Trivia: One of Hollywood's most prominent strong, silent types, Kevin Costner was for several years the celluloid personification of the baseball industry, given his indelible mark with baseball-themed hits like Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and For Love of the Game. His epic Western Dances with Wolves marked the first break from this trend and established Costner as a formidable directing talent to boot. Although several flops in the late '90s diminished his bankability, for many, Costner remained one of the industry's most enduring and endearing icons.A native of California, Costner was born January 18, 1955, in Lynnwood. While a marketing student at California State University in Fullerton, he became involved with community theater. Upon graduation in 1978, Costner took a marketing job that lasted all of 30 days before deciding to take a crack at acting. After an inauspicious 1974 film debut in the ultra-cheapie Sizzle Beach USA, Costner decided to take a more serious approach to acting. Venturing down the usual theater-workshop, multiple-audition route, the actor impressed casting directors who weren't really certain of how to use him. That may be one reason why Costner's big-studio debut in Night Shift (1982) consisted of little more than background decoration, and the same year's Frances featured the hapless young actor as an off-stage voice.Director Lawrence Kasdan liked Costner enough to cast him in the important role of the suicide victim who motivated the plot of The Big Chill (1983). Unfortunately, his flashback scenes were edited out of the movie, leaving all that was visible of the actor -- who had turned down Matthew Broderick's role in WarGames to take the part -- to be his dress suit, along with a fleeting glimpse of his hairline and hands as the undertaker prepared him for burial during the opening credits. Two years later, a guilt-ridden Kasdan chose Costner for a major part as a hell-raising gunfighter in the "retro" Western Silverado (1985), this time putting him in front of the camera for virtually the entire film. He also gained notice for the Diner-ish buddy road movie Fandango. The actor's big break came two years later as he burst onto the screen in two major films, No Way Out and The Untouchables; his growing popularity was further amplified with a brace of baseball films, released within months of one another. In Bull Durham (1988), the actor was taciturn minor-league ballplayer Crash Davis, and in the following year's Field of Dreams he was Ray Kinsella, a farmer who constructs a baseball diamond in his Iowa cornfield at the repeated urging of a voice that intones "if you build it, he will come."Riding high on the combined box-office success of these films, Costner was able to make his directing debut. With a small budget of 18 million dollars, he went off to the Black Hills of South Dakota to film the first Western epic that Hollywood had seen in years, a revisionist look at American Indian-white relationships titled Dances With Wolves (1990). The supposedly doomed project, in addition to being one of '90s biggest moneymakers, also took home a slew of Academy Awards, including statues for Best Picture and Best Director (usurping Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas).Costner's luck continued with the 1991 costume epic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; this, too, made money, though it seriously strained Costner's longtime friendship with the film's director, Kevin Reynolds. The same year, Costner had another hit -- and critical success -- on his hands with Oliver Stone's JFK. The next year's The Bodyguard, a film which teamed Costner with Whitney Houston, did so well at the box office that it seemed the actor could do no wrong. However, his next film, A Perfect World (1993), directed by Clint Eastwood and casting the actor against type as a half-psycho, half-benign prison escapee, was a major disappointment, even though Costner himself garnered some acclaim. Bad luck followed Perfect World in the form of another cast-against-type failure, the 1994 Western Wyatt Earp, which proved that Lawrence Kasdan could have his off days.Adding insult to injury, Costner's 1995 epic sci-fi adventure Waterworld received a whopping amount of negative publicity prior to opening due to its ballooning budget and bloated schedule; ultimately, its decent box office total in no way offset its cost. The following year, Costner was able to rebound somewhat with the romantic comedy Tin Cup, which was well-received by the critics and the public alike. Unfortunately, he opted to follow up this success with another large-scaled directorial effort, an epic filmization of author David Brin's The Postman. The 1997 film featured Costner as a Shakespeare-spouting drifter in a post-nuclear holocaust America whose efforts to reunite the country give him messianic qualities. Like Waterworld, The Postman received a critical drubbing and did poorly with audiences. Costner's reputation, now at an all-time low, received some resuscitation with the 1998 romantic drama Message in a Bottle, and later the same year he returned to the genre that loved him best with Sam Raimi's baseball drama For Love of the Game. A thoughtful reflection on the Cuban missile crisis provided the groundwork for the mid-level success Thirteen Days (2000), though Costner's next turn -- as a member of a group of Elvis impersonating casino bandits in 3000 Miles to Graceland -- drew harsh criticism, relegating it to a quick death at the box office. Though Costner's next effort was a more sentimental supernatural drama lamenting lost love, Dragonfly (2002) was dismissed by many as a cheap clone of The Sixth Sense and met an almost equally hasty fate.Costner fared better in 2003, and returned to directing, with Open Range, a Western co-starring himself and the iconic Robert Duvall -- while it was no Dances With Wolves in terms of mainstream popularity, it certainly received more positive feedback than The Postman or Waterworld. In 2004, Costner starred alongside Joan Allen in director Mike Binder's drama The Upside of Anger. That picture cast Allen as an unexpectedly single, upper-middle class woman who unexpectedly strikes up a romance with the boozy ex-baseball star who lives next door (Costner). Even if divided on the picture as a whole, critics unanimously praised the lead performances by Costner and Allen.After the thoroughly dispiriting (and critically drubbed) quasi-sequel to The Graduate, Rumor Has It..., Costner teamed up with Fugitive director Andrew Davis for the moderately successful 2006 Coast Guard thriller The Guardian, co-starring Ashton Kutcher and Hollywood ingenue Melissa Sagemiller.Costner then undertook another change-of-pace with one of his first psychological thrillers: 2007's Mr. Brooks, directed by Bruce A. Evans. Playing a psychotic criminal spurred on to macabre acts by his homicidal alter ego (William Hurt), Costner emerged from the critical- and box-office failure fairly unscathed. He came back swinging the following year with a starring role in the comedy Swing Vote, playing a small town slacker whose single vote is about to determine the outcome of a presidential election. Costner's usual everyman charm carried the movie, but soon he was back to his more somber side, starring in the recession-era drama The Company Men in 2010 alongside Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones. As the 2010's rolled on, Costner's name appeared often in conjunction with the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained prior to filming, but scheduling conflicts would eventually prevent the actor from participating in the project. He instead signed on for the latest Superman reboot, playing Clark Kent's adoptive dad on Planet Earth in Man of Steel.

