Trivia: Hayden Christensen made headlines in the spring of 2000, when director George Lucas announced that the 19-year-old actor would play the much-coveted role of Anakin Skywalker in Episode II and Episode III of the venerable Star Wars franchise. Born in Vancouver but raised in Toronto, Canada, Christensen became involved with Canadian television productions at a young age and carried his skills over to American TV movies and series in the late '90s. Though he would appear briefly in 1999's The Virgin Suicides for director Sofia Coppola -- a family friend of Lucas' -- it was Christensen's work in the Fox Family Channel's drama series Higher Ground which convinced Lucas to give the actor a reading. Adamant in his desire to find new talent for the role, Lucas passed over such potential adolescent Anakins as Ryan Phillippe, Jonathon Jackson, and even Leonardo DiCaprio in favor of Christensen. It remains to be seen whether the young actor will survive the typecasting that a similarly unknown Mark Hamill suffered some two and a half decades prior, in Episode IV.Before Episode II made it to the screen, Christensen won accolades -- including a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor -- playing a troubled goth teen in the family melodrama Life as a House. The stage thus set for his blockbuster debut, Christensen would be omnipresent on magazine covers and talk shows in the months leading up to Attack of the Clones' release. The film grossed more than 300 million dollars stateside, but sharp opinions on the movie's script did little to help Christensen's career. Even before the final Star Wars prequel Revenge of the Sith was released in 2005, Christensen began moving on as an actor, taking on more meaty character roles, like real life journalist Stephen Glass in the thriller Shattered Glass, and a fictional stand-in for Bob Dyaln in 2006's Factory Girl. He would als make a name for himself in thrillers like Jumper, Vanishing Point, and Takers.

Trivia: With an Oscar before the age of 30, repeated comparisons to Audrey Hepburn, and the drool of a thousand critics at her feet, Natalie Portman has emerged as one of the most promising actresses of her generation. Born in Jerusalem on June 9, 1981, to an artist mother and doctor father, Portman moved to New York when she was three. Raised on Long Island, she was discovered by a modeling agent who signed her on the spot. Her modeling stint led to an audition for Luc Besson's Leon (or The Professional, as it was called in the United States). Due to her age (she was 12 when the film was cast), Portman was initially turned down for the lead role of Mathilda, a girl who asks a hit man (Jean Reno) to train her as an assassin to avenge her brother's death and falls innocently in love with him in the process. However, she ultimately won the part and her 1994 film debut earned a number of positive notices. In interviews, Portman allowed that making her first film in the toughest sections of Spanish Harlem was frightening, but not quite so frightening, she claimed, as going back to school once shooting wrapped.Portman then took on the role of Al Pacino's step-daughter in another demanding film, Michael Mann's Heat (1995). She followed this up with lighter fare, like Mars Attacks! (1996), Everyone Says I Love You, and Beautiful Girls. After turning down title roles in both Lolita and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Portman took on another title role with her 1997 Broadway debut in The Diary of Anne Frank. She stayed with the show until May 1998, during which time she received positive notices for her performance. After lending her voice to The Prince of Egypt (1998), Portman took on her most talked-about role to date, that of Queen Amidala in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). Despite very mixed reviews, the film went into box-office hyperdrive, further propelling Portman toward her status as a rapidly emerging talent for the new millennium. She would end the 20th century with projects like Wayne Wang's Anywhere But Here and Where the Heart Is. Offscreen, Portman also did some growing up, enrolling for her college education at Harvard University. A psychology major, she made it clear upon her enrollment that, aside from her role as Queen Amidala in the Star Wars films, she would not accept any film roles for the duration of her education. Perhaps to the disappointment of fans, she stuck to her word, remaining absent from the screen (save Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones) until she received her degree in 2003. Luckily, upon her return to acting, it was immediately evident that it had been worth the wait.Portman's first foray following graduation was the 2003 Civil War ensemble drama Cold Mountain, alongside Renee Zellweger and Nicole Kidman. But in 2004, Portman was at the forefront of both Garden State, a moody dramedy that endeared her to fans, and Closer, a taught, intimate drama that earned her massive critical accolades, as well as her first Oscar nomination. In 2005, as the curtain finally closed on the Star Wars franchise with the release of Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Portman could be seen with a now iconic pixie haircut after shaving her head for a role in the graphic-novel adaptation V for Vendetta. The dystopic action thriller received mixed reviews, but Portman's performance, as usual, earned accolades. Per her usual M.O. as an actress, she would complete a number of independent, arthouse, or otherwise challenging projects for every blockbuster under her belt, like the 2006 Milos Forman directed period drama Goya's Ghosts, and the Wes Anderson 2007 road (or rather, train) movie The Darjeeling Limited. After appearing opposite Scarlett Johansson and Eric Bana as Anne Boleyn, the famously beheaded wife of King Henry VII in the 2008 period drama The Other Boleyn Girl, Portman turned her high-brow image on its ear the very next year, playing a small town cheerleader turned army wife in the Iraq War drama Brothers. Portman had even more impressive turns awaiting her, however, as 2010 brought the lead role in the hallucinatory Darren Aronofsky film The Black Swan, about an obsessively diligent ballerina who, in order to play both the innocent and dark sides of femininity with the leading role in Swan Lake, must battle her own conflicting inner demons as a woman. Portman trained in ballet rigorously for six months to perform the role, and her efforts paid dividends. Her performance received massive adoration from critics and audiences alike, and she emerged with an Academy Award for Best Actress - which Portman accepted while five months pregnant with a baby she was expecting with fiancé Benjamin Millepied, her choreographer whom she met while filming.Professionally, Portman had a mind to keep a balance with her choice of roles. In a change of pace from the gritty material in The Black Swan, she appeared in the stoner comedy Your Highness, the rom-com No Strings Attached, and the comic-book action thriller Thor.Portman had her first child with husband Benjamin Millepied in June of 2011.

