DeAnna Pappas

One of many Americans who rose to fame in the mid-2000s courtesy of reality TV dating, glamorous and sloe-eyed DeAnna Pappas grew up in Kentucky under the guardianship of her grandmother and aunt after losing her mother to cancer. She owed her exotic and alluring look to a unique combination of ethnicities including Greek and Native American. 26-year-old Pappas was working as a real estate agent in small-town Newnan, GA, when she first stepped in front of the cameras in 2007 as a contestant on season 11 of ABC's The Bachelor. She lost that season (as did all of the other contestants -- a first in that program's history) upon being rejected by suitor extraordinaire Brad Womack, but the viewing audience and the network responded so favorably to her presence that ABC called her on back as the main candidate in season four of The Bachelorette. In that venue, she surprised nearly everyone by accepting the proposal of snowboarder Jesse Csincsak and rejecting that of account executive Jason Mesnick. - Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide