Trivia: A prominent writer/producer of Hollywood features who later went on to make a name for himself as the creator of such popular small-screen hits as Felicity and Alias, J.J. Abrams has managed the rare feat of finding success in the all-too-often mutually exclusive worlds of both film and television. It was at the age of eight that the wide-eyed youth first discovered his love of film while on a Hollywood studio tour with his grandfather, and when the pair returned home, Abrams convinced his father to let him try his hand at filmmaking with the family's Super-8 camera. During the following decade, the young auteur grew increasingly comfortable behind the camera, and he continued to turn out his impressive amateur films at an exhausting rate. Later attending New York's Sarah Lawrence College and teaming with a close friend to pen a feature-film treatment, Abrams got his first taste of success when the screenplay was eventually adapted into the James Belushi comedy Taking Care of Business. In the following years, Abrams' career continued to gain momentum as he penned screenplays for such features as Regarding Henry, Forever Young, and Gone Fishin', and it was during this period that the ambitious screenwriter also began to try his hand at producing. As Abrams subsequently began to branch out by producing features that he had no hand in writing, such as The Pallbearer and The Suburbans, he also continued to write by contributing to the screenplay for Michael Bay's Armageddon. Abrams next made his first foray into television as the writer and creator of the hit television series Felicity -- which also found the tireless Abrams stepping into the director's chair for the first time in his professional career. As the series progressed, he was publicly vocal about his frustrations regarding the limitations of the series, and after joking that the series would be more interesting if the titular character had a secret life as a spy, the seed was planted for his most popular effort to date. Premiering on television in 2001, Abrams' second small-screen effort, Alias, told the story of a beautiful young international spy's efforts to battle the evil Alliance of 12 while attempting to find a balance between her secret and social lives. Not only did Alias immediately connect with television viewers, but it also found Abrams growing increasingly into his own as a writer and director. Three years later, Abrams had yet another hit on his hands as the writer/producer/director of Lost, which had the dubious distinction of being the most expensive television pilot ever produced. A haunting tale of a group of airplane-crash survivors stranded on a mysterious island, Lost stood alongside Desperate Housewives as one of the hits that kept the faltering ABC network afloat, picking up Emmy Awards and Golden Globes. Back in the world of film, fans were no doubt surprised when it was announced that Abrams would be returning to the world of features to direct the eagerly anticipated action sequel Mission: Impossible 3, which would serve as his feature-film directorial debut.Abrams would continue writing for TV over the coming years, penning the thriller series Undercovers, and the sci-fi series Fringe. He would also wear various combinations of the writer, producer, and director hats simultaneously for a number of projects, such as the hotly anticipated first-person monster movie Cloverfield in 2008, the massively successful Star Trek in 2009, and the drama/thriller/fantasy movie Super 8 in 2011.

Trivia: Columbia University alumnus Lorraine Gary had racked up an impressive list of stage credentials by the time she began appearing in made-for-TV movies in 1971. In both her small- and big-screen work, the versatile Gary has seldom offered the same characterization twice--with one notable exception. Having achieved movie fame for her performance as Ellen Foley, wife of sheriff Roy Scheider, in the blockbuster Jaws (1975), Gary felt obliged to revive the character in the two Jaws sequels, produced respectively in 1979 and 1987 (the latter picture, Jaws-The Revenge, compelled Gary to emerge from a brief retirement). For well over three decades, Lorraine Gary has been married to MCA executive Sidney Scheinberg.

