Trivia: One of the most celebrated actresses of her generation, as well as one of the few child stars to make a successful transition to adult roles, Christina Ricci has been impressing audiences and critics with her unnervingly accurate performances since debuting in 1990's Mermaids.The daughter of a lawyer and a former Ford model and the youngest of four children, Ricci was born in Santa Monica, CA, on February 12, 1980. Following her family's move to New York when she was eight, Ricci got her start acting in commercials. Her big screen debut came shortly after, when director Richard Benjamin cast her as Cher's younger daughter in Mermaids. Although much attention went to Winona Ryder, who played Ricci's older sister, the young actress made enough of an impression to land more work: The following year, she starred as the morbidly precocious Wednesday Addams in the hit film adaptation of The Addams Family. The role would help to establish Ricci as an actress known for playing dark, unconventional characters; she went on to play Wednesday again in the film's 1993 sequel Addams Family Values. Following a series of films both good and bad, including Now and Then, in which she played the young Rosie O'Donnell, and the critically panned but commercially successful Casper, Ricci starred as the troubled, sexually precocious Wendy Hood in Ang Lee's widely praised The Ice Storm. The actress handled the part with uncanny maturity, leading many observers to conclude that she was truly beginning to come into her own. This assessment was solidified with Ricci's subsequent roles in films like Buffalo '66 (in which she played Vincent Gallo's unwitting abductee-turned-girlfriend), John Waters' Pecker, and Don Roos' The Opposite of Sex, the last of which cast her as Dedee, a delightfully loathsome girl who wreaks tabloid-style havoc on everyone she encounters, whether they be dead or alive. For her performance as Dedee, Ricci was nominated for a Golden Globe and attained the unofficial title of the Sundance Film Festival's 1998 "It" Girl.Now riding high as an indie teen queen, Ricci went on in 1999 to headline the much-anticipated but ultimately disappointing 200 Cigarettes; the same year, she could be seen in Desert Blue, which featured 200 Cigarettes co-stars Casey Affleck and Kate Hudson, and Sleepy Hollow, in which she played Gothic princess Katrina Van Tassel opposite Johnny Depp's Ichabod Crane in Tim Burton's adaptation of Washington Irving's ghostly tale.In 2000, Ricci starred in Sally Potter's The Man Who Cried, in which she played a young Jewish woman who flees from Germany to Paris during World War II, and Bless the Child, a supernatural thriller that also starred Kim Basinger and Rufus Sewell.Though rumors of a stateside release date for Ricci's 2001 drama Prozac Nation continued to linger, the dark young starlet would move on to such unconventional efforts as The Laramie Project (2002) and the offbeat romantic comedy Pumpkin, which found her as a popular sorority girl who risks becoming a social outcast after falling for a mentally disabled young athlete whom she has volunteered to help train. Though subsequent efforts as Miranda and The Gathering (both 2002) fell beneath the radar at the box office, Ricci was a hit with Ally McBeal fans when she appeared in a recurring role in the Fox show that same year. Audiences who caught Woody Allen's 2003 comedy Anything Else found her as charming as ever (despite her sometimes shrill characterization in the film). At festivals that year, Ricci could be seen in supporting roles in actor Adam Goldberg's dark drama I Love Your Work, as well as in director Patty Jenkins' Aileen Wuornos biopic Monster.She next appeared in the werewolf film Cursed, before moving on to Penelope with Reese Witherspoon, and Black Snake Moan with Samuel L. Jackson. In 2006 Ricci turned in a memorable guest appearance on the popular medical drama Grey's Anatomy as an EMT put in the difficult position of keeping a bomb stuck inside a patient from exploding. A role in the big-budget bomb Speed Racer quickly followed, but in 2011 Ricci returned to television in ABC's Pan Am -- an ambitious but shortlived period piece series following a crew of glamourous flight attendants as they tended to travelers on "The World's Most Experienced Airline." Once Pam Am was canceled, Ricci returned to films, with a supporting role in the Rob Pattinson drama Bel Ami and a voice role in 2013's sequel The Smurfs 2.

