Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, Shiri Appleby has acted since she was a toddler. She started out when she was 4 with appearances in television commercials for such products as Cheerios and M&Ms. In 1987, when Shiri was 8, she made her starring debut with a small role in a television movie called Blood Vows: The Story of a Mafia Wife. Though Shiri appeared in a few long-since-forgotten movies in her early career, she was primarily devoted to bit parts on hit television shows such as Who's The Boss?, Knots Landing and Doogie Howser, M.D.

Shiri's big break came in 1999 with a starring role on the hit WB show Roswell, opposite such up-and-coming performers as Jason Behr, Brendan Fehr and Katherine Heigl. Though the show only managed to hang around for three seasons, its cult following all but assured Shiri a lucrative career within the film industry. Since Roswell went off the air in 2002, Shiri has appeared in many movies, including Swimfan (2002) opposite Jesse Bradford and Erika Christensen, Undertow (2004) alongside Josh Lucas and Jamie Bell, and Havoc (2005), which attracted all kinds of publicity for Anne Hathaway's nude scenes.

There's little doubt that Shiri Appleby is right on the cusp of breaking out in a major way: She has a recurring role on the ABC show Six Degrees, and in 2006 she worked on the films Thrill of the Kill; What Love Is, with Cuba Gooding Jr., The Killing Floor; and Charlie Wilson's War, opposite Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.