Trivia: Before he started acting, Mark Wahlberg was best known as Marky Mark, the pants-dropping rapper who attained fame and notoriety with his group the Funky Bunch. In the tradition of Will Smith and Ice Cube, Wahlberg has made a successful transition from music to film, garnering particular early praise for his role in Boogie Nights.Born June 5, 1971, in Dorchester, MA, Wahlberg had a troubled early life. One of nine children, he dropped out of school at 16 (he would later earn his GED) and committed a number of minor felonies. After working various odd jobs, Wahlberg briefly joined brother Donnie and his group New Kids on the Block before forming his own, Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch. The group had widespread popularity for a time, most notably with its 1992 hit single "Good Vibrations." However, it was Wahlberg himself who received the lion's share of attention, whether it was for the homophobia controversy that surrounded him for a time, or for the 1992 Calvin Klein ad campaign featuring him wearing nothing more than his underwear, Kate Moss, and an attitude. In 1993, Wahlberg turned his attentions to acting with a role in The Substitute. The film, co-starring a then-unknown Natasha Gregson Wagner, was a critical and commercial failure, but Wahlberg's next project, 1994's Renaissance Man, with Danny De Vito, gave him the positive notices that would increase with the release of his next film, The Basketball Diaries (1995). Although the film received mixed reviews, many critics praised Wahlberg's performance as Mickey, Leonardo Di Caprio's friend and fellow junkie. Following Diaries, Wahlberg appeared in Fear (1996) in the role of Reese Witherspoon's psychotic boyfriend.It was with the release of Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights in 1997 that Wahlberg finally received across-the-board respect for his commanding yet unassuming performance as busboy-turned-porn-star Eddie Adams/Dirk Diggler. The film was nominated for three Oscars and a slew of other awards by associations ranging from the British Academy to the New York Film Critics Circle to MTV. The positive attention landed Wahlberg on a wide range of magazine covers and gave him greater Hollywood pulling power. He had, as they say, arrived. Wahlberg's follow-up to Boogie Nights was 1998's The Big Hit, an action comedy that, particularly in the wake of Boogie Night's acclaim, proved to be a disappointment. This disappointment was hardly lessened by the relative critical and commercial shortcomings of Wahlberg's next film, The Corruptor (1999). An action flick that co-starred Chow Yun-Fat, The Corruptor showcased Wahlberg's familiar macho side and indicated that success in Hollywood is a strange and unpredictable thing. Though he gained positive notice for his role in David O. Russell' s unconventional war film Three Kings the same year, the film was only a moderate success, paving the way for an even more dramatic turn in the downbeat true story of the ill-fated Andrea Gail, The Perfect Storm, in 2000.The following year found Wahlberg filling some big shoes -- and receiving some hefty criticism as a result -- with his lead role in Tim Burton's much-anticipated remake of Planet of the Apes. Taking over the role that Charlton Heston made famous, Wahlberg found himself pursued onscreen by sinister simians, as well as offscreen by critics who decried the lack of depth that the actor brought to the role. Late that summer, Wahlberg came back down to Earth -- specifically to the everyday-Joe-rises-to-fame territory of Boogie Nights -- with Rock Star, the story of a tribute-band singer who gets a chance to sing for the band he idolizes. Though his noble attempt to fill the considerable shoes of Hollywood legend Cary Grant in the 2002 Charade remake The Truth About Charlie would be only slightly exceeded by his assumption of the role originally played by Michael Caine in the following year's remake of The Italian Job, Wahlberg would subsequently prove that there's nothing like the fresh breeze of an original script in director David O. Russell's existential 2004 comedy I Heart Huckabees. Of course, Wahlberg was never one to let a crowd down, and after riling audiences alongside Tyrese Gibson and André Benjamin in the Detroit-based revenge flick Four Brothers, the athletic actor would take to the gridiron to tell the inspirational story of one football fan whose dreams of playing in the NFL actually came true in the 2006 sports drama Invincible. Also released in the fall of 2006, The Departed allowed Wahlberg to act opposite such heavy hitters as Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, and his old Basketball Diaries co-star Leonardo Di Caprio under the direction of Martin Scorsese. Not only did Wahlberg hold his own against the cast of critics' darlings, he landed the film's only acting Academy Award nod. In 2007, Wahlberg starred in the suspense actioner The Shooter, as well as in director Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones. Wahlberg starred as the leader of a ragtag group trying to survive amidst murderous plant life in M. Night Shyamalan's so-bad-it's-good The Happening (2008), and played the titular role of Max Payne, which was adapted from a video game of the same name. In 2010 the actor starred in the inspirational docudrama chronicling the life of brothers Micky and Dicky Ecklund as they take on the world of boxing. Wahlberg earned an Academy Award nomination for producing the film; that same year, he began producing a new show for HBO, Boardwalk Empire. Wahlberg had a huge hit in 2012 with Seth MacFarlane's Ted, and joined the Transformer franchise in Transformers: Age of Extinction in 2014. Wahlberg continued his steady work, starring and producing both Deepwater Horizon (which was nominated for two Oscars) and Patriots Day (about the Boston Marathon bombing) in 2016.

