Christina Hendricks

Christina Hendricks (born May 3, 1975) is an award-winning American film and television actress and former model. She is best known for her role as Joan Holloway in the AMC drama television series Mad Men, for which she was nominated for six Emmy Awards.

A poll of female readers taken by Esquire magazine named Hendricks "the sexiest woman in the world". In 2010, she was voted Best Looking American Woman by Esquire magazine. She has also appeared on the FHM list of "100 Sexiest Women in the World" multiple times.

Hendricks' major film credits include Drive (2011), God's Pocket (2014), Lost River (2014), The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018), and Egg (2018). On television, she is known for her roles in Mad Men (2007-2015), Hap and Leonard (2016), Another Period (2015-2016), and Good Girls(2018-).

Hendricks has also appeared in a few music videos: Everclear's song One Hit Wonder (1998) and Broken Bells' song The Ghost Inside (2010).

Christina Hendricks was born as Christina Rene Hendricks on May 3, 1975, in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Jackie Sue (née Raymond) and Robert Hendricks. Her British-born father worked for the United States Forest Service and her American-born mother of English, Norwegian, and German ancestry was a psychologist. Through her father, she has dual US & UK citizenship. 

Because of her father's profession, the Hendricks family moved several times. When she was 3, the family moved to Twin Falls, Idaho, where she did her elementary and middle school education. While in Twin Falls, her mother encouraged her and her brother to join a local theater group in Twin Falls as a way of making friends, and Hendricks appeared in a production of Grease. "I had all these amazing friends through the theatre company," she recalled. "And it was a community that really respected theatre. The kids would put on a play and the entire town would show. And you were cool if you were an actor." Hendricks, a natural blonde, began coloring her hair red at age 10, inspired by the book Anne of Green Gables.

In 1989, when she was 13, her father transferred to the Forest Service Washington, DC, headquarters, and the family settled in the nearby Fairfax, Virginia. She attended Fairfax High School where she performed on stage. According to Hendricks, she was bullied in high school and described herself as an "outcast" and a "goth." She left Fairfax High School during her senior year and completed her studies at a local community college.

After entering a competition to appear on the cover of Seventeen magazine, she signed with a modeling agency, IMG Models, at age 18, and moved to New York City to pursue a career in show business.

Early years (1994–2006)

Hendricks worked as a model in New York, London, and Japan from the ages of 18 to 27 before transitioning into appearing in commercials.

In the mid-1990s, when she was in her early twenties, Hendricks relocated with her mother and brother to Los Angeles, California. Initially, she pursued a career working in the administrative sector of the music business, but was dissuaded by friends, and instead continued working as a model before auditioning for acting roles. She appeared in commercials for Carl's Jr. and Dr. Pepper, and also starred in the music video for Everclear's "One Hit Wonder" (1997). She appeared as the hand model in the poster for Sam Mendes' 1999 film American Beauty, starring Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening. (The poster showed her hand, while the navel belonged to actress Chloe Hunter.)

Hendricks made her television début in 1999 in the MTV anthology series Undressed, in which she portrayed "Rhiannon" in four episodes. The same year, she was also seen in Troy Miller's television short titled Sorority

Her first major starring role was as an intern on Beggars and Choosers, a Showtime television comedy series focused on a group of young professionals. She was seen in 19 episodes, from 1999 to 2001, appearing alongside Brian Kerwin, Charlotte Ross, and Tuc Watkins. During this time, she also guest-starred in an episode of the series Angel in 2000. Her other television credits around the time include Thieves (2001), ER (2002), The Court(2002, opposite Sally Field and Craig Bierko), Presidio Med (2003), UPN legal drama Kevin Hill (2004-2005), and Jake in Progress (2006).

Mad men and film debut (2007–2015)

Beginning in 2007, Hendricks played Joan Harris, alongside Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss, on the AMC series Mad Men as the office manager of advertising agency Sterling Cooper & Partners, providing mentoring to a group of women who must deal with the come-ons and callousness of professional advertising executives. Her performance has received critical praise, resulting in six Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.

2007 also saw Hendricks' feature film debut with La Cucina, an award-winning indie film, premiered on Showtime in December 2009, in which she starred as a writer opposite Portuguese actor Joaquim de Almeida. The same year, she starred as Angela opposite Kip Pardue in Ernst Gossner's drama South of Pico. She then appeared in four episodes of the NBC series Life in the recurring role of Olivia, detective Charlie Crews' (played by Damian Lewis) soon-to-be stepmother and Ted Earley's (Adam Arkin) love interest. 

In 2010, Hendricks starred in music videos for "The Ghost Inside" by Broken Bells.

