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Courteney Cox was born on June 15th, 1964 in Birmingham, Alabama, into an affluent Southern family. She is the daughter of Courteney (Bass) and Richard Lewis Cox (1930-2001), a businessman. She was the baby of the family with two older sisters (Virginia and Dottie) and an older brother, Richard, Jr. She was raised in an exclusive society town, Mountain Brook, Alabama. Courteney was the archetypal daddy's girl, and therefore was understandably devastated when, in 1974, her parents divorced, and her father moved to Florida.
She became a rebellious teen, and did not make things easy for her mother, and new stepfather, New York businessman Hunter Copeland. Now, she is great friends with both. She attended Mountain Brook High School, where she was a cheerleader, tennis player and swimmer. In her final year, she received her first taste of modeling. She appeared in an advert for the store, Parisians. Upon graduation, she left Alabama to study architecture and interior design at Mount Vernon College. After one year she dropped out to a pursue a modeling career in New York, after being signed by the prestigious Ford Modelling Agency. She appeared on the covers of teen magazines such as Tiger Beat and Little Miss, plus numerous romance novels. She then moved on to commercials for Maybeline, Noxema, New York Telephone Company and Tampax.
While modeling, she attended acting classes, as her real dream and ambition was to be an actress. In 1984, she landed herself a small part in one episode of As the World Turns (1956) as a young débutante named Bunny. Her first big break, however, was being cast by Brian De Palma in the Bruce Springsteen video "Dancing in The Dark". In 1985, she moved to LA to star alongside Dean Paul Martin in Misfits of Science (1985). It was a flop, but a few years later, she was chosen out of thousands of hopefuls to play Michael J. Fox's girlfriend, psychology major Lauren Miller in Family Ties (1982).
In 1989, Family Ties (1982) ended, and Cox went through a lean spell in her career, featuring in unmemorable movies such as Mr. Destiny (1990) with Michael Caine. Fortunes changed dramatically for Cox, when in 1994, she starred alongside Jim Carrey in the unexpected hit Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), and a year later she was cast as Monica Geller on the hugely successful sitcom Friends (1994). It was this part that turned her into an international superstar and led to an American Comedy Award nomination. In 1996 Cox starred in Wes Craven's horror/comedy Scream (1996) . This movie grossed over $100 million at the box office, and won Cox rave reviews for her standout performance as the wickedly bitchy and smug TV reporter Gale Weathers. She went on to play this character again in each of the three sequels. Not only did her involvement in this movie lead to critical acclaim, but it also led to her meeting actor husband David Arquette. He played her on-screen love interest Dewey, and life imitated art as the two fell in love for real. Their wedding took place in San Francisco, at the historic Grace Cathedral atop Nob Hill, on June 12th, 1999. Joined by 200 guests, including Cox's film star friends Liam Neeson and Kevin Spacey, the happy couple finally became Mr. and Mrs. Arquette.- Actress
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Amanda Elizabeth Righetti is a Utah-born, Nevada-raised actor/producer and Best Actress Award winner by the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival. Righetti began her career at 14, as a young model, but made waves as the trust-fund squandering, world-traveling black sheep, "Hailey Nichol", on Fox's The O.C. (2003).
So impressed by her talent and determination, Fox executives cast her as the lead role of "Tessa Lewis" in 2004's North Shore (2004). In 2005, Righetti ranked among FHM's 100 Sexiest Women while portraying "Jenna Moretti" in the popular drama, Reunion (2005). She has since appeared in several major motion pictures, and has guest-starred in popular television shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000) and HBO's Entourage (2004).
In 2008, Righetti was cast in the leading role of Michael Bay's remake, Friday the 13th (2009), while filming her series, The Mentalist (2008), for CBS. In 2009, "Friday the 13th" opened to the best 3-day weekend opening for any horror film, and "The Mentalist" won a People's Choice Award for Best New Television Drama.- Actress
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Natalie Portman is the first person born in the 1980s to have won the Academy Award for Best Actress (for Black Swan (2010)).
Natalie was born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel. She is the only child of Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born doctor, and Shelley Stevens, an American-born artist (from Cincinnati, Ohio), who also acts as Natalie's agent. Her parents are both of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Natalie's family left Israel for Washington, D.C., when she was still very young. After a few more moves, her family finally settled in New York, where she still lives to this day. She graduated with honors, and her academic achievements allowed her to attend Harvard University. She was discovered by an agent in a pizza parlor at the age of 11. She was pushed towards a career in modeling but she decided that she would rather pursue a career in acting. She was featured in many live performances, but she made her powerful film debut in the movie Léon: The Professional (1994) (aka "Léon"). Following this role Natalie won roles in such films as Heat (1995), Beautiful Girls (1996), and Mars Attacks! (1996).
It was not until 1999 that Natalie received worldwide fame as Queen Amidala in the highly anticipated US$431 million-grossing prequel Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). She then she starred in two critically acclaimed comedy dramas, Anywhere But Here (1999) and Where the Heart Is (2000), followed by Closer (2004), for which she received an Oscar nomination. She reprised her role as Padme Amidala in the last two episodes of the Star Wars prequel trilogy: Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005). She received an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Black Swan (2010).
She received a second nomination for Best Actress, for playing Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie (2016).- Actress
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Actress and activist Olivia Wilde is a modern day renaissance woman, starring in many acclaimed film productions, while simultaneously giving back to the community.
She was born on March 10, 1984 in New York City. Her parents are Leslie Cockburn (née Leslie Corkill Redlich) and Andrew Cockburn. Her mother is American-born and her father was born in London, England to an upper-class British family; he also later became a citizen of Ireland. Wilde is the middle child, having an older sister, Chloe Cockburn, and, a younger brother, Charlie Cockburn. She is of English, Irish, Scottish, German, and Manx descent.
She was raised in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and spent her summers in Ardmore, County Waterford, Ireland. She attended the private Georgetown Day School, as well as, Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, graduating in 2002. She was accepted to Bard College, another highly selective private school in Duchess County, New York but deferred her enrollment three times in order to pursue an acting career. She later studied at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, Ireland.
Wilde is known for her television roles as Alex Kelly in The O.C. (2003) from 2004-2005 and Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley in the medical-drama television series, House (2004) when she joined the cast in 2007 and appeared on the show until the series end in 2012.
Wilde is a board member of the organization "Artists for Peace and Justice," which supports communities in Haiti through programs in education, health care, and dignity through the performing arts. She has served as executive producer on several documentary short films, including, Sun City Picture House (2010), which is about a community in Haiti that rallies to build a movie theater after the disastrous 2010 earthquake and Baseball in the Time of Cholera (2012), which explored the cholera epidemic in Haiti.
Wilde is known for her roles in Year One (2009), Tron: Legacy (2010), Cowboys & Aliens (2011), In Time (2011), People Like Us (2012), Her (2013), Rush (2013), Drinking Buddies (2013), The Longest Week (2014), Love the Coopers (2015), and Meadowland (2015).
Since 2011, Wilde had been in a relationship with Jason Sudeikis. They have two children together, Otis Alexander Sudeikis (born April 20, 2014) and Daisy Josephine Sudeikis (born October 11, 2016). In November 2020, they announced that they had ended their relationship.
Wilde made her Broadway debut in the play "1984" at the Hudson Theatre in New York City in 2017. She has recently starred in Life Itself (2018) and A Vigilante (2018).- Actress
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Jessica Biel, has become one of Hollywood's most sought-out actresses. She was born in Ely, Minnesota, to Kimberly (Conroe) and Jonathan Edward Biel, who is a business consultant and GM worker. Biel was raised in Boulder, Colorado. She is of Hungarian Jewish, Danish, English, and German descent.
As a child, Biel initially pursued a career as a vocalist, performing in musical theater. Beginning at age nine, she starred in such productions as "Annie," "The Sound of Music," and "Beauty and the Beast." Biel soon turned to modeling and commercial work by competing in The International Modeling and Talent Association's Annual Conference in 1994.
Her Film debut was in the Kid's Rock Opera It's a Digital World (1994) where she demonstrated her acting and singing abilities. Her television series acting debut, playing Mary Camden on the WB's #1-rated show, 7th Heaven (1996), helped her emerge as a breakout star. She terrified moviegoers with her portrayal of Erin, "Leatherface's" greatest nemesis to date, in New Line Cinema's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), a remake of the original. Having finished filming, Blade: Trinity (2004) in Vancouver with Wesley Snipes, Ryan Reynolds, and Kris Kristofferson, she the portrayed a jet-fighter pilot in Stealth (2005), starring Josh Lucas, Jamie Foxx, and Sam Shepherd, for director Rob Cohen. Biel's film career began at age 14 when she played alongside Peter Fonda in his Golden Globe-winning performance in Ulee's Gold (1997). Her other film credits include I'll Be Home for Christmas (1998), Summer Catch (2001), Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction (2002), and Cellular (2004), which stars Chris Evans, Kim Basinger, and William H. Macy.
In her spare time, Biel is involved with charities such as Best Friends Animal Sanctuary and PETA. Her hobbies include ballet, soccer, running, yoga and hiking with her dog "East." She resides in Los Angeles.
In 2012, she married actor and singer Justin Timberlake. The two have a son.- Actress
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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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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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Milla Jovovich is a Ukrainian-American actress, supermodel, fashion designer, singer and public figure, who was on the cover of more than a hundred magazines, and starred in such films as The Fifth Element (1997), Ultraviolet (2006), and the Resident Evil (2002) franchise.
Milica Bogdanovna Jovovich was born on December 17, 1975 in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now in Ukraine). Her Serbian father, Bogdan Jovovich, was a medical doctor in Kyiv. There, he met her mother, Galina Jovovich (née Loginova), a Russian actress. At the age of 5, in 1981, Milla emigrated with her parents from the Soviet Union, moving first to London, UK, then to Sacramento, California, and eventually settled in Los Angeles. There her parents worked as house cleaners for the household of director Brian De Palma. Her parents separated, and eventually divorced, because her father was arrested and spent several years in prison.
Young Milla Jovovich was brought up by her single mother in Los Angeles. In addition to her native Ukrainian, she also speaks Russian and English. However, in spite of her cosmopolitan background, Milla was ostracized by some of her classmates, as a kid who emigrated from the Soviet Union amidst the paranoia of the Cold War. Many emotional scars had affected her behavior, but she eventually emerged as a resilient, multi-talented, albeit rebellious and risk-taking girl. She was coached by her actress mother since her childhood, first at home, then studied music, ballet, and acting in Los Angeles.
She shot to international fame after she was spotted by the photographer Richard Avedon at the age of 11, and was featured in Revlon's "Most Unforgettable Women in the World" advertisements, and on the cover of the Italian fashion magazine 'Lei' which was her first cover shoot. She made her first professional model contract at the age of 12, and soon made it to the cover of 'The Face', 'Vogue', 'Cosmopolitan' and many other magazines. In 1994, she appeared on the cover of 'High Times' in the UK, at the age of 18. The total number of her magazine covers worldwide was over one hundred by 2004, and keeps counting. In 2004, she made $10.4 million, becoming the highest paid supermodel in the world.
Milla appeared in ad campaigns for Chanel, Versace, Emporio Armani, Donna Karen, DKNY, Celine, P&K, H&H, and continues her role as the worldwide spokesperson and model for L'Oreal. Thanks to their continued success with Milla, Giorgio Armani chose her to be the face of his fragrance, Night. In addition to Armani's fragrance, Milla was the face for Calvin Klein's Obsession and Christian Dior's Poison for over 10 years and has most recently become the new face for Donna Karan's Cashmere Mist fragrance, which debuts in August 2009. Milla continues to shoot with the fashion industry's most sought after photographers, including Peter Lindbergh, Mario Sorrenti, Craig McDean and Inez & Vinoodh.
Milla made her acting debut in the Disney Channel movie The Night Train to Kathmandu (1988) and she made guest appearances on television series including Married... with Children (1987) (in 1989 as a French exchange student), Paradise (1988) and Parker Lewis Can't Lose (1990). In 1988, at age 12, she made her film debut credited as Milla in a supporting role in Two Moon Junction (1988) by writer/director Zalman King. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she played several supporting roles as a teenage actress in film and on television, then starred in Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991). In 1997, she co-starred opposite Bruce Willis in the sci-fi blockbuster The Fifth Element (1997), then she starred as the title character of The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999).
In the early 2000s, Milla had a few years of uncertainty in her acting career due to the uneven quality of her films, as well as some hectic events in her private life. She appeared with Mel Gibson in Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotel (2000) which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. She went on to co-star with Wes Bentley and Sarah Polley in The Claim (2000) and in Ben Stiller's spoof of the world of models and high-fashion, Zoolander (2001).
Milla achieved box office success in the U.S. and around the world with the action-packed thriller, Resident Evil (2002), based on the wildly popular video game, Resident Evil. It was written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Milla reprised her role as the zombie slaying heroine, Alice, in Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), and again in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) A seventh resident Evil movie is in pre-production.
She received glowing reviews opposite Oscar-winner Adrien Brody and Illeana Douglas in Dummy (2002) which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. In the spring of 2006, Milla returned to the big screen as action heroine, Violet, in the futuristic film Ultraviolet (2006) directed by Kurt Wimmer.
Focusing on her personal sense of style, her love of fashion led Milla and her friend and business partner, Carmen Hawk, to launch their Jovovich-Hawk clothing line, which achieved instant acclaim in the domestic and international fashion world. The fresh, unique line garnered the attention of red carpet watchers and fashion magazines, including American Vogue, who featured Jovovich-Hawk on their coveted list of "10 Things to Watch Out for in 2005." A student of voice and guitar since she was very young, Milla began writing songs for her first record at the age of 15.
Her first album, "The Divine Comedy", was released by EMI Records in 1994. Informed by her experiences as a child growing up as a Russian emigrant in the Red-bashing Reagan era, the introspective European-folkish debut drew favorable reviews for Milla's songwriting and performing. She continues to write music, and has had songs featured on several film soundtracks. She has been writing music and lyrics to her song-demos, playing her guitar and sampling other sounds from her computer, and allowing free download and remix of her songs from her website.
Charitable work also plays a major part in Milla's life. She has served as Master of Ceremonies and co-chaired with Elizabeth Taylor for the amfAR and Cinema Against AIDS event at the Venice Film Festival, and has been heavily involved with The Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, as well as The Wildlands Project.
For many years Milla Jovovich has been maintaining a healthier lifestyle, practicing yoga and meditation, trying to avoid junk food, and cooking for herself. Since she was a little girl, Milla has been writing a private diary, a habit she learned from her mother. She has been keeping a record of many good and bad facts of her life, her travels, her relationships, and all important ideas and events in her career, planning eventually to publish an autobiography. After dissolution of her two previous marriages, Milla Jovovich became engaged to film director Paul W.S. Anderson; their daughter, Ever Anderson, was born on November 3, 2007. They got married on August 22, 2009. Their second daughter, Dashiel Edan, was born on April 1, 2015.- Actress
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Scottie Thompson grew up performing as a ballet dancer. She transitioned into her acting career when she landed a recurring role on the Showtime series "Brotherhood" after graduating from Harvard University with a degree in Performance Studies. She has gone on to continue working in various television shows, films and independent films.- Actress
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Taylor Cole is best known for her recurring roles in THE ORIGINALS on the CW in addition to TV Land's IMPASTOR, the CW's SUPERNATURAL, and A&E's THE GLADES. She was a series regular on the NBC hit series, THE EVENT. She has since appeared in numerous shows, including SECOND CHANCE, BALLERS, CASTLE, TWO AND A HALF MEN, and NCIS, to name a few.
Taylor recently starred in LONG LOST CHRISTMAS and PUMPKIN EVERYTHING for Hallmark, and prior to that starred in ALL IS BRIGHT and SOUTH BEACH LOVE for them as well. She will next star in ALOHA HEART for Hallmark. Other feature credits include ONE WINTER WEDDING and UNLOCKING CHRISTMAS for Hallmark, and BAD for Lifetime. Taylor can also be seen in the films THE VIOLENT KIND, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, THE SURROGATES, TWELVE ROUNDS, as well as MTV's ALL YOU'VE GOT. Taylor first debuted in the WB TV series SUMMERLAND as a series regular.- Actress
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From her role as Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the hit Fox series "House" to her starring role as Abby McCarthy in Bravo's first scripted series "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce," Lisa Edelstein's range of roles are as diverse as her talent. Set for a Summer 2018 Season 5 premiere, "Girlfriends' Guide" is a dramedy following a best-selling author of a self-help series who separates from her husband and must navigate big career changes and the dating world as a newly single mother. Created by Marti Noxon, the show not only gave Edelstein the opportunity to be the series lead playing everything from heartfelt drama to physical comedy, she also had the chance to expand creatively by being a writer, producer and director on the show.
Edelstein is developing a dramedy pilot with Universal Cable based on the book Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas. She is co-writing the script with Carol Barbee, will star in the lead role and executive produce along with Phoenix Pictures. She is also shooting a recurring role in the new Netflix series "The Kominsky Method," starring Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin and created by Chuck Lorre. Edelstein plays Phoebe, the drug-addled hot mess daughter of Arkin's character. The show will premiere later this year. In addition, she took the helm this year by writing, directing, and starring in the short film "Unzipping." Based on the short story by Etgar Keret, Edelstein produced the film with Jane Hollen and Kate Cohen of Straight Up Films. James Le Gros and Jason Lewis co-star.
No stranger to fearless and even some iconic television roles, Edelstein was the risotto-loving Karen on "Seinfeld," Rob Lowe's call-girl girlfriend Laurie on "West Wing," the transsexual Cindy on "Ally McBeal," and Rhonda Roth, the first out-lesbian on network TV in Jason Katim's "Relativity." Other guest and recurring appearances include "Scandal," "The Good Wife," and "House of Lies." She co-starred for seven seasons on the medical drama "House," which became the most watched show in the world and garnered Edelstein the People's Choice Award for Favorite TV Actress.
Edelstein's feature credits include "Keeping The Faith," starring Ben Stiller and directed by Edward Norton, Mel Gibson's "What Women Want," "Daddy Day Care" with Eddie Murphy, "As Good As It Gets," the dramatic Showtime feature "Fathers and Sons," "Joshy," and "Dr. Bird's Advice to Sad Poets." She also works in the realm of animation voiceover in such shows as "American Dad," "King of the Hill," "Airbender: Legend of Korra," as well as the character Mercy Graves in the "Superman" and "Justice League" series.
While honing her craft at the prestigious NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Edelstein appeared in numerous off-Broadway productions and then authored, composed and performed the AIDS-related musical "Positive Me" at Ellen Stuart's La Mama in Manhattan. It was one of the first productions in any medium about the crisis and New York's Common Ground bestowed to her a Humanitarian Award for her efforts to further awareness.
