Trivia: The son of a trucking company manager, Brad Pitt was born December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, OK. Raised in Missouri as the oldest of three children, and brought up in a strict Baptist household, Pitt enrolled at the University of Missouri, following high school graduation, studying journalism and advertising. However, after discovering his love of acting, he dropped out of college two credit hours before he could graduate and moved to Hollywood. Once in California, Pitt took acting classes and supported himself with a variety of odd jobs that included chauffeuring strippers to private parties, waiting tables, and wearing a giant chicken suit for a local restaurant chain. His first break came when he landed a small recurring role on Dallas, and a part in a teenage-slasher movie, Cutting Class (1989) (opposite Roddy McDowall), marked his inauspicious entrance into the world of feature films. The previous year, Pitt's acting experience had been limited to the TV movie A Stoning in Fulgham County (1988). 1991 marked the end of Pitt's obscurity, as it was the year he made his appearance in Thelma & Louise (1991) as the wickedly charming drifter who seduces Geena Davis and then robs her blind. After becoming famous practically overnight, Pitt unfortunately chose to channel his newfound celebrity into Ralph Bakshi's disastrous animation/live action combo Cool World (1992). Following this misstep, Pitt took a starring role in director Tom Di Cillo's independent film Johnny Suede. The film failed to score with critics or at the box office and Pitt's documented clashes with the director allegedly inspired Di Cillo to pattern the character of the vain and egotistical Chad Palomino, in his 1995 Living in Oblivion, after the actor. Pitt's next venture, Robert Redford's lyrical fly-fishing drama A River Runs Through It (2002), gave the actor a much-needed chance to prove that he had talent in addition to physical appeal.Following his performance in Redford's film, Pitt appeared in Kalifornia and True Romance (both 1993), two road movies featuring fallen women and violent sociopaths. Pitt's next major role did not arrive until early 1994, when he was cast as the lead of the gorgeously photographed Legends of the Fall. As he did in A River Runs Through It, Pitt portrayed a free-spirited, strong-willed brother, but this time had greater opportunity to further develop his enigmatic character. Later that same year, fans watched in anticipation as Pitt exchanged his outdoorsy persona for the brooding, gothic posturing of Anne Rice's tortured vampire Louis in the film adaptation of Interview With the Vampire. Pitt next starred in the forgettable romantic comedy The Favor (1994) before going on to play a rookie detective investigating a series of gruesome crimes opposite Morgan Freeman in Seven (1995). In 1997, Pitt received a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a visionary mental patient in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys; the same year, Pitt attempted an Austrian accent and put on a backpack to play mountaineer Heinrich Harrar in Seven Years in Tibet. The film met with mixed reviews and generated a fair amount of controversy, thanks in part to the revelation that the real-life Harrar had in fact been a Nazi. Following Tibet, Pitt traveled in a less inflammatory direction with Alan J. Pakula's The Devil's Own, in which he starred with fellow screen icon Harrison Ford. Despite this seemingly faultless pairing, the film was a relative critical and box-office failure. In 1998, Pitt tried his hand at romantic drama, portraying Death in Meet Joe Black, the most expensive non-special effects film ever made. Pitt's penchant for quirk was prevalent with his cameo in the surreal comic fantasy Being John Malkovich (1999) and carried over into his role as Tyler Durden, the mysterious and anti-materialistic soap salesman in David Fincher's controversial Fight Club the same year. The odd characterizations didn't let up with his appearance as the audibly indecipherable pugilist in Guy Ritchie's eagerly anticipated follow-up to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch (2000).In July of 2000, the man voted "Most Sexy Actor Alive" by virtually every entertainment publication currently in circulation crushed the hearts of millions of adoring female fans when he wed popular film and television actress Jennifer