Favourite Actress' Of All Time. No order
My top 20 favourite actress' (Not in any particular order)
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Angelina Jolie is an Academy Award-winning actress who rose to fame after her role in Girl, Interrupted (1999), playing the title role in the "Lara Croft" blockbuster movies, as well as Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), Salt (2010) and Maleficent (2014). Off-screen, Jolie has become prominently involved in international charity projects, especially those involving refugees. She often appears on many "most beautiful women" lists, and she has a personal life that is avidly covered by the tabloid press.
Jolie was born Angelina Jolie Voight in Los Angeles, California. In her earliest years, Angelina began absorbing the acting craft from her actor parents, Jon Voight, an Oscar-winner, and Marcheline Bertrand, who had studied with Lee Strasberg. Her good looks may derive from her ancestry, which is German and Slovak on her father's side, and French-Canadian, Dutch, Polish, and remote Huron, on her mother's side. At age eleven, Angelina began studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she was seen in several stage productions. She undertook some film studies at New York University and later joined the renowned Met Theatre Group in Los Angeles. At age 16, she took up a career in modeling and appeared in some music videos.
In the mid-1990s, Jolie appeared in various small films where she got good notices, including Hackers (1995) and Foxfire (1996). Her critical acclaim increased when she played strong roles in the made-for-TV movies True Women (1997), and in George Wallace (1997) which won her a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination. Jolie's acclaim increased even further when she played the lead role in the HBO production Gia (1998). This was the true life story of supermodel Gia Carangi, a sensitive wild child who was both brazen and needy and who had a difficult time handling professional success and the deaths of people who were close to her. Carangi became involved with drugs and because of her needle-using habits she became, at the tender age of 26, one of the first celebrities to die of AIDS. Jolie's performance in Gia (1998) again garnered a Golden Globe Award and another Emmy nomination, and she additionally earned a SAG Award.
Angelina got a major break in 1999 when she won a leading role in the successful feature The Bone Collector (1999), starring alongside Denzel Washington. In that same year, Jolie gave a tour de force performance in Girl, Interrupted (1999) playing opposite Winona Ryder. The movie was a true story of women who spent time in a psychiatric hospital. Jolie's role was reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), the role which won Nicholson his first Oscar. Unlike "Cuckoo", "Girl" was a small film that received mixed reviews and barely made money at the box office. But when it came time to give out awards, Jolie won the triple crown -- "Girl" propelled her to win the Golden Globe Award, the SAG Award and the Academy Award for best leading actress in a supporting role.
With her newfound prominence, Jolie began to get in-depth attention from the press. Numerous aspects of her controversial personal life became news. At her wedding to her Hackers (1995) co-star Jonny Lee Miller, she had displayed her husband's name on the back of her shirt painted in her own blood. Jolie and Miller divorced, and in 2000, she married her Pushing Tin (1999) co-star Billy Bob Thornton. Jolie had become the fifth wife of a man twenty years her senior. During her marriage to Thornton, the spouses each wore a vial of the other's blood around their necks. That marriage came apart in 2002 and ended in divorce. In addition, Jolie was estranged from her famous father, Jon Voight.
In 2000, Jolie was asked to star in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). At first, she expressed disinterest, but then decided that the required training for the athletic role was intriguing. The eponymous character was drawn from a popular video game. Lara Croft was a female cross between Indiana Jones and James Bond. When the movie was released, critics were unimpressed with the final product, but critical acclaim wasn't the point of the movie. The public paid $275 million for theater tickets to see a buffed up Jolie portray the adventuresome Lara Croft. Jolie's father Jon Voight appeared in the movie, and during filming there was a brief rapprochement between father and daughter.
One of the Lara Croft movie's filming locations was Cambodia. While there, Jolie witnessed the natural beauty, culture and poverty of that country. She considered this an eye opening experience, and so began the humanitarian chapter of her life. Jolie began visiting refugee camps around the world and came to be formally appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Some of her experiences were written and published in her popular book "Notes from My Travels" whose profits go to UNHCR.
Jolie has stated that she now plans to spend most of her time in humanitarian efforts, to be financed by her actress salary. She devotes one third of her income to savings, one third to living expenses and one third to charity. In 2002, Angelina adopted a Cambodian refugee boy named Maddox, and in 2005, adopted an Ethiopian refugee girl named Zahara. Jolie's dramatic feature film Beyond Borders (2003) parallels some of her real life humanitarian experiences although, despite the inclusion of a romance between two westerners, many of the movie's images were too depressingly realistic -- the movie was not popular among critics or at the box office.
In 2004, Jolie began filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) with co-star Brad Pitt. The movie became a major box office success. There were rumors that Pitt and Jolie had an affair while filming Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Jolie insisted that because her mother had been hurt by adultery, she herself could never participate in an affair with a married man, therefore there had been no affair with Pitt at that time. Nonetheless, Pitt separated from his wife Jennifer Aniston in January 2005 and, in the months that followed, he was frequently seen in public with Jolie, apparently as a couple. Pitt's divorce was finalized later in 2005.
Jolie and Pitt announced in early 2006 that they would have a child together, and Jolie gave birth to daughter Shiloh that May. They also adopted a three-year-old Vietnamese boy named Pax. The couple, who married in 2014 and divorced in 2019, continue to pursue movie and humanitarian projects, and now have a total of six children. She was appointed Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George at the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to United Kingdom foreign policy and the campaign to end warzone sexual violence.- Actress
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Julia Fiona Roberts never dreamed she would become the most popular actress in America. She was born in Smyrna, Georgia, to Betty Lou (Bredemus) and Walter Grady Roberts, one-time actors and playwrights, and is of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, German, and Swedish descent. As a child, due to her love of animals, Julia originally wanted to be a veterinarian, but later studied journalism. When her brother, Eric Roberts, achieved some success in Hollywood, Julia decided to try acting. Her first break came in 1988 when she appeared in two youth-oriented movies Mystic Pizza (1988) and Satisfaction (1988). The movies introduced her to a new audience who instantly fell in love with this pretty woman. Julia's biggest success was in the signature movie Pretty Woman (1990), for which Julia got an Oscar nomination, and also won the People's Choice award for Favorite Actress. Even though Julia would spend the next few years either starring in serious movies, or playing fantasy roles like Tinkerbell, the movie audiences would always love Julia best in romantic comedies. With My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) Julia gave the genre fresh life that had been lacking in Hollywood for some time. Offscreen, after a brief marriage, Julia has been romantically linked with several actors, and married cinematographer Daniel Moder in 2002; the couple has three children together.
Julia has also become involved with UNICEF charities and has made visits to many different countries, including Haiti and India, in order to promote goodwill. Julia Robert remains one of the most popular and sought-after talents in Hollywood.- Actress
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Lovely, Julia (O'Hara) Stiles, of Irish, English and German heritage, was born on March 28, 1981 in New York City, the outgoing daughter and eldest of three children of a Greenwich Village artist mother, Judith Newcomb Stiles, and an elementary school teacher father, John O'Hara.
Encouraged to take modern dance lessons, she was introduced to Shakespeare and theater at an early age. When she was 11, she made her stage debut as a child actress with the experimental off-Broadway La MaMa Theatre. Her passion grew and by the next year was performing professionally and working in commercials. A bright, precocious student, she was seriously considered for the child vampire role of Claudia in Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) but lost out in the end to Kirsten Dunst. She continued training at New York's Professional Children's School and, at 15, made her cinematic bow with I Love You, I Love You Not (1996) with Claire Danes.
Julia was next featured as the daughter of Harrison Ford in The Devil's Own (1997), with her breakout role occurring on TV with the hard-hitting mini-movie Before Women Had Wings (1997), which was produced by Oprah Winfrey and dealt with child abuse. Her wish to play Shakespeare was granted threefold with her participation in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), which was based on the Bard's "The Taming of The Shrew" and earned her the Chicago Film Critics Award as volatile teen Kat; an updated version of Hamlet (2000) which paired her Ophelia with Ethan Hawke; and another updated version of "Othello" entitled O (2001), which involved her high school character of Desi (Desdemona) in a mixed romantic relationship with African-American Mekhi Phifer. The violent-edged film, made in 1998, was not released until three years later due to the Colorado shootings at Columbine High School.
In addition, Julia later portrayed Viola off-Broadway in a Shakespeare-in-the-Park production of "Twelfth Night" in 2002. She temporarily interrupted her career after deciding to enroll at Columbia University in 2000, where she earned a degree in English. Stiles has also returned to the stage, appearing in David Mamet's "Oleanna" in London, a role she would reprise on Broadway in 2009, opposite Bill Pullman and directed by Doug Hughes.
Moving into mainstream roles by the millennium, Julia took on a role that would carry her through the decade, co-starring with Matt Damon in popular Bourne series: The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). During the time between Bourne films, she appeared in ensemble dramas, appearing opposite Julia Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile (2003), won offbeat notice in the title role of Carolina (2003) with Shirley MacLaine and Randy Quaid. She also returned to her indie film roots, with films such as Between Us (2012) and the comedy farce, It's a Disaster (2012).
In 2010, Julia switched gears and headed to series television, joining the cast of Dexter (2006) for the show's fifth season as Lumen Pierce, a performance that earned her Emmy and Golden Globe support nominations. In 2012, she followed this up with leads in two other TV series, the social drama Blue (2012) and the dramatic thriller Riviera (2017).
Married to camera assistant Preston Cook and with one son, Julia's more recent filming has included prominent roles in The Great Gilly Hopkins (2015), Misconduct (2016), Jason Bourne (2016), Trouble (2017), Hustlers (2019) and The God Committee (2021).
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Jennifer Connelly was born in the Catskill Mountains, New York, to Ilene (Schuman), a dealer of antiques, and Gerard Connelly, a clothing manufacturer. Her father had Irish and Norwegian ancestry, and her mother was from a Jewish immigrant family. Jennifer grew up in Brooklyn Heights, just across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, except for the four years her parents spent in Woodstock, New York. Back in Brooklyn Heights, she attended St. Ann's school. A close friend of the family was an advertising executive. When Jennifer was ten, he suggested that her parents take her to a modeling audition. She began appearing in newspaper and magazine ads (among them "Seventeen" magazine), and soon moved on to television commercials. A casting director saw her and introduced her to Sergio Leone, who was seeking a young girl to dance in his gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984). Although having little screen time, the few minutes she was on-screen were enough to reveal her talent. Her next role after that was an episode of the British horror anthology TV series Tales of the Unexpected (1979) in 1984.
After Leone's movie, horror master Dario Argento signed her to play her first starring role in his thriller Phenomena (1985). The film made a lot of money in Europe but, unfortunately, was heavily cut for American distribution. Around the same time, she appeared in the rock video "I Drove All Night," a Roy Orbison song, co-starring Jason Priestley. She released a single called "Monologue of Love" in Japan in the mid-1980s, in which she sings in Japanese a charming little song with semi-classical instruments arrangement. On the B-side is "Message Of Love," which is an interview with music in background. She also appeared in television commercials in Japan.
She enrolled at Yale, and then transferred two years later to Stanford. She trained in classical theater and improvisation, studying with the late drama coach Roy London, Howard Fine, and Harold Guskin.
The late 1980s saw her starring in a hit and three lesser seen films. Amongst the latter was her roles in Ballet (1989), as a ballerina and in Some Girls (1988), where she played a self-absorbed college freshman. The hit was Labyrinth (1986), released in 1986. Jennifer got the job after a nationwide talent search for the lead in this fantasy directed by Jim Henson and produced by George Lucas. Her career entered in a calm phase after those films, until Dennis Hopper, who was impressed after having seen her in "Some Girls", cast Jennifer as an ingénue small-town girl in The Hot Spot (1990), based upon the 1950s crime novel "Hell Hath No Fury". It received mixed critical reviews, but it was not a box office success.
The Rocketeer (1991), an ambitious Touchstone super-production, came to the rescue. The film was an old-fashioned adventure flick about a man capable of flying with rockets on his back. Critics saw in "Rocketeer" a top-quality movie, a homage to those old films of the 1930s in which the likes of Errol Flynn starred. After "Rocketeer," Jennifer made Career Opportunities (1991), The Heart of Justice (1992), Mulholland Falls (1996), her first collaboration with Nick Nolte and Inventing the Abbotts (1997). In 1998, she was invited by director Alex Proyas to make Dark City (1998), a strange, visually stunning science-fiction extravaganza. In this movie, Jennifer played the main character's wife, and she delivered an acclaimed performance. The film itself didn't break any box-office record but received positive reviews. This led Jennifer to a contract with Fox for the television series The $treet (2000), a main part in the memorable and dramatic love-story Waking the Dead (2000) and, more important, a breakthrough part in the polemic and applauded independent Requiem for a Dream (2000), a tale about the haunting lives of drug addicts and the subsequent process of decadence and destruction. In "Requiem for a Dream," Jennifer had her career's most courageous, difficult part, a performance that earned her a Spirit Award Nomination. She followed this role with Pollock (2000), in which she played Pollock's mistress, Ruth Klingman. In 2001, Ron Howard chose her to co-star with Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind (2001), the film that tells the true story of John Nash, a man who suffered from mental illness but eventually beats this and wins the Nobel Prize in 1994. Jennifer played Nash's wife and won a Golden Globe, BAFTA, AFI and Oscar as Best Supporting Actress. Connelly continued her career with films including Hulk (2003), her second collaboration with Nick Nolte, Dark Water (2005), Blood Diamond (2006), The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), He's Just Not That Into You (2009) and Noah (2014), where she did her second collaboration with both Darren Aronofsky and Russell Crowe and made her third collaboration with Nick Nolte in that same film.
Jennifer lives in New York. She is 5'7", and speaks fluent Italian and French. She enjoys physical activities such as swimming, gymnastics, and bike riding. She is also an outdoors person -- camping, hiking and walking, and is interested in quantum physics and philosophy. She likes horses, Pearl Jam, SoundGarden, Jesus Jones, and occasionally wears a small picture of the The Dalai Lama on a necklace. Her favorite colors are cobalt blue, forest green, and "very pale green/gray -- sort of like the color of the sea". She likes to draw.- Actress
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Julianne Moore was born Julie Anne Smith in Fort Bragg, North Carolina on December 3, 1960, the daughter of Anne (Love), a social worker, and Peter Moore Smith, a paratrooper, colonel, and later military judge. Her mother moved to the U.S. in 1951, from Greenock, Scotland. Her father, from Burlington, New Jersey, has German, Irish, Welsh, German-Jewish, and English ancestry.
Moore spent the early years of her life in over two dozen locations around the world with her parents, during her father's military career. She finally found her place at Boston University, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree in acting from the School of the Performing Arts. After graduation (in 1983), She took the stage name "Julianne Moore" because there was another actress named "Julie Anne Smith". Julianne moved to New York and worked extensively in theater, including appearances off-Broadway in two Caryl Churchill plays, Serious Money and Ice Cream With Hot Fudge and as Ophelia in Hamlet at The Guthrie Theatre. But despite her formal training, Julianne fell into the attractive actress' trap of the mid-1980's: TV soaps and miniseries. She appeared briefly in the daytime serial The Edge of Night (1956) and from 1985 to 1988 she played two half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina on the soap As the World Turns (1956). This performance later led to an Outstanding Ingénue Daytime Emmy Award in 1988. Her subsequent appearances were in mostly forgettable TV-movies, such as Money, Power, Murder. (1989), The Last to Go (1991) and Cast a Deadly Spell (1991).
She made her entrance into the big screen with 1990's Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), where she played the victim of a mummy. Two years later, Julianne appeared in feature films with supporting parts in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and the comedy The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag (1992). She kept winning better and more powerful roles as time went on, including a small but memorable role as a doctor who spots Kimble Harrison Ford and attempts to thwart his escape in The Fugitive (1993). (A role that made such an impression on Steven Spielberg that he cast her in the Jurassic Park (1993) sequel without an audition in 1997). In one of Moore's most distinguished performances, she recapitulated her "beguiling Yelena" from Andre Gregory's workshop version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya in Louis Malle's critically acclaimed Vanya on 42nd Street (1994). Director Todd Haynes gave Julianne her first opportunity to take on a lead role in Safe (1995). Her portrayal of Carol White, an affluent L.A. housewife who develops an inexplicable allergic reaction to her environment, won critical praise as well as an Independent Spirit Award nomination.
Later that year she found her way into romantic comedy, co-starring as Hugh Grant's pregnant girlfriend in Nine Months (1995). Following films included Assassins (1995), where she played an electronics security expert targeted for death (next to Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas) and Surviving Picasso (1996), where she played Dora Maar, one of the numerous lovers of Picasso (portrayed by her hero, Anthony Hopkins). A year later, after co-starring in Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), opposite Jeff Goldblum, a young and unknown director, Paul Thomas Anderson asked Julianne to appear in his movie, Boogie Nights (1997). Despite her misgivings, she finally was won over by the script and her decision to play the role of Amber Waves, a loving porn star who acts as a mother figure to a ragtag crew, proved to be a wise one, since she received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. Julianne started 1998 by playing an erotic artist in The Big Lebowski (1998), continued with a small role in the social comedy Chicago Cab (1997) and ended with a subtle performance in Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho (1960). 1999 had Moore as busy as an actress can be.
As the century closed, Julianne starred in a number of high-profile projects, beginning with Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune (1999) , in which she was cast as the mentally challenged but adorable sister of a decidedly unhinged Glenn Close. A portrayal of the scheming Mrs. Cheveley followed in Oliver Parker's An Ideal Husband (1999) with a number of critics asserting that Moore was the best part of the movie. She then enjoyed another collaboration with director Anderson in Magnolia (1999) and continued with an outstanding performance in The End of the Affair (1999), for which she garnered another Oscar nomination. She ended 1999 with another great performance, that of a grieving mother in A Map of the World (1999), opposite Sigourney Weaver.- Actress
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Elegant Nicole Kidman, known as one of Hollywood's top Australian imports, was actually born in Honolulu, Hawaii, while her Australian parents were there on educational visas.
Kidman is the daughter of Janelle Ann (Glenny), a nursing instructor, and Antony David Kidman, a biochemist and clinical psychologist. She is of English, Irish, and Scottish descent. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Nicole's father pursued his research on breast cancer, and then, three years later, made the pilgrimage back to her parents' native Sydney in Australia, where Nicole was raised. Young Nicole's first love was ballet, but she eventually took up mime and drama as well (her first stage role was a bleating sheep in an elementary school Christmas pageant). In her adolescent years, acting edged out the other arts and became a kind of refuge -- as her classmates sought out fun in the sun, the fair-skinned Kidman retreated to dark rehearsal halls to practice her craft. She worked regularly at the Philip Street Theater, where she once received a personal letter of praise and encouragement from audience member Jane Campion (then a film student). Kidman eventually dropped out of high school to pursue acting full-time. She broke into movies at age 16, landing a role in the Australian holiday favorite Bush Christmas (1983). That appearance touched off a flurry of film and television offers, including a lead in BMX Bandits (1983) and a turn as a schoolgirl-turned-protester in the miniseries Vietnam (1987) (for which she won her first Australian Film Institute Award). With the help of an American agent, she eventually made her US debut opposite Sam Neill in the at-sea thriller Dead Calm (1989).
Kidman's next casting coup scored her more than exposure. While starring as Tom Cruise's doctor/love interest in the racetrack romance Days of Thunder (1990), she won over the Hollywood hunk hook, line and sinker. After a whirlwind courtship (and decent box office returns), the couple wed on December 24, 1990. Determined not to let her new marital status overshadow her fledgling career, the actress pressed on. She appeared as a catty high school senior in the Australian film Flirting (1991), then as Dustin Hoffman's moll in the gangster flick Billy Bathgate (1991). She reunited with Cruise for Far and Away (1992), the story of young Irish lovers who flee to America in the late 1800s, and starred opposite Michael Keaton in the tear-tugger My Life (1993). Despite her steady employment, critics and moviegoers still had not quite warmed to Kidman as a leading lady. She tried to spice up her image by seducing Val Kilmer in Batman Forever (1995), but achieved her real breakthrough with Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995). As a fame-crazed housewife determined to eliminate any obstacle in her path, Kidman proved that she had an impressive range and deadly comic timing. She took home a Golden Globe and several critics' awards for the performance. In 1996, Kidman stepped into a corset to work with her countrywoman and onetime admirer, Jane Campion, on the adaptation of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1996). A few months later, she tore across the screen as a nuclear weapons expert in The Peacemaker (1997), adding "action star" to her professional repertoire.
She and Cruise then disappeared into a notoriously long, secretive shoot for Stanley Kubrick's sexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut (1999). The couple's on-screen shenanigans prompted an increase in public speculation about their sex life (rumors had long been circulating that their marriage was a cover-up for Cruise's rumored homosexuality); tired of denying tabloid attacks, they successfully sued The Star for a story alleging that they needed a sex therapist to coach them through love scenes. Family life has always been a priority for Kidman. Born to social activists (mother was a feminist; father, a labor advocate), Nicole and her little sister, Antonia Kidman, discussed current events around the dinner table and participated in their parents' campaigns by passing out pamphlets on street corners. When her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, 17-year-old Nicole stopped working and took a massage course so that she could provide physical therapy (her mother eventually beat the cancer). She and Cruise adopted two children: Isabella Jane (born 1993) and Connor Antony (born 1995). Despite their rock-solid image, the couple announced in early 2001 that they were separating due to career conflicts. Her marriage to Cruise ended mid-summer of 2001.- Actress
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Winona Ryder was born Winona Laura Horowitz in Olmsted County, Minnesota, and was named after a nearby town, Winona, Minnesota. She is the daughter of Cynthia (Istas), an author and video producer, and Michael Horowitz, a publisher and bookseller. Her father's family is Ukrainian Jewish and Romanian Jewish. She grew up in a ranch commune in Northern California which had no electricity. She is the goddaughter of Timothy Leary. Her parents were friends of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and once edited a book called "Shaman Woman Mainline Lady", an anthology of writings on the drug experience in literature, which included one piece by Louisa May Alcott. Ryder would later play the lead role of Josephine March in the adaptation of this author's novel Little Women (1994).
Ryder moved with her parents to Petaluma, California when she was ten and enrolled in acting classes at the American Conservatory Theater. At age 13, she had a video audition to the film Desert Bloom (1986), but did not get the role. However, director David Seltzer spotted her and cast her in Lucas (1986). When telephoned to ask how she would like to have her name appear on the credits, she suggested Ryder as her father's Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels album was playing the background. Ryder was selected for the role of Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part III (1990), but had to drop out of the role after catching the flu from the strain of doing the films Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael (1990) and Mermaids (1990) back-to-back. She said she did not want to let everyone down by doing a substandard performance. She later made The Age of Innocence (1993), which was directed by Martin Scorsese, whom she believes to be "the best director in the world".- Actress
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Michelle Pfeiffer was born in Santa Ana, California to Dick and Donna Pfeiffer. She has an older brother and two younger sisters - Dedee Pfeiffer, and Lori Pfeiffer, who both dabbled in acting and modeling but decided against making it their lives' work. She graduated from Fountain Valley High School in 1976, and attended one year at the Golden West College, where she studied to become a court reporter. But it was while working as a supermarket checker at Vons, a large Southern California grocery chain, that she realized her true calling. She was married to actor/director Peter Horton ("Gary" of Thirtysomething (1987)) in 1981. They were later divorced, and she then had a three year relationship with actor Fisher Stevens. When that didn't work out, Pfeiffer decided she didn't want to wait any longer before having her own family, and in March of 1993, she adopted a baby girl, Claudia Rose. On November 13th of the same year, she married lawyer-turned-writer/producer David E. Kelley, creator of Picket Fences (1992), Chicago Hope (1994), The Practice (1997), and Boston Public (2000). On August 5, 1994 their son, John Henry was born.- Actress
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Multi Grammy Award-winning singer/comedienne/author Bette Midler has also proven herself to be a very capable actress in a string of both dramatic and comedic roles. Midler was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 1, 1945. She is the daughter of Ruth (Schindel), a seamstress, and Fred Midler, a painter. Her parents, originally from New Jersey, were both from Jewish families (from Russia, Poland, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire).
