List activity
128 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
176 people
- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Milla Jovovich is a Ukrainian-American actress, supermodel, fashion designer, singer and public figure, who was on the cover of more than a hundred magazines, and starred in such films as The Fifth Element (1997), Ultraviolet (2006), and the Resident Evil (2002) franchise.
Milica Bogdanovna Jovovich was born on December 17, 1975 in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now in Ukraine). Her Serbian father, Bogdan Jovovich, was a medical doctor in Kyiv. There, he met her mother, Galina Jovovich (née Loginova), a Russian actress. At the age of 5, in 1981, Milla emigrated with her parents from the Soviet Union, moving first to London, UK, then to Sacramento, California, and eventually settled in Los Angeles. There her parents worked as house cleaners for the household of director Brian De Palma. Her parents separated, and eventually divorced, because her father was arrested and spent several years in prison.
Young Milla Jovovich was brought up by her single mother in Los Angeles. In addition to her native Ukrainian, she also speaks Russian and English. However, in spite of her cosmopolitan background, Milla was ostracized by some of her classmates, as a kid who emigrated from the Soviet Union amidst the paranoia of the Cold War. Many emotional scars had affected her behavior, but she eventually emerged as a resilient, multi-talented, albeit rebellious and risk-taking girl. She was coached by her actress mother since her childhood, first at home, then studied music, ballet, and acting in Los Angeles.
She shot to international fame after she was spotted by the photographer Richard Avedon at the age of 11, and was featured in Revlon's "Most Unforgettable Women in the World" advertisements, and on the cover of the Italian fashion magazine 'Lei' which was her first cover shoot. She made her first professional model contract at the age of 12, and soon made it to the cover of 'The Face', 'Vogue', 'Cosmopolitan' and many other magazines. In 1994, she appeared on the cover of 'High Times' in the UK, at the age of 18. The total number of her magazine covers worldwide was over one hundred by 2004, and keeps counting. In 2004, she made $10.4 million, becoming the highest paid supermodel in the world.
Milla appeared in ad campaigns for Chanel, Versace, Emporio Armani, Donna Karen, DKNY, Celine, P&K, H&H, and continues her role as the worldwide spokesperson and model for L'Oreal. Thanks to their continued success with Milla, Giorgio Armani chose her to be the face of his fragrance, Night. In addition to Armani's fragrance, Milla was the face for Calvin Klein's Obsession and Christian Dior's Poison for over 10 years and has most recently become the new face for Donna Karan's Cashmere Mist fragrance, which debuts in August 2009. Milla continues to shoot with the fashion industry's most sought after photographers, including Peter Lindbergh, Mario Sorrenti, Craig McDean and Inez & Vinoodh.
Milla made her acting debut in the Disney Channel movie The Night Train to Kathmandu (1988) and she made guest appearances on television series including Married... with Children (1987) (in 1989 as a French exchange student), Paradise (1988) and Parker Lewis Can't Lose (1990). In 1988, at age 12, she made her film debut credited as Milla in a supporting role in Two Moon Junction (1988) by writer/director Zalman King. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she played several supporting roles as a teenage actress in film and on television, then starred in Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991). In 1997, she co-starred opposite Bruce Willis in the sci-fi blockbuster The Fifth Element (1997), then she starred as the title character of The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999).
In the early 2000s, Milla had a few years of uncertainty in her acting career due to the uneven quality of her films, as well as some hectic events in her private life. She appeared with Mel Gibson in Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotel (2000) which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. She went on to co-star with Wes Bentley and Sarah Polley in The Claim (2000) and in Ben Stiller's spoof of the world of models and high-fashion, Zoolander (2001).
Milla achieved box office success in the U.S. and around the world with the action-packed thriller, Resident Evil (2002), based on the wildly popular video game, Resident Evil. It was written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Milla reprised her role as the zombie slaying heroine, Alice, in Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), and again in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) A seventh resident Evil movie is in pre-production.
She received glowing reviews opposite Oscar-winner Adrien Brody and Illeana Douglas in Dummy (2002) which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. In the spring of 2006, Milla returned to the big screen as action heroine, Violet, in the futuristic film Ultraviolet (2006) directed by Kurt Wimmer.
Focusing on her personal sense of style, her love of fashion led Milla and her friend and business partner, Carmen Hawk, to launch their Jovovich-Hawk clothing line, which achieved instant acclaim in the domestic and international fashion world. The fresh, unique line garnered the attention of red carpet watchers and fashion magazines, including American Vogue, who featured Jovovich-Hawk on their coveted list of "10 Things to Watch Out for in 2005." A student of voice and guitar since she was very young, Milla began writing songs for her first record at the age of 15.
Her first album, "The Divine Comedy", was released by EMI Records in 1994. Informed by her experiences as a child growing up as a Russian emigrant in the Red-bashing Reagan era, the introspective European-folkish debut drew favorable reviews for Milla's songwriting and performing. She continues to write music, and has had songs featured on several film soundtracks. She has been writing music and lyrics to her song-demos, playing her guitar and sampling other sounds from her computer, and allowing free download and remix of her songs from her website.
Charitable work also plays a major part in Milla's life. She has served as Master of Ceremonies and co-chaired with Elizabeth Taylor for the amfAR and Cinema Against AIDS event at the Venice Film Festival, and has been heavily involved with The Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, as well as The Wildlands Project.
For many years Milla Jovovich has been maintaining a healthier lifestyle, practicing yoga and meditation, trying to avoid junk food, and cooking for herself. Since she was a little girl, Milla has been writing a private diary, a habit she learned from her mother. She has been keeping a record of many good and bad facts of her life, her travels, her relationships, and all important ideas and events in her career, planning eventually to publish an autobiography. After dissolution of her two previous marriages, Milla Jovovich became engaged to film director Paul W.S. Anderson; their daughter, Ever Anderson, was born on November 3, 2007. They got married on August 22, 2009. Their second daughter, Dashiel Edan, was born on April 1, 2015.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Christina Rene Hendricks was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Twin Falls, Idaho. Her father, Robert, originally from England, worked for the U.S. Forest Service, while her mother, Jackie Sue (Raymond), was a psychologist. At the age of 13 her father transferred to the Forest Service Washington, D.C. headquarters and the family moved to nearby Fairfax, Virginia. She began acting at school and went into modeling from the ages of 18 to 27. In her early 20s, she also began appearing on television, landing a recurring role in Beggars and Choosers (1999) in 2000 and another on Kevin Hill (2004) before rising to international fame in Mad Men (2007). As well as her more famously conventional awards nominations (Emmys) and wins (SAG Awards) she also won a SyFy Genre Award in for "Best Special Guest/Television" for her role as Saffron in Joss Whedon's short-lived Firefly (2002).- Actress
- Director
- Producer
Bryce Dallas Howard was born on March 2, 1981, in Los Angeles, California. She was conceived in Dallas, Texas (the reason for her middle name). Her father, Ron Howard, is a former actor turned Oscar-winning director. Her mother is actress and writer Cheryl Howard (née Alley). Her famous relatives include her uncle, actor Clint Howard, and her grandparents, actors Rance Howard and Jean Speegle Howard. She also has two younger twin sisters, Jocelyn and Paige Howard (also an actress), born in 1985, and a brother, Reed Howard, born in 1987. Her ancestry includes German, English, Scottish, and Irish.
Howard was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, because her parents decided to raise their four children as far away from the trappings of showbiz milieu as possible. During most of her childhood, she really did not have much access to a TV. She attended Greenwich Country Day School, and Byram Hills High School in Armonk, New York. At that time, she discovered existentialism and devoured books by Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. She attended the prestigious Steppenwolf School and Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts camp at Catskills, together with her friend, Natalie Portman. She applied to drama school as Bryce Dallas, dropping her last name to eschew special treatment because of association with her renowned father. From 1999-2003, she studied at the Stella Adler Conservatory and at the New York University Tisch School of Arts and graduated with a BFA degree in Drama in 2003. At that time, she performed in Broadway productions of classical plays by George Bernard Shaw, William Shakespeare and Anton Chekhov.
Young Howard appeared in three of her father's films as an extra, including her appearance as a child together with her mother in Apollo 13 (1995). She made her feature-film debut as Heather, a supporting role in Book of Love (2004) by director Alan Brown. Director M. Night Shyamalan was impressed by her performance in a Broadway play and cast her, without an audition, as a female lead in his two thrillers: The Village (2004) and Lady in the Water (2006). Howard replaced Nicole Kidman in the Dogville (2003) sequel, Manderlay (2005). She starred as Rosalind in As You Like It (2006), a reprise of her stage role that made such an impression on Shyamalan. She also played Gwen Stacy in the third installment of the Spider-Man franchise, Spider-Man 3 (2007), and the female lead, Claire, in the sequel Jurassic World (2015). Both films broke the records for highest openings weekends at the time of their release. Among Bryce's other major films are Terminator Salvation (2009), The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), The Help (2011), and 50/50 (2011).
Howard became a devoted vegan, after Joaquin Phoenix showed her Earthlings (2005), a documentary about animal cruelty. After seeing that, she has consumed no animal products, not even milk or eggs. Her other activities outside of the acting profession include playing basketball and writing.
On June 17, 2006, in Connecticut, she married her long-time boyfriend, actor Seth Gabel, whom she met at New York University and had dated for five years. On February 16, 2007, Bryce and her husband, Seth, became parents of their first child, a son named Theodore Norman Howard Gabel. Their second child, a daughter named Beatrice Jean Howard Gabel, was born on January 19, 2012.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Jennifer Garner, who catapulted into stardom with her lead role on the television series Alias (2001), has come a long way from her birthplace of Houston, Texas. Raised in Charleston, West Virginia by her mother Patricia Ann (née English), a retired English teacher, and her father, Billy Jack Garner, a former chemical engineer, she is the second of their three daughters. She spent nine years of her adolescence studying ballet, and characterizes her years in dance as consisting of determination rather than talent, being driven mostly by a love of the stage.
Jennifer took this determination with her when she enrolled at Denison University as a chemistry major; later she changed her major when she discovered that her passion for the stage was stronger than her love of science. New York attracted the young actress after college, and she worked as a hostess while pursuing a career in film and television. Her most recent move has been to Los Angeles, a decision that led to a role on the television series Felicity (1998), where she met her future husband Scott Foley. The couple divorced in 2004.
Jennifer starred in the television series Alias (2001) as Agent Sydney Bristow, who works for the Central Intelligence Agency. For her work, Garner has received four consecutive Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She has also received four Golden Globe nominations and won once, as well as received two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and won once. She has appeared in numerous other television production as well as such films as Elektra (2005), 13 Going on 30 (2004), Daredevil (2003), Pearl Harbor (2001) and Dude, Where's My Car? (2000). Aside from filming Alias (2001), Jennifer enjoys cooking, gardening, hiking, and--inspired by her character on the series--kickboxing. She married actor and filmmaker Ben Affleck in 2005, now her ex-husband, with whom she has three children.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Jennifer Grey is an American actress who starred in the film Dirty Dancing (1987) opposite Patrick Swayze, a sleeper hit that would become one of the biggest films of the 1980s. She had previously appeared with Patrick Swayze in John Milius's cold war drama Red Dawn (1984) as 'Toni,' one of the 'Wolverines,' a group of renegade teenagers fighting for their country during World War III.
She then starred in Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club (1984) and the John Badham project American Flyers (1985). By this time she had been linked in with the 'so-called' Brat Pack and unsurprisingly won a starring role in John Hughes's hit comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) playing the older sister of Matthew Broderick and love interest of Charlie Sheen.
As the 1980s drew to a close, Jennifer headlined Howard Brookner's romantic drama Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989), which again teamed her with Alan Ruck, and also Matt Dillon and Madonna. Since then she has worked steadily, starring in over 34 Film and TV appearances including If the Shoe Fits (1990), Wind (1992), and Bounce (2000).
Jennifer will nevertheless be best remembered as 'Baby' in Dirty Dancing (1987), a role that earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
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
- Producer
- Director
Jennifer Love Hewitt was born in Waco, Texas, to Patricia Mae (Shipp), a speech-language pathologist, and Herbert Daniel Hewitt, a medical technician. She has English, Italian, French, Scottish, and German ancestry. She got her first name from her older brother Todd Daniel Hewitt (b. November 8, 1970), who picked the name after a little blonde girl on whom he'd had a crush. Her mother selected Jennifer's middle name, Love (which she goes by offstage), from her best college friend. Her parents separated when she was six months old and her mother raised her in Killeen, Texas.
Hewitt made her official performing debut at age 3 when she sang at a livestock show. At age 5, she was taking tap, jazz, and ballet lessons, which led to her joining the Texas Show Team, who toured the Soviet Union and Europe. When she was 10 her family moved to Los Angeles with encouragement from talent scouts, while Todd stayed behind to finish high school in Texas Jennifer quickly found commercial work and a role on Disney's Kids Incorporated (1984) in 1989. She went through a series of television flops before finally hitting it big on Party of Five (1994) in 1995.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
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. After graduating from high school, she attended Loyola University in Chicago, where she studied Theater and English. She then moved on to study at the Steppenwolf Theater Company, before relocating to Los Angeles, California to pursue her acting career. Morrison's movie debut came in 1994, playing the daughter of Richard Gere and Sharon Stone in Intersection (1994). Success followed with various film and television roles, including the lead in Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000). She came to wide scale public attention in 2004 for her role as Dr. Allison Cameron in the television series House (2004), for which she was nominated for a prestigious Screen Actors Guild Award. Since leaving "House M.D.", her career has continued to progress with roles in Star Trek (2009), How I Met Your Mother (2005) and Warrior (2011).- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
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. Louis, Missouri. Jenna watched her mom, Anne, perform in church plays when she was young, which instilled a love of theater and performance.
A trained theater actress, Fischer returned to her roots after wrapping The Office. She starred in the Off-Broadway play Reasons to Be Happy, written and directed by Neil LaBute and co-starring Josh Hamilton, Leslie Bibb, and Fred Weller. She went on to star in the world premiere of Steve Martin's newest play Meteor Shower, an absurdist comedy opposite Greg Germann and Josh Stamberg, for a record-breaking run at the Old Globe Theatre.
In October 2019, Fischer and The Office cast-mate and real-life best friend Angela Kinsey launched a podcast called Office Ladies on the Earwolf platform, which has become wildly popular, landing in the Top Ten globally every week and receiving over 200 million downloads in its first two years. In January 2021, Office Ladies won iHeart Radio's Podcast of the Year award.
She is the author of two books: The Actor's Life: A Survival Guide, in which she details her journey from St. Louis to Hollywood to become a working actress, and the forthcoming Office BFF's: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There (co-authored with Angela Kinsey), which is a memoir of their best friendship and time working on The Office.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
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
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Anne Jacqueline Hathaway was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Kate McCauley Hathaway, an actress, and Gerald T. Hathaway, a lawyer, both originally from Philadelphia. She is of mostly Irish descent, along with English, German, and French. Her first major role came in the short-lived television series Get Real (1999). She gained widespread recognition for her roles in The Princess Diaries (2001) and its 2004 sequel as a young girl who discovers she is a member of royalty, opposite Julie Andrews and Heather Matarazzo.
She also had a notable role in Nicholas Nickleby (2002) opposite Charlie Hunnam and Jamie Bell, and a starring role in Ella Enchanted (2004). A former top-ranking soprano in New York, Hathaway was reportedly a front-runner for the role of "Christine" in the 2004 The Phantom of the Opera (2004). However, due to scheduling conflicts with The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), she couldn't take the role, which was later given to newcomer Emmy Rossum.
Hathaway soon started to move away from family-friendly films. Following The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), she appeared topless in the films Havoc (2005) opposite Josh Peck and Brokeback Mountain (2005) opposite Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Her desire to break out of her "Princess Diaries" image parallels that of her one-time co-star, Julie Andrews, who went topless in the film S.O.B. (1981) in order to break away from the image she created from her 1960s musicals. In interviews, Hathaway said that doing family-friendly films didn't mean she was similar to their characters or mean she objected to appearing nude in other films.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Kate Beckinsale was born on 26 July 1973 in Hounslow, Middlesex, England, and has resided in London for most of her life. Her mother is Judy Loe, who has appeared in a number of British dramas and sitcoms and continues to work as an actress, predominantly in British television productions. Her father was Richard Beckinsale, born in Nottingham, England. He starred in a number of popular British television comedies during the 1970s, most notably the series Rising Damp (1974), Porridge (1974) and The Lovers (1970). He passed away tragically early in 1979 at the age of 31.
Kate attended the private school Godolphin and Latymer School in London for her grade and primary school education. In her teens she twice won the British bookseller W.H. Smith Young Writers' competition - once for three short stories and once for three poems. After a tumultuous adolescence (a bout of anorexia - cured - and a smoking habit which continues to this day), she gradually took up the profession of acting.
Her major acting debut came in a TV film about World War II called One Against the Wind (1991), filmed in Luxembourg during the summer of 1991. It first aired on American television that December. Kate began attending Oxford University's New College in the fall of 1991, majoring in French and Russian literature. She had already decided that she wanted to act, but to broaden her horizons she chose university over drama school. While in her first year at Oxford, Kate received her big break in Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1993). Kate worked in three other films while attending Oxford, beginning with a part in the medieval historical drama Royal Deceit (1994), cast as Ethel. The film was shot during the spring of 1993 on location in Denmark, and she filmed her supporting part during New College's Easter break. Later in the summer of that year she played the lead in the contemporary mystery drama Uncovered (1994). Before she went back to school, her third year at university was spent at Oxford's study-abroad program in Paris, France, immersing herself in the French language, Parisian culture and French cigarettes.
