Minka Kelly

Minka Kelly was born on June 24, 1980 in Los Angeles, California. According to Kelly, her childhood was "pretty rough," and she held a resentment for Dufay, as he had abandoned her and her mother. However, at seventeen, she decided to try and reconcile by inviting him out to New Mexico.After graduating from high school, Kelly returned to Los Angeles with her father to pursue acting as a hobby while she went to school to become a surgical technician.

A veteran model and commercial actress, Minka Kelly had her breakthrough role as Lyla Garrity, the doggedly loyal, but deeply conflicted head cheerleader on Peter Berg’s small screen adaptation of his surprise hit film, Prior to her first regular series role, Kelly appeared in commercials for Old Navy and Johnson & Johnson, and modeled for a Madge Cosmetics ad campaign. Born June 24, 1980, Kelly's mother was a Las Vegas showgirl; her father was a rock guitarist who played on Aerosmith's 1982 LP.

She broke into acting with an episode of the 1960s-themed drama, American Dreams (NBC, 2002-05), before landing a three-episode arc on the WB sitcom, What I Like About You (2002-06). After appearing on an episode of the short-lived college comedy Cracking Up (Fox, 2003-04), Kelly scored her role on Friday Night Lights, portraying Lyla Garrity as a near-perfect All-American girl, whose overreaching sweetness aggravates her boyfriend, starting quarterback Jason Street (Scott Porter), even as she cares for him after an injury leaves him paralyzed from the waist down. Kelly then made the jump to features, filming the Jamie Foxx-Colin Farrell political thriller The Kingdom (2007), about a team of counter terrorism investigators who find themselves targets for assassination after setting out to find the perpetrators behind a deadly attack on Americans in a Middle Eastern country.