Elaine Hendrix has put her dancing shoes back on for Season 34 of Dancing With the Stars, but she’s certainly no stranger to the ballroom. In fact, she was a trained dancer before an unexpected accident completely derailed her career path in the early 1990s.

The Parent Trap star opened up about the accident during the show’s premiere on September 16, then proved she still has what it takes as a dancer when she scored toward the top of the leaderboard with her Week 1 dance. Scroll down for a refresh on what happened to Hendrix.

What happened to Elaine Hendrix?

Shortly after she moved to Los Angeles to pursue her professional career as a dancer, Hendrix was hit by a car. “I was riding my bike and got hit by a car, and that changed everything for me,” Hendrix told Huffington Post in 2016. “After that, dance became something that was very painful to do, so it just pushed me more in the direction of acting.”

On Dancing With the Stars, she told partner Alan Bersten that she’s “really lucky that [she] walked away” from the accident.

Is Elaine Hendrix a dancer?

Hendrix was a “classically trained dancer in modern and contemporary jazz” before her accident. However, she said she has never been trained in ballroom dance, which is what she has to do on Dancing With the Stars.

In the early days of her career, Hendrix was working as a model while also dancing for the Gary Harrison Dance Company. She grew up in Tennessee and then moved to Atlanta for high school, attending Northside School of Performing Arts. During her senior year, she won a model search, which is how she was able to pivot into a career as a dancer and model.

Dancing With the Stars, Season 34, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC

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