Holly Hunter

Born: 20th March, 1958
Where: Conyers, Georgia

The intense actress is probably best known for her Oscar-winning role as a melancholy mute bride to a New Zealand planter in The Piano.

Other career hightlights include an Academy Award-nominated role as an ambitious TV news producer in Broadcast News, Best Supporting Actress for The Firm, and most recently a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Thirteen.

Keen to specialise in off-kilter parts, she also starred in David Cronenberg's controversial Crash, which is still banned in the London borough of Westminster.

The youngest of seven children whose father was a part-time sporting goods company representative and part-time farmer with a 250 acre farm.

A keen pianist as a child, she discovered acting when she appeared in a school production of The Boyfriend.

After acting college in Pittsburgh, she went to New York, where she met playwright Beth Henley in a trapped lift and persuaded her to cast her in Crimes of the Heart.

In 1982, Hunter went to Los Angeles where she bided her time in smalll movies such as Swing Shift and TV work before her first starring role in the Coen brothers Raising Arizona.

The part that is said to have been written with her in mind after she had an uncredited part in the brothers' Blood Simple three years before.

She gained stardom in 1987 when she played the ambitious TV news producer Jane Craig in Broadcast News and won an Emmy for her memorable performance in Roe vs Wade.

After The Piano (a role she hounded the director Jane Campion for) she won an Emmy playing the title role in the TV movie The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom.

Subsequent roles included The Firm and the thriller Copycat with Sigourney Weaver before Cronenberg cast her as Helen Remington in Crash.

She starred opposite Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz in Danny Boyle's A Life Less Ordinary, shone in the comedy Living Out Loud and reteamed with the Coen brothers for O Brother Where Art Thou.

After a series of TV movies, she returned to the big screen in Brad Silberling's Moonlight Mile and delivered a critically acclaimed and Oscar nominated performance in the controversial coming-of-age drama Thirteen.

Most recently, Holly provided the vocals for the mother of a superhero family in Pixar's smash-hit, The Incredibles.