Kate Noelle Holmes (born December 18, 1978) is an American actress. She first achieved fame as Joey Potter on the television series Dawson's Creek (1998–2003).
Holmes made her film debut with a supporting role in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997). A mixture of parts in big-budget and small-scale film projects came next, including Disturbing Behavior (1998), Go, Teaching Mrs. Tingle (both 1999), Wonder Boys, The Gift (both 2000), Abandon, Phone Booth (both 2002), The Singing Detective, Pieces of April (both 2003), First Daughter (2004), Batman Begins, Thank You for Smoking (both 2005), Mad Money (2008), Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010), Jack and Jill (2011), Miss Meadows (2014), Woman in Gold, Touched with Fire (both 2015), Logan Lucky (2017), Dear Dictator (2018), Coda (2019), Brahms: The Boy II, and The Secret: Dare to Dream (both 2020).
Outside of film, Holmes made her Broadway theatre debut in a 2008 production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. In 2011, she portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy in the television miniseries The Kennedys, a role she reprised in The Kennedys: After Camelot (2017). She also played the part of Paige Finney on the third season of Showtime's Ray Donovan in 2015. Holmes made her directorial debut with the 2016 film All We Had, in which she also starred, following in 2022, by her second film Alone Together, which was also her debut as a screenwriter.
Holmes's marriage to actor Tom Cruise, which lasted from 2006 to 2012, attracted a great deal of media attention. They have one child together, a daughter named Suri.
Early life Holmes was born in Toledo, Ohio.Darren Crosdale. Dawson's Creek: The Official Companion. Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews McMeel, 1999; , pgs. 113–114. She is the youngest of five children born to Kathleen (née Stothers), a homemaker and philanthropist, and Martin Joseph Holmes Sr., an attorney who played basketball at Marquette University under coach Al McGuire.Janice Dunn. "Katie Holmes: A girl on the verge". Rolling Stone. Issue 795. September 17, 1998. 44.Rory Evans. "Extra, extra! Batman star Katie Holmes invites us along to savor the sights and sounds of her brand-new town." InStyle. June 2005. 224–233. She has three sisters and one brother. Holmes was baptized a Catholic and attended Christ the King Church in Toledo."Katie Holmes to Wed Actor Chris Klein" , Toledo Blade, December 31, 2003, pg. D3.
She graduated from the all-female Notre Dame Academy in Toledo (also her mother's alma mater), where she was a 4.0 student.Christopher Borrelli. "Katie Holmes for the Holiday: She Left Toledo With a Big Dream and Returns a Big Star", Toledo Blade, November 22, 1998, pg. G1.Judith Newman, "The Last Girl Scout", Allure. v. 13, n. 6. June 2003, pgs. 182–89. At St. John's Jesuit, a nearby all-male high school, Holmes appeared in school musicals, playing a waitress in Hello, Dolly! and Lola in Damn Yankees.Christopher Borrelli. "The It Girl: For Toledoan Katie Holmes, Stardom Is Just Around the Corner". Toledo Blade. January 11, 1998. Arts and Entertainment, 1; "Katie Holmes", Current Biography. She scored 1310 out of 1600 on her SAT and was accepted to Columbia University (and attended for a summer session); her father wanted her to become a doctor.
At age 14, she began classes at a modeling school in Toledo which led her to the International Modeling and Talent Association (IMTA) Competition held in New York City in 1996. Eventually, Holmes was signed to an agent after performing a monologue from To Kill a Mockingbird. An audition tape was sent to the casting director for the 1997 film The Ice Storm, directed by Ang Lee, and Holmes made her big-screen debut in the role of Libbets Casey in the film, opposite Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver.
Career 1997–2003: Dawson's Creek and career development In January 1997, Holmes went to Los Angeles for pilot season, when producers and cast shoot new programs in the hopes of securing a spot on a network schedule. The Toledo Blade reported she was offered the lead in Buffy the Vampire Slayer but she turned it down in order to finish high school. Columbia TriStar Television, producer of a new show named Dawson's Creek that was created by screenwriter Kevin Williamson, asked her to come to Los Angeles to audition, but there was a conflict with her schedule. "I was doing my school play, Damn Yankees. And I was playing Lola. I even got to wear the feather boa. I thought, 'There is no way I'm not playing Lola to go audition for some network. I couldn't let my school down. We had already sold a lot of tickets. So I told Kevin and The WB, 'I'm sorry. I just can't meet with you this week. I've got other commitments.' "Andy Mangels. From Scream to Dawson's Creek: An Unauthorized Take on the Phenomenal Career of Kevin Williamson. Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 2000. , 177.Cindy Pearlman. "'America's little sister' hits it big." Chicago Sun-Times. August 15, 1999. pg 3. The producers permitted her to audition on videotape. Holmes read for the part of Joey Potter, the tomboy best friend of the title character Dawson, on a videotape shot in her basement, her mother reading Dawson's lines.Marilyn Johnson and Andrew Southam. "Nice Girls Finish First: So what does it mean that a very nice girl playing a very thoughtful girl has become TV's teen idol? Consider it a good sign." Life. March 1999.
