Robert De Niro, born in 1943, American motion-picture actor, often hailed as one of the most brilliant of his generation. The son of two artists, De Niro was born in New York City and trained at two of the city's acting studios, the Stella Adler Conservatory and the American Workshop.

De Niro's initial film roles were in movies by American director Brian De Palma. De Niro first won acclaim in Hollywood for his role as a slow-witted, dying baseball player in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), but his reputation has thrived on volatile roles such as his riveting portrayal of a dangerous hoodlum in Mean Streets (1973), the film that marked the beginning of his sustained collaboration with director Martin Scorsese.

De Niro earned an Academy Award for best supporting actor in The Godfather II (1974) and Oscar nominations for best actor for his roles in Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978), and Cape Fear (1991). He won the 1974 Oscar for best supporting actor for an almost entirely Italian-speaking role as Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II. He won the Academy Award for best actor in Raging Bull (1980). De Niro's other films include New York, New York (1977), The King of Comedy (1983), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Brazil (1985), The Untouchables (1987), Midnight Run (1988), The Mission (1989), GoodFellas (1990), Guilty by Suspicion (1991), Night and the City (1992), Mad Dog and Glory (1993), This Boy's Life (1993), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Heat (1995), and Casino (1995). De Niro heads a production company, Tribeca Film Center, and he made his directorial debut with A Bronx Tale (1993).

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Tom Cruise, born in 1962, American motion-picture actor, who became a celebrity in the 1980s after his performance in Risky Business (1983), a satire of suburban adolescence. In the 1990s Cruise became one of the world’s most popular film stars.

Born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV in Syracuse, New York, he appeared in a succession of motion pictures in the early 1980s that focused on adolescent characters, such as The Outsiders (1983). He then moved on to roles in major productions such as Legend (1985); The Color of Money (1986), directed by Martin Scorsese; and Top Gun (1986), about United States Navy fighter pilots.

Cruise received praise for his performance in Rain Man (1988), in which he played the brother of an autistic man (see Autism). In Born on the Fourth of July (1989), he portrayed a paraplegic veteran of the Vietnam War (1959-1975) who becomes an antiwar activist. For his performance Cruise won the Golden Globe Award as best actor in a drama. His other films of the late 1980s and early 1990s include Cocktail (1988), about a bartender; Days of Thunder (1990), which he cowrote, about a race car driver; Far and Away (1992), about Irish immigrants to the United States in the late 19th century; A Few Good Men (1992), which concerns the murder trial of two marines; and The Firm (1993), about corruption in a prestigious law firm. Although his works during this period earned a mixed reception from critics, Cruise’s popularity with motion-picture audiences grew dramatically.

In 1993 Cruise made his directing debut with “The Fabulous Frammis,” an episode of the cable-television miniseries Fallen Angels. In 1994 he appeared in Interview with the Vampire, and in 1996 he starred as agent Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible, which he also produced. In 1997 Cruise won the Golden Globe Award for best actor in a drama for his starring role in Jerry Maguire (1996), which concerns the conflicts a sports agent feels between his personal and professional life.

In 1999 Cruise and his then-wife, Nicole Kidman, costarred in the psychological thriller Eyes Wide Shut. In 2000 Cruise won the Golden Globe Award as best supporting actor for his role in Magnolia (1999), which tells the interlocking stories of several characters in the San Fernando Valley in southern California. In Mission Impossible 2 (2000), Cruise reprised his role as Ethan Hunt.

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Bullock at Cannes in 2002
Bullock was once engaged to actor Tate Donovan whom she met while filming Love Potion No. 9. Their relationship lasted four years. She had previously dated football player Troy Aikman, blues guitarist Guy Forsythe,[citation needed] Austin musician Bob Schneider (for two years) and film co-stars, Ryan Gosling and Matthew McConaughey. McConaughey and Bullock met each other while filming A Time to Kill and became friends, dating for a while. Some notable celebrity friends include Heather Burns and Hugh Grant.

