Shane West was born in 1978 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He began to pursue an acting career at the age of fifteen, gaining bit parts on various television shows, but it was not until 1999 when West appeared in ABC's "Once and Again" (1999) that he got his major breakthrough. Aside from catapulting to teen heart-throb status with the success of the show, West has made his mark on the screen within such films as Liberty Heights (1999) and Whatever It Takes (2000).
West was subsequently cast opposite singer/actress Mandy Moore in 2002's A Walk to Remember, which was a box office success, grossing $41 million in the United States [1]. He also was in the Mandy Moore music video Cry. In 2003, West appeared in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and in 2004, he joined the cast of NBC's long running medical television series, ER (TV series) as intern/third year resident Ray Barnett. He recently starred in the independent film What We Do Is Secret, playing Darby Crash, a member of the 1970s punk band The Germs; the film has not yet been released. Members of the band were impressed by West's performance and re-formed the band with West taking the deceased Crash's place.

Source: IMDB and Wikipedia