Jessica Biel

(born March 3, 1982)[1] is an American actress, model, and occasional singer. Biel is known for her television role as Mary Camden in the long-running family-drama series 7th Heaven. She has also appeared in several Hollywood films, including Summer Catch, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Illusionist, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, and The A-Team.

Jessica Claire Biel was born in Ely, Minnesota. Her mother, Kimberly (née Conroe), is a homemaker and spiritual healer. Her father, Jonathan Biel, worked for GE as well as being an entrepreneur and business consultant.[2][3][4] She has a younger brother, Justin, born in 1985, and is of German, French, English, and Choctaw ancestry.[5][6] Biel's family moved frequently during her childhood, living in Texas, Connecticut, and Woodstock, Illinois, before finally settling in Boulder, Colorado. While growing up, Biel played soccer[7] and also trained as a gymnast.[4] She is also an avid snowboarder.[7] From 2000 to 2002, she attended Tufts University in Medford, MA

Biel initially trained to be a vocalist, and from age nine appeared in several musical productions in her hometown, playing lead roles in productions such as Annie, The Sound of Music, and Beauty and the Beast.[8]
At twelve, Biel attended The International Modeling and Talent Association conference in Los Angeles where she was discovered and signed by a talent agency. She began modeling for print advertisements, and appeared in commercials for products such as Dulux Paint and Pringles.[2]
Biel also played the character Regrettal, a lead role in a low-budget musical short titled It's a Digital World, but the film was never released. At fourteen, after auditioning for several television pilots, Biel was cast as Mary Camden, the oldest daughter in the family drama 7th Heaven. The show ran 11 seasons, making it the longest-running family drama in U.S. television history.

Avril Lavigne

(pronounced /ˈævrɨl ləˈviːn/; born 27 September 1984) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, fashion designer, actress and philanthropist. She was born in Belleville, Ontario, but spent the majority of her youth in the small town, Napanee, Ontario. By the age of 15, she had appeared on stage with Shania Twain, and by 16, Lavigne had signed a recording contract with Arista, now RCA Records. Record executive Antonio "L.A." Reid offered her a two-album deal worth more than $2 million. When she was 17 years old, Lavigne broke onto the music scene with her debut album, Let Go, released in 2002.

Let Go made Lavigne the youngest female soloist to reach #1 in the UK, and the album was certified four-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. As of 2009, over 16 million copies had been sold worldwide, more than 6 million of which were sold in the United States. Her breakthrough single, "Complicated", peaked at #1 in many countries around the world, as did the album Let Go. Her second album, Under My Skin, was released in 2004 and was her first album to peak at #1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 , eventually selling more than 10 million copies worldwide. The Best Damn Thing, Lavigne’s third album, was released in 2007. This album gave Lavigne her third #1 album in the UK Albums Chart and featured her first U.S. Billboard Hot 100 single, "Girlfriend". Lavigne has scored a total of five #1 singles worldwide, including "Complicated", "Sk8er Boi", "I'm With You", "My Happy Ending" and "Girlfriend". Lavigne has sold more than 30 million copies of her albums worldwide[1] and is currently one of the top-selling artists releasing albums in the U.S., with over 10.25 million copies certified by the RIAA.[2] Billboard named Lavigne the #10 pop artist in the "Best of the 2000s" chart, and she was listed as the 28th overall best act of the decade based on album sales, chart success, and cultural relativity in the U.S.[3][4] Her fourth studio album, Goodbye Lullaby, will be released in March 2011, with the first single to be released in January.

Lavigne branched out from recording music, pursuing careers in feature film acting and designing clothes and perfumes. She voiced a character in the animated film, Over the Hedge, in 2006. That same year, she made her on-screen feature film debut in Fast Food Nation. In 2008, Lavigne introduced her clothing line, Abbey Dawn; and in 2009, she released her first perfume, Black Star, which was followed by her second perfume, Forbidden Rose, in 2010.

In July 2006, Lavigne married her boyfriend of two years, Deryck Whibley, lead singer and guitarist for Sum 41. The marriage lasted a little over three years, and in October 2009, Lavigne filed for divorce. Whibley and Lavigne have continued to work together after the divorce, with Whibley producing her upcoming fourth album, as well as Lavigne's single, "Alice", written for Tim Burton's film Alice in Wonderland.

