Jada Pinkett Smith

Born: September 18, 1971
Where: Baltimore, Maryland, USA

The former Miss Maryland has played parts ranging from Muhammad Ali's wife in Ali to a battlecruiser pilot in the Matrix series.

Born to a contractor and a nurse, she studied dance and choreography at the Baltimore School for the Arts where she became friends with classmate Tupac Shakur.

She spent a year studying theatre at the North Carolina School of the Arts before dropping out and moving to LA to pursue a career in acting.

Crowned Miss Maryland in 1988, Jada went on to work in regional theatre before furthering her show business career by becoming a protege of filmmaker-actor Keenan Ivory Wayans (Scary Movie) who helped her acquire an agent.

Some TV work followed and her big break came in 1991 when she was cast in the part of a college fresher on the popular US sitcom A Different World.

But she didn't get her first film role until 1993 when she played a strong-minded single mother in the Hughes Brothers' Menace II Society.

Widespread recognition was something that alluded her, though, until 1996 with her role opposite Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor.

Jada married singer-actor Will Smith in 1997 and the couple have a son (Jaden - born 8 July 1998) and a daughter (Willow - born 31 October 2000) together.

Roles followed in Scream 2, Return to Paradise with Vince Vaughn and Spike Lee's Bamboozled in 2002.

After playing Sonji opposite husband Will Smith in Ali, she took up the controls of the good ship Logos in the Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.

In addition to being in front of the camera, she has also directed a number of music videos for fledgling rap groups and promotes her own Maja clothing group.

Recent work includes Michael Mann's Collateral with Tom Cruise and voice-over duties on the animated hit, Madagascar.