Trivia: A native of Houston, TX, Brett Cullen graduated from that city's university, also finding time to compete in fencing and contribute to the Houston Shakespeare Festival. Opting for a shot at stardom over continuing his theater studies, Cullen landed a role on The Chisholms as his first breakthrough. He achieved much attention as Bob Cleary in the highly successful miniseries The Thorn Birds, which led to a stint on the nighttime soap Falcon Crest. He continued to work steadily on both the stage and the screen including production of Guys and Dolls, The Little Foxes, and numerous Shakespearean plays. His film credits include Courage Under Fire and Apollo 13, a role that led to him joining the cast of the Tom Hanks-produced television spectacle From the Earth to the Moon. Cullen has had recurring roles on such respected programs as Ugly Betty, Friday Night Lights, The West Wing, and Lost. In 2007, he starred opposite Uma Thurman in the drama In Bloom. That same year, Cullen starred in the pilot for the television program Life Is Wild, but he was replaced when the show went to series by D.W. Moffett. He had a major role in 2008's The Life Before Her Eyes as well as Brothel. Two years later he played the dad of the troubled lead singer of The Runaways, and he followed that up with a part in the teen comedy Monte Carlo. In 2012 he could be seen in the blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises.

Trivia: Known in turn as Henry Fonda's son, Jane Fonda's brother, counter-culture icon Captain America, and Bridget Fonda's father, Peter Fonda finally got his due as an actor for his superb performance as a Florida beekeeper in Ulee's Gold (1997). Snaring an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for his work, Fonda was finally able to step out of his celebrated family's shadow, earning recognition for something besides his title as the black sheep of the Fonda clan.Born in New York City on February 23, 1940, Fonda, by his own accounts, grew up trying to live up to his famous father's expectations. An exceptionally bright young man, he entered the University of Omaha as a sophomore at the age of seventeen, without even finishing high school. In Omaha, he broke into acting, appearing in the Omaha Playhouse's production of Harvey. He then went to New York to pursue his acting career, first working with the Cecilwood Theatre and then debuting on Broadway at the age of twenty-one in a production of Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole. His early career took shape under the specter of his famous father, with the young actor incurring comparisons to the elder Fonda with everything he did. His onstage success led to a Hollywood screen test for the part of John F. Kennedy in PT 109. The role in the 1963 film ultimately went to Cliff Robertson, but Fonda made his film debut that same year in the Sandra Dee vehicle Tammy and the Doctor.Fonda continued to be consigned to romantic leads until he appeared in Roger Corman's The Wild Angels in 1966. A motorcycle enthusiast whom Corman cast after the film's original star, George Maharis, demanded a stunt double, Fonda seemed a natural for the role of a motorcycle gang leader. The film, which cast actual Hell's Angels and co-starred Bruce Dern, was a violent, drug-addled affair that catalyzed Fonda's reputation as his father's delinquent spawn and direct antithesis. This reputation was furthered by his starring role in Corman's The Trip, a 1967 film about the healing powers of LSD. Co-starring Dern and featuring a screenplay written by Jack Nicholson, The Trip, with its emphasis on sex, drugs, and societal estrangement, provided a preview of the film that would give Fonda both fame and notoriety.In 1969, Fonda starred in Easy Rider, a film that he also produced. Directed by Dennis Hopper, it starred Fonda, Hopper, and Nicholson as freewheeling, pot-smoking adventurers who find their counter-culture lifestyle threatened by the encroaching confines of the Establishment. One of the cultural landmarks of the late 1960s, tt was also an unexpected commercial success, grossing over $19 million at the box office, earning Fonda an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, and contributing to Hollywood's new interest in young audiences and socially relevant movies.Following the film's success, Fonda, now both a cult hero and a millionaire, went on to collaborate with Hopper again on 1971's The Last Movie. The film didn't enjoy the acclaim of their previous collaboration, and Fonda's subsequent efforts of that decade also failed to live up to the stature of Easy Rider. One possible exception was the 1974 sleeper Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, a film in which Fonda appeared to finance his directorial projects, one of which was Wanda Nevada, a 1979 film that featured his father. Increasingly, Fonda became better-known for his activities off-screen than on: his status as an anti-Establishment figurehead was enhanced when John Lennon wrote the song "She Said She Said" about him. Reportedly, it was inspired by a bad acid trip the musician had taken, during which Fonda repeatedly told him, "I know what it's like to be dead, man."Fonda's screen career continued its downward spiral during the 1980s, and towards the end of that decade it was once again overshadowed by that of a family member, in this case his daughter, Bridget. Fonda, who had exiled himself from L.A. in 1969 to live in Montana, seemed more aware of this than anyone: in an interview, he was quoted as saying, "I was Captain America and where....can you go with that? You can only ride so many motorcycles and smoke so many joints." But in the mid-1990s, Fonda's career began to get some much-needed resuscitation. After making a cameo appearance in Bodies, Rest & Motion, a 1993 film starring his daughter, he had a starring role in Michael Almereyda's Nadja (1994) and essentially parodied himself in John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. (1996). Fonda's true comeback was Ulee's Gold, Victor Nunez's 1997 exploration of loss and family ties. He won raves for his portrayal of the title character, and the Best Actor Oscar nomination he received for the film served as the industry's formal recognition of his re-emergence as a Hollywood player. The actor, always one to play by his own rules, next rejected mainstream Hollywood fare to star in Steven Soderbergh's The Limey in 1999, playing a shifty record producer, and earning uniformly excellent reviews. He also starred in The Passion of Ayn Rand as the author's long-suffering husband; the film premiered at that year's Sundance Film Festival. He branched out into kids films with a leading role in Thomas and the Magic Railroad in 2000, and appeared in The Laramie Project one year later. He continued to work steadily, often taking smaller parts in bigger movies like Supernova, Ghost Rider, and Wild Hogs. He was a fearsome, grizzled, and authentic Western presence in James Mangold's remake of 3:10 to Yuma in 2007. In 2011 he paid tribute to the man who helped launch his career by sitting down for interviews in Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.

