Elegant Woman - Hilary Duff, American actress

Hilary Erhard Duff (born September 28, 1987) is an American actress, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur, and book author. After working in local theater plays and television commercials in her childhood, Duff gained fame playing the title role in the Disney Channel television series Lizzie McGuire. She subsequently has appeared in films, including The Lizzie McGuire Movie, Cheaper by the Dozen, A Cinderella Story and Cheaper by the Dozen 2.

As a singer, Duff released an RIAA-certified triple-platinum debut album, Metamorphosis. Her next two albums, Hilary Duff and Most Wanted, were certified platinum. Her 2007 album Dignity was certified gold and spawned her highest charting US single as of 2011, "With Love". Best of Hilary Duff, a greatest-hits compilation, was released in late 2008. Duff has sold over 13 million records worldwide. Billboard ranked her the 69th best selling artist of the 2000s.

Duff has also launched her own clothing lines, Stuff by Hilary Duff and Femme for DKNY Jeans, and signed with IMG Models. She has also released two perfume collections with Elizabeth Arden. Her other business ventures include writing a young adult novel, Elixir, and working as an executive producer for the film According to Greta and as a producer for the films Material Girls and Beauty & the Briefcase.

Hilary Erhard Duff was born on September 28, 1987 in Houston, Texas, to Susan Colleen (née Cobb), a homemaker, and Robert Erhard Duff, a partner in a chain of convenience stores. Duff has an elder sister, Haylie, who is also an actress and singer. Her mother encouraged her to enroll in acting classes alongside Haylie. Both girls won roles in local theatre productions. At the ages of six and eight, the two sisters participated in a BalletMet Columbus production of The Nutcracker Suite in San Antonio. The sisters became increasingly interested in acting professionally. Their mother moved with them to California, but their father stayed in Houston to maintain his business. Because she had been pursuing a professional acting career at such a young age, Duff was home-schooled. The sisters auditioned for several years and were cast in several television commercials.

Early in her acting career, Duff primarily played minor roles. In 1997, she appeared uncredited in the Hallmark Entertainment western miniseries True Women. The following year, she played an uncredited extra in an ensemble dramedy, Playing by Heart. Her first major role was a young witch, Wendy, in Casper Meets Wendy. The film, however, was released to mostly unenthusiastic reviews. In 1999, Duff appeared in a supporting role in the television film The Soul Collector, which was based on a Kathleen Kane novel. For her performance, Duff won a Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Movie or Pilot (Supporting Young Actress).

Elegant Woman - Julianne Hough, American Actress

Julianne Hough (born July 20, 1988) is an American professional ballroom dancer, country music singer and actress. She is most widely known for being a two-time winner of ABC's Dancing with the Stars. She earned a Creative Arts Primetime Emmy nomination in 2007 for choreography. ABC's 20/20 called her one of the "very best dancers on the planet." Hough's brother, Derek, is also on Dancing with the Stars and is a three-time winner himself. Hough was signed to Mercury Nashville Records in December 2007. Her self-titled debut album was released May 20, 2008, debuting at #1 on the Billboard Country Album chart and #3 on the Billboard 200. It sold 67,000 copies its first week, and has sold over 320,000 total copies. On October 12, 2008, she released a holiday album, Sounds of the Season: The Julianne Hough Holiday Collection, which as of January 5, 2009, had sold 157,000 copies. She is starring in her first major motion picture film remake of Footloose that is scheduled for release on October 14, 2011 in theaters.

Hough was born in Sandy, Utah. She grew up the last of five children in a Latter-day Saint (Mormon) family in Sandy, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. Her parents are Mari Anne (née Heaton) and Bruce Robert Hough, who was twice chairman of the Utah Republican Party. Her brother, Derek Hough, is also a professional dancer. She also has three older sisters, Sharee, Marabeth, and Katherine. All four of Hough's grandparents were dancers, and her parents met while on a ballroom dancing team in college, in Idaho.

Elegant Woman - Vanessa Hudgens, American actress and singer

Vanessa Anne Hudgens (born December 14, 1988) is an American actress and singer, who is best known for her portrayal of the character Gabriella Montez in the High School Musical series. She also earned critical acclaim for her role in the 2009 film Bandslam.

As an actress, Hudgens has appeared in several television programs including Quintuplets, Still Standing, The Brothers García, Drake & Josh, and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. She made her screen debut in the 2003 drama Thirteen as Noel. She got her first starring role in the 2004 science-fiction-adventure Thunderbirds as Tintin.

Hudgens' debut album V was released on September 26, 2006. The album entered the Billboard 200 at number twenty four, and was later certified Gold. Hudgens released her second album, Identified, on July 1, 2008 in the U.S.

Hudgens' fame has also been marked by scandal caused by the release of private, self-taken nude photographs of herself on the Internet without her permission on several occasions. Since a third and anonymous release of these images, the FBI is now investigating these leaked photos in an attempt to find the source in connection with similar investigations regarding such hackings around altogether about 50 Hollywood celebrities.

Hudgens was born in Salinas, California, and lived all over the West Coast — from Oregon to Southern California — with her parents, Gina (née Guangco), who held a succession of office jobs, and Gregory Hudgens, a firefighter. She was raised as a Roman Catholic and has a younger sister, Stella Hudgens, who is also an actress. Hudgens is of mixed cultural background, as her father is of Irish and Native American descent, and her mother, a native of Manila, is of Chinese-Filipino-Spanish descent. Two of her grandparents were musicians.

Elegant Woman - Katrina Bowden, American actress

Katrina Bowden (born September 19, 1988) is an American actress. She is known for her short role as Britney Jennings on One Life to Live (2006) and for her role as Cerie in 30 Rock (2006–present).

