Kristin Davis

Kristin Landen Davis (also listed as Kristin Lee Davis) (born February 23 or February 24, 1965 depending on the source) is an American Golden Globe and Emmy award-nominated actress best known for the role of Charlotte York on HBO's Sex and the City.

Biography
Davis was born in Boulder, Colorado. An only child, her parents divorced when she was a baby and she was adopted by her stepfather after he married her mother in 1968. Early in her childhood Kristin and her parents moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where her adoptive father served as provost and taught psychology at the University of South Carolina. She lived in South Carolina until she graduated from A.C. Flora High School in 1983. She then moved to New Jersey, where she attended Rutgers University.
After graduation in 1987, Davis moved to New York and waited tables before opening a yoga studio with a friend. In 1995 she got her big break when she landed the role of Brooke Armstrong Campbell on Melrose Place. She left the show after one year when producers found that viewers disliked her less-than-agreeable character. Davis also had roles in other television series including Friends and Seinfeld. In 1998, Davis was cast as Charlotte York in "Sex and the City", of which she remained an integral cast member until the series ended in 2004. She has also hosted the VH1 show 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons.
In 2005, Davis starred in a television pilot entitled Soccer Moms in which she and Gina Torres star as two suburban mothers who moonlight as private detectives. Other films include The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D, where she plays Max's mom, opposite David Arquette and George Lopez, and the Walt Disney Pictures film The Shaggy Dog, where she plays Rebecca Douglas, opposite Tim Allen, and Deck The Halls, opposite Matthew Broderick. She also performed in ABC Family's Christmas movie, Three Days, and starred in a commercial for Head and Shoulders in 2006.
Davis is currently shooting the Sex and the City feature film, together with her fellow cast under the direction of executive producer Michael Patrick King.

Personal life
Davis was introduced to alcohol early. It left her with a liking that turned into an excess need, and from which she battled back: "I'm 12 years sober, so I don't have beer! When I used to drink I really liked Bass Ale!"
Having admitted to a preference for dating actors, her ex-boyfriend list is high profile and extensive, including: Alec Baldwin (with whom she guest starred on both "Will & Grace" 1998 and "Friends") Jeff Goldblum and Liev Schreiber. She says: ""If I had one wish for myself, it would be to fall in love. That's asking for trouble, but that's the truth."
Davis currently resides in Los Angeles.

Catherine Zeta-Jones

Catherine Zeta-Jones (born September 25, 1969) is an Academy Award-winning Welsh actress based predominantly in the United States. She began her career on stage at an early age. After starring in a number of UK and US television films and small roles in films, she came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies such as The Phantom, The Mask of Zorro, and Entrapment in the late 1990s. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for portraying Velma Kelly in the 2002 film adaptation of Chicago, making her the first and only Welsh actress to do so in that category. Zeta-Jones is married to Michael Douglas, with whom she shares a birthday. They have two children - Dylan (named after Dylan Thomas) and Carys.

Early life
Zeta-Jones was born Catherine Zeta Jones in Swansea, a maritime city located on the southern coast of Wales. Her mother, Patricia (n?e Fair), was an Irish seamstress, and her father, David "Dai" Jones, was a Welsh sweet factory owner. Zeta-Jones had one older brother, David A Jones, and one younger, Lyndon. Her father's cousin is married to singer Bonnie Tyler, who is also from Swansea, Wales. Her uncle owns Swansea's ?koda car dealership as well as Llanelli A.F.C. football club. Her name stems from those of her grandmothers - her maternal grandmother, Katherine Fair, and her paternal grandmother, Zeta Jones.
Zeta-Jones was raised Catholic. After her parents won ?100,000 at bingo in the 1980s, they moved to St. Andrews Drive in Mayals, an upper class area of Swansea. Zeta-Jones attended Dumbarton House School in Swansea. Welsh comedian and actor Rob Brydon also went there. She left school early to further her acting ambitions without obtaining O levels and went on to attend The Arts Educational Schools in Chiswick for a full-time three year course in musical theatre.

Career
Zeta-Jones' stage career began in childhood. She often performed at friends and family functions when she was younger. She was a part of a Catholic congregation's performing troupe before she was 10. During this time Zeta-Jones made her professional acting debut when she played the lead in Annie, a production at Swansea's Grand Theater. She also starred in a version of Bugsy Malone. At 14, Mickey Dolenz (of "The Monkees" fame) was visiting Wales and stopped by the Grand Theater to audition her for The Pyjama Game. He was so impressed with her performance that she was offered the opportunity to join his show for the rest of the tour. By 1987 Zeta-Jones was starring in 42nd Street as Peggy Sawyer in the West End. Once the show closed, the actress travelled to France, where she received the lead role in French director Philippe de Broca's 1001 Nights (also known as Sheherazade), her feature film debut.
Her Welsh and exotic looks, along with her singing and dancing ability, suggested a promising future, but it was in a straight acting role, as Mariette in the successful British television adaptation of H. E. Bates' The Darling Buds of May, that made her name. She briefly flirted with a musical career, beginning with a part in the 1992 album: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version Of Spartacus, from which the single "For All Time" was released in 1989. It failed to chart. She went on to release the singles "In the Arms of Love," "I Can't Help Myself," and a duet with David Essex, "True Love Ways." The duet was her only chart single, reaching #38 in the UK singles chart in 1994. She also starred in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, as well as in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery.
She continued to find moderate success with a number of television projects, including The Return of the Native (1994) and the mini-series Catherine the Great (1995). She also appeared in Splitting Heirs (1993), a comedy starring Eric Idle, Rick Moranis and John Cleese.
In 1996, she was cast as the evil aviatrix "Sala" in the action film, The Phantom, based on the comic created by Lee Falk. Her character did her best to kill Billy Zane's Phantom, while assisting villain Xander Drax (Treat Williams) in taking over the world with a weapon of doom. The following year, she starred in the CBS mini-series Titanic, which also starred Tim Curry and Peter Gallagher. Steven Spielberg, who noted her performance in the mini-series, recommended her to Martin Campbell, the director of The Mask of Zorro. Zeta-Jones subsequently landed a lead role in the film, alongside fellow Welsh compatriot Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas. She learnt dancing, riding, sword-fighting and took part in dialect classes in order to play her role as Elena. Commenting on her performance, the Variety wrote, "Zeta-Jones is bewitchingly lovely as the center of everyone's attention, and she throws herself into the often physical demands of her role with impressive grace." The following year she co-starred with Sean Connery in the film Entrapment, and alongside Liam Neeson and Lili Taylor in The Haunting.
In 2000, she starred in the critically-acclaimed Traffic with future husband Michael Douglas. Traffic earned praise from the wide press, and the Dallas Observer called the movie "a remarkable achievement in filmmaking, a beautiful and brutal work". Zeta-Jones performance earned her her first Golden Globe nomination, as Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture.
In 2003, Zeta-Jones played Velma Kelly in the film Chicago. Velma Kelly, her character, is a glamorous Chicago jazz stage performer who has to do time after killing her boyfriend. Her performance was praised by the press, among them were the Seattle Pi, which wrote, "Zeta-Jones makes a wonderfully statuesque and bitchy saloon goddess." Subsequently, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. On 22 October 2005, she referenced her award, as guest host on the television show Saturday Night Live, surrounded by four male dancers, mimicking the Bob Fosse-inspired Chicago-style dancing, suggesting in song that, no matter how bad she might be that night, "They Can't Take My Oscar Away." For her role in Chicago, she specifically requested a 1920s-style short bob wig, so her face could be seen and fans wouldn't doubt she did all her dancing herself.
In 2003, she voiced Marina in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas opposite Brad Pitt, as well as starring in Intolerable Cruelty with George Clooney. In 2004 she was in The Terminal, as well as Ocean's Twelve, the sequel to Ocean's Eleven. In 2005, she reprised her role as Elena in The Legend of Zorro, the sequel to The Mask of Zorro. In 2007, she starred in the romantic comedy No Reservations, a remake of the German film Mostly Martha. She stars in and produces the rugby union-related comedy, Coming Out. The film is produced by her company Milkwood Films.

Personal life
Zeta-Jones is married to actor Michael Douglas. She claims that when they met, he used the line "I'd like to father your children". They were married at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on 18 November 2000. A traditional Welsh choir (C?r Cymraeg Rehoboth) sang at her wedding. Her Welsh gold wedding ring includes a Celtic motif and was purchased in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth. Their son, Dylan Michael Douglas, was born 8 August 2000. Their daughter, Carys Zeta Douglas, was born April 20, 2003.
Her elder brother, David A. Jones (also known as Cameron Jones), is Vice President of the film company, Initial Entertainment. He was an executive producer of Gangs of New York. Her younger brother, Lyndon Jones, is her personal manager and producer for Milkwood Films. Zeta-Jones's parents recently moved from their Mayals property to a ?2 million home two miles further west along the Swansea coast, paid for by their daughter.
Apart from her acting career, Zeta-Jones is also an advertising spokeswoman, currently the global spokeswoman for cosmetics giant Elizabeth Arden.
Zeta-Jones lives predominantly with Douglas and the children in Bermuda but they are regular visitors to the new family home in Swansea, Wales.

In the media
Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders parodied Zeta-Jones as a vacuous ?ber-celebrity named Catherine Spartacus-Zeta-Douglas-Jones on their show French & Saunders in the series Back With a Vengeance. Catherine Spartacus-Zeta-Douglas-Jones alternates between a strong Welsh accent and a strong American accent and uses Welsh-language phrases when she speaks.

Halle Berry

Halle Maria Berry (IPA: /?h?l? ?b?r?/; born August 14, 1966) is an American actress and former fashion model and beauty queen. Berry has received Emmy and Golden Globe awards for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, and an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002 for her performance in Monster's Ball, becoming the only woman of African-American descent to have won the award for Best Actress. She is one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood and also a Revlon spokeswoman. She is attempting to expand into the production side of Hollywood.
Before becoming an actress, Berry entered several beauty contests, finishing runner-up in Miss USA (1986), and winning the Miss USA World 1986 contest. Her breakthrough feature film role was in the 1991 Jungle Fever. This led to roles in The Flintstones (1994), Bulworth (1998), X-Men (2000) and its sequels, and Die Another Day. She also won a worst actress Razzie award in 2005 for Catwoman, and accepted the award in person.
Divorced from baseball player David Justice and musician Eric Ben?t, Berry has been dating French-Canadian model Gabriel Aubry since November 2005.

Early life
Berry's parents selected her first name from Halle's Department Store, which was then a local landmark in her birthplace of Cleveland, Ohio. She is the daughter of Liverpool-born Englishwoman Judith Ann (n?e Hawkins) and African-American Jerome Jesse Berry. Berry's maternal grandmother, Nellie Dicken, was born in Sawley, Derbyshire, England, while her maternal grandfather, Earl Ellsworth Hawkins (an American), was born in Ohio. Berry's parents divorced when she was 4 years old and she was subsequently raised by her mother, a psychiatric nurse. Her father was an orderly in the same psychiatric ward where her mother worked and later became a bus driver. Berry said in published reports that she was estranged from her father since her childhood.
Berry studied at Bedford High School She worked in the children's department at Higbee's Department store. She subsequently attended the Cuyahoga Community College. In the 1980s, she entered several beauty contests, winning Miss Teen All-American in 1985 and Miss Ohio USA in 1986. Other entries included Miss USA (first runner-up in 1986 to Christy Fichtner of Texas, the second of the Texas Aces), and sixth place in Miss World 1986 (the winner being Trinidad and Tobago's Giselle Laronde). In the Miss USA 1986 pageant interview competition, she said she hoped to become an entertainer or to have something to do with the media. Her interview was awarded the highest score by the judges.
In 1989, during the taping of the short-lived television series Living Dolls, Berry lapsed into a coma and was diagnosed with diabetes mellitus type 1.