In 2011, Hendricks was seen in the role of Blanche in Danish film director Nicolas Winding Refn's crime drama Drive, alongside Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling. The same year, she appeared onstage in a production of Stephen Sondheim's Company at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York opposite Martha Plimpton and Stephen Colbert. 

Hendricks also lent her voice to the character of Sam Harper opposite Sean Faris in Electronic Arts' 2011 racing video game Need for Speed: The Run. The following year, she was cast in a supporting role of Natalie in Sally Potter's drama film Ginger & Rosa, playing the countercultural mother of a teenager growing up in the 1960s, alongside Elle Fanning(Ginger) and Alice Englert (Rosa). 

In 2014, Hendricks played the lead character in Gosling's directorial debut Lost River, a fantasy film set in Detroit. In 2015, she co-starred with Charlize Theron and Chloë Grace Moretz in the novel adaptation Dark Places (based on Gillian Flynn's 2009 novel by the same name.) 

Later years (2016-)

In 2016, Hendricks was cast as one of the leads (Roberta Hoffmann, a modeling agent) in Refn's thriller film The Neon Demon, alongside Elle Fanning and Karl Glusman. Critical response to the film was polarized, though the French film magazine Cahiers du cinémanamed it the third-best film of 2016. The same year, she starred in six episodes of the television series Hap and Leonard, playing the ex-wife of investigator Hap Collins (played by James Purefoy). She was seen in 6 episodes of the series. 

After appearing in Bad Santa 2 (2016), Fist Fight (2017), Crooked House (2017), and Pottersville (2017), her next major role was in Johannes Roberts' home-invasion based horror film The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018), in which she played the matriarch of a family under siege by killers. Upon release, the film received generally unfavorable reviews from critics, though The Guardian's Benjamin Lee praised Hendricks' performance. It was a commercial success, however, grossing $30 million.

In 2018, Hendricks returned to television in the Amazon Prime series The Romanoffs, reuniting with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner. She was cast as one of the leads on the NBC comedy crime series Good Girls, playing a woman who attempts to gain financial control of her life by holding up a grocery store. The show was renewed for a fourth season in 2020. 

In late 2018, Hendricks starred opposite Sienna Miller in the drama American Woman, portraying a woman helping her sister raise her family in rural Pennsylvania. In 2019, she lent her voice to Gabby Gabby character, the main anti-villain in the Disney/Pixar animated sequel Toy Story 4.

Since February 2018, Hendricks has also been seen as Beth Boland in Jenna Bans' crime comedy-drama television series Good Girls, alongside Retta and Mae Whitman.

Currently, in 2020, Hendricks' voice can be heard in Cherie's character in the television animation series Solar Opposites. She is also the voice behind Officer Jaffe in Tony Cervone's Scooby-Doo film Scoob!.

In 2011, Hendricks was ranked #82 in the FHM list of "100 Sexiest Women in the World". The same year, she was ranked #33 in the FHM Australia list of "100 Sexiest Women in the World". The following year, she was placed #89 in the FHM list of "100 Sexiest Women in the World".

Hendricks has been credited as having an ideal shape for a woman by British Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone who praised Hendricks' hourglass figure as an ideal shape for women, saying "Christina Hendricks is absolutely fabulous... We need more of these role models. There is such a sensation when there is a curvy role model. It shouldn't be so unusual." 

Los Angeles Times' Pulitzer Prize-wining television critic Mary McNamara says her portrayal of Joan (in Mad Men) has revolutionized perceptions of beauty on television. She has been called the "new modern ideal of Hollywood glamour—full-figured, voluptuous; a throwback to the days of Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, and Veronica Lake." 

British designer Vivienne Westwood selected Hendricks to represent her "Get A Life" Palladium jewelry collection in March 2011. Westwood described Hendricks as "the embodiment of beauty." A study by the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons attributed a 10% rise in 2010 of the number of British women receiving breast augmentation surgery in part to Hendricks' influence.

Hendricks has moved away from accepting the term "full-figured" and once lambasted a reporter who used the term while interviewing her. Hendricks commented in September 2010 that the media is too focused on women's bodies and not their actual talents, "I was working my butt off on the show [Mad Men] and then all anyone was talking about was my body."

Although known as a redhead, Hendricks is a natural blonde and began coloring her hair red at age 10, inspired by Lucy Maud Montgomery's 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables.

Hendricks was engaged to actor Geoffrey Arend in January 2009. They married on October 11 of that year. She has said in interviews that she and her husband do not plan to have children. On October 11, 2019, it was announced that Hendricks and Arend had separated after 10 years of marriage. She filed for divorce on December 13, 2019, citing "irreconcilable differences." 

She plays the accordion, like her character Joan in Mad Men.