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Anna Kay Faris (born November 29, 1976) is an American actress best known for her leading role as Cindy Campbell in the Scary Movie films. When Anna Faris' college roommate first saw Faris in her breakthrough role in "Scary Movie," the ex-roomie called the actress in surprise and told her "That's so weird that you were cast, because you are not funny." Hollywood has continually disagreed with that assessment, casting Faris in several projects where her comedic skills—subtle or, if Faris is to be believed, even unintentional--were allowed to shine. Faris was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Karen and Jack Faris, having Scottish, Irish, English, German, and French ancestry. She has a brother, Bob, and grew up in Edmonds, Washington, north of Seattle. Her parents encouraged her to pursue acting when she was young and she gave her first professional acting performance at age nine at the Seattle Repertory Theater. After attending Edmonds Woodway High School, she studied English literature at the University of Washington. An actress and performer since age six, the naturally blond, Seattle-bred beauty began her acting career in the independent horror feature, "Lover's Lane." In 2000, she received her breakout role as the hapless Cindy Campbell in the Wayans Brothers' horror spoof feature "Scary Movie". It was during the filming of "Scary Movie" that Faris decided to dye her blond tresses to black in an attempt to make her character look more like Neve Campbell and Jennifer Love Hewitt in the "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" features, the already-self-aware slasher hits "Scary Movie" was primarily parodying. The consistently amusing, often crude but good-natured spoof was a surprise hit--with much deserved credit going to Faris for her vanity-less performance (an admiring Hewitt sent her a bouquet of roses after seeing the film)—and the actress returned again under director Keenan Ivory Wayans' guidance for the lesser 2001 sequel "Scary Movie 2" and its 2003 non-Wayans follow-up, "Scary Movie 3" (with her clueless character promoted to the full lead and parodied Courteney Cox rather than Campbell). Her first significant film role was in the independent production Lovers Lane (1999). Her breakout role was the horror film parody Scary Movie (2000). The 5'5" Faris is a natural blonde, but dyed her hair black for the filming of Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2 so that her character more closely resembled Neve Campbell, who played the equivalent character in Scream, one of the films that Scary Movie was parodying. Faris' performance in the low-brow Rob Schneider comedy "The Hot Chick" (2002) was also singled out as one of the film's few redeeming features, and she bowled critics and audiences over with her brief but potently hilarious supporting turn as the vacuous actress Kelly, who visits Japan in director Sophia Coppola's "Lost In Translation" (2003). Faris admitted to basing her improved, empty-headed performance on a real-life Hollywood actress, but emphatically denied much-circulated Internet rumors that Cameron Diaz was her inspiration. While hoping to avoid Hollywood flavor of the month labels and explore more challenging and dramatic indie fare, the actress also shrewdly took on another major comedic role with much mainstream exposure when she was cast in a three-episode stint during the final season of "Friends" in 2003-2004, playing the birth mother of the baby Monica and Chandler plan to adopt. In the low-budget comedy “Waiting” (2005), Faris played a seductive waitress at a restaurant full of misfits, including two cooks (Luis Guzman and Dane Cook) who do disgusting things to the food, a waiter (Ryan Reynolds) whose only care in life is partying, a dishwasher (Chi McBride) who likes to wax philosophical and another waiter (Justin Long) who hates his dead-end job. Faris gained further popularity after becoming recurring character Erica in the final season of the popular American sitcom Friends. She also was in the critically acclaimed film Lost in Translation—in which she plays an actress promoting the fictional action movie Midnight Velocity. Faris was in the film Waiting... with Ryan Reynolds and Justin Long. In 2005, she appeared again with Reynolds in Just Friends, playing a supporting role as a pop-diva singer named Samantha James. Faris's role as the motor mouthed LaShawn Malone in Brokeback Mountain (2005) brought her to the attention of a much wider audience, her character being parodied by fans of the movie on the internet. Weeks after the release of “Waiting,” she reunited with Reynolds in "Just Friends" (2005) for another brilliantly funny out-there character, the spoiled socialite, diva and magazine pin-up girl Samantha James, whom formerly fat Reynolds is charged with turning into a pop-singing sensation just as he's reunited with the high school best pal (Amy Smart) he's pined for all his life. She then had a brief but scene-stealing turn as the too-chatty Southern trophy wife LaShawn in director Ang Lee's award winning and much ballyhooed "Brokeback Mountain" (2005). She next revived the clueless Cindy Campbell for the inevitable sequel, “Scary Movie 4” (2006). Faris starred with Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson in the feature film My Super Ex-Girlfriend, released on July 21, 2006. She is currently in production on the comedy Kids in America, playing Topher Grace's twin sister, in addition to her upcoming films Mama's Boy with Jeff Daniels and Diane Keaton, and Smiley Face with Adam Brody and John Cho. As of 2007, she was producing I Know What Boys Like, a film with Happy Madison Productions about a retired Playboy bunny. In the summer 2007 season of HBO's Entourage, Faris guest-starred as herself. In 2004, Faris married actor Ben Indra, whom she met while working on Lovers Lane and whom she had dated since 1999. She filed for divorce on April 3, 2007, citing irreconcilable differences. Anna Faris won the "Stonette of the Year" award at High Times Magazine's Stony Awards in Los Angeles on October 13, 2007. |
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