Jude Law: Recent News

Dec 16, 2011

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows: PEOPLE's Review

Jun 27, 2011

Jude Law & Sienna Miller Break Up

Jude Law: Snapshot

Name: Jude Law
Date of Birth: December 29, 1972
Birth Place: London, England

Jude Law found big-screen stardom as the worldly socialite murdered by Matt Damon in 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley. The film earned him an Oscar nod, leading to more applauded performances in Road to Perdition with Tom Hanks, Cold Mountain with Nicole Kidman (for which he earned his second Oscar nod), and Closer with Julia Roberts.

But it was the handsome Brit's well-publicized affair with his children's nanny while engaged to actress Sienna Miller that grabbed the spotlight. Although he publicly apologized, he and Miller eventually split.

In 2009, after welcoming his fourth child and returning to the box office with Sherlock Holmes, Law briefly gave his relationship with Miller another shot.

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Jude Law: Five Fun Facts

Jude Law was named after the conflicted hero of Thomas Hardy's Victorian novel Jude the Obscure.
At 12, Jude Law enrolled in the National Youth Music Theatre, and was briefly housed in the girl's dormitory because of confusion over his name. The founder of NYMT later told PEOPLE, "I felt a bit of a killjoy putting him in with the guys."
Actors Jude Law and Ewan McGregor became friends after they met at an audition in 1990 when a director gave them $30 and ordered them to get drunk so he could see how they got along.
For his role in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Jude Law learned how to play the saxophone and sail.
At the 2005 Oscars, host Chris Rock joked about Jude Law's frequent movie roles: "Who is Jude Law? Why is he in every movie I have seen, the last four years?...Even the movies he's not acting in, if you look at the credits, he made cupcakes or something."

Jude Law: Biography

1985: Acting Bug Bites Jude
Thirteen-year-old Jude Law, the son of London schoolteachers Peter and Maggie Law, lands a spot with Britain's National Youth Music Theatre, beginning his career as an actor.
1988: More than a Pretty Face
Law, 16, stars in the NYMT's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. "He was dominant in the group without being domineering. When he played the lead...the girls went bananas," NYMT founder Jeremy James Taylor tells PEOPLE. Law tells Britain's Times, "I can't say I've suffered for my looks and that's fine, but I want to be made to work hard." In 1990, he lands the TV musical The Tailor of Gloucester before dropping out of high school for the role of a teen runaway on the British soap Families.
1994: June 24
First Big Role, First Big Romance
Law gets his first big break in the British futuristic crime thriller, Shopping, directed by Paul Anderson. The film costars actress Sadie Frost as Law's sidekick and love interest; it isn't long before life imitates art.