Trivia: Ewan McGregor rocketed to fame over a short period of time, thanks to a brilliant turn as a heroin addict in Trainspotting and the good fortune of being selected by George Lucas and co. to portray the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace. Because Menace arrived amid concomitant fanfare and massive prerelease expectations in early summer 1999, McGregor's appearance in the new trilogy drew a whirlwind of media attention and elicited a series of roles in additional box-office blockbusters, launching the then 28-year-old actor into megastardom. Born on March 31, 1971, in the Scottish town of Crieff, on the southern edge of the Highlands, McGregor joined the Perth Repertory Theatre after high school graduation and subsequently trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His studies at Guildhall led to a key role in Dennis Potter's 1993 Lipstick on Your Collar, a made-for-television musical comedy set during the Suez Crisis. That same year, McGregor received first billing in the British television miniseries Scarlet & Black, an adaptation of Henri Beyle Stendhal's 1830 period novel about a young social climber in post-Napoleonic, late 19th century Europe. McGregor made a well-pedigreed cinematic debut, with a bit part in Bill Forsyth's episodic American drama Being Human (1993), starring Robin Williams. The picture, however, undeservedly flopped and closed almost as soon as it opened, rendering McGregor's contribution ineffectual. The actor continued to turn up on television on both sides of the Atlantic until late 1996; some of his more notable work during this period includes his turn as a beleaguered gunman in an episode of ER and the Cold War episode of Tales From the Crypt, in which he plays a vampiric thief. McGregor landed his cinematic breakthrough role with Danny Boyle's noirish, heavily stylized Shallow Grave (1994). In that film, he essays the role of Alex, a journalist who finds himself in a horrendous position after a murder. He appeared in Carl Prechezer's little-seen British surfing parable Blue Juice (1995) and Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book (1996) before losing almost 30 pounds and shaving his head for his turn as heroin addict Mark Renton in Trainspotting, his sophomore collaboration with Danny Boyle, which gained the attention of critics and audiences worldwide. McGregor then took a 180-degree turn (and projected unflagging versatility) by portraying Frank Churchill in the elegant historical comedy Emma (1996).McGregor continued to work at an impressive pace after Emma, with appearances in Brassed Off (1996), Nightwatch (1998), The Serpent's Kiss (1997), and yet another project with Danny Boyle, the 1997 fantasy A Life Less Ordinary. (The latter film concludes on a raffish note, with an animated puppet of Ewan McGregor dressed in a kilt that bears the McGregor family tartan). In 1998, the actor signed to appear in the Star Wars prequels. (Lucas' decision to hire McGregor for Obi-Wan in the Star Wars prequels was hardly capricious; his uncle, Denis Lawson, had appeared as Wedge Antilles, decades earlier, in the original three installments of the series.) That same year, McGregor contributed a fine performance to Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine, with his portrayal of an iconoclastic, Iggy Pop-like singer during the 1970s glam rock era.As the new millennium dawned, McGregor had a full slate of projects before him, including several for his own production shingle, Natural Nylon, co-founded by McGregor and fellow actors Jude Law, Sean Pertwee, Sadie Frost, and fellow Trainspotter Jonny Lee Miller. Pat Murphy's biopic Nora (2000, co-produced by Wim Wenders' banner Road Movies Filmproduktion and by Metropolitan pictures), represented one of the first films to emerge from this production house. As a dramatization of the real-life relationship between James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, Nora stars McGregor as Joyce and Susan Lynch as the eponymous Nora. The actor stayed in period costume for his other film that year, Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge. Set in 1899 Paris, it stars McGregor as a young poet who becomes enmeshed in the city's sex, drugs, and cancan scene and embarks on a tumultuous relationship with a courtesan (Nicole Kidman). Following a turn in Black Hawk Down (2001), McGregor reprised his role as a young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the eagerly anticipated Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones. 2003 saw McGregor taking advantage of an odd quirk. Years prior, a magazine had commented on the uncanny resemblance between the young Scotch actor and the legendary Albert Finney as a young man. In dire need of a twenty- or thirty-something to portray Finney's younger self for his fantasy Big Fish, Tim Burton cast McGregor in the role; he fit the bill with something close to utter perfection. In that same year's erotic drama Young Adam (directed by David Mackenzie and originally screened at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival), McGregor plays one of two barge workers unlucky enough to dredge up the nearly naked corpse of a young woman. The young actor also starred alongside Renée Zellweger, who, fresh from the success of Chicago, played the unlikely love interest of McGregor's preening, sexist Catcher Block in Down With Love, director Peyton Reed's homage to '60s romantic comedies. McGregor returned to the role of Obie-Wan Kenobi once again in 2005 for Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, the final film in George Lucas' epic saga. That same year, he lent his voice to the computer-animated family film Robots and starred opposite Scarlett Johansson in Michael Bay's big-budget sci-fi actioner The Island. He also secured the lead role of Sam Foster, a psychiatrist attempting to locate a suicidal patient, in Finding Neverland director Marc Forster's follow-up to that earlier hit, the mindbender Stay. Though that picture died a quick death at the box office, McGregor returned the following year as Ian Rider, a secret agent whose assassination sparks the adventure of a lifetime for his young nephew, in Geoffrey Sax's Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker. The film only had a limited run in the U.S., and was panned by critics.In late 2006, McGregor once again demonstrated his crossover appeal with turns in two much artier films: Scenes of a Sexual Nature and Miss Potter. The former -- Ed Blum's directorial debut, from a script by Aschlin Ditta -- is an ensemble piece about the illusions and realities in the relationships of seven British couples over the course of an afternoon on Hampstead Heath. The latter -- director Chris Noonan's long-awaited follow-up to his 1995 hit Babe -- is a biopic on the life of the much-loved children's author Beatrix Potter (played by Renée Zellweger). McGregor portrays Norman, her editor and paramour.McGregor was next cast in Marcel Langenegger's 2007 thriller The Tourist as Jonathan, an accountant who meets his dream girl at a local strip club but immediately becomes the prime suspect when the woman vanishes, and is accused of a multimillion-dollar theft. Over the coming years, McGregor would appear in a number of successful films, like Incendiary, Cassandra's Dream, I Love You, Phillip Morris, Amelia, Beginners, and Haywire.McGregor married French-born production designer Eve Mavrakis in 1995, with whom he has three children.

