Grumpy Cat's Friend Chrystal Is A Star Too

While on the focus on the new Lifetime original movie Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever has been around the titular cat and the actress voicing her Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza, no one seems to be remembering that Grumpy Cat has a human friend in the film, Chrystal. Because of Chrystal, Grumpy Cat might actually learn the true meaning of Christmas, and even if she doesn't she now has a friend for life. So while the mania surrounding Grumpy continues, I would rather focus on Chrystal, or rather the actress who plays Chrystal: Megan Charpentier.

Charpentier may only be 13 years old, but she's already created a name for herself by popping in movies and TV shows since 2008. Her first big role came in the form of a holiday movie, funnily enough. Charpentier was in the 2008 TV movie The Christmas Clause starring Back to the Future's Lea Thompson as a working mother who wishes to see what her life would be like if she decided to pursue her law career over family. Charpentier played one of Thompson's daughters. While the young actress' career has now blossomed into starring in holiday films on television rather than playing bit parts in them, she's done so much more in between from bigger films to great TV shows like Supernatural, Motive, Psych, Fringe and more.

Over the last few years, Charpentier has popped up in many films as the younger versions of main characters for flashback scenes. In 2009, Charpentier played the young version of Amanda Seyfried's "Needy" in Jennifer's Body, Diablo Cody's second scriptwriting outing after her Oscar-winning Juno. Charpentier played Needy when she was just beginning to become friends with Jennifer, who would later become a demon in the form of Megan Fox. Charpentier continued this trend by playing young versions of characters in Halle Berry's Frankie & Alice and in Red Riding Hood, where she played the younger version of Seyfried's character yet again.

Charpentier has also made quite the mark on horror films as she played The Red Queen in Resident Evil: Retribution. The Red Queen was a holographic representation of the artificial intelligence supercomputers that were created to protect different facilities and areas of the main Umbrella Corporation, the company responsible for bioengineering a T-virus that started the zombie apocalypse.

The young actress also co-starred opposite Jessica Chastain and Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in the horror film Mama. The film followed two young girls who, after being abandoned in the woods, were taken care of by an unknown entity that they called Mama. After five years, the girls are found and taken in by their uncle and his girlfriend (Chastain's character), but the entity follows them and haunts their new guardians. Charpentier played Victoria, the elder of the two girls who is much better at re-acclimating to civilized life. It's actually a pretty interesting film and Charpentier was quite great in it.

Let's hope that showing yet another side of her acting abilities will boost Charpentier's credentials even further, as clearly she's just beginning what is bound to be a successful career.

Images: Chris Helcermanas-Benge/Lifetime; subtlehorror/Tumblr