Julianne Moore

Born: December 1961
Where: Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA

Moore's versatility means she is now one of Hollywood's most in-demand actresses and now features increasingly in leading roles.

Born Julie Anne Smith, she had to change her name when she registered with the Actor's Guild as every variation of her name seemed to be taken.

After graduating from the American High School in Germany, (her father was in the military so the family lived all over the world) Julianne attended Boston University where she began her career on stage.

She then moved to Manhattan and worked as a waitress for a while before landing a small role on the American TV soap Edge of Night.

By 1985, though, the actress had caught her first break when she was cast in a popular US daytime drama As the World Turns.

Julianne didn't make a real impact on screen until she featured in the surprise box-office hit thriller The Hand the Rocks the Cradle.

Audiences began to put a name to her face after her 1997 appearance as a paleontologist pursuing dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

She rounded out that year and picked up a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination as a drug-addicted porn star in Boogie Nights.

In 1997, her son by Bart Freundlich was born, and after time off for motherhood, the actress teamed with the Coen brothers for The Big Lebowski.

She followed with a slightly more conventional role, stepping into Vera Miles' shoes as Lila Crane in Gus Van Sant's unnecessary shot-by-shot color remake of Hitchcock's 1960 classic Psycho.

Moore kicked off 1999, her busiest year to date, with the first of five feature appearances as an eccentric Southerner in Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune.

Segueing to period drama, she polished her British accent for An Ideal Husband and then offered an Oscar-nominated turn as an adulterous wife in the WWII-set The End of the Affair.

Moore continued to display her versatility as an almost saintly mother whose child dies while in the care of her best friend in A Map of the World and the pill-popping trophy wife of a dying TV executive in husband in Paul Thomas Anderson's Altmanesque Magnolia.

Despite being widely respected by both critics and audiences, her career hit a rocky patch when she took over the role of FBI agent Clarice Starling, a role made famous by Jodie Foster, in Silence Of The Lambs follow-up Hannibal.

Less reviled but equally unsuccessful was sci-fi comedy Evolution followed by a turn in Lasse Hallstrom's disappointing adaptation of The Shipping News.

She refound form in 2002, with another Academy-acknowledged turn in the glossy 50s melodrama Far From Heaven, then garnered praise alongside Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep in the Virginia Woolfe biopic The Hours.

After marrying Freundlich in 2003, Moore starred opposite Pierce Brosnan in the laboured romcom Laws Of Attraction. There was a strong whiff of The X-Files about her next film The Forgotten.

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, followed; a quirky but largely unseen true story about a 1950s housewife.

Also failing to cause much of a stir was racially charged urban drama Freedomland, good performances from Moore and Samuel L Jackson notwithstanding.

Later in 2006, Moore saw two contrasting films released in the UK in the same week: ensemble comedy Trust The Man (directed by husband Freundlich) and dystopian drama Children Of Men, opposite Clive Owen and Michael Caine.

Going into 2007, Moore's crowded slate includes London-set murder drama Savage Grace and sci-fi actioner Next, based on a story by Blade Runner author Philip K Dick.