Born on 12th August 1972 in Hazard, Kentucky, & raised in Pinetop, Kentucky Rebecca Gayheart moved to New York at the age of fifteen to finish high school, following a summer modeling job in the city. Rebecca studied at the renown Lee Strasburg in New York. It was after spending a summer modeling in New York that she decided to move there. While studying at the Institute, she landed a role on the now-canceled daytime soap, Loving .

Her stint on the show lasted from 1992 to 1993 and led to further television work, most notably on Beverly Hills 90210. During this time, she also acted in a number of forgettable television shows, and it wasn't until her part as a sorority girl in 1997's Scream 2 that she started to find film work. Her first project after Scream 2 was in Nothing to Lose, but her following film, 1998's Urban Legend, was successful enough to earn her a place among Hollywood's latest batch of up-and-coming starlets. After Legend, Gayheart co-starred with fellow Scream-er Neve Campbell in the obscure Canadian film Hair Shirt (1998). Her next project, the Heathers take-off Jawbreaker, faltered both at the box office and with critics, but did Gayheart the service of casting her in another leading role, helping to increase her fresh-scrubbed profile.