Katherine Moennig

Katherine Moennig
Born	Katherine Sian Moennig December 29, 1977 (1977-12-29) (age 31) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Other name(s)	Kate Moennig Scout[1] Alt. Gwyn[1]
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1999—present

Katherine Sian Moennig (born December 29, 1977)^[2] is an American actress known for her role as Shane McCutcheon on The L Word, as well as Jacqueline Pratt on Young Americans.

Personal life

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she is the daughter of Broadway dancer Mary Zahn and violin maker William Moennig.^[3] She is also the niece of actress Blythe Danner and cousin of Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow.^[1]

Moennig is of German, Scottish and Irish descent.^[4] She is called "Alt.Gwyn" by her friends, because she and Paltrow are so unlike each other.^[1] "Alt.Gwyn" means "Alt. Gwyneth" or "Alternate Gwyneth".

Although there has been much speculation surrounding Moennig's sexual orientation due to the on-screen lesbian and genderqueer roles she has taken, Moenning refuses to talk about her sexuality because she says that having a personal life is a sacred thing in Hollywood. In 2000, in an interview with the advocate, Moennig stated that she was straight, and was dating a Hollywood actor whom she claimed, "knows what he wants".^[1] However, the New York Post's Page Six reported sighting Moennig accompanied by Francesca Gregorini, in April 2005 at a party for Paper Magazine's Beautiful People issue.^[5], and her L Word costar Jennifer Beals also muddied the issue in an interview with The Advocate in which Beals cited Moennig along with several out lesbians as advisors to her character protrayal of Bette Porter.^[5] A rumour of Kate dating Clementine Ford after their collaboration in The L Word was denied by Ford in a Diva Magazine interview in 2009.^[6]

Career

Moennig moved to New York City at the age of 18 to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. There she began a modeling career, and also performed on stage.

In 1999, she had the central role in the Our Lady Peace video "Is Anybody Home?"

Her first major role was in the television series Young Americans, playing Jake Pratt, a girl who enters the Rawley Boys Academy by passing as a boy and ends up falling in love with Hamilton (Ian Somerhalder), the Dean's son.

She has played many lesbian and transgender roles. She auditioned for the part of Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry, which ended up going to actress Hilary Swank. She played a pre-operative transsexual in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (episode "Fallacy"). She appeared as a lesbian artist—and a former lover of Sophia Myles' character—in Terry Zwigoff's 2006 Art School Confidential.

On April 12, 2006, Moennig made her Off-Broadway debut, opposite Lee Pace, in Guardians, by Peter Morris. In it, she plays "American Girl"—a young United States Army soldier from West Virginia who becomes a scapegoat in a scandal involving abuse at an Iraqi prison. The story is loosely based on that of Lynndie England.^[7]

In 2008, Moennig played the role of Mary Landis, a suspect in season 6 episode 19 of CSI:Miami.

Katherine has several tattoos now. The number 2 on her right ring finger (which is her life number in numerology), a small red square on her left hand, a "cross" on her left wrist (which was previously the letter "K"), on her right triceps she has a tattoo of a swallow bird (she got it after having a dream that she had a tattoo of a bird on her right triceps), on her left triceps she has a tattoo that fans are saying reads 'audere est facere' ('to dare is to do' in Latin) , along her right side she has what appears to be a tattoo of ivy, on her right inner forearm she has a tattoo of the name "Mary," in honor of her mother, and lastly she has a tattoo of an outline of a violin with a letter "M" inside for her last name "Moennig" (which she got the day after her father died, in his honor).

Filmography

Film

Television

References

External links

• Katherine Moennig at the Internet Movie Database
• Katherine Moennig at The L Word official site