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Debra Messing Biography

Debra Messing

A vivacious redhead with a knack for verbal and physical comedy, Debra Messing was a Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning actress who dominated the sitcom scene for eight years as lovelorn interior designer Grace Adler on “Will and Grace” (ABC). It was during this masterful run as the ditzy Adler that Messing received the ultimate compliment for any comedienne – an oft-cited comparison to Lucille Ball. During and after the show’s run, Messing also found time to appear in the feature films “Hollywood Ending” (2002) and “The Wedding Date,” as well as the popular USA summer miniseries, “The Starter Wife” (2007) – a role which earned her another Emmy nomination.

Born Debra Lynn Messing in Brooklyn, NY on Aug. 15, 1968, Messing’s parents recognized her preoccupation with acting and singing when, as a child, she put on performances in their East Greenwich, RI home for family and visitors. The Messings encouraged their daughter to pursue a career in the arts, sending her to numerous performing arts camps during her adolescence. Following a high school tenure filled with numerous turns in musical and dramatic productions – with occasional moments of anti-Semitism thrown in, which the undaunted Messing used to strengthen her personality and resolve – she attended Brandeis University in Massachusetts. During her junior year, she also studied theater at the British European Studio Group, a prestigious program based in London. She graduated summa cum laude from Brandeis in 1990 with a Bachelor’s degree in Theater Arts, before being accepted into NYU’s exclusive Graduate Acting Program, which earned her a Master’s degree in Fine Arts.

Messing gained her earliest notices in a workshop production of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America: Perestroika” in 1993, later appearing in New York productions of plays by John Patrick Shanley and Paul Rudnick. That same year, she also played Dana Abandando, the cold-hearted, man-hungry sister of Gail O’Grady’s character in three episodes of “NYPD Blue” (ABC, 1993-2005). Her movie debut, as Keanu Reeves’ war bride in Alfonso Arau’s World War II fantasy, “A Walk in the Clouds,” came in 1995, as did her first big break – her network series debut in “Ned and Stacey” (Fox, 1995-97). While the series was not long for this world, it would hone her comic chops and make network execs sit up and take notice.

As a liberal reporter who must pretend to be married to cantankerous conservative adman Thomas Haden Church, Messing earned solid reviews for her comic skills – and much admiration from everyone for holding her own against that powerhouse of snide, Haden Church. By the end of the series’ run in 1997, Messing was working regularly in film and on television. She had a two-episode turn – including the much-loved “The Yada Yada” episode – as a girlfriend of Jerry Seinfeld on “Seinfeld” (NBC, 1989-1998), and appeared as the female lead in the woeful big-screen adaptation of “McHale’s Navy” (1997) with Tom Arnold.

Eva Mendes Biography

Eva Mendes

Eva Mendes (born March 5, 1974) is an American actress.

Mendes was born in Miami, Florida (although many sources incorrectly state her birthplace is Houston, Texas) to Cuban parents and was raised in Los Angeles. She went to Hoover High School in Glendale, California. She later attended California State University, Northridge but dropped out to seek an acting career. She studied with Ivana Chubbuck.

Mendes worked her way up through commercials to music videos (including an appearance in Will Smith’s video “Miami”) to guest roles in television soap operas and supporting film roles. She received her first big-screen break when she appeared in the award-winning and critically-acclaimed Training Day, where Mendes appeared completely nude. That performance led to roles in Stuck on You, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and as the female lead in the comedy Hitch opposite Will Smith. Her role in Once Upon a Time in Mexico also gave her a nomination at the Teen Choice Awards. She has two major movie projects pending, including Ghost Rider, in which she costars along with Nicolas Cage.

Mendes is a spokesmodel for Revlon. She has also worked in interior design and has written children’s books. Maxim ranked her #27 in their 2006 Hot 100 issue.

Young, talented and beautiful, Latino actress Eva Mendes rose to stardom on sheer luck and timing. Just five years prior to her starring role in â€œ2 Fast 2 Furiousâ€ (2003), the sequel to the unexpected hit, â€œThe Fast and the Furiousâ€ (2001), Mendes wasnâ€™t even thinking about an acting career, much less actively pursuing one. But fortune shined itâ€™s light on the energetic actress, and with her passion and zest for life, seized the moment and never looked back.

Born on March 5, 1978 in Miami, Mendes moved to Los Angeles with her family when she was two years old. Of Cuban descent, her parents fled the island in 1959 before the revolution, but ultimately split when Mendes was ten. Her mother worked as an accountant to support the family, and was very strict on Mendes and her three elder siblings. Mendes later attended Cal State Northridge where she majored in marketing, though she wasnâ€™t terribly interested in the subject.

Tamara Mello Biography

Tamara Mello

Tamara Mello (born February 22, 1976) is an American actress. Her career began in 1993 with appearances on various television programs and films. She has appeared on 7th Heaven and The Brady Bunch Movie, Boy Meets World, She’s All That and Diagnosis: Murder.

In 1999, she debuted in Popular as Lily, the politically correct vegetarian. After a few years on the show, major management firms had her high on their list, but she has only done a total of six roles since then.

