Mandy Moore

She was never as successful in the teen beat scene (nor as scandalous) as peers Britney and Christina, but Mandy Moore quietly made her own way from the child-star breeding ground of Orlando, Fla. (where her regular sporting-event gigs earned her the nickname "National Anthem Girl"), to a career in music and acting. Signed to Sony in 1999, Moore released her debut that year to mediocre reviews. I Wanna Be with You, a repackaged version of the same album, came out the following year and fared slightly better. The lukewarm critical reception didn't stop Moore from becoming an "it" girl in other ways, landing a Neutrogena spokesmodel job and appearing in films such as A Walk to Remember (her first lead) and Saved. In 2003, the former teen princess reinvented herself as an adult-alternative artist with Coverage, a collection of rather elegant covers of artists such as Joni Mitchell and Carole King that garnered some critical approval but sold so poorly that Moore's label dropped her. She came back with 2007's Wild Hope (released by the Firm), the first album on which Moore wrote or co-wrote every song, working with artists such as Rachael Yamagata and Lori McKenna.