Devon Aoki

Aoki was born in New York City, and grew up in California and London, attending highschool at The American School in London. Her Japanese American father, Rocky Aoki, a former Olympic wrestler, was the owner and founder of the Benihana restaurant chain until his death on July 10, 2008. Her mother, Pamela Hilburger, is a jewelry designer of German and English heritage.

Aoki was discovered in New York at a Rancid concert she had gatecrashed. She started modeling when she was 13, the same year Aoki was introduced by her godmother to Kate Moss, who would later take the young Devon under her wing. Moss pushed for Aoki to be signed, and she was signed onto Storm Model Management at age 14.

Aoki has modeled for the fashion houses Lancôme, Chanel, and Versace. Aoki is 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m)— an almost unheard of height for runway models, who are usually at least 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m) height.Aoki has done ad campaigns for Chanel Ready to Wear, Chanel Couture by Karl Lagerfeld, Versace by Steven Meisel, YSL by Juergen Teller, Alessandro Del Aqua, Hugo Boss, Moschino, Ungaro, Fendi, Junko Shimada by Bettina Kimenda and Baby Phat by Kimora Lee Simmons.

Early on in her career Aoki made cameo appearances in several music videos, including Duran Duran's "Electric Barbarella", Primal Scream's "Kowalski" (with Kate Moss), Elton John's "Something About the Way You Look Tonight", Ginuwine's "In Those Jeans" video and, later, in Ludacris' "Act a Fool". Music from this video was featured in the soundtrack of 2 Fast 2 Furious, which Ludacris and Aoki both appeared in. In 2006, she made an appearance in The Killers' video "Bones". Aoki has also made a cameo appearance in the short films accompanying the new Sean Lennon album, Friendly Fire.

Aoki has been on the cover of I-D magazine three times. She was also the face of Lancome cosmetics for four years. Aoki posed for renowned Singaporean photographer Leslie Kee for Kee's 2006 charity photo-book "Super Stars", dedicated to the victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami disaster, which consists of photographs of 300 Asian celebrities by Kee. The same year, Aoki posed for photographer Marc Baptiste’s book Nudes, but she has stated that she was wearing a dress:

Hilary Duff

Hilary Duff Gallery

Hilary Erhard Duff is an American actress, pop singer, songwriter and entrepreneur. After gaining fame for playing the title role in the television show Lizzie McGuire, Duff went on to have a film career; her most commercially successful movies include Cheaper by the Dozen, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, and A Cinderella Story.

Duff has expanded her repertoire into pop music, with four RIAA certified-platinum albums and over thirteen million albums sold worldwide.Her first studio album, Metamorphosis , was certified triple platinum and she followed it up with two more platinum albums, Hilary Duff and Most Wanted. Duff's last studio album, Dignity, was released in April 2007 and was certified Gold in August 2007.

She has also launched a clothing line, "Stuff by Hilary Duff", and two exclusive perfume collections with Elizabeth Arden. Duff and her mother were listed as producers for the movie Material Girls,As of April 2008, her upcoming films include the action thriller War, Inc., animated comedy Foodfight! and independent films Greta and Safety Glass.

Duff was born in Houston, Texas on September 28, 1987.She is the second child of Susan Colleen, a homemaker and film producer, and husband Robert Erhard Duff, a partner in a chain of convenience stores, who resides at the family home in Houston to maintain the family's convenience store business. She has an elder sister, Haylie Duff, who is also an actress/singer. Duff's mother encouraged Hilary to take up acting classes alongside her elder sister, Haylie, which resulted in both girls winning roles in various local theater productions. At the ages of eight and six, respectively, the Duff sisters participated in the ballet, The Nutcracker Suite with Columbus BalletMet in San Antonio.The siblings became more enthusiastic about the idea of choosing acting as a profession, and eventually relocated to California with their mother. Duff's father stayed at the family home in Houston to take care of their business.After several years of auditions and meetings, the Duff sisters were cast in various television commercials.

Duff's early career was marked by playing minor roles, starting off with an uncredited appearance in Hallmark Entertainment's western miniseries True Women in 1997. She also served as an uncredited extra, in writer-director Willard Carroll's ensemble dramedy Playing by Heart in 1998. Her first major role was as a star of the 1998 film Casper Meets Wendy, a direct-to-video sequel to Casper in which she plays the young witch Wendy, who encounters the animated character Casper. The film was released to mostly unenthusiastic reviews.

In 1999, Duff appeared in a supporting role in the television film The Soul Collector, which was, based on a Kathleen Kane novel and starred Bruce Greenwood and Melissa Gilbert. Duff won a Young Artist Award for "Best Performance in a TV Movie or Pilot (Supporting Young Actress)" for her role in the movie.


