Christina Renée Hendricks is an American actress and former model. With an extensive career on screen and stage, she has received various accolades, including six Primetime Emmy Award nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Critics' Choice Awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She is probably best known for her role as Joan Harris in the critically acclaimed AMC drama series Mad Men. In 2010, a poll of female readers taken by Esquire magazine named her "the sexiest woman in the world". She was also voted "Best Looking Woman in America". Born to an American mother and English father in Knoxville, Tennessee, Hendricks was raised in Portland, Oregon, and Twin Falls, Idaho, where she became active in local theater. After completing high school in Virginia, she moved to New York City and pursued a career as a model following her entry into a Seventeen cover contest.
Best known for playing Joan Harris on the AMC series Mad Men, she has also appeared in such films as Drive, Detachment and Life as We Know it.