Kyra Sedgwick

Born: August 19 1965
Where: New York, USA

Director Oliver Stone praises Sedgwick for her "Barbara Stanwyck quality"...but the big roles took a long time coming for the New Yorker.

She began her career at 15 on stage and then on the NBC daytime soap Another World but her first foray to Hollywood produced nothing but rejection.

She finally made her feature debut as a Polish Jew whose romance is interrupted by World War II in War and Love.

However, it was Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!, opposite Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst, that gave her fledgling career its biggest boost.

In 1989, Sedgwick's breakthrough performance as Donna, Tom Cruise's girlfriend in Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, raised her profile.

She then played the rebellious daughter of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in vory's Mr. & Mrs. Bridge nd then teamed husband Kevin Bacon for Pyrates.

Sedgwick stood out in the midst of the talented ensemble of Cameron Crowe's Singles and as one of Robert Downey Jr.'s guardian angels in the comedy Heart and Souls.

He next notable role was her scene-stealing performance in Lasse Hallstrom's Something to Talk About as the acid-tongued sister of megastar Julia Roberts.

Next came Phenomenon with John Travolta and her producing debut, the Showtime movie Losing Chase in which she played a companion hired to care for a convalescing woman (Helen Mirren).

Sidney Lumet's Critical Care reunited her with Mirren and she also played the lesbian lover of Julianna Margulies in What's Cooking?

Keeping with her low-profile, Sedgwick's next big roles were romantic comedy Just a Kiss and Personal Velocity, a potrait tale of three women trying to find their niche in life.

Recently, she starred as a feckless mother in the family drama Secondhand Lions with Michael Caine and Robert Duvall.