Carrie-Anne Moss

Moss began her career as a model before moving into acting through Canadian and American television roles in the early-to-mid 1990s, working steadily but without major recognition before her defining role came along.

Her opening rooftop sprint — shot months before the rest of the film — sold the studio on The Matrix. Trinity made wire-fu iconic in the West. A largely unknown actress at the time of casting, she trained intensively in martial arts and wire work to perform the sequence herself, and the footage was used specifically to convince a nervous Warner Bros. that the production's ambitious action style was achievable.

The role made her one of the defining action heroines of the era, and she reprised Trinity across both sequels, cementing a character now considered one of the most influential action heroines in modern film.