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"  Last June, a number of faintly spooky paparazzi pictures began to appear in newspapers, in weekly tabloids, and on the Internet. At first glance these were photographs of former first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy in her prime\u2014that glossy bouffant bob, those prominent cheekbones, those keen, wide-set eyes. In one shot she was pregnant and well-groomed in an A-line turquoise shift; in another she was carrying a young child at her hip, sporting an immaculate cream day dress and a single strand of pearls; a few weeks later, there she was lipsticked and in a bright red and black suit and black pillbox hat. Only the cell phone clutched by the elegant 31-year-old gave her away. For these were the earliest glimpses of actor Katie Holmes as Jackie Kennedy, captured during the filming of the History channel&amp;#039;s forthcoming eight-part drama The Kennedys. It was not only the resemblance that was striking, it was the strange visual riddle these images presented: Here were paparazzi shots of one of this century&amp;#039;s most photographed women, decked out as one of last century&amp;#039;s most photographed women. The choice of Holmes to play Kennedy has to be among the more thrillingly apt casting decisions in recent Hollywood history. At age 24, Jacqueline Kennedy married the man she described as &amp;quot;the choicest bachelor in the Senate&amp;quot;; at 26, Katie Holmes got engaged to the world-famous film star whose poster had once been tacked to her wall, following a whirlwind romance and an Eiffel Tower proposal. As The Kennedys&amp;#039; executive producer Joel Surnow observes, &amp;quot;Katie&amp;#039;s American royalty in her own way, and that adds great resonance to the character. She was number one on our wish list to play Jackie.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s genius,&amp;quot; says Pamela Keogh, author of Jackie Style and Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn?, of the casting. &amp;quot;Katie married a very powerful man, she has a great interest in fashion, and she&amp;#039;s very discreet. She certainly has life experience to draw upon.&amp;quot; As Katie Holmes looks back on her summer as Jackie, she carefully resists acknowledging the real-life parallels between herself and the first lady. &amp;quot;It was such a different time,&amp;quot; she says of the Kennedy era. &amp;quot;Who knows what it was really like for her?&amp;quot; Still, it&amp;#039;s clear that she feels a particular closeness to the role. She was 31 when she filmed The Kennedys, the same age as Jackie when John F. Kennedy (played in the series by Greg Kinnear) became president 50 years ago. As she talks in her even, deliberate way, you can&amp;#039;t help but note how many aspects of Jackie&amp;#039;s complicated character chime with her own values\u2014from her impeccable manners to her determination to create a private, child-centered world for her daughter, Suri. Holmes remarks on Jackie&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;strength under pressure. That was definitely something for me to take away from the experience: that it&amp;#039;s important to maintain control and poise at all times.&amp;quot; She breaks into a bright, gay laugh. &amp;quot;Well, I try....&amp;quot; We are talking on Thanksgiving eve; Holmes is at home in L.A. on a short break from filming the Adam Sandler comedy Jack and Jill on a cruise liner in Florida. It sounds fun-packed; Suri was with her, and life onboard the ship was a round of entertainment: &amp;quot;Every time I had a break, we&amp;#039;d go and ride a carousel or watch a parade.&amp;quot; Following Suri&amp;#039;s birth in 2006 (a year to the day after the couple&amp;#039;s first date), commentators speculated that Holmes&amp;#039; film career was back-burnered permanently. But the past two years have seen Holmes regain her momentum with a respected turn on Broadway in All My Sons, then a slew of film roles. As well as The Kennedys and Jack and Jill, she has starred in the Guillermo del Toro-scripted horror flick Don&amp;#039;t Be Afraid of the Dark and cop thriller The Son of No One alongside Al Pacino and Juliette Binoche. If anyone was in doubt about the spring in her step, last May Holmes gave a gutsy, strutting performance of &amp;quot;Whatever Lola Wants&amp;quot; from Damn Yankees alongside her husband at a Motion Picture &amp;amp;amp; Television Fund benefit; she now says she&amp;#039;d love a shot at musical theater. Holmes says that the switch to the more lighthearted Jack and Jill was a relief after the intensity of filming The Kennedys. To play Jackie, she immersed herself in research: screening and rescreening footage of the couple (&amp;quot;[Tom] watched everything with me; he found it fascinating&amp;quot;), reading countless books, down to one written by Jackie&amp;#039;s chef. She spent her evenings practicing the first lady&amp;#039;s whispery upper-class accent on her husband. &amp;quot;I worked as hard as I could, because I loved her. On set there was this feeling that we had to create something very special, because these people were very special.