At two months old, Colleen Broomall was a working actress on As the World Turns. Playing Meg Ryan’s soap-opera daughter, the Teaneck native (raised in Norwood) spent parts of the first five years of her life on the set, working alongside actors such as Julianne Moore and Marisa Tomei.
“I always had these secret wishes of getting back into acting, but I didn’t have the confidence,” she says. Sadly, it took the death of her brother in 2007 to give her the fortitude to give it another shot. “His death shattered my world,” she says. “I quit my job, and I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do next.”
Broomall started going to open calls. She was cast in The Winning Season, a 2009 basketball comedy starring Sam Rockwell and Emma Roberts. In January, Broomall, 27, moved to Los Angeles. The actress remains a Jersey girl at heart. “Los Angeles is all about the flashing lights, but I avoid that,” she says.