4 Facts About Actress Leslie Bibb, Sam Rockwell's Leading Lady

By Kamrun Nesa

Updated on 1/6/2019 at 2:10 PM

Getty | Jeff Kravitz
Getty | Jeff Kravitz

In 2018, when Sam Rockwell won award after award for his role in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, he thanked his "beloved Leslie Bibb" in his acceptance speeches. The adorable pair, who've been together since 2007, met in a hotel lobby in Los Angeles, and he was the first celebrity she dated. But Leslie has quite the illustrious background herself, having been in the spotlight long before she and Sam started dating!

  1. She was a model before she became an actress. In 1990, at just 16 years old, she got her big break on The Oprah Winfrey Show by becoming the winner of its first nationwide model search. She initially decided to attend the University of Virginia but, after one semester, dropped out and moved to New York to pursue modeling full-time, enrolling in the William Esper Studio.
  2. She first got into acting in 1996. She starred in TV shows such as Pacific Blue and Home Improvement before getting a lead on WB Network's Popular, and her career catapulted from there. Since then, she's been in movies such as Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Confessions of a Shopaholic, The Zookeeper, and the Iron Man franchise. Recently, she's been on the TV Land show Nobodies, which is produced by Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone.
  3. She was married once before. The 44-year-old was married to Rob Born, an investment banker, from 2003 to 2004.
  4. She's more than personally connected to Sam. She and Sam starred in Iron Man 2 together.