Bella Swan may have been the central character of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga, but the epic supernatural romance series was filled with other humans, vampires and shapeshifters whom fans haven't stopped obsessing over in the decade since Breaking Dawn hit bookshelves. Fans still fantasize about sharing a sleeping bag with Jacob Black and having a picnic in a field of flowers with Edward Cullen, but for some Twihards, all they want to do is spend a day shopping or exploring Italy with Alice Cullen.
Alice has been a fan-favorite character since she was first introduced, as readers and viewers alike were drawn to her upbeat personality and seemingly endless optimism. While Rosalie and some of Edward's other vampire family members were initially hesitant to welcome Bella into their lives, Alice knew from the very beginning that she and Bella were destined to become best friends. She was one of the most positive individuals in the entire Twilight franchise, and she gave her loved ones hope even in the face of extreme danger and impossible odds.
Meyer did a great job delving into the origin stories of the members of the Olympic coven, but unfortunately, since Alice was unable to remember details of her human life, her backstory remains a mystery to casual fans of the series. However, thanks to the author's The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide and interviews after the conclusion of the series, hardcore Alice lovers have gotten the chance to know more about her life before she met Bella. Here are 20 Wild Details Only True Fans Know About Alice Cullen.
20. SHE WAS BORN MARY ALICE BRANDON
Other than Rosalie Hale, whose pride in her heritage made her opt to keep her full name after becoming a vampire, none of Carlisle and Esme's "children" in the Olympic coven go by the names they were born with. Emmett McCarty and Edward Masen both changed their last names to Cullen to match their new parents, while Jasper Whitlock changed his last name to Hale to match his supposed biological sister Rosalie.
Alice's name change was even larger than her siblings', as she was actually born Mary Alice Brandon. She dropped her first name entirely later in life, and simply became Alice Cullen. She shared Edward and Emmett's dark hair, so claiming to be their sister was easy enough.
19. HER SISTER'S NIECE IS STILL ALIVE
When the Cullen family left Forks after an incident at Bella's 18th birthday party made Edward believe they were a threat to her safety, Alice used her free time researching the human life she struggled to remember. She discovered that she grew up in Biloxi, Mississippi, and had a younger sister named Cynthia.
Cynthia had long since passed away, but Alice found out that her daughter was still alive and living in Biloxi. Unfortunately, since it would be too difficult and potentially surprising to explain her continued existence to her niece, Alice opted to stay out of her life. Instead of meeting her sole remaining relative, she chose to visit her tombstone in Biloxi.
18. HER FATHER WAS A JEWELER
In Meyer's Official Illustrated Guide, the author provided Alice fans with some much-needed backstory for the beloved psychic vampire. While Edward and Rosalie both grew up in upper-class families and were accustomed to the level of wealth the Cullen family achieved as vampires, Alice was never particularly rich and she probably wasn't able to pursue her love for fashion until she joined the Olympic coven and was able to afford her expensive wardrobe.
Her father was a pearl trader and jeweler, and while his profession required him to travel often, he wasn't successful enough to provide his family with much. His frequent travels required Alice's mother to stay at home to tend to their house and children.
17. SHE HAD PREMONITIONS BEFORE SHE WAS A VAMPIRE
When some humans are turned into vampires, they develop additional powers beyond the standard gifts of enhanced speed, super strength, hardened skin and the ability to sparkle in the sunlight. Edward wasn't able to read minds and Jane wasn't able to create the illusion of pain in other's minds until they became immortals, but Alice was actually born with her ability to see the future.
Alice discovered at an early age that she could receive premonitions of events that hadn't yet taken place. She was able to predict random family visits and the weather, and her peculiar foresight made people in her community think she was odd. She sadly spent most of her human life as an outsider.
16. SHE WAS ACCUSED OF CURSING HER LOVED ONES
Some of Alice's visions predicted negative futures for the people she cared about, so she did everything she could to warn her loved ones of what was to come. She quickly discovered that this was a mistake, as people refused to believe her predictions and when they came true, they accused her of being some sort of witch.
According to the Illustrated Guide, she once warned a friend not to marry a certain man, and when the friend discovered after the wedding that the man suffered from insanity issues, she blamed Alice and believed the teenage psychic put a curse on the marriage. When Alice warned a male cousin not to take a journey and that same cousin passed away from an accident on the road, his mother blamed Alice for jinxing his trip.
15. SHE FORESAW HER MOTHER'S TRAGIC PASSING
Alice's most traumatic vision was of her mother's life being abruptly cut short by an unknown, sinister figure. She warned her mother, and was actually able to convince her to stay locked up in their house for a while. When her father returned from a trip, however, he demanded Alice to stop making up stories and encouraged his wife to pay less attention to Alice's premonition.
One night not long after that, Alice had a vision of a car running her mother's buggy off the road. When Alice ran off to find her mother, she found it was too late and that her mother had perished in a car accident exactly as she predicted.
14. HER FATHER TRAPPED HER IN A MENTAL ASYLUM
When Alice's father remarried very shortly after her mother's tragic and fatal accident, clues dropped by her new stepmother made it clear that their union had been arranged long before her birth mother was taken out of the picture. Alice initially believed her stepmother was responsible for the accident, but she eventually had a vision of her father paying someone to eliminate both her mother and herself and realized he was behind everything.
Alice searched the town for someone who would believe her story, but her father got to the marshal first and convinced him and the other townspeople that she had gone mad and was possessed by the devil. Her father and the aunt who believed she cursed her cousin paid the marshal to quietly take her to an asylum, so they could pretend she had simply passed away.
13. SHE WAS CLOSE WITH A VAMPIRIC ASYLUM EMPLOYEE
While Alice was living at the mental institution her father had trapped her in, she met and became the favorite of a vampire who worked in the building. The vampire chose to work at the asylum because he could freely feed off of the humans inside of it without anyone really caring when they mysteriously passed away, but his fondness for Alice kept him from ever feeding on her.
Unfortunately, Alice was given constant electroshock therapy while at the asylum, and these experimental "treatments" caused her to lose her memories. She forgot all about her mother and other loved ones, and the vampire soon became the only positive presence she was capable of remembering in her life.
12. HER VAMPIRE FRIEND REGULARLY TESTED HER POWERS
When Aro met Alice in Italy at the end of New Moon, he immediately saw the value of Alice's psychic talent and wanted her to join the Volturi's army of powerfully gifted vampires. He wasn't the first vampire to take a special interest in Alice, though—the vampiric asylum employee she befriended before she was made immortal was also fascinated by her ability to see the future.
The vampire frequently visited Alice with objects hidden in his hands to test her powers, and was amazed when she was always able to correctly guess what he was holding. He was so impressed and invested in Alice that he did everything he could to shield her from the asylum's horrifying treatments.
11. SHE ENCOUNTERED JAMES YEARS BEFORE 'TWILIGHT'
When James crossed paths with the Olympic Coven during their epic baseball game in Twilight, Alice discovered that she and James had met decades prior and that he was actually the reason she was turned into a vampire.
James loved hunting challenging prey, and when he found out that the asylum's vampire was interested in Alice, he chose her as his next target. Alice had a vision of James' planned attack, and told the worker that James was coming for her. The vampire then freed Alice and, knowing that she couldn't escape James as a human, turned her into a vampire to increase her chances of survival. James was so outraged by this that he took out the vampire instead of Alice.
10. SHE'S LOST HER MEMORY TWICE
Alice's childhood wasn't particularly positive, so it may be for the best that the electroshock treatments she received while locked away in the mental institution took away all of her memories. She forgot all about how the people in her town thought she was a witch, that her father trapped her in the asylum so she couldn't expose him for eliminating his own wife, and that her other friends and family members thought she cursed them whenever one of her frightening predictions came true.
It's slightly more tragic that when she became a vampire, she again suffered from a complete memory wipe and couldn't even remember who turned her. This second loss of memory made her forget about the king vampire who befriended and saved her, and she woke up as an immortal completely alone.
9. HER FIRST VAMPIRE PREMONITION WAS OF JASPER
Luckily, Alice wasn't alone for very long. Shortly after she was turned into a vampire, she had a premonition of her own future, and as an immortal, her visions were far clearer. She foresaw her future with her soulmate Jasper Whitlock, and even though they hadn't yet met, she immediately felt the love she would one day feel for him and receive from him in return.
Alice didn't immediately seek out Jasper, though. She knew it would be a long time before they were destined to find each other, and didn't try to force their meeting. When the time finally came in 1948, she sat in an empty diner in Philadephia and waited for him to come in. As she predicted, they quickly fell in love.
8. SHE ADOPTED AN ANIMAL-ONLY DIET ON HER OWN
Alice's premonitions of a future with Jasper showed her and her soulmate living happily with the Cullen family, and she learned that she'd eventually have to follow Carlisle's "vegetarian" vampire diet of feeding on animals instead of humans. So instead of waiting until she met up with the Olympic coven to change up her eating habits, she started working on her diet all on her own.
Most vampires struggle to contain their thirst for human blood after they're turned, but since Alice was able to foresee how easy it'd be to feed solely on animals, she didn't really struggle to adopt this diet during her first few years as an immortal. By the time she finally joined the Cullen family, she was already an expert at controlling her vampiric instincts.
