Salma Hayek Biography

Early life:

Hayek was born in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico to Sami Hayek, a Lebanese oil company executive, and Diana Jiménez, an opera singer. Hayek's paternal grandparents were Mexicans of Lebanese descent, while her mother is of Spanish descent. Raised in a wealthy, devoutly Catholic family, she was sent to the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Grand Coteau, Louisiana, at the age of 12. She was also an accomplished gymnast aspiring to compete in the Olympics.



After she was not asked by the religious sisters who ran the school to return to the Academy because of behavioral problems, Hayek returned to Mexico. She was later sent to live with her aunt in Houston, Texas, where she stayed until she was 17. She attended college in Mexico City, where she studied International Relations at the Universidad Iberoamericana. To the chagrin of her family, she dropped out to pursue a career as an actress.




At the age of 23, Hayek landed the title role in Teresa (1989), a successful Mexican telenovela that made her a star in Mexico. In 1994, Hayek starred in El Callejón de los Milagros (Midaq Alley), which has won more awards than any other movie in the history of Mexican cinema. For her performance Hayek was nominated to an Ariel Award.

Career:

Despite limited fluency in English, Hayek moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1991 to study acting under Stella Adler, hoping for a career in Hollywood. Robert Rodriguez and his producer wife Elizabeth Avellan soon gave Hayek the break she needed, a starring role opposite Antonio Banderas in 1995's Desperado. The movie caught Hollywood's attention, as moviegoers proved to be as dazzled with Hayek as Rodriguez had been.



Hayek followed her success in Desperado with a brief but memorable role in From Dusk Till Dawn. In 1999 she co-starred in Will Smith's big-budget Wild Wild West, and played a supporting role in Kevin Smith's Dogma. In 2000 she had an uncredited acting part opposite Benicio Del Toro in Traffic.



Around this time Hayek founded production company Ventanarosa, through which she produces film and television projects. Her first feature as a producer was 1999's El Colonel No Tiene Quien le Escriba, Mexico's official selection for submission for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars.



Frida, co-produced by Hayek, was released in 2002. Starring Hayek as Frida Kahlo, and Alfred Molina as her unfaithful husband, Diego Rivera, the film was directed by Julie Taymor and also featured an entourage of stars in supporting roles, including Antonio Banderas, Ashley Judd, Geoffrey Rush, Edward Norton and Valeria Golino. She earned a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her performance.



In 2003 she reprised her role from Desperado by appearing in the final film of the Mariachi Trilogy, Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

In that same year she produced and directed the The Maldonado Miracle, a Showtime movie which won her a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in a Children/Youth/Family Special.

In December 2005 she directed a music video for Prince, titled "Te Amo Corazon" ("I love you, sweetheart") that featured Mia Maestro, with whom she is good friends.



Hayek is an executive producer of Ugly Betty, television series airing in the United States since September 2006. Hayek adapted the series for American television with Ben Silverman, who acquired the rights and scripts from the Colombian Telenovela Yo Soy Betty La Fea in 2001. Originally intended as a half hour sitcom for NBC in 2004, the project would later be picked up by ABC for the 2006-2007 season with Silvio Horta also producing. Hayek guest-starred on Ugly Betty as Sofia Reyes, a magazine editor. She also had a cameo playing an actress in the telenovela within the show. The show quickly became a ratings hit and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy Series in 2007.



Hayek has also been credited as a song performer in three movies. The first was Desperado for the song Quedate Aquí. In Frida she performed with band Los Vega the Mexican folk song La Bruja. She also recorded Siente mi amor, song that played during the end credits of Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Personal Life:

Hayek dated fellow actor Edward Norton for four years, between 1999 and 2003, and then Josh Lucas from 2003 until 2004. As of 2006, Hayek is single and has homes in Los Angeles and Mexico. She is best friends with Spanish actress Penelope Cruz. The two co-starred in the 2006 film, Bandidas. Hayek studied at Ramtha's School of Enlightenment.

Gillian Anderson Biography

Early life:

Gillian Anderson was born on August 9th 1968 in Chicago to Edward and Rosemary Anderson. Soon after her birth her family moved to Puerto Rico for fifteen months and then to Crouch End in London so her father could attend the London Film school. When she was eleven, her family moved again, this time to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she attended Fountain Elementary and then City Middle/High School, a program for gifted students with a strong emphasis on the humanities; she graduated in 1986. With her English accent and background, she felt out of place in the American Midwest, and developed a reputation as a strong-willed and rebellious teenager. Anderson, mocked because of her British accent, soon developed a Midwest dialect. In addition, she had her nose pierced in the early 1980s, and dyed her hair various colors.



