Bijou Phillips

Bijou Lily Phillips (born April 1, 1980) is an American actress, fashion model, socialite, and singer. Some of her larger film roles include Bully, Havoc, Hostel: Part II, and Tart. Bijou Phillips was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, and is the daughter of John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas and his then-wife Geneviève Waïte, a South African model. Her older brother is Tamerlane Phillips and her half-siblings are Mackenzie Phillips, Jeffrey Phillips, and Chynna Phillips. The name "Bijou", which is French for "jewel," was taken from the song "My Petite Bijou" by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. She was a child Equestrienne champion. Phillips began modeling at the age of 13. Emancipated from her parents the following year, Phillips lived on her own in New York City. Phillips was the youngest model ever to appear on the cover of Vogue, and appeared in one of Calvin Klein's more controversial ad campaigns.
At fourteen, Phillips attended the Sierra Tucson rehab center in Arizona—not because she was addicted to drugs, she claims, but to get out of trouble for running up a large credit card bill in her father's name. Philips was involved in a long-term relationship with rocker Sean Lennon, son of legendary singer-songwriter John Lennon of The Beatles. The four-year relationship ended when Lennon found out about an affair Philips had with Max LeRoy, his childhood best friend who lived down the hall in The Dakota apartment building in New York City. LeRoy's family owned the famous Central Park restaurant Tavern on the Green. Before Lennon and LeRoy had a chance to mend their relationship, LeRoy died in a motorcycle accident. This loss and the love triangle between Philips, Lennon and LeRoy was the inspiration for much of Lennon's 2006 album, Friendly Fire.
Philips has been in a relationship with That 70s Show actor Danny Masterson since 2004. Phillips began modelling at an early age to escape boarding school. Besides Vogue, Phillips has also appeared on the cover of Stuff, Interview, Playboy, People, Detour, Nylon, Paper, 944, and Missbehave magazines. She has been on the catwalk of Jill Stuart and Heatherette. Her debut album, released in 1999, was titled I'd Rather Eat Glass, a sentiment that expressed her feelings about her former profession. She toured with the Lilith Fair music festival in 1999. As of 2007, Phillips is working on a second album and has posted several demos on her MySpace page.
In 1999, Phillips had a brief cameo in the film Sugar Town, playing a girl wanting an autograph. That same year, Phillips appeared in Black and White as Charlie. In 2000, she played Estrella Starr in Almost Famous. 2001 saw Phillips get bigger parts, including a supporting role in Bully and starring roles in Tart and Fast Sofa. Later film appearances include Octane, The Door in the Floor, Havoc, What We Do Is Secret, and Hostel: Part II (for which she was nominated for Scream Queen in the 2007 Scream Awards). Completed but not yet released is her starring role in Dark Streets, and she's reported to be starring in a remake of the 1974 film, It's Alive. She also has an uncredited cameo in the vampire comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead, directed by Jordan Galland. The film is set to be released in 2008.

