Trivia: An icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism, Sylvester Stallone is responsible for creating two characters who have become a part of the American cultural lexicon: Rocky Balboa, the no-name boxer who overcame all odds to become a champion, and John Rambo, the courageous soldier who specialized in violent rescues and revenge. Both characters are reflections of Stallone's personal experiences and the battles he waged during his transition from a poor kid in Hell's Kitchen to one of the world's most popular stars. According to Stallone, his was not a happy childhood. On July 6, 1946, in the aforementioned part of Manhattan, Sylvester Enzio Stallone was born to a chorine and an Italian immigrant. A forceps accident during his birth severed a facial nerve, leaving Stallone with parts of his lip, tongue, and chin paralyzed. In doing so, the accident imprinted Stallone with some of the most recognizable components of his persona: the distinctively slurred (and some say often nearly incomprehensible) speech patterns, drooping lower lip, and crooked left eye that have been eagerly seized upon by caricaturists. To compound these defects, Stallone was a homely, sickly child who once suffered from rickets. His parents were constantly at war and struggling to support Stallone and his younger brother, Frank Stallone (who became a B-movie actor). The elder brother spent most of his first five years in the care of foster homes. Stallone has said that his interest in acting came from his attempts to get attention and affection from those strangers who tried to raise him. When he was five, his parents moved their family to Silver Spring, MD, but once again spent their time bickering and largely ignored their children. Following his parents' divorce in 1957, the 11-year-old Stallone remained with his stern father. The actor's teen years proved even more traumatic. As Stallone seemed willing to do just about anything for attention, however negative, he had already been enrolled in 12 schools and expelled several times for his behavior problems. His grades were dreadful and his classmates picked on him for being different. Stallone coped by becoming a risk taker and developing elaborate fantasies in which he presented himself as a brave hero and champion of the underdog. At age 15, Stallone moved to Philadelphia to be with his mother and her new husband. By this time, he had begun lifting weights and took up fencing, football, and the discus. He also started appearing in school plays. Following graduation, Stallone received an athletic scholarship for the American College of Switzerland. While there he was a girls' athletic coach and in his spare time starred in a school production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The experience inspired him to become an actor and after returning stateside, he started studying drama at the University of Miami until he decided to move to New York in 1969. While working a variety of odd jobs, Stallone auditioned frequently but only occasionally found stage work, most of which was off-Broadway in shows like the all-nude Score and Rain. He even resorted to appearing in the softcore porn film, Party at Kitty's and Studs, which was later repackaged as The Italian Stallion after Stallone became famous. Stallone's face and even his deep voice were factors in his constant rejection for stage and film roles. He did nab a bit role in Woody Allen's Bananas (1971), but after he was turned down for The Godfather (1971), Stallone became discouraged. Rather than give up, however, Stallone again developed a coping mechanism -- he turned to writing scripts, lots of scripts, some of which were produced. He still auditioned and landed a starring role in Rebel (1973). During his writing phase, he married actress Sasha Czack in late 1974 and they moved to California in the hopes of building acting careers. His first minor success came when he wrote the screenplay for and co-starred in the nostalgic Lords of Flatbush (1974) with Henry Winkler. The film's modest success resulted in Stallone's getting larger roles, but he still didn't attract much notice until he penned the screenplay for Rocky. The story was strong and well written and studios were eager to buy the rights, but Stallone stipulated that he would be the star and must receive a share of the profits. Producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff accepted Stallone's terms and Rocky (1976) went on to become one of the biggest movie hits of all time. It also won several Oscars including ones for Best Picture, Best Director for John Avildsen, and a Best Actor nomination for Stallone. Suddenly Stallone found himself on Hollywood's A-list, a status he has largely maintained over the years. In addition to writing four sequels to Rocky, he penned three Rambo films (First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Rambo 3) and F.I.S.T. (1979). Stallone made his directorial debut with Paradise Alley, which he filmed in Hell's Kitchen. He also wrote and directed but did not appear in the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, Staying Alive (1983). In addition, Stallone has continued to appear in the films of other directors, notably Demolition Man (1993), Judge Dredd (1995), and Copland (1997), a film in which he allowed himself to gain 30 pounds in order to more accurately portray an aging sheriff. Occasionally, Stallone has ventured out of the action genre and into lighter fare with such embarrassing efforts as Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992) and Oscar (1991), which did not fare well at the box office. Following these missteps, Stallone found greater success with the animated adventure Antz (1998), a film in which his very distinctive voice, if not his very distinctive physique, was very much a part. Stallone was back in shape for the 2000 remake of Get Carter and hit the race tracks in the following year in the CART racing thriller Driven. Though the early 2000s found his career sputtering along with such forgettable duds as D-Tox and Avenging Angelo, Stallone took his career into his own hands by returning to the director's chair to resurrect two of his most iconic characters. Lacing his boxing gloves up once again for Rocky Balboa, the veteran action star proved he still had some fight left in him, and venturing into the jungles of Burma as John Rambo just two years later, he proved that hard "R" action could still sell in the era where most filmmakers were playing it "PG-13"safe. That trend continued with Stallone's all-star action opus The Expendables in 2010, with the success of that film leading to a sequel (with Simon West taking over directorial duties) featuring even more action icons in 2012. Incredibly, not even a broken neck suffered during production of The Expendables proved capable of slowing Stallone down, and 2013 found him teaming with Walter Hill for Bullet to the Head -- which followed a cop and a killer as they teamed up to take down a mutual enemy. In 2015, Stallone returned to Rocky Balboa once more, but this time as a supporting character in the spin-off film Creed. He earned rave reviews and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, making him only the sixth performer to be nominated for playing the same character in two separate films.

