Heidi is a supermodel and know for hosting TV show Project Runway.
Heidi's career began when a friend persuaded her to enroll in a national modeling contest in Germany called "Model 92". Out of 25,000 contestants, Heidi was voted the winner on April 29, 1992 and offered a modeling contract worth US$300,000. Heidi accepted the contract a few months later after graduating from school.
Heidi has been on the cover of fashion magazines, including Vogue, ELLE and Marie Claire.
Heidi became well known after appearing on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and for her work with Victoria's Secret.
/>Heidi was a spokesmodel for McDonald's, Braun, H & M, and Liz Claiborne, among others.
Heidi is currently a celebrity spokesmodel for Jordache and Volkswagen.
In addition to modeling, she has appeared in several TV shows, including Spin City, Sex and the City, Yes, Dear, and How I Met Your Mother.
Heidi had a role as an ill-tempered hair model in the movie Blow Dry, played a giantess in the movie Ella Enchanted and was cast as Ursula Andress in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.
Heidi had cameo appearances in The Devil Wears Prada and Perfect Stranger.
In July 2007, having earned $8 million in the previous 12 months, Heidi was named by Forbes as third on the list of the World's 15 Top-Earning Supermodels.
In 2008, Forbes estimated her income at $14 million, putting Heidi in second place.
For 2009, Forbes estimated her income at $16 million.
Heidi is signed to IMG Models in New York City.
Project Runway season three finalist Laura Bennett interviewed Heidi and Seal at the 59th Emmy Awards.
Heidi received an Emmy Award nomination for Project Runway for each of the first four seasons.
Heidi is married to singer Seal.Ellen hosts the syndicated talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and is also a judge on American Idol, having joined the show in its ninth season.
Ellen has hosted both the Academy Awards and the Primetime Emmys.
As a film actress, Ellen starred in Mr. Wrong, appeared in EDtv and The Love Letter, and provided the voice of Dory in the Disney-Pixar's animated film Finding Nemo.
Ellen starred in two television sitcoms, Ellen from 1994 to 1998 and The Ellen Show from 2001 to 2002.
In 1997, during the fourth season of Ellen, she came out publicly as a lesbian in an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Shortly afterwards, Ellen's character Ellen Morgan also came out to a therapist played by Winfrey and the series went on to explore various LGBT issues as well as the coming out process.
Ellen has won twelve Emmys and numerous awards for her work and charitable efforts.
Ellen was raised as a Christian Scientist until the age of thirteen.
Ellen once worked as a waitress at TGI Friday's, a house painter, a hostess and a bartender.
Ellen originally started performing stand-up comedy at small clubs and coffeehouses. Ellen describes Woody Allen and Steve Martin as her main influences at this time.
Ellen was named Showtime's Funniest Person in America in 1982.P Diddy won three Grammy Awards and two MTV Video Music Awards, and his clothing line earned a Council of Fashion Designers of America award.
P Diddy was portrayed by Derek Luke in the biopic of The Notorious B.I.G.
P Diddy is one of the richest hip-hop performers, having a net worth estimated at US $346 million in 2006.
P Diddy has taken the roles of recording executive, performer, producer of MTV's Making the Band, writer, arranger, clothing designer, and Broadway actor.
P Diddy's business interests under the umbrella of Bad Boy Entertainment Worldwide include Bad Boy Records; the clothing lines Sean John; Sean by Sean Combs, a movie production company; and two restaurants.
In June 2008 Combs' representative denied rumors of another name change.
P Diddy was originally known as Puff Daddy.
When P Diddy was a child, his father, aged 33, an associate of Frank Lucas the New York drug lord, was shot dead in his car at a Manhattan park after attending a party.
On December 27, 1999, Combs and his then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez were at Club New York, a midtown Manhattan nightclub, when gunfire broke out.
In December 1999 P Diddy was accused of assaulting Steve Stoute of Interscope Records.
By the late 1990s P Diddy was receiving criticism for watering down and overly commercializing hip-hop and overusing guest appearances by other artists and samples of past hits in his own hit songs. The Onion parodied this phenomenon in a 1997 article called "New rap song samples Billie Jean in its entirety, adds nothing."
In his youth P Diddy played football at the Roman Catholic Mount Saint Michael Academy.