Midler studied drama at the University of Hawaii and got her musical career started by performing in gay bathhouses with piano accompaniment from Barry Manilow. Her first album was "The Divine Miss M" released in November 1972, followed by the self-titled "Bette Midler" released in November 1973, both of which took off up the music charts, and Bette's popularity swiftly escalated from there.
After minor roles in several film/TV productions, she surprised all with her knockout performance of a hard-living rock-and-roll singer (loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin) in The Rose (1979), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1986, director Paul Mazursky cast Midler opposite Nick Nolte and Richard Dreyfuss in the hilarious Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), and so began a string of very funny comedic film roles. She played an obnoxious wife who was the victim of a kidnap plot by her scoundrel husband, played by Danny DeVito, in Ruthless People (1986), was pursued by CIA and KGB spies in Outrageous Fortune (1987), played mismatched twins with Lily Tomlin in Big Business (1988) and shone in the tear-jerker Beaches (1988).
Bette matched feisty James Caan in the WWII drama For the Boys (1991), made a dynamic trio with Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton in The First Wives Club (1996), was back on screen with DeVito for the tepid comedy Drowning Mona (2000) and turned up in the glossy remake of The Stepford Wives (2004). Apart from her four Grammy awards, Bette Midler has also won four Golden Globes, one Tony Award, and three Emmy Awards, plus she has sold in excess of 15 million albums worldwide. Most recently, she toured with her sassy "Kiss My Brass" show, and is promoting her album "Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook".- Producer
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Since melting audiences' hearts at the age of just six in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Drew Barrymore has emerged as one of the most beloved and singularly gifted actresses of her generation. Born in Culver City, California to John Drew Barrymore and Jaid Barrymore, the clutches of fame were near inescapable for young Drew, her father being a member of the esteemed showbiz dynasty fronted by stage star Maurice Barrymore, his thespian wife Georgiana and their three children: Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, and John Barrymore.
Tailgating a turbulent adolescence that saw her grapple with insobriety, substance abuse, and cutthroat media vitriol, a diligent Barrymore threw herself into her career throughout the early-mid nineties, first with a succession of 'bad girl' parts in cultish B-pictures like Poison Ivy (1992), Guncrazy (1992) and - fittingly - Bad Girls (1994); then warmly received turns in prestige vehicles such as Boys on the Side (1995), Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You (1996), and Wes Craven's game-changing Scream (1996). Equal portions of goofball - The Wedding Singer (1998), Never Been Kissed (1999), Charlie's Angels (2000) - and gravitas - Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), Donnie Darko (2001), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) - came next, with a Golden Globe-grabbing pièce de résistance - her divine incarnation of Edith Bouvier Beale in Grey Gardens (2009) - confirming that her skill set was every bit as forceful and far-reaching as imagined.
Having already set in motion a bunch of lucrative projects via production house Flower Films (co-est. with Nancy Juvonen in '95), Barrymore fastened an additional string to her bow when she spearheaded the sports dramedy Whip It (2009), her glowingly appraised directorial debut. Fresh off a healthy run of movie parts at the launch of the 2010s, her star turn as zombified suburban realtor Sheila Hammond - a tour de force at once dizzy and detailed - on Netflix's Santa Clarita Diet (2017) saw her step with trademark resolve into newer territory still: the flourishing world of small screen entertainment, a metamorphosis she continues to espouse with her role as compère of spirited daytime staple The Drew Barrymore Show (2020).- Alison Lohman was born in Palm Springs, California, to Diane (Dunham), a patisserie owner, and Gary Lohman, an architect. She grew up in a family with no showbiz connections but she always wanted to perform. By age 9, she had landed her first professional, theatrical role playing "Gretyl" in "The Sound of Music" at Palm Desert's McCallum Theater. At 11, Alison won the Desert Theater League's award for "Most Outstanding Actress in a Musical" for the title role in "Annie" and, by age 17, she had appeared in 12 different productions. An accomplished singer, she performed as a featured solo vocalist for Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and the Desert Symphony. As a senior in high school, Alison was an awardee of the National Foundation of the Advancement of the Arts. The offer of a scholarship to NYU's Tisch School soon followed but, instead, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film. She attended a session of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
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Sandra Annette Bullock was born in Arlington, a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Her mother, Helga Bullock (née Helga Mathilde Meyer), was a German opera singer. Her father, John W. Bullock, was an American voice teacher, who was born in Alabama, of German descent. Sandra grew up on the road with her parents and younger sister, chef Gesine Bullock-Prado, and spent much of her childhood in Nuremberg, Germany. She often performed in the children's chorus of whatever production her mother was in. That singing talent later came in handy for her role as an aspiring country singer in The Thing Called Love (1993). Her family moved back to the Washington area when she was adolescent. She later enrolled in East Carolina University in North Carolina, where she studied acting. Shortly afterward she moved to New York to pursue a career on the stage. This led to acting in television programs and then feature films. She gave memorable performances in Demolition Man (1993) and Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993), but did not achieve the stardom that seemed inevitable for her until her work in the smash hit Speed (1994). She now ranks as one of the most popular actresses in Hollywood. For her role in The Blind Side (2009) she won the Oscar, and her blockbusters The Proposal (2009), The Heat (2013) and Gravity (2013) made her a bankable star. With $56,000,000, she was listed in the Guinness Book Of World Records as the highest-paid actress in the world.- Actress
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Marisa Tomei was born on December 4, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York, to Patricia "Addie" (Bianchi), a teacher of English, and Gary Tomei, a lawyer, both of Italian descent. Marisa has a brother, actor Adam Tomei. As a child, Marisa's mother frequently corrected her speech as to eliminate her heavy Brooklyn accent. As a teen, Marisa attended Edward R. Murrow High School and graduated in the class of 1982. She was one year into her college education at Boston University when she dropped out for a co-starring role on the CBS daytime drama As the World Turns (1956). Her role on that show paved the way for her entrance into film: in 1984, she made her film debut with a bit part in The Flamingo Kid (1984). Three years later, Marisa became known for her role as Maggie Lawton, Lisa Bonet's college roommate, on the sitcom A Different World (1987).
Her real breakthrough came in 1992, when she co-starred as Joe Pesci's hilariously foul-mouthed, scene-stealing girlfriend in My Cousin Vinny (1992), a performance that won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Later that year, she turned up briefly as a snippy Mabel Normand in director Richard Attenborough's biopic Chaplin (1992), and was soon given her first starring role in Untamed Heart (1993). A subsequent starring role -- and attempted makeover into Audrey Hepburn -- in the romantic comedy Only You (1994) proved only moderately successful.
Marisa's other 1994 role as Michael Keaton's hugely pregnant wife in The Paper (1994) was well-received, although the film as a whole was not. Fortunately for Tomei, she was able to rebound the following year with a solid performance as a troubled single mother in Nick Cassavetes' Unhook the Stars (1996) which earned her a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She turned in a similarly strong work in Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), and in 1998 did some of her best work in years as the sexually liberated, unhinged cousin of Natasha Lyonne's Vivian Abramowitz in Tamara Jenkins' Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). Marisa co-starred with Mel Gibson in the hugely successful romantic comedy What Women Want (2000) and during the 2002 movie award season, she proved her first Best Supporting Actress Oscar win was no fluke when she received her second nomination in the same category for the critically acclaimed dark drama, In the Bedroom (2001). She also made a guest appearance on the animated TV phenomenon The Simpsons (1989) as Sara Sloane, a movie star who falls in love with Ned Flanders. In 2006, she went on to do 4 episodes for Rescue Me (2004). She played Angie, the ex-wife of Tommy Calvin (Denis Leary)'s brother Johnny (Dean Winters). At age 42, Marisa took on a provocative role in legendary filmmaker Sidney Lumet's melodramatic picture Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), in which she appeared nude in love scenes with costars Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Marisa then took on another provocative role as a stripper in the highly acclaimed film The Wrestler (2008) opposite Mickey Rourke. Her great performance earned her many awards from numerous film societies for Best Supporting Actress, a third Academy Award nomination, as well as nominations for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. Many critics heralded this performance as a standout in her career.- Actress
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Amanda Seyfried was born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Ann (Sander), an occupational therapist, and Jack Seyfried, a pharmacist. She is of German, and some English and Scottish, ancestry. She began modeling when she was eleven, and acted in high school productions as well as taking singing lessons.
More soap work followed as she completed her schooling and had already secured a place at Fordham University when she was offered a role in the Tina Fey-penned teen comedy Mean Girls (2004). She deferred her university education to complete the film. More television work followed, raising her profile across America, while her appearances in Mamma Mia! (2008) and Red Riding Hood (2011) helped establish her international fame.- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of the brightest, most tragic movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, Judy Garland was a much-loved character whose warmth and spirit, along with her rich and exuberant voice, kept theatre-goers entertained with an array of delightful musicals.
She was born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922 in Minnesota, the youngest daughter of vaudevillians Ethel Marian (Milne) and Francis Avent "Frank" Gumm. She was of English, along with some Scottish and Irish, descent. Her mother, an ambitious woman gifted in playing various musical instruments, saw the potential in her daughter at the tender age of just 2 years old when Baby Frances repeatedly sang "Jingle Bells" until she was dragged from the stage kicking and screaming during one of their Christmas shows and immediately drafted her into a dance act, entitled "The Gumm Sisters," along with her older sisters Mary Jane Gumm and Virginia Gumm. However, knowing that her youngest daughter would eventually become the biggest star, Ethel soon took Frances out of the act and together they traveled across America where she would perform in nightclubs, cabarets, hotels and theaters solo.
Her family life was not a happy one, largely because of her mother's drive for her to succeed as a performer and also her father's closeted homosexuality. The Gumm family would regularly be forced to leave town owing to her father's illicit affairs with other men, and from time to time they would be reduced to living out of their automobile. However, in September 1935 the Gumms', in particular Ethel's, prayers were answered when Frances was signed by Louis B. Mayer, mogul of leading film studio MGM, after hearing her sing. It was then that her name was changed from Frances Gumm to Judy Garland, after a popular '30s song "Judy" and film critic Robert Garland.
Tragedy soon followed, however, in the form of her father's death of meningitis in November 1935. Having been given no assignments with the exception of singing on radio, Judy faced the threat of losing her job following the arrival of Deanna Durbin. Knowing that they couldn't keep both of the teenage singers, MGM devised a short entitled Every Sunday (1936) which would be the girls' screen test. However, despite being the outright winner and being kept on by MGM, Judy's career did not officially kick off until she sang one of her most famous songs, "You Made Me Love You," at Clark Gable's birthday party in February 1937, during which Louis B. Mayer finally paid attention to the talented songstress.
Prior to this her film debut in Pigskin Parade (1936), in which she played a teenage hillbilly, had left her career hanging in the balance. However, following her rendition of "You Made Me Love You," MGM set to work preparing various musicals with which to keep Judy busy. All this had its toll on the young teenager, and she was given numerous pills by the studio doctors in order to combat her tiredness on set. Another problem was her weight fluctuation, but she was soon given amphetamines in order to give her the desired streamlined figure. This soon produced the downward spiral that resulted in her lifelong drug addiction.
In 1939, Judy shot immediately to stardom with The Wizard of Oz (1939), in which she portrayed Dorothy, an orphaned girl living on a farm in the dry plains of Kansas who gets whisked off into the magical world of Oz on the other end of the rainbow. Her poignant performance and sweet delivery of her signature song, 'Over The Rainbow,' earned Judy a special juvenile Oscar statuette on 29 February 1940 for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor. Now growing up, Judy began to yearn for meatier adult roles instead of the virginal characters she had been playing since she was 14. She was now taking an interest in men, and after starring in her final juvenile performance in Ziegfeld Girl (1941) alongside glamorous beauties Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr, Judy got engaged to bandleader David Rose in May 1941, just two months after his divorce from Martha Raye. Despite planning a big wedding, the couple eloped to Las Vegas and married during the early hours of the morning on July 28, 1941 with just her mother Ethel and her stepfather Will Gilmore present. However, their marriage went downhill as, after discovering that she was pregnant in November 1942, David and MGM persuaded her to abort the baby in order to keep her good-girl image up. She did so and, as a result, was haunted for the rest of her life by her 'inhumane actions.' The couple separated in January 1943.
By this time, Judy had starred in her first adult role as a vaudevillian during WWI in For Me and My Gal (1942). Within weeks of separation, Judy was soon having an affair with actor Tyrone Power, who was married to French actress Annabella. Their affair ended in May 1943, which was when her affair with producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz kicked off. He introduced her to psychoanalysis and she soon began to make decisions about her career on her own instead of being influenced by her domineering mother and MGM. Their affair ended in November 1943, and soon afterward Judy reluctantly began filming Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), which proved to be a big success. The director Vincente Minnelli highlighted Judy's beauty for the first time on screen, having made the period musical in color, her first color film since The Wizard of Oz (1939). He showed off her large brandy-brown eyes and her full, thick lips and after filming ended in April 1944, a love affair resulted between director and actress and they were soon living together.
Vincente began to mold Judy and her career, making her more beautiful and more popular with audiences worldwide. He directed her in The Clock (1945), and it was during the filming of this movie that the couple announced their engagement on set on January 9, 1945. Judy's divorce from David Rose had been finalized on June 8, 1944 after almost three years of marriage, and despite her brief fling with Orson Welles, who at the time was married to screen sex goddess Rita Hayworth, on June 15, 1945 Judy made Vincente her second husband, tying the knot with him that afternoon at her mother's home with her boss Louis B. Mayer giving her away and her best friend Betty Asher serving as bridesmaid. They spent three months on honeymoon in New York and afterwards Judy discovered that she was pregnant.
On March 12, 1946 in Los Angeles, California, Judy gave birth to their daughter, Liza Minnelli, via cesarean section. It was a joyous time for the couple, but Judy was out of commission for weeks due to the cesarean and her postnatal depression, so she spent much of her time recuperating in bed. She soon returned to work, but married life was never the same for Vincente and Judy after they filmed The Pirate (1948) together in 1947. Judy's mental health was fast deteriorating and she began hallucinating things and making false accusations toward people, especially her husband, making the filming a nightmare. She also began an affair with aspiring Russian actor Yul Brynner, but after the affair ended, Judy soon regained health and tried to salvage her failing marriage. She then teamed up with dancing legend Fred Astaire for the delightful musical Easter Parade (1948), which resulted in a successful comeback despite having Vincente fired from directing the musical. Afterwards, Judy's health deteriorated and she began the first of several suicide attempts. In May 1949, she was checked into a rehabilitation center, which caused her much distress.
She soon regained strength and was visited frequently by her lover Frank Sinatra, but never saw much of Vincente or Liza. On returning, Judy made In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which was also Liza's film debut, albeit via an uncredited cameo. She had already been suspended by MGM for her lack of cooperation on the set of The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), which also resulted in her getting replaced by Ginger Rogers. After being replaced by Betty Hutton on Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Judy was suspended yet again before making her final film for MGM, entitled Summer Stock (1950). At 28, Judy received her third suspension and was fired by MGM, and her second marriage was soon dissolved.
Having taken up with Sidney Luft, Judy traveled to London to star at the legendary Palladium. She was an instant success and after her divorce from Vincente Minnelli was finalized on March 29, 1951 after almost six years of marriage, Judy traveled with Sid to New York to make an appearance on Broadway. With her newfound fame on stage, Judy was stopped in her tracks in February 1952 when she became pregnant by her new lover, Sid. At the age of 30, she made him her third husband on June 8, 1952; the wedding was held at a friend's ranch in Pasadena. Her relationship with her mother had long since been dissolved by this point, and after the birth of her second daughter, Lorna Luft, on November 21, 1952, she refused to allow her mother to see her granddaughter. Ethel then died in January 1953 of a heart attack, leaving Judy devastated and feeling guilty about not reconciling with her mother before her untimely demise.
After the funeral, Judy signed a film contract with Warner Bros. to star in the musical remake of A Star Is Born (1937), which had starred Janet Gaynor, who had won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929. Filming soon began, resulting in an affair between Judy and her leading man, British star James Mason. She also picked up on her affair with Frank Sinatra, and after filming was complete Judy was yet again lauded as a great film star. She won a Golden Globe for her brilliant and truly outstanding performance as Esther Blodgett, nightclub singer turned movie star, but when it came to the Academy Awards, a distraught Judy lost out on the Best Actress Oscar to Grace Kelly for her portrayal of the wife of an alcoholic star in The Country Girl (1954). Many still argue that Judy should have won the Oscar over Grace Kelly. Continuing her work on stage, Judy gave birth to her beloved son, Joey Luft, on March 29, 1955. She soon began to lose her millions of dollars as a result of her husband's strong gambling addiction, and with hundreds of debts to pay, Judy and Sid began a volatile, on-off relationship resulting in numerous divorce filings.
In 1961, at the age of 39, Judy returned to her ailing film career, this time to star in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but this time she lost out to Rita Moreno for her performance in West Side Story (1961). Her battles with alcoholism and drugs led to Judy's making numerous headlines in newspapers, but she soldiered on, forming a close friendship with President John F. Kennedy. In 1963, Judy and Sid finally separated permanently, and on May 19, 1965 their divorce was finalized after almost 13 years of marriage. By this time, Judy, now 41, had made her final performance on film alongside Dirk Bogarde in I Could Go on Singing (1963). She married her fourth husband, Mark Herron, on November 14, 1965 in Las Vegas, but they separated in April 1966 after five months of marriage owing to his homosexuality. It was also that year that she began an affair with young journalist Tom Green. She then settled down in London after their affair ended, and she began dating disk jockey Mickey Deans in December 1968. They became engaged once her divorce from Mark Herron was finalized on January 9, 1969 after three years of marriage. She married Mickey, her fifth and final husband, in a register office in Chelsea, London, England on March 15, 1969.
She continued working on stage, appearing several times with her daughter Liza. It was during a concert in Chelsea, London, England that Judy stumbled into her bathroom late one night and died of an overdose of barbiturates, the drug that had dominated her much of her life, on June 22, 1969 at the age of 47. Her daughter Liza Minnelli paid for her funeral, and her former lover James Mason delivered her touching eulogy. She is still an icon to this day with her famous performances in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), and A Star Is Born (1954).- Actress
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Blake Ellender Lively was born Blake Ellender Brown on August 25, 1987 in Los Angeles, California to Elaine Lively & Ernie Lively. Her brother is actor Eric Lively, and her half-siblings are actors Lori Lively, Robyn Lively and Jason Lively. She followed her parents' and siblings' steps. Her first role was Trixie, the Tooth Fairy in the musical movie Sandman (1998), directed by her father. Her big break came along a few years later, though. Blake was up to finish high school when she got the co-starring role of Bridget in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005).
Blake was so perfect for the role of Bridget that, with no big references or even auditioning, she landed the role. According to her, all she did was walk in and leave a photo of herself. It was clear that she was the Bridget needed. After the film, Blake went back to high school for her senior year to have the life of a regular teenager -- or a very busy regular teenager. She was class president, a cheerleader, and performed with the choir.- Actress
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Jodie Foster started her career at the age of two. For four years she made commercials and finally gave her debut as an actress in the TV series Mayberry R.F.D. (1968). In 1975 Jodie was offered the role of prostitute Iris Steensma in the movie Taxi Driver (1976). This role, for which she received an Academy Award nomination in the "Best Supporting Actress" category, marked a breakthrough in her career. In 1980 she graduated as the best of her class from the College Lycée Français and began to study English Literature at Yale University, from where she graduated magna cum laude in 1985. One tragic moment in her life was March 30th, 1981 when John Warnock Hinkley Jr. attempted to assassinate the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. Hinkley was obsessed with Jodie and the movie Taxi Driver (1976), in which Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, tried to shoot presidential candidate Palantine. Despite the fact that Jodie never took acting lessons, she received two Oscars before she was thirty years of age. She received her first award for her part as Sarah Tobias in The Accused (1988) and the second one for her performance as Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).- Producer
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Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon was born on March 22, 1976 in New Orleans, Louisiana to Betty Witherspoon, a registered nurse & John Draper Witherspoon, a military surgeon. Reese spent the first 4 years of her life in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany, where her father served as a lieutenant colonel in the US Army reserves. Shortly after, the family moved back to the USA & settled in Nashville, Tennessee.
Reese was introduced to the entertainment industry at a very early age. At age 7, she began modeling. This led to appearances on several local television commercials. At age 11, she placed first in a Ten-State Talent Fair.
In 1990, she landed her first major acting role in Robert Mulligan's The Man in the Moon (1991). Her role as a 14-year old tomboy earned her rave reviews. Roles in bigger films such as Jack the Bear (1993) and A Far Off Place (1993) followed shortly after.
Following high school graduation in 1994 from Harpeth Hall, a Nashville all girls school, Reese decided to put her acting career on hold and attend Stanford University where she would major in English literature. However, her collegiate plans were shortly dashed when she accepted roles to star in two major motion pictures: Fear (1996), alongside Mark Wahlberg, and Freeway (1996) with Kiefer Sutherland. Although neither film was a huge box-office success, they did help to establish Reese as a rising starlet in Hollywood and open the door for bigger and better film roles. Those bigger roles came in movies such as Pleasantville (1998), Election (1999) and Cruel Intentions (1999).
Her breakthrough role came as Elle Woods in the 2001 comedy, Legally Blonde (2001). The movie was huge box-office smash and established Reese as one of the top female draws in Hollywood. The next year, she scored a follow-up hit with Sweet Home Alabama (2002), which went on to gross over $100 million dollars at the box office. In 2006, she took home the best actress Oscar for her role as June Carter Cash in the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line (2005). On the late 2000s and early 2010s, Reese continued to star in more romantic comedies, such as Four Christmases (2008) and How Do You Know (2010). In December 2010, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In the year 2014, she produced both Gone Girl (2014) and Wild (2014), for which she got nominated for best actress Oscar again for her role as Cheryl Strayed.- Actress
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Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, comedienne, singer, and model. Monroe is of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent. She became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her winsome embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol and her tragic personal and professional struggles within the film industry. Her life and death are still the subjects of much controversy and speculation.
She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1, 1926. Her mother, Gladys Pearl (Monroe), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, to American parents from Indiana and Missouri, and was a film-cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. Marilyn's biological father has been established through DNA testing as Charles Stanley Gifford, who had been born in Newport, Rhode Island, to a family with deep roots in the state. Because Gladys was mentally and financially unable to care for young Marilyn, Gladys placed her in the care of a foster family, The Bolenders. Although the Bolender family wanted to adopt Marilyn, Gladys was eventually able to stabilize her lifestyle and took Marilyn back in her care when Marilyn was 7 years old. However, shortly after regaining custody of Marilyn, Gladys had a complete mental breakdown and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was committed to a state mental hospital. Gladys spent the rest of her life going in and out of hospitals and rarely had contact with young Marilyn. Once Marilyn became an adult and celebrated as a film star, she paid a woman by the name of Inez Melson to look in on the institutionalized Gladys and give detailed reports of her progress. Gladys outlived her daughter, dying in 1984.
