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Leslie Louise Bibb was born in Bismark, North Dakota on November 17, 1973 and raised in rural Nelson County, Virginia, the youngest of four sisters. After her father’s death when she was three, she grew up in a single-parent home. The family later relocated to Richmond, Virginia, where Leslie excelled at St. Gertrude’s, an all-girls school. When Leslie was 16, her sister entered her photo on the spur of the moment in a nationally televised model search sponsored by Oprah Winfrey. Out of a field of 6,000 applicants, she was one of 20 chosen to appear on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” before a panel of judges including Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Iman. Leslie walked away the winner.

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A former teenage beauty queen, Halle Berry traded a successful modeling career for acting in the late 1980s. After high school, this youngest daughter of a black father and white mother, entered the Miss Teen Ohio Pageant and won, representing the state at the Miss Teen All-American Pageant. An over-achiever since she was a child, Berry attempted to add another crown as Miss Ohio in the Miss USA competition but placed as first runner-up. After finishing in the top five at the Miss World pageant, she moved into modeling, working first in the Chicago area and later in NYC. By 1989, Berry had begun the transition to performing when she was appropriately cast as a teenage model in the short-lived ABC sitcom “Living Dolls”. Guest work in other comedy series followed before she was able to convince Spike Lee she could handle the demanding role of a crack addict in his “Jungle Fever” (1991).

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Illustrious French actress Sarah Bernhardt was primarily known for her theatrical work, but she also appeared in a few films. It was said that the Grande Dame of French theater loathed cinema, and yet continued to appear in films until her death. She did not make her film debut until 1900 in Hamlet’s Duel. She hated her next film, Tosca (1908), so much so that she ordered the negative destroyed and it was never released. She did not appear in another film until 1911 with La Dame aux Camélias. This film was acclaimed by the public and critics alike and is credited with helping make cinema a respectable artistic medium in France. The next year she traveled to England to make Queen Elizabeth. This film was a tremendous success in the U.S. and lead the great actress to receive many offers to work with other studios. But Bernhardt was 69 and elected to stay with the studio she’d worked with from the start, Film d’art. Even after she lost her leg in 1915, Bernhardt continued to appear in the films she said she hated so much. In 1923, when the 79-year-old Bernhardt became ill, filmmakers transformed the actress’s hotel room into a set to film La Voyante. Unfortunately she died before the film was finished.

After a brief stint as a teen model, this statuesque blonde made her TV debut in an episode of PBS’ “Wonderworks”. Berkley is best known for her role as the intelligent Jessie on the Saturday morning sitcom “Saved By the Bell” (NBC, 1989-93) and its TV movie spin-offs. She followed with appearances on episodic TV (”The Hogan Family”, “Life Goes On”, “Diagnosis Murder” and “Burke’s Law”) and appearances in primetime “Saved By the Bell” specials (1992-93). Berkley made her feature acting debut as an uptight teenager in “White Wolves II: Legend of the Wild” (released direct to video, 1995) and then starred in the change of pace role of Nomi, a conniving lap dancer in Paul Verhoeven’s “Showgirls” (1995). Many unfairly placed the failure of the film, universally panned as one of the year’s worst, on Berkley; her agent dropped her and she had difficulty finding an appropriate follow-up vehicle. With new representation, she landed a role as Victor Garber’s actress-girlfriend in “The First Wives Club” (1996) and the lead in Tom DeCillo’s “The Real Blonde” (1998). Berkley enjoyed a critical success on the London stage as Honey, the stripper married to comic Lenny Bruce, in the play “Lenny”. On the big screen, she appeared as a secretary in Woody Allen’s period comedy “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion” (2001). After a short-lived stint as Christopher Titus’ step-sister on his eponymous sit-com, Berkley earned positive notices for her warm turn in the amusing 2002 film “Roger Dodger.”

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A highly popular actress known for her fresh, radiant beauty, Ingrid Bergman was a natural for virtuous roles but equally adept at playing notorious women. Either way, she had few peers when it came to expressing the subtleties of romantic tension. In 1933, fresh out of high school, she enrolled in the Royal Dramatic Theater and made her film debut the following year, soon becoming Sweden’s most promising young actress. Her breakthrough film was Gustaf Molander’s “Intermezzo” (1936), in which she played a pianist who has a love affair with a celebrated–and married–violinist. The film garnered the attention of American producer David O. Selznick, who invited her to Hollywood to do a remake. In 1939 she co-starred with Leslie Howard in that film, which the public loved, leading to a seven-year contract with Selznick.

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Barbi Benton was born Barbara Klein in New York on January 28, 1950. By 1952, her family had moved to Sacramento, California when her father, a military doctor, was assigned new duties there. Benton attended Rio Americano High School in Sacramento before heading for Los Angeles at age 16, where she began modeling to supplement her allowance.