Acting career
In the late 1980s, Berry went to Chicago to pursue a modeling career as well as acting. One of her first acting projects was a television series for local cable by Gordon Lake Productions called Chicago Force. In 1992, Berry was cast as the love interest in the video for R. Kelly's seminal single, "Honey Love".
In 1989, Berry landed the role of Emily Franklin in the short-lived ABC television series Living Dolls (a spin-off of Who's the Boss?). Her breakthrough feature film role was in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, in which she played a drug addict named Vivian. Her first co-starring role was in the 1991 film Strictly Business. In 1992, Berry portrayed a career woman who falls for Eddie Murphy in the romantic comedy Boomerang. That same year, she caught the public's attention as a headstrong biracial slave in the TV adaption of Queen: The Story of an American Family, based on the book by Alex Haley. Berry also played the sultry secretary who seduced Fred Flintstone in the live-action Flintstones movie as "Sharon Stone".
Playing a former drug addict struggling to regain custody of her son in Losing Isaiah (1995), Berry showed she could tackle more serious roles, holding her own opposite co-star Jessica Lange. She portrayed Sandra Beecher in Race the Sun (1996), which was based on a true story, and co-starred along side Kurt Russell in Executive Decision. From 1996 onwards, she was a Revlon spokeswoman for seven years and renewed her contract in 2004.
In 1998, Berry received praise for her role in Bulworth as an intelligent woman raised by activists who gives politician Warren Beatty a new lease on life. The same year,she played the singer Zola Taylor, one of the three wives of pop singer Frankie Lymon, in the biopic Why Do Fools Fall in Love. In the 1999 film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, she portrayed the first black woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. In the HBO biopic, Berry's performance was recognized with several awards, including an Emmy and a Golden Globe. (She was also one of the producers of the project.)
Berry portrayed the mutant superhero Storm in the movie adaptation of the comic book series X-Men (2000) and its sequels X2: X-Men United (2003) and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). In 2001, Berry appeared in the film Swordfish, which featured her first on-screen nude scene.
In 2001, Berry appeared as Leticia Musgrove, the wife of an executed murderer, in the film Monster's Ball. Her performance was awarded the National Board of Review and the Screen Actors Guild prizes, and earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Berry made history by becoming the first African-American woman to receive a Best Actress Academy Award.

International success
As Bond girl Jinx in the 2002 blockbuster Die Another Day, she famously recreated the scene from Dr. No, bursting from the surf to be greeted by James Bond, as Ursula Andress had 40 years earlier. In late 2003, she starred in the psychological thriller Gothika opposite Robert Downey Jr. The same year, she was named #1 in FHM's 100 Sexiest Women in the World poll. Her next lead role was in the film Catwoman, for which she was awarded a "worst actress" Razzie award in 2005. She accepted the award in person with a sense of humor, considering it an experience of the "rock bottom" in order to be "at the top". Holding the Academy Award in one hand and the Razzie in the other she said, "I never in my life thought that I would be here, winning a Razzie. It's not like I ever aspired to be here, but thank you. When I was a kid, my mother told me that if you could not be a good loser, then there's no way you could be a good winner".
Berry next appeared in the Oprah Winfrey-produced ABC telepic Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005), an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's novel, in which Berry portrayed Janie Crawford, an iconoclastic, free-spirited woman whose unconventional mores regarding relationships upset her 1920s contemporaries in her small community. Meanwhile, she voiced the character of Cappy, one of the many mechanical beings in the animated feature Robots (2005). In 2006, Hasty Pudding Theatricals gave her the Woman of The Year award. She starred in the thriller Perfect Stranger with Bruce Willis and wrapped shooting on Things We Lost in the Fire with Benicio del Toro. She is set to star in Class Act, based on the real life story of a teacher whose students helped her run for political office, and "Tulia", which will reunite her with Monster's Ball costar Billy Bob Thornton.
Berry is making the transition to working on the production side of film and television. She is working with author Angela Nissel to executive-produce a comedy series based on Nissel's two memoirs, The Broke Diaries and Mixed: My Life in Black and White. Berry has served many years as the face of Revlon cosmetics and also served as the face of Versace. She is featured in Maxim magazine's Girls of Maxim gallery.
Berry is one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood, earning $14 million each for Gothika and Catwoman. In July 2007, she topped In Touch magazine's list of the world's most fabulous 40-something celebrities. On April 3, 2007, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of the Kodak Theatre at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to the film industry.

Personal life
Berry has been married twice. Her first marriage, in 1992 to former baseball player David Justice, ended in divorce in 1996. Justice played with the Atlanta Braves and experienced a measure of fame as the team rose to prominence in the early 1990s. The couple found it difficult to maintain their relationship while he was playing baseball and she was filming elsewhere. Berry has stated publicly that she was so disappointed after her breakup with Justice that she considered taking her own life.
Berry's second marriage was to musician Eric Ben?t. They had met in 1997, and married in 2001. Berry credited Ben?t with support after she was involved in a February 2000 car accident. She had suffered a concussion but had left the scene before the police arrived, resulting in a misdemeanor charge. The incident became fodder for comedians. Berry stated she felt "really good about the resolution"; she pled no contest, paid a fine and was placed on three years' probation.
The couple separated in 2003. After the separation, Berry stated, "I want love, and I will find it, hopefully". While married to Ben?t, Berry had made plans to adopt Eric's daughter, India, but this never occurred. The divorce was finalized in January 2005.
In November 2005, she began dating French-Canadian supermodel Gabriel Aubry, who is ten years her junior. The couple met at a Versace photoshoot. After six months with Aubry, she stated in an interview, "I'm really happy in my personal life, which is a novelty to me. You know, I'm not the girl that has the best relationships".
Berry revealed on Extra that she plans to adopt children. "I will adopt if it doesn't happen for me naturally", she said. "I will definitely adopt. And I probably will adopt even if it does happen naturally". Later she stated, "I never want to be married again. I guess you could say I have bad taste in men. But I no longer feel the need to be someone's wife. I don't feel like I need to be validated by being in a marriage".
After initially denying rumors that she was pregnant, Berry confirmed in September 2007 that she was three months pregnant with Aubry's child. She stated has hopes to have a second child right away.

Berry in the media
Berry has stated that the manner in which people have reacted to her is often the result of ignorance. Her own self-identification has been influenced by her mother. She is quoted as saying
While taping the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on October 22, 2007, Berry displayed a distorted image of her face, remarking: "Here's where I look like my Jewish cousin!" During the editing of the program, the comment was obscured by a laugh track. The New York Post "Page Six" article that reported the story included Berry's reaction: "Berry, 41, who sounded like she was near tears, told Page Six last night: '"What happened was I was backstage before the show and I have three girls who are Jewish who work for me. We were going through pictures to see which ones looked silly, and one of my Jewish friends said [of the big-nose picture], 'That could be your Jewish cousin!' And I guess it was fresh in my mind, and it just came out of my mouth. But I didn't mean to offend anybody. I didn't. I didn't mean any harm. - and after the show I realized it could be seen as offensive, so I asked Jay to take it out, and he did.'"

Nicole Kidman

Nicole Mary Kidman, AC (born 20 June 1967) is an Academy Award-winning Australian A-list actress. In 2006, she became the highest paid actress in the film industry. In the same year, Kidman was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), Australia's highest civilian honour.
After making various appearances in film and television, Kidman received her breakthrough role in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. Since then, Kidman's acting career has developed greatly. Her performances in several films, such as To Die For (1995), Moulin Rouge! (2001), and The Hours (2002), have won her not only critical acclaim but also many film awards. In 2003, Kidman received her Star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California. Kidman is also a UNIFEM and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, a singer and a successful recording artist.
She is also well-known for her former high-profile marriage to Tom Cruise, as well as her current marriage to singer Keith Urban. Because she was born to Australian parents in Honolulu, Hawaii, Kidman has dual citizenship of Australia and the United States. In January 2008, she announced that she is pregnant with her first biological child, with husband Keith Urban.

Early life and family
Kidman was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the daughter of Janelle Ann (n?e MacNeille), a nursing instructor who edits her husband's books and was a member of the Women's Electoral Lobby, and Dr. Anthony David Kidman, a biochemist, clinical psychologist and author, with an office in Lane Cove, Sydney. At the time of Nicole Kidman's birth, her father was a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, D.C. The family returned to Australia when Kidman was four years old, when her father took on a lectureship at the University of Technology, Sydney. Kidman's parents now reside in Sydney's North Shore.
She started taking ballet lessons when she was four. She attended Lane Cove Public School in her primary years and later attended North Sydney Girls' High School. While living in Longueville, she attended St Mary's Cathedral College, but dropped out when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer; Kidman concentrated on her family responsibilities until her mother's recovery. She then trained at the Phillip Street Theatre, where she majored in voice production and theatre history. This led to studies at Sydney's Australian Theatre for Young People (of which she is now a patron).
She has a younger sister, Antonia Kidman who is a journalist. She has two adopted children with Tom Cruise.

Career

Early career in Australia (1983-1989)
Kidman's first appearance in film came in 1983 when, as a fifteen year-old, she appeared in the Pat Wilson music video for the song Bop Girl. By the end of the year she had secured a supporting role in the television series Five Mile Creek and four film roles, including BMX Bandits and Bush Christmas. During the 1980s, she appeared in several Australian movies and TV series, notably including the soap opera A Country Practice, the mini-series Vietnam (1986), Emerald City (1988), and Bangkok Hilton (1989).
In 1982, she might have appeared in the video for Roxy Music's song "True To Life".

Breakthrough (1989-1995)
In 1989, Kidman starred in the thriller film Dead Calm as Rae Ingram, the wife of naval officer John Ingram (Sam Neill), held captive on a Pacific Ocean yacht trip by the psychotic Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane). The thriller film received generally positive reviews; the staff of Variety.com commented: "Throughout the film, Kidman is excellent. She gives the character of Rae real tenacity and energy." Meanwhile, critic Roger Ebert noted the excellent chemistry between the leads, stating, "...Kidman and Zane do generate real, palpable hatred in their scenes together." In 1990, she appeared opposite Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, a stock car racing movie. After this, Kidman starred with Cruise in Ron Howard's Far and Away (1992). In 1995, Kidman featured in the ensemble cast of Batman Forever. On November 20, 1993 she hosted Saturday Night Live.

