Trivia: Simply by growing old gracefully, actress Susan Sarandon has defied the rules of Hollywood stardom: Not only has her fame continued to increase as she enters middle age, but the quality of her films and her performances in them has improved as well. Ultimately, she has come to embody an all-too-rare movie type -- the strong and sexy older woman. Born Susan Tomalin on October 4, 1946, in Queens, NY, she was the oldest of nine children. Even while attending the Catholic University of America, she did not study acting, and in fact expressed no interest in performing until after marrying actor Chris Sarandon. While accompanying her husband on an audition, Sarandon landed a pivotal role in the controversial 1970 feature Joe, and suddenly her own career as an actress was well underway. She soon became a regular on the daytime soap opera A World Apart and in 1972 appeared in the feature Mortadella. Lovin' Molly and The Front Page followed in 1974 before Sarandon earned cult immortality as Janet Weiss in 1975's camp classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the quintessential midnight movie of its era. After starring with Robert Redford in 1975's The Great Waldo Pepper, Sarandon struggled during the mid-'70s in a number of little-seen projects, including 1976's The Great Smokey Roadblock and 1978's Checkered Flag or Crash. Upon beginning a relationship with the famed filmmaker Louis Malle, however, her career took a turn for the better as she starred in the provocative Pretty Baby, portraying the prostitute mother of a 12-year-old Brooke Shields. Sarandon and Malle next teamed for 1980's superb Atlantic City, for which she earned her first Oscar nomination. After appearing in Paul Mazursky's Tempest, she then starred in Tony Scott's controversial 1983 horror film The Hunger, playing a scientist seduced by a vampire portrayed by Catherine Deneuve. The black comedy Compromising Positions followed in 1985, as did the TV miniseries Mussolini and I. Women of Valor, another mini, premiered a year later. While Sarandon had enjoyed a prolific career virtually from the outset, stardom remained just beyond her grasp prior to the mid-'80s. First, a prominent appearance with Jack Nicholson, Cher, and Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1986 hit The Witches of Eastwick brought her considerable attention, and then in 1988 she delivered a breakthrough performance in Ron Shelton's hit baseball comedy Bull Durham, which finally made her a star, at the age of 40. More important, the film teamed her with co-star Tim Robbins, with whom she soon began a long-term offscreen relationship. After a starring role in the 1989 apartheid drama A Dry White Season, Sarandon teamed with Geena Davis for Thelma and Louise, a much-discussed distaff road movie which became among the year's biggest hits and won both actresses Oscar nominations. Sarandon was again nominated for 1992's Lorenzo's Oil and 1994's The Client before finally winning her first Academy Award for 1995's Dead Man Walking, a gut-wrenching examination of the death penalty, adapted and directed by Robbins. Now a fully established star, Sarandon had her choice of projects; she decided to lend her voice to Tim Burton's animated James and the Giant Peach (1996). Two years later, she was more visible with starring roles in the thriller Twilight (starring opposite Paul Newman and Gene Hackman) and Stepmom, a weepie co-starring Julia Roberts. The same year, she had a supporting role in the John Turturro film Illuminata. Sarandon continued to stay busy in 1999, starring in Anywhere But Here, which featured her as Natalie Portman's mother, and Cradle Will Rock, Robbins' first directorial effort since Dead Man Walking. On television, Sarandon starred with Stephen Dorff in an adaptation of Anne Tyler's Earthly Possessions, and showed a keen sense of humor in her various appearances on SNL, Chappelle's Show, and Malcolm in the Middle. After starring alongside Goldie Hawn in The Banger Sisters, Sarandon could be seen in a variety of projects including Alfie (2004), Romance and Cigarettes (2005), and Elizabethtown (2006). In 2007, Sarandon joined Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg in The Lovely Bones, director Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel of the same name. She continued her heavy work schedule into the 2010s- in 2012 alone, the actress took on the role of a long-suffering mother to two grown sons in various states of distress for Jeff, Who Lives at Home, appeared as an older version of a character played by her daughter, Eva Amurri Martino, in That's My Boy and played a variety of supporting roles in the Wachowskis' Cloud Atlas. The following year found her in the crime drama Snitch, the ensemble rom-com The Big Wedding and in the Errol Flynn biopic The Last of Robin Hood. In 2014, she played Melissa McCarthy's grandmother (despite the fact that the actresses are only 24 years apart in age) in Tammy. She made a cameo appearance, as herself, in Zoolander 2 (2016).

