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: A petite actress with olive skin and pixie features, Ukrainian-born Mila Kunis became a breakout teen star on the FOX sitcom That '70s Show, playing spoiled daddy's girl Jackie Burkhardt. The rare 15-year-old actress to be cast as a 15-year-old character, Kunis also demonstrated her maturity by mastering accent-free English only a few years after immigrating. Her command of slang and teen vocal mannerisms won her work even when her appearance was not being utilized, as she voiced another all-American teen on FOX's animated envelope-pusher, Family Guy.Milena Markovna Kunis was born on August 14, 1983 in Kiev, Ukraine, then moved with her parents to Los Angeles when she was seven years old. Kunis credits listening to the simple vocabulary of Bob Barker on The Price Is Right with helping her develop a speedy fluency in English. She enrolled in acting classes at the Beverly Hills Studio, where she was discovered performing in a showcase. She quickly began appearing in commercials. Kunis filled out her early resumé with such pit stops as Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves (1997), Krippendorf's Tribe (1998), and the infamous WB ratings cellar-dweller Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher (1996). She also played a younger version of Angelina Jolie in the HBO movie Gia (1998). But it was her casting in Mark Brazill's That '70s Show that earned Kunis notice, as her petulant teen queen soon became a standout, able to range from endearing to grating. Her aggravated whining rung true enough to earn her a voice-over role on Family Guy, taking over for Lacey Chabert as Megan Griffin during the 2000 season. As the 2000's roled along, however, Kunis would seem to graduate to the ranks of adult actresses, rather than teen starlets, in seemingly the blink of an eye. Her comic turn in 2008's massively successful comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall kicked off Kunis' new style, followed quickly by roles as a femme fatale in 2008's Max Payne, a seductive grifter in 2009's Extract, and a post apocalyptic heroine in 2010's Book of Eli. 2010 would also find her playing opposite Natalie Portman's Oscar winning performance in Darren Aronofsky's psychological thriller The Black Swan. Though her supporting role offered less opportunity to showcase her talents than her costar's did, Kunis was roundly praised for the skill and presence she brought to the production -- not to mention her commitment to transforming her body for her character, training for months in ballet -- all further cementing her reputation as a serious actress. Kunis would spend the next several years appearing in numerous projects, like Friends with Benefits, The Muppets, Ted, Oz the Great and Powerful and Jupiter Ascending, an epic space drama directed by the Wachowskis.

Trivia: Alongside frequent collaborator Mathieu Kassovitz, Vincent Cassel emerged in the mid-1990s as one of France's most arresting and exciting new actors. Macho, hard-eyed, and appearing to be in constant preparation for a fight, Cassel embodied a kind of crude masculinity that recalled the likes of Jean-Paul Belmondo and served as a potent onscreen manifestation of the ever-tightening cultural tensions at work in late 20th century France. However, it is a testament to Cassel's talent that his onscreen persona has never verged into caricature, and thanks to his charisma and versatility, he has been able to work in films ranging from grim urban dramas to light romantic comedies.The son of celebrated actor Jean-Pierre Cassel, who made a career out of playing seductive bourgeois men, Cassel was born in Paris' Montmartre district on November 23, 1966. At the age of 17 he went to circus school and spent the next few years generally avoiding the acting scene, due in part to the fact that both his parents (his mother is a journalist) didn't want him to go into the movie business. Cassel was eventually sucked into films in 1991, when he landed a small role in Philippe de Broca's Les Clés du paradis. Two years later he enjoyed his first collaboration with Kassovitz in Metisse, an urban romantic comedy that cast Cassel as Kassovitz's older brother, a tough Jewish boxer.Cassel again stepped in front of the camera for Kassovitz in L'Haine (1995), in which he played a rough-hewn Jewish kid roaming the mean streets of Paris in the company of two friends and a gun. The film was a surprise international success, winning a Best Director Award for Kassovitz at Cannes and a number of French Césars. For his part, Cassel received Best Actor and Most Promising Young Actor César nominations for his portrayal of a young man undone both by his own flaws and those of society, something that raised his profile considerably in his native country and abroad. The actor began popping up in such English language productions as Merchant-Ivory's Jefferson in Paris (1995) and as the leading man in a number of French films, including L'Appartement (1996), a romantic comedy in which he starred alongside Romane Bohringer, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, and Monica Bellucci. Cassel and Bellucci would continue to collaborate onscreen (in such films as Come Mi Vuoi, 1996) and off, marrying in the late 1990s.Cassel's CV grew rapidly as the century drew to a close, with the actor dividing his time between French films and such international productions as Elizabeth (1998), in which he played the mincing Duc d'Anjou, and Jez Butterworth's Birthday Girl (2000), a romantic drama that cast Cassel and Kassovitz as the cousins of an English bank clerk's (Ben Chaplin) Russian mail-order bride (Nicole Kidman). The following year Cassel recieved what was perhaps his biggest stateside exposure to date with the American release of the highly stylized kung-fu-horror-action-costume adventure flick Brotherhood of the Wolf. In 2002 he appeared opposite his wife yet again in the controversial Irreversible. Two years later he was the bad guy in Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Twelve. He starred in the thriller Derailed in 2005. In 2007 he teamed up with David Cronenberg for the well-reviewed crime thriller Eastern Promises, and he would go on to a huge critical success playing the demanding ballet troupe leader in Black Swan. In 2011 he would again work with Cronenberg in the historical drama A Dangerous Method.

