Thiessen was born in Long Beach, California. Her father, Frank, is a park designer of German descent; her mother, Robyn, is a homemaker of Greek, Turkish and Welsh descent. She told InStyle magazine: "I'm a mutt. I have so much of everything in me, and half of it I don't even know. German on one side, Greek and Welsh on the other. My mom is very olive-skinned; I get my blue eyes from my dad." She credits her brother, Todd, as one of her most important sources of inspiration, and her mother and grandmother as role models. Her uncle, Roger Ernest, attended college with Steven Spielberg and co-wrote one of his student films called Slipstream. He also appeared in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Sugarland Express, playing a police officer in both films. Ernest was the first person to