&amp;quot; Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, later Onassis, was certainly an exceptional woman, not only for the unique place she occupies in history, but for her strength of will. &amp;quot;She had this terrific intelligence and controlled power,&amp;quot; says Sarah Bradford, the British biographer who wrote the acclaimed account of Jackie&amp;#039;s life America&amp;#039;s Queen. &amp;quot;She had a great sense of history and set out to make the White House glamorous, to project the presidency in that way.&amp;quot; Jackie Kennedy&amp;#039;s ambitions germinated in the competitive social atmosphere of her childhood. She was born in Southampton, New York, in 1929 into a well-to-do Catholic family headed by philandering stockbroker &amp;quot;Black Jack&amp;quot; Bouvier. When her mother, Janet, divorced Jack and remarried Standard Oil heir Hugh D. Auchincloss in 1942, Jackie and her younger sister, Lee, gained access to a yet grander life. But knowing that they did not stand to inherit the Auchincloss money, it was imperative that they marry well. Holmes&amp;#039; ambition was fostered in modeling and talent contests, growing up in the &amp;#039;80s and &amp;#039;90s as the youngest of five in a Catholic family in Toledo, Ohio. &amp;quot;From an early age, I knew I wanted to be in this business. So I did everything I could to get here,&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;s said.  Playing the complex, mysterious Jacqueline Kennedy is arguably Holmes&amp;#039; greatest acting challenge to date, though in some respects, it&amp;#039;s not the biggest leap for an A-list actress. &amp;quot;[The Kennedys] were like movie stars,&amp;quot; Holmes says. &amp;quot;There was such a professionalism to their public image.&amp;quot; Jackie was herself a performance; paparazzo Ron Galella was one of many who noticed this. &amp;quot;She didn&amp;#039;t believe she was an actress, although she was,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Even seeing her getting into a limousine was like watching a one-act play.&amp;quot; Jackie&amp;#039;s skilled deployment of her femininity was her hallmark. Truman Capote described her as a &amp;quot;geisha&amp;quot;; her nonthreatening charm, her small breathy voice, and her rapturous gaze all added up to a potent force that she unleashed on scores of powerful men, including her father-in-law, Joe Kennedy Sr., Charles de Gaulle, and Lyndon Johnson. At the first lady&amp;#039;s dinner parties, she&amp;#039;d always strive to keep the mood light. British ambassador David Ormsby-Gore recalled that she &amp;quot;rather deliberately made fun of serious topics.&amp;quot; She was rumored to have halted a heavy discussion about air pollution by saying: &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#039;t you just order the navy to spray our industrial centers with Chanel No. 5?&amp;quot; Biographer Sarah Bradford points out that Jackie was like no other president&amp;#039;s wife before her: &amp;quot;She was more like Grace Kelly in the careful, considered way she created her image. All the decoration and the clothes were absolutely deliberate. She thought things through.&amp;quot; She kept the smoking habit she acquired as a teenager out of sight, asking an aide to hold her cigarettes on the campaign trail so that she could take the odd furtive drag. She had a movie star&amp;#039;s habit of strictly policing her weight; in Sally Bedell Smith&amp;#039;s account of the Kennedy White House, Grace and Power, Jackie&amp;#039;s chief of staff Letitia Baldrige remembers her watching the scale &amp;quot;with the rigor of a diamond merchant counting his carats.