Actress I'm completely obsessed about (in a not creepy way ^^ )
not in order of preference cause that would be impossible to do
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Isobel Dorothy Powley is an English actress. Powley was born and raised in London, where she was educated at Holland Park School. She began acting as a teenager on television, starring on the CBBC action television series M.I. High (2007-2008), the period miniseries Little Dorrit (2008), the crime series Murderland (2009), and the ITV sitcom Benidorm (2014).
Powley gained critical praise for her portrayal of Princess Margaret in A Royal Night Out (2015), for which she was nominated for a British Independent Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer, and a sexually confused teenager in the coming-of-age film The Diary of a Teenage Girl, for which she won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Actress and the Trophee Chopard at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. She has since starred in the films Mary Shelley (2017), White Boy Rick (2018), Ashes in the Snow (2018), and The King of Staten Island (2020) and on the Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show (2019-2021).- Actress
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British actress Imogen Poots was born in Hammersmith, London, England, the daughter of English-born Fiona (Goodall), a journalist, and Trevor Poots, a Northern Ireland-born television producer. She was educated at Bute House Preparatory School for Girls, Queen's Gate School for Girls and Latymer Upper School, all in London. When she was a teenager she began attending the Youngblood Theatre Company, and developed a love of acting.
Poots' initial screen debut was a (2004) role in British medical drama Casualty (1986). She made her big screen debut as Young Valerie in V for Vendetta (2005), then went on to appear in various projects, including 28 Weeks Later (2007), Me and Orson Welles (2008), Centurion (2010), Bouquet of Barbed Wire (2010), Fright Night (2011), A Late Quartet (2012), Greetings from Tim Buckley (2012), and The Look of Love (2013).- Actress
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Actress and philanthropist Rooney Mara was born on April 17, 1985 in Bedford, New York. She made her screen debut in the slasher film Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005), went on to have a supporting role in the independent coming-of-age drama Tanner Hall (2009), and has since starred in the horror remake A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), the biographical drama The Social Network (2010), the thriller remake The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and the romantic drama Carol (2015).
Patricia Rooney Mara is one of four children of Kathleen McNulty (née Rooney) and NFL football team New York Giants executive Timothy Christopher Mara. Her grandfathers were Wellington Mara, co-owner of the Giants, and Timothy Rooney, owner of Yonkers Raceway, and her grand-uncle is Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney, the former Ambassador to Ireland. She is the great-granddaughter of Art Rooney, the founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers football franchise. Her father has Irish, German, and French-Canadian ancestry, and her mother is of Irish and Italian descent.
After graduating from Bedford's Fox Lane High School, she went to Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia in South America for four months as part of the Traveling School, an open learning environment. She attended George Washington University for a year and then transferred to New York University, where she studied international social policy psychology and nonprofits. She took her degree from New York University in 2010. Her studies focused on non-profit organizations, as her family has a tradition of involvement in philanthropic causes.
She had thought of acting after watching old movies and attending musical theater, but did not think of it as a serious vocation and was afraid she might fail at this. As a result of her reservations, she appeared in only one play while in high school.
She began seriously focusing on acting when she was at New York University, appearing in student films. Inspired by her older sister, actress Kate Mara, she began to pursue the craft, auditioning for acting jobs at age 19. She appeared with her sister Kate in the video horror movie Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005), billing herself as "Patricia Mara". As "Tricia Mara", she had guest roles on television and won her first lead in the movie Tanner Hall (2009), which was shot in the fall of 2007.
She originally auditioned for the supporting role of Lucasta in "Tanner Hall", a $3-million independent film, but director Tatiana von Fürstenberg was so impressed by the young actress, she had her return to audition for the lead role of Fernanda, which Mara won. Furstenberg was delighted with her nuanced performance, saying, "Still waters run deep".
Continuing to call herself Tricia Mara, this was during the making of "Tanner Hall" that she considered changing her professional name to Rooney Mara, soliciting the advice of the cast and crew. After premiering at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, her performance in "Tanner Hall" brought the rechristened Rooney Mara a "Rising Star" award at the 2009 Hamptons Film Festival and a "Stargazer Award" at the 2010 Gen Art Film Festival.
She received her first lead role in a major feature, in the $35 million remake A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010). The movie proved disappointing at the box office, grossing only $63 million domestically and racking up a worldwide gross of just under $116 million. However, she was noticed by critics in the small but pivotal role of the Boston University undergrad Erica Albright who dumps Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010). Director David Fincher subsequently cast her as the lead, Lisbeth Salander, in his thriller remake, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), based on Stieg Larsson's Millennium book series. She received critical acclaim for her performance, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama.
