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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
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- Writer
As the highest-paid actress in the world in 2015 and 2016, and with her films grossing over $5.5 billion worldwide, Jennifer Lawrence is often cited as the most successful actress of her generation. She is also the first person born in the 1990s to have won an acting Oscar.
Jennifer Shrader Lawrence was born August 15, 1990, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Karen (Koch), who manages a children's camp, and Gary Lawrence, who works in construction. She has two older brothers, Ben and Blaine, and has English, German, Irish, and Scottish ancestry.
Her career began when she traveled to Manhattan at the age of fourteen after dropping out of the 8th grade. After conducting her first cold read, agents told her mother that "it was the best cold read by a 14-year-old they had ever heard," and tried to convince her stage mother that she needed to spend the summer in Manhattan. After leaving the agency, Jennifer was spotted by an agent in the midst of shooting an H&M ad and asked to take her picture. The next day, that agent followed up with her and invited her to the studio for a cold-read audition. Again, the agents were highly impressed and strongly urged her mother to allow her to spend the summer in New York City. As fate would have it, she did and subsequently appeared in commercials such as MTV's "My Super Sweet 16" and played a role in the movie The Devil You Know (2013).
Shortly thereafter, her career forced her and her family to move to Los Angeles, where she was cast in the TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show (2007), and in smaller movies such as The Poker House (2008) and The Burning Plain (2008).
Her big break came when she played Ree in Winter's Bone (2010), which landed her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. Shortly thereafter, she secured the role of Mystique in franchise reboot X-Men: First Class (2011), which went on to be a hit in Summer 2011. Around this time, Lawrence scored the role of a lifetime when she was cast as Katniss Everdeen in the big-screen adaptation of literary sensation The Hunger Games (2012). The film went on to become one of the highest-grossing movies ever, with over $407 million at the US box office, and instantly propelled Lawrence to the A-list among young actors and actresses. Three Hunger Games sequels were released in each consecutive November: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014), and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (2015), with Lawrence reprising her role.
In 2012, the romantic comedy Silver Linings Playbook (2012) earned her the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Satellite Award, and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actress, among other accolades, making her the youngest person ever to be nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Actress and the second-youngest Best Actress winner.
She starred in David O. Russell's popular drama-comedy American Hustle (2013), as Roselyn Rosenfield, and teamed with the director again to play inventor Joy Mangano in another family comedy, Joy (2015), for which she earned Oscar nominations for both roles (Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress, respectively).- Actress
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Alice Braga Moraes born April 15, 1983 is a Brazilian actress. She has appeared in several Brazilian films, most notably as Angélica in 2002's highly acclaimed City of God and as Karina in 2005's Lower City. She came to international prominence after appearing opposite Will Smith in I Am Legend (2007) and has since become a familiar face in Hollywood, appearing in films such as Repo Men and Predators (both 2010), The Rite (2011) and Elysium (2013).- Actress
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Amy Lou Adams was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Italy, to American parents, Kathryn (Hicken) and Richard Kent Adams, a U.S. serviceman who was stationed at Caserma Ederle in Italy at the time. She was raised in a Mormon family of seven children in Castle Rock, Colorado, and has English, as well as smaller amounts of Danish, Swiss-German, and Norwegian, ancestry.
Adams sang in the school choir at Douglas County High School and was an apprentice dancer at a local dance company, with the ambition of becoming a ballerina. However, she worked as a greeter at The Gap and as a Hooters hostess to support herself before finding work as a dancer at Boulder's Dinner Theatre and Country Dinner Playhouse in such productions as "Brigadoon" and "A Chorus Line". It was there that she was spotted by a Minneapolis dinner-theater director who asked her to move to Chanhassen, Minnesota for more regional dinner theatre work.
Nursing a pulled muscle that kept her from dancing, she was free to audition for a part in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), which was filming nearby in Minnesota. During the filming, Kirstie Alley encouraged her to move to Los Angeles, where she soon won a part in the Fox television version of the film, Cruel Intentions (1999), in the part played in the film by Sarah Michelle Gellar, "Kathryn Merteuil". Although three episodes were filmed, the troubled series never aired. Instead, parts of the episodes were cobbled together and released as the direct-to-video Cruel Intentions 2 (2000). After more failed television spots, she landed a major role in Catch Me If You Can (2002), playing opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. But this did not provide the break-through she might have hoped for, with no work being offered for about a year. She eventually returned to television, and joined the short-lived series, Dr. Vegas (2004).
