Trivia: Born June 7, 1958, rock star Prince came into this world as Prince Roger Nelson; he was named for the Prince Roger Trio, a musical aggregation for which his father played. In light of his carefully cultivated public image -- the arrogant aloofness, the covey of bodyguards, the overemphasized androgyny -- it is sometimes easy to forget that Prince was uncommonly talented; in addition to his singing and composing skills, he was proficient at two dozen musical instruments. Prince's 1978 recording debut came and went without fanfare, but his third album, Dirty Mind, topped the charts. Even more popular was his sixth album, the double-Grammy winner Purple Rain, which of course was derived from his 1984 debut film -- which won an Oscar for Original Song Score. Though he insisted that Purple Rain was purely a work of fiction, the story line involves a young black pop singer from Minneapolis whose father is a traditionalist musician, so draw your own conclusions. Prince not only starred in his next picture, Under the Cherry Moon (1985), but also directed. Lensed in black-and-white, the film is a stylish hark-back to the film noir of the late '40s, far better directed than its detractors would have you believe; however, Prince the director would have been better off firing Prince the actor. Prince's last film work was Graffiti Bridge (1990), a sequel to Purple Rain. Later, Prince would change his name to an unpronouncable sign (a combination of the male-female symbol), although he was usually referred to as "the Artist Formerly Known as Prince". In 1999, he changed his name back to Prince. He continued touring and releasing albums at an almost prodigious rate. In 2007, he won a Golden Globe for writing a song from Happy Feet and played the halftime show at Super Bowl XLI just a few weeks later. Coincidentally, he played himself in a post-Super Bowl episode of New Girl in 2014, winning rave reviews for his fun turn. Prince died at his Paisley Park estate in 2016, at age 57.

Trivia: Early in her career, it looked as though actress Kristin Scott Thomas was going to be relegated to playing the kind of elegantly bloodless British women she portrayed in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), but with her role as the aristocratic but passionate Katharine Clifton in The English Patient (1996), Scott Thomas broke the mold, proving herself capable of projecting a good deal of sensuality and heat as her character embarked on a tragic affair with a Hungarian adventurer (Ralph Fiennes). The daughter of a Royal Navy pilot who died in an air crash when she was five, Scott Thomas was born the eldest of five children, in Cornwall, on May 24, 1960. When she was 11, tragedy struck again when her stepfather, also a military pilot, met a demise identical to her father's. Scott Thomas was left to help her mother look after the family and -- in contrast to what her film roles would suggest -- her situation was far from aristocratic. Although she had an interest in acting, her mother loathed the idea and sent her daughter to the Cheltenham Ladies College. Scott Thomas dropped out at age 16, spent some time in a convent, and eventually enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama to take a teacher training course. Unable to resist the call of the stage, however, Scott Thomas quietly began studying drama. Unfortunately, the school's drama department advised her to pursue other professions. Scott Thomas was 18 at the time and in addition to being hurt by the drama department's rejection, she was also fed up with school. Seeking to gain perspective on her life, she went to visit some friends in Paris. What originally began as a two-week vacation ended in a permanent change of residence, after Scott Thomas took an au pair job and then fell in love with a Frenchman (she eventually married, and divorced, obstetrician François Olivennes, with whom she has two sons and a daughter).Though her new French friends teased her for being a funny little English girl, Scott Thomas found herself at home in Paris and decided to try acting again. At the encouragement of her friends, she enrolled in L'Ecole Nationale des Arts et Techniques de Theatres, honing her skills and finding the French school to be more supportive than its English counterpart. She gained experience playing small roles on-stage and soon went on to do some television work. After an inauspicious debut playing a headstrong heiress in Prince's Under the Cherry Moon (1986), she worked in a number of French films. In 1988, she was given her first lead in an English film, playing a cool-blooded aristocrat in A Handful of Dust.It wasn't until the 1990s that Scott Thomas began to attain recognition outside of Europe. Two years after starring as Hugh Grant's wife in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992), she came to the attention of an international audience in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Her second outing with Grant, the film was a sleeper hit, becoming the highest-grossing British film in the country's history. Following the film's success, Scott Thomas applied her talents to smaller films, appearing as Alfred Hitchcock's thorny assistant in the French-Canadian Le Confessionnal (1994) and a plain-Jane entomologist who finds herself embroiled in family dysfunction in Angels & Insects (1995). In 1996, the year of The English Patient, Scott Thomas fully stepped into the glare of the international spotlight, earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role in the widely acclaimed film. That same year, she did less-heralded but no less respectable work in Richard III, in which she played the enigmatic Lady Anne, and Mission: Impossible, her first truly big-budget film. With Hollywood now taking full notice, Scott Thomas was cast in a coveted lead role in Robert Redford's 1998 adaptation of Nicholas Evans' The Horse Whisperer. The film proved something of a disappointment, although the actress was praised for her strong performance. The following year, she found herself involved in another high-profile project, starring opposite Harrison Ford in Random Hearts. Playing a woman who discovers that her husband, who died in a plane crash, was having an affair with Ford's wife, who also died in the crash, Scott Thomas again got to demonstrate her ability at embracing roles that went far beyond the confines of the tea-sipping British aristocracy. Subsequent work in Gosford Park and Tell No One kept Thomas busy over the course of the next few years, but it was back-to-back BAFTA nominations in 2009 (I've Loved You So Long) and 2010 (Nowhere Boy) that helped to end the decade on a decidedly positive note for the veteran actress. In 2011, she appeared in Salmon FIshing in the Yemen, and in 2012, played a Frenchwoman seduced by the much younger Robert Pattinson in Bel Ami. The following year, she re-teamed with Ralph Fiennes for The Invisible Woman.