She starred in the thriller film Side Effects (2013), the independent drama Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013), and the acclaimed sci-fi romantic drama Her (2013). The following year, she starred in the adventure drama Trash (2014). She garnered further critical acclaim for her performance in Todd Haynes' romantic drama Carol (2015), for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama and the SAG, BAFTA, and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
In the spirit of her family's philanthropic endeavors, Rooney created Faces of Kibera, a charity that provides food, medical care and housing to orphans in Nairobi, Kenya's Kibra district, a small slum that houses a million people. There are many orphans as AIDS is rampant in the slum.- Actress
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Greta Gerwig is an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, and director. She has collaborated with Noah Baumbach on several films, including Greenberg (2010), Frances Ha (2012), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination, and Mistress America (2015). Gerwig made her solo directorial debut with the critically acclaimed comedy-drama film Lady Bird (2017), which she also wrote, and has also had starring roles in the films Damsels in Distress (2011), Jackie (2016), and 20th Century Women (2016).
Greta Celeste Gerwig was born in Sacramento, California, to Christine Gerwig (née Sauer), a nurse, and Gordon Gerwig, a financial consultant and computer programmer. She has German, Irish, and English ancestry. Gerwig was raised as a Unitarian Universalist, but also attended an all-girls Catholic school. She has described herself as "an intense child". With an early interest in dance, she intended to get a degree in musical theatre in New York. She graduated from Barnard College in NY, where she studied English and philosophy, instead. Originally intending to become a playwright, after meeting young film director Joe Swanberg, she became the star of a series of intellectual low budget movies made by first-time filmmakers, a trend dubbed "mumblecore".
Gerwig was cast in a minor role in Swanberg's LOL (2006) in 2006, while still studying at Barnard. She then appeared in many of Swanberg's films, and personally co-directed, co-wrote and co-produced one entitled Nights and Weekends (2008). She has worked with good quality directors such as Ti West (The House of the Devil (2009)), Whit Stillman (Damsels in Distress (2011)), or Woody Allen (To Rome with Love (2012)) but success and (international) recognition did not come until Frances Ha (2012), directed by Noah Baumbach, a film she also co-wrote. Both tall and immature, awkward and graceful, blundering and candid, annoying and engaging, Greta has won all hearts in the title role of Frances Ha(liday).
In 2017, she wrote and directed the highly acclaimed, semi-autobiographical teen movie Lady Bird (2017), set in 2002-2003, and starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and Timothée Chalamet.
In 2011, Gerwig received an award for Acting from the Athena Film Festival for her artistry as one of Hollywood's definitive screen actresses of her generation.- Producer
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Charlize Theron was born in Benoni, a city in the greater Johannesburg area, in South Africa, the only child of Gerda Theron (née Maritz) and Charles Theron. She was raised on a farm outside the city. Theron is of Afrikaner (Dutch, with some French Huguenot and German) descent, and Afrikaner military figure Danie Theron was her great-great-uncle.
Theron received an education as a ballet dancer and has danced both the "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker". There was not much work for a young actress or dancer in South Africa, so she soon traveled to Europe and the United States, where she got a job at the Joffrey Ballet in New York. She was also able to work as a photo model. However, an injured knee put a halt to her dancing career.
In 1994, her mother bought her a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, and Charlize started visiting all of the agents on Hollywood Boulevard, but without any luck. She went to a bank to cash a check for $500 she received from her mother, and became furious when she learned that the bank would not cash it because it was an out-of-state check. She made a scene and an agent gave her his card, in exchange for learning American English, which she did by watching soap operas on television.
Her first role was in the B-film Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995), a non-speaking part with three seconds of screen time. Her next role was as Helga Svelgen in 2 Days in the Valley (1996), which landed her the role of Tina Powers in That Thing You Do! (1996). Since then, she has starred in movies like The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) and The Italian Job (2003). On February 29, 2004, she won her first Academy Award, a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Monster (2003).- Actress
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Mary Elle Fanning was born on the 9th of April 1998 in Conyers, Georgia, USA, to Heather Joy (Arrington) and Steven J. Fanning. Her mother played professional tennis, and her father, now an electronics salesman, played minor league baseball. She is of German, Irish, English, French, and Channel Islander descent.
