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- 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.
- Music Artist
- Producer
- Actress
Jennifer Lynn Lopez was born on July 24, 1969 in The Bronx, New York City, New York to teacher Lupe López and computer specialist David López. The two Puerto Ricans were brought to the continental United States during their childhoods and eventually met while living in New York City. Their daughters would have a stable, middle-class upbringing.
Jennifer always dreamed of being a multi-tasking superstar. As a child, she enjoyed a variety of musical genres, mainly Afro-Caribbean rhythms like salsa, merengue, and bachata, and mainstream music like pop, hip-hop, and R&B. Although she loved music, the film industry also intrigued her. Her biggest influence was the Rita Moreno musical, West Side Story (1961). At 5, Jennifer began taking singing and dancing lessons. Aside from being a budding entertainer, Jennifer was also a Catholic schoolgirl, attending eight years at a Catholic elementary school named Holy Family, located in The Bronx, before graduating from all-girls prep school Preston High School after a four-year stay. At school, Jennifer was an amazing athlete and participated in track and field and tennis. She spent most of her upbringing in a two-story house in the Castle Hill neighborhood.
At 18, Jennifer moved out of her parents' home. After high school, she briefly worked in a law office and took dance classes at night. During this time, she continued dance classes at night. Her big break came when she was offered a job as a fly girl on Fox's hit comedy In Living Color (1990). After a two-year stay at In Living Color (1990) where actress Rosie Perez served as choreographer, Lopez then went on to dance for famed singer-actress Janet Jackson. Her first major film was Gregory Nava's My Family/Mi familia (1995), and her career went into overdrive when she portrayed late Tejana singer Selena in Selena (1997).- Actor
- Producer
- Director
American actor and producer Matthew David McConaughey was born in Uvalde, Texas. His mother, Mary Kathleen (McCabe), is a substitute school teacher originally from New Jersey. His father, James Donald McConaughey, was a Mississippi-born gas station owner who ran an oil pipe supply business. He is of Irish, Scottish, German, English, and Swedish descent. Matthew grew up in Longview, Texas, where he graduated from the local High School (1988). Showing little interest in his father's oil business, which his two brothers later joined, Matthew was longing for a change of scenery, and spent a year in Australia, washing dishes and shoveling chicken manure. Back to the States, he attended the University of Texas in Austin, originally wishing to be a lawyer. But, when he discovered an inspirational Og Mandino book "The Greatest Salesman in the World" before one of his final exams, he suddenly knew he had to change his major from law to film.
He began his acting career in 1991, appearing in student films and commercials in Texas and directed short films as Chicano Chariots (1992). Once, in his hotel bar in Austin, he met the casting director and producer Don Phillips, who introduced him to director Richard Linklater for his next project. At first, Linklater thought Matthew was too handsome to play the role of a guy chasing high school girls in his coming-of-age drama Dazed and Confused (1993), but cast him after Matthew grew out his hair and mustache. His character was initially in three scenes but the role grew to more than 300 lines as Linklater encouraged him to do some improvisations. In 1995, he starred in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994), playing a mad bloodthirsty sadistic killer, opposite Renée Zellweger.
Shortly thereafter, moving to L.A., Matthew became a sensation with his performances in two high-profile 1996 films Lone Star (1996), where he portrayed killing suspected sheriff and in the film adaptation of John Grisham's novel A Time to Kill (1996), where he played an idealistic young lawyer opposite Sandra Bullock and Kevin Spacey. The actor was soon being hailed as one of the industry's hottest young leading man inspiring comparisons to actor Paul Newman. His following performances were Robert Zemeckis' Contact (1997) with Jodie Foster (the film was finished just before the death of the great astronomer and popularizer of space science Carl Sagan) and Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997), a fact-based 1839 story about the rebellious African slaves. In 1998, he teamed again with Richard Linklater as one of the bank-robbing brothers in The Newton Boys (1998), set in Matthew's birthplace, Uvalde, Texas. During this time, he also wrote, directed and starred in the 20-minute short The Rebel (1998).
In 1999, he starred in the comedy Edtv (1999), about the rise of reality television, and in 2000, he headlined Jonathan Mostow's U-571 (2000), portraying officer Lt. Tyler, in a WW II story of the daring mission of American submariners trying to capture the Enigma cipher machine.
In the 2000s, he became known for starring in romantic comedies, such as The Wedding Planner (2001), opposite Jennifer Lopez, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), in which he co-starred with Kate Hudson. He played Denton Van Zan, an American warrior and dragons hunter in the futuristic thriller Reign of Fire (2002), where he co-starred with Christian Bale. In 2006, he starred in the romantic comedy Failure to Launch (2006), and later as head coach Jack Lengyel in We Are Marshall (2006), along with Matthew Fox. In 2008, he played treasure hunter Benjamin "Finn" Finnegan in Fool's Gold (2008), again with Kate Hudson. After playing Connor Mead in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009), co-starring with Jennifer Garner, McConaughey took a two year hiatus to open different opportunities in his career. Since 2010, he has moved away from romantic comedies.
