Carly Schroeder was born in Valparaiso, Indiana; she has a younger brother, Hunter. At the age of three, she began appearing in print advertisements in Chicago and subsequently worked in television commercials. Her appearance in a Shake 'N' Bake ad caught the attention of actor Kin Shriner, who in 1997 arranged for her to play his daughter, Serena Baldwin, in the daytime drama General Hospital and then its spinoff Port Charles