Celebrity Wallpapers

Rose McGowan

Rose Arianna McGowan (born September 5) is an American actress, known for her role as Paige Matthews in Charmed. She has also appeared in Hollywood films including Scream and Jawbreaker. Although her exact age is unknown various reliable sources have listed her year of birth as 1973, 1974, and 1975.

Early Life

Rose McGowan, the second-eldest of six children (including two half-siblings), was born in Florence, Italy to Daniel McGowan (an Irish-born artist) and Terri (a French American writer); her parents were members of the Children of God and her father ran the Italian chapter of the group. McGowan spent her early childhood in the group’s communes and travelling Europe with her parents. Through her father’s art contacts, McGowan had become a child model and had appeared in Vogue Bambini and various other Italian magazines. Her parents divorced when McGowan was ten. She subsequently lived in Oregon and Gig Harbor, Washington. McGowan did not speak English until she moved to the U.S.

McGowan’s high school years were spent with her father in Seattle attending Roosevelt High School and Nova Alternative High School. At the age of fifteen, McGowan officially emancipated herself from her parents. She pursued a possible career in the film industry during her late teens. She also enrolled in a beauty school as a back-up.

Career

McGowan’s first attempt to “break” into Hollywood came in the form of a bit-role in the 1992 Pauly Shore comedy Encino Man. Her role in the 1995 black comedy, The Doom Generation, brought her to the attention of film critics and she received a nomination for “Best Debut Performance” at the 1996 Independent Spirit Awards. She was subsequently cast as Tatum Riley, the best friend of Neve Campbell’s character Sidney, in the 1996 hit horror-satire film Scream.

McGowan spent the majority of the 1990s appearing in low-budget films, including parts in Southie, Going All the Way and Lewis & Clark & George. She appeared in the critically-acclaimed short Seed, directed by San Francisco-born filmmaker Karin Thayer, in 1997, and played opposite Peter O’Toole in the 1998 movie adaptation of Phantoms, based on a novel by Dean Koontz. Notably, she also starred in the 1999 black comedy, Jawbreaker, where she played a high school student who tries to cover up a classmate’s murder. The role of Courtney Shayne earned McGowan a nomination for Best Villain at the 1999 MTV Movie Awards.

In 2001, after some minor film roles (including a small role in the wrestling-themed movie Ready to Rumble, which performed poorly at the box-office), McGowan was cast as Paige Matthews in the popular television series Charmed, as a replacement lead actress after Shannen Doherty’s resignation from the show. McGowan was offered to be a producer after the seventh season, but turned it down. The series ended its run in May 2006.

In May 2005, she portrayed actress/singer Ann-Margret in Elvis, a CBS mini-series about the life of Elvis Presley. That same year, McGowan lent her voice to the video game Darkwatch as a femme fatale named Tala. The game was published by Capcom for PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

McGowan can be seen starring in the upcoming Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double-feature Grind House, scheduled to be released on April 6, 2007. She also had a brief appearance in the upcoming Brian de Palma film The Black Dahlia.

Modeling

McGowan was the face of American clothing company bebe from 1998-1999. She was also the cover model for the Henry Mancini tribute album Shots in the Dark, which was released in 1996.

In addition to clothing endorsements, McGowan has appeared on numerous magazine covers including Seventeen, Interview, Maxim and GQ. Rose has also been featured on Maxim, FHM and Stuff magazine’s sexiest women lists.

Awards

In 1996 Rose was nominated for a Independent Spirit Award for her role in the dark comedy “The Doom Generation.” A few years later, at the 1999 MTV Movie Awards, Rose was nominated for “Best Villain” for her role as Courtney Shayne in 1999’s “Jawbreaker.” In 2005 Rose won her very first award “Best Sister” at the Family TV Awards, for her role as Paige Matthews on the witchy hit series “Charmed.”

Continue Reading

Elizabeth McGovern

A large-eyed, slightly baby-faced stage and screen performer McGovern first gained attention as Conrad Jarrett’s (Timothy Hutton) supportive and understanding girlfriend in the Oscar-winning “Ordinary People” (1980). The willowy actress followed with a stunning turn as Evelyn Nesbit in Milos Foreman’s adaptation of the E.L. Doctorow novel “Ragtime” (1981) netting a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. While subsequent projects found her working with a number of top film directors, she failed to find roles that utilized her unique beauty and challenged her range and talent. She appeared as the object of Robert De Niro’s obsession in Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984) and as Kevin Bacon’s pregnant wife in John Hughes’ “She’s Having a Baby” (1988). In 1989, McGovern offered two diverse performances as Mickey Rourke’s sympathetic girlfriend in Walter Hill’s “Johnny Handsome” (1989) and as a rebellious lesbian in Volker Schlondorf’s nonsensical thriller “The Handmaid’s Tale” (1989). McGovern fared better in the little seen romantic comedy-drama “The Favor” (1994) and was featured in the groundbreaking “Wings of Courage” (1995), Jean-Jacques Annaud’s period adventure, the first dramatic film shot in the IMAX 3-D format.

McGovern has been better served in her stage and TV roles, appearing off-Broadway in several productions, notably in Tina Howe’s “Painting Churches” (1989), David Hare’s “A Map of the World” (1990) and Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Her TV debut was opposite Beau Bridges in the adaptation of “The Man in the Brooks Brothers Suit” on the HBO anthology “Women & Men: Stories of Seduction” (1990). She later played an FBI agent in “Broken Trust” (TNT, 1995). McGovern made the jump to series TV headlining the short-lived sitcom “If Not For You” (CBS, 1995). Portraying a woman engaged to a boring yuppie but fighting a growing attraction to a co-worker, she gave a deft and sweetly comic turn. Using her expressive face and throaty voice, she revealed a previously untapped comic sensibility. McGovern married English producer-director Simon Curtis in 1992.

