
Twenty years ago, Tara Reid was everywhere. She’d starred in American Pie, she was on the cover of Rolling Stone and she was engaged to Carson Daly. And then, spectacularly, it all fell apart for her, in a blur of franken-nipples, Razzies and fake marriages. So what happened?
Reid started out in showbiz at a young age, after being talent-spotted in a New Jersey shopping mall. As a pigtailed six-year-old, she was a regular on the game show Child’s Play, before going on to shoot more than 100 commercials.
Her movie career took off in her early twenties. She was in The Big Lebowski, Urban Legend, Cruel Intentions and then, in 1999, megahit teen sex comedy American Pie, where she played the virginal Vicky alongside other up-and-coming stars like Chris Klein and Alyson Hannigan.
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It should have been the beginning of a stellar acting career. But it wasn’t.
"At the time of American Pie my career was so high, it was blasting and then it dropped," she told the Mirror last year. "All of a sudden you go from one extreme to the other."
Reid made some unfortunate movie choices, including Dr. T & The Women and Body Shots. But while she didn’t have box office success, she did have fame. She partied hard.
"If I was staying home and I’m not gonna get the meetings anyway, then what’s gonna happen?" she told Time in 2014. "You feel like you’re in jail. You’re not going to get the parts. You’re trying to be on your best behaviour and no one respects it. So you might as well just travel the world, meet new people, have fun."
Soon, it was impossible for the media to mention Tara Reid without the words "party girl" in front of her name. In 2003, Entertainment Weekly announced she was joining Scrubs.
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