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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Katie Holmes was born December 18, 1978 and is an American actress best known for her role as Joey Potter, a character on The WB television drama Dawson's Creek.

Katie Holmes

The part on the teen soap, only her second professional role, made Holmes a star, with the actress receiving tremendous praise from critics, and adoration from fans. Holmes’s movie roles have ranged from art films such as Pieces of April to thrillers such as Abandon, but she has not found the same success in films as she did on television, the actress admitting most of her films were "bombs."


Weeks after ending a four-year relationship and year-long engagement with actor Chris Klein, Holmes began a highly publicized relationship with actor Tom Cruise in 2005. In June, two months after they first met, she became engaged to Cruise. Their relationship has made Holmes the subject of international press attention, much of it highly negative, with the press speculating the relationship was only a publicity stunt to promote the couple's films. Many reports commented unfavorably about the interest of Holmes, a Roman Catholic, in Cruise's religion (Scientology). In October 2005, the couple announced Holmes was pregnant.