Trivia: After spending the 1980s playing a series of drug addict and character parts, Samuel L. Jackson emerged in the 1990s as one of the most prominent and well-respected actors in Hollywood. Work on a number of projects, both high-profile and low-key, has given Jackson ample opportunity to display an ability marked by both remarkable versatility and smooth intelligence.Born December 21, 1948, in Washington, D.C., Jackson was raised by his mother and grandparents in Chattanooga, TN. He attended Atlanta's Morehouse College, where he was co-founder of Atlanta's black-oriented Just Us Theater (the name of the company was taken from a famous Richard Pryor routine). Jackson arrived in New York in 1977, beginning what was to be a prolific career in film, television, and on the stage. After a plethora of character roles of varying sizes, Jackson was discovered by the public in the role of the hero's tempestuous, drug-addict brother in 1991's Jungle Fever, directed by another Morehouse College alumnus, Spike Lee. Jungle Fever won Jackson a special acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival and thereafter his career soared. Confronted with sudden celebrity, Jackson stayed grounded by continuing to live in the Harlem brownstone where he'd resided since his stage days. 1994 was a particularly felicitous year for Jackson; while his appearances in Jurassic Park (1993) and Menace II Society (1993) were still being seen in second-run houses, he co-starred with John Travolta as a mercurial hit man in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. His portrayal of an embittered father in the more low-key Fresh earned him additional acclaim. The following year, Jackson landed third billing in the big-budget Die Hard With a Vengeance and also starred in the adoption drama Losing Isaiah. His versatility was put on further display in 1996 with the release of five very different films: The Long Kiss Goodnight, a thriller in which he co-starred with Geena Davis as a private detective; an adaptation of John Grisham's A Time to Kill, which featured him as an enraged father driven to murder; Steve Buscemi's independent Trees Lounge; The Great White Hype, a boxing satire in which the actor played a flamboyant boxing promoter; and Hard Eight, the directorial debut of Paul Thomas Anderson.After the relative quiet of 1997, which saw Jackson again collaborate with Tarantino in the critically acclaimed Jackie Brown and play a philandering father in the similarly acclaimed Eve's Bayou (which also marked his debut as a producer), the actor lent his talents to a string of big-budget affairs (an exception being the 1998 Canadian film The Red Violin). Aside from an unbilled cameo in Out of Sight (1998), Jackson was featured in leading roles in The Negotiator (1998), Sphere (1998), and Deep Blue Sea (1999). His prominence in these films added confirmation of his complete transition from secondary actor to leading man, something that was further cemented by a coveted role in what was perhaps the most anticipated film of the decade, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), the first prequel to George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy. Jackson followed through on his leading man potential with a popular remake of Gordon Parks' seminal 1971 blaxploitation flick Shaft. Despite highly publicized squabbling between Jackson and director John Singleton, the film was a successful blend of homage, irony, and action; it became one of the rare character-driven hits in the special effects-laden summer of 2000.From hard-case Shaft to fragile as glass, Jackson once again hoodwinked audiences by playing against his usual super-bad persona in director M. Night Shyamalan's eagerly anticipated follow-up to The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable (2000). In his role as Bruce Willis' brittle, frail antithesis, Jackson proved that though he can talk trash and break heads with the best of them, he's always compelling to watch no matter what the role may be. Next taking a rare lead as a formerly successful pianist turned schizophrenic on the trail of a killer in the little-seen The Caveman's Valentine, Jackson turned in yet another compelling and sympathetic performance. Following an instance of road rage opposite Ben Affleck in Changing Lanes (2002), Jackson stirred film geek controversy upon wielding a purple lightsaber in the eagerly anticipated Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Despite rumors that the color of the lightsaber may have had some sort of mythical undertone, Jackson laughingly assured fans that it was a simple matter of his suggesting to Lucas that a purple lightsaber would simply "look cool," though he was admittedly surprised to see that Lucas had obliged him Jackson eventually saw the final print. A few short months later filmgoers would find Jackson recruiting a muscle-bound Vin Diesel for a dangerous secret mission in the spy thriller XXX.Jackson reprised his long-standing role as Mace Windu in the last segment of George Lucas's Star Wars franchise to be produced, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). It (unsurprisingly) grossed almost four hundred million dollars, and became that rare box-office blockbuster to also score favorably (if not unanimously) with critics; no less than Roger Ebert proclaimed it "spectacular." Jackson co-headlined 2005's crime comedy The Man alongside Eugene Levy and 2006's Joe Roth mystery Freedomland with Julianne Moore and Edie Falco, but his most hotly-anticipated release at the time of this writing is August 2006's Snakes on a Plane, a by-the-throat thriller about an assassin who unleashes a crate full of vipers onto a aircraft full of innocent (and understandably terrified) civilians. Produced by New Line Cinema on a somewhat low budget, the film continues to draw widespread buzz that anticipates cult status. Black Snake Moan, directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow) dramatizes the relationship between a small-town girl (Christina Ricci) and a blues player (Jackson). The picture is slated for release in September 2006 with Jackson's Shaft collaborator, John Singleton, producing.Jackson would spend the ensuing years appearing in a number of films, like Home of the Brave, Resurrecting the Champ, Lakeview Terrace, Django Unchained, and the Marvel superhero franchise films like Thor, Iron Man, and The Avengers, playing superhero wrangler Nick Fury.