Critical success (1995-present)
Her second film in 1995, To Die For was a satirical comedy that earned her praise from critics. She won a Golden Globe Award, and five other best actress awards for her portrayal of the murderous newscaster Suzanne Stone Maretto. Kidman and Cruise portrayed a married couple in Eyes Wide Shut in 1999, Stanley Kubrick's final film.
In 2002, Kidman received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in the 2001 musical film Moulin Rouge!, in which she played the courtesan Satine opposite Ewan McGregor. Consequently, Kidman received her second Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The same year, she had a well-received starring role in the horror film The Others. While in Australia filming Moulin Rouge!, Kidman injured her knee; as a result, Jodie Foster had to replace her as leading actress in the film Panic Room. In that film, Kidman's voice appears on the phone, as the mistress of the lead character's husband.
The following year, Kidman won critical praise for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, in which the prosthetics applied to her made her almost unrecognizable. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for this role, along with a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA, and numerous critics awards. Kidman became the first Australian actress to win an Academy Award. During her Academy Award acceptance speech, after tearing, Kidman made a statement about the importance of art, even during times of war: "Why do you come to the Academy Awards when the world is in such turmoil? Because art is important. And because you believe in what you do and you want to honor that, and it is a tradition that needs to be upheld."
In the same year, Kidman starred in three very different films. Dogville, by Danish director Lars von Trier, an experimental film set on a bare soundstage. Secondly, she co-starred alongside Anthony Hopkins in the film adaptation of Philip Roth's novel The Human Stain. Cold Mountain, a love story of two Southerners separated by the Civil War, was her final release that year, and garnered her a Golden Globe Award nomination.
In 2004, Kidman appeared in the critically panned remake of The Stepford Wives alongside Glenn Close, Faith Hill and Bette Midler. In September of the same year, Birth, in which the 37-year-old actress' character has an encounter with a 10-year-old boy (played by Cameron Bright) who attempts to convince her that he is a reincarnation of her dead husband, was met with a mixed reception primarily due to a scene where the boy strips and joins Kidman in the bathtub. Despite this, the film was nominated for the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, and Kidman was nominated for another Golden Globe Award. Kidman's two movies in 2005 were The Interpreter, directed by Sydney Pollack, the film received mixed reviews, though it did become a considerable success at the box office grossing nearly $165 million worldwide, with its $80 million budget, and Bewitched, co-starring Will Ferrell, based on the 1960s TV sitcom of the same name; the latter fared abysmally with critics and made only $131,413,159 at the box office.
In conjunction with her success in the film industry, Kidman became the face of the Chanel No. 5 perfume brand. She starred in a campaign of television and print ads with Rodrigo Santoro, directed by Moulin Rouge! director Baz Luhrmann to promote the fragrance during the holiday season in 2004, 2005, and 2006. The three-minute commercial produced for Chanel No. 5 perfume made Kidman the record holder for the most money paid per minute to an actor after she reportedly earned $US3.71 million. During this time, Kidman was also listed as the 45th Most Powerful Celebrity on the 2005 Forbes Celebrity 100 List. She made a reported US$14.5 million in 2004-2005. On People magazine's list of 2005's highest paid actresses, Kidman was second behind Julia Roberts with a US$16 million to US$17 million per-film price tag. She has since passed Roberts as the highest paid actress.
Recently, Kidman appeared in the Diane Arbus bio-pic Fur, she also lent her voice to the animated film Happy Feet, which quickly garnered critical and commercial success, the film grossed over $384 million dollars worldwide. In 2007, she starred in the science fiction movie The Invasion, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, and played opposite Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black in Noah Baumbach's comedy-drama Margot at the Wedding. She also starred in the film adaptation of the first part of the planned His Dark Materials trilogy of films, playing the villainous Mrs. Coulter. However, The Golden Compass''s failure to meet expectations at the North American box office has reduced the likelihood of a sequel.
She is also set to star in director Wong Kar-wai's next film, The Lady from Shanghai and Baz Luhrmann's Australian period film titled Australia, which is set in the remote Northern Territory during the Japanese attack on Darwin during World War II. Kidman will play an English woman feeling overwhelmed by the continent, opposite Hugh Jackman.
On 25 June 2007, Nintendo announced that Kidman is to be the new face of Nintendo's advertising campaign for the Nintendo DS game More Brain Training in its European market.
Kidman was featured in a series of advertisements for Sky in Italy, speaking Italian during the spots.
It is reported that Kidman will star and produce in an upcoming romantic comedy film called Monte Carlo. She plays one member of a trio of school teachers on holiday who cut short their no-frills sojourn in Paris and head to Monte Carlo, where they pose as wealthy vacationers.
Kidman was originally set to star in The Reader (film) a post-war Germany drama, but due to her pregnancy she had to back out of the film. Shortly after the news of Kidman's departure, it was announced that Kate Winslet would take over the role.

Singing
Not known as a singer prior to Moulin Rouge!, Kidman had several well-received vocal performances in the film. Her collaboration with Ewan McGregor on the song "Come What May" from the film's soundtrack debuted and peaked at 27 in the UK Singles Chart. Later she collaborated with Robbie Williams on the song "Somethin' Stupid", a cover of the old swing song on Williams' swing covers album Swing When You're Winning. It debuted and peaked at 8 in the Australian ARIAnet Singles Chart, and at number 1 for three weeks in the UK. It was the UK Christmas number 1 Single for 2001.
In 2006, she provided her voice for the animated movie Happy Feet, along with her vocals for her character Norma Jean's 'heartsong', which was a slightly altered version of "Kiss" by Prince.

Personal life

Relationships
Kidman met Tom Cruise on the set of their 1990 movie, Days of Thunder. Cruise was married to actress Mimi Rogers at the time, and later divorced her. Kidman and Cruise were married on Christmas Eve 1990 in Telluride, Colorado. The couple adopted two children, daughter Isabella Jane Cruise (b. December 22, 1992) and son Connor Anthony Cruise (b. January 17, 1995), and lived in Los Angeles, Australia, Colorado, and New York City. They separated just before their 10th wedding anniversary. At the time she was 3 months pregnant and subsequently had a miscarriage. Tom Cruise filed for divorce in February 2001. The marriage was dissolved in 2001, with Cruise citing irreconcilable differences as the cause of the divorce. The reasons for the dissolution have never been made public. Also, in an interview for Marie Claire magazine, Kidman mentions that she had an ectopic pregnancy early in their marriage. In an interview in the June 2006 issue of Ladies' Home Journal, Kidman reported that she still loved Tom Cruise. Kidman told the magazine: "He was huge; still is. To me, he was just Tom, but to everybody else, he is huge. But he was lovely to me. And I loved him. I still love him." In addition, she has expressed shock about their divorce.
The 2003 film Cold Mountain was plagued by rumours that an on-set affair between Kidman and co-star Jude Law was responsible for the breakup of his marriage. Both vehemently denied the allegations, and Kidman eventually won an undisclosed sum from the British tabloids that published the story. She donated the money to a Romanian orphanage in the town where the movie was filmed.. There were also rumours that she and Jim Carrey were going out after the two were spotted at restaurants together, but they both denied it explaining they are just the best of friends. Shortly after her Oscar win, there were unconfirmed rumours of a relationship between her and fellow Oscar winner Adrien Brody. She met musician Lenny Kravitz in 2003 and dated him into 2004. Nicole has recently revealed in an interview she was secretly engaged when her divorce from Tom Cruise was legalised and before she met Keith Urban. She declined to reveal who her fiance was, but considering Kravitz was her only major relationship between her two husbands, one could assume it was him.
Kidman met country singer Keith Urban at G'Day LA, an event honouring Australians in January 2005. Kidman and Urban were married on Sunday June 25, 2006, at the Cardinal Cerretti Memorial Chapel in the grounds of St Patrick's Estate, Manly in Sydney. They maintain homes in Sydney and Nashville, Tennessee.
After constant speculation by the press, on January 8, 2008, it was confirmed that Kidman is 3 months pregnant and that Kidman and Urban are expecting their first child together.

Religion
Kidman was raised a Catholic and currently is a practicing Catholic. She attended Mary Mackillop Chapel in North Sydney. However, during her marriage to Tom Cruise, she was a follower of Scientology.. She has kept private about Scientology in interviews, one time saying "I don't want to talk about it".

Politics
Kidman's name was included in an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times (August 17, 2006) that condemned organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, and supported Israel's efforts in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.
Kidman has made numerous donations to U.S. Democratic party candidates and endorsed John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

Charitable work
Kidman publicly supports a variety of charities and causes. She has been a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF Australia since 1994. She has worked to help raise money for and draw attention to the plight of the most disadvantaged children in Australia and around the world. In 2004, she was honoured as a "Citizen of the World" by the United Nations.
On January 26, 2006, Kidman received Australia's highest civilian honour when she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, for "service to the performing arts as an acclaimed motion picture performer, to health care through contributions to improve medical treatment for women and children and advocacy for cancer research, to youth as a principal supporter of young performing artists, and to humanitarian causes in Australia and internationally." However, due to film commitments and her wedding to Urban, it wasn't until 13 April 2007 that she was presented with the honour. She was also nominated goodwill ambassador for UNIFEM.
Kidman joined the 'Little Tee Campaign' for Breast Cancer Care to design T-shirts or vests to raise money for breast cancer. Kidman's mother, Janelle, is a breast cancer survivor who was diagnosed in 1984.
Kidman is a Patron of the Sydney Film Festival.

Press
In January 2005, Kidman won interim restraining orders against two Sydney-based paparazzi photographers.

Charlize Theron

Charlize Theron (born August 7, 1975) is a South African actress and former fashion model with American citizenship. She is well-known for her portrayal of the serial killing lesbian Aileen Wuornos in the film Monster, for which she won an Academy Award.

Biography

Early life
Theron was born in Benoni, Gauteng, South Africa. Her father, Charles Theron, was a construction company owner of French Huguenot descent. Her mother, Gerda, is of German descent and took over her husband's business after his death. Theron's first language is Afrikaans. She is also fluent in English and speaks some Xhosa. "Theron" is a French surname (originally spelt Th?ron) pronounced in Afrikaans as "Tronn", although she has said that she prefers the pronunciation "Thrown". The pronunciation commonly used in the United States involves two syllables, with stress on the first.
Theron grew up as the only child on her parents' farm near Johannesburg (Benoni). At the age of thirteen, Charlize was sent to boarding school and began her studies at the National School Of The Arts in Johannesburg. At fifteen, Theron witnessed the death of her father, an abusive alcoholic; her mother shot him in self-defense when he attacked her. The police laid no charges against her.

Acting career
At the age of sixteen, Theron traveled to Milan, Italy, on a one-year modeling contract, after winning a local competition. She went to New York with Pauline's Model Management. She decided to remain in NY after her contract ended, attending the Joffrey Ballet School, where she trained as a ballet dancer. A back injury closed this career path when Theron was eighteen.
Unable to dance, Theron bought a ticket to Los Angeles. After eight months in the city, she was cast in her first film part, a non-speaking role in the direct-to-video film Children of the Corn III. Larger roles in widely released Hollywood films followed, and her career skyrocketed in the late 1990s with box office successes like The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules.
After appearing in a few notable films, Theron starred as the lesbian serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003). Film critic Roger Ebert called it "one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema". For this role, Theron won the Best Actress Oscar at the 76th Academy Awards in February 2004, as well as the SAG Award and the Golden Globe Award. She is the first South African to win an Oscar for Best Actress. The Oscar win pushed her to The Hollywood Reporter's 2006 list of highest-paid actresses in Hollywood; earning $10,000,000 for both her subsequent films, North Country and Aeon Flux, she ranked seventh, behind Halle Berry, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Ren?e Zellweger, Reese Witherspoon, and Nicole Kidman.
On September 30, 2005, Theron received her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In the same year, she starred in the financially unsuccessful science fiction thriller ?on Flux, for which she received positive reviews. Additionally, Theron received a Best Actress Golden Globe nomination for her lead performance in the drama North Country. Ms. Magazine also honored her for this performance with a feature article in its Fall 2005 issue. Furthermore, Theron was nominated for an Oscar as a lead actress for the role.
In 2005, Theron portrayed Rita, Michael Bluth's (Jason Bateman) love interest, on the third season of FOX's critically-acclaimed television series Arrested Development. She also received Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for her role of Britt Ekland in the 2004 HBO movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.