Bowden attended the now-defunct Saint Thomas More School in Midland Park, New Jersey, for her grammar and middle school education. She later attended Immaculate Heart Academy in Township of Washington, Bergen County, New Jersey.

In 2006 she signed on in a two episode-arc on the ABC daytime soap opera television series One Life to Live as Britney. She guest starred in an episode of Law & Order: SVU. She was also in Fall Out Boy's music video for "Dance, Dance".

In 2006 Bowden signed on in the NBC sitcom television series 30 Rock. She portrays the laid back, sexy assistant, Cerie. The series premiered October 11, 2006 and stars Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan. She signed on as a series regular in the second season.

In 2008 she starred in Summit Entertainment's Sex Drive in a supporting role as "Ms. Tasty", and had a supporting role in the 2009 horror movie The Shortcut. Bowden starred as the lead female role in the comedy-horror film Tucker & Dale vs Evil. In 2010 she guest starred in an episode of the ABC series Ugly Betty portraying Heather.

 

Elegant Woman - Paola Turbay Gómez, American actress

Paola Turbay Gómez (born November 29, 1970 in Houston, USA) is an American actress, model, and television presenter.

Turbay represented Bogotá in the Miss Colombia beauty pageant, which she won in 1991. She was the first runner-up in the 1992 Miss Universe competition.

After finishing her studies in psychology at the Universidad de los Andes, Turbay focused on her career as a model and presenter in entertainment news segments on Noticias QAP and Noticiero C newscasts, as well as an actress, with shows like Hola Paola ("Hello Paola") during the 1990s. In 2005 she was the official presenter, with Miguel Varoni, of the National Beauty Pageant. She has also made cameo appearances in several Colombian series like O todos en la cama, Ecomoda (sequel to Betty la fea) and Leche ("Milk").

After studying acting in Hollywood, Florida, Turbay became the main character of the RCN TV comedy Noticias calientes ("Hot News") in 2002. Two years later she would star the telenovela Las noches de Luciana ("The Nights of Luciana") and in 2006 would present the Colombian version of Dancing with the Stars, Bailando por un Sueño. Paola has also made brief appearances in films such as Lenny the Wonder Dog and Love in the Time of Cholera.

In 2007, Turbay played Isabel Vega on the CBS series Cane, which was canceled in May 2008 after only one season. In 2008 she has been participating as a recurring guest star on the ABC series The Secret Life of the American Teenager. She also guested on the Showtime series Californication (Season 2, ep. 8, "Going Down and Out in Beverly Hills") and had a recurring role as an LAPD detective during the fifth season of TNT's The Closer.

On Jan. 6, 2010, she played the role of Beatriz on the CBS series The Mentalist (Season 3, ep. 11, "Bloodsport").

Paola has been cast on the role of Antonia Gavilán for the fourth season of the HBO series True Blood airing in 2011.

 

Elegant Woman - Minka Kelly, American actress

Minka Dumont Kelly (born Minka Dumont Dufay; June 24, 1980) is an American actress. She starred in the NBC series Friday Night Lights as Lyla Garrity, the 2011 film The Roommate, and a reboot of the 1970s television series Charlie's Angels. She made several appearances in the first two seasons of Parenthood.

Kelly was born in Los Angele. She is the only child of former Aerosmith guitarist Rick Dufay and Maureen Dumont Kelly, an exotic dancer and single mother, and the granddaughter of actor and investment advisor Richard Ney. Kelly and her mother often moved to different communities, before settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico by the time Kelly was in junior high school .During a Craig Ferguson interview, she stated that she is of French descent on her father's side and Irish descent on her mother's side.

Elegant Woman - Michelle Williams (American actress)

Michelle Ingrid Williams (born September 9, 1980) is an American actress. After starting her career with television guest appearances in the early 1990s, Williams achieved recognition for her role as Jen Lindley on the WB television teen drama Dawson's Creek, from 1998 to 2003. Williams graduated to full-length features including Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, her first mainstream film, Dick (1999), a comedy, and Prozac Nation (2001), a biographical film adaption.

Since the 2000s, the actress mostly appeared in dramatic independent films. A career highlight for Williams was starring in 2005's controversial movie Brokeback Mountain, about a homosexual relationship in the 1960s. One of its eight Academy Award nominations was a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Williams. Brokeback Mountain was followed with I'm Not There (2007), Synecdoche, New York (2008) and Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010). Williams's performance as a drifter in 2008's Wendy and Lucy earned her critical praise and her work opposite Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine (2010) led to the actress receiving another Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actress. Upcoming films for Williams included playing Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn (2011) and the 2013 3-D Oz: The Great and Powerful.

Her relationship with actor and Brokeback Mountain co-star Heath Ledger remains the most high-profile of Williams's relationships since the 1990s. Before breaking up in 2007, they had one child together: a daughter named Matilda Rose, born October 28, 2005. After his death in January 2008, the media paid close attention to Williams and her daughter; the two were also frequently followed by paparazzi.

Williams was born on September 9, 1980, in Kalispell, Montana, the daughter of Carla Ingrid (née Swenson), a homemaker, and Larry Richard Williams, an author and stock and commodities trader. He was also a two-time Republican candidate for the United States senate. She is of Norwegian descent. Since a child, Williams kept to herself and was self-sufficient; as she has said, "I was really secretive with my parents and I think I sort of continued that... I found that by keeping to myself I got on OK. I don't know why." When Williams was nine, her family moved to San Diego, California, and, at an early age, she became interested in acting.