A year away from the academic community and living on her own in the French capital caused her to re-evaluate the direction of her life. She faced a choice: continue with school or concentrate on her flourishing acting career. After much thought, she chose the acting career. In the spring of 1994 Kate left Oxford, after finishing three years of study. Kate appeared in the BBC/Thames Television satire Cold Comfort Farm (1995), filmed in London and East Sussex during late summer 1994 and which opened to spectacular reviews in the United States, grossing over $5 million during its American run. It was re-released to U.K. theaters in the spring of 1997.
Acting on the stage consumed the first part of 1995; she toured in England with the Thelma Holts Theatre Company production of Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull". After turning down several mediocre scripts "and going nearly berserk with boredom", she waited seven months before another interesting role was offered to her. Her big movie of 1995 was the romance/horror movie Haunted (1995), starring opposite Aidan Quinn and John Gielgud, and filmed in West Sussex. In this film she wanted to play "an object of desire", unlike her past performances where her characters were much less the siren and more the worldly innocent. Kate's first film project of 1996 was the British ITV production of Jane Austen's novel Emma (1996). Her last film of 1996 was the comedy Shooting Fish (1997), filmed at Shepperton Studios in London during early fall. She played the part of Georgie, an altruistic con artist. She had a daughter, Lily, in 1999 with actor Michael Sheen.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
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
- Producer
- Director
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
- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Keira Christina Knightley was born March 26, 1985 in the South West Greater London suburb of Richmond. She is the daughter of actor Will Knightley and actress turned playwright Sharman Macdonald. An older brother, Caleb Knightley, was born in 1979. Her father is English, while her Scottish-born mother is of Scottish and Welsh origin. Brought up immersed in the acting profession from both sides - writing and performing - it is little wonder that the young Keira asked for her own agent at the age of three. She was granted one at the age of six and performed in her first TV role as "Little Girl" in Royal Celebration (1993), aged seven.
It was discovered at an early age that Keira had severe difficulties in reading and writing. She was not officially dyslexic as she never sat the formal tests required of the British Dyslexia Association. Instead, she worked incredibly hard, encouraged by her family, until the problem had been overcome by her early teens. Her first multi-scene performance came in A Village Affair (1995), an adaptation of the lesbian love story by Joanna Trollope. This was followed by small parts in the British crime series The Bill (1984), an exiled German princess in The Treasure Seekers (1996) and a much more substantial role as the young "Judith Dunbar" in Giles Foster's adaptation of Rosamunde Pilcher's novel Coming Home (1998), alongside Peter O'Toole, Penelope Keith and Joanna Lumley. The first time Keira's name was mentioned around the world was when it was revealed (in a plot twist kept secret by director George Lucas) that she played Natalie Portman's decoy "Padme" to Portman's "Amidala" in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). It was several years before agreement was reached over which scenes featured Keira as the queen and which featured Natalie!
Keira had no formal training as an actress and did it out of pure enjoyment. She went to an ordinary council-run school in nearby Teddington and had no idea what she wanted to do when she left. By now, she was beginning to receive far more substantial roles and was starting to turn work down as one project and her schoolwork was enough to contend with. She reappeared on British television in 1999 as "Rose Fleming" in Alan Bleasdale's faithful reworking of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1999), and traveled to Romania to film her first title role in Walt Disney's Princess of Thieves (2001) in which she played Robin Hood's daughter, Gwyn. Keira's first serious boyfriend was her Princess of Thieves (2001) co-star Del Synnott, and they later co-starred in Peter Hewitt's 'work of fart' Thunderpants (2002). Nick Hamm's dark thriller The Hole (2001) kept her busy during 2000, and featured her first nude scene (15 at the time, the film was not released until she was 16 years old). In the summer of 2001, while Keira studied and sat her final school exams (she received six A's), she filmed a movie about an Asian girl's (Parminder Nagra) love for football and the prejudices she has to overcome regarding both her culture and her religion). Bend It Like Beckham (2002) was a smash hit in football-mad Britain but it had to wait until another of Keira's films propelled it to the top end of the US box office. Bend It Like Beckham (2002) cost just £3.5m to make, and nearly £1m of that came from the British Lottery. It took £11m in the UK and has since gone on to score more than US$76m worldwide.
Meanwhile, Keira had started A-levels at Esher College, studying Classics, English Literature and Political History, but continued to take acting roles which she thought would widen her experience as an actress. The story of a drug-addicted waitress and her friendship with the young son of a drug-addict, Pure (2002), occupied Keira from January to March 2002. Also at this time, Keira's first attempt at Shakespeare was filmed. She played "Helena" in a modern interpretation of a scene from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" entitled The Seasons Alter (2002). This was commissioned by the environmental organization "Futerra", of which Keira's mother is patron. Keira received no fee for this performance or for another short film, New Year's Eve (2002), by award-winning director Col Spector. But it was a chance encounter with producer Andy Harries at the London premiere of Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) which forced Keira to leave her studies and pursue acting full-time. The meeting lead to an audition for the role of "Larisa Feodorovna Guishar" - the classic heroine of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago (2002), played famously in the David Lean movie by Julie Christie. This was to be a big-budget TV movie with a screenplay written by Andrew Davies. Keira won the part and the mini-series was filmed throughout the Spring of 2002 in Slovakia, co-starring Sam Neill and Hans Matheson as "Yuri Zhivago". Keira rounded off 2002 with a few scenes in the first movie to be directed by Blackadder and Vicar of Dibley writer Richard Curtis. Called Love Actually (2003), Keira played "Juliet", a newlywed whose husband's Best Man is secretly besotted with her. A movie filmed after Love Actually (2003) but released before it was to make the world sit up and take notice of this beautiful fresh-faced young actress with a cute British accent. It was a movie which Keira very nearly missed out on, altogether. Auditions were held in London for a new blockbuster movie called Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), but heavy traffic in the city forced Keira to be tagged on to the end of the day's auditions list. It helped - she got the part. Filming took place in Los Angeles and the Caribbean from October 2002 to March 2003 and was released to massive box office success and almost universal acclaim in the July of that year.
Meanwhile, a small British film called Bend It Like Beckham (2002) had sneaked onto a North American release slate and was hardly setting the box office alight. But Keira's dominance in "Pirates" had set tongues wagging and questions being asked about the actress playing "Elizabeth Swann". Almost too late, "Bend It"'s distributors realized one of its two stars was the same girl whose name was on everyone's lips due to "Pirates", and took the unusual step of re-releasing "Bend It" to 1,000 screens across the US, catapulting it from no. 26 back up to no. 12. "Pirates", meanwhile, was fighting off all contenders at the top spot, and stayed in the Top 3 for an incredible 21 weeks. It was perhaps no surprise, then, that Keira was on producer Jerry Bruckheimer's wanted list for the part of "Guinevere" in a planned accurate telling of the legend of "King Arthur". Filming took place in Ireland and Wales from June to November 2003. In July, Keira had become the celebrity face of British jeweller and luxury goods retailer, Asprey. At a photoshoot for the company on Long Island New York in August, Keira met and fell in love with Northern Irish model Jamie Dornan. King Arthur (2004) was released in July 2004 to lukewarm reviews. It seems audiences wanted the legend after all, and not necessarily the truth. Keira became the breakout star and 'one to watch in 2004' throughout the world's media at the end of 2003.
Keira's 2004 started off in Scotland and Canada filming John Maybury's time-travelling thriller The Jacket (2005) with Oscar-winner Adrien Brody. A planned movie of Deborah Moggach's novel, "Tulip Fever", about forbidden love in 17th Century Amsterdam, was canceled in February after the British government suddenly closed tax loopholes which allowed filmmakers to claw back a large proportion of their expenditure. Due to star Keira and Jude Law in the main roles, the film remains mothballed. Instead, Keira spent her time wisely, visiting Ethiopia on behalf of the "Comic Relief" charity, and spending summer at various grandiose locations around the UK filming what promises to be a faithful adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel Pride & Prejudice (2005), alongside Matthew Macfadyen as "Mr. Darcy", and with Donald Sutherland and Judi Dench in supporting roles. In October 2004, Keira received her first major accolade, the Hollywood Film Award for Best Breakthrough Actor - Female, and readers of Empire Magazine voted her the Sexiet Movie Star Ever. The remainder of 2004 saw Keira once again trying a completely new genre, this time the part-fact, part-fiction life story of model turned bounty hunter Domino (2005). 2005 started with the premiere of The Jacket (2005) at the Sundance Film Festival, with the US premiere in LA on February 28th. Much of the year was then spent in the Caribbean filming both sequels to Pirates Of The Caribbean. Keira's first major presenting role came in a late-night bed-in comedy clip show for Comic Relief with presenter Johnny Vaughan. In late July, promotions started for the September release of Pride & Prejudice (2005), with British fans annoyed to learn that the US version would end with a post-marriage kiss, but the European version would not. Nevertheless, when the movie opened in September on both sides of the Atlantic, Keira received her greatest praise thus far in her career, amid much talk of awards. It spent three weeks at No. 1 in the UK box office.
Domino (2005) opened well in October, overshadowed by the death of Domino Harvey earlier in the year. Keira received Variety's Personality Of The Year Award in November, topped the following month by her first Golden Globe nomination, for Pride & Prejudice (2005). KeiraWeb.com exclusively announced that Keira would play Helene Joncour in an adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's novella Silk (2007). Pride & Prejudice (2005) garnered six BAFTA nominations at the start of 2006, but not Best Actress for Keira, a fact which paled soon after by the announcement she had received her first Academy Award nomination, the third youngest Best Actress Oscar hopeful. A controversial nude Vanity Fair cover of Keira and Scarlett Johansson kept the press busy up till the Oscars, with Reese Witherspoon taking home the gold man in the Best Actress category, although Keira's Vera Wang dress got more media attention. Keira spent early summer in Europe filming Silk (2007) opposite Michael Pitt, and the rest of the summer in the UK filming Atonement (2007), in which she plays Cecilia Tallis, and promoting the new Pirates movie (her Ellen Degeneres interview became one of the year's Top 10 'viral downloads'). Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) broke many box office records when it opens worldwide in July, becoming the third biggest movie ever by early September. Keira sued British newspaper The Daily Mail in early 2007 after her image in a bikini accompanied an article about a woman who blamed slim celebrities for the death of her daughter from anorexia. The case was settled and Keira matched the settlement damages and donated the total amount to an eating disorder charity. Keira filmed a movie about the life of Dylan Thomas, The Edge Of Love (2008) with a screenplay written by her mother Sharman Macdonald. Her co-star Lindsay Lohan pulled out just a week before filming began, and was replaced by Sienna Miller.
What was announced to be Keira's final Pirates movie in the franchise, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End (2007), opened strongly in June, rising to all-time fifth biggest movie by July. Atonement (2007) opened the Venice Film Festival in August, and opened worldwide in September, again to superb reviews for Keira. Meanwhile, Silk (2007) opened in September on very few screens and disappeared without a trace. Keira spent the rest of the year filming The Duchess (2008), the life story of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, based on Amanda Foreman's award-winning biography of the distant relation of Princess Diana. The year saw more accolades and poll-topping for Keira than ever before, including Women's Beauty Icon 2007 and gracing the covers of all the top-selling magazines. She won Best Actress for Atonement (2007) at the Variety Club Of Great Britain Showbiz Awards, and ended the year with her second Golden Globe nomination. Christmas Day saw - or rather heard - Keira on British TV screens in a new Robbie The Reindeer animated adventure, with DVD proceeds going to Comic Relief. At the start of 2008, Keira received her first BAFTA nomination - Best Actress for Atonement, and the movie wins Best Film: Drama at the Golden Globes. Seven Academy Award nominations for Atonement soon follow. Keira wins Best Actress for her role as Cecilia Tallis at the Empire Film Awards. In May, Keira's first Shakespearean role is announced, when she is confirmed to play Cordelia in a big-screen version of King Lear, alongside Naomi Watts and Gwyneth Paltrow, with Sir Anthony Hopkins as the titular monarch. After two years of rumours, it is confirmed that Keira is on the shortlist to play Eliza Doolittle in a new adaptation of My Fair Lady. The Edge Of Love opens the Edinburgh Film Festival on June 18th, and opens on limited release in the UK and US. A huge round of promotions for The Duchess occurs throughout the summer, with cast and crew trying to play down the marketers' decision to draw parallels between the duchess and Princess Diana. Keira attends the UK and US premieres and Toronto Film Festival within the first week of September. The Duchess opens strongly on both sides of the Atlantic. Two more movies were confirmed for Keira during September - a tale of adultery called Last Night (2010), and a biopic of author F Scott Fitzgerald entitled The Beautiful and the Damned.
Keira spent October on the streets of New York City filming Last Night alongside Sam Worthington and Guillaume Canet. Keira helped to promote the sixtieth anniversary of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights, by contributing to a series of short films produced to mark the occasion. In January 2009 it was announced Keira had signed to play a reclusive actress in an adaptation of Ken Bruen's novel London Boulevard (2010), co-starring Colin Farrell. Keira continues her close ties with the Comic Relief charity by helping to launch their British icons T-shirts campaign. In the same week King Lear was revealed to have been shelved, it was announced that Keira would instead star alongside her Pride & Prejudice co-star Carey Mulligan in an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go (2010). A new short film emerges in March, recorded in the January of 2008 in which Keira plays a Fairy! The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers (2009) was written by Keira's boyfriend Rupert Friend and actor Tom Mison. It went to be shown at the London Film Festival in October and won Best Comedy Short at the New Hampshire Film Festival. Keira continued to put her celebrity to good use in 2009 with a TV commercial for WomensAid highlighting domestic abuse against women. Unfortunately, UK censors refused to allow its broadcast and it can only be viewed on YouTube. May and June saw Keira filming Never Let Me Go (2010) and London Boulevard (2010) back-to-back. In October, a new direction for Keira's career emerged, when it was announced she would appear on the London stage in her West End debut role as Jennifer, in a reworking of Moliere's The Misanthrope, starring Damian Lewis and Tara Fitzgerald. More than $2m of ticket sales followed in the first four days, before even rehearsals had begun! The play ran from December to March at London's Comedy Theatre.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Born and raised in Montreal, Emily Hampshire has made an indelible mark on the Canadian film and television industry in a relatively short period of time. Her work has been recognized by the Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television with 3 Genie Award Nominations, a Gemini Award for her work on the small screen and was chosen by her peers in the Canadian Actors Guild as a nominee for 'Outstanding Female Performance' at the ACTRA Awards.
At the 2012 Cannes International Film Festival, Emily received the Birks Canadian Diamond Award during the Canadian Talent Tribute presented by Telefilm Canada for her career and work in David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis (2012) in which she appeared, opposite Robert Pattinson in an unusual "huis clos", playing Jane Melman.
Emily has been very busy in 2012 and 2013. She was praised for her 'winning performance' in An Awkward Sexual Adventure (2012) by John Anderson from Variety after the TIFF'12 movie premiere. She starred in the futuristic-zombie movie The Returned (2013) by Manuel Carballo, wrapped That Burning Feeling (2013) starring John Cho and stars All the Wrong Reasons (2013) in alongside Kevin Zegers and Cory Monteith. She also has a recurring role as a key supporting cast member in the wildly successful series Schitt's Creek (2015): motel front desk clerk Stevie Budd. Schitt's Creek is entering its 5th season in 2019.- Ashley McCall Scott is an American actress and model. She was born on July 13, 1977 in Metairie, Louisiana, but raised in Charleston, South Carolina. She began her modeling career as a young girl. She was a 1993 Elite Model Look finalist and became a Model for Elite Miami, she modeled internationally and graced the runways at fashion shows in Miami, Paris and London.
Ashley has appeared on the cover of the prestigious "Hollywood Reporter" and has been tracked by photographers from such publications as "WWD", "US Weekly", "Vegas", "Salon", "Victim", "ShortHair" and "Cosmo Girl". Her first screen credit was as "Gigolo Jane" in the feature film, A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). In 2001, she also broke into TV, when she was cast as "Asha Barlow" in the second season of FOX's hit sci-fi show, Dark Angel (2000).
In 2002, Ashley joined the cast of Birds of Prey (2002) as "Helena Kyle" (a.k.a The Huntress). She followed her work on "Birds of Prey" with films such as S.W.A.T. (2003), Evil Remains (2004), Walking Tall (2004), Lost (2004) (voice), Into the Blue (2005), The Kingdom (2007), Strange Wilderness (2008), 12 Rounds (2009) and TV movies, such as Christmas Mail (2010), Unstable (2012), The Nightmare Nanny (2013), Summoned (2013), Holiday Road Trip (2013).
She played "Emily Sullivan" in the CBS drama, Jericho (2006) (2006-2008) and was a guest star on CSI: Miami (2002), NCIS (2003) . She voiced Maria in the 2013 video game, The Last of Us (2013).