Bullock married motorcycle builder and Monster Garage host Jesse James on July 16, 2005. They met when Bullock arranged for her ten-year-old godson to meet James as a Christmas present. On her husband and her marriage, Bullock has commented:

So basically through a courtship of letters..I learned about a human being. It was not something I wanted, needed, or looked for, but because he was a stronger person than I was, spiritually and on a tolerance level, I was lucky enough that he educated me... I always thought of marriage as a death sentence, that there'd be a ball and chain, and you'd be told, "You need to stop doing these things and become a good little wife." Now people say "Oh my God you're going to have sex with one person the rest of your life!" I hope I have sex with him for the rest of my life - because I like it!

On December 20, 2000, Bullock survived the crash of a chartered business jet at Jackson Hole Airport. The aircraft hit a snowbank instead of the runway, resulting in both the nose gear and nose cone being ripped off, the right wing partially separated from the aircraft and the left wing bent back. When the September 11, 2001 attacks occurred, Bullock was staying at the Soho Grand hotel, twelve blocks from the World Trade Center. She saw the attacks from her hotel bedroom window and went to a nearby hospital to offer help. As all phone lines in New York City were down, she spent the rest of the day using her Palm Pilot to send e-mails on behalf of patients wanting to contact their families.

Bullock has twice donated $1 million to the American Red Cross, first to its Liberty Disaster Relief Fund and four years later in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis.

In October 2004, Bullock won a multimillion dollar judgment against Benny Daneshjou, the builder of her Lake Austin Texas mansion; the jury ruled the house was uninhabitable. It has since been torn down and rebuilt, and her Porsche 911 Turbo replaced by a Toyota Prius. Bullock also owns a house on Tybee Island, Georgia, which is a few miles from Savannah, Georgia. After four years of preparation, Bullock's first restaurant, Bess, opened in November 2006 in Austin, Texas.

She has a scar in the corner of her left eye which she received as a child when she fell into a lake and cut her head on a rock.

On April 22, 2007, a woman was lying outside James and Bullock's Southern California home in Orange County. When James confronted the woman, she ran inside her 2004 silver Mercedes and tried to run him over 3 to 4 times. The woman is said to be an obsessed fan of Sandra Bullock. The woman, Marcia Diana Valentine, was arrested on investigation of assault with a deadly weapon. In May, Bullock won a three-year restraining order against the woman. Valentine pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated assault and stalking.

On April 18, 2008, while Bullock was in Massachusetts shooting the film The Proposal, she and her husband were in an SUV that was hit head on by a drunken driver. There were no injuries.

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Sandra Annette Bullock (born July 26, 1964) is a Screen Actors Guild Award-winning and two-time Golden Globe Award-nominated American-German actress. She came to fame in the 1990s, after roles in successful films such as Speed and While You Were Sleeping, and has since established her career as a well-known leading Hollywood actress, with comedy hits like Miss Congeniality and The Lake House as well as her most recent film roles, in 2004's Crash, having received critical acclaim. She was ranked as the 14th richest female celebrity with an estimated fortune of $85 million in early 2007.

Early life
Bullock was born in Arlington County, Virginia, the daughter of Helga D. Meyer, a German opera singer, and John W Bullock, a Pentagon contractor, executive and part-time vocal coach from Alabama. Bullock's maternal grandfather was a rocket scientist from Nuremberg, Germany. On her father's side, she is descended from a prominent family in early Alabama history for whom Bullock County is named. Bullock lived in Nuremberg until age twelve, where she sang in the opera's children's choir at the Staatstheater Nürnberg. She frequently traveled with her mother on her opera tours, and lived in Germany and other parts of Europe for much of her childhood. She retains German citizenship. Bullock studied ballet and vocal arts as a child, taking small parts in her mother's opera productions.

Bullock attended Washington-Lee High School where she was a cheerleader, participated in high school theater productions and dated a football player. She graduated in 1982 and enrolled in East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. During this time, she worked as a waitress at a restaurant. She later left school during her senior year (Spring 1986), only three credits short of graduating, to pursue an acting career. She went on to Manhattan to pursue auditions and supported herself with a variety of odd jobs (bartender, cocktail waitress, coat checker).