That change came in 2011, in his first movie after that pause, when he portrayed criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller in The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), that operates mostly from the back seat of his Lincoln car. After this performance that was considered one of his best until then, Matthew played other iconic characters as district attorney Danny Buck Davidson in Bernie (2011), the wild private detective "Killer" Joe Cooper in Killer Joe (2011), Mud in Mud (2012), reporter Ward Jensen in The Paperboy (2012), male stripper club owner Dallas in Magic Mike (2012), starring Channing Tatum. McConaughey's career certainly reached it's prime, when he played HIV carrier Ron Woodroof in the biographical drama Dallas Buyers Club (2013), shot in less than a month. For his portrayal of Ron, Matthew won the Best Actor in the 86th Academy Awards, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, among other awards and nominations. The same year, he also appeared in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). In 2014, he starred in HBO's True Detective (2014), as detective Rustin Cohle, whose job is to investigate with his partner Martin Hart, played by Woody Harrelson, a gruesome murder that happened in his little town in Louisiana. The series was highly acclaimed by critics winning 4 of the 7 categories it was nominated at the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards; he also won a Critics' Choice Award for the role.
Also in 2014, Matthew starred in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi film Interstellar (2014), playing Cooper, a former NASA pilot.- Actor
- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Gerard James Butler was born in Paisley, Scotland, to Margaret and Edward Butler, a bookmaker. His family is of Irish origin. Gerard spent some of his very early childhood in Montreal, Quebec, but was mostly raised, along with his older brother and sister, in his hometown of Paisley. His parents divorced when he was a child, and he and his siblings were raised primarily by their mother, who later remarried. He had no contact with his father between the ages of two and 16 years old, after which time they became close. His father passed away when Gerard was in his early 20s. Butler went on to attend Glasgow University, where he studied to be a lawyer/solicitor. He was president of the school's law society thanks to his outgoing personality and great social skills.
His acting career began when he was approached in a London coffee shop by actor Steven Berkoff, who later appeared alongside Butler in Attila (2001), who gave him a role in a stage production of "Coriolanus" (later, Butler played Tullus Aufidius in a big screen Coriolanus (2011). After that, Butler decided to give up law for acting. He was cast as Ewan McGregor's character "Renton" in the stage adaptation of Trainspotting. His film debut was as Billy Connolly's younger brother in Mrs. Brown (1997). While filming the movie in Scotland, he was enjoying a picnic with his mother near the River Tay when they heard the shouts of a young boy, who had been swimming with a friend, who was in some trouble. Butler jumped in and saved the young boy from drowning. He received a Certificate of Bravery from the Royal Humane Society. He felt he only did what anyone in the situation would have done.
His film career continued with small roles, first in the "James Bond" movie, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and then Russell Mulcahy's Tale of the Mummy (1998). In 2000, Butler was cast in two breakthrough roles, the first being "Attila the Hun" in the USA Network mini-series, Attila (2001). The film's producers wanted a known actor to play the part but kept coming back to Butler's screen tests and decided he was their man. He had to lose the thick Scottish accent, but managed well. Around the time "Attila" was being filmed, casting was in progress for Wes Craven's new take on the "Dracula" legacy. Also wanting a known name, Butler wasn't much of a consideration, but his unending tenacity drove him to hounding the producers. Eventually, he sent them a clip of his portrayal of "Attila". Evidently, they saw something because Dracula 2000 (2000) was cast in the form of Butler. Attila's producers, thinking that his big-screen role might help with their own film's ratings, finished shooting a little early so he could get to work on Dracula 2000 (2000). Following these two roles, Butler developed quite a fan base, and began appearing on websites and fancasts everywhere.
Since then, he has appeared in Reign of Fire (2002) as "Creedy" and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (2003) as "Terry Sheridan", alongside Angelina Jolie. The role that garnered him the most attention from both moviegoers and movie makers, alike, was that of "Andre Marek" in the big-screen adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel, Timeline (2003). Butler played an archaeologist who was sent back in time with a team of students to rescue a colleague. Last year, he appeared in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, The Phantom of the Opera (2004), playing the title character in the successful adaptation of the stage musical. It was a role that brought him much international attention. Other projects include Dear Frankie (2004), The Game of Their Lives (2005) and Beowulf & Grendel (2005).
In 2007, he starred as Spartan "King Leonidas" in the Warner Bros. production 300 (2006), based on the Frank Miller graphic novel, and Shattered (2007), co-starring Pierce Brosnan and Maria Bello, which aired on network TV under the title, "Shattered". He also starred in P.S. I Love You (2007), with Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank.
In 2007, he appeared in Nim's Island (2008) and RocknRolla (2008), and completed the new Mark Neveldine / Brian Taylor film, Gamer (2009). His next films included The Ugly Truth (2009), co-starring Katherine Heigl, which began filming in April 2008, The Bounty Hunter (2010), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Chasing Mavericks (2012) and Olympus Has Fallen (2013). In recent years, he has appeared in films such as Gods of Egypt (2016), Geostorm (2017), Den of Thieves (2018), The Vanishing (2018) and Hunter Killer (2018). Butler is related to writer-director Mark Flood.- 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.- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Taylor Sheridan is an American actor, screenwriter and director. He is best known for writing the screenplay for 'Sicario' (2015) and 'Hell or high water' (2016), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
He also starred in the FX television series 'Sons of anarchy' and directed the film 'Wind river,' starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Ralph Ineson was born on 15 December 1969 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, UK. He is an actor and producer, known for The Witch (2015), The Green Knight (2021) and The Creator (2023).- Actor
- Producer
- Music Department
Javier Bardem belongs to a family of actors that have been working on films since the early days of Spanish cinema.
