Background and career
Christy Carlson Romano (born March 20, 1984) is an American actress, podcaster, and singer. On the Disney Channel, she played Ren Stevens on Even Stevens, the titular character from Kim Possible, and Cadet Captain Stone in Cadet Kelly.
Romano was born on March 20, 1984, in Milford, Connecticut, the youngest of four children of Anthony Romano and Sharon (née Carlson). She was raised Catholic and is of Italian descent. Romano began her career at six years old upon being cast in some national tours of Broadway shows, including Annie, The Will Rogers Follies with Keith Carradine, and The Sound of Music with Marie Osmond. She made her first feature film appearance in 1996 as a singing "Chiquita Banana" in Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You. She also appeared in Henry Fool (1997) and Looking for an Echo (2000).
In 2002, she acted in three Disney Channel projects simultaneously, supplementing her work on Even Stevens with a starring role in Cadet Kelly, alongside Hilary Duff, and voice acting as the title character in Kim Possible. Romano was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for her work on Kim Possible. The show inspired an adventure scavenger hunt at Disney's Epcot that ran for over five years, as well as two Disney Channel movies: Kim Possible: So the Drama and Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time. Romano voiced Yuffie Kisaragi in the English version of the movie Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, as well as in the Disney/Square game Kingdom Hearts. Throughout her teens and twenties, she starred in movies for ABC Family and Disney Channel, including Campus Confidential, Taking Five, The Cutting Edge: Going for the Gold, and The Cutting Edge: Chasing the Dream. Various other appearances include MTV's Kaya, CBS' Joan of Arcadia, The WB's Summerland, and TNT's Hawthorne. In 2012, she directed a music video for Steph Gold's "THE SUN", which was accepted into the Los Angeles Shorts Fest 2012. Since her Disney days, Romano has appeared in many films, including Lifetime's Deadly Daycare, Wes Craven's The Girl in the Photographs, Loosies, and Christmas with the Andersons. In March 2016, she directed her first feature, Christmas All Over Again, starring Nickelodeon's Sean Ryan Fox and YouTube star Todrick Hall; Lionsgate released the film for Christmas 2016. Romano appeared as pop star Poppy Blu in the live-action Kim Possible television movie, which premiered on February 15, 2019. Starting that year, Romano started her own YouTube show called Christy's Kitchen Throwback, in which she would cook recipes with former child actors and Disney stars as guest hosts. In August 2020, it was announced that Romano would host the cooking show Bucket List Bistro for Fox. On November 15, 2024, Fox announced that Romano was one of fifteen contestants to appear in the third season of reality quasi-military training television series Special Forces: World's Toughest Test. In 2026, Romano will portray Nicole in the upcoming Hallmark Channel/Disney collaboration movie Holiday Ever After: A Disney World Wish Come True.
Romano hosts several podcasts. She hosts Vulnerable where she interviews former child stars. She also hosts I Hear Voices with her former Kim Possible co-star Will Friedle. She also hosts Even More Stevens with her former Even Stevens co-stars Nick Spano and Steven Anthony Lawrence. In 2023, Romano launched PodCo, a podcast network focused on rewatches hosted by stars of popular TV series such as Wizards of Waverly Place, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Even Stevens, and others.
While working at Disney, Romano recorded songs for soundtracks for Kim Possible and other Disney projects. She first sang on the Disney Channel in a musical episode of Even Stevens, which led to more singing on the series and across Disney. In 2004, Walt Disney Records released Romano's debut album Greatest Disney TV & Film Hits, a compilation of previously released soundtrack appearances and new material. After her Broadway run of Beauty and the Beast, Romano signed a record deal with Jason Flom at Atlantic Records. Atlantic Records fired Flom before Romano released her first album, and the label did not honor her deal. She continued writing music with Kara DioGuardi and The Matrix, and placed her songs in several movies.
Romano made her Broadway debut in 1998 as Mary Phagan in the musical Parade by Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown. In February 2004, Romano began a 31-week run as Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast on Broadway. Romano was the youngest actress to portray the character on Broadway. She reprised the role in Atlanta's 2005 Fox Theatre production of Beauty and the Beast. In September 2008, she joined the Broadway company of Avenue Q as Kate Monster for several weeks. Romano starred as Michelle off-Broadway in White's Lies at New World Stages in 2010, alongside Betty Buckley and Tuc Watkins. Romano wrote a novel, Grace's Turn, for Disney literary subsidiary Hyperion, which the New York Public Library (NYPL) named the 2007 Teenage Book of the Year. After her singing career, Romano began narrating audiobooks, including Pop Princess by Rachel Cohn, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer trilogy by Michelle Hodkin, and Beautiful Blue World by Suzanne M. LaFleur. She also narrated audiobooks To Catch a Killer by Sheryl Scarborough, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong, Kaleidoscope Hearts by Claire Contreras, and the Adventures of Owl Series by Kristi Charish. On August 22, 2006, she published her own novel, Grace's Turn, for which she provided the narration as well.