Trivia: With looks suggesting a closet full of football trophies, the blond, blue-eyed Paul Walker has made a name for himself with a number of high-profile projects, including the successful teen flicks She's All That and Varsity Blues.Hailing from Glendale, CA, where he was born on September 12, 1973, Walker got his start at a young age, modeling and acting in various TV shows including Charles in Charge, Diff'rent Strokes, and Who's the Boss. His film debut came in the 1986 horror spoof Monster in the Closet, which complemented a part in the short-lived 1986 sitcom Throb. After high school, where he was active in a variety of sports, Walker opted to study marine biology at a series of California community colleges. Realizing his real love was acting, Walker resumed his long-dormant career in 1993, with a role on the CBS soap The Young and the Restless. This was followed by a lead role in Tammy and the T-Rex, which also starred an unknown Denise Richards. In 1998, after starring in the desultory Meet the Deedles, Walker won a secondary role as the object of Reese Witherspoon's pent-up passion in the critically acclaimed Pleasantville. His onscreen success continued with the following year's She's All That and Varsity Blues, both of which allowed the actor to capitalize on the craze for teens on the screen. In 2001, Walker tackled a leading role as he put the pedal to the metal with burgeoning star Vin Diesel in The Fast and the Furious. A throwback to the forgotten drive-in exploitationers of the past, adrenalized and pumped-up for the new millennium, The Fast and the Furious brought Walker into edgier thriller territory as a youthful undercover FBI agent drawn into the world of underground racing gangs. Taking to the road once again, Walker appeared later that year as a teen stalked by a maniacal trucker while on the way to pick-up his dream girl (Leelee Sobieski) in Joy Ride.In 2003, Walker reprised his Fast and the Furious role for the sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious, before signing on to appear alongside Penelope Cruiz, Susan Sarandon, and Alan Arkin for veteran actor Chazz Palminteri's big screen directorial debut, the ensemble drama Noel. The low-key movie provided a fore into films of a more subdued, dramatic nature, but the young actor wouldn't stay away from the thriller genre for long. In 2005 he appeared with Jessica Alba in the underwater adventure Into the Blue, and by 2006 he starred in the crime drama Running Scared. Walker kept the adrenaline pumping but widened his target audience for his next film, the Disney feature Eight Below. Walker starred as an Antarctic explorer who is forced to leave his beloved sled dogs behind when his life is in danger, but remains determined to rescue them. The movie was more family friendly than his other recent efforts, but before long he would be back to the grown-up fare that seemed to suit him. He next took a role in the John Herzfeld action flick The Death and Life of Bobby Z, in which he played opposite Laurence Fishburne as a convict who agrees to pose as a deceased drug dealer during a hostage switch. The edgy crime film was right up his alley, but Walker would change gears again for his next film, playing one of the six soldiers who raised the American flag at the Battle of Iwo Jima during WWII, in the Clint Eastwood movie Flags of Our Fathers. He was the lead in the 2006 action film Running Scared, as well as the star of the old-fashioned adventure film Eight Below. In 2009 he returned to his signature franchise with Fast & Furious, and followed that up with the crime film Takers, and then Fast Five, which became a huge hit. Walker continued to apppear in The Fast and the Furious franchise films before ironically losing his life as a passenger in a car crash at age 40 in 2013.