He was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, to actress Pilar Bardem (María del Pilar Bardem Muñoz) and businessman José Carlos Encinas Doussinague. His maternal grandparents were actors Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro, and his uncle is screenwriter Juan Antonio Bardem. He got his start in the family business, at age six, when he appeared in his first feature, "El picaro" (1974) (A.K.A. The Scoundrel). During his teenage years, he acted in several TV series, played rugby for the Spanish National Team, and toured the country with an independent theatrical group. Javier's early film role as a sexy stud in the black comedy, Jamón, Jamón (1992) (aka Ham Ham) propelled him to instant popularity and threatened to typecast him as nothing more than a brawny sex symbol. Determined to avert a beefcake image, he refused similar subsequent roles and has gone on to win acclaim for his ability to appear almost unrecognizable from film to film. With over 25 movies and numerous awards under his belt, it is Javier's stirring, passionate performance as the persecuted Cuban writer, Reynaldo Arenas, in Before Night Falls (2000) that will long be remembered as his breakthrough role. He received five Best Actor awards and a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Director
Toby Stephens began his acting career while a stagehand at the Chichester Festival Theatre, in end-of-season productions mounted by the crew. In his brief professional career, he has already won the Sir John Gielgud Prize for Best Actor and the Ian Charleson Award for his performance in the title role of "Coriolanus" at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1994. His other work at the RSC includes "Measure for Measure", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Antony and Cleopatra", "Wallenstein", "All's Well That Ends Well" and "Unfinished Business". Stephens also starred in Peter Hall's production of "Tartuffe" at the Aldwych Theatre and has just finished filming The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1996). His television appearances include A View from the Bridge (2012) and The Camomile Lawn (1992). He made his screen debut in Sally Potter's Orlando (1992).- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Paget Brewster is an American actress. Her career started in the early 1990s, but her breakthrough was portraying FBI agent Emily Prentiss in the long-running police procedural series "Criminal Minds" (2005-2020, 2022-). Prentiss was introduced as the replacement to the character of Elle Greenaway (played by Lola Glaudini) who resigned in the 2nd season. Brewster portrayed the character regularly from 2006 to 2012, and again since 2016.
Brewster is also a prominent voice actress in animation. Her most prominent voice roles so far were portraying the reporter Audrey Timmonds in "Godzilla: The Series" (1998-2000), the super-heroine Birdgirl/Judy Ken Sebben in "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law" (2000-2018) and the sequel series "Birdgirl" (2021-2022), bounty hunter Rona Vipra in "Duck Dodgers" (2003-2005). Lana Lang in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" (2012), Lois Lane in "Justice League: Gods and Monsters" (2015), Poison Ivy in "Batman and Harley Quinn" (2017) , and the adventurer Della Duck in "DuckTales" (2017-2021). Della was depicted as the twin sister of Della Duck. The character of Della was created for the "Donald Duck" comic strip in 1937, but had been limited to minor appearances until her re-introduction in "DuckTales" .
In 1969, Brewser was born in Concord, Massachusetts, to Galen Brewster and his wife Hathaway Tew. Both of her parents worked as school administrators at Middlesex School, a non-sectarian high school located in Concord. Brewster spend most of her early life in Massachusetts. She moved to New York City for her college education, as a design student at the Parsons School of Design. During her first year there, she took some acting roles. She eventually decided to drop out of the design school, and to pursue acting as a full-time career.
In the mid-1990s, Brewster moved to San Francisco, in order to take acting classes. In 1995, she became the host of the late-night talk show "The Paget Show" at KPIX-TV. Her first notable acting role in television was portraying the recurring role of the actress Kathy in the fourth season of the sitcom "Friends". She appeared in the series from 1997 to 1998. Kathy was depicted as a love interest to both Joey Tribbiani (played by Matt LeBlanc) and Chandler Bing (played by Matthew Perry). The love triangle caused some problems in the relationship of the two men. Kathy was written out of the series when she left Chandler for another man. Following this role, Brewster started appearing regularly in various films.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Jason Bateman is an American film and television actor, known for his role as Michael Bluth on the television sitcom Arrested Development (2003), as well as his role on Valerie (1986).
He was born in Rye, New York. His father, Kent Bateman, from a Utah-based family, is a film and television director and producer, and founder of a Hollywood repertory stage company. His mother, Victoria Bateman, was born in Shropshire, England, and worked as a flight attendant. His sister is actress Justine Bateman. In 1981, at the age of 12, young Bateman made his debut on television as James Cooper Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie (1974): Uncle Jed, appearing in 18 more episodes in one season. Jason also appeared in the original Knight Rider with David Hasselhoff for the season three episode "Lost Knight" (aired Dec 1984) playing the character "Doug" who befriends Kitt when he loses his memory. In the mid-1980s, he became the DGA's youngest-ever director when he directed three episodes of Valerie (1986) at age 18. During the 2000s, Bateman's film career has been on soaring trajectory. In 2005, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series, Musical or Comedy, for Arrested Development (2003), and received other awards and nominations.
Bateman has been enjoying a happy family life with his wife, actress Amanda Anka (daughter of singer Paul Anka), with whom he has two children. The Batemans reside in Los Angeles, California.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
David Michael Bautista, Jr. was born on January 18, 1969 in Washington, D.C., to Donna Raye (Mullins) and David Michael Bautista, a hairdresser. He has Filipino and Greek ancestry.