She found an outlet for her talents when she began acting in high school and community theater productions. She had wanted to be a marine biologist, but at 17 after a couple of auditions for


the Grand Rapids Community Theater, she gained a few roles and never looked back. She attended Goodman Theater School of Drama at DePaul University in Chicago, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1990, and a few summer schools with the National Theatre of Great Britain at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Early Career:

Anderson moved to New York when she was twenty-two, and started her career in The Philanthropist at the Long Wharf Theatre. To support herself when she started out, she worked as a waitress. Anderson did a lot of theatre work and won much critical acclaim, including a 1990-91 Theatre World Award for her role in the play Absent Friends produced by Alan Ayckbourn which ran at the Manhattan Theatre Club.



She moved to Los Angeles in 1991/92, spending a year auditioning. Although she had once vowed she would never do TV, being out of work for a year changed her mind. Anderson did Home Fires Burning for a cable station as well as the audio book version of Exit to Eden. She broke into mainstream television in 1993, with a guest appearance on the collegiate drama Class of '96 on the fledgling Fox Network.



As a result of her guest appearance in Class of 96, Anderson was sent the script for The X-Files at the age of 24. She decided to audition as: "for the first time in a long time the script involved a strong, independent intelligent woman as a lead character." Producer Chris Carter wanted to employ her, but FOX wanted someone with previous TV exposure and more "bimbo-like". Fox sent in more actresses, but Carter stood by Anderson, and she was cast as Special Agent Dana Scully. She got the part assuming it would run for thirteen episodes, the standard run for American TV networks. Filmed in Vancouver, the series eventually ran for nine seasons, and included one film. During her time on The X Files, Anderson won several awards for her portrayal of Agent Scully, including an Emmy Award, Golden Globe and two SAG awards for Best Actress in a Drama Series. While filming she met assistant art director Clyde Klotz, whom she married. She had roles in a handful of films during the run of The X-Files and starred in The House of Mirth, an adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel of the same name.

Later Carrer:

Since The X-Files ended, she has performed in several stage productions and worked on various film projects. She has also done narrative work for documentaries on scientific topics. In 2005, she appeared as Lady Dedlock in a BBC television adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House, had a starring role in the Irish film The Mighty Celt (for which she won an IFTA award for Best International Actress) and performed in a film version of the novel Tristram Shandy, released in January 2006.



In 1999, Anderson starred in the English release of Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, where she voiced the character of Moro. Anderson is a proclaimed lover of Miyazaki's work. She also took part in Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.



In 2006, she was nominated for the prestigious British Academy Television Award (BAFTA) for Best Actress and won the Broadcasting Press Guild Television and Radio Award for Best Actress for her role in Bleak House. However, her co-star in Bleak House, Anna Maxwell Martin, walked away with the BAFTA award. Anderson also received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for her performance as Lady Dedlock. She was also nominated for a Golden Satellite Award for her performance in Bleak House and came in second place in the best actress category of the 2005 BBC Drama Poll for her performance as Lady Dedlock. (Billie Piper won, and Anna Maxwell Martin came in third.) She was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress for her role in Bleak House.


She also appears in the movie The Last King of Scotland released in late 2006 and the movie Straightheads due to come out in April 2007.

Personal life:

As a teenager, Anderson has been said to have dyed her hair purple and, in her mid-teens, dated a twenty-year-old musician.


On New Year's Day 1994, Anderson married Clyde Klotz, the The X-Files series assistant art director, on the 17th hole of a golf course in Hawaii in a Buddhist ceremony. A few months later came the news that she was pregnant, and Chris Carter created an alien abduction storyline that kept Anderson off-camera long enough for labor, delivery, and a 10-day maternity leave. Daughter Piper Maru was born by caesarean section on September 25, 1994, Vancouver, Canada - Chris Carter was her godfather.



The X-Files finished its ninth and final season in May 2002, marking the end of a major period in her life - she started the show when she was 24, and finished it when she was 34. Her marriage broke down and she moved to London. From November 2002 through February 9, 2003, she starred in the Michael Weller play What the Night is For in London's West End. The cancellation of X-Files appears to have affected Gillian's personal life as well.



