Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Shrader Lawrence (born August 15, 1990) is an American film and television actress. She has had lead roles in TBS's The Bill Engvall Show and in the independent films The Burning Plain and Winter's Bone, for which she received critical acclaim and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. At age 20, this made her the second youngest actress to ever be nominated for the award. She was cast as Katniss Everdeen in the upcoming 2012 film, The Hunger Games, which is based on the first book in The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.

Early life

Lawrence was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of Karen (Koch), who runs a children's camp, and Gary Lawrence, who once owned a concrete construction firm, Lawrence & Associates. She acted in church plays and, by the age of 14, had decided to pursue an acting career, persuading her parents to take her to New York City to find a talent agent. Although she had no training or experience, she received high praise from the agency for which she auditioned. She graduated from high school two years early in order to begin a career in acting. 

Career

Lawrence starred in Guillermo Arriaga's directorial debut The Burning Plain, opposite Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger. Her performance in the film earned her the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best young emerging actor/actress during the Venice Film Festival in 2008.

She was part of the main cast of the TBS comedy The Bill Engvall Show as Lauren Pearson. Written and created by Bill Engvall and Michael Leeson, the show is set in a Denver suburb and follows the life of 'Bill Pearson' (played by Engvall), a family counselor whose own family could use a little dose of counseling. The series was canceled in 2009 after having aired three seasons.

Lawrence's other film credits include a lead role in Lori Petty's The Poker House opposite Selma Blair and Bokeem Woodbine as well as roles in Devil You Know and Garden Party. Her television credits include roles on Cold Case, Medium, and Monk. She is also featured in the music video for the song "The Mess I Made", from the album Losing Sleep by Parachute.

Lawrence had the lead role, frequently cited as a "breakout performance" for her, in Debra Granik's Winter's Bone (which won best picture at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010). She portrays seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly in the rural Ozarks, caring for her mentally-ill mother and her younger brother and sister, when she discovers that her father has put their house and land up as a bond for a court appearance. The performance was highly acclaimed by film critics: David Denby, writing in The New Yorker, said "the movie would be unimaginable with anyone less charismatic playing Ree. Lawrence received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for the role, on January 25, 2011. She is the second-youngest person to date to be nominated for the category.

Lawrence had a role in The Beaver, a dark comedy starring Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson. The Beaver was filmed in 2009, but after spending an extended period of time stalled due to controversy surrounding Gibson, it received a release date of May 6, 2011. Lawrence also has a starring role in the independent film Like Crazy, which premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and has reportedly been picked up by Paramount Pictures for a wider release. In June 2011, Lawrence appeared as shape-shifting villainess Mystique in X-Men: First Class, a prequel to the rest of the X-Men film series. Lawrence's Mystique is a younger version of the character played by Rebecca Romijn in earlier X-Men films. Lawrence is also set to star alongside Elisabeth Shue in Mark Tonderai's thriller House at the End of the Street, which completed filming in 2010 and is in post-production

Lawrence has stated that she has never taken drama classes or acting lessons, simply relying on her instincts when playing a role. She lived in New York City for the first few years of her career, but resides in Santa Monica, California.

Lawrence has been cast as Katniss Everdeen in the movie The Hunger Games, set to be released in March 2012. and The Silver Linings Playbook, opposite Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro.

On June 18, 2011, it was announced that Lawrence was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences alongside other actors and actresses that include Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, Bradley Cooper, and her Winter's Bone co-star John Hawkes.

Cameron Michelle Diaz

  

Filmography: Being John Malkovich (1999), Shrek (2001), Shrek Forever After (2010), Shrek 2 (2004), Gangs of New York (2002), Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her (2000), There's Something About Mary (1998)

See entire filmography

Model-turned-actress Cameron Diaz seemed to come out of nowhere when she made her 1994 screen debut opposite Jim Carrey in The Mask. However, her unusual beauty -- the result of her Cuban-American and Anglo-German-Native-American parentage -- helped to ensure that she would not be soon forgotten.

Born in San Diego, CA, on August 30, 1972, Diaz left school at 16 to become a model. For the next five years, she traveled the globe, working in Japan, Australia, Mexico, Morocco, and Paris. As a model for the Elite Agency, she did commercial work for such products as Coke, Nivea, and L.A. Gear. She returned to California at the age of 21 and was unknown in the film industry when cast in her breakthrough role as the target of Jim Carrey's hyper-animated lust in The Mask. Following the hoopla surrounding her performance -- or, more specifically, her physical appearance -- in the film, Diaz opted to take acting lessons and appear in a series of small, independent films, including The Last Supper (1995), She's the One (1996), and Feeling Minnesota (1996).