Edelstein resides in Los Angeles in a century old home with her husband artist Robert Russell, two step-sons, and several rescue dogs. She volunteers her time with a variety of charity organizations including Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, The Anti-Defamation League, Planned Parenthood and The Center for Reproductive Rights.- Actress
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Natascha McElhone was born in Walton on Thames, London. She attended several schools, Camden School for Girls being the last.
Natascha McElhone established herself as a talented leading actress when she left drama school in 1993 to play the lead in her first film, Merchant Ivory's Surviving Picasso, opposite Anthony Hopkins.
She quickly followed this with Peter Weir's film, The Truman Show; Alan J. Pakula's The Devil's Own, with Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford; and John Frankenheimer's action epic Ronin, in which she co-starred with Robert De Niro. She also played Rosalind to Kenneth Branagh's Berowne in his musical version of William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost.
In 2003, McElhone co-starred with George Clooney in Steven Soderbergh's futuristic love story, Solaris. McElhone starred in TNT's mini-series The Company, a Golden Globe-nominated drama. In 2005, she starred in NBC's Emmy-nominated mini-series, Revelations.
Natascha McElhone stars opposite David Duchovny in the Golden Globe-winning Showtime series Californication (2007).
McElhone also stars in the children's fantasy film, The Secret Of Moonacre Manor, with Ioan Gruffud. She shared the title role in Mrs Dalloway with Vanessa Redgrave directed by Oscar winning director Marleen Gorris. McElhone's other major film credits include City Of Ghosts, with Matt Dillon and Gérard Depardieu; Laurel Canyon, with Christian Bale and Francis McDormand; and Ladies In Lavender, with Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith.
She has most recently starred in The Kid and in two other British feature films 'The Theatre Of Dreams' with Toby Stephens and Brian Cox and in Julian Fellowes' adaptation of 'Romeo And Juliet' to be released March 2013. She has just completed filming 'The Sea' starring with Rufus Sewell, Ciaran Hinds and Charlotte Rampling also to be released in 2013.- Jaime Murray is a British actress, activist and television producer who lives and works in Los Angeles California. Trained at Drama Centre London before playing con artist Stacie Monroe in the BBC series Hustle upon graduation in 2004. The role of Lila West in the Showtime series Dexter took her to Los Angeles in 2007 where she has since lived and worked. Jaime is developing a limited TV series about the The Life and Death of John Allen Chau. The series will tell the story of the 26-year old Chinese American, who believed he was called by God to save the souls of the last 'uncontacted tribe' on earth by converting them to Christianity. She will exec produce with UCP, Littleton Road Productions and Activist Artists Management. Known for playing Stahma Tarr in the Syfy series Defiance (2013-2015), The Black Fairy in the ABC series Once Upon a Time (2016-2017), Antoinette in The CW series The Originals (2018), and Nyssa al Ghul in Gotham (2019), Gaia in the Starz miniseries Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (2011), Olivia Charles in The CW series Ringer (2011-2012), Helena G. Wells in the Syfy series Warehouse 13 (2010-2014)
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Melina Kanakaredes is an Emmy-nominated actor, writer, director, and philanthropist. She's best known for her starring role as Stella Bonasera in CSI: New York. Prior to that, she starred as Dr. Sydney Hansen in NBC's Providence. Most recently, Melina starred as Dr. Lane Hunter in Fox's The Resident. Melina's roots are in theatre, and throughout her career she's continued to work on stage, both in Los Angeles and New York City. One of her favorites; starring on Broadway as Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Film credits include Snitch, Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and 15 Minutes. Melina is also a successful writer, and has multiple projects in development, including an autobiographical comedy about growing up in a candy factory, produced by Sony. Away from the set, Melina enjoys celebrating her Greek heritage with friends and family, and travels to Greece as often as possible. She's also dedicated to working with many charitable organizations: LACHSA Foundation, Americans for the Arts, Jhpiego, and Xprize to name a few.- Actress
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Marina Sirtis was born in London, England, to Greek parents, Despina (Yianniri), a tailor's assistant, and John Sirtis. Her parents did not want her to become an actress. As soon as Marina completed high school, she secretly applied to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After her graduation, she worked in musical theater, repertory and television. In 1986, she moved to Los Angeles, California to boost her career. For six months, she auditioned for roles but was unsuccessful. Just before she planned to go back home, she got the role of Counselor Deanna Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). After the series ended, she reprised her role for a string of successful Star Trek films: Star Trek: Generations (1994), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002). In 1992, Sirtis married rock guitarist Michael Lamper. She occasionally attends Star Trek conventions so that her loving fans can meet her, and she can meet the fans.- Actress
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Lena Headey is a Bermudian-British actress. Headey is best known for her role as "Cersei Lannister" in Game of Thrones (2011) (2011-2019) and The Brothers Grimm (2005), Possession (2002), and The Remains of the Day (1993). Headey stars as "Queen Gorgo", a heroic Spartan woman in the period film, 300 (2006), by director Zack Snyder.
Headey was born in Hamilton, Bermuda, to British parents Sue and John Headey. Her father, a Yorkshire police cadet, was stationed in the Bermuda Police Service. She was raised there until age five, when her family returned to England. She was brought up in Yorkshire before moving to London in her teens. Headey had not gone to drama school before she became an actress. At the age of seventeen, Headey's performance in a one-off show in the company of six school friends caught the attention of a casting agent, who took a photo and asked her to audition. Eventually, Headey was cast in Waterland (1992), which became her big-screen debut. She honed her natural acting talent while filming and also took archery classes and horse training. She also took boxing classes in clubs in south London, where a former boxer had been teaching her to spar. During her film career, spanning over 15 years, Headey has shown her range in a variety of roles, playing characters from Amazon-type warriors and action-minded women in The Cave (2005) and The Brothers Grimm (2005), to a lesbian florist in Imagine Me & You (2005).
Headey's film career has taken her all over the world. She was in India for the filming of The Jungle Book (1994), then in St. Petersburg, Russia, for filming Onegin (1999), and in Norway for filming of Aberdeen (2000). In 2005 Headey was filming in Romania and in Mexico, then spent four months in Prague, Czech Republic, where a forest was designed and built for filming The Brothers Grimm (2005), with Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. During 2006 Headey was in Canada for the filming of 300 (2006), then went to locations in Bulgaria for shooting The Contractor (2007), and Germany and in Czech Republic for the filming of The Red Baron (2008).
She also played Gina McVey in the horror thriller The Broken (2008), and Elizabeth in Tell Tale (2009). In addition to her film-work, Heady appeared as Sarah Connor in a TV spin-off of the popular "Terminator" film franchise, the FOX's television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008).
Outside of her acting profession, Headey continued taking boxing lessons in London. She is a vegetarian and also remains loyal to yoga, which she discovered during her work in India. She has never been back to her birthplace in Bermuda; she shares her time between her homes in London, England, and Los Angeles, California.- Actress
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Karina Lombard is an actor, screenwriter and director. She is Italian, French, Native American. Born in Tahiti, the youngest of five children, and raised and educated in Spain, Switzerland and Peru. She is fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, French and German. She resides in Venice, California.
She is known for roles in such films as "Wide Sargasso Sea", "The Firm" with Tom Cruise, and "Legends of the Fall" opposite Brad Pitt, and television roles on such series as "The L Word", "NCIS", "CSI", "Rescue Me", and others. She did all her own stunts in Kull the Conqueror (1997).- Actress
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Janina Zione Gavankar (born November 29, 1980) is an American actress and musician. Gavankar is also trained as a pianist, vocalist, and orchestral percussionist. She majored in Theatre Performance at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Gavankar's roles include Papi, a lesbian lothario in The L Word; Leigh Turner, a police officer on The Gates; Ms. Dewey, the personification of a Microsoft branded search engine who commented on the user's searches; Shiva, the namesake of the sought-after trophy on The League; shapeshifter Luna Garza on HBO's True Blood; McKenna Hall on The CW's Arrow; and Meredith Bose on NBC's The Mysteries of Laura. She also played Diana Thomas on FOX's supernatural drama Sleepy Hollow.
Gavankar was born in Joliet, Illinois, to Peter Ganesh Gavankar, an engineer from Mumbai, who first traveled to the U.S. to pursue a master's degree, and Mohra Gavankar, from Pune, Maharashtra, who also emigrated to the U.S. from India. Her mother is half-Indian and half-Dutch.
Gavankar has acted in theatre, film, television, and online. Her most notable roles include Iden Versio, canon Star Wars character, and protagonist of Star Wars: Battlefront II, shapeshifter Luna Garza in True Blood, lesbian lothario Papi in The L Word; Ms. Dewey, the personification of a Microsoft live search engine; and Shiva, the namesake of the sought after trophy on The League. She regularly appears in Funny or Die shorts.
In 2006 she joined the cast of The L Word as a series regular, and shot all of the clips used for Ms. Dewey. In 2007, she landed a lead in CW pilot Dash 4 Cash. In 2008, Gavankar appeared in TV series Stargate Atlantis, Grey's Anatomy and NCIS, My Boys, and Factory. In 2009, she appeared in the TV shows The Cleaner, Dollhouse, Three Rivers, and The League, as well as indie movies Men, Interrupted, Indian Gangster, and Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey. Gavankar played the voice of Nikki in Quantum Quest. She landed a lead role in The Gates, since cancelled, on ABC. She appears on CW's Arrow as a vice squad police officer and brief girlfriend to Oliver Queen.
Gavankar is an admitted gamer and has appeared on, as well as co-hosted, G4 TV's Attack of the Show!, Epileptic Gaming's Up All Night, where she helped review Rock Band, Burnout Paradise, and Army of Two.
In 2011 Gavankar became a series regular in HBO's True Blood as a public school teacher and shapeshifter, Luna Garza, who gets romantically involved with one of the main characters of the series.
Her indie movie, Satellite of Love, premiered at the Dallas International Film Festival in 2012, and her 2012 indie I'm Afraid of Virginia Wolf is in post-production. On December 20, 2012, Gavankar was the last person interviewed for the now cancelled Attack of the Show! which aired on G4 TV.
On August 3, 2013, Gavankar landed a role as a witch named Qetsiyah in the fifth season of The Vampire Diaries. She guest starred in the third season of Husbands.
In 2014, she starred as Amita in the video game, Far Cry 4. She also played Detective Meredith Bose on The Mysteries of Laura from 2014 to 2016.
She starred as Iden Versio, the main character in the campaign mode of the 2017 Electronic Arts video game Star Wars Battlefront II.
In 2018, she has two films releasing. Blindspotting is premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, and The Vanishing of Sidney Hall is being distributed by A24.
Gavankar returned to music with a cover of Kanye West's "Love Lockdown". Gavankar's former all female singing group, Endera, was signed to Cash Money Records Universal Records.
She collaborated on a project for a song called "Tell Me What" in India with Pratichee Mohapatra of Viva, Deep, and Navraaz. She has had songs licensed to movies and television, and has sung and played marimba on film scores. Gavankar was featured in Russian artist Ella Leya's music video for "Wish I Could", in the music video by San Francisco-based band Recliner for their single "Float Away", as well as the music video for Manu Narayan's band Darunam.
In August 2012, she released the single for her upcoming EP, entitled Waiting for Godot, and in November, Billboard premiered the official music video. It went on to win numerous film festival awards.
While in high school, Gavankar auditioned for the front ensemble of the Phantom Regiment Drum and Bugle Corps of Rockford, Illinois. Before hearing whether she had made the corps, she was accepted for the Yale School of Drama's summer camp, and went there. "I fell in love with drum corps when I was 13 years old", Gavankar has stated, and remains a strong fan of the activity. When she heard the Martin Garrix/Usher collaboration, "Don't Look Down", she had the idea of performing it as marching music. With assistance from Drum Corps International, she contacted the Jersey Surf Drum and Bugle Corps and arranger Colin Bell. She went into the studios in New York with fifty members of Jersey Surf and recorded the music video "Don't Look Down- #JustAddDrumCorps Edition" that was released in April 2015.
On May 20, 2015, Gavankar performed a percussion duet at Carnegie Hall with Questlove for the Best Buddies charity benefit.- Actress
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Simone Lahbib was born on 6 February 1965 in Stirling, Scotland, UK. She is an actress and producer, known for Wire in the Blood (2002), Da Vinci's Demons (2013) and Philomena (2013). She has been married to Raffaello Degruttola since 10 May 2003. They have one child.- 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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Claire Forlani was born in the United Kingdom and grew up in London. Educated at Arts Educational School, she moved to the United States with her parents Pier Luigi and Barbara Forlani when she was 19 and began starring in films.
Claire has had leading roles in such films as Meet Joe Black (1998), Basquiat (1996), The Rock (1996), Mystery Men (1999), Mallrats (1995), Antitrust (2001), Boys and Girls (2000), The Medallion, Hallam Foe (2007), Flashbacks of a Fool (2008) and Green Street Hooligans (2005).
Claire is now starring in the Sky International show Domina, about ancient Rome .She appeared with Christopher Plummer in the television series Departure . Other television appearances include STARZ original series Camelot (2011) playing Queen Igraine, The Pentagon Papers (2003), Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King (2006), and she has had recurring roles on NCIS: Los Angeles (2009) and CSI: NY (2004).
Claire has also appeared in campaigns for Dewars, L'Oréal, Banana Republic, Shiesido and Dior.
She is married to actor Dougray Scott in 2007 and welcomed their son Milo Thomas Scott born 12.27.14- Actress
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Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald was born and raised in Glasgow. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she was raised by her mother, a sales executive in the garment industry. She has one brother, David. As a hobby, she acted in an amateur theatrical club, which she enjoyed a great deal. Macdonald was working as a barmaid, when she saw a leaflet for an open casting call for a film. She went along and was cast as Diane in Trainspotting (1996). For this breakout role, she was nominated for a BAFTA Scotland Award and began a highly successful acting career.
Other notable film projects include Stella Does Tricks (1996), Elizabeth (1998), Gosford Park (2001) and No Country for Old Men (2007). She won an Emmy for her role as Gina in The Girl in the Café (2005) and appeared as Helena Ravenclaw in the wildly popular Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011). In 2010, she won the role of Margaret Schroeder in Boardwalk Empire (2010).
Macdonald is married to Travis bassist Dougie Payne, and they have a son, Freddie.- 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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Though most famous for her role as Isabella "Bella" Swan in The Twilight (2008) Saga, Kristen Stewart has been a working actor since her early years in Los Angeles, California. Her parents, John Stewart and Jules Stewart, both work in film and television. The family includes three boys, Kristen's older brother Cameron Stewart and two adopted brothers Dana and Taylor. Kristen is of English, Scottish, and Ashkenazi Jewish descent.
After a talent scout caught her grade school performance in a play at the age of eight, she appeared on television in a few small roles. Her first significant role came when she was cast as Sam Jennings in The Safety of Objects (2001). Soon after that, she starred alongside Jodie Foster in the hit drama, Panic Room (2002) and was nominated for a Young Artist Award.
Praised for her Panic Room performance, she went on to join the cast of Cold Creek Manor (2003) as the daughter of Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone. Though the film did not do well at the box office, she received another nomination for a Young Artist Award. After appearing in a handful of movies and a Showtime movie called Speak (2004), Stewart was cast in the role of a teenage singer living in a commune in Sean Penn's Into the Wild (2007), a critically acclaimed biopic. A third Young Artist Award nomination resulted in a win for this role. She also appeared in Mary Stuart Masterson's The Cake Eaters (2007) that same year.
Just 17, Stewart took on the starring role in Twilight (2008) which was based on a series of the same name written by Stephenie Meyer, the novel already had a huge following and the film opened to fans anxious to see the vampire romance brought to life. Awarded the MTV Movie Award for Best Female Performance, Stewart's turn as Bella continued in the sequels The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010). The final installments of the series started filming in late 2010, and were released the following years, as The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011) and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012).
Despite her stratospheric launch into stardom with the Twilight films, she stayed true to her roots by working on a number of indie projects, including Adventureland (2009) (filmed prior to the Twilight series) and Welcome to the Rileys (2010). And she took on the daunting task of playing hard rocker Joan Jett in Floria Sigismondi's The Runaways (2010) alongside Dakota Fanning. Stewart received praise for her acting and musical performances and later won the 2010 BAFTA Rising Star Award and best actress at the Milan International Film Festival for Welcome to the Rileys (2010).
Stewart worked on several other leading roles between the Twilight Saga installments including the #1 summer box office hit, Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), and the Cannes selection On the Road (2012). She also performed in the Sundance drama Camp X-Ray (2014), Cannes selection Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), for which she won a César Award, and the Lionsgate action comedy, American Ultra (2015), also starring Jesse Eisenberg, the Adventureland duo. She also delivered an acclaimed turn opposite Academy Award-winner Julianne Moore in Still Alice (2014). For the remainder of the decade, Kristen alternated choice supporting roles, such as Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016) and Café Society (2016), with starring roles in films about historical figures, including Lizzie (2018) and Seberg (2019), and special effects/action thrillers Charlie's Angels (2019) and Underwater (2020).
Kristen had a change-of-pace role in the romantic comedy Happiest Season (2020), about an LGBT+ couple, and received universal acclaim, and her first Oscar nomination, for Best Actress, for her performance as Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín's Spencer (2021). Moving deeper into the 2020s, she is working on David Cronenberg's thriller Crimes of the Future (2022).
Stewart lives in Los Angeles, California.- Actress
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Stephanie Sigman is a Mexican actress. Her breakthrough role was in the 2011 crime drama film Miss Bala. She has gone on to appear in Pioneer (2013), Spectre (2015), Going Under (2016), and Annabelle: Creation (2017). On television, Sigman starred as Valeria Vélez in the first and second seasons of Netflix crime thriller, Narcos (2015).
Sigman was born in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico, to a Mexican mother and an American father, Lee Sigman, a New York Yankees scout from Kansas. She is a U.S. citizen through her father.
Sigman began her career appearing on Mexican television, before making her film debut in Rio de Oro. In 2011, she played the leading role of Laura Guerrero in the Mexican crime drama film, Miss Bala. The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist. Sigman was nominated for a Dublin Film Critics' Circle Award in 2011 for her performance in film. The following year, she played Catalina Aguado in the Canadian documentary film Flight of the Butterflies. In 2013, Sigman co-starred in the Norwegian thriller Pioneer.
In 2013, Sigman played the leading role in the USA Network drama pilot The Arrangement opposite Bryan Greenberg. It not was ordered to series. Later that year, she was cast in a recurring role on the FX crime drama series, The Bridge. She also starred in the Arctic Monkeys music video for "Snap Out of It" in 2014. In 2015, Sigman played Valeria Vélez, character based on Virginia Vallejo, in the Netflix crime thriller, Narcos.