Trivia: British director Guy Ritchie frequently attributes the success of his unorthodox crime films -- 1998's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, 2000's Snatch -- to the fact that his offbeat miscreants are more than believable, they are real. Preferring to cast for authenticity rather than resumé, Ritchie handpicks many of his actors from the true-life cult figures and rascals of London's underbelly. Actor Jason Statham is among the best of them.A one-time Olympic diver, fashion model, and black-market salesman, Statham came to acting by way of commercials and "street theater" -- a euphemism for hustling tourists on London's Oxford Street. Raised in Syndenham, London, he was the second son of a lounge singer and a dressmaker turned dancer. Although Statham had the familial background to go immediately into entertainment, he excelled first on the high dive. He was a member of the 1988 British Olympic Team in Seoul, Korea, and remained on the National Diving Squad for ten years. In the late '90s, a talent agent specializing in athletes landed Statham a gig in an ad campaign for the European clothing retailer French Connection. This led to an appearance in a Levi's Jeans commercial and a fledgling modeling career. Meanwhile, Statham had also earned local fame as a street corner con man, selling stolen jewelry and counterfeit perfume out of a briefcase. Thus, when French Connection's owner became one of the biggest investors in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, he naturally introduced the diver/model/hustler to knave-hunting Ritchie.Intrigued by Statham's past and impressed by his modeling work, Ritchie invited him to audition for a part in the film. The director challenged Statham to impersonate an illegal street vendor and convince him to purchase a piece of imitation gold jewelry. Statham was evidently so persuasive that Ritchie bought four sets. When the director attempted to return his worthless acquisition -- pretending that the gold had turned to stainless steel -- Statham was so graciously inflexible that Ritchie hired him.This unorthodox audition resulted in Statham's big screen debut as Bacon, one of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels' four primary characters engaged in a risky get-rich-quick scheme to repay a massive gambling debt. Bacon supplies a streetwise discipline and restraint that the other characters lack and a sense of humility crucial to Ritchie's film. In the director's follow-up crime comedy, Snatch, Ritchie rehired Statham to play Turkish, a smalltime hood vainly trying to break into the world of underground boxing. As this amateur but respectable hoodlum, Statham is attractive, urbane, immaculate, and smart enough to be bewildered by even his own laughable criminal ineptitude. The role began as a small supporting part in Snatch's star-filled ensemble cast but expanded throughout shooting. By the time of the film's theatrical release, Statham received top billing as its narrator and chief anti-hero.The Guy Ritchie oeuvre that supplied his breakthrough performances is not Statham's only acting arena. In 2000, he made his American film debut as a British drug dealer in Robert Adetuyi's Turn It Up starring Pras Michel. By 2001, he had finished shooting John Carpenter's sci-fi thriller Ghosts of Mars and joined Delroy Lindo in the cast of the Jet Li vehicle The One. A chance to reteam with former Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrel co-star Vinnie Jones proved too fun an opportunity to resist, and Stratham would round out a particularly busy 2001 with his role in the prison-bound sports remake Mean Machine. Just as audiences were finally standing up to take notice of the amiable tough-guy, Stratham stepped into his own as the action lead of the explosive 2002 adrenaline ride The Transporter. A sizable hit that would earn Statham increasingly prominent roles in such high profile pics as The Italian Job, and Cellular, The Transporter established Stratham as a bankable international action star and was eventually followed by a 2005 sequel that miraculously managed the improbable feat of upping the ante of the previous installment's over-the-top cartoon violence. A starring role in Ritchie's 2005 crime thriller Revolver found Stratham re-teaming with the director who launched his career with decidedly mixed results, and the following year it was off to race the clock and rescue the girl as a reformed assassin looking to make good in the hyper-intense action entry Crank. The positively outrageous Crank: High Voltage upped the ante (and the ampage) in every possible way in 2009, but not before Statham got behind the wheel for Resident Evil director Paul W.A. Anderson for the 2008 remake Death Race, discovered just how far a foolproof heist could go awry in The Bank Job, and once again put the pedal to the metal in The Transporter 3. All of this left little doubt that Statham had quickly become one of the most bankable action stars of his generation, and in 2010 he teamed with none other than Sylvester Stallone for the all-star action flick The Expendables. The action just kept coming in The Mechanic, Blitz, Killer Elite (which paired him with screen legend Robert DeNiro), Safe, and the super-sized The Expendables 2 in 2012. Statham next joined another franchise, making a cameo appearance in Fast & Furious 6. He also reprised his role in The Expendables 3. In 2015, Statham appeared in Furious 7 and flexed his comedy chops in Spy, opposite Melissa McCarthy, earning favorable reviews and opening him to another genre.