When WCW officials told him he'd never make it in sports entertainment, Bautista pushed himself to achieve his dream of being a Superstar. In May 2002, he made his debut on SmackDown using the ring name Batista, but it wasn't until a move to Raw and two victories over Kane that "The Animal" began to make noise in the WWE Universe. The wins impressed Ric Flair and Triple H, who were looking to align themselves with the industry's brightest new stars. After a lengthy search, they identified Randy Orton and Batista. Collectively the four Superstars became known as Evolution.
Batista earned his first championship alongside "The Nature Boy" when the duo captured the WWE Tag Team Championships in December 2003. As Evolution dominated WWE, Batista started to emerge from the shadows of Triple H and Ric Flair. By the time Batista won the 2005 Royal Rumble Match, World Heavyweight Champion Triple H viewed him as a serious threat to his title.
After a triceps injury at the hands of Mark Henry forced Batista to relinquish the title in January 2006, he vowed to return. Batista successfully regained the World Heavyweight Championship at Survivor Series in 2006. Four months into his second reign, Batista faced the Undertaker at WrestleMania 23. "The Animal" took Undertaker to the limit, but was unable to stop the streak of "The Deadman" at WrestleMania. Though disappointed, Batista stayed hungry and always managed to keep himself in the championship hunt for the rest of his career.
At Bragging Rights in 2009, Batista shocked the world when he blamed Rey Mysterio for a loss to Undertaker, then attacked his former tag team partner. "The Animal" then became locked in a tense rivalry with another former friend, John Cena, over the WWE Championship. The grueling match at Over the Limit led to a wheelchair-bound Batista declaring "I quit!" the following night on Raw before fading from the WWE Universe in May 2010. Following his departure from WWE, Bautista appeared opposite Vin Diesel in the Universal film Riddick (2013) and RZA's feature directorial debut The Man with the Iron Fists (2012), in which he played the villainous Brass Body and starred opposite Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu. His other film credits include The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012), where he played Argomael; the action film House of the Rising Sun (2011); and Wrong Side of Town (2010) opposite rapper Ja Rule.
Two years later, he joined MMA and won his first professional MMA fight. In January 2014, he made his long awaited return to the WWE, before quitting a second time in June of that same year. He did this in order to promote Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), which was released on August 1, 2014, and starred Chris Pratt, Benicio Del Toro, Zoe Saldana, and Djimon Hounsou, alongside Bautista.
He will shoot Kickboxer: Vengeance (2016), directed by John Stockwell, and co-starring martial artist Alain Moussi and UFC fighter Georges St-Pierre. The remake of the 1989 Jean-Claude Van Damme film, Kickboxer (1989) is about two brothers David and Kurt Sloan; When David wins the Karate World Championship, a promoter lures him to Hong Kong, despite his brother's protestations that the man is a crook. When Kurt travels to Thailand to meet his brother, he discovers he has died and seeks his revenge.
After starring in films such as, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Hotel Artemis (2018), Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018), and Final Score (2018), he made a special guest appearance on WWE Smackdown! (1999) for it's 1000 episode reuniting with his former Evolution members Triple H, Randy Orton, and Ric Flair on October 16, 2018. The following year on February 25, 2019, he made his return to WWE Raw (1993) when he attacked Ric Flair on his 70th birthday at the end of the episode sending a message to Triple H that would ultimately lead to a No Holds Barred match for WrestleMania 35 (2019). Batista added the stipulation that if he wins the match, Triple H will have to retire from in-ring competition. As a result, Triple H was finally able to beat Batista for the first time and won the match, which ultimately led to Batista announcing his official retirement from wrestling in the WWE. Following his retirement, he will continue with his career as an actor in Hollywood.
His next films scheduled for release will be; Stuber (2019), Avengers: Endgame (2019), Escape Plan: The Extractors (2019), and My Spy (2020). He is one of many professional wrestlers to make the smooth transition from wrestling into the entertainment world.- 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).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Timothy Omundson was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on July 29, 1969, the youngest of four children. He grew up in Seattle, Washington, where his family moved when he was one. His father is a former railroad man and his mother was a teacher. Tim started to study theatre at the age of 12 at the Seattle Children's Theater, and interned at theaters throughout high school. With acting as his main focus, he spent the summer of his junior year in New York at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and he was a Washington State Debate Champion in Dramatic Interpretation for two years. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater from USC and received the Jack Nicholson Award and the James A. Doolittle Award for outstanding achievements in acting. Shortly after graduation, he got his first professional job as a guest shot on Seinfeld (1989). Next was the recurring role of Dr. Joshua Levin on SeaQuest 2032 (1993). Tim lives in the Hollywood Hills with his wife, Allison, and their dogs, Betty and Sally.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Born in the Bronx, New York, Trina McGee is the eldest child to her classical pianist mother and her Haitian photographer/revolutionist father. Although her father was absent from the family unit, his political legacy continued to shape Trina's life. Exiled from Haiti in the 1960s for publishing pamphlets denouncing Papa Doc, he spent Trina's youth fleeing the Haitian authorities, who would find out his whereabouts periodically and force him to run for his life. Meanwhile, Trina learned to play piano, write songs and showed an interest in acting, creative writing and political issues. As a child, she attended the prestigious and politically-acclaimed Manhattan Country School, founded in 1968, as a result of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
Children of all races and financial backgrounds were able to learn and compete on an equal playing field. This base of this education has been the crux of her crossover appeal in the present day. After attending Howard University for two years with political science as her major, she decided that wasn't her path and returned home to New York to pursue music. She was convinced she could make it when a song she wrote was passed on to some local Minneapolis, Prince-affiliated producers. The song became #1 on a local Minneapolis station and gave her the inspiration to go for a music career. Shortly after, she was approached by a movie producer in New York who thought, based on Trina's unique physical appearance, she could procure work as an actress. The producer let Trina use his name to get an agent, and soon after she found herself in the original production of "Chelsea Walls", acting with Marisa Tomei and Gina Gershon, directed by Jane Alexander and Edwin Sherin. After that run, she did three Hip Hop musicals, of which she was the lead rapper and vocalist. This background came in handy when, shortly after the musicals, there was an open casting opportunity from Quincy Jones, who was searching for girls who could act, dance and sing. His vision was a television show based on 'The Monkees' sixties phenomenon, but with a girl group in place. After seeing eight hundred girls around the country, and a rough auditioning process, which turned away a young 'Lauren Hill' and Regina King, Trina lasted to become one of the final four. Although Quincy's vision never met fruition, the assistance she received from Quincy in starting a life in California has been crucial to her development as an artist.
