Dianna Agron

Dianna Agron born April 30, 1986) is an American actress, singer, dancer and director. She is also the creator and co-editor of the music, art and photography website You, Me, and Charlie. Other ventures include directing a music video, and producing, writing and directing an unreleased short film A Fuchsia Elephant. Agron made her television debut appearing as Jessica Grant in CSI: NY in 2006. From 2006 to 2007, Agron had recurring roles in Veronica Mars as Jenny Budosh, and Heroes as Debbie Marshall.
In 2009, Agron was cast in her most notable TV role to date as Quinn Fabray on the Fox musical comedy-drama series,Glee. In 2011, Agron co-starred in the films The Hunters and I Am Number Four. Later that year, a concert documentary film of Glee was released, titled Glee: The 3D Concert Movie. In 2013, Agron co-starred as Belle Blake, alongside Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Tommy Lee Jones in the action crime-comedy film The Family.
== Early life ==
Agron was born in Savannah, Georgia, and was raised in San Antonio, Texas and San Francisco, California. She is the daughter of Mary and Ronald S. Agron, a general manager of Hyatt hotels. She has a younger brother, Jason. Agron's father's family is originally from Russia, and according to Agron their original surname, Agronsky, was altered by Ellis Island officials. Her father was born to a Jewish family, while her mother converted to Judaism. Agron attended Hebrew school and had a bat mitzvah. When she was 15, she found out that her father had multiple sclerosis. In an interview for Cosmopolitan, she revealed: "Quite a bit changed after that,” she says. "At that age, you don't see mortality in your parents." The disease caused her parents' relationship to fall apart, and they decided to separate, which was devastating for her and her younger brother. "I had to play therapist to my family... be the glue. Those kinds of things I'm not ready to speak about yet." Agron attended Burlingame Intermediate School and Burlingame High School, where she was in the Homecoming Court, and played in Grease as Marty, and also involved in the set design, the costumes, painting and the whole process. She has been dancing since the age of three, focusing mainly on jazz and ballet, and she later began hip-hop dancing and fell in love with musical theater as a child, often performing in local and school productions, and played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz in fifth grade, and began teaching dance as a teenager. She says she was not "popular" in the stereotypical sense in high school, though she had many friends from different cliques around the school.
== Career ==
Agron has appeared on television shows such as Shark, Close to Home, CSI: NY, Numb3rs, and had a recurring role on Veronica Mars. She then appeared as Harper on a 13-episode series of short films called It's a Mall World, directed by Milo Ventimiglia, and airing on MTV, and then on the second season of Heroes as Debbie Marshall, the head cheerleader/captain of the cheer squad at Costa Verde High School. In 2009, Agron hosted a mini music festival for 826LA in Los Angeles called Chickens in Love.
Agron's most notable role to date is as Quinn Fabray, a high school cheerleader, on the Fox series Glee. Agron was the last primary actor to be cast, having won the role only days before the pilot began filming. Agron said in a 2009 interview pertaining to her casting session: "I nearly bailed on my audition for the show. I was so nervous." Before being cast as Quinn, the show's producers wondered if she appeared too innocent. Agron said in an interview: "They told me to come back with straight hair and to dress sexier. Later that week, I started work." Agron auditioned with Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon". The Glee producers said "we really lucked out in finding Agron to play Quinn." Quinn is described by Agron as Rachel Berry's (Lea Michele) enemy, and "terrible, the meanest girl." Agron said that her favorite part of Quinn is that "she's smart. But she's also human, and through her tough exterior, she's often a little girl lost." Quinn was originally conceived as the antagonistic queen bee head cheerleader, a departure from Agron's actual high school experience.
Quinn's role as head cheerleader is central to understanding her character. Agron said that she had never had any prior cheer experience before the Pilot. "If I had been [a cheerleader], I would've ended up on crutches," she told Emmy magazine. The role saw Agron nominated for the Teen Choice Award for Female Breakout Star star in 2009. She and the other cast members were awarded the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series in 2010, and were nominated in the same category the following year. Agron was praised for her dramatic acting during the confrontation scene with Quinn's parents in the episode "Ballad". Gerrick D. Kennedy, writing for the Los Angeles Times, was critical of the ongoing Quinn pregnancy plot in the episode "Hairography", and noted that he cringed whenever Quinn appeared on screen. Conversely, Bobby Hankinson of the Houston Chronicle enjoyed Quinn in the episode, and wrote: "I love that she can keep her Mean Girls edge while being heartbreakingly sad or as joyful as she was singing "Papa Don't Preach". The A.V. Club writer Todd VanDerWerff suggested that Quinn's season three reinvention hinged on the fact the producers no longer knew how to utilize Agron.
In 2012, The Biography Channel aired a documentary of Glee, with Agron being interviewed along with other castmates. It showed a brief description of Agron's character and her audition for the show. On July 23, 2012, it was reported that Agron was going to appear less frequently in Glee '​s fourth season. Agron's character, Quinn, only appeared on three episodes: "Thanksgiving", "Naked", and "I Do". Agron returned in the fifth season for two special episodes: "100" (Glee's 100th episode) and "New Directions" (second part of the 100th episode). On March 18, 2014, in an interview with E! Entertainment, Agron expressed interest in returning for more future Glee episodes. Agron announced she would return to Glee for its final season after the show's music producer, Alex Anders, shared a photo of an Agron recording music at Capitol Records.
== Personal life ==
Agron and her Glee co-star Lea Michele decided to rent an apartment together in downtown Los Angeles in early 2009. "We have these smack-downs at work and come home and are like, 'Wasn't it so funny when we were fighting today? Let's make cookies!'" said Michele to New York Magazine.
In 2011, she underwent nose surgery to repair her deviated septum which was the result of a blow to the nose when she was fourteen. Agron's Twitter account was hacked on December 18, 2011 and had started many trending topics. The hacker also got into her personal email and started leaking songs, scripts, and episodes of Glee.
After the July 2013 death of her Glee co-star, Cory Monteith, Agron reflected on her own mortality, saying "it just makes you take a new lease out on life and look at things a little bit differently. He was truly one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met in my entire life...." Although she is now out of the show, she said her continuing friendship with her Glee co-stars was a comfort in the wake of Monteith's death.