By the time she met Hugh Hefner in 1968, she was getting regular work on television shows as diverse as Hee Haw, The Love Boat as well as Playboy After Dark which filmed A-list entertainers performing in Hugh Hefner’s mansion surrounded by lovely women. Benton said she pretended to be Hefner’s girlfriend for a couple of episodes and soon found herself living the role full time. She was on her way to becoming a multifaceted icon of 1970s glamor. Shortly after meeting Hefner, at his suggestion, she changed her name to the more showbiz-friendly Barbi Benton. When he asked me out, Barbi recalls, “I was 18 and he was 42. I said I’d never gone out with anyone older than 24, and he said, ‘That’s all right. Neither have I.’ We hit it off right away, and it lasted for eight years!”

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Pretty blonde performer Amber Benson racked up numerous film and television credits before rising to fame on the popular supernatural series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Benson moved with her family to Los Angeles at age fourteen in 1991. By 1993 she had made the first of three “Jack Reed” TV-movies, “Jack Reed: Badge of Honor”, appearing as the daughter of the titular Chicago cop in this NBC entry as well as its 1994 and 1996 follow-ups. 1993 also saw the actress make her big-screen debut with featured roles in the teen thriller “The Crush” and Steven Soderbergh’s coming-of-age drama “King of the Hill”. Her relatively small but memorable parts in these very different features helped to launch the young performer’s career.

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The preternatural poise exuded by versatile, attractive performer Annette Bening is a byproduct of her years of successful stage work in regional theater that culminated with a 1987 Tony-nominated portrayal in Tina Howe’s “Coastal Disturbances”. Although her feature debut as the sexually frustrated wife of Dan Aykroyd in the lackluster comedy “The Great Outdoors” (1988) may have disappointed, audiences soon took note of her streamlined carriage and superb vocal instrument when she etched an aptly uneasy portrait of wickedness as the Marquise de Merteuil in Milos Forman’s “Valmont” (1989). The cool subtlety of her performance caught the attention of Stephen Frears, who ironically had directed his own version of the same tale, “Dangerous Liaisons”, six months earlier. (Bening had, in fact, auditioned for Michelle Pfeiffer’s role in that film).

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This regally beautiful stage-trained black performer has distinguished herself on stage, TV and film, often playing intelligent but long-suffering women who exhibit strength, patience and quiet elegance. Bassett has played opposite some of contemporary Hollywood’s most illustrious black leading men including Laurence Fishburne, Denzel Washington and Eddie Murphy. She has also worked with such notable black filmmakers as Ossie Davis, Spike Lee and John Singleton. Bassett, however, has not been confined to “black subjects” as she has also been featured prominently in diverse TV projects and in film collaborations with writer-directors John Sayles and Wes Craven.

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An attractive blond native of Norristown, Pennsylvania, Maria Bello moved to NYC where she spent about six years doing the struggling-actress thing, appearing in numerous stage productions, shooting a few commercials, including her golden moment as the Amstel Light girl, and co-founding Harlem’s Dream Yard Drama Project, a nonprofit arts and education program for urban kids. She made her TV debut in a guest appearance on the Fox comedy “Misery Loves Company” and demonstrated her versatility with a strong romantic turn opposite Bruce Greenwood in an episode of “Nowhere Man” (UPN). Bello made her TV-movie debut in “The Commish: In the Shadow of the Gallows” (ABC, 1995) before landing a choice role as a spy opposite Scott Bakula on the short-lived 1996 CBS action series “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”. She checked into County General Hospital for three “ER” episodes as sassy pediatrician Anna Del Amico, a character which became a regular on the popular series for one season (1997-98). Bello made a strong sexy impression as a recovering junkie to whom screenwriter Jerry Stahl (Ben Stiller) recounts his past in in “Permanent Midnight” (1998).

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An attractive brunette child performer, Camilla Belle began her career before her first birthday, landing a gig in a national advertising campaign at age nine months. By the time she was in school, she had begun to land roles in TV-movies like the 1993 NBC drama “Trouble Shooters: Trapped Beneath the Earth”, about the rescue of earthquake survivors. Belle segued to the big screen as one of the orphans in Alfonso Cuaron’s exquisite 1995 remake of “A Little Princess”. The busy youngster subsequently racked up a string of impressive credits, including a turn as another orphan in the ABC movie “Annie: A Royal Adventure” (1995) and as Jimmy Smits’ plucky daughter in “Martial Law” (Showtime, 1996). After an appearance in “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” (1997), Belle played the young Sally Owens (enacted by Sandra Bullock as an adult) in “Practical Magic” (1998) before being cast as Steven Segal’s child in the thriller “The Patriot” (HBO, 1999).

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A native of New York City, Bell graduated in 2002 from London’s esteemed conservatory Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, where her extensive training included dance and stage combat. Among her London theatre credits are The Seagull, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, The Children’s Hour and The Pentecost.

She most recently co-starred opposite in Miss Match. She also previously starred in the telefilm War Stories, and in back-to-back episodes of ER.

For the big screen, Bell appears in The Hillside Strangler, which is currently making the film festival circuit. Additional feature credits include Speakeasy, I Love Your Work, Fresh Out of Tears and Slammed.

Bell’s interests include writing, painting and studying foreign languages and dialects, a skill she honed during her four years in London and after a lifetime of extensive international travel. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her blue-nosed pit bull, Margaret