Trivia: Internationally known for his charisma and smoldering good looks, Antonio Banderas is the ultimate manifestation of the Latin heartthrob. Born in Málaga, Spain on August 10, 1960, Banderas wanted to become a professional soccer player until a broken foot sidelined his dreams at the age of fourteen. He went on to enroll in some drama classes, eventually joining a theatre troupe that toured all over Spain. His work in the theatre, and his performances on the streets, eventually landed him a spot with the National Theatre of Spain. While performing with the theatre, Banderas caught the attention of director Pedro Almodóvar, who cast the young actor in his film debut, Laberinto de Pasione (Labyrinth of Passion) (1982). He went on to appear in the director's La Ley del Deseo (Law of Desire) (1984), making headlines with his performance as a gay man, which required him to engage in his first male-to-male onscreen kiss. After Banderas appeared in Almodóvar's Matador (1986), the director cast him in his internationally acclaimed Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) (1988). The recognition Banderas gained for his role increased two years later when he starred in Almodóvar's controversial Atame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!) as a mental patient who kidnaps a porn star (Victoria Abril) and keeps her tied up until she returns his love.Banderas made his first stateside appearance as an unwitting object of Madonna's affections in Truth or Dare (1991). The following year, still speaking next to no English, he starred in his first American film, The Mambo Kings. It was a testament to his acting abilities that, despite having to learn all of his lines phonetically, Banderas still managed to turn in a critically praised performance as a struggling musician. He broke through to mainstream American audiences as the gay lover of AIDS-afflicted lawyer Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) in Philadelphia (1993). The film's success earned Banderas wide recognition, and the following year he was given a substantial role in Neil Jordan's high-profile adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, which allowed him to share the screen with the likes of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Banderas subsequently appeared in a number of films of widely varying quality, doing particularly strong work in Desperado (1995), Evita (1998), and The Mask of Zorro (1998). In 1999, he made his first foray into directing with Crazy in Alabama, a black comedy starring Melanie Griffith, to whom he had been married since 1996. The following year he starred as an aspiring boxer opposite Woody Harrelson in Play It to the Bone, portrayed a Cuban tycoon with a bad seed bride (Angelina Jolie) in Original Sin, and starred alongside Bob Hoskins and Wes Bentley in The White River Kid. Well established as a hearthrob and a talented dramatic actor by the end of the 1990s, the fact that Desperato director Robert Rodriguez was the only director to have expolored Banderas' comic potential (Banderas provided one of the few memorable performances in Rodriguez's segment of the otherwise abysmal Four Rooms (1995)) hinted at a heretofore unexplored but potentially lucrative territory for the actor. Later approached by Rodriguez to portray the super-spy patriarch in the family oriented adventure comedy Spy Kids (2001), Banderas charmed children and adults alike with his role as a kidnapped agent whose children must discover their inner stregnth in order to rescue their mother and father. After reprising his role in the following year's Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, Banderas would next return to more adult oriented roles in both Brian DePalma's Femme Fatale and the ill-fated Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (both 2002). After essaying a more historic role in the dramatic biopic Frida (also 2002), the remarkably diverse actor would one again team with Rodriguez for the sprawling Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003). In 2004 he joined the highly successful Shrek franchise voicing Puss In Boots, and the character became so popular that he appeared in each of the following sequels, and was the subject of his own feature in 2011. In 2005 he played Zorro again, and he had a major part in the dance film Take the Lead. In 2011 he reteamed for the first time in two decades with Pedro Almodovar in the Hitchcock-inspired The Skin I Live In, and the next year he appeared as a mysterious international espionage figure in the action film Haywire. He appeared in a small role in Rodriguez's Machete Kills (2013) and later appeared in The Expendables 3 (2014).

