Wendie Malick
Born: December 13 1950
Where: Buffalo, New York, USA
The former model is best known for the long-running American TV series Just Shoot Me as well as her tireless charity work.
Big screen appearances have been less prominent but include Scrooged, Bugsy and the children's comedy Racing Stripes.
As a child, she put on neighbourhood productions with her younger brother and sister and even recruited local girls - "all 11-year-old flat-chested things" - to appear in beauty pageants.
In the mid-1970s, she was spotted by the Wilhelmina Model Agency, a forged a career on catwalks from Venice to Senegal.
After quitting as a model in the 1980s, she did a little theatre work before being cast in the TV soap Love of Life.
In 1982, she made her big screen debut in the Bruce Paltrow romantic drama A Little Sex and went on to appear in the Bill Murry comedy Scrooged.
Subsequent roles tended to be on the small screen - Baywatch, Madonna: Innocence Lost and Apollo 11 - but she also appeared in the gangster feature Bugsy with Warren Beatty.
In 1997, she reached a wider audience in the TV sitcom Good Company and went on to star in Just Shoot Me.
Away from the the small screen, Malick got involved in building low-cost housing for poor families in Mexico (where she met her builder husband).
Every Thanksgiving, the Malick Building Squad travel to Tijuana to construct the shelters "instead of stuffing ourselves."
On screen, appearance have continued with leads in the low budget Just Add Love and drama Jerome in 1999.
She provided the voice of ChiCha in The Emperor's New Groove and recent appearance include the children's animatronic caper Racing Stripes.
