Katie Holmes

Katie Holmes (born 18.12.1978)

Katie Holmes is an American actress who first rose to fame in Dawson's Creek and is also known for her marriage to the actor Tom Cruise.

Katie Holmes: Childhood

Katie Holmes was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. Her parents were Kathleen Stothers and Martin Holmes (a divorce attorney). She is the youngest of five siblings.

Katie was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended the all-girl Notre Dame Academy. She appeared in school musicals at the nearby all-male school, playing a waiter in Hello, Dolly! and Lola in Damn Yankees.

Katie Holmes: Acting Career

Aged 14, Holmes started attending modeling classes in Toledo. She performed a monologue from To Kill A Mockingbird at an international talent competition and the tape was sent to the casting director for Ang Lee's The Ice Storm. She was cast in the film as Libbets Casey.

In 1997, Holmes reportedly turned down the lead role in Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

When the auditions for Dawson's Creek clashed with her school performance of Hello Dolly!, Katie was permitted to audition for the role of Joey Potter via videotape, with her mother reading Dawson's lines.

Katie filmed Dawson's Creek in her spring break each year whilst she was at school. She later moved to Wilmington, where the show was filmed, once The WB had picked it up. The series was widely marketed and Holmes became hugely popular, with many casting agents looking to cast 'a Katie Holmes' type. She soon appeared on the cover of magazines such as Seventeen and Rolling Stone. In 1998, she was given the role of grand marshal at Toledo's Thanksgiving Day parade.

Katie Holmes' first lead role in a film came in Disturbing Behaviour, released in 1998. Although Holmes described the film as "horrible", she won a MTV Movie Award for her performance. The next year, she appeared in Doug Liman's hit, Go. The same year, Teaching Mrs. Tingle was released, in which she played a student whose teacher (played by Helen Mirren) tries to prevent her from gaining a scholarship. In 2000, Holmes had a small role in Curtis Hanson's Wonder Boys and Sam Raimi's The Gift, which also featured Cate Blanchett and Keanu Reeves. The Gift is notable for featuring Holmes in her first nude scene.

Other film appearances include Abandon (2002), Phone Booth (2002) and The Singing Detective (2003), when she played Robert Downey Jr.'s nurse. In 2004, Katie played the president's daughter in First Daughter . The film received terrible reviews and suffered from very poor ticket sales at the cinema. The most successful film of Holmes' career was Batman Begins, released in 2005. In the film, she plays Rachel Dawes, a Gotham City attorney. She also appeared in Thank You For Smoking, alongside Aaron Eckhart.

Katie Holmes: Personal Life

During the first and second season of Dawson's Creek, Katie Holmes dated co-star Joshua Jackson but the relationship ended on friendly terms. In 2000, she met the actor Chris Klein. In 2003, the pair were engaged but two years later, the relationship had ended.

Not long after the split with Klein, Holmes began dating Tom Cruise. In April 2005, they made their first public appearance in Italy at the David di Donatello Awards. In May 2005, Cruise appeared in the Oprah Winfrey show, jumping up and down on the sofa and declaring his love for Katie. Less than a month later, Cruise proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Katie Holmes gave birth to her first child, a girl named Suri, on 18.4.2006, exactly one year after her and Cruise had met. Photographer Annie Liebowitz took the first public photographs of Suri, for Vanity Fair. Tom Cruise stated that Suri would not be baptized as a Catholic, as he and Katie were Scientologists.

On 18.11.2006, the pair was married at Odescalchi castle in Italy. The Scientology ceremony was attended by a number of Hollywood stars.