Camilla Belle on AllMovie

A dark-haired beauty with a devilish smile, Camilla Belle began her acting career long before she grew into her bewitching looks. She began appearing in television commercials in 1987, when she was just nine months old. By the time she started school, she was also appearing in her first dramatic role: a part in the made-for-TV thriller, Trouble Shooters: Trapped Beneath the Earth. Born to an American father and Brazilian mother, Belle grew to be fluent in both English and Portuguese, and was in fact named after a character on a popular Brazilian soap opera. While attending school in Los Angeles, Belle enjoyed trips to Brazil to visit family, as well as a household that embraced the food, music, and culture of both branches of her heritage. By the time she was in high school, she'd gotten her feet wet with appearances in numerous TV and big-screen films, such as Empty Cradle and A Little Princess. In 2004, Belle finally landed the part that would make her a popular name with a role in the independent film The Ballad of Jack & Rose. Starring alongside such greats as Daniel Day-Lewis and Catherine Keener was a tremendous experience for the young actress, and she followed up the role with another independent venture, The Chumscrubber. Finally ready for mainstream success, Belle starred in the 2005 remake of When a Stranger Calls, followed by a role in the thriller The Quiet, in which she played an orphaned deaf girl who is placed in the sordid and incestuous household of her godparents and their daughter, played by another sultry teen star, Elisha Cuthbert.