Trivia: Having acquired legions of loyal female followers with his portrayal of the ever-horny and dimwitted Kelso in the popular television comedy series That 70s Show, it may come as a surprise that male model-turned-actor Ashton Kutcher ironically majored in biochemical engineering at the University of Iowa before his "discovery" in an Iowa bar and subsequent stint on the catwalk for such fashion industry luminaries as Versace and Calvin Klein.Born in Cedar Rapids, IA, along with a fraternal twin named Michael, Kutcher was bitten by the acting bug in high school. Balancing his love for the stage with his talent for wrestling before gravitating toward the former in such high school productions as Annie, Kutcher worked numerous odd jobs during his tenure at the University of Iowa before winning the Fresh Faces of Iowa contest in 1997 and heading for New York. Competing in that same year's International Model and Talent Agency competition before being signed to the next agency, Kutcher relocated to Los Angeles the following year and soon landed his breakthrough role on That 70s Show. Though he had small roles in Down to You and Reindeer Games (both 2000), Kutcher's first major big-screen role was in Dude, Where's My Car? (also 2000), in which he teamed his airheaded goofiness with that of American Pie's Sean William Scott. Breaking out of the mold with a more serious turn alongside James Van Der Beek in 2001's Texas Rangers, a return to comedy wasn't far behind with a role in My Boss's Daughter scheduled for release later that same year. Though My Boss's Daughter would ultimately be pushed back to a late February 2003 release date, Kutcher and actress Brittany Murphy (8 Mile) scored a modest hit when Just Married was released into theaters in early January of the same year. Despite receiving only a lukewarm reception from critics, positive audience turnout ensured that Just Married would nevertheless hold on to a position in the box office top-ten for nearly a month after its release. Though My Boss's Daughter failed to stir up much at the box-office, the one-two punch of his immensely popular MTV prank show Punk'd and a high-profile romance with Demi Moore (whom he later married and then divorced) shot Kutcher's celebrity stock through the roof in 2003. He subsequently closed out the year with a self-depricating role in the holiday hit Cheaper by the Dozen.2004 saw Kutcher trying his hand at drama once again with the supernatural thriller The Butterfly Effect. Though the reviews were mixed, the film had its share of fans among critics and went on to makeup its budget more than three-times over. Kutcher continued finding success on the small-screen by producing the series Beauty and the Geek. In 2005 he teamed with Bernie Mac for the racial comedy Guess Who, and 2006 found Kutcher trying his hand at more action oriented fare teaming up with Kevin Costner for The Guardian. The actor would continue to find his place in the romcom niche with 2008's What Happens in Vegas, 2010's Valentine's Day and 2011's No Strings Attached, but made particular waves with a return to television, when he famously signed on to replace Charlie Sheen on the sitcom Two and a Half Men in 2011. His movie career slowed due to his television commitments, but he did find time to play Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in the 2013 bio-drama Jobs. Two and a Half Men wrapped up in 2015, leaving Kutcher free to return to movies and producing.

