Anna Faris is back in cinemas this Friday with not one but two films: twisted mall cop comedy Observe and Report (co-starring Seth Rogen) and British geek adventure Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (with The IT Crowd’s Chris O’Dowd).

It's a familiar pattern. One minute Faris is totally absent from our thoughts, then we turn around and suddenly she's in everything. But for such an ubiqitous starlet, we don't know that much about her. Sienna Miller's been in half as many films, and we know what she had for breakfast.

So, just how much is there to know about Anna Faris?

1. Early years
Anna Kay Faris was born on the 29th of November, 1976, in Baltimore, Maryland (probably best known as the drug-ridden setting of magic cop series The Wire).

She enjoyed acting with the neighbourhood kids, and landed her first paid gig at the Seattle Repatory Theatre, aged nine. There’s no photos of here at this age, so here’s one of her looking really hot.

ANNA FACT: Her name is pronounced ‘Onna’. “It's a curse my parents gave me,” she says.