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Asia Argento

Asia Aria Anna Maria Vittoria Rossa Argento (born September 20, 1975) is an Italian television and film actress and director. Argento was born in Rome. The City of Rome's register office refused to acknowledge Asia as an appropriate name, and instead officially inscribed her as Aria Argento. Despite this, she uses the name Asia Argento professionally. Her mother is actress Daria Nicolodi and her father is Dario Argento, an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter well known for his work in the Italian giallo genre, and for his influence on modern horror and slasher movies. Her great-grandfather was composer Alfredo Casella. Argento has said that as a child she was lonely and depressed due, in part, to her parents' work. Her father used to read her his scripts as bedtime stories. At age eight, Asia published a book of poems. At the age of fourteen, Asia ran away from her house. She was also an introvert and read to make up for having no friends.
In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine she stated that she was agoraphobic while she was writing Scarlet Diva and that she could not leave her apartment for months. She said: "I was afraid to go out of my apartment for a long time, I could only go out to work." Asia Argento has mentioned in interviews that she does not have a close relationship with her father. She has mentioned that he was absent when she was a child. She has also mentioned that she did not have a happy childhood. Regarding her relationship with her father and her reason for acting, she has stated that: “ I never acted out of ambition; I acted to gain my father’s attention. It took a long time for him to notice me – I started when I was nine, and he only cast me when I was 16. And he only became my father when he was my director. I always thought it was sick to choose looking at yourself on a big screen as your job. There has to be something crooked in your mind to want to be loved by everybody. It’s like being a prostitute, to share that intimacy with all those people. Asia Argento started acting at the age of nine playing a small part in a film by Sergio Citti. She was directed by her father Dario Argento in one of her first works, The Church (1989), when she was 12, and Trauma (1993), when she was 16. During this film she also had her first nude scene. She received the David di Donatello (Italy's version of Hollywood's Academy Award) for Best Actress in 1994 for her performance in Perdiamoci di vista!, and again in 1996 for Compagna di viaggio, which also earned her a Grolla d'oro award. In 1998, Argento began appearing in English-language movies, such as B. Monkey and New Rose Hotel, with Christopher Walken. Argento has proven her ability to work in multiple languages, adding French to the list of languages in which she has performed, with a role in 1994's La Reine Margot. That same year, she made her first foray into directing, calling the shots behind the short films Prospettive and A ritroso. In 1996, she directed a documentary on her father, and in 1998 a second one on Abel Ferrara, which won her the Rome Film Festival Award. She directed and wrote her first movie called Scarlet Diva (2000), which was co-produced by Dario Argento. Four years later directed her second movie, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004), based on a book by JT LeRoy, this time in the United States. According to a Paris Review interview with author and con artist Laura Albert, who was the brain behind JT LeRoy, Argento and Savannah Knoop, who "played" JT at the time, became lovers.
In addition to her cinematic accomplishments, Argento has written a number of stories for magazines such as Dynamo and L'Espresso, while her first novel, titled I Love You Kirk, was published in Italy in 1999. She has modeled for and endorses the brand "Miss Sixty". The band Hondo Maclean from South Wales, gained Argento's interest when they wrote a track named after her. She liked the track so much she sent them pictures which they used as the cover of their 2004 EP Chasing Angels.
From the 17th to the 25th of October 2006, Argento contributed a video diary to Nick Knight's website, SHOWstudio. The title of the 54 entries/episodes was "Don't Bother To Knock" and detailed Argento's daily life with three entries (noon, 6 pm and midnight) posted every day.
The content of the entries were partially controlled by a discussion forum and together formed a cohesive whole, a sort of "mini-movie" anyone could view for free. In the clips Argento discusses topics such as freaks, her father, Fellini and her sexuality; she also journals a pregnancy, a new love interest and her unraveling psyche. All of these issues come to a head before Argento's final revelations and good-byes. The last visual of the diary is a digitally manipulated portrait of Argento taken by Knight, slowly burning away.
She appeared in Placebo's music video, This Picture, and featured on a cover version of Je t'aime... moi non plus with Placebo frontman Brian Molko and dance producers Trash Palace. Argento has also starred in Catherine Breillat's period drama, Une vieille maîtresse (An Old Mistress). She speaks fluent Italian and English. She can also speak French, which she learned for her role in Les Morsures de L’Aube. Argento has been romatically linked with Sergio Rubini, Michael Pitt and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.
Her first child, Anna Lou, was born on 20 June 2001. Italian rock and roll musician Marco Castoldi (lead singer of Bluvertigo), also known as Morgan, is the father. She named her daughter after her half-sister, who died in a motorcycle accident. She and her daughter live in Rome. In March of 2008 She expects a new child in the fall with her new boyfriend, the film-director Michele Civetta. They will be married in Summer.

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Ashley Judd

Ashley Judd (born April 19, 1968) is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her leading roles in a series of late 1990s and early 2000s thriller films, including Kiss the Girls, Double Jeopardy and High Crimes. She has been nominated for two Golden Globe Awards.

