Tiffani Thiessen (born Tiffani Amber Thiessen on January 23, 1974 in Long Beach, California) is an American actress known for her roles as Kelly Kapowski in Saved by the Bell and as Valerie Malone in Beverly Hills, 90210. After many years of going by her full name, she is now credited as simply Tiffani Thiessen.
She was born in Long Beach, California; her father, Frank, was a park designer and her mother, Robyn, was a homemaker. She is of German, Greek, and Welsh descent. She told InStyle: "I'm a mutt. I have so much of everything in me, and half of it I don't even know. German on one side, Greek, Turkish and Welsh on the other. My mom is very olive-skinned; I get my blue eyes from my dad." She credits her brother, Todd, as one of her most important sources of inspiration, and her mother and grandmother as her role models. Her uncle, Roger Ernest, who attended college with Steven Spielberg and co-wrote one of his student films called Slipstream, and who appeared in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Sugarland Express playing a cop in both films, was the person who had first suggested that his niece enter show business.
