The Flip Side of Katie Holmes

One doesn’t know quite what to expect from Katie Holmes. At the beginning of her career, she was the typical ingénue, best known for her portrayal, on Dawson’s Creek, of the literal girl-nextdoor. Even in her “edgier” big-screen projects, like Go and Pieces of April, an air of wholesomeness clung to her like dew.

But that all changed in 2005, when Holmes fell hard for one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Or rather, it changed when he fell for her and seemed to go a bit insane with—well, no one was quite sure what, but let’s be generous and call it love. It’s a testament to the weirdness of that situation that getting married and having a baby—albeit in not exactly that order—tarnished her reputation, and that her decision, in 2012, to leave her then-husband helped to bolster it. But that’s exactly what happened.