7. SHE SPENT YEARS WITH JASPER BEFORE JOINING THE CULLENS
Alice knew she and Jasper were fated to find Carlise and Esme, but when she finally met up with Jasper, she didn't immediately wisk him away to join the Cullen clan. Instead, she and her soulmate spent two years together on their own, and met up with their future adopted father in 1950 when Alice's visions indicated they'd be ready to do so.
Jasper had previously lived with a different vampire family, so Alice needed time to help him transition from a diet of human blood to one of solely animal blood. They also needed time to truly get to know each other, since she was already in love with him before they even met and likely wanted a chance to better understand her feelings. When they joined with their new vampire parents and siblings, Alice and Jasper's relationship was practically perfect and they were entirely prepared to be Cullens.
6. SHE TOOK THE CULLEN LAST NAME TO EASE GOSSIP
Alice and Jasper didn't publicly display their affection for each other as often and intensely as Rosalie and Emmett did, but people still threw looks their way whenever they showed any signs of romance since they were supposedly siblings. To ease some of the gossip and prevent people from paying too much attention to the secretive Cullen family, Alice decided to change her last name to Cullen and encouraged Jasper to change his last name to Hale.
This allowed Alice to pretend she was related to Edward and Emmett, and claim that Jasper and Rosalie were siblings. Since they no longer appeared to be relatives, Rosalie and Alice became free to be with their soulmates in public.
5. HER GIFT MAKES HER FORMIDABLE IN BATTLE
Jasper was a major in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, so when he became a vampire, his proficiency in combat was enhanced and he became the Cullen family's best fighter. Emmett's incredible strength makes him similarly dangerous in combat, and Edward's ability to read minds helps him counter each of his opponents' next moves.
Stephenie Meyer has stated that Alice is only 4'10", but she's actually every bit as formidable in battle as her siblings. Alice can predict an opponent's move the instant they plan on making it, allowing her to block any assault coming her way. She used this gift to help her in the war against Victoria's newborn army, but since she prefers being non-violent, she doesn't utilize her power in combat to eliminate attackers more than is absolutely necessary.
4. SHE WAS 104 YEARS OLD IN 'TWILIGHT'
Cullen family patriarch Carlisle is unsurprisingly the oldest member of the Olympic coven, as he was born back in 1640. Casual fans may assume that Esme, Carlisle's wife and the "mother" of his adopted children, is the next oldest, but that title actually belongs to Alice's husband Jasper. Jasper was born in 1844, while Esme wasn't born until 1895.
This makes Jasper technically 57 years older than Alice, who was born in 1901. Edward was born that same year, so when Bella Swan met the Cullen family at Forks High School in 2005, Alice and Edward were both 104 years old. That's definitely quite the age gap from Bella, who was only seventeen at the start of the Twilight series.
3. ASHLEY GREENE WAS NOMINATED FOR A WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS AWARD
Fans loved Ashley Greene's portrayal of Alice Cullen in Summit's Twilight films, but the selection committee for the 33rd Golden Raspberry Awards weren't quite as fond of her performance. Greene actually earned a nomination for Worst Supporting Actress for her role in Breaking Dawn – Part 2 at the parodic award ceremony, which honored the worst films the film industry had to offer in 2012.
Greene shouldn't feel too bad about her nomination, however, since she was far from the only Twilight star to be criticized by the Razzies. Kristen Stewart won the event's Worst Actress award, Taylor Lautner took home Worst Supporting Actor and Breaking Dawn – Part 2 won Worst Film, Worst Director, Worst Screen Ensemble and several other negative awards.
2. GREENE DIDN'T CUT HER HAIR TO PORTRAY ALICE
Ashley Greene definitely brought Alice's optimism and kind-heartedness to life on the big screen in the cinematic Twilight saga, but she apparently wasn't willing to chop off her long and thick locks for her character's trademark pixie cut.
"She wears wigs in the Twilight movies," Greene's hairstylist Ted Gibson told Elle. "I like her with longer hair... long hair really accentuates her beauty." Greene wasn't alone in wearing wigs for the films—Rosalie Hale actress Nikki Reed's hair started falling out due to her frequent dye jobs for Twilight, so in all of the following films in the franchise, she opted to simply wear a blonde wig instead.
1. HER POWER IS ALL BASED ON OTHER PEOPLE'S DECISIONS
Some casual fans believe that Alice's predictions of the future are concrete and that her visions are definitely fated to occur exactly as she foresaw them, but her power isn't actually all that simple. Her psychic gift is entirely dependent on the plans and intentions of others, so each time people make a new decision, her premonitions change accordingly.
If an enemy doesn't make up their mind about a particular decision until the last possible second, Alice's power won't warn her until it's already too late. So while her enhanced power is definitely useful, it is far more limited than some fans realize. James constantly changed his plans during his hunt for Bella, which allowed him to stay a step ahead of Alice and nearly enabled him to end his prey's life despite the psychic's efforts to protect her.
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