Alisan Porter (born June 20, 1981) is an American former child actress, singer, dancer, and blogger. She is best known for her lead role in the 1991 film Curly Sue. Porter was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is Jewish; her maternal grandmother, whose father-in-law Joseph Klein was a prominent Worcester rabbi, ran the Charlotte Klein Dance Center in Worcester. Porter's mother, Laura Klein, was a dance coach for Diane Klimaszewski & Elaine Klimaszewski, who appeared on Star Search in 1987, in the junior vocalist category, before they became better known as the Coors Light Twins. Her father, Ric Porter, was co-founder, lead singer, and songwriter of the Worcester Band Zonkaraz. While in Los Angeles for the twins's appearance on the show, the show's producer heard Porter singing in the hotel lobby and had her on the very next episode. Alisan has been singing and performing since the age of three; at the age of five, she became the youngest Star Search participant ever to win the competition.
As an actress, she is known for her role as Curly Sue in the movie Curly Sue. She costarred with Tim Curry in an introduction scene of an awards ceremony where both of them "jumped" out of a movie screen and into real life through special effects. Porter continued acting in high school in Westport, Connecticut, where she joined a theatre group and participated in various shows. When she was eighteen, she moved to New York to audition for Broadway shows. She was cast as Urleen in the show Footloose. Porter is based in Los Angeles, where she has been working on her music career. During this time she starred as Miriam in the smash The Ten Commandments: The Musical at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles alongside Val Kilmer and Adam Lambert and Broadway star Lauren Kennedy. In 2003, the band The Raz was formed, with Porter as the vocalist and main songwriter. The Raz split up in 2004. In March 2005, she announced the birth of her new band, The Alisan Porter Project. During 2006, she performed in the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line as Bebe Bensonheimer at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in New York City.
Since December 2008, Porter is a contributing columnist for Movmnt Magazine. On March 10, 2012, Porter married Brian Autenrieth, a fruit exporter and former Days of Our Lives actor, in California. The couple have two children: son Mason Blaise (born July 17, 2012) and daughter Aria Sage (born May 8, 2014). Porter created a closed Facebook page for mothers called Lil' Mamas and then, in 2012, a related blog website of the same name. On February 29, 2016, she became a contestant on season 10 of The Voice and sang "Blue Bayou" for her blind audition perfomance. All four celebrities - Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine, Blake Shelton, and Pharrell Williams - turned their chairs for her and she chose Aguilera as her coach. Curly Sue is a 1991 American romantic comedy-drama film and starred Jim Belushi, Kelly Lynch and Alisan Porter as the titular character. It was the final film directed by John Hughes and the only John Hughes film distributed by Warner Bros. Its music was composed by Georges Delerue, along with the end title song "You Never Know" performed by Ringo Starr.