Marilyn was then taken in by Gladys' best friend Grace Goddard, who, after a series of foster homes, placed Marilyn into the Los Angeles Orphan's Home in 1935. Marilyn was traumatized by her experience there despite the Orphan's Home being an adequate living facility. Grace Goddard eventually took Marilyn back to live with her in 1937 although this stay did not last long as Grace's husband began molesting Marilyn. Marilyn went to live with Grace's Aunt Ana after this incident, although due to Aunt Ana's advanced age she could not care properly for Marilyn. Marilyn once again for the third time had to return to live with the Goddards. The Goddards planned to relocated and according to law, could not take Marilyn with them. She only had two choices: return to the orphanage or get married. Marilyn was only 16 years old.
She decided to marry a neighborhood friend named James Dougherty; he went into the military, she modeled, they divorced in 1946. She owned 400 books (including Tolstoy, Whitman, Milton), listened to Beethoven records, studied acting at the Actors' lab in Hollywood, and took literature courses at UCLA downtown. 20th Century Fox gave her a contract but let it lapse a year later. In 1948, Columbia gave her a six-month contract, turned her over to coach Natasha Lytess and featured her in the B movie Ladies of the Chorus (1948) in which she sang three numbers : "Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy", "Anyone Can Tell I Love You" and "The Ladies of the Chorus" with Adele Jergens (dubbed by Virginia Rees) and others. Joseph L. Mankiewicz saw her in a small part in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and put her in All About Eve (1950) , resulting in 20th Century re-signing her to a seven-year contract. Niagara (1953) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) launched her as a sex symbol superstar.
When she went to a supper honoring her in the The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she arrived in a red chiffon gown borrowed from the studio (she had never owned a gown). That same year, she married and divorced baseball great Joe DiMaggio (their wedding night was spent in Paso Robles, California). After The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she wanted serious acting to replace the sexpot image and went to New York's Actors Studio. She worked with director Lee Strasberg and also underwent psychoanalysis to learn more about herself. Critics praised her transformation in Bus Stop (1956) and the press was stunned by her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller . True to form, she had no veil to match her beige wedding dress so she dyed one in coffee; he wore one of the two suits he owned. They went to England that fall where she made The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Laurence Olivier , fighting with him and falling further prey to alcohol and pills. Two miscarriages and gynecological surgery followed. So had an affair with Yves Montand . Work on her last picture The Misfits (1961) , written for her by departing husband Miller, was interrupted by exhaustion. She was dropped from the unfinished Something's Got to Give (1962) due to chronic lateness and drug dependency.
On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe's day began with threatening phone calls. Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn's physician, came over the following day and quoted later in a document "Felt it was possible that Marilyn had felt rejected by some of the people she had been close to." Apart from being upset that her publicist slept too long, she seemed fine. Pat Newcombe, who had stayed the previous night at Marilyn's house, left in the early evening as did Greenson who had a dinner date. Marilyn was upset he couldn't stay, and around 7:30pm she telephoned him to say that her second husband's son had called her. Peter Lawford also called Marilyn, inviting her to dinner, but she declined. Lawford later said her speech was slurred. As the evening went on there were other phone calls, including one from Jose Belanos, who said he thought she sounded fine. According to the funeral directors, Marilyn died sometime between 9:30pm and 11:30pm. Her maid unable to raise her but seeing a light under her locked door, called the police shortly after midnight. She also phoned Ralph Greenson who, on arrival, could not break down the bedroom door. He eventually broke in through French windows and found Marilyn dead in bed. The coroner stated she had died from acute barbiturate poisoning, and it was a 'probable suicide' though many conspiracies would follow in the years after her death.- Music Artist
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Jennifer Lynn Lopez was born on July 24, 1969 in The Bronx, New York City, New York to teacher Lupe López and computer specialist David López. The two Puerto Ricans were brought to the continental United States during their childhoods and eventually met while living in New York City. Their daughters would have a stable, middle-class upbringing.
Jennifer always dreamed of being a multi-tasking superstar. As a child, she enjoyed a variety of musical genres, mainly Afro-Caribbean rhythms like salsa, merengue, and bachata, and mainstream music like pop, hip-hop, and R&B. Although she loved music, the film industry also intrigued her. Her biggest influence was the Rita Moreno musical, West Side Story (1961). At 5, Jennifer began taking singing and dancing lessons. Aside from being a budding entertainer, Jennifer was also a Catholic schoolgirl, attending eight years at a Catholic elementary school named Holy Family, located in The Bronx, before graduating from all-girls prep school Preston High School after a four-year stay. At school, Jennifer was an amazing athlete and participated in track and field and tennis. She spent most of her upbringing in a two-story house in the Castle Hill neighborhood.
At 18, Jennifer moved out of her parents' home. After high school, she briefly worked in a law office and took dance classes at night. During this time, she continued dance classes at night. Her big break came when she was offered a job as a fly girl on Fox's hit comedy In Living Color (1990). After a two-year stay at In Living Color (1990) where actress Rosie Perez served as choreographer, Lopez then went on to dance for famed singer-actress Janet Jackson. Her first major film was Gregory Nava's My Family/Mi familia (1995), and her career went into overdrive when she portrayed late Tejana singer Selena in Selena (1997).- Actress
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Academy Award-winning actress Marion Cotillard was born on September 30, 1975 in Paris. Cotillard is the daughter of Jean-Claude Cotillard, an actor, playwright and director, and Niseema Theillaud, an actress and drama teacher. Her father's family is from Brittany.
Raised in Orléans, France, she made her acting debut as a child with a role in one of her father's plays. She studied drama at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique in Orléans. After small appearances and performances in theater, Cotillard had occasional and minor roles in TV series such as Highlander (1992) and Extrême limite (1994), but her career as a film actress began in the mid-1990s. While still a teenager, Cotillard made her cinema debut at the age of 18 in the film L'histoire du garçon qui voulait qu'on l'embrasse (1994), and had small but noticeable roles in films such as Arnaud Desplechin's My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument (1996) and Coline Serreau's comedy The Green Planet (1996).
In 1996, she had her first lead role in the TV film Chloé (1996), playing the title role - a teenage runaway who is forced into prostitution. Cotillard co-starred opposite Anna Karina, the muse of the Nouvelle Vague.
In 1997, she won her first film award at the Festival Rencontres Cinématographiques d'Istres in France, for her performance as the young imprisoned Nathalie in the short film Affaire classée (1997). Her first prominent screen role was Lilly Bertineau in Gérard Pirès's box-office hit Taxi (1998), a role which she reprised in two sequels: Taxi 2 (2000) and Taxi 3 (2003), this role earned her first César award nomination (France's equivalent to the Oscar) for Most Promising Actress in 1999.
In 1999, Cotillard starred as Julie Bonzon in the Swiss war drama War in the Highlands (1998). For her performance in the film, she won the Best Actress award at the Autrans Film Festival in France. In 2001, Marion starred in Pretty Things (2001) as the twin sisters Marie and Lucie, and was nominated for her second César award for Most Promising Actress.
Cotillard's breakthrough in France came in 2003, when she starred in Yann Samuell's dark romantic comedy Love Me If You Dare (2003), in which she played Sophie Kowalsky, the daughter of Polish immigrants who lives a love-hate relationship with her childhood friend. The film was a box-office hit in France, became a cult film abroad and led Cotillard to bigger projects.
Her first Hollywood movie was Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003), in which she played Joséphine, the wife of William Bloom (played by Billy Crudup). A few years later, Marion starred in Ridley Scott's A Good Year (2006) playing Fanny Chenal, a French café owner who falls in love with Russell Crowe's character. In 2004, she won the Chopard Thophy of Female Revelation at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2005, Cotillard won the César award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance of Tina Lombardi in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement (2004).
In 2007, Cotillard received international recognition for her iconic portrayal of Édith Piaf in La Vie En Rose (2007). Director Olivier Dahan cast Cotillard to play the legendary French singer because to him, her eyes were like those of "Piaf". The fact that she can sing also helped Cotillard land the role of "Piaf", although most of the singing in the film is that of Piaf's. The role won Cotillard the Academy Award for Best Actress along with a César, a Lumière Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe. That made her only the second actress to win an acting Oscar performing in a language other than English next to Sophia Loren (Two Women (1960)). Only two male performers (Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful (1997) and Robert De Niro for The Godfather Part II (1974)) have won an Oscar for solely non-English parts. Trevor Nunn called her portrayal of "Piaf" "one of the greatest performances on film ever". At the Berlin International Film Festival, where the film premiered, Cotillard was given a 15-minute standing ovation. When she won the César, Alain Delon presented the award and announced the winner as "La Môme Marion" (The Kid Marion), he also praised her at the stage saying: "Marion, I give you this César. I think this César is for a great great actress, and I know what I'm talking about".
Cotillard has worked much more frequently in English-language movies following her Academy Award recognition. In 2009, she acted opposite Johnny Depp in Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009), and later that year played Luisa Contini in Rob Marshall's musical Nine (2009) and received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. Time magazine ranked her as the fifth best performance by a female in 2009. The following year, she took on the main antagonist role, Mal, in Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), and in 2011 she had memorable parts in Midnight in Paris (2011) and Contagion (2011) and reteamed with Christopher Nolan in The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
In 2011 and 2012 respectively, Cotillard appeared on the top of Le Figaro's list of the highest paid actors in France, it was the first time in nine years that a female topped the list. Cotillard was also the highest paid foreign actress in Hollywood.
In 2012, Cotillard received wide-spread critical acclaim for her role as the legless orca trainer Stéphanie in Rust and Bone (2012). The film was a box office hit in France and received a ten-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening at the 65th Cannes Film Festival. Cotillard won the Globe de Cristal (France's equivalent to the Golden Globe), the Étoile d'Or award and was nominated for the Golden Globes, SAG, BAFTA, Critics' Choice and César Awards for her performance in the film. Cate Blanchett wrote an op-ed for Variety praising Cotillard's performance in "Rust and Bone", the two actresses competed for the Academy Awards for Best Actress in 2008, Cate was nominated for her performance in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and Marion for her performance in La Vie En Rose (2007) and Cotillard won the Oscar.
She had her first leading role in an American movie in 2013, in James Gray's The Immigrant (2013), in which she played Ewa Cybulska, a Polish immigrant who wants to experience the American dream. Cotillard received wide-spread acclaim for her performance in the film at the 66th Cannes Film Festival, where the film premiered, and also won several critics awards. In 2014, Cotillard played Sandra in the Belgian film Two Days, One Night (2014) by the Dardenne brothers. Her performance was unanimously praised at the 67th Cannes Film Festival, earned several critics awards, Cotillard won her first European Award for Best Actress and also received her second Oscar nomination and her sixth César award nomination.
In 2015, she played Lady Macbeth opposite Michael Fassbender in Justin Kurzel's Macbeth (2015) and voiced two animated movies: The Little Prince (2015) in which she voiced The Rose, and April and the Extraordinary World (2015), in which she voiced the lead role, Avril. Her 2016 included Nicole Garcia's From the Land of the Moon (2016), Xavier Dolan's It's Only the End of the World (2016), Justin Kurzel's Assassin's Creed (2016), in which she worked again with her Macbeth co-star Michael Fassbender; and Robert Zemeckis's Allied (2016), with Brad Pitt.- Actress
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Almost everyone who has spent time with Kate Hudson -including directors, family members, co-stars and interviewers - is quick to comment on her ability to light up a room. Through some combination of a winning smile, solid work ethic, and good old-fashioned talent, the young actress has gone from indie beginner to Vanity Fair cover girl in just three years. What's more, she's done it all without capitalizing on the success of legendary actress mom, Goldie Hawn.
Kate Hudson was born in Los Angeles, California, to Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson, a comedian, actor and singer. She was raised by her mother and her mother's longtime boyfriend, actor Kurt Russell, whom she considers to be her father. Kate is the sister of actor Oliver Hudson, the half-sister of actor and hockey player Wyatt Russell, and the granddaughter of band musician Rut Hawn. She is the niece of entertainment publicist Patti Hawn, record producer Mark Hudson and musician Brett Hudson. Kate is of Hungarian Jewish (from her maternal grandmother), Italian (from her paternal grandmother), English, and German ancestry.
By all accounts, Hudson was a born performer - as a child she danced and sang at every opportunity. Her family hoped that she would attend New York University after graduating from high school, but she opted to get her feet wet in the professional acting world first. She made her big-screen debut as an ambitious young starlet stranded in a tiny California town in Desert Blue (1998). Her next two films, while critically panned, made it into wider release: 200 Cigarettes (1999) (in which she played an earnest but accident-prone ditz) and Gossip (2000) (which cast her as a rich, virginal college student). Perhaps Hudson's biggest break was landing the role of rock groupie (or "Band Aide") Penny Lane in Almost Famous (2000). The part was originally intended for Sarah Polley; when Polley backed out to pursue another project, director Cameron Crowe considered scrapping the film altogether. Hudson, who had been cast in a smaller role (as William's stewardess sister), begged for a chance to read for Penny. Crowe was impressed, Hudson got the part, and the show went on. As much as Tinseltown gossipmongers would like to put them at odds, mother and daughter agree that Hawn is one of Hudson's biggest supporters.- Actress
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Jennifer Aniston was born in Sherman Oaks, California, to actors John Aniston and Nancy Dow. Her father was Greek, and her mother was of English, Irish, Scottish, and Italian descent. Jennifer spent a year of her childhood living in Greece with her family. Her family then relocated to New York City where her parents divorced when she was nine. Jennifer was raised by her mother and her father landed a role, as "Victor Kiriakis", on the daytime soap Days of Our Lives (1965). Jennifer had her first taste of acting at age 11 when she joined the Rudolf Steiner School's drama club. It was also at the Rudolf Steiner School that she developed her passion for art. She began her professional training as a drama student at New York's School of Performing Arts, aka the "Fame" school. It was a division of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts. In 1987, after graduation, she appeared in such Off-Broadway productions as "For Dear Life" and "Dancing on Checker's Grave". In 1990, she landed her first television role, as a series regular on Molloy (1990). She also appeared in The Edge (1992), Ferris Bueller (1990), and had a recurring part on Herman's Head (1991). By 1993, she was floundering. Then, in 1994, a pilot called "Friends Like These" came along. Originally asked to audition for the role of "Monica", Aniston refused and auditioned for the role of "Rachel Green", the suburban princess turned coffee peddler. With the success of the series Friends (1994), Jennifer has become famous and sought-after as she turns her fame into movie roles during the series hiatus.- Actress
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Chloë Sevigny is an Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning actress and director who is known for her groundbreaking work across film, television and theatre. Sevigny has spent her career working with innovative and revolutionary filmmakers and artists including Lars von Trier, Jim Jarmusch, Mary Harron, David Fincher and Whit Stillman and Luca Guadagnino. She continues that work with several upcoming projects: Sevigny can be currently seen in We Are Who We Are, for HBO/Sky, which was created, written and directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name). The eight-episode drama is a coming of age story about a group of American soldiers on an Army base in Italy. We Are Who We Are is being produced by Wildside and Apartment Pictures and distributed by Freemantle. Alice Braga, Jack Dylan Grazer, and Kid Cudi also star. In 2021 Sevigny will begin production on the second season of the Natasha Lyonne hit Russian Doll for Netflix. In the first season, Chloë made an appearance as Leonora, mother to Natasha's character Nadia. The second season will be an origin story in which Chloë's character is heavily featured. Russian Doll was created by Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland. Sevigny was last seen on the big screen in Queen and Slim, directed by Melina Matsoukas and written by Lena Waithe, with the original idea by James Frey. The film stars Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith. The film is about a black man and black woman on a first date that goes awry after the two are pulled over by a police officer at a traffic stop. They kill the police officer in self-defense and go on the run, rather than turn themselves in. Chloë's character plays a pivotal role in deciding their fate. The film was released in the US by Universal in November 2019. Opening the 2019 Cannes Film Festival was Jim Jarmusch's third film for Focus Features and Universal Pictures International, The Dead Don't Die. The zombie-comedy boasts a cast including Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Adam Driver, Steve Buscemi and Selena Gomez. Sevigny plays a small-town police officer, with Murray and Driver, in a town under zombie attack. Carter Logan and Animal Kingdom produced. Sevigny previously worked with Jarmusch on Broken Flowers and Ten Minutes Older Sevigny has now made the move into directing with three critically acclaimed short films: Her most recent, White Echo, premiered in competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, at which Sevigny was the only American female director in Competition. Chloë's directorial debut, Kitty, also debuted at Cannes in 2016 and her second short entitled Carmen, proved equally successful at the 2017 Venice Film Festival. Recent past projects include: The Act, on Hulu, a true-crime anthology series written by Michelle Dean and Nick Antosca and directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (Mustang). The Act tells the true story of Gypsy Blanchard, a girl (Joey King) trying to escape the toxic relationship she has with her overprotective mother, played by Patricia Arquette. Chloë played Mel, who serves as the moral compass of the story. Lizzie, which premiered at Sundance 2018 after being developed and produced by Sevigny. The film, in which she starred with Kristen Stewart, was released by Roadside Attractions in September 2018. Lean On Pete, directed by Andrew Haigh, which was released domestically in May 2018 by A24. Sevigny co-starred with Steve Buscemi in a coming of age story starring Charlie Plummer, based on the acclaimed novel by Willy Vlautin. Golden Exits, directed by Alex Ross Perry, Oren Moverman's The Dinner, and Miguel Arteta's Beatriz at Dinner. The critically acclaimed television series Bloodline is recently aired its third and final season on Netflix. On stage, Sevigny was most recently seen in the New Group's Downtown Race Riot written by Seth Zvi Rosenfeld and directed by Scott Elliot. Sevigny was previously seen in The New Group's productions of What the Butler Saw and Hazelwood Junior High. Sevigny has also appeared in many celebrated indie and cult-favorite films like, The Last Days of Disco, American Psycho, Gummo, Dogville, Party Monster, Broken Flowers and Love & Friendship, and has appeared in television hits such as American Horror Story, Portlandia and Big Love, for which she won a Golden Globe. Sevigny made her film debut in the controversial Kids, directed by Larry Clark and written by Harmony Korine. For her performance in Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry, Chloë received nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe among many others. She makes her home in New York. 10/2020- Actress
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Anne Celeste Heche was an American actress, director, and screenwriter. She came to recognition portraying Vicky Hudson and Marley Love in the soap opera Another World (1964), which won her a Daytime Emmy Award and two Soap Opera Digest Awards. She came to mainstream prominence in the late 1990s with roles in the crime drama film Donnie Brasco (1997), the disaster film Volcano (1997), the slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), the action comedy film Six Days Seven Nights (1998), and the drama-thriller film Return to Paradise (1998).- Actress
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Megan Denise Fox was born on May 16, 1986 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and raised in Rockwood, Tennessee to Gloria Darlene Tonachio (née Cisson), a real estate manager and Franklin Thomas Fox, a parole officer. She began her drama and dance training at age 5 and at age 10, she moved to Port St. Lucie, Florida where she continued her training and finished school. Megan began acting and modeling at age 13 after winning several awards at the 1999 American Modeling and Talent Convention in Hilton Head, South Carolina. At age 17, she tested out of school using correspondence and eventually moved to Los Angeles, California. Megan made her film debut as Brianna Wallace in the Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen film, Holiday in the Sun (2001). Her best-known roles are as Sam Witwicky's love interest, Mikaela Banes in Transformers (2007) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), as April O'Neil in the remake Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) and its sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016), and as Jennifer Check in the horror comedy Jennifer's Body (2009).- Actress
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Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., an American advertising executive, originally from Texas. She has an older brother and a younger sister. When she was ten years old, her 40-year-old father died of a sudden heart attack. Her mother never remarried, and her grandmother moved in to help her mother.
Cate graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and, in a little over a year, had won both critical and popular acclaim. On graduating from NIDA, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls", then played Felice Bauer, the bride, in Tim Daly's "Kafka Dances", winning the 1993 Newcomer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle for her performance. From there, Blanchett moved to the role of Carol in David Mamet's searing polemic "Oleanna", also for the Sydney Theatre Company, and won the Rosemont Best Actress Award, her second award that year. She then co-starred in the ABC Television's prime time drama Heartland (1994), again winning critical acclaim. In 1995, she was nominated for Best Female Performance for her role as Ophelia in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet". Other theatre credits include Helen in the Sydney Theatre Company's "Sweet Phoebe", Miranda in "The Tempest" and Rose in "The Blind Giant is Dancing", both for the Belvoir Street Theatre Company. In other television roles, Blanchett starred as Bianca in ABC's Bordertown (1995), as Janie Morris in G.P. (1989) and in ABC's popular series Police Rescue (1994). She made her feature film debut in Paradise Road (1997).
Cate married writer Andrew Upton in 1997. She had met him a year earlier on a movie set, and they didn't like each other at first. He thought she was aloof, and she thought he was arrogant, but then they connected over a poker game at a party, and she went home with him that night. Three weeks later he proposed marriage and they quickly married before she went off to England to play her breakthrough role in films: the title character in Elizabeth (1998) for which she won numerous awards for her performance, including the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. Cate was also nominated for an Academy Award for the role but lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow. 2001 was a particularly busy year, with starring roles in Bandits (2001), The Shipping News (2001), Charlotte Gray (2001) and playing Elf Queen Galadriel in the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. She also gave birth to her first child, son Dashiell, in 2001. In 2004, she gave birth to her second son Roman.
Also, in 2004, she played actress Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004), for which she received an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. Two years later, she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for playing a teacher having an affair with an underage student in Notes on a Scandal (2006). In 2007, she returned to the role that made her a star in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). It earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. She was nominated for another Oscar that same year as Best Supporting Actress for playing Bob Dylan in I'm Not There (2007). In 2008, she gave birth to her third child, son Ignatius. She and her husband became artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company, choosing to spend more time in Australia raising their three sons. She also purchased a multi-million dollar home in Sydney, Australia and named it Bulwarra and made extensive renovations to it. Because of her life in Australia, her film work became sporadic, until Woody Allen cast her in the title role in Blue Jasmine (2013), which won her the Academy Award as Best Actress. She ended her job as artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, while her husband continued there for two more years before he too resigned.
In 2015, she adopted her daughter Edith in her father's homeland of the United States. That same year, she and her husband sold their multi-million dollar home in Australia at a profit and moved to America. Reasons varied from her wanting to work more in America to wanting to familiarize herself with her late father's American heritage. She played the title role of Carol (2015), a 1950s American housewife in a lesbian affair with a younger woman, for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. While most actresses might slow down in their forties, Blanchett did the opposite by stretching her boundaries even further, such as when she played 13 different characters in Manifesto (2015) and then making her Broadway debut in 2017 in "The Present", which is her husband's adaptation of Chekhov's play "Platonov" for which she earned a Tony nomination as Best Actress in a Play. Also in 2017, she was selected for the highest honor in her birth country: the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).- Actress
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Zooey Deschanel's quirky charm, striking blue eyes, and distinctively offbeat humor have made her one of the most beloved indie darlings of recent decades. Hailing from a renowned entertainment family, she began her career in the late 1990s. Deschanel's talent shines through her diverse roles, encompassing both comedic and dramatic territory, as well as her musical abilities.