Aniston in a relatively modest (at least by Hollywood standards) and intimate service.Pitt's next turn on the big screen found him re-teamed with Robert Redford, this time sharing the screen with the A River Runs Through It director in the espionage thriller Spy Game (2001). A fairly retro-straight-laced role for an actor who had become identified with his increasingly eccentric roles, he was soon cast in Steven Soderbergh's remake of the Rat Pack classic Ocean's 11 (2001), the tale of a group of criminals who plot to rob a string of casinos. Following a decidedly busy 2001 that also included a lead role opposite Julia Roberts in the romantic crime-comedy The Mexican, Pitt was virtually absent from the big-screen over the next three years. After walking away from the ambitious and troubled Darren Aronofsky production The Fountain, he popped up for a very brief cameo in pal George Clooney's 2002 directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and lent his voice to the animated adventure Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, but spent the majority of his time working on the historical epic Troy (2004). Directed by Wolfgang Peterson, the film employed a huge cast, crew and budget.The media engulfed Pitt's next screen role with tabloid fervor, as it cast him opposite bombshell Angelina Jolie. While the comedic actioner Mr. and Mrs. Smith grossed dollar one at the box office, the stars' off-camera relationship that made some of 2005's biggest headlines. Before long, Pitt had split from his wife Jennifer Aniston and adopted Jolie's two children. The family expanded to three in 2006 with the birth of the couple's first child, to four in 2007 with the adoption of a Vietnamese boy, and finally to six in 2008, with the birth of fraternal twins.In addition to increasing his family in 2006, Pitt also padded his filmography as a producer on a number of projects, including Martin Scorsese's The Departed, the Best Picture Winner for 2006. He also acted opposite Cate Blanchett in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's drama Babel. Interestingly, that film hit theaters the same year as The Fountain, a film that was originally set to star the duo. Pitt also stayed busy as an actor, reteaming with many familiar on-screen pals for Ocean's Thirteen. At about the same time, Pitt teamed up with Ridley Scott to co-produce a period western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Pitt also stars in the film, as James. The year 2007 found Pitt involved, simultaneously, in a number of increasingly intelligent and distinguished projects. He signed on to reteam with David Fincher for the first occasion since Fight Club, with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - a bittersweet fantasy, adapted by Forrest Gump scribe Eric Roth from an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, about a man who falls in love while he is aging in reverse. When the special effects heavy film hit theaters in time for awards season in 2008, Pitt garnered a Best Actor nomination from both the Academy and the Screen Actors Guild. Also in 2007, Pitt produced an adaptation of Marianne Pearl's memoir A Mighty Heart that starred Angelina Jolie. In the years that followed, Pitt remained supremely busy. He delivered a funny lead performance as Lt. Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino's blistering World War II saga Inglourious Basterds (2009), then did some of the most highly-praised work of his career as a disciplinarian father in Terence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011) - a sprawling, cerebral phantasmorgia on the meaning of life and death that became one of the critical sensations of the year. He also won a great deal of praise for his turn as Billy Beane in Bennett Miller's adaptation of the non-fiction book Moneyball, a role that not only earned him critical raves but Best Actor nominations from the Academy, BAFTA, the Broadcast Film Association, the Golden Globes, and won him the New York Film Critics Circle award (though the institution also recognized his work in Tree of Life as figuring into their decision).In 2013, Pitt's Plan B production company produced 12 Years a Slave (he also appeared in the film, in a small supporting role), which earned Pitt an Academy Award when the film won Best Picture. The next year, Pitt won an Emmy as part of the producing team of the HBO tv movie The Normal Heart.

