Born: Kristin Laura Kreuk on 30 December 1982 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Kristin Kreuk is a Canadian actress known for her roles on the Canadian television series teen soap Edgemont and on the American television series Smallville in which she stars as Clark Kent's star-crossed love Lana Lang.

Her father, Peter Kreuk, is of Dutch descent; her mother, Deanna Che, is of Chinese descent, but was born in Indonesia; her maternal grandmother is Chinese-Jamaican. Both parents are landscape architects. She has a sister who is about five years younger. Kreuk trained in gymnastics at the national level until high school but quit in grade 11 due to scoliosis. She had plans to study either psychology, environmental science, or forensic science at Simon Fraser University when a casting director for the CBC TV series Edgemont contacted her secondary school, looking for an exotic-looking girl to play the part of a Chinese Canadian, Laurel Yeung on the Vancouver-shot show. Kreuk's drama teacher convinced Kreuk, who had no previous acting experience other than in musicals at her high school, to audition for the role. To her surprise, she won the part.

After shooting the first season of Edgemont (a teen soap opera set at a Vancouver-area high school) and getting herself an agent, Kreuk landed the lead role of Snow White in a TV movie titled Snow White: The Fairest of Them All. The film, shot in Vancouver, also starred Miranda Richardson and was directed by Caroline Thompson. It aired on ABC on March 17, 2002.

I love having messy hair. I put in a lot of effort to have it look as messy as possible.

After Snow White, Kreuk's agent sent an audition tape to screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who at the time were putting together the cast of a show they had created for the WB Network entitled Smallville. The series (which was slated to be shot in Vancouver) revolves around the life of teenager Clark Kent before he becomes Superman. Gough and Millar called Kreuk to WB's studios in Burbank, California to audition for the role of Clark Kent's love, Lana Lang.

The executives at Neutrogena made her the spokesmodel for their new worldwide ad campaign; in this regard Kreuk followed in the footsteps of fellow teen stars such as Jennifer Love Hewitt and Mandy Moore. In 2005, she renewed her contract with Neutrogena for another two years, making her the company's longest-serving model spokesperson.

In 2003, she made her first feature film, a cameo appearance in the film Eurotrip, starring Scott Mechlowicz and Michelle Trachtenberg. The film, shot in Prague, Czech Republic, also featured cameos by Matt Damon and Lucy Lawless. It debuted in theatres on February 20, 2004.

In early 2005, Kreuk signed on to the independent feature film Partition, in which she played Naseem, a vulnerable seventeen-year-old whose world is shattered by the trauma of the Partition of India in 1947. The film was released in 2007.