Other notable appearances
The May 1999 issue of Playboy published nude photos of Theron, taken during the early years of her modeling career. Claiming they had been "for private use", Theron ended up suing photographer Guido Argentini.
Having signed a deal with John Galliano in 2004, Theron replaced Estonian model Tiiu Kuik as the spokeswoman in the J'ADORE advertisements by Christian Dior. From October 2005 to December 2006, Theron endorsed Raymond Weil watches. In February 2006, she was sued by Weil for breach of contract.
In May 2006, Maxim magazine named Theron #25 in its annual "Hot 100" issue.
In October 2007, Esquire magazine named Theron The Sexiest Woman Alive in its annual issue.

Personal life
Theron dated the lead singer of Third Eye Blind, Stephan Jenkins, from January 1998 to July 2001. They broke up after Jenkins failed to take her requests of marriage seriously. Theron now resides in Los Angeles in the home of late 1930's actress Helen Twelvetrees, with her long-time boyfriend Stuart Townsend, with whom she starred in the 2004 film Head in the Clouds, as well as in the 2002 film Trapped; she has said that they will not marry until same-sex couples are able to have their marriages recognized. Townsend recently stated he considers himself and Theron to be husband and wife. "We didn't have a ceremony," he said. "I don't need a certificate or the state or the church to say otherwise. So no there's no big official story on a wedding, but we are married. ... I consider her my wife and she considers me her husband".
While filming ?on Flux in Berlin, Germany, Theron had surgery on a herniated disc in her neck, the result of an injury incurred on the set during a stunt.
Theron is also involved in women's rights organizations. In 2006, Theron won GLAAD's Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for increasing "visibility and understanding in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community".[cite this quote] Theron is a supporter of animal rights and active member of PETA. She recently appeared in a PETA ad for their anti-fur campaign.
In a 2008 interview, she continuously mixed up two European cities, Budapest and Istanbul. The deputy mayor of Budapest responded by inviting her to spend a luxurious weekend in the Hungarian capital in order to get to know the city.
Theron became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 2007.

Kate Beckinsale

Kathrin Romany Beckinsale (born 26 July 1973) is an English actress, known for her roles in the films Pearl Harbor (2001), Van Helsing (2004), and Underworld (2003).

Biography
Born in London, Beckinsale was the daughter of actors Judy Loe and Richard Beckinsale, who died from heart attack in 1979. She has a paternal half-sister, Samantha, who is also an actress. Beckinsale's paternal great-grandfather was Burmese, and Beckinsale has said that she was "very oriental-looking" as a child.
Beckinsale attended the private Godolphin and Latymer School, an all-girls independent school in London. In her teens, Beckinsale twice won the W. H. Smith Young Writers' competition - once for three short stories and once for three poems. After a rebellious adolescence, including a period of anorexia and starting a smoking habit, she followed in the footsteps of her parents and began her acting career. Her first role was in One Against the Wind, a television film about World War II that was first aired in 1991. Having gained three language A levels, Beckinsale studied French and Russian literature at New College, Oxford, though she did not finish her degree. She thought that having an academic background studying foreign language and literature would broaden her range of acting roles.

Career
During her first year at Oxford, Beckinsale was offered a part in Kenneth Branagh's big-screen film, Much Ado About Nothing, adapted from the Shakespeare play. She spent her last year of studies in Paris, after which she decided to quit the university and concentrate on her acting career. Kate starred in a 1996 TV film adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. She subsequently appeared in a few low-profile films, including Shooting Fish and The Last Days of Disco (both in 1998). During this time, Beckinsale also appeared in television films and in stage roles, including the well-received Cold Comfort Farm, opposite British silver and small screen notables Rufus Sewell, Eileen Atkins, Joanna Lumley and Stephen Fry.
Her first major American film, Brokedown Palace (1999), was not a commercial success. Soon after, Beckinsale was cast in the 2001 film Pearl Harbor as the female lead, after actress Charlize Theron turned down the part. The film was one of the highest grossing films of its year. In the years following, she appeared in a series of American films that were high-profile, but were given a somewhat poor critical reception, including Serendipity (2001), Underworld (2003) and Van Helsing (2004). Notably, she appeared as Ava Gardner in The Aviator, a role for which she gained 20 pounds.
In 2006, Beckinsale was placed at #23 in FHM's "100 Sexiest Women in the World", after being #71 in 2005. She has also been placed at #16 in Maxim's "HOT 100" (2003), #63 in Stuff's "100 Sexiest Women in the World" (2002), and was chosen by the English magazine Hello! as "England's #1 Beauty", also in 2002.
In January 2006, Beckinsale reprised her role as a vampire in the movie Underworld: Evolution, a sequel to her 2003 film, Underworld, again directed by her husband, Len Wiseman. The film opened at the #1 spot at the box office, grossing over $26 million in its first weekend of release. On January 24, 2006, Beckinsale was featured on the MTV series, Punk'd. The set-up for the segment took place at the Avalon Hotel in Los Angeles.
Also in 2006, Beckinsale appeared in the Adam Sandler starring comedy-drama, Click, which opened on June 23. Next, Beckinsale replaced Sarah Jessica Parker in the film Vacancy, released in 2007. Her next role will be in Snow Angels, which is in post-production and scheduled for release some time in 2008.
At Comic-Con 2007, Kate expressed interest in playing Catwoman in the current Christopher Nolan directed Batman films. In April of 2007, during an interview promoting Vacancy, Beckinsale claimed no knowledge of the rumors linking her to a remake of Barbarella. "I was told on the set yesterday, someone said, 'Oh I hear you're doing Barbarella,' one of the grips. So that's the most official it's become. Every woman would consider Barbarella for a moment, but I don't know."

Personal life
Beckinsale and her ex-boyfriend Michael Sheen have a daughter, Lily Mo Sheen (born January 31, 1999). She reported in interviews that during her pregnancy with Lily was the only time she's ever stopped smoking. During the Underworld shoot, Beckinsale split from Sheen, who starred as her mortal enemy, Lucian, leader of the Lycans. She became involved with the director of the film, Len Wiseman. In June 2003, Beckinsale became engaged to Wiseman, and the two were married on 9 May 2004 in Bel-Air, California.

Kate Winslet

Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born October 5, 1975) is a five-time Academy Award-nominated, Emmy Award-nominated, BAFTA, Grammy and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning English actress.
She is noted for having played a wide range of diverse characters over her career, but is probably best-known for her critically acclaimed performances as Juliet Hulme in Heavenly Creatures (1994), Rose DeWitt Bukater in the highest-grossing film of all time, Titanic (1997), and Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).
She is the winner of a BAFTA and SAG Award, and a five-time Oscar nominee. At the age of 22, she broke the record for the youngest person to receive two Oscar nominations, and each of her subsequent nominations has broken a further record: the youngest person to receive three, four, and five nominations.

Life and career

Early life
Kate Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire, England to Roger John Winslet, a swimming-pool contractor, and Sally Ann Bridges, a barmaid; both of her parents were also actors. Her maternal grandparents, Linda (Plumb) and Archibald Oliver Bridges, founded and operated the Reading Repertory, and her uncle, Robert Bridges, appeared in the original West End production of Oliver! Her sisters are Beth Winslet and Anna Winslet, also actresses. Most of the people in her family are actors, so her continuing the time-honored tradition was perhaps a natural progression.
Winslet, raised as an Anglican, began studying drama at the age of eleven at the Redroofs Theatre School, a co-educational independent school in Maidenhead, Berkshire, where she was head girl and was soon cast as a spokesperson for a cereal in television commercials. Although she seems to be living an almost idealistic existence, it wasn't always that way. Throughout her adolescence, she was severely bullied for being overweight and having exceptionally large feet (which she inherited from her mother).

Career
Winslet's career began on television, with a co-starring role in the BBC children's science fiction serial Dark Season in 1991. This was followed by appearances in the made-for-TV movie Anglo-Saxon Attitudes in 1992 and an episode of the medical drama Casualty in 1993, also for the BBC.
Her film career took off with praise and recognition in 1994 when she starred in a joint leading role, as Juliet Hulme in director Peter Jackson's critically acclaimed Heavenly Creatures, playing a vivacious and imaginative teen who helps her best friend (played by Melanie Lynskey), murder her mother when they are not allowed to be together.
This role was followed by the successful film Sense and Sensibility (co-starring Emma Thompson), which made her well-known, especially in the UK. Winslet became famous world-wide after the 1997 release of Titanic, a massive hit which holds the record as highest-grossing film in history (not accounting for inflation) at more than 1 billion dollars in box-office worldwide. It went on to win 11 Academy Awards.
Winslet has been regarded as something of a critics' darling, generally receiving positive reviews for every one of her films. Despite Titanic's success, she has continued making lower-budget, independent films, including Hideous Kinky and Holy Smoke!; her roles in these smaller, more artistic films appear to be one of choice - she turned down the lead in Shakespeare in Love to make Hideous Kinky. She has also taken several roles in studio "period dramas" like Quills, Titanic and Finding Neverland. (For a time, she was given the nickname "Corset Kate").
In 2005, Winslet appeared in a television commercial for American Express. As part of the "My Life, My Card" campaign, the ad shows Winslet strolling around Camden Lock, in London, as she makes references to all the events that have happened to her film characters - such as going to prison for murder (Heavenly Creatures), being penniless and heartbroken (Sense and Sensibility), almost drowning (Titanic), losing her mind (Iris), having her memory erased (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and being in Neverland (Finding Neverland). During the ad, she is shown holding items relating to her films; during the reference to Sense and Sensibility she thumbs through a copy of the book, and when she references Finding Neverland, she's holding a hook.
Winslet also appeared in an episode of BBC's comedy series Extras in August of 2005, as a satirical version of 'herself'. She memorably told Andy and Maggie, the two characters who star in the series, that she was doing a film about the Holocaust because she was tired of losing out on Oscars, as she's been nominated four times, and that everyone who does a film about the Holocaust wins an Oscar. She also (while dressed as a nun) was shown giving phone sex tips to the romantically challenged Maggie. Ricky Gervais (who is a native from the same town as Winslet, Reading) later said on NPR that she was his favorite guest star. Her performance in the episode did lead to her being nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Performance in a Comedy Series, but she did not win.
As of March 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio signed to co-star in Revolutionary Road with Winslet as the Wheeler couple, a '50s couple who appear content on the surface but are withering internally. The film will be the first to reunite the notable duo, who have remained close since their first pairing in Titanic.
There are also talks that Winslet's husband, Sam Mendes and his production company, Neal Street Productions, purchased the film rights to the long-delayed biography of circus tiger tamer Mabel Stark. Winslet has stated that she has been eager to portray this complex woman for three years now and is looking forward to working with her husband on bringing this to the screen. (See Mabel Stark's page for more information on the project.)

