The Stunning Transformation Of Beth Behrs

On "2 Broke Girls," Beth Behrs charmed audiences as Caroline Channing, a ditzy rich girl with a heart of gold. In fact, in an interview with The List, Behrs revealed that a lot of the character's traits came directly from her. During one classic episode, Behrs' pratfall was unscripted. "I genuinely tripped in real life," she said. "Fell flat on my face and was trying to grab onto the end [of the dress] like that, and that ended up staying in the show. A lot of my clumsiness as Caroline was really just Beth in front of a live audience."

Behrs is more than just Caroline Channing, however. After a childhood spent idolizing actors like Julie Andrews, Behrs has had a long career in the entertainment industry across several long-running sitcoms, even bouncing around from television to movies. She's also a writer, having worked on several different projects in multiple mediums, and she even lived the classic starving-artist life before getting her big break. "I was sharing a one-bedroom apartment working, seven days a week," she told Rose & Ivy. "I was bartending at a theater and I was also a nanny at the time." Read on to learn more about Beth Behrs' transformation, from a horse-loving girl in rural Virginia to a television star beloved by audiences everywhere.

Beth Behrs was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the daughter of two schoolteachers. Her family moved around a lot when she was younger; after Pennsylvania, she lived in Lynchburg, Virginia and then Marin County, California, which is just outside San Francisco. It was her experience in Virginia, however, that had the biggest impact on the future television star, because in Virginia, she learned to love horses.

"My parents never could afford riding lessons, so the extent of horses for me growing up was popping on my neighbors' horses," Behrs told Sidelines Magazine. Visiting with her neighbors' horses led her to want to learn more, so she read anything about the animals that she could get her hands on. "[I read] all the horse books I could — 'Saddle Club,' 'Black Beauty,' anything by Marguerite Henry," she recalled. "[I visited] the wild horses on Assateague and Chincoteague Island when I visited my grandparents." In addition to her love of acting, Behrs' proud status as a horse girl would define a significant chunk of her life moving forward.

From a very young age, Beth Behrs knew that she wanted to be an actor. "I don't remember a time in my life that I didn't want to be an actress," she told Sidelines. In particular, the young Behrs was obsessed with "The Sound of Music" star Julie Andrews. In fact, she used to perform scenes from that film for her parents. "My parents told me because I don't remember, but when I was three or four years old, I was acting out the part of the movie, on the stairs, when the kids sang 'So Long Farewell,'" she explained to Rose & Ivy. Realizing that their little girl had something special, her parents nurtured her budding talents. "When I was four or five, my parents let me audition for community theater and they were like, 'This kid is weird,'" she laughed.

Those early years in community theater paid off, and Behrs went to UCLA's Theater, Film and Television program for college. Everything was in service of her main goal: making it in the entertainment industry. She worked at the university's historic Geffen Playhouse, signing up for shifts seven days a week just so she could be close to all the action. "It was more of a fun job, but it was so exhausting," she recalled to The Daily Bruin. "I remember I did that for six or seven months and finally realized, 'You have got to give yourself a break.'"

In the early days of Beth Behrs' acting career, she had a number of small roles on television shows like "Castle" and "NCIS: Los Angeles." In 2009, her first big break came in an "American Pie" spinoff called "American Pie Presents: The Book of Love," an entry in the iconic sex comedy franchise that went straight to DVD. In the film, Behrs plays Heidi, the virginal object of lead character Rob's affections. He finds a sex manual in the school library and uses the book's tips to convince her to sleep with him. Hey, we didn't say the movie was good.

In a behind-the-scenes interview for the film (via YouTube), Behrs and co-star Bug Hall (of "Little Rascals" fame) discussed filming the movie's sex scenes. "Beth did try and take care of me and be gentle, but ..." Hall revealed. Behrs joked, "I'm rough sometimes, what can I say?" In the video's conclusion, trying to one-up her co-stars, Behrs exclaimed directly to the camera, "You better f***ing watch this movie, cause it's f***ing awesome, f***ers!" Ah, "American Pie." What an era in culture.

That all being said, Behrs insisted to SFist that this installment wasn't just raunchy. "This one had the writer of the second movie and our director really wanted to bring back the heart," she said. "The female characters aren't just naked."