Trivia: While a prolific screen presence from the late-'60s onward, Barbara Hershey did not truly attain star status until two decades later, finally blossoming to become one of the most acclaimed American actresses of her generation. Born Barbara Herzstein on February 5, 1948, in Hollywood, CA, she studied drama during high school and in 1965 made her professional debut in the teen television romp Gidget. From 1966 to 1967, she was a regular on the series The Monroes and subsequently guest starred in a number of other programs. Hershey made her film bow in 1968's With Six You Get Eggroll, followed by the Western Heaven With a Gun and Last Summer. After a number of other lesser projects, she starred as the title heroine in 1972's Boxcar Bertha, the first major theatrical release from a then-unknown Martin Scorsese. David Carradine, Hershey's onscreen partner in crime, became her offscreen companion as well. Carradine directed them both in Americana (filmed in 1973 but not shown until eight years later), and together they had a child, Free.In another nod to the counterculture, Hershey rechristened herself "Barbara Seagull" and traveled to the Netherlands to film the 1973 drama Angela, winning Best Actress honors for her work at the Berlin Film Festival. Still, box-office success continued to elude her, and her resumé remained littered with undistinguished projects including the 1974 heist drama Diamonds, the 1976 comedy A Choice of Weapons, and the Western The Last Hard Men. By 1977, Hershey -- having dropped the "Seagull" surname -- turned to television, where she appeared in the Irwin Allen disaster production Flood! as well as the miniseries A Man Called Intrepid and the 1979-1980 weekly program From Here to Eternity. The 1980 comedy The Stunt Man, actually shot two years earlier, marked Hershey's return to feature films, and was followed by 1981's Take This Job and Shove It and the 1982 horror picture The Entity. By this point, Hershey -- once viewed as a rising star -- had been largely written off by the Hollywood powers-that-be. However, in 1983, she accepted a small role in Philip Kaufman's acclaimed The Right Stuff which garnered her considerable notice. She followed it with another small but pivotal role in Barry Levinson's 1984 baseball fable The Natural, and after a pair of well-regarded television projects -- the 1985 Errol Flynn bio My Wicked, Wicked Ways and 1986's Passion Flower -- Hershey's name was back on the map. After years of low-budget and low-brow projects, suddenly she was a fixture of high-profile features including Woody Allen's masterful 1986 effort Hannah and Her Sisters, David Anspaugh's Hoosiers, and Levinson's 1987 comedy Tin Men. Also in 1987, Hershey's turn in Andrei Konchalovsky's Shy People won Best Actress honors at the Cannes Film Festival, an award she again took home the following year for her performance in Chris Menges' A World Apart.Hershey also excelled in more mainstream affairs, appearing opposite Bette Midler in the weeper Beaches. In 1988, she and Scorsese reunited for the first time since Boxcar Bertha in The Last Temptation of Christ, in which she appeared as Mary Magdalene, winning a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. In 1990, Hershey returned to television to star in the movie A Killing in a Small Town, for which she won an Emmy. Back in the movies, she remained noted for her performances in offbeat fare like 1990's Tune in Tomorrow, 1993's Falling Down, and 1996's The Pallbearer. For her supporting performance in Jane Campion's 1996 adaptation of The Portrait of a Lady, Hershey also earned an Academy Award nomination. In 1998, the actress won further praise for her role as Kris Kristofferson's bohemian wife in A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries. The same year, she appeared as a struggling actress in Amos Poe's Frogs for Snakes, and then went on to play Bruce Willis' wife in the highly anticipated 1999 adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. She appeared in the drama Lantana in 2001, and had major parts in 11:14 and Paradise. She spent a few years away from the spotlight, but in 2007 she returned in Love Comes Lately and The Bird Can't Fly. She appeared as the title character in 2008's Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning, and played the mother to Natalie Portman in Black Swan.