The Hollywood Reporter claimed the story of Holmes's audition "has become the stuff of legend" and "no one even thought that it was weird that one of the female leads would audition via Federal Express."Ray Richmond. "Youth ache 100 episodes: The WB's signature show, 'Dawson's Creek' brings intellect and frankness to the portrayal of young adults." The Hollywood Reporter. April 17, 2002, pg. S1. Holmes won the part. Paul Stupin, executive producer of the show, said his first reaction on seeing her audition tape was "That's Joey Potter!"Christopher Borrelli. "Life on the Creek Comes to an End." Toledo Blade. May 4, 2003, pg. D1. Creator and executive producer Kevin Williamson said Holmes has a "unique combination of talent, beauty and skill that makes Hollywood come calling. But that's just the beginning. To meet her is to instantly fall under her spell."Kevin Williamson. "Holmes sweet Holmes", YM. v.46, n.7. September 1998, pg. 114; archived December 9, 2004. Williamson thought she had exactly the right look for Joey Potter. "She had those eyes, those eyes just stained with loneliness."Adam Rapoport. "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon", GQ, April 2002. While Dawson's Creek was met with mixed reviews,Christopher Borrelli. "'Dawson's Creek' Runs Too Smoothly: Characters Have Typical Woes But Adult Vocabularies", Toledo Blade, January 18, 1998. Holmes attained national attention.Vanessa Winans. "TV Star Home for Holiday Event: Record Crowd Steps Up for Parade." Toledo Blade. November 29, 1998, pg. A1.Vanessa Winans and David Patch. "Biggest Hit of the Day? Katie Holmes (And Her Mom)." Toledo Blade. November 29, 1998, pg. A11. Holmes was soon on the covers of magazines such as Seventeen, TV Guide, and Rolling Stone. Jancee Dunn, an editor at Rolling Stone, said she was chosen for the cover because "every time you mention Dawson's Creek you tend to get a lot of dolphin-like shrieks from teenage girls. The fact that she is drop-dead gorgeous didn't hurt either."Christopher Borrelli. "Toledoan Captures Coveted Cover of the Rolling Stone." Toledo Blade. August 27, 1998. Living Section, pg. 31.
During her time as a series regular on Dawson's Creek, Holmes's first leading role in a film came in 1998's Disturbing Behavior, a Scream-era Stepford Wives-goes-to-high school thriller, where she was a loner from the wrong side of the tracks. The film was recut from what the director intended. Roger Ebert, then of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote of her character, Rachel, "dresses in black and likes to strike poses on the beds of pickup trucks and is a bad girl who is in great danger of becoming a very good one."Stephen Holden. "Young Goody-Two-Shoes Who Basically Lack Souls." The New York Times, July 24, 1998, pg. E22. Despite the fact that it received mixed reviews and was not a huge financial success, the actress won a MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance for the role and also received a Saturn Award nomination for the part. Holmes, though, said the film was "just horrible." In 1999, she played a disaffected supermarket clerk in Doug Liman's ensemble piece Go. The film received excellent reviews and made a profit, and Holmes herself was liked by critics. The same year, in Kevin Williamson's Teaching Mrs. Tingle, which he wrote and directed, Holmes played a straight-A student whose vindictive teacher (Helen Mirren) threatens to keep her from a desperately needed scholarship. Also in 1999, she had an uncredited cameo with Dawson's Creek co-star Joshua Jackson in Muppets from Space, which was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina where Dawson's Creek also filmed.
The year 2000 saw Holmes feature in two film roles. The first was in Wonder Boys, directed by Curtis Hanson from the novel by Michael Chabon. The film told the story of a creative writing teacher at a university, with Michael Douglas in the leading role. Holmes had a small role (six and a half minutes of screen time) as Hannah Green, the talented student who lusts after Professor Grady Tripp (Douglas's character, who is her instructor and landlord). Many leading critics at the time took favorable notice to Holmes in the film. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said she was "just right as the beauty with kind of a crush on the old man."Kenneth Turan. "Ode to 'Wonder Boys,' Past, Present, Future", Los Angeles Times, February 23, 2000, pg. F1. Her second feature film during 2000 was The Gift, a Southern Gothic story directed by Sam Raimi and starring Cate Blanchett, she played the antithesis of Joey Potter: a promiscuous rich girl having affairs with everyone from a sociopathic wife-beater (Keanu Reeves) to the district attorney (Gary Cole), and is murdered by her fiancé (Greg Kinnear). Holmes did her first nude scene for the film, in a scene where her character was about to be murdered. Her appearance was lamented by Varietys Steven Kotler.Steven Kotler. "Is Sex Passe?", VLife (supplement to Variety), September 2003, pg. 48+ In Ohio, the scene met with disapproval from Russ Lemmon writing in the Toledo Blade.Russ Lemmon. "Career Move Possibly Less Than Wise", Toledo Blade, January 24, 2001, pg. D3.
Holmes hosted Saturday Night Live on February 24, 2001, participating in a send-up of Dawson's Creek where she falls madly in love with Chris Kattan's Mr. Peepers character and singing "Big Spender" from Sweet Charity. In the 2002 film Abandon, written by Oscar winner Stephen Gaghan, Holmes plays a delusional, homicidal college student named "Katie". Todd McCarthy of Variety and Roger Ebert commended her performance, but other critics savaged it.Todd McCarthy. "Subtlety is abandoned in routine thriller wrap-up". Variety. October 21, 2002. 33, 36. During the final season of Dawson's Creek, Holmes played the mistress of the public relations flack played by Colin Farrell in Phone Booth, which was both critically and financially successful. She also appeared as Robert Downey, Jr.'s nurse in The Singing Detective (2003). Dawson's Creek ended its run in 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.Nancy Mills. "A 'First' for Katie Daily News (New York). September 23, 2004. 45.
2003–2009: Focus on film career, brief hiatus, and theatre work