From Askmen.com:
Mary Elizabeth Winstead was born on November 28, 1984, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The youngest of five children, Mary has three sisters and a brother. She describes her mother as her hero.
As a girl, Mary Elizabeth Winstead showed a knack for singing and dancing, and trained for a while at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York. She became interested in acting at an early age. After playing Juliet in a fourth-grade production of Romeo and Juliet, Mary Elizabeth Winstead convinced her mother to find her an agent, and by the time Mary hit her teens, she was appearing on TV shows like Touched by an Angel and Promised Land.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead didn't know it at the time, but her early success may well have been hereditary. Screen legend Ava Gardner is her distant relative: "I really didn't find out until I was older," Mary explained, "and then my family were like, 'Oh, by the way, she's your cousin.'"
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