Scott starred in a number of made-for-television movies in recent years, primarily for the Lifetime network, including Summoned (2013), and The Nightmare Nanny (2013), 16 and Missing (2015). She was cast as series regular "Mary Newhouse" in the Lifetime comedy-drama series, UnREAL (2015), opposite Shiri Appleby and Constance Zimmer. UnREAL was acclaimed by critics as the best summer TV drama.
She resides in Los Angeles and was married to Steve Hart, Worlds Apart lead singer until their divorce in 2019. They are the parents of two baby girls. - Actress
- Producer
- Director
New Zealand icon Lucy Lawless is most known for her role as "Xena the Warrior Princess." Lucy is married to producer Rob Tapert (Robert Gerard Tapert) and resides in New Zealand. They have two sons, Julius Robert Bay Tapert and Judah Miro Tapert, who were both born in New Zealand. Lucy also has a daughter, Daisy Lawless, from her first marriage to Garth Lawless.
Lucy was born Lucille Frances Ryan in Mount Albert, Auckland, to Julie, a teacher, and Frank Ryan, a banker and the city's mayor. She was awarded an Order of Merit in the New Zealand Queen's Birthday Honor List in June 2004. Lucy, whose role as Xena in "Xena: Warrior Princess" made her a cult television star, has been involved with the Starship Foundation and has held a role on its board of trustees. She was awarded the Order of Merit for services to entertainment and the community.
In 1995, Lucy landed the role of "Xena: Warrior Princess" in the show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995), in a three-story arc, that led to her own spin-off show, Xena: Warrior Princess (1995), for six seasons.
Whilst she has been primarily known for her role on "Xena: Warrior Princess," Lucy has also appeared in the classic TV series, Battlestar Galactica (2004), in the semi-regular role of "D'anna Biers," among her other many and varied roles, including the hit Adam Sandler movie, Bedtime Stories (2008). Lucy was also in several made-for-TV movies including: Locusts (2005) and Vampire Bats (2005). She also lent her voice to the straight-to-video movies: Justice League: The New Frontier (2008) and Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight (2008). During 2011, Lucy appeared in the "No Ordinary Family" as the mysterious "Mrs. X" and also appeared in the prequel to Spartacus (2010), Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (2011) and "Spartacus Vengeance" as "Lucretia."
She portrayed "Caroline Platt" in Jane Campion's Top of the Lake (2013), a BBC Mini-Series in New Zealand, with Holly Hunter and Elisabeth Moss, the recurring character of "Diane Lewis" on NBC's Parks and Recreation (2009), and "Velma Kelly" in the Auckland Theatre Company's adaptation of "Chicago: The Musical," the latter from November 1-24, 2013.
As of 2019 she can be seen starring as Alexa Crowe in the light, colorful, Auckland-set mystery, "My Life is Murder."- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Kristen Anne Bell (born 1980) is an American actress and singer. She was born and raised in Huntington Woods, Michigan, and is the daughter of Lorelei (Frygier), a nurse, and Tom Bell, a television news director. Her ancestry is Polish (mother) and German, English, Irish, and Scottish (father). Kristen found her talent in entertainment at an early age. In 1992, she went to her first audition and won a role in Raggedy Ann and Andy. Bell's mother established her with an agent before she was 13, and she was cast in newspaper advertisements and television commercials. At this time, she also began private acting lessons. Bell had an uncredited role in the film Polish Wedding (1998) in 1998.
Bell attended Shrine Catholic High School, where she took part in drama and music club. She won the starring role of Dorothy in her high school's production of The Wizard of Oz. After graduation Bell moved to New York City to attend prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied musical theater. In 2001, Bell left university to play the role of Becky in Tom Sawyer. That same year, she made her first credited debut in Pootie Tang (2001), but her scene was cut and her appearance exists only in the credit sequence. In 2002, Bell appeared in the Broadway revival of The Crucible with Liam Neeson and Angela Bettis. She then moved to Los Angeles, California, and appeared in a handful television shows as a special guest, finding trouble gaining a recurring role in a television series.
In 2004, Bell appeared in the Lifetime's television film, Gracie's Choice, which received high ratings. At the age 24, Bell won the title role in Veronica Mars (2004), which started broadcasting in the fall of 2004, created by Rob Thomas. Bell starred as a seventeen-year-old detective, which put her alongside actors Enrico Colantoni who played her father, Percy Daggs III, Jason Dohring and Ryan Hansen. This series received very positive reviews, and Bell received much attention for her performance. Bell and the cast of Veronica Mars were nominated for two Teen Choice Awards.
In 2005, Bell starred in Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical (2005) in the role of Mary Lane. Reefer Madness debuted on the Showtime network on April 16, 2005. The following year, Bell won the Saturn Award for 'Best Actress on Television' for her performance in Veronica Mars.
In 2013, Bell voiced the main character, Princess Anna of Arendelle, in the Walt Disney Pictures animated movie, Frozen (2013), which received the 'best animated feature' award at the 86th Academy Awards. She performed the songs: 'For the First Time in Forever', 'Love is an Open Door', 'Do You Want to Build a Snowman', and 'For the First Time in Forever (Reprise)'. Frozen (2013), which was released on November 22, 2013, was hugely successful worldwide.
On March 13, 2013, it was confirmed that a Veronica Mars (2014) movie would finally be coming to fruition. Bell and creator, Rob Thomas, launched a fund raising campaign to produce the film through Kickstarter and attained the $2 million goal in few hours. The movie was released on March 14, 2014.
Bell married Dax Shepard in October, 2013.- Actress
- Producer
Kristen Nora Connolly is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Dana in the 2011 film The Cabin in the Woods, Christina Gallagher on the Netflix series House of Cards and Jamie Campbell on the CBS series Zoo. Connolly began her career with recurring roles on several CollegeHumor digital shorts. She appeared as an extra on the films Mona Lisa Smile, Meet Dave, and The Happening. She has also appeared on two CBS daytime soap operas with recurring roles on Guiding Light and As the World Turns.
She first gained mainstream recognition in 2012, after starring as the main protagonist Dana in the Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard film The Cabin in the Woods. She also starred in the horror film The Bay. In 2013, she had a starring role as Christina Gallagher on the Netflix series House of Cards alongside Kevin Spacey. On September 1, 2014 the A&E Houdini miniseries premiered with 3.7 million viewers, Connolly plays Bess Houdini with Academy Award-winning Adrien Brody playing Harry Houdini. Connolly also portrayed Jamie, a passionate journalist in the CBS drama-thriller series Zoo and co-starred as Lena in the drama series The Whispers. In 2014 she portrayed Petra Anderson in the drama thriller film A Good Marriage, based on Stephen King's short story of the same name.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Cameron Diaz, an American actress, was born in 1972 in San Diego, the daughter of a Cuban-American father and a German mother. Self described as "adventurous, independent and a tough kid," Cameron left home at 16 and for the next 5 years lived in such varied locales as Japan, Australia, Mexico, Morocco, and Paris. Returning to California at the age of 21, she was working as a model when she auditioned for a big part in The Mask (1994). To her amazement and despite having no previous acting experience, she was cast as the female lead in the film opposite Jim Carrey. Over the next 3 years, she honed her acting skills in such low budget independent films as The Last Supper (1995); Feeling Minnesota (1996); and Head Above Water (1996). She returned to main stream films in My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), in which she held her own against veteran actress Julia Roberts. She earned full fledged star status in 1998 for her performance in the box office smash There's Something About Mary (1998). Cameron Diaz appears to possess everything necessary to become one of the super stars of the new century.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Sharon Stone was born and raised in Meadville, a small town in Pennsylvania. Her strict father was a factory worker, and her mother was a homemaker. She was the second of four children. At the age of 15, she studied in Saegertown High School, Pennsylvania, and at that same age, entered Edinboro State University of Pennsylvania, and graduated with a degree in creative writing and fine arts. She was a very smart girl (with an IQ of 154), became a bookworm, and once was told that a suitable job for her (and her brains) was to become a lawyer. However, her first love was still the black-and-white movies, especially those featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. So, the 17-year-old Sharon got herself into the Miss Crawford County and won the beauty contest.
From working part-time as a McDonald's counter girl, she worked her way up to become a successful Ford model, both in TV commercials and print ads. In 1980, she made her acting debut in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980) as "pretty girl in train". Her first speaking part, though, was in Wes Craven's horror movie, Deadly Blessing (1981). She struggled through many parts in B-movies, notably King Solomon's Mines (1985) and Action Jackson (1988). She was also married in 1984 to Michael Greenburg, the producer of MacGyver (1985), but they divorced two years later.
She finally got her big break with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall (1990) and also posed nude for Playboy, a daring move for a 32-year-old actress. But it worked; she landed the breakthrough role as a sociopath novelist, "Catherine Tramell", in Basic Instinct (1992). Her interrogation scene has become a classic in film history and her performance captivated everyone, from MTV viewers, who honored her with Most Desirable Female and Best Female Performance Awards, to a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. After she got famous, she didn't want to be typecast, so she played a victim in Sliver (1993), and, in Intersection (1994), she was the aloof, estranged wife of Richard Gere. These movies didn't "work," so she got herself again into more aggressive roles , such as The Specialist (1994) with Sylvester Stallone and The Quick and the Dead (1995) with Gene Hackman.
But it wasn't until she played a beautiful but drug-crazy wife of Robert De Niro in Casino (1995) that she got far more than just fame and fortune--she also received the acknowledgment of the movie industry for her acting ability. She received her first Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. She did a couple of films afterwards, teaming up with Isabelle Adjani in Diabolique (1996), and as a woman waiting for her death penalty in Last Dance (1996). In 1998, she married a newspaper editor,Phil Bronstein but they divorced later in 2004. She received her third Golden Globe nomination for The Mighty (1998), a film that her company, "Chaos", also co-executive produced. The next year, she played the title role in Gloria (1999) and entered her first comedic role in The Muse (1999), which gave her another Golden Globe nomination.
Sharon Stone, a diva who thoroughly enjoys her hard-won stardom, is now a mother of three children: Roan, Laird and Quinn.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
French actress and model Eva Gaëlle Green was born on July 6, 1980, in Paris, France. Her father, Walter Green, is a dentist who appeared in the 1966 film Au hasard Balthazar (1966). Her mother, Marlène Jobert, is an actress turned children's book writer. Eva's mother was born in Algeria, of French, Spanish, and Sephardic Jewish heritage (during that time, Algeria was part of France), and Eva's father is of Swedish, French, and Breton descent. She has a fraternal twin sister, Joy. Eva left French school at 17. She switched to the American School in France for one year. She left the American School and studied acting at Saint Paul Drama School in Paris for three years, then had a 10-week polishing course at the Weber Douglas Academy of dramatic Art in London. She returned to Paris as an accomplished young actress, and played on stage in several theater productions: "La Jalousie en Trois Fax" and "Turcaret". There, she caught the eye of director Bernardo Bertolucci. Green followed a recommendation to work on her English. She studied for two months with an English coach before doing The Dreamers (2003) with Bernardo Bertolucci. During their work, Bertolucci described Green as being "so beautiful it's indecent".
Green won critical acclaim for her role in The Dreamers (2003). After "The Dreamers", Green played the love interest of cult French gentleman-thief, Arsène Lupin (2004), opposite Romain Duris. In 2005, she co-starred, opposite Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson, in Kingdom of Heaven (2005), produced and directed by Ridley Scott. The film brought her a wider international exposure. She turned down the femme fatale role in The Black Dahlia (2006), that went to Hilary Swank, because she didn't want to end up typecast after her role in "The Dreamers". Instead, Eva accepted the prestigious role of "Vesper Lynd", one of three Bond girls, opposite Daniel Craig, in Casino Royale (2006) and became the fifth French actress to play a James Bond girl, after Claudine Auger in Thunderball (1965), Corinne Cléry in Moonraker (1979), Carole Bouquet in For Your Eyes Only (1981) and Sophie Marceau in The World Is Not Enough (1999). She achieved international recognition for the film, one of the highest-grossing Bond movies ever.
Since then, Green has starred in the films Dark Shadows (2012), 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014), and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016). She also starred as Vanessa Ives in Showtime's horror drama Penny Dreadful (2014). Her performance in the series earned her a nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series - Drama at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards.
Since her school years, Green has been a cosmopolitan multilingual and multicultural person. Yet, since her father always lived in France with them and her mother, she and her twin sister can't speak Swedish. She developed a wide scope of interests beyond her acting profession and became an aspiring art connoisseur and an avid museum visitor. Her other activities, outside of acting, include playing and composing music, cooking at home, walking her terrier, and collecting art. She shares time between her two residencies, one is in Paris, France, and one in London, England.- Actress
- Director
- Producer
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.- Producer
- Actress
- Music Department
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
- Casting Director
- Producer
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 in Lexington, Kentucky to parents John Leslie McBride and Suzanne Lillian (née Sagley) (1937-2018). Her father owned his own business, and her mother studied at the historic Pasadena Playhouse. She had three siblings: John Michael (1957-1990), Neil Allen (1960-2008), and Melanie Suzanne (1962-2012).
McBride began her acting career in 1991, appearing in several television commercials for clients such as Rooms To Go; she was also a spokeswoman for Ford. She made her series television debut in a 1993 episode of ABC legal drama series Matlock, and later guest-starred in several other television drama series, including In the Heat of the Night; American Gothic; Profiler; Walker, Texas Ranger; and Dawson's Creek. In the last, she played Nina - a film buff who charms Dawson after his breakup with Jen - in the Season 1 episode "Road Trip" (1998) - and in 2003 returned to the series finale playing a different character.
In the 1990s, McBride had supporting roles in several made-for-television movies, such as Her Deadly Rival (1995) opposite Annie Potts and Harry Hamlin, Close to Danger (1997) with Rob Estes, Any Place But Home (1997), and Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999). In 1996, she appeared on the CBS miniseries A Season in Purgatory, based on Dominick Dunne's eponymous 1993 novel. From 2000 to 2010, she worked as a film and commercial casting director in Atlanta, Georgia and starred in several short films. In 2007, director Frank Darabont cast McBride as the "woman with the kids at home" in the ensemble-cast science-fiction horror film The Mist, alongside Thomas Jane, Laurie Holden, and Marcia Gay Harden. McBride was in contention for a bigger role in the film but did not want to take a significant amount of time away from her job as a casting director. The following year, she appeared in the Lifetime television movie Living Proof.
McBride's earlier relationship with Darabont led him to cast her as Carol Peletier in the AMC television drama series The Walking Dead - her biggest role to date. Peletier is a mid-forties widow and caring mother to preteen Sophia, fighting to survive in a violent post-apocalyptic world populated with flesh-eating zombies and the few surviving humans, some of whom are diabolical and even more dangerous than the zombies themselves. McBride did not audition for the role, which she thought was temporary. She was a recurring cast member in Season 1 and was promoted to series regular for Season 2. McBride's name appeared in the opening credits sequence beginning with the first episode of Season 4. Carol was supposed to have been killed off in the episode "Killer Within", but the producers eventually had a change of plans.
As the series progresses, McBride's character develops from being weak and dependent, into a strong, cunning, and loyal warrior. The direction of her character is contrasted between the two media. In the comic series, Carol is much younger and exhibits a neurotic, self-centered, and naive demeanor. Throughout her time in the comics, she grows increasingly unstable to the point of being self-destructive. The television show differs in these regards, as she is shown to be a stern, pragmatic, and compassionate individual who has been gradually building inner strength. Producers of the series, Scott M. Gimple and Robert Kirkman, said in 2014 that "Carol is her own unique character; it would be a disservice to Melissa McBride to say she's evolved into the Carol from the comics. The Carol in the TV show is a wholly original creation that we'll continue to explore on the show to great effect. Everyone in the writers' room loves that character, and we're thrilled with what Melissa has brought to the table. She has definitely become a character that is one to watch, and there's some really exciting stuff ahead for her."
McBride has received critical acclaim for her performance as Carol and won positive reviews from critics during Seasons 3, 4, and 5. Many critics praised McBride's performance in the Season 4 episode centered on her character, "The Grove". Others singled out Carol's actions in the Season 5 premiere, "No Sanctuary", which earned critical praise and positive fan reception. Despite the praise of some critics and a fan campaign, McBride did not receive a nomination for the 2014 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. However, she won the 40th Annual Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress on Television, and was nominated for the 2014 Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her performance in Season 4. In March 2015, McBride was nominated for a Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Leading Actress in a Television series, for her role as Carol. She once again won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress on Television at the 41st Saturn Awards, for the second year in a row.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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 director James Mangold (who would go on to direct such hits as Girl, Interrupted, Walk the Line and Logan) in his first feature Heavy, a critical and commercial success that went on to gain cult status. This was followed by another indie cult hit, Empire Records, but it was the leading role in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty that catapulted her to stardom at the age of eighteen.
Liv was next seen in Tom Hanks' hugely successful passion project That Thing You Do!, his paean to the glory days of 1960s rock 'n' roll (as the child of a rock 'n' roll background, this was a film whose subject was also dear to Liv's heart). This was followed by Michael Bay's action blockbuster Armageddon, starring alongside Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Steve Buscemi, who would later go on to direct Liv in Lonesome Jim.
Liv had come to the attention of director Robert Altman in Stealing Beauty and the late, great auteur went on to cast her in two of his final projects, Cookie's Fortune and Dr T and the Women, describing her as "very serious, very prepared and very professional...I am crazy about her."
