LIVELY NEARLY QUIT ACTING BEFORE GOSSIP GIRL

Gossip Girl made Blake Lively a household name. The actor starred on the show for six years (2007-2012) as Serena van der Woodsen, but she had decided to quit acting before being offered that career-making role.

Entertainment Weekly reports the 30-year-old actor realised in her teens that acting and the Hollywood scene were not for her. In an interview with Vanity Fair, she said, “I realised that [acting] was a business as much as a craft. People will go see your movie based on your standing and all of that, and it didn’t make sense to me because I was 18 and being an artist.”

Before her TV stardom, Lively’s most notable film was The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005). Then came Gossip Girl. She was approached by showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who had also been creators of the hit teenage drama, The O.C.

Initially, Lively was not totally on board. “I said, ‘No, I want to go to college. Thank you, though.’ Then they said, ‘Okay, you can go to Columbia [University] one day a week. After the first year [of the show], it’ll quiet down. Your life will go back to normal and you can start going to school. We can’t put it in writing, but we promise you can go.’ So that’s why I said, ‘Okay. You know what? I’ll do this,’” explained Lively in the interview.

Asked if she’d be game for a reboot, she said, “I’m open to anything that’s good, that’s interesting, and that sort of feels necessary? I imagine we all would [consider it].”

I realised that [acting] was a business as much as a craft... And it didn’t make sense to me because I was 18 and being an artist BLAKE LIVELY, ACTOR

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK Simon Cowell is an X Factor judge Blake Lively shot to fame playing Serena van der Woodsen in Gossip Girl for six seasons Simon Webbe (third from left) with bandmates of the British boy band Blue