Saturday, March 7, 2009

Who is Carla Gugino?

Who is Carla Gugino? The world knows her as an American actress known for her roles of Ingrid Cortez in the Spy Kids film trilogy, and as the lead characters of the television series Karen Sisco and Threshold.

Gugino was born August 29, 1971 in Sarasota, Florida, of Italian, English, and Irish ancestry.[1][2] Her parents separated when she was two.[3] Her father, Carl Gugino, is an orthodontist. Her mother moved the family to Paradise, California, when she was four years old. Despite moving around California a great deal as a child, Carla Gugino remained a straight-A student and graduated valedictorian. At the age of 15 she was spotted by a modeling agency in San Diego and moved to New York. This was unusual as at only 5 feet 4 inches (1.65 m) tall, she was considered too short for catwalk work. Finding the experience too much, Gugino moved back to California that summer. Partly at the suggestion of her aunt, game show model Carol Merrill, she subsequently studied acting.[4]

Gugino has starred in many films including art-house film Lovelife along with Saffron Burrows

and Sherilyn Fenn,

Snake Eyes

with Nicolas Cage

(1998),

Judas Kiss

(which she also co-produced, 1998), the three Spy Kids films,

Son in Law,

The One with Jet Li,

and Sin City.

Her most recent roles came in box office hits such as Night at the Museum (2006)

and American Gangster (2007).

She played Ashley Schaeffer in the first season of the Michael J. Fox

television series Spin City.

She also starred in the short lived CBS science fiction series Threshold

and in ABC's Karen Sisco,

in which she recreated the law-enforcement role of Jennifer Lopez

from the film Out of Sight.

Gugino appeared in Roundabout Theatre Company's After the Fall

opposite Six Feet Under's Peter Krause.

In late 2006, she will begin the Off-Broadway play by Tennessee Williams, Suddenly Last Summer

opposite actress Blythe Danner.

Gugino has also appeared in a wide range of TV programs including ALF,

Doogie Howser, M.D.,

Saved by the Bell,

Who's the Boss?

and The Wonder Years,

and is featured in the video to Bon Jovi's 1994 song "Always"

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and also on the last season of Chicago Hope

as brain surgeon Dr. Gina Simon.

Gugino also frequently appears in films written and directed by her longtime boyfriend Sebastian Gutierrez,

as they've worked together on several films in the past.[5]
Gugino played Vincent Chase's

new agent, Amanda,

in the second half of Entourage's third season for a couple of episodes and will reprise that role in the fifth season. Gugino appeared nude in the May 2007 issue of Allure.[6]

She played Sally Jupiter, the original Silk Spectre, in the Watchmen movie,[7]

and had a role in The Unborn.

She played the female lead in the serial killer thriller Righteous Kill

opposite Robert De Niro

and Al Pacino.

She also stars in a new film directed by Gutierrez, Women in Trouble, as a pornographic actress named Elektra Luxx.

Gugino starred in Chicago's Goodman Theater production of Eugene O'Neill's

Desire Under the Elms January 17th-February 17th, 2009 in the role of Abby. The New York Times lauds, ""She [Gugino] is simply magnificent...it is impossible to look away."[8]
After that she will appear opposite Dwayne Johnson