There is a wonderful article of Brittany from The Gainesville Sun that ran in the paper this weekend, you can read it below…

Brittany Daniel may stay in the heart of Los Angeles, but the Gainesville native is far from living the Hollywood life.

The beautiful actress has seen movie-star fame with “Joe Dirt,” “White Chicks” and “Little Man,” and small-screen success from “That 80s Show,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and most recently, the former CW comedy, “The Game.” But the gleam of the spotlight hasn’t led the 1994 Gainesville High School graduate to fall into the common traps of Hollywood.

She spends most of her time in the gym or with her twin sister Cynthia’s family in Malibu, Calif. She doesn’t drink or hang out in nightclubs. Her “low-key” lifestyle, she says, is because she comes from a “a good family and great small town.”

Daniel is the daughter of Carolyn Daniel and the late C.B. Daniel, a longtime city leader and banking executive in Gainesville. Her oldest brother, Brad, lives in Fort Lauderdale.

“I just come from a very stable home and I’m just very normal and I think having my family and sister around me keeps me grounded. I’m not a big party girl. I’m focused on work and being healthy,” says the fit and lean 33-year-old. “My health is really important to me so partying and all that stuff doesn’t really match my lifestyle.”

Brittany Daniel’s dedication to living healthy led her to her latest venture as consulting executive producer on the Style Network reality show, “Ruby,” which starts its third season Feb. 14. The cable series follows the life of an obese woman named Ruby Gettinger, who, in order to save her life, must confront her food addiction, lose weight and change her lifestyle. To become fit and healthy, she works with a team that includes a doctor, trainer, nutritionist and therapist.

Daniel met Gettinger at a fitness center in L.A., where Gettinger worked as a receptionist and Daniel was a client. When Gettinger moved back to her hometown of Savannah, Ga, she gained weight and her health declined. Daniel wanted to help so she created the concept for the show, connected with a producer and pitched it to different networks. Finally, after a three-year-long process, the Style Network bought the show and it premiered in November 2008.

“Ruby and I have been friends for about 10 years. … She was telling me how she had diabetes and that if she didn’t lose this weight the doctors said in the next two years, she could die,” says Daniel, who has appeared in a few episodes of the show. “I didn’t think there was any other way she was going to lose that weight unless she had a full support system behind her.”

The new season will shift from her physical journey to her emotional one as she seeks to remember her childhood and put together pieces of her past. At her heaviest, Gettinger was more than 700 pounds. In a December 2009 article from Australian-based Website, www.news.com.au, Gettinger said she weighed 350 pounds.

Working on “Ruby” has inspired Daniel to focus more on project development.

“I’m in negotiations right now for a different reality show that I want to produce, but this one I would be in it,” she says. “I think it’s really fun to be able to create something. I love being able to create a character when I’m working on the acting role, but there’s something really fun about creating a project for yourself or for people that you love or things that you believe.

“I don’t want to be auditioning for the rest of my life. … I’d really like to create projects for myself.”

The show would center around traveling, her favorite passion. At 30, Daniel got bitten by the “travel bug.” She often put off traveling because, as a working actress in L.A., she says, you never want to miss the call for an audition or meeting. But turning the milestone age made her put her life in perspective and question if she was living it to the fullest. That year, Daniel decided on a whim to travel abroad alone.

“I had never traveled by myself before. Two weeks before, I just said, ‘I’m going to Greece. I’m not going to plan anything. I’m just going to get there and find my way,’ and that’s what I did,” she says with excitement. “I just landed in Athens and asked people what islands were fun and I’d hop on ferries and take them to different islands and just found places to stay as I went. It was really such a fun experience.”

That same year, she traveled to Cambodia with her sister as part of the Cambodia Children’s Fund, as well as New Zealand and Argentina. Last summer she visited Thailand and hopes to go to Brazil and South Africa soon.

Her love of exploring is one of the reasons she enjoys making movies so much.

“I like the consistency of TV and you have time to really develop a character, but I like movies because it takes you on location and I feel like I’m in the circus,” she explains. “For a few months, you build this family with people who you don’t know and you get to go to a fun location. I like the feeling of being away.”

But fans of “The Game” have certainly missed her playing the role of Kelly Pitts, the saucy, sexy and loving-but-underappreciated football wife and mother. The CW canceled the show last year after three seasons, but since BET began airing episodes in syndication, the show has found a second wind and a resurgence of new fans. As a result, BET has expressed an interest in buying “The Game,” which is owned by CBS/Paramount, to air new episodes of the show.

“All of us would love to do another season, but unfortunately the longer they wait and the longer it takes, the less chance it might be to get all of us back together,” says Daniel, who plans to audition for TV pilots this year. “Our fan base has at least tripled since we’ve been on BET. When we were in Atlanta (for an appearance on “The Mo’Nique Show”), people were insane for the show. I mean IN-SANE! I couldn’t believe it.”

Daniel and her sister left Gainesville a week after their high school graduation to begin their breakout roles as Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield on the TV series, “Sweet Valley High.” Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (“Juno”) is turning the cult teen book series into a movie.

“I think ‘Sweet Valley High’ has a lot of fans out there and I think Diablo Cody would put a really nice, interesting kind of edgy spin on the series,” says Daniel, who starred in “The Basketball Diaries” with Leonardo DiCaprio. “I’d loved to be involved in any way because it is such a big part of my heart.”

Gainesville also holds a special place in her heart. She’s still a big Gator fan and misses going to the games. Some of her other hometown favorite things are Leonardo’s 706 and Gainesville Health and Fitness Center.

“I love that gym so much,” Daniel says. “I’ve traveled all over the world and that is the best gym I have ever been to.”

Carolyn Daniel doesn’t see her daughters as much as she’d like, but she doesn’t complain. They worked hard to earn the success they have, she says.

Cynthia Daniel is now a photographer married to actor Cole Hauser, whose great-grandfather was film mogul Harry Warner, a founding partner of Warner Brothers Studios. They have two sons, Ryland, 5, and Colt, 1 1/2.

“It’s not easy living in Gainesville and pursuing an acting career and they were willing to go the extra mile to achieve their goals,” Carolyn says as she prepares for a visit to see them. “Their father and I did everything we could to help them achieve those goals. I’m very proud.”

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 1:17 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.