In between her work for Altman, Liv starred opposite Ralph Fiennes in Onegin, directed by his sister Martha, from the classic novel by Alexander Pushkin. Ralph Fiennes said of Liv, "We tested a lot of actresses but Liv has an acute sense of emotional truth that's not performed or projected, but just is."
In 2001, Liv portrayed Arwen in the ground-breaking epic The Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King.
Nothing if not eclectic, Liv then defied expectations by starring in cult director Kevin Smith's gentle low-budget comedy Jersey Girl, re-uniting her with her Armageddon co-star Ben Affleck, before playing Betty, the female lead to Edward Norton's Bruce Banner in Marvel's The Incredible Hulk.
An actress who consistently refuses to be pigeonholed, Liv's career is one that cuts across genres; she cannot be defined by the roles she has chosen and is led, above all, by what speaks to her on an instinctual and emotional level. "It's very difficult to say no to whatever comes along," Tom Hanks has said of her, "...But she's saying no to all the right things."
In addition to her acting work, Liv has forged a decade-long relationship with Givenchy as the spokesperson for their fragrance and cosmetics line. Liv is also a brand ambassador for Triumph lingerie, developing a capsule collection that celebrates the company's commitment to body confidence, as exemplified by Liv herself, "a modern woman in every sense, a mother and actress with a fierce sense of femininity that women across the world can relate to."
Liv's previous design collaboration was with Belstaff, resulting in two capsule collections for the iconic British heritage brand. Liv has also been the face of commercial campaigns for several global brands, including Visa and Pantene.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Naomi Ellen Watts was born on September 28, 1968 in Shoreham, England to Myfanwy Edwards "Miv" (Roberts), an antiques dealer and costume/set designer, and Peter Watts (Peter Anthony Watts), Pink Floyd's road manager. Her maternal grandfather was Welsh. Her father died when she was seven and she followed her mother and brother around England until she was 14 and they finally settled in Australia, homeland of her maternal grandmother. When they arrived, she coaxed her mother to let her take acting classes. After bit parts in commercials, she landed her first role in For Love Alone (1986). Naomi met her best friend Nicole Kidman when they both auditioned for a bikini commercial and shared a taxi ride home. In 1991, Naomi starred with Kidman in the sleeper hit Flirting (1991), directed by John Duigan. Naomi continued her career by starring in the Australian Brides of Christ (1991) co-starring Oscar-winners Russell Crowe and Brenda Fricker.
In 1993, she worked with John Duigan again in Wide Sargasso Sea (1993) and director George Miller in Gross Misconduct (1993). Tank Girl (1995), in 1995, an adaptation of the comic book was a cult hit, starred Naomi as "Jet Girl", but it didn't do at the box-office or do much for her career. Watts continued to take insignificant parts in movies including the much forgotten film Children of the Corn: The Gathering (1996). It wasn't until David Lynch cast her in the critically acclaimed film Mulholland Drive (2001) that she began to become noticed. Her part as an aspiring actress showed her strong acting ability and wide range and earned her much respect, as much as to say by some that she was overlooked for a Oscar nomination that year. Stardom finally came to Naomi in the surprise hit The Ring (2002), which grossed over $100,000,000 at the box-office and starred Watts as an investigative reporter hunting down the truth behind several mysterious deaths seemingly caused by a video tape. While the movie did not fare well with the critics, it launched her into the spotlight. In 2003, she starred in Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams (2003) which earned her - what some say is a much overdue Oscar nomination and brought others to call her one of the best in her generation of actors. The same year, she was nominated for 21 Grams (2003), Naomi was chosen to play "Ann Darrow" in director Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005) which took her to New Zealand for a five month shoot. Watts completed her first comedy in I Heart Huckabees (2004) for director David O. Russell, playing a superficial spokes model - a break from her usual intense and dramatic roles she is known for.
In 2005, she reprized her role as the protective-mother-reporter "Rachel Keller" in The Ring Two (2005). The movie, released in March, opened to $35,000,000 at the box office in the first weekend and established her as a box-office draw. Also in 2005, it was decided that her independent movie Ellie Parker (2001) would be re-released in late 2005 after its success at resurfacing at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie, which Naomi also produced, features her in the title role and is a bit biographical, but yet exaggerated take of the life of a struggling actress as she comes to Hollywood and encounters nightmares of the profession (it also features Watts' own beat-up Honda which she travels around in). In 2006, she starred with Edward Norton in The Painted Veil (2006). In July of 2007, Naomi gave birth to a boy, Alexander Pete (Sasha Schreiber) in Los Angeles with Liev Schreiber. Since then her career choices have gathered even more critical acclaim with starring roles roles in German director Michael Haneke's American remake of his thriller Funny Games (2007), David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (2007), and the action-thriller, The International (2009), released in February 2009. In mid-2008, Watts announced she was expecting her second child with Schreiber and gave birth to second son Samuel Kai Schreiber, in New York on December 13.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Dedee Pfeiffer grew up in Midway City, California, as the daughter of a heating and air conditioning contractor and a homemaker.
She has studied with some of Hollywood's most renowned acting coaches such as Peggy Feury, Roy London and Ivana Chubbuck.
Dedee landed her first movie role in John Landis' film Into the Night and her first television role in the series Simon & Simon. She went on to star opposite Grace Jones in the horror cult classic comedy Vamp, made numerous other appearances in films such as Falling Down and television shows before she was cast on Cybil as Cybil Shepherd's daughter Rachel, a series regular.
Cybil earned nearly three dozen awards and nominations, picking up three Primetime Emmy awards and the Golden Globe Award for best television series - musical or comedy. Pfeiffer and the rest of the cast were nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a comedy series.
Pfeiffer went on to star in the series For Your Love and guest starred in several of the most iconic shows on television, including Seinfeld, Friends, two CSI series and ER, to mention a few.
Dedee won awards and nominations as an actor and producer on her short films, The Tub and Laredo. She also appeared in the award-winning film L.A., I Hate You.
She graced Playboy magazine's February 2002 cover, breaking with convention for the men's magazine in a pictorial that showed her nude with a BIPOC male model and displaying her tattoo art, in what at the time was a rule-breaking appearance in the men's magazine for a mainstream female star.
Pfeiffer took a 10-year break from Hollywood to earn her Master of Social Work degree from UCLA, and returned to acting as a series regular, playing Denise Brisbane on the ABC drama Big Sky.- Producer
- Actress
- Costume Designer
Charlize Theron was born in Benoni, a city in the greater Johannesburg area, in South Africa, the only child of Gerda Theron (née Maritz) and Charles Theron. She was raised on a farm outside the city. Theron is of Afrikaner (Dutch, with some French Huguenot and German) descent, and Afrikaner military figure Danie Theron was her great-great-uncle.
Theron received an education as a ballet dancer and has danced both the "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker". There was not much work for a young actress or dancer in South Africa, so she soon traveled to Europe and the United States, where she got a job at the Joffrey Ballet in New York. She was also able to work as a photo model. However, an injured knee put a halt to her dancing career.
In 1994, her mother bought her a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, and Charlize started visiting all of the agents on Hollywood Boulevard, but without any luck. She went to a bank to cash a check for $500 she received from her mother, and became furious when she learned that the bank would not cash it because it was an out-of-state check. She made a scene and an agent gave her his card, in exchange for learning American English, which she did by watching soap operas on television.
Her first role was in the B-film Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995), a non-speaking part with three seconds of screen time. Her next role was as Helga Svelgen in 2 Days in the Valley (1996), which landed her the role of Tina Powers in That Thing You Do! (1996). Since then, she has starred in movies like The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) and The Italian Job (2003). On February 29, 2004, she won her first Academy Award, a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Monster (2003).- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Jessica Michelle Chastain was born in Sacramento, California, and was raised in a middle-class household in a Northern California suburb. Her mother, Jerri Chastain, is a vegan chef whose family is originally from Kansas, and her stepfather is a fireman. She discovered dance at the age of nine and was in a dance troupe by age thirteen. She began performing in Shakespearean productions all over the Bay area.
An actor in a production of "Romeo & Juliet" encouraged her to audition for Juilliard as a drama major. She became a member of "Crew 32" with the help of a scholarship from one of the school's famous alumni, Robin Williams.
In her last year at Juilliard, she was offered a holding deal with TV writer/producer John Wells and she eventually worked in three of his TV shows. Jessica continues to do theatre, having played in "The Cherry Orchard", "Rodney's Wife", "Salome" and "Othello". She spends her time between New York and Los Angeles, working in theater, film and TV.
In 2011, she had a prolific year in film. She was nominated for and won a number of awards, including a 2012 Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for The Help (2011).- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Jessica Biel, has become one of Hollywood's most sought-out actresses. She was born in Ely, Minnesota, to Kimberly (Conroe) and Jonathan Edward Biel, who is a business consultant and GM worker. Biel was raised in Boulder, Colorado. She is of Hungarian Jewish, Danish, English, and German descent.
As a child, Biel initially pursued a career as a vocalist, performing in musical theater. Beginning at age nine, she starred in such productions as "Annie," "The Sound of Music," and "Beauty and the Beast." Biel soon turned to modeling and commercial work by competing in The International Modeling and Talent Association's Annual Conference in 1994.
Her Film debut was in the Kid's Rock Opera It's a Digital World (1994) where she demonstrated her acting and singing abilities. Her television series acting debut, playing Mary Camden on the WB's #1-rated show, 7th Heaven (1996), helped her emerge as a breakout star. She terrified moviegoers with her portrayal of Erin, "Leatherface's" greatest nemesis to date, in New Line Cinema's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), a remake of the original. Having finished filming, Blade: Trinity (2004) in Vancouver with Wesley Snipes, Ryan Reynolds, and Kris Kristofferson, she the portrayed a jet-fighter pilot in Stealth (2005), starring Josh Lucas, Jamie Foxx, and Sam Shepherd, for director Rob Cohen. Biel's film career began at age 14 when she played alongside Peter Fonda in his Golden Globe-winning performance in Ulee's Gold (1997). Her other film credits include I'll Be Home for Christmas (1998), Summer Catch (2001), Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction (2002), and Cellular (2004), which stars Chris Evans, Kim Basinger, and William H. Macy.
In her spare time, Biel is involved with charities such as Best Friends Animal Sanctuary and PETA. Her hobbies include ballet, soccer, running, yoga and hiking with her dog "East." She resides in Los Angeles.
In 2012, she married actor and singer Justin Timberlake. The two have a son.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Uma Karuna Thurman was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into a highly unorthodox and internationally-minded family. She is the daughter of Nena Thurman (née Birgitte Caroline von Schlebrügge), a fashion model and socialite who now runs a mountain retreat, and of Robert Thurman (Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman), a professor and academic who is one of the nation's foremost Buddhist scholars. Uma's mother was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to a German father and a Swedish mother (who herself was of Swedish, Danish, and German descent). Uma's father, a New Yorker, has English, Scots-Irish, Scottish, and German ancestry. Uma grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, where her father worked at Amherst College.
She and her siblings all have names deriving from Buddhist mythology; and Middle American behavior was little understood, much less pursued. And so it was that the young Thurman confronted childhood with an odd name and eccentric home life -- and nature seemingly conspired against her as well. She is six feet tall, and from an early age towered over everyone else in class. Her famously large feet would soon sprout to size 11 -- and even beyond that -- and although they would eventually be lovingly filmed by director Quentin Tarantino, as a child she generally wore the biggest shoes in class, which only provided another subject of ridicule. Even her long nose moved one of her mother's friends to helpfully suggest rhinoplasty -- to the ten-year-old Thurman. To make matters worse yet, the family constantly relocated, making the gangly, socially inept Thurman perpetually the new kid in class. The result was an exceptionally awkward, self-conscious, lonely and alienated childhood.
Unsurprisingly, the young Thurman enjoyed making believe she was someone other than herself, and so thrived at acting in school plays -- her sole successful extracurricular activity. This interest, and her lanky frame, perfect for modeling, led the 15-year-old Thurman to New York City for high school and modeling work (including a layout in Glamour Magazine) as she sought acting roles. The roles soon came, starting with a few formulaic and forgettable Hollywood products, but immediately followed by Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) and Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons (1988), both of which brought much attention to her unorthodox sensuality and performances that intriguingly combined innocence and worldliness. The weird, gangly girl became a sex symbol virtually overnight.
Thurman continued to be offered good roles in Hollywood pictures into the early '90s, the least commercially successful but probably best-known of which was her smoldering, astonishingly-adult performance as June, Henry Miller's wife, in Henry & June (1990), the first movie to actually receive the dreaded NC-17 rating in the USA. After a celebrated start, Thurman's career stalled in the early '90s with movies such as the mediocre Mad Dog and Glory (1993). Worse, her first starring role was in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), which had endured a tortured journey from cult-favorite book to big-budget movie, and was a critical and financial debacle. Fortunately, Uma bounced back with a brilliant performance as Mia Wallace, that most unorthodox of all gangster's molls, in Tarantino's lauded, hugely successful Pulp Fiction (1994), a role for which Thurman received an Academy Award nomination.
Since then, Thurman has had periods of flirting with roles in arty independents such as A Month by the Lake (1995), and supporting roles in which she has lent some glamorous presence to a mixed batch of movies, such as Beautiful Girls (1996) and The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996). Thurman returned to smaller films after playing the villainess Poison Ivy in the reviled Joel Schumacher effort Batman & Robin (1997) and Emma Peel in a remake of The Avengers (1998). She worked with Woody Allen and Sean Penn on Sweet and Lowdown (1999), and starred in Richard Linklater's drama Tape (2001) opposite Hawke. Thurman also won a Golden Globe award for her turn in the made-for-television film Hysterical Blindness (2002), directed by Mira Nair.
A return to the mainstream spotlight came when Thurman re-teamed with Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), a revenge flick the two had dreamed up on the set of Pulp Fiction (1994). She also turned up in the John Woo cautioner Paycheck (2003) that same year. The renewed attention was not altogether welcome because Thurman was dealing with the break-up of her marriage with Hawke at about this time. Thurman handled the situation with grace, however, and took her surging popularity in stride. She garnered critical acclaim for her work in Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) and was hailed as Tarantino's muse. Thurman reunited with Pulp Fiction (1994) dance partner John Travolta for the Get Shorty (1995) sequel Be Cool (2005) and played Ulla in The Producers (2005).
Thurman had been briefly married to Gary Oldman, from 1990 to 1992. In 1998, she married Ethan Hawke, her co-star in the offbeat futuristic thriller Gattaca (1997). The couple had two children, Levon and Maya. Hawke and Thurman filed for divorce in 2004.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Daryl Christine Hannah was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She is the daughter of Susan Jeanne (Metzger), a schoolteacher and later a producer, and Donald Christian Hannah, who owned a tugboat/barge company. Her stepfather was music journalist/promoter Jerrold Wexler. Her siblings are Page Hannah, Don Hannah and Tanya Wexler. She has Scottish, Norwegian, Danish, Irish, English, and German ancestry.
Daryl graduated from the University of Southern California School of Theatre. She practiced ballet with Maria Tallchief and studied drama at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. In her twenties, she played keyboard and sang backup for Jackson Browne. Hannah, a tall (5' 10") blond beauty, with haunting blue-green eyes, was a natural for show biz.
She started with small roles, such as a student in The Fury (1978) and as Kim Basinger's kid sister in Hard Country (1981). Daryl's breakout role was as the acrobatic, beautiful replicant punk android Pris in Blade Runner (1982); Pris was the vixen who wanted to live beyond her allotted years and risked the wrath of the title character. Showing her versatility, from there she portrayed a mermaid, Madison, who falls in love with Tom Hanks's character in Ron Howard's zany comedy Splash (1983), and a Cro-Magnon in The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986). Hannah played Roxanne in the eponymous Steve Martins contemporary take on the Cyrano de Bergerac story, and co-starred as Elle Driver in Quintin Tarantino's box office hit Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004).
Hannah has been a consistent, strong supporter of independent cinema, both acting in and producing many films, starring in such indie films as John Sayles's Casa de los babys (2003) as well as his political satire Silver City (2004). She worked on several films with the revered Robert Altman, including The Gingerbread Man (1998), as well as several films with the Polish Brothers including Northfork (2003) and Jackpot (2001). Daryl starred in the experimental improvised Michael Radford film Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000) and made As a filmmaker, Hannah wrote, directed, and produced an award winning short film, entitled The Last Supper (1995). Hannah also directed, produced and shot the documentary Strip Notes (2002) which was inspired while researching her role for Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000) that was shown on HBO and UK's Channel 4.
Daryl is in the process of shooting a documentary on Human Trafficking and has traveled undercover to South East Asia to document this atrocity and has become and advocates raising awareness and ending slavery. She has made over 40 video blogs for various websites including her popular dhlovelife.com. She designed dhlovelife.com (online since 2005) her website dedicated to sharing solutions on how to live more harmoniously with the planet and all other living things. Daryl has been passionate, committed and effective advocate for a more ethical relationship with each other and all life on the Planet. She has produced, hosted and shot numerous environmental awareness/ health documentaries, TV appearances and is a frequent speaker on both the conservative and progressive news.