P Diddys was instrumental in developing Jodeci and signing and producing Mary J. Blige
P Diddy says he was given the nickname "Puff" as a child because he would "huff and puff" when he was angry, and "Daddy" was another version of "player."
P Diddy attended Howard University in Washington, DC, where he showed a penchant for marketing.
P Diddy has "fond memories" of his high school buddies, one of whom (the team quarterback) was Andrew Campos, a reputed Gambino crime family enforcer.
P Diddy is not alleged, either in court papers or by law enforcement sources, to have engaged in any wrongdoing in any of his dealings with Campos.Donald is the Chairman and CEO of the Donald Trump Organization, a US-based real-estate developer.
Donald's extravagant lifestyle and outspoken manner have made him a celebrity for years, a status amplified by the success of his NBC reality show, The Apprentice (where he serves as host and executive producer).
Donald was the fourth of five children of Fred Donald, a wealthy real estate developer based in New York City.
Donald was strongly influenced by his father in his eventual goals to make a career in real estate development./>Donald started with the renovation of the Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt with the Pritzker family, he continued with Donald Tower in New York City and several other residential projects.
Donald would later expand into the airline industry (buying the Eastern Shuttle routes), and Atlantic City casino business, including buying the Taj Mahal Casino from the Crosby family, then taking it nto bankruptcy.
Much of the news about Donald in the early 1990s involved his much publicized financial problems, creditor-led bailout, extramarital affair with Marla Maples, and the resulting divorce from his first wife, Ivana Trump. The late 1990s saw a resurgence in his financial situation and fame.
In 2001, he completed Donald World Tower, a 72-story residential tower across from the United Nations.
Donald currently owns several million square feet of prime Manhattan real estate, and remains a major figure in the field of real estate in the United States.
In 2003, Donald became the executive producer and host of the NBC reality show, The Apprentice, in which a group of competitors battled for a high-level management job in one of Donald's commercial enterprises.Fefe's self-titled debut album earned her two Juno Award nominations.
Fefe's second album, Sunday Love, was not released due to the album's singles failure to chart, and she was then dropped from her record label.
Fefe's subsequent studio album, Joy, is scheduled for release in March 2010.
Fefe has Irish, Dutch, Native Canadian, English and Jamaican heritage.
Fefe comes from the same neighborhood that Mike Myers and Jim Carrey were raised.
Fefe's has admitted that her mixed heritage caused her to be bullied as a child.
Fefe began sending out demo tapes - recorded on a home karaoke machine - to every label in North America when she was 11 years old.
At the age of 13, Fefe started playing the piano, with influences ranging from Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, to Cyndi Lauper and Silverchair.
Fefe has said that John Lennon and Judy Garland are her primary musical influences, and that her biggest musical inspiration growing up was Michael Jackson.
Before Fefe was signed, she admitted to being stereotyped as contemporary R&B or pop singer instead of a rock musician due to her race, often being compared to Brandy and Britney Spears.Salma's charitable work includes increasing awareness on violence against women and discrimination against immigrants.
Salma is the first Mexican national to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Salma is one of the most prominent Mexican figures in Hollywood since the silent film era.o.
Salma is also, after Fernanda Montenegro, the second of three Latin American actresses (the other being Catalina Sandino Moreno) to achieve a Best Actress Oscar nomination.
In July 2007, The Hollywood Reporter ranked Salma fourth in their inaugural Latino Power 50, a list of the most powerful members of the Hollywood Latino community.
According to a poll, "65 percent of the .S. population would use the term 'sexy' to describe Salma".
In Deceber 2008, Entertainment Weekly ranked Salma number 17 in their list of the "25 Smartest People in TV."
Salma's first name, Salma, is Arabic for "safe".
Salma has been was diagnosed with dyslexia.
Salma was an accomplished gymnast aspiring to compete in the Olympics, but her father prevented her from being recruited by the Mexican national team.
Robert Rodriguez and his producer wife Elizabeth Avellan gave Salma the break she needed, starring in a role opposite Antonio Banderas in 1995's Desperado.
The movie caught Hollywood's attention, as moviegoers proved to be as dazzled by Salma as Rodriguez had been.
