Once she decided to become an actress, Ali Larter swiftly became caught up in the late '90s surge of teen-oriented entertainment. A native of Cherry Hill, NJ, Larter began modeling at age 13. After seven years as a cover girl and a globe-trotting Ford model, she opted to move to Los Angeles to set her sights on acting, and soon landed guest star roles on several TV series, including a two-episode stint on the WB's hit teen drama Dawson's_Creek in 1998. Quickly making the jump to movies, Larter co-starred in the high school gridiron hit Varsity_Blues (1999) as an alluring, ambitious cheerleader with eyes for Dawson's_Creek heartthrob James Van der Beek's quarterback. Though her next two movies, Drive_Me_Crazy (1999) and The House on Haunted Hill (1999), were not as successful, Larter's status as an up-and-coming young movie actress was enhanced by the sleeper success of teen horror film Final_Destination (2000), in which she sported a brunette hair color to suit her artist character's gothic leanings. The following summer, Larter could be seen -- this time playing characters closer to her own age -- in two more high-profile releases for the PG-13 set: first as Reese Witherspoon's possibly-homicidal sorority sister in the comedy Legally Blonde (2001); and later, as the main squeeze of Colin_Farrell, one of the titular train robbers in American Outlaws . The next several years brought much more of the same for Larter, as she signed for supporting roles in mostly buttered popcorn pictures and Hollywood programmers - such as the supernatural thriller follow-up Final Destination 2 (2003) and the Ashton Kutcher/Amanda Peet romantic comedy A Lot Like Love (2006) - but her career took an interesting twist in 2006. That year, Larter switched venues, signing for her first major television role: that of Niki Sanders, a single mom suddenly dumbstruck by the discovery of her violent, uber-strong alter ego, on the superhero-themed serial drama Heroes.
