Brenda Song as
London Tipton Born on March 27, 1988 in Carmichael, California to a Hmong American father and a Thai American mother, Brenda Song is the eldest of three children. She is a Tae Kwon Do black-belter and was named an All-American Scholar in ninth grade. She began her career as a child fashion model in San Francisco.
At the age of six, she started acting, first appearing on a television commercial for Little Caesars. In the late 1990s, she began playing minor roles in programs such as 7th Heaven, Once and Again,
Popular , Judging Amy, The Nightmare Room and The Bernie Mac Show, for which she earned a Young Artist Award nomination for the category "Best Performance in a Television Comedy Series, Guest Starring Young Actress". Her first major role was as Sariffa Chung in Nickelodeon's 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd.
In 2000, Song appeared in her first Disney film entitled The Ultimate Christmas Present, where she played Samantha Kwan, a role for which she won the Young Artist Award for "Best Performance in a TV Movie Comedy, Supporting Young Actress". Her next Disney project were Get a Clue in 2002, and Stuck in the Suburbs in 2004. Since then, she appeared in a number of programs, including
Will and Grace ,
One Tree Hill and Strong Medicine.
In 2005, Song landed the role of London Tipton on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. A year later, she starred in her very own Disney Channel original movie, Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior, which became very successful, allowing her to travel to Malaysia, Singapore and Mexico to promote the film. She also appeared in the Disney Channel Games 2006 and 2007.
Ultimate Disney talked to Song about how she landed the role of London Tipton and she said, "This is the very first job that I never had to audition for. I guess it was because I'd worked so much for Disney before this already, so I guess every job before was kind of like my audition. I actually got called to go to the table reading and when I went there, I saw Ashley Tisdale, and we had known each other previously from another job we did, and we freaked out... so it was really cool, it was just like, "Oh my God, I get to work on a series with my best friend for the next four or however many years!" And it was really awesome, but... it was the first time I didn't have to go through the whole process."