What Happened to Ashlie Brillault? Where She Is Now in 2026

If you were anywhere near a television between 2001 and 2004, you knew the hair flip. Kate Sanders, cheer captain of Hillridge Junior High, was the reason a whole generation flinched at the word “outfit.” Then Lizzie McGuire ended, and the actress behind Kate simply stopped showing up. No comeback tour, no reality show, no reboot cameo. So whatever happened to Ashlie Brillault? The short answer: she went to law school. The longer answer is a lot more interesting.

01Profile

That is one of the cleaner career pivots you will find on this site. Most former child actors have a messy middle section. Brillault has a straight line: television, university, law school, bar exam, courtroom. She has been a licensed attorney far longer than she was ever a working actress.

02The Rise: How Kate Sanders Took Over Disney Channel

A Long Beach Kid Who Booked One Very Big Role

Brillault grew up in the Long Beach area of Southern California, within driving distance of every casting office in Los Angeles. Her filmography is unusually short, and that is worth sitting with: rather than grinding through years of commercials and guest spots, she landed a recurring role on a show that became one of Disney Channel’s defining hits, and she essentially did that and nothing else. Beyond Lizzie McGuire, her only other credited screen appearance is a 2003 turn on the sitcom One on One, per her IMDb filmography. Two credits, one cultural footprint the size of a stadium.

The Antagonist Everybody Loved to Hate

Lizzie McGuire premiered on Disney Channel in January 2001, and its genius was that it took junior high seriously. Lizzie (Hilary Duff) was awkward on purpose. Gordo was the voice of reason. Miranda was the loyal one. And Kate Sanders was the former friend who had crossed over to the popular side and never looked back — the human embodiment of the moment your best friend from elementary school decides you are embarrassing.

What made the performance land was that Brillault never played Kate as a cartoon. There were flickers of insecurity under the sneer — a hard note for an adult actor to hit, let alone a teenager, and a big part of why the character stuck in people’s memories for two decades.

The Movie, and the Peak

In 2003, The Lizzie McGuire Movie took the cast to Rome and cemented Duff as a genuine teen star. Brillault appeared in the film as Kate, and for a moment she was part of one of the most visible young ensembles on the planet. Disney Channel in 2003 was a machine that turned supporting players into pop singers and franchise leads. That was the on-ramp. Brillault took the exit instead.

03Stepping Away From Hollywood

Here is the part people find hardest to believe. Lizzie McGuire wrapped its run in 2004, and Brillault did not go looking for the next thing. She has no credits after that year. While her castmates auditioned, recorded albums, and did the talk-show circuit, she finished high school in the Long Beach area and enrolled at California State University, Long Beach.

There is no scandal here, no falling-out, no tabloid rupture — which is precisely why it is such a satisfying story. As best as the public record shows, a teenager looked at the industry, decided it was not the life she wanted, and quietly left. The absence of drama is the story.

2001Lizzie McGuire premieres on Disney Channel; Brillault appears as Kate Sanders.
2003The Lizzie McGuire Movie is released; she also makes a guest appearance on One on One.
2004The series ends. It becomes her final credited screen work; she steps away from acting entirely.
2010Earns a bachelor's degree from California State University, Long Beach.
2011–2014Attends the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, working in the school's Civil Rights Clinic and on its criminal law review.
2014Graduates with a JD and begins volunteering as an attorney with an ACLU jails project, per her professional profile.
2015Admitted to the State Bar of California and begins practicing criminal defense.
2019–2020Disney+ announces a Lizzie McGuire revival, then shelves it. Brillault is not among the announced returning cast.
2020Takes part in a virtual cast reunion table read benefiting charity — one of her only public appearances as a former actor.

04From Cheer Captain to Criminal Defense

The law school years are where the pivot stops being a fun trivia fact and starts looking like a genuine calling. At Denver’s Sturm College of Law, according to her professional profile, Brillault earned a certificate in constitutional rights and remedies, worked in the Civil Rights Clinic, served as a staff editor on the school’s criminal law review, and placed near the top of an intramural motions competition. Those are not the extracurriculars of someone hedging her bets. That is a student aiming squarely at criminal and constitutional work.