Elle's ascent into stardom began when she was almost three years old, when she played the younger version of her sister, Dakota Fanning's, character Lucy in the drama film I Am Sam (2001). She then played younger Dakota again in Taken (2002) as Allie, age 3. But her first big independent movie without her sister was in 2003's Daddy Day Care (2003) as Jamie. She then had two guest appearances on Judging Amy (1999) and CSI: Miami (2002).
Elle was becoming more successful and she got another role, in 2004's The Door in the Floor (2004) with Kim Basinger. Her career kept improving, as she had two movies in 2005, Because of Winn-Dixie (2005) and I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With (2006).
She has since starred in a number of prominent films, including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Super 8 (2011), We Bought a Zoo (2011), and Maleficent (2014).- Actress
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Alicia Vikander is a Swedish actress, dancer and producer. She was born and raised in Gothenburg, Västra Götalands län, Sweden, to Maria Fahl, an actress of stage and screen, and Svante Vikander, a psychiatrist. Through her mother, she is one quarter Finnish, and had a maternal great aunt who moved from Finland to Sweden to escape World War 2. Alicia began acting as a child in minor stage productions at The Göteborg Opera, and trained as a ballet dancer at the Royal Swedish Ballet School in Stockholm, and the School of American Ballet in New York. She began her professional acting career by appearing in Swedish short films and television series, and first gained recognition in Northern Europe for her role as Josefin Björn-Tegebrandt in the TV drama Second Avenue (2007). Vikander made her feature film debut in Pure (2009), for which she won the Guldbagge Award for Best Actress. She attracted widespread recognition in 2012 for portraying Princess Ekaterina "Kitty" Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya in Joe Wright's film adaptation of Anna Karenina (2012), and Queen Caroline Mathilde in the acclaimed Danish film A Royal Affair (2012), receiving a BAFTA Rising Star Award nomination for her breakthrough. She went on to star in the 2013 Swedish drama film Hotel (2013)and appeared in the Julian Assange biopic The Fifth Estate (2013) that same year. In 2014 and 2015, Vikander achieved global recognition and acclaim for her roles as activist Vera Brittain in Testament of Youth (2014), an AI in Ex Machina (2014), for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress, and painter Gerda Wegener in The Danish Girl (2015), for which she received the Academy Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress.- Actress
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As the highest-paid actress in the world in 2015 and 2016, and with her films grossing over $5.5 billion worldwide, Jennifer Lawrence is often cited as the most successful actress of her generation. She is also the first person born in the 1990s to have won an acting Oscar.
Jennifer Shrader Lawrence was born August 15, 1990, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Karen (Koch), who manages a children's camp, and Gary Lawrence, who works in construction. She has two older brothers, Ben and Blaine, and has English, German, Irish, and Scottish ancestry.
Her career began when she traveled to Manhattan at the age of fourteen after dropping out of the 8th grade. After conducting her first cold read, agents told her mother that "it was the best cold read by a 14-year-old they had ever heard," and tried to convince her stage mother that she needed to spend the summer in Manhattan. After leaving the agency, Jennifer was spotted by an agent in the midst of shooting an H&M ad and asked to take her picture. The next day, that agent followed up with her and invited her to the studio for a cold-read audition. Again, the agents were highly impressed and strongly urged her mother to allow her to spend the summer in New York City. As fate would have it, she did and subsequently appeared in commercials such as MTV's "My Super Sweet 16" and played a role in the movie The Devil You Know (2013).
Shortly thereafter, her career forced her and her family to move to Los Angeles, where she was cast in the TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show (2007), and in smaller movies such as The Poker House (2008) and The Burning Plain (2008).
Her big break came when she played Ree in Winter's Bone (2010), which landed her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. Shortly thereafter, she secured the role of Mystique in franchise reboot X-Men: First Class (2011), which went on to be a hit in Summer 2011. Around this time, Lawrence scored the role of a lifetime when she was cast as Katniss Everdeen in the big-screen adaptation of literary sensation The Hunger Games (2012). The film went on to become one of the highest-grossing movies ever, with over $407 million at the US box office, and instantly propelled Lawrence to the A-list among young actors and actresses. Three Hunger Games sequels were released in each consecutive November: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014), and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (2015), with Lawrence reprising her role.
In 2012, the romantic comedy Silver Linings Playbook (2012) earned her the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Satellite Award, and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actress, among other accolades, making her the youngest person ever to be nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Actress and the second-youngest Best Actress winner.