Trivia: Following closely on Jackie Chan's well-calloused heels as one of the most dazzling physical performers of the silver screen, Jet Li's lightning-fast moves, friendly sense of humor, and genuine concern for his fans have endeared him to a generation of international action-film lovers as one of the most respected figures in martial arts cinema. The youngest of five siblings (consisting of two brother and two sisters) whose father died when he was only two years old, one might say that the painfully honest momma's boy has, since reaching adulthood, slightly overcompensated for his admittedly over-protected childhood (the future daredevil didn't even learn how to ride a bicycle until in his early teens). Sent during summer recess to what is now referred to as the Beijing Sports and Exercise school, Li was fatefully assigned to the wushu class and was one of a mere handful of students asked to return when the season ended and students filed back into classrooms in the fall. An exceptionally adept wushu student despite being only eight years of age, the experience boosted the confidence of the shy youth despite urges to join his classmates in after-school play. Leaving home for the first time the following year to attend competition, Li took first place at the event and was concurrently given the honor of performing at the opening ceremony of the eagerly anticipated Pan-Asian-African-Latin American Table Tennis Championships, an honor which also included the youth receiving personal praise from none other than Premier Zhou Enlai. No longer required to attend conventional schooling, the young wonder was admitted to a rigorous sports school. Eventually remaining with a group that consisted of 20 of China's finest young wushu practitioners, the students were then put through another kind of training entirely -- this time of the Western etiquette persuasion -- for an extremely important goodwill tour of the United States. Despite a potentially embarrassing international incident in which the overly excited youngster expressed his excitement when he spotted what he thought was a Chinese airplane in Hawaii (the plane was actually Tawianese, an extremely sensitive and important distinction at the time) and travels with a heavily guarded entourage, the journey went fairly well and gave Li a newfound sense of independence. Winning the coveted All-China Youth Championships upon his return to China provided Li with his first national championship title, though it was only a prelude to a slew of awards to come including a bloodied performance at the qualifying round of China's National Games, during which Li accidentally cut his head with his saber (the determined youngster didn't even realize what had happened, assuming he was simply perspiring, until his form was nearly finished). Despite his serious injury, the 12-year-old Li went on to win first place in the National Games to the amazement of the enraptured crowd. Competing frequently in the following years and surviving a close brush with death in a faulty cargo plane (the passengers were literally given pads of paper to write out their wills), Li was later appointed to an official welcoming committee for American presidents due to his previous contributions to positive Sino-American relations. Later attempting to live up to his title of "All-Around Wushu Champion of China," the 16-year-old who many referred to as all capable decided to do all he could to live up to the title by internalizing his understanding of the wushu practice through philosophy. Operating on the basic principle of Taiji (similar to yin/yang in the balance/counterbalance theory), Li began an internal voyage that would be just as rewarding as the physical labors he had so diligently pursued. Breaking into the world of film with an exciting performance in 1979's Shaolin Temple, Li's screen presence was undeniable and ignited a boom in the kung-fu film industry during the 1980s. Though he took an unsuccessful attempt at directing a few short years later with Born to Defend (1986), his acting career continued to accelerate at high speed with such hits as the Once Upon a Time in China and the Fong Sai-Yuk series in the early '90s. Rising to remarkable celebrity status due to his charm and unmatchable moves, Li gained fans in both the