During the next phase of her life, she got married, did numerous sitcoms and dramatic television guest spots, an action movie with Sylvester Stallone and the The Fast and the Furious (2001) director Rob Cohen, worked with Mike Nichols in The Birdcage (1996), and somehow managed to have three children, in-between. The last child was born while filming the sitcom, Boy Meets World (1993), where Trina spent three years on the seven-year ABC, TGIF staple. Although she was now a mother of three, she portrayed a teenager, simultaneously, on television. This was also one of the first interracial relationships portrayed by teenagers on television and was the result of a LA Times article which subsequently published an editorial reply written by Trina, herself, on the importance of racial tolerance.
Always a survivor, when Trina became a single mom at the end of her "Boy Meets World" run, she focused on the repairing of her family unit, which meant at that time being an at-home mom, taking on a slew of commercial work. She shook her bottom in a hot commercial with Kid Rock, was smoothed out sophisticated with a car ad alongside Halle Berry's ex, soul singer Eric Benét (directed by Rob Cohen of the Fast and Furious), and currently has the AT&T logo slapped on her backside as her good friend, D.L. Hughley, lustfully looks on. She also starred in the last Ice Cube Friday franchise, Friday After Next (2002), and several more guest television spots. She is a consistent entity in the entertainment field and is recognized daily wherever she goes, especially by kids 5-17, who grew up on her work. She is also finding herself as a writer and currently has several television sitcoms in development. Not only has she penned these works herself, she has procured commitment from the array of star power she's come in contact with over the years. It seems next level of stardom is Trina's destiny.
Trina now lives in the San Fernando Valley with her three kids. She also likes painting and putting on plays, with her talented children, in her spare time.- Director
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Wesley Wales Anderson was born in Houston, Texas. His mother, Texas Ann (Burroughs), is an archaeologist turned real estate agent, and his father, Melver Leonard Anderson, worked in advertising and PR. He has two brothers, Eric and Mel. Anderson's parents divorced when he was a young child, an event that he described as the most crucial event of his brothers and his growing up. During childhood, Anderson also began writing plays and making super-8 movies. He was educated at Westchester High School and then St. John's, a private prep school in Houston, Texas, which was later to prove an inspiration for the film Rushmore (1998).
Anderson attended the University of Texas in Austin, where he majored in philosophy. It was there that he met Owen Wilson. They became friends and began making short films, some of which aired on a local cable-access station. One of their shorts was Bottle Rocket (1993), which starred Owen and his brother Luke Wilson. The short was screened at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was successfully received, so much so that they received funding to make a feature-length version. Bottle Rocket (1996) was not a commercial hit, but it gained a cult audience and high-profile fans, which included Martin Scorsese.
Success followed with films such as Rushmore (1998), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and an animated feature, Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). The latter two films earned Anderson Oscar nominations.- Actor
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Despite his prominence in Hollywood as a character actor known for playing villains and criminals, Ben Mendelsohn has been a leading man in Australia since starting acting as a teenager.
Paul Benjamin Mendelsohn was born in Melbourne, Australia, to Carole Ann (Ferguson), a nurse, and Frederick Arthur Oscar Mendelsohn, a medical researcher. Getting his start in television, including The Henderson Kids (1985) and the long running soap opera Neighbours (1985), Mendelsohn broke out with his performance as an ill-fated juvenile delinquent in the acclaimed coming of age film The Year My Voice Broke (1987). Mendelsohn won the best supporting actor award from the Australian Film Institute, his first of eight nominations.
Mendelsohn went onto to become one of the most popular teen/young adult stars in Australia cinema, often rivaling other emerging talents of his generation, including Russell Crowe, Noah Taylor, and Guy Pearce, leading the Australian tabloid to nickname them "the Mouse Pack" in reference to the Rat Pack in America and Brit Pack in the UK, emerging at the same time. Among his peers, Mendelsohn seemed to corner the market on troubled, angry young men, thanks to his roles in Idiot Box (1996), Metal Skin (1994), and Nirvana Street Murder (1990). But Mendelsohn also proved he was capable of being a romantic lead, starring in the comedies The Big Steal (1990), Cosi (1996), and Amy (1997).
