Trivia: Before enrolling in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Sean Bean was going to enter his father's Sheffield steel fabrication business as a welder. He changed his mind after he garnered praise for acting in a few roles in local theater while taking an art class at Rotherham College. Bean received a scholarship to the prestigious academy and graduated a few years later with the Silver Medal for his performance in Waiting for Godot. Shortly thereafter, Bean performed in several West End productions. He also appeared in Romeo and Juliet with the Glasgow Citizens Theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon. In the first he played Tybalt and in the second he played Romeo. Following more stage experience, Bean made his feature film debut in 1986 in Derek Jarman's Carvaggio. Two years later, after returning to the stage, Bean appeared in Mike Figgis' Stormy Monday and in another Jarman effort, War Requiem. In addition to his filmwork, Bean also has a thriving television career that began in the mid-'80s. Notable television work includes Clarissa (1992) and Sharpe (1993). It is as a "bad guy" in films such as Patriot Games and Golden Eye that Bean is best-known in the U.S., though in the 1997 remake of Anna Karenina, he plays the dashing and romantic Count Vronsky. After joining Robert De Niro and Jean Reno for some international espionage in John Frankenheimer's Ronin (1998), taking a psychotic turn in Essex Boys (2000) and kidnapping the daughter of a respected adolescent therapist in Don't Say a Word (2001), Bean made his way to New Zealand for a role in director Peter Jackson's highly-successful Lord of the Rings trilogy.Bean maintained his career working in diverse projects such as Equilibrium, the old fashioned sword and sandal epic Troy, and National Treasure.He scored a supporting part in 2005's drama North Country, as well as a major part in Michael Bay's sci-fi spectacle The Island. He returned to the role of Sharpe for 2006's Sharpe's Challenge as well as 2008's Sharpe's Peril, and in between took on the role of the serial killer made famous by Rutger Hauer in the remake of The Hitcher.The steadily working actor continued his hot streak in such projects as Percy Jackson & the Olympians and Death Race 2, and he found success on the small screen when he was cast in a pivotal part in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones.

Trivia: The second of three children, David Thewlis grew up in an apartment above his family's combination toy store and wallpaper shop. He received his training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. A veteran of the London stage and English television (Prime Suspect 3), Thewlis found his particular cinematic niche as the antihero of director Mike Leigh's Naked (1993). From the moment that Thewlis, playing an indigent from Manchester, showed up unannounced at the doorstep of his old girlfriend and immediately proceeded to verbally trash everyone in sight, the audience knew it wasn't in for a Noël Coward revival. The result of Thewlis's antisocial screen behavior was the unqualified praise of discriminating moviegoers, not to mention awards from the Cannes jury, the New York Film Critics, and the National Society of Film Critics. He went on to demonstrate his versatility in a number of diverse roles, including Paul Verlaine in 1995's Total Eclipse, an animated earthworm in James and the Giant Peach (1996), a mountaineer in Seven Years in Tibet (1997, a role for which the actor was subsequently banned from entering China), and an expatriate British composer living in Rome in Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged in 1998. Also that year, Thewlis could be seen doing a brief but hilarious turn as a giggling conceptual artist in The Big Lebowski. As rare as it is for an actor to possess the versatility needed to alternate between such adult-oriented fare as director Mike Leigh's Naked and such innocent fun as James and the Giant Peach, Thewlis could be as effective in the former as he was endearing in the latter. Following a chilling performance as the leader of a London gang in the 2002 crime drama Gangster No. 1, Thewlis switched gears somewhat to portray the villain in the made-for-television family adventure Dinotopia shortly thereafter. In 2003, Thewlis expanded his resumé by making his feature directorial debut with Cheeky, a comedy drama concerning a mournful widower (Thewlis) whose life takes a change for the better after appearing in a popular game show of questionable taste. His profile steadily increasing thanks to roles in such high-profile releases as Timeline and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (as Professor Remus Lupin), the actor began to make as big a name for himself in large-scale Hollywood blockbusters as he previously had in intimate independent dramas. Of course, that's not to say that Thewlis had lost his taste for smaller-scale films, just that his skills were now in increased demand stateside as a direct result of his powerful early-career performances. After a busy year in 2005 with roles in the historical dramas Kingdom of Heaven and The New World, Thewlis drifted back into modern times to play a small but pivotal role in an American-shot segment of the international short anthology All the Invisible Children -- a powerful meditation on the modern mistreatment of youth by the increasingly jaded adult population. A brief turn as the Scotland Yard homicide detective trailing Sharon Stone in the belated and ill-fated sequel Basic Instinct 2 may have gone unseen by many fans after the film received considerably negative word of mouth, though a fun turn as the paranoid, bubblegum-chomping reporter hot on the trail of the young Antichrist in the 2006 remake of The Omen gave audiences much more to chew on and offered Thewlis the opportunity to have a bit of fun, to the delight of fans everywhere. The following year, Thewlis reprised his role of Prof. Lupin in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and appeared in the title role in The Inner Life of Martin Frost. He could next be seen in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, a film adaptation of the John Boyne Holocaust novel, which focuses on the friendship that develops between the child of a Nazi commander at a concentration camp and a young Jewish prisoner. Thewlis enjoyed a high-profile 2011 when the last of the Harry Potter films hit screens, as did other films he was cast in including the Shakespearean drama Anonymous, and Steven Spielberg's Oscar nominated War Horse.

Trivia: Was head boy of his high school in his final year. Left the University of Sussex after two years to join a fringe theatre group called the Brighton Combination. Performed with the Madhouse Company of London, a comedy troupe, during the 1970s. Attended a circus school in New York during the 1970s, where he learned to walk the tightrope, ride a unicycle, juggle and perform magic. Met wife Imelda Staunton when they were both cast in a 1982 production of Guys and Dolls at the Royal National Theatre in London. They later worked together in a production of The Wizard of Oz; he was the Cowardly Lion to her Dorothy. Serves as chairman of the Hampstead Cricket Club.

Trivia: Thanks in part to Alun Armstrong, the works of Charles Dickens enjoyed widespread exposure before television and theater audiences in the late 20th century. A longtime fan of Dickens, Armstrong performed in two highly acclaimed TV productions of Dickens: David Copperfield as Dan Pegotty and Oliver Twist as Mr. Fleming. In addition, he played the cruel schoolmaster Squeers in the Royal Shakespeare Company's stage adaptation of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. The production won four 1982 Tony Awards, including the award for Best Play, after it moved from London to New York. Armstrong also played Squeers in a 1982 TV production of Nickleby that won an Emmy and was nominated for a British Academy Award. Such is Armstrong's passion for Dickens that he turned down a role in a high-profile Clint Eastwood film to do the David Copperfield production. However, he has gratefully accepted challenging roles in many other high-profile motion pictures. For example, he played Mornay in Braveheart, Owens in Patriot Games, Corporal Davies in A Bridge Too Far, Lacourbe in The Duellists, and Keith in Get Carter.Theatergoers who have never seen Armstrong on the stage have been missing performances of the first rank. He was nominated for the coveted Laurence Olivier Award six times for work in such plays as Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, and Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. He won the Olivier Award as Best Actor for his performance in Cameron Mackintosh's musical production of the Christopher Bond play Sweeney Todd. In film productions, Armstrong helped Jonathan Tammuz win a 1989 Oscar in the category of Best Live Action Short for his role as Stefano in The Childeater. And in TV productions, he earned a Best Actor nomination from the Royal Television Society for his performance in This Is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. Armstrong was born on July 17, 1946, in County Durham, England. Though his face may have once been handsome, it is now a relief map of crevasses that make him ideal for roles as Dickens characters. Such a countenance works well, too, for Shakespeare characters whose visages are etched with the hardships of living. Armstrong put his wrinkles to work in the Royal Shakespeare Company productions of The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter's Tale, Troilus and Cressida, As You Like It, and Measure for Measure. Although never regarded as a famous actor, Armstrong has certainly been one of the hardest-working. Between 1999 and 2002, he performed in 17 productions, including two major films -- Sleepy Hollow and The Mummy Returns -- and a hit TV miniseries, The Aristocrats.

