Disney Channel star Anneliese van der Pol's career comeback happened after family tragedy

Anneliese van der Pol got the chance to make a career comeback shortly after her mom died.

The 39-year-old actress shot to fame as a teenager playing Chelsea Daniels on the Disney Channel sitcom 'That's So Raven' alongside Raven-Symoné in the early 2000s but struggled to get back on the scene in later years and the call for reboot series 'Raven's Home' came shortly after she lost her mother Dyan.

Speaking on 'Wizards of Waverly Pod', she told fellow former Disney stars David DeLuise and Jennifer Stone: "I was living in New York. It wasn't working out, I was auditioning for a lot of theatre and it just wasn't working out, I wasn't booking anything. Then Raven just literally called me.

"This was soon after my mom died and I was pretty upset about that. Things weren't great.

"And Raven just called me and asked if I wanted to be back on TV, back on Disney Channel."

Anneliese - who stars as Belle in the Broadway production of 'Beauty and the Beast' shortly after the supernatural sitcom ended in 2007 and also appeared in 'Twilight' parody 'Vampires Suck' in 2011 - jumped at the chance to reprise her role and "didn't care" when Raven warned her that there wasn't a great deal of pay involved.

She said: "I was like 'Yeah!' and she was like 'Okay girl, but it's not gonna be about us, it's gonna be the kids' and I was like 'I don't care, girl, I'll be background!' and then she said there wasn't a lot of money but I said 'I don't care!'"

The actress reprised her role as the titular character's best friend on the Disney+ series from 2017 until 2021 and recently explained that in the time before landing the job, she had to work in a restaurant to make ends meet.

Speaking on the 'Chicks in the Office' podcast, she explained: "I was living paycheck to paycheck working in restaurants, you know, like everybody else. I was like oh my gosh, I’m gonna be on TV again. I was nothing but excited."