25 years ago, 18-year-old Alexis Bledel walked into Stars Hollow with a stack of books, a cool co-star in Lauren Graham, and zero clue she was about to become a huge pop culture fixture for teens across the globe. The world was introduced to Rory Gilmore on October 5, 2000, and they fell in love. And as Bledel will confess, it just takes one big role to change your life… forever.
In 2000, the Texas-born Bledel was new to acting and, at that age, still figuring out who she was. Now, in 2025, she’s 44. She’s no longer a Gilmore girl, but a Gilmore woman.
What most people don’t know is that Bledel was raised speaking Spanish before English. That’s probably explains why she was such a shy kid. In fact, her parents initially enrolled her in acting classes to help her talk to strangers without panic. At 17, she landed her first role in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore in 1998. That’s pretty epic for a first film. Of course, just a year or two later, she became Rory. For seven seasons, that’s 154 episodes, she played the young teen with a cool mom.
Of course what made Bledel interesting was that she never chased fame. You didn’t see her in tabloids or doing anything untoward. Instead, she was quietly balanced her life with Gilmore Girls and films like Tuck Everlasting and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, where she played Lena alongside Blake Lively, America Ferrera, and Amber Tamblyn. That movie came out in 2005 and was a huge hit, especially amongst teenage girls. The sequel followed in 2008.
When Gilmore Girls wrapped in 2007, Bledel quietly shifted gears again and showed up in a fewer films and a few TV roles. Then her 3-episode role in Mad Men in 2012 got the attention of Hollywood again. That show also introduced her to Vincent Kartheiser. They married in 2014, had a son in 2015, and somehow kept the entire thing mostly out of public view… until they divorced in 2022.
Meanwhile, Bledel found fame again with The Handmaid’s Tale. She played Emily Malek. Bledel won an Emmy in 2017 and picked up four nominations overall. Of course, she later stepped away from that role too in 2022. “It was deeply upsetting to even imagine Emily going through something like that — being captured, powerless, with no say over her body.” She left the show at the peak of her career.
That decision lines up with everything else that was happening in her life and some of the decisions she made at the time. For example, she wasn’t doing social media, and she wasn’t attending many red carpet events. In fact, her first major appearance in years came in March 2024 at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Oscars viewing party. Before that, she’d been largely off-grid to the public.
She’s not disconnected from the world, though. When Blake Lively filed a sexual harassment complaint in late 2024, Bledel joined Ferrera and Tamblyn in a public statement of support. She also narrated the 50th anniversary audiobook of Tuck Everlasting and quietly finished two films, Ponderosa and Joy Will Prevail, both now in post-production.
It’s hard to believe, but Gilmore Girls actually turned 25 in 2025. Today, the mom and daughter show still pulls massive streaming numbers. New fans discover it all the time.
For many, we feel like Alexis Bledel grew up before our eyes. For many, she’ll always be Rory Gilmore. Quiet. Shy. Beautiful. And yeah, that theme song is still true. “Where you lead I will follow / Anywhere that you tell me to / If you need, if you need me to be with you / I will follow where you lead.”
RELATED: Christy Carlson Romano Looks Beautiful 23 Years After Even Stevens (2002) Made Her a Disney Star
