Anna Sergeevna Kournikova (Russian: Анна Сергеевна Ку́рникова (listen (help·info)), Anna Sergeevna Kurnikova; born June 7, 1981) is a semi-retired Russian professional tennis player and model. Her celebrity made her one of the best known tennis players worldwide. At the peak of her fame, fans looking for images of Kournikova made her name (or misspellings of it) one of the most common search strings on the internet search engine Google.

She has had some success at the singles game, reaching #8 in the world in 2000, but her speciality has been doubles, where she has at times been the world’s No.1 doubles player. With Martina Hingis as her partner, she won Grand Slam titles in Australia in 1999 and 2002. Kournikova’s major-league tennis career has been curtailed for the past several years, and possibly ended, by serious back and spinal problems.

Kournikova was born in Moscow in the former Soviet Union to Alla and Sergei Kournikov; she and her mother later emigrated to the United States. Currently, she resides in Miami Beach, Florida, and plays in occasional exhibitions and in doubles for the St. Louis Aces of World Team Tennis.

Tennis career

At ages 13 and 14, Kournikova made headlines in international junior tennis, winning several tournaments including the 1995 Italian Open. She was 14 years old when she ended 1995 as Junior European Champion Under 18 and ITF Junior World Champion Under 18. (more…)

Anna Friel (born July 12, 1976) is a Golden Globe-nominated English actress from Rochdale, in Greater Manchester. She currently stars as Charlotte “Chuck” Charles, the female lead in the American television series Pushing Daisies.

Early life

Anna Louise Friel was born July 12, 1976 in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England, United Kingdom. She attended Crompton House Secondary School, High Crompton, Shaw. The daughter of two teachers, Anna became interested in acting at an early age and received frequent praise for her work at local talent shows.

Acting career

At the age of 13, she was hired for her first professional acting job in the Channel 4 drama serial G.B.H., as the daughter of Michael Palin’s character. Her performance led to a series of appearances on various British television shows, including Emmerdale. In 1992, Friel was added to the cast on the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside, where she gained greater exposure in the role of Beth Jordache. Though she only stayed on the programme for two years, Friel’s lesbian kiss remains one of the most talked-about moments in British soap history. In 1995, Friel won the National Television Award for Most popular actress for her work on Brookside. (more…)

Anna Kay Faris (born November 29, 1976) is an American actress best known for her lead role as Cindy Campbell in the Scary Movie films. She also is well known for the movie, The Hot Chick as April.

Biography

Early life

Faris was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Karen and Jack Faris. She has a brother, Bob, and grew up in Edmonds, Washington, north of Seattle. Her parents encouraged her to pursue acting when she was young and she gave her first professional acting performance at age nine at the Seattle Repertory Theater. After attending Edmonds Woodway High School, she studied English literature at the University of Washington.

Film career

Her first significant film role was in the independent production Lovers Lane (1999). Her breakout role was the horror film parody Scary Movie (2000). The 5′5″ Faris is a natural blonde, but dyed her hair black for the filming of Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2 so that her character more closely resembled Neve Campbell, who played the equivalent character in Scream, one of the films that Scary Movie was parodying.

Faris gained further popularity after becoming recurring character Erica in the final season of the popular American sitcom Friends. She also was in the critically acclaimed film Lost in Translation—in which she plays an actress promoting the fictional action movie Midnight Velocity. (more…)

Anna Falchi (born Anna Kristiina Palomäki on April 22, 1972, in Tampere) is a Finnish-born model and film actress. Half Italian on her father’s side, she was raised by her mother in Italy, where she remains relatively well-known for her modelling, and rather less so for her acting. Being raised in Italy with a Finnish name that proved complex to pronounce, she chose an alternative stage name to help advance her modelling and acting career.

She started her career as a model. She first appeared on TV in a commercial for an Italian bank in 1992 . The ad starred Paolo Villaggio, and was directed by the famous Federico Fellini. This helped her launch a film career, starting with Nel continente nero (On the Dark Continent) in 1993. She appeared in many films since, including the 1994 fantasy movie Desideria e l’Anello del Drago and more recently the comedy Nessun messaggio in segreteria released in 2005. She has also been a popular television personality, hosting various specials on Italian TV.

She is less known in the English speaking world. Some fans of the horror comic Dylan Dog, know her as the lead female in a film adaptation called Dellamorte Dellamore, which was released in the U.S. as Cemetery Man. (more…)