Katherine Moennig has been widely recognized for her gender-ambiguous looks; while her face is aesthetically beautiful, her ultra-skinny figure and short hair make her a convincing tomboy. As the era of the waif-look amongst supermodels came to a close, tiny figures like Moennig's earned a place in the new millennium — where the trend was to be neither too masculine nor too feminine. Indeed, on the 2000 television series Young Americans, Moennig played a young woman who dresses up like a boy. Also known as "Kate," she was born on December 29, 1976, and raised in Philadelphia, PA, where the young hoyden came to recognize herself as slightly boyish even before it became an asset to her career. She moved to New York when she was 18 to begin training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and her post-graduation work included an internship at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. She would go on to gain exposure as a model as well as an actress, and appeared in a music video for rock band Our Lady Peace's song "Is Anybody Home?" Her growing fame is notably familial, as she is the niece of actress Blythe Danner, and thus the cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow. After her rise in popularity with the teen drama Young Americans and an appearance on Law & Order in 2001, Moennig has complemented her TV career with several film appearances. In 2001, she was featured in two Sundance Film Festival movies: in Love the Hard Way as Debbie, and Slo-Mo, in the role of Raven, amidst a young man's strange psychological time warp. Additionally, that same year she appeared in The Shipping News, starring Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, and Cate Blanchett.