Getty Julianne Hough.
Julianne Hough is one of the earliest dancers from ”Dancing with the Stars,” but she was in the public eye well before that.
The 33-year-old DWTS pro-turned judge has been a dancer since childhood. Hough was born in Utah, but at age 10 she convinced her parents to allow her to train with professional ballroom dancers at a performing arts school in London, where she eventually competed in, and won, international dance competitions, per Interview magazine.
In 2001, six years before she made her debut on DWTS, Hough had a cameo as a school girl in the film “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” per IMDb. She was a dancer at the XIX Winter Olympics opening ceremony the following year.
Hough became a household name thanks to the back-to-back mirrorball trophies she won on the ABC celebrity ballroom competition, but her childhood was far from easy. In 2014, she told Redbook she was brutally bullied as a teen after returning to the U.S. from England.
“I got bullied in high school big-time,” Hough revealed. “I had just come back from London and was the new kid. People looked at me like, ‘She thinks she’s all that.‘ And because I didn’t know how to talk to them, maybe I did come across that way? I don’t know. I got asked to prom by a guy, and he ended up ditching me that day because the girls had told him to do it.”
Julianne Hough Looked A Lot Different Before ‘Dancing With the Stars’
Hough’s looks have changed a lot since her pre-DWTS days. In 2019, she shared an Instagram throwback photo of herself at age 14. The future star had short hair as she posed with her dad, Bruce Robert Hough, for Father’s Day in 2002.
She also posted a 2006 throwback photo of her first red carpet event at age 18.
GettyJulianne Hough
In May 2007, Hough wore a white dress and pulled her hair back for the premiere of “Ocean’s 13” at the famous Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. A few months later, she pulled off a short hairstyle for a DWTS celebration party.
GettyJulianne Hough in 2007.
Julianne Hough Has Been Open About Her ‘Less is More’ Attitude About Beauty As She Has Gotten Older
While her looks have changed over the years, Hough is much more comfortable with her appearance as an adult. “I’m so much more comfortable in my skin today than I was at 18,” Hough told People in 2015. “I think a lot of that had to do with [being] focused on who I thought people wanted me to be rather than who I truly am.”
She revealed that when she was younger she piled on the makeup for dance competitions. “I used to wear so much makeup,” she admitted. “I think we tend to feel comfortable and it becomes a sort of security blanket to have a lot of makeup on.”
Hough also talked about her “less is more” approach in an interview with PopSugar. “I used to wear a lot of makeup and bake and contour, with full glam,” she said. “But my whole thing now is less is more. The less you have, the more you can see your actual skin, and I really love that. It’s refreshing. But I’m not going to lie, those Snapchat filters are pretty amazing.”
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