Mimi Rogers

A versatile Hollywood actress, Mimi Rogers did not step before the camera until she was in her early twenties. As a civil engineer's daughter, Rogers had a peripatetic childhood, living in several different states and England. Eventually she and her family settled in Southern California. An unusually bright person, Rogers graduated from high school at age 14. Instead of going straight to college, she spent the rest of her teen years involved with community service work. She debuted in television movies in 1982 and the following year appeared in her first film, the romantic Blue Skies Again opposite Harry Hamlin. It was an inauspicious debut and her next two films did little toward making her a star. Up until she played a seductive socialite who falls in love with a policeman in Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), Rogers was considered a rather wholesome, even plain beauty, but in that film, done-up to the nines, she proved herself as sexy and alluring as any actress onscreen. She got some positive reviews for playing Christopher Reeve's lover in Street Smart (1987). Though she has appeared in many subsequent films, her ascension to stardom proved a slow one despite gaining some level of notoriety for her brief marriage to Tom Cruise.

In 1991 audiences were treated to their first true taste of the actresses formidable dramatic talent when she essayed the role of a spiritually bankrupt swinger turned religious zealot in writer/director Michael Tolkin's religious-themed drama The Rapture. Her transformation and subsequent spiritual conflict was nothing short of devastating, and though she would only appear in supporting roles in the years that immediately followed, she had made her mark and it was only a matter of time until her star caught fire. Roles in Killer (1994) and Full Body Massage successfully balanced Rogers' smouldering sensuality with her undeniable dramatic talent, and in 1996 her breakthrough finally arrived with the Barbra Streisand drama The Mirror Has Two Faces. With a performance that threatened to steal the spotlight from a star as bright as Streisand, the dramatic role proved an unlikely precursor to her performance in the following year's blockbuster comedy Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Though savvy filmgoers were well aware of her dramatic capacity at this point, few had pegged her as being a solid comedic actress - and her role as the snaggle-toothed secret agent's trusty sidekick revealed a heretofore unseen versatility. After taking the lead in a pair of respectable made-for-television features, Rogers blasted into space with the sci-fi misfire Lost in Space in 1998. Perhaps somewhat disenchanted with her blockbuster status, Rogers spent the next few years turning in solid performances in such low-budget fare as Ginger Snaps (2000) and moving into television on the short-lived sitcom The Geena Davis Show.

A dedicated mother of two, Rogers earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Children's Special as a result of her role in the Holocaust drama The Devil's Arithmetic before later appearing in the family adventure Cave In (2003). Following a somewhat forgettable role in the abysmal Dumb and Dumberer, Rogers was cast in a key role opposite Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger in the family drama Door in the Floor (2004).

~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide