Ryan Phillippe

Born: September 10, 1974
Where: Delaware, USA

The star - who was spotted by an agent in a barbershop - really established his acting credentials in Clint Eastwood's WWII epic Flags of our Fathers.

He played John "Doc" Bradley, one of six American soldiers who raised the Stars and Stripes over the island of Iwo Jima during the Battle of the Pacific.

The only boy among three sisters, he is the son of a DuPont chemist and the manageress of a day care centre.

He attended New Castle Baptist Academy, where he played basketball and soccer as well as earning a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

At the age of fifteen, a neighbour suggested he should pursue and acting career and a chance meeting with a casting agent in a barbershop led to auditions in New York.

Early TV appearances included the daytime drama One Life to Live - his character Billy Douglas caused controversy as the first gay teenager in a daily soap opera.

After leaving the show, Phillippe moved to Los Angeles, where he landed a number of small parts in various television shows.

He made his big screen debut in the Tony Scott's 1995 submarine action thriller Crimson Tide and subsequently appeared in 1996's White Squall.

In 1997, he was cast in the horror film, I Know What You Did Last Summer, which co-starred Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze, Jr and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Parts followed in the Studio 54 biopic 54 with Mike Myers and Cruel Intentions -the American high school version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses - during which he pursued a relationship with his future wife Reese Witherspoon.

(when she first met him a year earlier at her 21st birthday party she is reported to have commented "I think you're my birthday present". They would separate after seven years).

Phillippe subsequently appeared in the crime drama The Way of the Gun, starred as a famed software engineer in the thriller Antitrust, and co-starred in Robert Altman's critically-acclaimed ensemble drama Gosford Park.

In 2002, he appeared in the wry comedy Igby Goes Down and was part of the all-star cast of the sprawling social drama Crash, which won the best picture Oscar.

In Flags of our Fathers he reached a career high with his performance as one of the heroes of Iwo Jima.