Lillian Diana Gish was born on October 14, 1893 in Springfield, Ohio. Her father James Lee Gish was an alcoholic who caroused around, was rarely at home and left the family to more or less to fend for themselves. To help make ends meet, Lillian, her sister Dorothy Gish and their mother Mary Gish a.k.a...

Marie Magdelene Dietrich von Losch (aka Marlene) was born in Berlin, Germany on December 27, 1901. Her father was an army officer who had served in the Franco-Prussian War. Because of his constant absences from the family due to his army duties, Marlene and the rest had to rely on themselves. When he died...

Pauline Marion Goddard Levy was born in Whitestone Landing, New York, on 3 June 1910. She was a beautiful child who began to model for local department stores before she made her debut with Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies at the age of 13. For three years she astounded audiences with her talent. She married Edgar James when she was 15...

One of the brightest, most tragic movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, Judy Garland was a much-loved character whose warmth and spirit, along with her rich and exuberant voice, kept theatre-goers entertained with an array of delightful musicals. She was born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922 in Minnesota...

In America, the early performing arts accomplishments of young Maureen FitzSimons (who we know as Maureen O'Hara) would definitely have put her in the child prodigy category. However, for a child of Irish heritage surrounded by gifted parents and family, these were very natural traits. Maureen made her entrance into this caring haven on August 17...

Born May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, she was the daughter of a doctor and a suffragette, both of whom always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a child, she was also very close to her brother, Tom, and was devastated at age 14 to find him dead...

Anne Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 7, 1923. She was the daughter of a salesman and his wife, Catherine, who herself was the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, the world-renowned architect. Anne was a young girl of 11 when her parents moved to New York City, which at that time was still the hub of the entertainment industry even though the film colony was moving west...

When Jennifer Jones arrived in Hollywood in 1939, she still called herself Phylis Isley. Her face and especially her eyes drew the attention of the producer David O. Selznick, who did not only allow her a great career but also fell in love with her and finally married Jennifer Jones in 1949. For her role in The Song of Bernadette...

Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in New York City. Her parents were middle-class, with her father working as a salesman and her mother as a secretary. They divorced when she was five. When she was a school girl, Lauren originally wanted to be a dancer, but later, she became enthralled with acting...

Her parents divorced when she was young. In her first year of high school, she gave up dance for acting. After a little time in John Murray Anderson's acting school, she was in the off-Broadway play "The Earth Between" (1923). Her Broadway debut in 1929 was in "Broken Dishes". Late in 1930, on a six-month Universal contract...

Audrey Hepburn was born on May 4, 1929 in Brussels, Belgium. She was a blue-blood from the beginning; her mother was a Dutch baroness, and her father, who was of English and Austrian descent, worked in business. After her parents divorced, Audrey went to London with her mother where she went to a private girls school...

In the summer of 1954, Grace Kelly and Cary Grant were on the French Riviera working on an Alfred Hitchcock movie, To Catch a Thief. It was probably the scene after she speeds along the Moyen Corniche to quickly get to the "picnic grounds", and away from a tailing police car, that she had time to look at the Mediterranean and the countryside along the coast...

Elizabeth Taylor is considered one of the last, if not the last major star, to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system. And not just any studio, the top of the heap: MGM. Her early movies, as a child in the early 1940s, starred such Hollywood luminaries as Orson Welles and Spencer Tracy...

Janet Leigh was born Jeanette Helen Morrison on July 6, 1927 in Merced, California. She was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Jeanette was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters...

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, California. Her mother was a film-cutter at RKO Studios who, widowed and mentally ill, abandoned her to sequence of foster homes. She was almost smothered to death at two, nearly raped at six. At nine, the LA Orphans' Home paid her a nickel a month for kitchen work while taking back a penny every Sunday for church...

Demure British beauty Jean Simmons was born January 31, 1929 in Crouch End, London. As a 14-year-old dance student, she was plucked from her school to play Margaret Lockwood's precocious sister in Give Us the Moon, and she went on to make a name for herself in such major British productions as Caesar and Cleopatra...

Piper Laurie was born Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit, Michigan, on January 22, 1932, the daughter of a Polish immigrant and his Russian-American wife. Her father was a furniture dealer who moved his family to Los Angeles, California, when she was 6-years-old. Rosetta was a pretty red-haired little girl, but very shy...

Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda was born on December 21, 1937 in New York City to legendary screen star Henry Fonda and socialite Frances Ford Seymour. It was the second marriage for both her parents; Henry was divorced from actress Margaret Sullavan and Frances was the widow of a wealthy industrialist, George Tuttle Brokaw...

Anne Bancroft was born on September 17, 1931 in the Bronx, New York, the daughter of Michael Italiano (1906-2001) and Mildred DiNapoli (1908-2010). She made her cinema debut inDon't Bother to Knock in 1952 and over the next five years appeared in a lot of undistinguished movies as a supporting actress (like...

Considered by many to be one of the greatest American actresses of all time, Geraldine Page was a master craftswoman who seemed to bring out the most inner detail of the character she was playing. Her dedication to her craft has earned her the respect of many of today's great actors including Meryl Streep and Michelle Pfeiffer...

Born in Detroit, Ellen Burstyn worked a number of jobs before she became an actress. At 14, she was a short-order cook at a lunch counter. After graduating from Detroit's Cass Technical High School, she went to Texas to model and then to New York as a showgirl on The Jackie Gleason Show. From there, it was to Montreal as a nightclub dancer and then Broadway with her debut in "Fair Game (1957)"...

Barbra Streisand was born on April 24, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York. She is an actress, director, producer and writer. Among her many films are Hello, Dolly!, A Star Is Born, Yentl and The Mirror Has Two Faces. As a child she attended the Beis Yakov Jewish School in Brooklyn. She is good friends with singer/songwriter Neil Diamond...

Brooke Adams was born on February 8, 1949 in New York City to Robert K. and Rosalind Adams. She was educated at the prestigious High School for the Performing Arts and the School of the American Ballet. Starting her career on the stage while still a juvenile, her film career took off when she became an adult with a well-received performance...

Diane Keaton was a California native who studied Drama at Santa Ana College before dropping out to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. After appearing in summer stock for several months, she got her first major stage role in the Broadway rock musical "Hair". As understudy to the lead, she gained attention by not removing any of her clothing...

Theresa Russell, named one of the "100 sexiest stars in film history" (Empire Magazine), was born in San Diego, California. She was discovered by a photographer at the age of 12, and made her film debut in Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon, oppositeRobert De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Robert Mitchum...

On April 20, 1949, Jessica Lange was born in Cloquet, Minnesota, USA, where her father worked as a traveling salesman. She obtained a scholarship to study art at the University of Minnesota, but instead went to Paris to study drama. She moved to New York, working as a model for many years, until producer Dino De Laurentiis cast her as the female lead in King Kong...

Linda Carroll Hamilton was born on September 26, 1956 in Salisbury, Maryland, USA. Following Wicomico High School, she studied for two years at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, before moving on to acting studies in New York. In New York, she attended acting workshops given by Lee Strasberg...

Melanie Griffith was born on August 9, 1957, in New York City to model Tippi Hedren and advertising executive Peter Griffith. Her parents' marriage ended in 1961 and Tippi came to Los Angeles to get a new start. Tippi caught the eye of the great directorAlfred Hitchcock, who gave her starring roles in The Birds andMarnie...

Christine Lahti was born April 4, 1950 in Birmingham, Michigan to Elizabeth Margaret and Paul Theodore Lahti. She studied fine arts at Florida State University and received a bachelors degree in drama from the University of Michigan. In New York, Christine worked as a waitress and did commercials before she found her breakthrough role in ...And Justice for All. with Al Pacino...

Six time Academy Award nominee Glenn Close was born and was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. She was often seen on Broadway until 1982 when she was cast in her award winning role as Jenny Fields in The World According to Garp alongsideRobin Williams. For this role, a breakthrough in film for Close, she later went on to receive an Academy Award Nomination for Best Supporting Actress...

Born in Los Angeles, Jennifer Jason Leigh - the daughter of actor Vic Morrow - worked in her first film at the age of nine, in a nonspeaking role for the film Death of a Stranger (The Spy Who Never Was). At 14 she attended summer acting workshops given by Lee Strasberg and landed a role in the Disney TV movieThe Young Runaways...

Blond-haired, blue-eyed with an effervescent personality, Meg Ryan graduated from Bethel high school, Bethel in June 1979. Moving to New York, she attended New York University where she majored in journalism. To earn extra money while working on her degree, Meg went into acting using her new name Meg Ryan...

