Katie Holmes, born in the northwestern Ohio city of Toledo, is the youngest of the five children (four daughters, one son) of Kathleen and Martin Joseph Holmes, Sr. (born 1945), an attorney specializing in divorces. (Among his clients was Thomas Noe of the Coingate scandal.)


She lived in the Corey Woods section of Sylvania Township, Lucas County, in a brick 1862 Italianate home with a white picket fence. Her siblings are Tamara (born circa 1968), Holly (born circa 1970), Martin (born 1970), and Nancy (born circa 1975). Holmes, a Roman Catholic, attended Christ the King Church and parochial schools in Toledo. Her high school was the all-female Notre Dame Academy, her mother's alma mater, and where Katie was a 4.0 student.




Holmes was in school musicals, playing a waiter in Hello, Dolly and Lola in Damn Yankees. She scored 1310 on her SATs and was accepted to Columbia University. Her father wanted her to be a doctor. Holmes loved reading. "I never feel lonely in a bookstore," she said. A British writer profiling her in 2003 said "The way Holmes approached her unusual education was as American as apple pie: she went to cheerleading practice, got straight A grades, and made a pledge that she would remain a virgin until marriage." Holmes told The Blade her favorite film was Pretty in Pink with Molly Ringwald and the three people she most wanted to meet were Pope John Paul II, Senator John H. Glenn, and actress Meryl Streep. She confessed her "secret vices" were Starbucks coffee and jelly beans and the three words best describing herself as "honest, determined, and imaginative."

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At fourteen, she began classes at a modeling school in Toledo run by Margaret O'Brien, who took her to New York City in 1996 to a talent expo. There she found an agent after performing a monologue from To Kill a Mockingbird. An audition tape was sent to the casting director for the film The Ice Storm (1997), directed by Ang Lee. She was cast in a small role, Libbets Casey, in the film which starred Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. Ang Lee told Holmes's hometown paper, The Blade, "Katie was cast because she had the perfect amount of innocence and worldliness that we needed for Libbets. I was really taken by her wide open eyes. She really is a beautiful girl but there is also a lot of intelligence there and it shows."




In January 1997, Holmes went to Los Angeles for pilot season, when producers cast and shoot new programs in the hopes of securing a spot on a network schedule. The Blade reported she was offered the lead in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but turned it down. Columbia Tri-Star Television, producer of a new show 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 to 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.'"


The producers permitted her to audition on videotape. Holmes read for the part of Joey Potter, the tomboyish best friend of the title character in Dawson's Creek, on a videotape shot in her basement, her mother reading Dawson's lines in a scene where the dialogue included talk of sex and masturbation. 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."



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!". 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." Williamson thought she had exactly the right look for Joey Potter. "She had those eyes, those eyes just stained with loneliness."