Trivia: Possessing the sort of ironclad genetics that virtually ensure a career on daytime television if all else fails, actor Josh Duhamel, not surprisingly, earned his breakthrough feature role playing the eponymous, lusted-after Hollywood hunk in the 2004 romantic comedy Win a Date With Tad Hamilton! Though subpar grades may have kept the aspiring cavity warrior from pursuing his childhood dreams of earning his keep as a dentist, a move to the West Coast eventually found Duhamel embarking on a career as a fashion model. It didn't take long for the photogenic cover boy to make the leap from still life to moving pictures, and in 1999, the fledgling actor made his small-screen debut in the long-running daytime drama All My Children. Having just come off his role as the titular character in 2002's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Duhamel found the ideal platform on which to hone his skills with the popular soap opera. Further schooling was no doubt provided when Duhamel appeared opposite Hollywood heavy James Caan in the 2003 television series Las Vegas -- in which he was cast as casino surveillance head "Big Ed" Deline's (Caan) eager young protégé. By the time the 2000's got rolling, Duhamel was a leading man, cashing in at the box office with roles in films like Turistas, the Transformers franchise, Life as We Know It, and New Year's Eve.

Trivia: Was inspired to become an actress as a child when she saw Hayley Mills in Pollyanna. Once had to sit for an hour on a block of ice while shooting a scene as a mermaid in the British TV series Honest. Appeared in the play When We Are Married at the Garrick Theatre in 2010.

Trivia: Studied law at the University of Oxford, but declined a job at the law firm Slaughter and May after graduation, and chose to pursue a career in acting. Reached the final 3 in the first series of Sky One's Project Catwalk in 2006. Worked as a model for a year to raise money for drama school, applying without her parents' knowledge. Appeared in the play Turandot at the Hampstead Theatre in London in 2008. Sold the dress she wore to the 2013 BAFTA Awards for eBay's Big Charity 50, donating the money to Breast Cancer Care.