Trivia: Born July 11th, 1956, brunette leading lady Sela Ward graduated from the University of Alabama, where among many other activities she was a cheerleader for the Crimson Tide football team. Heading to New York, Ward determined to either become an airline stewardess or a model; a fear of flying led to her choosing the latter vocation. She proved she could act as well as pose when she was cast in the 1985 Burt Reynolds vehicle The Man Who Loved Women. Beginning in 1991, Ward portrayed Teddy on the weekly TV "dramedy" Sisters, a role that earned her a 1994 Emmy award. Sela Ward's additional television credits include the title role in the 1995 cable TV biopic Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story, as well as Once and Again, for which she would win the Best TV Series Actress in a Drama Award at the 2000 Golden Globes. 2004 would find the actress in the role of a private investigator in the made-for-tv movie Suburban Madness, and appeared on the big screen for The Day After Tomorrow. The following year Ward joined the cast of Fox's hit television series House in the recurring role of Stacy Warner, ex-partner of House, and former attorney for the hospital. Though her character was eventually written off the show, Ward reprised the role of Stacy Warner in House's 2012 finale.

Trivia: A veteran of Chicago's free-form Organic Theatre, the boyish, personable John Heard won the Theatre World Award for his performance in the 1976 play Streamers, and two years later was the recipient of the Obie Award for two separate off-Broadway productions. He made his film bow as the harried correspondent for an underground newspaper in Joan Micklin Silver's Between the Lines. In Silver's 1979 Head Over Heels, Heard again received top billing, this time as the obsessive ex-lover of Mary Beth Hurt. One of his first "mainstream" leading roles was in Paul Schrader's erotic thriller Cat People (1981). Heard was agreeable, if a little bullheaded, as Macaulay Culkin's dad in the two Home Alone films; less agreeable was his portrayal of Tom Hanks' abrasive business rival in Big (1988) On television, Heard was seen as the tormented Reverend Dimmesdale opposite Meg Foster's Hester Prynne in the PBS production of The Scarlet Letter, and was heard as one of the celebrity voices on the made-for-cable Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam (1987). John Heard was at one time married to actress Margot Kidder. He turned in fine supporting work in Beaches, and was the bad guy in the Tom Hanks hit Big. A well-respected character actor, Heard continued to work in projects as diverse as Rambling Rose, Radio Flyer, In the Line of Fire, and the comedy My Fellow Americans. He had a major part in the Brian De Palma thriller Snake Eyes in 1998, and the next year he had a brief recurring part on The Sopranos. He appeared in the 2000 biopic Pollock, and the next year was in the Shakespeare inspired high-school drama O. In 2002 he played legendary television executive Roone Arledge in the made for TV film Monday Night Mayhem, and in 2004 he appeared in the comedy White Chicks. He worked non-stop throughout the rest of the decade appearing in such films as The Great Debaters, The Guardian, and Formosa Betrayed. In 2007 he was cast in the short-lived ABC series Cavemen. In 2011 he was part of the ensemble in the well-regarded docudrama about the 2008 financial meltdown, Too Big to Fail.