Music
Winslet has also enjoyed a brief taste of success as a singer, with her single "What If" from the soundtrack of Christmas Carol: The Movie, which reached #1 in Ireland and #6 in the UK (she also filmed a music video for the song). She has also participated in a duet with "Weird Al" Yankovic on the Sandra Boynton CD, Dog Train, and sang in the 2006 film, Romance and Cigarettes. She also sang an aria from La Boheme, called "Sono andati", in her film Heavenly Creatures, which is featured on the film's soundtrack.

Personal life
On November 22, 1998, Winslet married director Jim Threapleton. The two have a daughter, Mia Honey, who was born on October 12, 2000. After a divorce in 2001, Winslet was reported to have been dating playwright Jeff Smeenge before a relationship with Sam Mendes, whom she married on May 24, 2003, on the island of Anguilla in the Caribbean. Their son, Joe Alfie, was born on December 22, 2003.
The media, particularly in England, have enthusiastically documented her weight fluctuations over the years. Winslet has been outspoken about her refusal to lose weight in order to conform to the Hollywood ideal. In February 2003, the British edition of Gentlemen's Quarterly magazine published photographs of Winslet which had been digitally enhanced to make her look dramatically thinner than she really was; Winslet issued a statement saying that the alterations were made without her consent. GQ issued an apology in the subsequent issue.
Winslet and her husband Mendes currently reside in New York City. They also own a manor house in the tiny village of Church Westcote near Stow-on-the-Wold. Kate and Sam spent ?3 million on the secluded Westcote Manor, a rambling Grade II-listed house with eight bedrooms, set in 22 acres. They've reportedly spent more than ?1 million on interior renovations as well as restoring the original water garden, mulberry garden and orchard, which all fell into disrepair when the former owner, equestrian artist Raoul Millais, died in 1999. As of 2006, it is reported Winslet and Mendes have a large lake house near Canandaigua lake, in Canandaigua, New York.

Eva Longoria

Eva Jacqueline Longoria Parker (born March 15, 1975) is a Golden Globe Award-nominated American film and television actress. She plays Gabrielle Solis in the ABC television series Desperate Housewives. She has also become an internationally recognized model after appearing in several high-profile advertising campaigns and numerous men's magazines. Longoria is also known for her high profile relationship with NBA guard Tony Parker, whom she married in 2007.

Biography

Early life
Eva Longoria Parker was born Eva Jacqueline Longoria in Corpus Christi, Texas, the daughter of Mexican-American Catholic parents, Enrique Longoria, Jr. (born in Rachal, Brooks County, Texas) and Ella Eva Mireles (married in Falfurrias, Brooks County, Texas). Her ancestry traces to Southern Mexican immigrants who immigrated to the United States. She has three older sisters: Elizabeth Judina, Emily Jeannette, and Esmeralda Josephina. The family lived and worked on farmland that had been handed down to them from past generations, but they often had very little money; Enrique and Ella struggled for many years to give their children a decent upbringing. Eva showed viewers an introspect into the hardship she faced in her formative years growing up poor on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006; she took cameras on location to the family farm, and showed how spartan they were still living. Longoria admitted that things looked slightly better for them financially, only when she made it in show business. In an interview with Dateline's Stone Phillips, Longoria also revealed the snubbing she received from her siblings. She said "I grew up as the ugly duckling. They used to call me 'la prieta fea,' which means 'the ugly dark one.'"
Longoria attended Marvin P. Baker Middle School and later Roy Miller High School, receiving her Bachelor of Science degree in kinesiology at nearby Texas A&M University-Kingsville. During this time, she won the title of Miss Corpus Christi, USA in 1998. After completing college, Longoria entered a talent contest that led her to Los Angeles; shortly after, she was spotted and signed by a theatrical agent. With many family members still living in Corpus Christi, she still returns to her home town for visits.

Career
Longoria landed her first television role in 2000, guest-starring in an episode of Beverly Hills, 90210. Another guest appearance in General Hospital the same year brought her big break on the popular American soap opera The Young and the Restless, in which she played psychotic Isabella Bra?a Williams from 2001 to 2003. People en Espa?ol listed her among its "Most Beautiful People" for 2003. After leaving The Young and the Restless, she was seen on the now-cancelled Dick Wolf revival of Dragnet. Although it lasted only two seasons, the show gave Longoria another leading star credit to her name. Following Dragnet, she starred in two ill-fated productions - Se?orita Justice, a poorly received direct-to-video film, and a television film titled The Dead Will Tell. In 2004, Longoria landed a role that elevated her to the A-List. She starred as adulteress Gabrielle Solis in the worldwide break-out ABC hit Desperate Housewives. As the show became an overnight sensation, Longoria's career was well and truly launched. But she has never considered her career to have jumped off so suddenly, "I think it's funny when people say I'm an overnight sensation, because I've been working at it for 10 years."
Shortly after her debut on Desperate Housewives, Longoria starred in a poorly received direct-to-video film titled Carlita's Secret, for which she was also co-producer. In 2005, she was rewarded for her performance as Gabrielle Solis in Desperate Housewives when she was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy along with her co-stars. Even though neither Longoria nor any of the rest of the cast won, she was awarded the prestigious ALMA AWARD and named entertainer of the year. She also starred opposite Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland in the 2006 thriller The Sentinel, which was her first major role in a theatrical movie (both Douglas and Sutherland noted that much to their surprise Eva whipped both of them in gun practice). Longoria continues to be included in lists of Hollywood's Most Beautiful and was listed #1 in Maxim's Hottest Female Stars of 2005 and 2006, becoming the first woman to top the list in two consecutive years. She was ranked #9 in the magazine's Hot 100 of 2007 list. In her most recently released film, Harsh Times, she plays the character Sylvia and co-stars with actors Freddy Rodriguez and Christian Bale.
In her interview with Ryan Seacrest on The Interview with Ryan Seacrest on E!, she stated: "I don't want to be on 7th Heaven -- on for 20 years and no one's really watching, and it's hanging on by a thread." She has also stated multiple times that she will not renew her Desperate Housewives contract once it is up. Instead, she has set her sights on the film industry. At the time of her statements, the length of her contract was not known, but she has since revealed it to be 10 years, starting from the first season.
In 2006, Longoria appeared in Jessica Simpson's music video "A Public Affair" along with Christina Milian, Christina Applegate, Ryan Seacrest, Maria Menounos, and Andy Dick. Longoria was on the cover of the September 2006 issue of Maxim Magazine. She sat down with Maxim and discussed how contrary to belief, her life really is normal. "Tony [Parker] and I spend most of our time in San Antonio. We have such a normal life there. I mean, we hang out and have breakfast, go to his parents', go to my parents'. Do laundry."
Longoria recently won a People's Choice Award for Best TV Actress. In January 2007, Longoria was chosen to be the first face of Bebe Sport. She will appear in the Spring/Summer 2007 campaign, photographed by Greg Kadel. The actress also holds model contracts with L'Oreal and Hanes, New York & Co. Longoria also hosted the 2007 NCLR ALMA Awards on June 5, 2007, on ABC.
In 2007, the stars of Desperate Housewives each renewed their contracts with ABC for four years, worth $40 million. In November 2007, Longoria won a Bambi award in Germany for best TV Actress.

Personal life
Longoria was married to General Hospital star Tyler Christopher from January 20, 2002, to January 19, 2004, and as such, was also credited as Eva Longoria Christopher. She has been romantically linked to successful writer Milan Gracanin, ex-*NSYNC member JC Chasez, Benjamin Dudash [back up dancer for *NSYNC], actor Mousir Syed and Life As We Know It star Sean Faris (although both Faris and Longoria deny any romantic link). Like many South Texans, Longoria is an avid San Antonio Spurs fan and is a courtside regular at Spurs games. On November 30, 2006, she became engaged to Spurs point guard Tony Parker. The two called in to the Ryan Seacrest radio show to announce it. She said the way he proposed was "perfect, personal, and sweet." After playing against the Utah Jazz, Parker flew out to Los Angeles, which was unexpected because she never thought he would come there after the game. She got off work at about midnight and found Parker waiting for her. The couple was officially married on July 6, 2007, because French law requires couples who marry to make their vows official at a city hall. They had their lavish church wedding on July 7, 2007 in Paris.
On June 14, 2007, the Spurs won the 2007 NBA Finals in Cleveland, Ohio against the Cavaliers, and Parker was honored as the Finals MVP for the series. Longoria was shown wiping many tears as Parker was awarded the trophy. In September 2007, she started a restaurant in Los Angeles called Beso which translates to kiss.
In Desperate Housewives, she is now credited as Eva Longoria Parker.
Eva Longoria Parker says she's ready to quit Desperate Housewives to start a family and pursue a film career.
Longoria was voted No. 10 in COED Magazine Online's list of "Top 20 Sexiest Athlete Wives of 2007".

Charity work
Longoria founded Eva's Heroes a charity which helps developmentally disadvantaged children. She signed shoe for the Spirit of Women Red Shoe Celebrity Auction. Longoria also supports the Clothes Off Our Back Foundation, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, the National Stroke Association, Project HOME and St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital.

Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston (born February 11, 1969) is an Emmy- and Golden Globe Award-winning American film and television actress, best known for her role as Rachel Green in the popular television sitcom Friends. Apart from Friends, she has starred in several Hollywood films, including Bruce Almighty, Office Space, Along Came Polly, Derailed and The Break-Up.

Biography

Early life
Aniston was born in Sherman Oaks, California, and grew up in New York City. She is the daughter of the Greek-American actor John Aniston (originally Yannis Anastassakis) and actress Nancy Dow. Aniston has two half-brothers, John Melick and Alex Aniston. Aniston's father was born on the island of Crete, while her maternal grandfather, Gordon McLean Dow, was of Scottish and English descent, and her maternal grandmother, Louise Grieco, was of Italian ancestry. Aniston's godfather was the late Greek American actor Telly Savalas, her father's best friend. Aniston spent part of her childhood living in Greece with her family, but relocated to New York City, where her father appeared in the soap operas Days of Our Lives, Love of Life and Search for Tomorrow. Aniston attended the New York Rudolf Steiner School and graduated from Manhattan's Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. Among her high school friends was future gay rights activist Chastity Bono. Aniston's desire to become an actress grew as she worked in Off Broadway productions such as For Dear Life and Dancing on Checker's Grave. During this time, she supported herself with several part-time jobs, including working as a telemarketer and bike messenger. In 1989, she moved to Los Angeles, California.

