Rhona Mitra

British actress Rhona Mitra's rise to success was helped by two unlikely and dissimilar factors: a video game and an American teen drama. Born in London's Paddington district on August 9, 1976, Mitra was, by her own admission, a troubled adolescent who was expelled from two boarding schools and spent several years involved in London's club culture. In time, she developed an interest in acting and, deciding it was time to take a more serious approach to her life, enrolled in drama school. After one year in the three-year program, Mitra was convinced she knew enough to start looking for work, and began performing in regional theater. In 1997, after landing small roles in several British television shows, she was cast as Flora in a three-part television adaptation of Jilly Cooper's novel The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, and made her film debut the same year in a fantasy adventure for children, A Kid in Aladdin's Palace, in which she played Sheherazade. In 1998, Mitra's resemblance to Laura Croft, the heroine of the popular video game Tomb Raider, won her a job impersonating Croft at trade shows and gaming conventions in the U.K.; she spent most of the year as Croft, and even made an album in which she sang several songs as the character. That same year, Mitra found time to play a small role in the acclaimed British drama Croupier. In 1999, her career got a major boost in the United States when she was cast in the recurring role of Holly Beggins, a British student studying medicine in America, on the successful television series Party of Five. Mitra spent the better part of a year on the show, and in 2000, found herself moving up to portraying a full-fledged doctor, Dr. Ollie Klein, on the well-regarded medical drama Gideon's Grossing, which left the air in 2001. Mitra's television work helped raise her profile in the film industry, and she earned showy supporting roles in Hollow Man, Get Carter, and Sweet Home Alabama.