Trivia: The younger brother of actor Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck spent the last few years of the 1990s working his way out of his brother's muscular shadow. The younger Affleck, who remarkably bears almost no resemblance to his older brother, was born August 12, 1975, in Falmouth, MA. He made his television debut in the 1987 American Playhouse special Lemon Sky and three years later played the young Robert Kennedy in the TV miniseries The Kennedys of Massachusetts. The young actor's film debut came in 1995, with Gus Van Sant's To Die For, in which he had a supporting role as one of Joaquin Phoenix's slacker friends. The next year, he appeared in the largely unseen Race the Sun, and in 1997 benefited from the Power of Ben with roles in two of his brother's films. In the first, Chasing Amy, Affleck was little more than a blip on the screen, but in the second, Van Sant's Good Will Hunting, he had a decidedly more substantial part as one of Matt Damon's South Boston homeboys. Following the astounding, Oscar-winning success of Hunting, Affleck landed substantial roles in two films with casts featuring Who's Who lineups of Hollywood's Young and Hot: Desert Blue (1998), in which he starred with Christina Ricci, Kate Hudson, and Brendan Sexton III; and 200 Cigarettes (1999), in which he appeared as a soft-hearted punk alongside Desert Blue co-stars Ricci and Hudson, along with Paul Rudd, Courtney Love, Janeane Garofalo, and brother Ben. Although the film basically flopped, it did little to hurt the actor's career and the same year he attained added credibility with an unbilled appearance in the summer smash American Pie. The next few years found the younger Affleck in some notable more noticeable roles with his work in Hamlet, Committed, and Drowning Mona (all 2000). In 2001 he would get his largest billing yet, as well as his induction into the teen horror craze, with Soul Survivors.A re-teaming with Good Will Hunting co-horts Van Sant and Damon in 2002's deliberate independent drama Gerry was bookended by sizable supporting roles in director Steven Soderbergh's carefree crime comedies Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve, and in 2005 the younger Affleck would prove without question his ability to carry a dramatic feature with his subtle portrayal of an aimless twenty-something hindered by familial obligations in Steve Buscemi's Sundance-nominated drama Lonesome Jim. In 2006 Casey would star opposite Zach Braff in director Tony Goldwin's romantic comedy re-make The Last Kiss. 2007 would prove to be a turning point for the actor. In addition to reprising his character for the third installment of the Ocean's Eleven franchise, Affleck earned strong reviews for two drama that year. He headlined brother Ben Affleck's directorial debut, an adaptation of Dennis Lehane's Gone Baby Gone, bring to life the character of Patrick Kenzie, a private eye with close ties to the mean streets of Boston. But his work as the title coward in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford brought him numerous good reviews even though the film failed to make much of a splash at the box office. His work earned him a number of year-end accolades including nominations from the Academy and the Screen Actors Guild for Best Supporting Actor (even though he is the lead).After these critical successes he was poised for a breakthrough, but he was away from the big screen for three years, not returning to movies until 2010 as the star of the Jim Thompson adaptation The Killer Inside Me, and as director/producer/screenwriter/editor of I'm Still Here, a mockumentary that satirized celebrity meltdowns starring Joaquin Phoenix. He was part of the ensemble in Tower Heist the next year, and followed that up by voicing a part in ParaNorman in 2012.

