10 Actresses You Won’t Mind Your Daughters Looking Up To
Or future daughters…or girls you know…or sons…or cats…
In no particular order…
Angela Bassett
Education: B.A. African American Studies, Yale University; M.F.A. Yale School of Drama
Fluencies: English
Causes: Youth Arts Programs, UNICEF
Notable Awards and Accomplishments:
- UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador
- Full scholarship to Yale
- 1993, Golden Globe Award Winner – Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, What’s Love Got to Do With It
- 1994, Academy Award Nominee – Best Actress in a Leading Role, What’s Love Got to Do with It
- 2002, Emmy Nominee – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Mini-Series/Television Movie, The Rosa Parks Story
- 2008, Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
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Mira Sorvino
Education: B.A. (magna cum laude) East Asian Studies, Harvard University
Fluencies: English, Mandarin, French
Causes: Amnesty International
Notable Awards and Accomplishments:
- 1989, Hoopes Prize – For her thesis on racial conflict in China
- 1995, Academy Award Winner – Best Supporting Actress, Mighty Aphrodite
- Golden Globe Award Winner – Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, Mighty Aphrodite
- BAFTA Award Nominee – Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, Mighty Aphrodite
- Emmy & Golden Globe Award Nominee, Norma Jean & Marilyn
- Mirasorvone, a compound excreted by the sunburst diving beetle as a defensive mechanism, was named in her honor after she portrayed an entomologist in Mimic.
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Natalie Portman
Education: B.A. Psychology, Harvard University
Fluencies: English, Hebrew, French, Japanese, Arabic and German
Causes: Animal rights, the environment, FINCA International, Israel
Notable Awards and Accomplishments:
- 1998, High school paper A Simple Method To Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar was entered in the Intel Science Talent Search and published in Journal of Chemical Education
- 1998, Tony Nomination – Best Actress, The Diary of Anne Frank
- 2002, Co-authored – Frontal Lobe Activation During Object Permanence: Data from Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
- 2004, pursued graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- 2004, Golden Globe Winner – Best Supporting Actress, Closer
- 2004, Academy Award Nominee – Best Supporting Actress, Closer
- 2004, BAFTA Nominee – Best Supporting Actress, Closer
- 2006, she appeared as a guest lecturer at a Columbia University course in terrorism and counterterrorism
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Danica McKellar
Education: B.S. (summa cum laude) Mathematics, UCLA
Fluencies: English, French
Causes: Making math and science more accessible to young girls.
Notable Awards and Accomplishments:
- 1998, Co-Author – Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z²
- 2007, Author – Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail
- 2008, Author – Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who’s Boss
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Rachel Weisz
Education: Bachelors Degree in English, Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Fluencies: English, German
Causes: The Constant Gardener Trust, It’s Only Make Believe (bringing theater to hospitalized children), Pediatric Epilepsy Project
Notable Awards and Accomplishments:
- 2006, Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, The Constant Gardener
- 2006, Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, The Constant Gardener
- 2006, BAFTA Best Actress in a Leading Role, The Constant Gardener
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America Ferrera
Education: B.A. International Relations, USC
Fluencies: English, Spanish
Causes: Save the Children, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Cancer research, Peace Games, Smiles for Success (dental care for women trying to get off welfare)
Notable Awards and Accomplishments:
- 2007 Golden Globe Award Winner – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Comedy or Musical (Also nominated in 2008 and 2009), Ugly Betty
- 2007, Emmy Award Winner – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Also nominated in 2008 and 2009), Ugly Betty
- 2007 Time Magazine – 100 Most Influential People
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Lucy Liu
Education: B.A. Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan
Fluencies: English, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish and Japanese
Causes: International AIDS issues, human rights, UNICEF, breast cancer research
Notable Awards and Accomplishments:
- Graduated from New York’s Stuyvesant High School
- Plays the accordion
- Accomplished visual artist having shown in the US and Germany
- Won Grant to study art in China
- First Asian-American female to host Saturday Night Live
- 1999, Emmy Nomination – Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, Ally McBeal
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Julia Stiles
Education: B.A. English Literature, Columbia University
Fluencies: English, German, Spanish and some Italian
Causes: Habitat for Humanity, Amnesty International, children’s issues, Rock the Vote
Notable Awards and Accomplishments:
- Has built houses in Costa Rica for the underprivileged
- Board of Directors of Amend.org, a New York-based nonprofit that implements childhood injury prevention programs in Africa
- Made her directorial debut at 2007 Tribeca Film Festival with her short film Ravings
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Aisha Tyler
Education: B.S. Government with a minor in Environmental Policy, Dartmouth University
Fluencies: English, French, Russian and Swahili
Causes: Breast Cancer
Notable Awards and Accomplishments:
- 2004, Author – Swerve: A Guide to the Sweet Life for Postmodern Girls
- Plays on the World Poker Tour in the Hollywood Home games for the Childhelp USA charity
- Regular contributor to various magazines
- NAACP Image Award
Jodie Foster
Education: B.A. (magna cum laude) Literature, Yale University
Fluencies: English, French, German
Notable Awards and Accomplishments:
- Graduated from a French-speaking prep school and was class Valedictorian
- Founded her own production company before the age of 30
- Has an asteroid named in her honor
- Dubs the French versions of her movies herself
- It would take a couple days to list the awards Jodie Foster has won. Suffice it to say, she was first nominated for an Academy Award in 1976 at the age of 14 for her performance as Iris in Taxi Driver and has since won 2, one for The Accused and another for Silence of the Lambs, and has an arm load of other nominations.
How’d we do? Tomorrow we’ll bring you the 10 worst.