Trivia: British lead actor, onscreen from the '60s.

Trivia: Statuesque British comic actress Eleanor Bron rose to fame on radio, stage, and television as a member of the Establishment, a London revue troupe. Her gift for mimicry was generously showcased in her first film appearance as the Middle-Eastern cultist/spy in the Beatles' Help! (1965). She was also effective as a pretentious American tourist in Two for the Road (1967) and as the less-than-bright waitress heroine in Bedazzled (1967). In the last two decades, Eleanor Bron has augmented her film work with one-woman stage presentations and various satirical British television weeklies.

Trivia: Cambridge-educated Peter Cook was, along with Dudley Moore, David Frost and Jonathan Miller, one of the founders of the irreverent British comedy troupe "Beyond the Fringe." When the group came to Broadway (an event celebrated on a near-nightly basis on such TV programs as The Jack Paar Program and The Ed Sullivan Show), Cook shared a Tony award with his fellow Fringers. Together with longtime collaborator Dudley Moore, Cook split off into a two-man act. The towering Cook and diminutive Moore co-starred in such cheeky British comedies as The Wrong Box (1968) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1968), usually writing all their own material. The best of their filmic collaborations was Bedazzled, a breezily sacrilegious update of the "Faust" legend. While they remained friends, Cook and Moore eventually decided that they'd fare better as "singles." Cook continued to write for and appear in such films as Supergirl (1984), The Princess Bride (1986) and Great Balls of Fire (1989), and also co-starred with Mimi Kennedy on the 1981 American TV sitcom The Two of Us. Peter Cook died of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage at the age of 57.

Trivia: Is perhaps best known for her role as Lady Duff-Gordon in the 1997 romantic epic Titanic. In 2011, provided the voice and motion capture performance for the main antagonist of the video game Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. Runs the radio production company Jarvis & Ayres Productions alongside her husband. Received the UK Radio Academy's award for Best Drama and Readings Producer. Is a supporter of the National Brain Appeal.

Trivia: One of the cinema's most accomplished and prolific stunt men, Vic Armstrong has been working for over 30 years on both sides of the Atlantic, in a breathtaking variety of films. A native of Glasgow, Scotland, Armstrong made his stunt debut as a double for Gregory Peck in Stanley Donen's Arabesque (1966). He went on to do stunt work in countless films and television shows throughout the latter half of the 1960s, contributing to such diverse productions as The Peter Cook and Dudley Moore Show, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), and You Only Live Twice (1969). Thanks to his prowess in executing the most complicated of stunts with unerring accuracy, Armstrong quickly segued into the role of stunt coordinator, first working in this capacity on Joseph Losey's 1970 Figures in a Landscape. His role as a stunt coordinator for such films as the first two Superman installments was complemented by his work as a double for a number of leading men, including Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, Malcolm McDowell, and Jon Voight. Perhaps most famously, Armstrong served as Harrison Ford's double for all three Indiana Jones films, work that was made all the more successful by his resemblance to and friendship with Ford. The stunt man would also double Ford in a number of the actor's other films, including Witness (1985), The Mosquito Coast (1986), and Working Girl (1988). Along with George Lucas, Armstrong was the only creative member of the crew to serve on all three Indy films, something that led him to make his directorial debut as the helmer of the second season premiere of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Armstrong added to his directorial CV with the 1992 Joshua Tree, an action thriller starring Dolph Lundgren and George Segal (the latter of whom Armstrong had doubled in the 1973 A Touch of Class), and as the second unit director on such films as The Phantom (1996), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999), and Entrapment (1999). Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he also continued to do incredibly prolific stunt work for films of every conceivable genre, from Empire of the Sun (1987) to Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989) to Rob Roy (1995), further cementing his already sterling reputation as one of the film industry's most indispensable members.