Hannah has been a greening consultant for events such as the Virgin Music Festival, attended by over 150,000 people. Her many speaking engagements include keynote speeches at the UN Climate Change Summit, UN Global Business Conference on the environment, Natural and Organic Products Expo, LOHAS and numerous national and international universities, conferences and events. She has written articles on self sufficiency and sustainability for many magazines and has done a plethora of interviews on the topic in thousands of publications. The site features weekly five-minute inspirational video blogs which Daryl produces and films. There are daily news updates, alerts, community and access to goods and services. She is a member of the World Future Council, sits on the boards of the Sylvia Earle Alliance, Mission Blue, Eco America, Environmental Media Association (EMA), The Somaly Mam Foundation, and the Action Sports Environmental Coalition, She is the founder of the Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance (SBA).- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Rose McGowan is an American actress and director, known for her contribution to independent film. Since the age of nineteen, she has appeared in acclaimed films by Gregg Araki, Wes Craven, Brian De Palma, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. In 2014, her directorial debut Dawn (2014) was nominated for the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Rose Arianna McGowan was born on September 5, 1973 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy, to American parents Terri and Daniel Patrick McGowan. She is the second eldest of six siblings, and has Irish, French, and English ancestry. As a young child, she was raised within the Italian chapter of the Children of God. During the early 1980s, her family severed ties with the community and migrated to Eugene, Oregon, USA. Following the divorce of her parents, Rose relocated to Gig Harbor, Washington, to live with her grandmother. At age 14, McGowan was accused of drug use by a family friend and committed to rehabilitation. She has consistently maintained the decision was unjustified. Upon release, she spent a year without a home and was emancipated from her parents by the age of 15. McGowan's career as an actor began with The Doom Generation (1995). Originally intended for Jordan Ladd, the character of Amy Blue was, coincidentally, awarded to McGowan by an associate of director Gregg Araki. For her performance, she was nominated at the 1995 Independent Spirit Awards for Best Debut Performance. Subsequently cast in Wes Craven's Scream (1996), she experienced further success when the project defied expectations to become one of the highest grossing films of the year. The innovative career of McGowan was overshadowed throughout much of the 1990s by her high-profile relationship with musician Brian Warner (aka Marilyn Manson). Strong performances in Going All the Way (1997), Lewis & Clark & George (1997), Southie (1998) and Jawbreaker (1999) were largely unseen by the general public. When the relationship ended between Rose and Manson in 2001, she remarked: "There is great love, but our lifestyle difference is, unfortunately, even greater". Rose continued to work solidly, appearing in a string of soft-sounding studio and independent films. Performances from this period included: a political activist in Showtime's The Killing Yard (2001), a grifter in Roads to Riches (2002) and a factory worker in "Stealing Bess" (aka Vacuums (2003)). She was re-introduced to the mainstream as Paige Matthews in Aaron Spelling's Charmed (1998), a popular television series for which she devoted five consecutive years. When "Charmed" finished its run in 2006, McGowan emerged in top form. Critics praised her efforts in Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror (2007), and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (2007). In several interviews, McGowan has expressed a general apathy and disdain for Hollywood. Despite this, her work ethic remains strong. Following her recent marriage to LA-based artist Davey Detail, the actress has resolved to purse further projects as a director.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Anna Nicole Smith was born on 28 November 1967 in Houston, Texas, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994), Be Cool (2005) and Illegal Aliens (2007). She was married to J. Howard Marshall II and Billy Smith. She died on 8 February 2007 in Hollywood, Florida, USA.- Producer
- Actress
- Director
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).- Kimberly Jan Dickens is an American actress. Her film debut was in the 1995 comedy film Palookaville. Dickens played lead roles in the films Truth or Consequences, N.M. (1997), Zero Effect (1998) and Mercury Rising (1998). Her other films include Great Expectations (1998), Hollow Man (2000), House of Sand and Fog (2003), Thank You for Smoking (2005), The Blind Side (2009), Gone Girl (2014), Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), Lizzie (2018), and Land (2021).
- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Kate Nauta was born on April 29, 1982 in Salem, Oregon, USA as Kate Lynne Nauta. She is an actress, model and singer, best known for her role as Lola in Transporter 2 (2005). She also sang two of her songs for its soundtrack.
She started modeling at age 15. At 17, she won the U.S. Elite Model Look contest and went on to the finals in Nice, France. The finals were won by Vika Sementsova from Ukraine.
Kate also sings and write lyrics. She has worked with Lenny Kravitz and Naughty By Nature.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Olga Kurylenko is a Ukrainian-French actress and model, went from sharing a cramped flat with her aunt, uncle, grandparents and cousin to starring as a Bond girl opposite Daniel Craig.
She was born Olga Konstantinovna Kurylenko on November 14, 1979, in Berdyansk, Ukraine, Soviet Union. Her mother, Marina Alyabysheva, divorced her father, Konstantin Kurylenko, soon after her birth. After the divorce her mother struggled to survive as an art teacher. Young Olga was brought up by her mother and her grandmother, Raisa. During her youth Olga had the humbling experience of living in poverty; she had no choice but to wear rags and had to darn the holes on her sweater. During her years in Ukraine she studied art and languages and spent seven years studying piano at a local school of music in Berdyansk. She also went to a ballet studio until 13.
At age 13 Olga and her mother made a trip to Moscow. There she was spotted by an agent, who approached her at a subway station and offered her a job as a model. Initially Olga's mother was suspicious, but she checked the agent's credentials and eventually allowed Olga to accept training as a model in Moscow, which turned out to be a good career choice.
By age 16 she was ready for the next step. She moved to Paris, learned French in six months and was signed by the Madison agency. At age 18 she appeared on the cover of Glamour, and in short order graced the covers of Elle, Madame Figaro, Marie Claire, and Vogue. She also became the face of Lejaby lingerie, Bebe clothing, Clarins and Helena Rubinstein cosmetic companies.
In 1999 Olga married French photographer Cedric Van Mol, but divorced him 3-1/2 years later. One day Olga presented herself to an acting agency. Eventually she swapped the catwalk for the movie screen, and her acting career took off. In 2005 she made her film debut as "Iris", a sensual beauty, in The Ring Finger (2005), by director Diane Bertrand.
Olga's cinematic roles have been notably steamy, and her natural beauty and explicit nudity attracted the attention of the male audiences. She appeared opposite Elijah Wood in Paris, I Love You (2006) and as "Sofia" in The Snake (2006), then co-starred as Russian beauty "Nika Boronina" opposite Timothy Olyphant in Hitman (2007). She also appeared as "Mina Harud" in the indie surveillance-thriller Tyranny (2008). On Christmas Eve 2007, Olga was offered to play what will become her biggest hit: co-starring as "Camille", the Bond girl, opposite Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace (2008), a sequel to Casino Royale (2006).
With the international success as Bond Girl, Olga also made appearances on various TV productions in Russia and Ukraine. In 2012, Olga Kurylenko was cast as Julia, supporting role in the Sci-Fi adventure Oblivion (2013) opposite Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman.- Actress
- Soundtrack
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 self-help bible "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Her mother is English (with Irish ancestry) and her father is American; he was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and is partly of Native-American descent (his Native American name is Star Touches Earth). Her parents divorced when she was age two. Her father returned to America and Hayley remained with her mother in London, but she spent her summers in Missouri with her father. Hayley's mother saw theater as an important communal experience, so she was introduced to theater from a young age. At age 11, she had memorable trip to see Ralph Fiennes playing Hamlet. She would later work with him on The Duchess (2008).
She went to Sion-Manning Roman Catholic Girl's School in West London where she excelled academically. She took her A-levels at the London Oratory School. She took two years out of her education, traveling with her father and working for a casting director. In 2005, she graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with a degree in Acting. Hayley began her career with parts on a few BBC television productions. Her first big break came in the television miniseries, The Line of Beauty (2006). The following year, she got her first film role in How About You (2007). She followed this with Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream (2007). Her breakthrough role came four years later as British agent Peggy Carter in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011).- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
The very lovely, vivacious and smart-looking Joanna Cassidy was born in Camden, New Jersey, and raised in nearby Haddonfield, a borough located in Camden County. She grew up in a creative environment as the daughter and granddaughter of artists. At an early age she engaged in painting and sculpture and went on to major in art at Syracuse University in New York. During her time there she married Kennard C. Kobrin in 1964, a doctor in residency, and found work as a fashion model to help work his way to a degree. The couple eventually moved to San Francisco, where her husband set up a psychiatric practice; Joanna continued modeling and gave birth to a son and daughter. Following their divorce ten years later, she decided to move to Los Angeles in a bid for an acting career.
In between modeling chores and occasional commercial gigs, the reddish-haired beauty found minor, decorative work as an actress in such action fare as Steve McQueen's thriller Bullitt (1968), the Jason Robards drama Fools (1970), The Laughing Policeman (1973) starring Walter Matthau and The Outfit (1973) with Robert Duvall. Her first co-starring role came opposite George C. Scott in the offbeat comedy caper The Bank Shot (1974).
Television became an important medium for her in the late 1970s, with guest parts on all the popular shows of the time, both comedic and dramatic, including Dallas (1978). Trapper John, M.D. (1979), Taxi (1978), Starsky and Hutch (1975), Charlie's Angels (1976), Lou Grant (1977) and a recurring role on Falcon Crest (1981). A regular on the sketch/variety show Shields and Yarnell (1977), which showcased the popular mime couple, Joanna languished in three failed series attempts--The Roller Girls (1978), 240-Robert (1979) and The Family Tree (1983)--before hitting the jackpot with the sitcom Buffalo Bill (1983) opposite Dabney Coleman, in which she finally had the opportunity to demonstrate her flair for offbeat comedy. The show became that's season's critical darling, with Coleman playing a vain, sexist, obnoxious talk show host (a variation of his popular 9 to 5 (1980) film character) and Joanna received a Golden Globe for her resourceful portrayal of Jo Jo White, the director of his show and romantic foil for Coleman, who stood toe-to-toe with his antics.
The 1980s also brought about positive, critical reception for Joanna on film as well, especially in a number of showy portrayals, notably her snake-dancing replicant in the futuristic sci-fi thriller Blade Runner (1982), her radio journalist involved with Nick Nolte and Ed Harris in the political drama Under Fire (1983) and her co-starring role in a wacky triangle with Bob Hoskins and a hyperkinetic hare in the highly ambitious part toon/part fantasy film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). Back on the TV front she was seen in recurring roles on L.A. Law (1986), Diagnosis Murder (1993), The District (2000) and Boston Legal (2004).
Since then Joanna has juggled a number of quality film and TV assignments, a definitive highlight being her Emmy-nominated recurring role as a quirky, capricious mother/psychiatrist in the cult cable series Six Feet Under (2001). More recently she has taken part in more controversial film work that contain stronger social themes such as Anthrax (2001), a Canadian political thriller whose storyline feeds on the fear of terrorism; The Virgin of Juarez (2006), which chronicled the murders of hundreds of Mexican women; and the gay-themed pictures Kiss the Bride (2007) and Anderson's Cross (2010).
Off-camera Joanna is devoted to her art (painting, sculpting) and is a dedicated animal activist as well as golfer and antique collector. She presently resides in the Los Angeles area with her dogs.- Actress
- Producer
- Music Department
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
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Born in 1979 in London, England, actress Rosamund Mary Elizabeth Pike is the only child of a classical violinist mother, Caroline (Friend), and an opera singer father, Julian Pike. Due to her parents' work, she spent her early childhood traveling around Europe. Pike attended Badminton School in Bristol, England and began acting at the National Youth Theatre. While appearing in a National Youth Theatre production of "Romeo and Juliet", she was first spotted and signed by an agent, although she continued her education at Wadham College, Oxford, where she read English Literature, eventually graduating with an upper second class honors degree.
Pike appeared in a number of UK television series, including Wives and Daughters (1999), before scoring an auspicious feature film debut as the glacial beauty "Miranda Frost" in the James Bond film, Die Another Day (2002); when the film was released, she was only 23. Though her debut was a big-budget action film, the film work that followed was primarily in smaller, independent films, including Promised Land (2004), The Libertine (2004), (for which she won the Best Supporting Actress award at The British Independent Film Awards), and Pride & Prejudice (2005), as one of the Bennet daughters. A brief foray into Hollywood film followed with the action flick, Doom (2005), and the thriller, Fracture (2007), but she returned to smaller films with exceptional performances in three films: An Education (2009), Made in Dagenham (2010), and the lead opposite Paul Giamatti in Barney's Version (2010).
As she continued her stage work in England, Pike appeared in the spy spoof, Johnny English Reborn (2011), and inhabited the role of "Andromeda" in the sci-fi epic, Wrath of the Titans (2012). She returned to action films with the female lead opposite Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher (2012).
Pike entered into a relationship with a mathematical researcher named Robie Uniacke in 2009. She gave birth to their first son, named Solo, in May 2012. She returned to acting and landed the coveted title role in Gone Girl (2014). The film became a critical and box-office hit, with Pike earning the film's sole Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. She also earned nominations as Best Actress from Screen Actor's Guild, Golden Globes, and BAFTA. She gave birth to her second son with Uniacke in December 2014.- Producer
- Actress
- Music Department
Often considered hip-hop's first lady, the woman behind the moniker Queen Latifah was born Dana Elaine Owens on March 18, 1970, in East Orange, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Rita (Bray), a teacher, and Lancelot Owens Sr. She came from a police family-both her father and her older brother were cops-which would later influence her rhyming style and life philosophy. Her brother died in a motorcycle accident in 1992. Owens witnessed both sides of black urban life in the USA while growing up. After a brief stint as a Burger King employee, she soon found herself making waves in the hip-hop music scene.
After working as the human beatbox alongside Ladies Fresh, she was just 18 years old when she broke through in the late 1980s with a style that picked selectively from jazz, reggae, and soul traditions, from beats produced by D.J. Mark the 45 King. Her debut single, "Wrath of My Madness," was released in 1988. A year later, her debut long-player, "All Hail the Queen," enjoyed favored reviews: an old, wise head was evident on the top of her young shoulders. The former Burger King employee maintained her early commitment to answering the misogynist armory of some of her male counterparts and, at the same time, imparted musical good times to all genders. Her name means "delicate and sensitive" in Arabic, but she has often been anything but in her rhymes and the messages she sends out through them. One of the most prominent female hip-hop artists on the scene for over a decade, Queen Latifah has also made tremendous inroads in movies, television, and artist management, with her management company, Flavor Unit, alongside her business partner Shakim Compere. A role model who takes the responsibility to heart, Latifah has carefully constructed a fine career for herself-one that is constantly moving upward.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Amanda Peet was born and raised in New York City. She is the daughter of Penny (Levy), a social worker, and Charles Peet, a lawyer, and has an older sister. Her father was of mostly English and German ancestry, and her mother was from a Jewish family (from Germany, Russia, and Hungary). Peet's great-grandfathers were politician Samuel Levy and showbiz impresario S.L. Rothafel.
Peet made an unconventional stage debut at the age of three, when she jumped onto the stage during a play. Yet, despite this early start, she later studied acting more as a hobby than anything else. She studied history at Columbia University, where a drama professor convinced her to audition for acting teacher Uta Hagen, with whom she later went on to study for a four-year period. During this time, she participated in the off-Broadway revival of Clifford Odets's "Awake and Sing." She supported herself during the audition phase of her career by working as a waitress and with the residual checks she received from a Skittles candy commercial. Perseverance and hard work paid off, and, in 1995, she was cast in a guest-starring role on the hit series Law & Order (1990).
Her feature film debut came in 1995 with the movie Animal Room (1995). For a while afterward, Amanda continued to find steady work but also found herself appearing in a depressingly large number of indie films that were never picked up for distribution. She did, however, meet her boyfriend Brian Van Holt on the set of indie movie Whipped (2000). Her turn as the ditzy hit-woman with the heart of gold in the hit comedy The Whole Nine Yards (2000), opposite Bruce Willis, took her from supporting role status to leading lady. That same year she was voted one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World by "People" Magazine.- Producer
- Actress
- Executive
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
- Producer
- Writer
Melissa Ivy Rauch was born in Marlboro, New Jersey. She attended Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, where she received a BFA degree. While going to school, Melissa performed stand-up comedy around Manhattan, and soon made a name for herself on the NYC comedy scene. Her one-woman show, "The Miss Education of Jenna Bush", in which she portrayed Jenna Bush Hager, the former President's daughter, garnered critical acclaim and played to sold-out audiences (Outstanding Solo Show and TheaterMania's Audience Favorite Award--New York International Fringe Festival/HBO's US Comedy Arts Festival).
Melissa resides in Los Angeles, California, with Winston Rauch, her husband and writing partner.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Carol Vorderman was born on 24 December 1960 in Bedford, Bedfordshire, England, UK. She is an actress and writer, known for W1A (2014), Trollied (2011) and Mr Blobby: Mr Blobby (1993).- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Alison Brie was born in Hollywood, California, to Joanne (Brenner), who worked at a non-profit child care agency, and Charles Terry Schermerhorn, a musician and entertainment reporter. Her mother is Jewish and her father has Scottish, Dutch, English, German, and Norwegian ancestry. Brie grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of South Pasadena. Interested in acting at an early age, she began her career performing in community theater shows at the Jewish Community Center in Los Feliz. Her very first role was "Toto" in the Wizard of Oz. After graduating from South Pasadena High School in 2001; Alison attended California Institute of the Arts where she received her BFA in Acting. While there, she was one of the original cast members in the world premiere of The Peach Blossom Fan, performed as the inaugural theater production at Disney's REDCAT Theater in Downtown LA. During that time, Alison also studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Scotland.
