Michelle Trachtenberg's Hollywood journey began, as many do, with commercials. "I saw a friend of mine in a commercial," she told the Chicago Tribune back in 1996, "[I] walked over to my mom and said, 'Mommy, I want to be on TV.'" And on TV she was! Her first commercial was for Wisk laundry detergent when she was just 3 years old, and as of her 1996 interview, she could still sing the commercial's jingle. Trachtenberg went on to star in over 100 commercials for businesses like Hoover, Panasonic, Kraft, and Fuji.
The young star made the leap from commercials to episodic television when she played a dying child on Law & Order in 1991, according to her IMDb credits. Trachtenberg then went on to appear on Clarissa Explains it All before scoring a multi-episode arc on the famous soap opera All My Children as an autistic child. "That was an especially challenging role because I can't talk much," she continued.
Challenging though it was, Trachtenberg did a great job, as she soon caught the eye of Nickelodeon producers.
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