Trivia: The most commercially successful filmmaker in Hollywood history, Steven Spielberg was born December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, OH. A lifelong cinema buff, he began directing his first short movies while still a child, later studying film at California State University and winning notice for his 1969 short feature Amblin'. He first made his mark in television, directing Joan Crawford in the pilot for Rod Serling's Night Gallery and working on episodes of Columbo and Marcus Welby, M.D. Spielberg's first feature-length effort, 1971's Duel, a taut thriller starring Dennis Weaver, was widely acclaimed as one of the best movies ever made for television. Spielberg permanently graduated to feature films with 1974's The Sugarland Express, but it was his next effort, Jaws, which truly cemented his reputation as a rising star. The most successful film of 1975, this tale of a man-eating Great White shark was widely recognized as the picture which established the summer months as the film industry's most lucrative period of the year, heralding a move toward big-budget blockbusters which culminated two years later with his friend George Lucas' Star Wars. Spielberg's follow-up, 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was another staggering success, employing state-of-the-art special effects to document its story of contact with alien life. With the 1979 slapstick-war comedy 1941, Spielberg made his first major misstep, as the star-studded picture performed miserably at the box office. However, he swiftly regained his footing with 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark. Produced by Lucas, the film was one of the biggest hits of the decade, later launching a pair of sequels as well as a short-lived television series. However, it was Spielberg's next effort which truly asserted his position as the era's most popular filmmaker: 1982's E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, the touching tale of a boy who befriends an alien, was hailed upon release as an instant classic, and became one of the most commercially successful movies of all time. After 1984's Raiders of the Lost Ark sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg went against type to direct The Color Purple, an adaptation of Alice Walker's much-honored novel exploring the lives and struggles of a group of African-American women during the Depression years. The film went on to gross over $100 million at the box office, later securing 11 Academy Award nominations. A 1987 dramatization of J.G. Ballard's novel Empire of the Sun was his next picture, and was one of his few box-office disappointments. A similar fate met the sentimental Always (1989), a remake of the wartime weeper A Guy Named Joe, but Spielberg returned to form with the same year's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.With 1991's 60-million-dollar production of Hook, Spielberg again fell victim to negative reviews and lackluster box-office returns, but in 1993 he returned with a vengeance with Jurassic Park. That same year, he released Schindler's List, an epic docudrama set during the Holocaust. The picture won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director honors. As befitting his role as a major Hollywood player, Spielberg and his company, Amblin Entertainment, also produced a number of highly successful features, including 1982's Poltergeist, 1985's Back to the Future, and 1988's groundbreaking Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He also diversified into television, beginning in 1985 with the anthology series Amazing Stories and later supervising the animated series Tiny Toon Adventures and the underwater adventure Seaquest DSV. However, in the wake of Schindler's List, Spielberg's status as a power broker grew exponentially with the formation of Dreamworks SKG, a production company he headed along with former Disney chief Jeffrey Katzenberg and music mogul David Geffen; consequently, Spielberg spent much of the mid-'90s behind the scenes, serving as executive producer on films such as Twister (1996), Men in Black (1997), and two 1998 films, Deep Impact and The Mask of Zorro. Spielberg returned to the director's chair with the 1997 smash The Lost World, the sequel to Jurassic Park. The same year, he was rewarded with several Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Amistad, a slavery epic for which he served as both director and producer. Whatever disappointment Spielberg may have felt over not actually winning any of the above awards was most likely mollified the following year with Saving Private Ryan. The World War II epic, which Spielberg directed and produced, won a staggering 11 Academy Award nominations. Eventually winning five, the film lost out to Shakespeare in Love for Best Picture. Ryan did win a Golden Globe for Best Picture (in the Drama category), as well a Best Director nod for Spielberg. After taking the helm for a short documentary chronicling American history for the millennial New Years Eve celebration broadcast, Spielberg took another shot at summer blockbuster success with the sci-fi drama A.I.. Featuring Oscar nominated child actor Haley Joel Osment in the role of a robot boy who longs to be human, and adapted from an original idea from Stanley Kubrick, the high-concept film received a decidedly mixed reception at the box office. The following year, however, would find Spielberg once again coming out on top with two remarkably upbeat chase films. Adapted from a short story by revered science fiction author Phillip K. Dick and starring Tom Cruise as a the head of an elite "pre-crime division" of police officers who use a trio of psychics to predicts criminals' crimes so that they can be arrested before they have a chance to commit them, Minority Report proved an exhilarating sci-fi action epic. A mere six-months later, Spielberg's fast-paced crime adventure Catch Me If You Can adapted the real life exploits of legendary con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr. to the big screen to the delight of audiences hungering for an entertaining and lightweight holiday release. 2004 saw Spielberg team with Hanks yet again, this time for the lighthearted comedy The Terminal. Also starring Catherine Zeta Jones, the film centered on a man without a country who takes up residence in an American airport. The following year found the director diving back into the big-budget sci-fi genre with War of the Worlds. Starring Tom Cruise, the ambitious film was adapted from H.G. Wells classic alien-invasion novel of the same name. After this Hollywood juggernaut, Spielberg cinematically visited his Jewish heritage for the first time since Schindler's List with 2005's critically acclaimed Munich. Beginning with the 1972 Munich Olympics at which 11 Israeli athletes were kidnapped and later murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, the film follows the small group of Mossad agents recruited to track down and assassinate those responsible. Praised for its sensitive and painful portrayal of ordinary men grappling with their new lives as killers, Munich earned Spielberg a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, reminding audiences and critics alike of the filmmaker's ability to go far beyond the realm of simple adventure and fantasy. In 2006, Spielberg produced Clint Eastwood's two films about WWII, Flags of Our Fathers, about the American soldiers at Iwo Jima, and Red Sun, Black Sand, which takes a look at what life was like for men in the Japanese military; both films received broad critical acclaim. In 2008, Spielberg re-ignited the Indiana Jones franchise with the fourth installment in the saga, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. While critical response to this outing was mixed, it scored at the box office and satisfied many moviegoers. During the years that followed, the number of efforts that bore Spielberg's producing imprimatur grew exponentially. These included The Lovely Bones (2009), the Coen Brothers' remake True Grit (2010), the J.J. Abrams-directed sci-fi fantasy Super 8 (20011) and the eagerly-awaited sequel Men in Black III (2012). Meanwhile, Spielberg reassumed the director's chair for a varied series of pictures, including The Adventures of Tintin (2011). His long gestating Abraham Lincoln biopic Lincoln hit screens in 2012 starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the iconic president and Sally Field as his first lady, and the movie went on to be nominated for a number of Oscars including Best Director and Best Picture. In 2015, he executive produced Jurassic World, the fourth film in the series, and reteamed with Tom Hanks for Bridge of Spies.

