Aw, Blake, You’re All Grown Up! The Blond Beauty Turns 25, Snakkle Looks Back on Her Best Moments

Not much has changed since she was a youngster. In this vintage pic of the actress, she looks cute as a button. Born and raised in Tarzana, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Lively is the youngest of five children. Because much of her family is involved in the entertainment industry, it came as no surprise that little Lively wanted to take a stab at acting herself. That smile? Definitely star material.

In 2005, Lively landed one of the leads in the film adaptation of the wildly popular teen fiction book The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Of the four best friends, Lively played Bridget, the hardheaded soccer star with a crush on her coach. The film was a success, and Lively was nominated for Choice Movie Breakout – Female at the Teen Choice Awards.

Lively attended Burbank High School when she wasn’t auditioning or landing movie roles, which meant that she was never very far from the action. Not long after graduating from high school, Lively costarred with Justin Long in the movie Accepted, which helped to pave her way to A-list fame.

Lively struck gold with her role as “It Girl” Serena van der Woodsen on the hit CW television series Gossip Girl. The book-to-TV show about Upper East Side high school prep students was the perfect guilty pleasure. With The O.C. creator Josh Schwartz at the helm of the project, Lively became the next Marissa Cooper almost overnight.

In this 2009 period reflection, Lively plays young Pippa, a troubled girl with a neurotic, drug-abusing mother who obsesses over her daughter’s looks. Lively’s performance alongside Bello was noteworthy and strong, and helped to cement her ability to cross over from TV to film successfully.

You know you’ve made it in America when you get asked to cohost an episode of Saturday Night Live. Lively joined the cast for a night in 2010, starring in a skit with funnyman Andy Samberg. Lively poked fun at her blond-bombshell sex appeal in a number of sexy, er, numbers. Check out this clip to watch Samberg sing about getting lucky. He would be so lucky!

The Town was written by and starred Ben Affleck, plus it boasted a stacked cast of A-list celebrities with the talent to back it up. In order to play Krista Coughlin, Lively had to adopt a convincing Boston accent (Charlestown, to be precise) and break out of her typecast role as a cute and sexy prep school girl. Off came the headband, on went the smudged eyeliner and druggie affectations. The Town opened in theaters to overwhelming success, raking in $23 million and netting Jeremy Renner an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor as Affleck’s friend James “Jem” Coughlin. Well played, Blake!

In 2011, Lively starred alongside Ryan Reynolds in the comic book-based movie Green Lantern. This time, she was a top-billing leading lady. While the blockbuster underperformed at the box office, the on-screen chemistry between Reynolds and Lively was undeniable. Hal Jordan, played by Reynolds, predictably goes on to save the world and life of his childhood (ands soon-to-be real life) sweetheart, played by Lively.

It was a whirlwind year for Lively, seeing as she also landed herself on the cover of fashion mag Vogue’s February issue. Lively looks perfectly coiffed and put together in the old Hollywood retro-inspired photo shoot. A red carpet natural, Lively has a day-to-day personal style that made her a no-brainer for the spring cover. Unsurprisingly, she made the cover again only a few months later in June, in a jaw-dropping surf-inspired feature shot by famed photographer Mario Testino that left none of Lively’s curves unexplored.

As soon as news hit that Lively had been spotted leaving Reynolds’s Boston apartment in October 2011, tongues started wagging about the possibility of an on-set romance between the two former costars. The two lovebirds didn’t try too hard to keep a lid on things and were soon making red carpet appearances together. Not the first high-profile relationship for either of them, they’ve taken their relationship in stride and appear completely at ease with each other. So, sadly for Lively fans, she’s still off the market.

In between filming scenes for Gossip Girl, Lively managed to star in Oliver Stone’s 2012 summer blockbuster Savages. The all-star cast featured Friday Night Lights star Taylor Kitsch and the fairly new Aaron Taylor-Johnson as friends Chon and Ben, who share the same lover, O, played by Lively. Salma Hayek and Benicio Del Toro play the Mexican cartel villains who kidnap O in order to shut down Chon and Ben’s successful marijuana-growing business in Laguna Beach, California. It’s unlikely Lively had any trouble convincing audiences she was a sexy, sought-after leading lady in need of rescue by two equally hot lovers.