Her role in the low-budget independent film Junebug (2005) (which was shot in 21 days) got her real attention, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress as well as other awards. The following year, her ability to look like a wide-eyed Disney animated heroine helped her to be chosen from about 300 actresses auditioning for the role of "Giselle" in the animated/live-action feature film, Enchanted (2007), which would prove to be her major break-through role. Her vivacious yet innocent portrayal allowed her to use her singing and dancing talents. Her performance garnered a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
Adams next appeared in the major production, Charlie Wilson's War (2007), and went on to act in the independent film, Sunshine Cleaning (2008), which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Her role as "Sister James" in Doubt (2008) brought her a second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, as well as nominations for a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild award, and a British Academy Film award. She appeared as Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and as a post-9/11 hot line counselor, aspiring writer, amateur cook and blogger in Julie & Julia (2009). In the early 2010s, she starred with Jason Segel in The Muppets (2011), with Philip Seymour Hoffman in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (2012), and alongside Clint Eastwood and Justin Timberlake in Trouble with the Curve (2012). She played reporter Lois Lane in Man of Steel (2013) and con artist Sydney Prosser in American Hustle (2013), before portraying real-life artist Margaret Keane in Tim Burton's biopic Big Eyes (2014).
In 2016, she reprised her role as Lane in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and headlined Denis Villeneuve's science fiction drama Arrival (2016) and Tom Ford's dark thriller Nocturnal Animals (2016). In 2018, she received another Oscar nomination, her sixth, for starring as Lynne Cheney in the biographical drama Vice (2018), opposite Christian Bale as Dick Cheney.- Actress
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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
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Emily Jean "Emma" Stone was born on November 6, 1988 in Scottsdale, Arizona to Krista Jean Stone (née Yeager), a homemaker & Jeffrey Charles "Jeff" Stone, a contracting company founder and CEO. She is of Swedish, German & British Isles descent. Stone began acting as a child as a member of the Valley Youth Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona, where she made her stage debut in a production of Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows". She appeared in many more productions through her early teens until, at the age of fifteen, she decided that she wanted to make acting her career.
The official story is that she made a PowerPoint presentation, backed by Madonna's "Hollywood" and itself entitled "Project Hollywood", in an attempt to persuade her parents to allow her to drop out of school and move to Los Angeles. The pitch was successful and she and her mother moved to LA with her schooling completed at home while she spent her days auditioning.
She had her TV breakthrough when she won the part of Laurie Partridge in the VH1 talent/reality show In Search of the Partridge Family (2004) which led to a number of small TV roles in the following years. Her movie debut was as Jules in Superbad (2007) and, after a string of successful performances, her leading role as Olive in Easy A (2010) established her as a star.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
New Yorker Claire Catherine Danes was born in Manhattan, the daughter of Carla (Hall), a day-care provider and artist, and Christopher Danes, a computer consultant and photographer. She has an older brother, Asa. Her paternal grandfather, Gibson Andrew Danes, was a Dean of the Yale School of Art and Architecture. She is of mostly German and British Isles descent.
Claire was educated at Dalton School, New York, The New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, The Professional Performing Arts School and Lycée Français de Los Angeles. From 1998, she attended Yale University, studying psychology, but dropped out after two years to concentrate on her acting career.
Danes first came to major public attention when she appeared as "Angela Chase" in My So-Called Life (1994). She won an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe award for this performance. A successful film career followed, including the role of "Juliet", opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996). She continued acting in such varied project as The Hours (2002), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) and Stardust (2007).
In 2010, she appeared in the HBO Production, Temple Grandin (2010), playing the title character. She received huge critical acclaim for the role, and won an Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance. Since 2011, she has starred on the SHOWTIME series Homeland (2011), receiving great critical acclaim and winning Emmys and Golden Globes.- Actress
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Ask Kate Winslet what she likes about any of her characters, and the word "ballsy" is bound to pop up at least once. The British actress has made a point of eschewing straightforward pretty-girl parts in favor of more devilish damsels; as a result, she's built an eclectic resume that runs the gamut from Shakespearean tragedy to modern-day mysticism and erotica.
Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire, into a family of thespians -- parents Roger Winslet and Sally Anne Bridges-Winslet were both stage actors, maternal grandparents Oliver and Linda Bridges ran the Reading Repertory Theatre, and uncle Robert Bridges was a fixture in London's West End theatre district. Kate came into her talent at an early age. She scored her first professional gig at eleven, dancing opposite the Honey Monster in a commercial for a kids' cereal. She started acting lessons around the same time, which led to formal training at a performing arts high school. Over the next few years, she appeared on stage regularly and landed a few bit parts in sitcoms. Her first big break came at age 17, when she was cast as an obsessive adolescent in Heavenly Creatures (1994). The film, based on the true story of two fantasy-gripped girls who commit a brutal murder, received modest distribution but was roundly praised by critics.
Still a relative unknown, Winslet attended a cattle call audition the next year for Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995). She made an immediate impression on the film's star, Emma Thompson, and beat out more than a hundred other hopefuls for the part of plucky Marianne Dashwood. Her efforts were rewarded with both a British Academy Award and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Winslet followed up with two more period pieces, playing the rebellious heroine in Jude (1996) and Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).