young and old and continued to thrill Eastern moviegoers in increasingly awe-inspiring ways. A crossover to American films began with his role as the villain in Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) (a role originally offered to Chan but turned down due to his inclination never to play the bad guy), and continued with more likable roles in Romeo Must Die and Kiss of the Dragon (2000 and 2001 respectively). Li caused something of a sensation with the release of Kiss of the Dragon when he made a special plea to parents not to bring their children to the film due to the unusually (for Li) adult-oriented violence of the film. A request virtually unheard of in the Hollywood system, Li promised parents that they would soon be able to share his high-kicking escapades with their children with the decidedly more family friendly The One a few short months later. In 2003 Li would return to stateside screens alongside DMX in Cradle to the Grave (2003), a remake of the classic Fritz Lang film M (1931) which fared only moderatly well at the box office.Just as it began to seem as if Li had forsaken the period martial arts genre on which he was weaned in favor of mainstream Hollywood success, his memorable return to the format with director Zhang Yimou's richly textured 2002 effort Hero proved to fans that he still possessed all the talent and charm he had so skillfully displayed in the previous Hong Kong hits produced before his crossover success. Despite the fact that the film drew some of the best reviews of Li's later career, however, the inexplicable decision made by U.S. distributor Miramax to sit on Hero for nearly two years before unceremoniously dumping it into stateside theaters in August of 2004 eventually caused many fans to seek out foreign releases of the critically-praised effort well before it's official U.S. release; a mournful mistake that likely resulted in diminshed sales at stateside multiplexes. A second collaboration with Kiss of the Dragon collaborator Luc Besson resulted in Unleashed, an effort many fans considered to be a notable improvement over his previous U.S. efforts, and in 2006 Li would return to the genre that launched his career one last time with the throwback martial arts biopic Fearless. A traditional-minded kung-fu epic that eschewed wirework and digital effects to focus on character and the art of fighting, Fearless proved an enormous success when it out-grossed such recent hits as House of Flying Daggars, Hero, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon upon being released into East Asian theaters in January of 2006. He made The Warlords and The Forbidden Kingdom, and had one of this most high-profile successes in the United States being part of the superstar ensemble in The Expendables, signing on for that movie's sequel two years later as well. In between those two films he could be seen in Flying Swords of the Dragon Gate and Emperor and the White Snake.

Trivia: Highly intelligent and extremely well educated -- earning an M.A. at Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology and a Fulbright Fellowship at M.I.T. -- Dolph Lundgren is better known for his athletic achievements than his intellectual pursuits. An internationally recognized kick-boxing champion, the 6' 6", 250-pound Lundgren was working as a doorman at a trendy New York disco when his personally produced exercise video Maximum Potential caught the eye of movie producers. His 1984 cinematic debut was a bit part in the James Bond opus A View to a Kill, which co-starred Lundgren's then-lover Grace Jones. (Earlier reports that Lundgren appeared in 1970's The Out-of-Towners were really out of town.) His breakthrough film role was as Drago, the automaton-like Russian ring opponent of Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV (1985). The content of Lundgren's subsequent films is implicit in their titles: Masters of the Universe (in which Lundgren played bulging-biceped cartoon character He-Man), Universal Soldier (sharing the screen with fellow bodybuilder Jean-Claude Van Damme), Red Scorpion, Showdown in Little Tokyo, Army of One, etc. When Lundgren showed up as a street preacher in the futuristic Johnny Mnemonic (1995), one got the feeling that he was not going to be advocating peace on earth for long.

Trivia: Born Carlos Ray Norris, Chuck Norris served in Korea in the Army. While there, he studied karate and later became the World Middleweight Karate Champion. He was encouraged by one of his karate students, actor Steve McQueen, to go into acting. He debuted onscreen in the enormously popular Bruce Lee vehicle Enter the Dragon (1973); since the death of Lee he has been the screen's premier martial arts star. He has appeared primarily in militaristic movies in which he single-handedly kills many enemies. His breakthrough film was Missing in Action (1984), in which he played an ex-POW in search of American prisoners still held in Vietnam.

