In the early 2000s, Amy Smart was on the verge of big screen stardom. With her glowing blonde locks and girl-next-door charm, she won over audiences in hit teen comedies like Varsity Blues, Road Trip, Rat Race, and The Butterfly Effect. Smart had the perfect combination of beauty, wit, and charisma to become Hollywood’s next “It Girl.”
But after a string of successful supporting turns, Amy Smart’s rising star seemed to fade. She never quite achieved the widespread fame and success predicted during her breakthrough years. So for those who wonder “What ever happened to Amy Smart?”, her trajectory is an interesting case of an actress failing to reach her full potential.
Background Info
The City of Angels saw Amy Smart enter the world in the spring of 1976. With working-class parents, Amy broke into the film business the same way most young actresses do, by making the transition over from modeling. She would take modeling gigs throughout the United States before going to Italy for more. She wouldn’t take long before landing a few television roles that would open a gateway into Hollywood.
Bit parts in the equivalent of lifetime dramas led to her first major part, appearing in the hook segment of Campfire Tales alongside future Cyclops/Jury Member James Marsden (Most Underrated Actor. Fight me). Amy Smart would make her mark in the brief part she had, focusing on the urban myth of the unsuspecting couple getting down in their car when a hook-handed man escapes a nearby asylum. Who decided sharp hooks for hands were a good idea?
Regardless of the choice in prosthesis, Amy made her impression and got a slew of offers from there, starring in indie hits like How to Make the Cruelest Month alongside LGBT icon Clea Duvall as well as Strangeland, directed by Dee Snider of Twisted Sister. These would just be the interlude before she got a massive role in the high school football drama Varsity Blues in 1999. Hollywood had a weird obsession with high school football movies there for a while.
Cult Streak
Nevertheless, she persisted. Amy Smart took on numerous roles from early Todd Phillips comedy Road Trip (this man wrote Joker), all the way to a part in the drama series Felicity for sixteen episodes. While she would follow with Jerry Zucker’s Rat Race alongside the ensemble cast, it wasn’t what she would become known for, instead following with a streak of critically acclaimed performances in cult classics The Butterfly Effect, Just Friends, and Crank in subsequent years.
While every role would bring her some level of acclaim, with great chemistry between Amy Smart and the three male leads of the films, including Ashton Kutcher, Ryan Reynolds, and the not-super charismatic Jason Statham. Even with the filming schedule of the remaining decade, she would find time to pop up in recurring roles on the hit comedy Scrubs as well as Adult Swim’s calling card Robot Chicken.
She would finish out the decade with a sequel to Crank, playing the girlfriend of Chev Chelios (seriously, what is that name?) in a film that outclasses the already ridiculous medical science of the first by leaps and bounds. It’s f*cking awesome.
Amy kept moving and the new decade brought new experiences. She would meet and marry her husband, home improvement reality star Carter Oosterhouse in 2011, and the two would eventually welcome a daughter by surrogate after a few years together. The two remain together still, raising their daughter in their Los Angeles home.
New Beginnings
Even with her newfound love and married life, Amy Smart didn’t slow down in her career path, moving to focus more on indie films and more dabbling in television. She would make appearances on the Showtime dramedy Shameless as well as the early FX drama breakout Justified over the early decade in between indies ranging from drama to horror, some better than others.
The second half of the decade was a little more dicey when it came to roles with Amy somehow falling into the trap of an Asylum comedy ripoff of the at the time new Avengers: Infinity War. How it happened, nobody can truly say. Nobody really watched the movie either, because holy shit there aren’t words to describe how terrible it is to see a half-painted green Shawn Michaels in his greatest-ever screwjob since Montreal in 1997. If you’re going to make a parody, at least make it funny.
Where is Amy Smart Now?
Thankfully Amy Smart would recover and move into a better superhero project with the budget and writing to make use of her talents. She would join the cast of Stargirl, playing the main character Courtney’s mother Barbara in every episode of the sleeper hit DC show. Of course, it was slaughtered in the Warner Bros./Discovery merger, leading to an early death among other DC shows (RIP Doom Patrol).
She’s only had one role so far since the end of Stargirl, showing up in the recent On Sacred Ground, a film about the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. She has plenty of projects in the works though, including an indie sports drama and horror/thriller alongside Zoolander star Billy Zane. Amy seems to just take roles as they come these days, choosing what she wants to do while raising her small family.