Bullock later completed her coursework and was awarded a bachelor's degree from East Carolina University. She is fluent in German.

Career

Sandra Bullock's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
While in New York, Bullock took acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse. She had appeared in several student films and had later landed a role in an Off-Broadway play No Time Flat. Director Alan J. Levi was impressed by Bullock's performance and offered her a part in the made-for-TV movie Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1989). After filming the TV movie, Bullock had stayed in Los Angeles and was cast in a series of small roles in several independent films as well as in the lead role of the short-lived NBC television version of the film Working Girl (1990). She had later appeared in several films such as Love Potion No. 9 (1992), The Thing Called Love (1993) and Fire on the Amazon (where she agreed to appear topless if the camera did not show that much, she covered herself with duct tape which apparently was somewhat painful to take off).

One of Bullock's first notable movie appearances was in the science-fiction/action movie, Demolition Man (1993), which had starred Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. This role then led to her break-through performance in Speed the following year. She became a high-level movie star in the late 1990s, carrying a string of successes, including While You Were Sleeping (replacing actress Demi Moore, who was originally scheduled to star), and Miss Congeniality. Bullock received 11 million dollars for Speed 2 and 17.5 million dollars for Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous.

Bullock was selected as one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in the World in 1996 and 1999, and was also ranked #58 in Empire magazine's Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time list. She was presented with the 2002 Raúl Juliá Award for Excellence for her efforts, as the executive producer of the sitcom The George Lopez Show, in helping expand career openings for Hispanic talent in the media and entertainment industry. She also guest starred as Accident Amy in two episodes. In 2002, she starred opposite Hugh Grant in the global hit Two Weeks Notice.

In 2004, Bullock had a supporting role in the film Crash. She received positive reviews for her performance, with some critics suggesting that it was the best performance of her career.[citation needed] Bullock later appeared in The Lake House, a romantic drama also starring her Speed co-star, Keanu Reeves; it was released on June 16, 2006. Because their film characters are separated throughout the film (due to the plot revolving around time travel), Bullock and Reeves were only on set together for two weeks during filming. The same year, Bullock appeared in Infamous, playing author Harper Lee. Bullock also stars in Premonition with Julian McMahon, which was released in March 2007.

Bullock received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on March 24, 2005. In January 2007, Bullock was named the 14th richest woman in entertainment by Forbes, with a net worth of $85 million.

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Roberts's personal life has often been in the spotlight. She has had widely reported romantic relationships with numerous famous men, including Liam Neeson, Dylan McDermott, Kiefer Sutherland, Lyle Lovett, Matthew Perry, and Benjamin Bratt. She was briefly engaged to McDermott, her Steel Magnolias co-star. She met Sutherland in 1990, when he was her co-star in Flatliners; he left his wife and children to move in with Roberts. In August 1990, Roberts and Sutherland announced their engagement, with an elaborate studio-planned wedding scheduled for June 14, 1991. Roberts broke the engagement three days before the wedding when she discovered Sutherland had been meeting with a stripper named Amanda Rice. Roberts subsequently went to Ireland with Jason Patric, a friend of Sutherland's. On June 27, 1993, she married country singer Lyle Lovett; the couple had met only three weeks earlier. The wedding took place on 72-hours' notice and was held in Marion, Indiana, near where Lovett was appearing on tour with his band. Less than two years later, in March 1995, the couple separated, and subsequently divorced.

In 1998, Roberts began dating Law & Order star Benjamin Bratt, who was her escort for the March 25, 2001 Academy Awards ceremony at which she won her Oscar. Three months later, in June 2001, Roberts and Bratt announced that they were no longer a couple. "It's come to a kind and tenderhearted end," she said of their relationship. Roberts met her current husband, cameraman Daniel Moder, on the set of her movie The Mexican in 2000 and they began an affair. Though at the time, Moder was married to Vera Steinberg Moder, he filed for divorce a little over a year later, and after it was finalized, he and Roberts wed on Fourth of July 2002, at her ranch in Taos, New Mexico. On November 28, 2004, they became the parents of fraternal twins, daughter Hazel Patricia and son Phinnaeus "Finn" Walter. Their third child, son Henry Daniel Moder, was born on June 18, 2007 in Los Angeles.