The role that transformed Winslet from art house attraction to international star was Rose DeWitt Bukater, the passionate, rosy-cheeked aristocrat in James Cameron's Titanic (1997). Young girls the world over both idolized and identified with Winslet, swooning over all that face time opposite heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio and noting her refreshingly healthy, unemaciated physique. Winslet's performance also garnered a Best Actress nomination, making her the youngest actress to ever receive two Academy Award nominations.
After the swell of unexpected attention surrounding Titanic (1997), Winslet was eager to retreat into independent projects. Rumor has it that she turned down the lead roles in both Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Anna and the King (1999) in order to play adventurous soul searchers in Hideous Kinky (1998) and Holy Smoke (1999). The former cast her as a young single mother traveling through 1970s Morocco with her daughters in tow; the latter, as a zealous follower of a guru tricked into a "deprogramming" session in the Australian outback. The next year found her back in period dress as the Marquis de Sade's chambermaid and accomplice in Quills (2000). Kate holds the distinction of being the youngest actor ever honored with four Academy Award nominations (she received her fourth at age 29). As of 2016, she has been nominated for an Oscar seven times, winning one of them: she received the Best Actress Oscar for the drama The Reader (2008), playing a former concentration camp guard.
For her performance of Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs (2015), she received her seventh Academy Award nomination.
Off camera, Winslet is known for her mischievous pranks and familial devotion. She has two sisters, Anna Winslet and Beth Winslet (both actresses), and a brother, Joss.
In 1998, she married assistant director Jim Threapleton. They had a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton, in October 2000. They divorced in 2001. She later married director Sam Mendes in 2003 and gave birth to their son, Joe Alfie Winslet-Mendes, later that year. After seven years of marriage, in February 2010 they announced that they had amicably separated, and divorced in October 2010. In 2012, Kate married Ned Rocknroll, with whom she has a son. She was awarded Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to Drama.- Actress
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Rose Byrne was born in Balmain, Sydney, Australia. She is the daughter of Jane, a primary school administrator, and Robin Byrne, a semi-retired statistician and market researcher.
She landed her first role in a movie, Dallas Doll (1994), when she was 15 years old.
Since then, Rose has appeared in a variety of Australian televisions shows including Heartbreak High (1994), Echo Point (1995), and the film Two Hands (1999) alongside Heath Ledger. After this, she appeared in various movies like The Date (1999), My Mother Frank (2000), and Clara Law's The Goddess of 1967 (2000) for which she obtained the Female Volpi Cup at the Venice Festival in 2000.
Her first experience on a big-budget movie came when she played handmaiden, Dormé, to Natalie Portman, Padmé Amidala, in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002). In 2003, she starred, coincidentally, as Rose Mortmain in the adaptation of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle (2003). In 2004, she acted in Wicker Park (2004) with Diane Kruger and Josh Hartnett. Here, she heard Wolfgang Petersen was looking for an actress for Briseis in his next movie Troy (2004) with Brad Pitt, she got the part and was recognised as one of the most promising actresses in Hollywood.
After Troy (2004), she played Edith in a TV adaptation of Casanova (2005). In September 2005, she started to act in Sunshine (2007), a Danny Boyle movie, where she plays the pilot in a space mission.- Actress
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Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., an American advertising executive, originally from Texas. She has an older brother and a younger sister. When she was ten years old, her 40-year-old father died of a sudden heart attack. Her mother never remarried, and her grandmother moved in to help her mother.
Cate graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and, in a little over a year, had won both critical and popular acclaim. On graduating from NIDA, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls", then played Felice Bauer, the bride, in Tim Daly's "Kafka Dances", winning the 1993 Newcomer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle for her performance. From there, Blanchett moved to the role of Carol in David Mamet's searing polemic "Oleanna", also for the Sydney Theatre Company, and won the Rosemont Best Actress Award, her second award that year. She then co-starred in the ABC Television's prime time drama Heartland (1994), again winning critical acclaim. In 1995, she was nominated for Best Female Performance for her role as Ophelia in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet". Other theatre credits include Helen in the Sydney Theatre Company's "Sweet Phoebe", Miranda in "The Tempest" and Rose in "The Blind Giant is Dancing", both for the Belvoir Street Theatre Company. In other television roles, Blanchett starred as Bianca in ABC's Bordertown (1995), as Janie Morris in G.P. (1989) and in ABC's popular series Police Rescue (1994). She made her feature film debut in Paradise Road (1997).