Trivia: Both exotic and classic, Wales-born actress Catherine Zeta-Jones began acting as a child. By ten she was part of the Catholic congregation's performing troupe, and by 18 she was performing professionally in the West End. It was in there that she caught the eye of French director Philippe de Broca, who offered her the lead in his film Les 1001 Nuits in 1989. After traveling to France to film the movie, she returned to Britain, where she landed a starring role in the Yorkshire Television comedy drama series The Darling Buds of May, based on a series of novels by H.E. Bates. The show was a huge hit, and made Zeta-Jones one of the U.K.'s most popular TV actresses. After the series ended in 1993, she steadily found work playing lead roles in TV movies and miniseries such as Catherine the Great and The Cinder Path. She also played supporting roles small films, including Christopher Columbus: The Discovery and Splitting Heirs. The big screen role that undoubtedly put Zeta-Jones on the map, however, came in 1998 when she was cast opposite Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas in 1998's The Mask of Zorro. America was enchanted by the dark-haired actress' charisma and beauty, and she began to be offered better and better roles in American film. She starred in films like Entrapment, The Haunting, and High Fidelity, before taking the prominent role of a white-collar drug kingpin's wife in 2000, in Steven Soderbergh's treatise on the drug war, Traffic. Her performance was impressive to critics and audiences, many of whom felt that she deserved an Oscar nomination.The actress had no time to quibble over awards, however, as she married actor Michael Douglas in November that year, and gave birth to their son Dylan Michael nine months later. Zeta-Jones' took it easy during the next year, appearing only in the romantic comedy America's Sweethearts, but her next project would be the one to cement her as Hollywood royalty: a starring role in the Broadway adaptation Chicago. Few fans were aware of the singing and dancing skills that she'd honed on the musical stage at the beginning of her career, much less that she had sometimes performed with the English National Opera. Her performance blew audiences away, and won her the 2002 Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Zeta-Jones lightened things up in 2003, making audiences laugh alongside George Clooney in the Coen Brothers' movie Intolerable Cruelty, then as an airport employee who falls for stranded immigrant Tom Hanks in The Terminal (2004).The actress' screen time, however, began to diminish at about that point, given her decision to shift priorities and hone in on raising a family with Douglas; her film appearances grew decidedly less frequent, and she thus found time to give birth to a baby girl named Carys Zeta Douglas in April of 2003. On the side, however, she continued to appear in occasional commercials, and the paparazzi often published candid photos of the actress in public, baby-in-arms, which held her in the limelight. The motion pictures in which Zeta-Jones appeared during this period took fewer chances by banking off of recent successes (gone, at least temporarily, were the challenges of such films as Chicago and Traffic). Efforts during this period included the blockbuster sequel Ocean's Twelve (with Clooney, 2004), the onscreen reunion with Antonio Banderas The Legend of Zorro and even the musical concert film Tony Bennett: An American Classic, which reunited Zeta-Jones and Chicago wunderkind Rob Marshall.In 2007, she teamed with Shine director Scott Hicks for an Americanized remake of the German-language comedy Mostly Martha, retitled No Reservations. She followed that up with Australian director Gillian Armstrong's period piece Death Defying Acts -- a cinematization of Harry Houdini's 1926 tour of Britain, co-starring Timothy Spall and Guy Pearce, and scripted by Brian Ward and Tony Grisoni. Zeta-Jones returned to the musical fold in Rock of Ages, a 2012 adaptation of the 2006 Broadway show. She next took on several supporting roles, in films like the sports rom-com Playing for Keeps, the psychological thriller Side Effects and the action sequel Red 2.

Trivia: Nick Chinlund's handsome, rugged exterior makes him an ideal candidate for roles in such high-profile, high-octane releases as Con Air and Tears of the Sun, so casting directors may be tempted to steer him toward films that make use of his somewhat imposing physical presence; nonetheless, the talented stage and screen actor also possesses the chops needed to highlight such little-seen indies as Amy's Orgasm and Chutney Popcorn. That rare combination offers great potential for crossover appeal, so audiences on both sides of the blockbuster spectrum can find reasons for appreciating an actor of Chinlund's caliber. The New York native started out as a jock, but his aspirations on the court were sidelined by a college basketball injury; however, it didn't take long for him to see the silver lining in his career-halting accident, and he soon veered toward acting. Though Chinlund would remain at Brown University in the following years, a shift toward drama classes soon convinced him that his future didn't lie on the well-polished planks of the basketball court, but the well-worn boards of the theater stage. Roles in such Williamstown Theater Festival productions as Mother Courage and Little Oedipus helped the fresh-faced hopeful make a name for himself in the theater community, and shortly after graduation, Chinlund opted to kick-start his feature career by making the move to Los Angeles. In addition to an impressively creepy early role in a pair of X-Files episodes entitled "Irresistable" and "Orison," Chinlund also made a mark in such features as Lethal Weapon 3, Bad Girls, and Eraser. While small-screen roles in episodes of Third Watch and Buffy the Vampire Slayer found Chinlund continuing to make a name for himself among television viewers, his performances in such character-driven dramas as A Brother's Kiss and Once in the Life saw the emerging actor eschewing more action-oriented fare in favor of roles in more down-to-earth features. Though supporting roles in Training Day, Below, and Tears of the Sun did find Chinlund's visibility rising among the multiplex set, it was his participation in such efforts as Goodnight, Joseph Parker (in which he played the eponymous character) that seemed to draw him the most praise from critics. In 2004, Chinlund rejoined Below director David Twohy for a role opposite action icon Vin Diesel in the eagerly anticipated Pitch Black sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick.