Trivia: After several years in secondary film roles, the skeletal, menacing Christopher Lee achieved horror-flick stardom as the Monster in 1958's The Curse of Frankenstein, the second of his 21 Hammer Studios films. Contrary to popular belief, Lee and Peter Cushing did not first appear together in The Curse of Frankenstein. In Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), in which Cushing plays the minor role of Osric, Lee appears as the cadaverous candle-bearer in the "frighted with false fires" scene, one of his first film roles. In 1958, Lee made his inaugural appearance as "the Count" in The Horror of Dracula, with Cushing as Van Helsing. It would remain the favorite of Lee's Dracula films; the actor later noted that he was grateful to be allowed to convey "the sadness of the character. The terrible sentence, the doom of immortality...."Three years after Curse, Lee added another legendary figure to his gallery of characters: Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist of Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes. With the release eight years later of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Lee became the first actor ever to portray both Holmes and Holmes' brother, Mycroft, onscreen. Other Lee roles of note include the title characters in 1959's The Mummy and the Fu Manchu series of the '60s, and the villainous Scaramanga in the 1974 James Bond effort The Man With the Golden Gun. In one brilliant casting coup, the actor was co-starred with fellow movie bogeymen Cushing, Vincent Price, and John Carradine in the otherwise unmemorable House of Long Shadows (1982). Established as a legend in his own right, Lee continued working steadily throughout the '80s and '90s, appearing in films ranging from Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) to Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999).In 2001, after appearing in nearly 300 film and television productions and being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the international star with the most screen credits to his name, the 79-year-old actor undertook the role of Saruman, chief of all wizards, in director Peter Jackson's eagerly anticipated screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Thought by many to be the millennial predecessor to George Lucas' Star Wars franchise, audiences thrilled to the wondrous battle between Saruman and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) atop the wizard's ominous tower, though Lee didn't play favorites between the franchises when Lucas shot back with the continuing saga of Anakin Skywalker's journey to the dark side in mid-2002. Wielding a lightsaber against one of the most powerful adversaries in the Star Wars canon, Lee proved that even at 80 he still had what it takes to be a compelling and demanding screen presence. He lent his vocal talents to Tim Burton's Corpse Bride in 2005, and appeared as the father of Willy Wonka in the same director's adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic. He appeared as Count Dooku in Revenge of the Sith, and voiced the part for the animated Clone Wars. He appeared in the quirky British film Burke & Hare in 2010, and the next year he could be seen Martin Scorsese's Hugo. In 2012 he teamed with Tim Burton yet again when he appeared in the big-screen adaptation of Dark Shadows.Now nearly into 90s, Lee returned to Middle Earth in 2012 with Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, appearing in the first (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) and third (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies) films. He also reprised the role in a number of video games based on the two series. Lee was still actively working when he died in 2015, at age 93.