Though Beth Behrs had a few small roles early on, her career really took off in 2011, when she cast opposite Kat Dennings on the CBS sitcom "2 Broke Girls." In the years before, however, Behrs truly was a broke girl herself, living paycheck to paycheck. Showrunner Michael Patrick King was pulling for Behrs to get the part, but before she screen-tested, he warned her that she should wear a pair of high heels to the audition so that she matched her character's aesthetic. She didn't own any, because she couldn't afford any. She bought a new outfit anyway. "[I] barely had enough gas to get to work ... so I put it all on a credit card, but I kept all of the tags on," she told Rose & Ivy. "When he hugged me, he asked me, 'Do you have tags on your clothes?'"

On the show, Behrs played Caroline Channing, an heiress who comes from money but supports herself by working as a waitress. The role kickstarted her career, but it took time. "I couldn't afford a red carpet stylist or anything; I have no problem with it but I was wearing Forever 21," she recalled. Looking back, though, she appreciated the experience. "I loved that about that time because I think there was something authentic about owning 'this is who I am' and 'this is reality.' My heart and my soul are not what I am wearing on the red carpet."

When Beth Behrs suddenly became incredibly famous thanks to the massive success of "2 Broke Girls," she struggled under the glare of the spotlight. "A few years into '2 Broke Girls,' I got this crazy skin rash all over my body," Behrs revealed to Rose & Ivy. "It took us seven months of me going to different doctors to realize that the rash was being caused by deep-rooted stress." She'd always struggled with anxiety, but it kicked into overdrive when her career took off, and she had to find new ways of coping with her stress.

To manage, Behrs turned to her oldest passion. "The thing that has single handedly changed my mental health for the better = horses, horses, horses," she wrote on Instagram. Behrs is now a big proponent of equine therapy, as she explained to Sidelines. "I learned that no matter how I was feeling, if I showed up as myself at that moment in time, I'd connect with the horses. It became so empowering to realize the power of being authentic."

Along those lines, Behrs formed a charity in 2016 called SheHerdPower. The group works with survivors of sexual assault, encouraging equine therapy as a way to heal. Her business partner Cassandra Ogier told The Hollywood Reporter, "Domesticated horses have almost always been subjugated, shut down or abused. So the parallel story is that we're also helping them."

Though Beth Behrs finally made her career on television, her first acting experiences were on the stage. In 2016, she returned to the theater when she made her New York City stage debut in an off-Broadway play. The show, titled "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of New York City," featured Behrs as a woman who strikes up a friendship with someone else whose mother is undergoing cancer treatment.

Before the show's opening, Behrs appeared on "Live! with Kelly" to promote the show. "It's a dream come true," she said. "New York theater's been my heart and soul since I was five, so this is, like ... I could not be happier."

After her run in the show ended, Behrs spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about what she'd learned from acting in the same show each night on stage, night after night. "It's been the most challenging thing but the most creatively rewarding thing I've ever done. Theater is truly the only actor's medium," she said, noting that on television, an actor's performance is also in the hands of the show's editors. "A TV show is nothing compared to doing a play every night, and going back will feel like such a break. I'll have a life again!"

Many actors make their name in one facet of the entertainment industry before branching out to other avenues. It's common for actors to branch out into singing, or vice versa. Less common, though, is for an actor to try their hand at writing comics ... but that's exactly what Beth Behrs has done.

In 2016, she launched "Dents," a web comic co-written with her childhood friend Matt Doyle. It's about a mutant girl with superpowers, inspired by the X-Men comics they read together as kids. Though fans may have been surprised to see a sitcom actor like Behrs take such a swerve into a different corner of the entertainment world, she told The Hollywood Reporter that it wasn't all that different than portraying Caroline Channing on television. "It doesn't feel like a departure for me, it's still storytelling," she said. "When I'm acting, I'm serving someone else's narrative but I've felt equally as happy and creatively fulfilled being the author of my own. It's an opportunity to flex a different creative muscle for me, and unleash my inner nerd."

The comic deals heavily with themes about the climate crisis, an issue that Behrs feels very strongly about. "Being outdoors is like church for me," she told CBR. "I consider nature a sanctuary that nurtures and makes us who we are — and we are destroying it ... 'Dents' is an opportunity to engage in conversation about this global issue in an inviting, narrative way."