She starred in David O. Russell's popular drama-comedy American Hustle (2013), as Roselyn Rosenfield, and teamed with the director again to play inventor Joy Mangano in another family comedy, Joy (2015), for which she earned Oscar nominations for both roles (Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress, respectively).- Actress
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Anne Jacqueline Hathaway was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Kate McCauley Hathaway, an actress, and Gerald T. Hathaway, a lawyer, both originally from Philadelphia. She is of mostly Irish descent, along with English, German, and French. Her first major role came in the short-lived television series Get Real (1999). She gained widespread recognition for her roles in The Princess Diaries (2001) and its 2004 sequel as a young girl who discovers she is a member of royalty, opposite Julie Andrews and Heather Matarazzo.
She also had a notable role in Nicholas Nickleby (2002) opposite Charlie Hunnam and Jamie Bell, and a starring role in Ella Enchanted (2004). A former top-ranking soprano in New York, Hathaway was reportedly a front-runner for the role of "Christine" in the 2004 The Phantom of the Opera (2004). However, due to scheduling conflicts with The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), she couldn't take the role, which was later given to newcomer Emmy Rossum.
Hathaway soon started to move away from family-friendly films. Following The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), she appeared topless in the films Havoc (2005) opposite Josh Peck and Brokeback Mountain (2005) opposite Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Her desire to break out of her "Princess Diaries" image parallels that of her one-time co-star, Julie Andrews, who went topless in the film S.O.B. (1981) in order to break away from the image she created from her 1960s musicals. In interviews, Hathaway said that doing family-friendly films didn't mean she was similar to their characters or mean she objected to appearing nude in other films.- Actress
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Zoe Swicord Kazan was born in Los Angeles, California, to screenwriters Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord. She is the granddaughter of director Elia Kazan. She is of Greek (from her paternal grandfather), English, and German descent.
Kazan received her BA in Theater from Yale University. In the fall of 2006, she played "Sandy" opposite Cynthia Nixon in The New Group's production of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie". She returned to the stage in the fall of 2007 in Playwrights Horizon's production of "100 Saints You Should Know" and in the New Group's "Things We Want". She lives in Brooklyn.- Actress
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Elizabeth Chase "Lizzie" Olsen (born February 16, 1989) is an American actress. She is known for her roles in the films Silent House (2011), Liberal Arts (2012), Godzilla (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), and Captain America: Civil War (2016). For her role in the critically-acclaimed Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), she was nominated for numerous awards, including the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. She is the younger sister of actresses and fashion designers Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen.
Olsen was born in Sherman Oaks, California to Jarnette "Jarnie", a personal manager, and David "Dave" Olsen, a real estate developer and mortgage banker. She is the younger sister of twins Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen, who became famous as TV and movie stars at an early age. Her oldest brother is named Trent Olsen, and she has two younger half-siblings. In 1996, Olsen's parents divorced. The Olsens have Norwegian and English ancestry.
As a child, Olsen received ballet and singing lessons. She began acting at age 4, and by 11 she'd had small roles in How the West Was Fun and the straight-to-video series The Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley. Having appeared in her sisters' videos, when she was in the fourth grade, Olsen began to go on auditions for other projects, auditioning for the film Spy Kids. She almost quit acting in 2004 over the media frenzy surrounding Mary-Kate's eating disorder.
She attended Campbell Hall School in North Hollywood, California from kindergarten through grade 12. After graduation, she enrolled at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. In 2009, Olsen spent a semester studying in Moscow, Russia at the Moscow Art Theatre School through the MATS program at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.
Olsen's breakout role came in 2011, when she appeared in the film Martha Marcy May Marlene. The film, along with Olsen's performance, received critical acclaim. Olsen was nominated for and won numerous critics awards for her portrayal of the titular character Martha, a girl suffering from delusions and paranoia after fleeing her life in a cult and returning to her family. She next appeared in the horror film remake Silent House, in which she played the role of Sarah. The film received mixed reviews, although Olsen's performance was once again praised. Olsen also appeared in the music video "The Queen" by Carlotta. Olsen filmed the movie Red Lights during mid-2011, and it was released in the U.S. on July 13, 2012. She starred in Josh Radnor's film Liberal Arts, which was released on January 22, 2012. She and Dakota Fanning starred in Very Good Girls, a 2013 release.
In January 2013, Olsen was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award. She co-starred in the 2013 American remake of the 2003 South Korean film Oldboy; she played Marie, a young social worker who developed a relationship with the protagonist, played by Josh Brolin. She played Edie Parker, Jack Kerouac's first wife and the author of the Beat Generation memoir You'll Be Okay, in Kill Your Darlings.
