Profile: Katie Holmes

In the US, the eight-hour show was relegated to an obscure cable network after the History Channel refused to broadcast it. Members of the Kennedy clan were reportedly unhappy with the screenplay and historians disputed the storyline. One British critic summed it up as a "soapy biopic with a nice sideline in fairly unashamed muck-raking".

Holmes' performance got mixed reviews. The Times praised her acting skills, while Newsweek claimed she lacked "the gravitas to pull off the role" and the Hollywood Reporter suggested the actress struggled to capture the former first lady's accent.

"I worked as hard as I could, because I loved her," Holmes said. But her hard work was not enough to pull in viewers or to salvage her own once-promising career.

Holmes is only 32, but her detractors say her best years are behind her. The former star of television teen drama Dawson's Creek looked set for a long and lucrative career when she appeared in films such as The Ice Storm, Pieces Of April and Batman Begins. But that was before Holmes became Mrs Tom Cruise, undoubtedly her most contentious and high-profile role to date.

Since marrying Cruise in 2006, the fresh-faced Catholic girl from the Midwest has been the subject of fevered speculation. Is her relationship with Cruise a marriage of convenience? Has she been forced to convert to scientology? Is she on drugs? Is she estranged from her family in Ohio?

The arrival of the couple's daughter, Suri, generated yet more interest, especially when the baby did not appear in public for almost five months. Now Suri, who will be five this month, is one of the most photographed children in the world, not least because she dresses like a fashion victim, complete with make-up and kitten heels.

Holmes is aware of the speculation surrounding her family but rarely acknowledges it. "It's there, it's one of these things," she told New York magazine last year. "It is weird. I get it. But you just, you know, smile and nod."

Before meeting Cruise, Holmes was best known for playing clever but vulnerable Joey Potter in Dawson's Creek, the popular drama about a group of unusually articulate teenagers growing up in rural North Carolina. Holmes was invited to read for the part by the show's creator, Kevin Williamson, during the spring break of her senior year at high school but couldn't make it to Los Angeles. Instead she shot a video in her basement with her mother reading Dawson's lines in the script. Williamson cast her because "she had those eyes, those eyes just stained with loneliness".

Dawson's Creek ran from 1998 to 2003, during which time Holmes lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, where filming took place, and fell in love for the first time, with co-star Joshua Jackson. When the series ended, Holmes said of Joey: "I miss her spirit and her spunk and I miss her anxiety. She always had these long speeches about her fears and her future and love. It was a great tool for me personally. So much of me is in Joey and it really felt like I grew up on television."

Afterwards Holmes moved to Los Angeles to pursue a film career. She didn't go after big-budget movies, preferring smaller productions such as Go and Thank You For Smoking, which didn't make much money but won critical acclaim. Colleagues praised her intelligence, her beauty and her professionalism. "She's the most honest person I've met in this business. She was brought up right," said Peter Hedges who directed her in Pieces Of April.

In 2005, Holmes was introduced to Tom Cruise, an actor whose poster had been stuck on her childhood bedroom wall. Cruise, who had split up with Penelope Cruz the previous year, was smitten and declared his love for Holmes by jumping up and down on a sofa during an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Two months later he proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower and made the engagement public at a press conference attended by Holmes' mother.

Among the stories that circulated at the time was the claim that Cruise's people paid Holmes to be his girlfriend and that she signed a business contract to become his wife. It was reported that Holmes was forced by her husband to join the scientology movement, against the wishes of her family, and that she was brainwashed. But Holmes ignored the clamour of disapproval. "I have found the man of my dreams," she said. "From the moment I met him it just felt like I'd known him forever."

Katie Noelle Holmes was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1978, the youngest of five children. Her mother brought up the family and her father was a divorce lawyer. A straight-A student at the all-girls Notre Dame Academy, she knew from an early age that she wanted to act, appearing in several school musicals. "I knew that I wanted to be in this business so I did everything I could to get here," she said.

But when she was accepted at the prestigious Columbia University in New York her parents encouraged her to further her education.

Holmes spent a summer at Columbia, took classes at a modelling school in her spare time and found an agent. Her agent got her an audition for Ang Lee's film The Ice Storm, where she was cast as Libbets Casey.

Lee said: "Katie had the perfect amount of innocence and worldliness that we needed for Libbets."

Holmes made the film and never went back to Columbia. Six months later she was working on Dawson's Creek. "I went from graduating high school one June to having everyone know who I was by January."

Wherever she goes, Holmes is under scrutiny, but she doesn't let it get her down. "I feel really, really lucky," she has said. "I feel the best response is just going about my life, enjoying life, making movies, being a good mom and good wife. Because if you're doing well, what can they say?"

Facts of life

• Holmes' appearance on the 100th edition of So You Think You Can Dance made it one of the most watched television shows of 2009.

• In 2010, Holmes began designing clothes with her stylist, Jeanne Yang. The Holmes & Yang collection is sold in Barneys, New York.

• Holmes wouldn't travel to Los Angeles to audition for her part in Dawson's Creek because she was rehearsing for her school production of Damn Yankees and didn't want to let her classmates down.

• As a schoolgirl, Holmes was a cheerleader, a straight-A student and pledged to remain a virgin until she married.

• Holmes' character Joey Potter in Dawson's Creek was named after Jo in Little Women.

• After marrying Cruise, in the 15th century Odescalchi Castle in Italy, Holmes was reportedly assigned a scientology chaperone, Jessica Rodriguez, who accompanied her to interviews and acted as her spokeswoman.