Camilla Belle Routh is an American actress, director and producer.
Early life
Belle was born to Cristina Gould, a Brazilian fashion designer and Jack Wesley Routh, a construction company owner and former country music composer. Belle was raised in a Catholic household. She attended the Católica Elementary School of São Paulo and then the Marlborough School, an all-girl high school in Los Angeles. She grew up speaking Portuguese. During her childhood, Belle would spend seasons in Santos, Brazil, where Cristina was born. She adopted many Brazilian habits, such as the taste for Brazilian telenovelas.
Career
In 1992, she was cast as a lead in her first film, NBC's thriller, Trapped Beneath the Earth. Belle began her career with a small role in the film production of the novelA Little Princess. In , she played Cathy Bowman, a young wealthy British girl attacked by a pack of Compsognathus. In 1998, she played Aubrey Shepard on the Focus on the Family radio drama Adventures in Odyssey. Following a turn as Steven Seagal's daughter in The Patriot, she earned a 1999 Youth in Film Young Artist Award nomination for her portrayal of Sandra Bullock's character as a girl in Practical Magic, as well as another nomination the same year for her guest appearance on the TV series . She received her third and fourth Young Artist Award nominations respectively for the telefilm Replacing Dad and for her first lead role, in the Disney Channel TV Movie Rip Girls. Belle played the lead role in the television movieBack to the Secret Garden, then took a break from acting before returning with a role in the independent filmThe Quiet. SFStation wrote that "performance-wise The Quiet belongs to Camilla Belle and Elisha Cuthbert". She returned to performing after a short break with the lead role in the remake of When a Stranger Calls. She then played a lead role in her biggest box office hit to date, the Roland Emmerich-directed big-budget film 10,000 BC. Since this $270 million hit, Belle has played a number of lead roles in smaller independent, direct-to-video, short and unreleased films., her last film was The Mad Whale, a student project produced by James Franco's Elysium Bandini Studios and the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Personal life
Belle dated Joe Jonas from late 2008 to mid-2009. They met when she appeared in the Jonas Brothers' "Lovebug" music video. She has a close friendship with Maria Sharapova.
