Favorite Actresses

1. Jennifer Lawrence

As the highest-paid actress in the world in 2015 and 2016, and with her films grossing over $5.5 billion worldwide, Jennifer Lawrence is often cited as the most successful actress of her generation. She is also the first person born in the 1990s to have won an acting Oscar.

Jennifer Shrader Lawrence...

2. Yvonne Strahovski

Actress | Stateless

Yvonne Jaqueline Strzechowski was born and raised in Australia. Her parents were Polish immigrants. She attended the Santa Sabina College for her high school education. She then went on to study Performance at the University of Western Sydney's School of Contemporary Arts, graduating in 2003. ...

3. Evangeline Lilly

Actress | The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Evangeline Lilly, born in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, in 1979, was discovered on the streets of Kelowna, British Columbia, by the famous Ford modeling agency. Although she initially decided to pass on a modeling career, she went ahead and signed with Ford anyway, to help pay for her University of ...

4. Amy Adams

Actress | Arrival

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 ...

5. Carrie Fisher

Actress | Star Wars

Carrie Frances Fisher was born on October 21, 1956 in Burbank, California, to singers/actors Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. She was an actress and writer known for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return ...

6. Kate Winslet

Actress | Titanic

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...

7. Scarlett Johansson

Actress | Lost in Translation

Scarlett Ingrid Johansson was born on November 22, 1984 in Manhattan, New York City, New York. Her mother, Melanie Sloan is from a Jewish family from the Bronx and her father, Karsten Johansson is a Danish-born architect from Copenhagen. She has a sister, Vanessa Johansson, who is also an actress, ...

8. Erica Durance

Actress | The Butterfly Effect 2

Erica Durance was born on June 21, 1978 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She is an actress and producer known for Smallville (2001) and Saving Hope (2012). She grew up with an older brother and sister on a turkey farm in Three Hills. After school, she moved to Vancouver to start her acting career. ...

9. Allison Mack

Actress | Smallville

Mack was born in Germany but moved with her family to Long Beach, California, when she was 2. She began acting at 4 with print work and commercials, and began studying at The Young Actors Space in Los Angeles when she was 7. Before joining the cast of Smallville (2001), Allison starred in the ...

10. Diane Kruger

Actress | Inglourious Basterds

Diane Kruger was born Diane Heidkrüger in Algermissen, near Hildesheim, Germany, to Maria-Theresa, a bank employee, and Hans-Heinrich Heidkrüger, a computer specialist. She studied ballet with the Royal Ballet in London before an injury ended her career. She returned to Germany and became a top ...

11. Emma Watson

Actress | The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson was born in Paris, France, to British parents, Jacqueline Luesby and Chris Watson, both lawyers. She moved to Oxfordshire when she was five, where she attended the Dragon School. From the age of six, Emma knew that she wanted to be an actress and, for a number of years,...

12. Claire Danes

Actress | My So-Called Life

New Yorker Claire Catherine Danes was born in Manhattan, the daughter of Carla (Hall), a day-care provider and artist, and Christopher Danes, a computer consultant and photographer. She has an older brother, Asa. Her paternal grandfather, Gibson Andrew Danes, was a Dean of the Yale School of Art ...

13. Emma Stone

Actress | La La Land

Emily Jean "Emma" Stone was born on November 6, 1988 in Scottsdale, Arizona to Krista Jean Stone (née Yeager), a homemaker & Jeffrey Charles "Jeff" Stone, a contracting company founder and CEO. She is of Swedish, German & British Isles descent. Stone began acting as a child as a member of the ...

14. Liv Tyler

Actress | Armageddon

Liv Tyler is an actress of international renown and has been a familiar face on our screens for over two decades and counting. She began modelling at the age of fourteen before pursuing a career in acting. After making her film debut in Bruce Beresford's Silent Fall, she was cast by fledgling ...

15. Cate Blanchett

Actress | Carol

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 ...

16. Sigourney Weaver

Actress | Alien Resurrection

Sigourney Weaver has created a host of memorable characters, both dramatic and comic, ranging from Ripley in Alien to Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist to Gwen/Tawny in Galaxy Quest and most recently, 14-year-old Kiri in Avatar: The Way of Water. With a career spanning over 50 years, Weaver has ...

17. Gwyneth Paltrow

Actress | Shakespeare in Love

Gwyneth Kate Paltrow was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of noted producer and director Bruce Paltrow and Tony Award-winning actress Blythe Danner. Her father was from a Jewish family, while her mother is of mostly German descent. When Gwyneth was eleven, the family moved to Massachusetts, where ...

18. Judi Dench

Actress | Skyfall

Dame Judi Dench was born Judith Olivia Dench in York, England, to Eleanora Olive (Jones), who was from Dublin, Ireland, and Reginald Arthur Dench, a doctor from Dorset, England. She attended Mount School in York, and studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She has performed with the ...

19. Julia Ormond

Actress | Sabrina

The dark and classically beautiful British actress and social activist Julia (Karin) Ormond was born on January 4, 1965, in Surrey, into England, the second of five children. Born of privilege as the daughter of a well-to-do laboratory technician, her parents divorced when she was young. Julia ...

20. Reese Witherspoon

Producer | Wild

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 ...

21. Emma Thompson

Actress | Sense and Sensibility

Emma Thompson was born on April 15, 1959 in Paddington, London, into a family of actors - father Eric Thompson and mother Phyllida Law, who has co-starred with Thompson in several films. Her sister, Sophie Thompson, is an actor as well. Her father was English-born and her mother is Scottish-born. ...

