Why Blake Lively Nearly Passed On Her Career-Making Gossip Girl Role

Blake Lively almost passed on playing Serena van der Woodsen on The CW's "Gossip Girl" because she wanted to go to college instead. She'd pretty much given up on acting by the time series creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage offered her the lead role on their iconic show.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, the actor explained, "I said, 'No, I want to go to college. Thank you, though.' Then they said, 'Okay, you can go to Columbia [University] one day a week. After the first year [of the show], it'll quiet down. Your life will go back to normal and you can start going to school. We can't put it in writing, but we promise you can go.'" She continued, "So that's why I said, 'Okay. You know what? I'll do this.'"

As we know today, the teen show blew up, became an obsession among millennials, and turned Lively into a bona fide bombshell around the world.

Once "Gossip Girl" turned into a sensation in 2007, Lively started to get lead roles in various movies. Although the show went on for five years until 2012, in between seasons, Lively was acting in such feature films as Rebecca Miller's "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee," Ben Affleck's "The Town," and DC's infamously terrible first attempt at a "Green Lantern" movie.

Interestingly, she never had another role in a TV series once "Gossip Girl" concluded its run. In 2012, she married her "Green Lantern" co-star Ryan Reynolds — after all, the movie's real success was that it brought the two together — and they went on to become a true power couple in Hollywood. She later became a mom of four, but also continued acting, giving us such films as "The Shallows," "A Simple Favor," and the controversial box office smash "It Ends With Us."