Charities
Roberts has given her time and resources to UNICEF as well as to other charitable organizations. In Spring 1995, Roberts, an enthusiastic supporter of UNICEF, asked if she could meet some of the relief agency's neediest recipients. On May 10, she arrived in Port-au-Prince, as she said, "to educate myself". The poverty she found was overwhelming. "My heart is just bursting", she said. UNICEF officials hoped that her six-day visit would trigger an outburst of giving: $10 million in aid was sought at the time.

In 2000, Roberts narrated Silent Angels, a documentary about Rett syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder, which was shot in Los Angeles, Baltimore and New York. The documentary was designed to help raise public awareness about the disease. In July 2006, Earth Biofuels announced Roberts as a spokeswoman for the company and as chair of the company's newly formed Advisory Board promoting the use of renewable fuels.

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Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American - Academy Award winning film actress and former fashion model. She became well known during the early 1990s after starring in the romantic comedy Pretty Woman opposite Richard Gere, which grossed US $463 million worldwide. She won the Best Actress Academy Award in 2000 for her critically acclaimed turn as the title character in Erin Brockovich and earned Oscar nominations as Best Supporting Actress for Steel Magnolias (1989) and Best Actress for Pretty Woman (1990). Her films, which also include romantic comedies such as My Best Friend's Wedding, Mystic Pizza, Notting Hill, Runaway Bride, and crime films such as The Pelican Brief and Ocean's Eleven, have collectively earned box office receipts of over US$2 billion, making her the most successful actress in terms of box office receipts.

Roberts had become one of the highest-paid actresses in the world, topping the Hollywood Reporter's annual "power list" of top-earning female stars from 2002 to 2005, until 2006, when Nicole Kidman won the top spot. Her fee for 1990's Pretty Woman was $300,000; in 2003, she was paid an unprecedented $25 million for her role in Mona Lisa Smile. As of 2007, Roberts's net worth was estimated to be US$140 million.

Roberts was the first actress to appear on the cover of Vogue and the first woman to land the cover of GQ. She has been named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" eleven times, tied with Halle Berry. In 2001 Ladies Home Journal ranked her as the 11th most powerful woman in America, beating out then national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and first lady Laura Bush. Roberts has a production company called Red Om Films ("Moder" spelled backwards; formerly Shoelace Productions).
Roberts was born in Atlanta, Georgia at Crawford Long Hospital. Her father, Walter Grady Roberts, was a vacuum cleaner salesman, and her Minneapolis, Minnesota-born mother, Betty Lou Motes (née Bredemus), was a one-time church secretary and real estate agent. Her parents, one-time actors and playwrights, met while performing theatrical productions for the armed forces and later co-founded the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop in Atlanta, Georgia off Juniper Street in Midtown; the two divorced in 1971. Her mother later married Michael Motes and had another daughter, named Nancy Motes who was born in 1976. Roberts's father died of cancer when she was ten. Her older brother and sister, Eric Roberts (from whom she was once estranged but reconciled since 2004) and Lisa Roberts Gillan, are also actors.

Roberts moved to Smyrna, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta) in 1972, where she attended Fitzhugh Lee Elementary School, Griffin Middle School and Campbell High School. She played clarinet in the band. Roberts wanted to be a veterinarian as a child, but soon after graduating from Smyrna's Campbell High School, she headed to New York to join her sister Lisa Roberts Gillan and pursue a career in acting. Once there, she signed with the Click modeling agency and enrolled in acting classes. She reverted to her original name "Julia Roberts" when she discovered that a "Julie Roberts" was already registered with the Screen Actors Guild. Her niece, Emma Roberts, whom Julia used to take to movie sets when she was a young girl, has joined her father and aunts in the acting business.