In 2014, Olsen starred in Legendary's Godzilla a reboot, opposite Bryan Cranston and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Olsen joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe by playing the Scarlet Witch in Avengers: Age of Ultron, the 2015 Avengers sequel. She first appeared as the character in a mid-credits scene of the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier, again alongside her Godzilla co-star Taylor-Johnson, who portrayed her brother Quicksilver. She reprised this role as the Scarlet Witch in the 2015 film Avengers: Age of Ultron and the 2016 film Captain America: Civil War.
In September 2014, it was announced that Olsen would portray Audrey Williams, Hank Williams' wife, manager, and duet partner in the upcoming 2015 biopic I Saw the Light directed by Marc Abraham and starring Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams.
In January 2016, it was announced that Olsen would team up with her Avengers: Age of Ultron co-star Jeremy Renner in Taylor Sheridan's directorial feature film debut, Wind River.
Olsen attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and the Atlantic Theater Company and graduated in March 2013 after six years of intermittent study. Her sisters' clothing line "Elizabeth and James" was named after her and her older brother.
Olsen started dating fellow actor Boyd Holbrook in September 2012 after meeting him on the film Very Good Girls. They became engaged in March 2014 but called it off in January 2015.- Actress
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Sarah Polley is an actress and director renowned in her native Canada for her political activism. Blessed with an extremely expressive face that enables directors to minimize dialog due to her uncanny ability to suggest a character's thoughts, Polley has become a favorite of critics for her sensitive portraits of wounded and conflicted young women in independent films.
She was born into a show business family: her stepfather, Michael Polley, appeared with her in the movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) and on the television series Avonlea (1990); and her mother, Diane Polley, was an actress and casting director. It was her mother's connections that launched Sarah, at her own insistence, on an acting career at the age of four, following in the footsteps of her older half-brother Mark Polley. A second half-brother, John Buchan, is a casting director and producer.
Her career as a child actress shifted into high gear when she was cast as the Cockney waif Jody Turner in Lantern Hill (1989), for which she won a Gemini Award, the Canadian equivalent of the Emmy, in 1992. Produced by Kevin Sullivan, the film was based on the book by Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables (1985). When Sullivan created a television series based on Montgomery's work, he cast Polley in the lead role of Sara Stanley in Avonlea (1990). The series propelled Polley into the first rank of Canadian TV stars and made her independently wealthy by the age of fourteen.
Her personal life was deeply affected by the death of her mother Diane from cancer shortly after her 11th birthday, a development that ironically paralleled the fictional life of her character Sara. Highly intelligent and politically progressive at a young age, Polley eventually rebelled against what she felt was the Americanization of the series after it was picked up by the Disney Channel for distribution in the US, eventually dropping out of the show. Though she does not blame her parents, she remains publicly disenchanted over the loss of her childhood and, in October 2003, said she is working on a script about a twelve-year-old girl on a TV show.
Polley, who picked up a second Gemini Award for her performance in the TV series Straight Up (1996), subsequently quit acting and high school to turn her attention to politics, positioning herself on the extreme left of Canada's left-of-center New Democratic Party. The publicity ensuing from her losing some teeth after being slugged by an Ontario policeman during a protest against the Conservative provincial government, plus the stinging cynicism from some other activists unimpressed by her celebrity, led her to lower her political profile temporarily and return to acting in Atom Egoyan's film The Sweet Hereafter (1997). It was her appearance as Nicole, the teenage girl injured in a school bus accident who serves as the conscience of the small town rent by the tragedy, that first brought her to the attention of critics in the US. In Canada, the role was heralded by critics as her successful breakthrough to adult roles. It was her second film with Egoyan, who wrote the part with her in mind when he adapted the novel by Russell Banks, who, ironically, is American. Predictions of an Academy Award nomination and future stardom were part of the critical consensus, and she received her first Best Actress Genie nomination from Canada's Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television and the Best Supporting Actress award from the Boston Society of Film Critics. It was the buzz created at the Sundance Festival, where her starring role in the film Guinevere (1999) was showcased, when the entertainment media crowned her the it-girl of 1999.
