This beautiful child actress made her film debut when chosen by director Howard Zieff over thousands of competitors, for the plum role of the hypochondriac tomboy opposite Macaulay Culkin in "My Girl" (1991). The Chicago native was hardly new to show business, however. Chlumsky (pronounced "CLUM-ski") has worked steadily as a photographic model since appearing in her first ad at age ten months. She has acted in TV commercials and industrial films and appeared in two productions of "Annie". Chlumsky has also appeared onstage in "Fiddler on the Roof" and "The Music Man".
Chlumsky's debut as Vada Sultenfuss in "My Girl" led to its 1994 sequel, "My Girl 2", in which her character travels to Los Angeles to "discover" her dead mother. Mothers again figured in "Trading Mom" (1994), a fantasy co-starring Sissy Spacek as a Mom replaced by her evil clone. In 1995, Chlumsky shared the screen with the equally precocious Christina Ricci in "Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain". She played a neglected tomboy who befriends--and gets into adventurous scrapes with--spoiled city girl Ricci.