Trivia: A graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts and winner of the Theatre World award for her performance in the Broadway production of Prelude to a Kiss, Mary Louise Parker has developed into the Mae Marsh of the 1990s: the eternal victim. Poor, put-upon Parker seems to have "kick me" emblazoned on her forehead in most of her screen appearances. However, unlike silent star Marsh, Parker's characters usually enjoy a satisfying "worm has turned" moment -- one of her first major film roles was as the abused wife in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) A more self-reliant Parker was seen in the 1990 AIDS-related TV movie Longtime Companion, as the supportive "earth mother" to a group of urban homosexual men. Still, there's a foredoomed quality in Mary-Louise Parker's performances that can't be easily shaken. While her film career thrives, Parker is also busy on stage and occasionally television. Parker received a Tony nomination for her work in a Broadway production of Prelude to a Kiss. She also appears on productions all over the country. On television Parker appears in television movies such as Sugartime and Saint Maybe (1998).

Trivia: An idiosyncratic actor known for both his versatility and sinewy, off-kilter sexiness, Sam Rockwell is one of the stage and screen's most imaginative and least predictable performers. Once dubbed "the male Parker Posey" for his voluminous work in independent films, Rockwell has also earned notice for his work in more mainstream fare, including Frank Darabont's The Green Mile (1999).Born in Daly City, CA, on November 5, 1968, Rockwell enjoyed a steadfastly bohemian upbringing. The son of artists and actors, Rockwell moved to New York City with his parents when he was two. Three years later, his parents divorced, and he spent much of his youth traveling back and forth between them. Raised by his father in San Francisco, he spent his summers in New York with his mother, whose unconventional lifestyle -- replete with sex, drugs, and flamboyant hippies -- introduced Rockwell to some very adult pastimes at an extremely young age. It was through his mother that he became involved in theater, making his stage debut at the age of ten. He later attended San Francisco's High School of the Performing Arts, where, at the age of 18, he was chosen to star in Clown House (1988), an ill-fated thriller revolving around three brothers' fight to the death with a group of maniacal circus entertainers.Following his screen debut, Rockwell moved to New York and proceeded to make 20 more films, including Last Exit to Brooklyn (1990) and Tom Di Cillo's Box of Moonlight (1996). It was the actor's work in the latter film that first won him recognition: as The Kid, a coonskin cap-clad free spirit whose backwoods existence alters the mundane life of a burnt-out engineer (John Turturro), Rockwell gave an engaging performance that sparked industry attention; unfortunately, the independent film disappeared at the box office. The actor next garnered attention for his lead role in John Duigan's Lawn Dogs (1997), a tale about the unconventional friendship between a white trash lawn boy (Rockwell) and a ten year-old girl (Mischa Barton) with a heart problem. Employing a heavy helping of magical realism to tell its story, the film earned fairly positive reviews, and Rockwell drew particular praise for his complex, low-key performance.The actor subsequently appeared in a series of comedies that made good use of his quirky persona, most notably Safe Men (1998), which cast him and Steve Zahn as two singers of dubious quality who find themselves the unwitting targets of the Jewish mafia. In 1999, more mainstream audiences were introduced to Rockwell thanks to his memorable work in three films: A Midsummer Night's Dream, which cast him as the cross-dressing Francis Flute; Galaxy Quest, a comedy spoof in which Rockwell played a cast member of a failing circa-'70s sci-fi TV series; and The Green Mile, in which the actor got to fully exhibit his twisted versatility as Wild Bill, a death-row inmate whom Rockwell himself characterized as "a disgusting, racist, pedophile freak." Switching gears almost as much as humanly possible, Rockwell's following role in Galaxy Quest (1999) found him a quirky cast member of a Star Trek-like television sci-fi series. The contrast between Rockwell's ultra-lightweight Galaxy Quest characterization and his former role as a genuinely revolting criminal was a testament to his versatility, and though he would stick to comedy with Charlie's Angels, a series of small roles would follow before Rockwell teamed with actor George Clooney for Welcome to Collinwood and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (both 2002). Appearing as former host of the cult television sensation The Gong Show in the latter, Rockwell brought Chuck Barris' compellingly quirky (and partially fictionalized) biography to the screen under first-time director George Clooney. In addition to his work onscreen, Rockwell has continued to act on the stage, appearing in such productions as a 1998 off-Broadway run of Mike Leigh's Goosepimples.Over the next several years, Rockwell would remain a constant force on screen, appearing in films like The Assassination of Jesse James, Choke, Frost/Nixon, Choke, Moon, Conviction, Cowboys & Aliens, and The Sitter.

Trivia: A former die-hard theater actor who made a comfortable transition to screens both big and small in the late '90s, Jeremy Renner drew praise and courted controversy with his portrayal of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. A California native, Renner discovered his love for acting while drifting through various majors at college. He dabbled in computer science and criminology before taking an acting class, and soon decided to double major in theater and psychology, the stage offering the struggling student a healthy outlet for his sometimes bottled emotions. After graduation, the aspiring actor moved to Los Angeles in hopes of finding work. A starring role in the play Search and Destroy (which he also co-directed) earned Renner positive notice from critics, and, in 1995, he made his feature debut in the critically panned gross-out comedy National Lampoon's Senior Trip. Numerous film and television supporting roles followed, including a 1999 guest-starring appearance as a former puritan turned menacing vampire on the popular WB series Angel. Three years later, and despite bearing almost no physical resemblance to the titular character, Renner's chillingly low-key performance as a true-life murderer and cannibal in the biopic Dahmer earned him an Independent Spirit Award Best Actor nomination. In 2003, he received more exposure in a role opposite Colin Farrell in the big-budget action thriller S.W.A.T. After taking the lead as an institutionalized member of the Aryan Nation in Neo Ned, he then stepped before the camera for Italian actress/director Asia Argento in J.T. LeRoy's 2004 screen adaptation of his story collection The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.Renner scored big roles in the drama North Country and the zombie sequel 28 Weeks Later before heading up the quirky TV cop show The Unusuals, which lasted only one season on ABC. However, his work in Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, as a soldier who specializes in disarming IED's in Iraq, brought him stellar reviews and a number of industry accolades including Best Actor nominations from The Screen Actors Guild, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the Academy. He aslo won that very same award from numerous critics groups.Two years later he returned to the Oscar race for his supporting turn as Ben Affleck's best frined in The Town. He would follow that up with a pair of giant box office hits, co-starring opposite Tom Cruise in the fourth Mission: Impossible movie, and then taking the part of Hawkeye in The Avengers in 2012. That same year he would take over the part of Jason Bourne in The Bourne Legacy, and he lent his voice to the animated film Ice Age: Continental Drift. He appeared in the Academy Award-nominated American Hustle in 2013 and then filled his plate with sequels like The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Mission: Impossible 5.