Cate married writer Andrew Upton in 1997. She had met him a year earlier on a movie set, and they didn't like each other at first. He thought she was aloof, and she thought he was arrogant, but then they connected over a poker game at a party, and she went home with him that night. Three weeks later he proposed marriage and they quickly married before she went off to England to play her breakthrough role in films: the title character in Elizabeth (1998) for which she won numerous awards for her performance, including the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. Cate was also nominated for an Academy Award for the role but lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow. 2001 was a particularly busy year, with starring roles in Bandits (2001), The Shipping News (2001), Charlotte Gray (2001) and playing Elf Queen Galadriel in the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. She also gave birth to her first child, son Dashiell, in 2001. In 2004, she gave birth to her second son Roman.
Also, in 2004, she played actress Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004), for which she received an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. Two years later, she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for playing a teacher having an affair with an underage student in Notes on a Scandal (2006). In 2007, she returned to the role that made her a star in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). It earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. She was nominated for another Oscar that same year as Best Supporting Actress for playing Bob Dylan in I'm Not There (2007). In 2008, she gave birth to her third child, son Ignatius. She and her husband became artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company, choosing to spend more time in Australia raising their three sons. She also purchased a multi-million dollar home in Sydney, Australia and named it Bulwarra and made extensive renovations to it. Because of her life in Australia, her film work became sporadic, until Woody Allen cast her in the title role in Blue Jasmine (2013), which won her the Academy Award as Best Actress. She ended her job as artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, while her husband continued there for two more years before he too resigned.
In 2015, she adopted her daughter Edith in her father's homeland of the United States. That same year, she and her husband sold their multi-million dollar home in Australia at a profit and moved to America. Reasons varied from her wanting to work more in America to wanting to familiarize herself with her late father's American heritage. She played the title role of Carol (2015), a 1950s American housewife in a lesbian affair with a younger woman, for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. While most actresses might slow down in their forties, Blanchett did the opposite by stretching her boundaries even further, such as when she played 13 different characters in Manifesto (2015) and then making her Broadway debut in 2017 in "The Present", which is her husband's adaptation of Chekhov's play "Platonov" for which she earned a Tony nomination as Best Actress in a Play. Also in 2017, she was selected for the highest honor in her birth country: the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).- Actress
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Emily Olivia Leah Blunt is a British actress known for her roles in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), The Young Victoria (2009), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and The Girl on the Train (2016), among many others.
Blunt was born on February 23, 1983, in Roehampton, South West London, England, the second of four children in the family of Joanna Mackie, a former actress and teacher, and Oliver Simon Peter Blunt, a barrister. Her grandfather was Major General Peter Blunt, and her uncle is MP Crispin Blunt. Emily received a rigorous education at Ibstock Place School, a co-ed private school at Roehampton. However, young Emily Blunt had a stammer, since she was a kid of 8. Her mother took her to relaxation classes, which did not do anything. She reached a turning point at 12, when a teacher cleverly asked her to play a character with a different voice and said, "I really believe in you". Blunt ended up using a northern accent, and it did the trick, her stammer disappeared.
From 1999 - 2001, Blunt went to Hurtwood House, the top co-ed boarding school where she would excel at sport, cello and singing. She also had two years of drama studies at Hurtwood's theatre course. In August 2000, she was chosen to perform at the Edinburgh Festival. She was signed up by an agent, Kenneth Mcreddie, who led her to the West End and the BBC, scoring her roles in several period dramas on stage as well as on TV productions, such as Foyle's War (2002), Henry VIII (2003) and Empire (2005). In 2001, she appeared as "Gwen Cavendish" opposite Dame Judi Dench in Sir Peter Hall's production of "The Royal Family" at Haymarket Theatre. For that role, she won the Evening Standard Award for Best Newcomer. In 2002, she played "Juliet" in "Romeo and Juliet" at the prestigious Chichester Festival.
Blunt's career ascended to international fame after she starred as "Isolda" opposite Alex Kingston in Warrior Queen (2003). A year later, she won critical acclaim for her breakout performance as "Tamsin", a well-educated, cynical and deceptive 16-year-old beauty in My Summer of Love (2004), a story of two lonely girls from the opposite ends of the social heap. Emily Blunt and her co-star, Natalie Press, shared an Evening Standard British Film award for Most Promising Newcomer. In 2005, she spent a few months in Australia filming Irresistible (2006) with Susan Sarandon and Sam Neill. Blunt gave an impressive performance as "Mara", a cunning young destroyer who acts crazy and surreptitiously provokes paranoia in others. She also continued her work on British television, starring as "Natasha" in Stephen Poliakoff's Gideon's Daughter (2005), opposite Bill Nighy, a role that won her a 2007 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role.
She continued the line of playing manipulative characters as "Emily", a caustic put-upon assistant to Meryl Streep's lead in The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Blunt's performance with a neurotic twist added a dimension of sarcasm to the comedy, and gained her much attention as well as new jobs: in two dramas opposite Tom Hanks, then in the title role in the period drama, The Young Victoria (2009). Her most recent works include appearances as antiques dealer "Gwen Conliffe" in The Wolfman (2010) and as the ballerina in The Adjustment Bureau (2011).