Intensely private and extremely ambivalent about the personal cost of celebrity and the Hollywood ethos Fame is the Name of the Game, Polley could be seen as rebelling against the expectations of mainstream cinema when she embarked on a career path that took her out of the spotlight thrown by the harsh lights of the Hollywood hype/publicity machine after shooting the film Go (1999). She dropped out of Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000), the US$60 million mega-hyped vehicle that was supposed to make her a mainstream star in the US, choosing to return to Canada to make the CDN$1.5 million The Law of Enclosures (2000) for Genie Award-winner John Greyson, a director she admires greatly. The film grossed poorly in Canada and was not released in the US, but it did garner Polley her second Genie nomination for Best Actress. While her replacement in Almost Famous (2000) went on to win an Oscar nomination and a career above the title in glossy Hollywood films, she took a wide variety of parts, large and small, in independent films, including significant roles in the ensemble pieces The Claim (2000) and The Weight of Water (2000); bit parts in eXistenZ (1999) and Love Come Down (2000); and the lead in No Such Thing (2001). Her choice of projects showed her to be a questing spirit more focused on learning the art of her craft than on stardom.
She has said that her choice of film roles, eschewing mainstream Hollywood movies for chancier, non-commercial independent fare, was the result of an ethical decision on her part to make films with social importance. A less-observant viewer might think that the rebel Polley played in her political life that had previously manifested itself in her profession was now driving her to the verge of career suicide in terms of popularity, marketability, and choice of future roles. However, that interpretation does not recognize the extraordinary talent that will always keep her in demand by directors, if not casting agents, with an eye on the opening weekend box office. One must understand Polley's career progression in light of her attendance at the Canadian Film Centre's directors program and her production of short films, including Don't Think Twice (1999) and the highly praised I Shout Love (2001). Polley is a cinema artist. This woman wants to make, and will make films. Thus, we can understand her career choices as a desire to work with and understand the technique of some of the best directors in film, including David Cronenberg, Michael Winterbottom, and Hal Hartley.
Polley is as renowned for her intelligence as for her remarkable talent. The problem of the intelligent person in the acting field is that the actor, as artist, in not ultimately in control of their medium, and it is artistic control that is the hallmark of the great artist. The controlling intelligence on a movie set is the director, and her attendance at the Canadian Film Centre has given her a new perspective on acting. The actor, she says, should not try to give a complete performance for the camera (that is, control the representation on film) but must remember that the function of the actor is to give the director as much coverage as possible as a film, as well as a performance, is made in the editing room. According to Polley, this realization, that the film actor exists to serve the director, has given her new enthusiasm for acting. Thus, her career, and her career choices, can be seen as a quest for knowledge about the art of cinema, a journey whose fruition we will see in her future feature work as both actor and director.- Actress
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Felicity Rose Hadley Jones is an English actress and producer. Jones started her professional acting career as a child, appearing at age 12 in The Treasure Seekers (1996). She went on to play Ethel Hallow for one series in the television show The Worst Witch and its sequel Weirdsister College. After Kings Norton Girls School, Jones attended King Edward VI Handsworth School, to complete A Levels and went on to take a gap year (during which she appeared in the BBC series Servants (2003)). She took time off from acting to attend school during her formative years, and has worked steadily since she graduated with a 2:1 from Wadham College, Oxford in 2006, where she read English. While studying English, she appeared in student plays, including Attis in which she played the title role, and, in 2005, Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors" for the OUDS summer tour to Japan, starring alongside Harry Lloyd.
On radio, she is known for playing the long-running role of Emma Grundy in The Archers. In 2008, she appeared in the Donmar Warehouse production of The Chalk Garden. Since 2006, Jones has appeared in numerous films, including Northanger Abbey (2007), Brideshead Revisited (2008), Chéri (2009), and The Tempest (2010). She stars in Star Wars spin-off Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) as Jyn Erso. Her performance in the 2011 film Like Crazy (2011) was met with critical acclaim garnering her numerous awards, including a special jury prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. In 2014, her performance as Jane Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014) was also met with critical acclaim, garnering her nominations for the Golden Globe, SAG, BAFTA, and Academy Award for Best Actress.
In 2019, Jones founded her own production company, Piecrust Productions with her brother, Alex Jones.- Actress
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Juno Violet Temple was born in London, England, into a showbiz family, the daughter of producer Amanda Temple and film director Julien Temple. She was named 'Juno' after her parents took a visit to the Grand Canyon during pregnancy and found they were standing on a butte of Cape Final known as Juno Temple. She has English and Scottish ancestry.
Her family moved to America, where she spent the first four years of her life. The family then moved back to England and settled in Somerset. At age four, she decided she wanted to be an actress after her father showed her Beauty and the Beast (1946) by Jean Cocteau.