Trivia: Onscreen for nearly a decade at the time he was cast in director Kevin McDonald's The Last King of Scotland, Glasgow-born actor James McAvoy seemed to many an overnight sensation. The fact is, however, that the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama alumnus had already formed the foundation of an enduring career at the time he was charged with holding his own opposite the formidable -- and, eventually, Oscar-winning -- Forest Whitaker.McAvoy's parents divorced when he was just seven years old. In the aftermath, he and his mother would go to live with his grandparents in Glasgow's housing projects, with the youngster's notable interest in stage and film work eventually leading him to study at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. At 16, McAvoy made his professional acting debut in the child abuse drama The Near Room, with a role in the long-running British crime drama The Bill following in short order. On the heels of a part in 2001's Emmy Award-winning WWII miniseries Band of Brothers, McAvoy caught the eye of critics in the small-screen adaptation White Teeth before being cast in a pivotal role in the sci-fi effort Children of Dune. While roles in such U.K. television dramas as Early Doors, Shameless, and State of Play found McAvoy growing increasingly comfortable on the small screen, feature performances in Bright Young Things, Wimbledon, and Inside I'm Dancing (aka, Rory O'Shea Was Here) brought him to the attention of Hollywood. In 2005, the actor went global in a very big way with a pivotal appearance as Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. But it was his Last King role the following year, as a hard-partying doctor who gradually becomes a captive to one of the 20th century's most notorious dictators, that truly propelled him to international acclaim. With his star-making role in The Last King of Scotland, McAvoy became not only a critical darling, but a serious dramatic talent whose future appeared to hold great things as well. Indeed, his follow-ups to Last King proved to feature him in one lead role after another. He romanced Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane, a story about the young Jane Austen; anguished over his separation from Keira Knightley in the Oscar-nominated WWII-era romance Atonement; and fell unexpectedly in love with Christina Ricci in the fantasy Penelope. After this string of romantic leading-man roles, McAvoy did an about-face and co-starred as a reluctant but innately talented assassin in the action-packed thriller Wanted opposite Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. He had the lead role in 2009's drama The Last Station, and played a layer in the historical drama The Conspirator one year later. He voiced the part of Gnomeo in the animated family film Gnomeo & Juliet in 2011, and that same year he was cast as the young Professor X in the action spectacle X-Men: First Class. That role kept him busy for the next couple of years, as he reprised the character in several sequels, including X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).

Trivia: Tall, gangly, and possessed of a frenetic intensity that lends itself to the highly eccentric and often borderline insane characters he plays, British actor Richard E. Grant is nothing if not one of the more distinctive performers to have gained celluloid immortality. His wild eyes and high-strung demeanor occasionally giving him an uncanny resemblance to a meerkat on speed, Grant has been delighting and shocking observers with both his on- and off-screen persona since his 1987 breakthrough in Withnail & I. Born Richard Grant Esterhuysen on May 5, 1957, in Mbabane, Swaziland, Grant had a somewhat distinctive upbringing, thanks in part to his father's job as the Swazi Minister of Education. His parents' divorce when the actor was 11, for example, was the source of a fair amount of scandal in South Africa. For his part, Grant knew early on that he wanted to be an actor, something that was fueled by an infatuation with Barbra Streisand and a steady diet of movies. He followed the career of Donald Sutherland with particularly rapt attention, as, like Grant, Sutherland was tall, thin, long-faced, and hailed from the middle of nowhere.After studying English and Drama at Cape Town University, where he co-founded the multi-racial, avant garde Troupe Theatre Company, Grant headed for London in 1982. He was greeted by a period of unemployment and frustration that lasted for almost five years. The actor eventually began finding work on the stage, and in 1984 was dubbed by Plays and Players magazine as "most promising newcomer" for his performance in Tramway Road at Hammersmith's Lyric Theatre. Ironically enough, given his years of struggle, it was Grant's portrayal of a bitter, pill-popping, unemployed actor in Bruce Robinson's black comedy Withnail & I that finally put him on the map. The film was a genuine cult classic, and Hollywood soon came sniffing around, if only to cast Grant in the 1988 demons-on-the-loose flop Warlock. The following year, the actor again tapped into his reserves of unpleasantness for Robinson, starring as a toxic advertising executive who develops a talking boil in the satirical How to Get Ahead in Advertising. Grant's hilariously vile characterization was considered by many to be the highlight of the film, and further