Continue Reading

Kelly McGills

This leading lady’s first two film appearances, as the love interest to a drunken writer in “Reuben, Reuben” (1982) and the soft-spoken Amish widow in “Witness” (1985), displayed a promising mix of talent and earthy beauty. Kelly McGillis’ career, however, stumbled a bit after playing Tom Cruise’s love interest in “Top Gun” (1986) as her forays into straightforwardly glamorous roles have earned relatively lukewarm critical responses.

McGillis dropped out of high school to pursue a career as an actor and eventually attended Juilliard in Manhattan. She understudied the role of Dona Elvire in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “Don Juan” but had little other professional experience when director Robert Ellis Miller “discovered” her and cast her opposite Tom Conti in “Reuben, Reuben”. Notices were good, and McGillis then moved to “Witness” and “Top Gun.” (In the latter, her 5′10″ height was quite evident as she stood next to the shorter Tom Cruise.) Attempts to put her in the position to carry a picture resulted in “Made in Heaven” (1986), in which McGillis was matched with Timothy Hutton as the as-yet-unborn beauty he meets in heaven, who is yet unborn, and “The House on Carroll Street” (1988), in which McGillis was a blacklisting victim who stumbles on an espionage plot. Both films were box office disappointments. “The Accused” (1988) had McGillis as the assistant district attorney who is moved to put three rapists behind bars by the pathos of Jodie Foster, but it was Foster who got the reviews–and the Oscar. McGillis then did “Winter People” (1989), an Ozark-based Sturm und Drang, which also flopped. In 1991, she produced the film “The Awakening”, which did not receive wide-spread release, and the following year played the woman who marries and tries to tame John Goodman’s “The Babe”. McGillis joined “Witness” co-star Alexander Godunov in reprising their characters in a brief, amusing cameo for “North” (1994).

McGillis appeared in her first TV-movie in 1984, playing a sister who seeks to punish her sister’s tormentor in “Sweet Revenge” (CBS). She followed with “Private Sessions” (NBC, 1985), a busted pilot. In 1993, McGillis played a woman in love with a retarded man in “Bonds of Love” (CBS) and in the 1994 CBS miniseries “In the Best of Families: Marriage, Pride and Madness”, she was a woman obsessed with destroying her ex-husband.

McGillis’ theater career was interrupted by “Reuben, Reuben”, but she returned to the stage in 1988 playing Portia in the Folger Shakespeare Theatre production of “The Merchant of Venice.” She has since continued an association with that company, appearing in “Twelfth Night”, “Mary Stuart” and “Measure for Measure”, among others. In 1994, McGillis made her Broadway debut in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of “Hedda Gabler”.

Continue Reading

Reba McEntire

Country music superstar Reba McEntire has enjoyed huge commercial and critical success in 1980s and 90s. She proved to be a key figure in the successful crossover of country music into the pop mainstream, and later showed herself a capable character player in features and on TV. The product of a small-town upbringing in Oklahoma, McEntire competed on the rodeo circuit with her family and sang with her brother and sister as part of the teenaged Singing McEntires until she was signed by Mercury Records in the mid-70s. Achieving success by the end of the decade, she brought her rich, throbbing alto, with its distinctive Midwestern twang, to such country pop tunes as “I Can’t Even Get the Blues”. In the mid-80s McEntire sang several very traditional country songs like “How Blue” and plush ballads about broken romance including “Whoever’s in New England” and “He Broke Your Memory Last Night”. She continued her success into the 90s with her hard-hitting duet with Linda Davis, “Does He Love You” and other he-done-me-wrong songs like “For My Broken Heart.”

With her attractively forthright manner and her trademark voluminous, teased brunette hair, McEntire not only won many music industry awards and produced an impressive string of best-selling albums, but also made music videos and a great many TV variety and award show appearances. As with other country music stars, media visibility and the experience of putting over storytelling songs suggested the possibility of straight acting, and McEntire made her feature debut in the highly enjoyable revamp of 50s monster films, “Tremors” (1990). She has subsequently performed smoothly as the extravagant Texan mother candidate in “North” (1994) and in TV-movies such as “The Man from Left Field” (1993), opposite Burt Reynolds and as Annie Oakley in “Buffalo Girls” (CBS, 1995). The latter proved a nice warm-up for her 2001 Broadway debut as Annie Oakley in the hit revival of Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun.” McEntire received glowing notices not only for her beautifully singing but also for her deft comic timing and chemistry with leading man Brent Barrett.

McEntire began concentrating more television than film in the late-1990s, starring in several made-for-TV movies, including “Forever Love” (CBS, 1998) in which she played a loving wife and mother who slips into a stroke-induced coma only to awake twenty years later and try to assimilate herself back into the lives of her loves ones. In “Secrets of Giving” (CBS, 1999), she was a widow in 1905 struggling to keep her farm and few head of cattle while caring for her ailing 5-year-old son (Devon Alan). But a lone stranger (Thomas Ian Griffith) arrives out of the blue to help, making a deal with the town’s banker that puts his own future in jeopardy, but brightens the Christmas season for everyone else. McEntire then got her own sitcom, “Reba” (WB, 2001- ), playing a Texas soccer mom whose idyllic suburban life is rapidly falling apart around her after her husband leaves her for another woman and her teenaged daughter gets pregnant. Despite a previously crazed schedule of recording, touring and hosting “The Country Music Awards,” McEntire found it a blessing to have a regular schedule in which to live a normal family life. The show itself became a rare hit for the perpetually struggling WB, taking in a consistent 3 million viewers a week, as McEntire earned kudos with a nomination for a 2003 Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy.

Continue Reading