After a brief guest appearance on the sitcom 'Veronica's Closet,' Deschanel made her feature film debut in Lawrence Kasdan's 'Mumford' (1999). Her breakout role came courtesy of Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical 'Almost Famous' (2000), where she portrayed the enigmatic Anita Miller, the older sister of the film's protagonist. Deschanel effortlessly embodies the rebellious and free-spirited youth of the 1970s rock scene. Her nuanced performance in 'Almost Famous' solidified her status as a rising star.
Deschanel's reputation is built on her ability to portray endearingly awkward and unconventional female characters. Her portrayal of the heartbroken yet resilient Summer Finn in '(500) Days of Summer' (2009) became an iconic portrayal of unconventional romance in the 21st-century. Her deadpan delivery and self-aware humor found perfect expression in her most well-known role, Jessica Day, in the hit sitcom 'New Girl' (2011 - 2018). As the bubbly and optimistic school teacher who moves in with three male roommates, she quickly became a beloved television icon, earning numerous award nominations for her performance.
While widely recognized for her comedic roles, Deschanel has also proven her dramatic chops in independent films such as 'All the Real Girls' (2003). This critically-acclaimed film earned her recognition for authentically portraying a young woman navigating a complex relationship. She further demonstrated her versatility with the role of Trillian in the science-fiction comedy 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'(2005), demonstrating her ability to adapt to fantastical and quirky settings.
Deschanel's off-screen talents extend to her musical abilities. She often showcases her singing in films and television, notably in 'Elf' (2003) where her rendition of 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' with Will Ferrell is a holiday classic. She also starred in the television adaptation of 'Once Upon a Mattress' (2005). Deschanel formed the musical duo 'She & Him' in 2006 with singer-songwriter M. Zooey Claire Deschanel, is an American actress and musician.
Ward, where her retro-inspired vocals and songwriting talents have produced multiple successful albums.
Beyond acting and music, Deschanel has become a multi-faceted figure in popular culture. Her co-founding of the women-focused digital media company HelloGiggles in 2011 demonstrated her entrepreneurial spirit and desire to empower women. Her carefully curated personal style, often featuring vintage-inspired pieces, has also earned her recognition as a fashion icon.
Deschanel's career has continued to thrive in recent years. She lent her voice to the animated film 'Trolls' (2016) and its sequel 'Trolls World Tour' (2020), playing the cheerful and optimistic Princess Bridget. She also took on supporting roles in films like 'Rock the Kasbah' (2015) and 'The Driftless Area' (2015). Alongside her continued musical endeavors, Deschanel remains an active figure on television, hosting 'The Celebrity Dating Game' (2021).
Looking ahead, Deschanel has several projects in development. She's attached to star in 'Dreamin' Wild', a biopic where she will portray legendary singer-songwriter Cass Elliot of The Mamas & the Papas. Deschanel is also slated to make a return to dramatic territory with the film 'Harold and the Purple Crayon,' a live-action adaptation of the beloved children's book. Her continued willingness to experiment across genres solidifies her place as a dynamic and enduring talent in the entertainment world.
With her endearing personality, comedic timing, and the ability to imbue both quirky and serious characters with depth and heart, Zooey Deschanel has built a captivating and enduring career. Her contributions to film, television, and music have earned her a devoted following and a position as a beloved figure in popular culture. As she ventures into new projects, Deschanel continues to captivate audiences with her unique blend of charm, talent, and undeniable individuality.- Actress
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Rachel Anne McAdams was born on November 17, 1978 in London, Ontario, Canada, to Sandra Kay (Gale), a nurse, and Lance Frederick McAdams, a truck driver and furniture mover. She is of English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish descent. Rachel became involved with acting as a teenager and by the age of 13 was performing in Shakespearean productions in summer theater camp; she went on to graduate with honors with a BFA degree in Theater from York University. After her debut in an episode of Disney's The Famous Jett Jackson (1998), she co-starred in the Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows (2003), a comedy-drama about the trials and travails of a Shakespearean theater group, and won a Gemini award for her performance in 2003.
Her breakout role as Regina George in the hit comedy Mean Girls (2004) instantly catapulted her onto the short list of Hollywood's hottest young actresses. She followed that film with a star turn opposite Ryan Gosling in the adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks bestseller The Notebook (2004), which was a surprise box office success and became the predominant romantic drama for a new, young generation of moviegoers. After filming, McAdams and Gosling became romantically involved and dated through mid-2007. McAdams next showcased her versatility onscreen with the manic comedy Wedding Crashers (2005), the thriller Red Eye (2005), and the holiday drama The Family Stone (2005).
McAdams then explored the independent film world with Married Life (2007), which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and also starred Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson. Starring roles in the military drama The Lucky Ones (2008), the newspaper thriller State of Play (2009), and the romance The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) followed before she starred opposite Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law in Guy Ritchie's international blockbuster Sherlock Holmes (2009). McAdams played the plucky producer of a failing morning TV show in Morning Glory (2010), the materialistic fiancée of Owen Wilson in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011), and returned to romantic drama territory with the hit film The Vow (2012) opposite Channing Tatum. The actress also stars with Ben Affleck in Terrence Malick's To the Wonder (2012) and alongside Noomi Rapace in Brian De Palma's thriller Passion (2012).
In 2005, McAdams received ShoWest's "Supporting Actress of the Year" Award as well as the "Breakthrough Actress of the Year" at the Hollywood Film Awards. In 2009, she was awarded with ShoWest's "Female Star of the Year." As of 2011, she has been romantically linked with her Midnight in Paris (2011) co-star Michael Sheen.- Actress
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It was after the 1968 Democratic convention and there was a casting call for a film with several roles for the kind of young people who had disrupted the convention. Two recent graduates of Catholic University in Washington DC, went to the audition in New York for Joe (1970). Chris Sarandon, who had studied to be an actor, was passed over. His wife Susan got a major role.
That role was as Susan Compton, the daughter of ad executive Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick). In the movie Dad Bill kills Susan's drug dealer boyfriend and next befriends Joe (Peter Boyle)-- a bigot who works on an assembly line and who collects guns.
Five years later, Sarandon made the film where fans of cult classics have come to know her as Janet, who gets entangled with transvestite Dr. Frank n Furter in The The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). More than 15 years after beginning her career Sarandon at last actively campaigned for a great role, Annie in Bull Durham (1988), flying at her own expense from Rome to Los Angeles. "It was such a wonderful script ... and did away with a lot of myths and challenged the American definition of success", she said. "When I got there, I spent some time with Kevin Costner, kissed some ass at the studio and got back on a plane". Her romance with the Bull Durham (1988)) supporting actor, Tim Robbins, had produced two sons by 1992 and put Sarandon in the position of leaving her domestic paradise only to accept roles that really challenged her. The result was four Academy Award nominations in the 1990s and best actress for Dead Man Walking (1995). Her first Academy Award nomination was for Louis Malle's Atlantic City (1980).- Actress
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Juliette Lewis has been recognized as one of Hollywood's most talented and versatile actors of her generation since she first stunned audiences and critics alike with her Oscar-nominated performance as "Danielle Bowden" in Cape Fear (1991). To date, she has worked with some of the most revered directors in the industry, including Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Lasse Hallström, Oliver Stone, and Garry Marshall. Whether lending dramatic authenticity or a natural comedic flair to her roles, Lewis graces the screen with remarkable range and an original and captivating style.
Lewis was born in Los Angeles, Californa, to Glenis (Duggan) Batley, a graphic designer, and Geoffrey Lewis, an actor. By the age of six, she knew she wanted to be a performer. At twelve, Lewis landed her first leading role in the Showtime miniseries Home Fires (1987). After appearing in several TV sitcoms including The Wonder Years (1988), she made her move to film, starring with Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) and with Jennifer Jason Leigh in the drama Crooked Hearts (1991). At 16, Lewis starred opposite Brad Pitt in the critically acclaimed television movie Too Young to Die? (1990), catching the attention of Martin Scorsese, who cast her in his thriller Cape Fear (1991). Her powerful scenes with Robert De Niro captured the quiet complexities of adolescence and earned her an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe nomination for "Best Supporting Actress". Her auditorium scene with De Niro went down in movie history as one of cinema's classic scenes.
Lewis next worked with Woody Allen in Husbands and Wives (1992), playing a self-assured college coed with a penchant for older men and, particularly, her married professor. She quickly followed suit with a succession of starring roles in a variety of blockbusters and critically acclaimed projects including Kalifornia (1993), Romeo Is Bleeding (1993), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), and Natural Born Killers (1994), Oliver Stone's controversial media satire about two mass murderers who become legendary folk heroes. Lewis's other credits include the Nora Ephron comedy Mixed Nuts (1994), with Steve Martin and Adam Sandler; the sci-fi action film Strange Days (1995) with Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett; Quentin Tarantino's vampire tale From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) with George Clooney; The Evening Star (1996) with Shirley MacLaine; the Garry Marshall-directed The Other Sister (1999), and Todd Phillips' Old School (2003), co-starring opposite Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Will Ferrell as well as Starsky & Hutch (2004). In addition to her film career, Lewis has continued to add roles to her growing list of television credits with a performance in Showtime's My Louisiana Sky (2001), for which she secured an EMMY nomination, and a starring role in the Mira Nair-directed HBO's film Hysterical Blindness (2002), alongside Uma Thurman and Gena Rowlands.
After a six-year hiatus from film to pursue her burgeoning music career exclusively, Lewis announced her return to acting with a handful of upcoming movies. Juliette starred alongside Elliot Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig and Jimmy Fallon in the comedy Whip It (2009). The film was released by Fox Searchlight on October 2nd, 2009. Directed by Drew Barrymore, the film tells the story of an ex-beauty pageant contestant that leaves her crowns behind after joining a roller derby team. Lewis plays "Iron Maven", the star of a top derby team. Next, she joined the cast of the acclaimed European animated thriller Metropia (2009), as the voice of "Nina". She also appeared in the romantic comedy The Switch (2010), opposite Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, and Patrick Wilson. The film tells the story of a single mother (Aniston) who decides to have a child using a sperm donor. Juliette plays "Debbie Epstein", the best friend of Aniston's character. Lewis also appears in Sympathy for Delicious (2010), Mark Ruffalo's directorial debut. The film follows a paralyzed DJ, struggling to survive on the streets of LA who turns to faith healing and mysteriously develops the ability to cure the sick. Juliette plays "Ariel", costarring alongside Orlando Bloom, Mark Ruffalo, and Laura Linney. The film took home the US Dramatic Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Most recently, Juliette Lewis appears in the indie-drama Conviction (2010), which stars Hilary Swank, Melissa Leo, Minnie Driver, and Sam Rockwell. She plays "Roseanna Perry" in the true story of an unemployed single mother (Swank) who saw her brother begin serving a life sentence in 1983 for murder and robbery. The role has won Lewis praise from audiences and critics, alike, for her performance, with USA Today saying, "Juliette Lewis has an indelible role" and the San Francisco Chronicle saying "Her character work should be studied in schools. Just remarkable". In addition to Conviction (2010), Lewis also makes a cameo in Todd Phillips's comedy, Due Date (2010), starring Robert Downey Jr., Michelle Monaghan, and Zach Galifianakis.
Beginning in 2004, Juliette took a hiatus from acting to embark on a musical journey. After six years, two full length albums and countless high profile tours and festival gigs with her band, 'Juliette & the Licks', Juliette set out on a solo career. Releasing "Terra Incognita" last fall, the album has taken her all across the world from Europe to Japan to Turkey, Australia, North America and Canada. For more information on Juliette Lewis' music, please visit her MySpace page. Juliette Lewis resides in Los Angeles.- Actress
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Helena Bonham Carter is an actress of great versatility, one of the UK's finest and most successful.
Bonham Carter was born May 26, 1966 in Golders Green, London, England, the youngest of three children of Elena (née Propper de Callejón), a psychotherapist, and Raymond Bonham Carter, a merchant banker. Through her father, she is the great-granddaughter of former Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith, and her blue-blooded family tree also contains Barons and Baronesses, diplomats, and a director, Bonham Carter's great-uncle Anthony Asquith, who made Pygmalion (1938) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), among others. Cousin Crispin Bonham-Carter is also an actor. Her maternal grandfather, Eduardo Propper de Callejón, was a Spanish diplomat who was awarded the honorific Righteous Among the Nations, by Israel, for helping save Jews during World War II (Eduardo's own father was a Czech Jew). Helena's maternal grandmother, Hélène Fould-Springer, was from an upper-class Jewish family from France, Austria, and Germany, and later converted to her husband's Catholic faith.
Bonham Carter experienced family dramas during her childhood, including her father's stroke - which left him wheelchair-bound. She attended South Hampstead High School and Westminster School in London, and subsequently devoted herself to an acting career. That trajectory actually began in 1979 when, at age thirteen, she entered a national poetry writing competition and used her second place winnings to place her photo in the casting directory "Spotlight." She soon had her first agent and her first acting job, in a commercial, at age sixteen. She then landed a role in the made-for-TV movie A Pattern of Roses (1983), which subsequently led to her casting in the Merchant Ivory films A Room with a View (1985), director James Ivory's tasteful adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel, and Lady Jane (1986), giving a strong performance as the uncrowned Queen of England. She had roles in three other productions under the Merchant-Ivory banner (director Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala): an uncredited appearance in Maurice (1987), and large roles in Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991) and Howards End (1992).
Often referred to as the "corset queen" or "English rose" because of her early work, Bonham Carter continued to surprise audiences with magnificent performances in a variety of roles from her more traditional corset-clad character in The Wings of the Dove (1997) and Shakespearian damsels to the dark and neurotic anti-heroines of Fight Club (1999). Her acclaimed performance in The Wings of the Dove (1997) earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination, a BAFTA Best Actress nomination, and a SAG Awards Best Actress nomination. It also won her a Best Actress Award from the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics, the Boston Society Film Critics, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Texas Society of Film Critics, and the Southeastern Film Critics Association.
In the late 1990s, Bonham Carter embarked on the next phase of her career, moving from capable actress to compelling star. Audiences and critics had long been enchanted by her delicate beauty, evocative of another time and place. Her late '90s and early and mid 2000s roles included Mick Jackson's Live from Baghdad (2002), alongside Michael Keaton, receiving a nomination for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe; Paul Greengrass' The Theory of Flight (1998), in which she played a victim of motor neurone disease; Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996), in which she played Olivia; opposite Woody Allen in his Mighty Aphrodite (1995); Mort Ransen's Margaret's Museum (1995); Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein (1994); and Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990).
Other notable credits include her appearance with Steve Martin in Novocaine (2001), Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes, in which she played an ape, Thaddeus O'Sullivan's The Heart of Me (2002), opposite Paul Bettany, and Big Fish (2003), her second effort with Tim Burton, in which she appeared as a witch.
In between her films, Helena has managed a few television appearances, which include her portrayal of Jacqui Jackson in Magnificent 7 (2005), the tale of a mother struggling to raise seven children - three daughters and four autistic boys; as Anne Boleyn in the two-parter biopic of Henry VIII starring Ray Winstone; and as Morgan Le Fey, alongside Sam Neill and Miranda Richardson, in Merlin. Earlier television appearances include Michael Mann's Miami Vice (1984) as Don Johnson's junkie fiancée, and as a stripper who wins Rik Mayall's heart in Dancing Queen (1993). Helena has also appeared on stage, in productions of Trelawney of the Wells, The Barber of Seville, House of Bernarda Alba, The Chalk Garden, and Woman in White.
Bonham Carter was nominated for a Golden Globe for the fifth time for her role in partner Tim Burton's film adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), for which Burton and co-star Johnny Depp were also nominated. For the role, she was awarded Best Actress at the Evening Standard British Film Awards 2008. Other 2000s work includes playing Mrs Bucket in Tim Burton's massive hit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), providing the voices for the aristocratic Lady Campanula Tottington in Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and for the eponymous dead heroine in Tim Burton's spooky Corpse Bride (2005), and co-starring in Conversations with Other Women (2005) opposite Aaron Eckhart.
After their meeting while filming Planet of the Apes (2001), Bonham Carter and Tim Burton made seven films together. They lived in adjoining residences in London, shared a connecting hallway, and have two children: Billy Ray Burton, born in 2003, and Nell Burton, who was born in 2007. Ironically, a mutual love of Sweeney Todd was part of the initial attraction for the pair. Bonham Carter has said in numerous interviews that her audition process for the role of Mrs. Lovett was the most grueling of her career and that, ultimately, it was Sondheim who she had to convince that she was right for the role.- Actress
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Sally Margaret Field was born November 6, 1946 in Pasadena, California, to actress Margaret Field (née Morlan) and salesman Richard Dryden Field. Her parents divorced in 1950 and her mother then married stuntman Jock Mahoney, and they had a daughter, Princess O'Mahoney. She also has a brother, Richard Field. Sally attended Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California.
Her acting career began in 1965, when she landed the role of Frances Elizabeth 'Gidget' Lawrence in Gidget (1965); it was canceled after only one season because of bad ratings. She went on to star in The Flying Nun (1967), which ran for three seasons. She also appeared in her first film in 1967, The Way West (1967) opposite Kirk Douglas. In the next few years she appeared in numerous TV movies and TV shows such as Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (1971), Marriage: Year One (1971), The Girl with Something Extra (1973), and Sybil (1976). In 1977 she starred alongside then-boyfriend Burt Reynolds in the box office hit Smokey and the Bandit (1977), which led to a less successful sequel in 1980. In 1979 she starred in the popular film Norma Rae (1979) and she received her first Oscar for that role.
In the years that followed she starred in films such as Absence of Malice (1981), Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), Places in the Heart (1984) (she received her second Oscar for her role), Murphy's Romance (1985), Punchline (1988) and Steel Magnolias (1989). In 1993 she starred alongside Robin Williams and Pierce Brosnan in the popular comedy Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). A year after, she played the role of Tom Hanks character's mother (even though she's only ten years older than he is in real life) in Forrest Gump (1994). The film was a huge commercial success and won six Academy awards.
Since then she has appeared in TV movies and miniseries such as A Woman of Independent Means (1995), Merry Christmas, George Bailey (1997), From the Earth to the Moon (1998) and David Copperfield (2000). In 2000 she appeared in the film Where the Heart Is (2000) with Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd, and in 2003 she starred alongside Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003). She also appeared in 12 episodes of ER (1994) from 2000 to 2006. From 2006 to 2011, she played the role of matriarch Nora Walker in the hit television show Brothers & Sisters (2006), which earned her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Getting back into film, she earned her third Oscar nomination for Lincoln (2012) and played Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its blockbuster sequel.
Sally has been married twice, first to Steven Craig from 1968 to 1973. They had two sons together, Peter Craig and Eli Craig. Her second marriage was to film producer Alan Greisman from 1984 to 1994. They had one son together, Samuel Greisman. Between marriages, from 1976 to 1980, she was in a relationship with Burt Reynolds.- Actress
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Southern-bred Mary-Louise Parker was born on August 2, 1964 in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, the youngest of four children of Judge John Morgan Parker, and the former Caroline Louise Morell. She is of mostly Swedish, English, and Scottish descent. Her father's occupation took the family both around the country and abroad while growing up.
Parker showed potential in her teens and majored in acting in her college years, graduating from the North Carolina School of the Arts. Beginning her acting career with a part on the daytime soap Ryan's Hope (1975), Mary decided to test the waters in New York, and after work on the off-Broadway stage in the late 1980s, made her Broadway debut with "Prelude to a Kiss" in 1990, where she won the Theatre World Award, the Clarence Derwent Award and a Tony nomination.
Films and TV quickly followed and she quickly gained attention. She provided both poignant and amusing as the token femme friend to a group of gay men in the AIDS drama Longtime Companion (1989), but really caught fire with her feisty, standout performance in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), holding her own against such female powerhouses as Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates and Mary Stuart Masterson. Dubbed by some as the "long-suffering girl next door," she played such noble offbeat miserables and cast-asides in Grand Canyon (1991), Naked in New York (1993), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), The Client (1994) Boys on the Side (1995), in which she was the AIDS victim this time, The Portrait of a Lady (1996), The Maker (1997), Let the Devil Wear Black (1999), Red Dragon (2002) and Pipe Dream (2001).
Preferring quality over quantity, she perfected her craft with offbeat roles in independent features and did not abandon her theater roots. She copped a slew of acting prizes for her stage work in "How I Learned to Drive" (1996) and, most notably, "Proof" in 2000, wherein she won nearly every award there is to attain, including the prestigious Tony. Her marquee name still does not command what it should, but a picture or production with Mary-Louise Parker in it usually guarantees a strong critical reception. Unmarried, she did enter into a longtime companionship with actor Billy Crudup after the twosome appeared opposite each other in the 1996 play, "Bus Stop". They went their separate ways in 2003, amid major controversy (she was pregnant at the time).
Mary Louise continues to divide her time equally and skillfully on TV, film and the stage. The powerful TV miniseries adaptation of Tony Kushner heralded award-winning Broadway play Angels in America (2003), directed by Mike Nichols, earned the actress supporting performance Golden Globe and Emmy awards. She also earned a Tony nomination for the Broadway show, "Reckless", a year later but truly turned heads and wowed audiences the year after that in the highly acclaimed 7-season Showtime series Weeds (2005), earning another Golden Globe and several Emmy nominations for her amazing performance as Nancy Botwin, a relatively naïve suburban housewife and mother who courts serious trouble with the law and drug cartels when she turns into a neighborhood drug dealer for sustenance after her husband dies suddenly.
Into the millennium, Mary has continued with compelling work in such films as RED 2 (2013), R.I.P.D. (2013), Jamesy Boy (2014), Behaving Badly (2014), Chronically Metropolitan (2016), Golden Exits (2017) and Red Sparrow (2018). TV roles have included recurring roles on The Blacklist (2013) and the sci-fi thriller Mr. Mercedes (2017).
Her first child is eighteen-year-old William Atticus Parker -- a director, writer and actor. Adopting a second child from Ethiopia, Mary Louise was acknowledged in 2013 for her significant contributions to Hope North, an organization that works in the educating and healing of young victims caught in Uganda's civil war. Her memoir-in-letters, Dear Mr. You, came out in 2015.- Actress
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Laura Leggett Linney was born in New York City on February 5, 1964, into a theatre family. Her father was prominent playwright Romulus Linney, whose own great-grandfather was a congressman from North Carolina. Her mother, Miriam Anderson (Leggett), is a nurse. Although she did not live in her father's house (her parents having divorced when she was an infant), Linney's world revolved, in part, around his profession from the earliest age. She graduated from Brown University in 1986 and studied acting at Juilliard and the Arts Theatre School in Moscow and, thereafter, embarked on a career on the Broadway stage receiving favorable notices for her work in such plays as "Hedda Gabler" and "Six Degrees of Separation".
Linney's film career began in the early 1990s with small roles in Lorenzo's Oil (1992) and Dave (1993). She landed the role of Mary Anne Singleton in the PBS film adaptations of Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" series, playing her in Tales of the City (1993), More Tales of the City (1998) and Further Tales of the City (2001). Linney's first substantial big-screen role was as the ex-girlfriend of Richard Gere's character in Primal Fear (1996) and her superb performance brought her praise and a better selection of roles. Clint Eastwood chose Linney to play his daughter, another prominent role, in 1997's Absolute Power (1997), followed by another second billing in the following year's The Truman Show (1998).
