Tiffani-Amber Thiessen Profile

Tiffani-Amber Thiessen (born January 23, 1974 in Long Beach, California) is an American television and film actress. After many years of going by her full name, she is now credited as simply Tiffani Thiessen.

Career
She was born in Long Beach, California; her father, Frank, was a park designer and her mother, Robyn, was a homemaker. She is of German, Greek, Turkish and Welsh descent. She told InStyle, "I’m a mutt. I have so much of everything in me, and half of it I don’t even know. German on one side, Greek, Turkish and Welsh on the other. My mom is very olive-skinned; I get my blue eyes from my dad." [1] She credits her brother, Todd, as one of her most important inspirations, and mother and grandmother as her role models.

As a child, she competed in many beauty pageants, and she won the Miss Junior America pageant in 1987. Her first big break in show business was her role on the television program Saved By The Bell, as nice girl Kelly Kapowski, a role she continued playing in the short lived Saved by the Bell: The College Years. This was very different from her next major role, as a duplicitous vixen, Valerie Malone, on Beverly Hills 90210.