After starring opposite Ewan McGregor in Danny Boyle's A Life Less Ordinary (1997), Diaz further endeared herself to audiences and critics with her performance in My Best Friend's Wedding (1997). Proving herself an acceptable foil for the film's star, Julia Roberts, she went on to greater success in the Farrelly brothers' There's Something About Mary in 1998. Starring as the film's titular heroine, Diaz turned in an audience-pleasing performance in the cheerfully bawdy film, which proved to be one of the year's biggest box-office successes. The same year, Diaz cameoed in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and starred as Jon Favreau's unhinged fiancée in the black comedy Very Bad Things. Now fully established as one of Hollywood's hottest properties, she accepted leads in 1999's Being John Malkovich, in which she played puppeteer John Cusack's wife, and Any Given Sunday, in which she played the president and co-owner of a football team in Oliver Stone's paean to American football.

In 2000, Diaz joined Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu in Charlie's Angels, the much-hyped big-screen remake of the television classic. A comically self-aware and fairly faithful adaptation of the original series, Charlie's Angels served up Matrix-style action with retro-sensibilities, propelling the franchise into the new millennium. The following year found Diaz endearing herself to younger audiences as the voice of Princess Fiona in the animated box-office smash Shrek, as well as using her wide-eyed innocence to horrific effect in the Tom Cruise mindbender Vanilla Sky. Headlining the ill-fated comedy The Next Best Thing in 2002, Diaz would take a historical trip to the birthplace of America in director Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York before becoming the second (after Julia Roberts) actress to join the "20-Million-Dollar Club" with Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Like its predecessor, the film performed well at the box office, and Diaz further proved her box-office clout in 2004 when another sequel, Shrek 2, became the third-highest grossing film of all time.

Diaz switched gears altogether in 2005 when she headed to the small screen, hosting and producing the MTV reality show Trippin'. With its focus on ecology and conservation, the program found the actress and her celebrity pals traipsing the globe to explore various natural environments. Diaz also remained a strong presence in Hollywood during the Christmas season of 2005 in the well-received Curtis Hanson film In Her Shoes. In this picture -- adapted from the Jennifer Weiner novel by Susannah Grant -- Diaz plays the beautiful yet thoroughly harebrained and irresponsible Maggie, sister of the prim, proper, and conservative attorney Rose (Australian import Toni Collette), with whom she comes to blows during their ill-advised stint as roommates. As Maggie discovers a grandmother that she never knew existed (Shirley MacLaine) and travels to Florida to bond with the woman, Rose experiences a significant romantic breakup and decides to change careers. A long-buried and dormant secret from the past then comes to light that reunites the women and forges a path to reconciliation. In Her Shoes struck box-office gold and won the hearts of many critics. And though it surprised just about everyone who foresaw a dopey, lame-brained romantic comedy, assiduous devotees of Hanson's career were perhaps less shocked given the director's keen intelligence and marvelous track record.

Diaz maintained a relatively low profile throughout 2006, following up the Hanson film with yet another lightly comic dissection of contemporary relationships, Nancy Meyers' Holiday. In this romantic comedy, released in December 2006, Diaz plays Amanda, a City of Angels native who meets Briton Iris (Titanic star Kate Winslet) on an Internet website that encourages its users to take vacations by temporarily "swapping homes" with one another. Inevitably, Amanda falls for an Englishman (Jude Law) while Iris meets and falls for an American man (Jack Black).

Meanwhile, the actress signed on to voice Princess Fiona again for Dreamworks' tertiary installment of the Shrek franchise, Shrek the Third, which finds Prince Fiona and Shrek the Ogre married but not planning to inherit the throne. When King Harold (the voice of John Cleese) falls ill, Shrek, Puss in Boots, and Donkey foresee the need for a scion, and set out to find Fiona's rebellious cousin, Artie, the "rightful" heir to the kingdom. Pop idol Justin Timberlake, Diaz's longtime boyfriend and suitor, provided the voice for Artie.

Prior to her long-standing romantic relationship with Timberlake (a constant source of tabloid fodder and speculation), Diaz was alternately linked, offscreen, with actor Matt Dillon, actor Jared Leto (to whom she was engaged for a time), and video producer Carlos De La Torre. She has never married, and according to some sources, never has any intention of marrying. In August 2004, however, she caused an enormous media stir when she turned up alongside Timberlake at Disney's Magic Kingdom in Orlando -- wearing what appeared to be a massive gold band with a diamond on her left hand; the couple denied that it was an engagement ring. The very same situation recurred in January 2005, when Diaz (sporting the same jewelry) and Timberlake popped up at the Los Angeles restaurant Angelini Osteria. by Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi