Hope Davis

Born: 23 March 1964
Where: Englewood, New Jersey, USA

The accomplished stage actress and Baywatch hopeful drew critical acclaim for her performance as Jack Nicholson's daughter in About Schmidt.

A darling of the independent circuit, she attracted attention opposite Paul Giamatti in American Splendor and Paul Rudolph's Secret Lives of Dentists.

After studying ballet as a teenager (she was a childhood friend of Mira Sorvino) she took to the stage in Chicago and made her big screen debut in Flatliners.

She had also unsuccessfully auditioned for the long-running beach, bums and breasts TV series Baywatch.

Minor roles in Home Alone and Kiss of Death followed before she raised her profile with a trio of independent projects.

Greg Mottola's The Daytrippers, Bart Freundlich's The Myth of the Fingerprints and Brad Anderson's Next Stop Wonderland put her firmly on the map.

However, she also won praise for her stage work - she took over Madonna's role in the Chicago production of Speed the Plow.

Subsequent film roles included Stanley Tucci's The Imposters, the conspiracy thriller Arlington Road opposite Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins and Mumford.

In 2001, her embittered single mother in Hearts in Atlantis won Hope critical acclaim and the following year she played Jack Nicholson's daughter in the Oscar-nominated About Schmidt.

More recently Davis has been working on The Secret Lives of Dentists and in American Splendor, the biopic of cartoon writer Harvey Pekar (Giamatti).