Kristen Bell Used to Sell Fake I.D.s in College

Award-winning actor Kristen Bell has had an exciting and memorable career on the stage and screen. No one was born an actor, though, and that still applies to Bell. Few would be surprised to learn she’s had jobs prior to becoming a performer, though less would expect what one of them is, especially given its ironic relation to one of her most famous characters.

Bell and one of her most famous characters had a career in common

After her early days of stage acting, Bell made the jump to television with the cult classic Veronica Mars. Bell played the titular Veronica, a role that would go on to earn her critical acclaim and a Best Actress Saturn Award. Even today, it’s still considered some of her best acting.

While Veronica is mostly known for her detective work, one episode of the original series sees her supposedly working a different vocation. Episode 12 of Season 1, “Clash of The Tritons,” involves the young amateur P.I. being framed for selling fake I.D.s, and the bulk of the episode follows her tracking down the real culprit to clear her name.

Unbeknownst to most fans, though, is that she really was guilty this whole time – in real life, at least. As revealed in an interview with Jimmy Fallon, Bell herself made and sold fake I.D.s to kids while she was in college. After talking about her kids and her book, The World Needs More Purple People, Fallon makes a comment about he’d always imagined her being a good kid. She agrees with this statement, but with a caveat.

Bell described herself as a “goodie goodie” throughout most of her childhood before admitting that her entrepreneurial streak hit in a less-than-ethical way once she got to college. Taking advantage of how badly-constructed the New Jersey licenses were at the time (she described them as a piece of paper with lamination), she started making her own.

Selling them for $20 each, adults under the age of 21 somehow managed to use the “terrible” I.D.s to sneak into bars. As Bell says, they weren’t that convincing, but she thinks many of the bar owners were willing to bend the rules all the same.

Bell ran her fake I.D. empire out of a major university

While Veronica’s fake I.D. scandal happened during a season in which she was still in high school, Bell was actually a college freshman during her story. She’d recently moved to NYC for it, attending New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. While there, she studied musical theater in addition to running her I.D. business.

Overall, though, her time at college seemed most memorable for the many roles it helped her land. Her first film role was an uncredited teenage girl in Polish Wedding in 1998. After that, she got a part in the 2001 movie Pootie Tang, though her role was entirely cut from the finished film.

The same year, though, she was able to star as Becky Thatcher in a Broadway production of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In the end, this early success prompted her to drop out in 2002, only a few credits away from graduating.

The actor has made a name for herself despite her nefarious past

Bell’s brief flirtation with law-breaking and early retirement from education hasn’t hindered her career, as she’s become quite a successful actor. As mentioned, Veronica Mars was her big break on screen, though she’d already killed in the Broadway revival of The Crucible two years prior to that in 2002. After moving to LA, she’s consistently gotten major roles in things ranging from Gossip Girl to Frozen to The Good Place and more.

Most recently, she starred in the miniseries The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window as the lead. In what’s almost a satire of her most famous roles, she plays a disturbed woman named Anna with a drinking problem trying to find the truth behind a murder she may or may not have seen outside her home.