Trivia: Tall, radiant, and sensual, British ingenue Emily Blunt caught the attention of the public and press when she starred (at age 20) opposite Natalie Press in Pawel Pawlikowski's gentle, finely told lesbian romance My Summer of Love (2004). In the eyes of many Americans, Blunt (who counted this as her first cinematic credit) seemed to arrive at the top instantaneously. In truth, Blunt -- a London native -- had established herself on British television (largely in BBC productions) several years prior. Summer, however, represented the actress' big global break. She plays a sexually experienced and playfully manipulative teen who seduces the younger and more impressionable Press into an impassioned love affair, while the latter's brother (Paddy Considine) becomes a born-again evangelical Christian and carries his faith to torturous, alienating extremes. The work garnered enthusiastic notices and performed well on the international festival circuit; it thus marked a fortuitous and brazenly intelligent cinematic bow for a young actress. Newsweek's David Ansen was not alone when he tagged Blunt (along with her co-star, Press) as a "major discovery." Variety's Derek Elley observed, "Blunt's perf as the mysterious, mixed-up Tamsin grows, adding a sense of menace which coincides with...Considine's loony Phil." After a supporting role in the U.S. miniseries Empire (about the Roman Empire), Blunt landed her second major break -- and culled even broader exposure -- with a supporting role in David Frankel's bittersweet drama The Devil Wears Prada. As Emily, the obnoxious (yet soft-hearted) assistant to fashion mogul Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), Blunt delivered a colorful and impressive performance. As a result, she received a 2007 Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Although she lost out to Jennifer Hudson at that ceremony, Blunt won the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Television Series, Mini-Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television for her work opposite Bill Nighy in Gideon's Daughter.Blunt followed Prada up with planned supporting roles in such features as The Snow Goose (2006), The Girl in the Park (2007), Wind Chill (2007), The Great Buck Howard (2007), and The Jane Austen Book Club (2007).In 2009 Blunt scored her largest starring role to date as the title character in the costume drama The Young Victoria. In 2010 she married The Office star John Krasinski, and in that same year they co-starred together in Gulliver's Travels. The couple would also each appear in cameo roles in 2011's The Muppets, written and co-starring Jason Segel with whom Blunt would co-star in the 2012 romantic comedy The Five-Year Engagement and rounded out her 2012 with the Golden Globe nominated Salmon Fishing in Yemen, romantic dramedy Your Sister's Sister and the sci-fi action thriller Looper. In 2014, she starred opposite Tom Cruise in the action-thriller Edge of Tomorrow and showed off her singing skills as the Baker's Wife in Into the Woods. The following year, she appeared in the Oscar-nominated Sicario, and in 2016, tackled the Snow White sequel The Huntsman: Winter's War and starred in the highly-anticipated adaptation of The Girl on the Train.

Trivia: Intended to be a puppeteer in college, but dropped out to study comedy, including a stint with Boom Chicago in Amsterdam; while on a cast swap with Second City in Chicago in 2002, met his future comedic partner Keegan-Michael Key. Before the premiere of Key & Peele on Comedy Central in 2012, overlapped with Key for several seasons in the cast of MADtv. Unsuccessfully auditioned to play Barack Obama on Saturday Night Live in 2008 (the role went to Fred Armisen), but would earn acclaim for impersonating the president on Key & Peele in 2012. Like Key, has a black father and a white mother, a biracial status that provides a unique cultural sensitivity and informs much of their comedy.

