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But after splashing down on movie screens as Jake Gyllenhaal's would-be girlfriend in last summer's disaster epic The Day After Tomorrow, the young actress finally found the role that would combine her abilities and put her on the Hollywood map: Christine, the talented ingenue who would beguile Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera. She's a creative force unto herself, a young woman who began her career on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera at the age of seven, and went on to find television and film roles that would highlight not only her preternatural beauty, but her talent as a singer and actor as well. Now, that's no mean feat for a budding starlet, even in a town where overnight success seems to happen on a daily basis but Rossum isn't just some hottie in a micro-mini waiting to be discovered by a well-heeled studio executive.
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