Kate Noelle Holmes (born December 18, 1978) is an American actress and filmmaker. She first achieved fame as Joey Potter on the television series Dawson's Creek (1998–2003).

Holmes made her film debut with a supporting role in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997). A mixture of parts in big-budget and small-scale film projects came next, including Disturbing Behavior (1998), Go, Teaching Mrs. Tingle (both 1999), Wonder Boys, The Gift (both 2000), Abandon, Phone Booth (both 2002), The Singing Detective, Pieces of April (both 2003), First Daughter (2004), Batman Begins, Thank You for Smoking (both 2005), Mad Money (2008), Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010), Jack and Jill (2011), Miss Meadows (2014), Woman in Gold, Touched with Fire (both 2015), Logan Lucky (2017), Dear Dictator (2018), Coda (2019), Brahms: The Boy II, and The Secret: Dare to Dream (both 2020).

Outside of film, Holmes made her Broadway theatre debut in a 2008 production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. In 2011, she portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy in the television miniseries The Kennedys, a role she reprised in The Kennedys: After Camelot (2017). She also played the part of Paige Finney on the third season of Showtime's Ray Donovan in 2015. Holmes made her directorial debut with the 2016 film All We Had, in which she also starred, following in 2022, by her second movie Alone Together, which was also her debut as a screenwriter.

Holmes's marriage to actor Tom Cruise, which lasted from 2006 to 2012, attracted a great deal of media attention. They have one child together, a daughter named Suri.

Holmes was born in Toledo, Ohio. She is the youngest of five children born to Kathleen (née Stothers), a homemaker and philanthropist, and Martin Joseph Holmes Sr., an attorney who played basketball at Marquette University under coach Al McGuire. She has three sisters and one brother. Holmes was baptized a Catholic and attended Christ the King Church in Toledo.

She graduated from the all-female Notre Dame Academy in Toledo (also her mother's alma mater), where she was a 4.0 student. At St. John's Jesuit and St. Francis de Sales, nearby all-male high schools, Holmes appeared in school musicals, playing a waitress in Hello, Dolly! and Lola in Damn Yankees. She scored 1310 out of 1600 on her SAT and was accepted to Columbia University (and attended for a summer session); her father wanted her to become a doctor.

At age 14, she began classes at a modeling school in Toledo which led her to the International Modeling and Talent Association (IMTA) Competition held in New York City in 1996. Eventually, Holmes was signed to an agent after performing a monologue from To Kill a Mockingbird. An audition tape was sent to the casting director for the 1997 film The Ice Storm, directed by Ang Lee, and Holmes made her big-screen debut in the role of Libbets Casey in the film, opposite Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver.

In January 1997, Holmes went to Los Angeles for pilot season, when producers and cast shoot new programs in the hopes of securing a spot on a network schedule. The Toledo Blade reported she was offered the lead in Buffy the Vampire Slayer but she turned it down in order to finish high school. Columbia TriStar Television, producer of a new show named Dawson's Creek that was created by screenwriter Kevin Williamson, asked her to come to Los Angeles to audition, but there was a conflict with her schedule. "I was doing my school play, Damn Yankees. And I was playing Lola. I even got to wear the feather boa. I thought, 'There is no way I'm not playing Lola to go audition for some network. I couldn't let my school down. We had already sold a lot of tickets. So I told Kevin and The WB, 'I'm sorry. I just can't meet with you this week. I've got other commitments.' " The producers permitted her to audition on videotape. Holmes read for the part of Joey Potter, the tomboy best friend of the title character Dawson, on a videotape shot in her basement, her mother reading Dawson's lines.