Name: Carrie-Anne Moss
Date of Birth: August 21, 1967
Place of Birth: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Education: Magee Secondary School, Vancouver, British Columbia; American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Pasadena, Calif.

Carrie-Anne Moss In the more than two decades since Princess Leia cast the original mold, there have really been only two other sci-fi action heroines who have managed to permeate the collective consciousness — Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley and Carrie-Anne Moss' Trinity, whose sleek PVC suit, kung fu fightin' ways, and short, modern 'do were a welcome change from her cinematic ancestor's bathrobe-and-Cinnabons look.

It also took Carrie-Anne Moss six auditions to prove to Matrix directors Larry and Andy Wachowski that in addition to having a more-than-pretty face, she was more than pretty tough. "I auditioned in the regular way, first for the casting director and then for the Wachowski brothers," Moss recalled in an interview on the film's Web site. "After that, I did this most amazing three-day process of screen testing for the film, the first day of which was three hours of running, kung fu, and taping all these different fights."

Once Moss nabbed the part, she and co-stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, and Hugo Weaving spent six months with a Hong Kong wire team, which prepared the quartet for its breathtaking midair stunts. Moss also worked with kung fu master Ma Dai, filming on location in Sydney, Australia, on weekdays and training on the weekends. In the end, Moss performed nearly all her own stunts, even when injured. "During the government lobby scene, just before I had to do my cartwheel on the wall, I hurt one of my ankles so badly I felt sure that I had broken it," Moss said in the movie site posting. "I kept my boot on, which I think supported it. The adrenaline of those three days of fighting kept me going, and when the weekend came by, I couldn't walk."

That work ethic — if not the high tolerance for pain — initially inspired Moss to spread her wings beyond her native Canada. During her childhood, Moss lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her mother, Barbara. "I'm the first person in my family to live outside of Canada," she told The Ubyssey. "My mother was married at 17 [and] had two kids by 19. I'm doing something that I have no role model for."

What Barbara could do was encourage her daughter, named for the Hollies' 1967 hit "Carrie Anne," to dream. At the age of 11, Moss debuted in Vancouver children's musical theater; later, she toured Europe with the school choir of the exclusive Magee Secondary School, where she and former Ally McBeal honey Gil Bellows were classmates.

In 1985, Moss headed to Toronto and into a lucrative modeling career that took her from Japan to Spain. The face someone once deemed as "alien," according to Movieline, also provided Moss with an entreé into her chosen profession, acting. While in Spain, she won the role of Tara McDonald, a regular on the CBS series Dark Justice (1991). The series eventually relocated from Barcelona to Los Angeles, with Moss in tow.

After serving on Justice, Moss honed her talents at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, Calif. She lent her good looks to a slew of eye-candy TV shows, such as Silk Stalkings, Baywatch, and The Matrix (the name was pure coincidence; the show had nothing to do with the blockbuster in Moss' future). Simultaneously, she bided her time in a series of video-store shelf-fillers, with such minimal highlights as: 1) working with fellow ingénue Heather Graham (Terrified) and 2) thrilling screen-capture enthusiasts with a topless scene in The Soft Kill.

While working on paying her dues, Moss joined the proud ranks of those actors selected to work with American pop icon Aaron Spelling. "There's nothing like being a kid from Canada and getting [onto] Models Inc.," Moss reminisced on TNT's Rough Cut. "I mean, I had no money, and I had grown up watching Aaron Spelling shows … I had never gotten a job like that before, so [it] was absolutely exciting."

Moss portrayed Carrie, an older model of 27 (gasp), whose career wobbled precariously at the top of the proverbial hill. "I call myself now the resident victim because things happen to my character in such bizarre ways," Moss said at the time to the Winnipeg, Manitoba, Free Press. "They kind of put me through the ringer." The ringer entailed impersonating her boss (played by late-night soap veteran Linda Grey), being committed, moonlighting as a prostitute, and being thrown in jail. "I asked them, 'If we get picked up for another season, could you just … give me a normal relationship for, like, a minute, one episode? I'd be really happy,'" Moss added.

Her happiness, in the form of The Matrix, came four years later, and there's enough of it to last her quite a while. For starters, Moss stars in The Crew, which is a summer 2000 comedy with Burt Reynolds and Richard Dreyfuss as aging mobsters. She's also Commander Kate Bowman in Red Planet, a bound-to-be-better-than-Mission to Mars movie featuring Val Kilmer and Benjamin Bratt.

To keep herself well-rounded, Moss has completed some smaller films, including Chocolat, with Juliette Binoche and Francophile Johnny Depp, and the psychological thriller Memento. The latter stars Guy Pearce as a man with short-term amnesia who must solve his wife's murder.

In the future, Moss and Reeves will reunite for the remaining installments of the Matrix trilogy. It's evident that the girl without a role model relishes the thought of bringing the new sci-fi goddess into the next millennium. "I think Trinity is a great role model because she's strong and she doesn't put up with BS," Moss told her hometown paper, the Vancouver Sun. "I've never felt as powerful as I have playing her — but I eventually discovered it wasn't the part, it was me."

Source: <Whatisthematrix>

Carrie-Anne Moss plays the role of Trinity.