Katie Holmes (born December 18, 1978) is an American actress best known as Joey Potter on Dawson's Creek .
Born Katherine Noelle Holmes in Toledo, Ohio, she was the youngest of the five children of Martin, an attorney, and Kathleen Holmes. She attended Catholic schools in Toledo, including the all-female Notre Dame Academy. While in high school, she went with her mother to Los Angeles to audition for pilots for television shows. She did not land a television role, but was cast as the improbably named Libbets Casey in the film The Ice Storm (1997), directed by Ang Lee and starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver.
She returned to Toledo but her audition tapes continued to circulate. One reached the producers of a new show created by Kevin Williamson for Columbia Tri-Star Television: Dawson's Creek. Her appointment to read for it was unknowingly set by the producers for the same day as her high school production of Damn Yankees (she was playing Lola), but they permitted her to send a videotape rather than make her miss the show. Holmes read for the part of Joey, the tomboyish best friend of the title character, while her mother read Dawson's lines, including dialogue about sex and masturbation. Holmes won the part. Williamson said "She had those eyes, those eyes just stained with loneliness."
"I'm a lot like Joey," she said. "I think they saw that. I come from a small town. I was a tomboy. Joey tries to be articulate and deny that she doesn't have a lot of experience in life. Her life parallels mine, which is all about new everything--relationships, personnel, perceptions--and about being guarded." Dawson's Creek filmed its first season in the spring and summer of 1997. Holmes moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, where the show filmed, and for a time lived with creator Williamson.
At 5'9" (some sources say 5'7"), the tall brunette enchanted the press. "The Audrey Hepburn of her generation," was one typical comment. Variety, reviewing the pilot, said Holmes "is a confident young performer who delivers her lines with slyness and conviction." So good was Holmes that The New York Times Magazine would claim everyone in Hollywood was looking for the "Katie Holmes type" when casting shows. "The Katie Holmes type," the reporter claimed, "is a throwback to the 1950's: she is a smart girl next door (as opposed to the babe-o-rama blondes)"--the sort represented by her Dawson's Creek co-star Michelle Williams. But her "type" was no less attractive, Arena magazine declaring her "the most coquettishly sexy woman on television. Anywhere."
Dawson's Creek ran from 1998 to 2003 and Holmes was the only actor to appear in all 128 episodes. "It was very difficult for me to leave Wilmington, to have my little glass bubble burst and move on. I hate change. On the other hand it was refreshing to play someone else," she said in 2004. Holmes confirmed that, as is often the case on soaps, the character is a cariacature of the actor: "I miss her spirit, and her spunk, and I miss her anxiety. She always had these long sppeches about her fears and her future and love. It was a great tool for me personally because I got to get it all out. I was able to psychoanalyze all of it everyday with her and then I wouldn't have to do it on my own. So much of me is in Joey and it really felt like I grew up on television."
Holmes' movie career has not been as successful as the show. While she often draws great notices, her films have tended to be badly reviewed or box office duds. Her first starring part came in Disturbing Behavior (1998), a Stepford Wives-goes-to-high school thriller where she was a loner from the wrong side of the tracks. Holmes won a MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance for the role, though Holmes said the film was "just horrible". Next she was a disaffected supermarket clerk in Doug Liman's stylish ensemble piece Go (1999). She had an uncredited cameo with Dawson's Creek co-star Joshua Jackson in Muppets in Space (1999), which was also filmed in Wilmington. Kevin Williamson's disaffection for his own high school days spawned Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), which he wrote and directed. Holmes played a straight-A student whose vindictive teacher threatens to keep her from a desperately needed scholarship.
In Wonder Boys (2000), the film version of the Michael Chabon novel, she had a small role (six and one-half minutes of screen time) as the tenant--and object of lust--of her English professor, played by Michael Douglas. In The Gift (2000), a Southern Gothic story directed by Sam Raimi and starring Cate Blanchett, she played the antithesis of Joey Potter: a slutty rich girl carrying on with everyone in town, from a white trash wife-beater to the district attorney, and who winds up dead for her trouble. Holmes did her first nude scene for the film and said "I just hope there aren't a lot of pauses on DVD players." Her appearance deshabile was lamented by Variety's Steven Kloter: "It seems the only time we see a naked woman on screen is when someone like Katie Holmes needs to break with her sanitized WB past and march brazenly into a new future."
Holmes was the mistress of the public relations flack played by Colin Farrell in Phone Booth (2002) and Robert Downey, Jr.'s nurse in The Singing Detective (2002).
Her next starring role was in Pieces of April (2003), a gritty comedy about a dysfunctional family on Thanksgiving. Variety said it was "one of her best film perfs." In Abandon (2003), written by Oscar winner Stephen Gaghan, Holmes was a delusional and homicidal college student named "Katie." Roger Ebert commended Holmes' performance and the film's intelligence, but other critics and audiences savaged it.
Holmes played the president's daughter in First Daughter, which was originally to be released in January 2004 on the same day as Chasing Liberty, the Mandy Moore film about a presidential daughter, but was ultimately released in September 2004 to dismal reviews and ticket sales. First Daughter, directed by Forest Whitaker, also starred Michael Keaton as Holmes's father and Mark Blucas as her love interest. Forthcoming is her appearance in the latest installment of the Batman franchise, Batman Begins. Entertainment Weekly reported in its December 17, 2004 issue that Holmes was to play the murdered wife of Spade Cooley in a biopic written, directed, and starring Dennis Quaid.
Holmes hosted Saturday Night Live on February 24, 2001, participating in a hilarious send-up of Dawson's Creek where she falls madly in love with Chris Kattan's Mr. Peepers character and singing "Hey, Big Spender" from Damned Yankees. She was Punk'd by Ashton Kutcher in November 2003. Holmes was annually named by FHM magazine as one of the sexiest women in the world from 1999 forward [2] (http://metalbunny.net/girlz/hotlist.php?list=fhmuk) and was named one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People" in its May 12, 2003 issue. Teen People declared her one of the "25 Hottest Stars Under 25" in its June/July 2003 issue. She has appeared in advertisements for Garnier Lumia shampoos and The Gap.
Holmes is (as of late 2004) engaged to actor Chris Klein, a loss lamented by both sexes: GQ 's Adam Rapoport wrote she was "more the girl you want to take home to your parents than the girl you want to take home", while Allure 's Judith Newman wrote "I want to bring her home to meet my parents. But then, who doesn't?