Trivia: Sporting the kind of darkly mischievous good looks that often get him cast as randy, ne'er-do-well paramours, Rufus Sewell began his film career in the early '90s and soon emerged as one of England's most promising young actors. The son of an Australian animator who died when he was ten, Sewell was born in Twickenham, Middlesex, on October 29, 1967. He trained to become an actor at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, leaving the school after three years. After making a promising debut on the London stage with an award-winning performance in Making It Better, Sewell originated the role of Septimus Hodge in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, which earned him a nomination for the prestigious Olivier Award. He also won acclaim on the other side of the Atlantic, winning Broadway's Theatre World Award for his performance in Translations.In addition to his work on the stage, Sewell had been acting on both the large and small screen, making his film debut in 1991 with Twenty-One, in which he played Patsy Kensit's junkie boyfriend. In 1994 he caught the attention of American art house filmgoers with his role as a sweet-natured bus driver who becomes the object of Albert Finney's affections in A Man of No Importance; the same year, PBS viewers could see him star in the acclaimed adaptation of Middlemarch.Sewell's art house recognition increased the following year, when he had starring roles in John Schlesinger's Cold Comfort Farm and Carrington. The first film cast him as an earthy farmer accustomed to rolls in the hay, while the second cast him as one of Emma Thompson's army of spurned lovers. Both films helped to get him noticed, even if the attention centered primarily on his imported lust-object status, but it was not until 1998 that he was given his first starring role, headlining the cast of Dark City. Unfortunately, the film vaporized at the box office, as did Sewell's other film that year, Dangerous Beauty.In 1999, the actor was again visible to transatlantic audiences, first as a bitter, alcoholic cokehead in The Very Thought of You, a romantic comedy released in Britain the previous year; and then in John Turturro's Illuminata, a turn-of-the-century romantic farce which cast him as an amorous actor. The latter film -- which also featured Susan Sarandon, Ben Gazzara, and Christopher Walken in its impressive cast -- won a number of good reviews, as did Sewell, an actor who by this point had made the expression of earthy lustiness into something of an endearing trademark.In 2000 Sewell graced the screen in Bless the Child, a supernatural thriller that also starred Kim Basinger and Christina Ricci. Of course few actors of his generation could essay such instantly dislikable villains as the talented Sewell, and after raising the ire of the noble Heath Ledger in the popular period adventure A Knight's Tale, he would once again make viewer's skin crawl as an aristocratic creep with more than a few skeletons in the closet in Neil Burger's romantic fantasy The Illusionist. In 2008 Sewell appeared as Alexander Hamilton in the Emmy-winning HBO mini-series John Adams, with subsequent roles in Eleventh Hour and The Pillars of the Earth preceding a turn as Detective Aurelio Zen in the TV mini-series Zen, and a turn as an evil bloodsucker with designs on the newly established United States in Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

