Rachel Nichols

From her three-way scene in Sex & the City in 2002 to her scream-inducing performances in horror films to her stint as a black ops CIA agent in the final season of the ABC action drama Alias, Rachel Nichols has captured the attention of television audiences and moviegoers alike. And to think that she considers the her acting career merely accidental, crediting it to just being in the right place at the right time.

Rachel Emily Nichols was born and raised in Augusta, Maine. During high school, she spent time studying in France. She admits that she was an awkward teen growing up and was not the hot chick people may perceive her to have been. When she was in the university, she started getting modeling jobs for companies like Guess, Abercrombie & Fitch, L'Oreal, and Nicole Miller. Her work as a model eventually led to acting opportunities.

In 2000, she made her feature film debut in Autumn in New York. She then followed it up with her television debut on the HBO comedy hit Sex & the City. She has since appeared in several movies including the suspense-thriller flicks The Amityville Horror (2005) and P2 (2007).

On television, Rachel got a starring role as part of the Los Angeles Violent Crimes Unit in the FOX crime drama series The Inside in 2005. The show got canceled after airing only seven episodes, Nichols continued on with another major project. That same year, she was cast in J.J. Abrams' Alias as a potential replacement for Jennifer Garner's character Sydney Bristow in the event she decides to leave the show.