For someone who spent just one year enrolled in actual high school, Penn Badgley has managed to make a career of playing angst-ridden students. Which is why he initially turned down the part of 17-year-old Dan Humphrey on TV’s campy Gossip Girl. “All I knew was that I’d already done three WB shows,” Badgley says, “and that it was called Gossip Girl.”

Smartly, he reconsidered. Gossip Girl has delivered for Badgley on all fronts. It endowed him with enough teen cred to do a Midwest college tour this past October in support of Obama, a cause he’d have bled for. Then it hooked him up with a girl—co-star Blake Lively, who has probably been photographed at Starbucks fifteen times since you started reading this. (Of their tabloid-chronicled relationship, he’ll say only that “95 percent of what you read is bullshit.”)

Finally, the show has given the 22-year-old actor a shot at a legit career. Penn Badgley (named after the Penn tennis balls his dad was nervously squeezing during his mom’s first sonogram) has been acting professionally since he was 13, and he knows how fleeting television success can be. (See: Perry, Luke; Priestley, Jason.) Still, while he won’t exactly bite the hand that feeds him, he certainly nibbles on it: “I can do this role with my eyes closed and my arms behind my back. What I’m looking for now is something challenging.” Like? “I always joke with the show’s creators, ‘Anytime you want me to do drugs or contemplate suicide, I’ll do it.’

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More Pictures

x004 “Wicked” On Broadway 5th Anniversary One-Night-Only Benefit

x003 8th Annual 24 Hour Plays on Broadway

x007 Boarding For Breast Cancer “Save Our Breast Friends” Fundraiser

x022 Comme des Garcons for H&M Collection Preview

x011 Mohegan Sun Celebrates the Grand Opening of Casino of the Wind

x007 Ideal Bite Presents The First-Ever “BEST IN GREEN” (B.I.G) Awards

x014 The Grand Opening of Haven Hosted By Benji Madden

more x015 15th Annual “Kids For Kids” Celebrity Carnival

x008 Jessica leaves her apartment for an appearance on Conan O’Brien show

x009 LOUIS VUITTON & TEEN VOGUE Holiday Celebration

x006 HQs Leaving the Gossip Girl Christmas Party at Haven

Attention Upper East Siders: Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester is not engaged.

The New York Post had reported that she and beau Sebastian Stan announced on their “secret” Facebook pages that they’re getting hitched.

But Stan’s rep tells Usmagazine.com, “He is not engaged.”

Another source tells Us that the supposed Facebook pages are fake.

See what Gossip Girl stars looked like as kids.

A wedding may not be far off for the couple, who met on the set of their CW hit show.

In October, a source close to the actress told Us that Meester is “really in love” with Stan.

See sexy photos of Gossip Girl stars on the beach.

Said the source, “I think this is the first time she really sees a future with someone.”

Source

Jessica on Late Night with Conan O’Brien

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