American actress Nora Zehetner was born on February 5, 1981 in El Paso, Texas. She studied at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, a post-high school program for students interested in engineering for medicine, only to leave after a year to pursue an acting career. Her lifelong interest in acting brought her to Los Angeles, where she began playing bit roles, and later supporting roles, on film and television. She first appeared on television screens in 2000, when she was given a bit role on the television series Gilmore Girls. She made her film debut a year later, through the coming-of-age film Tart, which starred Dominique Swain.
Nora Zehetner appeared in other films, including American Pie 2, May, RSVP and The Burning Land. She also made guest appearances in shows like Going to California, Septuplets and She Spies. She got her first major television role in 2003, when she was cast as Laynie Hart in the WB drama Everwood. In 2005, she starred in the dramatic film Brick, which won an award in that year’s Sundance Film Festival. Aside from playing a major role in the independent film, she also provided a song for the soundtrack.
Zehetner’s next major television role came in 2006, when she was included in the cast of Heroes. She plays the role of Eden McCain, a superhuman with the ability of persuasion. Initially plucked by Noah Bennet (Jack Coleman) out of criminal life, she first worked with them to befriend Chandra Suresh (Erick Avari) to ask him to remove Claire Bennet’s (Hayden Panettiere) name from his list of superhumans. She later encounters Sylar (Zachary Quinto) and plots to persuade him to commit suicide. It doesn’t work, and when he proceeded to kill her, she decides to kill herself instead so that he wouldn’t claim her powers.
After her eight-episode run on Heroes, she appeared in other films such as Fifty Pills, Beneath and Remarkable Power.