Teresa Palmer is an Australian actress. Teresa Palmer was raised in Adelaide, South Australia. She was a student at Mercedes College, a private Catholic day school, and won a local casting audition, "Search for a Movie Star", in 2003. Her first acting job was dressing up as Strawberry Shortcake and Santa`s Little Helper on weekends for promotions.

Teresa Palmer went to acting classes for a couple of years and appeared in a few television commercials. After graduating from high school, she got a call from her local talent agent about appearing in a student film, 2:37. The director had seen her head shot on the acting agency`s website and wanted her to be in the movie.

Teresa Palmer thought that she would work in an animal rescue service, and eventually open her own animal welfare agency. She was accepted into university to study teaching and was taking a course on journalism, but had always dreamt of acting. Teresa Palmer quit university to work in the film industry.