In 2015, Sigman appeared in the James Bond film, Spectre, becoming the second Mexican actress to play a Bond girl after Linda Christian first played the role of Valerie Mathis in the 1954 TV adaptation of Casino Royale. She later was cast as a female lead in the action comedy Going Under, and well as War on Everyone.
In 2016, Sigman had a recurring role as Monica Ava during the second season of the ABC anthology drama series, American Crime created by John Ridley. Ridley later cast Sigman in the leading role as Presence Foster, the former Army veteran who finds herself as unlicensed Private Investigator, in the ABC detective drama pilot, Presence.
In 2017, Sigman began playing Jessica Cortez, captain and commanding officer of the LAPD Metropolitan Division in S.W.A.T..
Sigman starred as Sister Charlotte in Annabelle: Creation, opposite Miranda Otto. The horror film was released on 11 August 2017.- Actress
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Madeleine Stowe was born in Los Angeles, California, to Mireya Maria (Mora Steinvorth) and Robert Alfred Stowe, a civil engineer. Her mother was a from a prominent political family in Costa Rica. Stowe grew up in Eagle Rock, a working-class neighborhood of Los Angeles. At age ten she started practicing for a career as a concert pianist and trained every day for hours. However, when her instructor died in 1976 she more or less quit playing.
She went to University of Southern California and studied cinema and journalism before taking up acting at Beverly Hills' Solaris Theater. She made a few appearances in TV and on film but her breakthrough came in 1987 with Stakeout (1987). Other major credits include The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and Short Cuts (1993).
When not filming, she spends her time at her ranch in Texas, which she shares with her husband Brian Benben.- Actress
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Catherine Fabienne Deneuve was born October 22, 1943 in Paris, France, to actor parents Renée Simonot and Maurice Dorléac. She made her movie debut in 1957, when she was barely a teenager and continued with small parts in minor films, until Roger Vadim gave her a meatier role in Vice and Virtue (1963). Her breakthrough came with the excellent musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), in which she gave an unforgettable performance as a romantic middle-class girl who falls in love with a young soldier but gets imprisoned in a loveless marriage with another man; the director was the gifted Jacques Demy, who also cast Deneuve in the less successful The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). She then played a schizophrenic killer in Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965) and a married woman who works as a part-time prostitute every afternoon in Luis Buñuel's masterpiece Belle de Jour (1967). She also worked with Buñuel in Tristana (1970) and gave a great performance for François Truffaut in Mississippi Mermaid (1969), a kind of apotheosis of her "frigid femme fatale" persona. In the seventies she didn't find parts of that caliber, but her magnificent work in Truffaut's The Last Metro (1980) as a stage actress in Nazi-occupied Paris revived her career. She was also very good in the epic drama Indochine (1992), for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination (Best Actress). Although the elegant and always radiant Deneuve has never appeared on stage, she is universally hailed as one of the "grandes dames" of French cinema, joining a list that includes such illustrious talents as Simone Signoret, Jeanne Moreau, Isabelle Huppert, Isabelle Adjani and the younger Juliette Binoche.- Actress
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Sophie Marceau was born Sophie Danièle Sylvie Maupu in Paris, France, to Simone (Morisset), a shop assistant, and Benoît Maupu, a truck driver. She grew up far from the studio spotlights. When she was 14 she was living in the Paris suburb of Gentilly with her father. She learned from friends that director Claude Pinoteau was looking for new faces for a movie about teenagers called The Party (1980). She auditioned for the role, got it, and the film was a success. She played in The Party 2 (1982), then bought back her contract with Gaumont when she was 16 years old for one million French francs. She is a critically acclaimed actress, having received the Cesar for Best Feminine Hope for "La Boum 2" in 1983. She was elected Romantic actress for Chouans! (1988) at the Festival International du Film Romantique (International Festival of Romantic Movie) of Cabourg in 1988, and was awarded the Moliere of the Best Theatrical Revelation for "Eurydice et Pygmalion" in 1994.- With a strong body of work in her native Germany, Antje broke out into the international marketplace in Zack Snyder's Superman retelling, "Man of Steel" as the villainess, "Faora". Other credits include Renny Harlin's "5 Days of August", Warner Brothers' "The Seventh Son", Simon Curtis's "The Woman in Gold" with Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds and Ariel Vroman's "Criminal" with Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman and Tommy Lee Jones. Antje has most recently been seen in Stephen Poliakoff's "Close to the Enemy" for the BBC, the Sky/Amazon pilot, "Oasis" and the hit Netflix series "Dark" which has just shot it's second series which will air in summer 2019. Antje can next be seen playing the lead role in the limited series "Dead End" and in the feature "Blame Game" which opened the Max Ophuls Film Festival.
- Elizabeth Jane Hurley was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, to Angela Mary (Titt), a teacher, and Roy Leonard Hurley, an army major. Wanting to be a dancer, Hurley went to ballet boarding school at 12, but soon returned home. When it came time to go to college, Hurley won a scholarship to the London Studio Centre which taught courses for dance and theater. Soon, Hurley wore the punk rock look with pink hair and a nose ring, but to get work, she had to change her image to one that was castable. After college, Hurley worked in the theater and made her screen debut in Aria (1987). Roles in Television and a film, Rowing with the Wind (1988), which included a young actor named Hugh Grant, soon followed. European films followed her appearance in the BBC serial Christabel (1988). Her film debut in a Hollywood movie was in the Wesley Snipes action drama Passenger 57 (1992). When Hugh Grant was picked up with Divine Brown, Hurley became headline news. Added to this was the fact that she was the model representing top cosmetics house Estée Lauder, and there was nowhere Hurley could go to get away from the press. In 1994, Hurley and Hugh Grant set up Simian Films in partnership with Castle Rock Entertainment. As Head of Development, Hurley found the script and produced her first film Extreme Measures (1996), which stars Hugh Grant.
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Jacqueline Bisset has been an international film star since the late '60s. She received her first roles mainly because of her stunning beauty, but over time she has become a fine actress respected by fans and critics alike. Bisset has worked with directors John Huston, François Truffaut, George Cukor and Roman Polanski. Her co-stars have included Anthony Quinn, Paul Newman, Nick Nolte, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Kenneth Branagh and Marcello Mastroianni.
Her somewhat French-sounding name has led many to assume that she is from France, but she was brought up in England and had to study to learn French. Her mother was French and was an attorney before being married. As a child Jacqueline studied ballet. During her teenage years her father left the family when her mother was diagnosed with disseminating sclerosis; Jacqueline worked as a model to support her ailing mother and eventually her parents divorced, an experience she has said she considered character-strengthening. She took an early interest in film, and her modeling career helped pay for acting lessons.
In 1967 Bisset gained her first critical attention in Two for the Road (1967), and that same year appeared in the popular James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967), playing Miss Goodthighs. In 1968 her career got a boost when Mia Farrow unexpectedly dropped out of the shooting of The Detective (1968); Farrow's marriage to co-star Frank Sinatra was on the rocks, and her role was eventually given to Bisset, who received special billing in the film's credits. In the following year she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Most Promising Newcomer for The Sweet Ride (1968) and gained even more attention playing opposite Steve McQueen in the popular action film Bullitt (1968). In 1970 she was featured in the star-studded disaster film Airport (1970) and had the main role in The Grasshopper (1970). Then she co-starred with Alan Alda in the well-reviewed but commercially underperforming horror movie, The Mephisto Waltz (1971). In 1973 she became recognized in Europe as a serious actress when she played the lead in Truffaut's Day for Night (1973). However, it would be several years before her talents would be taken seriously in the US. Though she scored another domestic hit with Murder on the Orient Express (1974), her part in it, as had often been the case, was decorative. She did appear to good effect in Believe in Me (1971), Le Magnifique (1973), The Sunday Woman (1975) and St. Ives (1976).
Jacqueline's stunning looks and figure made quite a splash in The Deep (1977). Her underwater swimming scenes in that movie inspired the worldwide wet T-shirt craze, and Newsweek magazine declared her "the most beautiful film actress of all time." The film's producer, Peter Guber, said "That T-shirt made me a rich man." However, she hated the wet T-shirt scenes because she felt exploited. At the time of filming she was not told that the filmmakers would shoot the scenes in such a provocative way, and she felt tricked. On the plus side, the huge success of the picture made Bisset officially bankable. She was next seen in high-profile roles in The Greek Tycoon (1978), a thinly disguised fictionalization of the marriage of Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis, and Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in a Comedy.
In the early '80s, Bisset starred in the box office disasters When Time Ran Out... (1980) and Inchon (1981), but her well-received turn opposite Candice Bergen in Rich and Famous (1981) between those two films helped gain her recognition as a serious actress from American audiences. She rebounded neatly with Class (1983) and Under the Volcano (1984), getting a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actress for the latter. She also earned praise for her work in the excellent made-for-cable WWII drama Forbidden (1984), then appeared on network TV in adaptations of Anna Karenina (1985) with Christopher Reeve and Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story (1987) with Armand Assante. In 1989 she co-starred in the raunchy yet witty comedy Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989) and the erotic thriller Wild Orchid (1989), neither of which fared too well, but her output remained consistent. As she transitioned seamlessly out of her ingenue years, smaller-scale productions such as CrimeBroker (1993) and Leave of Absence (1994) would provide Bisset with plum roles, even if they went largely unseen.
In 1996 she was nominated for a César Award, the French equivalent of the Oscar, for her performance in Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie (1995). She held roles in period pieces like Dangerous Beauty (1998), as well as the Biblical epics Jesus (1999) and In the Beginning (2000). Other notable credits included the miniseries Joan of Arc (1999) alongside Leelee Sobieski, which gained her an Emmy nomination, and The Sleepy Time Gal (2001), which premiered at Sundance but unfortunately was not picked up for theatrical distribution. In 2005 Jacqueline was back on the big screen, playing Keira Knightley's mother in the Domino Harvey biopic Domino (2005) for Tony Scott. In 2006 she appeared in the fourth season of Nip/Tuck (2003) as the ruthless extortionist "James." Bisset then turned in strong performances in Boaz Yakin's disturbing independent drama Death in Love (2008) and the telepic An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving (2008), garnering accolades for both. In 2013 she appeared in BBC's program Dancing on the Edge (2013), for which she finally won her first Golden Globe. She followed that up with the movies Welcome to New York (2014) with Gérard Depardieu and Miss You Already (2015) with Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette.
2016 saw the long-awaited release of Linda Yellen's comedy The Last Film Festival (2016), where Jacqueline was a riot as a washed-up Italian diva alongside Dennis Hopper in his final role. Since then she's kept busy on the indie circuit, appearing in Backstabbing for Beginners (2018) with Ben Kingsley, Here and Now (2018) with Sarah Jessica Parker, and Asher (2018) with Ron Perlman and Famke Janssen, as well as the Amazon original movie Birds of Paradise (2021) and a title role in Loren & Rose (2022).
Bisset has never married, but has been involved in long-term romantic relationships with Canadian actor Michael Sarrazin, Moroccan entrepreneur Victor Drai, Russian ballet dancer Alexander Godunov, Swiss actor Vincent Perez and Turkish martial arts instructor Emin Boztepe. She continues to make numerous films, and frequently participates in film festivals and award ceremonies around the world.- Actress
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Aleksa Palladino was born on 21 September 1980 in New York City, New York, USA. She is an actress and composer, known for Boardwalk Empire (2010), Halt and Catch Fire (2014) and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007). She was previously married to Devon Church.- Actress
- Producer
- Music Department
An extremely gifted, versatile performer adept at both comedy and drama, actress/singer Katey Sagal became a household name in the late 1980s as the fabulously brazen, undomesticated Peg Bundy on the enduring Fox series Married... with Children (1987). During its lengthy run she received three Golden Globe and two American Comedy Award nominations. As popular and identifiable as her Peg Bundy persona was, Katey assertively moved on after the show went off the air, not only starring in other sitcoms and television movies, but portraying characters that were polar opposites of the outrageous role that first earned her nationwide attention. For example, in 2008 she took on the role of Gemma Teller Morrow, the matriarch of a Hell's- Angels-esque California biker gang, on the series Sons of Anarchy (2008), and in 2011 her portrayal earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in the Television Series--Drama.
Catherine Louise Sagal was born on January 19, 1954, to director and singer Sara Zwilling and noted television and film director Boris Sagal. The Los Angeles native began performing at age 5 and studied voice and acting at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.
A singing waitress during her "salad" years, she started performing with the band "The Group With No Name," then caught a break after hooking up with Gene Simmons and his 1970s rock band KISS. In the meantime, she gained valuable experience as a backup recording singer for Simmons and other established stars like Bob Dylan, Olivia Newton-John, Etta James, and Tanya Tucker. She was also dynamic performing live with diva Bette Midler as one of her "Harlettes" in Bette's wildly avant-garde stage shows during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 1985, while performing on stage in a musical, she was spotted by talent agents who subsequently cast her as Mary Tyler Moore's feisty co-worker Jo Tucker in Mary (1985), a short-lived comedy series. From that point on she focused on film and television. In 1987 she won the role of voluptuous "housewife" Peg Bundy in the irreverent comedy Married... with Children (1987), and the rest is history.
In addition to her busy on-camera scheduling, Katey has retraced her steps to her first love: singing and songwriting. With the support of her record label Valley Entertainment, she released the album "Room" in 2004 that combined classics like "Feel a Whole Lot Better" and "(For the Love of) Money" with original songs she penned, including "Life Goes Round," "Daddy's Girl," and "Wish I Were a Kid." "Room" is her first CD since her 1994 debut "Well."
In her post-Bundy career, Katey has continued to demonstrate a strong range, playing a much more responsible parent in the popular sitcom 8 Simple Rules (2002), co-starring the late John Ritter and valiantly moving to single-household-head after Ritter's sudden passing in 2003 with highly successful results.
She has earned earned equally-fine kudos for her television movies like Chance of a Lifetime (1998), a charming romantic comedy that also co-starred John Ritter, God's New Plan (1999), a tearjerker in which she played a dying mother, and the Disney offerings Smart House (1999) and Mr. Headmistress (1998). The voice of Turanga Leela, the beautiful one-eyed sewer mutant in the animated series Futurama (1999), she has also guested on Ghost Whisperer (2005), Lost (2004), Boston Legal (2004), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000), and Eli Stone (2008). Feature films have included Maid to Order (1987), The Good Mother (1988), the Sundance Film Festival favorite Dropping Out (2000), Following Tildy (2002), and the indie I'm Reed Fish (2006).
Playing Jack's mother in a live-action/adventure retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk (2009) that also featured the talents of Christopher Lloyd, James Earl Jones, and Chevy Chase, Katey's more recent efforts include recurring role on TV's Lost (2004), a role in the mini-series The Bastard Executioner (2015) and a regular role in the series Superior Donuts (2017). She would also join the cast of the sitcom The Conners (2018) as a love interest to widower Dan John Goodman.
Following brief marriages to musician Freddie Beckmeier, Fred Lombardo, and former Steppenwolf drummer and "Mighty Ducks" hockey film advisor Jack White, Katey resides in the Los Angeles area with fourth husband writer/producer/director/creator Kurt Sutter, whose acclaimed work includes The Shield (2002) and the offbeat Sons of Anarchy (2008), which Sutter created. She had three children by White: Ruby (died at birth), Sarah, and Jackson; and one daughter by Sutter, Esme Louise.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Sofía Margarita Vergara Vergara was born and raised in Barranquilla, Colombia. Her mother, Margarita Vergara Dávila de Vergara, is a housewife. Her father, Julio Enrique Vergara Robayo, provides cattle to the meat industry. She has five siblings. She was educated at a private bilingual Spanish/English school. She then went on to study pre-dentistry. However, Sofía was discovered by a photographer, whilst at the beach, and this led to various jobs in modeling and television. At age 23, she was a runway model. From 1995 to 1998, she co-hosted a travel show, Fuera de serie (1995), which gave her exposure in the United States. Her first film role was the criminal comedy Big Trouble (2002). Her breakthrough role was as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on the American television series Modern Family (2009). In 2010-2013, she received four Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for this role. Sofía resides in Los Angeles, California with her son, Manolo.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Salma Hayek was born on September 2, 1966 in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico. Her father is of Lebanese descent and her mother is of Mexican/Spanish ancestry. After having seen Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) in a local movie theater, she decided she wanted to become an actress. At age 12, she was sent to the Academy of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans, Louisiana. After attending Mexico City's prestigious university Universidad Iberoamericana, she felt ready to pursue acting seriously.
She soon landed the title role in Teresa (1989), a hugely successful soap opera which earned her the star status in her native Mexico. However, anxious to make films and to explore her talent as well as passion, she left both Teresa (1989) and Mexico in 1991. Heartbroken fans spread rumors that she was having a secret affair with Mexico's president and left to escape his wife's wrath. She made her way to Los Angeles. She approached Hollywood with naive enthusiasm and quickly learned that Latina actresses were typecast as the mistress maid or local prostitute. By late 1992, she had landed only small roles. She appeared on Street Justice (1991), The Sinbad Show (1993), Nurses (1991), and as a sexy maid on Dream On (1990). She also had only one line in My Crazy Life (1993). Feeling under-appreciated by Anglo filmmakers, she vented her frustrations on Paul Rodriguez's late-night Spanish-language talk show.
Robert Rodriguez and his wife Elizabeth Avellan happened to be watching and were immediately smitten with her. He soon gave her big break -- to star opposite Antonio Banderas in the cult classic Desperado (1995), bringing her into Hollywood prominence. The moviegoers were as dazzled with her as he had been. Afterwards, she was cast again by Rodriguez to star in the cult classic From Dusk Till Dawn (1996). Her first star billing came later that year with Fools Rush In (1997) opposite Matthew Perry. It was a modest hit and her star continued to rise in both commercial and films such as Breaking Up (1997) with an unknown Russell Crowe, 54 (1998), Dogma (1999) and In the Time of the Butterflies (2001), the small artistic film which won her an ALMA award as best actress and the summer blockbuster Wild Wild West (1999). Her production company Ventanarosa produced the Mexican feature film El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1999), which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and selected as Mexico's official Oscar entry for best foreign film.
The new millennium started out quietly as she prepared to produce and star in her dream role of Frida Kahlo, the legendary Mexican painter whom she had been admiring her entire life and whose story she wanted to bring to the big screen ever since she arrived in Hollywood. Frida (2002) was full of passion and enthusiasm, with performances from her and Alfred Molina as Kahlo's cheating husband Diego Rivera. It also featured an entourage of stars such as Antonio Banderas, Ashley Judd, Geoffrey Rush, Edward Norton and Valeria Golino.