Always a strong performer, Linney truly came into her own after 2000, starting the decade auspiciously with her widely-praised, arguably flawless performance in You Can Count on Me (2000). She found herself nominated for an Academy Award for this, her first lead role, for which her salary had been $10,000. Linney won numerous critics' awards for her role as Sammy, a single mother whose life is complicated by a new boss and the arrival in town of her aimless brother. On the heels of this success came her marvelous turn as Bertha Dorset in The House of Mirth (2000), clearly the best performance in a film of strong performances. Since then, Linney has frequently been offered challenging dramatic roles, and always rises to the occasion, such as in Mystic River (2003) and Kinsey (2004), for which she received another Academy Award nomination.- Actress
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Sarah Jessica Parker was born March 25, 1965, in Nelsonville, Ohio, to Barbra Forste (née Keck), a teacher who ran a nursery school, and Stephen Parker, a journalist. Her parents divorced, and her mother later remarried to Paul Forste and had four more children, bringing the total to eight. Sarah now had 3 full siblings and 4 half siblings. Her father was of Eastern European Jewish ancestry, and her mother had German, and some English, roots.
Trained in singing and ballet, Sarah was cast in the Broadway production of "The Innocents", which prompted her family to relocate to New Jersey. Already a professional performer (she studied at the American Ballet School and the Professional Children's School), Sarah was cast in "The Sound of Music" (along with four of her siblings), and landed the lead in the Broadway run of "Annie". After a year as the free-spirited orphan, Sarah attended Dwight Morrow High School, while continuing to add more credits to her acting resume. She landed a role in the made-for-TV movie My Body, My Child (1982), before being cast as one of the lead roles in the 1982 sitcom Square Pegs (1982), as high-schooler Patty Green.
Once a graduate, Sarah decided to pursue a full-time acting career rather than further her education. Since Square Pegs (1982) did not last more than a year, Sarah moved on to supporting film roles in movies such as Footloose (1984), Firstborn (1984), and the lead role in the teenage film Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985). Sarah was having lots of fun, although she had yet to land a star-turning role. After more television appearances in series and made-for-TV movies including A Year in the Life (1986), The Room Upstairs (1987) and Dadah Is Death (1988), Sarah finally landed the role of Steve Martin's bubbly lover in the 1991 comedy L.A. Story (1991). More substantial film roles soon followed, starting with a role opposite Nicolas Cage in Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) (which foreshadowed her comedic talent), Hocus Pocus (1993) and Ed Wood (1994).
A big Woody Allen fan, she starred opposite the renowned filmmaker in the television movie The Sunshine Boys (1996), and that same year, she landed a starring role in Miami Rhapsody (1995). 1996 was a film intensive year with roles in The First Wives Club (1996), If Lucy Fell (1996), and Mars Attacks! (1996). All the while making a name for herself in film, Sarah was gaining respect as a theater actress, with her lead role as a dog (hard to imagine, but true) in the off-Broadway "Sylvia", and her Broadway roles in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" (starring her present husband, Matthew Broderick), and the Tony-Award nominated "Once Upon a Mattress".
But Sarah's star has shot up since her portrayal of Manhattan sex-columnist Carrie Bradshaw in the HBO series Sex and the City (1998). Sarah's Golden Globe Best Actress victory in 2000 only underscores the fact that she plays the role of Carrie as though it were literally written for her. Sarah has been happily married to fellow actor Matthew Broderick for quite a while now. Before the marriage, she dated Robert Downey Jr. (who she also lived with), and the late John Kennedy Jr. When not serving as lead actress and producer of Sex and the City (1998), Sarah is a member of Hollywood's Women's Political Committee, and is UNICEF's representative for the Performing Arts.- Actress
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Captivating, gifted, and sensational, Angela Bassett's presence has been felt in theaters and on stages and television screens throughout the world. Angela Evelyn Bassett was born on August 16, 1958 in New York City, to Betty Jane (Gilbert), a social worker, and Daniel Benjamin Bassett, a preacher's son. Bassett and her sister D'nette grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida with their mother. As a single mother, Betty stressed the importance of education for her children. With the assistance of an academic scholarship, Bassett matriculated into Yale University. In 1980, she received her B.A. in African-American studies from Yale University. In 1983, she earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Yale School of Drama. It was at Yale that Bassett met her husband, Courtney B. Vance, a 1986 graduate of the Drama School.
Bassett first appeared in small roles on The Cosby Show (1984) and Spenser: For Hire (1985), but it was not until 1990 that a spate of television roles brought her notice. Her breakthrough role, though, was playing Tina Turner, whom she had never seen perform before taking the role, in What's Love Got to Do with It (1993). Bassett's performance earned her an Academy Award nomination and a Golded Globe Award for Best Actress.- Actress
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Considered by many critics to be the greatest living actress, Meryl Streep has been nominated for the Academy Award an astonishing 21 times, and has won it three times. Meryl was born Mary Louise Streep in 1949 in Summit, New Jersey, to Mary Wolf (Wilkinson), a commercial artist, and Harry William Streep, Jr., a pharmaceutical executive. Her father was of German and Swiss-German descent, and her mother had English, Irish, and German ancestry.
Meryl's early performing ambitions leaned toward the opera. She became interested in acting while a student at Vassar and upon graduation she enrolled in the Yale School of Drama. She gave an outstanding performance in her first film role, Julia (1977), and the next year she was nominated for her first Oscar for her role in The Deer Hunter (1978). She went on to win the Academy Award for her performances in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Sophie's Choice (1982), in which she gave a heart-wrenching portrayal of an inmate mother in a Nazi death camp.
A perfectionist in her craft and meticulous and painstaking in her preparation for her roles, Meryl turned out a string of highly acclaimed performances over the next decade in great films like Silkwood (1983); Out of Africa (1985); Ironweed (1987); and A Cry in the Dark (1988). Her career declined slightly in the early 1990s as a result of her inability to find suitable parts, but she shot back to the top in 1995 with her performance as Clint Eastwood's married lover in The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and as the prodigal daughter in Marvin's Room (1996). In 1998 she made her first venture into the area of producing, and was the executive producer for the moving ...First Do No Harm (1997). A realist when she talks about her future years in film, she remarked that "...no matter what happens, my work will stand..."- Actress
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Anna Kay Faris was born on November 29, 1976 in Baltimore, Maryland, to Karen (Bathurst), a special education teacher, and Jack Faris, a sociologist. She was raised in Edmonds, Washington. Her ancestry includes English, German, Scottish, French, Dutch, Irish, and Welsh. Anna started acting very young but not professionally. She loved watching theatrical plays and eventually produced one of her own with all the neighborhood children, in her immediate environment. She was always encouraged with the emphasis that she wasn't just "pretending" but rather being an unpaid producer, director, writer and an actress.
Her first paid job was at the Seattle Repertory Theatre at age nine. She loved it and did other local plays and readings. After graduating from the University of Washington in English Literature, she decided to leave for London to work and write, but after filming (the less than wonderful) Lovers Lane (2000) and a short for the Seattle Film Festival, she decided to give Los Angeles a try. She signed up with a wonderful management agency and before she could catch her breath, Keenen Ivory Wayans cast her in heavy, hard, and comedic movie (To some people, it is almost too horrific.), Scary Movie (2000) and its sequels.
She never takes anything for granted and just feels so very fortunate to have been given a chance. (An example was her trying to thank all the journalists and photographers that came to the New York premiere.)
Anna was married to actor Chris Pratt in 2009. They have a son. They separated in 2017 and were divorced in November, 2018.- Actress
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Isla Lang Fisher was born on February 3, 1976 in Muscat, Oman, to Scottish parents Elspeth Reid and Brian Fisher, who worked as a banker for the U.N. She spent her early childhood in Bathgate, Scotland, before moving to Perth, Australia with her family in the early 1980s. From a young age, Isla showed an interest in both acting and writing. At nine years old, she was appearing in Australian TV commercials. She landed some small parts in the Australian television series Bay City (1993). This led to a bigger part in the television series Paradise Beach (1993). When that show ended, she landed a role in the long-running Australian soap opera Home and Away (1988). While working on that show, she indulged in another of her passions, writing, and published two best-selling novels, "Seduced By Fame" and "Bewitched". In 1997, she was picked by the readers of FHM magazine as #35 on the list of the "100 Sexiest Women in the World", and in 2003, she placed 26th.
Isla has since appeared in the films Wedding Crashers (2005), The Lookout (2007), Hot Rod (2007) and Definitely, Maybe (2008), Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009), and Now You See Me (2013).- Actress
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Judy Greer was born and raised outside of Detroit, Michigan, as Judith Therese Evans. She is the daughter of Mollie Ann (née Greer), a hospital administrator and former nun, and Richard Evans, a mechanical engineer. She has German, Irish, English, Welsh, and Scottish ancestry. After training for nearly ten years in classical Russian ballet, Greer shifted her interest to acting and was accepted into Chicago's prestigious Theatre School at DePaul University.
After a variety of odd jobs during college, from telemarketer to oyster shucker, Greer landed her first on-screen role just three days after graduation -- a small part in the Jason Lee-David Schwimmer comedy Kissing a Fool (1998). She flew to Los Angeles for the film's premiere and never left. Greer quickly landed a role in the dark comedy Jawbreaker (1999), with Rose McGowan and Rebecca Gayheart. Greer starred as a school wallflower-turned-babe in a story about high school girls who accidentally kill their best friend and try to cover up the murder.
She went on to play a news correspondent in David O. Russell's Three Kings (1999), landing a memorable opening love scene with George Clooney. Her performance caught the eye of Hollywood, and she appeared next in Mike Nichols's What Planet Are You From? (2000) as a flight attendant opposite Garry Shandling. Her television credits include a recurring role as Jason Bateman's assistant Kitty on Fox's Arrested Development (2003), as well as guest-starring roles on Love & Money (1999), Maggie Winters (1998), and Early Edition (1996).
Greer starred opposite Jennifer Garner in Columbia Pictures' romantic comedy 13 Going on 30 (2004), directed by Gary Winick. Greer played an office colleague alongside Garner's character, with whom she shares a checkered past.
She co-starred in writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (2004), opposite Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sigourney Weaver, and William Hurt. Set in 1897, the film revolves around a close-knit community that lives with the knowledge that a mythical race of creatures resides in the woods surrounding them. The Village (2004) was released July 30, 2004, by Touchtone Pictures. Greer also co-starred in director Wes Craven's Cursed (2005), a modern twist on the classic werewolf tale written by Kevin Williamson. The busy actress also landed a co-starring role opposite Orlando Bloom and Susan Sarandon in writer-director Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown (2005), playing the sister of Bloom's character and daughter of Sarandon's character.
She also joined Jeff Bridges and Jeanne Tripplehorn in the independent film The Amateurs (2005) by writer-director Michael Traeger. The film revolves around a motley group of friends who band together to make an amateur porn film. Greer plays a young temptress at the local mattress store who secures a role in the movie by allowing the store to be used as a film location.
Greer wrapped production in New York on a co-starring role opposite Tom McCarthy ("The Station Agent") in Danny Leiner's The Great New Wonderful (2005) for Serenade Films/Sly Dog Films. The dark comedy tells five different stories against the backdrop of an uncertain post-September 11 New York. The cast also includes Maggie Gyllenhaal, Edie Falco and Tony Shalhoub.
She also appeared in writer-director Adam Goldberg's psychological drama I Love Your Work (2003), opposite Giovanni Ribisi. The film is about a fictional movie star (Ribisi) and his gradual meltdown and increasing obsession with a young film student and his girlfriend. The stellar cast also included Franka Potente, Christina Ricci, and Jason Lee and debuted at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival. In the film, Greer plays Samantha, the personal assistant of Ribisi's character.
Greer had a starring role as the female lead role in the comedy The Hebrew Hammer (2003) as the feisty, fearless Esther, who joins forces with an Orthodox Jewish Blaxploitation hero (Adam Goldberg) to save Hanukkah from an evil son of Santa Claus (Andy Dick). The Hebrew Hammer (2003) debuted at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and premiered on Comedy Central followed by a theatrical release.
She also appeared in Adaptation. (2002), from director Spike Jonze. In the film, Nicolas Cage stars as self-loathing writer Charlie Kaufman (and twin brother Donald) as he attempts to adapt the novel "The Orchid Thief" for the big screen. Greer played Alice, the waitress with whom he becomes obsessed -- the object of his fantasies.
Greer turned in a scene-stealing comedic performance in The Wedding Planner (2001), with Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey, in which she played Penny, Lopez's sweet but ditsy assistant who tries hard, but often falls a little short. Equally adept at more dramatic roles, Greer gave a standout performance opposite Mel Gibson in What Women Want (2000), playing a suicidal file clerk rescued by the one man who can hear women's thoughts. Greer's pivotal scene with Gibson is the heart of the film.
With a genuine gift for comedy and an engaging on-screen presence, Judy Greer has quickly become one of Hollywood's most captivating talents. Having appeared in such diverse films as Jawbreaker (1999), What Women Want (2000), The Wedding Planner (2001), Adaptation. (2002), and Wilson (2017) as well as a number of upcoming feature film projects, Greer turns in scene-stealing performances opposite some of the industry's biggest stars.- Actress
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Amy Lou Adams was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Italy, to American parents, Kathryn (Hicken) and Richard Kent Adams, a U.S. serviceman who was stationed at Caserma Ederle in Italy at the time. She was raised in a Mormon family of seven children in Castle Rock, Colorado, and has English, as well as smaller amounts of Danish, Swiss-German, and Norwegian, ancestry.
Adams sang in the school choir at Douglas County High School and was an apprentice dancer at a local dance company, with the ambition of becoming a ballerina. However, she worked as a greeter at The Gap and as a Hooters hostess to support herself before finding work as a dancer at Boulder's Dinner Theatre and Country Dinner Playhouse in such productions as "Brigadoon" and "A Chorus Line". It was there that she was spotted by a Minneapolis dinner-theater director who asked her to move to Chanhassen, Minnesota for more regional dinner theatre work.
Nursing a pulled muscle that kept her from dancing, she was free to audition for a part in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), which was filming nearby in Minnesota. During the filming, Kirstie Alley encouraged her to move to Los Angeles, where she soon won a part in the Fox television version of the film, Cruel Intentions (1999), in the part played in the film by Sarah Michelle Gellar, "Kathryn Merteuil". Although three episodes were filmed, the troubled series never aired. Instead, parts of the episodes were cobbled together and released as the direct-to-video Cruel Intentions 2 (2000). After more failed television spots, she landed a major role in Catch Me If You Can (2002), playing opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. But this did not provide the break-through she might have hoped for, with no work being offered for about a year. She eventually returned to television, and joined the short-lived series, Dr. Vegas (2004).
Her role in the low-budget independent film Junebug (2005) (which was shot in 21 days) got her real attention, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress as well as other awards. The following year, her ability to look like a wide-eyed Disney animated heroine helped her to be chosen from about 300 actresses auditioning for the role of "Giselle" in the animated/live-action feature film, Enchanted (2007), which would prove to be her major break-through role. Her vivacious yet innocent portrayal allowed her to use her singing and dancing talents. Her performance garnered a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
Adams next appeared in the major production, Charlie Wilson's War (2007), and went on to act in the independent film, Sunshine Cleaning (2008), which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Her role as "Sister James" in Doubt (2008) brought her a second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, as well as nominations for a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild award, and a British Academy Film award. She appeared as Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and as a post-9/11 hot line counselor, aspiring writer, amateur cook and blogger in Julie & Julia (2009). In the early 2010s, she starred with Jason Segel in The Muppets (2011), with Philip Seymour Hoffman in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (2012), and alongside Clint Eastwood and Justin Timberlake in Trouble with the Curve (2012). She played reporter Lois Lane in Man of Steel (2013) and con artist Sydney Prosser in American Hustle (2013), before portraying real-life artist Margaret Keane in Tim Burton's biopic Big Eyes (2014).
In 2016, she reprised her role as Lane in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and headlined Denis Villeneuve's science fiction drama Arrival (2016) and Tom Ford's dark thriller Nocturnal Animals (2016). In 2018, she received another Oscar nomination, her sixth, for starring as Lynne Cheney in the biographical drama Vice (2018), opposite Christian Bale as Dick Cheney.- Actress
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Julianna Margulies was born on June 8, 1966 in Spring Valley (near New York City), as the youngest of three daughters of Francesca (Goldberg), a teacher and dancer in American Ballet, and Paul Margulies, an advertising writer and philosopher. She is of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage (from Romania, Austria, Hungary, and Russia). Until beginning high school in New Hampshire at age 14, she lived several years with her family in Paris and in England. She obtained a B.A. degree in liberal arts from Sarah Lawrence College, where she appeared in several plays on campus. She jobbed as a waitress until her first role as a prostitute looking to go straight in Out for Justice (1991). It took more than a year to find another role; during that time, she managed to support herself from several regional theater productions and national TV ads. Until she became a regular in ER (1994), she guest starred in several television series and a pilot. Since then, she has starred in several films, including Ghost Ship (2002), Evelyn (2002), and Snakes on a Plane (2006), and headlines the CBS drama The Good Wife (2009), for which she has won both an Emmy and a Golden Globe.- Actress
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Archie is an Emmy Award winning British actress best known for her role as Kalinda Sharma in The Good Wife, for which she was nominated for an Emmy three times in a row and went on to to be honored with a Golden Globe Nomination. She made her film debut in the critically acclaimed East Is East which won a Bafta for Best Film. She then went onto star in the Bafta and Golden Globe nominated international hit Bend It Like Beckham. She appeared in John Le Carre's The Constant Gardener, which was nominated for 10 Bafta's and won an Oscar and went on to work alongside Angelina Jolie in the gut wrenching A Mighty Heart. Archie then went on to star in 2 Bafta winning Netflix/BBC series; The Fall, opposite Gillian Anderson as well as Shetland. She recently starred on the American TV hit Blindspot and in the International blockbuster earthquake movie San Andreas opposite Dwayne Johnson. The New Year will see Archie lead the highly anticipated 6 part drama Next Of Kin on ITV.- Actress
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Kat Dennings was born Katherine Victoria Litwack in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, to Ellen (Schatz), a speech therapist and poet, and Gerald Litwack, a molecular pharmacologist. She is the youngest of five children. Her family is of Russian Jewish descent. Kat was predominantly home-schooled, graduating at the age of fourteen. Her family subsequently moved to Los Angeles, California to support Kat acting full-time.
After work doing commercials, she began work in television, starting with a role on HBO's Sex and the City (1998), following up with roles on Raising Dad (2001), The Scream Team (2002), Everwood (2002), Without a Trace (2002) and ER (1994), among others.
Kat made the move to the big screen with supporting roles in Raise Your Voice (2004), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and Big Momma's House 2 (2006). She later achieved a level of fame with roles in The House Bunny (2008) and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008).
Kat continues to act in feature films and is an avid video blogger. Since 2011, she has starred with Beth Behrs in the CBS television series 2 Broke Girls (2011).- Actress
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Actress and activist Shailene Woodley was born in Simi Valley, California, to Lori (Victor), a middle school counselor, and Lonnie Woodley, a school principal. She has one brother, Tanner. She was educated at Simi Valley High School in California. When Woodley was four years old she began commercial modeling. Acting roles followed, and she made her screen debut in 1999's Replacing Dad (1999). More parts followed in The District (2000), The O.C. (2003) and Crossing Jordan (2001),amongst others. When Woodley was 15, she was diagnosed with Idiopathic Scoliosis and wore a chest-to-hips plastic brace for two years, which proved a successful treatment.
In 2008 Woodley was cast in the lead role of Amy Juergens in The Secret Life of the American Teenager (2008) and in 2011 she had her big screen breakthrough when she appeared in Alexander Payne's The Descendants (2011), opposite George Clooney. Her performance in the role of Alexandra King brought critical acclaim and recognition by the movie industry. She won an Independent Spirit Award and the 2012 MTV Movie Awards Breakthrough Performance Award, as well as a Golden Globe nomination. She gained more prominence for portraying Tris from the Divergent film trilogy based on the book series. She portrayed Mary Jane Watson in deleted scenes of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. She had roles in The Fault in Our Stars, The Mauritanian, White Bird in a Blizzard, Big Little Lies, Adrift and The Fallout. She was engaged to Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers but broke up.- Actress
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Courteney Cox was born on June 15th, 1964 in Birmingham, Alabama, into an affluent Southern family. She is the daughter of Courteney (Bass) and Richard Lewis Cox (1930-2001), a businessman. She was the baby of the family with two older sisters (Virginia and Dottie) and an older brother, Richard, Jr. She was raised in an exclusive society town, Mountain Brook, Alabama. Courteney was the archetypal daddy's girl, and therefore was understandably devastated when, in 1974, her parents divorced, and her father moved to Florida.
She became a rebellious teen, and did not make things easy for her mother, and new stepfather, New York businessman Hunter Copeland. Now, she is great friends with both. She attended Mountain Brook High School, where she was a cheerleader, tennis player and swimmer. In her final year, she received her first taste of modeling. She appeared in an advert for the store, Parisians. Upon graduation, she left Alabama to study architecture and interior design at Mount Vernon College. After one year she dropped out to a pursue a modeling career in New York, after being signed by the prestigious Ford Modelling Agency. She appeared on the covers of teen magazines such as Tiger Beat and Little Miss, plus numerous romance novels. She then moved on to commercials for Maybeline, Noxema, New York Telephone Company and Tampax.
While modeling, she attended acting classes, as her real dream and ambition was to be an actress. In 1984, she landed herself a small part in one episode of As the World Turns (1956) as a young débutante named Bunny. Her first big break, however, was being cast by Brian De Palma in the Bruce Springsteen video "Dancing in The Dark". In 1985, she moved to LA to star alongside Dean Paul Martin in Misfits of Science (1985). It was a flop, but a few years later, she was chosen out of thousands of hopefuls to play Michael J. Fox's girlfriend, psychology major Lauren Miller in Family Ties (1982).
In 1989, Family Ties (1982) ended, and Cox went through a lean spell in her career, featuring in unmemorable movies such as Mr. Destiny (1990) with Michael Caine. Fortunes changed dramatically for Cox, when in 1994, she starred alongside Jim Carrey in the unexpected hit Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), and a year later she was cast as Monica Geller on the hugely successful sitcom Friends (1994). It was this part that turned her into an international superstar and led to an American Comedy Award nomination. In 1996 Cox starred in Wes Craven's horror/comedy Scream (1996) . This movie grossed over $100 million at the box office, and won Cox rave reviews for her standout performance as the wickedly bitchy and smug TV reporter Gale Weathers. She went on to play this character again in each of the three sequels. Not only did her involvement in this movie lead to critical acclaim, but it also led to her meeting actor husband David Arquette. He played her on-screen love interest Dewey, and life imitated art as the two fell in love for real. Their wedding took place in San Francisco, at the historic Grace Cathedral atop Nob Hill, on June 12th, 1999. Joined by 200 guests, including Cox's film star friends Liam Neeson and Kevin Spacey, the happy couple finally became Mr. and Mrs. Arquette.- Actress
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Emily Irene VanCamp (born May 12, 1986) is a Canadian actress, known for her lead roles on the WB series Everwood (2002), the ABC dramas Brothers & Sisters (2006) and Revenge (2011), and as Sharon Carter / Agent 13 in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Captain America: Civil War (2016). VanCamp stars as the female lead in the Fox medical drama series The Resident (2018), which debuted in January 2018 as a midseason entry in the 2017-18 US television season. VanCamp was born in Port Perry, Ontario. She is the third of four daughters born to Cindy and Robert VanCamp. Her father is an animal nutritionist and her first job was working for her father, delivering food to clients in and around her hometown. VanCamp started studying dance at age three, and wanting to become a professional dancer, at the age of 11 convinced her parents to let her attend a summer training program in Montreal. At 12, she was accepted at the École supérieure de ballet du Québec, the training program of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, and moved in with a local French Canadian family.