In December 2004, Anderson married Julian Ozanne, a documentary filmmaker, in the village of Shella on Lamu, an island off the coast of Kenya. Anderson and Ozanne announced their separation on 21 April 2006, after 16 months of marriage. On November 1, 2006, Anderson and boyfriend Mark Griffiths welcomed a son named Oscar.

Anderson provides philanthropic and charitable assistance in the support of finding a cure for neurofibromatosis. She serves as NF, Inc.'s Honorary Spokesperson and is a Patron of the Neurofibromatosis Association (based in the UK). Her support stems from her brother being diagnosed with NF-1.

Nathalie Portman Biographie P01

Early life:

Portman was born in Jerusalem, Israel. Her father, Avner Hershlag, is an Israeli medical doctor specializing in the research and treatment of human fertility and reproduction. Her mother, Shelley Stevens, is a Jewish American homemaker who now works as her agent. Portman's father's family members are descendants of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Romania, while her mother's family members were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Russia; her paternal grandfather's parents died in Auschwitz and her Romanian-born great-grandmother was a spy for the British during World War II.



Portman's parents met at a Jewish student center at the Ohio State University, where Portman's mother was selling tickets. Portman's father returned to Israel, but the two corresponded and were married when Portman's mother visited Israel a few years later. When Portman was three years old, her family moved from Israel to her mother's native United States, where her father pursued his medical training. The family lived in Washington, D.C. in 1984 (she attended the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School), and then Connecticut in 1988,

before finally settling down in Syosset, New York in 1990.



Portman has said that although she "really loves the States, her heart's in Jerusalem. That's where I feel at home." Portman is an only child and very close to her parents, who are often seen with her at her film premieres. Her mother always accompanied pre-adult Portman to filming locations.

Early Career:

Portman started taking dancing lessons at the age of four, performed in local troupes, and dreamed of dancing on Broadway. At the age of 12 Portman was discovered in a pizza parlor by an agent for Revlon, who offered her an opportunity to model. She asked to be introduced to acting talent scouts, and took "Portman", her grandmother's maiden name, as her professional stage surname.



Starting at age 13, Portman spent her school holidays attending upscale theater camps Stagedoor Manor and Usdan Camp, where she fell in love with acting, playing roles in camp productions such as the title character in Anne of Green Gables, Dream Laurey in Oklahoma!, and Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1993 Portman obtained her first professional role, as an understudy for the off-Broadway musical Ruthless!



Her inaugural experience in professional theater led her to audition for Luc Besson's 1994 film Léon (aka The Professional). She was initially turned down for the role due to her youth, but through further auditioning won the part. Soon after getting the part, she took Portman as her stage name in the interest of privacy. In the film, Portman plays an orphaned girl who befriends a much older man who is an assassin. Léon opened on November 18, 1994, and marked her feature film debut at age 12. That same year she appeared in the short film Developing, which aired on television.



In 1996, to Portman's surprise, the casting director for the new Star Wars films, Robin Gurland, contacted her to see if she was interested in playing the female lead in the new films. Portman, still only 14 years old at the time, and having never seen the original three Star Wars films, was speculative at first about the commitment she was making and what impact it would have on her life, as the role would ultimately see her participate in three films over the course of a decade. After meeting with George Lucas and producer Rick McCallum, she signed on to the prequel trilogy. Portman then auditioned for the role of Anne Frank in the Broadway revival of The Diary of Anne Frank. The decision to participate in this production caused her to pull out of the film The Horse Whisperer. She turned down the title role in Adrian Lyne's Lolita (1997), due to her feelings about young actresses being exposed to sex in films. In mid-1997, production began on the first of the three Star Wars prequel films, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

Liv Tyler Biography

Early life:

Tyler is the daughter of Steven Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith, and Bebe Buell, a model and singer. Having grown up with the understanding that rock star Todd Rundgren was her biological father, she only found out the truth about her parentage at age 9, after noticing that Steven Tyler's daughter Mia Tyler looked like her twin. She then changed her name from Liv Rundgren to Liv Tyler but kept Rundgren as a middle name. Liv's mother named her after Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann. In 1979-80 Bebe Buell was romantically involved with Stiv Bators and Bators lived with the two of them in Portland, Maine for a period where Bebe kept a house. Liv's father was also rumoured to be Ritchie Blackmore, guitarist of Deep Purple and Rainbow. The rumour was started by Elyssa Perry the wife of Aerosmith guitarist

Joe Perry who, apparently wanted to put doubt into Tyler's mind that he might not be the father.