Since graduating, she has continued to work in all forms of media, including film, television, and theater. She has performed in the Blank Theater Company's Young Playwright's festival and in shows at the Odyssey, Write-Act, and Rubicon Theaters, receiving an Indy Award for her haunting performance as "Ophelia" in the Rubicon's production of Hamlet. She had performed guest spots for Comedy Central and Disney's Hannah Montana (2006) as well as leading roles in some independent films before landing her role on Mad Men (2007). Since then, she has continued to work in film and TV.
Alison lives in South Pasadena.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Kaley Christine Cuoco was born in Camarillo, California, to Layne Ann (Wingate) and Gary Carmine Cuoco, a realtor. She is of Italian (father) and German and English (mother) descent. A model and commercial actress from the age of 6, Cuoco's first major role was in the TV movie Quicksand: No Escape (1992) with Donald Sutherland and Tim Matheson. Her other television credits include guest-starring on the series Ellen (1994) (where she played "little Ellen" to the Ellen DeGeneres character), Northern Exposure (1990), Don't Forget Your Toothbrush (1995) and My So-Called Life (1994). In addition, she played a leading role in the miniseries, Mr. Murder (1998). Cuoco has appeared in the feature films Lucky 13 (2005), Picture Perfect (1997) and Virtuosity (1995).
On stage, she has performed in Los Angeles-area productions of "Annie" and "Fiddler on the Roof". When she is not acting, Cuoco is an avid tennis player, who in earlier years had consistently been ranked well in Southern California Tennis Association standings as a member of a regional amateur division team. In addition, she enjoys spending time with friends, going to the mall, and hip-hop dancing.
Cuoco was home-schooled, and lived in Ventura County, California with her family. She was previously married to both tennis player Ryan Sweeting and Karl Cook. In early 2022 Cuoco began dating actor Tom Pelphrey. The two made their first public appearance as a couple at a Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in early May 2022.
Cuoco announced on Instagram in October 2022 the couple were expecting their first child together. She later on gave birth to their daughter, named Matilda Carmine Richie Pelphrey, on 30 March 2023.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Minka Kelly was born in Los Angeles, California and she is the only child of former Aerosmith guitarist, Rick Dufay, and Maureen Kelly, an exotic dancer and single mother, who often moved with her daughter to different communities before settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by the time Minka was in junior high school.
Her paternal grandfather was actor Richard Ney. Minka's ancestry includes Austrian, German, French, Irish, English, Scottish, and Dutch.- Producer
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Padma Lakshmi was born on 1 September 1970 in Madras, Tamil Nadu, India. She is a producer and actress, known for Glitter (2001), Star Trek: Enterprise (2001) and Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi (2020). She was previously married to Salman Rushdie.- Actress
- Soundtrack
January Jones was born on January 5, 1978 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She is the daughter of Karen Sue (née Cox), a sporting goods store manager, and Marvin Roger Jones, a gym teacher and fitness director. She is of Czech, Danish, English, Welsh, and German ancestry. She was named after the character January Wayne in Jacqueline Susann's potboiler novel turned film, Once Is Not Enough (1975). She has two sisters, Jacey Jones and Jina Jones].
Her family moved to the small town of Hecla, South Dakota, with a population of just some 400 souls in 1979, when she was one year old; they moved back to Sioux Falls in 1986. After graduating from Roosevelt High School, she moved to New York City to become a model. Despite her stature (5'6", which is short for a fashion model), she got modeling gigs, including Abercrombie & Fitch ads. However, modeling was just a means to an end, to get out of South Dakota and avoid going to college.
She got her first taste of acting from TV commercials and found that she had flair for it, even though she did not act in high school and had no training. January appeared in a couple of television pilots and a cable television series before making her big screen debut in All the Rage (1999), an indie that never got a real release. She followed it up with a small role in the teen thriller The Glass House (2001). Her actual debut in the sense of attracting attention was in the near silent role of the beauty who entices Jane Fonda's son, Troy Garity, in the Bruce Willis-Cate Blanchett-Billy Bob Thornton comedy Bandits (2001). It was not a career-making part. At the time the movie was released, she was ending a three-year relationship with Ashton Kutcher.
Small roles followed, including a "don't blink or you won't see me" part in the Adam Sandler-Jack Nicholson comedy Anger Management (2003). She gained some career traction with a good role in another comedy, American Wedding (2003), a sequel to American Pie (1999). Until she landed the part on Mad Men (2007), which made its debut on AMC in 2007, her career was steady but undistinguished. "I choose roles that are not me", January has said. The role of Betty Draper has garnered her two Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy nomination as Best Actress. Her cool, Grace Kelly-ish blonde ice queen looks -- counterpointed by her soul burning in her bright blue eyes -- have established her as a retro icon of the 21st Century.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Lacey Nicole Chabert was born in Purvis, Mississippi, to Julie (Johnson) and Tony Chabert, a representative for an oil company. She is of Cajun (French), Italian, English, and Scottish ancestry. Chabert started in drama and music performances in and around her hometown in Mississippi from an early age, and was a finalist on Star Search (1983) in 1991. She gained her break in a cough syrup commercial, before successfully auditioning for the Broadway production of Les Miserables, where she played young Cosette for two years. Since then, she has been on a few television series, notably Party of Five (1994), a number of telemovies like Gypsy (1993), and her big-screen debut, Lost in Space (1998). Known for her natural acting skills and charming personality, her cotton candy voice has seen her record many advertising jingles, plus play parts in animated films and TV shows like Nickelodeon's The Wild Thornberrys (1998). A more than capable violinist, she enjoys various activities, especially shoe shopping, and she is particularly fond of Cajun cooking. As a result of her promising career, her family, including two sisters and a brother, have moved from Mississippi to California.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Emmy Award-winning actress Jaime Pressly is known for her wide range of film and television roles. Pressly appeared in Welcome to Flatch (2022) from 2022 to 2023. Previously, she played Jill Kendall, opposite Anna Faris and Academy Award winner Allison Janney, on Chuck Lorre's hit CBS comedy Mom (2013).
Before that, Pressly starred as Jennifer Doyle in TV Land's original sitcom Jennifer Falls (2014). The first-ever single camera comedy for TV Land, the show revolved around Jennifer, a former high-powered executive who had fallen from grace and hit every bump on the way down to rock bottom. Best known for her role as Joy Turner, on the hit show "My Name Is Earl," Pressly was nominated for her first Golden Globe and won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2007. Additionally, Jaime was nominated for a SAG Actor Award in both 2006 and 2007, and an Emmy in 2006. She has previously starred the DreamWorks film "I Love You, Man" directed by John Hamburg, opposite Paul Rudd, Jason Segel and Jon Favreau. Other film credits include cult classics such as "Joe Dirt" with David Spade, "Not Another Teen Movie" with Chris Evans, and "Can't Hardly Wait", among others.- Actress
- Producer
Born in New York but raised in California, Devon Aoki is no stranger to the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Her father is former Olympic wrestler and Benihana restaurant magnate Rocky Aoki and her mother is Pamela Hilburger, a jewelry designer. Devon is of Japanese (from her father) and German and English (from her mother) ancestry. She started modeling when she was 13, the same year her godmother introduced her to modeling legend Kate Moss. She is now the face of Lancome and is one of the top earners at her agency, Women.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Known primarily for her acting career, 'In Her Name' is Sarah Carter's debut as a feature director and filmmaker. This movie premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival 2022. Canadian-born, Sarah trained classically in theater, dance, and fine arts at Ryerson University Toronto. When she arrived in Los Angeles, her acting career took off quickly with string of long-running series regular roles. She became well known for her role as "Madeleine Poe" opposite James Woods on CBS' Shark directed by Spike Lee and most recently she took the lead as "Harper Deakins" opposite Cole Hauser and Richard Shiff on her series Rogue.
Her guest-starring and recurring roles leave a memorable impression, namely as "Alicia Baker" on the CW's Smallville; as "Wrenn Darcy" opposite Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland, and Jill Clayburgh in HBO's Dirty Sexy Money; as "Cassie" in the much-talked-about "The Sundance Kids" episode of HBO's Entourage; as "Lynn Downey" on CBS' long-running remake of Hawaii Five-0, and she's maintained her status as a fan favorite recurring as "Cicada," the first female villain, on CW's The Flash, as well as a guest-star in Law & Order SVU opposite Mariska Hargitay portraying a charismatic capo of NXIVM sex cult.
Her success as an actor inspired a quiet pursuit of the director's chair beginning with Judd Apatow and Seth Rogan inviting her into the writing room to develop her character on their comedy series 'Undeclared'. Since then, she has shadowed and worked with several top directors, most notably over the course of her 5-year run on Steven Spielberg's "Falling Skies".
In film, Sarah has starred in several independent and studio pictures, including Haven, Killing Zelda Sparks, Berkeley, The Weinstein Co.'s DOA: Dead or Alive, New Line Cinema's Final Destination 2. She appeared opposite Rachel McAdams, as "Diane" in SpyGlass Pictures' blockbuster, The Vow, and opposite Larenz Tate as "Veronica" in Business Ethics.
With the birth of her daughter, Alice, Sarah completed her first original screenplay, 'Girl Who Needed A Ride'. She is CEO and founder of her own house, Cheshire Moon Productions. Along with her husband, Emmy Award-winning editor, Kevin Barth, she has successfully produced two full-length features, "A Pity", and her self-penned directorial debut "In Her Name". Both have shared success on the 2022 festival circuit.
Sarah honors her mastery of the artistic process by teaching and contributing as a philanthropist in various ways. She's worked with teenage boys at Camp Kilpatrick Juvenile Delinquent Hall to help them tell their stories and move their emotions creatively, and facilitates women's groups intended to share and release trauma, celebrate wisdom, and find freedom in a safe community. For years, she was the spokesperson for The Breast Cancer Fund promoting health and wellness, raising funds for research, and was featured in Elle Magazine for climbing Mt. Shasta in honor of all the women in her life and around the world who live with or who have died fighting cancer. Today, Cheshire Moon Productions has partnered with EmpowerHer, an organization to support and inspire young women who have lost their mothers.
Working and traveling alone as an actor for over a decade, she values her ability to bond and communicate beyond language and culture. As a practicing Buddhist and yogini, with professional training in core energetics, and having acquired teaching status for her studies with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes on story analysis and channeling archetypes, Sarah applies her experience as a mystic to all facets of her life's work.
Along with being a professional actor, director, writer, producer, and devoted mother, Sarah is a singer/songwriter in her band, "SanguinDrake."- Actress
- Producer
Linn Natassia Malthe is a Norwegian model and actress.
Natassia is the middle of two sisters with an older brother she recently discovered she had. She was born in Oslo, Norway, and is of half Norwegian/Chinese descent. Her mother is from Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. She is usually credited by her birth name but is sometimes credited Natassia Linn Malthe.
In Scotland, and Norway, Malthe went to dance schools at the Goh Ballet Academy, The Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and The Norwegian Opera House, The Oslo National academy of the Arts where she studied dance, art history, and anatomy. Later she moved to London, England to study musical theater. From there she went to Los Angeles and landed her first part on television. She is getting a bachelor's degree in Film and TV School and is planning on studying at AFI after her bachelor's degree which will be completed in 2024.
In 2005, Natassia Malthe, with Jennifer Garner was nominated at MTV Movie Awards for MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss. She has been the main character in multiple video game movies such as DOA and Bloodrayne and she has also played a Marvel Comic book character Typhoid Mary in Elektra with Jennifer Garner and Will Yun Lee.
In 2009, Malthe starred as an elf bounty-hunter and sorceress-in-training in the Sci Fi Channel miniseries Knights of Bloodsteel. Starred opposite Jason Statham and Ryan Philippe in the movie "Chaos". At the start of her career she also did fashion modeling to help finance her move from Norway to Hollywood to pursue an acting career and is among the Girls of Maxim and Toro Women.
She was also the face of LG electronics and starred in a 100 million dollar budget campaign called "Scarlet" with Emmy award winning director David Nutter as the director best known for Band of Brothers and Games of Thrones.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Brittany Murphy was born Brittany Anne Bertolotti on November 10, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia, to Sharon Kathleen Murphy and Angelo Joseph Bertolotti. Her father's ancestry is Italian, and her mother is of Irish and Slovak descent. Her father moved the family back to Edison, New Jersey as a native New Yorker and to be closer to other siblings from previous marriages. While dining out one night in the presence of Hollywood royalty, Brittany at the age of 5 approached an adjoining table when Academy Award nominee Burt Reynolds and George Segal were seated. Brittany introduced herself to the Hollywood legends and confidently told them that someday she too would be a star.
She comes from a long line of international musicians and performers with three half-brothers and a sister. Angelo Bertolotti was torn from their tight-knit family as a made-man with the Italian Mafia. The Senior Bertolotti, who coined the nickname of "Britt" for his daughter, was also an entrepreneur and diplomat for organized crime families and one of the first to be subjected to a RICO prosecution. Brittany's interests and well-being were always her father's first goal and objective. To distance his talented daughter from his infamous past, Angelo allowed Sharon to use her maiden name for Brittany's, so that her shining star would not be overshadowed by a father's past, with the couple divorcing thereafter.
Brittany began receiving accolades and applause in regional theater at the early age of 9. At the age of 13, she landed several national commercials. She appeared on television and caught the attention of a personal manager and an agent. Soon, Brittany's mother Sharon turned full-time to being a "Stage Mom" where Angelo provided financial support throughout and their relationship is memorialized with a long and close history in pictures. The hopeful daughter and mother moved to Burbank, CA, where Brittany landed her first television role on Blossom (1990). Hearts and doors opened up for a starring role on Drexell's Class (1991), a short lived TV series.
Brittany's big screen movie debut started with Clueless (1995), where she was co-starring with Alicia Silverstone. Britt soared, demonstrating her musical and artistic talents with dramatic and comedic roles landing a nomination for best leading female performance in the Young Artist Awards for her role in the television film David and Lisa (1998). She garnered tremendous attention for her role in Girl, Interrupted (1999) with Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie. Brittany's band, "Blessed Soul" was growing with her as lead singer and Britt lent her vocal talents to the TV hit, cartoon sensation, King of the Hill (1997) as the voice of Luanne.
She is alleged to have been a witness in the case of the former Department of Homeland Security employee and persecuted whistleblower Julia Davis. According to Davis, Brittany and her fiancée Simon Monjack were then targeted for retaliation that included land and aerial surveillance and a threatened prosecution. Monjack was arrested and detained by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Brittany and Simon confided in Alex Ben Block of the Hollywood Reporter, telling him in an interview that they were under surveillance by helicopters and their telephones have been wiretapped. This information was published by THR posthumously, in an article entitled "The Last Difficult Days of Brittany Murphy."
On December 20, 2009, Brittany Murphy died an untimely death. The LAPD and Los Angeles County Coroner closed the case within one hour, attributing her death to pneumonia and anemia. Five months after Brittany's unexpected demise, her husband Simon Monjack was found dead in the house he shared with Brittany. The chief/spokesperson at the Los Angeles County Dept of Coroner, Craig Harvey, stated that Simon also died from the same exact causes as his wife, namely pneumonia and anemia. Neither Brittany, nor Simon, were given a thorough and complete forensic autopsy for poisons. Brittany's father, Angelo "AJ" Bertolotti, is pursuing the investigation of the true reasons behind Brittany's and Simon's sudden demise, as he believes that the two were murdered. Abnormally high levels of heavy metals and poisons were discovered in Brittany's hair, tested by two other independent forensic labs with famed Pathologist, attorney Cyril Wecht concluded from the appearances, Brittany could have been murdered and should be exhumed. Her father Angelo is preparing court actions to ensure she obtains justice.- Actress
- Soundtrack
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 British Columbia tuition and expenses.- Producer
- Actress
- Writer
Heidi Klum was born in Bergisch Gladbach, a small city near Cologne, Germany, in 1973. Her career as a top fashion model and swimsuit star began almost by accident when, on a lark, she submitted photos to a model competition hosted by Petra, a young woman's magazine. Klum won the competition, and signed with Metropolitan, the German modeling agency. After modeling in Europe for a few years to great success, she went to the United States to pursue modeling there, and met with more success, culminating in her relationship with Victoria's Secret. This brought her to the pinnacle of modeling and, in 1998, the coveted cover of Sports Illustrated's annual Swimsuit Issue, cementing her status as one of the world's top models. Along with that came lucrative marketing opportunities, including her own signature lines of sandals, jewelry, and perfume.