Due to Salma's loyalty to the director, she would later decline playing the role Catherine Zeta-Jones eventually took in The Mask of Zorro after Rodriguez abandoned the project.Joy is known as an American comedian, writer, actress, and a co-host of the talk show The View.
Joy began hosting her own news and commentary program in the fall of 2009, titled The Joy Behar Show on CNN's sister network, HLN.
Joy's mother, Rose, was a seamstress, and her father, Gino Occhiuto, was a truck driver.
Joy and her partner, Steve Janowitz, whom she refers to as her "spousal equivalent," have been together since the mid-1980s.
On March 17, 2009, Joy announced that she might eventually marry Steve, but that the probability is small.
Joy holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from Queens College, and a Master of Arts degree in English education from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Joy resides in Manhattan.
Following years as a stand-up comedian (particularly in New York) and WABC radio talk show host, Joy became one of the original cast members of Barbara Walters's ABC television creation, The View, in 1997.
Originally, Joy appeared only on the days when Walters was away from the show; soon Joy became a regular co-host.
Joy often hosts a segment called "Joy's Comedy Corner" in which she presents up-and-coming comedians.
Star Jones, former co-host on The View, and Joy had well-publicized disputes. On March 27, 2006, Star Jones called in to the show to discuss a recent operation that she had undergone. After talking with the show's co-hosts, Joy abruptly stated to Jones, "OK, Star. That's enough about you.
In August 2009 Joy, alongside her co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joyrri Joypherd, Barbara Walters and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, won the 36th Annual Daytime Emmy award. It follows over a decade of nominations for The View.
Joy has appeared in a number of films including Cookie and This Is My Life.
Joy fulfilled a lifelong dream of acting in a movie with Woody Allen when she appeared in Manhattan Murder Mystery.
Joy has also made theater appearances in The Food Chain and The Vagina Monologues.A self-proclaimed "D-list celebrity", Kathy first gained recognition for appearances on two episodes of Seinfeld, and then for her supporting role on the NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan.
Kathy is now the star of the Bravo reality show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, for which she won two Emmy Awards as executive producer.
Kathy has also worked as a voice artist and red carpet commentator, in addition to several other career pursuits.
In 2008 she was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.
Kathy made a cameo appearance in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction.
Kathy has appeared on the show Ugly Betty as a fashion channel reporter.
Kathy also has a secondary career in voiceover work, and has been featured on a variety of projects such as the animated series Dilbert and Spider-Man: The New Animated Series.
Kathy's TV production company is called Inappropriate Laughter, a reference to her sometimes shocking form of humor.
While Kathy paints herself as a Hollywood outsider, she has a group of close celebrity friends such as Rosie O'Donnell, Joan Rivers, Jerry Seinfeld, Brooke Shields, Gloria Estefan, Whoopi Goldberg, Jennifer Coolidge, Larry David, and Ricky Gervais.John first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease.
John has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The first, for his role in Saturday Night Fever and the second for Pulp Fiction.
John won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in Get Shorty.
John's father, was a semi-professional football player turned tire salesman. .
John's mother who was 42 when John was born, was an actress and singer before becoming a high school drama and English teacher.
At age 24, John became one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.
John performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album, which eventually went on to sell more than 10 million copies.
John turned down, lead roles in the box office hits American Gigolo, Flashdance, An Officer and a Gentleman, Splash and Fatal Attraction.
John pursued flying and eventually earned his license to command aircraft.
It was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Johnny is best known as the co-creator and principal star of the MTV series Jackass and its subsequent films.
Johnny credits a copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road given to him by his cousin, country singer/songwriter Roger Alan Wade, with giving him the acting bug.
After graduating, Johnny moved to California to become an actor, first appeared in commercials and as an extra.
Johnny attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on a scholarship, but dropped out within after weeks.
Johnny's idea to test self-defense equipment on himself was picked up by the Jeff Tremaine-helmed skateboarding magazine Big Brother, and the stunts were filmed and included in Big Brother's Number Two video. This eventually led to Jackass the series.
Johnny has appeared in a number of films including the Dukes of Hazzard, The Ringer, A Dirty Shame, Men in Black II, Lords of Dogtown and Coyote Ugly.
Johnny featured as a guest voice on an episode of King of the Hill.