Judd was born Ashley Tyler Ciminella in Granada Hills, California, the daughter of Naomi Judd, a well-known country music singer and motivational speaker, and Michael Ciminella, Jr., a marketing analyst for the horseracing industry. Judd's father is of Italian descent. Judd has a half-sister, Wynonna Judd, who is also a country music singer. At the time of her birth, her mother was working as a nurse, and did not become well-known as a singer along with her daughter Wynonna until the early 1980s. Judd's parents divorced in 1972, and in 1974, her mother took her back to her own native Kentucky, where Judd grew up.
Judd's mother raised her Baptist, and she attended twelve schools before college including Franklin High School (Tennessee). She briefly tried modeling in Japan during school breaks. An alumna of the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma at the University of Kentucky, she majored in French and minored in anthropology, art history, theater, and women’s studies. She spent a semester studying in France as part of her major, a move that mirrored her role as Reed in the television series Sisters. She was in the UK Honors Program and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, but did not graduate with her class, leaving university early to drive cross-country in pursuit of an acting career in Hollywood, where she studied with well-respected acting teacher, Robert Carnegie, at Playhouse West. During this time, she worked as a waitress at "The Ivy" restaurant and lived in a Malibu, California house her sister bought her, which burned down during the great Malibu fires. On May 9, 2007, it was announced that Judd had completed her bachelor’s degree in French from the University of Kentucky. In a May 2007 appearance on The Ellen Degeneres Show, Judd explained that she had completed her degree requirements in 1990, but had mistakenly thought she was one class short. She only needed to "sign a piece of paper" in order to graduate. Ellen then surprised Judd by presenting her with her diploma, which Degeneres had acquired from the university.



Judd began acting on television, and appeared as Ensign Robin Lefler, a Starfleet officer, in two 1991 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. From 1991 to 1994 she had a recurring role as Reed, the daughter of Alex (Swoosie Kurtz), on the NBC drama Sisters. She made her feature film debut in 1992's Kuffs, and had the starring role in 1993's independent film, Ruby in Paradise, for which she received good reviews. She also had a role in the 1994 Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers, but her scenes were cut from the version of the film released theatrically. She gained further critical acclaim for her roles in 1995's Smoke and Heat. She also played the role of Callie in Philip Ridley's dark, adult fairy-tale The Passion of Darkly Noon.By the end of the 1990s, Judd had managed to achieve significant fame and success as a leading actress, after leading roles in several thrillers that performed well at the box office, including Kiss the Girls in 1997 and 1999's Double Jeopardy. Several of her early 2000s films, including 2001's Someone Like You and 2002's High Crimes, received only mixed reviews and moderate box office, although she did receive positive notices, and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, for her performance in the 2004 biography of Cole Porter, De-Lovely, opposite Kevin Kline. Judd's movie nude scenes, notably in "Norma Jean and Marilyn" and "A Normal Life" have drawn frequent criticism from her family's southern, conservative fan base.
She is currently the magazine advertising "face" of American Beauty, an Estee Lauder cosmetic brand sold exclusively at Kohl's department stores, and H. Stern jewelers. In June 2007, American family clothing retailer Goody's, announced that they were going to be releasing three fashion clothing lines with Judd in the Fall to be called - AJ™, Love Ashley™, and Ashley Judd™. "I'm thrilled to be involved in a clothing line that provides simple, lovely solutions for women’s wardrobes," said Ashley Judd in a statement. "I've always loved items that you can throw on easily and know that you’ll feel and look good. This line does just that, while keeping with the best of current styles and trends

