Gabrielle Montez - err, Vanessa Hudgens - is one firecracker of a teen pop act, best known as the character Gabrielle from the crazed television film High School Musical. The actress/singer/heartbreaker has been entertaining the masses since her youth, and a slowdown is out of the question for this busy performer.

Vanessa Hudgens was born in Salinas, California, raised in the So-Cal city San Diego. Catching the performing bug at an early age, Hudgens started performing in musicals at age eight, moving her family to Los Angeles after winning an audition for a commercial. Sensing her talent for acting and performing, Hudgens moved to England to study drama and music at Kingsbrook Business and Enterprise College, moving back to L.A. at the completion of the program to immediately score gigs on shows and films like Quintuplets, Cover Me, Still Standing, Thirteen and Thunderbirds. A rising star on the Tinseltown entertainment scene, Hudgens scored her biggest gig yet when she was cast in 2006's High School Musical as the beautiful and shy transfer student Gabrielle Montez. The Disney Channel Original Movie was an instant fad among teens and tweens nationwide, propelling the film's soundtrack to number ones across the Billboard 200, Top Kid, Top Soundtracks and Top Internet Albums charts while pushing names like Hudgens' up on the celebrity screen.

After the smoke from High School Musical started to clear, Hudgens was offered a recording contract as a solo artist and she released the album V in 2006. Continuing to work with the High Shool Musical crew, Hudgens also toured with the Disney group the Cheetah Girls that year, winning Teen Choice Awards before nude pictures of the much-too-young performer surfaced on the Internet. Regardless, Disney kept Hudgens onboard High School Musical and the teen pop sensation has since released her second solo album Identified in 2008.