Actress Amanda Bynes arrives at the premiere of DreamWork's 'She's the Man' in 2006. Photo / Getty Images
Actress Amanda Bynes arrives at the premiere of DreamWork's 'She's the Man' in 2006. Photo / Getty Images
It was the year 2000 and The Amanda Show was on TV daily.
The US comedy show was hugely successful on the Nickelodeon network and made big stars of its main cast.
But it was the fresh-faced Amanda Bynes who was propelled to the extreme highs of fame, with the 33-year old making headlines this week for her engagement to a mystery man.
The then young teenager, who got her big break as a 10-year-old on sketch series All That, was dubbed a young Carol Burnett, with her co-star Drake Bell saying years later, "Unbelievable talent and funny as well... Way beyond her years, like lightning in a bottle. When we started working together we were 12, 13 years old and the girl was running circles around the adults. She's unbelievable."
The Amanda Show was one of Nickelodeon's most popular shows. Photo / Youtube
After three seasons, Bynes left the show and began starring in the popular series What I Like About You as Holly Tyler and made her big-screen debut in the comedy Big Fat Liar, opposite fellow child star Frankie Muniz.
After that was chick flick What A Girl Wants with Colin Firth and Kelly Preston, cementing her status as an 'It girl' in Hollywood, up against the likes of teen queens Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan.
But it was perhaps her most popular film, She's The Man, in 2006, which marked the beginning of Bynes' unravelling.
Years later, in a 2018 interview with Paper magazine, Bynes revealed she "hated" the way she looked in the movie, which led her into a "deep depression".
"When the movie came out and I saw it, I went into a deep depression for four to six months because I didn't like how I looked when I was a boy," she said.
Seeing herself on screen with short hair, thick eyebrows, and sideburns was "a strange and out-of-body experience," she said.
After that, she would only appear in three more feature films before abruptly quitting acting at the age of 24 in 2010.
Bynes won the Favourite Movie Actress award at the Kids' Choice Awards several times. Photo / Getty Images
Following roles in Hairspray (2007), Sydney White (2007) and her last ever movie, Easy A (2010), Bynes took to Twitter to declare she didn't "love" acting anymore.
This was after filming – and being reportedly sacked – from the 2011 movie Hall Pass with Owen Wilson, in what was set to be her first breakout adult role.
Sources told The Daily Beast she was acting erratically on set, with reps claiming her departure from the movie was due to a "scheduling conflict".
"If I don't love something anymore, I stop doing it. I don't love acting anymore, so I've stopped doing it. I know 24 is a young age to retire, but you heard it here first," she wrote.
STRING OF CRIMINAL INCIDENTS
In total, Bynes accrued seven car incidents in 2012.
She dropped off the radar for two years before emerging in April 2012, for all the wrong reasons, when she was arrested for a DUI in West Hollywood.
That same month she was arrested again for hitting a car and leaving the scene.
Bynes was arrested again later that year for two hit-and-run driving incidents.
In a separate cry for help, Bynes was charged with reckless endangerment and attempted tampering with evidence for allegedly throwing a bong out of her apartment window.
She appeared in court to face the charges in New York in 2013, sporting a bizarre long blue wig.
Amanda Bynes attends an appearance at Manhattan Criminal Court in 2013. Photo / Getty Images
In July that year, she allegedly started a fire in the driveway of a stranger's house in California, and was hospitalised under a 72-hour mental health evaluation hold.
Her parents, Rick and Lynn, filed for guardianship of their daughter, which was granted.
BIZARRE TWITTER RAGES
Bynes became infamous for her series of crazy, horrible tweets throughout 2013, which were often aimed at fellow celebrities including some of her former cast mates.
March 21, 2013: "I want @drake to murder my vagina"
May 4, 2013: "I f***d @DrakeBell so many times on the Amanda show set oh god"
May 26, 2013: "@Rihanna Chris Brown beat you because you're not pretty enough"
June 2, 3013: "My dad is as ugly as RuPaul! So thankful I look nothing like you both! I had nose surgery after my mug shots so my nose and I are gorgeous!"
"My dad was verbally and physically abuse (sic) to me as a child," she wrote. "He called me ugly as a child and then asked me if I wanted to have sex with him and I did not know how to respond and I said no and then I was forced to live with my dad which was a total nightmare. My dad fondled himself in front of me so many times that I started recording him on my phone in hopes of catching him saying or doing something inappropriate around me so I could get him arrested and put in jail for the rest of his perverted life. My mom knows that my father's literally and physically incestual (sic) towards his own daughter and the fact that she never called the police on him embarrasses me to no end. So, today I am meeting with a lawyer to get a restraining order against my dad."
Bynes' parents vehemently denied the allegations made by their daughter.
"I am heartbroken today for my husband of 47 years," Bynes' mother responded in a statement.
"Rick has never abused Amanda or our other children physically or sexually. These accusations are absolutely horrible and could not be further from the truth! These allegations stem from Amanda's mental state at the moment."
A day later, Bynes retracted her accusations in a bizarre way. "My dad never did any of those things. The microchip in my brain made me say those things but he's the one that ordered them to microchip me."
DISAPPEARING FROM SOCIAL MEDIA
A month later, Bynes admitted on Twitter to being diagnosed bipolar and manic depressive. By March of 2015, she wasn't tweeting at all.
She reappeared in the media in a remorseful interview in 2018 with Paper magazine, where she was she was "ashamed and embarrassed" by her previous behaviour.
"It makes me feel so horrible and sick to my stomach and sad. Everything I worked my whole life to achieve, I kind of ruined it all through Twitter. But it's definitely not Twitter's fault – it's my own fault," she said.
"I'm really ashamed and embarrassed with the things I said. I can't turn back time but if I could, I would. And I'm so sorry to whoever I hurt and whoever I lied about because it truly eats away at me."
She said at the time she had been sober for four years, and was studying merchandise product development at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, which she graduated from in June last year.