Trivia: Onstage, on television, in the movies or in a serious interview, listening to and watching comedian/actor Robin Williams was an extraordinary experience. An improvisational master with a style comparable to Danny Kaye, his words rushed forth in a gush of manic energy. They punctuated even the most basic story with sudden subject detours that often dissolved into flights of comic fancy, bawdy repartee, and unpredictable celebrity impressions before returning earthward with some pithy comment or dead-on observation.Born in Chicago on July 21st, 1951, Williams was raised as an only child and had much time alone with which to develop his imagination, often by memorizing Jonathan Winters' comedy records. After high school, Williams studied political science at Claremont Men's College, as well as drama at Marin College in California and then at Juilliard. His first real break came when he was cast as a crazy space alien on a fanciful episode of Happy Days. William's portrayal of Mork from Ork delighted audiences and generated so great a response that producer Garry Marshall gave Williams his own sitcom, Mork and Mindy, which ran from 1978 to 1982. The show was a hit and established Williams as one of the most popular comedians (along with Richard Pryor and Billy Crystal) of the '70s and '80s.Williams made his big screen debut in the title role of Robert Altman's elaborate but financially disastrous comic fantasy Popeye (1980). His next films included the modestly successful The World According to Garp, The Survivors, Moscow on the Hudson, Club Paradise, The Best of Times. Then in 1987, writer-director Barry Levinson drew from both sides of Williams - the manic shtickmeister and the studied Juliard thesp - for Good Morning, Vietnam, in which the comedian-cum-actor portrayed real-life deejay Adrian Cronauer, stationed in Saigon during the late sixties. Levinson shot the film strategically, by encouraging often outrageous, behind-the-mike improvisatory comedy routines for the scenes of Cronauer's broadcasts but evoking more sober dramatizations for Williams's scenes outside of the radio station. Thanks in no small part to this strategy, Williams received a much-deserved Oscar nomination for the role, but lost to Michael Douglas in Wall Street.Williams subsequently tackled a restrained performance as an introverted scientist trying to help a catatonic Robert De Niro in Awakenings (1990). He also earned accolades for playing an inspirational English teacher in the comedy/drama Dead Poets Society (1989) -- a role that earned him his second Oscar nomination. Williams's tragi-comic portrayal of a mad, homeless man in search of salvation and the Holy Grail in The Fisher King (1991) earned him a third nomination. In 1993, he lent his voice to two popular animated movies, Ferngully: The Last Rain Forest and most notably Aladdin, in which he played a rollicking genie and was allowed to go all out with ad-libs, improvs, and scads of celebrity improvisations.Further successes came in 1993 with Mrs. Doubtfire, in which he played a recently divorced father who masquerades as a Scottish nanny to be close to his kids. He had another hit in 1995 playing a rather staid homosexual club owner opposite a hilariously fey Nathan Lane in The Birdcage. In 1997, Williams turned in one of his best dramatic performances in Good Will Hunting, a performance for which he was rewarded with an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.Williams kept up his dramatic endeavors with both of his 1998 films: the comedy Patch Adams and What Dreams May Come, a vibrantly colored exploration of the afterlife. He next had starring roles in both Bicentennial Man and Jakob the Liar, playing a robot-turned-human in the former and a prisoner of the Warsaw ghetto in the latter. Though it was obvious to all that Williams' waning film career needed an invigorating breath of fresh air, many may not have expected the dark 180-degree turn he attempted in 2002 with roles in Death to Smoochy, Insomnia and One Hour Photo. Catching audiences off-guard with his portrayal of three deeply disturbed and tortured souls, the roles pointed to a new stage in Williams' career in which he would substitute the sap for more sinister motivations.Absent from the big-screen in 2003, Williams continued his vacation from comedy in 2004, starring in the little-seen thriller The Final Cut and in the David Duchovny-directed melodrama The House of D. After appearing in the comic documentary The Aristocrats and lending his voice to a character in the animated adventure Robots in 2005, he finally returned full-time in 2006 with roles in the vacation laugher RV and the crime comedy Man of the Year. His next project, The Night Listener, was a tense and erosive tale of literary trickery fueled by such serious issues as child abuse and AIDS.Williams wasn't finished with comedy, however. He lent his voice to the cast of the family feature Happy Feet and Happy Feet 2, played a late night talk show host who accidentally wins a presidential election in Man of the Year, portrayed an enthusiastic minister in License to Wed, and played a statue of Teddy Roosevelt that comes to life in Night at the Museum and its sequel Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. He would also enjoy family-friendly comedic turns in World's Greatest Dad, Shrink, and Old Dogs.In 2013, he returned to television, playing the head of an advertising agency in The Crazy Ones; the show did well in the ratings, but was canceled after only one season. He also played yet another president, Dwight Eisenhower, in Lee Daniel's The Butler. Williams died in 2014 at age 63.