Career

1986–1989
Roberts made her film debut playing a supporting role opposite her brother, Eric, in Blood Red (she has just two words of dialogue), which, although filmed in 1987 was not released until 1989 (She was just about to have her 19th birthday during the filming). Her first television appearance was as a juvenile rape victim in the initial season of the series Crime Story with Dennis Farina, in the episode titled "The Survivor", broadcast on February 13, 1987. She also once appeared on Sesame Street opposite the character Elmo, demonstrating her ability to change emotions. Roberts first caught the attention of moviegoers with her performance in the independent film Mystic Pizza in 1988; that same year, she had a role in the fourth season finale of Miami Vice. The following year, she was featured in Steel Magnolias as a young bride battling diabetes and garnered her first Oscar nomination (as Best Supporting Actress) for her performance.

1990–2000
Roberts become known to worldwide audiences when she co-starred with Richard Gere in the Cinderella/Pygmalionesque story Pretty Woman in 1990. Roberts won the role after the first two choices for the part, Molly Ringwald and Meg Ryan both turned it down. The role also earned her a second Oscar nod, this time as Best Actress. Her next box office success was the thriller Sleeping with the Enemy, playing a battered wife who escapes her demented husband, Patrick Bergin, and begins a new life in Iowa. She played Tinkerbell in Steven Spielberg's Hook in 1991, and also played a Nurse in the 1991 film Dying Young; which was followed by a two-year hiatus, during which she made no films other than a cameo appearance in Robert Altman's The Player (1992). In early 1993, she was the subject of a People magazine cover story asking, "What Happened to Julia Roberts?"

In 1993, she co-starred with Denzel Washington in the successful The Pelican Brief, based on the John Grisham novel. She also starred alongside Liam Neeson in the 1996 film Michael Collins. Over the next few years, she starred in a series of films that were critical and commercial failures, primarily because she was cast in roles that strayed too far from her film persona, such as Stephen Frears' Mary Reilly (1996) for which earned a Razzie Worst Actress nomination. She broke her losing streak with the hugely popular comedy My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), and eventually regained her earlier reputation as an actress who could open a movie and guarantee box office success. She starred with Hugh Grant in the popular 1999 film Notting Hill. That same year, she also starred in Runaway Bride, the second film with the Julia Roberts-Richard Gere duo. Roberts was a guest star on the Law & Order television series in an episode broadcast on May 5, 1999 entitled "Empire", with series regular Benjamin Bratt (at that time her boyfriend).

2001–2005
Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Roberts, cast of Ocean's Eleven along with director Steven Soderbergh in December 2001

In 2001, Roberts received the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Erin Brockovich, who helped wage a successful lawsuit against energy giant Pacific Gas & Electric. Whilst presenting the Best Actor Award to Denzel Washington the following year, she made a gaff when she said she was glad that Tom Conti wasn't there. She meant the conductor Bill Conti, who had tried to hasten the conclusion of her Oscar speech the previous year, but instead named the Scottish actor. Roberts would team up with Erin Brockovich director Steven Soderbergh for three more films: Ocean's Eleven (2001), Full Frontal (2002), and Ocean's Twelve (2004). Later in 2001 she starred in the road gangster comedy The Mexican giving her a chance to work with long time friend Brad Pitt. In 2005, she was featured in the music video for the hit single "Dreamgirl" by the Dave Matthews Band.

2006–present
Roberts's two films released in 2006, The Ant Bully and Charlotte's Web, were both animated features for which she provided only voice acting. Her next film was Charlie Wilson's War, with Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman, directed by Mike Nichols and based on the book by former CBS journalist George Crile; it was released on December 21, 2007. Fireflies in the Garden, also starring Ryan Reynolds and Willem Dafoe is currently in post-production, with release set for 2008. It has also been announced that Roberts will star in The Friday Night Knitting Club, based on the novel of the same name by Kate Jacobs. Her niece, Emma Roberts, is said to be considered for the role of her daughter.