paved the way for greater industry appreciation.Grant subsequently earned recognition on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to a number of diverse and often peculiar roles in films of widely varying quality. Particularly memorable during the early to mid-'90s were portrayals Anais Nin's well-intentioned but dull husband in Henry & June (1990), the evil billionaire Darwin Mayflower in the spectacularly disappointing Hudson Hawk (1991), an overly insistent screenwriter in Robert Altman's The Player (1992), high society lounge lizard Larry Lefferts in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (1993), and an outrageous fashion designer that Grant described as a "male Vivienne Westwood" in Altman's disastrous Pret-A-Porter (1994).Despite his eccentric persona, Grant has time and again proven himself more than capable of essaying straight man roles, as he demonstrated in such films as Jack and Sarah (1995), in which he played a grieving widower; The Portrait of a Lady (1996), in which he had a small but memorable role as one of Isabel Archer's most ardent suitors; and the made-for-TV The Scarlet Pimpernel (1999), which cast him as its titular hero. He has also continued to shine in films that impress upon his comedic abilities, as evidenced by his role as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996) and his portrayal of a disgruntled advertising man in A Merry War (1997) (otherwise known as Keep the Aspidistra Flying), a satirical comedy based upon a novel by George Orwell.Enlisted again by Altman, Grant showed up alongside a star-studded ensemble cast in 2001's critically-acclaimed Gosford Park. Supporting roles continued to suit him well as he would later take on parts in Steven Fry's Bright Young Things and the 2004 John Malkovich-starrer Colour Me Kubrick.

Trivia: Catherine O'Hara was born on March 4, 1954, in Toronto, Ontario, though her heritage may or may not be a contributing factor to the strange quality she brings to her dry comedic style on the Hollywood screen. While the inspiration for O'Hara's forthright straight-faced demeanor is unknown, she is arguably a one-of-a-kind presence in many American films.O'Hara began acting in her hometown in 1974, when she first appeared on Second City Television, where she distinguished herself through impersonations. She performed on the program regularly during the mid-'70s, and also wrote for it beginning in 1976. Later that decade, she continued her television experience with voice-overs for cartoons, an endeavor she would revisit throughout her career in some notable roles.In 1980, she played Audrey in Nothing Personal, and in the mid-'80s played several small roles in feature films, including Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985). In 1988, she made a parental splash as Delia Deetz in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, with Winona Ryder playing her morose young goth daughter. Mainstream Hollywood featured O'Hara again two years later in Dick Tracy with Warren Beatty and Madonna. Also in 1990, she returned to big-screen motherhood, this time as mother to Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone (and she would also later appear in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York in 1992).By this point, O'Hara was well established in American popular culture, and she continued to take on creative roles. Revisiting the bizarre darkness of Tim Burton's imaginative projects, she performed the character voices of both Sally and Shock in his animated feature The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993. Two years later, her voice-over credentials increased when she played Calamity Jane in Walt Disney's Tall Tale: The Unbelievable Adventures of Pecos Bill. Her voice work continued throughout the 1990s, and in 1996, O'Hara expanded her appeal to include the indie-film world when she starred in what became a revered independent feature, Christopher Guest's satirical mockumentary Waiting for Guffman. In Home Fries (1998) with Drew Barrymore, she played the role of Mrs. Lever.Satiric and campy, 2000's Best in Show showcased numerous strong performances, allowing for flamboyant and unique characterizations from all cast members, including O'Hara, whose pursed-lipped matter-of-factness instilled personality into Southern dog-owner Cookie Guggelman Fleck. In 2001, O'Hara appeared on the television shows Committed and Speaking of Sex, and she returned to the big screen in 2002 with a role in Orange County. Strong as ever in Guest's subsequent mock-docs A Mighty Wind (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006), she continued to impress with bit parts such features as Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Penelope, and Away We Go while continuing to do impressive voice work in films like Monster House and Spike Jonze's Where the WIld Things Are. 2010 proved to be a good year thanks to an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Mick Jackson's made-for-HBO biopic Temple Grandin. While the award eluded her, O'Hara remained busy as ever thanks to her role in the cult Nickeledeon hit Glenn Martin DDS. Meanwhile, multiple voice roles in Burton's 2012 feature Frankenweenie offered her the opportunity to once again work with the quirky director who previously used her to striking effect in some of his most popular films.

