Katie Holmes

Kate Noelle Holmes, born December 18, 1978, is an American actress. She first achieved widespread fame for her performance as Joey Potter on the television series Dawson's Creek (1998–2003). Over her career, Holmes has appeared in a wide variety of studio and independent feature films, performed on Broadway, and expanded into television roles, directing, and screenwriting.

Holmes was born in Toledo, Ohio, as the youngest of five children to Kathleen, a homemaker and philanthropist, and Martin Joseph Holmes Sr., an attorney. Raised Catholic, she attended Christ the King Church and graduated from the all-female Notre Dame Academy in Toledo as a 4.0 student. During high school, she participated in school musicals at a nearby all-male high school. At age 14, she enrolled in a modeling school that led to the International Modeling and Talent Association Competition in 1996, where she signed with an agent after reciting a monologue from To Kill a Mockingbird. Holmes was later accepted to Columbia University, where she attended a summer session.

Holmes made her big-screen debut playing Libbets Casey in Ang Lee's 1997 film The Ice Storm. Shortly thereafter, she submitted an audition tape recorded in her basement for the television series Dawson's Creek. She landed the role of Joey Potter and went on to become the only actor to appear in all 128 episodes of the show's six-season run. Her role brought her national media attention and led to her first starring film role in the 1998 thriller Disturbing Behavior, for which she won an MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance.

During and following her time on Dawson's Creek, Holmes built a broad filmography across comedy, drama, and thriller genres. In 1999, she appeared in the ensemble film Go and Kevin Williamson's Teaching Mrs. Tingle, followed by roles in Wonder Boys and Sam Raimi's The Gift in 2000. She went on to star in Abandon (2002), Phone Booth (2002), and The Singing Detective (2003). For her performance in the 2003 comedy-drama Pieces of April, Holmes received a Satellite Award for Best Actress. Her subsequent major roles included starring in First Daughter (2004), portraying Rachel Dawes in the superhero film Batman Begins (2005), and featured in the satire Thank You for Smoking (2005).

Holmes was married to actor Tom Cruise from 2006 to 2012, with whom she has a daughter named Suri. Following a brief acting hiatus, she made her Broadway debut in a 2008 revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons and starred in the film Mad Money (2008). In 2011, she portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy in the television miniseries The Kennedys, later reprising the role in The Kennedys: After Camelot (2017). She also played Paige Finney on the third season of Ray Donovan in 2015. Holmes made her feature directorial debut with the 2016 film All We Had, in which she also starred, and later directed and wrote her second feature film, Alone Together, released in 2022.