Trivia: A tall, intense, hulking actor who was a natural to play Frankenstein's monster in The Bride (1985), Clancy Brown has utilized his naturally menacing exterior for a career's worth of villainous roles, most notably in films such as Highlander and The Shawshank Redemption. With good looks that could be described as somewhat Neanderthal in nature, he has also found the occasional sympathetic portrayal, and been equal to the task of acting it. Clancy Brown was born on January 5, 1959, in Urbana, OH, the son of a newspaperman-turned-U.S. congressman. He was raised in both Urbana and Washington, D.C., and claims to have been introduced to acting by a neighbor who got him into Shakespeare at a young age. Brown acted in high school and during his teenage summers before enrolling at Northwestern University on a track scholarship as a discus hurler. He graduated with a degree in speech and went on to mix drinks in Chicago while working in local theater. Brown's first film role established the trend for how his services would be used throughout his career. He appeared as Viking in the Sean Penn "juvy" drama Bad Boys (1983), in which he threw around his muscle as one of the detention center's intimidators. Next he appeared in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) as the cowboy Rawhide, then as Highlander's sword-wielding embodiment of evil, Kurgan, in the 1986 cult classic. A succession of roles as bruising heavies, often corrupt cops, followed during the late '80s and '90s, in films such as Dead Man Walking (1996) and The Hurricane (1999). The most memorable among these was Captain Byron Hadley, the crooked prison guard with the deadly billy club in the multiple-Oscar-nominated The Shawshank Redemption (1994). In 1997, he played one of his more infrequent good guy roles as Sergeant Zim in Starship Troopers. From 1997-1998, he had a prominent recurring guest role as a doctor on NBC's ratings champ ER. His prolific television career also includes a role on the sci-fi series Earth 2 (1994). In 2002, Brown appeared among an ensemble cast in the HBO film The Laramie Project, which was about the beating death of gay Wyoming teen Matthew Shepard. The next year, he took on the prominant role of Brother Justin Crowe on HBO's cryptic period drama Carnivàle, joining another talented ensemble cast and once again tapping into his dark side. Brown's distinctive voice has been in high demand throughout his career, resulting in dozens of voice-over credits in animated features such as The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004) and television series. Of course his distinctively brute face was still very much an important part of his career, with an onscreen role in the hit television series Lost serving well to provide viewers with a valuable history of the mysterious "hatch." A trip back in time found the hulking Brown assuming the role of a monstrous viking in director Markus Nispel's Pathfinder, and later that same year the actor could once again be spotted on the big screen in the Kevin Costner Coast Guard drama The Guardian. In 2008 he appeared in the college football film The Express, and the next year had small but crucial roles in the indie drama The Twenty, as well as Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! He continued to land small parts in bug budget Hollywood spectacles like the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Cowboys & Aliens, and Green Lantern.

Trivia: Georgia native Omari Hardwick spent his formative years interested mainly in football, playing as a defensive back for the Furman Purple Paladins, and later for the University of Georgia Bulldogs. It was at UG where Hardwick first took an interest in acting, studying his craft in school and acting in a local theater troupe. Hardwick eventually moved to New York to act on Broadway, and later relocated to L.A. to pursue more on-camera roles. His big break came in 2004, when he was cast in Spike Lee's Sucker Free City, and within a few years, Hardwick was regularly appearing on the drama Saved. He stayed with the show for a season, and later made waves with a starring role in another Spike Lee project, 2008's Miracle at St. Anna. This soon led to a comedic turn in the crime comedy Next Day Air and the action comedy Kick Ass. He co-starred with Dylan McDermott in TNT's television series Dark Blue, in which he played a newlywed struggling to balance married liife with a demanding career in law enforcement (2009-2011), and took on a small role in the critically claimed musical drama Sparkle in 2012.

Trivia: A square-jawed blonde with steely blue eyes, actor Neal McDonough had essayed every role from psychopath to dunce before roles in HBO's Band of Brothers and Minority Report (2002) found him gaining a reputation as the man to cast if a script called for a dependable, all-American tough guy. Though his screen presence has been growing steadily in the first years of the new millennium, it wasn't long ago that McDonough was considering abandoning his career as an actor. A native of Dorchester, MA, easygoing McDonough attended Barnstable High School before graduating from Syracuse University and later training as an actor at the London Academy of Dramatic Arts and Sciences. Taking to the stage following his graduation, it wasn't long before McDonough was appearing in such productions as Waiting for Lefty and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in 1991 he took home a Best Actor Dramalogue Award for his role in Away Alone. McDonough began his move into film with a minor role in 1990's Darkman, and the same year appearances in such popular television series as China Beach and Quantum Leap ensured that his face would remain a familiar one to audiences. Following a turn as Lou Gehrig in the 1991 made-for-television feature Babe Ruth, McDonough's television career began to take off, and through the mid-'90s he found frequent work on the small screen with the exception of such features as Angels in the Outfield (1994). A childhood dream came true for the lifelong Star Trek fan when he was cast in the Star Trek: First Contact (1996), and that same year McDonough voiced Dr. Bruce Banner in the animated television series The Incredible Hulk. His career shifting increasingly toward feature work in the late '90s, McDonough took on memorable roles in such features as Circles (1998) and the quirky pseudo-horror film Ravenous (1999). Though the frustration of never receiving a truly gratifying role caused him to reconsider his chosen career, McDonough's big break was just around the corner. Cast as 1st Lt. Lynn "Buck" Compton in director Steven Spielberg's acclaimed HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, McDonough's role as the troubled soldier who suffers a nervous breakdown in the chaos of war finally gave the actor a chance to flex his chops and caught the attention of series producer Spielberg, who immediately approached him for a role in Minority Report. Cast as the best friend of Tom Cruise's character, McDonough was now a recognizable Hollywood figure and was quickly developing a solid screen persona. Subsequently returning to the small screen for the television series Boomtown, McDonough was cast in the role formerly occupied by Jimmy Smits, who dropped out at the last minute. As McDonough began preparation for roles in Timeline (2003) and Walking Tall (2004), it seems as if the dependable actor might finally be edging toward leading-man status. Though that may not have been the case when McDonough accompanied his onscreen brothers into the woods to expose the skeletons in the family closet in the 2005 drama American Gothic, a more amiable turn as a dedicated friend attempting to help his best pal find a man to father her child in the comedy drama Silent Men went a long way in making the actor a bit more likeable to viewers. The following year McDonough could be seen treading water opposite Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher in the Coast Guard drama The Guardian. He continued to work steadily in a variety of films including Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers, The Hitcher, I Know Who Killed Me, 88 Minutes, and Traitor. In 2008 he joined the cast of the successful ABC drama Desperate Housewives in that program's fifth season.

