Anna Friel

Born: July 12th 1976
Where: Belfast, Northern Ireland

The one-time Brookside babe has starred in movies ranging from the post-natal comedy Mad Cows to the soccer movie Goal!

The daughter of a deputy head at a specials needs school and a French teacher-turned-website designer, she was raised in Donegal, Ireland.

After moving to Rochdale in Lancashire with her family, she went to drama school in Oldham and landed her first TV job aged 12 in GBH.

At 16, she appeared in Emmerdale and, having briefly attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, she shot to fame aged 17 playing Beth Jordache in Brookside.

She attracted attention as British television's first lesbian character but quit the soap aged 19 (after collapsing on set with exhaustion).

She continued acting in Tales From The Crypt and Our Mutual Friend and built up her sex symbol persona with a role in the BBC2 movie The Tribe (the role required full frontal nudity).

Friel then brought a combination of innocence and charm to her first major big screen outing as the brazen flirt Prue in David Leland's World War II drama The Land Girls.

She continued to establish herself as a film actress as Ewan McGregor's wife in Rogue Trader, the biopic of Nick Leeson.

She also joined Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christian Bale and Rupert Everett in the 1999 remake of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The same year, she appeared on Broadway in Patrick Marber's Closer (Jack Nicholson said publicly he wouldn't rest until he' slept with her).

Friel went on to star in the criticised Mad Cows, based on the Kathy Lette novel, and also appeared in the drama The War Bride.

In 2001, she starred in the relationship drama Me Without You and starred alongside Billy Connolly in the sci-fi yarn Timeline.

She has had a couple of highly publicised relationships with the likes of Darren Day and Robbie Williams but now lives with the actor David Thewlis with whom she has a daugher, Gracie.

Recent work includes the football drama Goal!