During the 1990s, Judd dated baseball player Brady Anderson, singers Lyle Lovett and Michael Bolton, and actors Matthew McConaughey and Robert De Niro. She became engaged to Scottish CART, later IndyCar driver, and now NASCAR driver Dario Franchitti, in December 1999, and the two were married at Skibo Castle, near Dornoch, Scotland, on December 12, 2001. She and her husband divide their time between a home in Scotland and their farm outside Franklin, Tennessee. Judd can be easily be recognized in Gasoline Alley wearing a white hat, and was present at the 2007 Indianapolis 500 when her husband won. When in Manhattan, she attends services at a charismatic Missionary Baptist Church. Judd regularly attends University of Kentucky basketball games, frequently sitting next to Donna Smith (wife of former UK Coach Tubby Smith), or in the student section. Last year, she was a guest columnist for a local Kentucky newspaper, writing about the NCAA Championships. She is frequently sought out for celebrity camera shots during televised games. She posed for a poster wearing only a hockey jersey for fundraising purposes for their alma mater's hockey team. She is also an avid practitioner of yoga, cooking and gardening. In February 2006, Judd entered a program at Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap, Texas and stayed for 47 days. She was there because of personal issues, including depression and isolation. Judd is active in humanitarian and political causes. She was appointed Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, an education and prevention program of the international NGO Population Services International (PSI) promoting AIDS prevention and treatment, and speaks and demonstrates at pro-choice events. On October 29, 2006, Judd appeared at a "Women for Ford" event for Democratic Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. A long running feud between Judd and Indy race car driver Milka Duno took place throughout the 2007 IRL season. After the final race of the 2007 season the actress stated to the assembled news media that, "I know this is not very sportsmanlike, but they've got to get the 23 car (Duno) off the track. It's very dangerous. I'm tired of holding my tongue. She shouldn't be out there. When a car is 10 miles (an hour) off the pace, it's not appropriate to be racing. People's lives are at stake".

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Anne Hathaway

Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress. She made her acting debut in the 1999 television series Get Real, but her first prominent role was in Disney's family comedy The Princess Diaries (2001), which established her career. She continued to appear in family films over the next three years, and she had the lead roles in Ella Enchanted and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (both 2004). Hathaway wanted to break the "G-rated" image, and consequently, in 2005 she co-starred in the adult-themed Havoc and Brokeback Mountain, both requiring nude scenes, as well as The Devil Wears Prada (2006), in which she starred opposite Meryl Streep. That film has become the highest-grossing film of her career. Becoming Jane, in which she stars as Jane Austen, was released in 2007. Her acting style has been compared to that of Judy Garland and Audrey Hepburn, and she cites Hepburn as her favorite actress and Streep as her idol. People magazine named her one of 2001's breakthrough stars and in 2006 she was listed as one of the world's 50 Most Beautiful People. Hathaway was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Gerald Hathaway, a lawyer, and Kate McCauley, an actress who inspired Hathaway to follow in her footsteps. She was named after the wife of playwright William Shakespeare. She has an older brother, Michael, and a younger brother, Thomas. Hathaway has mainly Irish and French ancestry. She was raised in the Catholic religion with what she considers "really strong values," and wanted to be a nun during her childhood. However, at fifteen, she decided not to become a nun after learning that her brother Michael was gay. Although she was raised as a Catholic, she felt that she could not be part of a religion that disapproved of her brother's sexual orientation. She has stated that she is a non-denominational Christian.