She passed the California bar and was admitted in 2015. Her practice is listed on attorney directories as effectively 100% criminal defense, based out of Long Beach with the Law Offices of David J. Givot. Givot’s practice has a distinctive specialty: representing paramedics, EMTs, and other emergency medical professionals facing criminal charges or licensing and administrative action — people whose careers can end over a single accusation, and who often do not know that the same rules apply to them as to anyone else in an interrogation room.

Think about what that job actually involves. Standing next to someone on the worst day of their life. Reading police reports. Arguing suppression motions. Explaining to a client’s family what a plea offer means. It is unglamorous, high-stakes work with none of the applause that comes with a soundstage — and she has now been doing it roughly three times as long as she was on television.

05What She Is Doing Now

Still Practicing in Long Beach

As of 2026, Brillault remains a practicing criminal defense attorney in California. Attorney directory listings for her — including a FindLaw profile updated in January 2026 — continue to place her at the Law Offices of David J. Givot in Long Beach, and her California bar license, issued in 2015, is listed as active with no record of discipline. She is a member of the Orange County Bar Association, per her professional profile.

If you were hoping for a dramatic third act, this is not that. It is better, honestly: a person who found the thing she actually wanted to do at 20 and has simply kept doing it.

A Deliberately Private Life

Brillault does not court attention. She has no active public acting presence, does not appear on the nostalgia convention circuit in any documented way, and has not given the kind of tell-all interview that former Disney stars are routinely offered. Reports over the years have described her as married with a daughter; beyond that, she has kept her family life out of public view, and we are going to leave it there.

The Reunion She Did Show Up For

The one real exception came in May 2020, when much of the Lizzie McGuire cast assembled for a virtual table read of a classic episode to raise money for charity. Brillault joined, and got to address the thing every fan wants to ask her — that people still meet her and immediately want to know why she was so mean to Lizzie.

I’m nice in real life, I swear! — Ashlie Brillault, virtual Lizzie McGuire cast reunion, May 2020, as reported by Nicki Swift

As for the revival itself: Disney+ announced a Lizzie McGuire continuation in 2019 with Hilary Duff and the on-screen McGuire family attached, production started in late 2019, and the project was shut down in 2020 amid what Duff publicly described as a disagreement over how grown-up the show could be on a family platform. Brillault was never announced as part of that cast, and no confirmed revival is in production as of mid-2026. If you have seen social posts advertising a 2026 Lizzie McGuire sequel film, treat them with heavy skepticism — nothing of the sort has been confirmed by Disney.

06Summary

The “where are they now” genre runs on downfall — the money, the fame, the second act that never arrived. Ashlie Brillault’s story refuses to cooperate. She got famous young, decided it was not for her, went to university, went to law school, passed the bar, and built a career that has now outlasted her acting one several times over.

Ashlie Brillault in 2026: Quick Facts

Played Kate Sanders on Disney Channel's Lizzie McGuire (2001–2004) and in The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003).
Her final credited screen work was in 2004; she has not returned to acting.
Earned a BA from CSU Long Beach (2010) and a JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law (2014).
Admitted to the State Bar of California in 2015; her license is active with no record of discipline.
Works as a criminal defense attorney with the Law Offices of David J. Givot in Long Beach, still listed there in 2026.
Her one notable public appearance as a former cast member was a charity table read reunion in May 2020.
She was not part of the announced Disney+ revival cast, and no revival is confirmed to be in production.

So the next time that episode cycles through your algorithm and Kate Sanders flips her hair at Lizzie in the hallway, you can enjoy it with a bit of extra context. The girl on screen grew up to spend her days arguing on behalf of people who need someone in their corner. If you had to design a redemption arc for television’s most memorable junior high antagonist, you would struggle to write a better one — and this one has the advantage of being real.