The catalysts for change eventually came in 2001, when Leigh, in the throes of addiction and barely eating, was told by the director of Not Another Teen Movie that she looked unhealthily thin. This led to abuse of drugs such as cocaine, which quickly escalated into addiction. Leigh described them as being "broken", both having had troubled family lives and difficult upbringings. They began a relationship, and Leigh left home to move in with West. Drug addiction and recovery Īt age 16, Leigh met her future husband, 20-year-old Nathan West, when they both attended auditions for the pilot of an unsuccessful WB series titled Saving Graces. At 16, she took and passed the California High School Proficiency Exam. In 1999, Leigh and her mother relocated to Los Angeles so she could develop her acting career. She soon began acting by appearing in local television commercials and a syndicated teen news show, Hall Pass. Leigh was in eighth grade when she started modelling. Leigh was estranged from her father for many years following her parents' divorce, but they have since reconciled. The business went bankrupt when she was eight and her parents' marriage ended when she was 12 she, her mother, and her older brother – former actor Christopher Khayman Lee – then moved to Miami, where her mother remarried her first husband. Leigh was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, to Yvonne Norton and Robert Potts and raised in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where her parents ran a weight-loss business.