If you tune in to “Secrets on Sorority Row” tonight at 7 on Lifetime, two of the young stars of the movie may look familiar to you if you’ve paid attention to the Birmingham acting scene.

Kate Edmonds and Taylor Hanks, who were both involved with Red Mountain Theatre Company, Virginia Samford Theatre and Acting Out Academy, find themselves playing sorority pledge sisters in the thriller – much to their delight and surprise.

“It’s crazy,” says Edmonds, who had done another movie with the same production company that airs on Lifetime May 31.

She recalls a conversation with the director, Dylan Vox, who called her about the second film and told her they had cast an actress also represented by Lynne Marks, Edmonds’ manager.

“I thought, well, that’s interesting, and then he told me it was Taylor,” Edmonds says. “I said, ’Oh, my gosh, I literally grew up with Taylor Hanks.’ He said they had 800 submissions for each of the girls, and it was Taylor.”

Edmonds and Hanks mostly know each other through years of work and classes with Red Mountain Theatre Company, although both did shows at the Virginia Samford Theatre. Edmonds did shows at Mountain Brook High School, while Hanks was active in the theater program at Alabama School of Fine Arts and New York’s Pace University, from which she recently graduated.

“I love Kate,” Hanks says. “We did a lot of stuff together. We took classes together, and we’ve always gotten along. We were always on the same path together.”

Alabama actresses Kate Edmonds, left, and Taylor Hanks play sorority pledges in Lifetime’s “Secrets on Sorority Row.” (Photo courtesy of Lifetime)

Right now, that path is to primetime television, playing two young women pledging a sorority their mothers had been members of decades before.

“It’s been 22 years since a tragic accident left one sorority sister dead, and strange events begin to occur,” Edmonds says.

The movie was shot in Roanoke, Virginia, and Edmonds and Hanks worked together every day, Edmonds says.

“It was so much fun,” she says. “If I’m getting cast in a movie with someone I know, it’s at least someone I know and love.”

Both Edmonds, the daughter of Susan and Stewart Edmonds of Mountain Brook, and Hanks, the daughter of Debra and Steven Hanks of Hoover, are committed to acting careers, though Edmonds is focusing on film right now and Hanks, also a director and a poet, has a real love for live theater.

“Both of my parents are actors, so I grew up in an environment where theater was appreciated, and I basically did any theater I could get my hands on,” Hanks says. “There’s literally not a single time that I can remember that this wasn’t what I wanted to do and planned to do and was working to do.

“Anywhere I can act I’m going to do it,” adds Hanks, who also had roles in the films “The Giant” and “The Breakup Marriage.” “But I have a very special love for the stage. It feels like my foundation. It feels like my craftmanship has been based around the practice of stage work.”

Edmonds’ first TV role was in Investigation Discovery’s “Homicide Hunter” series, and she’s leaning more toward film work.

“Film acting is so different from theater,” says Edmonds, whose parents also have been supportive of her career. “It’s so much smaller, and you don’t have an audience, and you get multiple takes to do everything. I just fell in love with film acting.”

And May is turning out to be “The Month of Kate Edmonds” on Lifetime. The first movie she filmed for the network, “A Party Goes Wrong,” airs May 31.

Also a thriller, that movie is about a young woman, April, who is fighting for her life after a run-in with a bad crowd – a really bad crowd – that gets her involved in organ trafficking.

“I play April’s best friend, and it may be her fault that this is happening,” Edmonds says. “I play a dark and seedy character in that one.”

The young actress is as committed to her career as her co-star and friend Hanks.

“I would be on sets with older actors and they would say, ‘If you could do anything else, you should do that,’” says Edmonds, whose resume also includes the movies “Root Letter” and “The Third Saturday in October.” “I can’t do anything else. I was meant to do this.”

Next up for both actresses is auditioning for future roles. Edmonds is planning her move to Atlanta, and Hanks will continue “dabbling in directing and reading poetry” in New York.

“I get paid to do things I love to do, and that’s kind of awesome,” Hanks says.