Trivia: Actor Nicolas Cage has always strived to make a name for himself based on his work, rather than on his lineage. As the nephew of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, Cage altered his last name to avoid accusations of nepotism. (He chose "Cage" both out of admiration for avant-garde musician John Cage and en homage to comic book hero Luke Cage). Even if he had retained the family name, it isn't likely that anyone would consider Cage holding fast to his uncle's coattails. Time and again, Cage travels to great lengths to add verisimilitude to his roles.Born January 7, 1964, in Long Beach, CA, to a literature professor father and dancer/choreographer mother, Cage first caught the acting bug while a student at Beverly Hills High School. After graduation, he debuted on film with a small part in Amy Heckerling's 1982 classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Following a lead role in Martha Coolidge's cult comedy Valley Girl (1983), Cage spent the remainder of the decade playing endearingly bizarre and disreputable men, most notably as Crazy Charlie the Appliance King in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Hi McDonough in Raising Arizona (1987), and Ronny Cammareri in the same year's Moonstruck, the last of which won him a Golden Globe nomination and a legion of female fans, ecstatic over the actor's unconventional romantic appeal.The '90s saw Cage assume a series of diverse roles, ranging from a violent ex-con in David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990) to a sweet-natured private eye in the romantic comedy Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) to a dying alcoholic in Mike Figgis' astonishing Leaving Las Vegas (1995). For this last role, Cage won a Best Actor Oscar for his quietly devastating portrayal, and, respectability in hand, gained an official entrance into Hollywood's higher ranks. After winning his Oscar, along with a score of other honors for his performance, Cage switched gears in a way that would prove to be, with the occasional exception, largely permanent. He dove into a series of action movies like the Michael Bay thriller The Rock, the prisoners-on-a-plane movie Con Air, and the infamous John Woo flick Face/Off. Greeted with hefty paychecks and audience approval, Cage forged ahead on a career path lit largely with explosions.There would be exceptions, like 1998's City of Angels, a remake of Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, and Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead, and the the lightly dramatic romantic comedy The Family Man, but Cage stuck mostly to thrillers and action movies. A spate of such films would fill his resume, like Gone in 60 Seconds, The Life of David Gale, 8MM, and Snake Eyes, but Cage would briefly revisit his roots in character work, teaming with Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze in 2002 for a duel role in the complex comedy Adaptation (2002). With Cage appearing as both screenwriter Charlie Kaufman as well as his fictional brother Donald, Adaptation followed Charlie's attempt to adapt author Susan Orlean's seemingly unfilmable novel The Orchid Thief as a feature film, and Donald's parallel efforts to write his own hacky yet lucrative script by following the guidance of a caustic, Syd Field-like screenwriting instructor (Brian Cox). A weighty role that demanded an actor capable of portraying characters that couldn't differ more emotionally despite their outward appearance, Adaptation brought Cage his second Oscar nomination -- and he was soon back to business as usual.2004 saw the release of the megahit adventure film National Treasure, which cast Cage as an archaeologist convinced there's a treasure map on the back of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The outrageous film would earn a sequel in 2007, but first Cage made the ill-advised decision to star in Neil LaBute's reworking of the Robin Hardy/Anthony Shaffer collaboration The Wicker Man (2006). Though video compilations of the movie's most hilariously hackneyed moments would become popular on the internet, Cage was soon portraying a motorcycle-driving stuntman who sells his soul to Mephistopheles -- in Mark Steven Johnson's live-action comic book adaptation Ghost Rider. Upon premiering in the States, the film became a big success. In the same year's sci-fi thriller Next, directed by Lee Tamahori, Cage plays Cris Johnson, a man who attains the ability to see into the future and must suddenly decide between saving himself and saving the world; the film failed to ignite the way Ghost Rider did just a couple months before it. Next came Bangkok Dangerous, Knowing, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans, Drive Angry, Seeking Justice, and Trespass -- all high octane, high adrenaline movies that found Cage diving, leaping, and shooting his way through the story. Cage found himself with a surprise hit in Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass (2010), playing a vigilante former cop in the black comedy film. He voiced the main character in 2013's animated The Croods, but then mostly stuck to action-crime-thriller-type movies for the next couple of years, including films like Left Behind (2014), The Runner (2015) and The Trust (2016).

