Anna Faris - Early Life

Early Life

Anna Faris was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Her mother, Karen, was a special education teacher at Seaview Elementary School in Edmonds, Washington, where Faris was raised. Her father, Jack Faris, is a sociologist who worked at the University of Washington as a vice president of internal communications and later headed the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association. She has an older brother, Robert, who is also a sociologist and a professor at the University of California, Davis. At age 6, Faris moved with her family to Edmonds, Washington.

Her parents encouraged her to pursue acting when she was young, and she gave her first professional acting performance at age 9, in a three-month run of Arthur Miller's one-act play Danger: Memory! at the Seattle Repertory Theater. She went on to play Scout in a production of To Kill a Mockingbird at the Issaquah, Washington, Village Theatre, and played title character in Heidi and Rebecca in Our Town. At 14, while attending Edmonds-Woodway High School, she appeared in a frozen-yogurt TV commercial. After graduating from high school in 1994, Faris attended the University of Washington and earned a degree in English literature. Around this time, "my third or fourth job was a training video for Red Robin, which is a burger chain out West. I play, like, the perfect hostess. And I think they still use it," she said in May 2012.