Sophia Bush

TV and film actress Sophia Bush says that she's not a celebrity...

Okay so she said something like that in an interview with CosmoGirl two years ago, but that kind of non-Hollywood attitude is typical of Sophia Bush. What she actually said was:

I work on a TV show so I'm notable for the TV show, but I'm not a celebrity. I don't call myself a celebrity. I'm an actor. I can go to the mall alone. I can put on a hat and put my hair in a ponytail and go out in jeans and a T-shirt with no makeup on and people almost don't notice me.

Recognize her anyone?

In a 2007 interview with Saturday Night Magazine Sophia Bush talked about her self-control and good girl personality:

I appreciate that when I am considered part of 'young Hollywood,' it’s because of my work, not my ability to shotgun beers. That is how I want to be represented, not by my social habits. I love my job, I love acting, I love making movies, I love becoming someone else for 10 hours a day for the joy of finding someone else’s psychology. If I plan on doing this for the rest of my life, if I plan to still be working until I’m 60, I can’t blow it now. I’d rather do it slowly and properly than explode for being a party girl and not have a career in two years, it’s not worth it for me.

Among the movie roles played by Sophia Bush was in the action/thriller Hitcher, in the biker movie Supercross, and in the video game horror/thriller Stay Alive. Her latest movie is The Narrows, due for release this year. But apart from these Sophia Bush has been in teen movies, like Van Wilder and John Tucker Must Die.

On TV Sophia Bush has also played teen parts, mostly cheerleaders. In three episodes of the plastic surgery show Nip/Tuck Sophia portrayed a bisexual cheerleader! "That show was my personal boundary," admits Sophia.

Sophia Bush is most well-known for her role as a straight but foxy cheerleader in One Tree Hill. But the funny thing is....the attractive Sophia Bush was never a cheerleader in her own high school!

Sophia was in the Westridge School for Girls, in her hometown of Pasadena California. Bush says that she was very energetic and outgoing in high school; played volleyball, and loved to study. "I was one of those people that always liked to go home and do their homework," recalls Sophia. And it was in high school that she first caught the acting bug from taking part in the school plays.

Sophia's family also played a part in exposing her to the entertainment industry. Her father Charles William Bush is an advertising and celebrity photographer. "My dad is just amazingly talented. He's got an eye to see what's really beautiful about a person, and that's such a great thing because be it staring at a celebrity or looking at a landscape on vacation, he can point out so many things that make what you're viewing so much more exciting." Her mom Maureen works with her dad and at a young age Sophia (born 8 July 1982) got to meet and vibe with models, actors, celebrities.

Sophia was named Pasadena's Tournament of Roses Parade Queen in 2000. Says Bush, "I was very lucky that it lent some publicity to what I was doing, but I didn't even start working as an actress until the end of my freshman year in college." Ironically 2000 was also the year when George W Bush became the US president, and has stayed in that position throughout Sophia's career. Because of the same surnames many people still wonder if Sophia is related to the political Bush family!

Sophia Bush majored in theatre at the University of Southern California, but later switched to journalism so she could understand the public relations side of having an acting career. In her third year of college she read for the role of Brooke Davis, the cheerleader in One Tree Hill. On the set she met and began dating co-star Chad Michael Murray (2003). They were married in April 2005 and then divorced in September that year, following reports that he had an affair with bad girl Paris Hilton while filming House of Wax with her.

Within a few months of the break-up Chad hooked up with an 18-year old extra on the same show, Kenzie Dalton. To make it even worse for Sophia, Chad got engaged to his new girlfriend! But Sophia Bush continued working with Chad through all seasons of OTH like a professional. "I still care about Chad and I always will. I will never bash him." CosmoGirl. "The thing that hurts most is throwing all my wedding photos away, having wasted that trip down the aisle with my dad."

Sophia says that she was nothing like the vixens that she plays on OTH and Nip/Tuck, "I've always been the long-term relationship, go-home-and-meet-mom girl. Ever since I was little, love and commitment have always been important to me." Sophia was in a relationship with her Stay Alive co-star Jon Foster and was rumored to have dated Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. Latest gossip has Sophia Bush "hooking up" with the other hunk from One Tree Hill, James Lafferty; although this has been denied and is certainly a rumor started to promote the current season of the show.

One Tree Hill is shot in Wilmington, North Carolina away from Hollywood and Sophia's family in LA and her friends in New York. During the shoot Sophia would take time out to visit her parents in Pasadena. "My parents and I are very close, and I haven't lived at home with them in Pasadena since leaving for USC, so it'll be nice to visit them and hang there."

The latest season of OTH has moved forward 4 years, basically skipping college, and the characters now have careers and babies!

One other non-Hollywood trait in Sophia Bush is her loyalty to her friends. Holly, one of her best friends from college, was diagnosed with Lymphoma (cancer). "I flew home and even though I couldn't see Holly in the hospital, I just had to be home," recalls Sophia. When Holly recovered the friends started a nonprofit for teenagers and young people with cancer. "We want to get people to donate their old iPods so we can update them with the latest, greatest music and give them to sick teens to check out while they're in the hospital."

Another friend of Sophia's is Milo Ventimiglia, her co-star in Stay Alive and the guy who dated Alexis Bledel, and the two of them are members of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Sophia Bush likes Barack Obama's health care plan and is supporting his presidential campaign.

Sophia Bush helped Barefoot Wine Beach Rescue Project clean Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina last year.

Brittany Snow, who co-starred with Sophia Bush in the comedy John Tucker Must Die, describes her as a best friend forever. Snow says she couldn't have beat her nine-year battle with anorexia without Sophia's support: "Sophia gives really, really good advice," Snow, 22, reveals in the May issue of CosmoGIRL. "I have so many girlfriends who are not even in Hollywood who struggle with eating disorders — Sophia and Amanda Bynes are the only two people I know who are happy with their bodies."

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