Alexis Bledel

Gilmore Girls star Alexis Bledel captured viewers’ hearts for seven seasons — and on two networks — as Rory Gilmore, the lovable Yalie with dreams of journalistic stardom.

Featured opposite Lauren Graham, who plays Rory’s mom and best friend Lorelai,  Bledel dated her Gilmore Girls onscreen love interest Milo Ventimiglia for more than three years before the couple separated in July 2006.

The Houston native got her start doing community theater in her hometown. Her feature film debut came with 2002’s Tuck Everlasting, in which she starred alongside Ben Kingsley, Sissy Spacek and Jonathan Jackson.

In recent years, Bledel has taken roles in the high-budget blockbuster Sin City and the beloved girl-bonding flick The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, with Ugly Betty breakout star America Ferrera. Bledel reprised her Traveling Pants role when the film’s highly anticipated sequel hit theaters in 2008. In 2009, she hit the big screen in Post Grad costarring with comedy vets Carol Burnett and Jane Lynch, and signed a modeling contract with IMG.

Bledel accepted her Mad Men costar Vincent Kartheiser‘s proposal in 2013 and they were married in a small ceremony in 2014. The two have one child together, but have kept the child out of the public eye. Us confirmed in August 2022 that Kartheiser had filed for divorce after eight years of marriage.

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Bledel reprised her role as Rory Gilmore in the Netflix revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in Life in 2016.