The circumstances leading to Alabama King's birth are hardly romantic. Danielle King, a Wrightsville Beach townie and concierge desk girl at the Shell Island Resort, slipped a Mr. Mark Day her number as he checked in, with the offer to "show him around". He obliged her of that offer a few times, although they never saw much of the beach in these meetings, before going back to his regular life, whatever that involved. She never saw him again. However, as she discovered a month later, she was very much pregnant from the encounter. Although Danielle was financially independent at 23, she was barely making ends scrape by. The prospect of adding a child to the mix was terrifying. Nonetheless, possessed by a spirit of bullheaded irrationality and a craving for nothing but french toast, she decided to keep the baby and raise it on her own. Alabama Louise King, named after the state Danielle had come from and her beloved nana, was born on a December afternoon.

Care for young Alabama often fell to different parties -- Danielle's sister, her mother, a young neighbor looking to make extra cash, whatever boyfriend Danielle was seeing at the time -- as her mother began working again as soon as she could, and picked up extra shifts to make ends meet. The subsequent environment was supportive and kind, but ultimately more than a little stressful. The phrase "wanted for nothing" in no way applied to Alabama as she got older, as there was plenty that she wanted in comparison to her peers, but the King family and the assorted company that was responsible for her well-being saw to it that she definitely was in need of nothing. One of the things Alabama wanted the most was to put the tourist-trap she was raised in in her rearview mirror and never look back. From an early age, she was pragmatic enough to see education as the means to help her achieve that goal and was an overachiever of a student, going from straight S for Satisfactory marks right into As and the very occasional B. Everyone knew Alabama was going to go places, and not just to nearby Wilmington.

Nothing could derail her from her plan (school - college - post graduate education - something, probably law - presidency), except of course that her plan got derailed completely when she starred in a school play to boost her extracurriculars. Alabama did not expect to fall in love with acting, but fall she did and suddenly that thirty-year plan was looking just a touch too rigid. Trapped by the endless pressures of applying to college and enduring one hurricane too many, Alabama started to view acting not just as a new passion but a means of escaping North Carolina and decided to drop out in her senior year to pursue acting professionally. Although Danielle was hardly excited at her seemingly logical daughter going off the deep end for a pipe dream, she nonetheless vowed to support her. Between the job Alabama had since she was sixteen and her mother's raise as the manager at the resort, she was able to fund her relocation to LA, albeit in a shitty neighborhood.

If the plan was to 'get rich or die trying', Alabama had 'die trying' to look forward to -- although she landed a bit role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a few commercials, and a couple of films, the roles did not seem to be pouring in all in all. Alabama fell into a cycle where she worked as a waitress, quit her job whenever filming interferred and then found new restaurants to work at whenever she failed auditions, which was often. Disgruntled with both the lack of roles she was being offered and the caliber of ones that did come her way, Alabama set about obtaining her GED and getting her life back on track. The same year that Mean Girls came out, Alabama transferred into Barnard and the "big lesbian crush!" jokes practically wrote themselves whenever she was recognized. Which, at that stage in her career, was rarely. Alabama had a good time in New York and at Barnard, living a normal college experience. Still, she spent the subsequent four years with the nagging feeling that she'd been a quitter. After graduating with a degree in anthropology, she decided to give acting a second shot, figuring at least now she had a degree to fall back on between jobs.

It turned out, she need not worry. Alabama's re-emergence into the world of professional make believe was ultimately far more successful than her initial attempt. In short order, Alabama landed two supporting roles -- Jessica, in what would go on to be the enormously successful Twilight saga, and Georgina Sparks, in what was at the time the incredibly popular CW show Gossip Girl. Although no casting director in the history of casting directors ever cried out "Get me that psycho from Gossip Girl!", Alabama nonetheless was able to progress further into auditons until she was steadily landing roles, some better than others. Though gaining recognition for other projects over the years, Alabama's biggest role to date has arguably been Johanna Mason in The Hunger Games franchise; though mildly familiar with the nature of rabid fandom from her Twilight days, little could prepare her for the passionate responses The Hunger Games drew from its fans (or their ire when she was initially cast), and she has since used the platform afforded to her to become an outspoken critic of the nature of Hollywood's limited roles for women, and an activist for other various causes that she deems important. Still, Alabama doesn't feel like a celebrity, mostly because when she's not filming on location, she lives in a trendy neighborhood in Los Angeles with a number of cats bordering on socially unacceptable.