Trivia: Standing four feet five inches tall, actor Peter Dinklage has had a prolific career both on-stage and in film. After graduating from college in Vermont, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and the Welsh School of Music and Drama in Wales. He worked in several productions off-Broadway and wrote his own play entitled Frog. He made his film debut in Tom DiCillo's 1995 independent comedy Living in Oblivion as the dwarf in the dream sequence. He then appeared in Safe Men, Bullet, Never Again, and Just a Kiss before returning to independent comedies. In 2001 he had a substantial role in Michel Gondry's Human Nature, written by Charlie Kaufman. In 2002, he played Binky, the sidekick to the clown Bananas played by Steve Buscemi in Alexandre Rockwell's 13 Moons. His first starring film role was in Tom McCarthy's The Station Agent as Finbar McBride, a lonely misfit who shacks up in an abandoned railway depot. Also starring Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale, the film won festival acclaim at Sundance. In 2003, Dinklage can be seen in both the Lincoln Center production of Toulouse Lautrec and the Jon Favreau holiday comedy Elf starring Will Ferrell. After a supporting role in The Baxter found Dinklage appearing in one of the year's most off-beat romantic comedies, and the sci fi television series Threshold afforded him the opportunity to appear alongside Star Trek: The Next Generation star Brent Spiner, Dinklage would next share the screen with the most popular canine in film and television history in the 2006 family-oriented adventure Lassie. In 2005, Dinklage took on a starring role in Threshold, a short-lived science fiction series from CBS, and joined the cast of filmmaker Michael Showalter's comedy The Baxter, in which he played a wedding planner. The following year the actor would make waves in Ryan Murphy's highly sexed drama Nip/Tuck. After appearing in a variety of television roles (including a stint playing himself on HBO's popular series entourage) Dinklage once again teamed with HBO to join the cast of Game of Thrones. This proved a fateful decision on his part, as the adaptation of George R. R. Martin's popular series of novels would become wildly successful, in no small part due to Dinklage's portrayal of Tyrion Lannister, the "imp" whose political savvy and brilliant mind allow him to thrive in a world that is less than kind to those it perceives as physically limited. The role led to an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Series, Miniseries or Television Film in 2012.

