Gender & Pronouns: Cis female, she/her
Date of Birth: September 28th, 1991 (29)
Place of Birth: Beverly Hills, California
Length of Residency: Since October 2009
Occupation: Singer and songwriter
Love stories composed of headlines, whispers, and still images stolen in the night: this was Avery Beaufort’s beginning. Eliza Beaufort was standing on the mountaintop of her career, basking in the warmth of critic praise and audience reception thanks to a successful franchise only to freeze when the sun went down every night and left her lonely. She used the sparks she had with her fellow costar and on-screen romance to create a companion for herself. Beckett Taylor would have been hard to not fall in love with, she reasoned with herself, and she was willing to play the game entirely on his terms. Locked doors in a rotation of nondescript hotel rooms, a hand creeping to find hers in the dark for only a few seconds, the occasional longing glance that she spent going blue in the face denying in every single interview when the vultures began prying with their crowbars and asking if their characters had rubbed off on them. Eliza knew it meant more to her than it did Beckett, but it didn’t bother her. There was someone to keep her warm in the moments when it was cold, and wasn’t that all they could really ask for? The rumor mill spun with Eliza and Beckett in the threads, but they could never prove anything. Fingerprints were dusted away, the ghosts kept their vow of silence. Conspiracies remained as such, a lingering wondering of ‘what if’ left as the after-taste in the mouths of those who searched for clues. Beckett and Eliza fell apart in a mutual agreement and let their rapidly burning careers carry them down different paths. A connection forged by a shooting star seemed to fizzle out and disappear in the night sky, and for Eliza, the nights after him were even colder than the ones before. The air was noticeably thinner. And just when she thought she’d found her footing, being alone, she was met with a small pink cross on a piece of plastic that told her she’d never be alone again.
Eliza submerged herself into a wild corner of the Hills where the trees provided privacy and the terrain offered a journey no one was willing to take for an exclusive scoop — especially not when all that was waiting was an iron gate — and left her career behind to have her daughter. Avery Isabelle, the sun to keep her warm and a healthy dose of salt in the open wound that was Beckett Taylor’s aftermath every time Eliza looked into her daughter’s eyes. For several years, it was the two of them against the world. They lived in as much normalcy as someone like Eliza Beaufort could lasso down from the heavens, their household filled with laughter and the smell of cinnamon on Saturdays and hugs every night before bed. Eliza made the decision to go back to work, producing and directing more than taking on a role in front of the camera. It was an adjustment, but Avery viewed it all as an adventure, an exceptionally peculiar playground. She learned how to add numbers in her mom’s trailer, waltzed up and down the aisles of planes, drifted off in directors chairs when boredom overtook her. The busier her mom got, the more distant she seemed. Nannies entered the picture and began doing the heavy lifting. Sweet, docile Avery never complained; she enjoyed the company she had and hugged her mom extra tight when she would come home. Eventually, there were more memories made without her mother than with. It felt more like a loss than it did a sting of betrayal.
Avery was unaware of just what storms followed her mother until she was a little older, able to see behind the smoke and mirrors. Eliza met another man, an attorney that worked in tandem with the new agency Eliza had recently signed onto, and they got married when Avery was nine. With the new marriage came a crashing wave of change even happy-go-lucky Avery didn’t know how to ride out. There were now siblings who Avery might have resembled, but could not bond with no matter how hard she tried. They moved to Calabasas so her step-father would be closer to his job. She was not the pristine, manufactured marble that the rest of her so-called family took on. Avery tended to be goofy in the moments she was not quiet, a little more rough around the edges. Their ideals and beliefs differed, in the way oil mixed swimmingly with water. Feeling lonely was no longer a pastime, it was a career that Avery excelled in. She was the black sheep within her own home.
Reading scripts with her mother was the one thing that even an influx of siblings, a new step-father, a new house and an entirely foreign planet they seemed to have relocated to. Avery would help her mom run lines before auditions or scenes to spend uninterrupted time together, and Avery enjoyed it. She liked the idea of playing a character, escaping into someone else’s shoes for a minute, and expressed that she would like to try acting, go on a few auditions. Her mother had displayed some reproach towards the idea, but it was none other than her step-father who encouraged it and eventually got Eliza to come around. The Beaufort name that opened the door, and Avery’s careful and dedicated approach that she’d mirrored from watching her mother in the past that got her the golden ticket. She took a small guest part on Law and Order: SVU (“Honey, nobody who’s anybody hasn’t let Benson and Stabler get all up in their business.”) at fourteen and did a few movies that fell into one of two categories - cult favorite, or may as well have never happened. When people discovered that Eliza Beaufort’s daughter was following in her footsteps, the vultures began to swoop and Avery pasted a smile on her face despite the discomfort. Her mother and step-father had warned that sacrifice played an even larger role in a career in the business. For awhile, it felt like an okay price to pay, but steadily increased the more she got swept up in playing the name-game and attending networking events that had nothing to do with what she’d enjoyed so much in the beginning. The idea of being an actress tapered off in quiet, turning Avery into a “Where are they now?” story that most skimmed over with little regard.
But for Avery’s family, they were only finding new beginnings and preparing for the expanse of an empire. Talk of a reality show began to become nightly conversation around the dinner table — the Goldens, as Avery sardonically referred to them inside her head, were thrilled at the idea. Avery, older and jaded and not at all interested in broadcasting the inner workings of her life on TV, was wildly uncomfortable by the idea and didn’t want to go through with it. She begged for her mother to see some sort of reasoning to this, tried to find a loose thread and yank hard on it, but was met with neatly tied edges. She was the lone wolf, once again. Plans were put into place, and finally, Avery could take no more of it. She would be turning eighteen in two months, so she ungracefully shoved the contract back in the network’s face and created a messy fracture with her family. Avery moved out of the house in Calabasas and was all ready to start a new life on her own when she got a call none other from Beckett Taylor. He had his suspicions that she was his daughter, and wanted to meet. She went apprehensively, meeting a man that she’d only heard of in passing and was as good as an entity in her realm only to find somewhat of a kindred spirit in him. Whether he was her father or not, it was the first real thing Avery had gotten within her clutches in what had felt like years. Beckett made mention that he was living off on Catalina Island, and Avery not-so-hesitantly jumped at the idea of a fresh start. She moved to Catalina Island to be closer with her father, and in it, she found reprieve. While the reality show with her family took off, Avery was on Catalina Island learning to surf, writing every day, and taking the time to breathe air that hadn’t been brushed to perfection.
The writing blossomed into a new career for Avery. She began to put songs together at three in the morning and gave them to other artists to bring to life. The collaborative and creative process was cathartic for Avery; she became something like a hot commodity in songwriting when her songs skyrocketed to success in the hands of others. Occasionally she would let a song or two of her own slip out into the universe and if radio waves caught it, then so be it, but she took much greater pleasure in taking a behind-the-scenes role. She turns a deaf ear to the family she has milling around in Hollywood, and if she can, she avoids entering their turf at all costs. She isn’t looking for a fight, especially when she knows that victory and loss have the same price of hollowness that she’s spent years replenishing out on Catalina.
Positive: Diligent | Affable | Audacious
Negative: Implacable | Detached | Capricious
Avery Beaufort is portrayed by Grace.