In 1998, VanCamp became interested in acting after visiting her sister Katie on the set of the film Ladies Room (1999). She started taking acting classes on Saturday afternoons, found an agent and, after working on a few commercials, was cast in the second part of the three-part season-seven premiere of the Canadian children's horror anthology television series Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1990)Her character was present in one scene and spoke no dialogue, playing opposite a 17-year-old Elisha Cuthbert.- Actress
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Lea Michele Sarfati was born in the Bronx, New York to Edith Thomasina (Porcelli), a nurse, and Mark David Sarfati, a delicatessen owner-turned-real estate agent. Her mother is of Italian descent (from Rome and Naples), and her father is of Sephardi Jewish ancestry (from Turkey and Greece). Lea was raised Catholic in Tenafly, New Jersey and graduated from Tenafly High School.
At age eight, Lea went with a friend to an open casting call for an up-and-coming musical. After spontaneously deciding to audition, she was offered the role and, two weeks later, she was starring on Broadway. She made her Broadway debut in 1995 as a replacement for the role of Young Cosette in "Les Misérables". She was then cast in the role of Tateh's daughter, the Little Girl, in the 1998 original Broadway cast of "Ragtime", and in 2004 she portrayed Shprintze and understudied the role of Chava in the Broadway revival of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof".
When she was 14, Lea was given the role of Wendla Bergmann in Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's musical version of "Spring Awakening". She starred in early workshops, off-Broadway, and finally originated the role in the Broadway production at age 20. Around the same time that the show was set to go to Broadway, Lea was offered the role of Éponine Thénardier in the Broadway revival of "Les Misérables". She chose to remain with "Spring Awakening", which debuted on Broadway in December 2006. She was later nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical. After two years of starring in "Spring Awakening", Lea left the show with co-star Jonathan Groff, to pursue other opportunities.
In late 2008, Lea won the role of Rachel Berry on the comedy-drama series Glee (2009), and since the show's premiere on May 19, 2009, has received worldwide critical acclaim for her performance. She received the 2009 Satellite Award for Best Actress in a Series - Comedy or Musical, and later won three People's Choice Awards and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Along with her award wins, Lea also received Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations.- Actress
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Becki grew up in Guilford, Connecticut. She started performing in local productions and summer stock theater at age 13. She studied European History at the University of Pennsylvania, during which time she spent several semesters abroad. After graduating, Becki immediately moved to NYC to pursue Broadway. After appearing in dozens of national commercials and guest starring roles, including Cold Case (2003), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), and American Dreams (2002), she landed the role of Amanda on Ugly Betty (2006). She is married to actor Chris Diamantopoulos, and her brother is actor Matt Newton.- Actress
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Anna Kendrick was born in Portland, Maine, to Janice (Cooke), an accountant, and William Kendrick, a teacher. She has an older brother, Michael Cooke Kendrick, who has also acted. She is of English, Irish, and Scottish descent.
For her role as "Dinah" in "High Society" on Broadway, Anna Kendrick was nominated for a Tony Award (second youngest ever), a Drama Desk Award, and a Fany Award (best actress featured in a musical). Her spectacular performance landed her the Drama League and Theatre World Award.
She was a lead performer with Cabaret's Kit Kat Club at "Carnegie Hall Live" in My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies (1999) (TV). She also had the privilege of working with director Scott Ellis and choreographer Susan Stroman at the New York City Opera House with Jeremy Irons amongst many more celebrity status actors, playing the role of "Fredrika" in "A Little Night Music".
Anna work-shopped "Jane Eyre" & "The Little Princess" for Broadway and starred in the feature film Camp (2003) with director Todd Graff.- Actress
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Cobie Smulders was born on April 3, 1982, in Vancouver, British Columbia, to a Dutch father and an English mother. As a girl, Cobie had set her sights on becoming a doctor or a marine biologist. In fact, it wasn't until high school that Cobie started to explore acting after appearing in several school productions. As a teenager, Cobie caught the eye of a modeling agency, which led to several years of world travel to places such as France, Japan, Italy, Greece, and Germany. Yet even as Cobie's modeling career was on the rise, she still managed to attend school, graduating from high school in 2000 with honors.
Once out of high school, Cobie continued modeling internationally until the opportunity arose to audition for film and television. It was not long before Cobie's natural ability as an actress impressed casting directors, landing her guest spots on television series such as Special Unit 2 (2001) and Jeremiah (2002). In addition, Cobie also appeared in the short Candy from Strangers (2001) directed by fellow Canadian rising star Eric Johnson.
Cobie got her big break just months later when she landed the role of Juliet Droil in the ABC program Veritas: The Quest (2003). The series marked her first series role for television.- Actress
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Moretz is best known for her work in the sci-fi thriller series The Peripheral, created by Scott B. Smith; the Mattson Tomlin-directed sci-fi thriller Mother/Android; Neil Jordan's thriller Greta; Roseanne Liang's Shadow in the Cloud, which claimed the Midnight Madness People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival in 2020; The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which won both critical acclaim and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2018; Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria, which went on to claim the Independent Spirit Awards' Robert Altman Award after world premiering in Venice; MGM's The Amityville Horror; Marc Webb's 500 Days of Summer; the Kick-Ass franchise; Matt Reeves' English-language remake of Let Me In; Martin Scorsese's Oscar winner Hugo; Warner Bros' If I Stay and Dark Shadows; Kimberly Peirce's remake of the Stephen King classic Carrie; and Sony's The Equalizer with Denzel Washington. She also exec produced the Snapchat Discover series Coming Out, which premiered in 2021.- Actress
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Elizabeth Banks was born Elizabeth Mitchell in Pittsfield, a small city in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts near the New York border, on February 10, 1974. She is the daughter of Anne Marie (Wallace), who worked in a bank, and Mark Phineas Mitchell, a factory worker. Elizabeth describes herself as having been seen as a "goody two-shoes" in her youth who was nominated for the local Harvest Queen.
Banks left home to attend college at the University of Pennsylvania--from which she graduated Magna cum Laude--and went on to attend the Advanced Training Program at the prestigious American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, graduating in 1996. She then moved to New York and worked in the theater, and began getting small roles in films and on television. Seeking more screen work, she moved to Los Angeles and was soon cast in supporting roles. She also had to change her last name, to Banks, in order to avoid confusion with actress Elizabeth Mitchell.
Her breakthrough role was as Betty Brant, the secretary of the cantankerous newspaper tycoon in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002). She followed up this performance with small roles in other movies: Swept Away (2002), Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002), Seabiscuit (2003) and The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005). In 2003 she won the Exciting New Face Award at the Young Hollywood Awards. The winsome, beautiful Banks projected an exceptionally charming screen presence that drew comparisons to Audrey Hepburn, and Hollywood eventually began to take notice, Banks being cast in the lead in such films as Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) and in Oliver Stone's biopic of George W. Bush, W. (2008), as Laura Bush.
In television, Banks was a recurring guest star on Scrubs (2001) as Dr. Kim Briggs, the love interest of Zach Braff's J.D. In 2010 she was cast as Alec Baldwin's love interest in season four of 30 Rock (2006). Originally scheduled to appear in only four episodes, she was brought back as a recurring character for two more seasons, and earned Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for two consecutive years. Elizabeth has also appeared in such films as Our Idiot Brother (2011), Man on a Ledge (2012), What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012), People Like Us (2012), and Pitch Perfect (2012). She also won the coveted role as Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games (2012) and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013).
After an eleven-year courtship, Banks married Max Handelman, a sports writer and producer, in 2003. They have two sons, Felix, who was born in March 2011, and Magnus, born in Nov. 2012, both by gestational surrogacy.- Actress
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Vera Farmiga is an American actress who has received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Up in the Air (2009) and Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her roles in Bates Motel (2013) and When They See Us (2019).
She was born Vera Ann Farmiga, the second of seven children, on August 6, 1973, in Clifton, New Jersey, USA, to Ukrainian parents. She did not speak English until the age of six, and was raised in the Ukrainian Catholic home of her mother, Luba (Spas), a schoolteacher, and her father, Michael Farmiga, a computer systems analyst. Her younger sister is actress Taissa Farmiga, who is 21 years her junior. Young Vera was a shy, nearsighted girl, who played piano and folk danced with a Ukrainian touring company in her teens.
In 1991, she graduated from Hunterdon Central Regional High School. Farmiga initially dreamed of becoming an optometrist, but she later changed her mind and studied acting at Syracuse University's School of Performing Arts, graduating in 1995. The following year, she began her professional acting career, making her Broadway debut as an understudy in the play "Taking Sides". Her stage credits included performances in "The Tempest", "Good", "The Seagull", and in a well-reviewed off-Broadway production of "Second-Hand Smoke" (1997). That same year, she made her television debut as the female lead, opposite a then-unknown Heath Ledger, in Fox's adventure series Roar (1997).
In 1998, Farmiga made her big screen debut in the drama Return to Paradise (1998), then played the daughters of Christopher Walken in The Opportunists (1999) and Richard Gere in Autumn in New York (2000). She starred as a working-class mother struggling to keep her life and marriage together while hiding her drug addiction in Down to the Bone (2004), for which she was awarded Best Actress from the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Farmiga's acting talent shone in a range of characters, from her role as a senator's daughter in The Manchurian Candidate (2004), the wife of a mobster in Running Scared (2006), a humorous prostitute in Breaking and Entering (2006), and a police psychiatrist in The Departed (2006).
In 2010, Farmiga received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in Up in the Air (2009). In 2011, she made her directorial debut with the drama Higher Ground (2011), in which she also appeared in the leading role. Although the film had a limited release, Farmiga's direction and performance received attention at several festivals. In 2013, she began starring in the drama thriller series Bates Motel (2013), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in the first season. In 2019, she received a second Primetime Emmy Award nomination, this time in the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie category, for her role in the drama miniseries When They See Us (2019).
Farmiga was formerly married to actor Sebastian Roché, whom she met during production of Roar (1997). The two eloped to the Bahamas after the series ended in 1997. They separated and subsequently divorced in 2004. On September 13, 2008, she married musician Renn Hawkey, with whom she has two children, son Fynn McDonnell (b. 2009) and daughter Gytta Lubov Hawkey (b. 2010). Farmiga lives with her family in Hudson Valley, New York. Her other activities, outside her acting profession, include reading, playing piano, boxing, jujitsu, and spending time with her pet angora goats.- Actress
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Sarah Paulson was born on December 17, 1974 in Tampa, Florida, to Catharine Gordon (Dolcater) and Douglas Lyle Paulson II. She spent most of her early years in New York and Maine, before settling in Manhattan to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the High School for Performing Arts. Although she made her Broadway debut in "The Sisters Rosensweig" and performed in the off-Broadway "Talking Pictures", she debuted on the small screen in late 1994 in a guest shot on NBC's Law & Order (1990), then, in the following spring, landed her first TV-movie role in CBS' Friends at Last (1995) and finally became a TV series regular by fall 1995.
Best known for her amazing performance in CBS' supernatural drama American Gothic (1995) as the benevolent spiritual guide to her young brother, she was also a regular on the WB series Jack & Jill (1999) as "Elisa Cronkite", the former girlfriend of David "Jill" Jillefsky (Ivan Sergei) as well as the main character in the TV series Leap of Faith (2002), "Faith Wardwell", and as "Audrey" in the TV movie Metropolis (2000). She was also part of the cast of Shaughnessy (1996), The Long Way Home (1998) (as "Leanne Bossert") and Path to War (2002) as Luci Baines Johnson, as well as making notable appearances in Touched by an Angel (1994) playing "Zoe" in Manhunt (2001), 20 October 2001, and Cracker: Mind Over Murder (1997) playing "Nina" in True Romance: Part 1 (1997), 18 September 1997.
Sarah has now played in movies with such stars as Mel Gibson in the romantic comedy What Women Want (2000) (as "Annie", Gibson's secretary), Diane Keaton in the romantic drama The Other Sister (1999) (as "Heather Tate", Keaton's lesbian eldest daughter), Jamie Foxx in Held Up (1999) (as "Mary", a developmentally disabled young woman with an unfaithful boyfriend) and David Hyde Pierce in the romantic comedy Down with Love (2003) (as "Vicky Hiller", Pierce's crush). She also had two major roles in the comedy Bug (2002) and the drama, Levitation (1997), where she starred as a pregnant teenager who searches for her biological mother, with the help of a guardian angel.- Actress
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Mae was born in Los Angeles, California to Pat Musick, a voice artist, and Jeffrey Whitman, a personal manager and set construction coordinator. She began her career with a voice-over for a Tyson Chicken commercial. Whitman attended Ribét Academy, a private preparatory school in Los Angeles.
Whitman made her first silver screen debut playing Meg Ryan's youngest daughter, "Casey Green", in When a Man Loves a Woman (1994). Among her notable childhood roles were that of "Patricia Whitmore", daughter of the President in Independence Day (1996); George Clooney's daughter, "Maggie Taylor", in One Fine Day (1996); and the charming daughter, "Bernice Pruitt", of Sandra Bullock, in Hope Floats (1998).
As she has grown older, Mae has made several guest appearances in television shows such as JAG (1995), State of Grace (2001), Desperate Housewives (2004), Grey's Anatomy (2005) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), just to name a few, as well as some voice-over work.
In 2015, she starred in the movie The Duff (2015) portraying a high school student who realized she is the approachable one, the designated ugly fat friend, the DUFF.
We should expect to see great things from Mae Whitman as her career progresses, for she has shown what a strong, dynamic, and talented actress she has become.- Actress
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Ask Kate Winslet what she likes about any of her characters, and the word "ballsy" is bound to pop up at least once. The British actress has made a point of eschewing straightforward pretty-girl parts in favor of more devilish damsels; as a result, she's built an eclectic resume that runs the gamut from Shakespearean tragedy to modern-day mysticism and erotica.
Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire, into a family of thespians -- parents Roger Winslet and Sally Anne Bridges-Winslet were both stage actors, maternal grandparents Oliver and Linda Bridges ran the Reading Repertory Theatre, and uncle Robert Bridges was a fixture in London's West End theatre district. Kate came into her talent at an early age. She scored her first professional gig at eleven, dancing opposite the Honey Monster in a commercial for a kids' cereal. She started acting lessons around the same time, which led to formal training at a performing arts high school. Over the next few years, she appeared on stage regularly and landed a few bit parts in sitcoms. Her first big break came at age 17, when she was cast as an obsessive adolescent in Heavenly Creatures (1994). The film, based on the true story of two fantasy-gripped girls who commit a brutal murder, received modest distribution but was roundly praised by critics.
Still a relative unknown, Winslet attended a cattle call audition the next year for Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995). She made an immediate impression on the film's star, Emma Thompson, and beat out more than a hundred other hopefuls for the part of plucky Marianne Dashwood. Her efforts were rewarded with both a British Academy Award and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Winslet followed up with two more period pieces, playing the rebellious heroine in Jude (1996) and Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).
The role that transformed Winslet from art house attraction to international star was Rose DeWitt Bukater, the passionate, rosy-cheeked aristocrat in James Cameron's Titanic (1997). Young girls the world over both idolized and identified with Winslet, swooning over all that face time opposite heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio and noting her refreshingly healthy, unemaciated physique. Winslet's performance also garnered a Best Actress nomination, making her the youngest actress to ever receive two Academy Award nominations.
After the swell of unexpected attention surrounding Titanic (1997), Winslet was eager to retreat into independent projects. Rumor has it that she turned down the lead roles in both Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Anna and the King (1999) in order to play adventurous soul searchers in Hideous Kinky (1998) and Holy Smoke (1999). The former cast her as a young single mother traveling through 1970s Morocco with her daughters in tow; the latter, as a zealous follower of a guru tricked into a "deprogramming" session in the Australian outback. The next year found her back in period dress as the Marquis de Sade's chambermaid and accomplice in Quills (2000). Kate holds the distinction of being the youngest actor ever honored with four Academy Award nominations (she received her fourth at age 29). As of 2016, she has been nominated for an Oscar seven times, winning one of them: she received the Best Actress Oscar for the drama The Reader (2008), playing a former concentration camp guard.
For her performance of Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs (2015), she received her seventh Academy Award nomination.
Off camera, Winslet is known for her mischievous pranks and familial devotion. She has two sisters, Anna Winslet and Beth Winslet (both actresses), and a brother, Joss.
In 1998, she married assistant director Jim Threapleton. They had a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton, in October 2000. They divorced in 2001. She later married director Sam Mendes in 2003 and gave birth to their son, Joe Alfie Winslet-Mendes, later that year. After seven years of marriage, in February 2010 they announced that they had amicably separated, and divorced in October 2010. In 2012, Kate married Ned Rocknroll, with whom she has a son. She was awarded Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to Drama.- Actress
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Hilary was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to Judith Kay (Clough), a secretary, and Stephen Michael Swank, who served in the National Guard and was also a traveling salesman. Her maternal grandmother, Frances Martha Dominguez, was of Mexican descent, and her other roots include German, English, and Scottish. During her early childhood, her family moved to Spokane, Washington, and when she was six, to Bellingham, Washington.
Hilary was discovered as a child by producer Suzy Sachs, who coached her in acting. When she was nine years old, she starred in her first play as "Mowgli" in "The Jungle Book". She began to appear regularly in local theater and school plays. She went to school in Bellingham, where she lived with her family, until she was 16. She competed in the Junior Olympics and Washington State championships in swimming; she ranked 5th in the state in all-around gymnastics (which would come in handy for starring in The Next Karate Kid (1994) years later). In 1990, Hilary and her mother moved to Los Angeles, where she enrolled in South Pasadena High School, and started acting professionally. She appeared in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) but The Next Karate Kid (1994), where she got the part competing against hundreds of other actresses, was her breakout role. Ever since then, she has been much in demand and has worked non-stop in movies. She won the Best Actress Oscar for playing "Brandon Teena" in Boys Don't Cry (1999). In addition to the Oscar, Hilary won the Golden Globe Award for "Best Actress in a Drama" and "Best Actress" prizes from The New York Film Critics, The Los Angeles Film Critics, The Chicago Film Critics and The Broadcast Film Critics Association. She also won the "Breakthrough Performance" prize from The National Board of Review.
Hilary then appeared in supporting roles opposite Cate Blanchett and Keanu Reeves in Sam Raimi's The Gift (2000) and opposite Al Pacino and Robin Williams in Christopher Nolan's Insomnia (2002). Hilary then starred as "Alice Paul" in HBO's Iron Jawed Angels (2004), which told the story of the women's suffragist movement and she was honored with both SAG and Golden Globe nominations for her performance in this film. In 2004, Hilary starred opposite Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman as the title character in Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby (2004); the story of a young woman's quest to realize her dream of becoming a professional boxer. For this performance, she was honored with her second Academy Award for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role" and has garnered "Best Actress" prizes from the National Society of Film Critics, the Screen Actors Guild, The Broadcast Film Critics, and a Golden Globe for "Best Lead Actress in a Drama".
Hilary Swank is the third youngest woman in history to win two Academy Awards for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role".
She subsequently had a supporting role opposite Scarlett Johansson and Josh Hartnett in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia (2006), starred in Freedom Writers (2007), the true story of Long Beach schoolteacher, Erin Gruwell, The Reaping (2007) for Warner Brothers, and reunited with her Freedom Writers (2007) writer/director, Richard LaGravenese, starring in the film adaptation of Cecelia Ahern's novel, P.S. I Love You (2007).
An aficionado for anything that involves the outdoors, she enjoys: sky diving, river rafting and skiing.- Actress
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Christina Applegate was born in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, to record producer/executive Robert Applegate and singer-actress Nancy Priddy. Her parents split-up shortly after her birth. She has two half-siblings from her father's re-marriage - Alisa (b. October 10, 1977) and Kyle (b. July 15, 1981). Alisa and Christina are best friends and even lived together while Alisa was going to college. Christina's mother took her along on all of her auditions and acting jobs. She made her acting debut at age five months, when her mother got her in a commercial for Playtex nursers. Her mother never remarried, but kept company with Stephen Stills. Christina still cherishes a guitar Stephen gave her when she was young. She played in a number of TV series before landing her breakout role in Married... with Children (1987). Christina still studies jazz dance.- Actress
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Calista Kay Flockhart was born 11 November, 1964 in Freeport, Illinois. Her mother, Kay (Honohan), was a school teacher, and her father, Ronald Flockhart, worked for Kraft Foods Inc. She has Irish, Scottish, German, and English ancestry. Calista was named after her great-grandmother.
Flockhart attended Rutgers University in New Jersey to study acting. After college, she worked in regional theatre in Cleveland, Louisville, Chicago and Houston for $400 for eight weeks of work. In 1994, she got her first Broadway role playing "Laura" in Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie", for which she was recognized with the Theater World and Clarence Darwent Awards. She's also played in an all-star production of Anton Chekhov's "The Three Sisters" playing "Natasha". She wasn't too fond of TV before Ally McBeal (1997), but did take part in a 1992 episode of the HBO series Lifestories: Families in Crisis (1992). She did take part in many movies, but among them is the remake of The Birdcage (1996). Calista played the fiancée of Robin Williams's son. In 1997, she appeared in Telling Lies in America (1997) as the object of Brad Renfro's obsession.
Calista has established herself in New York, Chicago and elsewhere with an impressive stage and theater repertoire. She worked in the off-Broadway productions of "The Loop", "All for One", "Sophistry", "Wrong Turn at Lungfish", "Beside Herself" and "Bovver Boys". She also starred in non-NYC productions, such as "The Three Sisters" in Chicago, and "Our Town" and "Death Takes a Holiday" at the Williamstown Theater Festival.- Producer
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Sara Gilbert was born on January 29, 1975, as Sara Rebecca Abeles at St. John's Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica, California, to Barbara Cowan and Harold Abeles. Barbara was previously married to the late Paul Gilbert. At the age of six, when Sara saw her sister Melissa Gilbert get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she told her mother that she wanted to be an actress, too. A string of commercials and, in 1984, an appearance in the CBS TV movie Calamity Jane (1984), led her to adopt the Gilbert family name. After failing to get the new The Facts of Life (1979) show, she eventually found success with Roseanne (1988). Sara spent a total of nine years on that show and was given time to be able to study at Yale University, graduating with honors in 1997. Aside from Roseanne (1988), she has provided the voice of Laura Powers on The Simpsons (1989), and starred in several movies including Sudie and Simpson (1990), Poison Ivy (1992) and Light It Up (1999).- Actress
- Producer
Most recently, Keri can be seen starring in "The Diplomat" for Netflix in which Keri plays the titular role of an American Diplomat in London. She also stars in an episode of the limited anthology series "Extrapolations" created by Scott Burns. She also recently starred in "Cocaine Bear" for Universal Pictures from director Elizabeth Banks. Last year, she starred in the supernatural horror thriller "Antlers" for director Scott Cooper and producer Guillermo del Toro, and in "Star Wars: Episode IX" which reunited her with friend and director J.J. Abrams.
For six seasons Keri starred in the critically acclaimed FX series "The Americans" for which she received a Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama, three Emmy Award nominations, two Golden Globe Award nominations, six Critics' Choice Award nominations - one win - and a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.
