Name: Jada Pinkett Smith
Occupation: Actress, Video director, Clothing designer
Date of Birth: September 18, 1971
Place of Birth: Baltimore, Md., USA
Sign: Virgo
Relations: Husband: Will Smith; children: Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, Willow Camille Reign Smith
Education: Baltimore School for the Arts; North Carolina School of the Arts

When Jada Pinkett dropped out of the North Carolina School of the Arts after one scant year to move to Los Angeles, she was chasing down a dream that has been shared by countless other aspiring starlets since the dawn of the celluloid age. But what separated Pinkett from the vast majority of those starstruck hopefuls was the fact that she was doubly blessed with a versatile talent and the dogged determination to actually realize the dream. Having extensively studied music and dance during her upbringing in Baltimore, Maryland, Pinkett had already made an auspicious professional stage debut in acclaimed playwright August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone. She also had moxie in spades.
Talent aside, Pinkett readily confesses that the hard-partying lifestyle she led during her first few years in L.A. was instrumental in getting her that key first break into show business. After meeting Keenen Ivory Wayans at a Hollywood soiree, she pestered him relentlessly about hiring her as a choreographer for his series In Living Color, despite the fact that the only directly applicable experience she had to commend her for the job were several dance numbers she had arranged for a high school play. As unimpressed as Wayans was with Pinkett's choreography credentials, something about her grabbed his attention. Though he declined to hire her, he did take a personal interest in her future, helping her get on the path by hooking her up with an agent.

Pinkett subsequently filmed a sitcom pilot for a pre-X-Files supernatural drama called Moe's World, but the series was never picked up. Thus, her first major role to see the light of day came in 1991, on the Cosby Show spin-off A Different World. Though the long-running series was well into its dotage by then, it provided Pinkett with the two things she needed most to advance in her chosen profession: steady employmentùshe appeared on the show for two seasonsùand a chance to strut her stuff before a national audience.

Pinkett did an about-face from the light-comedy-with-a-lesson theme of A Different World for her feature debut outing, in the slice-of-gangsta-life film Menace II Society, which unflinchingly explored its protagonist's inexorable fall from high school graduate with a promising future to victim of ghetto life. Reviewers heaped the film with praise, singling out Pinkett's supporting performance, in particular, for its conviction. During the next couple of years, the pint-sized actress cropped up in movies as diverse as the slapstick A Low Down Dirty Shame, in which she finally got to work with auteur-star Keenen Ivory Wayans; the sweetly comic coming-of-age tale The Inkwell; and the adolescent-pleasing horror flick Tales From the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight. Though she scored a leading roleùthe first of her careerùin 1994's Jason's Lyric, her biggest break was just around the corner, in the form of The Nutty Professor.

Although much of the original 1963 Jerry Lewis comedy was radically revamped in order to turn the blockbuster 1996 update into a star vehicle for Eddie Murphy, one holdover was Pinkett's strictly supporting role as the object of the professor's affections. Though Pinkett had no illusions that the script demanded she do anything more than look pretty and stand in the right spot, she was determined to bring as much to the characterization as she could. Reflecting later on her work in the film, she admitted that "It was hard bringing that woman to life, because she sure didn't jump off the page." Pinkett's effort to bring depth and dimension to the character worked: in her capacity as Murphy's foil, she managed to avoid being a mere accessory to the male hormonal fantasy.

Pinkett next signed on to play a tough-as-nails member of an all-women gang of bank robbers in Set It Off. Displaying the proven facility with which she can toggle between widely different genres, she followed the social-injustice drama by appearing in a small, but pivotal, capacity in the highly successful Scream sequel, Scream 2. The five-foot-nothin' dynamo hasn't confined her interests to the realm of acting: in addition to stepping behind the camera to direct several rap videos, she has also created a line of women's clothing.

Over the past few years, Pinkett's increasingly visible career has been paralleled by her increasingly visible relationship with actor Will Smith. The two, who first met on the set of Smith's series The Fresh Prince of Bel Air in 1990, had been close friends for some time before Pinkett broke up with her boyfriend and Smith divorced his wife, Sheree Zampino, with whom he has a young son. At that point, the lovelorn friends started spending more time together in the spirit of consolation, and soon discovered that their feelings went beyond friendship. Before long they were being hailed as the most glamorous Hollywood couple around. Pinkett and Smith made good on their 1997 resolution by exchanging wedding vows in an ultra-secret New Year's Eve ceremony. Their first child, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, was born the following summer; their second, a daughter named Willow Camille Reign Smith, was born in October 2000.

Ever a bundle of energy, Pinkett hasn't let marriage or motherhood slow her down. She headlined the romantic comedy Woo, alongside Pam Grier, and appeared in Return to Paradise, a Hollywood-style remake of the highly regarded 1989 French drama Force Majeure that also starred Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, and Joaquin Phoenix. She most recently starred in Spike Lee's Bamboozled.

Source: <Mr Showbiz>

Jada plays Niobe, the ex-girlfriend of Morpheus and the captain of the 'Logose' (pronounced Low-Ghose).