Trivia: A Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (for 1979's Buried Child), an Oscar-nominated actor, and a director and screenwriter to boot, multi-talented Sam Shepard has made a career of plumbing the darker depths of middle-American rural sensibilities and Western myths. The son of a military man, he was born Samuel Shepard Rogers on November 3, 1943, in Fort Sheridan, IL. Following a peripatetic childhood, part of which was spent on a farm, Shepard left home in late adolescence to move to New York City, where by the age of 20, he already had two plays produced. As a playwright, Shepard went on to win a number of Obies for such dramas as Curse of the Starving Class (1977), which he made into a film in 1994, and True West (aired on PBS in 1986). As an actor, the lanky and handsome Shepard made his feature film debut with a small role in Bronco Bullfrog (1969) and didn't resurface again until Bob Dylan's disastrous Renaldo and Clara (1978). The film followed Shepard's residence in London during the early '70s, where he worked on-stage as an actor and director when not playing drums for his band, The Holy Modal Rounders, which had performed as part of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. Also in 1978, Shepard made a big impression playing a wealthy landowner in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, but it was not until he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for playing astronaut Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983) that he became a well-known actor. Following this success, he went on to specialize in playing drifters, cowboys, con artists, and eccentric characters with only the occasional leading role. Some of his more notable work included Paris, Texas (1984), which he also wrote; Fool For Love (1985), which was adapted from his play of the same name; Baby Boom (1987), Steel Magnolias (1989), and The Pelican Brief (1993). In addition to acting and writing, Shepard has also directed: in 1988, he made his debut with Far North, a film he wrote especially for his off-screen leading lady, Jessica Lange, with whom he has acted in Frances (1982), Country (1984), and Crimes of the Heart (1986).In 1999, Shepard could be seen on both the big and small screen. He appeared in Snow Falling on Cedars and Dash and Lilly, a made-for-TV movie for which he won an Emmy nomination in the role of the titular Dashiell Hammett. In addition, he also lent his writing skills to Simpatico, a Nick Nolte vehicle about friendship and loss adapted from Shepard's play of the same name.As the new decade began, he could be seen as the ghost in a modern-set Hamlet. He appeared in Black Hawk Down, as well as in Sean Penn's The Pledge. His play True West enjoyed a highly successful revival starring John C. Riley and Philip Seymour Hoffman as feuding brothers, which was notable because the actors traded parts every third performance. In 2004 he appeared in the popular romantic drama The Notebook, and wrote Don't Come Knocking the next year. He was the legendary outlaw Frank James in 2007's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He was cast as Valerie Plame's father in Fair Game, and portrayed a dog-loving sheriff in Lawrnece Kasdan's Darling Companion.

Trivia: Character player Garret Dillahunt appeared onscreen from the late '90s, and -- though versatile -- often displayed a predilection for evocations of slightly rugged types. Early in his career, Dillahunt essayed a string of guest portrayals on series including NYPD Blue and The X-Files, and signed on as a fixture on less successful series outings such as Maximum Bob (1998), Leap Years (2001), and A Minute with Stan Hooper (2003). When these programs folded not long after they first bowed, Dillahunt continued to find work on the small screen, appearing in multiple episodes of such series as ER (2005-2006), The 4400 (2005-2006), John from Cincinnati (2007), and Damages (2007), in such a variety of characterizations that his versatility as an actor was clearly notable. Dillahunt's ability to disappear into a role lead to him portraying not one but two memorable characters on HBO's critically acclaimed Western series Deadwood; his evocation of Wild Bill Hickock murderer Jack McCall so impressed the series' producers that he was brought back the next season to portray George Hearst's emissary Francis Wolcott (who was also secretly a serial killer). The next year, the actor's evocation of Jesus on Jack Kenny, Flody Suarez, and John Tinker's risky comedy drama series The Book of Daniel (2006) brought him lead billing, but the program never caught fire with the public. In 2007, Dillahunt transitioned to features and appeared in at least two A-list theatrical releases: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men. For No Country, Dillahunt and his co-stars picked up a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. He appeared in the short-lived HBO surfing series John From Cincinnati, and had a recurring role on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. In 2009 he starred in the big-screen remake of Last House on the Left, and had a small role in The Road. In 2010 he landed the role of the grandfather of the title character on the FOX sitcom Raising Hope, which turned into a ratings hit. He was one of the stars in the drama Any Day Now as a gay lawyer attempting to adopt a child.

