Selena Gomez Helped to Launch Demi Lovato's Career!

Demi Lovato's star turn at Disney had its beginnings when she was 11. Her mother, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader and a country-music singer, took Ms. Lovato and her best friend, a fellow Barney performer named Selena Gomez, to a "talent search" in Austin organized by Disney, which was considering developing a Lizzie McGuire spinoff.

Disney casting executives noticed Ms. Lovato but snapped up her friend. "Selena is an adorable looking Hispanic girl, and looks more Hispanic than Demi, and that's what they were looking for at the time," says Ms. De La Garza. Ms. Lovato returned to Dallas, where she was home-schooled and continued her acting, singing and music lessons.

Then in 2006, Ms. Lovato attended another Disney talent search in Dallas, and Disney cast her in a short series called As the Bell Rings. Filmed outside Austin, each episode was a five-minute-long comedic vignette about high-school students between classes that aired in place of commercial breaks on other Disney Channel shows.

Ms. Gomez was largely responsible for what happened next. "I was absolutely determined to get [Ms. Lovato] on the Disney Channel with me," Ms. Gomez says in an interview. So during a break in the taping of her Disney show, Wizards of Waverly Place, she called Ms. Lovato out of the audience for an impromptu performance. When she belted out a version of singer Christina Aguilera's 2006 "Ain't No Other Man" single, "all of the [executives'] heads completely turned to her," says Ms. Gomez.

Well, as The Cheetah Girls say, "friends help friends make their dreams come true!" :) Demi Lovato’s star turn at Disney had its beginnings when she was 11. Her mother, a former Da

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