In the 1990s, Mendelsohn appeared in just one "Hollywood" film, the action film Vertical Limit (2000), as one of two daredevil climbers on a rescue mission, often providing the film's comic relief. The film failed to find an audience and Mendelsohn returned to Australia, where he primarily worked in theater and television, despite earning best actor nominations from the Australian Film Institute and Australian Film Critics Circle for the drama Mullet, as a prodigal son returning to his small town. He also took steps to work in more international films such as The New World (2005), Knowing (2009) and Australia (2008). Mendelsohn has acknowledged that there was a period of almost two years that he had so little work, he considered leaving the acting profession entirely.
In 2009, Mendelsohn experienced a bit of a comeback with the role in the independent Australian films Beautiful Kate (2009), as troubled man forced to reunite with his dying father and come to terms with the death of his twin sister, with whom he had a complicated relationship. He was nominated for Australian Film Institute and Australian Film Critics Circle Best Actor in 2009. A year later, he appeared as Pope in Animal Kingdom (2010), the most terrifying and violent member of a crime family. In 2010, he won Best Actor from the Australian Film Institute, Independent Film Award, and Australian Film Critics Circle.
Since 2010, Mendelsohn has become a major player in Hollywood as a character actor in both blockbuster films (The Dark Knight Rises (2012)) and critically acclaimed films such as Killing Them Softly (2012) and The Place Beyond the Pines (2012). In 2013 he appeared in the UK Starred Up (2013), which earned him a Best Supporting Actor Award from the British Independent Film Awards. He received high praise for his performance as gambling addict in 2015's Mississippi Grind (2015) (earning an independent spirit award nomination for best actor). The same year he began a two season run on Netflix's Bloodline (2015) as Danny Rayburn, the black sheep in a well respected family in the Florida Keys (he was considered a guest actor in the third and final season). In 2016 his career took another leap forward, appearing as the main villain in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), and winning the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. He missed the ceremony, as he was filming Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One (2018).- Actor
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Paul Stephen Rudd was born in Passaic, New Jersey. His parents, Michael and Gloria, both from Jewish families, were born in the London area, U.K. He has one sister, who is three years younger than he is. Paul traveled with his family during his early years, because of his father's airline job at TWA. His family eventually settled in Overland Park, Kansas, where his mother worked as a sales manager for TV station KSMO-TV. Paul attended Broadmoor Junior High and Shawnee Mission West High School, from which he graduated in 1987, and where he was Student Body President. He then enrolled at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, majoring in theater. He graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts-West in Los Angeles and participated in a three-month intensive workshop under the guidance of Michael Kahn at the British Drama Academy at Oxford University in Britain. Rudd helped to produce the Globe Theater's production of Howard Brenton's "Bloody Poetry," which starred Rudd as Percy Bysshe Shelley.- Actress
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Robin Weigert is an American actress. She is primarily known for television roles, and was once nominated for a "Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series."
In 1969, Weigert was born in Washington D.C. Her family is of Jewish heritage. Her parents were the psychiatrist Wolfgang Oscar Weigert and his wife Dionne Laufman. Her father was from Berlin, Germany, but emigrated to the United States decades before Robin's birth.
Weigert was educated at Brandeis University, an American private research university located in Waltham, Massachusetts. Brandeis is a secular, non-sectarian, and coeducational institution, sponsored by the Jewish-American community, It was named after Louis Dembitz Brandeis, the first Jewish Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1856-1941, term 1916-1939). Weigert graduated in 1991, at the age of 22.
Deciding to follow an acting career, Weigert enrolled in the Graduate Acting Program of the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Tisch is a performing, cinematic, and media arts school located in Manhattan, New York City. Following her graduation, Weigert spend the first years of her career as a theatrical actress in New York City. She eventually decided to move to Los Angeles, California, where she hoped to find better career opportunities.
Weigert started her television career with cameo roles in television films such as "Mary and Rhoda" (2000), a spin-off of the sitcom "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (1970-1977). She appeared in guest star roles in a number of police procedural television series, such as "Law & Order", "Without a Trace", "NYPD Blue", "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation", and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit". Her first recurring role was that of Detective Anna Mayes in the early seasons of the police procedural series "Cold Case" (2003-2010). In the series Mayes is a former work colleague of Scotty Valens (one of the main characters) and is on occasion called to assist the main team in their investigations of cold cases.
From 2004 to 2006, Weigert played her breakthrough role of frontierswoman Martha Jane "Calamity Jane" Canary (1852-1903) in the Western television series "Deadwood" (2004-2006). The series was set in the 1870s, and depicted life in the Dakota Territory (1861-1889), an organized incorporated territory of the United States. Weigert's role as the "unkempt, cantankerous, and foul-mouthed drunkard" Calamity Jane received critical praise. Weigert was nominated for a "Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series" for this role, but the Award for 2004 was instead won by rival actress Drea de Matteo (1972-).
The increased attention helped Weigert gain a number of film roles. She appeared in the drama film "Loggerheads" (2005) which depicted estranged families, in the neo-noir film "The Good German" (2006), and the drug-addiction themed film "Things We Lost in the Fire" (2007). She had a more substantial role in the "postmodern" drama film "Synecdoche, New York" (2008), playing the adult version of the character Olive Cotard (with the child version played by Sadie Goldstein).
After several years of mostly appearing in films, Weigert returned to television in 2010 with the recurring role of lawyer Ally Lowen in the contemporary Western television series "Sons of Anarchy" (2008-2014). The series depicted the lives of a close-knit outlaw motorcycle club in California, and utilize Old West themes and motifs in a contemporary setting. Lowen was a recurring character in Seasons 3, 5, and 6.