Like many other models, most notably Famke Janssen, Klum then sought to parlay her fame into a career in Hollywood. She has appeared frequently on TV in the US and in Germany, and has had several small parts in movies, including a cameo playing Swiss bombshell Ursula Andress in the Peter Sellers biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004). Klum is married to British singer Seal and, as of June 2005, was expecting a child with him -- she has a daughter, Leni, with a boyfriend from a previous relationship. While she is best known for her beauty and perfect figure (one of her nicknames being "The Body"), the tall and willowy Klum remains surprisingly down-to-earth for a supermodel - a middle-class Westphalian girl from a small city - and has an endearingly goofy, engaging sense of humor. She is famously close to her father, Gunther.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
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
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Denise Richards was born in Downers Grove, Illinois, the older of two daughters of Joni Lee, who owned a coffee shop, and Irv Richards, a telephone engineer. She has German, French-Canadian, Irish, English, and Welsh ancestry. She grew up in the Chicago area, until the family relocated to Oceanside, CA when Denise was 15. She began working as a model, and moved to L.A. after she graduated from high school. She landed parts in both TV and movies, and gave breakthrough performances in Starship Troopers (1997) with Casper Van Dien, Wild Things (1998) and The World Is Not Enough (1999), in which she plays a Bond Girl. She also was in Undercover Brother (2002) with Eddie Griffin and appeared in Scary Movie 3 (2003) with her now ex-husband, Charlie Sheen.- 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 "Hamlet" in New York, and was "Juliet" in Peter Hall's "Romeo and Juliet" at the Ahmanson theatre in Los Angeles.
- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
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
- Producer
- Director
Jaime Ray Newman will next be seen in a recurring role on the new Apple TV series created by Don Cheadle, THE BIG CIGAR, as well as guest starring in BEL AIR on Peacock. She recently appeared as a recurring character on the critically-acclaimed Hulu series DOPESICK, opposite Michael Keaton, as well as on THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE for HBO. Newman held prominent recurring roles in both DEPUTY on FOX and LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE, opposite Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. Previously, Jaime has recurred on VERONICA MARS, THE MAGICIANS, THE IMPOSTERS, MAJOR CRIMES, SATISFACTION, CSI, DROP DEAD DIVA, and NIP/TUCK. Jaime also starred in NBC's MIDNIGHT TEXAS and season one of Marvel's THE PUNISHER on Netflix. Her other credits include A&E's BATES MOTEL, ABC's WICKED CITY, and ABC's EASTWICK.
Jaime will next be seen in the independent feature film, JUDO, directed by Guy Nattiv. Her other film work includes appearing in CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, RUBBERNECK, the independent movie RED ROBIN, as well as the remake of the animated film TARZAN. She can also be seen in the feature VALLEY OF THE GODS, opposite Josh Hartnett and John Malkovich. Jaime received an Academy Award for best short in 2018 for SKIN. She will next be seen in the short film KINSHIP, directed by Daniel Ramirez and produced by Lawrence Bender and Kevin Brown. She is currently developing projects alongside her husband, Guy Nattiv, for their production company, New Native Pictures.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
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).- Born in Montréal, Québec, Missy lived most of her life in Surrey, British Columbia, with her father, a minister; her mother; and two sisters. She began her career in front of the camera at age 18, when she started modeling. The print advertisements soon turned into commercials for Mercedes Benz, Sprint Canada, and the Olympics. It wasn't long before Hollywood came calling.
Missy's first guest appearance was on the action-drama series Dark Angel (2000), opposite Jessica Alba. She followed that with the role of Julia on the critically acclaimed cable series The Chris Isaak Show (2001). Her next audition landed her the plum role of Tory Stratton in Black Sash (2003). She also had starring roles on the shows Life as We Know It (2004) and Reaper (2007). Missy starred as Haley Graham in the 2006 gymnastics movie Stick It (2006). She also starred as police officer Andy McNally in ABC's prime-time cop show Rookie Blue (2010).
A dedicated soccer player, Missy's new schedule has forced her to take time away from the sport, but she picks up games whenever she can. She also enjoys snowboarding and outdoor sports on the local Vancouver mountains. She resides in Vancouver with her family. - Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Kim Basinger was born December 8, 1953, in Athens, Georgia, the third of five children. Both her parents had been in entertainment, her dad had played big-band jazz, and her mother had performed water ballet in several Esther Williams movies. Kim was introspective, from her father's side. As a schoolgirl, she was very shy. To help her overcome this, her parents had Kim study ballet from an early age. By the time she reached sweet sixteen, the once-shy Kim entered the Athens Junior Miss contest. From there, she went on to win the Junior Miss Georgia title, and traveled to New York to compete in the national Junior Miss pageant. Kim, who had blossomed to a 5' 7" beauty, was offered a contract on the spot with the Ford Modeling Agency. At the age of 20, Kim was a top model commanding $1,000 a day. Throughout the early 1970s, she appeared on dozens of magazine covers and in hundreds of ads, most notably as the Breck girl. Kim took acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse, performed in various Greenwich Village clubs, and she sang under the stage name Chelsea. Kim moved to Los Angeles in 1976, ready to conquer Hollywood. Kim broke into television doing episodes of such hit series as Charlie's Angels (1976). In 1980, she married Ron Snyder (they divorced in 1989). In movies, she had roles like being a Bond girl in Never Say Never Again (1983) and playing a small-town Texan beauty in Nadine (1987). Her breakout role was as photojournalist Vicki Vale in the blockbuster hit Batman (1989). There was no long-orchestrated campaign on her part to snag this plum role, Kim was a last-minute replacement for Sean Young. This took her to a career high.
With perhaps too much disposable income, Kim headed up an investment group that purchased the entire town of Braselton, in her native Georgia, for $20 million (she would later have to sell it). In 1993, Kim married Alec Baldwin, and in 1995 they had a daughter, Ireland Eliesse. Kim took some time off to stay at home with her child. Kim, who loves animals and is a strict vegetarian, devoted energy to animal rights issues, and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), even posing for some ads. In 1997, Kim gave an Oscar-winning performance in the film noir classic L.A. Confidential (1997). Kim's salary for I Dreamed of Africa (2000) was $5,000,000, putting her firmly in the category of big-name movie star. And no doubt there are still many great things ahead, in the career of cover girl turned Oscar-winning actress Kim Basinger.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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 captivated audiences and won acclaim as one of the most gifted and versatile actresses on stage and screen.
Born and educated in New York City, Weaver graduated from Stanford University and went on to receive a master's degree from the Yale School of Drama. Her first professional job was in Sir John Gielgud's production of The Constant Wife working with Ingrid Bergman.
After a walk-on in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, Weaver made her motion picture debut in Ridley Scott's 1979 blockbuster Alien. She later reprised the role of Warrant Officer Ripley in James Cameron's 1986 Aliens; her performance earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. In 1992, she again brought Ripley back to life in David Fincher's Alien 3, which she co-produced, and in 1997 she starred in and co-produced Alien: Resurrection for director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. In 1985, Weaver starred in Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters alongside Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd playing Dana Barrett and her possessed counterpart Zuul.
In 1988 Weaver portrayed primatologist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist and Katharine Parker in the Mike Nichols comedy Working Girl. Both performances earned her Academy Award Nominations, and she was awarded two Golden Globes for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture. Other films include Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously (1983) with Linda Hunt and Mel Gibson, Eyewitness (1981) with William Hurt, Half Moon Street (1986) with Michael Caine, Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) with Gerard Depardieu, Roman Polanski's gripping film adaptation of Death and the Maiden (1994), the thriller Copycat (1995) and Paul Rudnick's comedy Jeffery (1995). Weaver also starred in Showtime's live-action film Snow White (1997) based on the original Grimm's fairy tale, which earned her an Emmy nomination and a Screen Actors Guild nomination.
In 1997 Weaver joined the ensemble of Ang Lee's critically acclaimed film The Ice Storm alongside Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci. Her performance garnered her a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe nomination and a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She later gave a galvanizing performance in A Map of the World (1999), Scott Elliott's powerful drama based on the novel by Jane Hamilton, which earned her universal critical praise and a Golden Globe nomination for best actress. Also in 1999, Weaver appeared in the science fiction comedy Galaxy Quest directed by Dean Parisot alongside Tim Allen and Alan Rickman. She delighted audiences with her flair for comedy, and the film proved to be a hit of the 1999 holiday season. She followed this with the popular comedies Company Man (2000) written and directed by Douglas McGrath and David Mirkin's Heartbreakers (2001) opposite Gene Hackman, Jennifer Love-Hewitt and the late Ray Liotta.
In 2002 Weaver starred in the film version of The Guys, with Anthony LaPaglia, directed by Jim Simpson, and in 2003 she portrayed the cold-blooded, red-headed warden in the hit comedy Holes directed by Andy Davis. The next year, Weaver appeared in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village and received rave reviews for her performance in Imaginery Heroes written and directed by Dan Harris.
In 2006 she appeared in three films - as Babe Paley in Douglas McGrath's Infamous, in Jake Kasdan's The TV Set, and in Snow Cake opposite Alan Rickman. In the following years, Weaver lent her voice to Pixar's 2008 box office smash WALL-E as well as The Tale of Despereaux (2008) with Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Watson. She also starred in the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedy Baby Mama (2008) and Andy Fickman's comedy You Again (2010) with Jamie Lee Curtis. In December 2009 Weaver starred as Dr. Grace Augustine in Jim Cameron's groundbreaking film Avatar, which went on to be the highest grossing film of all time. The film won a Golden Globe for Best Picture and an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.
Other credits include Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Miguel Arteta's Cedar Rapids (2011), Paul (2011), Amy Heckerling's Vamps (2012), and Neil Blomkamp's Chappie (2015). In December 2016 she starred in Focus Features' A Monster Calls alongside Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones and newcomer, Lewis MacDougall, followed by Lionsgate's The Assignment (2017) with Michelle Rodriguez directed by Walter Hill.
After coming to New York in the fall of 1975, Weaver performed Off-Off Broadway in Christopher Durang's The Nature and Purpose of the Universe (1974), Titanic (1976) and Das Lusitania Songspiel (1980). She and Durang co-wrote Das Lusitania which earned them both Drama Desk nominations. She has appeared in numerous Off-Broadway productions in New York, working with writers such as John Guare, Albert Innaurato, Richard Nelson and Len Jenkin. In regional repertory she has performed works by Pinter, Williams, Feydeau and Shakespeare. Weaver also appeared in the PBS mini-series "The Best of Families" (1977) and John Cheever's The Sorrows of Gin (1979), adapted by Wendy Wasserstein for PBS.
Weaver received a Tony Award nomination for her starring role in Hurlyburly (1984) on Broadway, directed by Mike Nichols. She played Portia in the Classic Stage Company of New York's production of The Merchant of Venice (1986). In 1996 Weaver returned to Broadway in the Lincoln Center production of Sex and Longing, written by Christopher Durang. In the Fall of 2012, she starred in the Lincoln Center production of Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike which moved to Broadway in 2013. That year Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike took home the Tony award for Best Play.
Weaver originated the female lead in Anne Nelson's The Guys (2001) at The Flea where it was commissioned and directed by Jim Simpson. The Guys tells the story of a fire captain played by Bill Murray dealing with the aftermath of 9/11. In 2002 she starred in Neil LaBute's play The Mercy Seat opposite Liev Schreiber - which John Lahr of The New Yorker described as offering "performances of a depth and concentration that haven't been seen in New York for many seasons." Weaver also originated roles in two A.R. Gurney world premieres, Mrs. Farnsworth (2004) at the Flea Theater (New York Times 10 Best Plays for 2004), and Crazy Mary (2007) at Playwrights Horizons.
In television Weaver received Emmy, Screen Actors' Guild and Golden Globe nominations for her role as Mary Griffith in Lifetime's "Prayers for Bobby," which was also Emmy nominated for Outstanding Made for Television Movie. In 2012 she was seen in USA Network's miniseries "Political Animals," for which she received SAG, Golden Globe, and Emmy nominations. Weaver also appeared in the Marvel series "The Defenders," released globally on Netflix in August 2017.
Ms. Weaver was honored to receive the GLAAD Media Award for her work in "Prayers for Bobby" as well as the Trevor Life Award in 2011. She has been the Honorary Chair of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund for the last 33 years. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, and she also served on the Board of Human Rights First for 25 years. Weaver was proud to receive the National Audubon Society's Rachel Carson Award in 2009 for her environmental work. She was also a co-founder of the original Flea Theater on White Street which championed young artists and new work.
Weaver appeared in season 4 of the French television series "Call My Agent!" which was released globally on Netflix in 2021 and won the International Emmy for Comedy Series. Additionally, she starred in Philippe Falardeau's My Salinger Year which opened the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival. In April 2021 Weaver narrated James Cameron's "Secrets of the Whales," which debuted on Disney+ and garnered an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Narrator. The series also won the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.
Weaver's recent film work includes Phyllis Nagy's drama Call Jane alongside Elizabeth Banks, Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky's The Goos House alongside Kevin Kline. James Cameron's Avatar: The Way of Water premiered at the end of 2022 with Weaver playing Kiri, Grace Augustine's Na'vi daughter. A2 received "Best Picture" nominations for the Oscars, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice awards and has grossed almost 2.5 billion dollars. Upcoming projects include Amazon Studios' drama series, "The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart," which she also executive produced, and Paul Schrader's Master Gardener, opposite Joel Edgerton, which premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.- Actress
- Producer
- Music Department
A small-town girl born and raised in rural Kalispell, Montana, Michelle Ingrid Williams is the daughter of Carla Ingrid (Swenson), a homemaker, and Larry Richard Williams, a commodity trader and author. Her ancestry is Norwegian, as well as German, British Isles, and other Scandinavian. She was first known as bad girl Jen Lindley in the television series Dawson's Creek (1998). She appeared in the comedy film Dick (1999), which was a parody of the Watergate Scandal along with Kirsten Dunst, as well as Prozac Nation (2001) with Christina Ricci. Since then, Michelle has worked her way into the world of independent films such as The Station Agent (2003), Imaginary Heroes (2004), and The Baxter (2005). But her real success happened in 2005 when she starred in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005) as Alma Beers Del Mar. A woman who realizes her husband is in love with another man. Her talent shown in Brokeback Mountain (2005) landed her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In 2011, she received her first lead role Academy Award nomination for Blue Valentine (2010). She followed this in 2012 with a lead role Academy Award nomination for My Week with Marilyn (2011).
Michelle has a daughter, Matilda, with late Australian actor Heath Ledger.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Ashley Williams is an American actress. She is known for playing Victoria on the CBS series How I Met Your Mother opposite Josh Radnor. She's also had a long relationship with The Hallmark Channel where she stars in movies, produces, directs, writes, and also founded their women's directing initiative called "Make Her Mark". She also wrote and directed the short film "Meats" which played at Sundance and sold to Showtime. She has starred in more than a dozen different television pilots over the years and done over 200 episodes of television and television movies, in studio and independent films, regional theater, Off-Broadway, and on Broadway. She starred in the television series The Jim Gaffigan Show on Comedy Central and in the NBC series Good Morning Miami, as well as Warner Brothers' movie Something Borrowed.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Jamie Lee Curtis was born on November 22, 1958 in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of legendary actors Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. She got her big break at acting in 1978 when she won the role of Laurie Strode in Halloween (1978). After that, she became famous for roles in movies like Trading Places (1983), Perfect (1985) and A Fish Called Wanda (1988). She starred in one of the biggest action films ever, True Lies (1994), for which she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance. Curtis also appeared on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979), and starred in Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story (1981) as the title role. Her first starring role was opposite Richard Lewis on the ABC situation comedy Anything But Love (1989). In 1998, she starred in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) in which she reprised her role that made her famous back in 1978.
Jamie Lee served as an honorary chairperson for the Building Resilience for Young Children Dealing with Trauma program held at the Shakespeare Theatre - Harman Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C. She was an inspiration for the youth that were celebrated. Curtis was also given an award from US Department of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman for her work on behalf of children through her charities and children's books.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
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
- Soundtrack
Jeri Ryan was born Jeri Lynn Zimmerman on February 22, 1968 in Munich, West Germany, to Gerhard Florian Zimmerman, a Master Sergeant in the United States Army, and his wife Sharon, a social worker. She and her older brother Mark grew up on several military bases, including Kansas, Maryland, Hawaii, Georgia and Texas. Finally, at age 11, her father retired from the Army and her family settled down in Paducah, Kentucky. After graduating from Lone Oak High School in 1986, she attended Northwestern University Chicago as a National Merit Scholar. While studying there, she won a number of beauty contests (a.o.- sixth annual Miss Northwestern Alpha Delta Phi Pageant in 1989).
With a B.S. degree in Theatre, she came to Los Angeles, California and since then she has been on several television series and films - including popular series like Matlock (1986), Melrose Place (1992) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995) as well as Dark Skies (1996). Her television experience also includes roles in a variety of telefilms including Nightmare in Columbia County (1991), NBC's In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco (1993), Co-ed Call Girl (1996), The Sentinel (1996), Men Cry Bullets (1998), Dracula 2000 (2000), The Last Man (2000) and Down with Love (2003). Jeri Ryan resides in an area of Los Angeles, California with her husband chef Christophe Eme, her son Alex and daughter Gisele.- Actress
- Producer
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
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Precocious, outspoken child-teen starlet of the 1990s, Christina Ricci was born on February 12, 1980 in Santa Monica, California, the youngest of four children of Sarah (Murdoch), a realtor, and Ralph Ricci, a lawyer and therapist. She is of Italian (from her paternal grandfather), Irish, and Scots-Irish descent. She made her screen debut at the age of 9 in Mermaids (1990), in which she worked with Winona Ryder and Cher. Her breakthrough adult role was in The Ice Storm (1997), in which she plays a nymphet who skillfully seduces two brothers. She worked with Johnny Depp and Casper Van Dien in the Tim Burton film Sleepy Hollow (1999).- Teri Polo was born in Dover, Delaware, to Jane (Gentry) and Vincent Polo, a stereo systems designer. Her ancestry includes Italian (from her paternal grandfather), German, and English. She has two brothers, Mike and Steve. Polo studied ballet for twelve years and was a dancer for the Delaware Regional Ballet at age 15. She dropped out of high school at 16 because she won a local modeling contest for a blue jeans advert in Seventeen magazine. Polo tried her hand at modeling, and was signed to Elite petite division.
