Amelia Sheinfeld's beginnings can be described as one word: humble. She wasn't born in a town in the midwest where everyone knew everyone nor did she work from the bottom floor up. Instead, Amelia was born into a middle class family in Toronto on Valentine's Day of 1977. She was preceded by two brothers and two sisters would later follow Amelia's birth. Her parents were blue collar - her father was a local mechanic with his own garage and her mother worked part time at a local bakery. Amelia's older brothers reluctantly looked after their younger sisters when their parents worked or were otherwise engaged. If asked, her older brothers wouldn't have guessed the middle Sheinfeld child would be the one to make a living in Hollywood. Amelia was quietly precocious. Her idea of rebellion was watching television shows and movies that weren't age appropriate for her. Later on, it would make sense that the thirteen year old who watched "Twin Peaks" on Saturdays would be geared towards the more surreal of projects.

Average in almost every sense of the world, Amelia made decent grades when she moved onto high school and was involved in a handful of clubs. She was content to sit in the background; a trait that made it positively perfect for her to be on the stage crew for a number of high school productions. Soon enough, Amelia longed to be on stage and joined theatre groups during her summers. It was something to kill time then, nothing more or nothing less. Amelia's peers would say she had a certain aptitude for the stage and acting that they hadn't seen coming. When Amelia was sixteen, she accompanied a friend on an audition to a Canadian film production called Exotica. The film content was racy for a then sixteen year old Amelia but she had set out to audition for the smaller and less scandalous part of a babysitter named Tracey when dared to by the friend. She got the part and lost the friendship. Thanks a lot, teenage jealousy. Amelia's parents disapproved initially of the content but were relieved to know she wasn't in fact playing the role of the exotic dancer but the more chaste babysitter. The film wrapped and Amelia got a taste for acting.

It still came as a surprise to Amelia's parents that she would be passing up her acceptance to McGill University and instead embarking on an acting career in Hollywood. Toronto was hardly a stick in the mud ghost town but the Canadian film industry didn't shine as brightly as the lights of Hollywood. The Sheinfelds gave their daughter the most reluctant of blessings and insisted that she could come home at any time if the "whole acting thing was a crap shoot". All Amelia had with her was a suitcase full of clothes, her car, and money from both working at Dairy Queen and graduation gifts to keep her afloat. She arrived in Los Angeles and immediately took up shop in an apartment that was more of a closet than a living space. In between auditions, Amelia worked waitress jobs. The first role she landed after her move to Los Angeles was a two episode stint on "Boy Meets World". She gained more recognition with the role of the innocent Nicole Walker in Fear, playing against Mark Wahlberg's deranged David. Auditions came and went, roles were lost or won, and Amelia still chugged on until she found yet another role on a teen series that would catapult her a little higher onto the Hollywood ladder.

Amelia hadn't been the first choice for the role of Willow, Buffy's shy best friend at Sunnydale High. In fact, the pilot had been filmed with a different actress entirely but something wasn't quite right. Amelia auditioned on a whim - a job was a job to her and she really liked the concept. It seemed that Joss Whedon took a liking to her and her approach to the character. Any other actress would've read Willow's unsure lines with a sense of sadness but Amelia added her own brand of optimism to Willow's nature. The role of Willow Rosenberg opened a lot of doors for her. The trend of popular teen movies didn't really interest Amelia for the most part and she stuck to smaller indie productions unlike her co-stars. Most notable were Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides and Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. Her role as Penny Lane gave her instant popularity both commercially and critically and she walked away from the experience with a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination all before the age of twenty five. The pressure was on to top that and the closest Amelia got was her role in Secretary and picking up another Golden Globe nomination.

A lot of actresses find themselves lost after the show they've been on for eons wraps up. Amelia couldn't ever say she really had that problem but she missed the security net that Buffy had provided. Even if the movies she were in flopped, she still had the certainty of a job with Joss Whedon and her co-stars to come back to. Her agent, ever the Hollywood opportunist, saw this as a chance to make his client into the next Hollywood sweetheart. Amelia had a certain cache with being on a very popular show as well as the nice girl looks and personality. Like actresses before her and after her, one had to break into the world of romantic comedy to be America's Sweetheart. Amelia had never wanted her career to go in that direction - she had never really thought of herself to be the one to be in competition with the Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, and Jennifer Aniston types of Hollywood - but she went along with her agent's wishes to elevate her status. After all, maybe the "one for me, one for them" mentality would work out in the end and she'd finally get to do some work she actually liked.

The plan to make Amelia the new reigning queen of romantic comedy failed. There were more hits than misses and the smaller, more independent films were where she really thrived. There was never that perfect storm of good critical reception and good box office numbers. It was either a flop at the box office with positive reception or a hit at the box office with scathing reviews. Amelia's gumption only lasted so long until she was at a crossroads to take control of her career or slowly fade away as she became more miserable with the choices being selected for her. In 2009, she and her agent parted ways and she found someone to better represent her wishes and play to her strengths.

Due to the instability of film, Amelia yearned to get back to the silver screen. Her new agent got her a meeting with one of the creators of "Glee" who was working on a new horror series for FX. She made quite an impression on Ryan Murphy and was asked to audition for his new show, "American Horror Story". Amelia had been itching to get back to television and accepted, first a small guest role and then was a permanent fixture the next three seasons of the show. Amelia now had the job security she had yearned for since Buffy with the added freedom of being able to do films and not rely on only them for her income and success. With Jessica Lange slated to leave after season four, everyone's looking to Amelia as the new "star" of that anthology series.