Trivia: A film prodigy dedicated to Latin American cinema even as his success gave him a ticket to Hollywood, Guillermo del Toro earned a place as one of Time magazine's 50 Young Leaders for the New Millennium before he made his third film.BornOctober 9, 1964 in Guadalajara, Mexico, and raised by his staunchly Catholic grandmother, del Toro was already involved in filmmaking by his teens. A fan of such horror masters as James Whale, Mario Bava, George A. Romero, Alfred Hitchcock, and the work of Britain's Hammer Films, del Toro learned about makeup and effects from The Exorcist's Dick Smith as well as studying screenwriting and making Super-8, 16 mm, and 35 mm short films. Though he executive-produced his first feature, Doña Herlinda and Her Son (1986), at age 21, del Toro initially spent almost a decade as a makeup supervisor, forming his own company, Necropia, in the early '80s. He still found time to produce and direct numerous programs for Mexican television, as well as teach film workshops. Doing his part to turn his hometown into Mexican cinema central, del Toro also co-founded the city's Film Studies Center and the Guadalajara-based Mexican Film Festival.del Toro's feature directorial debut, Cronos (1993), heightened his prominence as a rising star in Mexican film. A low-key, superbly acted horror movie, Cronos' imagery of the vampire as parasite was at once a smart revision of the genre and a veiled allegory about Mexico and the United States. Winner of the critics' prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Cronos put del Toro on the world-cinema and American-independent map. Along with serving on the selection committees for the Sundance Film Festival and the Independent Spirit Awards, del Toro followed Cronos with his first foray into Hollywood filmmaking, Mimic (1997). Starring Mira Sorvino (who took the role partly on the advice of then-boyfriend and del Toro fan Quentin Tarantino), Mimic mined some great scares out of mutant, shape-shifting bugs terrorizing New York City, but having to acquiesce to Hollywood studio demands left del Toro unhappy about the experience.Returning to Mexico, del Toro formed his own production company, The Tequila Gang, and set out to make a more personal thriller. Produced by Pedro Almodóvar and his brother, Agustín Almodóvar, and shot in Spain, The Devil's Backbone (2001) was a more ambitious ghost story set during the end of the Spanish Civil War. Using filters and a mobile camera, del Toro created ominous, sepia-toned visuals that evoked a spectral surveillance over the tragic, politically metaphorical events taking place in an isolated, haunted boys' school for Republican Army orphans. Hailed for its chilling atmosphere, intelligent complexity, and excellent performances from Federico Luppi and Marisa Paredes as the school's left-wing leaders, The Devil's Backbone confirmed del Toro's artistic promise and earned him more critical kudos.Gratified by the experience making The Devil's Backbone and clear-eyed about what Hollywood could offer, del Toro followed his personal movie with the big-budget, Wesley Snipes comic-book vampire thriller sequel Blade 2 (2002). del Toro also began to develop several other American projects, including works with notable Hollywood mavericks James Cameron and Francis Ford Coppola. Though the prospect of del Toro adapting H.P. Lovecraft's chilling short story At the Mountains of Madness gave fans of the horror author hope that someone would finally get his work right on the big screen (no slight to Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon), del Toro's next project would ultimately be an adaptation of a more contemporary supernatural tale. Adapted from and produced by comic-book artist/writer Mike Mignola, Hellboy told the tale of a demon summoned by Nazis in the waning days of World War II (Ron Perlman) who eventually joins the allies in battling the forces of evil.Subsequently preferring to pull back a bit from Hollywood and craft another modestly budgeted dark fairy tale in the vein of The Devil's Backbone, del Toro would next focus his attentions on the production of Pan's Labyrinth. Though Pan's Labyrinth wasn't a direct sequel to The Devil's Backbone in the traditional sense, this unsettling fantasy continued to explore the themes of childhood innocence and tyrannical oppression by following the quest of a young girl who becomes convinced by a mythical faun that she is a lost princess of legend. Once again set during the days of the Spanish Civil War, Pan's Labyrinth merged real-world nightmares with otherworldly wonders with a fluidity seldom seen in contemporary fantasy, and critics were quick to praise the director for his assured handling of the thematically complex material. Pan's Labyrinth became a rare art-house crossover hit, and curried the favor of Academy members, who showered it with Oscar nominations.By this point, Hellboy fans were beginning to wonder whether or not the long-gestating rumors of a sequel to that modestly successful Mike Mignola adaptation would ever bear any tangible fruit. Then, in 2006 Universal announced that they had acquired the rights after Sony withdrew funding from Revolution Studios and were looking to move forward with the film, with director del Toro once again teaming with writer Mignola and stars Ron Perlman and Selma Blair to chronicle the further adventures of everyone's favorite BPRD agent.To the delight of fans, Hellboy II: The Golden Army was eventually released in 2008.In December of 2010, del Toro, along with his long-time cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, director Matthew Cullen, and Executive Producer Javier Jimenez, launched a production company named Mirada. Designed to serve as a collaborative space for artists to work on on the development of a wide variety of digital production (film, television, advertising interactive media, and more), Mirada would find enough success to merit the creation of Motion Theory, another production company.