&amp;quot; If she added two pounds, she would fast for a day and spend extra time exercising on the trampoline or tennis court. She was a fashion obsessive, planning her public looks as meticulously as any actress stepping out on the red carpet. Working with her official designer Oleg Cassini (and sneakily procuring pieces by her favorite French designers, including Givenchy), Jackie aimed for dramatic impact: a bright red suit for a 1961 visit to Ottawa where she&amp;#039;d be photographed alongside the mounted police; dresses in striking shades of apricot, ice blue, and pink for a 1962 tour of India and Pakistan where she needed to stand out among the crowds; a columnar gown in regal white for the evening of inaugural balls celebrating JFK&amp;#039;s taking office in January 1961. Holmes approaches dressing with a similar relish and skill. She can pull off unfussy edginess (in Jil Sander or The Row) as adeptly as dreamy romance (think the ice cream\u2013colored Armani Priv\u00E9 gown she wore for Vanity Fair&amp;#039;s 2007 Oscar party). Like fellow brunette Jackie, she works a paintbox of bright colors: She paired gold Roger Vivier shoes with her scarlet McQueen gown for a UNICEF benefit and royal blue Louboutins with her red Armani for the Met&amp;#039;s 2008 Costume Institute gala (Suri&amp;#039;s suggestion). In a neat move, The Kennedys&amp;#039; producers invited Giorgio Armani, the designer behind Holmes&amp;#039; wedding dress, to design some of the actress&amp;#039;s costumes, including a version of Jackie&amp;#039;s inaugural ball gown, its embroidered bodice covered by a layer of silk chiffon, accompanied by a cape of heavier duchess silk satin. &amp;quot;It perfectly suits Katie&amp;#039;s natural beauty and the role she is playing,&amp;quot; Armani says. &amp;quot;With the &amp;#039;60s hairstyle, Katie bears an extraordinary resemblance to Jackie, and the effect is one of charismatic appeal.&amp;quot; Without doubt, Holmes&amp;#039; own interest in fashion has developed considerably since she arrived on Hollywood&amp;#039;s radar in her late teens, first appearing in Ang Lee&amp;#039;s The Ice Storm and then in the long-running drama Dawson&amp;#039;s Creek as the lip-chewing, navel-gazing teenager Joey Potter. In the first half of her twenties, dressing pretty was her default setting, but since ascending to outsize fame, Holmes&amp;#039; look has become one of sophisticated modernism. Writer Pamela Keogh says, &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s got a really elevated sense of style\u2014she knows who Roger Vivier is, as does her daughter.&amp;quot; Holmes name-checks Armani, Stella McCartney, Chlo\u00E9, Temperley, and Victoria Beckham as her most admired designers.  In 2008 she started her own label, Holmes &amp;amp;amp; Yang, in partnership with her friend and fellow mom, stylist Jeanne Yang, and their second collection is stocked at Barneys. Consisting of luxurious basics, the line is a distillate of the sexy yet pared-down style Holmes has advanced over recent years. Unusually for a celebrity-designed collection, the clothes, sticking to a limited color palette and made from fine silks, leathers, and suedes, are restrained and gorgeously wearable. Perhaps not surprisingly, the line includes complementary pieces for little girls, to set off Mom&amp;#039;s ensemble. For the new season, &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a lot of long dresses, a cute little knife-pleat skirt, and we did a little bit of a print with tiny flowers,&amp;quot; she says. All the clothes are made in New York&amp;#039;s garment district, and her involvement in the process has made her even more enthusiastic about fashion. &amp;quot;I have such an appreciation for the fine details and the amount of work it takes. I really appreciate clothing and designers so much more. It&amp;#039;s made shopping even better.&amp;quot; Click here to see Katie Holmes&amp;#039; February Cover Shoot Holmes&amp;#039; passion for retail therapy has been captured countless times by the paparazzi\u2014who can forget the shot of mother and daughter clutching matching orange Herm\u00E8s carrier bags? Jackie indulged her love for high-end shopping with similar fervor, particularly after her marriage to shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968. Capote recalled her habits: &amp;quot;I accompanied her on one of those shop-till-you-drop sprees. She would walk into a store, order two dozen silk blouses in different shades, give them an address, and walk out. She seemed in a daze, hypnotized.&amp;quot; Holmes reports that she and Suri have a more focused shopping style. &amp;quot;The other day we came out of a store, and she said, `I want to go there,&amp;#039; pointing at another store quite a distance away. In that store was the dress that she wanted. I said, `Wow, Suri. You&amp;#039;re something. You picked that out from a football field away.