Lili Taylor

Born: February 20 1967
Where: Glencoe, Illinois, USA

The uncrowned queen of the US indie scene, Taylor is known for her portrayal of the damaged and downright weird.

She made offbeat roles her own from the start opposite the little heard of Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza through to Matt Dillon's drunk girlfriend in Factotum.

Even during her forays into blockbuster films - The Haunting, Ransom - she still wound up playing weirdos or lesbians.

The fifth of six children born to an Illinois hardware store manager, Taylor was raised in comfortable suburbia.

However, she claims she was misdiagnosed with manic depression as a teenager and has only recently overcome the problem.

She enrolled at Piven Theatre Workshop (and was expelled for working as an actor while studying) and landed the audition for Mystic Pizza in 1988.

The following year she starred in Say Anything and Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of the July with Tom Cruise.

Subsequent appearances included Arizona Dream, Rudy and the Robert Altman classics Short Cuts and Pret-A-Porter.

However, it was as the career-minded lesbian assassin in 1996's I Shot Andy Warhol where she established herself as the first choice for damaged characters.

Ron Howard cast her as the kidnapper in Ransom opposite Mel Gibson and she played the scary Nell in the 1999 remake of The Haunting.

In 2000, she starred in the romantic comedy High Fidelity with John Cusack ad went on to play Nate's wife Lisa in Six Feet Under.

Offscreen, she dated Sopranos actor Michael Imperioli while a relationship with the actor Michael Rapaport ended with him admitting harassment and being ordered to stay away from her.

Indie darling John Sayles cast her in his drama Casa de los Babys and her recent work includes the drama Factotum opposite Matt Dilloon.