Trivia: At the age of 26, Steven Soderbergh permanently altered the face of independent cinema when he became the youngest-ever winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival for sex, lies and videotape, his feature-film directorial debut. A simmering exploration of the nature of modern relationships and the links between sexuality and voyeurism, the film was an international sensation that established its director as one of the golden boys of world cinema. Born in Georgia on January 14, 1963, Soderbergh grew up in Baton Rouge, LA. While still in high school, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's film animation class and began making short 16 mm films with second-hand equipment. After he graduation, he went to Hollywood, where he worked as a freelance editor. Soderbergh's time in Hollywood was brief, and he soon returned home, where he continued making short films and writing scripts. One of his films, a documentary about the rock group Yes, earned him an assignment to direct a full-length concert film for the band. The finished product, 9012 Live, was nominated for a 1986 Grammy. Following this achievement, Soderbergh filmed the short subject Winston, a study of sexual gamesmanship that he would expand into sex, lies and videotape. In the wake of the 1989 film's great success, Soderbergh made Kafka, a darkly comic fictional account of the author's life. The austere film turned out to be something of a disappointment, as did the modest King of the Hill, Soderbergh's 1993 portrait of a young boy's coming-of-age during the Depression. The Underneath, his 1995 film, was a post-noir crime drama that offered further existential meditation and an exploration of the destructive effects of sexuality: unfortunately, like Soderbergh's previous two efforts, it remained mired in relative obscurity. The same could be said of Schizopolis and Gray's Anatomy (both 1996), the former a loopy, inventive look at the intricacies of communication that Soderbergh termed an "artistic wake-up call" to himself, the latter a filmed performance of one of Spalding Gray's monologues. In 1998, Soderbergh made good on his "wake-up call" with Out of Sight, his most critically and commercially successful film since sex, lies and videotape. Adapted from the novel by Elmore Leonard, it was an irreverent, enjoyable affair that remained true to the book's spirit and featured believable chemistry between leads George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. The following year, Soderbergh continued on his critical winning streak with The Limey, the generally well-received tale of an ex-con (Terence Stamp) bent on revenge for his daughter's mysterious death. He earned even greater plaudits in 2000 as the director of Erin Brockovich; starring Julia Roberts as its eponymous secretary-heroine who uncovers a major environmental scandal, the film was enthusiastically embraced by audiences and critics alike. Later that same year, Soderbergh raised the bar on issue-oriented drama with Traffic, a multi-layered, multi-character look at the United States' "War on Drugs." The long-gestating project started life as a British miniseries in the early '90s; when Soderbergh realized director Ed Zwick was working on his own exposé on the same subject, the two joined forces, with Zwick producing. Originally developed at Fox with Harrison Ford in the lead, Traffic then switched hands to the major-indie studio USA Films when Ford dropped out, and Michael Douglas snapped up the part. Easily Soderbergh's most ambitious effort, the 50 million-dollar production boasted a seven-city shooting schedule with over 100 speaking parts; almost a third of which were spoken completely in Spanish. What's more, the director insisted on serving as cinematographer for the primarily hand-held, naturally lit film. (Soderbergh originally wanted his credit to read "photographed and directed by," but since WGA regulations prohibit a cinematographer to be credited over a screenwriter, he opted for a pseudonym, Peter Andrews -- his father's first and middle names.) The gamble paid off, both critically and commercially. Soderbergh's touch with actors yielded best-yet performances from Catherine Zeta-Jones, Miguel Ferrer, and Benicio Del Toro, the latter of whom walked away with a slew of year-end critics awards, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar. The film itself shared a berth with Brockovich when the Academy Awards nominations were announced, and Soderbergh made it into the history books as the first person to be doubly nominated