Memphis, TN, native Ginnifer Goodwin set her sights on performing from early childhood -- when she enrolled in dance classes at age five and appeared in a production of The Little Engine That Could -- but first began to aggressively hone her acting chops when she attended Boston University as a drama major, then received classical training as a thespian at London's prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. ...

Blonde, bouncy Dorothy Provine was born in South Dakota to a Seattle-based businessman and his interior decorator wife. While attending the University of Washington, Provine appeared in some 35 amateur and professional stage productions, and was cohost of a Seattle TV quiz program. She headed to Broadway at age 20, but had better luck in Hollywood, where she was given star billing in such low-budgeters as T ...

A young actress with dark-haired good looks and a strong personality, Jordana Brewster was born in Panama City, Panama, on April 26, 1980; her father, Alden Brewster, is a successful investment banker, while her mother, Maria Jaao, is a former model whose resumé includes an appearance in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Mr. Brewster's career dictated a certain amount of traveling, so Jordana lived in ...

A brash, acerbic, by-the-throat comedienne who built a career out of skewering pop culture fixations such as Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, Chelsea Handler grew up in a devout Jewish household in New Jersey (with five siblings) and entered show business by way of stand-up comedy. In that sphere, Handler's unapologetically blunt and occasionally self-denigrating routines both turned heads and won her a mass ...

Canadian-born Shenae Grimes established herself as an actress midway through high school, and quickly racked up a long series of teen and young adult roles in prime-time dramas. Grimes is perhaps best known for her ongoing performance as Darcy Edwards on the adolescent soaper Degrassi: The Next Generation -- a spin-off of the legendary Degrassi High. In-between production stints on that series, Grimes inter ...

Born George Alan O'Dowd on June 14, 1961, in Eltham, London, to parents Gerry and Dinah O'Dowd. George grew up in a lively household with his four brothers and one sister. Despite being part of the large working class Irish brood, George claims he had a lonely childhood, referring to himself as the "pink sheep" of the family. To stand out in the male-dominated household, George created his own image on whic ...

Montreal native Jessalyn Gilsig began her acting career at age 12 doing voice-over work, and went on to study acting at Harvard's American Repertory Theater. She appeared in several off-Broadway productions and landed bit parts in big movies, such as Jacknife  with Robert De Niro and The Horse Whisperer with Robert Redford, but TV was where she found the most success. In the late 1990s, she appeared on Vipe ...

Though fourth-billed in her first film, My Girl (1991), 9-year-old advertising model Anna Chlumsky was clearly the star. Playing a mortician's daughter learning about life and love in the early 1970s, Anna made one of the more auspicious movie debuts in recent memory; she also administered the first screen kiss to juvenile superstar Macauley Culkin, an event which garnered as much press coverage as Shirley ...

Prior to her role as the new Bionic Woman, U.K. audiences were familiar with British actress Michelle Ryan thanks to her five-year run (2000-2005) as Zoe Slater on the long-running BBC soap opera EastEnders. After she left that series, a role in Sean Ellis' moderately successful indie comedy Cashback  (2006), as Suzy, the ex-girlfriend of Ben (Sean Biggerstaff) gained her some notice on the festival circuit ...

Model-turned-actress Leslie Bibb grew up in Virginia, well outside the realm of showbusiness, with plans to tackle a legal career. She embarked on the road to celebrity, however (and achieved an incredible break), in 1990, when the then-16-year-old's mother submitted Leslie's photograph to a nationwide model search that Oprah Winfrey mounted; the judges ferreted Bibb out of more than 6,000 candidates and ha ...