Currently enrolled at Harvard Law School and MIT, 30-year-old Bridgit Mendler lives a quiet, successful life most well known for playing the iconic Teddie of Good Luck Charlie (2010) and has made appearances in many other Disney channel shows and multiple different movies. On top of acting, she is remarkably smart and hopes to receive her Ph.D. from MIT’s Center for Constructive Communications and Social Machines group. Between both acting and her impressive studious reputation, that’s not all Mendler has achieved – in 2012, she released one album with two hit songs, which are still trending among the population of mostly Gen-Z, who grew up knowing her.

Some of my favorite categories of movies as a child were the Alvin and the Chipmunks series, Studio Ghibli films, and Disney Channel’s original movies. Mendler made her appearance both on and offscreen in each one, including Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2009), The Secret World of Arrietty (2010), Lemonade Mouth (2011), and Good Luck Charlie: It’s Christmas! (2011). In each, I never failed to recognize Mendler and I have always admired her.

She is undoubtedly most noticeable from Disney, in Good Luck Charlie and even the original Disney Channel movie Lemonade Mouth. Disney Channel is quite notorious for their actors and actresses getting classified by the audience as having “bad acting” abilities because since the channel is aimed at a younger audience, the actors and actresses have to emphasize everything they do and say to make it understandable. Bridgit Mendler has never fully fit that stereotype for me – her deliveries of lines are strong enough to be understood by younger audiences, yet still very convincing and at a level where the audience can tell how skilled she is in the acting world. This is one of the reasons she has always stood out to me and my peers and will always be one of Disney’s most iconic stars.

Mendler also sings in both the Secret World of Arrietty and Lemonade Mouth as well as other outside projects. As the Lemonade Mouth band’s lead singer, she carries the vocals for almost all the songs given throughout the film. She had been interested in music at a young age and began to record songs in her father’s studio when she was 14 years old. In 2009, she signed with Hollywood Records and went on to release her album Hello My Name Is…, (2012) which included her songs Ready or Not and Hurricane. These two songs amassed over 417 million plays on Spotify and over 408 million plays on YouTube, with Ready or Not peaking at #43 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. As of today, Hurricane is being used for TikTok trends, giving the song even more recognition eleven years later.

Mendler tended to maintain strong friendships with her time in the industry. She dated co-star Shane Harper, who played her love interest Spencer in Good Luck Charlie, from 2011 to 2015. With an unofficial notice for breaking up, Mendler then married Griffin Cleverly in 2019, inviting the whole family from Good Luck Charlie to her wedding dinner and co-star Naomi Scott from Lemonade Mouth to her wedding.

Mendler has not acted since 2019 nor sang since 2017, leaving her fans saddened by her disappearance. However, she continued to impress them as she wanted to focus on her academia, graduating as an anthropology major from USC in 2016, completing her graduate degree at MIT in 2020 and is now working on her Ph.D. with MIT’s Center for Constructive Communications and Social Machines group. Since 2022, she has been enrolled at both Harvard Law School and MIT.

Mendler is an aspiring woman of so many talents, and I continue to look up to her wherever she goes next in life. I hope that she will someday return to the music and acting industry, making a comeback for all who have also looked up to her. She has shown the world what a role model she is in all three industries of acting, singing, and academics and I believe she will go on to do even greater things in life.