Trivia: Since his debut performance in director David Gordon Green's bleak rural drama George Washington (2000), actor Paul Schneider has appeared alongside Sarah Jessica Parker and Diane Keaton in The Family Stone (2005) and co-starred in the comedy drama Elizabethtown. Schneider also co-stars in Mr. Woodcock director Craig Gillepsie's romantic comedy Lars and the Real Girl. He had a memorable supporting turn in the Jane Campion period drama Bright Star, and was a haunted single dad in Away We Go. In 2009 he was cast in the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, and was one of the main players in the 2011 adaptation of Water for Elephants. He starred in the 2012 comedy The Babymakers.

Trivia: Grew up in Carville, LA, a town on the Mississippi River named for his grandfather, who was its postmaster. As a teen, he worked on his first political campaign for a car dealer running for the Louisiana state legislature. Served in the United States Marine Corps from 1966 to 1968. Taught eighth-grade science in rural Louisiana. Has appeared as himself on Mad About You, Spin City, The Family Guy and Arli$$. Played a prosecutor in Milos Forman's 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt. Had a cameo in the 2005 comedy Wedding Crashers. Both he and his wife, GOP stalwart Mary Matalin, hosted CNN's raucous Crossfire, but not at the same time. A prolific author, his books include such New York Times best sellers as We're Right, They're Wrong (1996), and a children's book, Lu and the Swamp Ghost (2004). In 2009, joined the faculty of Tulane University to teach political science.

Trivia: A post-punk, neo-gothic balladeer with an ardent following, Australian musician Nick Cave has also lent his distinctive presence to films as both a composer and performer. Raised in small town Wangaratta, Australia, Cave attended boarding school in Melbourne, where he met future collaborator Mick Harvey and formed a band that became the Birthday Party. After a couple of years in art school and a move to London, Cave and the Birthday Party left their incendiary mark on the second-generation punk scene before disbanding in 1983. Cave then settled in West Berlin following a brief sojourn in Los Angeles, teaming with Harvey and German musician Blixa Bargeld to form Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. As befitting a band named after a passage in the Bible, Cave's songs evolved into intense narratives filled with love, violence, and Biblical portent accompanied by dramatically eclectic, blues-tinged sonic backdrops. Among the Bad Seeds' admirers was German director Wim Wenders, who cast Cave and the band in his Berlin seraphim allegory Wings of Desire (1987). Appearing in the climactic scene, Cave inwardly despaired about having to perform a fan favorite before launching into the thematically fitting "From Her to Eternity." The Bad Seeds also contributed an apocalyptic love song to Wenders' millennial epic Until the End of the World (1991). Continuing his movie work after Wings of Desire, a screenplay Cave helped pen during his Los Angeles stint was turned into a film by fellow Aussie John Hillcoat. A brutal prison drama based on actual events, Ghosts...of the Civil Dead (1988) featured Cave as one of the inmates, and was nominated for a slew of Australian Film Institute awards, including one for Cave and one for Harvey and Bargeld's haunting score. After kicking an infamous drug habit and moving to Brazil in the late '80s, Cave's creative output flourished into the 1990s, beginning with the sixth Bad Seeds album The Good Son and a German documentary chronicling the band, The Road to God Knows Where, in 1990. Continuing to make acclaimed music with the Bad Seeds throughout the decade, including the creepy Scream (1996) and X-Files (1998) soundtrack tune "Red Right Hand," Cave also contributed to a number of offbeat film projects. Sending up his usual dark attire and goth mien, Cave appeared as the platinum blond, white-clad rocker muse to Brad Pitt's wannabe title character in Tom DiCillo's wry indie Johnny Suede (1991). An apt match of innovators, Cave scored a documentary about American avant-garde cinema icon Jonas Mekas, Jonas in the Desert (1994); his skill with dark ballads elegantly meshed with the subject in the performance-documentary September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill (1995). Along with releasing the Bad Seeds' Murder Ballads in 1996, Cave acted in and composed the score for Rhinoceros Hunting in Budapest (1996), and reunited with Hillcoat to score Hillcoat's To Have & to Hold (1997). Moving back to London in the late '90s, Cave provided the music for the Irvine Welsh-scripted triptych film The Acid House (1998).