Johnny tore his urethra during a stunt for Nitro Circus. He now has to flush it twice daily by sticking a tube into his penis all the way up to his bladder (10?11 inches) to prevented scar tissue from forming.Kevin gained critical acclaim in the early 1990s, culminating in his first Academy Award for The Usual Suspects (Best Supporting Actor), followed by a Best Actor Academy Award win for American Beauty (1999).
Kevin's other starring roles in Hollywood include Seven, L.A. Confidential, Pay It Forward, and Superman Returns in a career which has eventually earned him Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
Since 2003, he has been artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London.
Kevin attended Northridge Military Academy from which he was expelled.
At Chatsworth High, Kevin starred in the school's senior production of The Sound of Music, playing the part of Captain George von Trapp.
Kevin tried to succeed as a stand up comedian for several years, before attending the Juilliard School in New York City, where he studied drama, between 1979 and 1981. During this time period, Kevin performed stand up comedy in bowling alley talent contests.
Kevin's father was unconvinced that Kevin could make a career for himself as an actor, and did not change his mind until Kevin became a well known theatre actor.
Kevin appeared in the 1995 thriller film Seven, with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, making a sudden and unexpected entrance late in the film as the serial killer John Doe, after going unmentioned in the film's ads and opening credits.
Kevin made his directorial debut with the film Albino Alligator (1996). The film was a failure at the box office, grossing $339,379 with a budget of $6 million, but critics praised Kevin's direction.
Kevin won universal praise and a Best Actor Oscar for his role as a depressed suburban father who re-evaluates his life in 1999's American Beauty; the same year, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Khloe is best known for her appearances on Keeping Up with the Kardashian's and Kourtney and Khloé Take Miami.
Khloe has two sisters, Kourtney and Kim, two half sisters, Kendall and Kylie Jenner, and a younger brother, Rob. Khloe also has three stepbrothers, Burt, Brandon, and Brody Jenner, and one stepsister, Casey Jenner.
As seen on Keeping Up with the Kardashian's, Khloé co-owns and operates D-A-S-H, a clothing boutique in Calabasas, California and Miami with her sisters Kourtney and Kim.
On November 12, 2007 Khloe was arrested for driving under the influence. It was suggested that Khloe's actions were the result of her difficulties coping with the anniversary of her father's death.
On July 18, 2008, Khloe reported to jail to serve time for violation of probation for her DUI incident. Khloe was released from jail less than three hours later due to overcrowding.
After one month of dating, Khloe and NBA Los Angeles Lakers star Lamar Odom announced their engagement.
On September 27, 2009, Khloe and Odom were married.
Khloe wed in a Vera Wang dress before a crowd consisting of 250 people.The pair were married at the Bel Air estate of music mogul Irving Azoff.
In April 2009, Kourtney and Khloé announced that they were contracted to star in their own reality TV spin-off, which followed their move to launch a Dash store in Miami, Florida.
The series, Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami, debuted on E! on August 16, 2009 at 10 PM.
Khloe appeared in one of PETA's "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" campaigns.Bruce's career began in television in the 1980s famously in the series Moonlighting.
Bruce is well known for his role as John McClane in the Die Hard series, which were critical and financial successes.
Bruce has also appeared in over sixty films, including Pulp Fiction, Sin City, 12 Monkeys, Armageddon, and The Sixth Sense.
Motion pictures featuring Bruce have grossed US$ 2.55 to US$ 3.05 billion at North American box offices, making him the seventh highest-grossing actor in a leading role.
Bruce was married to actress Demi Moore and they had three daughters, before their divorce in 2000 after thirteen years of marriage.
Bruce is a two-time Emmy Award-winning, Golden Globe Award-winning, and four-time Saturn Award-nominated actor.
Bruce attended Penns Grove High School in his hometown, where he encountered issues with his stutter.
Bruce used to be hatefully nicknamed Buck-Buck by his schoolmates.
After high school, Bruce took a job as a security guard at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant and also transported work crews at the DuPont Chambers Works factory in Deepwater, New Jersey. Bruce quit after a colleague was killed on the job, and became a regular at several bars.
After a stint as a private investigator (a role he would play in the television series Moonlighting as well as in the 1991 film, The Last Boy Scout), Bruce returned to acting.
In addition to starring roles in big budget Hollywood films, he has long been heavily involved in films produced by independent producers and art houses.