Emily is a highly versatile actress and a multifaceted person. Her talents include singing and playing cello; she is also skilled at horseback riding.
On August 28, 2009, Blunt and Krasinski announced their engagement. The couple married on July 10, 2010, at the estate of their friend, George Clooney, on Lake Como in Italy. Blunt and Krasinski live in the Los Angeles area, California, and have two children.- Actress
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Rachel Hannah Weisz was born on 7 March, 1970, in London, U.K., to Edith Ruth (Teich), a psychoanalyst, and George Weisz, an inventor. Her parents both came to England around 1938. Her father is a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, and her mother, from Vienna, was of Italian and Austrian Jewish heritage. Rachel has a sister, Minnie, a curator and photographer.
Rachel started modeling when she was 14, and began acting during her studies at Cambridge University. While there, she formed a theater company named "Talking Tongues", which won the Guardian Award, at the Edinburgh Festival, for its take on Neville Southall's "Washbag". Rachel went on to star on stage in the lauded Sean Mathias revival of Noël Coward's "Design For Living". It was a role that won her a vote for Most Promising Newcomer by the London Critics' Circle.
She has starred in many movies, including The Mummy (1999), Enemy at the Gates (2001) and Stealing Beauty (1996). Rachel can also be seen in the movies The Shape of Things (2003), About a Boy (2002), Constantine (2005) and The Constant Gardener (2005), for which she won an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Rachel has a son with her former partner, director Darren Aronofsky. In June 2011, she married "James Bond" actor Daniel Craig in a private ceremony in New York.- Actress
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Katherine Marie Heigl was born on November 24, 1978 in Washington, D.C., to Nancy Heigl (née Engelhardt), a personnel manager, and Paul Heigl, an accountant and executive. Her father is of German/Swiss-German and Irish descent, and her mother is of German ancestry. A short time after her birth, the family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where Katherine was to spend the majority of her childhood; the youngest member of her family, Katherine--or "Katie" as she is nicknamed--has two elder siblings, John and Meg. Tragically, her older brother Jason died in 1986 of brain injuries suffered in a car accident, after being thrown from the back of a pickup truck. When doctors determined he was brain-dead, the family made the difficult decision to donate his organs. Not only did this painful chapter give Katherine a greater perspective and appreciation for life, but it motivated her to use her celebrity to promote the importance of organ donation.
Katherine was first thrust into the limelight as a child model. An aunt, visiting the family in New Canaan, took a number of photographs of Katherine, then aged nine, in a series of poses to advertise a hair care product she had invented. Upon returning to New York, with permission from Katherine's parents, she sent the photos to a number of modeling agencies. Within a few weeks, Katherine had been signed to Wilhelmina, a renowned international modeling agency. Almost immediately, she made her debut in a magazine advertisement and soon followed this with an inaugural television appearance in a national commercial for Cheerios breakfast cereal.
Following a number of commercials and modeling assignments for Sears and Lord & Taylor, she made her big-screen debut in That Night (1992), which starred Juliette Lewis and C. Thomas Howell. It was then that she realized that acting rather than modeling was her passion. In 1993, Katherine appeared in Steven Soderbergh's critically-acclaimed Depression-era drama, King of the Hill (1993), before landing her first leading role as a rebellious teenager, alongside Gérard Depardieu, in My Father the Hero (1994). During this time, Katherine continued to attend New Canaan High School, balancing her academic studies with work on films and modeling, which she undertook during holidays, vacations and weekends.
In 1995, she played "Sarah Ryback", the niece of Steven Seagal's character, in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), which was her "debut" in the action film genre. Acting was now becoming a stronger focus for Katherine, although she still modeled extensively, appearing regularly in magazines such as "Seventeen". Television appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992) and Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993) soon followed, before she took the lead role in Disney's Wish Upon a Star (1996) in 1996. It was also during that year that Katherine's parents divorced and, following her graduation from high school in 1997, she moved with her mother into a four-bedroom house in Los Angeles' Malibu Canyon area. This enabled her to focus upon acting with the guidance and support of her mother, who now managed her career.
In 1997, Katherine portrayed "Taffy Entwhistle", Rita Hayworth's stand-in, in Stand-ins (1997) and was also cast as the beauteous "Princess Ilene" in the European production, Prince Valiant (1997). She then made her made-for-TV movie debut, co-starring with Peter Fonda in a re-working of the classic Shakespearean play, The Tempest (1998), updated with an American Civil War theme. In this film, she played "Miranda Prosper", a young woman torn between her love for both her father and a Union soldier. Bug Buster (1998) and Bride of Chucky (1998) represented a venture into the horror genre for Katherine. While both films could be described as rather tongue-in-cheek despite their gory emphases, Bride of Chucky (1998) was the better received, both critically and commercially.