Broadway debut
Roberts made her Broadway debut on April 19, 2006 as Nan in a revival of Richard Greenberg's 1997 play Three Days of Rain opposite Bradley Cooper and Paul Rudd. Although the play grossed nearly US$1 million dollars in ticket sales during its first week and was a commercial success throughout its limited run, most critics heavily criticized Roberts' performance. The New York Times' critic Ben Brantly, a self-proclaimed 'Juliaholic,' described her as being fraught with "self-consciousness (especially in the first act)and only glancingly acquainted with the two characters she plays." Brantley also criticized the production of “Greenberg's slender, elegant play,” writing that “it's almost impossible to discern its artistic virtues from this wooden and splintered interpretation, directed by Joe Mantello.” Three Days of Rain received two Tony Award nominations in stage design categories, but took home neither prize. Roberts did, however, receive a Broadway.com audience award (a minor theatrical prize) for her performance.

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Jessica Marie Alba (born April 28, 1981) is an American television and film actress. She began her television and movie appearances at age 13 in Camp Nowhere and The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994). Alba rose to prominence as the lead actress in the television series Dark Angel (2000–2002). Alba later appeared in various films including Honey (2003), Sin City (2005), Fantastic Four (2005), Into the Blue (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Good Luck Chuck both in 2007.

Alba appears frequently on the "Hot 100" section of Maxim and was voted AskMen.com's number one on their list of "99 Most Desirable Women" in 2006, as well as "Sexiest Woman in the World" by FHM in 2007. She also appeared on the cover of Playboy, which was followed by a lawsuit that was later dropped. Alba has won various awards for her acting, including the Choice Actress Teen Choice Award and Saturn Award for Best Actress (TV) for her acting in the series Dark Angel.

Early life

Alba was born in Pomona, California to Catherine Alba (née Jensen) and Mark Alba. Her mother is of Danish and French Canadian descent and her father is of Mexican American descent (both his parents were born in California). She has a younger brother, Joshua. Her father's Air Force career took the family to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Del Rio, Texas before settling back in California when she was nine years old.

Alba's early life was marked by a multitude of physical maladies; she suffered collapsed lungs twice, had pneumonia 4-5 times a year, a ruptured appendix, and a tonsillar cyst. This isolated her from other children at school because she was in the hospital so often that no one knew her well enough to befriend her. She has also acknowledged suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder during childhood. Her health improved, however, when her family moved to California. She graduated from high school at age 16, and subsequently attended the Atlantic Theater Company.

Career
Alba expressed interest in acting since the age of five. In 1992, the 11-year-old Alba persuaded her mother to take her to an acting competition in Beverly Hills, whose grand prize was free acting classes. Alba won the grand prize, and took her first acting lessons. An agent signed Alba nine months later.
In Edmonton during the filming of Good Luck Chuck, August 2006

Her first appearance on film was a small role in the 1994 feature Camp Nowhere as Gail. She was originally hired for two weeks but her role turned into a two-month job in a leading role when one of the prominent actresses dropped out.

Alba appeared in two national television commercials for Nintendo and J.C. Penney as a child. She was later featured in several independent films. She branched out into television in 1994 with a recurring role as the vain Jessica in three episodes of the Nickelodeon comedy series The Secret World of Alex Mack. She then performed the role of Maya in the first two seasons of the television series Flipper. Under the tutelage of her lifeguard mother, Alba learned to swim before she could walk, and she was a PADI-certified scuba diver, skills which were put to use on the show, which was filmed in Australia.

In 1998, she appeared as Melissa Hauer in a first-season episode of the Steven Bochco crime-drama Brooklyn South, as Leanne in two episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 and as Layla in an episode of The Love Boat: The Next Wave. In 1999, she appeared in the Randy Quaid comedy feature P.U.N.K.S.. After Alba graduated from high school, she studied acting with William H. Macy and his wife, Felicity Huffman, at the Atlantic Theater Company, which was developed by Macy and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and film director, David Mamet.