Christian first caught the public eye when he was cast in the starring role of Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun at the age of 13, playing an English boy who is separated from his parents and subsequently finds himself lost in a Japanese internment camp
Christian is especially noted for his cult following: the tenth anniversary issue of Entertainment Weekly hailed him as one of the "Top 8 Most Powerful Cult Figures of the Past Decade", citing his cult status on the Internet.
Christian was once labeled one of the "Most Creative People in Entertainment".
After leaving Wales in 1976, Christian spent his childhood in several countries, including England, Portugal and the United States.
As a child, Christian participated actively in rugby union.
Christian had his first kiss was with an acrobat named Barta.
As a child, he trained in ballet and guitar.
Christian's sister Louise's work in theatre influenced his decision to become an actor.
Christian's father was married feminist icon Gloria Steinem.
Christian's first foray into acting was a commercial for the fabric softener Lenor in 1982, when he was eight years old.
Christian was recommended by actress Winona Ryder to star in Gillian Armstrong's 1994 film Little Women.
Equilibrium was Christian's third film of 2002, costing US$20 million to produce but earning just over US$5 million worldwide.In Equilibrium, Christian played John Preston, an elite law enforcer in a dystopian society. Equilibrium featured a fictional martial art called Gun Kata that combined gunfighting with hand-to-hand combat. According to moviebodycounts.com, the character of John Preston has the third most on-screen kills in a single movie ever with 118, exactly half of the movie's total of 236.
2004 After a year's hiatus, Christian returned in 2004 to play Trevor Reznik, the title character in the psychological thriller The Machinist. Christian gained attention for his devotion to the role and for the lengths to which he went to achieve Reznik's emaciated, skeletal appearance.
In 2004, after completing filming for The Machinist, Christian won the coveted role of Batman and his alter ego Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, a reboot of the Batman film series. Still fresh off The Machinist, it became necessary for Christian to bulk up to match Batman's muscular physique.Kenny has recorded 13 albums, 11 of which have been certified gold or higher by the RIAA.
Kenny has produced more than 30 Top Ten singles on the U.S.
Kenny has received six ACM (including four consecutive Entertainer of the Year Awards), as well as six CMA awards.
Kenny is one of the most popular touring acts in country music, regularly selling out the venues at which he performs; his 2007 Flip-Flop Summer Tour was the highest-grossing country road trip of 2007.
Kenny was awarded his 4th consecutive ACM Entertainer of the Year award on May 18, 2008.
Kenny's mother Karen, was, and still is, a hair stylist in the Knoxville area.
Kenny was raised in Luttrell, Tennessee, and attended Gibbs High School, where he was a receiver on the football team, and graduated in 1986.
Kenny first tried to learn guitar at age 5 but quit because "it hurt his fingers."
Kenny graduated from East Tennessee State University with a degree in advertising.Two of his albums, The Gambler and Kenny, are featured in the About.com poll of "The 200 Most Influential Country Albums Ever".
Kenny was voted the "Favorite Singer of All-Time" in a 1986 joint poll by readers of both USA Today and People.
Kenny has received hundreds of awards for both his music and charity work.
These include AMAs, Grammys, ACMs and CMAs, as well as a lifetime achievement award for a career spanning six decades in 2003.
The first single from the album, "I Can't Unlove You," was also a chart hit.
Remaining a popular entertainer around the world, the following year he completed a tour of the United Kingdom and the Ireland telling BBC Radio 2 DJ Steve Wright, his favorite hit of his was "The Gambler".
Kenny has also acted in a variety of movies and television shows, most notably the title roles in "Kenny Kenny as The Gambler" and the MacShayne series.
As of 2009, Kenny lives in Nicholson, Georgia.
Kenny graduated from Jefferson Davis High School in Houston.
Kenny has been married five times.
As of 2005, Kenny has become an avid Atlanta Thrashers fan, and can often be seen at Philips Arena taking in a game.
Mary has sold more than forty eight million albums worldwide.
Mary has received many Grammy Award nominations for her work, winning ten, and has been awarded the World Music Legends Award for combining hip hop and soul together.
Mary's vocal range registers from alto to mezzo-soprano, but mostly performs in the mezzo-soprano range.