Career
Aniston moved to Hollywood and was cast in her first television role in 1990, starring as a regular on the short-lived series Molloy and in the TV movie Camp Cucamonga. She also co-starred in Ferris Bueller, a television adaptation of the 1986 hit movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the same year; the series, however, was quickly canceled. Aniston then appeared in two more failed television comedy shows, The Edge and Muddling Through, and guest-starred on Quantum Leap, Herman's Head, Burke's Law, on South Park in episode Rainforest Schmainforest. After the string of cancelled shows, along with her appearance in the critically derided 1993 horror film, Leprechaun, Aniston considered giving up acting.
Aniston's plans changed, however, after auditioning for Friends, a sitcom that was set to debut on NBC's 1994-1995 fall line-up. The producers of the show originally wanted Aniston to audition for the role of Monica Geller, but she persuaded them that she was better suited for the role of Rachel Green. She was cast in the role and played the character from 1994 until the show ended in 2004.
The program was hugely successful and Aniston, along with her co-stars, gained wide renown among television viewers. Her hairstyle at the time, which became known as the "Rachel", was widely copied. Aniston received a salary of one million dollars per episode for the last two seasons of Friends, as well as five Emmy nominations, including a win for "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series". According to the Guinness World Book of Records (2005), Aniston (along with her female costars) became the highest paid TV actress of all time with her $1 million-per-episode paycheck for the tenth season of Friends.
In 1994, Microsoft invited Aniston, along with comedian Matthew Perry, to shoot a 30-minute promotional advertisement for their new operating system, Windows 95.
In addition to her career as a TV actress, Aniston has enjoyed a reasonably successful film career. Her biggest box office success to date was her appearance in 2003's Bruce Almighty, in which she played the girlfriend of title character (Jim Carrey); the film grossed $243M at the United States box office and almost twice that worldwide. Aniston's 2004 film, Along Came Polly (opposite Ben Stiller), also did well at the box office after opening at the #1 spot.
She gained considerable critical acclaim for her performances in The Object of My Affection (1998), a comedy drama about a girl who falls for a gay man, and in the low-budget 2002 film, The Good Girl, directed by Miguel Arteta, playing an unglamorous cashier in a small town. The latter film opened in relatively few theaters - under 700 in total - taking $14M in the U.S. box office.
In late 2005, Aniston headlined two major studio films, Derailed and Rumor Has It, both of which performed fairly at the box office, grossing over $36 million each despite little support from critics.
In 2006, Aniston appeared in the low-budget drama, Friends with Money, which was first shown at the Cannes Film Festival, received a limited release, and grossed over $13 million. Aniston's next film, The Break-Up, which was released on June 2, grossed approximately $39.17 million during its opening weekend, despite lukewarm reviews. It has currently grossed over $118 million at the U.S. box office and over $203 million worldwide.
In addition to acting, Aniston has also directed a hospital emergency room-set short film named Room 10, starring Robin Wright Penn and Kris Kristofferson; Aniston has noted that she was inspired to direct by actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who directed a short film in 2006.
Forbes listed Aniston as the 10th richest woman in the entertainment industry for the year 2007. She is behind such powerhouses as Oprah Winfrey, J. K. Rowling, Madonna, Celine Dion and Jennifer Lopez and is ahead of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and the Olsen twins. Aniston's net worth is approximately $110 million. Aniston was also included in the annual Star Salary Top 10 of trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter for 2006. According to Forbes in October 2007, Aniston was the top-selling celebrity face of the entertainment industry.

Personal life
Aniston has previously dated musician Adam Duritz, and dated/lived with actor Tate Donovan. Her high-profile relationship with actor Brad Pitt was frequently publicized in the press. She married Pitt on July 29, 2000, in a lavish Malibu wedding. Though their marriage was for years considered the rare Hollywood success, rumors of trouble began circulating, and the Pitts announced their separation on January 7, 2005. As Pitt's marriage to Jennifer drew to a close, he and actress Angelina Jolie were involved in a well-publicized Hollywood scandal in which Jolie was the "other woman", largely due to their chemistry during the filming of the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith. While Jolie and Pitt both denied any claims of adultery, speculations continued to mount throughout 2004 and early 2005. Aniston officially filed for divorce on March 25, 2005 which was finalized on October 2, 2005.
Media reports have speculated that the split was due to Aniston's refusal to have children. Aniston vehemently denied this later on in an August 2005 Vanity Fair interview, stating, "I've never in my life said I didn't want to have children... I've always wanted to have children, and I would never give up that experience for a career." Aniston also revealed that her divorce prompted her to reach out to her mother, from whom she was estranged for nearly a decade. They initially became estranged when Nancy talked about her daughter on a TV show and later wrote a book titled From Mother and Daughter to Friends: A Memoir (1999).
She has also stated that she was devastated by the death of her longtime therapist, whose work helped to make the separation from Pitt easier. Summing up her relationship with Pitt, Aniston has said that their relationship, which she does not regret, was "seven very intense years together" and that "it was a beautiful, complicated relationship."
Since the couple's divorce, Aniston has been romantically linked with actor Vince Vaughn. In August 2006, Aniston denied rumors that the two were engaged or that Vaughn had proposed. In October 2006, gossip magazine Us Weekly quoted sources from Vaughn that the couple had broken up. In December 2006, representatives for both Aniston and Vaughn confirmed that they had indeed split up a few weeks before when Aniston visited Vaughn in London.
In 2007, Aniston guest starred in an episode of Courteney Cox Arquette's series Dirt. Aniston played Arquette's snobby rival Tina Harrod.
She has had two septoplasties which she maintains were to thin her deviated septum - one incorrectly done in 1994 and one in early 2007. This is a simple medical procedure that helps cure a common condition that can lead to breathing difficulty and trouble sleeping. However, the Press has speculated that these procedures were actually cosmetic.

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie (born Angelina Jolie Voight on June 4, 1975) is an American film actor and a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. She is often cited by popular media as one of the world's most beautiful women and her off-screen life is widely reported. She has received three Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award.
Though she made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in the 1982 film Lookin' to Get Out, Jolie's acting career began in earnest a decade later with the low budget production Cyborg 2 (1993). Her first leading role in a major film was in Hackers (1995). She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Girl, Interrupted (1999). Jolie achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of videogame heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), and since then has established herself as one of the best-known and highest-paid actresses in Hollywood. She had her biggest commercial success with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005).
Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie currently lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship that has attracted worldwide media attention. Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, as well as a biological daughter, Shiloh. Jolie has promoted humanitarian causes throughout the world, and is noted for her work with refugees through UNHCR.

Early life and family
Born in Los Angeles, California, Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, who died from ovarian cancer in 2007. Jolie is the niece of Chip Taylor, sister of James Haven and the god-daughter of Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father's side, she is of Slovak and German descent, and on her mother's side she is French Canadian and is said to be part Iroquois, although Voight once claimed Bertrand is "not seriously Iroquois," and they merely said it to enhance his ex-wife's exotic background.
After her parents' separation in 1976, Jolie and her brother were raised by their mother, who abandoned her acting ambitions and moved with them to Palisades, New York. As a child Jolie regularly saw movies with her mother and later explained that this had inspired her interest in acting; she had not been influenced by her father. When she was 11, the family moved back to Los Angeles and Jolie decided she wanted to act and enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she trained for two years and appeared in several stage productions. She later recalled her time as a student at Beverly Hills High School (later Moreno High School), and her feeling of isolation among the children of some of the area's more affluent families. Jolie's mother survived on a more modest income, and Jolie often wore second-hand clothes. She was teased by other students who also targeted her for her distinctive features, for being extremely thin, and for wearing glasses and braces. Her self esteem was further diminished when her initial attempts at modeling proved unsuccessful. As her despondency grew, she started to cut herself; later commenting, "I collected knives and always had certain things around. For some reason, the ritual of having cut myself and feeling the pain, maybe feeling alive, feeling some kind of release, it was somehow therapeutic to me." At 14, she dropped out of her acting classes and dreamed of becoming a funeral director. Her self-loathing led her to embark on a rebellious period in her life; she wore black, dyed her hair purple and went out moshing with her live-in boyfriend. Two years later, after the relationship had ended, she rented an apartment above a garage a few blocks from her mother's home. She returned to theatre studies and graduated from high school, though in recent times she has referred to this period with the observation, "I am still at heart-and always will be-just a punk kid with tattoos".
Jolie has been long estranged from her father, though a reconciliation was attempted, and he appeared with her in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. In July 2002, Jolie filed a request to legally change her name to "Angelina Jolie", dropping Voight as her surname; the name change was made official on September 12, 2002. In August of the same year, Voight claimed that his daughter had "serious emotional problems" on Access Hollywood. Jolie later indicated that she no longer wished to pursue a relationship with her father, and said, "My father and I don't speak. I don't hold any anger toward him. I don't believe that somebody's family becomes their blood. Because my son's adopted, and families are earned." She stated that she did not want to publicize her reasons for her estrangement from her father, but because she had adopted her son, she did not think it was healthy for her to associate with Voight.

Early work, 1993-1997
Jolie began working as a fashion model at 14. She was signed with Finesse Model Management and modeled in both the United States and Europe, working mainly in Los Angeles, New York and London. At that time she also appeared in numerous music videos, including those of Meat Loaf ("Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through"), Antonello Venditti ("Alta Marea"), Lenny Kravitz ("Stand by My Woman"), and The Lemonheads ("It's About Time"). At the age of 16, Jolie returned to theatre, and played her first role as a German dominatrix. She began to learn from her father, as she noticed his method of observing people to become like them. Their relationship during this time was less strained, with Jolie realizing that they were both "drama queens".
Jolie appeared in five of her brother's student films, made while he attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts, but her professional movie career began in 1993, when she played her first leading role in the low budget film Cyborg 2, as Casella "Cash" Reese, a near-human robot, designed to seduce her way into a rival manufacturer's headquarters and then self-detonate. Following several undistinguished projects she starred as Kate "Acid Burn" Libby in her first Hollywood picture, Hackers (1995), where she met her first husband Jonny Lee Miller. The New York Times wrote, "Kate (Angelina Jolie) stands out. That's because she scowls even more sourly than [her co-stars] and is that rare female hacker who sits intently at her keyboard in a see-through top. Despite her sullen posturing, which is all this role requires, Ms. Jolie has the sweetly cherubic looks of her father, Jon Voight." The movie failed to make a profit at the box-office, but developed a cult following after its video release.
She appeared as Gina Malacici in the 1996 comedy Love Is All There Is, a modern-day loose adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set among two rival Italian family restaurant owners in the Bronx, New York. In the road movie Mojave Moon she was a youngster, named Eleanor Rigby, who falls for Danny Aiello, while he takes a shine to her mother, Anne Archer. In 1996, she also played Margret "Legs" Sadovsky, one of five teenage girls who form an unlikely bond in the film Foxfire after they beat up a teacher who has sexually harassed them. The Los Angeles Times wrote about Jolie's performance, "It took a lot of hogwash to develop this character, but Jolie, Jon Voight's knockout daughter, has the presence to overcome the stereotype. Though the story is narrated by Maddy, Legs is the subject and the catalyst."
In 1997, Jolie starred with David Duchovny in the thriller Playing God, a film portraying a famed L.A. surgeon who is stripped of his medical license and is lured deep into the criminal world where he meets Jolie's character, Claire. The movie was not received well by critics and Roger Ebert noted that "Angelina Jolie finds a certain warmth in a kind of role that is usually hard and aggressive; she seems too nice to be [a criminal's] girlfriend, and maybe she is." She then appeared in the TV movie True Women, a historical romantic drama set in the West, and based on the book by Janice Woods Windle. That year she also played a stripper in the Rolling Stones music video for the song "Anybody Seen My Baby?"