Trivia: Combining low-key, average-Joe charisma with a bottomless capacity for shrewd comic timing, Donal Logue earned a reputation in the late '90s as one of the decade's most compelling -- and prolific -- character actors. First winning notice and a dedicated cult following for his portrayal of Jimmy McBride, a cab driver featured in a series of MTV promos, Logue went on to work in a string of films good, bad, and ugly before finally landing his first major starring role in Jenniphr Goodman's 2000 Sundance favorite The Tao of Steve. The son of Irish immigrants, Logue was born in Ottawa, Canada, on February 27, 1966. Raised largely in the Southwestern United States, he went on to attend Harvard, where he studied history and began to nurture an interest in theater. Although Logue had long aspired to be a writer, a stint at the British-American Drama Academy in London strengthened his dedication to acting, and after graduating from college, he began performing on the stage. Logue got his first break in the early '90s, when he began doing the notorious Jimmy the cab driver segments for MTV and won a small role in Robert Redford's Sneakers (1992). Supporting work in films ranging from Little Women (1994) to 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up (1995) to the American remake of Diabolique (1996) followed, as did work on several TV series. In 1999, film audiences were finally given a greater opportunity to see what Logue was capable of when he turned in a scene-stealing performance as a slobby L.A. limo driver with half-baked acting ambitions in The Big Tease, Kevin Allen's light-hearted hairdressing mockumentary. Full-blown appreciation finally came the actor's way the following year, when he starred as the title character of Goodman's The Tao of Steve. A wry comedy about a late-twentysomething slacker whose savvy dating philosophy allows him to win over the ladies despite a gut whose bounty is matched only by the amount of pot he consumes, the film was a great success at the 2000 Sundance Festival, where Logue was awarded a Special Jury Prize for Outstanding Performance.The growing appreciation that surrounded Logue's work was reflected in the number of projects the actor was involved with that same year. Appearing in no less than six movies, including the summer blockbuster The Patriot, Logue was soon being touted as one of the industry's more promising -- to say nothing of hard-working -- talents.

