Anna Faris

Date of birth: November 29, 1976
Age: 33

Anna Kay Faris is an American actress best known for her leading role as Cindy Campbell in the Scary Movie films.

Faris was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Karen and Jack Faris, having Scottish, Irish, English, German, and French ancestry. 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.

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.

Faris was in the film Waiting... with Ryan Reynolds and Justin Long. In 2005, she appeared again with Reynolds in Just Friends, playing a supporting role as a pop-diva singer named Samantha James. Faris's role as the motor mouthed LaShawn Malone in Brokeback Mountain (2005) brought her to the attention of a much wider audience, her character being parodied by fans of the movie on the internet. Faris starred with Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson in the feature film My Super Ex-Girlfriend, released on July 21, 2006. She is currently in production on the comedy Kids in America, playing Topher Grace's twin sister, in addition to her upcoming films Mama's Boy with Jeff Daniels and Diane Keaton, and Smiley Face with Adam Brody and John Cho. As of 2007, she was producing I Know What Boys Like, a film with Happy Madison Productions about a retired Playboy bunny. In the summer 2007 season of HBO's Entourage, Faris guest-starred as herself.

In 2004, Faris married actor Ben Indra, whom she met while working on Lovers Lane and whom she had dated since 1999. She filed for divorce on April 3, 2007, citing irreconcilable differences. Anna Faris won the "Stonette of the Year" award at High Times Magazine's Stony Awards in Los Angeles on October 13, 2007.

See also:  Actress,  American,  Entourage