ABOUT
Austin Ames (Chad Michael Murray) plays Prince Charming to Hilary Duff's Sam Montgomery in the movie A Cinderella Story.
Samantha Montgomery (or as she likes to be known, Sam) lived a semi-fairytale life with her widowed father when she was 8 years old in a suburb in California. One day, an earthquake kills her father and leaves her with her plastic-surgery-obsessed stepmother Fiona and her two cruel stepsisters Brianna and Gabriella. 8 years later, Sam is a straight-A student enduring her uncaring stepmother's wrath, who turned her father's cafe into a girly hot-pink hot spot and forces her to work as a "diner girl". In addition to her family, Sam must deal with the "popular" girls at school, led by Shelby. Samantha confides in her best friend Carter and cyber-space, pen-pal, her "secret admirer" who wants to attend Princeton with her. What she doesn't know is that her secret admirer turns out to be Austin Aames, the most popular boy at school who is currently dating Shelby.
As they text each other back and forth, Austin (or, as he refers to himself in cyber space - Nomad) invites Sam to the Halloween Dance so they can meet face-to-face. Austin dumps Shelby a few hours before the dance. At the same time, Fiona forces Sam to work late at the diner that night until midnight. Carter, Rhonda (Sam's mentor and friend at the diner who also works there), and the other cafe employees help Sam get to the dance, masquerading as Cinderella in a mask and Rhonda's wedding dress. She meets Austin in the middle of the dance floor, and they dance and play "10 Questions", Sam never revealing her identity. As they dance outside in at the dance. However, Sam's cell phone alarm goes off 15 minutes before midnight, warning her to run back to the diner before she's caught, leaving Austin without Sam's real name. As Sam and Carter flee the dance, Sam's cell phone drops and Austin picks it up, determined to find out who this "Cinderella" is.
Sam goes to school the next day to find Austin performing a school-wide search for his Cinderella. Sam is still feeling uncomfortable about revealing herself to Austin, who in turn is still searching obsessively. One afternoon, Sam's stepsisters find her emails while snooping around on her computer. After unsuccessfully trying to pass themselves off as Cinderella to Austin, they end up showing the emails to Shelby and her friends. The stepsisters make her believe Sam stole Austin on purpose, so she puts together a cruel skit to perform at a football match in order to humiliate Sam. The skit is performed in front of the whole school, as well as Austin's father who is present at the pep rally and has been pressuring Austin to attend college to play football and work at his car wash.
Sam goes back home in shame and Fiona brings her a letter from Princeton saying that she wasn't accepted. This is, in actuality, a fake letter as Fiona threw out the real letter from Princeton which said she was accepted. Eventually, Sam has enough of her step-family and their abusive treatment and quits working at the diner, tells Fiona off, and moves in with Rhonda. The night of the big football game, Sam storms into the locker room and confronts Austin, saying that she's fed up with his two different identities, one to her and one to his friends "waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought, useless and disappointing". In the last few moments of the game, Austin comes to his senses, abandons the game, and makes up with Sam, at the very same time it starts raining. In the end, Sam finds her father's hidden will which leaves everything to her. She has Fiona taken for questioning by the district attorney for keeping it a secret when her signature was plainly on the document. Fiona, Brianna and Gabriella are then forced work at the diner to pay off their community service debts, under supervision from Rhonda. Carter gets a role in a commercial. Sam and Austin are accepted to Princeton and ride off to their new future together.
Source: Wikipedia