Early life
Avril Ramona Lavigne was born in Belleville, Ontario, the daughter of Judith-Rosanne "Judy" (née Loshaw) and Jean-Claude Lavigne. Her father, who is of French Canadian descent,[5] named her Avril after the French word for the month of April.[6] She has an older brother, Matthew, and a younger sister, Michelle.[7] A daughter of a working-class family,[8] Lavigne, at the age of two, began singing church songs along with her mother. When Lavigne was five years old, the family moved to Napanee, Ontario,[6] a town with an approximate population of 5,000.[9][10][11] Although she struggled with paying attention in school, sometimes kicked out of class for misbehaving, her parents were supportive of her singing. Her father bought her a microphone, a drum kit, a keyboard, several guitars, and converted their basement into a studio. When Lavigne was 14, her parents would take her to karaoke sessions.[12] Lavigne also performed at country fairs, singing songs by Garth Brooks, The Dixie Chicks, and Shania Twain. She also began writing her own songs. Her first song was called "Can't Stop Thinking About You", about a teenage crush, which she described as "cheesy cute".[13]

“ I’ve known all my life that this is what I was supposed to do.... Visualizing like what it would be like to be famous with my music. And always just dreaming, always daydreaming. ”
—Avril Lavigne, NBC News[12]


In 1998,[11] Lavigne won a radio contest to perform with fellow Canadian singer Shania Twain at the Corel Centre (now Scotiabank Place) in Ottawa, before an audience of 20,000 people.[6][9] Twain and Lavigne sang "What Made You Say That",[6] and Lavigne told Twain she was going to be "a famous singer".[9] During a performance with the Lennox Community Theatre, Lavigne was spotted by local folk singer Stephen Medd. He invited her to contribute vocals on his song, "Touch the Sky", for his 1999 album, Quinte Spirit. She later sang on "Temple of Life" and "Two Rivers" for his follow-up album, My Window to You, in 2000. In December 1999, Lavigne was discovered by her first professional manager, Cliff Fabri, while singing country covers at a Chapters bookstore in Kingston, Ontario.[6][9] Fabri sent out VHS tapes of Lavigne's home performances to several industry prospects, and Lavigne was visited by several executives.[14] Mark Jowett, co-founder of the Canadian management firm Nettwerk, received a copy of Lavigne's karaoke performances recorded in her parents' basement,[15] and arranged for Lavigne to work with Peter Zizzo in New York during the summer of 2000, where she wrote the song "Why?". It was on a subsequent trip to New York that Lavigne was noticed by Arista Records.[14]

Alesha Dixon

(born 7 October 1978)[1] is an English singer-songwriter, dancer, model and television personality. She first found fame in the all-female R&B/garage trio Mis-Teeq, however, the trio separated in 2005 and Dixon continued pursuing her music career as a solo artist, signing to Polydor Records. Dixon began recording her debut solo album, Fired Up in 2006, but due to poor record sales of her first two singles, "Lipstick" and "Knockdown", she was dropped from Polydor.[2]

In 2007 Dixon became a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing and eventually won. Her television exposure led to a successful comeback,[3] which included her signing to Asylum Records, an offshoot of Warner Music Group. Dixon then released a second album, entitled The Alesha Show in 2008, which received platinum certification from BPI in the UK.

In September 2009 Dixon became a judge on the seventh series of Strictly Come Dancing, replacing fellow judge Arlene Phillips.[4] The replacement of Phillips by Dixon attracted criticism, as some questioned the extent of Dixon's dancing knowledge.[5] Dixon herself dismissed the criticism, describing it as a "storm in a teacup", and refused to stand down as judge.[6] In 2010 Dixon returned for the eighth series of Strictly Come Dancing and released her third studio album, The Entertainer.

Early life
Dixon was born in Welwyn Garden City, to an English mother, Beverly Harris, and Jamaican father, Melvin Dixon. She has five half-brothers called Adrian, Mark, John, Jeroame, Callum and one half-sister called Leyanne. She was educated at Monk's Walk School, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. Where Top Hat Stage School is based and to which Alesha made a personal appearance at for their "Summer 2009 Awards Show". Dixon's mother and father split up when Dixon was four years old and Dixon's father moved away, resulting in Dixon later describing her family life as "very dysfunctional".[7]

Her first job was at Ladbrokes,[8] although she aspired to become a PE teacher after leaving college. After completing a diploma course in sports studies,[8] she had planned to take up a place at Loughborough University,[9] but whilst at dance classes in London she was approached by a talent scout from a production company.[10] Whilst travelling back home on the train she was approached by another scout who was forming a band and asked if she was interested.[10] Dixon's musical hopes had previously been met with scepticism from Melvin Dixon, as he encouraged Alesha to follow a more academic career path.[11] Dixon explained that "his view was there weren't many black British musicians who were overly successful. I said, 'Dad, I can't base my decision on what people haven't done'".[11] Ignoring her father's advice, Dixon decided to pursue a career in music.

