Michelle Monaghan was born on March 23, 1976, in Winthrop, Iowa. She is the youngest of three
children and the only daughter of Sharon (Hamel), who ran a daycare center, and Robert L. Monaghan, a
factory worker, and farmer. She is of mostly Irish and German descent. After graduating from high
school in Iowa, she studied journalism for three years at Chicago's Columbia College. To pay for college,
she took a job as a model. In 1999, she quit college and moved to New York to work full-time as a
fashion model. She traveled the world doing stints on the runways in Milan, Singapore, Tokyo, and Hong
Kong, and also enjoyed appearances in an of number magazines and catalogs.
In 2000, she made her TV debut in two episodes of Young Americans (2000), then appeared in Law &
Order: Special Victims Unit (1999). She made her big-screen debut with a small role of Henrietta in
Perfume (2001). Monaghan shot to fame in 2002 when she co-starred as Kimberly Woods for one
season on the TV series Boston Public (2000). After appearances in several supporting roles, she starred
opposite Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer in the black comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005). Later in
2005, Monaghan was filming in China, Italy, and the United States on Mission: Impossible III (2006), as
the female lead opposite Tom Cruise.
In August of 2005, in Sydney, Australia, Michelle Monaghan married her long-time sweetheart, Peter
White, a New York-based graphic designer, who she met at a Manhattan party five years earlier.