Alyssa Milano

Alyssa Jayne Milano was born on December 19, 1972, in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, to Lin Milano, a fashion designer and talent manager, and Thomas M. Milano, a film music editor. Of Italian descent, she has a brother named Cory, who is a decade younger. After a shooting in the neighborhood, the family relocated to Great Ils, Staten Island. Milano was raised Catholic and has continued to practice the faith.

Milano's career began at age seven when her babysitter brought her, without her parents' knowledge, to an audition for the national touring company of Annie. She was among four girls chosen from a pool of more than 1,500 candidates. The production kept Milano and her mother on the road for 18 months. Her Broadway work spans from 1978 to 1996 and includes Annie as well as Chicago, in which she took on the replacement role of Roxie Hart and performed her own singing. Following her time with Annie, she returned to New York and appeared in television commercials and several off-Broadway productions, among them the first American musical adaptation of Jane Eyre. A New York agent signed her after she accompanied a friend from Annie to the agent's office.

On stage beyond Broadway, Milano performed in Tender Offer, a one-act play by Wendy Wasserstein, and All Night Long by playwright John O'Keefe, as well as the first American musical adaptation of Jane Eyre. In late 1991 and early 1992, she produced and starred in a Los Angeles production of Butterflies Are Free, which ran from December 26, 1991, to January 19, 1992.

In August 1984, Milano made her film debut in the coming-of-age drama Old Enough, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival and won First Prize there. That same year, she won the role of Samantha Micelli on the ABC sitcom Who's the Boss?, which premiered on September 20, 1984, and ran through 1992. The series required her family to relocate to Los Angeles. At age 12, she co-starred in Commando (1985) as Jenny Matrix, the daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character John Matrix. She also appeared in the children's film The Canterville Ghost, and a Japanese producer's interest in that film led to a five-album record deal in Japan, where her albums achieved platinum status. Milano described the music as bubblegum pop and later criticized its quality, noting she had no interest in pursuing a music career in the United States. During the same period, she wrote a weekly column titled "From Alyssa, with love" for the teen magazine Teen Machine and produced a teen workout video called Teen Steam.

In 1992, Milano appeared in the independent film Where the Day Takes You, playing a teenage prostitute. The film was nominated for the Critics Award at the Deauville Film Festival and won the Golden Space Needle Award at the Seattle International Film Festival. She subsequently played Amy Fisher in the television film Casualties of Love: The "Long Island Lolita" Story, one of three TV films based on Fisher's shooting of Mary Jo Buttafuoco. In the early 1990s, Milano also appeared in several adult-oriented erotic films, including Embrace of the Vampire, Deadly Sins, and Poison Ivy II: Lily. She has stated that those experiences led her to require a nudity clause in future contracts giving her full control over such scenes.

In late 1996, producer Aaron Spelling offered Milano the role of Jennifer Mancini on Melrose Place, where she appeared from 1997 to 1998. In 1998, Spelling cast her as Phoebe Halliwell, one of three lead characters on Charmed. She and co-star Holly Marie Combs became producers on the show during its fourth season, and the series ran for eight seasons, concluding in 2006. Also in 1998, Milano appeared in the music video for Blink-182's "Josie" as Mark Hoppus's love interest. Subsequent television roles included Billie Cunningham in My Name Is Earl from 2007 to 2008, Savannah "Savi" Davis in Mistresses from 2013 to 2014, Renata Murphy in Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later in 2017, and Coralee Armstrong in Insatiable from 2018 to 2019.

Beyond her performance career, Milano became publicly known as an activist, particularly for her involvement in the #MeToo movement in October 2017.