Alba rose to greater prominence in Hollywood in 1999 after appearing as a member of a snobby high school clique in the Drew Barrymore romantic comedy Never Been Kissed, and as the female lead in the 1999 comedy-horror film Idle Hands, opposite Devon Sawa.

Her big break came when writer/director James Cameron picked Alba from a pool of 1,200 candidates for the role of the genetically-engineered super-soldier, Max Guevara, on the FOX sci-fi television series Dark Angel. Co-created by Cameron, the series starred Alba, and ran for two seasons until 2002, earning her critical acclaim as well as a Golden-Globe nomination. Alba later revealed that she had suffered from an eating disorder while in preparation for Dark Angel.

Alba's most notable film roles have included an aspiring dancer-choreographer in Honey, exotic dancer Nancy Callahan in Sin City and as the classic Marvel Comics character Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Four, of which movie critic Mick LaSalle said that her performance while talking for long periods of time was on "shaky ground". She then appeared in its sequel, in Into the Blue later that year, and Good Luck Chuck a few years later. Alba went on to host the 2006 MTV Movie Awards and performed sketches spoofing the movies King Kong, Mission Impossible 3, and The Da Vinci Code.

In 2008, Alba appeared in her first horror-film role in The Eye, a remake of the Hong Kong original. In February, she hosted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences's Science and Technical Awards. Later in the year, she starred in The Love Guru. She has signed on to star in An Invisible Sign of My Own to be released in 2009. Alba has been represented by talent agent Patrick Whitesell.

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Early life
Barrymore was born in Culver City, California, the daughter of American actor John Drew Barrymore and Ildikó Jaid Barrymore (née Makó), an aspiring actress born in a displaced persons camp in Brannenburg, West Germany to Hungarian World War II refugees. She is of Irish descent on her father's side through an ancestor, actor Maurice Costello. Her parents divorced after she was born. She has a half-brother John Blyth Barrymore, also an actor, and two half-sisters, Blyth Dolores Barrymore and Brahma (Jessica) Blyth Barrymore.

Barrymore was born into the acting profession, her great-grandparents Maurice Barrymore and Georgie Drew Barrymore, Maurice Costello and Mae Costello (née Altschuk) and her grandparents John Barrymore and Dolores Costello were all actors; John Barrymore was arguably the most acclaimed actor of his generation. She is the grand-niece of Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore and Helene Costello and the great grandniece of John Drew, Jr., actress Louisa Drew, and silent film actor/writer/director Sidney Drew. She is also the god-daughter of director Steven Spielberg.

Her first name, Drew, was the maiden name of her paternal great-grandmother, Georgie Drew Barrymore; her middle name, Blyth, was the original surname of the dynasty founded by her great-grandfather, Maurice Barrymore.

Rise to fame
Drew Barrymore's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Barrymore's career began when she auditioned for a dog food commercial at eleven months old. When she was bitten by her canine co-star, the producers were afraid she would cry, but she merely laughed, and was hired for the job. She made her film debut in Altered States (1980), in which she got a small part. A year later, she landed the role of Gertie, the younger sister of Elliott, in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which made her famous. She received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1984 for her role in Irreconcilable Differences, in which she starred as a young girl divorcing her parents. In a review in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert states: "Barrymore is the right actress for this role precisely because she approaches it with such grave calm." He concludes with saying that "The Drew Barrymore character sees right through all of this. She doesn't care about careers, she wants to be given a happy home and her minimum daily requirement of love, and, in a way, the movie is about how Hollywood (and American success in general) tends to cut adults off from the natural functions of parents."

Rebellious era
In the wake of this sudden stardom, Barrymore endured a notoriously troubled childhood. She was already a regular at the famed Studio 54 when she was a little girl, smoking cigarettes at age nine, drinking alcohol by the time she was 11, smoking marijuana at 12, and snorting cocaine at 13. Her nightlife and constant partying became a popular subject with the media. She was in rehab at age 13. A suicide attempt at age 14 put her back in rehab, followed by a three month stay with singer David Crosby and his wife. The stay was precipated, Crosby said, because she "needed to be around some people that were committed to sobriety. "Barrymore later described this period of her life in her 1990 autobiography, Little Girl Lost. The next year, following a successful to juvenile court petition for emancipation, she moved into her own apartment and has never relapsed.

