Little do people know, Rachel Jade Bilson actually got her start in acting in 1988 with the film The Wrong Guys with comedian Louie Anderson (making her the O.C. cast member with the earliest professional debut), thanks to her parents. A friend recomended her to filmmakers for the seven-episode TV miniseries Human Target while attending Notre Dame High School (the same school as Kirsten Dunst, but a year ahead). Even though it was a small role, Bilson realized acting was something she wanted to do full-time. Therefore, once she graduated from high school, she pursued her new passion and hired an agent.

Bilson was also a popular stage actress, her first high-profile gig being in a production of Bye Bye Birdie, followed by The Crucible and Once Upon a Mattress. She was granted a key role in a CBS fantasy series called It's True but the show never aired due to financial reasons. She continued to film commercials before finally reaching her ultra-famous role of Summer Roberts.

After nonstop auditioning and thanks to a resourceful agent, Bilson appeared as a guest star in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. But it was the lead in a short film, Unbroken, which lead FOX to cast her as Summer Robert's, the O.C.'s resident queen bee, best friend of recently (and controversially) deceased Marissa Cooper (played by Mischa Barton) and girlfriend of dorky but lovable Seth Cohen (Adam Brody). The O.C. skyrocketed the four main stars (Barton, Bilson, Brody, and Benjamin McKenzie, who plays bad boy Ryan Atwood) to fame when it debuted in 2003, and the show is currently filming the fourth season (the third season is on DVD October 24th).

Rachel in 'The Last Kiss'

"I feel very lucky to work in the environment that I work in. I'm surrounded by people that I love and care about and who make me laugh every day. I get to work with my friends and you really can't ask for more than that," Bilson once said of her current working environment. Sure enough, her newest film, The Last Kiss (with Zach Braff) is set to release this year. Bilson plays Kim in the film, which is already receiving positive reviews. However, news is not so great for The O.C...

The O.C. won't start its fourth season until well after the rest of FOX's fall schedule hits the air, and as things stand now, it won't be around for as long either. The network confirmed that it's ordered only 16 episodes of the show for the 2006-07 season, as first reported by Variety. A typical full-season order for a series is 22 episodes. Typical for most shows, that is. Through its first three seasons, The O.C. never shot fewer than 24 episodes; last year the count was 25. Also, the show will have to compete with other popular Thursday dramas with the same time slot, Grey's Anatomy and CSI, not to mention NBC's popular game show Deal or No Deal. But hopefully, Bilson and her castmates will bring the show back to what it was!

Bilson, a religious watcher of Friends and Sex and the City, has a younger sister Addie and two older brothers. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her high school best friend Lea, and is dating O.C. costar Adam Brody (of whom she says, "I tend to call him Seth in real life, actually! And he does the same thing to me . . . calling me Summer instead of Rachel after we've shot a scene together. He's not dorky as Seth in real life.").