Breakthrough, 1997-2000
Jolie's career prospects began to improve after her performance as Cornelia Wallace in the 1997 biopic George Wallace for which she won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Emmy. The film was highly praised by critics and, among other awards, received the Golden Globe for Best Miniseries/Motion Picture made for TV. She played the second wife of the segregationist Governor of Alabama who was shot and paralyzed while running for President. The film starred Gary Sinise and was directed by John Frankenheimer.
In 1998, Jolie starred in HBO's Gia as supermodel Gia Carangi. The film depicted a world of sex, drugs and emotional drama, and chronicled the destruction of Carangi's life and career as a result of her drug addiction, and her decline and death from AIDS. Vanessa Vance from Reel.com noted, "Angelina Jolie gained wide recognition for her role as the titular Gia, and it's easy to see why. Jolie is fierce in her portrayal-filling the part with nerve, charm, and desperation-and her role in this film is quite possibly the most beautiful train wreck ever filmed." For the second consecutive year, Jolie won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy. She also won her first Screen Actors Guild Award. In accordance with Lee Strasberg's method acting Jolie reportedly preferred to stay in character in between scenes during many of her early films, and as a result had gained a reputation for being difficult to deal with. While shooting Gia, she told her then-husband Jonny Lee Miller that she wouldn't be able to phone him. "I'd tell him: 'I'm alone; I'm dying; I'm gay; I'm not going to see you for weeks.'"
Following Gia, Jolie moved to New York and stopped acting for a short period of time, because she felt that she had "nothing else to give". She enrolled at New York University to study filmmaking and attended writing classes. She described it as "just good for me to collect myself" on Inside the Actors Studio.
Jolie returned to film as Gloria McNeary in the 1998 gangster movie Hell's Kitchen, and later that year was part of an ensemble cast that included Sean Connery, Gillian Anderson, Ryan Phillippe and Jon Stewart in Playing by Heart. The drama tells the story of several seemingly unconnected characters, with Jolie playing a young club-scene hipster, Joan. The film received predominantly positive reviews and Jolie was praised in particular. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Jolie, working through an overwritten part, is a sensation as the desperate club crawler learning truths about what she's willing to gamble." Jolie won the Breakthrough Performance Award by the National Board of Review.
In 1999, she starred in Mike Newell's comedy-drama Pushing Tin, about two air traffic controllers who engage in macho conflict, co-starring alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. Jolie played Thornton's seductive wife Mary Bell. The film received a lukewarm reception from critics and Jolie's character was particularly criticized. The Washington Post wrote, "Mary (Angelina Jolie), a completely ludicrous writer's creation of a free-spirited woman who weeps over hibiscus plants that die, wears lots of turquoise rings and gets real lonely when Russell spends entire nights away from home." She then worked with Denzel Washington in The Bone Collector, an adapted crime novel written by Jeffery Deaver. Jolie played Amelia Donaghy, a police officer haunted by her cop father's suicide, who reluctantly helps Washington track down a serial killer. The movie grossed $151 million worldwide, but was a critical failure; the Detroit Free Press concluded, "Jolie, while always delicious to look at, is simply and woefully miscast."
Jolie next took the supporting role of Lisa Rowe alongside Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted (1999), a film that tells the story of mental patient Susanna Kaysen, and which was adapted from Kaysen's original memoir Girl, Interrupted. While the lead role of the film was Ryder's character, and was hoped to be a comeback for Ryder, the film instead became the "welcome-to-Hollywood coronation" for Jolie. Jolie won her third Golden Globe, her second Screen Actors Guild Award and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Variety noted, "Jolie is excellent as the flamboyant, irresponsible girl who turns out to be far more instrumental than the doctors in Susanna's rehabilitation" and Roger Ebert wrote about her performance:
In 2000, Jolie appeared in her first summer blockbuster, Gone In 60 Seconds, in which she played Sarah "Sway" Wayland, ex-girlfriend of car-thief Nicolas Cage. The role was small, and the Washington Post criticized that "all she does in this movie is stand around, cooling down, modeling those fleshy, pulsating muscle-tubes that nest so provocatively around her teeth." She later explained that the film was a welcome relief after the heavy role of Lisa Rowe, and it became her highest grossing movie up until then, earning $237 million internationally.

International success, 2001-present
Although highly regarded for her acting abilities, Jolie's films to date had often not appealed to a wide audience, but Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) made her an international superstar. An adaptation of the popular Tomb Raider videogame, Jolie was required to master a British accent and undergo extensive martial arts training to play the title role of Lara Croft. She was generally praised for her physical performance, but the movie generated mostly negative reviews. Slant Magazine commented, "Angelina Jolie was born to play Lara Croft but [director] Simon West makes her journey into a game of Frogger." The movie was a huge international success nonetheless, earning $275 million worldwide, and launched her global reputation as a female action star.
Jolie then starred alongside Antonio Banderas as the mail-order bride Julia Russell in Original Sin, a thriller based on the novel Waltz into Darkness by Cornell Woolrich. The film was a major critical failure, with The New York Times noting, "The story plunges more precipitously than Ms. Jolie's neckline." In 2002, she played Lanie Kerrigan in Life or Something Like It, a film about an ambitious TV reporter who is told that she will die in a week. The film was poorly received by critics, though Jolie's performance received positive reviews. CNN's Paul Clinton wrote, "Jolie is excellent in her role. Despite some of the ludicrous plot points in the middle of the film, this Academy Award-winning actress is exceedingly believable in her journey towards self-discovery and the true meaning of fulfilling life."
Jolie reprised her role as Lara Croft in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life in 2003. The sequel, while not as lucrative as the original, earned $156 million at the international box-office. Later that year Jolie starred in Beyond Borders, a film about aid workers in Africa. Although reflecting Jolie's real-life interest in promoting humanitarian relief, the film was critically and financially unsuccessful. The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Jolie, as she did in her Oscar-winning role in Girl, Interrupted, can bring electricity and believability to roles that have a reality she can understand. She can also, witness the Lara Croft films, do acknowledged cartoons. But the limbo of a hybrid character, a badly written cardboard person in a fly-infested, blood-and-guts world, completely defeats her."
In 2004, Jolie starred alongside Ethan Hawke in the thriller Taking Lives, as Illeana Scott, an FBI profiler summoned to help Montreal law enforcement hunt down a serial killer. The movie received mixed reviews and The Hollywood Reporter concluded, "Angelina Jolie plays a role that definitely feels like something she has already done, but she does add an unmistakable dash of excitement and glamour." She also provided the voice of Lola, an angelfish in the animated DreamWorks movie Shark Tale; the cast included Will Smith, Martin Scorsese, Ren?e Zellweger, Jack Black and Robert De Niro. Also in 2004, Jolie had a brief appearance as Franky in Kerry Conran's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a science fiction adventure film shot with actors entirely in front of a bluescreen. Jolie then played Olympias in Alexander (2004), Oliver Stone's biopic about the life of Alexander the Great. The film failed domestically, with Stone attributing its poor reception to disapproval of the depiction of Alexander's homosexuality, but it succeeded internationally, with revenue of $139 million outside the United States.
Jolie's only movie of 2005, the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, is also her biggest commercial success to date. The film, directed by Doug Liman, tells the story of a bored married couple who find out that they are both secret assassins. Jolie starred as Jane Smith alongside Brad Pitt. The film was well received and was generally lauded for the chemistry between the two leads. The Star Tribune noted, "While the story feels haphazard, the movie gets by on gregarious charm, galloping energy and the stars' thermonuclear screen chemistry." The movie earned over $478 million worldwide, one of the biggest hits of 2005.
Jolie next appeared in Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd (2006), a film about the early history of the CIA, as seen through the eyes of Edward Wilson, played by Matt Damon. Jolie co-starred as Margaret Russell, Wilson's neglected wife who becomes increasingly discontented by the effects of his work. According to the Chicago Tribune, "Jolie ages convincingly throughout, and is blithely unconcerned with how her brittle character is coming off in terms of audience sympathy."
In 2007, Jolie made her directorial debut with the documentary A Place in Time, which captures the life in 27 locations around the globe during a single week and features fellow actors such as Jude Law, Hilary Swank, Colin Farrell and Jonny Lee Miller. The film is intended to be distributed through the National Education Association, mainly in high schools. Jolie starred as Mariane Pearl in Michael Winterbottom's documentary-style drama A Mighty Heart (2007), about the kidnap and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. The picture is based on Mariane Pearl's memoirs A Mighty Heart and had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter described Jolie's performance as "well-measured and moving", played "with respect and a firm grasp on a difficult accent." The film earned her a fourth Golden Globe and her third Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. Jolie also played Grendel's mother in Robert Zemeckis' animated epic Beowulf (2007) which was created through the motion capture technique.
Jolie has completed shooting the action film Wanted, an adaptation of a graphic novel by Mark Millar, as well as the DreamWorks animated movie Kung Fu Panda, both scheduled for summer releases in 2008. She was also cast as the lead in Clint Eastwood's upcoming drama, Changeling, which wrapped principle photography in December 2007.