Trivia: Following her breakthrough in 1988's Beetlejuice, Winona Ryder emerged as one of the most celebrated actresses of her generation. Adept at playing characters ranging from depressed, angst-ridden goths to Edith Wharton debutantes, the saucer-eyed, porcelain-skinned Ryder has attained critical respect in addition to widespread popularity.Ryder was born in and named after the city of Winona, MN, on October 29, 1971. The daughter of communal hippies and the goddaughter of LSD guru Timothy Leary, she grew up on a commune in Northern California. Ryder's family moved to Petaluma when she was ten; following regular abuse from her classmates, who targeted her for her unconventional, androgynous appearance (she was once jumped by a group of boys who had mistaken her for a gay boy), she was home schooled. At the age of 11, she joined the American Conservatory Theatre, and was soon trying out for movie roles. An audition for the part of Jon Voight's daughter in Desert Bloom failed to yield a role but did land the actress an agent, and at the age of 14, Ryder -- who had changed her last name from Horowitz -- made her film debut in Lucas (1986).Finding popularity with her turn as a suicidal teen who has more in common with the ghosts living in her attic than with her yuppie parents in Tim Burton's black comedy Beetlejuice, Ryder quickly became one of the most steadily employed actresses in Hollywood. She continued to corner the alienated and/or confused teen market with starring roles in a number of offbeat films, including the 1989 cult classic Heathers, Great Balls of Fire (in which she played Jerry Lee Lewis' 13-year-old bride), Burton's Edward Scissorhands, and Mermaids.The early '90s saw Ryder begin to branch out from teen roles toward parts requiring greater maturity. Following a turn as a taxi driver in Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth (1991), the actress starred in Francis Ford Coppola's lavish adaptation Bram Stoker's Dracula and then went on to play Antonio Banderas' lover in the critically disembowelled The House of the Spirits. Greater success came with Martin Scorsese's 1993 adaptation of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. Ryder won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Daniel Day-Lewis' picture-perfect wife, and in the process started getting taken seriously as an actress capable of playing more adult characters.A second Oscar nomination -- this time for Best Actress -- followed the next year for Ryder's portrayal of Jo March in Gillian Armstrong's adaptation of Little Women. The same year, the actress took on an entirely different role in Reality Bites, in which she played a twentysomething suffering from post-graduation angst. Similar twentysomething angst followed in How to Make an American Quilt (1995) but was then traded for Puritanical adultery, hair extensions, and another turn with Daniel Day-Lewis in Nicholas Hytner's 1996 adaptation of The Crucible.Following a starring role in the highly anticipated and almost as highly criticized Alien Resurrection in 1997, Ryder had a turn as the waif-ish object of Kenneth Branagh's affections in Woody Allen's Celebrity. She managed to escape much of the criticism leveled at both of these films, and in 1999 and 2000, she reappeared with lead roles in two films, Girl, Interrupted, in which she played a mental institution inmate in the female answer to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the supernatural thriller Lost Souls. Winona shed her skin once more in 2002, when she took the romantic lead in Mr. Deeds, a typically goofy Adam Sandler vehicle. This was a surprising move for Ryder, who, despite making a niche for herself in nearly every imaginable genre, has rarely delved into the world of madcap romantic comedies. Of course, 2001-2002 wouldn't be complete without mention of Winona's inexplicable thievery; the young millionaire was convicted for stealing $5,500 worth of merchandise from a Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue. 2003, meanwhile, meant more unfamiliar territory for Ryder -- she left fiction behind for a part in the documentary The Day My God Died. An uncredited turn as a warped child psychologist in director Asia Argento's The Heart is Decietful Above all Things showed without question that Ryder was still willing to shake things up on the silver screen, and in 2006 she would play an insurance claims investigator assigned the task of investigating a curious death in the aptly titled comedy The Darwin Awards. Later that same year, Ryder would be rotoscoped for a supporting role in director Richard Linklater's animated adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel A Scanner Darkly. The next few years found the maturing actress eschewing Hollywood for roles in smaller independent features such as Sex and Death 101 and David Wain's The Ten, and on the heels of a brief yet memorable turn as Spock's mother in 2009's Star Trek, Ryder channeled her dark energy into the role of a former ballet ingenue on the decline in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. Meanwhile, in 2012, a voice role in Tim Burton's canine creature feature Frankenweenie found Ryder reuniting with the director who helped launch her to cinema stardom in the late-1980s.