It was a box office hit and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including best actress for Hayek. It won awards for make-up and score by Elliot Goldenthal. Later that year, she expanded her horizons, directing The Maldonado Miracle (2003), which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2003, she starred in the finale of Rodriguez's Desperado trilogy Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), again opposite Banderas. She also starred in After the Sunset (2004) opposite Pierce Brosnan, and Ask the Dust (2006) opposite Colin Farrell. She then starred in Bandidas (2006), which also featured Penélope Cruz, and Lonely Hearts (2006) opposite Jared Leto.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Minka Kelly was born in Los Angeles, California and she is the only child of former Aerosmith guitarist, Rick Dufay, and Maureen Kelly, an exotic dancer and single mother, who often moved with her daughter to different communities before settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by the time Minka was in junior high school.
Her paternal grandfather was actor Richard Ney. Minka's ancestry includes Austrian, German, French, Irish, English, Scottish, and Dutch.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
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
On November 12, 1929, Grace Patricia Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to wealthy parents. Her girlhood was uneventful for the most part, but one of the things she desired was to become an actress which she had decided on at an early age. After her high school graduation in 1947, Grace struck out on her own, heading to New York's bright lights to try her luck there. Grace worked some as a model and made her debut on Broadway in 1949. She also made a brief foray into the infant medium of television. Not content with the work in New York, Grace moved to Southern California for the more prestigious part of acting -- motion pictures. In 1951, she appeared in her first film entitled Fourteen Hours (1951) when she was 22. It was a small part, but a start nonetheless. The following year she landed the role of Amy Kane in High Noon (1952), a western starring Gary Cooper and Lloyd Bridges which turned out to be very popular. In 1953, Grace appeared in only one film, but it was another popular one. The film was Mogambo (1953) where Grace played Linda Nordley. The film was a jungle drama in which fellow cast members, Clark Gable and Ava Gardner turned in masterful performances. It was also one of the best films ever released by MGM. Although she got noticed with High Noon, her work with director Alfred Hitchcock, which began with Dial M for Murder (1954) made her a star. Her standout performance in Rear Window (1954) brought her to prominence. As Lisa Fremont, she was cast opposite James Stewart, who played a crippled photographer who witnesses a murder in the next apartment from his wheelchair. Grace stayed busy in 1954 appearing in five films. Grace would forever be immortalized by winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Georgie Elgin opposite Bing Crosby in The Country Girl (1954). In 1955, Grace once again teamed with Hitchcock in To Catch a Thief (1955) co-starring Cary Grant. In 1956, she played Tracy Lord in the musical comedy High Society (1956) which also starred Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. The whimsical tale ended with her re-marrying her former husband, played by Crosby. The film was well received. It also turned out to be her final acting performance. Grace had recently met and married Prince Rainier of the little principality of Monaco. By becoming a princess, she gave up her career. For the rest of her life, she was to remain in the news with her marriage and her three children. On September 14, 1982, Grace was killed in an automobile accident in her adoptive home country. She was just 52 years old.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Marlee Beth Matlin was born on August 24, 1965 in Morton Grove, Illinois, to Libby (Hammer) and Donald Matlin, an automobile dealer. She has two older brothers. Her family is of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent.
Marlee lost much of her hearing at the age of eighteen months. That did not stop her from acting in a children's theater company at age seven; she was Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz". Her deafness never held her back. As an adult, she said it so eloquently: "I have always resisted putting limitations on myself, both professionally and personally." Marlee studied criminal justice at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, and maintained her passion for acting after graduating. While performing on stage through Chicago and the Midwest, Marlee attracted notice for her performance in a production of the Tony Award-winning play "Children of a Lesser God" and was cast in the movie version Children of a Lesser God (1986). Although this was her movie debut, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. While shooting her next movie Walker (1987), in Nicaragua, large-hearted Marlee took time to visit both hearing and hearing-impaired children. She continued this tradition of visiting local children through her travels to Germany, England, Italy, Australia, Mexico, Canada, etc.
Her interest in the criminal justice field played a role in her on screen career; she portrayed an assistant D.A. on the television series Reasonable Doubts (1991), while off screen she married police officer Kevin Grandalski on August 29, 1993. The couple has four children: Sarah (born 1996), Brandon (born 2000), Tyler (born 2002), and Isabelle (born 2003). In 1994, Marlee was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance as Laurie Bey on the television series Picket Fences (1992). Marlee is also a spokeswoman for the National Captioning Institute. In 1995, she testified at a congressional hearing and helped get a law passed that requires all television sets 13 inches or larger to be manufactured with built-in chips to provide closed captioning on their screens; this was a godsend for deaf viewers.
Marlee serves as the national spokeswoman for the largest provider of television closed captioning, and has spoken on behalf of CC in countries such as Australia, England, France and Italy. She also serves on the boards of a number of charitable organizations, including Very Special Arts, the Starlight Foundation, and other charities that primarily benefit children. As someone who loves children so much, it is only fitting that she has four of her own. Professionally, Marlee has even tried producing, being the executive producer for Where the Truth Lies (1999).- Actress
- Director
- Soundtrack
Kseniya Rappoport was born on 25 March 1974 in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, USSR [now St. Petersburg, Russia]. She is an actress and director, known for The Double Hour (2009), The Unknown Woman (2006) and Yurev den (2008). She is married to Dmitriy Borisov.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Paz Vega
A renowned international actress who has captivated audiences in Europe, North America, and Latin America with her talent and versatility in acting. After starting her career on the successful sitcom "Siete vidas", the Sevillian actress made the jump to the big screen with Julio Medem's "Sex and Lucia" in 2001, which earned her prestigious accolades as a breakthrough actress in Spain and the rest of Europe, including the Goya and the Chopard Trophy at the Cannes International Film Festival.
In 2006, Paz Vega took a significant step in her career by working in Hollywood, alongside director James L. Brooks, who invited her to co-star in "Spanglish" alongside Adam Sandler. This role allowed her to win the Best Breakthrough Actress award from the Phoenix Film Critics Society. Since then, she has worked with prestigious directors such as Pedro Almodóvar, Frank Miller, Danis Tanovic, Oliver Parker, Michelle Placido, and the Taviani Brothers, and has shared the screen with big names in international cinema such as Scarlett Johansson, Diego Luna, Jason Clarke, Andie MacDowell, Eva Mendes, Adrien Brody, Colin Farrell, and legendary actors such as Rob Lowe, Christopher Lee, Christopher Walken, Antonio Banderas, Morgan Freeman, Nicole Kidman, and Sylvester Stallone, to name a few. In 2022, Paz Vega starred in the comedy "A todo Tren 2", which achieved excellent results at the Spanish box office, becoming the third most-watched movie in the country. Additionally, that same year, Vega filmed "Luciérnagas en el Mozote", the first Hollywood movie made in El Salvador and produced by Bob Yari.
2023 has started exceptionally well for Paz Vega, who leads the cast of "Kaleidoscope" alongside Giancarlo Esposito, Tati Gabrielle, Rufus Sewell, and Jai Courtney, a new Netflix production produced by Ridley Scott that has already become a worldwide success. Additionally, Vega has ventured into directing and screenwriting, demonstrating her commitment and passion for the film industry and establishing herself as a multidisciplinary artist willing to continue surprising audiences. In short, Paz Vega is one of the most outstanding and recognized actresses in international cinema- Actress
- Cinematographer
Actress Bérénice Bejo was born in Buenos Aires, the daughter of Silvia De Paoli, a lawyer, and Miguel Bejo, a filmmaker. When she was three, Bejo's family relocated to Paris, France. She embarked on a successful acting career in the 1990s, with various roles in French television and film productions. She made her American film debut as Christiana in A Knight's Tale (2001), but came to major international recognition with her role as Peppy Miller in the critical and popular hit, The Artist (2011), which was written and directed by her husband, Michel Hazanavicius. The film garnered many major awards and nominations. Bejo herself was nominated as Best Supporting Actress of the year at the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Oscars. She was also nominated as Best Leading Actress at the BAFTA Awards.- Actress
- Producer
- Casting Department
Catherine Keener is an American actress, Oscar-nominated for her roles in the independent films Being John Malkovich (1999) and Capote (2005). Acclaimed in her community for her quirky roles in independent film and mainstream such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Keener got her start as a casting director in New York City.
Catherine Ann Keener was born in Miami, Florida, and was raised in Hialeah, FL. She is the daughter of Evelyn (Jamiel) and James Keener, who owned an auto shop. She is of Lebanese (mother) and English, Scottish, and German (father) descent. Keener attended Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She began taking acting classes when she was unable to sign up for a photography class. After graduating, Keener managed a McDonalds in New York City before becoming an assistant casting director and soon relocating to Los Angeles.
Not long after, Keener told her superior of her aspirations for acting and she landed a one-worded role as a waitress in About Last Night (1986). Two years later, she landed a role in a film called Survival Quest (1988), where she met her future husband, Dermot Mulroney. After struggling for years in the industry, Keener landed a role in an independent film, opposite the unknown Brad Pitt, in Johnny Suede (1991). Her ascent in independent film began as she starred in Living in Oblivion (1995) and Walking and Talking (1996) before her mainstream break with Being John Malkovich (1999) in 1999, which earned Keener her first Oscar nomination. Since then, Catherine Keener has starred in several critically acclaimed films.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Jessica Brown Findlay is an English actress. She is known for Emelia Conan-Doyle in the British comedy-drama Albatross (2011), Winter's Tale (2014), This Beautiful Fantastic (2016) and Lady Sybil Crawley in ITV's Downton Abbey (2010). She also starred in the TV series Misfits (2009) and mini-series Labyrinth (2012). In 2011, she starred in the Black Mirror (2011) episode, Fifteen Million Merits (2011). "Albatross" was her film debut.
Jessica was born in Cookham, Berkshire, to Beverley, a teacher's aide and nurse, and Christopher Brown-Findlay, who works in finance. She is of Scottish, English, and Irish descent. Jessica trained with the National Youth Ballet and the Associates of the Royal Ballet. At age fifteen, she was invited to dance with the Kirov at the Royal Opera House for a summer season.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Ana Ortiz was born on 25 January 1971 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Ugly Betty (2006), Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (2011) and Devious Maids (2013). She has been married to Noah Lebenzon since 9 June 2007. They have two children.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Eva Birthistle was born on 16 April 1974 in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland. She is an actress and director, known for Imagine Me & You (2005), A Fond Kiss (2004) and Brooklyn (2015). She is married to Ross John Barr. They have two children. She was previously married to Raife Patrick Burchell.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Romy Schneider was born on 23 September 1938 in Vienna, Austria into a family of actors. Making her film debut at the age of 15, her breakthrough came two years later in the very popular trilogy Sissi (1955). Her mother, supervising her daughter's career, immediately approved Romy's participation in Christine (1958), the remake of Max Ophüls's Playing at Love (1933), where Magda Schneider once starred herself. During the shooting, she fell in love with her co-star Alain Delon and eventually moved with him to Paris. At that time, she started her international career collaborating with famous directors such as Luchino Visconti and Orson Welles. After Delon had broken up with her in 1964, she married Harry Meyen shortly after. Although she gave birth to a boy, David-Christopher, their relationship was difficult, so they divorced in 1975. Being unsatisfied with her personal life, she turned to alcohol and drugs, but her cinematic career -especially in France- remained intact. She was the first actress, receiving the new created César Award as "Best Actress" for her role in That Most Important Thing: Love (1975). Three years later, she was awarded again for A Simple Story (1978). After a short marriage to her former secretary Daniel Biasini, being the father of her daughter Sarah Biasini, she suffered the hardest blow of her life when her son was impaled on a fence in 1981. She never managed to recover from this loss and died on 29 May 1982 in Paris. Although it was suggested she committed suicide caused by an overdose of sleeping pills, she was declared to have died from cardiac arrest.- Actress
- Writer
Alejandra Barros was born on August 11th, 1971 in Mexico City, Mexico. In order to become an actress, she studied theatre in "Lee Strasberg Theater Institute" (New York). She also studied dance in "Broadway Dance Center".
She participated in various Mexican soaps like "Clase 406" and "Locura de amor" before getting her first protagonic role as Mariana in the successful soap "Mariana de la noche". She also acted in a play called "Malcom y su lucha contra los Eunucos".
She has one son, Luis Manuel, from a previous marriage.- Actress
- Writer
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Amanda Peet was born and raised in New York City. She is the daughter of Penny (Levy), a social worker, and Charles Peet, a lawyer, and has an older sister. Her father was of mostly English and German ancestry, and her mother was from a Jewish family (from Germany, Russia, and Hungary). Peet's great-grandfathers were politician Samuel Levy and showbiz impresario S.L. Rothafel.
Peet made an unconventional stage debut at the age of three, when she jumped onto the stage during a play. Yet, despite this early start, she later studied acting more as a hobby than anything else. She studied history at Columbia University, where a drama professor convinced her to audition for acting teacher Uta Hagen, with whom she later went on to study for a four-year period. During this time, she participated in the off-Broadway revival of Clifford Odets's "Awake and Sing." She supported herself during the audition phase of her career by working as a waitress and with the residual checks she received from a Skittles candy commercial. Perseverance and hard work paid off, and, in 1995, she was cast in a guest-starring role on the hit series Law & Order (1990).
Her feature film debut came in 1995 with the movie Animal Room (1995). For a while afterward, Amanda continued to find steady work but also found herself appearing in a depressingly large number of indie films that were never picked up for distribution. She did, however, meet her boyfriend Brian Van Holt on the set of indie movie Whipped (2000). Her turn as the ditzy hit-woman with the heart of gold in the hit comedy The Whole Nine Yards (2000), opposite Bruce Willis, took her from supporting role status to leading lady. That same year she was voted one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World by "People" Magazine.- Actress
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Alexandra "Alex" Meneses, the ALMA Award-nominated actress known for her smoldering bombshell characters and philanthropic commitment to a wide variety of causes, recently starred on The CW's critically acclaimed series Jane the Virgin (2014). She also recently starred as Isabella, the over-the-top diva actress on NBC's comedy series Telenovela, for which she received an Imagen Award nomination. Eva Longoria produced and starred in it.
Alex first became embraced by audiences playing Teresa Morales in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Her role as Stefania Fogagnolo, Brad Garrett's luscious Italian girlfriend on Everybody Loves Raymond, earned her an ALMA Award and American Comedy Award nominations. Other TV roles include Cookie, Joey Tribiani's sister, on Friends; Sofia on The Goldbergs; and roles on CSI, CSI Miami, Prison Break, NCIS, Psych, Austi & Ally, and The Cleveland Show. She recently starred in the TV movie Unorganized Crime opposite Chazz Palminteri.
On film, the Chicago native and former model has also appeared in Selena, Boyle Heights, Ripped, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award-winning Auto Focus opposite Greg Kinnear. Alex was Mistress of Ceremonies for Ischia Global Film Festival in Italy.
As president and founder of her own production company (Oo La La Productions/L.A.D.S. Entertainment), Alex produced the Sundance Channel hit documentary Damned To Heaven, a gripping look at life inside the FLDS (Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) pluralistic community of Colorado City, Arizona.
She also executive-produced Australians Hit Hollywood, an honest look at Australians and New Zealanders who have turned themselves into prominent players in the Hollywood entertainment scenes.
While still in high school in Chicago, Alex was inspired to pursue an acting career after seeing Rita Moreno's performance in West Side Story and enrolled in the famed Second City Improv program. Following high school, Alex landed a modeling contract and moved to Europe, where she worked regularly in Italy, France and Greece. Upon her return to the US, she entered The Lee Strasberg Theater Institute to hone her acting skills.
She has received acclaim in the Geffen Playhouse's production of Oscar and Felix: A New Look at the Odd Couple by Neil Simon. An adapted revival of The Odd Couple, Simon altered the ethnicity of Oscar & Felix's neighboring sisters to Spanish, which fit Meneses, who is half Mexican-American. Alex has appeared in numerous stage productions, including Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater.
In her ongoing commitment to philanthropy and volunteerism, Alex has served on the Board of Trustees at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles for ten years and has helped to raise tens of millions of dollars for the hospital. She also serves on the boards for United Hope for Animals and The Chicago Symphony and is a member of The Chicago Historical Society.
A proud alumna of Chicago's Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School, Alex frequently returns to campus and meets with students to share her insights and commitment to a McAuley education. In 2005 she established the Alexandra Meneses Endowed Scholarship to help ensure a new generation of young women are given the best possible career and life opportunities.
Alex is a devoted mother to her young daughter and divides her time between Los Angeles and Chicago.
Awards: American Comedy Award - Everybody Loves Raymond Alma Award - Everybody Loves Raymond Imagen Award for Best Actress - Telenovela Imagen Award for Best Comedy - Telenovela Latina of Influence - Hispanic Lifestyle 2018 (Won) Idyllwild Film Festival for Best Actress 2018 Idyllwild Film Festival for Best Ensemble Cast 2018 (Won)- Actress
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Anna Easteden is a Finnish -born farmer's daughter, an international model and a Los Angeles, CA -based award nominated actress. Easteden started her career as a teenager after receiving a large modeling contract with a Japanese modeling agency. She holds a B.A. in Theater and Performance Studies from University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. in Political Science from Univeristy of California, Berkeley. In Tokyo she modeled for large companies: Kanebo, Sony, Nissen, Wacoal, Oricom, NEC and Lux, among many others. In addition to working in Japan, Easteden, who loves traveling, worked in other countries, such as Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and New Zealand. Anna's modeling career continued in the US as well. Her clients include: Salvatore Ferragamo, Calvin Klein, XOXO, Hermes, Diesel, Pony, T-Mobile, Toyo Tires, Michael Antonio, and Jockey. Easteden's first theater performance as an actress was in a musical "The Sleeping Beauty" at the Tivoli Theater in Chicago in the name role "Beauty". Her most meaningful theater performance was at University of California, Berkeley, where Easteden received her Bachelor of Arts in Theater and Performance Studies as well as Bachelor of Arts in Political Science - playing "Nella" in "A Murder of Crows" written by Mac Wellman. Easteden has acted in notable TV-shows, such as: "Two and a Half Men", "Bones," "Days Of Our Lives" and "Who Wants to be a Superhero?." Her award nomination came from the Method Fest Film Festival from her portrayal of Nina in the film by Mika Kaurismäki, "The House of Branching Love", which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. In Finland, Easteden is the host of "Wipeout" on FOX. Her most recent films: "Junkie" in which she plays the title role of the Junkie and "Ribbons" are opening in theaters in late 2016. Easteden's interests also include those in the humanitarian arena. Easteden conducted a comparative legal research study on the different aspects of asylum procedures in selected European countries for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Bratislava, Slovakia. Her research impacted the Slovak National Asylum Legislation, which was in the process of amendment.- Actress
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Laura Leighton was born on 24 July 1968 in Iowa City, Iowa, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Melrose Place (1992), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) and Skin (2003). She has been married to Doug Savant since 2 May 1998. They have two children.- Rachel Shelley was born in Swindon, England, UK. Rachel is an actor, known for Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001), Blank (2022) and The L Word (2004).
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Jacqueline Samuda was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and grew up in both the United States and Canada. She received a B.F.A. Degree in Performance from York University in Toronto, and has appeared on stage, radio, and big and small screens in Canada and the U.S. since her debut at the Shaw Festival at the age of 21. At 23, she received an Ontario Arts Council Grant for Individual Professional Development in theatre, in New York City. She is a Dramalogue Award winner for directing George F. Walker's play, "Zastrozzi, " at Company of Angels Theatre in Los Angeles, and a 2016 Leo Award winner for Best Guest Performance by a Female in a Dramatic Series. She has six sisters and one brother, and lives in Vancouver, Canada with her husband Rob Riley and two sons, Griffin and Christian.- 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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Melissa Ellen Gilbert is an American actress, television director, producer, politician, and former president of the Screen Actors Guild. Gilbert began her career as a child actress in the late 1960s, appearing in numerous commercials and guest starring roles on television. From 1974 to 1983, she starred as Laura Ingalls Wilder, the second oldest daughter of Charles Ingalls (played by Michael Landon) on the NBC series Little House on the Prairie. During the run of Little House, Gilbert appeared in several television films, including The Diary of Anne Frank and The Miracle Worker.- Actress
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Diane Lane was born on January 22, 1965, in New York. She is the daughter of acting coach Burton Eugene "Burt" Lane and nightclub singer/centerfold Colleen Farrington. Her parents' families were both from the state of Georgia. Diane was acting from a very young age and made her stage debut at the age of six. Her work in such acclaimed theater productions as "The Cherry Orchard" and "Medea" led to her being called to Hollywood. She was 13 when she was cast by director George Roy Hill in his wonderful 1979 film A Little Romance (1979), opposite Sir Laurence Olivier. The film only did so-so commercially, but Olivier praised his young co-star, calling her the new Grace Kelly. After her well-received debut, Diane found herself on magazine covers all over the world, including "Time", which declared her the "new young acting sensation". However, things quietened down a bit when she found herself in such critical and financial flops as Touched by Love (1980), Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1980), Movie Madness (1982), Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982) and, most unmemorably, Six Pack (1982), all of which failed to set her career on fire.
She also made several TV movies during this period, but it was in 1983 that she finally began to fulfill the promise of stardom that had earlier been predicted for her. Acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola took note of Diane's appeal and cast her in two "youth"-oriented films based on S.E. Hinton novels. Indeed, Rumble Fish (1983) and The Outsiders (1983) have become cult classics and resulted in her getting a loyal fan base. The industry was now taking notice of Diane Lane, and she soon secured lead roles in three big-budget studio epics. She turned down the first, Splash (1983) (which was a surprise hit for Daryl Hannah). Unfortunately, the other two were critical and box-office bombs: Walter Hill's glossy rock 'n' roll fable Streets of Fire (1984) was not the huge summer success that many had thought it would be, and the massively troubled Coppola epic The Cotton Club (1984) co-starring Richard Gere was also a high-profile flop. The back-to-back failure of both of these films could have ended her career there and then -- but thankfully it didn't. Possibly "burned out" by the lambasting these films received and unhappy with the direction her career was taking, she "retired" from the film business at age 19, saying that she had forgotten what she had started acting for. She stayed away from the screen for the next three years. Ironically, the two films that were the main causes of her "retirement" have since grown in popularity, and "Streets of Fire" especially seems to have found the kind of audience it couldn't get when it was first released.
The process of rebuilding her career was a slow and gradual one. First came the obscure and very sexy straight-to-video thriller Lady Beware (1987), followed by the critically acclaimed but little seen The Big Town (1987) with Matt Dillon and Tommy Lee Jones. In the former, Diane plays a very mysterious and sexy stripper and her memorable strip sequence is a highlight of the film. Despite her sexy new on-screen image, it wasn't until 1989's smash hit TV mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989) that Diane made another big impression on a sizable audience. Her performance in the hugely popular and critically acclaimed western epic as a vulnerable "whore with a heart" won her an Emmy nomination and much praise. Film producers were interested in her again. Another well-received TV production, Descending Angel (1990), was followed by smaller roles in major films like Richard Attenborough's Chaplin (1992) and Mike Binder's Indian Summer (1993), and larger parts in small independent films like My New Gun (1992), Vital Signs (1990) and Knight Moves (1992). Indeed, the latter two films co-starred her then-husband, Christopher Lambert, with whom she had a daughter named Eleanor.
Diane was now re-established in Hollywood and started to appear in higher-profile co-starring roles in some big-budget, major movies like Walter Hill's Wild Bill (1995), the Sylvester Stallone actioner Judge Dredd (1995), the Robin Williams's comedy Jack (1996) and Murder at 1600 (1997) co-starring Wesley Snipes. However, all of these still did not quite make Diane a "big-name star" and, by 1997, she found herself, possibly by choice, back in smaller, personal projects.
Her next role as a frustrated 1960s housewife in the independent hit A Walk on the Moon (1999) deservedly won her rave notices and, at last, gave her career the big lift it needed. The cute but tear-jerking comedy My Dog Skip (2000) also proved to be a small-scale success. However, it was the £330-million worldwide grossing blockbuster hit The Perfect Storm (2000) that finally made Diane Lane the household name that she always should have been.
After the worldwide success of "The Perfect Storm", she was more in demand than ever. She played Leelee Sobieski's sinister junkie guardian in the slick thriller The Glass House (2001), and co-starred with Keanu Reeves in the #1 smash hit Hardball (2001). However, her greatest career moment was still to come with her lead role in the enormous critical and commercial hit Unfaithful (2002), in which she superbly portrayed Richard Gere's adulterous wife. Her performance won the respect of critics and audiences alike, as well as many awards and nominations including Best Actress Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.
Her follow-up films including Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), Must Love Dogs (2005), Hollywoodland (2006), Secretariat (2010), and the blockbuster, Man of Steel (2013), were all received and her performances were highly praised. She won further Best Actress Golden Globe nominations for her roles in Under the Tuscan Sun (2003) and Cinema Verite (2011).
She is very well regarded within the industry, adored by film fans, and has a credibility and quality that is all too rare today. Her immense talent at playing human and real characters, her "drop dead gorgeous" beauty and down-to-earth grittiness guarantees that she will stay on top, and she guarantee has already shown the kind of resilience that will keep her working for a long, long time.- This stunning Canadian was born in Nova Scotia yet spent most of her childhood in the Philippines, educated in British schools, while her Kiwi father was an attorney for the Asian Bank. After the family relocated to Canada, Justine launched a successful modeling career by winning a lucrative contract at The Elite Look of the Year competition in Brazil where she represented Canada at the age of 14. Barely 20 when she bought her first home in Miami's exclusive South Beach, she has recently made a move to the West Coast.
Currently completing her degrees in Art History and English Literature from McGill University in Montreal while pursuing a burgeoning acting career in Los Angeles, Justine has had three starring film roles this past year alone. In between academics and acting she records audio books, most recently narrating best-seller, "The Historian." Having written her first novel, she's equally comfortable wielding a pen, knitting needles, or a sidearm at the local shooting gallery. Multi-lingual, multi-talented, and fiercely intelligent - she's one to watch in the years to come. - Actress
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Liz Vassey began acting at the age of nine, performing in over fifty musicals and plays. She moved to New York at the age of sixteen to join the cast of All My Children. For her work on that show, she was nominated for her first Daytime Emmy. Since then, Liz has appeared as a regular or recurring character on twelve television shows including ER, Maximum Bob, Necessary Roughness, Brotherly Love, Push Nevada, Two and a Half Men, FOX's live action version of The Tick, and, most recently, Season Two of The Tick reboot on Amazon. But she is probably best known for her five year run on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as DNA technician "Wendy Simms." Liz has also guest starred on many TV shows, starred in many pilots, and appeared in several films. In addition to acting, Liz is an accomplished writer. She co-wrote an episode of CSI during her last season, and has since sold six television pilots and a TV movie, developing for such networks and studios as NBC, Freeform, Universal, Netflix, and CW. An avid runner, Liz recently made her directorial debut with the newly released documentary feature, The Human Race, which focuses on runners over the age of fifty. Liz lives in Hollywood with her husband, David Emmerichs, and their combined brood of way too many pets.- Actress
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Jennifer Taylor (born Jennifer Bini) is an American actress from Hoboken, New Jersey. She is primarily known for the role of Chelsea Melini in the sitcom "Two and a Half Men". Her character was the girlfriend of protagonist Charlie Harper (played by Charlie Sheen) in season 6 (2008-2009), and his fiancee in season 7 (2009-2010). While Charlie was a womanizer, Chelsea was one of the few women which he genuinely loved.
Taylor was born to an Italian-American family. She is a former beauty contestant. She was the third runner-up in the 1995 Miss Florida USA pageant, and the first runner-up of the 1996 pageant. She started appearing in films by 1998. Taylor had a small role in the neo-noir thriller "Wild Things" (1998), which depicted several characters with hidden agendas. She also appeared in the sports comedy "The Waterboy" (1998), about a man in his early 30s who becomes a college football player.
By the early 2000s, Taylor started regularly appearing in various television roles. She had played three different characters in early seasons of "Two and a Half Men", before being cast in the regular role of Chelsea. Taylor also had the guest star role of Eve in a 2005 episode of the fantasy series "Charmed". Her character was a married mother who attempted to seduce regular character Leo Wyatt (played by Brian Krause) during a playdate of their respective children.
During the 2010s, Taylor primarily appeared in television films. In the theatrical film "Ashley" (2013), Taylor portrayed Stacy Collins (the protagonist's mother). Her character was the mother of Ashley Collins (played by Nicole Fox), an adolescent lesbian whose self-harm habits turned off her lovers. Stacy attributed her daughter's mental problems to Ashley having suffered sexual abuse by her father at an early age.
In the Christian-themed drama "God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness" (2018), Taylor had the supporting role of Meg Harvey. Her character was the owner of a soup kitchen, who supported the efforts of the controversial pastor Dave Hill (played by David A. R. White). The film earned 7.4 million dollars at the worldwide box office. It was the third film in its series, but under-performed at the box office.
In 2022, Taylor was cast as the humanoid angel Grace in the salvation-themed television series "Saved by Grace". Its first season lasted for 5 episodes. By 2022, Taylor was 50-years-old. Her acting career has lasted for 24 years, mostly devoted to playing supporting characters. She seems to have no intention to retire yet. Taylor has two children, son Jake and daughter Samantha. She has stated in past interviews that gardening was her hobby, and that she used to grow several fruits and vegetables in her private garden.- Actress
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Ingrid Bergman was one of the greatest actresses from Hollywood's lamented Golden Era. Her natural and unpretentious beauty and her immense acting talent made her one of the most celebrated figures in the history of American cinema. Bergman is also one of the most Oscar-awarded actresses, tied with Meryl Streep and Frances McDormand, all three of them second only to Katharine Hepburn.
Ingrid Bergman was born on August 29, 1915 in Stockholm, Sweden, to a German mother, Frieda Henrietta (Adler), and a Swedish father, Justus Samuel Bergman, an artist and photographer. Her mother died when she was only two and her father died when she was 12. She went to live with an elderly uncle.
The woman who would be one of the top stars in Hollywood in the 1940s had decided to become an actress after finishing her formal schooling. She had had a taste of acting at age 17 when she played an uncredited role of a girl standing in line in the Swedish film Landskamp (1932) in 1932 - not much of a beginning for a girl who would be known as "Sweden's illustrious gift to Hollywood." Her parents died when she was just a girl and the uncle she lived with didn't want to stand in the way of Ingrid's dream. The next year she enrolled at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm but decided that stage acting was not for her. It would be three more years before she would have another chance at a film. When she did, it was more than just a bit part. The film in question was The Count of the Old Town (1935), where she had a speaking part as Elsa Edlund. After several films that year that established her as a class actress, Ingrid appeared in Intermezzo (1936) as Anita Hoffman. Luckily for her, American producer David O. Selznick saw it and sent a representative from Selznick International Pictures to gain rights to the story and have Ingrid signed to a contract. Once signed, she came to California and starred in United Artists' 1939 remake of her 1936 film, Intermezzo (1939), reprising her original role. The film was a hit and so was Ingrid.
Her beauty was unlike anything the movie industry had seen before and her acting was superb. Hollywood was about to find out that they had the most versatile actress the industry had ever seen. Here was a woman who truly cared about the craft she represented. The public fell in love with her. Ingrid was under contract to go back to Sweden to film Only One Night (1939) in 1939 and June Night (1940) in 1940. Back in the US she appeared in three films, all well-received. She made only one film in 1942, but it was the classic Casablanca (1942) opposite Humphrey Bogart.
Ingrid was choosing her roles well. In 1943 she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), the only film she made that year. The critics and public didn't forget her when she made Gaslight (1944) the following year--her role of Paula Alquist got her the Oscar for Best Actress. In 1945 Ingrid played in Spellbound (1945), Saratoga Trunk (1945) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), for which she received her third Oscar nomination for her role of Sister Benedict. She made no films in 1947, but bounced back with a fourth nomination for Joan of Arc (1948). In 1949 she went to Italy to film Stromboli (1950), directed by Roberto Rossellini. She fell in love with him and left her husband, Dr. Peter Lindstrom, and daughter, Pia Lindström. America's "moral guardians" in the press and the pulpits were outraged. She was pregnant and decided to remain in Italy, where her son was born. In 1952 Ingrid had twins, Isotta and Isabella Rossellini, who became an outstanding actress in her own right, as did Pia.
Ingrid continued to make films in Italy and finally returned to Hollywood in 1956 in the title role in Anastasia (1956), which was filmed in England. For this she won her second Academy Award. She had scarcely missed a beat. Ingrid continued to bounce between Europe and the US making movies, and fine ones at that. A film with Ingrid Bergman was sure to be a quality production. In her final big-screen performance in 1978's Autumn Sonata (1978) she had her final Academy Award nomination. Though she didn't win, many felt it was the most sterling performance of her career. Ingrid retired, but not before she gave an outstanding performance in the mini-series A Woman Called Golda (1982), a film about Israeli prime minister Golda Meir. For this she won an Emmy Award as Best Actress, but, unfortunately, she did not live to see the fruits of her labor.
Ingrid died from cancer on August 29, 1982, her 67th birthday, in London, England.- Actress
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An icy, elegant blonde with a knack for playing complex and strong-willed female leads, enormously popular actress Faye Dunaway starred in several films which defined what many would come to call Hollywood's "second Golden Age." During her tenure at the top of the box office, she was a more than capable match for some of the biggest macho stars of the 1970s. Then an overwrought turn in the disastrous biopic Mommie Dearest (1981) effectively derailed her career - but, at the same time, made her a bit of a camp favorite in the gay community - though she's been afforded infrequent opportunities worthy of her talent since that unfortunate halt.
Born prematurely on Jan. 14, 1941 in Bascom, FL, Dorothy Faye Dunaway was the daughter of MacDowell Dunaway, Jr., a career Army officer, and his wife, Grace April Smith. After a stint as a teenaged beauty queen in Florida, she intended to pursue education at the University of Florida, but switched to acting, earning her degree from Boston University in 1962. She was given the enviable task of choosing between a Fulbright Scholarship to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts or a role in the Broadway production of "A Man For All Seasons" as a member of the American National Theatre and Academy. She picked the latter, enjoying a fruitful stage career for the next two years, which was capped by appearances in "After the Fall" and "Hogan's Goat." The latter - an off-Broadway production in 1967 - required Dunaway to tumble down a flight of steps in every performance, earning her a screen debut in the wan counterculture comedy The Happening (1967). Just five months after its release, however, she was wowing audiences across the country as Depression-era bank robber Bonnie Parker in Arthur Penn's controversial Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Her turn as the naïve but trigger-happy and sexually aggressive Parker earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, and provided a direct route to the front of the line for Hollywood leading ladies in an unbelievably short amount of time.
Dunaway followed this success with another hit, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), in which her coolly sensual insurance investigator generated considerable sparks with playboy and jewel thief Steve McQueen. She then bounced between arthouse efforts like Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970), directed by her ex-boyfriend, photographer Jerry Schatzberg, and the revisionist Western 'Doc' (1971), as well as big-budget efforts like Little Big Man (1970), which cast her as a predatory preacher's wife with designs on Dustin Hoffman's reluctant Native American hero. Dunaway also balanced these projects with several well-regarded theatrical productions, including a 1972-73 stint as Blanche Du Bois in "A Streetcar Named Desire," and notable TV-movies like The Woman I Love (1972), which cast her as the Duchess of Windsor, and TV broadcasts of Hogan's Goat (1971) and After the Fall (1974). But her turn as the duplicitous Lady De Winter in Richard Lester's splashy, slapstick take on The Three Musketeers (1973) and its sequel The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974) preceded a long period of critical and box office hits, starting with her masterful performance in Chinatown (1974).
Dunaway's turn as Evelyn Mulwray, the mysterious woman who draws detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) into a dark and complicated web of murder, incest, and catastrophic business deals, seemed the epitome of every femme fatale to ever stride across a chiaroscuro-lit scene in classic noir. But Dunaway also found the horribly wounded core of her character as well, and turned Evelyn from a pastiche to a full-blown and emotionally resonant human being. Critics and award groups rushed to nominate Dunaway for the role, and she netted her second Academy Award nod, as well as Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. Dunaway had fought hard for her performance - her battles with director Roman Polanski were no secret - but sadly, she lost the Oscar to Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974). However, it would be Dunaway's performance which stood the test of time.
High-gloss turns in The Towering Inferno (1974) and Sydney Pollack's political thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975) preceded one of her best television performances; that of Depression-era radio preacher Aimee Semple MacPherson in The Disappearance of Aimee (1976). Even more startling was her sterling role in Network (1976), Paddy Chayefsky's blistering take on the television industry. Dunaway pulled out all the stops as an executive on the rise who stops at nothing to advance her career - even bedding veteran producer William Holden. Critics again rose in unison to praise Dunaway, and she finally netted an Oscar for the role, as well as a Golden Globe.
