Jessica Biel Biography:

Jessica Biel shot to sexy celebrity status as the nourishing preacher's daughter on the WB television show "7th Heaven", then received greater notoriety for trying to get herself thrown off the show by using  a sexually explicit photo spread in the men's magazine Gear. Making such comments as, "Mary Camden is dead," the 17-year-old Jessica Biel indeed got out of her contract to chase a movie and acting career; when that failed, she - amusingly - found herself re-thinking her quick decision and returned for guest appearances on the program.

Biel was born on March 3, 1982, in Ely, MN, then raised in Boulder, CO. She was first discovered at the 1994 IMTA Los Angeles Convention, which gained her a scholarship to Diane Hardin's Young Actors Space in Los Angeles. Young teen girl type print modeling and advertising work followed, and in 1996, Biel started her role as Mary Camden on the Aaron Spelling-produced "7th Heaven" starring young teen heart-throb David Gallagher. Shortly thereafter, she was hired and cast as Peter Fonda's granddaughter in Victor Nunez's rich character study, "Ulee's Gold" (1997) about a reclusive beekeeper who slowly pulls his dysfunctional family back together, but not without having to fight his son's previous dastardly cohorts. Then Biel played Jonathan Taylor Thomas' love interest in "I'll Be Home for Christmas" (1998) about a college student that experiences difficulty getting home for Christmas after being hazed by his friends.

It was clear that Jessica Biel had grown tired of playing "the good girl" on television and tried to make the producers fire her from "7th Heaven", claiming her unspoiled image was a reason that kept her from getting the role that went to Thora Birch in "American Beauty" (1999). When the producers would not discharge her from her contract, she posed on the cover of the March 2000 Gear under the headline "Fallen Angel." The images inside featured her sprawled topless and naked on a bed, and next to a bathroom mirror, her hands giving insufficient cover in a way that pushed even Gear's laidback standards for showing breasts. The issue become one of Gear's most popular ever, with terrific resale value on E-bay as surfers searched for naked pictures of Biel, and finally got her fired from the show.

However, the debate and publicity did not at once improve her film career. Biel's first post-Gear role was as a bikini wearing sexy teen in the Freddie Prinze Jr. baseball movie "Summer Catch" (2001), a comedy-romance about a rich girl whose family summers on Cape Cod and has a romance with a local poor boy who hopes to become a major league baseball player. The film scarcely made a splash at the box office after being moved from its initial release date. 

Biel has since been making guest appearances in her original Mary Camden role, and was cast in director Roger Avary's "The Rules of Attraction" (2002) about the incredibly spoiled and over privileged students of Camden College and the backdrop for an unusual love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate. 

An unfortunate shortcut on the back roads of Texas found Biel and friends chased by one of the silver screen's most famous killers in the 2003 remake "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and then supporting roles in David R. Ellis's powerful "Cellular" (2004) with Kim Basinger, about a young man who receives an emergency phone call on his cell phone from an older woman. The catch? The woman claims to have been kidnapped; and the kidnappers have targeted her husband and child next. 

Next up was the vampire slaying Wesley Snipes action fantasy "Blade: Trinity" (2004) doing well to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. Next was the action adventure science fiction thriller "Stealth" (2005) starring Jamie Foxx about a man deeply ensconced in a top-secret military program, where three pilots struggle to bring an artificial intelligence program under control before it initiates the next world war. Next was the smash hit and star studded film by "Almost Famous" director Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown" (2005), this was Biel's first chance to work with such an esteemed cast including the likes of Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon and Alec Baldwin.

In 2006, Biel ventured back in time to become the source of a distinctly supernatural mystery as the ill-fated love interest of a Vienna magician played by Edward Norton in director Neil Burger's "The Illusionist" (2006) .

Biel started 2007 at a low point, as the romantic lead in the end-of-the-world science fiction thriller "NEXT" starring Nicolas Cage about a Las Vegas magician who can see into the future and is pursued by FBI agents seeking to use his abilities to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack. The film failed at the box office, bringing in only $15 million worldwide in its first week.

The actress next switched genres, introducing her comic abilities to audiences in the comedy "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" (2007). The Universal Studios charade stars Adam Sandler and Kevin James as, respectively, Chuck Levine and Larry Valentine - two straight masculine firefighters who pose as gay husbands to qualify for domestic partner benefits. Biel plays the film's romantic lead; as the attorney who represents the two men against the insurance company, with whom Sandler falls in love.

2008 started a new era for Jessica Biel, as she emerged from the early criticism and began to look like a true movie star and sexy celebrity. She started the year with "Hole In The Paper Sky" (2008) about a brilliant, sneering math genius who is inexplicably drawn into an unusual friendship with a doomed laboratory dog. Next was the drama "Powder Blue" (2008) starring Forest Whitaker, Patrick Swayze and Ray Liotta. Biel then moved into a comedy-romance role as Larita in "Easy Virtue" (2009), the tale of an American divorcée who meets her new in-laws after tying the knot with a young Englishman on the spur of the moment in France. 

Next for Jessica Biel was a move to animation and comedy adventure with "Planet 51" (2009), about how the inhabitants of Planet 51 live in fear of alien invasion. Their paranoia is realized when an astronaut arrives from Earth. Befriended by a young resident, he has to avoid capture in order to recover his spaceship and try to return home. Scheduled for release in 2009 is the comedy "Nailed" with James Marsden and Jake Gyllenhaal, about a small town waitress who gets a nail accidentally lodged in her head causing unpredictable behavior that leads her to Washington, DC, where sparks fly when she meets a clueless young senator who takes up her cause.

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