In 1999, Katherine decided to branch out into series television when she accepted the role of the haughty, yet vulnerable, "Isabel Evans", on Roswell (1999), a show that blended teen angst with sci-fi drama. Though she had never planned to embark on a career in television, the role of Isabel, a teenager with a secret life, was an offer she found impossible to refuse. In the series, Isabel, her brother Max (Jason Behr) and their friend Michael (Brendan Fehr) are aliens passing as humans in Roswell, New Mexico, as they desperately try to hide the truth from government agencies, the people of Roswell and even their own adopted families. To publicize her role on the show, Katherine graced the covers of magazines such as "TV Guide", "Maxim" and "Teen" and was interviewed on Later (1994) and The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn (1999). Along with her mother Nancy, she also appeared in an episode of the Sci-Fi TV talk show, Crossing Over with John Edward (2001), during which she spoke with John Edward, a psychic medium, about her late brother, Jason. During the three years Roswell (1999) was in production, Katherine found time to work on several movies. 100 Girls (2000), an independent film released in 2001, is the story of a college freshman who meets the girl of his dreams in an elevator during a blackout, and spends the rest of the movie trying to find her again. Her cameo role is that of Arlene, the competitive tomboy. The second film, Valentine (2001), a horror film starring David Boreanaz and Denise Richards, appeared in U.S. theaters on February 2, 2001. In this movie, which is based upon the 1996 novel by Tom Savage, Katherine plays "Shelley", a medical student who meets a sudden demise.
In the spring of 2001, Katherine accepted a role in NBC's Critical Assembly (2002), a two-hour original television thriller. Katherine and Kerr Smith (Dawson's Creek (1998)) co-starred as brilliant and politically concerned college students who build a nuclear device to illustrate the need for a change in national priorities, but are betrayed by a fellow student when the bomb ends up in the hands of a terrorist. Unfortunately, the telefilm, directed by Eric Laneuville, written by Tom Vaughan, and based on the best-seller "The Seventh Power" by James Mills, was shelved when its storyline was deemed too close for comfort to the events of September 11, 2001. It was eventually broadcast in 2003. Since the cancellation of Roswell (1999) in the spring of 2002, Katherine has been busy with various projects, including an appearance on UPN's update of the classic television series, The Twilight Zone (2002). That episode, entitled Cradle of Darkness (2002), aired on October 2, 2002, and featured Katherine in the role of a woman who goes back in time to stop one of the most notorious murders in history. In addition, she completed a movie, Descendant (2003), a psychological thriller inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher". She has also starred as "Romy" in ABC/Touchstone's two-hour telepic, Romy and Michele: In the Beginning (2005), a prequel to the 1997 feature, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997). During the summer of 2002, Katherine made a major decision in the direction of her career when she signed on for representation in all areas with the William Morris Agency, one of the biggest and most prestigious agencies in the entertainment industry. She is now being represented by Norman Aladjem at Paradigm Agency and being managed by Nancy Heigl and Stephanie Simon and Jason Newman at Untitled Entertainment.- Actress
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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
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Anna Kendrick was born in Portland, Maine, to Janice (Cooke), an accountant, and William Kendrick, a teacher. She has an older brother, Michael Cooke Kendrick, who has also acted. She is of English, Irish, and Scottish descent.
For her role as "Dinah" in "High Society" on Broadway, Anna Kendrick was nominated for a Tony Award (second youngest ever), a Drama Desk Award, and a Fany Award (best actress featured in a musical). Her spectacular performance landed her the Drama League and Theatre World Award.
She was a lead performer with Cabaret's Kit Kat Club at "Carnegie Hall Live" in My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies (1999) (TV). She also had the privilege of working with director Scott Ellis and choreographer Susan Stroman at the New York City Opera House with Jeremy Irons amongst many more celebrity status actors, playing the role of "Fredrika" in "A Little Night Music".
Anna work-shopped "Jane Eyre" & "The Little Princess" for Broadway and starred in the feature film Camp (2003) with director Todd Graff.- Actress
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Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, who also holds German citizenship. She was born on April 30, 1982 in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, to parents Inez (née Rupprecht), who owned an art gallery, and Klaus Dunst, a medical services executive. She has a younger brother named Christian Dunst, born in 1987. Her father is German, from Hamburg, and her mother, who is American, is of German and Swedish descent.
Her career began at the age of 3 when she started modeling and appearing in commercials. She made her feature film debut with an uncredited role at age 6 in the 'Oedipus Wrecks' segment of Woody Allen's 1989 film New York Stories (1989). She received her first film credit in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). Her family moved to Los Angeles in 1993, where her film career took off.
In 1994, she made her breakthrough performance in Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), alongside such stars as Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. Her performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination, the MTV Award for Best Breakthrough Performance and the Saturn Award for Best Young Actress. In 1995, she was named one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People. Over the next few years, she made a string of hit movies including Little Women (1994), Jumanji (1995) and Small Soldiers (1998).