New image
In her late teens, Barrymore forged a new image as she played a manipulative teenage seductress in Poison Ivy (1992), which was a box office failure, but was popular on video and cable. That same year, at the age of 17, she posed nude for the cover of the July issue of Interview magazine with her then-fiance, actor Jamie Walters, as well as appearing nude in pictures inside the issue. In 1993, Barrymore earned a second Golden Globe nomination for the film Guncrazy. Barrymore would go on to pose nude for the January 1995 issue of Playboy. Steven Spielberg, who directed her in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial when she was a child, gave her a quilt for her twentieth birthday with a note that read, "Cover yourself up". Enclosed were copies of her Playboy pictures, with the pictures altered by his art department so that she appeared fully clothed. She would appear nude in five of her films during this period. On 1995 appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, Barrymore climbed onto Dave Letterman's desk and bared her breasts to him, her back to the camera, in celebration of his birthday. She modeled in a series of Guess? jeans ads during this time. She underwent breast reduction surgery in 1992, and has said on the subject:

I really love my body and the way it is right now. There's something very awkward about women and their breasts because men look at them so much. When they're huge, you become very self-conscious. Your back hurts. You find that whatever you wear, you look heavy in. It's uncomfortable. I've learned something, though, about breasts through my years of pondering and pontificating, and that is: Men love them, and I love that.

Return to prominence
In 1995, Barrymore starred in Boys on the Side opposite Whoopi Goldberg and Mary-Louise Parker, and had a cameo role in Joel Schumacher's film Batman Forever, in which she portrayed a glitzy Marilyn Monroe character. The following year, she made a cameo in the successful horror film Scream. Barrymore has continued to be highly bankable, and a top box office draw. She became especially adept in romantic comedies, such as Wishful Thinking (1996), The Wedding Singer (1998), Home Fries (1998).

Besides a number of appearances in films produced by her company, Flower Films, including Charlie's Angels, Barrymore had a dramatic role in the comedy/drama Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), playing a teenage mother in a failed marriage with the drug-addicted father (based on the real-life story of Beverly D'Onofrio). In 2002, Barrymore appeared in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, alongside Julia Roberts.

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Drew Blyth Barrymore (born February 22, 1975) is an American actress and film producer. She is the youngest member of the Barrymore family of American actors. She began acting when she was eleven months old. Barrymore made her screen debut in Altered States in 1980. Following her 1980 screen debut in Altered States, she starred in her breakout role in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. She quickly became one of Hollywood's most recognized child actresses, going on to establish herself in mainly comic roles.

Following a turbulent childhood which was marked by drug and alcohol abuse and two stints in rehab, Barrymore wrote the 1990 autobiography, Little Girl Lost. Barrymore successfully made the transition from child star to adult actress with a number of films including the unsuccessful Poison Ivy, Bad Girls, Boys on the Side, and Everyone Says I Love You. Subsequently, she has established herself in romantic comedies such as The Wedding Singer and starred in the drama film Lucky You opposite Eric Bana.

In 1995, she and partner Nancy Juvonen formed the production company Flower Films, with its first production the 1999 Barrymore film Never Been Kissed. Flower Films has gone on to produce the Barrymore vehicle films Charlie's Angels, 50 First Dates, and Music and Lyrics, as well as the cult film Donnie Darko. Barrymore's more recent projects include He's Just Not That into You, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, and Everybody's Fine. A recipient of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Barrymore appeared on the cover of the 2007 People magazine's 100 Most Beautiful issue.

Barrymore was named Ambassador Against Hunger for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). Since then, she has donated over $1 million dollars to the program. In 2007, she became both CoverGirl's newest model and spokeswoman for the cosmetic and the face for Gucci's newest jewelry line.

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