Trivia: Although his screen appearances, particularly that of his role as aide to the president on the TV series The West Wing, have earned him career success, Dule Hill's real love of the spotlight relates more closely to his love of tap dancing than of performing in other genres. Born in Orange, NJ, on May 3, 1974, and raised in Sayreville, NJ, Hill began dancing at the age of three. His Jamaican parents enrolled him in dance school as a young child, and he branched out into film and theater by the time he finished high school. After gaining attention as an actor for appearing in a Corn Pops commercial, as a high school senior, he played the role of Harlem in his first feature film, Sugar Hill, in 1993. That same year, he also had a small part in the TV movie Hallelujah, and on the series City Kids. His childhood theater experience would prove beneficial, as he chose to leave college before the end of his third year to perform Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk on Broadway.In 1997, he played the young Donald in the drama The Ditchdigger's Daughters, which explored the complex themes of race in America, as well as fatherhood. He appeared in the made-for-TV murder mystery Color of Justice, also relevant to racial issues, that year also. Switching to a more light-hearted genre, he played Preston in the teen romantic comedy She's All That, starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachael Leigh Cook, in 1999.His recurring role on The West Wing, the drama series about political life in the White House, rounded off his widespread attention, along with his role in 2000's Men of Honor, the war drama starring Robert De Niro and Cuba Gooding Jr. Having appeared with the ranks of several established Hollywood stars, Hill's dramatic talent grew increasingly apparent. In 2002, he appeared in a supporting role in Holes, a fantasy comedy-drama for tweens. The film aslo stars Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, and Patricia Arquette. Hill returned to television in 2006 for the USA Network's Psych a detective show in which he played Burton Guster, the straightman sidekick to James Roday's psychic detective, Shawn Spencer. The popular show ran for 6 seasons and continued to air new episodes in 2012.

Trivia: New Jersey-born actor Brian Geraghty owed his love of acting -- and concomitant celebrity -- to one role that provided him with depthless inspiration: Sean Penn's turn as convicted murderer Matthew Poncelet in Dead Man Walking. After viewing that performance, Geraghty -- unclear after high school about where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do -- made a beeline from his home of Toms River, NJ, to New York City's Neighborhood Playhouse, where he plunged headfirst into classical theater -- and subsequently received a bid to audition for HBO's organized crime drama The Sopranos. Though Geraghty's turn in that blockbuster constituted a small one at best (he played a bumbling counterman who plugs himself in the foot), it caught the attention of Hollywood producers and casting agents, and helped Geraghty immeasurably during a brief period during which he taught surfing in Los Angeles and attended auditions on the side. Feature roles soon followed, in such pictures as Jarhead (2005), We Are Marshall (2006), and Bobby (2006). He ascended to higher billing (but descended several dozen notches in terms of picture quality) as a quarterback smitten with Lindsay Lohan in the critically reviled horror outing I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

Trivia: With his coal-black hair and slightly olive-skinned complexion, U.S.-born supporting actor Michael Rady often fell into an "ethnic" casting niche. His memorable roles included Kostas, the Greek lover of Lena (Alexis Bledel), in Ken Kwapis' delightful coming-of-age tale Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Nick Zingaro in Andrew Davis' adventure drama The Guardian (2006). In 2008, Rady reprised his Traveling Pants role for the sequel. In the years to come, Rady would find success on the small screen on the reboot of Melrose Place and the proceedural The Mentalist.