In 2000, she received rave reviews for her role as "Lux Lisbon" in Sofia Coppola's independent film, The Virgin Suicides (1999) and proved her status as a leading actress in the comedy hit, Bring It On (2000). She also graduated from Notre Dame High School in Los Angeles in June of that year.
In 2002, she landed one of her best known roles as Peter Parker's love interest, Mary Jane Watson, in Spider-Man (2002). She continued her role in Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007).
She went on to land roles in such films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), the romantic comedy Wimbledon (2004), and in Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown (2005). She also played the title character in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006).
Dunst won the Best Actress Award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival for her performance as Justine in Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011). In 2012, she appeared in Walter Salles' film adaptation of On the Road (2012) and the independent comedy Bachelorette (2012). She also has several films in production, including The Two Faces of January (2014).
Her charity work includes designing a necklace to raise funds for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation as well as supporting various cancer charities.- Actress
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Malin was born in Stockholm, Sweden and raised in Toronto, Canada. Her mother, Pia (Sundström), is a model and aerobics instructor, and her father, Magnus Åkerman, is an insurance broker. They moved to Toronto when she was age 2. At age 5, she began appearing in TV commercials. Her parents divorced when she was 6 and her father returned to Sweden.
At age 17, she won the Canadian title of Ford Supermodel. This enabled her to spend 3 years as a catwalk model in Europe. She decided to become a child psychologist and enrolled in York University but she was offered a guest role in Earth: Final Conflict (1997) so she turned her attention back to acting. She moved to Los Angeles in 2001 and won roles in both TV and film. Her breakthrough role came when she was cast as Silk Spectre II in Watchmen (2009).- Actress
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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
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Cobie Smulders was born on April 3, 1982, in Vancouver, British Columbia, to a Dutch father and an English mother. As a girl, Cobie had set her sights on becoming a doctor or a marine biologist. In fact, it wasn't until high school that Cobie started to explore acting after appearing in several school productions. As a teenager, Cobie caught the eye of a modeling agency, which led to several years of world travel to places such as France, Japan, Italy, Greece, and Germany. Yet even as Cobie's modeling career was on the rise, she still managed to attend school, graduating from high school in 2000 with honors.
Once out of high school, Cobie continued modeling internationally until the opportunity arose to audition for film and television. It was not long before Cobie's natural ability as an actress impressed casting directors, landing her guest spots on television series such as Special Unit 2 (2001) and Jeremiah (2002). In addition, Cobie also appeared in the short Candy from Strangers (2001) directed by fellow Canadian rising star Eric Johnson.
Cobie got her big break just months later when she landed the role of Juliet Droil in the ABC program Veritas: The Quest (2003). The series marked her first series role for television.- Actress
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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
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Eva Mendes is an American actress, model and businesswoman. She began acting in the late 1990s. After a series of roles in B movies such as Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998) and Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000), she made a career-changing appearance in Training Day (2001). Since then, Mendes has co-starred in films such as All About the Benjamins (2002), 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), Ghost Rider (2007), We Own the Night (2007), Stuck on You (2003), Hitch (2005), opposite Will Smith. and The Other Guys (2010). She has appeared in several music videos for artists like Will Smith. Mendes has been a model and ambassador for Cocio chocolate milk, Magnum ice cream, Calvin Klein, Cartier, Thierry Mugler perfume, Reebok, Campari apéritif, Pantene shampoo, Morgan, and Peek & Cloppenburg. She designs a fashion collection for New York & Company and is also the creative director of CIRCA Beauty, a makeup line sold at Walgreens.
Eva de la Caridad Méndez was born in Miami, Florida, to Cuban parents Eva Pérez Suárez and Juan Carlos Méndez, and was raised by her mother in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake after her parents' divorce. Mendes grew up a Roman Catholic and at one time even considered becoming a Catholic nun. Her mother worked at Mann's Chinese Theatre and later for an aerospace company, and her father ran a meat distribution business. Mendes had one older brother, Juan Carlos Méndez, Jr. (1963-2016), who died from throat cancer. She has an older sister, Janet, and a younger paternal half-brother, Carlos Alberto "Carlo" Méndez. She attended Hoover High School in Glendale, and later studied marketing at California State University, Northridge, but left college to pursue acting under coach Ivana Chubbuck. Mendes began her acting career after a talent manager saw her photo in a friend's portfolio. Her first film appearance was in the direct-to-video Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998). Mendes was disappointed in her performance and she hired an acting coach. She then appeared in the films A Night at the Roxbury, My Brother the Pig, Urban Legends: Final Cut, and Exit Wounds. Mendes' breakthrough role came when she appeared in Antoine Fuqua's crime thriller Training Day (2001), playing the girlfriend of Denzel Washington's character. This then led to roles in All About the Benjamins (2002), 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) (which earned her a nomination at the Teen Choice Awards), Out of Time (2003), and Stuck on You (2003).