Hathaway was raised in Millburn, New Jersey, and graduated from Millburn High School where she was in many school plays. She spent several semesters studying at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York before transferring to New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She referred to her college enrollment as one of her best decisions because she enjoyed being with others who were trying to "grow up." Hathaway was a member of the Barrow Group Theater Company's acting program and the first teenager admitted. She is a trained stage actress and has stated that she prefers appearing on stage to film roles. Hathaway, a soprano, performed twice in 1998 with the All Eastern U.S. High School Honors Chorus at Carnegie Hall and has performed in plays at Seton Hall Prep in West Orange. Three days after performing at Carnegie Hall, she was cast in the short-lived 1999 television series Get Real. Hathaway starred in Get Real for one season, after which it was cancelled. Her first major role was in The Other Side of Heaven (2001) opposite Christopher Gorham, but before production began in New Zealand, she auditioned for the lead role of Mia Thermopolis in the Garry Marshall-directed The Princess Diaries (2001). Marshall loved her immediately because she fell off her chair during the audition and his granddaughters thought that she had nice hair. Hathaway enjoyed filming The Princess Diaries and called it "really fun". It was released before Heaven because of its comedic-oriented plot, which critics said was effective because of her casting; a reviewer for BBC wrote that "Hathaway shines in the title role, and generates great chemistry". Across the world, the film was a commercial success and a sequel was planned shortly after. The Other Side of Heaven was received weakly by critics, but it performed well for a religious-themed film. In February 2002, Hathaway made her Broadway debut opposite Brian Stokes Mitchell in the City Center Encores! production of Carnival. She received positive reviews for her portrayal of Lili; the role demanded both acting and singing, and was a continuation of her success as a comic actress.
Hathaway continued appearing in comedy films and was known in the media as a children's role model. The following year, she appeared in Nicholas Nickleby (2002) opposite Charlie Hunnam and Jamie Bell, which opened to positive reviews; the Northwest Herald referred to it as "an unbelievably fun film"[18] and the Deseret News said that the cast was "Oscar-worthy". Despite critical acclaim, the film never entered wide release and failed at the North American box office (totaling less than US$4 million). Hathaway's next role was in Ella Enchanted (2004), the film adaptation of the award-winning novel. It received indifferent reviews: the Chicago Tribune called it "shiny candy that tastes oddly familiar yet lacks sugary punch" and the New York Times felt that it was "clichéd and forgetful". However, the Dallas Morning News cited Tommy O'Haver's directing-style as "a Flintstones-like humor to the setting by melding modern with medieval culture".

In 2004 Hathaway was to star opposite Gerard Butler in The Phantom of the Opera, but she rejected the role because of her conflicting contract with Disney. Disney began production on The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement in early 2004 and it was initially going to be filmed in Prague, but the location was changed to Los Angeles, where the "kingdom" of Genovia was built. The film opened to negative reviews and peaked higher at the box office than its predecessor, but ended with lower ticket sales. Hathaway enjoys interior design and reading as pastimes, and has stated that she is a Non-denominational Christian. She has cited Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (1943) as her favorite novel. Since 2004, Hathaway has been in a relationship with real estate developer Raffaello Follieri. In regards to personal strife and subsequent media attention, Hathaway's self-subscribed mantra is a quote by Oscar Wilde: "the less said about life's sores the better. Hathaway is involved with various charities, including The Creative Coalition, The Step Up Women's Network, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, The Human Rights Campaign, and The Lollipop Theatre Network, an organization that screens films to critically ill children. In 2008, she was honored at Elle magazine's "Women in Hollywood" tribute, and has also been honored for her work with The Step Up Women's Network and The Human Rights Campaign. In early 2007, Hathaway spoke of her experiences with depression during her teenage years, saying that she eventually overcame the disorder without medication. In a fall 2008 appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, Hathaway noted that she had once again stopped smoking. The actress, who had begun smoking "heavily" while filming Rachel Getting Married, had "quit for a while", but had started again in the wake of her stressful summer and the end of her relationship with Raffaello Follieri. She credited the decline in her stress level to quitting smoking. She also declared her return to being a vegetarian. As of November 2008, Hathaway is reportedly in a relationship with actor Adam Shulman. In regard to personal strife and subsequent media attention, Hathaway's self-subscribed mantra is a quote by Oscar Wilde: "The less said about life's sores the better

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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.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. 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. 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." She's confessed to killing pets at a very young age, "My snake I had - I tried killing him," and recalls how at 12 she was "a bad girl - beating up my friends." At 14, she dropped out of her acting classes and dreamed of becoming a funeral director. During this period, 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.

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 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?" 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. 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 appeared in Playing by Heart, part of an ensemble cast that included Sean Connery, Gillian Anderson, Ryan Phillippe and Jon Stewart. 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."[25] Jolie won the Breakthrough Performance Award by the National Board of Review.

In 1999, she starred in Mike Newell's comedy-drama Pushing Tin, co-starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. Jolie played Thornton's seductive wife. 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 the sociopathic Lisa Rowe 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 Winona Ryder played the main character in what was hoped to be a comeback for her, 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: “ Jolie is emerging as one of the great wild spirits of current movies, a loose cannon who somehow has deadly aim.”

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.