Beth Behrs doesn't just write comics. In 2017, she released a book called "The Total ME-Tox: How to Ditch Your Diet, Move Your Body & Love Your Life." It's a combination self-help book, memoir, and cookbook, and Behrs told SELF that the most important piece was giving readers reassurance rather than directing them. "I really wanted the book to be empowering so that people know it's OK to be authentic and strive to be the best version of themselves without working toward perfection," she said. "If you want to have wine and pizza, sometimes that is the best medicine."

For Behrs, the cooking aspect of the book wasn't just about learning how to eat healthy. Instead, the very practice of cooking is important, no matter how the food turns out at the end. "There's something to be said about living in the present moment. In cooking you're allowing your mind to just focus on the task at hand," she said, "and you're able to escape and put your mind at rest. That's why it becomes meditative."

In an interview with BUILD, Behrs revealed that the process of writing the book, too, was rewarding. "I was scheduling, like, three nights a week of at least a few hours writing, for like, years," she recalled. "Now, like, being able to put this out there ... I'm so proud of all the work that went into it, that I'm like, it was worth it."

Beth Behrs began dating "Mad Men" star Michael Gladis back in 2010, telling People that their relationship was built on cooking together. "He actually has taught me about cooking," she said. "When we met I didn't know where kale was in the grocery store. There's this Indian-inspired chicken saagwala, but we do the healthy version. We use nonfat Greek yogurt instead of cream. And spinach. And we have a very nice bottle of Italian wine."

On Instagram in 2016, she announced their engagement. "I said yes!!" she wrote, alongside a bunch of ring and heart emojis. "6 years down a lifetime to go! #love"

They married in 2018, getting hitched in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She shared a snap on Instagram of herself in a white dress and flowing veil by Monique Lhullier, posing with her new husband against a gorgeous backdrop of snow-capped mountains. "I do, we did," she wrote. "Best day of my life."

When "2 Broke Girls" was canceled, Beth Behrs was disappointed that the show didn't really get a chance to wrap up its storyline in a satisfying way. She told Rose & Ivy, "I am regretting that we didn't get a proper ending to the show because it was such a shock, we all thought we were coming back. We didn't say goodbye ... I think when it first happened, I was just scared, I didn't have a job anymore and what was I going to do next?"

Thankfully, next came "The Neighborhood," another sitcom; it launched in 2018, the year after "2 Broke Girls" came to a surprising end. The show is about a white family (Behrs and "New Girl" star Max Greenfield) who move to a mostly-Black neighborhood in Pasadena. The show also stars Tichina Arnold and Cedric the Entertainer, and Behrs told CBS News that working with the legendary comedian is one of the best parts of the gig. "Working with Cedric in front of a live audience, there's such an element of you don't know what he's going to throw at you. As an actress who comes from the theater and loves that live feeling and electricity, I feel like working with Cedric has excited that theater-girl muscle in me," she said. "He's so funny and unpredictable."

At press time, the show is in its seventh season, which means it's already lasted longer than "2 Broke Girls." That's perfectly fine with Behrs, who told Kelly Clarkson, "We all wanna do it forever."

In 2022, Beth Behrs and Michael Gladis' family got a bit bigger. That year, they welcomed their first daughter, as Behrs revealed on Instagram. "Welcome to the world Emma George Gladis," she wrote alongside an adorable black-and-white photo of a tiny hand. "Our hearts are so full. We are overjoyed!"

Behrs and Gladis haven't shared much about their daughter online, choosing instead to keep things private. She did, however, share a shout-out to Tabeeze, her favorite baby clothing brand, alongside a video montage of her dressing her adorable daughter. The onesies snap from the bottom up, which means they are the ideal choice if it's tough to pull clothes over your baby's head. "Check out link in @tabeeze bioto learn more about their special gifting to families with disabled + medically complex babies," she wrote on Instagram. In the video, Behrs' daughter wears a cannula, and in the Instagram caption, she added, "Shout out to all you ⁣#nicuwarriors #nicumamas & #nicudads!"

This suggests that her baby may have experienced some health issues early in life; here's hoping everything's okay now! In 2023, she re-shared the black-and-white photo of her daughter's tiny hand, this time captioning it, "My forever #valentines ! Life is sweeter as 3!"