Born June 13th, 1986, in Sherman Oaks, CA, Mary-Kate Olsen is one-half of the multimillion-dollar franchise known as The Olsen Twins. Long before the pair had unwittingly indoctrinated themselves into the hearts and minds of adoring pre-pubescent girls (and vaguely creepy fraternity boys), however, Mary-Kate and her sister, Ashley Olsen, were simply the youngest members of the long-running sitcom Full House, which hired them just a year after their birth. Because of U.S. child-labor laws, the girls took turns playing Full House's resident cute baby girl, Michelle Tanner. Before long, Mary-Kate and Ashley had their own catchphrase ("You got it, dude"), which reverberated in the ears of Uncle Jesse (John Stamos) and throughout American audiences loudly enough to merit a TVQ rating -- the sitcom world's most prominent popularity contest -- second only to Bill Cosby.
Mary-Kate continued her part-time role as Michelle until Full House came to a close in 1995, though she took time out to film several family-oriented straight-to-video releases, including To Grandmother's House We Go (1992), Double, Double, Toil and Trouble (1993), and How the West Was Fun (1994). Luckily for Olsen, the demise of Full House hardly marked the end of her career. Along with her sister, Mary-Kate's success in the family-oriented video market planted the seeds for what would eventually become a multimillion-dollar empire with enough punch to land the twins the 83rd spot in Forbes magazine's list of the world's 100 most powerful celebrities in 2003.
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