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Holmes is proud of her daughter&amp;#039;s fashion sense: &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;ll really tell me [what she thinks]. Like today I&amp;#039;m wearing brown suede pants, and she said, `I don&amp;#039;t like your pants.&amp;#039; But then she&amp;#039;ll say, `You&amp;#039;ve got to wear these shoes.&amp;#039; Or `That&amp;#039;s so pretty, Mom. Wear that.&amp;#039; She&amp;#039;s got a great eye.&amp;quot; Jackie&amp;#039;s unwavering devotion to her children, Caroline and John Jr., was an obvious point of connection for Holmes. She was struck deeply when she learned that Jackie had so many difficulties bearing children; she miscarried in her first year of her marriage, she gave birth to a still-born daughter in 1956, and her third child, Patrick, died when he was two days old in 1963. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t realize that she had lost a child in August and then [Jack] was assassinated in November. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe it. She had so much strength.... I loved her love of family, how important it was for her to be a good mother.&amp;quot; Similarly, Holmes found Jackie&amp;#039;s adoration of her husband quite moving. &amp;quot;Jackie loved strong men,&amp;quot; says Joel Surnow, who is perhaps best known as the cocreator of 24. &amp;quot;She wasn&amp;#039;t turned off by the immature or high-testosterone things that men can do. She accepted that they have flaws, but they also had great qualities that she happened to adore.&amp;quot; Holmes also evidently enjoys the alpha qualities of her husband. She recently went to Dubai to watch him hang off the side of the 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa skyscraper to film a stunt for Mission: Impossible 4. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s quite something,&amp;quot; she says, later mentioning that one of her favorite activities is riding on the back of Cruise&amp;#039;s motorcycle. Holmes also relishes homier pursuits. She loves spending time doing arts and crafts with her daughter, just as her mother, Kathleen, a skilled seamstress, did with her. When we talk, she is about to start on the appetizers and pumpkin pie for their Thanksgiving dinner (&amp;quot;My confidence isn&amp;#039;t high yet on the rest of the meal&amp;quot;) and later will head downtown to the flower market to choose some blooms. &amp;quot;I like to create a nice table. I love roses and orchids and French tulips and berries, and then a lot of things that are just pretty and I have no idea what their names are.&amp;quot; Speaking with Holmes, one senses something of Jackie&amp;#039;s soft power. Like one of Jackie&amp;#039;s dinner parties, she keeps the conversation determinedly upbeat, repeating words like fun, wonderful, amazing, incredible, beautiful. There is something admirably unruffled about her, considering that she has existed for half a decade at the center of a constant swirl of gossip about everything from the nature of her and Cruise&amp;#039;s marriage and their practice of Scientology, to whether or not she actually ran the New York marathon and her daughter&amp;#039;s high heels. Holmes has even maintained a civil relationship with the paparazzi, unlike Jackie, who ended up battling Galella in court in 1972. A paparazzo interviewed by the blog Jezebel remarked that Holmes was a particularly pleasant subject to shoot. (&amp;quot;Katie is nice,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;and Suri\u2014she always sells.&amp;quot;) Resigned to traveling with security, Holmes has simply ceased questioning the attention. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t worry so much. It is what it is, and it&amp;#039;s fine. I&amp;#039;ll go somewhere because I need to get something done.&amp;quot; (Immediately after our conversation, she&amp;#039;s photographed at the flower market.) Holmes&amp;#039; detached calm brings to mind something novelist Edna O&amp;#039;Brien wrote about Jackie, her friend from the mid-1980s: &amp;quot;Distance and distancing were central to her, not only from others, but from huge parts of herself. It was what gave her that inexplicable aura. Her mystery was that she was a mystery to herself.&amp;quot; It is that mystery that keeps us watching.  Click here to see Katie Holmes&amp;#039; February Cover Shoot "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/celebrity-style/news/a11533/turn-it-on-katie-holmes-525236/>