- Actress
- Writer
- Composer
Charlotte Gainsbourg was born in London, England in 1971. She is an Anglo-French actress and singer. The daughter of English singer and actress Jane Birkin and French songwriter, singer and actor Serge Gainsbourg, she was raised in Paris. Charlotte made her motion picture debut in 1984. In 1986, Charlotte won a César Award for "Most Promising Actress", and, in 2000, she won "Best Supporting Actress" for the film The Log (1999). In 1993, Charlotte made her English speaking debut in The Cement Garden (1993), written and directed by her uncle, Andrew Birkin. She made her stage debut in 1994 in David Mamet's Oleanna at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse. In 1996, Charlotte starred as the title character in Jane Eyre (1996), a film adaption of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel. In 2006, Charlotte appeared alongside Gael García Bernal in Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep (2006). In 2007, she appeared as Claire in the Todd Haynes directed Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There (2007), also contributing a cover of the Dylan song "Just Like a Woman" to the film soundtrack. In 2009, she won the award for Best Actress at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival for the film Antichrist (2009). Charlotte starred in the French/Australian production, The Tree (2010), released in 2010, and in Lars von Trier's science fiction disaster film, Melancholia (2011).- Elizabeth Jane Hurley was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, to Angela Mary (Titt), a teacher, and Roy Leonard Hurley, an army major. Wanting to be a dancer, Hurley went to ballet boarding school at 12, but soon returned home. When it came time to go to college, Hurley won a scholarship to the London Studio Centre which taught courses for dance and theater. Soon, Hurley wore the punk rock look with pink hair and a nose ring, but to get work, she had to change her image to one that was castable. After college, Hurley worked in the theater and made her screen debut in Aria (1987). Roles in Television and a film, Rowing with the Wind (1988), which included a young actor named Hugh Grant, soon followed. European films followed her appearance in the BBC serial Christabel (1988). Her film debut in a Hollywood movie was in the Wesley Snipes action drama Passenger 57 (1992). When Hugh Grant was picked up with Divine Brown, Hurley became headline news. Added to this was the fact that she was the model representing top cosmetics house Estée Lauder, and there was nowhere Hurley could go to get away from the press. In 1994, Hurley and Hugh Grant set up Simian Films in partnership with Castle Rock Entertainment. As Head of Development, Hurley found the script and produced her first film Extreme Measures (1996), which stars Hugh Grant.
- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Heather Joan Graham was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Joan (Bransfield), a schoolteacher and children's book author, and James Graham, an FBI agent. She and her sister, actress Aimee Graham, were raised by their strictly Catholic parents. They relocated often, as a result of their father's occupation, and Heather became increasingly shy. Surprisingly, she had a passion for acting from an early age and despite being labeled a 'theater geek' by her peers, she was voted Most Talented by her high school senior class. Unfortunately, her love of acting created a tension between Heather and her family although her mother obligingly drove her to auditions in Hollywood throughout her adolescence.
After high school Heather moved to Los Angeles and received small roles in a variety of films including Drugstore Cowboy (1989). When her career did not take off as quickly as was hoped, Heather enrolled in the University of California at Los Angeles to get her degree in drama. It was at UCLA that she was noticed by actor James Woods and received a subsequent part in a film Woods starred in, Diggstown (1992). Heather dropped out of UCLA after two years to pursue her acting career on a full time basis. Aside from gaining a modeling contract with Emanuel Ungaro Liberte, Heather has risen to star in such films as Swingers (1996), a role she received after being taken out swing dancing by Jon Favreau, to blockbusters like Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), and Boogie Nights (1997).- Actress
- Soundtrack
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
- Producer
Abbie Cornish, also known by her rap name Dusk, is an Australian actress and rapper. Following her lead performance in 2004's Somersault, Cornish is best-known for her film roles as the titular heroin addict in the drama Candy (2006), courtier Bess Throckmorton in the historical drama Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Fanny Brawne in the John Keats biopic Bright Star (2009), "Sweet Pea" in the action film Sucker Punch (2011), Lindy in the science fiction thriller Limitless (2011) and for her work with writer/director Martin McDonagh in Seven Psychopaths (2012) and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017).
Cornish was born in Lochinvar, New South Wales, Australia, as the second of five children of Shelley and Barry Cornish. Her sister, Isabelle Cornish, is also an actress. She grew up on a 70-hectare (170-acre) farm before moving to Newcastle, New South Wales. As a teenager, Cornish was fascinated by independent and foreign films. In 2006 she became an ambassador for Australian animal rights group Voiceless, the animal-protection institute, and was part of a national advertising campaign in 2012. Cornish began model-ling at age 13 after reaching the finals of a Dolly Magazine competition. In 1999, Cornish was awarded the Australian Film Institute Young Actor's Award for her role in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's television show Wildside and was offered her first role in a feature film, The Monkey's Mask.
In 2004, Cornish appeared in the award-winning short film Everything Goes with Hugo Weaving. She received the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Actress at the FCCA and IF Awards and Best Breakthrough Performance at the 2005 Miami International Film Festival for her role in Somersault. Cornish received critical acclaim for her role in Candy, opposite Heath Ledger. She has also starred in A Good Year, Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss. In April 2010, Cornish was cast in Limitless, the film adaptation of the novel The Dark Fields, directed by Neil Burger and also starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro.
Cornish narrated Zack Snyder's film Sucker Punch, in which she played one of the protagonists, at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International. Cornish played the role of Wally in Madonna's film W.E., about Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. She replaced Emily Blunt in the independent film The Girl. It premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2012. She starred alongside Woody Harrelson and Colin Farrell in Seven Psychopaths, released in 2012. Cornish co-starred in the 2014 RoboCop reboot. She played Clara Murphy, the wife of protagonist Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman). In 2015, she played Agent Katherine Cowles in Solace, a mystery thriller film directed by Afonso Poyart with central performances by Anthony Hopkins, Colin Farrell, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. In 2016, she filmed The Girl Who Invented Kissing with Luke Wilson.
Cornish is a rapper, singer and songwriter. She has been rapping under the name Dusk since 2000 and was part of an Australian hip hop group from the age of 18 to 22. In 2015, Cornish supported American rapper Nas on his Australian tour. The same year she released two new tracks on SoundCloud: "Evolve" featuring Jane Tyrrell and "Way Back Home" which was produced by Suffa from Hilltop Hoods.- Actress
- Producer
- Music Department
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
- Director
- Soundtrack
Megyn Price is one of the more familiar faces in the world of television sitcoms. A gifted college student with a mind for figures, Price initially embarked on a career in finance, before making the jump to acting. Her television debut on the final season episode, Liberation - October 16, 1968 (1993), of the sci-fi adventure, Quantum Leap (1989) (NBC, 1989-1993), soon led to more TV guest spots and a regular cast role on the exceptionally short-lived legal sitcom, Common Law (1996) (ABC, 1996). Although Price occasionally picked up smaller parts in feature films, like the Russell Crowe vehicle, Mystery, Alaska (1999), it was on the small screen that she truly excelled. While another co-starring role on the Al Franken sitcom, LateLine (1998) (NBC, 1998-2000), lasted a mere two seasons, Price's turn as thirty-something mom "Claudia Finnerty" on the family comedy, Grounded for Life (2001) (The WB, 2001-05), helped establish her as a recognizable screen presence. Surrounded by a popular ensemble cast, that included Patrick Warburton and David Spade, she enjoyed her lengthiest series run on the relationship sitcom, Rules of Engagement (2007) as matrimonial veteran, "Audrey Bingham".- Actress
- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
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 fashion model. She later pursued acting and relocated to Paris at the suggestion of filmmaker Luc Besson (The Fifth Element (1997)). She married French actor Guillaume Canet (The Beach (2000)) in 2001.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
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 her father began working in summer stock productions in the Berkshires. It was here that she received her early acting training under the tutelage of her parents. She graduated from the all-girls Spence School in New York City and moved to California where she attended the UC Santa Barbara, majoring in Art History. She soon quit, realizing it was not her passion. She made her film debut with a small part in Shout (1991) and for the next five years had featured roles in a mixed bag of film fare that included Flesh and Bone (1993); Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994); Se7en (1995); Jefferson in Paris (1995); Moonlight and Valentino (1995); and The Pallbearer (1996). It was her performance in the title role of Emma Woodhouse in Emma (1996) that led to her being offered the role of Viola in Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which she was awarded the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Her roles have also included The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Shallow Hal (2001), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), Proof (2005), Iron Man (2008), Two Lovers (2008), and Country Strong (2010). She has two children with her former husband, English musician Chris Martin.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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
- Producer
- Director
Born two months premature at four pounds, Kate Noelle Holmes made her first appearance on December 18, 1978, in Toledo, Ohio. She is the daughter of Kathleen Ann (Craft), a philanthropist, and Martin Joseph Holmes, Sr., a lawyer. She is of German, Irish, and English ancestry. Her parents have said that her strong-willed personality is probably due to her early birth. Being the youngest in the Holmes clan, completing the family of three other sisters and one brother, Katie was always the baby.
As a teenager, she began attending modeling school. When she was sixteen, her teacher invited her to go to a modeling competition with other girls from her class. She competed in the International Modeling and Talent Association by singing, dancing, and reciting a monologue from To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). By the end of that time in New York, Katie won many awards. But she said she didn't want to model because it wasn't challenging enough. So when she was seventeen, Katie went to Los Angeles to audition for movies. Luckily, on her second audition, she was cast in the movie, The Ice Storm (1997), directed by Ang Lee. Katie's character was Libbets Casey, a rich New Yorker, who is pursued by two of the main characters. It was a small part, but it marked the beginning of her professional acting career.
After the excitement of her first movie, Katie began sending in audition tapes for pilot shows. During that time, she was also starring in her all-girls Catholic high school musical, Damn Yankees, as Lola. After Kevin Williamson received her audition tape for his new show, Dawson's Creek (1998), the producers wanted her to come to Hollywood right away and read live for them. But because they wanted her to come on the opening night for Damn Yankees, Katie had to tell them she couldn't make it. Fortunately, the show's producers wanted her so much for that role, they rescheduled her callback and the result was she got the part as Joey Potter. During her first year with Dawson's Creek (1998), Katie was able to do two movies, Disturbing Behavior (1998) and Go (1999), and, for the former, she won Best Breakthrough Female Performance at the 1999 MTV Movie Awards.
The following year, she starred next to Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys (2000), playing Hannah Green, a published author and a boarder at her teacher's (Douglas) house, who has a crush on him, and tries to seduce him. Her first leading role came in 2002, with Abandon (2002). She played a college student named Katie Burke, who is haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her boyfriend who vanished two years prior. With Dawson's Creek (1998) coming to a close after six years in May of 2003, it was a bittersweet moment for all the cast. Accustomed to being in North Carolina filming ten months out of a year, the cast members now had the opportunity to make more movies.
Katie demonstrated this in October, when she had two new movies, Pieces of April (2003) and The Singing Detective (2003), coming out in that month alone. Pieces of April (2003) is a charming Thanksgiving movie about April (Holmes), the black sheep of her family, who wants to give her family the perfect dinner before her mother passes on. The Singing Detective (2003) is a dark musical where the main character (Robert Downey Jr.) was a writer in a hospital for skin conditions who writes a dark world of seduction and murder in his mind. Katie Holmes played the kind Nurse Mills who tends to his every need. She also gets to lip sync and dance in this movie. In 2004, she starred in the romantic movie First Daughter (2004), in which she played the President's (Michael Keaton) daughter, Samantha, who wants to go to college without any Secret Service tagging along. In 2005, Holmes co-starred in Batman Begins (2005), where she played Rachel Dawes, a childhood sweetheart and love interest to Batman/Bruce Wayne.
Katie has a daughter with her ex-husband, Tom Cruise.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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
- Producer
- Director
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.- Born and raised in northern California, Josie Maran aspired to become a model at a young age. Her father is of Russian Jewish descent, and her mother has Dutch, French, and German ancestry. At the age of 12, while attending a barbecue, a woman asked her to be in a San Francisco fashion show. A modeling agent at the show saw her and encouraged her to begin modeling. This was the foundation that led toward her professional career.
Demand for her has been steady over the years. After an appearance in a Backstreet Boys music video, the growing attention focused on her skyrocketed. Some of her earlier works included American Eagle Outfitters, Allen Allen and Mango. Glamour Magazine gave Josie her first magazine cover and she later graced future covers. She has an impressive resume which includes work for Marie Claire, Guess, and Victoria's Secret. A very popular ongoing gig for her is the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue which has featured her for three years in a row. Her most prestigious professional contract to date is with Maybelline International as their spokesmodel, where she has appeared in numerous ads and commercials. Recently, Josie began her transition from modeling to acting by starring in the lead role of an independent film titled, The Mallory Effect (2002). - Actress
- Producer
- Director
Tiffani Amber Thiessen was born on January 23, 1974 in Long Beach, California to Robyn Ernest, a homemaker & Frank Thiessen, a park designer. She grew up in Long Beach with her parents and her brothers, professional cyclist Todd (born August 1, 1968) and Schyler (born May 10, 1977). When Tiffani was 8, her uncle, Roger Ernest, suggested that she try acting and modeling. Soon afterward, she appeared in her first TV commercial, for Peaches and Cream Barbie. From there she started competing in several beauty pageants and, in 1987, she won the Miss Junior America pageant.
She got her big break when she was cast as the popular cheerleader Kelly Kapowski on the NBC series Saved by the Bell (1989), which lasted for five years. But this was not at all the end of her career. Coinciding with the cancellation of the short-lived Saved by the Bell: The College Years (1993), she was cast as the bitchy, conniving vixen Valerie Malone on Aaron Spelling's long-running hit series Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990). Here, she played the constant enemy of Kelly Taylor, played by Jennie Garth, although in real life, the two are actually best friends. Tiffani also lived with co-star Brian Austin Green for several years. She stayed with the show until 1998 and then left to pursue her movie career. The result was two independent movies, followed by two comedies and then Hollywood Ending (2002), in which she starred alongside Woody Allen.
She met actor Richard Ruccolo while guest starring as Marti in the hit sitcom Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place (1998) where in 2001, the couple became engaged. During the fall of 2002, she co-starred with best friend Jennie's husband, Peter Facinelli, and Bill Bellamy on Fox's action/drama series, Fastlane (2002), where she starred as Billie Chambers, but the show was canceled after one season. In 2003, Tiffani broke off her engagement to Richard Ruccolo and in 2005, she married actor Brady Smith. The couple have two children, a daughter, Harper Smith (Harper Renn Smith) and a son, Holt Fisher Smith.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Carla Gugino was born in Sarasota, Florida, to Carl Gugino, an orthodontist. She is of Italian (father) and English-Irish (mother) ancestry. Gugino moved with her mother to Paradise, California, when Carla was just five years old. During her childhood, they moved many times within the state. But she remained a straight-A student throughout high school and graduated as valedictorian. A major modeling agency discovered Carla in San Diego and sent her to New York to begin a new career when she was 15. New York was more than she could handle at that young age, so she returned to LA in the summer, modeling and enrolling in an acting class at the suggestion of her aunt, Carol Merrill, known from Let's Make a Deal (1963). During her free time, Carla enjoys yoga, traveling and spending time with her friends in Los Angeles.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
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
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni was born on February 25, 1966 in New York City. Her father, Anthony Pantaleoni, was a corporate lawyer, and her mother, Emily Ann (Patterson), worked as a dietitian and nutritionist. She is of Italian (from a paternal great-great-grandfather), Polish, English, Irish, Scottish, and German descent. Téa attended but did not complete studies at Sarah Lawrence College. She started out in acting as Lisa DiNapoli in Santa Barbara (1984) in 1989 and followed up with small roles in Switch (1991) and A League of Their Own (1992).
In 1992 she starred in the short-lived sitcom Flying Blind (1992). In 1994 she appeared in Wyatt Earp (1994) opposite Kevin Costner and The Counterfeit Contessa (1994) opposite D.W. Moffett. In 1995 she starred opposite Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in the popular film Bad Boys (1995). She also had a guest appearance on Frasier (1993) that same year.
She appeared in many successful films after that, such as Flirting with Disaster (1996), Deep Impact (1998), The Family Man (2000), Spanglish (2004), You Kill Me (2007) and most recently, she starred in the film Ghost Town (2008) opposite Greg Kinnear.
Tea was married to television commercial producer Neil Joseph Tardio Jr. from 1991 to 1995. In 1997 she married actor David Duchovny, with whom she has two children: Daughter West Duchovny (born April 24, 1999) and Son Kyd Miller Duchovny (born June 15, 2002).