Trivia: Known to millions of Star Wars fans as the scabby and nefarious Emperor Palpatine, Scottish actor Ian McDiarmid also happens to have built a career as one of the London theatre's most acclaimed and influential figures. The co-artistic director (along with Jonathan Kent) of Islington's Almeida Theatre since 1990, McDiarmid has been, in large part, responsible for the Almeida's transformation from obscure fringe theatre to one of London's most respected playhouses. Alongside Kent, he was named by one theatre critic as one of the "capital's prime impresarios."Born in Carnoustie, Scotland, on April 17, 1947, McDiarmid grew up in Dundee, Tayside. Although he nurtured an interest in the theatre from a young age, he put aside his stage inclinations to study social sciences at St. Andrews University. Ultimately deciding that he was not suited for a career as a clinical psychologist, McDiarmid decided to take the plunge into acting, working for a year to support his training courses at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. After completing his study, he performed with various fringe theatres throughout Scotland and England, and eventually joined the vaunted Royal Shakespeare Company.McDiarmid began moving into television and film in the late 1970s with his casting in a supporting role in the TV series The Professionals. He made his film debut in 1980, but did not have his first major -- or memorable -- role until he was cast as the Emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi (1983). Like so many other actors in the Star Wars trilogy who traded in recognizable facial/bodily/vocal features for the demands of their often heavily made-up or computerized characters, McDiarmid did earn a certain amount of fame for his work in the film, but it was largely confined to the realm of enthusiastic Star Wars fans.While the actor continued to appear onscreen in such features as Gorky Park (1983) and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), his first love was the theatre, and it was in his capacity as a stage actor and director that he made and continues to make his greatest impact. In 1998, McDiarmid and Kent won the Evening Standard's Theatrical Achievement of the Year award. The following year, McDiarmid appeared in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and reprised the role of Emporer Palpatine -- albeit a younger, less made-up version of the character -- for the hugely-hyped Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, which succeeded in introducing him to a new generation of Star Wars fans. After appearing in the World War I drama All the Kings Men the same year, McDiarmid returned to the role of Palpatine in 2002's Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones and again in the franchise-closer Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Trivia: Born July 9th, 1955 and bitten by the acting bug while in high school, Jimmy Smits earned a B.A. from Brooklyn College and an M.F.A. from Cornell. His excellent work in off-Broadway productions led to his being cast in several movie and TV projects, notably the two-hour pilot for Miami Vice (1984). In 1986, Smits was signed to play tyro attorney Victor Sifuentes on the weekly NBC series L.A. Law, a role which would win him a fervent fan following as well as an Emmy. He eventually left the series to pursue a theatrical film career, but by 1994 was back on the small screen in such cable-TV productions as The Cisco Kid and Solomon and Sheba. While filming the latter production in Morocco, Smits was asked by the producers of the TV series NYPD Blue to replace another actor with movie aspirations, David Caruso. In the fall of 1994, Smits made his NYPD Blue bow in the role of detective Bobby Simone, almost immediately reclaiming the viewers who'd sworn to desert the series when Caruso left. Following this personal triumph, Smits starred in 1995's Mi Familia, a critically acclaimed film of barrio life.In 1998, after four years in the role of Simone, Smits chose to leave NYPD Blue, though the show would continue for another seven years without him. The first few years of his career following the departure from the show were somewhat lackluster, but Smits eventually landed the role of Senator Bail Organa in the second and third Star Wars prequels, a move that would permanently cement him in film history in the minds of at least one very large fanbase.In addition to his work with the Star Wars franchise, Smits also made an inevitable return to the small-screen mid-decade with a prominent role on NBC's The West Wing during the show's 2004-2005 season. Smits continued to find success on the small screen for his turn as assistant district attorney Miguel Prado. The role would earn him a Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.