Trivia: As one of the most impressively talented members of the emerging New Hollywood of the early 21st century, Reese Witherspoon has proven that she can do far more than just pose winsomely for the camera. Born March 22, 1976, in Nashville, TN, Witherspoon was a child model and acted in television commercials from the age of seven. She had a part in the 1991 Lifetime cable movie Wildflower before making her 1991 film debut in the coming-of-age story The Man in the Moon (1991). The 14-year-old Witherspoon made an immediate impact on critics and audiences alike, netting widespread praise for her portrayal of a tomboy experiencing love for the first time.While still in high school, Witherspoon completed two more feature films, Jack the Bear (1993), starring Danny De Vito, and Disney's A Far Off Place (1993), which required the actress to spend several months living in the Kalahari Desert. Following a supporting role in the 1993 CBS miniseries Return to Lonesome Dove and a lead in the critically disembowelled S.F.W., Witherspoon temporarily set aside her career to study English literature at Stanford University. She then returned to film as the abused girlfriend of a psychotic Mark Wahlberg in the thriller Fear (1996). In the same year, she had to deal with yet another crazed male in Freeway, a satirical version of Little Red Riding Hood in which Witherspoon co-starred with Kiefer Sutherland, who took on the role of the aforementioned crazed male.Her career began to take off in 1998, with roles in two high-profile films. The first, Twilight, saw her sharing the screen with Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon, and Paul Newman. The film received mixed reviews and lackluster box office, but Pleasantville, her other project that year, proved to be both a critical and financial hit. The actress won wide recognition for her leading role as Tobey Maguire's oversexed sister, and this recognition -- along with critical respect -- increased the following year with another leading role, in Alexander Payne's acclaimed satire Election. Starring opposite Matthew Broderick, Witherspoon won raves for her hilarious, high-strung portrayal of student-council presidential candidate Tracy Flick. The character stood in stark contrast to the one Witherspoon subsequently portrayed in Cruel Intentions, Roger Kumble's delightfully trashy all-teen update of Dangerous Liaisons. As the virginal Annette, Witherspoon was convincing as the object of Ryan Phillippe's reluctant affection, perhaps due in part to her real-life relationship with the actor, whom she married in June 1999.After turning up in an amusing minor role as serial killer Patrick Bateman's burnt-out yuppie girlfriend in American Psycho (2000), Witherspoon again pleased critics and audiences alike with her decidedly Clueless-esque role in 2001's Legally Blonde. Her star turn as a seemingly dimwitted sorority blonde-turned-Harvard law-school-prodigy unexpectedly shot the featherweight comedy to number one, despite such heavy summer contenders as Steven Spielberg's A.I. and the ominously cast heist thriller The Score. The 18-million-dollar film went on to gross nearly 100 million dollars, proving that Witherspoon had finally arrived as a box-office draw.Though she would test out her chops in the Oscar Wilde adaptation The Importance of Being Earnest, Witherspoon's proper follow-up to Legally Blonde came in the form of 2002's Sweet Home Alabama, a culture-clash romantic comedy as embraced by audiences as it was rejected by critics. As with Drew Barrymore before her, Witherspoon used her newfound standing among the Hollywood elite to start her own production company, Type A Films, as well as to up her asking price to the rarefied 15-million-dollar range for the sequel to Legally Blonde. Though Blonde 2 didn't perform quite as well as the first film, the power player/doting mother of two wasted no time in prepping other projects for the screen, taking the lead in 2004's elaborate costume drama Vanity Fair as Becky Sharp, a woman who strives to transcend class barriers in 19th century England. For all its lavish costumes and sets, Vanity Fair received mixed reviews, but Witherspoon's winning performance still garnered praise.The next year, she appeared in the heaven-can-wait romantic comedy Just Like Heaven with Mark Ruffalo, as well as James Mangold's biopic Walk the Line as June Carter Cash, wife of country music legend Johnny Cash. This role proved to be a pivotal one, earning Witherspoon both a Best Actress Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her performance, and cementing her as an actress whose abilities go far beyond her charm and pretty face.As with others before her, however, the Best Actress statue portended a breakup between her and her husband; in October, 2006, she and Phillippe began their divorce proceedings, shortly after his starring turn in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers. Career-wise, however, she didn't miss a beat, continuing to appear in popular romantic comedies like Four Christmases and Just Like Heaven, before getting more serious for the 1930's period drama Water for Elephants in 2011. By the next year, Witherspoon was crossing genres, playing the femme fatale at the center of a love triangle between two deadly secret agents in the action comedy This Means War.She did strong work in a supporting role in Mud, and in 2014 she returned to the Oscar race, garnering a Best Actress nomination for her work in Wild, playing a recovering addict who takes a grueling hike through California and Oregon in order to purge herself of her problems.

