Katie Holmes

A brunette beauty from a close-knit Catholic family in Toledo, OH, Katie Holmes accomplished what aspiring actors only dream of at the onset of their careers – she landed her first two professional auditions, resulting in her feature debut in the acclaimed "The Ice Storm" (1997) and a regular series role on the popular teen drama "Dawson's Creek" (The WB, 1998-2003). While such an accomplishment could easily have been written off as amazing luck, those who witnessed her work were not likely to discount her formidable talent and ease on camera.

Katie Holmes Biography

Kate Noelle "Katie" Holmes (born December 18, 1978) is an American actress who first achieved fame for her role as Joey Potter on The WB teen drama Dawson's Creek from 1998 to 2003. Her part on the show, only her second professional role, made Holmes a star. 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, but she has not found the same success in films as she did on television and admits most of her films have been "bombs" films that did not meet expectations at the box office.

With a promising turn as Libbets Casey, Tobey Maguire's love interest in Ang Lee's swinging 1970s set "The Ice Storm," Holmes made the most of her supporting role, proving a compelling screen performer. While this big screen debut won the actress acclaim, television would soon make Katie Holmes a household name. Interestingly, the young actress' refreshing grounding in homespun values almost caused her to miss her auspicious small screen debut. Asked to audition for Kevin Williamson's smart teen drama "Dawson's Creek" on the same day she was to debut as Lola in her high school production of "Damn Yankees," Holmes politely declined, citing that her commitment to fellow castmates and friends was more important. Casting agents wisely rescheduled, and Holmes won the role on the new series.

As Joey Potter, Dawson's proverbial girl-next-door, she played the injured innocent, sweet, but with an edge, the product of a background far removed from the Holmes' own traditional and happy home. Faced with an imprisoned father, dead mother, and an overworked sister who is not only Joey's guardian, but has a new baby of her own, the character's everyday traumas were handled with grace by the actress. Holmes weekly gave a standout performance on the popular series, even among a cast of palpably gifted and more experienced young actors.

Her skillful performance in the disappointing thriller "Disturbing Behavior" (1998) could not elevate that film above its uninspired predictability, and while Williamson's "Teaching Mrs. Tingle" (1999) showcased Holmes' glowing presence and unmatched watch-ability, it became apparent that it was high time she moved past the tired teen scream genre. A move in that direction came with her turn as a supermarket checkout girl caught up in a drug-related hostage situation in Doug Lyman’s indeed ensemble film "Go" (1999). She was reunited with Tobey Maguire in "Wonder Boys" (2000), the Curtis Hanson-directed adaptation of Michael Chabot’s novel which chronicled a middle-aged author (Michael Douglas) plagued by writer's block.

With "Go" and "Wonder Boys," in which she played a student pursuing her much-older professor, Holmes smartly chose feature film roles that played against her well-established "Dawson's Creek" girl-next-door persona, a challenge she continued to meet as more films came her way. In Sam Ramie’s thriller "The Gift" (2000) she played a bitchy, man-eating Southern beauty who is brutally murdered, essaying a grown-up nude scene designed more to put the character of sweet-faced Joey behind her than to titillate. She took the lead in screenwriter-turned-director Stephen Gagman’s woman-in-jeopardy outing "Abandon" (2002), her first turn at carrying a picture in a mature leading role, and also joined the cast of director Joel Schumacher's 2003 action fest "The Phone Booth."

Further honing her post-TV craft as her series entered its last season, Holmes took the lead in the indeed gem, "Pieces of April" (2003) playing a headstrong young woman trying to reconcile with her dying mother – a role than earned her much critical acclaim – and appeared in a supporting role in "The Singing Detective" (2003), an adaptation of the Dennis Potter book starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey, Jr. After that it was on to a role she had probably outgrown but sparkled in nonetheless, "First Daughter" (2004), in which she was cast as an independent-minded Presidential offspring off to college who falls for the Secret Service agent assigned to protect her by posing as a dorm advisor.

Holmes got her introductory shot at a big-screen action blockbuster when she was cast opposite Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne's childhood friend and love interest, Rachel Dawes, an incorruptible Gotham City district attorney – and a character created especially for the screen – in "Batman Begins" (2005). This effective re-launch of the popular film franchise focused on the character's shadowy origins, but minus the over-the-top gothic camp of the original Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher films. Just weeks before the film's debut, Holmes' private life was catapulted into the public eye when she and actor Tom Cruise announced that they were dating, an announcement met with some skepticism from the media and the public, given that word came prior to both having major summer movies poised to debut. Speculation that the relationship was a publicity stunt ran rampant, especially after some ill-advised public appearances – including their bizarre, love-professing visit to "The Oprah Winfrey Show" (Syndicated, 1986- ), in which Cruise jumped unashamedly on the couch with fist-pumping exuberance. Holmes also adopted Cruise's management team and began taking courses in Scientology, which the superstar had long championed and began touting much more vocally during his many press interviews while promoting his blockbuster, "War of the Worlds" (2005).