She attended Enmore Primary School in Somerset. It was during this time that her father cast her in his film Vigo (1998). However, her father ended up cutting her out of the film. Two years later, at age 11, her father cast her in another of his films, Pandaemonium (2000).
She became a weekly boarder at King's College boarding school in Taunton. She then moved on to Bedales boarding school in Hampshire to take her A-Levels, one of which was Drama. She left with a B and two C's.
At age 15, she told her parents that she was serious about becoming an actress Her mother saw a call for an open audition for Notes on a Scandal (2006), and Juno was successful in winning the role of Cate Blanchett's daughter. This was her big break and led to a role in another high-profile film, Atonement (2007). She dyed her hair red to play Lola.
In 2009, Juno moved to Los Angeles, partly for her acting career.- Actress
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Olivia resides in New York City where she was born and raised. She has trained extensively in classical Shakespearian acting in New York at the American Globe Theatre, and in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She began acting professionally in 2003, and plans to pursue a career in both theater and film.- Actress
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Actress and activist Olivia Wilde is a modern day renaissance woman, starring in many acclaimed film productions, while simultaneously giving back to the community.
She was born on March 10, 1984 in New York City. Her parents are Leslie Cockburn (née Leslie Corkill Redlich) and Andrew Cockburn. Her mother is American-born and her father was born in London, England to an upper-class British family; he also later became a citizen of Ireland. Wilde is the middle child, having an older sister, Chloe Cockburn, and, a younger brother, Charlie Cockburn. She is of English, Irish, Scottish, German, and Manx descent.
She was raised in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and spent her summers in Ardmore, County Waterford, Ireland. She attended the private Georgetown Day School, as well as, Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, graduating in 2002. She was accepted to Bard College, another highly selective private school in Duchess County, New York but deferred her enrollment three times in order to pursue an acting career. She later studied at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, Ireland.
Wilde is known for her television roles as Alex Kelly in The O.C. (2003) from 2004-2005 and Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley in the medical-drama television series, House (2004) when she joined the cast in 2007 and appeared on the show until the series end in 2012.
Wilde is a board member of the organization "Artists for Peace and Justice," which supports communities in Haiti through programs in education, health care, and dignity through the performing arts. She has served as executive producer on several documentary short films, including, Sun City Picture House (2010), which is about a community in Haiti that rallies to build a movie theater after the disastrous 2010 earthquake and Baseball in the Time of Cholera (2012), which explored the cholera epidemic in Haiti.
Wilde is known for her roles in Year One (2009), Tron: Legacy (2010), Cowboys & Aliens (2011), In Time (2011), People Like Us (2012), Her (2013), Rush (2013), Drinking Buddies (2013), The Longest Week (2014), Love the Coopers (2015), and Meadowland (2015).
Since 2011, Wilde had been in a relationship with Jason Sudeikis. They have two children together, Otis Alexander Sudeikis (born April 20, 2014) and Daisy Josephine Sudeikis (born October 11, 2016). In November 2020, they announced that they had ended their relationship.
Wilde made her Broadway debut in the play "1984" at the Hudson Theatre in New York City in 2017. She has recently starred in Life Itself (2018) and A Vigilante (2018).- Actress
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Hannah Dakota Fanning was born on the 23rd of February 1994, in Conyers, Georgia, USA, to Heather Joy (Arrington) and Steven Fanning. Her mother played professional tennis, and her father, now an electronics salesman, played minor league baseball. She is of German, Irish, English, French, and Channel Islander descent. Before her debut into the cinematic world, Dakota did her own acting around her house. She was very active for her age, and often put a blanket under her shirt and pretended to be having a baby, using her younger sister, Elle Fanning, who is also an actress now, as the baby. Dakota went to a playhouse near her home, where the children that attended put on a play every week to show to their parents. But the people running the playhouse noticed that Dakota stood out, and advised her parents to take her to an agency. They believed that she was extremely talented.
The Fanning family were advised to spend six weeks in Los Angeles, a long way from their home in Georgia. But there Dakota managed to get her first work; to star in a national Tide commercial. She was chosen out of many, many other children.
The family then decided to move to Los Angeles permanently, for it looked like Dakota's career was looking very good. After they moved, Dakota signed with a professional agency, and soon won a role in the movie Tomcats (2001). She then went onto a small project called Father Xmas (2001) as Clairee.