Surprisingly, Dunaway's career began to falter after her Oscar win. She was effective as a fashion photographer who experiences disturbing visions in Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), but was wasted in thankless roles as the dissatisfied ex of washed-up boxer Jon Voight in The Champ (1979) and wife to Frank Sinatra's detective in The First Deadly Sin (1980). And then came Mommie Dearest (1981), director Frank Perry's biopic of actress Joan Crawford based on the tell-all book by her daughter Christina Crawford. Crawford herself had praised Dunaway in the early stages of her career, and while some critics gave positive reviews to her performance - in particular, the extent to which she physically transformed herself into Crawford - most fixated on the hysterical dialogue and garish scenes of child abuse. Clips of Dunaway as Crawford bellowing "No more wire hangers!" became immediate laugh-getters on late-night television, and a substantial gay following rose up in response to the film's high camp value. Dunaway, however, found none of the response amusing, and later admitted her regret in taking the role. Whether laughable or pure genius, no one could deny that Dunaway threw her everything into the role. The film's continued cult success proved she had succeeded in becoming Crawford.
The fallout from "Mommie Dearest" obscured Dunaway's follow-up projects, which included the title role in the TV-movie Evita Peron (1981) and a return to Broadway in 1982's "The Curse of an Aching Heart". Discouraged, she moved to London with her second husband, photographer Terry O'Neill, who had also served as a producer on "Mommie Dearest." For the next few years, Dunaway appeared sporadically in films, most of which underscored her newly minted status as a camp icon. The Wicked Lady (1983) was an absurd, near-softcore period drama by Michael Winner, with Dunaway as an 18th-century highway robber. Fans of her early dramatic work were similarly aghast by her turn as a shrieking witch battling Helen Slater's Girl of Steel in Supergirl (1984). Only a Golden Globe-winning appearance in the cumbersome miniseries Ellis Island (1984) offered any respite from the negative press which now continued to follow her.
Dunaway returned to the United States in 1987 following her divorce from O'Neill, and attempted to rebuild her career and reputation by appearing in several independent dramas. She was widely praised for her performance as a once-glamorous woman felled by alcohol in Barbet Schroeder's Barfly (1987), and served as executive producer and star of Cold Sassy Tree (1989), a TV adaptation of the popular novel by Olive Ann Burns about an independent-minded woman who romances a recently widowed store owner (Richard Widmark). Dunaway was exceptionally busy for the remainder of the decade in both major Hollywood features and independent fare, though her strong women now occasionally sported an unfortunate shrill side. She was Robert Duvall's frosty wife in the dystopian thriller The Handmaid's Tale (1990) and contributed a vocal cameo as Evelyn Mulwray in The Two Jakes (1990), the ill-fated sequel to "Chinatown". Other notable performances came as the unhappy wife of psychiatrist Marlon Brando in Don Juan DeMarco (1994), as the daughter of imprisoned Klansman Gene Hackman in The Chamber (1996), and as a bartender caught in the middle of a hostage standoff in Kevin Spacey's Albino Alligator (1996). She later received Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe nominations as the matron of a wealthy Jewish family in turmoil in The Twilight of the Golds (1996). Perhaps her best turn of the decade was as a seductive murderess who attempts to sway the unflappable Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) in It's All in the Game (1993), which earned her a 1994 Emmy. She won her third Golden Globe as modeling agency head Wilhelmina Cooper in the biopic Gia (1998), starring Angelina Jolie as doomed model Gia Carangi.
The 1990s were also not without incident for Dunaway. She was embroiled in an ugly lawsuit against Andrew Lloyd Webber after he closed a Los Angeles production of his musical version of "Sunset Blvd." with claims that she was unable to sing to his standards. The suit was later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. A national tour of Terrence McNally's "Master Class", about the legendary opera diva Maria Callas, ended with her involvement in a suit over legal rights to the play. The project was expected to become her next great film role but remained uncompleted more than a decade after the 1996 tour. Her attempt at sitcom stardom in It Had to Be You (1993), co-starring Robert Urich, was met with universal disinterest, and the project was announced as being retooled without Dunaway prior to its cancellation.
Dunaway's schedule remained busy from 2000 onward, mostly in television and small independent features. She co-starred with Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix as the wife of career criminal James Caan in The Yards (2000), then made her directorial debut with the short The Yellow Bird (2001), based on the play by Tennessee Williams. Younger audiences had their first taste of Dunaway's particular star power as Ian Somerhalder's mother in The Rules of Attraction (2002), Roger Avary's amped-up adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel, before Dunaway turned up the heat as a merciless celebrity judge on the reality series The Starlet (2005).
Dunaway penned her memoirs, Looking For Gatsby, in 1995, one year before receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Attached throughout her professional career to intriguing men ranging from Lenny Bruce to Marcello Mastroianni, she was twice married; her first husband was singer Peter Wolf of the popular seventies rock group, The J. Geils Band. Liam O'Neill, her son by second husband Terry, followed in her footsteps with minor acting roles beginning in 2004. His father later dropped a bombshell in 2003 by revealing that Liam was not their biological son, but was adopted - a claim that Dunaway had previously denied.
A series of occasional roles in little-seen films followed, but Dunaway was unexpectedly thrust back into the public eye at the 2017 Academy Awards. Reunited with Warren Beatty on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of "Bonnie and Clyde," the pair were tapped to present the Best Picture award to close the night. Before proceeding onstage, Beatty was mistakenly handed a backup envelope for Best Actress in a Leading Role, which had already been won by Emma Stone for La La Land (2016). Unsure what to do when he opened the envelope and discovered the error, Beatty stalled for time and showed the card to Dunaway; misunderstanding his intent, the actress announced that the Best Picture Oscar went to "La La Land." During producer Jordan Horowitz's acceptance speech, he was informed that the actual Best Picture winner was Moonlight (2016). During the onstage chaos that ensued, Beatty delivered a heartfelt explanation and apology for the snafu while undergoing good-natured ribbing from host Jimmy Kimmel.
After her break from acting and the memorable Oscars moment, Dunaway is now back in the saddle as an actress working more frequently in her 70s. Over the past year, she has appeared in three films, starring in The Bye Bye Man (2017), The Case for Christ (2017), and Inconceivable (2017), with more projects expected to be on the way. The icon also fronts Gucci's summer 2018 ad campaign for their Sylvie handbag and has a Broadway show scheduled for 2019.- Actress
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- Soundtrack
Bianca Kajlich was born on 26 March 1977 in Seattle, Washington, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Halloween: Resurrection (2002), Bring It On (2000) and Dark Was the Night (2014). She has been married to Mike Catherwood since 16 December 2012. They have one child. She was previously married to Landon Donovan.- Brandy Kopp was born on 25 May 1982 in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. She is an actress, known for The Butterfly Effect (2004), Matt's Chance (2013) and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (2014).
- Ashley McCall Scott is an American actress and model. She was born on July 13, 1977 in Metairie, Louisiana, but raised in Charleston, South Carolina. She began her modeling career as a young girl. She was a 1993 Elite Model Look finalist and became a Model for Elite Miami, she modeled internationally and graced the runways at fashion shows in Miami, Paris and London.
Ashley has appeared on the cover of the prestigious "Hollywood Reporter" and has been tracked by photographers from such publications as "WWD", "US Weekly", "Vegas", "Salon", "Victim", "ShortHair" and "Cosmo Girl". Her first screen credit was as "Gigolo Jane" in the feature film, A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). In 2001, she also broke into TV, when she was cast as "Asha Barlow" in the second season of FOX's hit sci-fi show, Dark Angel (2000).
In 2002, Ashley joined the cast of Birds of Prey (2002) as "Helena Kyle" (a.k.a The Huntress). She followed her work on "Birds of Prey" with films such as S.W.A.T. (2003), Evil Remains (2004), Walking Tall (2004), Lost (2004) (voice), Into the Blue (2005), The Kingdom (2007), Strange Wilderness (2008), 12 Rounds (2009) and TV movies, such as Christmas Mail (2010), Unstable (2012), The Nightmare Nanny (2013), Summoned (2013), Holiday Road Trip (2013).
She played "Emily Sullivan" in the CBS drama, Jericho (2006) (2006-2008) and was a guest star on CSI: Miami (2002), NCIS (2003) . She voiced Maria in the 2013 video game, The Last of Us (2013).
Scott starred in a number of made-for-television movies in recent years, primarily for the Lifetime network, including Summoned (2013), and The Nightmare Nanny (2013), 16 and Missing (2015). She was cast as series regular "Mary Newhouse" in the Lifetime comedy-drama series, UnREAL (2015), opposite Shiri Appleby and Constance Zimmer. UnREAL was acclaimed by critics as the best summer TV drama.
She resides in Los Angeles and was married to Steve Hart, Worlds Apart lead singer until their divorce in 2019. They are the parents of two baby girls. - Aya Sumika was born on 22 August 1980 in Seattle, Washington, USA. She is an actress, known for Numb3rs (2005), Hawaii (2004) and The O.C. (2003).
- Actress
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Elizabeth Banks was born Elizabeth Mitchell in Pittsfield, a small city in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts near the New York border, on February 10, 1974. She is the daughter of Anne Marie (Wallace), who worked in a bank, and Mark Phineas Mitchell, a factory worker. Elizabeth describes herself as having been seen as a "goody two-shoes" in her youth who was nominated for the local Harvest Queen.
Banks left home to attend college at the University of Pennsylvania--from which she graduated Magna cum Laude--and went on to attend the Advanced Training Program at the prestigious American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, graduating in 1996. She then moved to New York and worked in the theater, and began getting small roles in films and on television. Seeking more screen work, she moved to Los Angeles and was soon cast in supporting roles. She also had to change her last name, to Banks, in order to avoid confusion with actress Elizabeth Mitchell.
Her breakthrough role was as Betty Brant, the secretary of the cantankerous newspaper tycoon in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002). She followed up this performance with small roles in other movies: Swept Away (2002), Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002), Seabiscuit (2003) and The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005). In 2003 she won the Exciting New Face Award at the Young Hollywood Awards. The winsome, beautiful Banks projected an exceptionally charming screen presence that drew comparisons to Audrey Hepburn, and Hollywood eventually began to take notice, Banks being cast in the lead in such films as Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) and in Oliver Stone's biopic of George W. Bush, W. (2008), as Laura Bush.
In television, Banks was a recurring guest star on Scrubs (2001) as Dr. Kim Briggs, the love interest of Zach Braff's J.D. In 2010 she was cast as Alec Baldwin's love interest in season four of 30 Rock (2006). Originally scheduled to appear in only four episodes, she was brought back as a recurring character for two more seasons, and earned Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for two consecutive years. Elizabeth has also appeared in such films as Our Idiot Brother (2011), Man on a Ledge (2012), What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012), People Like Us (2012), and Pitch Perfect (2012). She also won the coveted role as Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games (2012) and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013).
After an eleven-year courtship, Banks married Max Handelman, a sports writer and producer, in 2003. They have two sons, Felix, who was born in March 2011, and Magnus, born in Nov. 2012, both by gestational surrogacy.- Actress
- Writer
Born in Florence, Italy. Fluent in English, French and Italian. Simona travels frequently to Paris (France), where she has lived for four years, London (UK) and Los Angeles. She made her debut as an actress in 1994, working alongside Italian household name Alberto Sordi in the feature film Nestore l'Ultima Corsa (directed by Alberto Sordi). Simona Caparrini gained more fame in Italy and abroad in 2012, when she was chosen by Woody Allen to play Aunt Joan in his feature film To Rome with Love. In 2013 she worked in the feature film Romeo and Juliet, directed by Carlo Carlei, playing a cameo role, a noble woman friend of the Capulets. In 2015 she joined the prestigious cast of the Warner Bros. film The Man from U.N.C.L.E. directed by Guy Ritchie, where she plays the Contessa. In the past seven years Simona has been working extensively as a screenwriter and ghost-writer for feature films and TV series in Italy and abroad.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Michelle Suzanne Dockery (born 15 December 1981) is an English actress and singer. She is best known for her role as Lady Mary Crawley in the ITV drama series Downton Abbey (2010-2015), for which she has been nominated for three consecutive Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. She made her professional stage debut in His Dark Materials in 2004. For her role as Eliza Doolittle in the 2007 London revival of Pygmalion, she was nominated for the Evening Standard Award.- Actress
- Producer
Sidse Babett Knudsen is a Danish actress who works in theatre, television, and film. Knudsen made her screen debut in the 1997 improvisational comedy Let's Get Lost, for which she received both the Robert and Bodil awards for Best Actress.
Following the critical success of her debut, Knudsen has been considered one of the top Danish actresses of her generation. In 2000, she again won both best actress awards for the comedy romance Den Eneste Ene (English title: The One and Only). In 2016, she won the César Award for Best Supporting Actress for the film Courted (L'Hermine). Knudsen has also received award nominations for her roles in Monas Verden (Mona's World) and Efter Brylluppet (After the Wedding).
Knudsen achieved international recognition for her leading role as fictional Danish Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg in the Danish TV series Borgen, and for her role as Theresa Cullen in the HBO science fiction-Western television series Westworld.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Maribel Verdú was born on October 2, 1970 in Madrid, Spain as María Isabel Verdú Rollán. She is an actress, known for Snow White (2012), Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and And Your Mother Too (2001). She is the older sister of twins Marina and Carlota and she has been married to Pedro Larrañaga since September 1999.- Actress
- Producer
Ayelet Zurer is one of Israel's most acclaimed actresses. She was born in Tel Aviv, and first garnered the attention of Hollywood when she was cast by Steven Spielberg in her first English-speaking role, as Eric Bana's character's wife in the Oscar® nominated film Munich (2005). Since arriving in the United States, Zurer has starred in Studio films including Sony Pictures' Vantage Point with Dennis Quaid and William Hurt, Samuel Goldwyn's Fugitive Pieces opposite Stephen Dillane, Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected opposite Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe. Ron Howard's Angeles and Demons, opposite Tom Hanks, Darling Companion, a Lawrence Kasdan ensemble cast featuring Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline and Warner Bros. Man Of Steel opposite Russell Crow. She filmed Rodrigo Garcia, Last days in the desert opposite Ewan McGregor, as well as awaiting the release of the movie The Last Knights by the Japanese director Kazuaki Kiriya opposite Clive Owen.
She recently won the Gold Nymph Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series at the 54th Festival of Television of Monte-Carlo for her role in the series "Hostages". Ayelet won the Israeli Film And Television Academy Award for her lead performance in Nina's Tragedies. She also received nominations for her work in the features Only Dogs Run Free, The Dybbuk from the Holy Apple Field, Desperado, and Rutenberg. She won the Haifa International Film Festival critic award and was awarded a star on Haifa's "film boulevard," for her international and local achievements. Zurer also won the Israeli Television Academy Award for her lead performance in "In Treatment," a highly acclaimed television series that has been adapted by HBO for American television. In 2014 She was nominated apposite herself in the year's best drama "Shtisel", but won best actress in a drama for her portrayal of a brilliant surgeon faced with the life and death dilemma in Hostages, sold to BBC4 and Canal Plus, and as a format to the American ABC. The "face " of one of Israel's leading women's fashion companies- Golbary. She is a producer, a writer, an illustrator of two adult books, "Shorts" and the best seller "Badolina" by Gabi Nitazn. Ayelet has been developing a few of her own projects in Israel and the US, expressing interest in working internationally with directors from all over the world, believing in joining unknown writers/directors as well as known ones.- Actress
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Famke Janssen was born November 5, 1964, in Amstelveen, the Netherlands, and has two other siblings. Moving to America in the 1980s, she modeled for Chanel in New York. Later, taking a break from modeling, she attended Columbia University, majoring in literature.
This model-turned-actress broke into Hollywood in the early 1990s. Her first film was Fathers & Sons (1992). Later she became James Bond's enemy in GoldenEye (1995). Her career has bloomed since then with her starring in such films as House on Haunted Hill (1999), Hide and Seek (2005), a recurring role on FX's Nip/Tuck (2003), and the blockbuster movies X-Men (2000), X2 (2003), and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Nadine Velazquez stars in History Channel's new drama, Six (2017), as "Jackie Ortiz", a strong wife of a Navy SEAL who holds the Ortiz family together. Known for her role as "Sophia" on FXX's The League (2009)--which ended its successful seven year run in 2015--and as "Catalina", the sexy hotel maid/stripper/illegal immigrant with a heart of gold, on the People's Choice-winning NBC comedy series My Name Is Earl (2005), for which she received four Alma Award nominations in the Best Supporting Actress category, She also plays "Deputy DA Emma Rios" on TNT's Major Crimes (2012).
Moviegoers know her well from seeing her dramatic side starring opposite Denzel Washington in the Robert Zemeckis-directed Flight (2012), as well as in the action thriller Snitch (2013), where she starred as "'Analisa". Dwayne Johnson's wife. In 2016 moviegoers got a chance to see her in Universal's box-office hit [tt2869728 opposite Ice Cube and Kevin Hart, as well as in her first romantic comedy, The Bounce Back (2016) opposite Shemar Moore.
"Daily Variety" singled her out as one of "Ten Actors to Watch" and "USA Today" named her "One of Five Rising Stars to Watch Closely". She was additionally picked by "Entertainment Weekly" for its "Summer 'Must' List" and was included in "People En Espanol" for its "50 Most Beautiful People".
A Chicago native of Puerto Rican descent, Nadine resides in Los Angeles. She is a supporter of charities that provide education and shelter to disenfranchised women. Her dedication to these charities come from her personal experience.- Actress
- Producer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Mexican actress Kate del Castillo broke through in America as a result of her award-winning performance in the hit Fox Searchlight/Weinstein movie Under the Same Moon (2007), which is to date the highest-grossing Spanish-language theatrical release in U.S. history.
Kate starred as "Queen of the South" in La Reina del Sur (2011) a short form prime-time telenovela for Telemundo (NBC/Universal) and Antena 3 (Spain.) This adaptation of the bestseller by Spanish novelist Arturo Perez-Reverte drew more than 8.1 million viewers in its debut week, making it the most successful telenovela premiere week in the web's history. It continues to break records attracting male viewers and non-Spanish speaking viewers.
Del Castillo appeared as a guest star in six episodes of the fifth season of the Showtime hit comedy series _Weeds_. She starred as 'Pilar Zuazo,' a powerful Mexican crime boss who threatened Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker) and Esteban's romance and was then hit with a mallet by Nancy's son.
Del Castillo recently starred in Univision.com's first-ever webnovela (which she co-produced), "Vidas Cruzadas" (Crossed Lives). The series was a huge success and generated more than two million video streams through September 15, 2009 making it one of the three most-watched online properties ever according to the network.
