Renee Olstead

Renee Olstead has been collecting impressive credits on TV, in film, and in the music industry since the age of six. Born in the suburbs of Houston, Texas, Olstead was a precocious talent from a very young age, appearing in pageants and TV commercials by age five. Between the ages of five and ten, she appeared in a number of TV movies, and in 1997, she was the focus of an E! Channel documentary, "The Making of a Child Star." In 1999, she appeared in two major studio films, "End of Days" (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and "The Insider" (with Al Pacino). Her family moved to Los Angeles when Olstead was cast in the CBS working class sitcom "Still Standing" in 2002. Starring Jami Gertz and Mark Addy as her parents, the show ran for four seasons, with Olstead playing their overly-dramatic teenage daughter. When not shooting the series, she pursued a singing career, becoming a performer of jazz standards in Los Angeles-area clubs. Her work as a singer drew the attention of producer David Foster; their recordings drew the attention of Warner Brothers, who released an album of Olstead's unusually mature jazz singing when she was still 14 years old. A second album was released in 2009, when Olstead was a regular on the ABC Family series "The Secret Life of the American Teenager."