Alicia Christian Foster was born in Los Angeles on November 19, 1962. Her parents divorced three years before she was born, and she was conceived when her mother, Brandy, was visiting her father, Lucius, for child support. Alicia's siblings nicknamed her "Jodie," a name she has used in her profession...

Sharon Stone was born and raised in Meadville, a small town in Pennsylvania. Her strict father was a factory worker and her mother was an accountant and homemaker. She was the second of four children. At the age of 15, she studied in Saegertown High School, Pennsylvania and, at that same age, entered Edinboro State University of Pennsylvania...

Winona Ryder was born Winona Laura Horowitz and named after the town in which she was born, Winona, Minnesota. She grew up in a ranch commune in Northern California which had no electricity. She is the goddaughter of Timothy Leary. Her parents were friends of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and once edited a book called "Shaman Woman Mainline Lady"...

Madeleine Stowe grew up in Eagle Rock, a working-class neighborhood of Los Angeles. At age ten she started practicing for a career as a concert pianist and trained every day for hours. However, when her instructor died in 1976 she more or less quit playing. She went to University of Southern California and studied cinema and journalism before taking up acting at Beverly Hills' Solaris Theater...

Ask Kate Winslet what she liked about any of her characters, and the word "ballsy" is bound to pop up at least once. The British actress has made a point of eschewing straightforward pretty-girl parts in favor of more devilish damsels; as a result, she's built an eclectic resume; that runs the gamut from Shakespearean tragedy to modern-day mysticism and erotica...

Hilary Swank is the third youngest woman in history to win two Academy Awards for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role". In addition to the Oscar for her performance as "Brandon Teena" in Boys Don't Cry, Hilary won the Golden Globe Award for "Best Actress in a Drama" and "Best Actress" prizes from The New York Film Critics...

Cameron Diaz was born in 1972 in San Diego. Her mother, Billie (Early), has English, Scots-Irish, and German ancestry, and her father, Emilio Diaz, was from a Cuban family (of Spanish origin). Self-described as "adventurous, independent and a tough kid," Cameron left home at 16 and for the next 5 years lived in such varied locales as Japan...

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, as the daughter of Italian immigrants and began her career in school plays as a teenager. She attended the University of Illinois and got bitten by the acting bug, starring in "Guys and Dolls". Leaving for New York, she took part in "West Side Story" in 1981...

Jennifer Connelly was born in the Catskill Mountains, New York, to Ilene, a dealer of antiques, and Gerard Connelly, a clothing manufacturer. Her father had Irish and Norwegian ancestry, and her mother was from a Jewish immigrant family. Jennifer grew up in Brooklyn Heights, just across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan...

The daughter of a military judge and a Scottish social worker, Julianne Moore was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on December 3, 1960. She spent the early years of her life in over two dozen locations around the world with her parents before she finally found her place at Boston University, where...

Maggie Gyllenhaal made her debut in her father 'Stephen Gyllenhaal''s film Waterland and emerged as a full-blown star inSecretary. Her sweet looks and conduct result in a subtle on-screen style that emerges from the character she plays, whether the part is large or small. A graduate of Columbia University...

Charlize Theron was born in Benoni, a city in the greater Johannesburg-area, South Africa on August 7th, 1975, to Gerda Theron and Charles Theron (she was named after him). She has French, Dutch, and German ancestry. Charlize began her modeling career in 1991 aged 16 when she won a local modeling contest...

Precocious, outspoken child-teen starlet of the 1990s, Christina Ricci was born in 1980 in Santa Monica, California, the youngest of four children of a lawyer father and realtor mother. She made her screen debut at the age of 9 in Mermaids, in which she worked with Cher. Her breakthrough adult role was in The Ice Storm...

Uma Karuna Thurman, daughter of Robert Thurman and Nena Thurman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 29, 1970. Uma grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, where her father worked at Amherst College. She left boarding school at just 15, already determined to become an actress. She moved to New York to follow her dream...

Bryce Dallas Howard was born on March 2, 1981, in Los Angeles, California. She was conceived in Dallas, Texas (the reason for her middle name). Her father, named Ron Howard, is a former actor turned Oscar-winning director. Her mother is actress and writer Cheryl Howard (nee Alley). Her famous relatives include her uncle...

Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Australia to an American father and an Australian mother. She has an older brother and an younger sister. When she was ten years old, her 40-year old father died of a sudden heart attack. Her mother never remarried, and her grandmother moved in to help her mother...