Russell's film credits include "We Were Soldiers," "Mad About Mambo," "The Upside of Anger," "Mission Impossible III," "August Rush," "The Girl In The Park," "Bedtime Stories," Extraordinary Measures," "Goats," "Austenland," "Dark Skies," "Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes," "Free State Of Jones," and the romantic comedy "Waitress" for which she received rave reviews.
Keri first garnered attention when she starred in the title role of the hit television series "Felicity" from J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves. Just four months after the show's acclaimed premiere on the WB, she was honored with a Golden Globe® Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Drama Series.
Keri's other television credits include the miniseries "Into the West," executive produced by Steven Spielberg, the Hallmark Hall of Fame Presentation "The Magic of Ordinary Days," and "Running Wilde" with Will Arnett.
Keri starred alongside Adam Driver in the Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson's "Burn This." The limited engagement play, directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer, opened in March 2019 and ran through July 2019.
Russell returned to New York theatre after making her off- Broadway stage debut in production of Neil LaBute's "Fat Pig," in 2005.- Actress
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Lauren Ambrose was born on 20 February 1978 in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Six Feet Under (2001), Psycho Beach Party (2000) and Can't Hardly Wait (1998). She has been married to Sam Handel since September 2001. They have two children.- Actress
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Kimberly Jayne "Kim" Raver is an American actress from New York City. She has had a relatively long career in television roles, but she is primarily remembered for three roles. She portrayed the paramedic Kimberly "Kim" Zambrano in the police procedural "Third Watch" (1999-2005), the political advisor Audrey Raines in several seasons of the crime thriller series #24 (2001-2010), and the cardio-thoracic surgeon Dr. Theodora Grace "Teddy" Altman in the medical drama "Grey's Anatomy" (2005-). Raver joined the medical drama in its 6th season. She was originally intended to only portray a new recurring character, but was promoted to a series-regular before the end of that season.
In 1975, Raver made her television debut as a child actress in the long-running educational children's television "Sesame Street" (1969-). She appeared regularly in the series from 1975 to 1978. She decided to follow an acting career in the early 1990s, but she mostly acted in television commercials for the first few years of her career.
In 1995, Raver made her Broadway debut in the play "Holiday" by Philip Barry. Shortly later, Raver started portraying one-shot characters in popular television series of the 1990s, such as "Law & Order", "The Practice", and "Spin City". Her role in "Third Watch" was the first time that Raver portrayed a major character in television.
Raver portrayed the Assistant District Attorney Kathryn Hale, one of the main characters in the short-lived action drama series "The Nine" (2006-2007). In the series, Kathryn and several other characters were held hostage by bank robbers over a 52-hour period. The episodes explored events in the lives of the hostages both before and after the robbery. The series was nominated for a Golden Reel Award, but was canceled due to poor ratings.
Raver portrayed the editor-in-chief Nico Reilly, one of the main characters in the short-lived comedy-drama series "Lipstick Jungle" (2008-2009). The series was based on a popular novel by Candace Bushnell, and focused on the life-long friendship of three career women who worked in different industries. The series was canceled due to poor ratings and a controversy over abrupt casting changes.
Raver joined the cast of "Grey's Anatomy" in 2009, and decided to depart from the series in 2012. Following a years-long hiatus, she returned to the series in 2017. She has remained a series-regular ever since. Raver also had recurring roles in the crime drama "Ray Donovan" (2013-2020) and the political thriller "Designated Survivor" (2016-2019) during this period. Raver made her voice acting debut in animation in the superhero film "Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors" (2018), where she voiced the super-heroine Captain Marvel /Carol Danvers.- Actress
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As a kid, Sissy Spacek climbed trees, rode horses, swam, and played in the woods. She was born Mary Elizabeth Spacek on December 25, 1949, in Quitman, Texas, to Virginia Frances (Spilman) and Edwin Arnold Spacek, Sr., a county agricultural agent. Her father's family was of Czech and German origin.
Sissy attended Quitman High School and was homecoming queen. After graduating, she embarked on an acting career, gaining interest in the profession through her cousin, actor Rip Torn. Sissy relocated to New York, and through him, enrolled in the New York branch of the Actors Studio. She studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute while also pursuing work as a model and singer, appearing in West Village showcases such as the Bitter End for $10 a night. Sissy eventually broke into film and one of her first roles was as Holly in the classic Badlands (1973). The art director on that film was Jack Fisk, with whom she would marry in 1974 and ultimately collaborate on eight films. Sissy followed this landmark film with a star-making and Oscar nominated performance in Carrie (1976), in which she played a humiliated prom queen who goes postal with her telekinesis. Sissy has had an enduring and award winning career in movies and television, which includes an Oscar as Best Actress for Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). The parents of two grown daughters, Sissy and Jack live on a large horse ranch in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Even though she continued to appear in film and television during the late 1980s and 1990s, Sissy devoted most of those years to her family. Then, in 2001, Sissy returned to the big screen in a major way with a powerful performance in In the Bedroom (2001), which not only earned her a sixth Best Actress Oscar nomination, but a win for Best Actress at the Golden Globes, Independent Spirit Awards, and numerous critics association awards. Sissy continues to work steadily as an actress, but in 2012, her credits expanded even further to include a memoir, My Extraordinary Ordinary Life.- Actress
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Neve Campbell was born and raised in Guelph, Ontario, to Marnie (Neve), a Dutch-born psychologist and yoga instructor (from Amsterdam), and Gerry Campbell, a Scottish-born teacher (from Glasgow). Campbell first came to our TV screens in the hit Drama series Party of Five (1994). Described as TV's most believable teenager, her first major film role came in the form of innocent victim "Sidney Prescott" in Scream (1996), the film which re-defined the slasher genre.
She joined the cast of the acclaimed series House of Cards In 2016, playing Leann Harvey, shortly after in 2018 she starred opposite Dwayne Johnson in the action movie Skyscraper.
Many film offers came Neve's way but, as she was filming Party of Five (1994) for nine months of the year, the filming schedules often clashed. So in 2000, she announced that she was to leave the award-winning show to concentrate on a film career. Working in many genres, her film credits include the romantic comedy Three to Tango (1999) alongside Matthew Perry and the erotic thriller Wild Things (1998) with Denise Richards and Matt Dillon, though she has turned to a more art house approach with the critically acclaimed Panic (2000) and, more recently, Last Call (2002), both directed by Henry Bromell.
She is an animal lover and describes herself as having a dry, often offensive sense of humor.- Actress
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AnnaLynne McCord is an American actress, writer, director and former model. Known for playing vixen-type roles. McCord first gained prominence in 2007 as the scheming Eden Lord on the FX television series Nip/Tuck (2003), and as the pampered Loren Wakefield on the MyNetworkTV telenovela American Heiress (2007).
In 2008, she was the second actress to be cast in the CW series 90210 (2008), portraying anti-heroine Naomi Clark. Initially, the part of Clark was conceived as a supporting role. By the end of the first season, however, various media outlets had begun referring to McCord as the series' lead. For the role of Naomi Clark, she was nominated for a Teen Choice Award and received the Hollywood Life Young Hollywood Superstar of Tomorrow award in 2009. In 2010, she won a Breakthrough of the Year Award in the category of "Breakthrough Standout Performance".
In 2011, she was nominated for VH1's "Do Something" Award in the category of "TV Star". Her turn as a disturbed and delusional teenager in the 2012 film Excision (2012) was widely acclaimed. For her role in Excision, McCord won "Best Actress" at the Malaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema in 2012. Also for her role in Excision, she earned second place for "Best Actress" at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards in 2013.
Apart from acting, she has also contributed to charities in her free time.- Eisley was born on October 29, 1993, in Los Angeles, California, to musician David Glen Eisley and actress Olivia Hussey. Her grandfather was actor Anthony Eisley. Eisley and her mother appeared together in the movie Headspace (2005). After small roles in various independent films, Eisley gained a major role in The Secret Life of the American Teenager (2008). She played Ashley Juergens, younger sister of teen mother Amy Juergens.
Eisley starred as Sawa in the action film Kite (2014), opposite Samuel L. Jackson. At the end of 2014, she filmed Social Suicide (2015), a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet. At the beginning of 2015, she also filmed the dark fantasy film The Curse of Sleeping Beauty (2016) as Briar Rose. Eisley also appears in the film adaptation of V.C. Andrews' book My Sweet Audrina (2016) in the title role of Audrina. - Actress
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An extremely gifted, versatile performer adept at both comedy and drama, actress/singer Katey Sagal became a household name in the late 1980s as the fabulously brazen, undomesticated Peg Bundy on the enduring Fox series Married... with Children (1987). During its lengthy run she received three Golden Globe and two American Comedy Award nominations. As popular and identifiable as her Peg Bundy persona was, Katey assertively moved on after the show went off the air, not only starring in other sitcoms and television movies, but portraying characters that were polar opposites of the outrageous role that first earned her nationwide attention. For example, in 2008 she took on the role of Gemma Teller Morrow, the matriarch of a Hell's- Angels-esque California biker gang, on the series Sons of Anarchy (2008), and in 2011 her portrayal earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in the Television Series--Drama.
Catherine Louise Sagal was born on January 19, 1954, to director and singer Sara Zwilling and noted television and film director Boris Sagal. The Los Angeles native began performing at age 5 and studied voice and acting at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.
A singing waitress during her "salad" years, she started performing with the band "The Group With No Name," then caught a break after hooking up with Gene Simmons and his 1970s rock band KISS. In the meantime, she gained valuable experience as a backup recording singer for Simmons and other established stars like Bob Dylan, Olivia Newton-John, Etta James, and Tanya Tucker. She was also dynamic performing live with diva Bette Midler as one of her "Harlettes" in Bette's wildly avant-garde stage shows during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 1985, while performing on stage in a musical, she was spotted by talent agents who subsequently cast her as Mary Tyler Moore's feisty co-worker Jo Tucker in Mary (1985), a short-lived comedy series. From that point on she focused on film and television. In 1987 she won the role of voluptuous "housewife" Peg Bundy in the irreverent comedy Married... with Children (1987), and the rest is history.
In addition to her busy on-camera scheduling, Katey has retraced her steps to her first love: singing and songwriting. With the support of her record label Valley Entertainment, she released the album "Room" in 2004 that combined classics like "Feel a Whole Lot Better" and "(For the Love of) Money" with original songs she penned, including "Life Goes Round," "Daddy's Girl," and "Wish I Were a Kid." "Room" is her first CD since her 1994 debut "Well."
In her post-Bundy career, Katey has continued to demonstrate a strong range, playing a much more responsible parent in the popular sitcom 8 Simple Rules (2002), co-starring the late John Ritter and valiantly moving to single-household-head after Ritter's sudden passing in 2003 with highly successful results.
She has earned earned equally-fine kudos for her television movies like Chance of a Lifetime (1998), a charming romantic comedy that also co-starred John Ritter, God's New Plan (1999), a tearjerker in which she played a dying mother, and the Disney offerings Smart House (1999) and Mr. Headmistress (1998). The voice of Turanga Leela, the beautiful one-eyed sewer mutant in the animated series Futurama (1999), she has also guested on Ghost Whisperer (2005), Lost (2004), Boston Legal (2004), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000), and Eli Stone (2008). Feature films have included Maid to Order (1987), The Good Mother (1988), the Sundance Film Festival favorite Dropping Out (2000), Following Tildy (2002), and the indie I'm Reed Fish (2006).
Playing Jack's mother in a live-action/adventure retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk (2009) that also featured the talents of Christopher Lloyd, James Earl Jones, and Chevy Chase, Katey's more recent efforts include recurring role on TV's Lost (2004), a role in the mini-series The Bastard Executioner (2015) and a regular role in the series Superior Donuts (2017). She would also join the cast of the sitcom The Conners (2018) as a love interest to widower Dan John Goodman.
Following brief marriages to musician Freddie Beckmeier, Fred Lombardo, and former Steppenwolf drummer and "Mighty Ducks" hockey film advisor Jack White, Katey resides in the Los Angeles area with fourth husband writer/producer/director/creator Kurt Sutter, whose acclaimed work includes The Shield (2002) and the offbeat Sons of Anarchy (2008), which Sutter created. She had three children by White: Ruby (died at birth), Sarah, and Jackson; and one daughter by Sutter, Esme Louise.- Actress
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Erika Jane Christensen was born in 1982 in Seattle, Washington, to Kathy (Hendricks), a construction manager, and Steven Christensen, a human resources executive and insurance worker. She was raised in the suburban outskirts of Los Angeles, California. At age 12, Erika knew that she was going to be an actress. Talented in acting, singing and dance, the young Christensen was determined, not just lucky; it wasn't long before she landed her first job: a commercial for national advertising giant, McDonalds. She followed up with a part in Michael Jackson's music video for "Childhood," then landed her big break: a lead role in Universal's Leave It to Beaver (1997). Christensen was only 13 years old, but acclaimed by critics for her "chemistry" and "radiant self-assurance." Guest spots on television followed. Christensen popped up everywhere including prime time heavy hitters like Frasier (1993), Nothing Sacred (1997), The Practice (1997), 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996) and Touched by an Angel (1994). Erika received a nomination by the Hollywood Reporter for the 1998 Young Star Award (Best Performance By A Young Actress in a TV Drama Series) for her outstanding performance in Nothing Sacred (1997). Erika also kept her big screen presence known, in 1999 she worked on a Disney made-for-tv movie called Can of Worms (1999). And in 2000 Erika was able to show the world her acting chops when she took the gritty role of Caroline Wakefield, a teenage daughter of the White House Drug Czar who is herself a drug addict, in the award-winning Steven Soderbergh film, Traffic (2000). Aside from the distinction of playing alongside Hollywood's elite, Erika earned critical acclaim for the realism of the role, and received multiple awards including Female Breakthrough Performance at the MTV Movie Awards, Female Standout Performance at the Young Hollywood Awards, and Outstanding Performance by a Cast Ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Erika is of Norwegian (from her paternal grandmother), Danish, English, German, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish descent.- Actress
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Sarah Polley is an actress and director renowned in her native Canada for her political activism. Blessed with an extremely expressive face that enables directors to minimize dialog due to her uncanny ability to suggest a character's thoughts, Polley has become a favorite of critics for her sensitive portraits of wounded and conflicted young women in independent films.
She was born into a show business family: her stepfather, Michael Polley, appeared with her in the movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) and on the television series Avonlea (1990); and her mother, Diane Polley, was an actress and casting director. It was her mother's connections that launched Sarah, at her own insistence, on an acting career at the age of four, following in the footsteps of her older half-brother Mark Polley. A second half-brother, John Buchan, is a casting director and producer.
Her career as a child actress shifted into high gear when she was cast as the Cockney waif Jody Turner in Lantern Hill (1989), for which she won a Gemini Award, the Canadian equivalent of the Emmy, in 1992. Produced by Kevin Sullivan, the film was based on the book by Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables (1985). When Sullivan created a television series based on Montgomery's work, he cast Polley in the lead role of Sara Stanley in Avonlea (1990). The series propelled Polley into the first rank of Canadian TV stars and made her independently wealthy by the age of fourteen.
Her personal life was deeply affected by the death of her mother Diane from cancer shortly after her 11th birthday, a development that ironically paralleled the fictional life of her character Sara. Highly intelligent and politically progressive at a young age, Polley eventually rebelled against what she felt was the Americanization of the series after it was picked up by the Disney Channel for distribution in the US, eventually dropping out of the show. Though she does not blame her parents, she remains publicly disenchanted over the loss of her childhood and, in October 2003, said she is working on a script about a twelve-year-old girl on a TV show.
Polley, who picked up a second Gemini Award for her performance in the TV series Straight Up (1996), subsequently quit acting and high school to turn her attention to politics, positioning herself on the extreme left of Canada's left-of-center New Democratic Party. The publicity ensuing from her losing some teeth after being slugged by an Ontario policeman during a protest against the Conservative provincial government, plus the stinging cynicism from some other activists unimpressed by her celebrity, led her to lower her political profile temporarily and return to acting in Atom Egoyan's film The Sweet Hereafter (1997). It was her appearance as Nicole, the teenage girl injured in a school bus accident who serves as the conscience of the small town rent by the tragedy, that first brought her to the attention of critics in the US. In Canada, the role was heralded by critics as her successful breakthrough to adult roles. It was her second film with Egoyan, who wrote the part with her in mind when he adapted the novel by Russell Banks, who, ironically, is American. Predictions of an Academy Award nomination and future stardom were part of the critical consensus, and she received her first Best Actress Genie nomination from Canada's Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television and the Best Supporting Actress award from the Boston Society of Film Critics. It was the buzz created at the Sundance Festival, where her starring role in the film Guinevere (1999) was showcased, when the entertainment media crowned her the it-girl of 1999.
Intensely private and extremely ambivalent about the personal cost of celebrity and the Hollywood ethos Fame is the Name of the Game, Polley could be seen as rebelling against the expectations of mainstream cinema when she embarked on a career path that took her out of the spotlight thrown by the harsh lights of the Hollywood hype/publicity machine after shooting the film Go (1999). She dropped out of Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000), the US$60 million mega-hyped vehicle that was supposed to make her a mainstream star in the US, choosing to return to Canada to make the CDN$1.5 million The Law of Enclosures (2000) for Genie Award-winner John Greyson, a director she admires greatly. The film grossed poorly in Canada and was not released in the US, but it did garner Polley her second Genie nomination for Best Actress. While her replacement in Almost Famous (2000) went on to win an Oscar nomination and a career above the title in glossy Hollywood films, she took a wide variety of parts, large and small, in independent films, including significant roles in the ensemble pieces The Claim (2000) and The Weight of Water (2000); bit parts in eXistenZ (1999) and Love Come Down (2000); and the lead in No Such Thing (2001). Her choice of projects showed her to be a questing spirit more focused on learning the art of her craft than on stardom.
She has said that her choice of film roles, eschewing mainstream Hollywood movies for chancier, non-commercial independent fare, was the result of an ethical decision on her part to make films with social importance. A less-observant viewer might think that the rebel Polley played in her political life that had previously manifested itself in her profession was now driving her to the verge of career suicide in terms of popularity, marketability, and choice of future roles. However, that interpretation does not recognize the extraordinary talent that will always keep her in demand by directors, if not casting agents, with an eye on the opening weekend box office. One must understand Polley's career progression in light of her attendance at the Canadian Film Centre's directors program and her production of short films, including Don't Think Twice (1999) and the highly praised I Shout Love (2001). Polley is a cinema artist. This woman wants to make, and will make films. Thus, we can understand her career choices as a desire to work with and understand the technique of some of the best directors in film, including David Cronenberg, Michael Winterbottom, and Hal Hartley.
Polley is as renowned for her intelligence as for her remarkable talent. The problem of the intelligent person in the acting field is that the actor, as artist, in not ultimately in control of their medium, and it is artistic control that is the hallmark of the great artist. The controlling intelligence on a movie set is the director, and her attendance at the Canadian Film Centre has given her a new perspective on acting. The actor, she says, should not try to give a complete performance for the camera (that is, control the representation on film) but must remember that the function of the actor is to give the director as much coverage as possible as a film, as well as a performance, is made in the editing room. According to Polley, this realization, that the film actor exists to serve the director, has given her new enthusiasm for acting. Thus, her career, and her career choices, can be seen as a quest for knowledge about the art of cinema, a journey whose fruition we will see in her future feature work as both actor and director.- Actress
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Amy Frederica Brenneman was born in New London, Connecticut, to Frederica (Shoenfield), a judge in the Connecticut State Superior Court, and Russell Langdon Brenneman, Jr., an environmental lawyer. Amy's mother was one of the first women to graduate from Harvard. Amy is also a graduate of Harvard, where she majored in comparative religion. She spent one semester studying sacred dances in Nepal. While in college, she formed the Cornerstone Theater Company, a touring production company that takes classics to small towns and encourages locals to participate in them. After touring for five years, she moved to New York, where she became a teacher in Brooklyn. She landed her first TV role in 1992.- Marcia Anne Cross was born on March 25, 1962 in Marlborough, Massachusetts. As a child, Marcia always wanted to be an actress, so she set out to have a career in acting. Cross graduated from the Juilliard School in New York, a naturally gifted girl. Her career began in 1984, when she joined the cast of the daytime soap opera The Edge of Night (1956). After six months, the show ended its 28-year run. The following year, in 1985, she starred opposite Carroll O'Connor in the television film Brass (1985). Then she landed the lead role in Pros & Cons (1986) with comedienne Sheryl Lee Ralph. She kept busy by starring in The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James (1986) with many famous figures in Hollywood - including June Carter Cash, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson. Marcia's career was looking up when she was cast as Kate Roberts in another daytime soap opera, One Life to Live (1968), and as Tanya in Another World (1964). Marcia was then seen opposite Tim Daly in the tearjerker romance Almost Grown (1988). Almost Grown (1988) was a television pilot that never got picked up, but is still very acclaimed to this day. Marcia was then cast as Ruth Fielding in Bad Influence (1990), a thriller that starred Cross, Rob Lowe and James Spader.
She joined the cast of Knots Landing (1979) - an incredibly famous nighttime soap opera in 1991. After a year, she left to do work on a new television series called Melrose Place (1992). She was cast as the psychotic Dr. Kimberly Shaw on the prime-time soap opera. The show was a pop-culture phenomenon, going down in history as one of the most entertaining and memorable shows of the 1990s. Marcia, who was starring opposite Heather Locklear, Courtney Thorne-Smith and others, emerged as the fan favorite of the show. Then her longtime companion and fiance, Richard Jordan, died in 1993. Marcia reigned on, starring in films like Female Perversions (1996) opposite Tilda Swinton and Always Say Goodbye (1997) opposite Emmy-nominee Polly Draper, throughout her long run on "Melrose Place". In 1997, she left the show in order to get her Master's Degree in Psychology. From 1997 to 2003, she continued to act regularly. She starred in Dancing in September (2000), a critically acclaimed film, got herself the lead role in Living in Fear (2001), starred in The Wind Effect (2003), a disturbing film about family, and even filmed Eastwick (2002), a television pilot that never was picked up. Eastwick (2002) was based on the film The Witches of Eastwick (1987), and Marcia was cast in the Susan Sarandon role.
She got back into the public eye by joining the cast of the critically-acclaimed television series Everwood (2002) with Treat Williams. After a year on the show, she left it when she auditioned for a new television series, Desperate Housewives (2004). In 2004, Marcia was cast as Bree Van De Kamp in Desperate Housewives (2004), which went on to be a monster-hit with the critics and audiences. Marcia began to be nominated for very prestigious awards - including the Emmy Award, Golden Globe, Golden Satellite Award, and a Television Critics' Association Award. Marcia even won a Screen Actors Guild Award in 2005. - Actress
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Sandra Oh was born to Korean parents in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean, Ontario, Canada. Her father, Oh Junsu, a businessman, and her mother, Oh Young-Nam, a biochemist, were married in Seoul, Korea. They both attended graduate school at the University of Toronto. Sandra began her career as a ballet dancer and eventually studied drama at the National Theatre School in Montreal. She then starred in a London (Ontario) stage production of David Mamet's "Oleanna" and appeared as the title character in the Canadian television production The Diary of Evelyn Lau (1994), beating out over 1,000 applicants. Her list of awards includes the FIPA d'Or for Best Actress at the 1994 Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels at Cannes, France, two Genie Awards (the Canadian Oscar), a Cable Ace Award, a Theatre World Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2003, she married writer-director Alexander Payne and their first film together was the Oscar-winning Sideways (2004).- Actress
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Jane Krakowski was born in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey, to Barbara (Benoit), a college theater instructor, and Edward Krajkowski, a chemical engineer. Her father was of Polish descent and her mother has French-Canadian and Scottish ancestry.