Trivia: As a multi-talented film and stage performer with an intense comic flair, the diminutive and stocky Jewish-American character actor Alan Arkin built a career for himself out of playing slightly gruff and opinionated yet endearing eccentrics. Though not commonly recognized as such, Arkin's ability extends not only beyond the range of the comedic but far beyond the scope of acting. In addition to his before-the-camera work, Arkin is an accomplished theatrical and cinematic director, an author, and a gifted vocalist.Born March 26, 1934, to immigrant parents of Russian and German Hebrew descent, Arkin came of age in New York City, then attended Los Angeles City College in the early '50s and launched his entertainment career as a key member of the folk band the Tarriers, alongside Erik Darling, Carl Carlton, and Bob Carey. Unfortunately, the Tarriers never managed to find a musical foothold amid the 1960s folk boom -- which, despite the success of a European tour in 1957, encouraged Arkin to leave the group and carve out a niche for himself in another arena.Arkin instead turned to stage comedy and joined Chicago's Second City troupe, then in its infancy. (It officially began in 1959.) From there, Arkin transitioned to Broadway roles, and won a Tony and critical raves for his debut, in Carl Reiner's autobiographical seriocomedy Enter Laughing (1963). He followed it up with the lead in Murray Schisgal's surrealistic character comedy Luv, and made his onscreen debut alongside friend and fellow actor Reiner, for Norman Jewison's frenetic social satire The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! The picture not only scored with the public and press (and received a Best Picture nod) but netted Arkin a nomination for Best Actor. He lost to Paul Scofield, for the latter's role as Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons.Arkin evinced pronounced versatility by cutting dramatically against type for his next performance: that of Harry Roat, a psychopath who systematically psychologically tortures Audrey Hepburn, in Terence Young's Wait Until Dark (1967). A return to comedy with 1968's Inspector Clouseau (with Arkin in the Peter Sellers role) proved disastrous. Fortunately, Arkin took this as a cue, and shifted direction once again the following year, with his aforementioned portrayal of Singer in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter -- a gentle and beautiful adaptation of Carson McCullers' wonderful novel. For the effort, Arkin received a much-deserved sophomore Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, but lost to Charly's Cliff Robertson. The '70s brought mixed prospects for Arkin. He debuted as a film director in 1971, with a screen adaptation of Jules Feiffer's jet-black comedy Little Murders -- a theatrical work that Arkin had previously directed, to rave reviews, off-Broadway. A foray into the subject of American apathy in the face of random violence as it escalated during the late '60s and early '70s, the film tells the story of a sociopathically aggressive woman (Marcia Rodd) who wheedles an apathetic photographer-cum-avant-garde filmmaker (Elliott Gould) into marriage. The film divided journalists sharply. Despite initial reservations and objections, the film aged well with time, and has received renewed critical attention in recent years.Arkin's choice of projects over the remainder of the decade varied dramatically in quality -- from the dregs of Gene Saks' Neil Simon cinematization Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1972) and the tasteless police comedy Freebie and the Bean (1974) to the finely wrought, overlooked comedy-mystery The Seven-Percent Solution (1976) and Arthur Hiller's sensational farce The In-Laws (1979). Alongside his film work during the '70s, Arkin authored two best-sellers: the children's book Tony's Hard Work Day (1972) and an exploration of yoga, Half Way Through the Door: An Actor's Journey Towards the Self (1975). In the late '70s, Arkin made a rare television appearance, delighting younger viewers with a wild and gothic starring role on an episode of Jim Henson's Muppet Show.If the 1970s struck Arkin fans as something of a mixed bag, the actor's career choices suffered during the '80s, perhaps because of the paucity of solid comedic roles available in Hollywood during that decade. A brief list of Arkin's film credits during that period render it surprising that he could even sustain his own career throughout such poor choices: Chu Chu and the Philly Flash (1981), Improper Channels (1981), Full Moon High (1982), Bad Medicine (1985), Big Trouble (1985), and Escape from Sobibor (1987). Arkin did make two wonderful contributions to overlooked '80s comedies, however: 1980's Simon and 1985's Joshua Then and Now. In the first picture, directed by fellow Tarrier vocalist (and former Woody Allen co-scenarist) Marshall Brickman, Arkin plays Simon Mendelssohn, a college professor who falls prey to a nutty government think tank run by Max Wright and Austin Pendleton. Although the film remained an obscurity, Joshua delivers some of Arkin's most impressive onscreen work to date, and doubtless enabled him to pull from his own Jewish heritage in developing the character.The public's decision to snub these two pictures may have foreshadowed Arkin's work in the '90s, when he appeared in several fine, but equally overlooked, efforts. These included: Havana (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), Indian Summer (1993), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), the aforementioned Mother Night (1996), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), and Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). He delivered a searing performance as the "loser" salesman who robs his company of much-sought-after leads, in James Foley's David Mamet cinematization Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and offered the only memorable contribution to Andrew Davis' fable Steal Big, Steal Little (1995), as "an opportunist who weighs in with the underdogs and learns the true meaning of decency and friendship...