Gwyneth Paltrow

Born: 28th September 1972
Where: Los Angeles, USA

The anglophile actress reached an international audience when she won an Oscar for Viola de Lesseps in John Madden's Shakespeare in Love.

The part was one of many - including Emma, Great Expectations, Sliding Doors, Possession and Sylvia - where she showed off her pitch perfect English accent.

She maintained her anglo love affair by marrying singer Chris Martin, of British rockers Coldplay and they have set up home in London.

Daughter of the late TV producer Bruce Paltrow and stage and screen actress Blythe Danner, she chose to follow a path in show business (her brother Jake is a director).

When she was 11, the family moved to Massachusetts where her father began working in summer stock productions in the Berkshires.

It was here that she received her early training under the tutelage of her parents and in 1991 she quit the University of California and began to actively pursue a career in acting.

She made her film debut with a small part in the 1991 John Travolta drama Shout and for the next five years had featured roles in a variety of roles.

Appearances included Young Wendy in Hook and the crime thriller Malice to her breakthrough as con woman in the romantic drama Flesh and Bone and the waspish Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle.

When David Fincher cast her to play the wife of a homicide detective in Se7en in 1995 she began a relationship with co-star Brad Pitt.

Their affair was well-publicised, and the pressures showed when they got engaged in November 1996 only to separate the following year.

Subsequent roles included Emma (which led to her casting in Shakespeare in Love) an updating of Dickens' Great Expectations and the British romantic comedy Sliding Doors.

At the same time she discussed the role of Rose in Titanic with director James Cameron but turned down the part of Emma Peel in The Avengers.

Back on screen, Shakespeare in Love, co-starring Joseph Fiennes and Geoffrey Rush, landed her an Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Actress.

Paltrow followed this with Anthony Minghella's accomplished crime thriller The Talented Mr Ripley with Jude Law and Matt Damon.

The year 2000 saw her directed by her father for the first time in Duets, with TV star Scott Speedman cast in the role originally earmarked for Pitt.

It would be their only collaboration as Bruce died in October 2002, aged 58, after a bout of pneumonia and a recurrence of throat cancer.

Next up was the romantic drama Bounce with Ben Affleck and the ensemble comedy The Royal Tenenbaums with Gene Hackman and Ben Stiller.

She donned a 200lb fat suit for the Farrelly Brothers' Shallow Hal and refined her English accent for the romantic drama Possession.

In 2003, she played doomed poetess Sylvia Plath opposite new 007 Daniel Craig in Sylvia and also starred in the romantic comedy View from the Top with Mark Ruffalo.

The following year, she played Jude Law's love interest in the retro sci-fi thriller Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Recent work includes the the part of Anthony Hopkins' troubled daughter in the John Madden drama Proof (she appeared in the London stage version in 2002).