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Amy Smart

Amy Lysle Smart (born March 26, 1976) is an American actress and former fashion model. Smart was born in Topanga, California, the daughter of Judy, a museum worker, and John Smart, a salesperson. Inspired by her friend Vinessa Shaw, Smart studied ballet for ten years and enrolled in acting classes when she was 16, but began her career as a fashion model, working in Italy, France, Mexico, and Tahiti (Awards-winning spots for Club Med directed by Bruno Aveillan). Smart's first film role was for director Martin Kunert's film Campfire Tales, followed by a very minor role in the 1997 film Starship Troopers as the co-pilot for (and friend of) Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards). Amy had a starring role in the mini-series titled The 70s, playing a young woman from Ohio. In 1999, Smart played the girlfriend of a popular football player (played by James Van Der Beek) in the film Varsity Blues. Also, Smart appeared in the series Felicity, as a girlfriend of Scott Foley's character. She subsequently appeared in a number of films catering to a teenage audience, many of which were successful, including Road Trip (2000) and The Butterfly Effect (2004). In 2002, she was ranked #27 in Stuff magazine's "100 Sexiest Women in the World" and in 2004, she was nominated for "Best Kiss" at the MTV Movie Awards for her role in Starsky & Hutch. In 2005, Smart co-starred with Ryan Reynolds in the romantic comedy film Just Friends, which had a total domestic box office gross of $32,619,761 and a total worldwide box office of $50,817,598. Smart also had a small role in the American sitcom Scrubs, playing Jamie Moyer, the wife of a coma patient, and was nicknamed TCW (Tasty Coma Wife) by JD and his friends. JD has a short relationship with her following the death of her husband. On September 1, 2006, Crank was released, in which she plays the girlfriend of the lead character, Chev (played by Jason Statham). Smart was a regular cast member in the short-lived 2006 CBS television series Smith. She also has voiced some of the characters in the animated series Robot Chicken, created by Seth Green. Smart appeared as Joy in the 2006 movie Peaceful Warrior, starring Scott Mechlowicz and Nick Nolte. Smart was the speaker for the Heal the Bay organization; she has also worked with the Humane Society and the "Environmental Media Association", and was named one of Organic Style magazine's "Women with Organic Style" of 2004. Smart is with actor Branden Williams, whom she has dated for over thirteen years. Her former roommate Ali Larter appeared alongside Smart in the film Varsity Blues and modeled with her in Milan. Smart is also friends with author and animal communicator Amelia Kinkade, and was acknowledged in Kinkade's second book, The Language of Miracles.

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Alicia Silverstone

Alicia Silverstone (born October 4, 1976) is an American actress and former fashion model. She first came to widespread attention in music videos for Aerosmith and is best recalled for her roles in Hollywood films such as Clueless (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997). Silverstone was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Deirdre "Didi" (née Radford), a Scotland-born former flight attendant who worked for Pan Am, and Monty Silverstone, an England-born real-estate investor. Silverstone was raised in a "traditional Jewish household"; her father, a native of East London, is Jewish, and her mother converted to Conservative Judaism before marriage. Silverstone is the youngest of three children and also has a half-sister, London-based rock singer Kezi Silverstone, and a half-brother, David Silverstone, both from her father's previous marriage. Silverstone attended Crocker Middle School, then San Mateo High School but did not complete her high school studies. Silverstone visited England over a summer during childhood. When she was six, she began modeling and was subsequently cast in television commercials, the first being for Domino's Pizza. She acquired some early modeling and advertising work and was eventually cast as 'dream girl' Jessica on The Wonder Years. Silverstone won a leading part in the 1993 film The Crush, playing a teenaged girl who sets out to ruin an older man after her affections are spurned; she won two awards at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards for the role for Best Breakthrough Performance and Best Villain. Silverstone became legally emancipated at the age of 15 in order to work the hours required for the shooting schedule of the film. After seeing her in The Crush, Marty Callner decided she'd be perfect for a role in a music video he was directing for the band Aerosmith, called "Cryin'", and then the following two videos "Amazing" and "Crazy". These were hugely successful both for the band and Silverstone, making her a household name (and also gaining her the nickname, "the Aerosmith chick"). They also got her noticed by film maker Amy Heckerling, who after seeing them decided to cast her in Clueless. Clueless 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. Silverstone's next role was as Batgirl in Batman & Robin, which was neither a critical nor a financial success. Silverstone won a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress. She suffered further bad press for allegedly striking a pedestrian with her vehicle in a crosswalk. She also starred in 1997's dark comedy Excess Baggage, which was the first movie to be released by her production company. In the film, Silverstone played a rich brat who fakes her own kidnapping in order to get her father's attention. While not as reviled as Batman & Robin, the film was not as critically or commercially embraced as Clueless