Humanitarian work
Jolie first became personally aware of worldwide humanitarian crises while filming Tomb Raider in poverty-stricken and widely mined Cambodia. Deeply affected by these experiences, she eventually turned to UNHCR for more information on international trouble spots. In the following months she agreed to visit different refugee camps around the world to learn more about the situation and the conditions in these areas. In February 2001, Jolie went on her first field visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed. In the coming months she returned to Cambodia for two weeks and later met with Afghan refugees in Pakistan where she donated $1 million for Afghan refugees in response to an international UNHCR emergency appeal. She insisted on covering all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field staff on all of her visits. Impressed by her interest and devotion in the subject, UNHCR named her a Goodwill Ambassador on August 27, 2001 at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva. In a press conference Jolie explained her motives for joining the refugee agency:
During her first three years as Goodwill Ambassador Jolie concentrated her efforts on field missions, visiting refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) all around the world. Asked what she hoped to accomplish, she stated, "Awareness of the plight of these people. I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked down upon." In 2002, Jolie visited Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand and Colombian refugees in Ecuador to take a closer look at the "Western Hemisphere's most severe humanitarian crisis". Jolie later went to various UNHCR facilities in Kosovo and paid a visit to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya with refugees mainly from Sudan. She also met with Angolan refugees while filming Beyond Borders in Namibia.
In 2003, Jolie embarked on a six-day mission to Tanzania where she traveled to western border camps, hosting Congolese refugees and she paid a week-long visit to Sri Lanka. She later concluded a four-day mission to Russia as she traveled to North Caucasus. Concurrently with the release of her movie Beyond Borders in October 2003 she published Notes from My Travels, a collection of journal entries that chronicle her early field missions (2001-2002). During a private stay in Jordan in December 2003 she asked to visit Iraqi refugees in Jordan's remote eastern desert and later that month she went to Egypt to meet Sudanese refugees.
On her first U.N. trip within the United States, Jolie went to Arizona in 2004, visiting detained asylum seekers at three facilities and the Southwest Key Program, a facility for unaccompanied children in Phoenix. With the humanitarian situation in Sudan worsening, she flew to Chad in June 2004, paying a visit to border sites and camps for refugees who had fled fighting in western Sudan's Darfur region. Four months later she returned to the region, this time going directly into West Darfur. Also in 2004, Jolie met with Afghan refugees in Thailand and on a private stay to Lebanon during the Christmas holidays, she visited UNHCR's regional office in Beirut, as well as some young refugees and cancer patients in the Lebanese capital.
In 2005, Jolie visited Pakistani camps containing Afghan refugees, and she also met with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz; she returned to Pakistan with Brad Pitt during the Thanksgiving weekend in November to see the impact of the October 8 Kashmir earthquake. In 2006, Jolie and Pitt flew to Haiti and visited a school supported by Y?le Ha?ti, a charity founded by Haitian-born hip hop musician Wyclef Jean, and while filming A Mighty Heart in India, Jolie met with Afghan and Burmese refugees in New Delhi. She spent Christmas Day 2006 with Colombian refugees in San Jos?, Costa Rica where she handed out presents. In 2007, Jolie returned to Chad for a two-day mission to assess the deteriorating security situation for refugees from Darfur; Jolie and Pitt subsequently donated $1 million to three relief organizations in Chad and Darfur. Jolie also made her first visit to Syria and Iraq, where she met with Iraqi refugees as well as multi-national forces and U.S. troops.
With increasing experience, Jolie became more involved in promoting humanitarian causes on a political level. She regularly attends World Refugee Day in Washington, D.C., and she was an invited speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2005 and 2006. Jolie also began lobbying humanitarian interests in the U.S. capital, where she met with congressmen and senators at least 20 times from 2003. She explained in Forbes:
In 2005, Jolie took part at a National Press Club luncheon, where she announced the founding of the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children, an organization that provides free legal-aid to asylum-seeking children with no legal representation which Jolie personally funded with a donation of $500,000 for its first two years. Jolie also pushed for several bills to aid refugees and vulnerable children in the Third World. In addition to her political involvement, Jolie began using the public's interest in her to promote humanitarian causes through the mass media. She filmed a MTV special, The Diary Of Angelina Jolie & Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa, portraying her and noted economist Dr. Jeffrey Sachs on a trip to a remote group of villages in Western Kenya. There, Sachs's United Nations Millennium Project team is working with locals to end poverty, hunger and disease. In 2006, Jolie announced the founding of the Jolie/Pitt Foundation which made initial donations to Global Action for Children and Doctors Without Borders of $1 million each. Jolie also co-chairs the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, founded at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2006, which helps fund education programs for children affected by conflict.
Jolie has received wide recognition for her humanitarian work. In 2003, she was the first recipient of the newly created Citizen of the World Award by the United Nations Correspondents Association, and in 2005, she was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the UNA-USA. Cambodia's King Norodom Sihamoni awarded Jolie Cambodian citizenship for her conservation work in the country on August 12, 2005; she has pledged $5 million to set up a wildlife sanctuary in the north-western province of Battambang and owns property there. In 2007, Jolie became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and she received the Freedom Award by the International Rescue Committee.

Relationships
On March 28, 1996, Jolie married British actor Jonny Lee Miller, her co-star in the film Hackers. She attended her wedding in black leather pants and a white shirt, upon which she had written the groom's name in her blood. Jolie and Miller separated the following year and subsequently divorced on February 3, 1999. They remained on good terms and Jolie later explained, "It comes down to timing. I think he's the greatest husband a girl could ask for. I'll always love him, we were simply too young."
She then married American actor Billy Bob Thornton, whom she had met on the set of Pushing Tin, on May 5, 2000. As a result of their frequent public declarations of passion and gestures of love (most famously wearing one another's blood in vials around their necks), their relationship became a favorite topic of the entertainment media. Jolie and Thornton divorced on May 27, 2003. Asked in Vogue about the sudden dissolution of their marriage, Jolie stated, "It took me by surprise, too, because overnight, we totally changed. I think one day we had just nothing in common. And it's scary but... I think it can happen when you get involved and you don't know yourself yet."
Jolie has said in interviews that she is bisexual and has long acknowledged that she had a sexual relationship with her Foxfire co-star Jenny Shimizu, "I would probably have married Jenny if I hadn't married my husband. I fell in love with her the first second I saw her." In 2003, asked if she was bisexual, Jolie responded, "Of course. If I fell in love with a woman tomorrow, would I feel that it's okay to want to kiss and touch her? If I fell in love with her? Absolutely! Yes!"
In early 2005, Jolie was involved in a well-publicized Hollywood scandal when she was accused of being the "other woman" in the divorce of actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. The allegation was that she and Pitt had started an affair during filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith; however, she has denied this in several interviews. In an interview in 2005, she explained, "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife."
While Jolie and Pitt never publicly commented on the nature of their relationship, speculations continued throughout 2005. The first intimate paparazzi photos emerged in April, one month after Aniston had filed for divorce; they showed Pitt, Jolie and her son Maddox at a beach in Kenya. During the summer Jolie and Pitt were seen together with increasing frequency and most of the entertainment media considered them a couple, dubbing them "Brangelina". On January 11, 2006 Jolie confirmed to People that she was pregnant with Pitt's child and thereby confirmed their relationship for the first time in public.

Children
On March 10, 2002, Jolie adopted her first child, seven-month-old Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt (originally Maddox Chivan Thornton Jolie). He was born on August 5, 2001 as Rath Vibol in Cambodia, and he initially lived in a local orphanage in Battambang. Jolie decided to apply for adoption after she had visited Cambodia twice, while filming Tomb Raider and on a UNHCR field trip in 2001. After her divorce from her second husband, Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie received sole custody of Maddox. Like Jolie's other children, Maddox has gained a considerable celebrity and appears regularly in the tabloid media.
Jolie adopted a six-month-old girl from Ethiopia, Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt (originally Zahara Marley Jolie), on July 6, 2005. Zahara was born on January 8, 2005; her original name has been reported as either Tena Adam or Yemsrach. Jolie picked her up at a Wide Horizons For Children orphanage in Addis Ababa. Shortly after they returned to the United States, Zahara was hospitalized for dehydration and malnutrition. In 2007, media outlets reported Zahara's biological mother, Mentewabe Dawit, was still alive and wanted her daughter back, but she later denied these reports, saying she thought Zahara was a "very fortunate human being to be adopted by a world famous lady".
Brad Pitt was reportedly present when Jolie signed the adoption papers and collected her daughter; later Jolie indicated that she and Pitt made the decision to adopt Zahara together. In December 2005 it was confirmed that Pitt was seeking to legally adopt Jolie's two children, and on January 19, 2006, a judge in California approved this request. The children's legal surnames were formally changed to "Jolie-Pitt".
On May 27, 2006, Jolie gave birth to a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, in Swakopmund, Namibia by a scheduled caesarean section. Pitt confirmed that their newly-born daughter will have a Namibian passport, and Jolie decided to offer the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images herself, rather than allowing paparazzi to make these extremely valuable snapshots. People paid more than $4.1 million for the North American rights, while British magazine Hello! obtained the international rights for roughly $3.5 million; the total rights sale earned up to $10 million worldwide - the most expensive celebrity image of all time. All profits were donated to an undisclosed charity by Jolie and Pitt. Madame Tussauds in New York unveiled a wax figure of two-month-old Shiloh; it was the first infant re-created in wax by Madame Tussauds.
On March 15, 2007, Jolie adopted a three-year-old boy from Vietnam, Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt (originally Pax Thien Jolie), who was born on November 29, 2003 and abandoned at birth at a local hospital, where he was initially named Pham Quang Sang. Jolie adopted the boy from the Tam Binh orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City. Jolie revealed that his first name, Pax, was suggested by her mother before her death.

Jolie in the media
Jolie appeared in the media from an early age due to her famous father Jon Voight. At seven she had a small part in Lookin' to Get Out, a movie co-written by and starring her father, and in 1986 and 1988 she attended the Academy Awards as a teenager with him. However, when she started her acting career, Jolie decided not to use "Voight" as a stage name, because she wished to establish her own identity as an actress. Jolie was never shy about controversy and integrated her teenage "wild girl" image into her public persona in the first years of her career. During her acceptance speech at the 2000 Academy Awards, Jolie declared, "I'm so in love with my brother right now", which, combined with her affectionate behavior towards him that night, sparked speculation in the tabloid media of an incestuous relationship with her brother James Haven. She has denied those rumors vehemently, and Jolie and Haven later explained in interviews that after their parents' divorce they relied on one another and because of that they hold on to each other as a means of emotional support.
Jolie is noted as "the one A-list celebrity without a publicist", and she quickly became a tabloid's favorite, since she presented herself as very outspoken in interviews, discussing her love life and her interest in BDSM openly, and once claiming to be "most likely to sleep with a female fan". As one of her most distinctive physical features, Jolie's lips have attracted notable media attention and she has been described as "the current gold standard of beauty in the West" among women seeking cosmetic surgery. She also created headlines with her much publicized marriage to Billy Bob Thornton and her subsequent change into an advocate for global humanitarian problems. As she took on the role of UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador she started to use her celebrity to highlight humanitarian causes worldwide. Jolie has been taking flying lessons since 2004 and she has a private pilot license and an instrument rating. The media speculated that Jolie is a Buddhist, but she said that she teaches Buddhism to her son Maddox because she considers it part of his culture. Jolie has not stated definitively whether or not she believes in God. When asked in 2000 if there was a God, she said, "For the people who believe in it, I hope so. There doesn't need to be a God for me."
Starting in 2005, her relationship with Brad Pitt became one of the most reported celebrity stories worldwide. After Jolie confirmed her pregnancy in early 2006, the unprecedented media hype surrounding them "reached the point of insanity" as Reuters described it in their story "The Brangelina fever". Trying to avoid the media attention, the couple went to Namibia for the birth of "the most anticipated baby since Jesus Christ", as it had been described.
Today, Jolie is one of the best known celebrities around the world. According to the Q Score, in 2000, subsequent to her Oscar win, 31 % of respondents in the United States said Jolie was familiar to them, by 2006 she was familiar to 81 % of Americans. In a 2006 global industry survey by ACNielsen in 42 international markets Jolie, together with Brad Pitt, was found to be the favorite celebrity endorser for brands and products worldwide. Also in 2006, Jolie was among the Time 100, a list of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time, and she was described as the world's most beautiful woman in the "100 Most Beautiful" issue of People. On Forbes Magazine's annual Celebrity 100 list, Jolie was ranked at No. 35 in 2006, and No. 14 in 2007. In February 2007, she was voted the greatest sex symbol of all time in the British Channel 4 television show The 100 Greatest Sex Symbols.

Tattoos
Jolie's inventory of tattoos has become the subject of much media attention and has often been addressed by interviewers. Jolie stated that, while she is not opposed to film nudity, the large number of tattoos on her body has forced filmmakers to become more creative when planning nude or love scenes. Make-up has been used to cover up the tattoos in many of her productions. Jolie currently has 13 known tattoos, among them the Tennessee Williams quote "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages", which she got together with her mother, the Arabic phrase (strength of will), the Latin proverb "quod me nutrit me destruit" (what nourishes me destroys me), and a Yantra prayer written in the ancient Khmer and Pali scripts for her son Maddox. She also has four sets of geographical coordinates on her upper left arm indicating the birthplaces of her children. Over time she covered or lasered several of her tattoos, including "Billy Bob", the name of her former husband Billy Bob Thornton, a Chinese character for death (?), and a window on her lower back; she explained that she removed the window, because, while she used to spend all of her time looking out through windows wishing to be outside, she now lives there all of the time.