Hilary Duff

(born September 28, 1987) is an American actress and singer. After working in local theater plays and television commercials in her childhood, Duff gained fame for playing the title role in the Disney Channel television series Lizzie McGuire. Duff subsequently ventured into feature films, with many successful movies to her credit including The Lizzie McGuire Movie, Cheaper by the Dozen, A Cinderella Story and Cheaper by the Dozen 2. She has most recently appeared in According to Greta and Stay Cool. As of November 2010, her upcoming films include, Bloodworth, The Story of Bonnie and Clyde and She Wants Me.

Duff has since expanded her repertoire into pop music with the release of three RIAA-certified platinum albums and over thirteen million records sold worldwide as of February 2007.[1] Her first studio album, Metamorphosis, was certified triple platinum and supplemented it with two more platinum albums, Hilary Duff and Most Wanted. Duff released her third studio album, Dignity, which was certified gold in August 2007[2] and released two singles, "With Love", her highest charting US single to date and "Stranger". In November 2008, she released a compilation of her greatest hits, Best of Hilary Duff, whose single "Reach Out" became her third #1 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play.

Duff has also branched into fashion with the launch of her own clothing lines, Stuff by Hilary Duff and Femme for DKNY Jeans, and two exclusive perfume collections with Elizabeth Arden as well as being signed on as a model to IMG Models New York.[3] Other business ventures include the scribing of a young adult novel Elixir and being acredited as a producer and executive producer for the movies Material Girls[4] and According to Greta respectively.

On February 19, 2010, Duff became engaged to NHL player Mike Comrie. The couple married on August 14, 2010 in Santa Barbara, California.

Early life
Duff with her sister in April 2008.Duff was born in Houston, Texas[6] as the second of two daughters of Susan Colleen (née Cobb), a homemaker, and Robert Erhard Duff, a partner in a chain of convenience stores.[7] She has an elder sister, Haylie Duff, who is also an actress/singer. Duff's mother encouraged Hilary to take up acting classes alongside her elder sister, which resulted in both girls winning roles in various local theatre productions.[8] At the ages of eight and six, respectively, the Duff sisters participated in the ballet, The Nutcracker Suite with Columbus BalletMet in San Antonio.[6] The siblings became more enthusiastic about the idea of choosing acting as a profession, and eventually relocated to California with their mother, while their father resides at the family home in Houston to take care of their business.[7][8] After several years of auditions and meetings, the Duff sisters were cast in various television commercials.[7] In a 2009 interview with Vanity Fair, Duff mentioned that she was home schooled due to her early start of an acting career.

Penélope Cruz

(born April 28, 1974), better known as Penélope Cruz, is a Spanish actress. At 15, she was signed by an agent. She made her acting debut at 16 on television, and her feature film debut the following year in Jamón, jamón (1992), to critical acclaim. Her subsequent roles in the 1990s and 2000s included Open Your Eyes (1997), The Hi-Lo Country (1999), The Girl of Your Dreams (2000) and Woman on Top (2000). Cruz achieved recognition for her lead roles in Vanilla Sky and Blow. Both films were released in 2001 and were commercially successful worldwide.

In the 2000s, she has appeared in films from a wide range of genres, including the comedy Waking Up in Reno (2002), the thriller Gothika (2003), the Christmas movie Noel (2004), the action adventure Sahara (2005), the animated G-Force and the musical drama Nine. Her most notable films to date are Volver (2006), for which she earned Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), for which she received an Academy Award. She was the first Spanish actress in history to receive an Academy Award, and the sixth Spanish actor overall.

Cruz has modeled for companies such as Mango, Ralph Lauren and L'Oréal. Cruz and her younger sister Mónica Cruz have designed items for Mango. She has donated both her time and money to charities. Cruz has volunteered in Uganda and India, where she spent one week working for Mother Teresa; she donated her salary from The Hi-Lo Country to help fund the late nun's mission