She was the female lead in the 2005 film Hitch, making her one of the first minority actors to play the lead in a hit romantic comedy. Mendes subsequently starred in The Wendell Baker Story (2005) with Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson and Will Ferrell, with Luke Wilson directing, as well as Guilty Hearts (2002), Trust the Man (2005), Ghost Rider (2007), We Own the Night (2007), Live! (2007), and Cleaner (2007). In 2008, she was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for her performance in the all-female comedy film The Women. Mendes then appeared in The Spirit, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, The Other Guys (2010), Last Night (2010), Fast Five (2011), and a spoof short film for Funny or Die. In 2012, Mendes visited Sierra Leone and was featured in the PBS documentary Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. In 2012, she starred in the crime drama film The Place Beyond the Pines, with Entertainment Weekly describing her performance as "quietly heartbreaking". The following year, she appeared in the HBO comedy film Clear History (2013). Mendes appeared in the Pet Shop Boys' music video for "Se a vida é (That's the Way Life Is)" in 1996, Aerosmith's music video for "Hole in My Soul" in 1997, and Will Smith's music video for "Miami" in 1998.
She also appeared in the music video for The Strokes' "The End Has No End" in 2004, and appeared nude in a print advertisement for Calvin Klein's Secret Obsession perfume, an ad which was banned in the United States. In December 2007, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) used a nude photo of Mendes for their anti-fur campaign. She also modeled in a Morgan campaign. Mendes was a spokesmodel for the 2008 Campari calendar. In July 2008, she was announced as the international face of Australia's 30 Days of Fashion & Beauty event. She made guest appearances in that country at the month-long festival in September. Mendes has been a spokesperson for Calvin Klein, Magnum, and the chocolate milk brand Cocio. She also promoted Thierry Mugler's Angel fragrance, Reebok shoes, and Pantene shampoo. In 2011, Mendes appeared in a Peek & Cloppenburg clothing catalog. Mendes has a line of bed linens and dinnerware that is sold at Macy's. In 2010, Mendes sang on "Pimps Don't Cry," a song featured in The Other Guys, and performed a duet with CeeLo Green on "Pimps Don't Cry." In 2011, she recorded a version of "The Windmills of Your Mind."
Along with acting, Eva is employed by Revlon Cosmetics as an international spokeswoman. She joins such elite actresses and models as Julianne Moore, Halle Berry and Cindy Crawford, who appear in Revlon's television and print ads. She is also a passionate supporter and active participant in Revlon's fight against breast cancer. Eva's goals are to improve her acting skills by working with such contemporary directors as Steven Soderbergh, Spike Jonze, Pedro Almodóvar, Robert Rodriguez, Carl Franklin, John Singleton, and Antoine Fuqua and learning from such renowned directors as Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni.
She was the creative director of the makeup brand CIRCA Beauty, which launched exclusively at Walgreens in 2015.
Eva has two children with her partner Ryan Gosling.- 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
- 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.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Amy Smart was born in Topanga Canyon, California to Judy, who worked at a museum, and John Boden Smart, a salesman. She has German, English, and Irish ancestry.
Smart was a relatively new arrival when she first gained notice for her supporting roles in the 1999 hit teen films Varsity Blues (1999) and Outside Providence (1999). The Los Angeles native got her start in TV-movies and made her feature debut in Stephen Kay's The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997), which was screened at 1997's Sundance Film Festival alongside Keanu Reeves. She was briefly seen in Paul Verhoeven's big-budget sci-fi actioner Starship Troopers (1997) with actor Casper Van Dien and had an impressive turn in the vastly different, quirkily independent How to Make the Cruelest Month (1998), in which she played Dot, the graceful golden girl who seduces the one-time boyfriend of her sister, troubled protagonist Bell (Clea DuVall). The by-the-numbers horror film Campfire Tales (1997) followed in 1997, along with the topically chilling but clumsily executed Internet stalker thriller Dee Snider's Strangeland (1998), written and produced by and starring the titular Twisted Sister frontman as a deranged torturer who meets his victims in web chatrooms. Amy reached her widest audience with a co-starring role opposite James Van Der Beek in Brian Robbins' surprise box office hit "Varsity Blues (1999)". She played Jules Harbor, a girl who longs for life beyond her small town's high-school-football-obsessed culture but is tied to it as sister of the injured star quarterback (Paul Walker) and girlfriend of his idealistic replacement (Van Der Beek). Her next role was that of Shawn Hatosy's upper-class love interest in Michael Corrente's poignant 1970s-era comedy "Outside Providence (1999)". Based on Peter Farrelly's novel, the film followed a working-class teen (Hatosy) sent by his abrasive but loving father (Alec Baldwin) to a tony prep school after running into trouble at home.