Bell has received a Satellite Award and Saturn Award, and has been nominated several times for Television Critics Association Awards and Teen Choice Awards. Bell was born and raised in Huntington Woods, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Her mother, Lorelei (née Frygier), is a registered nurse, and her father, Tom Bell, is the television news director for WOAI-TV in San Antonio. During her time at the school, she won the starring role in the school’s 1997 production of The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy Gale and also appeared in productions of Fiddler on the Roof (1995), Lady Be Good (1996), and Li’l Abner (1998). in 1992, Bell went to her first audition and won a dual role as a banana and a tree in a suburban Detroit theater’s production of Raggedy Ann and Andy. in 1998, she appeared with an uncredited role in the locally filmed movie Polish Wedding. in 2001, Bell left New York University to take a key role as Becky Thatcher in the short-lived Broadway musical of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. in 2002, she appeared in the Broadway revival of The Crucible with Liam Neeson, Angela Bettis and Laura Linney.