But Dakota's big break-through was yet to come. She auditioned for one of the main characters in I Am Sam (2001), and the director and the rest of the crew were amazed by her extraordinary talent. Dakota was cast, and starred in the movie as Lucy Diamond Dawson, alongside major Hollywood stars Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer.
After I Am Sam (2001) her talent was immediately recognized around the world. She went straight onto Trapped (2002) as Abby Jennings, alongside Charlize Theron, then played the younger version of Reese Witherspoon in 2002's Sweet Home Alabama (2002) But Dakota still had two more movies to come in 2002. Firstly she got a huge role in Steven Spielberg's Taken (2002), the mini-TV series, and narrated the ten whole episodes, as well as having a part. This was a little more challenging, as she was playing a troubled alien child, but she managed to do brilliantly. Her last movie for 2002 was the children's movie Hansel & Gretel (2002) as Katie.
2003 was also a brilliant year for Dakota, as she starred in a number of exciting projects. Firstly, it was as Sally Walden in The Cat in the Hat (2003) with Mike Myers, then she played Lorraine "Ray" Schleine, a bratty little girl, in the sweet comedy Uptown Girls (2003) alongside Brittany Murphy. She then voiced preschool Kim in Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time (2003).
In 2004, Dakota appeared in the violent thriller, Man on Fire (2004), alongside Denzel Washington. Her reviews were excellent.
First in 2005 was Nine Lives (2005), as Maria, then the chilling Hide and Seek (2005) alongside Robert De Niro. By now, she was the busiest child actress in Hollywood, with a resume to die for. Her younger sister, (Elle Fanning), had also been discovered a few years earlier.
After Hide and Seek (2005) came War of the Worlds (2005), which was one of her major movies out of everything she'd worked in. Not only did it make her more popular, but she got to play the daughter of A-list Hollywood actor Tom Cruise. They had four very successful premieres; the first in Tokyo, Japan, the second in France, the third in London, England and the fourth in New York, USA. The reviews were outstanding, especially Dakota's. She then voiced Lilo in Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005).- Actress
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Natalie Portman is the first person born in the 1980s to have won the Academy Award for Best Actress (for Black Swan (2010)).
Natalie was born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel. She is the only child of Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born doctor, and Shelley Stevens, an American-born artist (from Cincinnati, Ohio), who also acts as Natalie's agent. Her parents are both of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Natalie's family left Israel for Washington, D.C., when she was still very young. After a few more moves, her family finally settled in New York, where she still lives to this day. She graduated with honors, and her academic achievements allowed her to attend Harvard University. She was discovered by an agent in a pizza parlor at the age of 11. She was pushed towards a career in modeling but she decided that she would rather pursue a career in acting. She was featured in many live performances, but she made her powerful film debut in the movie Léon: The Professional (1994) (aka "Léon"). Following this role Natalie won roles in such films as Heat (1995), Beautiful Girls (1996), and Mars Attacks! (1996).
It was not until 1999 that Natalie received worldwide fame as Queen Amidala in the highly anticipated US$431 million-grossing prequel Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). She then she starred in two critically acclaimed comedy dramas, Anywhere But Here (1999) and Where the Heart Is (2000), followed by Closer (2004), for which she received an Oscar nomination. She reprised her role as Padme Amidala in the last two episodes of the Star Wars prequel trilogy: Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005). She received an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Black Swan (2010).
She received a second nomination for Best Actress, for playing Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie (2016).- Actress
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Australian actress Emily Browning was born in 1988 in Melbourne, Australia, to Shelley and Andrew Browning. She has two younger brothers. Her start in acting came after a classmate's father, involved in the acting business, noticed her "acting all ditsy" in a school play. Emily found an agent and was soon filming on location for the Hallmark TV-movie, The Echo of Thunder (1998). She received more roles from there, including parts in The Man Who Sued God (2001), opposite Billy Connolly, and Ned Kelly (2003), opposite Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom. In that film, she had to hug Heath Ledger, and she said that all of her friends, who went to see the film, at the same time sent her a barrage of text messages about how lucky she was! Emily says she tries to avoid "cheesy" movies, and her big break came when she was on a press tour in LA for Ghost Ship (2002), that was filmed in Australia and released in America. In the same year, she won an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Young Actress, and was nominated for the same award, the next year. Emily received some scripts when she was in LA and sent in a video audition for A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004). She received a call and was asked to come to LA for a proper audition, which won her the part. She spent months in LA filming, for the second time acting opposite Billy Connolly. Emily said she enjoyed the experience of making a big budget film in America, and says that although she's not sure what is coming next, she's hoping to do some more Australian work.