Trivia: The daughter of cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and actress Mary Jo Deschanel, Zooey Deschanel made her film debut as the conflicted, rebellious patient of a small-town psychologist in Lawrence Kasdan's Mumford (1999). Prior to her debut, Deschanel -- who spent much of her childhood on location with her parents -- acted in a number of stage productions and made her professional debut on an episode of the sitcom Veronica's Closet. A year after making her film debut in Mumford, the young actress appeared in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous as the sister of an aspiring rock journalist who becomes caught up in the parallel universe of '70s rock. After turning up in the Dogma 95-style Manic in 2001, Deschanel would join the strong cast of director Barry Sonnenfeld's long-delayed comedy Big Trouble before re-teaming with that film's D.J. Qualls for the loser-turned-smooth operator teen comedy The New Guy in (2002). After following up with a role in the equally ill-recieved teen-thriller Abandon the same year, Deschanel earned positive nods for her role as the virginal teen who falls for a reformed womanizer in critical darling David Gordon Green's All the Real Girls. Though her next few film roles remained relatively low-key, the latter half of 2003 found the emerging young actress appearing in both the independent black comedy Eulogy and wide-release Will Ferrel family comedy Elf.In 2005 she scored a part in the big-screen adaptation of the popular sci-fi book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In 2006 she was cast in the romantic comedy Failure to Launch. In 2007 she scored a small-screen success as Dorothy in the reimagining of Wizard of Oz known as Tin Man. In 2008 she was the lead actress in the derided thriller The Happening, but had a huge critical success the next year in the indie comedy (500) Days of Summer. In 2011 she was one of the sisters in the comedy Our Idiot Brother, and had another hit on the small-screen as the lead in the FOX sitcom New Girl.

Trivia: Actor Tom Aldredge is one of the few actors who are perhaps equally well remembered for careers on the screen and the stage. Aldredge made his Broadway debut in the musical The Nervous Set in 1959 when he was 31, and began making appearances on TV soon afterward, appearing in TV movies like The Mouse on the Moon and The Troublemaker in the early '60s. As the decades rolled on, Aldredge would continue to nurture his stage career, earning particular accolades for his performance in the Stephen Sondheim production Into the Woods. All the while, he racked up role after role in movies and on TV, playing memorable characters like Ozzie in 1973's Sticks and Bones and William Shakespeare on the CBS Festival of the Lively Arts for Young People in 1977 - for which he won a Daytime Emmy Award. He would also find no trouble picking up regular parts on television, co-starring in the series Ryan's Hope in the early 80s, and The Sopranos, Damages, and Boardwalk Empire in the 2000's. Aldredge passed away in July of 2011 at the age of 83.

Trivia: Rising above the negative stereotypes attached to models-turned-actresses, Alison Elliott has proved her talent as the latter in an eclectic mix of leading roles. Raised in San Francisco, Elliott worked as a Ford model, but decided that acting was her calling and was soon cast on a short-lived TV series. Though she won a supporting role in Lawrence Kasdan and Kevin Costner's downbeat interpretation of Western legend Wyatt Earp (1994), Elliott began to forge a career in independent films when she was cast as the central femme in Steven Soderbergh's neo-noir The Underneath (1994). Elliott's star performance as the reformed ex-con in The Spitfire Grill (1996) earned rave reviews, but despite winning the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award, the film was less than stellar at the box office. Elliott showed that she could also handle period roles in Iain Softley's adaptation of the Henry James novel The Wings of the Dove (1997). As ailing heiress Millie Theale, Elliott managed to be ethereal and ingenuous without being cloying, matching Softley's emphasis on the story's complex emotional ambiguities. Sticking to her non-Hollywood ways, Elliott next starred in The Eternal (1998), directed by resolute iconoclast Michael Almereyda.

