Jaime King

Jaime King (born April 23, 1979) is an American actress and model. In her modeling career and early film roles, she used the names Jamie King and James King, which was a childhood nickname given to King by her parents, because her agency already represented another Jaime—the older, then-more famous model Jaime Rishar. A successful model, King was discovered at age 14 in 1993 and appeared in Vogue, Mademoiselle and Harper's Bazaar, among other fashion magazines. From 1998, she moved into acting, taking small film roles. Her first major role was in Pearl Harbor (2001) and her first starring movie role was in Bulletproof Monk (2003). She has since appeared as a lead in other films, such as Sin City (2005) and My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009) and, from 2011 to 2015, starred in the television series Hart of Dixie. She also voiced the role of Aurra Sing on Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Early life King was born in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Nancy King, a former beauty queen, and Robert King. She has an older sister Sandi, a younger sister Barry and a younger brother Robert (Robbie). King was named after Lindsay Wagner's character, Jaime Sommers, on the 1970s television series The Bionic Woman. King's parents separated in 1994. King had attended Nancy Bounds' Studios, a modeling school, and in 1995 dropped out of Westside High School in order to pursue a modeling career in New York. She later enrolled in a home-study program run by the University of Nebraska. Modeling career She was discovered in November 1993, at age fourteen, while attending Nancy Bounds' Studios. After being spotted at her graduation fashion show by model agent Michael Flutie, King was invited to New York City to begin modeling professionally. She joined Company Management, which already represented Jaime Rishar, a more established model. To avoid confusion, King opted to use her childhood nickname, James, for the duration of her modeling career and later, at the beginning of her film career. In March 1994 she traveled to New York for test pictures and received enthusiastic responses, however, she did not return to New York until July 1994, after gaining a successful advertisement for Abercrombie & Fitch. Much of fall and spring 1994 were spent commuting between Omaha and New York. King had a successful early career as a fashion model, and by age fifteen she had been featured in the fashion magazines Vogue, Mademoiselle, Allure, and Seventeen. At sixteen, King had graced the pages of Glamour and Harper's Bazaar. She was featured in the cover story of the New York Times Magazine published on February 4, 1996 and had walked the runway for Chanel and Christian Dior. In 1998, she began co-hosting MTV's fashion series, House of Style, with fellow model turned actress Rebecca Romijn. Despite her success, King noted that she "remember[s] the times where I was so alone" and thought she was "never gonna be able to be a kid." Acting career In 1999, King began her acting career and made her debut in the Daniel Waters' comedy Happy Campers, as Pixel. Happy Campers was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001, and in 2003, King was nominated for Best Actress at the DVD Exclusive Awards. Filmed in 1999, she also appeared in Filter's music video for "Take a Picture". Following her debut acting roles, King appeared briefly in the film Blow, portraying the adult Kristina Jung, daughter of cocaine smuggler George Jung (portrayed by Johnny Depp). King made her first appearance in a large Hollywood production with her role as the seventeen-year-old nurse, Betty, in the World War II epic romance Pearl Harbor (2001). Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine commented that King "has a lively minute or two" in the film, but her part was small and the "young cast is mostly pinup packaging". King went on to be featured in the Incubus music video "Wish You Were Here". The roles King took part in during 2001 garnered her the "New Stylemaker" title at the Young Hollywood Awards. In 2002, she appeared in the teen comedy Slackers as Angela Patton, Four Faces of God as Sam, and the crime comedy Lone Star State of Mind as Baby. Slackers received negative responses from critics, including one who found that the characters "are not so strikingly original as to elevate the slack material", while Four Faces of God and Lone Star State of Mind did not have wide theatrical releases. 2003 saw King in the film Bulletproof Monk, alongside Chow Yun-fat and Seann William Scott, an adaptation of a comic book by Michael Avon Oeming. After five auditions, a screen test, and a physical test, she landed the role of Jade, a character skilled in martial arts. This was King's first leading action film role. Bulletproof Monk received mostly negative reviews from critics, who cited that the fight scenes were not as well choreographed or directed as those other genre films, and that the alternating comedic and action scenes were jarring. Regardless, Bulletproof Monk was nominated for Choice Movie in a Drama/Action Adventure award at the Teen Choice Awards. Breakthrough In 2005, King appeared in a variety of film and television roles. She first appeared in the independent black comedy and satire Pretty Persuasion, playing a small role as Kathy Joyce, the stepmother of Evan Rachel Wood's character. King landed dual roles (as twins) in the film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel Sin City. She had met with director Robert Rodriguez, who was a fan of her work, and at the time King was unaware that Rodriguez wanted her involved in the film. Eventually, "we started reading [the Sin City graphic novel], and it was really fun". King portrayed Goldie and Wendy, the twin prostitutes in charge of the girls of Old Town, in the segment The Hard Goodbye opposite Mickey Rourke. Sin City featured a large ensemble cast of well-known actors which included Rosario Dawson and Jessica Alba, with whom King "kinda grew up together" in New York. Sin City had opened to wide critical and commercial success, gathering particular recognition for the film's unique coloring process, which rendered most of the film in black and white but retained coloring for select objects; King was one of the few in the black and white film to have color, that being, red lips and blonde hair when acting as Goldie. The film was screened at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival in-competition and won the Technical Grand Prize for the film's "visual shaping." The family comedy Cheaper by the Dozen 2 featured King as Anne Murtaugh in another large ensemble cast. She also acted in the Al Pacino drama Two for the Money as Alexandria. Both films had negative critical and box office reception. Personal life During her first job modeling, King began using heroin and had an addiction to the drug from age fourteen to nineteen. In 1997, her boyfriend, 20-year-old fashion photographer Davide Sorrenti, had died from what was thought to be a kidney ailment brought on by excessive heroin use. Following his death, King became sober, and went to rehabilitation at age nineteen for her addictions to both heroin and alcohol. She briefly dated Kid Rock at the age of 21. She also dated Seann William Scott. In January 2005, while working on the set of Fanboys, she met future husband Kyle Newman, the film's director. Within three months of dating, the two moved in together. Newman proposed in spring 2007, and the two married on November 23, 2007 in an "intimate and relaxed" ceremony in Los Angeles at Greystone Park and Manor, where Newman had proposed. King told InStyle magazine, "I want at least three children." On May 3, 2013 it was announced that King and her husband were expecting their first child. Their son, James Knight Newman was born October 6, 2013, weighing 7 lbs. 2oz. In 2014, she revealed her struggles with endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome, which led to infertility. King suffered five miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy prior to her first successful pregnancy. In February 2015, King announced she was pregnant with the couple's second child. Taylor Swift will be the child's godmother.