for Best Director for two films that were also both nominated for Best Picture. When the winners were finally announced, Traffic earned four Oscars including a Best Director statue for Soderbergh; his work on Brockovich helped snag a long-awaited Best Actress Oscar for Roberts. Soderbergh then plunged headlong into two big-budget adaptations of classic films, both starring his Out of Sight muse George Clooney: 2001's Ocean's Eleven and 2002's Solaris. The former, a star-laden update of 1960's Rat Pack favorite, garnered favorable reviews and a box-office total of more than $180 million -- the director's biggest take yet. The latter marked Soderbergh's return to screenwriting: Encouraged by producer James Cameron to adapt Stanislaw Lem's philosophical sci-fi short story, Soderbergh also signed on to direct in the wake of his 2000 Oscar win. Rather than tamper with director Andrei Tarkovsky's acclaimed 1972 adaptation of Solaris, Soderbergh promised his version would be closer in spirit to the source material. Despite an economical editing job and generally encouraging reviews, audiences let the moody, psychological sci-fi film die a quick death. Between these high-profile projects, the director managed to sandwich in a $2 million ensemble piece, shot mostly on digital video in less than three weeks. 2002's Full Frontal reunited him for the third time with Julia Roberts, but Soderbergh's grungy, esoteric take on the discord between movie life and "real" life was generally reviled by critics and ignored at the box office. The director would retreat to safer waters in 2004 with the successful sequel Ocean's Twelve, a more self-reflexive, globe-trotting take on the first film. A string of almost deliberately obscure work followed. On HBO, Soderbergh and Clooney satisfied their political leanings with K Street, a gritty soap that attempted to meld fiction with documentary as it charted the lives of two high-powered lobbyists (played by high-powered lobbyists James Carville and Mary Matalin). The drab Midwestern anti-thriller Bubble boasted a unique releasing scheme, in which it premiered on pay-per-view cable, in art-house theaters and on DVD at the same time in early 2006. Later that year, The Good German divided critics who found it either enthrallingly retro or needlessly opaque and austere; whatever their opinions, the film failed to catch on with audiences. Once again, Soderbergh licked his wounds by providing the company with another installment of its profitable Ocean's franchise in summer 2007. He followed this up with a slew of projects that continued to alternate between arthouse and commercial, including the wildly ambitious Che (2008) - a 4-hour+ biopic of revolutionary leader Che Guevara (starring Benicio del Toro; a cinematization of the television series The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and a biopic of Liberace starring Michael Douglas. Soderbergh's next "vanity project" was a semi-experimental arthouse film called The Girlfriend Experience, in which real-life porn star Sasha Grey played a prostitute who offers clients the short-term simulation of a real relationship. He next made the quirky comedy/drama The Informant!, starring Matt Damon as the real life blundering informant and white collar criminal Marc Whitacre, before oscillating back to less commerical fare, with The Last Time I Saw Michael Gregg. Soon he was moving on to another big-budget picture: the 2011 epidemic thriller Contagion, which he soon followed up with the hotly anticipated action movie Haywire, starring real-life female mixed martial arts champion Gina Carano as the hard-hitting lead. In an August 2011 article in the New York Times, Soderbergh confirmed his intention to retire from filmmaking to pursue painting full-time, indicating that his 2012 comedy Magic Mike, which told the story of a male stripper who longs to get out of the business while training a handsome young protege, would be his cinematic swan song.In addition to his directorial work, Soderbergh has also served as a producer and screenwriter for other directors' projects; he first made major headway into the world of producing when he and Clooney opened up an exclusive, first-look deal to develop projects under the shingle Section Eight in late 2001. Among Section Eight's first endeavors were pictures helmed by Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven), and Christopher Nolan (Insomnia); though the shingle rarely produced runaway hits, through it, Soderbergh was able to show support for micro-budgeted debuts not unlike his own.

