Rachel Bilson

Born Rachel Sarah Bilson

August 25, 1981 (1981-08-25) (age 29)

Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Occupation Actress

Years active 2003–present

Rachel Sarah Bilson (born August 25, 1981) is an American actress. Bilson grew up in a California show business family, and made her television debut in 2003, subsequently becoming well-known for playing Summer Roberts on the prime time drama series The O.C. Bilson made her film debut in the 2006 film The Last Kiss and starred in the 2008 action/science fiction film Jumper.

Bilson was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of Janice (née Stango), a sex therapist, and Danny Bilson, a writer/director/producer. Bilson's father is Jewish and her mother, a native of Philadelphia, is Italian American. Bilson's father comes from a show business family; her great-grandfather, George Bilson, (born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England) was the head of the trailer department at RKO Pictures, her Brooklyn-born great-grandmother, Hattie Bilson, was a screenwriter, and her grandfather, Bruce Bilson, is a film director. Bilson's parents divorced during her childhood, and in 1997, her father remarried Heather Medway, an actress and the mother of Bilson's half-sisters Hattie and Rosemary.

Bilson has been noted as having a "self-destructive, rebellious period" during her teen years. When she was 14, she and a group of her brother's friends were involved in a car accident, a head-on collision with another car. As a result, Bilson was unconscious for a few days, has a scar above her right eye, and sometimes suffers from migraines and memory loss. She has stated that the experience "changed" her, encouraging her to "stop... getting into trouble” and stopping her from "going down that road". Bilson graduated from Walter Reed Middle School in 1995 and from Notre Dame High School in 1999. During her time at Notre Dame, she appeared in productions of Bye Bye Birdie, Once Upon a Mattress and The Crucible.