Trivia: Made her theater debut at the age of 5. Moved to Canada when she was 7. At 10 years old, landed her first television role, acting opposite Michael Cera on the Canadian children's series I Was a Sixth Grade Alien. The daughter of a prima ballerina, she studied dance at a young age until a back injury forced her to stop. Won two Gemini Awards for her work on the Canadian teen drama renegadepress.com. Founded the production company OnFire Films with Anna Nikita Kaminsky in 2010. Became an advocate for polio eradication after meeting author Kurt Sipolski, who wrote about his personal battle with the disease in the memoir Too Early for Flowers, which was optioned for film by Solo.

Trivia: Hawaiian beauty Kristine Anapau may have started out as a model, though after a successful turn as an actress in the 1997 made-for-television movie Escape From Atlantis, the catwalk queen was soon packing her bags for Los Angeles to pursue a career in film and television. A native of Hilo, HI, Anapau (sometimes credited Kristina Roper) often credits her remarkable early maturity to 12 years of classical ballet training. Graduating high school at the age of 15 to attend the University of Hawaii, the earthy islander segued into modeling early on, later auditioning for a role in Atlantis at the suggestion of her agent. After refining her acting skills in Los Angeles, Anapau appeared on television in both Undressed and The Opposite Sex before her feature debut in 100 Girls (2000). Her next role, in Madison (also 2000), would find the actress in the company of Bruce Dern and James Caviezel. In addition to her film work, Anapau also dabbles in music with her band, the Three G's.

Trivia: Trained as a dancer. Got her start in TV at age 12 on the British children's series Short Change. Has a recurring role as Jennie on Entourage.

Trivia: Actor Sebastian Stan studied drama at Rutgers University before beginning his professional acting career, making minor appearances on TV shows like Law & Order. Eventually, Stan was cast in the 2006 film The Architect, as well as 2007's The Education of Charlie Banks. Then, in 2009, the actor scored a major role in a TV series, playing Jack Benjamin on the NBC series Kings. He went on to appear in the award-winning Black Swan, the comedy Hot Tub Time Machine, the superhero flick Captain America: The First Avenger, Gone, and The Apparition.

Trivia: Actor Toby Hemingway took his Hollywood bow in the mid- to late 2000s with a pair of supporting roles in two extremely different films that displayed his versatility: Renny Harlin's supernatural horror opus The Covenant and Robert Benton's romantic ensemble drama Feast of Love (2007).

Trivia: Studied at the Actors Studio and with Stella Adler, whom he says was the biggest influence in his life. Considers the 1990 action-adventure Delta Force 2 some of his worst work. Has had roles in a number of Darren Aronofsky's films. Imitated some of his mother-in-law's facial expressions for his role as a retired drug-cartel enforcer in Breaking Bad. Doesn't consider himself a character actor, but a "weird-looking romantic lead."

Trivia: Classically trained thespian Patrick Heusinger graduated from actors' Mecca Juilliard. He then entered feature filmdom on an offbeat note as a younger version of one of the main characters, Lars, in Sweet Land (2005), director Ali Selim's unique take on period Americana. For his next major project, Joy Dietrich's family drama Tie a Yellow Ribbon (2007), Heusinger ascended to much higher billing; the motion picture concerns the complex and often tenuous relationships that transpire between three Asian American immigrant women.