Katie Holmes

Biography:  Kate Noelle "Katie" Holmes is an American actress who first achieved fame for her role as Joey Potter on The WB television teen drama Dawson's Creek from 1998 to 2003. Her movie roles have ranged from art house films such as The Ice Storm to thrillers such as Abandon to blockbusters such as Batman Begins. In early 2005, Holmes began a highly publicized relationship with actor Tom Cruise, which drew attention due to the sixteen-year age difference between the two. In June, two months after they first met, Holmes and Cruise were engaged. Their relationship made Holmes the subject of international media attention, much of it negative, including speculation the relationship was a publicity stunt to promote the couple's films. Holmes, who was brought up as a Roman Catholic, joined the Church of Scientology shortly after the couple began dating. On April 18, 2006, Holmes gave birth to their daughter, Suri. On November 18, 2006, she and Cruise were married in Italy. Early life Holmes was born in Toledo, Ohio, the youngest in a family of five children (four daughters, one son) of Kathleen A. Stothers, a homemaker and a philanthropist, and Martin Joseph Holmes, Sr. (born 1945), an attorney specializing in divorces. She lived in the Corey Woods section of Sylvania Township, Lucas County, in a brick 1862 Italianate-style home. Her siblings are Tamera (born c. 1968), Holly Ann (born c. 1970), Martin Joseph, Jr. (born 1970), who works as a lawyer in Ohio, and Nancy Kay (Blaylock), a teacher (born c. 1975). Holmes, baptized a Roman Catholic attended Christ the King Church and parochial schools in Toledo.Her high school was the all-female Notre Dame Academy, her mother's alma mater, where Katie was a 4.0 student. At St. John's Jesuit, a nearby all-male high school, she appeared in school musicals, playing a waiter in Hello, Dolly! and Lola in Damn Yankees. She scored 1310 out of 1600 on her SAT and was accepted to Columbia University her father wanted her to be a doctor. Holmes loved reading: "I never feel lonely in a bookstore", she said. A British writer profiling her in 2003 said "The way Holmes approached her unusual education was as American as apple pie: she went to cheerleading practice, got straight A grades, and made a pledge that she would remain a virgin until marriage." Holmes told her hometown paper The Blade that the three words best describing herself were "honest, determined, and imaginative." At age fourteen she began classes at a modeling school in Toledo run by Margaret O'Brien, who took her to IMTA, the International Modeling and Talent Association Competition held in New York City in 1996. There she found an agent after performing a monologue from To Kill a Mockingbird. An audition tape was sent to the casting director for the 1997 film The Ice Storm, directed by Ang Lee. She was cast in the role of Libbets Casey, in the film which starred Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. Ang Lee told The Blade, "Katie was cast because she had the perfect amount of innocence and worldliness that we needed for Libbets. I was really taken by her wide open eyes. She really is a beautiful girl but there is also a lot of intelligence there and it shows." Acting In January 1997, Holmes went to Los Angeles for pilot season, when producers cast and shoot new programs in the hopes of securing a spot on a network schedule. The Blade reported she was offered the lead in Buffy the Vampire Slayer but she turned it down. Columbia Tri-Star Television, producer of a new show created by screenwriter Kevin Williamson, asked her to come to Los Angeles to audition, but there was a conflict with her schedule. "I was doing my school play, Damn Yankees. And I was playing Lola. I even got to wear the feather boa. I thought, 'There is no way I'm not playing Lola to go audition for some network. I couldn't let my school down. We had already sold a lot of tickets. So I told Kevin and The WB, 'I'm sorry. I just can't meet with you this week. I've got other commitments.'" The producers permitted her to audition on videotape. Holmes read for the part of Joey Potter, the tomboy best friend of the title character Dawson, on a videotape shot in her basement, her mother reading Dawson's lines. The Hollywood Reporter claimed the story of Holmes's audition "has become the stuff of legend" and "no one even thought that it was weird that one of the female leads would audition via Federal Express." Holmes won the part. Paul Stupin, executive producer of the show, said his first reaction on seeing her audition tape was "That's Joey Potter!" Creator and executive producer Kevin Williamson said Holmes has a "unique combination of talent, beauty and skill that makes Hollywood come calling. But that's just the beginning. To meet her is to instantly fall under her spell." Williamson thought she had exactly the right look for Joey Potter. "She had those eyes, those eyes just stained with loneliness." Personal life Holmes purchased a townhouse in Wilmington in 2002. When Dawson's Creek ended its run in 2003, she moved to Los Angeles, California, then New York City in 2005, before going back to Los Angeles when she married Tom Cruise. Holmes dated her Dawson's Creek co-star Joshua Jackson for all the first season and part of the second season, the relationship ending peacefully. She told Rolling Stone, "I fell in love, I had my first love, and it was something so incredible and indescribable that I will treasure it always. And that I feel so fortunate because he's now one of my best friends." Holmes met actor Chris Klein in 2000. A Midwesterner like Holmes—he grew up in Illinois and Nebraska—Klein and Holmes were engaged in late 2003, but in early 2005 she and Klein ended their relationship. Press accounts cited the distance imposed by their careers as a factor. In the fall of 2005, Klein said of the split, "We grew up. The fantasy was over and reality set in." Holmes told a reporter in 2005, "Chris and I care about each other and we're still friends."