Katie Holmes

Katie Holmes is an American actress, filmmaker, and screenwriter born on December 18, 1978, in Toledo, Ohio. The youngest of five children, she was raised by her mother Kathleen, a homemaker and philanthropist, and her father Martin Joseph Holmes Sr., an attorney who played basketball at Marquette University under coach Al McGuire. Holmes was baptized Catholic and attended Christ the King Church in Toledo. She graduated with a 4.0 grade point average from Notre Dame Academy, an all-female school in Toledo that her mother had also attended. During high school, she participated in musicals at the nearby St. John's Jesuit, taking on the role of a waitress in Hello, Dolly! and Lola in Damn Yankees. She scored 1310 out of 1600 on her SAT and was accepted to Columbia University, attending for a summer session, though her father had hoped she would pursue medicine.

Holmes entered the entertainment industry after beginning modeling classes at age 14 in Toledo, which led her to the International Modeling and Talent Association Competition in New York City in 1996. A monologue she performed from To Kill a Mockingbird secured her representation, and an audition tape submitted to the casting director for Ang Lee's The Ice Storm resulted in her film debut in 1997, playing Libbets Casey opposite Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. That same year, she auditioned for the television series Dawson's Creek via a videotape recorded in her basement — she had declined to travel to Los Angeles for an in-person audition in order to fulfill her commitment to her school's production of Damn Yankees. She was cast as Joey Potter, the tomboy best friend of the title character, and remained with the series from 1998 to 2003, gaining national attention and appearing on the covers of publications including Seventeen, TV Guide, and Rolling Stone.

While working on Dawson's Creek, Holmes pursued a range of film projects. Her first leading film role came in the 1998 thriller Disturbing Behavior, for which she received an MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance and a Saturn Award nomination. She followed that with the ensemble film Go in 1999, directed by Doug Liman, and appeared the same year in Kevin Williamson's Teaching Mrs. Tingle alongside Helen Mirren. In 2000, she appeared in Wonder Boys, directed by Curtis Hanson and starring Michael Douglas, and in Sam Raimi's Southern Gothic thriller The Gift, opposite Cate Blanchett. Subsequent film credits include Abandon and Phone Booth in 2002, The Singing Detective and Pieces of April in 2003, First Daughter in 2004, Batman Begins and Thank You for Smoking in 2005, Mad Money in 2008, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark in 2010, Jack and Jill in 2011, Miss Meadows in 2014, Woman in Gold and Touched with Fire in 2015, Logan Lucky in 2017, Dear Dictator in 2018, Coda in 2019, and both Brahms: The Boy II and The Secret: Dare to Dream in 2020.

Holmes made her Broadway debut in 2008 in a production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons, launching a stage career that extended through 2024. She subsequently starred in Dead Accounts on Broadway and appeared in a production of the drama Our Town. Her Broadway work represents a sustained engagement with the stage alongside her screen career.

On television, Holmes portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy in the 2011 miniseries The Kennedys, a role she returned to in The Kennedys: After Camelot in 2017. In 2015, she joined the cast of Showtime's Ray Donovan for its third season, playing the character Paige Finney. Behind the camera, Holmes made her directorial debut with the 2016 film All We Had, in which she also starred. Her second directorial effort, Alone Together in 2022, also marked her debut as a screenwriter.

Holmes was married to actor Tom Cruise from 2006 to 2012. The couple have one daughter together, named Suri.