Nina Dobrev (born Nina Constantinova Dobreva; in Bulgarian January 9, 1989) is a Canadian actress. She has played the role of Mia Jones, the single teenage mother on Degrassi: The Next Generation, since the show's sixth season. She currently stars as Elena Gilbert in the TV series The Vampire Diaries. Modeling jobs led to commercials, which then turned into film auditions. Shortly thereafter, she booked roles in feature films, including Fugitive Pieces, Away from Her, Never Cry Werewolf, and the television series Degrassi: The Next Generation. She also was in an MTV movie called The American Mall on CTV. She is currently starring in The CW's drama The Vampire Diaries, playing the dual role of Elena Gilbert, a human who is caught between two vampire brothers, and Elena's doppelgänger Katherine Pierce, a vampire that the same brothers each loved while they were still human during the American Civil War. She also had a bit role in the erotic thriller Chloe, theatrically released by Sony Pictures Classics on March 26, 2010. The film grossed $3 million in the United States theatrically and became one of the higher-grossing specialty films in the United States in 2010 (according to Variety, "$3 million is the new $10 million" for specialty films' box office in 2010).