Trivia: American director Robert Zemeckis studied filmmaking at Northern Illinois University, and then got his start with a job with the film editing department at WMAQ-TV, Chicago's NBC flagship station. After commercial work, Zemeckis and his friend and collaborator, Bob Gale, became assistants to Steven Spielberg. It was Spielberg who lined up Zemeckis' first directing job, the 1977 comedy/nostalgia blend I Wanna Hold Your Hand; despite the film's low budget, it demonstrated Zemeckis' ability to combine credible live-action sequences with elaborate special effects devices. Spielberg next had Zemeckis and Gale work on the screenplay of 1941 (1979), which, despite its disappointing box-office returns, convinced the young director that his protegés were valuable commodities. Working again under Spielberg's aegis, Zemeckis directed his first real financial success, Romancing the Stone (1981), a wild adventure yarn that somehow never lost sight of its sense of humor. The director then took on Back to the Future (1984) and its two sequels, once again proving that live actors could be combined with special effects to produce spectacular results. Zemeckis further proved this when, in collaboration with Spielberg and cartoon producer Richard Williams, he directed Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), a groundbreaking combination of cartoon animation and "real" action, which went on to become one of the decade's biggest moneymakers. By the early '90s, Zemeckis was recognized as a director of great technical skill but little personal viewpoint, something that changed with the 1994 release of Forrest Gump. Beyond its top-heavy special effects, the film was a distinctly human drama about a mildly retarded young man (Tom Hanks) who achieves professional and personal success by refusing to see anything but the good in people. Expected to be a moderately profitable feature, Forrest Gump amazed everyone by becoming the top moneyspinner of the summer of 1994 -- and one of the highest-grossing movies of all time. As an added bonus, it helped Zemeckis snag a Best Director Oscar, as well as several other awards. He found further success, albeit moderate by comparison, with Contact, a 1997 film starring Jodie Foster as an astronomer seeking out extraterrestrial life forms. The 1990s also found the frequent director becoming much more active as a producer, and in addition to producing many of his own films Zemeckis also backed future Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson on his first stateside feature The Frighteners. As he continued to produce such William Castle remakes as The House on Haunted Hill and Thir13en Ghosts, Zemeckis prepaired to shoot his next feature, a film that once again found him teaming with Forrest Gump star Hanks. A memorable adventure drama concerning a dedicated FedEx executive's struggle for survival after enduring a horrific plane crash and becoming stranded on a deserted island, the filming of Cast Away was halted halfway through so that star Hanks could physically transform himself for the demanding role - and in the meantime Zemeckis took the helm for the Harrison Ford/Michelle Pheiffer fright fest What Lies Beneath. In the end both films performed fairly well at the box office, even if Cast Away had recieved a somewhat negative reaction by many due to its meditative pacing and open ended coda. By the time The Polar Express hit theaters it had been nearly four years since Zemeckis had invaded the multiplexes. A holiday hit featuring vocal contributions by Tom Hanks and Daryl Sabara, The Polar Express thrilled families in both traditional theaters and as an IMAX 3D release, and took in an impressive pull at the domestic box office. His credits as a producer steadily grew as he played an instrumental part in bringing such diverse efforts as House of Wax and The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio to the screen, Zemeckis continued his efforts to provide fun frights for viewers of all ages by serving as executive producer of both the kid-friendly, computer animated haunted house flick Monster House, and producer to the apocalyptic Hilary Swank starer The Reaping. Back in the director's chair, Zemeckis would be putting the finishing touches on the Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery-scripted adventure fantasy Beowulf - an Eighth Century tale of good versus evil inspired by the popular Old English poem of the same name. He had a huge hit in 2009 with the Jim Carrey starring motion-capture version of A Christmas Carol, however audiences rejected Mars Needs Moms, an animated film he helped produce. He returned to live-action actors with 2012's drama Flight, and followed that up with a remake of The Beatles Yellow Submarine.

Trivia: Along with his friend and occasional collaborator Steven Spielberg, George Lucas was the key figure behind the American film industry's evolution (or, according to most critics, de-evolution) from cinema to spectacle during the late '70s. The mastermind behind two of the most lucrative franchises in history -- Star Wars and the Indiana Jones features, respectively -- Lucas redefined the concept of the Hollywood motion picture, shifting the focus of film away from acting and personal storytelling to special effects, production design, and rapid-fire action. Remaining at all times on the cutting edge of merchandising and technology, he forever altered the ways in which movies are perceived by audiences and studios alike. Born May 14, 1944, in Modesto, CA, George Walton Lucas Jr.'s first love was not filmmaking, but auto racing. Only a serious wreck forced him out of the sport, and he eventually enrolled in the University of Southern California's famed film school program. There his experimental short subject THX 1138 won a number of awards and helped earn him an internship at Warner Bros. studios, where he worked as a production assistant on fellow U.S.C. alum Francis Ford Coppola's 1969 effort The Rain People. After working on the Al and David Maysles brothers' 1970 Rolling Stones documentary Gimme Shelter, Lucas (with Coppola's financial assistance) mounted a feature-length remake of THX 1138. The end result, starring Robert Duvall, won rave reviews, and swiftly established itself as a major cult favorite. The success of THX 1138 brought Lucas to the attention of Universal Studios, which agreed to finance 1973's nostalgic American Graffiti, a superb reminiscence on early-'60s America which launched the motion-picture careers of talents including Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, and