Trivia: Born in Los Angeles, California, where his father was a professor of linguistics at UCLA, the family moved back to their native London when he was 7. Went by the name BB Burn when he competed as a beatboxer. His big television breakthrough came in BBC's Bleak House, an adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel, in the role of William Guppy. Appeared in the 2009 West End revival of Oliver! as Bill Sikes, opposite Rowan Atkinson; he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical in the Whatsonstage Theatre Awards for the role. He and his wife had a third child, a daughter, Rosa in 2014. The couple split up in 2017.

Trivia: Best friend of frequent co-star Simon Pegg, Essex-born Nick Frost got his start as a comedy writer before gaining prominence on the BAFTA-nominated sitcom Spaced. After the show bowed in 2001, Frost joined his cast mates and director Edgar Wright in the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead. Featuring Frost as the slovenly sidekick to the aforementioned Pegg's leading man, Shaun was released in 2004 and went on to become an international cult hit, turning its modest budget into 30 million dollars in worldwide box-office grosses. For his performance, Frost earned a nomination for the Most Promising Newcomer prize at the British Independent Film Awards. In the wake of the success of Shaun of the Dead, Frost starred in the U.K. sci-fi comedy series Hyperdrive before re-teaming with Pegg and Wright yet again, this time for the 2007 big-screen cop comedy Hot Fuzz. That same year, Frost and Pegg could also be seen on La Triviata, a BBC sitcom they co-wrote and directed about pub trivia contests.

Trivia: British lead actor, onscreen from 1972.

Trivia: Black comedy lead, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: Something of a Renaissance man in his native Britain -- a performer who divides his time between screen acting, journalism, radio emceeing, and standup comedy -- Russell Brand trademarked himself via an outlandishly flamboyant, rave-happy persona, sporting the goth-tinged apparel, black mascara, and a bouffant, mile-high hairdo to match. He first entered show business at a tender age, with a portrayal of the gangster Fat Sam in the theatrical version of the kiddie musical Bugsy Malone, then moved into standup comedy, with a series of innumerable appearances on U.K. television (each one underscoring his anarchic image). For a time in the mid- to late 2000s, the press reported that the Channel 4 network was struggling to find the right vehicle to house Brand's larger-than-life personality and schtick; one of the more popular series, Russell Brand's Ponderland, intercut routines by Brand with flip and video archival clips. Brand made history when he signed as an on-air DJ with BBC 6 Music and helped that station drive its listener count through the roof, and as of 2002 began segueing into acting roles in features. Brand made two of his more high-profile appearances as Flash Harry in the boarding school comedy St. Trinian's, and as Aldous Snow, an obnoxious British rocker who whisks the lead character's girlfriend away, in the Judd Apatow-produced romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The movie was a huge hit, and Brand followed it up with a starring role in another comedy, Get Him to the Greek, opposite Jonah Hill in 2010. Brand's would also lend his vocal talents to animated features like 2010's Despicable Me and 2011's Hop. He even payed homage to his British roots with the role of jester Trinculo in Julie Taymor's 2011 adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, opposite a femaile Prospero played by Helen Mirren. The chemistry between the two English stars would sustain for another film as well, as they reteamed for 2011's Arthur. In 2010 Brand married pop star Katy Perry, but filed for divorce from her fourteen months later. In 2012 he appeared in the hair-metal jukebox musical Rock of Ages.

Trivia: Had breakthrough role as Koop in Justin Kerrigan's cult hit Human Traffic (1999). His work with playwright-screenwriter Joe Penhall, who adapted Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2009), includes a 2001 stage version and 2005 TV adaptation of Blue/Orange, and the 2009 BBC drama Moses Jones. Badly injured his Achilles tendons in both legs while playing soccer, once while auditioning for Mean Machine (2001), starring Vinnie Jones. Stopped lifting weights because "muscle-bound isn't a good look for spouting Shakespeare."