Jane was the winner of the 2003 Tony Award for her stunning and sultry portrayal of "Carla", in the Broadway musical "Nine", opposite Antonio Banderas. Her performance also earned her the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critic's Award. Krakowski also stars in Alfie (2004), the remake of the famous 1966 film, alongside Jude Law. Krakowski recently filmed Pretty Persuasion (2005) starring Evan Rachel Wood and James Woods. Other recent film credits include When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (2003), Go (1999), The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000) as "Betty Rubble", Dance with Me (1998), Mrs. Winterbourne (1996), Stepping Out (1991), Fatal Attraction (1987) and Vacation (1983). For television, Jane received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her portrayal of "Elaine Vassal" on Ally McBeal (1997).
She also stars in NBC's remake of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol: The Musical (2004), opposite Kelsey Grammer. Other recent television credits include: Law & Order (1990), Everwood (2002), the ABC family movie Just a Walk in the Park (2002), and the miniseries, Queen (1993) (aka Alex Haley's "Queen"). Other Broadway credits include "Grand Hotel" (Tony Award and Drama Desk Award nominee), "Company", "Once Upon a Mattress", "Tartuffe" and "Starlight Express". In Los Angeles, California, she starred at the Mark Taper Forum in "Henceforward", for which she won the LA Drama Critics Award and the Dramalogue Awards, and played "Mabel" in the Reprise production of "Mack and Mabel". In addition to singing on several original Broadway cast recordings of shows in which she appeared, and the Ally McBeal (1997) Christmas episode compilation CDs, Krakowski also recorded the hit single track "You" with A/C hitman Jim Brickman on his recent album "Lovesongs and Lullabies".- Actress
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Malin was born in Stockholm, Sweden and raised in Toronto, Canada. Her mother, Pia (Sundström), is a model and aerobics instructor, and her father, Magnus Åkerman, is an insurance broker. They moved to Toronto when she was age 2. At age 5, she began appearing in TV commercials. Her parents divorced when she was 6 and her father returned to Sweden.
At age 17, she won the Canadian title of Ford Supermodel. This enabled her to spend 3 years as a catwalk model in Europe. She decided to become a child psychologist and enrolled in York University but she was offered a guest role in Earth: Final Conflict (1997) so she turned her attention back to acting. She moved to Los Angeles in 2001 and won roles in both TV and film. Her breakthrough role came when she was cast as Silk Spectre II in Watchmen (2009).- Actress
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Hilarie was born and raised in Sterling Park, Virginia. She is the oldest of four children and describes her family as tight-knit. Hilarie developed a passion for acting early in life. Shortly after moving to New York to go to school and pursuing her acting dream, she landed the coveted job of VJ at MTV. She won a guest spot interviewing on the red carpet for MTV and did so well she ended up with a job.- Actress
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Frances Louise McDormand was born on June 23, 1957, in Gibson City, Illinois. She was adopted by Canadian-born parents Noreen Eloise (Nickleson), a nurse from Ontario, and Rev. Vernon Weir McDormand, a Disciples of Christ minister from Nova Scotia, who raised her in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. She earned a BA in theater from Bethany College in 1979 and an MFA from Yale University in 1982. Her career after graduation began onstage, and she has retained her association with the theater throughout her career. She soon obtained prominent roles in movies as well, first starring in Blood Simple (1984), in which she worked with filmmaker Joel Coen, whom she married that year. She frequently collaborated with Coen and his brother, Ethan Coen, in their films.
McDormand's skilled and versatile acting has been recognized by both the critics and the Academy, and in addition to many critics' awards, she has been nominated for an Academy Award six times - Supporting in Mississippi Burning (1988), Almost Famous (2000), and North Country (2005), and Lead in Fargo (1996), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and Nomadland (2020), winning the Oscar for the latter three. She also won a Best Picture Oscar as co-producer of "Nomadland." Keenly intelligent and possessed of a sharp wit, McDormand is the antithesis of the Hollywood starlet - rather than making every role about Frances McDormand, she dissolves into the characters she plays. Accordingly, she has expressed some reservations about the iconic recognition she has gained from her touching and amusing portrayal of Police Chief Marge Gunderson, the quintessential Minnesota Scandinavian, in Fargo (1996).
McDormand and Coen adopted a son, Pedro McDormand Coen, who was born in Paraguay, in 1994. They live in New York.- Actress
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Portia de Rossi was born and raised in Geelong, Australia. Originally born Amanda Rogers, at 15 she changed her name to Portia, saying that it was the most daring thing she had ever done up until that point. After graduating from high school, she attended the University of Melbourne, and studied law. Although she studied diligently, in 1993, Portia found herself giving special notice to a casting director who saw her in a commercial, and she soon auditioned for Sirens (1994), a low budget comedy starring Hugh Grant. She was cast in the role of Giddy, one of the three gorgeous models in the movie. It wasn't until 1997, however, that Portia at last began to attract real attention. She turned an unforgettable role as Murphy in Scream 2 (1997), and in 1998 she joined the cast of Ally McBeal (1997) as the "Ice Queen", Nelle Porter. She has also worked on such projects as Stigmata (1999), Girl (1998), and The Invisibles (1999), and she has appeared on several magazine covers, including Shape. After more than a decade of hard work, Portia is finally beginning to win real recognition, not only for her long golden tresses, but also for her wonderful talent.- Actress
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Robin Gayle Wright was born in Dallas, Texas, to Gayle (Gaston), a national director at Mary Kay, and Freddie Wright, a pharmaceutical executive. She grew up in San Diego, California. She started her professional career as a model in 1980 at age 14, and worked both in Paris and Japan. After finishing high school she decided to become an actress. She got a role on the soap opera Santa Barbara (1984), for which she was nominated three times for a Daytime Emmy. During the first season of the show, she fell in love with fellow cast member Dane Witherspoon, whom she married in 1986. Meanwhile, she starred in The Princess Bride (1987), playing the title role. After leaving the cast of Santa Barbara, she got the starring role in Denial (1990) alongside Jason Patric. In 1990, she was in State of Grace (1990), where she met actor Sean Penn, by whom she had a daughter, Dylan Frances, and a son, Hopper Jack. After taking some time off, Robin was back to Hollywood with one the best roles of her career: She played Tara in The Playboys (1992). She was extremely stunning and brilliant. Then, she acted in Toys (1992) with Robin Williams, and she gave a funny performance. In 1994, Wright was in the blockbuster hit Forrest Gump (1994), with Tom Hanks. For her performance as Jenny, she got a nomination for a Golden Globe Award. She got a small role in The Crossing Guard (1995), which starred Jack Nicholson. After turning down 14 roles, she played the title role of MGM/UA's Moll Flanders (1996), directed by Pen Densham, and co-starring Morgan Freeman and Stockard Channing. She then starred in Erin Dignam's Loved (1997), with William Hurt.- Actress
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Teri Hatcher is an American actress, writer, presenter, and former NFL cheerleader. She is known for her television roles, portraying Lois Lane on the ABC series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-1997), and as Susan Mayer on the television series Desperate Housewives (2004-2012), for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.
Teri Lynn Hatcher was born in Palo Alto, California, the only child of Esther (Beshur), a computer programmer, and Owen Walker Hatcher, Jr., a nuclear physicist and electrical engineer. She has Syrian (from her immigrant maternal grandfather), Frisian, English, and Irish ancestry. Teri grew up in Sunnyvale, California, and spent her childhood dancing, and fishing with her father. While at Fremont High School, she was captain of the Featherettes, a dance team that had the look of regular cheerleaders, with the exception of the large headdresses they wore. She was voted "Most Likely to Become a Solid Gold (1980) Dancer" by her graduating class in 1982. Hatcher studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco while taking a degree course in mathematics and engineering at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. She became a member of the 1984 Gold Rush, the name of the professional cheer leading squad of the American football San Francisco 49ers.
Hatcher went to Hollywood to lend moral support to a friend during a open casting call. She, however, auditioned and won the role of the singing and dancing mermaid for the television series The Love Boat (1977). She went on to play "Penny Parker," a ditsy but sweet-hearted struggling actress on MacGyver (1985). When that show ended, she auditioned for and won the role of smart and savvy "Lois Lane" on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993), saying that she didn't want to be stuck with the pretty airhead image she had acquired as "Penny Parker."
She married actor Jon Tenney in May 1994. She gave birth to daughter Emerson Tenney on November 10, 1997. Later, she signed to play "Sally Bowles" in a road tour of Cabaret. The tour debuted in Los Angeles on March 2, 1999. Her final show was on September 4, 1999. She stayed out of the industry for a little bit before nabbing a role on the darkly comedic soap opera Desperate Housewives (2004), which could have been a huge mistake. The show turned out to be a mega-hit, which skyrocketed Hatcher to the A-list. Her portrayal of a divorced mother, "Susan Mayer," was consistently named as America's favorite "Desperate Housewife." Hatcher won both a Golden Globe for Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and the SAG Award for Female Actor in a Comedy Series before the show's first season was even over.- Actress
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This stunning and resourceful actress has been primarily a film player thus far. Only recently has she been opening herself up more to doing television (the series Gemini Division (2008), which she executive-produced), and animated voice-overs. Dawson's powerhouse talent stands out the most in edgy, urban filming that dates back to 1995 when she was only sixteen.
A rags-to-riches article entitled "Rosario Dawson: From Tenement to Tinseltown" probably says it all. Rosario was born on May 9, 1979 in New York City. Her mother, Isabel Celeste, of Puerto Rican and Afro-Cuban descent, is a singer, and her stepfather, who raised her, Greg Dawson, of Irish descent, is a construction laborer. Her parents, who married when both were teenagers, eventually divorced. Rosario and her younger brother, Clay Dawson, had it hard while growing up, and were cared for by family members, most of whom were poverty-stricken, and some of whom were HIV-positive.
Her career actually started as a child when she made a minor showing on the children's show, Sesame Street (1969). As the story goes, she was "discovered" as an adolescent on her front porch step by two photographers. One of them, Harmony Korine, was an aspiring screenwriter who thought the inexperienced sixteen-year-old was ideal for the controversial cult film Kids (1995), in which she would portray a sexually active adolescent. It took time for Rosario's film career to kick in after that, but by the late 1990s, she had nabbed several independent films. Since then, she has moved into main-stream hits (and misses) and has surprised viewers with her earthy, provocative, uninhibited approach to her roles.
Reflecting New York's tougher, tawdrier side as assorted streetwalkers, homeless mothers, drug addicts, etc., her film highlights have included Light It Up (1999), Edward Burns' Sidewalks of New York (2001), Spike Lee's 25th Hour (2002) and Shattered Glass (2003). For Oliver Stone, she portrayed the duped bride of Colin Farrell's famed B.C. Macedonian warrior, Alexander (2004) (as in "...the Great"), which featured a notoriously violent-tinged nude/sex scene.
Expanding her horizons beyond film, she has always expressed interest in singing. She hooked up with Prince for the re-release of his 1980s hit "1999" and appeared in The Chemical Brothers' video for the song "Out of Control" from the album "Surrender". She is also featured on the Outkast track, "She Lives in My Lap". On stage, she co-starred as Julia in a revival of "Two Gentlemen of Verona" at the Public Theater's "Shakespeare in the Park" and appeared in "The Vagina Monologues".
She lucked into and got to show off her singing chops in the film adaptation of the hit New York musical Rent (2005), when Daphne Rubin-Vega, the original Mimi, became pregnant and was unable to reprise her exotic dancer role. Rosario also appeared as a prostitute in the adaptation of the graphic novel Sin City (2005). Of late, she has turned to producing. One of those, Descent (2007), had her playing a college coed who is brutally attacked and raped by a fellow student. Her more popular ventures have thus far included the role of Valerie Brown in the live-action version of the comic strip Josie and the Pussycats (2001), the Will Smith starrer Men in Black II (2002), Eagle Eye (2008) with Shia LaBeouf and Seven Pounds (2008), again with Smith, in which she offered one of her more tender-hearted performances as a woman with a potentially fatal heart condition.
More recent millennium films opposite some of Hollywood's top leading movie men include the tense actioneer Unstoppable (2010) with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine; the comedy/fantasy Zookeeper (2011) opposite Dalekmania (1995); romantic dramedy 10 Years (2011) with Channing Tatum; crime drama Fire with Fire (2012) with Bruce Willis; romantic comedy Top Five (2014) with Chris Rock; and action adventure Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) with Woody Harrelson. She has also top-lined independent films with her own feisty characters such as the thriller Unforgettable (2017) and the title role in the dramedy Krystal (2017).
Focusing also on TV projects, Rosario has graced such action series/mini-series as Daredevil (2015), Iron Fist (2017) and The Defenders (2017), as well as the comedy Jane the Virgin (2014) and animated cartoon series The Last Kids on Earth (2019).
Off-camera, the still-single Dawson is highly active in political, social and environmental causes and has been involved with such organizations/charities/campaigns as the Lower East Side Girls Club, Global Cool, the O.N.E. Campaign, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Control Arms, International Rescue Committee, Voto Latino (which she founded), Conservation International, Doctors Without Borders, National Geographic Society, The Nature Conservancy and Save the Children. In October 2008, she lent her voice to the RESPECT! Campaign, a movement aimed at preventing domestic violence.- Actress
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Allison Janney is an award-winning actress who has earned a solid reputation in stage productions and in many supporting roles on screen, and who more recently has become prominent by portraying one of the major characters in the popular TV series The West Wing (1999).
Entertainment Weekly magazine describes Janney's screen presence as "uncommonly beautiful and infinitely expressive." As an actor, the magazine deems her to be "one to watch."
Janney was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Macy Brooks (Putnam), a former actress, and Jervis Spencer Janney, Jr., a real estate developer and jazz musician. While studying at Kenyon College, Janney answered a casting call for an on-campus play that was to be directed by Kenyon's most famous alumnus, the legendary actor Paul Newman. During her audition/interview, Janney played upon Newman's known passion for race car driving - she explained how she cut thirty minutes off of the 130 mile journey from her home town to the college. She got chosen for the play's cast.
After earning her degree in drama, Janney took Joanne Woodward's suggestion to do further study at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. She also studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
Early in her career Janney got comedic roles in the soap operas As the World Turns (1956) and Guiding Light (1952). Later, she gave memorable movie performances in supporting roles in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), American Beauty (1999) and Nurse Betty (2000), and in the made-for-TV movie ...First Do No Harm (1997), among others.
Among her stage work, Janney has played in a revival of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge" on Broadway opposite Anthony LaPaglia, which earned her a Tony Award nomination, and a Drama League Award for outstanding artist for the 1997-98 season. She played in Noel Coward's "Present Laughter" opposite Frank Langella, which earned her the Outer Critics Circle Award and an Actors' Equity award. Janney also appeared in the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of "The Taming of the Shrew."
In 1999 Janney became part of the original cast of the acclaimed TV series The West Wing (1999) where she played the President's press secretary who eventually gets promoted to the White House Chief of Staff. Her impressive work during the seven seasons of that renowned series earned her four Emmys and two SAG Awards.
With her reputation becoming more broadly established during her work on "The West Wing" Janney won more substantive roles in feature films, in the acclaimed The Hours (2002) where she was Meryl Streep's lesbian lover, and in How to Deal (2003) where she played Mandy Moore's mother.- Actress
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Sophia Bush has captured film and television audiences with her range of roles and diverse characters She was born on July 8, 1982, in Pasadena, California, and is an only child. Her father, Charles William Bush, is a renowned advertising and celebrity photographer, and her mother, Maureen E. (Searson) Bush, runs a photography studio.
Growing up in Pasadena, Sophia made her acting debut there in a school theater production while attending Westridge School for Girls, a small private school. She was crowned Queen of the Royal Court for the 2000 Tournament of Roses and graduated from high school that same year. In 2002, Sophia made her screen debut as Sally, a college student, in the comedy National Lampoon's Van Wilder (2002), opposite Ryan Reynolds. She attended University of Southern California for three years, and took a Journalism major and Theatre minor, albeit she did not graduate, taking her leave of absence after getting the part as Brooke Davis, a flirtatious cheerleader on the WB TV series One Tree Hill (2003). She was also cast to play opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger and Nick Stahl in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), but, after she began principal photography on the film, the director deemed her too young for the role and she was soon replaced by actress Claire Danes. She was also featured in a three-episode arc on the provocative FX drama, Nip/Tuck (2003).
Sophia got her big break when One Tree Hill (2003) developed a loyal following and became her steady gig. The show ran for nine seasons. Her character evolved from a trouble-making vixen to a fiercely loyal friend, and is a huge fan favorite. It was while working on the series that Bush began dating her on-screen love interest, actor Chad Michael Murray. They wed in April 2005, but split after five months, in September 2005. In December 2006, their divorce became final. Meanwhile, she continued to land big screen roles, such as October Bantum in Stay Alive (2006), a horror film by writer/director William Brent Bell, and as Beth in John Tucker Must Die (2006), a comedy by director Betty Thomas, co-starring Jesse Metcalfe and Brittany Snow. Bush is co-starring as Grace Andrews, who is terrorized by a killer played by Sean Bean, in the remake of The Hitcher (2007), for Focus Features.
She starred in Serenade Films' movie The Narrows (2008), a movie based on Tim McLoughlin's novel, "Heart of the Old Country". Bush played Kathy Popovich, an NYU student who attracts the attention of Mike Manadoro (Kevin Zegers), a fellow student with some shady connections. "The Narrows" was directed by François Velle. Bush was then seen in Table for Three (2009), an independent comedy that takes a look at the tangled relationships between couples and roommates. The film co-starred Brandon Routh and Jesse Bradford.
Bush garnered the most individual Teen Choice Awards in 2007, taking home awards in the categories of "Choice Movie Actress: Comedy", "Choice Movie Actress: Horror/Thriller" and "Choice Movie: Breakout Female". In addition, she was also a recipient of the "Rising Star" Award at the 2007 Vail Film Festival as well as the "New Hollywood Style Icon" Award at the 2008 Hollywood Style Awards.
Sophia is a passionate philanthropist whose causes focus on the celebration of arts as well as the environment. She is an advocate of the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, a foundation committed to the preservation of biodiversity within the Maasai tribal lands of East Africa. Funds support conservation, education, and health services within the Maasai community, as well as a host of programs designed to conserve Africa's legendary wildlife. She also contributes her time and talents to the Art of Elysium, a non-profit that enriches the lives of children battling serious medical conditions by bringing together artists to share their time and talent. She has also worked as an Assignment Editor for Annenberg TV News in her spare time. Her other talents include horseback riding, boxing, and photography. She enjoys reading and spending time with her friends, and resided in Wilmington, North Carolina, where One Tree Hill (2003) was filmed.- Actress
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Megan is an only child born in Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Martha, was a model, and her father, Carter Mullally Jr., was a contract player for Paramount. Megan first entered Northwestern University intending to study acting, but switched to English literature. However, she still ended up starring in several campus musicals, which gained attention from producers and prompted her to drop out of school. In 1985, she moved to Los Angeles with no particular success. But, in 1994, she co-starred in "Grease" on Broadway with Rosie O'Donnell and, in 1995, in "How To Succeed In Business" with Matthew Broderick. Her star has been rising ever since. Her band Nancy and Beth have recorded two albums and tour extensively. She has directed four music videos for Nancy and Beth, which can be found at nancyandbeth.com.- Actress
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Sofía Margarita Vergara Vergara was born and raised in Barranquilla, Colombia. Her mother, Margarita Vergara Dávila de Vergara, is a housewife. Her father, Julio Enrique Vergara Robayo, provides cattle to the meat industry. She has five siblings. She was educated at a private bilingual Spanish/English school. She then went on to study pre-dentistry. However, Sofía was discovered by a photographer, whilst at the beach, and this led to various jobs in modeling and television. At age 23, she was a runway model. From 1995 to 1998, she co-hosted a travel show, Fuera de serie (1995), which gave her exposure in the United States. Her first film role was the criminal comedy Big Trouble (2002). Her breakthrough role was as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on the American television series Modern Family (2009). In 2010-2013, she received four Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for this role. Sofía resides in Los Angeles, California with her son, Manolo.- Actress
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Kate Mara is an American actress. She starred in the Netflix political drama House of Cards (2013) as Zoe Barnes and appeared in the Fox TV series 24 (2001) as computer analyst Shari Rothenberg. She appeared in Brokeback Mountain (2005), We Are Marshall (2006), Shooter (2007), Transsiberian (2008), Stone of Destiny (2008), The Open Road (2009), Transcendence (2014), and Fantastic Four (2015) as the Invisible Woman. She also appeared in the FX horror mini-series American Horror Story (2011) as Hayden McClaine. Mara's film debut was in Random Hearts (1999), with Harrison Ford in 1999, directed by Sydney Pollack. In 2015, she also had a supporting role as astronaut "Beth Johanssen" in director Ridley Scott's film The Martian (2015). In the same year, she also starred as Ashley Smith in the movie Captive (2015).
Mara also starred in Morgan (2016), Megan Leavey (2017) and My Days of Mercy (2017).
Kate was born in Bedford, New York. She is one of four children of Kathleen McNulty (Rooney) and NFL football team New York Giants executive Timothy Christopher Mara. Her younger sister is actress Rooney Mara.
Her grandfathers were Wellington Mara, co-owner of the Giants, and Timothy Rooney, owner of Yonkers Raceway, and her grand-uncle is Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney, the former US Ambassador to Ireland. She is the great-granddaughter of Art Rooney Sr., the founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers football franchise. She often sings the national anthem at Giants home games. Her father has Irish, German, and French-Canadian ancestry, and her mother is of Irish and Italian descent.
Mara graduated from high school a year early. She was accepted at the prestigious NYU Tisch School of the Arts but deferred her admission for three consecutive years.- Actress
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Saoirse Una Ronan was born in The Bronx, New York City, New York, United States, to Irish parents, Monica Ronan (née Brennan) and Paul Ronan, an actor. When Saoirse was three, the family moved back to Dublin, Ireland. Saoirse grew up in Dublin and briefly in Co. Carlow before moving back to Dublin with her parents.
Saoirse made her first TV appearance with a small role in a few episodes of the TV series, The Clinic (2003). Her first film appearance was in the 2007 movie, I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007). Saoirse received international fame after appearing in the movie, Atonement (2007), which was directed by Joe Wright. The movie co-starred Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. The film was successful, both critically and commercially, and in 2008, Saoirse earned an Oscar nomination for her role. She became one of the youngest actresses to be nominated for an Oscar. She continued to earn success and fame. Between 2008 to 2011, she starred in a number of successful movies, including City of Ember (2008), which earned her a nomination for Irish Film & Television Award, The Lovely Bones (2009), for which she was nominated for a BAFTA Award, and The Way Back (2010), for which she won Irish Film & Television Award for Actress in a Supporting Role. In 2016, Ronan was nominated for her second Oscar for Brooklyn (2015). She became the second youngest actress to receive two Oscar nominations at the age of 21. The youngest actress is Angela Lansbury. In 2018, Ronan was nominated for her third Oscar for Lady Bird (2017). She's the second youngest actress (first being Jennifer Lawrence) to receive three Oscar nominations before the age of 24.
Saoirse Ronan resides in London, United Kingdom.