[striking] the perfect blend of cynicism, sincerity, and simpatico." Arkin maintained a comparatively lower profile during the early years of the millennium, aside from outstanding contributions to the otherwise dull farce America's Sweethearts (2001), the gripping telemovie The Pentagon Papers (2003), and the historical biopic And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003). In early 2007, Arkin received his first Academy Award nod in 38 years: a Best Actor nomination that he subsequently won for his hilarious turn in the road comedy Little Miss Sunshine. In that movie, Arkin played the grandfather of an über-dysfunctional family, who is ejected from a nursing home for his freewheeling lifestyle. The character's passions include porn and heroin -- elements that, as used by the film's directors, enable Arkin to provide much of the film's fresh and inspired humor. The part earned him rave reviews, and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.He appeared in the dog film Marley & Me in 2008, and that same year reteamed with Steve Carell for the big-screen version of Get Smart. He was the executive producer and co-star of the shaggy-dog crime tale Thin Ice in 2010, and the next year he had a brief cameo as a studio tour guide in The Muppets, and appeared in The Change-Up. He had a major part in Ben Affleck's Argo, a thriller about agents attempting to save American hostages held by Iranians by pretending to be making a Hollywood blockbuster. His portrayal of a showbiz producer who helps pull of the scheme, Arkin captured another Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.Alan Arkin has married and divorced three times, to Jeremy Yaffe, to Barbara Dana, and to Suzanne Arkin. In addition to the legacy engendered by his own career resumé, Arkin has fathered something of an acting dynasty; his three sons, Adam, Matthew, and Tony, are all gifted and accomplished actors, with Adam Arkin (Northern Exposure, Chicago Hope) maintaining a somewhat higher profile than his brothers.

Trivia: Actor, playwright, and screenwriter Chazz Palminteri is anything but an overnight success. For him, stardom was the result of nearly 20 years of relative obscurity as he worked his way from nightclubs to off-Broadway to small television roles. It was only after he penned his one-man 35-character autobiographical play A Bronx Tale that the then-36-year-old actor hit the big time. A big, burly Italian, he has since specialized in playing heavies and other bad guys. Born Calogero Lorenzo Palminteri, the son of a Bronx bus driver, he first dreamed of an acting career at age 13. Following high school, however, Palminteri became a singer and spent over a decade as a lounge crooner; he was also a member of a pop group. Though he made a decent living, Palminteri couldn't forget his initial aspiration and, in 1982, devoted himself full-time to acting. While attending acting classes and auditioning, Palminteri supported himself as a doorman and spent the next few years working off-Broadway in small roles. In 1988, he headed to Southern California to work as a bit-player on television, making his debut appearance on Hill Street Blues. After two years of playing relatively inconsequential parts, a frustrated Palminteri took matters into his own hands and, on five yellow legal pads, wrote the script for A Bronx Tale. The play debuted at the West Coast Ensemble theater to critical raves. He then took it to Playhouse 91 in New York, where it played to standing-room-only crowds for four months. One night, Robert DeNiro caught it and was greatly impressed by both Palminteri and his play. Shortly afterward, Palminteri was visited by Hollywood producers wanting to by the film rights. Cagily, he refused to sell unless he was guaranteed the lead. Four years later, with help from DeNiro, who would use it for his directorial debut and play a supporting role, Palminteri's wish came true. Released in 1993, A Bronx Tale received critical praise but did not catch on with audiences. Still, it was enough to jump-start Palminteri's film career and, in 1994, he co-starred in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway as Cheech, a gangster thug with a love of the theater. Palminteri's portrayal of Cheech earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 1996, another of Palminteri's plays, Faithful, the offbeat story of a strange relationship between a suicidal housewife and the thug her husband hires to kill her, became a film starring himself and Cher. A subsequent turn as the malevolent headmaster of a prestigious private school in the same year's Diabolique found Palminteri hanging up his gangster hat to turn in an especially menacing performance, with subsequent roles in Mulholland Falls, Analyze This, and Just Like Mona showing an actor who had perfected roles on both sides of the law and seemed to show little interest in branching out. Vocal performances in Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure and the computer animated 2005 comedy Hoodwinked made impressive use of the screen heavy's distinctive voice, and gave the longtime screen actor a chance to have some fun without necessarily having the stress of being on camera. A rare voyage into weekly television followed when Palminteri served as boss to one of television's greatest detectives in the 2005 revival of Kojack (this time featuring actor Ving Rhames in the role of the lollipop -munching cop), with a subsequent role as a crooked cop in Wayne Kramer's hyper-stylized action entry Running Scared finding the actor remaining safely behind the badge. One of six co-recipients of a Special Jury Prize for Dramatic Ensemble Performance at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival for his participation in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Palminteri cold next be seen as a diamond-hunting gangster searching for a most unusual thief in the Wayans brothers comedy Little Man (2006). Since then, Palminteri has divided his time between family life and his film career.