Trivia: While British actor Anthony Daniels' face and name may not be immediately familiar to the moviegoing public, his primary film role most assuredly is: fussy aureate android C-3PO in the phenomenally popular Star Wars saga. Though acting was his passion, Daniels did not attempt to make it his career until his mid-twenties. After three years in drama school, Daniels won a job on BBC Radio and soon moved to theater, joining Britain's Young Vic Company. Daniels had been a professional thespian for only two years when he, despite initial reluctance, agreed to play C-3PO in George Lucas' record-breaking sci-fi fantasy Star Wars (1977). Paired with the bolder droid R2D2, C-3PO fretfully joined Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia in the old-fashioned battle against the evil Dark Side; his gold anthropomorphized machine body became a prominent symbol of Lucas' elaborately conceived cinematic universe. The blockbuster sequels, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), also featured Daniels as the popular droid. Though Daniels moved on to other acting projects, including the animated Lord of the Rings (1978), I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle (1989), and the fourth installment of British television's acclaimed Prime Suspect series, he also authored the comic book The Protocol Offensive about C-3PO. When Lucas began production in the late '90s on the trio of prequels to the original Star Wars, Daniels was one of the few original cast members the story allowed to return -- and Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace (1999) finally revealed the origin of a pre-gilded age C-3PO.

Trivia: A sturdy, dependable lead with substantial romantic appeal and genre versatility, rugged Aussie performer Jack Thompson attained tremendous stardom as one of the top box-office draws in his native country. He received one of his best-known (and most visible) assignments early in his career, with lead billing on a television series: the Australian WWII adventure drama Spyforce (1971-1973). Born Jack Payne, Thompson took his big screen bow in Fever Heat (1968), but Ken Hannam's period sheep-shearing drama Sunday Too Far Away (1975) - as a cornerstone of the New Australian Cinema - represented the actor's first and most significant career breakthrough. Indeed, Thompson's subsequent rise to stardom closely matches the rebirth and renewed prominence of Australian film during the '70s. Other notable Thompson efforts include Caddie (1976), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), and The Man From Snowy River (1982). For his many contributions to Australian cinema, Thompson was awarded an Order of Australia and was named the country's Good Will Ambassador to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a post he served for several years. In the late '90s - thanks in no small part to the runaway success of the international crossover hit The Sum of Us (1994) (in which Thompson plays an open-minded father supportive of his son's gay lifestyle), Thompson made the transition to Hollywood. His American credits included Clint Eastwood's offbeat drama Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) (as the defense attorney of an eccentric antique dealer); George Lucas's intergalactic romance Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (as Cliegg Lars, Luke Skywalker's step-grandfather); and Steven Soderberg's World War II drama The Good German (as a congressman). In 2008, Thompson teamed up with George Clooney and Renee Zellweger for the period football comedy Leatherheads.