Trivia: Wes Bentley was a relative newcomer to film when he starred in Sam Mendes' American Beauty (1999), but his haunting portrayal of the battered, enigmatic Ricky Fitts made him one of the most talked about young actors of the year. Dark, lanky, and possessing a pair of blue eyes of diamond-cutting intensity, Bentley beat out 20 young Hollywood actors for the role (according to Mendes), and his breakthrough performance was soon generating Oscar buzz. The actor originally hailed from Jonesboro, AR, where he was tormented by school bullies for being a "pretty boy," and he came to film via New York's Juilliard School, where he acted in a number of productions. While in New York, Bentley also sought other work, and an open casting call for Rent led to a casting director's request for him to do some reading for a small film. Prior to American Beauty, Bentley's film experience had been limited to roles in independent films such as Three Below Zero and Halfway to Pleasantville, and a small part in Jonathan Demme's Beloved. Following his acclaimed role in American Beauty, Bentley appeared in The White River Kid, in which he played the film's titular murderer.In the wake of American Beauty, Bentley starred in Michael Winterbottom's The Claim, as well as yet another version of the classic adventure tale The Four Feathers. He was away from screens for three years at that point, but returned in 2005's The Game of Their Lives and continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including Ghost Rider and Jonah Hex. He scored his most high-profile role since American Beauty in 2012 when he played the part of Seneca Crane, the elaborately bearded game-master in The Hunger Games. He played a supporting role in Christopher Nolan's outerspace epic Interstellar in 2014.

Trivia: A fiercely independent actress who refuses to be pressed into a conventional mode or typecast, Eva Mendes was studying marketing in the late '90s when an agent stumbled across her photo while perusing Mendes's neighbor's portfolio. She soon appeared in an Aerosmith video and made her film debut in Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror. Mendes next appeared in a few made-for-television productions and hammed it up with Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan in A Night at the Roxbury before being cast in a prominent role in Urban Legends: Final Cut. Working against typecasting despite her teen horror resumé, Mendes next took roles in Exit Wounds, Training Day, and All About the Benjamins. Mendes next began work on a children's book titled Crazy Leggs Beshee in which she wanted to introduce art, history, vocabulary, and values to children in a fun and easily comprehendable medium.In 2003, Mendes' career took off, with the actress taking on large roles in an ecclectic quartet of high-profile films. In 2 Fast 2 Furious she played a customs agent working with Paul Walker to bring down a Miami drug cartel. Out of Time found her reteaming with Training Day costar Denzel Washington. Flexing her comedic chops, Mendes was the love interest of half a pair of conjoined twins in the Farrelly brothers' Stuck on You. And in Once Upon a Time in Mexico she played another government agent, this time opposite Johnny Depp.Mendes would go on to appear in a number of films over the coming years, like The Wendell Baker Story, Hitch, Ghost Rider, The Other Guys, and Girl in Progress. She took several years off in order to focus on her growing family, but in 2015, it was announced she would reprise her role from 2 Fast 2 Furious in a future Fast film.

Trivia: The son of an insurance broker dad and a librarian mum. His brother has a Ph D in psychology. His parent's magician friend, who had studied with mime Marcel Marceau, inspired him to pursue acting. After university, suffered from depression while touring Australia performing in a play. Directed the play Ninja, which was written by his wife Tamara Asmar, at the Old Fitzroy Theatre, Sydney in 2005.

Trivia: Parents show dogs professionally. Encouraged her siblings, Ryot and Liberty, to try out for the first season of Amazing Race Australia. Contracted malaria while serving a year in South Africa as a Rotary International Youth Ambassador from Australia. Became a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig in Australia in 2011. Trained at the New York Film Academy and the Second City Training Center, after receiving a scholarship via the Australian Theatre for Young People. Launched her own clothing line, for Torrid, in 2015.