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Ayumi Hamasaki

Ayumi Hamasaki

Ayumi Hamasaki born October 2, 1978, is a Japanese singer-songwriter and former actress.Also known as "Ayu" to her fans, Hamasaki has been dubbed the "Empress of pop" or "the Empress of J-Pop" due to her popularity and widespread influence in Japan.Born and raised in Fukuoka, Hamasaki moved to Tokyo at the age of fourteen to pursue a career in entertainment. In 1998, Hamasaki, under the tutelage of Avex CEO Max Matsuura, released a string of modestly performing singles that concluded with her 1999 debut album A Song for XX. The album debuted atop the Oricon charts (Japan's primary music charts, similar to the Billboard charts) and held that position for four weeks in a row, establishing Hamasaki's popularity in Japan.

Since her 1998 debut with the single "Poker Face", she has sold around 50 million records, making her one of Japan's best-selling singers.With the release of her thirty-ninth single, "Startin'/Born to Be...", in 2006, Hamasaki became Japan's female solo artist with the most number-one singles. In addition, the release of Hamasaki's 2008 single "Mirrorcle World" made Hamasaki the only Japanese female artist to have a number-one single every year for ten consecutive years.She is also the first Japanese artist to have her first original eight studio albums top the Oricon charts,as well as the Japanese female artist with the most number-one singles, most Top 10 singles, highest singles sales, and most million-seller singles (this record for most million-seller singles is shared with band Pink Lady and fellow J-pop singers Namie Amuro and Hikaru Utada.

Hamasaki began her modeling career at the age of seven, modeling locally for institutions such as banks to earn money for the family. At the age of fourteen, she moved from Fukuoka to Tokyo to take various modeling stints as well as acting jobs in such productions as television dramas like Miseinen and b-movies like Gakko II and Ladys Ladys!! Soucho Saigo no Hi. She did not meet with much success in these endeavors: she was deemed by her talent agency as too short to be a model, and the projects she acted in were not well-received by the general public.Although Hamasaki originally got good grades, she eventually decided that the subjects she was taking were of no use to her; consequently, her grades dropped drastically and she became a delinquent.

As her modeling and acting endeavors met with little success, Hamasaki's talent agency decided to repackage her as a singer; her first professional musical endeavors were in the rap scene. Nothing from Nothing, her first album, was released in December 1995 under the Nippon Columbia label. When the album failed to chart on the Oricon, the label dropped her.Shortly afterwards, Hamasaki left high school; with no job, she spent much of her time shopping at Shibuya boutiques and dancing at Velfarre, an Avex-owned disco club.

At Velfarre, Hamasaki was introduced to her future producer, Max Matsuura, through a mutual friend. Matsuura offered Hamasaki a recording deal immediately after hearing her sing, but Hamasaki suspected Matsuura of ulterior motives and turned the offer down.Nonetheless, Matsuura persisted in offering her a contract until the following year, when Hamasaki finally signed on to the Avex label and began taking vocal training.Finding the instructors too rigid and the classes too dull, however,Hamasaki skipped most of her classes. When she confessed to Matsuura that she had skipped the classes, he sent her to New York for training. While there, Hamasaki corresponded with Matsuura who, impressed with her writing, suggested she try writing her own lyrics.

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Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie is an American film actor and a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. She is often cited by popular media as one of the world's most beautiful women and her off-screen life is widely reported.[1] She has received three Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award.

Though she made her screen debut as a child alongside her father Jon Voight in the 1982 film Lookin' to Get Out, Jolie's acting career began in earnest a decade later with the low budget production Cyborg 2. Her first leading role in a major film was in Hackers. She starred in the critically acclaimed biographical films George Wallace and Gia , and won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Girl, Interrupted . Jolie achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of videogame heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and since then has established herself as one of the best-known and highest-paid actresses in Hollywood.She had her biggest commercial success with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie currently lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship that has attracted worldwide media attention.Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, as well as a biological daughter, Shiloh. Jolie has promoted humanitarian causes throughout the world, and is noted for her work with refugees through UNHCR.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. Jolie is the niece of Chip Taylor, sister of James Haven and the god-daughter of Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father's side, she is of Slovak and German descent,and on her mother's side she is French Canadian and is said to be part Iroquois,although Voight once claimed Bertrand is "not seriously Iroquois," and they merely said it to enhance his ex-wife's exotic background.

After her parents' separation in 1976, Jolie and her brother were raised by their mother, who abandoned her acting ambitions and moved with them to Palisades, New York.As a child Jolie regularly saw movies with her mother and later explained that this had inspired her interest in acting; she had not been influenced by her father.When she was 11, the family moved back to Los Angeles and Jolie decided she wanted to act and enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she trained for two years and appeared in several stage productions. She later recalled her time as a student at Beverly Hills High School (later Moreno High School), and her feeling of isolation among the children of some of the area's more affluent families. Jolie's mother survived on a more modest income, and Jolie often wore second-hand clothes. She was teased by other students who also targeted her for her distinctive features, for being extremely thin, and for wearing glasses and braces.