Harrison Ford. Even more important was the film's soundtrack, a collection of vintage rock & roll hits which became an immediate best-seller and established the formula for movie soundtracks for decades to come. Shot on a miniscule budget, American Graffiti grossed over 145 million dollars, and earned a number of Academy Award nominations including nods for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Suddenly, Lucas was a major Hollywood player, and he was given much greater latitude and support in developing his next project. That next project proved to be 1977's Star Wars, one of the most important and successful films in Hollywood history. A space opera inspired by the writings of Joseph Campbell (as well as, in no small part, Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress), it incorporated elements of mythology and religion to create a self-contained universe populated by larger-than-life characters in extraordinary situations, all achieved with the latest in cutting-edge technology. Made for just under ten million dollars, Star Wars grossed over 400 million dollars globally on just its initial run alone, creating a cottage industry of toys, comic books, and other collectibles and establishing science fiction as Hollywood's dominant genre. The overwhelming success of Star Wars did more than simply alter the kinds of films the studios looked to produce, however; it also forever changed the way films were made. The most notable aspect of the picture's storytelling was its breakneck pacing, edited by Lucas himself in tandem with his wife. Seemingly no film had ever moved so quickly, and its overwhelming success proved not only that a generation weaned on the rapid pace of television could easily absorb such an onslaught of image and sound, but that this was the kind of narrative they wanted to see on a regular basis. Studios scrambled to develop their own sci-fi projects, while Lucas himself turned to studying the pioneering special effects work of innovators like Willis O'Brien and Linwood Dunn, ultimately establishing his own F/X company, Industrial Light and Magic, to assist other filmmakers and technicians in creating the most accomplished visuals possible. The work of the Industrial Light and Magic team quickly became the industry standard, constantly remaining two or three steps ahead of their competition by applying the latest technological advances to manufacture seamless visual effects. Eventually, they became among the very first to work with computer graphics. Lucas also established Skywalker Sound, a state-of-the-art post-production audio facility which later developed THX, a means of creating new levels of sophistication in motion-picture soundtracks. Given the flurry of activity that followed in the wake of Star Wars, Lucas opted not to direct his screenplay for the film's inevitable sequel, 1980's The Empire Strikes Back, instead handing the reins over to Irvin Kershner. Widely considered the best of the Star Wars films, it was another massive hit, with a cliffhanger ending which left audiences dangling in suspense waiting for the third part of the trilogy. However, Lucas' next project, which he worked on with director Steven Spielberg, was the screenplay for 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, an adventure inspired by the old-time movie serials. Starring Harrison Ford as the renowned archaeologist Indiana Jones, Raiders was another blockbuster, later inspiring two sequels, 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, as well as a short-lived television series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Now working almost exclusively in the capacity of executive producer, Lucas wrapped up the Star Wars trilogy in 1983 with Return of the Jedi. His next major project was also his first unmitigated disaster: 1986's Howard the Duck. Based on a cult hit from Marvel Comics, the film was both a critical and commercial bomb, while 1988's sword-and-sorcery epic Willow failed to fare much better. In 1997, he reissued the Star Wars trilogy in theaters with additional footage and newly revised special effects, all to massive box-office success. Finally, that summer he also began pre-production on the first of the hotly anticipated new Star Wars features. The first of the new trilogy, Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace, opened in May of 1999. Despite an almost unprecedented degree of marketing, rumor, and advance ticket sales, the film failed to live up to the colossal expectations that industry and media observers placed upon it. In addition to receiving unenthusiastic reviews and weak word-of-mouth, it also didn't surpass Titanic's box-office record, as many had expected it would. However, The Phantom Menace still proved to be a very profitable affair, grossing well over 400 million dollars, and legions of Lucas fans came out of theaters already impatient for the trilogy's next installment. Though Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones was greeted with largely negative reviews by critics, longtime fans of the series nevertheless costumed-up and assembled en masse in front of multiplexes nationwide in anticipation for the next chapter in Anakin Skywalker's continuing fall to the dark side. Generally considered an improvement over the previous installment by fans, the film also made film history in being the first feature to be digitally shot and projected in theaters, prompting many to mark the days of celluloid entertainment in the traditional sense. Though it had strong adversarial competition in the form of everyone's favorite web-slinging superhero Spider-Man, Attack of the Clones still managed to make a splash at the box-office. The next installment, in the saga, 2005's Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith - fared even better critically and commercially, and brought the saga full circle, ending where 1977's Episode IV: A New Hope begain.In the years that followed, Lucas turned up as participant in a number of documentaries, such as The Pixar Story and Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel. He then joined forces with longtime friend and collaborator Steven Spielberg for 2008's sequel Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, executive produced the same year's television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and then in 2012 executive produced the period drama Red Tails, on the experiences of the Tuskegee Airmen - directed by first-timer Anthony Hemingway. He also served as the executive producer for the 2012 film Red Tails.