In 2013, Weigert played the lead role of Abby Ableman in the lesbian-themed drama film "Concussion". Weigert received critical praise for the role, and was nominated for a "Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor". The Award for the year was instead won by rival actor Michael Bakari Jordan (1987-).
In 2015, Weigert joined the cast of the neo-noir television series "Jessica Jones" (2015-) during its first season. She played the role of physician Dr. Wendy Ross-Hogarth, the same-sex wife of lawyer Jeryn "Jeri" Hogarth (played Carrie-Anne Moss).
In 2016, Weigert provided voice acting for the animated television series "Transformers: Robots in Disguise" (2015-2017). In the series, Weigert depicted the female villain Scatterspike, a member of the Scavengers. The Scavengers are depicted as a sub-group of the Decepticons, who earn a living by salvaging technological relics left behind by the Autobots during Cybertron's Great War.
In 2017, Weigert depicted the CIA agent Heather Myles in the British mini-series "Fearless". Myles is the series' main antagonist. Also in 2017, Weigert joined the cast of the dramatic television series "Big Little Lies" (2017-). She plays the recurring role of Dr. Amanda Reisman. the therapist attending to a married couple, Perry and Celeste Wright (played by Alexander Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman).
In 2018, Weigert played the role of "body-positive therapist" Verena Baptist in the black comedy mini-series "Dietland". In the series, Baptist is a published author and feminist activist, who is known for helping marginalized women to gain a new perspective in life and to struggle against misogyny. But her life lessons may have inspired a vigilante group in a series of murders against supposedly villainous men.
From 2018 to 2019, Weigert played the recurring role of Jamie Hudson in the third and and final season of the espionage-themed series "Berlin Station" (2016-2019). Hudson is depicted as a college buddy of Valerie Edwards (played by Michelle Forbes), the Section Chief of CIA's operatives in Berlin, Germany. Edwards is one of the main characters of the series.
In 2019, Weigert returned to the role of Calamity Jane in the Western television film "Deadwood: The Movie". It is a sequel of the television series "Deadwood" and the main action is set in the year 1889, just as South Dakota is declared a new U.S. state. By 2019, Weigert was 50 years old, but her career showed no signs of slowing down. She remains a popular character actress, with regular appearances in television.- Actor
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Peter Dinklage is an American actor. Since his breakout role in The Station Agent (2003), he has appeared in numerous films and theatre plays. Since 2011, Dinklage has portrayed Tyrion Lannister in the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011) . For this he won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Series, Miniseries or Television Film in 2011.
Peter Hayden Dinklage was born in Morristown, New Jersey, to Diane (Hayden), an elementary school teacher, and John Carl Dinklage, an insurance salesman. He is of German, Irish, and English descent. In 1991, he received a degree in drama from Bennington College and began his career. His exquisite theatre work that expresses brilliantly the unique range of his acting qualities, includes remarkable performances full of profoundness, charisma, intelligence, sensation and insights in plays such as "The Killing Act", "Imperfect Love", Ivan Turgenev's "A Month in the Country" as well as the title roles in William Shakespeare's "Richard III" and in Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya".
Peter Dinklage received acclaim for his first film, Living in Oblivion (1995), where he played an actor frustrated with the limited and caricatured roles offered to actors who have dwarfism. In 2003, he starred in The Station Agent (2003), written and directed by Tom McCarthy. The movie received critical praise as well as Peter Dinklage's work including nominations such as for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role at the "Screen Actors Guild" and Best Male Lead at the "Film Independent Spirit Awards". One of his next roles has been the one of Miles Finch, an acclaimed children's book author, in Elf (2003). Find Me Guilty (2006), the original English Death at a Funeral (2007), its American remake Death at a Funeral (2010), Penelope (2006), The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) are also included in his brilliant work concerning feature films.
His fine work in television also includes shows such as Entourage (2004), Life as We Know It (2004), Threshold (2005) and Nip/Tuck (2003). In 2011, the primary role of Tyrion Lannister, a man of sharp wit and bright spirit, in Game of Thrones (2011), was incarnated with unique greatness in Dinklage's unparalleled performance. The series is an adaptation of author George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and his work has received widespread praise, also highlighted by his receiving of the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series at The 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards (2011), The 67th Primetime Emmy Awards (2015), The 70th Primetime Emmy Awards (2018) and The 71st Primetime Emmy Awards (2019) as well as of the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television at [error].
Dinklage, among others, has also voiced Captain Gutt in Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) and The Mighty Eagle in The Angry Birds Movie (2016), starred in the comedy horror film Knights of Badassdom (2013) while his tour-de-force interpretations as a multifarious "chameleon" of substantial mastery and artistic generosity also include film and TV gems such as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), Three Christs (2017) and I Think We're Alone Now (2018).- Actor
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Simon Baker was first recognized in 1992, when he received Australia's prestigious Logie award for Most Popular New Talent. Upon relocating to Los Angeles with his family, Baker was immediately cast in the Academy Award winning film L.A. Confidential (1997).- Actor
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American actor, filmmaker and activist Edward Harrison Norton was born on August 18, 1969, in Boston, Massachusetts, and was raised in Columbia, Maryland.
His mother, Lydia Robinson "Robin" (Rouse), was a foundation executive and teacher of English, and a daughter of famed real estate developer James Rouse, who developed Columbia, MD; she passed away of brain cancer on March 6, 1997. His father, Edward Mower Norton, was an environmental lawyer and conservationist, who works for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Edward has two younger siblings, James and Molly.
