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Sharon Stone Biography  A self-described "übergeek" who couldn't get a date to her high school prom, Sharon Stone proved that brains (an IQ of 154) were certainly no impediment to forging a career in the entertainment industry, especially when capitalizing on naturally blonde good looks as a fetching piece of "eye candy" in movies both good and bad. The former beauty pageant contestant and Ford model made her film debut with a non-speaking part as a beautiful woman fleetingly glimpsed from a moving train in Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories" (1980) and then survived more than a decade of mostly mediocre parts to claw her way to stardom. A journalist's dream, she is one of the best interviews in Hollywood, talking smart, tough and funny (she once described former beau Dwight Yoakam as less appealing than a "dirt sandwich"), and bringing back an old-fashioned, high-octane glamour to her role as a "movie star.” Despite demonstrating considerable range as an actor, Stone has shown her true genius to be self-invention, creating a persona to rival that of stars like Joan Crawford and Betty Davis from a more style-conscious, bygone era. |
Katherine Moennig Biography
Lean, strikingly featured, and appealing to both male and female audiences, actress Katherine Moennig did not shy away from characters with strong sexual identities over the course of her career. Her first notices came while playing a young woman who masquerades as a boy in order to attend an all-male school in the short-lived WB series “Young Americans” (2000); three years later, she found more substantial fame as the self-destructive Shane McCutcheon on “The L Word” (Showtime, 2003- ). Her androgynous looks and choices of roles led many in the press to speculate about Moennig’s own sexuality. That she skirted the issue in interviews seemed to indicate that Moennig had something to hide, but in reality, it only added to her appeal with viewers.
Born Katherine Sian Moennig in Philadelphia, PA on Dec. 29, 1976, her career as an actress seemed a foregone conclusion; her mother was Broadway dancer Mary Zahn, her father a violin maker, and her aunt the acclaimed stage and screen actress Blythe Danner – making Gwyneth Paltrow her first cousin. The performing bug bit at the age of 10 after a role in a grade-school production of “Winnie the Pooh;” Moennig and a friend later wrote their own version of the story and performed it at the Free Library in Philadelphia. Though entry into the professional acting world might have been easy for her, Moennig concentrated on completing her high school studies At the age of 18, she made for New York City and enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While in New York, she also pursued a modeling career.
Brooke Shields Biography
Through the connections of her manager mother, a former model, Brooke Shields landed her first professional modeling job before her first birthday when she was selected to pose for advertisements for Ivory Snow photographed by Francesco Scavullo. Within two years, the toddler was a pro on the runways as well and was later featured as a Breck girl and in Colgate commercials shot by Richard Avedon. With her thick eyebrows, sensual pouty lips, lustrous hair and bright eyes, Shields projected the image of a Lolita while off-screen she was a conservative Catholic girl. When Louis Malle tapped her for the title role of a child prostitute in "Pretty Baby" (1978), a drama loosely inspired by the life of photographer E.J. Bellocq, she became embroiled in controversy, partly over the overt sensuality of her role and partly for her somewhat innocent nude scenes (such as a shot of the actress emerging from a bathtub).
Shields attempted to demonstrate a more wholesome persona co-starring with George Burns in "Just You and Me, Kid" (1979) and featured appearances in numerous TV variety specials headlined by veteran comic Bob Hope. Yet she reverted to teen vamp for the 1980 remake of "The Blue Lagoon" and Franco Zefferelli's overwrought adaptation of "Endless Love" (1981). By the time she enrolled at Princeton in 1983, Shields was considered more of a personality than an actress and the few movies she made during her college years (e.g., "Sahara" 1984; "Brenda Starr" filmed in 1986 but released in 1989) merely confirmed that opinion. (It also didn't help that her beauty and modeling work had landed her on the cover of TIME magazine as "the face of the 80s".) She was equally famous for a chapter in a 1984 book she penned ("On Your Own") in which she extolled the virtues of remaining a virgin.
Date: 15 March 2008, Saturday
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