Gabrielle Carteris Biography

Gabrielle Carteris was born on January 2, 1961, in Scottsdale, Arizona, US, to a realtor mother, Marlene, and a restaurant owner father, Ernest J. Carteris. She has a twin brother named James.

She has Jewish, Greek, Polish, and Russian roots. Her parents divorced soon after her birth, and Carteris lived with her mother in San Francisco, California. Marlene later opened a children’s clothes store.

Carteris initially attended the Redwood High School in Larkspur, California, where she was involved in ballet and mime. She received a scholarship to study ballet at the San Francisco School of Ballet, where she eventually studied dance for 8 years. Following this, she also studied acting at San Francisco’s American Conservatory of Theater.

She also explored her love for performance arts at the Sarah Lawrence College, from where she graduated with a BA in liberal arts in 1983. She also briefly moved to London, where she studied theater. After stints at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and the London Academy of Music and Arts, she moved to New York to formally begin her acting career.

Soon after graduation, Gabrielle Carteris began her TV career playing a teenager on shows such as ABC Afterschool Specials, Another World, and CBS Schoolbreak Special. In 1990, Carteris became a household name with her role of newspaper editor Andrea Zuckerman in Beverly Hills, 90210, which later became one of the longest-running one-hour TV series.

At 29, she played 15-year-old Andrea with ease and thus became the oldest actor to portray one of the original eight “students” on the show. She once admitted that when she had first auditioned for the role of Andrea, she had lied about her age, fearing that she was too old to play a high-school student. She also revealed that during her first pregnancy, the writers of the show decided to make Andrea pregnant.

The show ran till 2000, but Carteris, meanwhile, also appeared in the Brian de Palma-directed movie Raising Cain, while being part of the show. She quit the show midway to begin her syndicated talk show Gabrielle in 1995-96. She also produced a series of specials named Lifestories.

She later also began lending her voice to various video games and animated series, such as The Mummy: The Animated Series (2003), La Pucelle: Tactics (2002), Minority Report: Everybody Runs (2002), and Avatar: The Last Airbender (2006).

She has also been part of series such as My Alibi (2008) and Code Black (2015). She has appeared in a few films, too, such as Meet Wally Sparks (1997) and How to Deter a Robber (2020). In 2019, she was seen on Fox's BH90210 reboot.

Gabrielle Carteris had started her board service as a fifth alternate national director of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in 2008, becoming the first alternate national director in 2009. In 2010, she started a her 3-year stint as a national board member.

She was also previously associated with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), working for the AFTRA Los Angeles Local Board and the AFTRA National Board. In 2011, she became the Los Angeles Local president and the national second vice president of the group. She also worked for the G1 (Group for One Union) to merge SAG and AFTRA.

In 2012, she took over as the executive vice president of the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, also known as the SAG-AFTRA, a union representing more than 100,000 actors and workers, primarily from the US film industry. After 4 years, in March 2016, Carteris became the president of SAG-AFTRA, following the death of its then-president, Ken Howard. She was formally elected as the president on April 9, 2016.

In 2017 and 2019, she was re-elected. In 2019, SAG-AFTRA awarded Carteris the prestigious George Heller Memorial Award for her achievements and service.

In 2021, she eventually lost the seat to Fran Drescher. She has also been the vice president of the California Labor Federation.

In 2006, Gabrielle Carteris survived a serious injury on set, becoming partially paralyzed in the face. She spoke about the condition in detail in a 2008 issue of People magazine.

She later became associated with various trade unions and created the President’s Blue Ribbon Safety Commission, which focused on dealing with harassment, making film sets safe for stunt performers, and maintaining Covid-19 safety protocols. She also led the President’s Task Force on Education, Outreach and Engagement (PTEOE) and organized regular remote workshops and seminars, in order to keep members connected during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She is also a champion for diversity and has been vocal about the perils of ageism in the film industry. She has worked for gender and pay equity and has united Spanish-speaking actors and broadcasters, forming unions with them. In May 2017, she gave a TEDx speech on equality in the entertainment industry.

In May 2021, following the end of her SAG-AFTRA presidency, Gabrielle Carteris was elected the president of the International Federation of Actors (FIA). Throughout her career, she has been associated with numerous social causes and initiatives, such as Read to Grow, DARE, MADD, and the Noxzema Extraordinary Teen Program.

Gabrielle Carteris got married to Charles Isaacs on May 3, 1992. The two had met when she was filming the pilot of Beverly Hills, 90210. Charles, who is a stockbroker, and later moved to Los Angeles to be with Carteris.

The couple has two children: their elder daughter, Kelsey Rose, who was born on May 11, 1994, and their younger daughter, Mollie Elizabeth, who was born on February 8, 1999. Mollie is a musician.