While Amanda Seyfried's star was rising, she was experiencing unexplained bouts of OCD.

Amanda Seyfried always knew she wanted to be a star. 

She began acting as a teenager, before landing her breakout role as Karen Smith in 2004's Mean Girls. 

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Below we look back at the 36-year-old's rise to fame and journey into motherhood: 

Amanda Seyfried's childhood and rise to fame.

Seyfried was drawn to the entertainment industry from a young age. 

When she was a child, the Mamma Mia! star dreamed of becoming a singer.

"My family would take me to watch musicals in New York sometimes. I absolutely loved them," she told Cinema.com. "And I've always loved singing."

Amanda Seyfried as a child. Image: Pinterest. 

"Growing up singing, it was always something that I thought I'd pursue," she said, adding that "acting took over". 

Seyfried was just 11 when she began modelling. By 17, she had switched gears and put all her energy into becoming an actor. 

It was a decision that came with a lot of sacrifices. 

The Dropout star almost didn't graduate high school because she spent so much time auditioning for roles and working with a Broadway coach to improve her vocal skills. 

Despite her promising career, she admitted she went through a "dark" period when she was younger.

"[I modelled] because it was glamorous and because people let me. I was made fun of at school for being pale and ugly," she told inews in 2018.

As a teenager, Seyfried struggled with intense panic attacks and unexplainable bouts of OCD. Then at 19, she was officially diagnosed with the disorder. She now describes her mental health as a "work in progress" and she doesn't regret sharing her mental health journey with others. 

"I don’t edit myself as much as I should," she said. "But it makes me feel better at the end of the day that I’m not being fraudulent or withholding."

In 2016, she told Allure she plans to stay on her OCD medication.

"I’ll never get off of it. I’ve been on it since I was 19. I’m on the lowest dose. I don’t see the point of getting off of it," she explained. 

"Whether it’s placebo or not, I don’t want to risk it. And what are you fighting against? Just the stigma of using a tool? A mental illness is a thing that people cast in a different category [from other illnesses], but I don’t think it is. It should be taken as seriously as anything else." 

Amanda Seyfried's acting career.

Seyfried's first big break came in 1999 when she starred as Lucy Montgomery in the TV series As The World Turns. 

In recent years, she's spoken about the culture on set, describing her experience on the show as "heartbreaking". 

"It was really exciting and heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. They were mean," she told SiriusXM. 

"Not that anyone was being mean to me, like, to my face, but it wasn't a warm environment. These people were coming to work, and they were doing their thing, and they were leaving, and I was a 15-year-old who wanted to be an actor."

Seyfried was later fired from the show without any explanation. 

"I was bad, and they fired me; they sent my character out, off to South America. But they didn't tell me that! They just didn't invite me back. I heard through the actors playing my parents talking about where Lucy had gone," she explained. 

While that experience could have turned the young actor off Hollywood for good, it actually made her even more determined. 

"I doubled down at that point," she said. "Like, 'Oh, no, this is what I want to do. This is exactly where I need to be. I want that back, let's get me another job,' and I kept auditioning, and I got another job on another soap opera."

She would go on to score a number of smaller or reoccurring roles on TV, before landing the role of Karen Smith in 2004's Mean Girls alongside Rachel McAdams, Lindsay Lohan and Tina Fey. 

Her next major role was starring alongside Meryl Streep in 2008's Mamma Mia! This was the role that made Seyfried a household name. She was 23 at the time. 

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Since then, she's starred in a number of movies including Dear John, Les Misérables, Chloe and Letters To Juliet. 

Along with a string of MTV Awards, she was nominated for an Oscar in 2021 for her role in Netflix's Mank.

Amanda Seyfried's family life. 

Seyfried has managed to remain relatively private about her dating and family life, despite being one of the most recognisable women in Hollywood. 

In 2016, she began dating Thomas Sadoski, after they met on the set of the off-Broadway play, The Way We Get Back.

When they initially met, the pair were dating other people. 

“We were both in bad relationships… [Thomas] never flirted, never disrespected his wife," she told Porter Edit in 2018. "That was another reason why I thought, later on, that I could marry him."

After they split up with their former partners, Seyfried said they had an instant connection that was "freeing". 

"It was amazing. It felt healthy and freeing and clean. We can tell the story without any guilt," she explained. 

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In 2017, they married in secret, during a private ceremony with no guests and just a witness. Seyfried was nine months pregnant at the time. 

"I really wanted to have rings on in the hospital, you know? And what if something goes wrong, and he’s not legally my husband?" she said.

A few weeks later, the couple welcomed a daughter named Nina.

In 2019, Seyfried told People they didn’t plan for children. 

“I just happened to get pregnant,” she said. “If it happens to you, you just make it work.”

In August 2020, Seyfried told Mother's Table that her mum was living with them and helping look after Nina. 

"My mom lives with us - she’s our nanny. My life is awesome because she is the third parent for us. I am so lucky - I know I am," she explained. "When my daughter gets up, she either comes in our room or she goes downstairs. And if we’re still sleeping its great, 'cos she can hang out with my mom. She wakes up early."

In September 2020, the pair welcomed a son named Thomas.

These days, Seyfried spends most of her time on her family farm in New York State. 

"It's insane how much I can feel so accomplished and successful here without having to be in a successful movie," she told The New York Times.

She's currently starring in Disney Plus' new series The Dropout, which chronicles the rise and fall of infamous tech fraud Elizabeth Holmes.

Feature Image: Getty/Mamamia.