Career:

After starting a career as a model (with a height of 5' 10"[3]), she quickly moved into acting. She first became known to TV audiences when she starred alongside Alicia Silverstone in the Aerosmith music video "Crazy" in 1993. Later on, having been cast almost simultaneously for Silent Fall and Heavy, the filming of Heavy was delayed until she became available. By the age of 20, she had already starred in several successful movies, including Stealing Beauty, That Thing You Do! and Inventing the Abbotts.



Although it was her appearance in Armageddon (which was released on her 21st birthday, and her father's band made the song "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" for the movie) that made her known to a very wide public, she has proven herself in more sophisticated acting challenges such as Onegin (based on the 19th century Russian novel Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin), in which she convincingly portrayed the character of Tatyana Larina, and two movies directed by Robert Altman: Cookie's Fortune and Dr. T & the Women. Her most successful role came in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which she played Arwen Undómiel.



Tyler was chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World in 1997. She was also voted the 6th Sexiest Female Movie Star in the Australian Empire Magazine in September 2002, and #2 in TheAge.com's Top 100: Natural Beauties of all time in 2004.

Personal life:

On March 25, 2003, she married British musician Royston Langdon of the band Spacehog. On December 14, 2004, she gave birth to a son, Milo William Langdon, in a New York hospital.



Tyler's ancestry is a combination of Italian, German, Russian and Cherokee Indian on her father's side.

Alicia Silverstone Biography

Early life:

Alicia Silverstone was born in San Francisco, California, to Monty Silverstone, a real-estate investor, and Didi Radford, a former flight attendant. Silverstone's parents are both English. Her father was a native of East London and was also Jewish. Her mother converted to Judaism upon marrying Silverstone's father. Silverstone is the youngest of three children and also has a half-sister, London rock singer Kezi Silverstone, and a half-brother, David Silverstone, both from her father's previous marriage. Silverstone was raised in Hillsborough, California, and visited England during the summer. When she was six, she began modeling and was subsequently cast in television commercials, the first being for Domino's Pizza.



Alicia attended Crocker Middle School, then she attended San Mateo High School in San Mateo, California, where she was a cheerleader. During this time, she acquired some early modeling

and advertising work and was eventually cast as the 'dream girl' on American TV series The Wonder Years.

Early career:

Silverstone won a leading part in the 1993 film The Crush, playing a girl who sets out to ruin an older man after her teenage crush is spurned; she won two awards at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards for the role. Silverstone became legally emancipated at the age of fifteen in order to work the hours required for the shooting schedule of the film. She went on to star in three Aerosmith music videos known as the "Cryamazy trilogy", entitled "Cryin," "Crazy," and "Amazing", which were hugely successful both for the band and Silverstone, making her a household name (and also gaining her the nickname, "the Aerosmith chick"). Around this period, Silverstone was offered the role of Valerie Malone on Beverly Hills 90210. After she turned it down, the role went to Tiffani Thiessen.



Silverstone's next starring role was in Clueless, which became a sleeper hit and critical darling during the summer of 1995. Silverstone's performance was well received, and she was branded the spokeswoman for an emerging young generation. As a result, she signed a deal with Columbia-TriStar worth $10 million. As part of the package, she got a three-year first-look deal for her own production company, First Kiss Productions. Silverstone also won "Best Female Performance" and "Most Desirable Female" by the MTV Movie Awards in 1996 for her performance in the film.



Her next role was as Batgirl in Batman & Robin; she was lambasted by tabloid media and mainstream press alike for putting on weight. Though she was not overweight, Silverstone had obviously put on more weight than the public was used to seeing her carry, and this started a whirlwind of rumors that affected her personal life. Coincidentally, she was turned down for the lead in 1994's My Father the Hero because the producers said that she was too heavy for the part. The role ultimately went to Katherine Heigl instead. She suffered further bad press for allegedly striking a pedestrian with her vehicle in a crosswalk; and it didn't help Silverstone's cause that Batman & Robin was an even bigger critical and commercial failure than her other movie from 1997, the dark comedy Excess Baggage, which was the first movie to be released by First Kiss Productions. In the film, Silverstone played a chain smoking, underage drinking, rich brat, who fakes her own kidnapping in order to get her father's attention. The film was not as critically or commercially embraced as Clueless. Silverstone also came under fire (especially by E!) for receiving such a lucrative production deal so early in her career. Excess Baggage was such a disappointment, that after just one film, Columbia-TriStar let their production deal with Silverstone expire.