Trivia: Like many another contemporary movie and TV favorite, Stanley Tucci is a graduate of the drama department at SUNY-Purchase. Tucci made his film bow in 1985's Prizzi's Honor, after which he specialized in playing lowlifes and scuzzbags, despite his offscreen credentials as a loyal friend and loving family man. Some of his more memorable appearances were as Rick Pinzolo in TV's Wiseguy (1987-1989), a minor-league thug named Vernon in Beethoven (1992), and a Middle-Eastern assassin in The Pelican Brief (1993). Tucci acquired a fan following of sorts for his slimy year-long role of Richard Cross on the weekly TV series Murder One (1995).In 1996, Tucci broke loose from his established screen persona by playing an ambitious Italian-American restaurateur in Big Night, the most delightfully "gastronomic" film since Like Water for Chocolate. The art-house favorite was a sheer labor of love for Tucci, who served as its producer, co-wrote its script with his cousin Joe Tropiano, and shared directorial duties with his friend Campbell Scott. Tucci again directed two years later with The Impostors, a farcical comedy that cast him and longtime friend Oliver Platt as two stowaways on an ocean liner. Unlike Big Night, however, the film did not do well with audiences or critics. After starring in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1998) as Puck and In Too Deep (1999) as a police supervisor, Tucci again stepped behind the camera, this time to direct Joe Gould's Secret (2000). A historical drama about an eccentric man (Ian Holm) living on the streets of Greenwich Village, it received a very enthusiastic reception at the 2000 Sundance Festival, where it premiered. The early 2000s seemed to be a winning period for the versatile actor, with Tucci also taking home the Best Supporting Actor in a television movie award for his role in Conspiracy (2001). That same year he appeared in America's Sweethearts as an intense movie mogul. He continued doing solid work even when the finished films were sometimes lacking. He played in the Jennifer Lopez hit Maid in Manhattan, Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition, the American remake of Shall We Dance?, and landed his largest role in a major Hollywood production when Steven Spielberg cast him as the ambitious, officious manager of The Terminal. Tucci lent his voice to the animated film Robots in 2005, and the next year earned solid notices for his work as a fashion magazine editor loyal to the diva editor in chief Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.The highly-respected character actor continued to work steadily in a variety of projects, but a pair of high-profile supporting roles in 2009 earned him strong reviews and awards consideration. As the husband to Julia Child in Julie & Julia, Tucci got to work opposite Meryl Streep yet again in another box-office hit, but it was his creepy turn as a child killer in the big screen adaptation of The Lovely Bones that earned him Screen Actors Guild, Golden Globe, and Academy Award nominations.In 2010 he appeared opposite Cher in Burlesque, and was a loving father in the sleeper hit Easy A. In 2012, Tucci was cast as the announcer and emcee Caesar Flickman in the hit adaptation of the smash novel The Hunger Games. Tucci continued to be a work horse, appearing in seven films in 2014, including Transformers: Age of Extinction and a cameo in Muppets Most Wanted.

Trivia: Born in Santiago, Chile, but raised in London, Romania, Toronto, and Madrid, worldly actor Santiago Cabrera had professional soccer aspirations long before he entered into acting. After playing soccer on a college scholarship for three years in his native Chile and even going semi-pro in London, the future Heroes star enrolled in Drama Centre London and appeared on-stage in productions of Britannicus and The Last Days of Don Juan, among other works. A post-graduation role as Montano in the Northampton Royal Theatre and Greenwich Theater productions of Othello found Cabrera's career getting off to an impressive start, with his performance as Octavius in the ABC miniseries Empire serving well to ignite a small-screen career. Later, Cabrera also made a bid for feature success opposite Brittany Murphy and Orlando Bloom in the romantic comedy Love and Other Disasters. Subsequently cast in Heroes as heroin-addicted artist Isaac Mendez, whose paintings foreshadow ominous events, Cabrera finally found his footing on the small screen.

Trivia: Appeared in a Broadway production of Evita when she was just 10 years old. Insisted that if she was cast in 100 Things To Do Before High School, her mother had to surprise her with the announcement; mother took her to a go-kart track and put her in car 315, the channel on which she would be a star. Released her first album, Stopping Time, at age 14. Accepted into college at age 15. Won CinemaCon's Rising Star Award for her performance in Transformers: The Last Knight.

Trivia: Moved from Winston-Salem to Los Angeles in 2008 to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. Performed as one of the New Faces at the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival in 2011. Named one of Variety Magazine's 10 Comics to Watch in 2012. Performed stand-up as the opening act for fellow comedians Aziz Ansari and Daniel Tosh. Participated in a live script reading of the film Space Jam, held at the UCB Theatre in Los Angeles in 2014. Released his first televised comedy special, Love in the Store, in 2014, directed by Spike Lee.