L'Oréal Paris signed del Castillo to an exclusive U.S. contract as a spokesperson for the company and its beauty brands. The advertising was shot in Los Angeles and Paris and appeared in the U.S. and Mexico. The California Ford dealers tapped her as its spokesperson to star in their television and radio ads. The History Channel named her Network Spokesperson for Hispanic Heritage Month in 2007.
Kate del Castillo, was appointed Ambassador for the Mexican Commission on Human Rights to combat human trafficking in 2009, and launched the Blue Heart campaign in Mexico City with U.N. Goodwill Ambassador Mira Sorvino in 2010..
She began her acting career as a child, but it wasn't until the enormously successful telenovela "Muchachitas" that she became a full-fledged star in Mexico. She went on to become the leading ingénue of nine telenovelas, including "Ramona" and "La Mentira" taking them to the top of the Nielsen charts every time. Her telenovelas have aired multiple times in more than 100 countries worldwide. Kate received various accolades for her critically acclaimed performance as a Bolivian dancer in American Visa (2005) including "Best Actress" awards in film festivals in Spain and Brazil, and a "Best Actress" nomination at the Ariel Awards, Mexico's equivalent to the Oscars. In the United States, the movie premiered at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles, to a sold-out crowd. She also did a cameo in Bordertown (2007) as Antonio Banderas's long-suffering wife.
Kate returned to her theater roots in Mexico for a sold-out eight week theatre run in the two character David Harrower play "Blackbird" ("Pájaro Negro.) She won the "Best Actress" award from the Theatre Critics Association in Mexico.
Among her many awards, Kate received the "Outstanding Performance in a Motion Picture" award for her performances in Trade (2007) and Under the Same Moon (2007) by the National Hispanic Media under the umbrella of the National Latino Media Council. In August 2008, she won the Imagen "Best Actress" award for "Under the Same Moon."
Kate has graced the covers of the top Spanish-language magazines, and was People en Español's 2007 cover Actress of the Year, as well as one of their "Most Beautiful People." On September 13, 2009, Kate served as Grand Marshall in Los Angeles' Mexican Independence Day Parade.
Kate was the voice of Sally Carrera in the Spanish version of Pixar/Disney's Cars (2006) and will soon appear in the animated Rio (2011)_ as a bird/wife to George Lopez. She made her crossover debut on television in the U.S. in the Golden Globe-nominated PBS series American Family (2002) alongside Edward James Olmos.
She is developing a project for television, which she hopes will showcase her love of extreme sports. She published her first novel "Tuya," which is based on her screenplay, and it is now in its third printing.- Actress
- Writer
Lisa Olivia Munn was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Her mother, Kimberly Schmid, lived in Vietnam, and is of Chinese ancestry, while her father, Winston Barrett Munn, is from a family with deep roots in the American South. Olivia's parents divorced when she was two years old, and she was raised by her mother and stepfather, a member of the United States Air Force. Although the family departed Oklahoma and resided in many locations, she was mainly raised in Tokyo, Japan. During this time, she appeared in a number of local theater productions and later became a model in the Japanese fashion industry. When the family eventually returned to the United States, Olivia moved to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. After a few small roles, her career took a very promising turn when she landed the role of Mily Acuna on the Hawaii-lensed TV series Beyond the Break (2006) and the role of Rob Schneider's receptionist in Big Stan (2007). She hosts "The Daily Nut" and the "Formula D" Podcasts on G4.- Actress
- Music Department
Tabu is an Indian actress. She has mainly acted in Hindi films, though she has also starred in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi and Bengali-language films, as well as one American film. She has won the National Film Award for Best Actress twice, and holds the record for the most wins of Filmfare's Critics Award for Best Female Performer, with four. With few exceptions, she is best known for acting in artistic, low-budget films that go on to garner more critical appreciation than substantial box-office figures. Her appearances in commercially successful films were few, and her parts in these films were small, such as Border (1997), Saajan Chale Sasural (1996), Biwi No. 1 (1999) and Hum Saath-Saath Hain (1999). Her most notable performances include Maachis (1996), Virasat (1997), Hu Tu Tu (1999), Astitva (2000), Chandni Bar (2001), Maqbool (2003) and Cheeni Kum (2007). Her leading role in Mira Nair's American film The Namesake (2006) also drew major praise.
Regarded as one of the most talented Indian actresses of her generation, Tabu is known to be selective about her film roles. She was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award, in 2011 by the Government of India for her contributions towards the arts.- Actress
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- Art Department
Often described as "a young Meryl Streep" due to her versatility and tendency to steal all her scenes, French actress Laëtitia Eïdo shocked the world with her heart-wrenching performance as Shirin El-Abed, an embattled doctor caught in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Netflix's highly acclaimed series, "'Fauda (2015)'."
Born and raised in France, to a French father and a Lebanese mother, her ambiguous ethnicity enables her to bring many different nationalities to life. Laëtitia has delivered award winning performances, including 5 Best Actress Awards, in more than 10 languages.
Her penchant for artistic endeavors began as a little girl, when she won several prestigious contests in both drawing and writing, with one of her creations being exhibited in the Eiffel Tower, as part of a worldwide professional design contest when she was just a teenager. Her love of acting came to light early as well, as she spent a good portion of her childhood putting on elaborate skits, readily transforming into all kinds of bold and dynamic characters.
Referred to by critics as a "standout actress," "the beating heart of Fauda's series," "sensual," and "fiercely funny," Laëtitia was classically trained in Paris and New York, from Peter Brook's to Jacques Lecoq's theater companies. She then immersed herself in the Meisner technique, which completely transformed her approach to acting.
Known for her intense, unforgettable, and emotionally evocative performances, Eïdo prepares meticulously for each role, leaving no detail untouched. Over the course of her career, Laëtitia has had many main and lead parts, most recently giving a stellar performance in the Apple TV+ French and English language series "'Liaison (2023)'," starring alongside Vincent Cassel and Eva Green. In 2024, Laëtitia will once again star with Eva Green in Martin Campbell's ("Casino Royale," "Goldeneye") next feature "Dirty Angels." She is also expected to appear in Terrence Malick's highly anticipated "'The Way of the Wind'," as well as alongside Aaron Eckhart in upcoming spy thriller "Chief of Station," in the independent Belgian film "The Virgin and child," and in the French timely action movie "Elyas" with Roschdy Zem.
Having the rare ability to flawlessly navigate between art-house films, action-packed series, and projects from major American studios, as well as being a regular on the theater circuit, Laëtitia remarked that, "acting for me is constantly delving into the mysteries of the human soul and finding the purest way to convey emotions as a healing channel for the audience."- Actress
- Producer
Most recently, Keri can be seen starring in "The Diplomat" for Netflix in which Keri plays the titular role of an American Diplomat in London. She also stars in an episode of the limited anthology series "Extrapolations" created by Scott Burns. She also recently starred in "Cocaine Bear" for Universal Pictures from director Elizabeth Banks. Last year, she starred in the supernatural horror thriller "Antlers" for director Scott Cooper and producer Guillermo del Toro, and in "Star Wars: Episode IX" which reunited her with friend and director J.J. Abrams.
For six seasons Keri starred in the critically acclaimed FX series "The Americans" for which she received a Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama, three Emmy Award nominations, two Golden Globe Award nominations, six Critics' Choice Award nominations - one win - and a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.
Russell's film credits include "We Were Soldiers," "Mad About Mambo," "The Upside of Anger," "Mission Impossible III," "August Rush," "The Girl In The Park," "Bedtime Stories," Extraordinary Measures," "Goats," "Austenland," "Dark Skies," "Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes," "Free State Of Jones," and the romantic comedy "Waitress" for which she received rave reviews.
Keri first garnered attention when she starred in the title role of the hit television series "Felicity" from J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves. Just four months after the show's acclaimed premiere on the WB, she was honored with a Golden Globe® Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Drama Series.
Keri's other television credits include the miniseries "Into the West," executive produced by Steven Spielberg, the Hallmark Hall of Fame Presentation "The Magic of Ordinary Days," and "Running Wilde" with Will Arnett.
Keri starred alongside Adam Driver in the Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson's "Burn This." The limited engagement play, directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer, opened in March 2019 and ran through July 2019.
Russell returned to New York theatre after making her off- Broadway stage debut in production of Neil LaBute's "Fat Pig," in 2005.- Actress
- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Keira Christina Knightley was born March 26, 1985 in the South West Greater London suburb of Richmond. She is the daughter of actor Will Knightley and actress turned playwright Sharman Macdonald. An older brother, Caleb Knightley, was born in 1979. Her father is English, while her Scottish-born mother is of Scottish and Welsh origin. Brought up immersed in the acting profession from both sides - writing and performing - it is little wonder that the young Keira asked for her own agent at the age of three. She was granted one at the age of six and performed in her first TV role as "Little Girl" in Royal Celebration (1993), aged seven.
It was discovered at an early age that Keira had severe difficulties in reading and writing. She was not officially dyslexic as she never sat the formal tests required of the British Dyslexia Association. Instead, she worked incredibly hard, encouraged by her family, until the problem had been overcome by her early teens. Her first multi-scene performance came in A Village Affair (1995), an adaptation of the lesbian love story by Joanna Trollope. This was followed by small parts in the British crime series The Bill (1984), an exiled German princess in The Treasure Seekers (1996) and a much more substantial role as the young "Judith Dunbar" in Giles Foster's adaptation of Rosamunde Pilcher's novel Coming Home (1998), alongside Peter O'Toole, Penelope Keith and Joanna Lumley. The first time Keira's name was mentioned around the world was when it was revealed (in a plot twist kept secret by director George Lucas) that she played Natalie Portman's decoy "Padme" to Portman's "Amidala" in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). It was several years before agreement was reached over which scenes featured Keira as the queen and which featured Natalie!
Keira had no formal training as an actress and did it out of pure enjoyment. She went to an ordinary council-run school in nearby Teddington and had no idea what she wanted to do when she left. By now, she was beginning to receive far more substantial roles and was starting to turn work down as one project and her schoolwork was enough to contend with. She reappeared on British television in 1999 as "Rose Fleming" in Alan Bleasdale's faithful reworking of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1999), and traveled to Romania to film her first title role in Walt Disney's Princess of Thieves (2001) in which she played Robin Hood's daughter, Gwyn. Keira's first serious boyfriend was her Princess of Thieves (2001) co-star Del Synnott, and they later co-starred in Peter Hewitt's 'work of fart' Thunderpants (2002). Nick Hamm's dark thriller The Hole (2001) kept her busy during 2000, and featured her first nude scene (15 at the time, the film was not released until she was 16 years old). In the summer of 2001, while Keira studied and sat her final school exams (she received six A's), she filmed a movie about an Asian girl's (Parminder Nagra) love for football and the prejudices she has to overcome regarding both her culture and her religion). Bend It Like Beckham (2002) was a smash hit in football-mad Britain but it had to wait until another of Keira's films propelled it to the top end of the US box office. Bend It Like Beckham (2002) cost just £3.5m to make, and nearly £1m of that came from the British Lottery. It took £11m in the UK and has since gone on to score more than US$76m worldwide.
Meanwhile, Keira had started A-levels at Esher College, studying Classics, English Literature and Political History, but continued to take acting roles which she thought would widen her experience as an actress. The story of a drug-addicted waitress and her friendship with the young son of a drug-addict, Pure (2002), occupied Keira from January to March 2002. Also at this time, Keira's first attempt at Shakespeare was filmed. She played "Helena" in a modern interpretation of a scene from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" entitled The Seasons Alter (2002). This was commissioned by the environmental organization "Futerra", of which Keira's mother is patron. Keira received no fee for this performance or for another short film, New Year's Eve (2002), by award-winning director Col Spector. But it was a chance encounter with producer Andy Harries at the London premiere of Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) which forced Keira to leave her studies and pursue acting full-time. The meeting lead to an audition for the role of "Larisa Feodorovna Guishar" - the classic heroine of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago (2002), played famously in the David Lean movie by Julie Christie. This was to be a big-budget TV movie with a screenplay written by Andrew Davies. Keira won the part and the mini-series was filmed throughout the Spring of 2002 in Slovakia, co-starring Sam Neill and Hans Matheson as "Yuri Zhivago". Keira rounded off 2002 with a few scenes in the first movie to be directed by Blackadder and Vicar of Dibley writer Richard Curtis. Called Love Actually (2003), Keira played "Juliet", a newlywed whose husband's Best Man is secretly besotted with her. A movie filmed after Love Actually (2003) but released before it was to make the world sit up and take notice of this beautiful fresh-faced young actress with a cute British accent. It was a movie which Keira very nearly missed out on, altogether. Auditions were held in London for a new blockbuster movie called Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), but heavy traffic in the city forced Keira to be tagged on to the end of the day's auditions list. It helped - she got the part. Filming took place in Los Angeles and the Caribbean from October 2002 to March 2003 and was released to massive box office success and almost universal acclaim in the July of that year.
Meanwhile, a small British film called Bend It Like Beckham (2002) had sneaked onto a North American release slate and was hardly setting the box office alight. But Keira's dominance in "Pirates" had set tongues wagging and questions being asked about the actress playing "Elizabeth Swann". Almost too late, "Bend It"'s distributors realized one of its two stars was the same girl whose name was on everyone's lips due to "Pirates", and took the unusual step of re-releasing "Bend It" to 1,000 screens across the US, catapulting it from no. 26 back up to no. 12. "Pirates", meanwhile, was fighting off all contenders at the top spot, and stayed in the Top 3 for an incredible 21 weeks. It was perhaps no surprise, then, that Keira was on producer Jerry Bruckheimer's wanted list for the part of "Guinevere" in a planned accurate telling of the legend of "King Arthur". Filming took place in Ireland and Wales from June to November 2003. In July, Keira had become the celebrity face of British jeweller and luxury goods retailer, Asprey. At a photoshoot for the company on Long Island New York in August, Keira met and fell in love with Northern Irish model Jamie Dornan. King Arthur (2004) was released in July 2004 to lukewarm reviews. It seems audiences wanted the legend after all, and not necessarily the truth. Keira became the breakout star and 'one to watch in 2004' throughout the world's media at the end of 2003.
Keira's 2004 started off in Scotland and Canada filming John Maybury's time-travelling thriller The Jacket (2005) with Oscar-winner Adrien Brody. A planned movie of Deborah Moggach's novel, "Tulip Fever", about forbidden love in 17th Century Amsterdam, was canceled in February after the British government suddenly closed tax loopholes which allowed filmmakers to claw back a large proportion of their expenditure. Due to star Keira and Jude Law in the main roles, the film remains mothballed. Instead, Keira spent her time wisely, visiting Ethiopia on behalf of the "Comic Relief" charity, and spending summer at various grandiose locations around the UK filming what promises to be a faithful adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel Pride & Prejudice (2005), alongside Matthew Macfadyen as "Mr. Darcy", and with Donald Sutherland and Judi Dench in supporting roles. In October 2004, Keira received her first major accolade, the Hollywood Film Award for Best Breakthrough Actor - Female, and readers of Empire Magazine voted her the Sexiet Movie Star Ever. The remainder of 2004 saw Keira once again trying a completely new genre, this time the part-fact, part-fiction life story of model turned bounty hunter Domino (2005). 2005 started with the premiere of The Jacket (2005) at the Sundance Film Festival, with the US premiere in LA on February 28th. Much of the year was then spent in the Caribbean filming both sequels to Pirates Of The Caribbean. Keira's first major presenting role came in a late-night bed-in comedy clip show for Comic Relief with presenter Johnny Vaughan. In late July, promotions started for the September release of Pride & Prejudice (2005), with British fans annoyed to learn that the US version would end with a post-marriage kiss, but the European version would not. Nevertheless, when the movie opened in September on both sides of the Atlantic, Keira received her greatest praise thus far in her career, amid much talk of awards. It spent three weeks at No. 1 in the UK box office.
Domino (2005) opened well in October, overshadowed by the death of Domino Harvey earlier in the year. Keira received Variety's Personality Of The Year Award in November, topped the following month by her first Golden Globe nomination, for Pride & Prejudice (2005). KeiraWeb.com exclusively announced that Keira would play Helene Joncour in an adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's novella Silk (2007). Pride & Prejudice (2005) garnered six BAFTA nominations at the start of 2006, but not Best Actress for Keira, a fact which paled soon after by the announcement she had received her first Academy Award nomination, the third youngest Best Actress Oscar hopeful. A controversial nude Vanity Fair cover of Keira and Scarlett Johansson kept the press busy up till the Oscars, with Reese Witherspoon taking home the gold man in the Best Actress category, although Keira's Vera Wang dress got more media attention. Keira spent early summer in Europe filming Silk (2007) opposite Michael Pitt, and the rest of the summer in the UK filming Atonement (2007), in which she plays Cecilia Tallis, and promoting the new Pirates movie (her Ellen Degeneres interview became one of the year's Top 10 'viral downloads'). Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) broke many box office records when it opens worldwide in July, becoming the third biggest movie ever by early September. Keira sued British newspaper The Daily Mail in early 2007 after her image in a bikini accompanied an article about a woman who blamed slim celebrities for the death of her daughter from anorexia. The case was settled and Keira matched the settlement damages and donated the total amount to an eating disorder charity. Keira filmed a movie about the life of Dylan Thomas, The Edge Of Love (2008) with a screenplay written by her mother Sharman Macdonald. Her co-star Lindsay Lohan pulled out just a week before filming began, and was replaced by Sienna Miller.
What was announced to be Keira's final Pirates movie in the franchise, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End (2007), opened strongly in June, rising to all-time fifth biggest movie by July. Atonement (2007) opened the Venice Film Festival in August, and opened worldwide in September, again to superb reviews for Keira. Meanwhile, Silk (2007) opened in September on very few screens and disappeared without a trace. Keira spent the rest of the year filming The Duchess (2008), the life story of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, based on Amanda Foreman's award-winning biography of the distant relation of Princess Diana. The year saw more accolades and poll-topping for Keira than ever before, including Women's Beauty Icon 2007 and gracing the covers of all the top-selling magazines. She won Best Actress for Atonement (2007) at the Variety Club Of Great Britain Showbiz Awards, and ended the year with her second Golden Globe nomination. Christmas Day saw - or rather heard - Keira on British TV screens in a new Robbie The Reindeer animated adventure, with DVD proceeds going to Comic Relief. At the start of 2008, Keira received her first BAFTA nomination - Best Actress for Atonement, and the movie wins Best Film: Drama at the Golden Globes. Seven Academy Award nominations for Atonement soon follow. Keira wins Best Actress for her role as Cecilia Tallis at the Empire Film Awards. In May, Keira's first Shakespearean role is announced, when she is confirmed to play Cordelia in a big-screen version of King Lear, alongside Naomi Watts and Gwyneth Paltrow, with Sir Anthony Hopkins as the titular monarch. After two years of rumours, it is confirmed that Keira is on the shortlist to play Eliza Doolittle in a new adaptation of My Fair Lady. The Edge Of Love opens the Edinburgh Film Festival on June 18th, and opens on limited release in the UK and US. A huge round of promotions for The Duchess occurs throughout the summer, with cast and crew trying to play down the marketers' decision to draw parallels between the duchess and Princess Diana. Keira attends the UK and US premieres and Toronto Film Festival within the first week of September. The Duchess opens strongly on both sides of the Atlantic. Two more movies were confirmed for Keira during September - a tale of adultery called Last Night (2010), and a biopic of author F Scott Fitzgerald entitled The Beautiful and the Damned.
