Rachel Nichols

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Date of Birth : Jan 8th 1980

American actress, best known for her portrayal of CIA officer Rachel Gibson on the ABC television series Alias. She’s also starred in several films, including Dumb and Dumberer, The Amityville Horror, The Woods, and most recently G.I. Joe.

At first, Nichols appeared in various television shows in bit parts (her first auditioned role, which she won, was that of an orgy-loving restaurant hostess in a 2002 episode of Sex and the City), but later that year she won the role of Jessica, the dogged school-newspaper reporter, in Dumb and Dumberer. She left Columbia midway through her last semester to shoot the picture, but still managed to graduate on time despite the demanding modeling schedule. She wrote two term papers and took the final exam of her undergraduate career just days before shipping all of her things to Atlanta, where Dumberer was being filmed. Although Dumberer was ultimately a flop, the exposure it provided earned Nichols roles in the television series Line of Fire, plus the 2005 horror films, The Amityville Horror, and The Woods.

In 2004, FOX planned to develop a series vaguely reminiscent of their first hit drama, 21 Jump Street. They enlisted Todd and Glenn Kessler (of Robbery Homicide Division) to create the show, tentatively named The Inside. The Kesslers cast Nichols as a 22-year-old federal agent who impersonates a high-school girl in an undercover operation; they also cast Fastlane’s Peter Facinelli and model Willa Holland, and shot a pilot. The pilot underwhelmed studio execs, though, and FOX brought in Angel writer Tim Minear to re-tool the concept.