Born two months premature at four pounds, Kate Noelle Holmes made her first appearance on December 18, 1978, in Toledo, Ohio. Her parents, Martin and Kathleen, say that her strong-willed personality is probably from being born premature. Being the youngest in the Holmes clan, completing the family of three other sisters and one brother, Katie was always the baby. As a teenager, she began attending modeling school. When she was sixteen, her teacher invited her to go to a modeling competition with other girls from her class. She competed in the International Modeling and Talent Association by singing, dancing, and reciting a monologue from To Kill a Mockingbird. By the end of that time in New York, Katie won many awards. But she said she didn't want to model because it wasn't challenging enough. So when she was seventeen, Katie went to Los Angeles to audition for movies. Luckily, on her second audition, she was cast in the movie, The Ice Storm, directed by Ang Lee. Katie's character was Libbets Casey, a rich New Yorker, who is pursued by two of the main characters. It was a small part, but it marked the beginning of her professional acting career.

After the excitement of her first movie, Katie began sending in audition tapes for pilot shows. During that time, she was also starring in her all-girls Catholic high school musical, Damn Yankees, as Lola. After Kevin Williamson received her audition tape for his new show, Dawson's Creek, the producers wanted her to come to Hollywood right away and read live for them. But because they wanted her to come on the opening night for Damn Yankees, Katie had to tell them she couldn't make it. Fortunately, the show's producers wanted her so much for that role, they rescheduled her callback and the result was she got the part as Joey Potter.

During her first year with Dawson's Creek, Katie was able to do two movies, Disturbing Behavior and Go, and, for the former, she won Best Breakthrough Female Performance in the 1999 MTV Movie Awards. The following year, she starred next to Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys, playing Hannah Green, a published author and a boarder at her teacher's (Douglas) house, who has a crush on him, and tries to seduce him.

Her first leading role came in 2002, with Abandon. She played a college student named Katie Burke, who is haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her boyfriend who vanished two years prior.

With Dawson's Creek coming to a close after six years in May of 2003, it was a bittersweet thing for all the cast. Accustomed to being in North Carolina filming ten months out of a year, the cast members now had the opportunity to make more movies. Katie demonstrated this in October, when she had two new movies, Pieces of April and The Singing Detective, coming out in that month alone. Pieces of April is a charming Thanksgiving movie about April (Holmes), the black sheep of her family, who wants to give her family the perfect dinner before her mother passes on. The Singing Detective is a dark musical where the main character (Robert Downey Jr.) is a writer in a hospital for skin conditions who writes a dark world of seduction and murder in his mind. Katie Holmes plays the kind Nurse Mills who tends to his every need. She also gets to lip-sing and dance in this movie. Her 2004 movie schedule included the upcoming romantic movie First Daughter, in which she plays the President's (Michael Keaton) daughter, Samantha, who wants to go to college without any Secret Service tagging along. Currently filming for release in 2005 is Batman Begins, a new Batman movie where Katie plays Rachel Dawes, a childhood sweetheart and love interest to Batman/Bruce Wayne.



Batman Begins (2005): $1,000,000
Pieces of April (2003): $0 (box office % only)
Phone Booth (2002): $500,000
Abandon (2002): $1,000,000
The Gift (2000): $200,000

Her father Martin Joseph Holmes, Sr. is a lawyer, an attorney specializing in divorces, and her mother Kathleen (Kathy) A. Stothers is a homemaker and a philanthropist. Graduated from Notre Dame Academy, an all-girls Roman Catholic school in Toledo, Ohio. Dated actor and co-star of "Dawson's Creek" (1998), Joshua Jackson, while filming Season 1 of the show and part of Season 2. She refers to him as her first love. They remain great friends. Bought a Wilmington, North Carolina townhouse, while filming "Dawson's Creek" (1998), and lived there for ten months of the year. Auditioned for the role of Ellie Christianson in Wicked (1998), but Julia Stiles won the part. Was lined up to have a 3 episode guest spot on "Friends" (1994) but had to pull out due to scheduling conflicts. The first movie she ever saw was E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). The first concert she ever saw was Whitney Houston. Sang Eponine's theme song, "On My Own" from Les Miserables, in an episode of "Dawson's Creek" (1998). Noisy underground British artist 'Firexit' has two songs with references to Katie, one called "K H" (Katie's initials) and a song called "The reason I can't have her" featuring samples of Katie singing 'On my own' from a "Dawson's Creek" (1998) episode. December 2003 - She and Chris Klein are engaged. Ranked #35 in Stuff magazine's "102 Sexiest Women in the World" (2002). Shares a birthday with Brad Pitt, Casper Van Dien, Christina Aguilera, DMX, film critic Leonard Maltin and legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Has worked with two Batmans. In Batman Begins (2005), she works with Christian Bale. Her previous film was First Daughter (2004), in which her father, the President, is played by Michael Keaton. Holmes's couch-jumping-worthy engagement ring is a Edwardian-style oval- shaped diamond ring of about 5 carats in a pave setting. Ranked as #72 in FHM's "100 Sexiest Women in the World 2005" special supplement. (2005) Friends with Victoria Beckham. She and Tom Cruise both wore Armani at their wedding. Stepmother of Tom Cruise's adopted children: Isabella and Connor Cruise. Mentioned in the song High School Never Ends by Bowling for Soup. Niece of former WCW Superstar Jimmy Golden. Katie's brother-in-law Joseph Jeffrey Fretti, the husband of Holmes' eldest sister Tamara Holmes, was found dead on 12 April 2009 in his mother Shirley's home in Sarasota, Florida. He was 48.