After only three months, Cruise announced his intention to marry his new girlfriend while doing a press junket in Paris in June, 2005. By October, she announced that she was pregnant with their first child, prompting her to drop out of her co-starring role in the drama "Shame on You" (lensed, 2005). The paparazzi kept a close eye on her ever-bulging belly until Holmes finally gave birth – presumably, a "silent birth" sanctioned by Scientology rules – to daughter, Suri, in April, 2006. Because the couple had been so forthcoming with all other details of their life together, the press and public were surprised when no photos were released of their baby daughter for months. This only served to fuel the media's fire, all of whom – be it bloggers or tabloid writers – imagined a variety of humorous, sometimes far-fetched scenarios as to why this was. Finally, Cruise, Holmes and their 4-month-old daughter posed for photographer Annie Leibovitz for a 22-page spread in Vanity Fair, receiving much publicity for that first peek in September, 2006.

Katie Holmes Movie Career

In 2005, Holmes characterized her film career as being a string of "bombs." "Usually I'm not even in the top ten", she said, the highest grossing film of her career at that time being Phone Booth, in which she played a supporting role. She lamented "It's not like I have a lot of stuff that's great just waiting for me to sign on to."

Her first leading role came in Disturbing Behavior (1998), a Scream-era Stepford Wives-goes-to-high school thriller, where she was a loner from the wrong side of the tracks. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote her character, Rachel, "dresses in black and likes to strike poses on the beds of pickup trucks and is a bad girl who is in great danger of becoming a very good one."The actress won a MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance for the role, though Holmes said the film was "just horrible."

Holmes played a disaffected supermarket clerk in Doug Liman's acclaimed ensemble piece Go (1999).

She had an uncredited cameo with Dawson's Creek co-star Joshua Jackson in Muppets from Space (1999), which was also filmed in Wilmington.

Kevin Williamson's disaffection for his high school days spawned Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), which he wrote and directed. Holmes played a straight-A student whose vindictive teacher (Helen Mirren) threatens to keep her from a desperately needed scholarship.

In Wonder Boys (2000), directed by Curtis Hanson from the novel by Michael Chabon, Holmes had a small role (six and one-half minutes of screen time) but nevertheless attracted the attention of numerous film critics with her performance as Hannah Green, the talented student who lusts after Professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas), her creative writing instructor and landlord. Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times said she was "just right as the beauty with kind of a crush on the old man."

In The Gift (2000), a Southern Gothic story directed by Sam Raimi and starring Cate Blanchett, she played the antithesis of Joey Potter: a promiscuous rich girl having affairs with everyone from a sociopathic wife-beater (Keanu Reeves) to the district attorney (Gary Cole), and is murdered by her fiancé (Greg Kinnear). Holmes did her first nude scene for the film, baring her breasts and her buttocks in a thong in a scene where her character was about to be murdered. Of the scene, she said, "I just hope there aren't a lot of pauses on DVD players." Her appearance was lamented by Variety's Steven Kotler: "It seems the only time we see a naked woman on screen is when someone like Katie Holmes needs to break with her sanitized WB past and march brazenly into a new future."

Holmes played the President's daughter in First Daughter, which was originally to be released in January 2004 on the same day as Chasing Liberty, the Mandy Moore film about a president's daughter, but was ultimately released in September 2004 to dismal reviews and ticket sales. First Daughter, directed by Forest Whitaker, also starred Michael Keaton as her father and Marc Blucas as her love interest. The Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt called her character, Samantha Mackenzie, "a startling example of how a studio film can dumb down and neutralize the comic abilities of a lively young star." In the 2005 film Batman Begins, the most successful film of her career to date, she played Rachel Dawes, an attorney in the Gotham City district attorney's office and the childhood sweetheart of the title character. Variety was unenthusiastic. "Holmes is OK", was its critic's sole remark on her performance. She received a Golden Raspberry nomination for "worst supporting actress" for the film. She has since been recast by Maggie Gyllenhaal for the film's sequel The Dark Knight, citing schedule conflicts with Mad Money, a film in production co-starring Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah.

In 2005, she appeared in the film version of Christopher Buckley's satirical novel Thank You for Smoking about a tobacco lobbyist played by Aaron Eckhart, whom Holmes's character, a Washington reporter, seduces. Variety wrote one of the film's "sole relatively weak notes from Holmes, who lacks even a hint of the wiliness of a ruthless reporter" and The New York Times said the cast was "exceptionally fine" except for Holmes, who "strained credulity" in her role.

Holmes had agreed to play in Shame on You, a biopic about the country singer Spade Cooley written and directed by Dennis Quaid, as the wife whom Cooley (played by Quaid) stomps to death. But the picture, set to shoot in New Orleans, Louisiana, was delayed by Hurricane Katrina, and Holmes dropped out because of her pregnancy.

Katie Holmes Photos