Kristin Davis

Early life and education

Davis was born in Boulder, Colorado. She is an only child, and her parents divorced when she was a baby. She was adopted by her stepfather, then-University of Colorado Boulder professor Keith Davis, after he married her mother, Dorothy, a university data analyst, in 1968. She has three sisters from her father's first marriage. Early in her childhood, she and her parents moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where her father served as provost and teaches psychology at the University of South Carolina.

Davis wanted to be an actress from the age of 9, when she was cast in the Workshop Theatre production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Davis lived in South Carolina until she graduated from A.C. Flora High School in 1983. She then moved to New Jersey, where she attended Rutgers University. Davis graduated with a BFA degree in Acting from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1987.

Television

After graduation in 1987, Davis moved to New York and waited tables before opening a yoga studio with a friend. In 1991, she acted in a couple of episodes of the daytime drama (soap opera) General Hospital. Her big break came in 1995 when she landed the role of villainess Brooke Armstrong Campbell on the nighttime drama Melrose Place. She left the show after one year when producers decided to kill off the character. Davis also had roles in other television series including Friends, Will and Grace and Seinfeld.

In 1998, Davis was cast as Charlotte York in Sex and the City and remained an integral cast member until the series ended in 2004. In 1999, along with the rest of the cast, she was awarded the Women in Film Lucy Award in recognition of her excellence and innovation in her creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television. She received an Emmy nomination for her role as Charlotte in the final season.

Davis hosted the VH1 show 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons. In 2005, she starred in a television pilot entitled Soccer Moms in which she and Gina Torres star as suburban mothers who moonlight as private detectives. She starred as Miss Spider in the animated television special Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Kids and its spin-off series Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends and was recently a guest judge on the Lifetime (TV network) program Project Runway.

Films

Davis's films include The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D, opposite David Arquette and George Lopez; the 2006 version of The Shaggy Dog, opposite Tim Allen, and Deck the Halls, opposite Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito. She performed in ABC Family channel's Christmas movie Three Days in 2001, and in a commercial for Head & Shoulders shampoo.

Davis appeared in 2008's Sex and the City feature film, under the direction of executive producer Michael Patrick King. In 2009, Davis co-starred in Couples Retreat, a comedy chronicling four couples who partake in therapy sessions at a tropical island resort. Jon Favreau, who also co-wrote the script, played her husband.

Stage

Davis made her Broadway debut in July 2012, when she replaced Kerry Butler in the revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. She made her West End debut playing Beth Gallagher in Fatal Attraction at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in March 2014.

Other work and recognition

Davis is a Global Ambassador for Oxfam, and has campaigned in support of their work since 2004, travelling to locations including Haiti, Mozambique, and South Africa.

The cosmetics company Maybelline named Davis as a celebrity spokeswoman in 2004.

Shortly after the wide release of the Sex and the City feature film, in June 2008, Belk, the nation's largest privately owned department store chain, announced a partnership with Davis. The arrangement included a ladies' apparel and accessories line that debuted in 2008 in 125 store locations and online, with eventual plans for expanding availability to other store locations. In a press release about the product line launch, Davis cited her upbringing in South Carolina as part of her inspiration for working with the chain. In late 2009 Belk cancelled the arrangement, citing the difficult economic conditions prevailing, while Davis said she hoped to take the line elsewhere.

During her 2009 visit to Africa, Davis, a lifelong lover of elephants, discovered an abandoned baby elephant and arranged for it to be taken to a wildlife rehabilitation center. In recognition of the attention she has brought to the plight of orphaned African elephants, Davis won the Humane Society's 2010 Wyler Award, which is bestowed on a celebrity or public figure who has made news on behalf of animals. She is also a patron of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust which works to protect elephants and other wildlife in Kenya.

Davis has worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and is included on their list of "High Profile Supporters". In 2015 she visited the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Davis later filmed a fund-raising appeal supporting the UNHCR, and in 2016 visited Australia to promote the UNHCR's work, focussing on the plight of women victims of sexual violence in Congo.

Personal life

In 2011, she adopted a daughter, Gemma Rose Davis. They reside in Los Angeles, California. Davis has never married.

Davis is a recovering alcoholic. She says she was introduced to alcohol early as part of her Southern upbringing: "Alcohol freed me. I was really shy and I didn't know how to come out of my shell. I drank for the same reason I loved acting. I wanted to feel things and express myself and be free. And I'm not naturally that way." She became sober at the age of 22, later stating, "I miss it. You don't go to rehab and then suddenly it goes away."