Early life
Penélope Cruz Sánchez was born in Alcobendas, Community of Madrid, Spain, the daughter of Encarna Sánchez, a hairdresser and personal manager, and Eduardo Cruz, a retailer and auto mechanic.[1][2] She was raised Roman Catholic.[3] Throughout her childhood, Cruz lived in Alcobendas, a working-class city, although she spent "a lot" of time at her grandmother's apartment.[2] Cruz is the oldest of three siblings;[2] she has a younger brother, Eduardo, who is a singer, and a younger sister, Mónica, who is an actress.[4] She has said that she had a happy childhood, and Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes described Cruz's childhood as a "simple life".[2] In 2000, Cruz stated that as a child she would throw herself on the floor and "start kicking and breaking things" when she did not get her way.[5] Initially, Cruz had no ambition to be an actress and focused on dance,[2] having studied classical ballet for nine years[4] at Spain's National Conservatory.[5] She received three years of Spanish ballet training and four years of theater at Cristina Rota's New York school.[6][7]

When Cruz was a teenager, she began having an interest in acting after seeing the film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar.[2][8] She began doing casting calls for an agent, but was rejected multiple times because the agent felt that she was too young.[2][9] Cruz commented on the experience that "I was very extroverted as a kid. [...] I was studying when I was in high school at night, I was in ballet and I was doing castings. I looked for an agent and she sent me away three times because I was a little girl but I kept coming back. I'm still with her after all these years."[9] In 1989, at the age of 15, Cruz won an audition at a talent agency over more than 300 other girls.[5] In 1999, Katrina Bayonas, Cruz's agent, commented, "She was absolutely magic [at the audition]. It was obvious there was something very impressive about this kid. [...] She was very green, but there was a presence. There was just something coming from within."

Angelina Jolie

(pronounced /dʒoʊˈliː/ joh-LEE; born June 4, 1975), née Angelina Jolie Voight, is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards. Jolie promotes humanitarian causes, and is noted for her work with refugees as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She has been cited as one of the world's most attractive people, as well as the world's "most beautiful" woman, titles for which she has received substantial media attention.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

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 wider fame after her portrayal of video game 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.[7] She has had her biggest commercial successes with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) and the animated film Kung Fu Panda (2008).[8]

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 three biological children, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne.

Early life and family
Born in Los Angeles, California, Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. She is the niece of Chip Taylor, sister of James Haven and the goddaughter of Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father's side, Jolie is of Czechoslovak and German descent,[9][10] and on her mother's side she is Canadian and is said to be part Iroquois.[11][12] However, Voight has claimed Bertrand was "not seriously Iroquois", and they merely said it to enhance his ex-wife's exotic background.[13]

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.[14] 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.[15] When she was eleven years old, 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.

At the age of 14, she dropped out of her acting classes and dreamed of becoming a funeral director.[16] During this period, she wore black clothing, dyed her hair purple and went out moshing with her live-in boyfriend.[15] Two years later, after the relationship had ended, she rented an apartment above a garage a few blocks from her mother's home.[14] 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".[17]

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.[15] 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."[18]

Jolie was estranged from her father for many years. The two tried to reconcile and he appeared with her in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).[14] 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.[19] In August of the same year, Voight claimed that his daughter had "serious mental 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.[20] In February 2010, Jolie publicly reunited with her father when he visited her while filming The Tourist in Venice.[21]

Jessica Alba

(born April 28, 1981)[1] 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).[2][3] 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.[4][5]

Alba is considered a sex symbol and often generates media attention for her looks. She appears frequently on the "Hot 100" section of Maxim and was voted number one on AskMen.com's list of "99 Most Desirable Women" in 2006, as well as "Sexiest Woman in the World" by FHM in 2007.[6][7][8] The use of her image on the cover of the March 2006 Playboy sparked a lawsuit by her, which was later dropped.[9] She has also won various awards for her acting, including the Choice Actress Teen Choice Award and Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television, and a Golden Globe nomination for her lead role in the television series Dark Angel

Early life
Alba was born in Pomona, California[1] to Catherine (née Jensen) and Mark Alba. Her mother is of Danish and French Canadian descent and her father is Mexican American (though both of his parents were born in California).[10] 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.[3][10] Alba described her family as being a "very conservative family—a traditional, Catholic, Latin American family" and herself as very liberal; she says she had identified herself as a "feminist" as early as age five.[11]

Alba's early life was marked by a multitude of physical maladies. During childhood, she suffered from collapsed lungs twice, had pneumonia 4-5 times a year, as well as a ruptured appendix and a tonsillar cyst.[3] Alba became isolated from other children at school, because she was in the hospital so often due to her illnesses that no one knew her well enough to befriend her.[12] Alba has also had asthma since she was a child.[3] Alba has said that her family's frequent moving also contributed to her isolation from her peers.[11] She has also acknowledged that she has suffered from obsessive–compulsive disorder during her childhood.[13][14] Alba graduated from high school at age 16,[15] and she subsequently attended the Atlantic Theater Company.[16]