July 2: High School Musical's Ashley Tisdale is 26-years-old today.

Ashley Michelle Tisdale was born in West Deal, New Jersey on July 2, 1985. Her maternal grandfather, Arnold Morris, developed the Ginsu Knives.

At the age of three, Tisdale met her current manager, Bill Perlman, at a New Jersey mall, resulting in her placement in more than 100 national network TV ads. She began her theatrical career by appearing in Gypsy: A Musical Fable and The Sound of Music at Monmouth County's Jewish Community Center.
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t the age of eight, she was cast to play the part of Cosette in a national touring production of the musical Les Misérables. Tisdale toured for two years on Les Misérables before landing a role in an international touring production of Annie in Korea.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Tisdale had minor roles in several television shows such as The Hughleys, Smart Guy, 7th Heaven, Boston Public and Bette and in the feature films A Bug's Life and Donnie Darko. She also worked as a Ford Model. For her role in Boston Public, she received a 2000 Young Artist Award nomination for "Best Guest Performance In a TV drama."

Photo by Mark Perez 

In 2004, she was cast as the teenage candy-counter girl Maddie Fitzpatrick in the Disney Channel series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, which premiered in March 2005 and ended in 2008. She later won her first award at the UK Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards for "Best TV Actress."

Although the producers of the Disney Channel Original Movie High School Musical did not initially consider her because of her "good-girl image" on The Suite Life, Tisdale was eventually cast as the popular, narcissistic high school student Sharpay Evans in the 2006 film. High School Musical became Disney Channel's most watched movie that year, with 7.7 million viewers in its US premiere broadcast.

The soundtrack, in which Tisdale lent her vocals for several songs, became the top-selling album in the U.S. that year. Tisdale became the first female artist to debut with two songs simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with "What I've Been Looking For" and "Bop to the Top," both tracks from the film's soundtrack. Due to the popularity earned by Tisdale through her performance in High School Musical, Warner Bros. Records signed her for a recording contract in July 2006 and she started working on her debut album.

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Headstrong, Tisdale's debut album, released in February 2007 via Warner Bros,debuted at number five on the Billboard 200. "Be Good to Me" was released as the album's first single in the December, 2006 and "He Said She Said" was released as the second, in September, 2007. In 2008, "Not Like That" and "Suddenly" were released as singles in a selective number of countries that did not include North America.

A music DVD entitled There's Something About Ashley followed the release of her debut album, with a three-song trilogy comprising music videos and a documentary about the creation of Headstrong.

The success of the first High School Musical film led Tisdale to reprise the role in the 2007 sequel High School Musical 2. She lent vocals for several tracks in the film's soundtrack. Even more successful than the first film, High School Musical 2 became the most-watched cable-television movie, receiving 17 million viewers on its premiere night. Also in 2007, Tisdale was given the voice role of Candace Flynn, the series' secondary antagonist, in Phineas and Ferb and made a vocal contribution to the show's 2009 soundtrack.

Tisdale formed her own production company in 2008 and named it Blondie Girl Productions. Tisdale had her first lead role in the 2008 ABC Family Original Movie Picture This as Mandy Gilbert, an unpopular and bullied teenager.

Tisdale reprised her role as Sharpay Evans in the 2008 High School Musical 3: Senior Year. Her performance in the film earned her an MTV Movie Award for "Breakthrough Performance Female" in 2009.

Her second studio album, Guilty Pleasure, was released in 2009. It debuted at number twelve on the Billboard 200. The song "It's Alright, It's OK" was released as the album's lead single in April in airplay and digital formats and a second single, "Crank It Up", was later released in October.

Tisdale posed nude for the May 2011 issue of Allure magazine. She was quoted as saying that "being in this shoot was me saying, ‘I’m not just the young girl everybody thinks I am. I’m actually a woman.’”






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