Trivia: A native of Flint, MI, who played in the NFL for seven years before segueing into film, athlete-turned-actor Terry Crews made his television debut on the small-screen sports entertainment show Battle Dome and has since moved on to appear in films by such disparate directors as David Lynch, Mike Judge, and David Ayer.During high school, Crews studied at Interlochen Art Academy, and he continued on to Western Michigan University for college; it was during his freshman year that he first took to the gridiron, and after making an impression as a Mid-American Conference defensive end, he solidified his reputation as a star player by leading his team to the Mid-American Conference championship in 1988. Crews married longtime wife Rebecca the day before his 21st birthday, and later went on to have an impressive professional football career while playing for the L.A. Rams, the San Diego Chargers, and the Washington Redskins. Though he had originally intended to become a special-effects artist, Crews gradually became aware of the power of his onscreen charisma when he accepted a role in the short-lived television series Battle Dome in 1999. Despite the fact that only a few episodes of the seires ever made it to the airwaves, the experience left Crews convinced that he had found his calling.Few lifelong actors could even dream of landing roles in such major motion pictures as The 6th Day, Training Day, and Friday After Next so early in their careers, but that's precisely what Crews did, and he has never looked back since. The actor's hulking frame made him an ideal candidate for intimidating onscreen figures, and his disarming sense of humor has found him developing a distinct comic persona in such films as Starsky & Hutch, Soul Plane, White Chicks, and The Longest Yard while also winning over viewers on the small screen with his role as Chris Rock's father on Everybody Hates Chris. As a supporting player, Crews consistently impresses, with his little-seen role as former professional wrestler-turned-President of the United States in Beavis and Butt-Head creator Judge's Idiocracy (2006) offering a telling example of how far he is willing to go to get a laugh. That same year, Crews showed his impressive range by making a brief appearance in surrealist specialist Lynch's Inland Empire, with comic roles in Norbit, Who's Your Caddy?, and Balls of Fury following in short order.2008 proved a busy year for Crews. In addition to his continued work on Everybody Hates Chris, he co-starred in the police drama Street Kings, as well as director Peter Segal's revamp of the classic comedy series Get Smart. Crews played a member of a motley gang of mercenaries in 2010's action blockbuster The Expendables (he reprised this role for the film's sequel in 2012).

Trivia: A native of Lynnwood, WA, Randy Couture established himself as one of the top-tiered Mixed Martial Arts champions and professional Greco-Roman wrestlers in the world. Couture served six years in the army, where he subjected himself to intense training as a boxer alongside the standard basic-training routines. He then underwent 25 years of training as a Greco-Roman wrestler and delved into MMA with full abandon, cultivating a unique fighting method dubbed "Ground and Pound" that involved flooring and pinning down an opponent and pounding the individual with one's fists. Occupationally, Couture held a six-year post as a strength conditioning and assistant wrestling coach at Oregon State University. In 1997 (at age 33), he formally entered the Ultimate Fighting Championship competitions and chalked up a formidable record, courageously taking on, and defeating, such formidable opponents as Chuck Liddell, Pedro Rizzo, and Kevin Randleman; he also moved into announcing on pay-per-view fighting events.In terms of film work, the majority of Couture's early on-camera appearances consist, unsurprisingly, of live wrestling and MMA events. He moved into dramatic roles, however, under the aegis of no less than David Mamet, in the esteemed playwright-cum-director's 2008 martial arts saga Redbelt. Coincident with this, Couture also signed on to star opposite Rob Schneider and David Carradine in the crime comedy Big Stan (2008) and appeared as the villain in the straight-to-DVD Universal sequel The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior.

Trivia: Australian-born Liam Hemsworth became a star in his home country with the role of Josh Taylor on the popular soap opera Neighbours. Prior to making his mark as an actor, Hemsworth had led a blue-collar life laying floors, but in 2007 he scored the part of Josh, as well as a role on another popular Australian show, McLeod's Daughters. He soon followed this with parts on The Elephant Princess and Satisfaction before transitioning to Hollywood for a role in the 2009 action movie Knowing. But his big break stateside came in 2010 when he was cast opposite Miley Cyrus in the romantic drama The Last Song. In 2012 he was cast as Gale, one of the two love interests for Katniss Everdeen in the adaptations of the highly successive Hunger Games series, and landed a part in the action film The Expendables 2.

Trivia: Began Tae Kwon Do training at age 14. Is a kickboxing instructor for the Professional Karate Association. One of his earliest acting roles was in the British soap Doctors, which filmed in his hometown of Birmingham. Frequently collaborates with director Isaac Florentine, beginning with 2003's Special Forces. Tore his ACL six weeks before filming began on Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012), but filmed that movie and his next three with it torn so he wouldn't have to back out of any commitments.