Soleil Moon Frye has quite a unique name, but is better known by the name of the character she played early in her life – Punky Brewster.
She was born in California on August 6th, 1976, to actor Virgil Frye and Sondra Peluce, who would later manage Soleil’s career. Soleil means Sun in French. Her big break (big is an understatement there) was on the NBC series Punky Brewster as the title character. The show was about Punky, who was abandoned with her dog, Brandon, by her mother at a local supermarket, and later adopted by Henry Warnimont. Soleil was just 7 at the time she was cast. And the show was a smash success. Suddenly Soleil was a child superstar, doing interviews on 20/20, describing herself as a “survivor” at the tender age of 8.
After the show ended, she seemingly disappeared from Hollywood, as many child starlets have seemed to do. She resurfaced in 1992 on the cover of People magazine declaring her intentions to get a breast reduction at the age of 16. The surgery was to reduce her from a D-cup; which she said strained her back, to a C-cup.
Throughout this ordeal, Soleil was attending a private high school in California’s San Fernando Valley. She would go on to attend New School University in New York for one year.
After leaving college, she decided to get back into the business and began directing films. She became the youngest woman ever to direct a feature film, at age 19. The film, Wild Horses, starred Scott Caan and Marisa Ribisi.
She then got back into acting, with several forgettable films but a few well-received guest spots on TV, including a shot on the wildly popular “Friends.” Her 2nd big break came with her costarring on the television show Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, with Melissa Joan Hart. She hopes that this will bring her more opportunities to act and direct.
Off-screen, Soleil has taught a couple seminars on acting and auditioning at ORTC. She’s recently married to Jason Goldberg.