Mary cites Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin and Chaka Khan as three of the most influential vocalists in her life.
Mary is the second of four children born to parents Cora (a nurse), and Thomas Blige (a jazz musician).
Mary was taught to sing by her father.
Mary spent her early years in Savannah, Georgia, where she sang in a Pentecostal church.
Mary dropped out of school in eleventh grade.
When she was 17, Blige recorded an impromptu cover of Anita Baker's "Caught Up In the Rapture" at a recording booth in the Galleria Mall in White Plains, New York. It was sent it to the president and CEO of the label, Andre Harrell who then met Mary and in 1989, she was signed to the label; becoming the company's youngest and first female artist.
Mary occasionally did session work as a background singer for her label mates.
Mary's first national debut appearance was in the summer of 1992 when she appeared on MTV.
After the success of What's the 411, Sean "Puffy" Combs hailed the singer as "the queen of hip-hop soul", a title that she has since retained.Nathan is best known for his lead role as Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the television series Firefly and its film continuation, Serenity.
Nathan has the current lead role as Richard Castle on the ABC series Castle.
Nathan acted in the soap opera One Life to Live as Joey Buchanan, for which he was nominated in 1996 for a Daytime Emmy Award in the "Outstanding Younger Actor" category.
Nathan played a supporting role in the sitcom Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place and was cast as "James Fredrick Ryan" or "The Minnesota Ryan" in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.
Nathan played Caleb in the final season of Whedon's series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Nathan considered his time on Firefly to be the most fun he had on a television series.
Nathan has made one appearance in the 2006-2007 season of Lost, as Kevin, Kate's ex-husband.
Nathan joined the cast of Desperate Housewives as Dr. Adam Mayfair, a gynecologist.
Nathan lent his voice to the animated series King of the Hill in 2001.
Nathan plays the voice of a Marine Sergeant in the Xbox 360 game Halo 3.Nicole is the adopted daughter of soul singer Lionel Richie, and is best known for her role in the reality television series The Simple Life, alongside fellow socialite Paris Hilton.
On the reality show Nicole and Paris tried various jobs included farm workers, mermaids in an underwater show, hotel maids, sausage makers, crawfishers, working for a baseball team, working in a beauty salon, and working on a cattle ranch.
Nicole studied Arts and Media for two years at the University of Arizona.
Nicole met Paris in 1986, when she started kindergarten at The Buckley School in Nicolerman Oaks, California.
Nicole's godfathers are Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones.
Nicole has one godmother, Nancy Davis, daughter of Marvin Davis and mother of Brandon Davis.
Nicole was legally adopted by the Lionel Richie when she was nine.
When she was three years old, Nicole began attending weekly sessions with a psychotherapist and remained in therapy throughout her childhood.
In an interview with Ryan Seacrest in November 2005, Nicole stated that she doesn't publicly identify her birth parents "for confidentiality reasons," and that they were friends of Lionel Richie and his wife Brenda before her birth.The son of director Stephen Gyllenhall and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Jake began acting at age ten.
Jake has appeared in diverse roles since his first lead role in 1999's October Sky, followed by the 2001 indie cult hit Donnie Darko, in which he played a psychologically troubled teen and onscreen brother to his real-life sister, actress Maggie Gyllenhall.
In the 2004 blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow he portrayed a student caught in a cataclysmic global cooling event, alongside Dennis Quaid as his father.
Jake then played against type as a frustrated Marine in Jarhead (2005).
The same year, he won critical acclaim as Jack Twist in the film Brokeback Mountain opposite Heath Ledger.
Jake has become an activist, promoting various political and social causes.
Jake appeared in Rock the Vote advertising, campaigned for the Democratic Party in the 2004 election, and promoted environmental causes and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Jake's Bar Mitzvah celebration took place at a homeless shelter because his parents wanted to instill in him a sense of gratitude for his privileged lifestyle.
Jake worked as a lifeguard, and as a busboy at a restaurant operated by a family friend in his youth.
As an 11-year-old he made his acting debut as Billy Crystal's son in the 1991 comedy film City Slickers.
Jake attended Columbia University, where his sister was a senior and from which his mother had graduated, to study Eastern religions and philosophy. Jake dropped out after two years to concentrate on acting, but has expressed intentions to eventually finish his degree.