Early Life
Berkley was born and raised in Farmington Hills, a community located among Detroit's northern suburbs in Oakland County, Michigan. She is the daughter of Jere, a gift basket business owner, and Fred Berkley, a lawyer. Her family is Jewish. Berkley was born with heterochromia, the condition of differently coloured irises, so that her right eye is half green and half brown, and her left eye is all green. She graduated in 1990 from North Farmington High School in Farmington Hills after previously having attended the Cranbrook Kingswood School, a private school in Bloomfield Hills.
From a young age she danced, and she practiced in a room that her parents arranged for her in the basement of their house. In 1982 at age ten she auditioned for the lead role in the film Annie, but was turned down. As her love for dancing increased, she became more interested in pursuing it professionally, traveling to New York to train with other dancers and choreographers. She began to take part in several ballets, including Swan Lake and in 1983 she appeared in some musicals.
Read more about this topic: Elizabeth Berkley
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Show me a character whose life arouses my curiosity, and my flesh begins crawling with suspense.”
—Fawn M. Brodie (1915–1981)