Book excerpt: Gomez's star quality must have been evident from birth - she was named after the singer huge Latin star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. It was her mother Amanda Dawn "Mandy" Teefey, a former theatre actress, who inspired her to act. She received her first break on Barney & Friends in 2002, before being discovered by Disney when they were conducting a global casting call. She made two pilots which floundered before she was cast in the series Wizards of Waverley in 2008. During the series, she also kick-started her musical career. Typically cautious, she has said she decided to form a band to support her rather than go solo. She said she had decided to name them ‘Selena Gomez and the Scene’ to mock disparagers who criticised her for wanting to launch herself into music.