Vanessa Ray

Vanessa Ray (born Vanessa Ray Liptak on June 24, 1981) is an American actress whose career has spanned stage, television, and film. She earned her Actors' Equity Association card performing the role of Rusty and singing "Let's Hear It for the Boy" in the musical Footloose, and went on to play Nemo in Robert and Kristin Lopez's Finding Nemo: The Musical at Disney World in Orlando. Her screen work began with a youth-oriented video short, The Sparky Chronicles: The Map (2003), in which she played a character named Chris.

Ray's Broadway career ran from 2006 to 2009. Prior to her Broadway appearances, she originated the role of Olive Ostrovsky on the national tour of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a credit that preceded her joining the Broadway production of the same show. She later became part of the Broadway cast of Hair during its final year, playing Crissy and performing the song "Frank Mills."

Concurrent with her stage work, Ray began a television career, joining the cast of the soap opera As the World Turns in 2006 as Teri Ciccone, a role she held through 2010. She subsequently appeared in recurring roles on Damages in 2010 and Suits from 2011 to 2012. Her most prominent television role came with the Freeform thriller series Pretty Little Liars, where she played Charlotte Drake, also known as CeCe Drake, from 2012 to 2017, earning a Teen Choice Award for the performance. In 2013, Ray joined Blue Bloods on CBS in its fourth season as Officer Edit "Eddie" Janko, continuing in that role through the series' cancellation in December 2024.

Ray married actor Derek James Baynham on January 8, 2003. In 2007, the first season of the HGTV series Marriage Under Construction documented their purchase, renovation, and sale of a house in Toronto. The couple divorced in 2009. Ray later became engaged to Landon Beard in March 2015, and the two married on June 14, 2015, at the Condor's Nest Ranch in eastern San Diego County, California. In December 2020, Ray disclosed during an appearance on The Pink Lemonade podcast that she has bipolar disorder, having first been diagnosed during a three-month stay in a mental health facility. On March 1, 2024, Ray and her husband welcomed a baby boy through adoption.