Trivia: "Sunjata," originally his middle name, is a Guinean word for "hungry lion" and was given to him by his adoptive parents. Played on two state championship football teams in high school. Performed in a student play his sophomore year at Florida A&M, which prompted him to switch majors from business to fine arts. Began making a name for himself on stage in the late 1990s, particularly in Twelfth Night with Helen Hunt, and then on TV, most notably as a sailor attempting to woo Sarah Jessica Parker on a 2002 episode of Sex and the City. In 2003 won a Theater World Award and earned his first Tony nomination for playing a gay baseball player in Take Me Out. In 2003 was named by People magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people of the year. Came to the public's attention as New York firefighter Franco Rivera on Rescue Me in 2004 and as Nurse Eli on Grey's Anatomy in 2010. Has shown support for the 9/11 Truth Movement that wants the 9/11 attacks to be reinvestigated; in a 2009 interview with Russia Today said he believes the 9/11 attacks were an inside job.

Trivia: One of Spain's foremost leading ladies of the 1990s, Penélope Cruz has managed to make her mark with international audiences as well. Born in Madrid on April 28, 1974, Cruz was one of three children of a merchant and a hairdresser. After years of intensive study in ballet and jazz, she broke into acting in 1992. That year, she had starring roles in Jamón Jamón and Belle Epoque, two very disparate films. The former cast her as the desperately poor daughter of a village prostitute, while the latter featured her as one of four lusty daughters of a wealthy man in pre-Franco Spain. Belle Epoque proved to be a huge success, winning nine Goya Awards (the Spanish equivalent of an Academy Award) and an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Its success gave Cruz a dose of international recognition, and after starring in a number of Spanish films, she enhanced this recognition in 1997 with the Sundance entry Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes). That same year, she had a brief but memorable role in Pedro Almodóvar's Carne Trémula (Live Flesh). In 1998, Cruz had her first starring role in an English-language film, playing Billy Crudup's Mexican-American love interest in Stephen Frears' The Hi-Lo Country. She had another go at English later that year in the Spanish-British romantic comedy Twice Upon a Yesterday, which cast her as a Spanish barmaid living in London. In 1999, she returned to Spain to collaborate once again with Almodóvar on Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother), a wildly acclaimed film that premiered at Cannes that year.The next two years would prove to be a critical turning point in both Cruz's personal and professional life, with increasingly visible roles in large-scale Hollywood productions as well as a developing relationship with one Tinseltown's most popular leading men. Gaining notice for her roles in All the Pretty Horses in 2000 and Blow the following year, it appeared as if Cruz's career had suddenly kicked into overdrive. After starring alongside Nicolas Cage in the underperforming Captain Corelli's Mandolin in 2001, Cruz dove back into familiar territory with director Cameron Crowe's remake of Abre los Ojos, Vanilla Sky (2001). Developing a close relationship with lead Tom Cruise as his much publicized breakup with Nicole Kidman drew to a close, the pair soon found themselves the center of considerable paparazzi attention as they became Hollywood's hottest new couple.While "Cruz & Cruise" outlasted most celebrity couplings born on movie sets -- even generating wedding talk -- the duo went their separate ways in 2004. Perhaps not coincidentally, Cruz's career took a backseat to her paramour's while she was dating him; between 2001 and 2004, most of her roles were either minor ones in uncelebrated American indies (Waking Up in Reno, Masked and Anonymous, Noel) or meatier ones in foreign films that failed to gain traction in the States (Fanfan la Tulipe, Don't Move, Bandidas). Luckily, the actress rebounded with a performance thought by many critics to be the best of her career, when she re-teamed with one of her earliest champions, Pedro Almodóvar, for his nostalgic, bittersweet Volver in 2006. Warm, witty, and biting, Cruz's performance kept her name in the running for many year-end