22. Lynn Collins

Actress | X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Viola Lynn Collins was born in Houston, Texas, to Patricia Lynn (Campbell) and Phillip Dean Collins. She attended the Juilliard School for Drama and had a great deal of Shakespearean training before being cast as "Portia" in "The Merchant of Venice". She also played "Ophelia" in a production of "...

23. Jenna Fischer

Actress | The Office

Jenna Fischer is best known for playing Pam Beesly on the acclaimed television show The Office, for which she received an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress and two SAG Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble Comedy.

She was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but was raised mostly in St...

24. Lana Parrilla

Actress | Once Upon a Time

Lana Maria Parrilla (born July 15, 1977) is an American actress. Parrilla is best known for her roles on television and radio. She was a regular cast member in the fifth season of the ABC sitcom Spin City (1996) from 2000 to 2001. She later starred in Boomtown (2002-2003), Windfall (2006), ...

25. Sandra Bullock

Producer | The Proposal

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 ...

26. Meg Ryan

Actress | When Harry Met Sally...

Blonde-haired, blue-eyed with an effervescent personality, Meg Ryan was born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra in Fairfield, Connecticut, to Susan (Duggan), an English teacher and one-time actress, and Harry Hyra, a math teacher. She is of Ruthenian, Polish, Irish, and German ancestry ("Hyra" is a ...

27. Hailee Steinfeld

Actress | True Grit

Hailee Steinfeld was born on December 11, 1996 in Tarzana, California, to Cheri (Domasin), an interior designer, and Peter Steinfeld, a personal fitness trainer. She has a brother, Griffin. Her uncle is Jake Steinfeld, a fitness trainer, and her great-uncle is actor Larry Domasin. Her father is of ...

28. Anna Paquin

Actress | The Piano

Anna Paquin is the first millennial to have received an Academy Award nomination for acting, and the first to win.

She was born on July 24, 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Mary (Brophy), an English teacher from Wellington, New Zealand, and Brian Paquin, a Canadian phys-ed teacher. Anna moved ...

29. Helen Mirren

Actress | The Queen

Dame Helen Mirren was born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital in West London. Her mother, Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda (Rogers), was from a working-class English family, and her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov, was a Russian-born civil servant, from Kuryanovo, whose own father was a diplomat. ...

30. Jena Malone

Actress | The Neon Demon

Jena Malone was born in Reno, Nevada, raised in Sparks, Nevada; two cities that have merged together over time, to Deborah Malone and Edward Berge. Her grandfather owned a casino, Karl's Silver Club, in Reno. She was raised by her mother and her mother's partner. Beginning as a child actress, and ...

31. Hayley Atwell

Actress | Captain America: The First Avenger

Born in London, England, Hayley Elizabeth Atwell has dual citizenship of the United Kingdom and the United States. An only child, Hayley was named after actress Hayley Mills. Her parents, Alison (Cain) and Grant Atwell, both motivational speakers, met at a London workshop of Dale Carnegie's ...

32. Jaimie Alexander

Actress | Thor

Jaimie Alexander was born in Greenville, South Carolina, but moved with her family to Grapevine, Texas, when she was four years old. She took theatre classes in grade school as a hobby but was kicked out in high school because she could not sing, and so she took up sports instead. At age 17 she ...

33. Emily Blunt

Actress | Edge of Tomorrow

Emily Olivia Leah Blunt is a British actress known for her roles in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), The Young Victoria (2009), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and The Girl on the Train (2016), among many others.

Blunt was born on February 23, 1983, in Roehampton, South West London, England, the second of ...

34. Mandy Moore

Actress | A Walk to Remember

Amanda Leigh Moore was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, on April 10, 1984, to Stacy (Friedman), a former news reporter, and Don Moore, an airline pilot. During her childhood, her family moved to Orlando, Florida, where she was raised. She has Russian Jewish (from her maternal grandfather), English, ...

35. Olivia Wilde

Actress | Tron: Legacy

Actress and activist Olivia Wilde is a modern day renaissance woman, starring in many acclaimed film productions, while simultaneously giving back to the community.

She was born on March 10, 1984 in New York City. Her parents are Leslie Cockburn (née Leslie Corkill Redlich) and Andrew Cockburn. Her ...

36. Melissa McBride

Actress | The Walking Dead

Melissa Suzanne McBride (born May 23, 1965) is an American actress and former casting director, best known for her role as Carol Peletier on the AMC series The Walking Dead. McBride has garnered critical acclaim and received multiple awards and nominations for her role on the show.

McBride was born ...

37. Gemma Arterton

Actress | Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Gemma Christina Arterton was born in Gravesend, Kent, England, where she was raised. She is the daughter of Sally-Anne (Heap), a cleaner, and Barry J. Arterton, a welder. Her mother's cousin is singer-songwriter Eric Goulden.

Her parents divorced when she was age five, and Gemma subsequently lived ...

38. America Ferrera

Actress | Barbie

America Georgine Ferrera (born April 18, 1984) is an American actress. She is known for her leading role as Betty Suarez on the American Broadcasting Company's comedy-drama television series Ugly Betty (2006) . Her acting garnered critical acclaim, and she won the Golden Globe Award for Best ...

39. Jennifer Morrison

Actress | House M.D.

Jennifer Marie Morrison was born in Chicago, Illinois, the oldest child of teachers David and Judy Morrison. She was raised in Arlington Heights, IL, with a younger sister and brother. She attended the same school her parents taught at, Prospect High School. As a child, she did some work as a model...

40. Georgie Henley

Actress | The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Georgina Helen Henley was born July 9, 1995 in Ilkley, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, the youngest of three daughters of Mike and Helen Henley. When she was young, she joined a local drama group called "Upstagers". It was there that she started her acting career, participating in stage ...