Trivia: A stage and screen actor with an enigmatic stare, Michael Emerson has made a name for himself with roles that capitalize on his unique, expressive face. An Iowa native, he studied theater arts at Drake University in Des Moines before moving to New York to pursue an acting career. Unfortunately, like a lot of up-and-comers, he found himself spending most of his time doing other work to support himself; in his case, it was freelance illustrations for publications like The Boston Globe and The New York Times. In 1986, he relocated to Florida, where he worked in regional theater and, in 1993, enrolled in the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's University of Alabama-sponsored Master of Fine Arts/Professional Acting Training program. It was there that he met his future wife, Carrie Preston, whom he married in 1998. Shortly after graduating, he began scoring bigger and better roles in productions like 1997's off-Broadway show Gross Indecency: The Trials of Oscar Wilde, in which he played the title role. Other prominent roles followed in plays like The Misanthrope and The Iceman Cometh. It was around this time that Emerson parlayed his success into a career onscreen, starting out with roles in projects like the independent film The Journey and the TV movie Grace & Glorie. A particularly prominent role came in 2004, when he was cast in the sadistic horror movie Saw. The movie was a huge success, setting off a major trend in horror that made graphic, up-close torture a new staple subgenre, and ingraining Emerson's memorably large eyes and eerily placid voice into the minds of millions. He continued to do interesting work, playing a bad guy in 2005's The Legend of Zorro and a butler to a Rock Hudson-style movie star in the comedy Straight-Jacket, which he made with his wife. Then in 2006, Emerson joined the cast of the hit TV series Lost, playing the mysterious and manipulative Ben, whose role in the island's secrets and power over its inhabitants drew in countless viewers who loved how well he played the creepy and nefarious villain. After Lost ended, he moved into a starring role on the TV series Person of Interest opposite Jim Caviezel.

Trivia: The youngest child of actor/singer Bing Crosby and his second wife Kathryn Grant, Mary Crosby made her first professional appearances in the company of her siblings in Bing's Christmas-season TV specials of the 1960s and 1970s. As an adult actress, Mary seemed determined, either by accident or design, to go against the grain of the "wholesome" image perpetrated by her father. As the whole world knows, it was Mary Crosby who, in the guise of "Kristin Shepard," shot J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) in that fateful 1980 episode of TV's Dallas.

Trivia: Mixed-blood and Filipino-born, Phillips was raised in Arlington, Texas, where he began acting at age 10. After receiving his college degree in theater, he studied film technique with Adam Roarke at the Film Actor's Lab in Dallas. Between 1983 and 1986 he worked at the Lab as an assistant director and instructor. Concurrently, he performed in several plays in Dallas and Fort Worth, including Doctor Faustus and Hamlet. From 1983-87 Phillips appeared in several small, independent, Texas-made films, beginning with Angel Alley; one of these, Trespasses (1987), he co-wrote, while he associate-produced another, Dakota (1988). His big break came when director Luis Valdez was casting the Hollywood biopic La Bamba (1987), which focused on early rock 'n' roller Ritchie Valens. Someone suggested Phillips for the role of Valens' brother, but after he auditioned he was selected by Valdez to play the lead. The film was surprisingly successful and Philips married its assistant director, Julie Cypher. With his performance as a barrio boy in Stand and Deliver (1988) he further established himself as a leading Hispanic star and representative of the Hispanic community. After playing an American Indian in the youth Western Young Guns (1988), he found himself fascinated with Indian culture and became a Cherokee blood brother. He wrote one of his films, Ambition (1991).

Trivia: Speaks Spanish and Italian. He and his wife narrated a book together, An Unfinished Life, by Mark Spragg. Frequently works with the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, including stints in Uncle Vanya and The Pillowman. Appeared in both The Mask of Zorro (1998) and the 2005 sequel The Legend of Zorro, but as different characters.

Trivia: The son of Mexican film legend Pedro Armendáriz, Pedro Armendáriz Jr. became a movie and television star in his own right, both in Mexico and abroad. Indeed, there are intriguing parallels between the careers of the two men: Both portrayed real-life Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa (Sr. in multiple films, Jr. in 1989's The Old Gringo), and both had supporting roles in James Bond movies (Sr. played 007's contact in Turkey in 1963's From Russia With Love, while Jr. played a corrupt politician in 1989's Licence to Kill).Armendáriz started acting in the '70s, mostly with bit parts in violent Westerns starring Anthony Quinn, John Wayne, or Clint Eastwood. While he became a leading man in his native country, he was relegated to mostly walk-on roles in U.S. productions for a long time; while American audiences would probably best recognize him from Licence to Kill or The Old Gringo, he also had small roles in Before Night Falls(2000), The Mexican (2001), Original Sin (2001), and The Crime of Padre Amaro (2002). Back in Mexico, he finally received greater recognition for his acting with starring roles in the acclaimed films La Ley de Herodes (2000) and Su Alteza Serenisma (2001).Interestingly, Hollywood grew more interested in casting him in positions of power toward the end of his life, as he he played authority figures in such diverse films as Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), the Will Ferrell comedy Casa de mi Padre (2012), and The Mask of Zorro (1998) and its sequel The Legend of Zorro (2005). Armendáriz died of eye cancer on December 26, 2011.