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Ellen Whyte

Tom Cruise
Born:  July 3, 1962
Best-known roles: Maverick in Top Gun, Charlie in Rain Man, Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible
Estimated earnings: US$31 million
Tom Cruise's career started when he was chucked out of the school wrestling team because of an injury. He auditioned for a school play, won the lead role and liked it so much that he decided to become an actor.
His landed his first role when he was 19 and his career took off very quickly from there. By the time he was 21 he had starred in Risky Business, a hit that made him a star.
Most of  Cruise's films are blockbusters.  He made seven consecutive films that grossed more than US$100 million. Because of this he's been dubbed Hollywood's most powerful actor as well as one of the top five movie stars of all time.
However, if you check the celebrity magazines, their main focus is on Cruise's scepticism of psychiatry and his membership of the Scientology cult.
Drew Barrymore
Born:  February 22, 1975
Best-known roles: Gertie in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Casey in Scream, Dylan in Charlie's Angels
Estimated earnings: US$22 million
Drew Barrymore comes from a family who have been actors for more than 200 years. She landed her first acting job when she was 11 months old, working in a dog food commercial.
When she was six she got a role in ET, directed by  her godfather Steven Spielberg, and was instantly famous. Unfortunately she couldn't cope. She was  taking drugs and alcohol when she was only 13 and was sent to a rehabilitation centre. She recovered  and her career took off for the second time when she was 19 with hit films like Scream and The Wedding Singer.
This year she was voted number one in People's annual 100 Most Beautiful People and she is also an ambassador against hunger for the United Nations World Food Programme.
Matt Damon
Born: October 8, 1970
Best-known roles: Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr Ripley, Linus in Ocean's Eleven, John in All The Pretty Horses
Estimated earnings: US$27 million
Damon did very well at school, and went to Harvard. However, he kept sneaking off to take part in films like Mystic Pizza and Geronimo and eventually dropped out.
Together with his childhood friend Ben Affleck, he wrote and acted in the 1997 hit Good Will Hunting. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Since then he's worked in a string of hit films. He's also been hailed as the new James Bond for his role as Jason Bourne in the action-thriller trilogy, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.
Away from Hollywood,  Damon does a lot of charity work for groups, such as ONE Campaign and H2O Africa Foundation.
Jennifer Aniston
Born:  February 11, 1969
Best-known roles: Rachel Green in Friends, Grace in Bruce Almighty, Brooke in The Breakup
Estimated earnings: US$18.5 million
Jennifer Aniston was born in California, but spent part of her early childhood in Greece.
Her father was a well-known soap opera actor, and her godfather was actor Telly Savalas, the star of Kojak, a hard-hitting police drama series in the 1970s.
Aniston studied performing arts in college, worked in some theatre productions and then went to Hollywood. Although she found work, every project was short-lived or a failure.
She was considering giving up when she was offered a role on Friends. She played Rachel Green from 1994 to 2004, making US$1 million per episode for the last two seasons.
Not bad for someone who was considering packing it in not so long ago!
Sandra Bullock
Born:  July 26, 1964
Best-known roles: Annie in Speed, Lucy in While You Were Sleeping, Gracie in Miss Congeniality
Estimated earnings: US$10.5 million
Sandra Bullock was born in the US, but spent her childhood in Germany where her father worked for the US government.
Her father was a part-time vocal coach and her mother was an opera singer.  Bullock decided she wanted to act.
She took classes, worked in some small theatre productions and then landed a role in the film The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman when she was 25.
Her career took off when she was 29 with Demolition Man.  Since then she has been named one of the Most Beautiful People in the World, and won various acting awards.
She also runs her own production company Fortis Films.
fab fact!
Who Is The Best ROI (return on investment) Star? Forbes estimates Matt Damon is best value for money. For every US$1 he got paid for his past three films, investors got back US$29 of gross income. Jennifer Aniston is the best bet for female stars. Her past three films have returned US$17 of gross income for every US$1 she was paid.
compare!
He won't say how much he makes, but Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan's biggest local film Armour of God grossed HK$35 million. Recent hit Rush Hour III  grossed US$100 million in the US but only HK$3.5 million locally. Still, not a bad deal!
Build Your Vocab
When you're reading you don't always need to know every word to understand the  passage.  But do you remember new vocabulary when you come across it? Build your word power by finding appropriate synonyms for the following words and phrases in the text. Want an extra challenge? Try completing this exercise from memory first!
Honest, revealing, truthful
Handle, deal with
Having artificial body parts, especially electro-mechanical ones
Try-out, interview
Acclaim, praise
Answers
Hard-hitting
Cope
Bionic
Audition
Hail as



The world's hottest stars