Keira spent October on the streets of New York City filming Last Night alongside Sam Worthington and Guillaume Canet. Keira helped to promote the sixtieth anniversary of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights, by contributing to a series of short films produced to mark the occasion. In January 2009 it was announced Keira had signed to play a reclusive actress in an adaptation of Ken Bruen's novel London Boulevard (2010), co-starring Colin Farrell. Keira continues her close ties with the Comic Relief charity by helping to launch their British icons T-shirts campaign. In the same week King Lear was revealed to have been shelved, it was announced that Keira would instead star alongside her Pride & Prejudice co-star Carey Mulligan in an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go (2010). A new short film emerges in March, recorded in the January of 2008 in which Keira plays a Fairy! The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers (2009) was written by Keira's boyfriend Rupert Friend and actor Tom Mison. It went to be shown at the London Film Festival in October and won Best Comedy Short at the New Hampshire Film Festival. Keira continued to put her celebrity to good use in 2009 with a TV commercial for WomensAid highlighting domestic abuse against women. Unfortunately, UK censors refused to allow its broadcast and it can only be viewed on YouTube. May and June saw Keira filming Never Let Me Go (2010) and London Boulevard (2010) back-to-back. In October, a new direction for Keira's career emerged, when it was announced she would appear on the London stage in her West End debut role as Jennifer, in a reworking of Moliere's The Misanthrope, starring Damian Lewis and Tara Fitzgerald. More than $2m of ticket sales followed in the first four days, before even rehearsals had begun! The play ran from December to March at London's Comedy Theatre.- Actress
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Michelle Lynn Monaghan was born on March 23, 1976, in Winthrop, Iowa. She is the youngest of three children and the only daughter of Sharon (Hamel), who ran a day care center, and Robert L. Monaghan, a factory worker and farmer. She is of mostly Irish and German descent. After graduating from high school in Iowa, she studied journalism for three years at Chicago's Columbia College. In order to pay for college, she took a job as a model. In 1999, she quit college and moved to New York to work full-time as a fashion model. She traveled the world doing stints on the runways in Milan, Singapore, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, and also appeared in a number of magazines and catalogs.
In 2000, she made her TV debut in two episodes of Young Americans (2000), then appeared in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999). She made her big screen debut with a small role of Henrietta in Perfume (2001). Monaghan shot to fame in 2002 when she co-starred as Kimberly Woods for one season on the TV series Boston Public (2000). After appearances in several supporting roles, she starred opposite Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer in the black comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005). Later in 2005, Monaghan was filming in China, Italy, and the United States on Mission: Impossible III (2006), as the female lead opposite Tom Cruise.
In August of 2005, in Sydney, Australia, she married her long-time sweetheart, Peter White, a New York based graphic designer, whom she met at a Manhattan party five years earlier.- Actress
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Natalie Zea is an American actress known for her performances on television. Zea began her acting career in theatre. Her first major role was on the NBC daytime soap opera Passions (2000-2002), where she played the role of Gwen Hotchkiss. Her breakout role was on the ABC prime time soap opera Dirty Sexy Money as socialite Karen Darling, where she starred from 2007 to 2009. Zea also has made many guest appearances on television, starred in a number of independent and made-for-television movies, and had recurring roles in The Shield, Hung, Californication, and The Unicorn.- Actress
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Rachel Emily Nichols was born in Augusta, Maine, the daughter of Alison and James Nichols, a schoolteacher. She has English, French Canadian, German, Irish, Italian and Scottish ancestry. She attended and graduated from Cony High School in Augusta, where she competed in the high jump. She attended Columbia University in New York City, where she eventually graduated with a double major in mathematics and economics. She began modeling, launching a successful career with work for such high-profile companies as Guess?, Abercrombie & Fitch and L'Oréal.
Rachel moved into acting, snagging a role on the HBO situation comedy Sex and the City (1998) with her very first audition. She made her film debut as Jessica Matthews in the prequel Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003). Success continued with roles in such projects as The Amityville Horror (2005), The Inside (2005), Alias (2001), G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009), Criminal Minds (2005) (a recurring role as FBI Agent Ashley Seaver) and Conan the Barbarian (2011). She played the lead role of police officer Kiera Cameron on the science fiction series Continuum (2012).- Actress
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Rebecca Hall was born in London, England, the daughter of Peter Hall, a stage director and founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Maria Ewing, an opera singer. Her father was English. Her mother, who is American, is of Dutch and African-American origin. Her parents separated when she was still young, and they divorced in 1990. She has a half-brother, Edward Hall, who is a theatre director, and four other half-siblings, including theatre designer Lucy Hall, veteran TV drama producer Christopher Hall, and Jennifer Caron Hall, a writer and painter.- Actress
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The acclaimed Cornish actress Dame Kristin Scott Thomas was born in Redruth, Cornwall, to Deborah (Hurlbatt) and Lieutenant Commander Simon Scott Thomas. Her father was a pilot for the British Royal Navy and died in a flying accident in 1964. Her stepfather, Lt. Cdr Simon Idiens, was also a pilot, and died six years later under similar circumstances. Her childhood home was Dorset, England. She left at the age of 19 to work as an au pair in Paris. She was married to French doctor François Oliviennes, with whom she had three children; Hannah, Joseph, and George.- Actress
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Catalina Sandino Moreno made her screen debut as the title character in the critically-acclaimed film "Maria Full of Grace" from Fine Line Features/HBO. For her performance, Sandino was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role and won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. The film debuted in the U.S. at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award, and opened in limited release in July 2004. The film won the Grand Special Prize at the 2004 Deauville Film Festival. Sandino has earned other awards and nominations for her performance, including the Silver Berlin Bear for Best Actress at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival, the Golden Space Needle Award for Best Actress at the 2004 Seattle International Film Festival and the award for Breakthrough Actor at the 2004 Gotham Awards. She was named ShoWest's International Star of the Year for 2005. She currently lives in Los Angeles.- A versatile actress, Annabeth Gish weathered the transition from child actor to adult, with a variety of dramatic and comedic roles on film and television.
Anne Elizabeth Gish was born on March 13, 1971 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and moved with her family to Cedar Falls, at the age of two. Her parents were both teachers; her father, Robert Gish, was an English professor at the University of Northern Iowa, her mother, Judy, taught at Malcolm Price Laboratory School. Performing in community theater productions throughout her childhood, Gish began her professional acting career, at the age of eight, by appearing in a number of commercials. She made her screen debut, at the age of 13, in the teen film, Desert Bloom (1986), opposite Jon Voight, and, in following years, has found success in film and television. Gish starred in the films, Hiding Out (1987), with Jon Cryer, Mystic Pizza (1988), with Julia Roberts, and on Shag (1988), opposite Phoebe Cates and Bridget Fonda. She also played the lead role, as rape victim "Lyn McKenna", in the TV movie, When He's Not a Stranger (1989). Gish went on to graduate from Cedar Falls' Northern University High School in 1989. In addition to acting, Gish took time to focus on her academic career and attended Duke University. Studying English as well as theater, she graduated with honors, in 1993, with a BA in English.
Gish returned to screens in the mid-1990s, with appearances in supporting roles, in films Wyatt Earp (1994), The Last Supper (1995) and critical praise biopic, Nixon (1995). The next year, Gish appeared in the ensemble cast movie, Beautiful Girls (1996). On television, Gish played the younger sister of Dana Delany's character in True Women (1997), a epic miniseries, based on the best seller novel by Janice Woods Windle. Her other credits include the miniseries, Scarlett (1994), the short-lived Patricia Wettig's drama series Courthouse (1995), the box office bomb superhero film, Steel (1997), a supporting role on Ashley Judd's success thriller, Double Jeopardy (1999), and several other independent films.
Most recently, Gish played "Special Agent Monica Reyes" on the cult series, The X-Files (1993) (2001-2002), for which she was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress on Television. She also starred in the Showtime drama, Brotherhood (2006) (2006-2008) and appeared in recurring roles on The West Wing (1999) (2003-2006), Flashforward (2009) (2010), Pretty Little Liars (2010) (2011-2012) and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000) (2011-2012). In 2012, she starred on the ABC drama series, Americana (2012), as Ashley Greene's character's mother. - Actress
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Freida Selena Pinto was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), Maharashtra, India, to Sylvia, a school principal, and Frederick Pinto, a senior bank branch manager. She is from a Mangalorean family.
Pinto traversed the modeling circuit in Mumbai (represented by Elite Model Management India) for two years before gaining her big break when director Danny Boyle picked her out in the audition process to play the female lead, Latika, for his project Slumdog Millionaire (2008). In a promo interview, Boyle likened spotting her to his discovery of Kelly Macdonald for Trainspotting.
Surprisingly, Freida, who studied at Mumbai's St. Xaviers College, began taking acting classes (she has done amateur theater before) only after completing her debut film -- when she attended a three-month workshop by Barry John, the veteran theater guru.
Between 2006 and 2007, she anchored Full Circle, a travel show that was telecast on Zee International Asia Pacific. She went on assignments to Afghanistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Fiji, among other countries.- Actress
Lyne Renée (real name Line van Wambeke, born 17 May 1979) is a Belgian actress.
She graduated from the Studio Herman Teirlick in Antwerp, Belgium. From 2003 to 2005, she worked as a stage actress in Belgian theaters, and then starred in the Belgian TV series Kinderen van Dewindt and the Dutch film Ober, by Alex van Warmerdam. In 2006 she moved to Los Angeles and appeared in the movies The Box Collector (2008) and The Hessen Affair (2009). The latter is a film noir, the plot of which takes place in US-occupied Germany right after the end of World War II. In it, Renée plays a femme fatale, the driving force behind a jewelry heist.
In 2011 she moved to London, where she starred in The River Line at the Jermyn Street Theatre. She also appeared in the TV series Strike Back and Parade's End.
In 2016, she had a recurring role on the ABC series Of Kings and Prophets as the Witch of Endor, appeared in the miniseries Madoff as Catherine Hooper, fiancee of Andrew Madoff, and had a role in the thriller Split. Then in 2017, she appeared in the second season of the PBS series Mercy Street as well as the film The Hippopotamus. In 2019, she had another major film role, in Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen.- Actress
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Molly Parker, the extremely talented and versatile Canadian actress is best known in the United States for playing the Western widow "Alma Garret" on the cable-TV series Deadwood (2004). Raised on a commune, she described as "a hippie farm" in Pitt Meadows, B.C., Parker got the acting bug when she was 16 years old, after 13 years of ballet training. Parker's uncle was an actor, and his agent took her on as a client, enabling her to launch her career in small roles on Canadian television. She enrolled at Vancouver's Gastown Actors' Studio after she graduated from high school, and continued to act on TV in series and TV-movies while learning her craft at acting school.
Parker began attracting attention when she appeared as the daughter of a lesbian military officer in the TV-movie Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (1995). She earned a Gemini nomination (the Canadian TV industry's equivalent of the Emmy) for her performance in the TV-movie Paris or Somewhere (1994). However, it was her debut in theatrical films that gave her her big breakthrough, playing a necrophiliac in Lynne Stopkewich's 1996 film Kissed (1996). It was "Kissed" that set Molly's career into overdrive.
A friend got her an audition for the low-budget independent feature film, and she hit if off with the director, who not only cast her, but became her friend. As the character "Sandra Larson", a poetic soul obsessed with death who engages in sexual congress with a corpse, Parker created a sympathetic character in a difficult role. The film garnered her rave revues and she won a Genie Award, the Canadian cinema's Academy Award, for her performance. She parlayed the accolades into a sustained career on film and in TV.
On TV, Parker was part of the cast of CBC-TV's six-part sitcom Twitch City (1998), playing the girlfriend of Don McKellar, which enabled her to showcase her comedic skills. Other memorable TV roles was the female rabbi on Home Box Office's series Six Feet Under (2001) and, of course, the regular role on HBO's Deadwood (2004). She has appeared in many ambitious films, including Jeremy Podeswa's The Five Senses (1999), István Szabó's Sunshine (1999) and Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland (1999). She also re-teamed with director Lynne Stopkewich for Suspicious River (2000).
Parker made waves with another provocative film with sex as its subject, director Wayne Wang's The Center of the World (2001). In the movie, Parker played a San Francisco lap dancer who becomes a paid escort to a Silicon Valley nerd. For her performance, she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. In 2002, she was nominated twice as best supporting actress at the Genies for her roles in the British/Canadian co-production War Bride (2001) and Bruce Sweeney's Last Wedding (2001), winning for her appearance in the latter film.
Parker's reputation as an outstanding actress is based on her assaying of strong, yet flawed, definitely complex women in character-leads and supporting parts in challenging films. Not only does she convey intelligence, but there is an unconscious elegance to her, a true inner beauty that radiates on-screen. She will be gracing the screen, both large and small, with her unique presence for many years to come.- Ayça Bingöl was born in Istanbul in 1975. She graduated from the Theatre Department at the Istanbul University State Conservatory in 1998. Bingöl started performing as a professional actress at the Dormen Theatre in 1996. From 1998 to 2000, she acted as a guest actress at the Theatre Fora. She has also performed in many films, commercials, and TV series. In addition, she acts as a voice actress. Bingöl is a member of Yeditepe Actors. In the season of 2007-2008, she acted in the play "Bana Bir Picasso Gerek" at the Duru Theatre. In 2008-2009, she performed in "Nehrin Solgun Yüzü" at the Theater Studio. Bingöl has received many awards for her performance. She continues her work in Istanbul.
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Mickey Sumner was born on 19 January 1984. She is an actress and director, known for Frances Ha (2012), Snowpiercer (2020) and Battle of the Sexes (2017). She has been married to Chris Kantrowitz since 1 July 2017. They have one child.- Actress
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Emmanuelle Seigner is the daughter of a well known photographer and her mother is a journalist. She was born in Paris, France on June 22, 1966. Her grandfather was Louis Seigner, chairman of the Comédie Française and who also appeared in several movies. Emmanuelle was raised at a convent school . At age fourteen she became a model. Her mysterious beauty made her an international cover-model. Jean-Luc Godard gave her a part in his crime movie Detective (1985), starring Johnny Hallyday and Nathalie Baye. In 1986 Emmanuelle played the part of Zanon a young girl in the movie Cours privé (1986) (by Pierre Granier-Deferre). She met Roman Polanski and married him. He gave her a part in the thriller Frantic (1988) with Harrison Ford. Four years later Polanski gave her the leading part in the movie Bitter Moon (1992).- Actress
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Chiara Mastroianni was born on 28 May 1972 in Paris, France. She is an actress, known for Persepolis (2007), Ready to Wear (1994) and Beloved (2011). She was previously married to Benjamin Biolay.- Actress
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Hediyeh Tehrani started her acting career with Masud Kimiai's "The Sultan (1997)", which made her a recognizable star instantly. Previously, she had been offered a few roles which she passed on. In 1997, Hedieh won a Hafiz Award (a prestigious industry award in Iran) for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of 'Maryam Koohsari' in Soltan. Since then, Hedieh has won numerous awards for her numerous roles - both nationally and internationally- perhaps making her one of the most recognizable artists in Iran. Hedieh is known for her portrayal of strong, willful and often stubborn women. Besides her acting career, Hedieh has been adamant about promoting her country- Iran- through her photography. Her pictorial essays on some of the most remote areas of Iran has garnered her much recognition and she is an active member of "Khooshe Saar-e Boomi" a grassroot organization dedicated to preserving native and indigenous cultural habitats and customs. She has been instrumental in organizing photography and educational tours in this area. Hediyeh is also an active member of a children's charity, Bonyad-e Koodak, lending her time and name to bringing children's issues to the forefront.- Actress
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Clotilde Hesme was born in Troyes, France in 1979. She is the sister of Annelise Hesme, and Élodie Hesme, who are also actresses. After studying at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique (CNSAD), she appeared in plays and was noticed by Jérôme Bonnel who cast her in his film Le Chignon d'Olga in 2002. In 2005 she appeared in Philippe Garrel's Regular Lovers. She was nominated for the 2008 César Award for Most Promising Actress for her role in Christophe Honoré's Love Songs. She won the César Award for Most Promising Actress in 2010 for the film Angèle et Tony.- Actress
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From the age of 13,she attended the Italia Conte stage school where she studied dance, drama, and singing for three years. At 16, she began her modeling career gracing the covers of numerous magazines including GQ, FHM, Maxim, Sky, Cosmopolitan, Hello, Tatler, The Face, and Company, becoming one of the most recognisable in Britain, It wasn't long before Madison Avenue started calling, and in 1995, she got her first advertising campaign for Lee Jeans. Since then, she's been featured in campaigns for Renault Megane Walkers and Piz Buin. In 1998, she launched the biggest bra campaign ever for Triumph's Flaunt range and was featured on billboards nation wide, Her UK television credits are extensive and include co-hosting Britain's most popular morning programme magazine Channel 4's The Big Breakfast and MTV's live two-hour show Select. She also hosted VPL, a magazine lifestyle programme for Granada Television, the final concert at Wembley Stadium for Sky Premiers Oasis Live at Wembley. Her US credits include a four-episode arc on the WB's Smallville portraying Lex Luthor's girlfriend. She made her feature film debut in the thriller Ripper, released in October 2001, and also starred in the play "Eye Contact" at the Riverside Studios in Lonon. In her first stage role, her character Anya explores the world of adult dance clubs from an honest and funny point of view,- Actress
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Evelyne Brochu was born on 17 November 1983 in Montreal, Québec, Canada. She is an actress and producer, known for Tom at the Farm (2013), Pawn Sacrifice (2014) and Café de Flore (2011).- Actress
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Nicholson was born and raised in Medford, Massachusetts (outside Boston), and is the eldest of four siblings. She is the daughter of Kate (Gilday) and James O. Nicholson, Jr., and is of Irish heritage. Nicholson moved to New York which led to a modeling career in Paris. She attended Hunter College as a General Studies Major. She is married to British actor Jonathan Cake. The couple met playing a couple in an HBO pilot "Marriage" directed by Michael Apted.- 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.