At 18, she moved to Los Angeles on Christmas Day with big dreams. She worked three jobs and washed her clothes in the sink. Then she auditioned for one role on a new TV show and landed a completely different one.
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August 18, 1994. Madelaine Petsch is born in Port Orchard, Washington. Her parents are from South Africa. For the first 10 years of her life, she splits her time between the two countries.
At 3, she starts dance classes. At 5, her mom signs her up for her first play. After the very first rehearsal, she knows this is what she wants to do with her life.
School is harder. Kids bully her for her bright red hair and her South African accent. Her confidence takes a beating.
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She keeps performing anyway. She studies at the Tacoma School of the Arts.
A few months after turning 18, she moves to Los Angeles. She arrives on Christmas Day.
The dream is big. The reality is tough. She works three jobs at once: managing a coffee shop, assisting a photographer, and waiting tables. Money is so tight she washes her clothes in the sink.
Here’s what makes it worse. Before her big break, she starts having really bad panic attacks. Social anxiety follows. Some days she shows up to auditions completely exhausted.
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Then comes Riverdale, a dark new take on the Archie comics.
She auditions for Betty Cooper. What she doesn’t know is that the casting director already has another role in mind for her. That character is top secret at the time.
February 2016. She is cast as Cheryl Blossom, the fiery redhead queen of Riverdale High.
Funny twist. She is a big Archie fan, but she has no idea who Cheryl is. The character barely appears in the comics.
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January 2017. Riverdale premieres on The CW. Cheryl quickly becomes a fan favorite. The girl once bullied for her red hair is now famous for it.
The show runs for 7 seasons, until 2023. She appears in 131 episodes.
August 2019. She covers Nylon magazine and talks openly about her panic attacks and social anxiety. She explains that therapy helped her understand what she was feeling. She speaks out against the stigma around getting help.
After Riverdale ends, she takes on her biggest challenge yet.
She leads a new horror trilogy, The Strangers. All three films are shot in just 52 days.
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May 17, 2024. The Strangers: Chapter 1 hits theaters. Critics are harsh, but audiences show up. It has the biggest domestic opening of any horror film that year up to that point, $11.8 million.
Made for about $8.5 million, it earns about $48 million worldwide. She stars in both sequels too.
Here is the part most people miss. The confident mean girl the world fell in love with was played by someone fighting panic attacks and old wounds from school.
Your struggles do not disqualify you. Sometimes they are exactly what make you strong enough to shine.
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