Caroline Sunshine

Early life

Caroline Sunshine was born on September 5, 1995 in Atlanta, Georgia. To parents Tom and Karen Sunshine. She was raised in Orange County, California, and has two younger brothers, John (born in 1997) and Christopher (born in 2000). Sunshine began studying ballet at the age of 3 and landed her first lead role playing Goldilocks in a kindergarten play. Her kindergarten teacher was Mrs Sally Palmer. She later moved on to acting with the Orange County Children's Theater and dancing competitively with the South Coast Performing Arts studio in Tustin, California.

Career

In 2004 Sunshine started in theater and her stage credits include Annie Warbucks at the Orange County Children's Theatre, The Nutcracker at the Academy of Dance and South Coast Performing Arts, and Stage Door at the Lutheran High School of Orange County. In 2006, Sunshine began going to professional auditions at the age of 11, and landed her first role in a commercial for Amazing Allysen the talking doll, as well as commercial work for Yoplait Go-Gurt, and Cap'n Crunch. In 2010, Sunshine filmed her first pilot for the CBS sitcom, Team Spitz, co-starring as the teenage daughter of a high school coach played by Rob Riggle of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In the summer of that same year, she gained popular notoriety for her role as Barbara Winslow in her first feature film, Marmaduke, based on the comic strip of the same name. In the fall of 2010, Sunshine landed what would become a co-starring role on the Disney Channel original series, Shake It Up as European exchange student, Tinka Hessenheffer alongside Kenton Duty as her flamboyant twin brother, Gunther Hessenheffer. The glitzy brother/sister duo of Gunther and Tinka is said to be inspired by Ryan and Sharpay Evans of Disney's High School Musical franchise. She was a recurring cast member during the first season, but was promoted to a regular character for the second and third seasons. The series ended in November 2013.

Sunshine appeared in the Disney Channel stars Christmas album Holidays Unwrapped; the album was released on New Years Day, she had a solo performance cover song of All I Want for Christmas Is You with featured as the tenth Song on the album. In 2014, Sunshine performed as the lead role of Campbell in the Non-Equity national tour of Bring It On the Musical. In June 2014 she filmed a Freeform pilot called Recovery Road based on Blake Nelson's novel of the same name, in which she plays a title role alongside Samantha Logan. Neither Sunshine nor Logan would appear in the actual series, however. Logan was replaced by Jessica Sula and Sunshine's character was removed from the script. During 2015 Sunshine appeared in a TV Movie called Go Four Broke as Tiffani Brand. And earlier she appeared in the big screen production of The Outfield

Personal life

Sunshine currently lives in Orange County, California with her father Tom, her mother Karen, and her two younger brothers, Johnny and Chris. In her free time she enjoys dancing, traveling, cooking, baking, and photography, as well as outdoor activities including going to the beach, surfing, snorkeling and rafting. In February 2011, Sunshine became the spokesmodel for the teen fragrance, "Puppy Love 4 Girlz". "Puppy Love" Fragrances is committed to helping homeless dogs and puppies, with a portion of all proceeds of the perfume going to local animal shelters. In May 2011, Sunshine was named one of Dream Magazine's "Top 16 Under 16".

In addition to her work with "Puppy Love", Sunshine is involved in several other charitable causes including the "Joyful Sewing Organization", which makes blankets for cancer patients, "Working Wardrobes", which provides assistance to underprivileged women and victims of domestic abuse, the Orange County Child Abuse Prevention Center, which offers in-home parenting classes to families to break the generational cycle of abuse, the "Adopt A Hero" program, which provides for the needs of soldiers and their families; the "Loaves and Fishes Ministry" which helps to feed the homeless, and the "Thirst Project" which is dedicated to providing clean drinking water to communities in developing nations.