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Alicia Keys

Alicia Keys

Alicia J. Augello-Cook better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American R&B, soul and neo soul singer-songwriter, pianist and actress, who has sold over 25 million albums worldwide as of 2007,and has won numerous awards, including eleven Grammy Awards, seventeen Billboard Music Awards, three American Music Awards, and fourteen NAACP Image Awards.

Keys was born in the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem, in New York City, New York, to Teresa "Terria" Augello, a paralegal and part-time actress, and Craig Cook, a flight attendant. Keys' mother is of Irish and Italian descent, and her father is Jamaican. Keys describes herself as comfortable with her biracial heritage : "I grew up in New York, and thank God, I never had to go through that in regards to, 'You're not black enough, you're not white enough,' the whole kind of white/black-mixture thing. I never had to go through that. I went through prejudices and all, surely. But I never had to battle with those two parts of me."

Keys' parents separated during her early childhood, and she was subsequently raised by her mother during her formative years in Hell's Kitchen, also in Manhattan. In 1985, Keys and a group of other girls played the parts of Rudy Huxtable's sleepover guests in an episode of The Cosby Show called "Slumber Party".She began playing the piano when she was seven, learning classical music by composers such as Beethoven, Mozart, and her favorite, Chopin.Keys almost chose Wilde as her stage name at age sixteen until her manager suggested the name Keys after a dream he had. Keys felt that name represented her both as a performer and person.

Keys graduated from the Professional Performing Arts School, a prestigious high school in Manhattan, as valedictorian at the age of sixteen in only three years. Although accepted to Columbia University with a partial scholarship,she decided to drop out and pursue her musical career. Keys signed a demo deal with Jermaine Dupri and his So So Def label, then distributed by Columbia Records. She co-wrote and recorded a song entitled "Dah Dee Dah (Sexy Thing)", which appeared on the soundtrack to the 1997 blockbuster, Men in Black. The song was Keys' first professional recording; however, it was never released as a single and her record contract with Columbia Records ended quickly. Keys later met Clive Davis, who signed her to Arista Records, which has since disbanded. Following Davis to his newly formed J Records label, she recorded the songs "Rock wit U" and "Rear View Mirror", featured on the soundtracks to the films Shaft (2000) and Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001) respectively. Keys then released her debut album, Songs in A Minor.

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Ali Landry

Ali Landry


Ali Germaine Landry was on born July 21, 1973.She is a former Miss USA (1996), model and actress. She is recognized as the Doritos Girl from her popular 1998 Super Bowl commercial. In 1998, she was named by People magazine as one of 50 most beautiful people in the world.

Landry grew up in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. This southern region of Louisiana is referred to as "Acadiana," the heart of Cajun country. Landry is of French and Spanish descent.She graduated from Cecilia High School in 1991. She attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana now University of Louisiana-Lafayette and was majoring in Mass Communications. She is an alumna of Kappa Delta Sorority.

Her first foray into pageantry came in 1990 when she was crowned Miss Louisiana Teen USA. The pageant is directed by RPM Productions. She represented Louisiana in the Miss Teen USA 1990 pageant held in Biloxi, Mississippi in July 1990, where she placed first in the preliminary swimsuit and evening gown competitions, but was ranked seventh during the final competition and couldn't reach the final 6.

In 1995, Landry won the Miss Louisiana USA 1996 title, becoming the first former Miss Louisiana Teen USA to win the Miss title. She went on to compete in the 1996 Miss USA pageant, which was broadcast live from South Padre Island, Texas in February 1996 — she placed third highest after the preliminary competition and second highest on average during the final Top 10 competiton. She was the highest placed of the Top 6 finalists and eventually went on to win the 1996 title.

She is the first former Miss Teen USA delegate to actually win the Miss USA crown (her predecessor Shanna Moakler, previously Miss Rhode Island Teen USA, Miss New York USA and first runner-up to Miss USA Chelsi Smith, only inherited the title after Smith became Miss Universe).

Landry went on to compete in the 1996 Miss Universe pageant held in Las Vegas in May that year. She placed first in the preliminary competiton and was ranked second in the evening gown and interview events during the final competition. She was second going in to the next round of six delegates, but was eliminated after the judges' questions.

Until 1999, Landry was the only former Miss Teen USA delegate to compete at Miss Universe. Her record at all three pageants was not surpassed until 2000 when Miss USA 2000, Lynnette Cole made the top 5 at all three pageants.

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