awards, even garnering her her first Oscar nomination for Best Actress.In 2008, Cruz earned strong reviews for her work in Elegy, but it was her turn in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona that garnered her Best Supporting Actress nods from the Hollywood Foreign Press, the Screen Actors Guild, and winning the trophy in that category from the Academy.She was nominated the next year for the Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Oscar for her sexy supporting turn in Rob Marshall's big-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Nine. Despite the film itself doing poorly, Cruz proved that she'd found a solid career trajectory as the 2010's progressed, appearing in projects like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

Trivia: The daughter of a Nigerian businessman and a Scotch tour guide, exotically beautiful British actress Carmen Ejogo grew up in London and won her first part at age 11, but only broke through to international acclaim in 1997, as Eddie Murphy's onscreen paramour in the comic actioner Metro. Later, Ejogo disclosed the full extent of her dramatic range with a skilled portrayal of Sally Hemings -- Thomas Jefferson's mistress -- (a part she inherited from Thandie Newton and others) in the acclaimed television miniseries Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (2000). The crime comedy What's the Worst That Could Happen? (2001), with Danny DeVito and Martin Lawrence, represented a low point, but Ejogo saved face via exemplary supporting work in such pictures as Lackawanna Blues (2005) and The Brave One (2007). In the coming years, Ejogo would find additional success on the small screen, on series like Kidnapped and Chaos.

Trivia: Was recruited to the University of Pennsylvania as a football player. Served in the Vietnam war. Moved to New York from Philadelphia in 1961 to work in advertising. Began acting at 46. Appeared in the 2008 LAByrinth off-Broadway production of Unconditional, opposite Anna Chlumsky. Provided a voice-over for a series of commercials for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2013.

Trivia: Wanted to be an actor since he was 11-years-old.Was encouraged by high school counselors to pursue his career as an actor and study drama.Made his debut as a singer in 1997.Made his debut for television in 1998.Is a fashion fanatic.Has contributed to many causes over the years supporting LGBTQ youth in homeless conditions and also HIV/AIDS organizations.

Trivia: Majored in criminology in college and had aspirations of a career in law. Made TV debut as an extra in an episode of the 1993 FOX drama series Class of '96. Took classes at the Lee Strasberg Theater & Film Institute in New York, NY. Worked as a personal bartender for fashion designer Calvin Klein. Was an original cast member in the 2000 Off-Broadway production of Love In A Thirsty Land. Had the starring role in the Canadian comedy-drama series Naked Josh, which first aired in 2003. Coproduced, cowrote and costarred in Camp Hollywood, a 2004 made-for-TV documentary that won a Gemini Award, Canada's highest honor for excellence on the small screen. Appeared on CBS' drama CSI: NY in 2005 in a regular series role, but that same year decided to leave show to concentrate on the third season of the Naked Josh. Instrumental in forming an advanced-training acting program for Canadian thespians through the Canadian Film Centre.

Trivia: When fiery-haired Canadian actress Rachelle Lefevre discovered her love of acting, she made a point of learning about her chosen craft. She studied at McGill University, as well as at Dawson College, both near her family home in Quebec, Canada, and additionally traveled to Walnut Hill School in Massachusetts to study theater. Eventually, while working at a sushi restaurant in Montreal, Lefevre got a tip about an upcoming audition for a television series, eventually leading to a number of roles on Canadian TV. The actress traveled south to appear in Hollywood films like Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and on TV series like Charmed, Boston Legal, and Life on Mars. It wouldn't be until 2008, however, that she experienced a major jolt of fame, as she took on the role of the gorgeous and malicious vampire Victoria in the highly anticipated film adaptation of the young adult novel Twilight. Television roles in Off the Map and A Gifted Man followed.