Trivia: Boasting brooding good looks which have allowed him to play both edgy heroes and fearsome villains, Temuera Morrison is one of New Zealand's best-recognized actors, and perhaps the most visible Maori performer in the world. Morrison was born in the tourist community of Rotorua; his instincts as a performer came naturally, given his father's career as a musician and the fact his uncle, Sir Howard Morrison, was one of the nation's best-loved entertainers. After completing high school, Morrison briefly worked with his uncle, but before long he decided to go into acting, and studied drama through New Zealand's Special Performing Arts Training Scheme. Morrison's SPATS training led to his first film role, in the drama Other Halves, and in 1988 he got to show some comic flair in the James Bond parody Never Say Die. In 1993, Morrison was hired as the Maori dialogue advisor on the international hit The Piano, but his big break came a year later, when Morrisonwas cast as Jake Heke, an alcoholic and abusive Maori husband and father, in the acclaimed drama Once Were Warriors. Morrison's vivid performance won him the Best Actor trophy at the 1994 New Zealand Film and TV Awards, and the attention brought Morrison to Hollywood. However, Morrison's initial American roles were in a handful of would-be blockbusters which died on the vine commercially speaking, including Barb Wire, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Speed 2: Cruise Control. However, Morrison fared better at the box office with 2000's Vertical Limit, and the year before he made a triumphant return to New Zealand to star in the sequel to Once Were Warriors, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? The film did not receive the same degree of international attention as the original, but it was popular and well-reviewed in New Zealand, and Morrison's second turn as Jake won him another Best Actor prize from the New Zealand Film and TV Awards. Morrison landed his biggest hit in 2002, when he was cast as Jango Fett in the eagerly anticipated Star Wars: Episode Two -- Attack of the Clones. ~ Mark Deming

Trivia: Though Australian-born actress Rose Byrne made her film debut in 1994, when she played a supporting role in the eccentric drama Dallas Doll alongside Sandra Bernhard and Jake Blundell, her breakout performances within her native country were both on the small screen; namely, in the soap opera Echo Point and the long-running drama series Heartbreak High. After developing a fan base and gaining some critical recognition, Byrne was cast alongside fellow Aussie Heath Ledger in Two Hands (1999), which featured the actress playing an innocent country girl whose would-be suitor has unwittingly found himself in the midst of a mafia scandal. Though she undoubtedly caught the eye of American filmmakers after Two Hands' premiere at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, Byrne wouldn't appear in an American film until several years later, when she made a very small appearance in a very big movie -- Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones. However, before Star Wars, Byrne starred in two little-known, but nonetheless significant, Australian parts, including her first lead role in The Goddess of 1967 (2000), in which she portrayed a blind, emotionally unstable orphan, and My Mother Frank, which featured her as the unrequited love interest of a pining college student. After the 2002 release of Attack of the Clones, Byrne could be seen in a minor but indelible supporting role in Matt Dillon's City of Ghosts. Byrne went on to perform in two critically acclaimed Australian features -- The Rage in Placid Lake (2003) and The Night We Called It a Day (2003) -- as well as the U.K. release I Capture the Castle (2003), in which she co-starred as the beautiful daughter of a once-grand English family. In 2004, Byrne played a supporting role in Wolfgang Petersen's big-budget historical epic Troy, and went on to star with Josh Hartnett, Matthew Lillard, and Troy alumna Diane Kruger in director Paul McGuigan's thriller Wicker Park. In 2006 she was cast in a supporting role in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. In 2007 she had a hit on the small-screen as one of the leads in the series Damages. Although she continued to work steadily in movies as well, she didn't find herself in a big hit until 2011 when she was one of the main characters in the Oscar nominated comedy Bridesmaids. That same year she also appeared in X-Men: First Class as Dr. Moira MacTaggert.Byrne soon became a mainstay in the comedy world, appearing in The Internship, Neighbors and Spy. She also appeared in the 2014 remake of Annie, playing Grace, and reprised her role of in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).

Trivia: Is of Indian and Pakistani descent.Started her career as an actress at the age of 8.Used to spend her summers in England when she was young.Moved to London in 2010.Has had an extensive career performing in theater.