Apparently, Sony was hoping that after a potential blockbuster like Batman & Robin, Silverstone would be bankable at the box office. But when the performance of Batman & Robin proved to be disappointing, they lost faith in her and pretty much dumped excess baggage with very little promotion or marketing. After her production deal ended, very few people would hire her.

Later career:

For some time, Silverstone, despite her young age, gained the reputation of being a "has been", who reached her peak with the Aerosmith videos and Clueless. She effectively removed herself from the public eye for many years, resurfacing in the critically acclaimed NBC television show Miss Match, which was cancelled after thirteen episodes in fall 2003.



Silverstone later acknowledged that she hates the trappings of fame, insisting that being a celebrity is a horrific ordeal that she wouldn't want her worst enemy to suffer.

Alicia Silverstone reportedly refuses to appear nude in any of her movies. Because of this, she requires a body double in her place for nude scenes. When she starred in the stage version of The Graduate, she insisted on wearing underwear for the famous nude scene. The producers were forced to let her do this because, otherwise, she would have resigned from the show. She has also acted in the Kenneth Branagh film adaptation of the Shakespeare play Love's Labour's Lost, in which she was required to sing and dance.



Her most recent movie, Stormbreaker, was released in the UK during the summer of 2006, and in North America on October 13, 2006. Silverstone filmed the role of Jack Starbright (Alex Rider's Housekeeper and Guardian) in the summer of 2005, several days after her wedding. She took the role because of the opportunity to work with co-stars Ewan McGregor and Sophie Okonedo, both of whom she has said she admires.

Personal life:

Silverstone has dated Adam Sandler. She married her longtime boyfriend Christopher Jarecki in a beachfront ceremony at Lake Tahoe on June 11, 2005. The couple dated for eight years prior to being married, and Silverstone has noted that she feels "really lucky" to have been in a long-term relationship from a young age.



She is also noted for her strong views on animal welfare and is a committed vegan. In 2004, Silverstone was voted sexiest female vegetarian by PETA. In another illustration of her activism, Alicia recently went to the South Central Farm in LA to support the community.
She is bilingual, fluent in English and French.

Claire Forlani Biographie

Early life:

Forlani was born in Twickenham in London, England to Pier Forlani (an Italian, from Ferrara) and Barbara (who was English) At the age of eleven, Forlani entered the Arts Educational School in London, where she began to study acting. During her six years at the school, she also studied dance, which led to performances on stage in The Nutcracker and Orpheus in the Underworld.

Career:

Forlani's parents moved to San Francisco in 1993, in order to allow for wider casting opportunities in Hollywood films. Subsequently, Forlani was cast in the television mini-series J.F.K.: Reckless Youth and the film Police Academy: Mission to Moscow




In 1995 she played the supporting role of Brandi Svenning in Kevin Smith's cult classic, Mallrats. In 1996, Forlani appeared in a supporting role in the blockbuster action movie The Rock. She continued to appear in both widely released and smaller-budget films. Forlani was cast in the 1998 film, Deep Rising, but due to creative conflicts left the set during the first few days of filming; that same year, her starring role in Meet Joe Black (co-starring Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt) was Forlani's most financially successful film. Next, she appeared in Antitrust, a thriller that was released in January of 2001 to mixed reviews.



Forlani was the new face of L'Oreal in 2001. She has been ranked Ranked #51 (2000) and #89 (2001) in Stuff magazine's 100 Sexiest Women, #85 (2001) in FHM magazine's 100 Sexiest Women and was slotted in Loaded's Hot 100 Babes.



In the fall of 2006, Forlani joined the cast of CSI: New York in a recurring role as a medical examiner, Dr. Peyton Driscoll.

Personal life:

Forlani has dated actors Benicio Del Toro, John Cusack (between 1997 and 1998) and Brad Pitt Ben Stiller (between 1998 and 1999) and is engaged to Dougray Scott.