Overview
Chyler Leigh West (pronounced ; née Potts; born April 10, 1982), known professionally as Chyler Leigh, is an American actress, singer and model. She is known for portraying Janey Briggs in the comedy film Not Another Teen Movie (2001), Lexie Grey in the ABC medical drama series Grey's Anatomy (2007–2012), and Alex Danvers in the DC Comics superhero series Supergirl (2015–2021).
Early life
Leigh was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, on April 10, 1982, to Yvonne Norton and Robert Potts. She was raised in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where her parents ran a weight-loss business. The business went bankrupt when she was eight and her parents' marriage ended when she was 12; she, her mother, and her older brotherformer actor Christopher Khayman Leethen moved to Miami, where her mother remarried her first husband. Leigh was estranged from her father for many years following her parents' divorce, but they have since reconciled.
Leigh was in eighth grade when she started modelling. She soon began acting by appearing in local television commercials and a syndicated teen news show, Hall Pass. In 1999, Leigh and her mother relocated to Los Angeles so she could develop her acting career. At 16, she took and passed the California High School Proficiency Exam.
Drug addiction and recovery
At age 16, Leigh met her future husband, 20-year-old Nathan West, when they both attended auditions for the pilot of an unsuccessful WB series titled Saving Graces. They began a relationship, and Leigh left home to move in with West. Leigh described them as being "broken", both having had troubled family lives and difficult upbringings. This led to abuse of drugs such as cocaine, which quickly escalated into addiction; she was told by the director of Not Another Teen Movie that she looked unhealthily thin. Around that time, she and West also attended a Christian church service, at the invitation of a friend, which helped them in recovery, and the two were subsequently married.
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