A petite, spunky, tousle-haired California girl best known for her role as activist and outcast Lily on “Popular” (The WB, 1999-2001), actress Tamara Mello got her start in the early 1990s, racking up independent film credits before landing on the aptly-named teen comedy-drama. Mello got her start in the mockumentary “…And God Spoke” in 1993, and the following year acted in an episode of the CBS drama “Sweet Justice”. 1995 saw her take a small supporting role in the hit spoof “The Brady Bunch Movie”, and in 1997 she was featured in the less successful comedy “The Beautician and the Beast”.

Mello began making frequent appearances on television in the mid-90s, guesting on episodes of “7th Heaven” (The WB) and “Boy Meets World” (ABC) in 1996 and 1997, respectively. From 1997-1998 she had a regular role on the critically acclaimed ABC drama “Nothing Sacred”. A provocative and somewhat controversial series about a renegade priest (Kevin Anderson), “Nothing Sacred” featured Mello as a receptionist in a Catholic church who deals with the emotional and spiritual fallout of an unplanned pregnancy and subsequent abortion. The series met an early demise despite its quality, and it was back to guest work for Mello, including a 1999 episode of “Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane”, a New York-set teen sitcom on The WB.

1999 would turn out to be a banner year for Mello, who followed up forgettable roles in the direct-to-video releases “Infidelity” and “Overnight Delivery” (both 1998) with a supporting turn in the hit teen feature “She’s All That” (1999). Playing Chandler Locklear, a stealthily sharp-tongued in-crowd member loyal to Uber-popular villainess Taylor (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe), Mello was surprisingly convincing as a catty high school student. She took a rather different role in “Popular” later that year, playing Lily Esposito, a tireless activist and one of the more outgoing and fearless members of the out-crowd. Down-to-earth and charming, with an energy more inspiring than annoying, Lily was an asset to the series due to Mello’s skilled portrayal.

While “Popular” won a fiercely loyal audience and numerous accolades from various organizations advocating responsible programming, Mello continued to pursue film work in her free time, portraying the quirky Mars Girl in the independent comedy “Spanish Judges” (2000) and taking a supporting role in 2001′s “Tortilla Soup”, a Los Angeles-set Mexican-American remake of Ang Lee’s “Eat Drink Man Woman”.

Katharine McPhee Biography

Katharine McPhee

Katharine Hope McPhee (born March 25, 1984) is an American singer who was the runner-up to Taylor Hicks on the fifth season of American Idol in 2006.

Born in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Van Nuys, McPhee moved with her parents and sister to Sherman Oaks when she was 12 years old. McPhee has been singing since the age of two. Her mother, Patricia Burch McPhee (stage name Peisha Arten), a vocal coach and accomplished cabaret singer, recognized a talent for music in her daughter and decided to train her. Her father, Daniel McPhee, is a television producer and her older sister, Adriana Burch McPhee (born June 30, 1982) is an aspiring producer as well. McPhee also has two dogs named Lilly and Nena. She carries them along when she is on shoots or during recordings

McPhee graduated in 2002 from Notre Dame High School. At Notre Dame, McPhee was a student body vice president, a varsity swimmer, and a thespian. She performed in school plays with her elder sister Adriana; both sisters were Homecoming Princess nominees in their senior year.

Afterward, McPhee attended Boston Conservatory for three semesters, majoring in musical theater. McPhee left the college due to her manager’s suggestion that she try out for television pilots in Los Angeles. In a People news article it was reported that she was rejected in “only 195 out of 200 auditions.” She was eventually cast as “Paramount Girl” in the 2006 musical film about the life of Hank Garland, Crazy Other early acting endeavors included lead actress in local professional productions of Annie Get Your Gun and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. She was nominated in 2005 for the Theatre L.A. Ovation Award for her lead role in Annie Get Your Gun. McPhee was also part of a failed mall-based MTV soap opera entitled You Are Here, playing the older sister of a more popular younger sister.

American Idol:

McPhee was persuaded by a significant other to try out for American Idol. She auditioned in San Francisco, and sang “God Bless the Child,” originally performed by Billie Holiday. Paula Abdul said that McPhee looked beautiful, Randy Jackson hailed her audition as potentially the best so far that season, and Simon Cowell complimented her for being “current” in terms of her appearance. Cowell also noted that McPhee was not the wannabe that he’d presumed she was after learning that her mother was a singer.

In the final cut-down show for the Top 24, McPhee was one of the first to be put through and, in excitement, kissed all three judges on the lips.

McPhee listed Whitney Houston and Brian McKnight as her favorite artists in the American Idol interview of the top 24 semi-finalists.

During the week leading to the third round of the semi-finals, she was rumored to be quitting due to pregnancy. However, during the performance show on March 7, 2006, she denied this accusation, attributing it to a poor choice of clothing. Host Ryan Seacrest, with tongue-in-cheek, later asked about her and fellow Idol contestant Kevin Covais; McPhee denied any relationship.

During the week preceding the top three show, McPhee visited her former high school for her hometown celebration.

McPhee’s run on American Idol led to the popular use of the term “McPheever”, coined by Ralph Garman of Los Angeles radio station KROQ’s morning show Kevin and Bean.

McPhee was congratulated by Congressman Brad Sherman of Sherman Oaks, the 27th district of California, who raised a flag in her honor at the United States Capitol on the day of the finale show.

During the competition, McPhee roomed with fellow contestant Kellie Pickler, and when Pickler was eliminated, she roomed with Paris Bennett.

Rose McGowan Biography

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.”

Elizabeth McGovern Biography

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.

Kelly McGillis Biography

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”.