SARAH JESSICA PARKER

Date of Birth: March 25, 1965

"What makes a real movie star is when you give the audience exactly what they want. Like with Woody Allen. We expect something from him, we enjoy it and want more of it. And I will never achieve that because that's my great fear—being the same."

Sarah Jessica Parker is not your average sex symbol. But she's become just that, thanks to roles ranging from the L.A. bubblehead in L.A. Story to the Manhattan sex columnist observing her friends' foibles in the TV series Sex and the City. Would you believe that there was once a time when directors didn't think Parker was pretty?

The Ohio native is the youngest of four children. Her father left home when Parker was a year old; two years later her mother married again, and eventually there were four more children.

As a child, Parker's focus was art. She studied ballet and acting at the College Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, and appeared in many performances. At the age of eight, she won the lead to NBC's TV adaptation of The Little Match Girl.

When she and her brother won roles in a Broadway play in 1976, the whole family picked up and moved to New York City to support the children's new profession. She continued to get parts, eventually becoming the third actress to star as Annie on Broadway after performing as one of the orphans in the musical Annie.

Parker stayed on to do Annie from ages 12 to 14, and then kept right on working. In the process, she chose to give up ballet, though by now she was dancing with the prestigious American Ballet Theater.

In 1982 she landed a starring role on the sitcom Square Pegs. Relocating to Los Angeles, the series only lasted for a year, so Parker found other projects. Her smile popped up regularly in film and TV and on stage.

When Steve Martin cast her in L.A. Story in 1991, Hollywood suddenly realized that the comedienne could also be a sexy woman. Her career blossomed, with such films as Honeymoon in Vegas, Ed Wood and The First Wives' Club.

Then came HBO's Sex in the City, in which Parker starred as one of four single women negotiating life, love and sex in Manhattan. She won an Emmy and four Golden Globes for Best Performance by an Actress in a Comedy Series and returned to her role in the big screen version, Sex and the City: The Movie (2008).

Parker has been married to longtime love Matthew Broderick since May 1997. Their son, James Wilke Broderick, was born on October 28, 2002 in Manhattan. In 2009 they had twin daughters via a surrogate mother.