Everything you need to know about the Jewish Disney Channel star, who is unsurprisingly great at TikTok.
ByEmily Burack
Ashley Tisdale started her career when she was just 3 years old, breaking through as a Disney channel star in the mid-2000s onThe Suite Life of Zack and Cody and theHigh School Musicalseries.
Now, she’s a mom, an interior designer, and surprisingly good at TikTok. (Maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise… she is a singer, dancer, and actress.) Anyway, it’s time for 18 things to know about Ashley Tisdale:
1. Ashley was born in New Jersey to a Jewish mom and a Christian dad. She was raised with “a little bit of both” of their religions.
2. She started filming commercials when she was just3 years old, filming over 100 national network TV advertisem*nts as a child. Her theater career began at Monmouth County’s Jewish Community Center inGypsy: A Musical FableandThe Sound of Music.
3. At 8, she was cast inLes Miserables and toured for two years as Cosette, then toured asAnniein Korea. Talking about The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, she said, “It’s fate that I wound up on a show based in a hotel, because I toured for two years onLes Miserables, so I have the experience of living in a hotel and I love it. The best things about staying in hotels are getting movies on the TV and room service!”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CG2g537FdRc/
4. Throughout her early roles, Ashley continued to attend school, explaining, “I was always in regular school and I worked in clothing stores growing up. I didn’t ‘make it’ until I was 18, so I had already graduated public school. I definitely feel like I had the best of both worlds.”
5. And how did she “make it”? By snagging a role in Suite Life of Zack and Cody,the comedy staring twins Cole and Dylan Spouse, where she originally auditioned for the role of London Tipton. As Brenda Song recalls, “They were going full, true Paris Hilton parody. And when we read for the roles they were like, ‘No, actually, you guys switch parts.’ Hollywood wasn’t doing that then.”
6. On kissing Zac Efron on Suite Life: “At the time, he was used to acting on like, Warner Brothers, which is CW, and we were on Disney Channel,” Ashleysaid. “And so… he tried kissing me with his tongue, and I was like, get away from me. I closed my mouth so fast. I was like, ‘this is Disney Channel, we don’t kiss like that on Disney Channel.'”
7. She would famously star in High School Musicalas Sharpay Evans.
8. She still posts stills of herself as Sharpay on her Instagram, and tweetsthat Sharpay was never the villain:
Sharpay was chasing her dream, Troy and Gabriella were chasing each other 😏 https://t.co/9tTVhSZq66
— Ashley Tisdale (@ashleytisdale) September 16, 2019
I personally think she was a victim from the start……. her parents named her Sharpay! https://t.co/P48WWOkHWM
— Ashley Tisdale (@ashleytisdale) May 15, 2017
9. However, Ashley has said she doesn’t want to watch the movies with her daughter: “Personally, I don’t watch my own stuff… Also, my husband has hardly seen anything that I’m in. I think I just showed him High School Musical this year, and we’ve been married six years at this point. And that wasn’t even the full movie. I’m not someone who likes to watch myself.”
10. Her husband is Christopher French, a composer and music producer. Here’s them at their wedding in 2014:
11. In 2021, they welcomed a baby girl, Jupiter Iris French.
12. Ashley has two dogs she’s obsessed with, and they both have their own Instagram accounts: @sushisuefrench and @ziggystardustfrench.
13. She launched an interior design business called Frenshe Interiors, named after her lifestyle blog. The inspiration? Diane Keaton. “Diane Keaton is why I got into interior design,” she told Architectural Digest. “She opened my eyes to being creative in other fields besides acting. I received her book years ago from a friend, and my dream goal is to own one of her homes that she designed!”
14. She’s also a singer: She released three albums, Headstrong (2007), Guilty Pleasure (2009), and Symptoms (2019). “He Said She Said” will forever remain her #1 bop:
15. Ashley is still close with HSM co-star Vanessa Hudgens. Here’s them singing together:
16. She voiced Candace, the older sister trying to catch Phineas and Ferb, in Phineas & Ferb,and got her own movie spin-off in 2020,Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe.
17. Ashley is currently a panelist onThe Masked Dancer. (LikeThe Masked Singer, but, uh, dancing.)
18. And yes, she herself is a great dancer; she joined TikTok in 2020 and relearned her High School Musical dances for the app, much to the delight of her followers:
@ashleytisdale My work out while on Self Quarantine. I can’t believe I remembered it 😝