Silverstone appeared in Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of the Shakespeare play Love's Labour's Lost in 2000, in which she was required to sing and dance. In 2001, Silverstone provided the voice of Sharon Spitz, the lead character in the Canadian animated television Braceface. After removing herself from the public eye for a few years, she resurfaced in the 2003 NBC television show Miss Match, which was then cancelled after 18 episodes.

Silverstone later acknowledged that she hates the trappings of fame. According to Silverstone, "Fame is not anything I wish on anyone. You start acting because you love it. Then success arrives, and suddenly you're on show". After the cancellation of Miss Match in 2003, she did a pilot with FOX called Queen B, in which she would have played a former high school prom queen named Beatrice (Bea), who has found out that the real world is nothing like high school. In 2005, she co-starred with Queen Latifah in Beauty Shop, a spin-off of the BarberShop films. She played one of the stylists in the beauty shop. For the pilot season of 2006-2007, she surfaced on a pilot being developed by ABC called Pink Collar, in which she would have worked in a law firm. Silverstone's most recent movie, Stormbreaker, was released in the UK on July 21, 2006, and in North America on October 13, 2006. She appeared alongside Ewan McGregor and Sophie Okonedo. In November 2006, she starred in the made-for-TV movie Candles on Bay Street for Hallmark Hall of Fame, based on the book by Cathie Pelletier. She has dated famous actors including Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro and Adam Sandler. Silverstone married longtime boyfriend, rock musician Christopher Jarecki (lead singer of group Underdogs), in a beachfront ceremony at Lake Tahoe on June 11, 2005. The couple had dated for eight years prior to being married, after meeting outside a movie theater in 1997. They got engaged about a year before their marriage and Silverstone's engagement ring belonged to Jarecki's grandmother. They live in an eco-friendly Los Angeles house complete with solar panels and an organic vegetable garden. She bought the house, shared with a "menagerie of rescued dogs," in 1996. Silverstone drives a Mercedes Benz. She is often seen around with gal pal socialite KJ Stevens Silverstone is noted for being an animal welfare and environmental activist. She also became a vegan in 1998 after attending an animal rights meeting. "I realized that I was the problem," she told InStyle Home in spring 2007. "I was an animal lover who was eating animals." In 2004, Silverstone was voted "Sexiest Female Vegetarian" by PETA. In 2007, Silverstone appeared nude in a print advertisement and 30-second commercial for PETA championing vegetarianism, and the TV spot was subsequently pulled from the Houston, Texas, market by Comcast Cable. Silverstone set up a sanctuary for rescued pets in Los Angeles. Federal campaign contribution records also reveal that Silverstone contributed $500 to Dennis Kucinich's 2004 Presidential campaign. On May 23, 2007, Silverstone was a guest on ABC's The View. Moments before she entered, hosts Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck h

ad a heated argument regarding the Iraq war. The video segment shows Silverstone entering and walking past Hasselbeck to greet the other hosts. Though the interview continued normally and featured easy conversation between Silverstone and Hasselbeck, Access Hollywood deemed the act a deliberate snub. Hasselbeck later revealed, on an episode of The View which aired September 19, 2007, that Silverstone called and apologized for the incident. Hasselbeck said that Silverstone never meant to be rude, but was simply nervous when she walked on the stage and believed that incident was wrongly perceived by the media.

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