Born of Albanian-Danish descent in Boston, MA, on December 30, 1980, Dushku grew up the youngest sibling of three older brothers. Following her debut in That Night, which cast her as a young girl who becomes infatuated with the rebellious teen who lives across the street, the young actress did supporting work in This Boy's Life (1993) and played the daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies (1994). In 1998 Dushku got one of her biggest breaks to date when she was cast as troubled slayer Faith on Buffy. Although Faith was only meant to appear in a handful of episodes, the show's creators liked Dushku enough to make Faith a recurring character, and also featured her on Angel, Buffy's spin-off.

Dushku had perhaps her most successful big-screen role to date in Bring It On (2000), a high-school comedy that cast her as Kirsten Dunst's reluctant but tough fellow cheerleader. The film was one of the summer's biggest money-earners, and Dushku, unsurprisingly, was soon busy with a number of new film projects. Included amongst them were Soul Survivor (2001), a teen horror movie that also featured Casey Affleck and Wes Bentley, and The New Guy (2001), another comedy about the horrors of high school life.