Trivia: Brando-esque leading man Michael Parks was one of five children of an itinerant laborer. Like the rest of his family, Parks drifted from job to job in his early teens, briefly marrying at 15. When he wasn't nickel-and-diming it as a migrant worker, Parks acted with amateur theater groups up and down the California coast. Discovered by an agent in 1960, Parks was signed to a Universal contract, spending most of his time on suspension due to his ornery outspokenness. He settled down long enough to play an au naturel Adam in John Huston's The Bible (1966) and to star as a young motorcyclist in search of the Real America on the 1969 TV series Then Came Bronson. Parks astonished his anti-establishment fans in 1968 when he supported George Wallace for the presidency. Parks' film appearances since then have been confined to second-string productions, though he managed to attract attention in 1977 by portraying Bobby Kennedy in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover. In 1990, Parks co-produced as well as starred in Caged Fury, though it was his turn as Canadian mobster Jean Renault in David Lynch's Twin Peaks that offered him the most exposure that year. Numerous film and television roles followed, and in 1996 director Quentin Tarantino gave Parks a career-boost by casting him in the violent horror/crime hybrid From Dusk Till Dawn (a role that the actor would reprise in Kill Bill, Vol. 1, Death Proof, and Planet Terror). A turn as the volatile leader of a religious cult in Kevin Smith's Red State capitalized on Parks' intense onscreen charisma, and in 2012 he could be spotted in director Ben Affleck's Argo. And though the documentary Kevin Smith: Burn in Hell found the outspoken Clerks director jokingly chiding "View Askewniverse" veteran Affleck for "cherry-picking" Parks on the strength of his Red State performance, few would deny that the talented Parks would have likely won the role on his own merit. Parks died in 2017, at age 77.

Trivia: The frequently low-key and subdued character actor Pat Healy appeared onscreen from the late '90s onward, with bit parts in such features as Magnolia (1999), Ghost World (2001), and Undertow (2004). As an actor, Healy graduated to premier billing with his central role in the scathing satire Great World of Sound -- playing a record producer unwittingly employed by a scam outfit to bilk thousands of dollars from average citizens. Healy also wrote, directed, and acted in his own short film, Mullitt (2000), which ran at the Sundance Film Festival.

Trivia: Striking terror deep in the hearts and subconsciousness of filmgoers worldwide with his chilling portrayal of aspiring transsexual serial killer James "Buffalo Bill" Gumb in director Jonathan Demme's acclaimed thriller The Silence of the Lambs, Steppenwolf Theater alumnus Ted Levine may not have received the star status some may have expected would follow the role, but he can consistently be counted on to turn in a lively performance, no matter how small his part may be.Born in Cleveland, OH, Levine received his M.F.A. in acting from the University of Chicago before making frequent appearances in such 1980s made-for-television efforts as Michael Mann's Crime Story (1986) and his feature debut in 1987's Ironweed. Taking small roles in such features as Betrayed (1988) and Next of Kin (1989) before his big break in Silence, Levine, curiously, stuck mostly to television following his portrayal of Buffalo Bill, not taking another featured role until his turn as a cop on the trail of a carnivorous industrial speed iron in The Mangler (1995). Appearing in Georgia and Michael Mann's acclaimed Heat the same year, Levine began to gain more prominent roles in the following years before taking to the seas with Patrick Stewart in Moby Dick (1998). Though he received critical acclaim for his role in the controversial television series Wonderland (2000), the show aired a meager two episodes (though four were produced) before being pulled due to outcry over its portrayal of the mental health system and its inhabitants. Bouncing back to the big screen, fans found that Levine could still be counted on to turn in absorbing performances in such features as Evolution and The Fast and the Furious (both 2001). Over the next several years, Levine would remain extremely active, appearing in films like The Manchuriuan Candidate, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Hills Have Eyes, and Shutter Island, as well as on TV series like Monk and Luck.

Trivia: Trained in stilt-walking.Builds late 1800s and 1920s inspired feather costumes.Plays clawhammer style banjo.In 2001, self-published a collection of her writings and poetry.Has performed in TV series like True Justice and Edgemont.