Trivia: A native of Blacktown, New South Wales, Australia, actor Joel Edgerton grew up in the town of Dural, where he attended primary and secondary school. After high school, the aspiring thespian attended the Nepean Drama School on the Kingswood Campus at the University of Western Sydney, graduating in 1994. Cinematically, he divided his subsequent efforts between producing (for his Blue Tongue Films production shingle, co-run with his brother) and acting, but placed the greatest emphasis on acting. Early features (produced mostly in Australia) included Praise (1998), Dogwatch (1999), and Erskineville Kings (1999), but Edgerton came into his own with his popular ongoing turn as Will McGill on the Aussie soaper The Secret Life of Us, then branched out into increased international exposure with onscreen contributions to two of George Lucas' Star Wars films, Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones (2002) and Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith (2005). Those assignments represented something of a watershed for Edgerton, who then worked predominantly on higher profiled features, including Joe Carnahan's Smokin' Aces (2007) and Tatia Rosenthal's $9.99 (2008). In 2010, he co-starred in the highly acclaimed Australian crime-drama Animal Kingdom and lent his voice to the animated film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole. Edgerton soon began scoring starring roles, headlining the disappointing 2011 remake of The Thing, starring opposite Jennifer Garner in the family film The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012) and playing a predominate role in the Academy Award-nominated Zero Dark Thirty (2012). In 2013, he played Tom Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

Trivia: As a child, thought she may go into the medical profession. Was bitten by the acting bug at age 14 when she performed in a school production of The Boyfriend. First TV role was in an episode of the series House Gang in 1996. Although she worked mainly in local TV and film productions, landed a small role playing Hermione Bagwa in the international blockbuster Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002). In 2011, played Olive in Sydney's Belvoir Theatre production of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Traced her family history in a 2013 episode of Who Do You Think You Are?

Trivia: Not to be confused with the honey-voiced radio tenor of the same name, British dwarf actor Kenny Baker was a fixture of science-fiction and horror films of the 1970s and 1980s. A nightclub performer who, like America's Michael Dunn, traded in more on his talent than his size, the 3'8" Baker was cast in Star Wars (1977) as the beep-boop-beeping minirobot R2-D2, while his nightclub partner Jack Purvis was given the smaller role of the chief Jawa. Baker gave one of the few all-motorized human performances in film history. Once jammed into his robot costume, he was unable to move about and had to rely on a sophisticated remote controls - and when those didn't work, he had to be pulled around on nylon ropes. Additionally, the noisemaking computer controls on the R2D2 shell were so loud that Baker didn't know if a take was over unless someone banged on the costume with a hammer. Somehow Baker survived both his tight hardware exterior and the sweltering Tunisian heat on location, and appeared in both Star Wars sequels, as well as such other oddball movie projects as The Elephant Man (1980), Time Bandits (1981) and Mona Lisa (1988). And in the Oscar-winning Amadeus (1984), Kenny Baker could be seen without his R2D2 getup as a jester-like performer in one of Mozart's comic operas.Baker returned to R2 in the second set of Star Wars films, beginning in 1999, but retired from the role once that trilogy ended in 2005. He was a consultant on 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Baker died in 2016, at age 81.

Trivia: This Australian leading man has been onscreen from 1974.

Trivia: Aussie actress Claudia Karvan lived out one of the most unconventional of childhoods as the daughter of two nightclub proprietors in the seedy, adult-oriented Kings Cross district of Sydney. Though she spent a short period dabbling in rebellious and somewhat edgy behavior, she remained inherently intellectual and heavily gravitated to literature as a primary source of fascination. Karvan moved into film at the tender age of nine, when a friend's father cast her in a prominent role in the family oriented drama Molly. Numerous additional assignments followed, culminating with a lead as a wayward abandoned adolescent whose path intersects with that of the mother who abandoned her (Judy Davis) in white-hot director Gillian Armstrong's slice-of-life drama High Tide (1987). Karvan scored even greater acclaim and popularity as one of the stars of the 90210-like Australian series drama The Secret Life of Us, about a group of trendy twenty-somethings, and then produced and co-starred in a follow-up series about similar characters in their thirties, entitled My Way. Meanwhile, Karvan's feature work continued; projects included the 1992 Redheads, the 1994 Tales of Erotica, and the 2000 outing Risk. In 2008 Karvan lent her voice to the groundbreaking claymation feature $9.99, opposite Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia, and Secret Life co-star Samuel Johnson.