From the age of five onward, the Yale graduate (majoring in history) was interested in acting. At the age of eight, he would ask his drama teacher what his motivation in a scene was. He attended theater schools throughout his life, and eventually managed to find work on stage in New York as a member of the Signature players, who produced the works of playwright and director Edward Albee. Around the time when he was appearing in Albee's Fragments, in Hollywood, they were looking for a young actor to star opposite Richard Gere in a new courtroom thriller, Primal Fear (1996). The role was offered to Leonardo DiCaprio but he turned it down. Gere was on the verge of walking away from the project, fed up with the wait for a young star to be found, when Edward auditioned and won the role over 2000 other hopefuls. Before the film was even released, his test screenings for the part were causing a Hollywood sensation, and he was soon offered roles in Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996). Edward won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Primal Fear (1996). In 1998, Norton gained 30 pounds of muscle and transformed his look into that of a monstrous skinhead for his role as a violent white supremacist in American History X (1998). This performance earned him his second Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actor.
He received his third Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor, for his work in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014). His most prominent roles also include the critically acclaimed Everyone Says I Love You (1996), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Fight Club (1999), Red Dragon (2002), 25th Hour (2002), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), The Illusionist (2006), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). He has also directed and co-written films, including his directorial debut, Keeping the Faith (2000). He has done uncredited work on the scripts for The Score (2001), Frida (2002), and The Incredible Hulk (2008).
Alongside his work in cinema, Norton is an environmental and social activist, and is a member of the board of trustees of Enterprise Community Partners, a non-profit organization for developing affordable housing founded by his grandfather James Rouse.- Actor
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Christian Michael Leonard Slater was born on August 18, 1969 in New York City, to Michael Hawkins, a well-known soap actor, and Mary Jo Slater (née Lawton), a casting agent. Christian started in show business early, appearing on the soap opera The Edge of Night (1956) in 1976 at the age of 7. He went on to star in many Broadway shows in the early-1980s. He rose to fame in Hollywood after landing the role of Binx Davey in The Legend of Billie Jean (1985). He moved to Los Angeles in 1987 to pursue a further acting career after dropping out of high school. After having a starring role in the cult classic Heathers (1988), he became somewhat known as the Hollywood bad-boy, having many run-ins with the law. He is also well-known for having dated stars such as Winona Ryder, Christina Applegate, Samantha Mathis and was at one time engaged to actress/model Nina Huang. In 2000, he married Ryan Haddon, the daughter of 1970s model Dayle Haddon. The couple have two children, Jaden Christopher (b. 1999) and Eliana Sophia (b. 2001). As of early 2005, they separated and later divorced, but remain dedicated to bring up their children.- Actor
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Thomas Jacob "Jack" Black was born on August 28, 1969 in Santa Monica, California and raised in Hermosa Beach, California to Judith Love Cohen & Thomas William Black, both satellite engineers. He is of Russian Jewish & British-German ancestry. Black attended the University of California at Los Angeles. While at UCLA, he was a member of Tim Robbins' acting troupe & it was through this collaboration that led to his 1992 film debut in Bob Roberts (1992). Although he was just a background voice in his first film, Jack's appearances in such television shows as The X-Files (1993), his breakthrough performance in High Fidelity (2000) & his rock-comedy band, Tenacious D have created an ever-growing cult following.- Actress
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Catherine Zeta-Jones was born September 25, 1969 in Swansea, Wales (and raised in the nearby town of Mumbles), the only daughter of Patricia (nee Fair) and David James "Dai" Jones, who formerly owned a sweet factory. She attended Dumbarton House School (Swansea). Her father (the son of Bertram (1912-1970) and Zeta Davies Jones (1917-2008)) is of Welsh descent and her mother (the daughter of William (1921-2000) and Catherine O'Callaghan Fair (1920-2001) ) is of English, Irish, and Welsh ancestry. Her brothers are David Jones (born 1967), a development executive, and Lyndon Jones (born 1972), who works at her production company. Her birth name was simply Catherine Jones, but she added her paternal grandmother's name ("Zeta") so as to stand out from the many other young women with the exact same name.
She showed an interest early on in entertainment. She starred on stage in "Annie", "Bugsy Malone" and "The Pajama Game". At age 15, she had the lead in the British revival of "42nd Street". She was originally cast as the second understudy for the lead role in the musical but when the star and first understudy became sick the night the play's producer was in the audience, she was given the lead for the rest of the musical's production. She first made a name for herself in the early 1990s when she starred in the Yorkshire Television comedy/drama series The Darling Buds of May (1991). The series was a success and made her one of the United Kingdom's most popular television actresses.
She subsequently played supporting roles in several films including Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992), the miniseries Catherine the Great (1995) and a larger role as the seductive Sala in The Phantom (1996) before landing her breakthrough role playing the fiery Elena opposite Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro (1998). She starred in many big-budget blockbusters like Entrapment (1999), The Haunting (1999) and Traffic (2000), for which many believed she was robbed of an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as murderous vaudevillian Velma Kelly in the musical comedy Chicago (2002). She then appeared opposite George Clooney in Intolerable Cruelty (2003), Ocean's Twelve (2004) and reprised her starring role in the sequel The Legend of Zorro (2005).
In November 2000, she married actor Michael Douglas. She gave birth to their son Dylan Michael in August 2000 followed by daughter, Carys, in April 2003. She was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.