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Born in Port Jefferson, Long Island, in April 1993, actress Vivien Cardone was home-schooled for her first nine years and subsequently moved with her family to Utah, where she attended private Christian school. Cardone stepped in front of the cameras well before her 10th birthday, on the heels of her 19-month-older sister (a commercial actress from the age of 1 1/2), with commercial work for brands such as Sears, Pillsbury, and Pizza Hut, in addition to a veritable blizzard of public service announcements. Eventually, the two girls (one four years old, and one five) headlined a Disney video series designed for sale in Asia to help Asian children learn English. Though her sister abandoned acting indefinitely, Vivien opted to stick with it and struck out on her own, prestigiously so, as the young niece of schizophrenic mathematician John Nash's (Russell Crowe) roommate in the Ron Howard-directed Best Picture winner A Beautiful Mind (2001). Cardone then switched venues and made an equally strong impression on the small screen, as Delia Brown, Dr. Andy Brown's only daughter, on the WB network's gentle series drama Everwood. The ingénue landed one of her first starring roles as a preteen struggling to contend with the sudden death of her mother, who finds unexpected help from a cute puppy and several kindly strangers, in the gentle family-oriented drama All Roads Lead Home (2008).