Click here for her image galleryBell was born and raised in Huntington Woods, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. She is the daughter of Tom Bell, a television news director, and Lorelei "Lori" Bell, a registered nurse. Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and she has 2 half sisters from her father's remarriage: Sara and Jody. Bell has a lazy eye which affects her right eye. She inherited it from her mother, who had it corrected as a child. Bell claims that if she does not get enough sleep, it furthers the ailment. She nicknames her right eye "Wonky".
At the age of 4, Bell claimed she did not like her first name and opted to change it to "Smurfette" after the character in the The Smurfs; however, her mother convinced Bell to go by her middle name of Anne instead; she used the name Annie until high school. She attended Burton Elementary school in Huntington Woods where she studied singing and tap dancing.
Just before her freshman year of high school, Bell's parents decided to pull her from the public school system. She then attended Shrine Catholic High School in nearby Royal Oak, where she took part in the drama and music club. During her time at the school, she gained the starring role in the school's 1997 production of The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy Gale and also appeared in productions of Fiddler on the Roof (1995), Lady Be Good (1996), and Li'l Abner (1998). In 1998, the year she graduated, Bell was named the yearbook's "Best Looking Girl" by senior class vote.
When Bell was 17, her best friend Jenny DeRita, whom she met at age 11 during a Detroit community theater production, was killed in an automobile accident. Bell said that it was "both the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me. [...] Once you learn not to take people for granted, you live a lot happier life."
Shortly after her high school graduation, Bell moved to New York and attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, majoring in musical theater. In 2001, during her senior year at New York University, Bell left a few credits shy of graduating[ to take a role in the Broadway musical of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
At age eleven, Bell became a vegetarian. In an interview with PETA, Bell stated, "I have always been an animal lover. I had a hard time disassociating the animals I cuddled with—dogs and cats, for example—from the animals on my plate, and I never really cared for the taste of meat. I always loved my Brussels sprouts!" During the time she lived in Michigan, Bell fostered animals from Michigan Humane Society and she now supports the San Diego based Helen Woodward Animal Center. Bell often attends fund raisers for the ASPCA and other non-profit organizations dedicated to protecting animals. She owns a Welsh Corgi-Chow Chow mix named Lola, a Welsh Corgi-Chihuahua mix named Shakey, and a black Labrador Retriever named Sadie, who was 11 years old when she was rescued from Hurricane Katrina and adopted by Bell in 2005. She and many of those who worked on Veronica Mars, including friend Ryan Hansen, are involved with the charity organization Invisible Children Inc.. The goal of the organization is to create awareness regarding the plight of the people of Northern Uganda who are caught in the midst of a civil war between the government and Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army. Bell has shown her support for the Writers Guild of America in the writer's strike, appearing in the picket lines in December 2007 stating, "the writers are just looking for some fairness."
In 2007, Bell ended a five year relationship with former fiancé Kevin Mann, and is dating actor Dax Shepard. She told Complex magazine that dating "makes me want to vomit. And not out of grossness — OK, a little bit out of grossness, but just nerves." Bell explains, "I’ve always been a serial monogamist."
Being from Michigan, she is also an avid fan of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team.
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