Michelle Monaghan

Michelle Monaghan started modeling on the side to pay for journalism tuition, when she eventually found herself heavily in demand and interrupting her studies to travel to Europe and Asia for modeling gigs, she dropped out of college her junior year, deciding to commit to modeling full-time. Moving to New York City, Monaghan posed for a variety of catalogs, magazines and clothing designers but had hopes of parlaying her position in front of the camera into a return to acting.

She landed a few minor parts in television, most notably on the short-lived WB series Young Americans in 2000 and NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2001. Her feature debut came with the indie Perfume in 2001 and was followed by a slightly showier and higher-profile role in director Adrian Lyne's romantic thriller, Unfaithful in 2002. Monaghan's big acting break came late in 2002, when she was added to the cast of David E. Kelley's Boston Public.

Monaghan returned to the silver screen in a series of high profile features, starting with It Runs in the Family opposite Michael Douglas, Winter Solstice, and the blockbuster smash The Bourne Supremacy. Monaghan was quickly spotted by Hollywood directors who cast her in high-profile films like the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie action-comedy, Mr. And Mrs. Smith and North Country, where she played one of Charlize Theron's female miner co-workers and fellow victim of sexual harassment.

In her first major leading role in a studio film, she played an actress opposite Robert Downey, Jr. and Val Kilmer in the action thriller Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which earned her critical notice with Best Supporting Actress nominations from the Saturn and Satellite Awards. The charismatic actress played for her largest audience yet when she co-starred opposite Tom Cruise in 2006's Mission: Impossible III. In another kidnapping thriller, Monaghan essayed a private detective on the trail of a missing child in Ben Affleck's acclaimed directorial debut, Gone, Baby, Gone.

The rising actress shifted to comedy for her next pair of projects and proved appealing in popular romantic comedies The Best of Me, The Heartbreak Kid and Made of Honor. In her first lead, Monaghan took the wheel to play a truck driver whose life is interrupted by the arrival of her 12-year-old son from the father who has raised him in the indie Trucker.

In 2014 Monaghan joined Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in the widely acclaimed first season of the HBO drama, True Detective.