Kristen Bell's Real Name: Kristen Anne Bell

Quick answer: Kristen Bell's birth name is Kristen Anne Bell. She was born on July 18, 1980, in Huntington Woods, Michigan, near Detroit. She is known as the star of Veronica Mars, the voice of Anna in Disney's Frozen, Eleanor Shellstrop in The Good Place, and the lead of Netflix's Nobody Wants This. She acts under her birth name (Library of Congress; TV Insider).

Real name and early life

The Library of Congress name authority files her as "Bell, Kristen, 1980-." It cites "born Kristen Anne Bell, July 18, 1980 in Huntington Woods, Michigan," and another note gives Detroit. Anne is her middle name. TV Insider's profile also gives her birth name as Kristen Anne Bell.

TV Insider says she studied singing and tap dancing in elementary school and acted in local children's theater. At Shrine Catholic High School she already had an agent, performed with a Detroit community theater, and appeared in local ads. She went to New York University to study musical theater. LOC notes that she attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She left before graduating after landing Becky Thatcher in the Broadway musical The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (2001). In 2002 she appeared in The Crucible on Broadway with Liam Neeson.

Career highlights

After moving to Los Angeles, she headlined the Lifetime film Gracie's Choice (2004) and appeared in David Mamet's Spartan. Her breakthrough was Veronica Mars (2004–07), playing a teenage detective. The show became a critical and cult favorite and later returned as a 2014 Kickstarter-funded film and a 2019 Hulu revival.

She played Elle Bishop on NBC's Heroes and the title role in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008). Other films include Couples Retreat, When in Rome, You Again, Safety Not Guaranteed, and Hit and Run (2012), which was written and co-directed by her longtime partner, Dax Shepard. She starred on Showtime's House of Lies (2012–16) and narrated Gossip Girl and its 2021 reboot.

Voicing Anna in Frozen (2013) and Frozen II (2019) brought her a large young audience. TV Insider lists Frozen III among her upcoming voice credits. She also appeared in Bad Moms and The Boss (2016) and starred as Eleanor Shellstrop on NBC's The Good Place. LOC notes that she joined the cast reading the companion audiobook. More recently she has starred opposite Adam Brody in Nobody Wants This, Netflix's comedy series from Erin Foster.

Name notes for searchers

Bell is her family surname, and she has no stage name. Searches for "Kristen Bell married name" refer to her husband, Dax Shepard, but she still works as Kristen Bell. TV Insider and LOC both confirm Anne as her middle name.