Trivia: A glamorous actress whose beauty and sophistication has only increased as the years pass, London-born screen star Francesca Annis is well known to cinema lovers for her roles in such films as Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971) and David Lynch's Dune (1984). Though she would later become better known to gossip column readers for her May-September romance with actor Ralph Fiennes following an appearance opposite the intense actor in the Broadway version of Hamlet, Annis has continued to impress both on stage and screen thanks to numerous challenging roles.Though a convent education initially steered her toward life as a nun, studies in acting and dance gradually led her into the entertainment industry until she was cast in the lead of the 1958 film The Cat Gang at age 14. The featured child actor in the tale of a group of children who stumble across a smuggling ring while spending long days on the local harbor, Annis made a distinct impression on audiences and was soon advancing in such films as No Kidding (1960) and His and Hers (1961). A role in the 1963 film Cleopatra gained the young starlet international attention, and shortly after the family film Flipper's New Adventure, Annis was cast as Estella in the 1967 U.K. television series Great Expectations. If audiences had not previously recognized her talent by this point, her remarkably powerful performance in Roman Polanski's 1971 feature film Macbeth would be hard to deny. After continuing to gain credit on stage and screen throughout the 1970s, roles in the following decade's Dune, Krull (1983), and Under the Cherry Moon (1986) culminated with an impressive performance as Jacqueline Kennedy in the 1988 made-for-television feature Onassis: The Richest Man in the World.Perhaps her most well-known performance to date due to the romantic scandal that resulted from it, her part in the 1995 Broadway production of Hamlet found both her and co-star Ralph Fiennes abandoning their longtime partners to embark on a heated romance (after playing mother and son Gertrude and Hamlet in the play). Though the scandal caused quite a stir, her memorable (and BAFTA-nominated) performance in 1998's Reckless steered gossip hounds back toward recognizing her remarkable skills as an actress. In 1999 Annis would once again remind the public of her affairs, though, when she appeared opposite Fiennes in the film Onegin, a cinematic adaptation of a 19th century Russian novel. In addition to appearing in such efforts as Deceit (2000) and Copenhagen (2002) in the new millennium, Annis continued her many impressive on-stage performances with an appearance in the West End production of Noël Coward's The Vortex.

Trivia: Canadian leading lady Alexandra Stewart studied acting in Paris, where she launched her film career in 1958's Les Monards. An intriguing combination of high intelligence and earthy sensuality, Alexandra quickly became a favorite amongst the New Wave directors of the 1960s. She may well be the only actress who can boast of having been directed by Francois Truffaut (The Bride Wore Black, Day for Night), Roger Vadim (Les Liaisons Dangereuse) and Otto Preminger (Exodus), Arthur Penn (Mickey One) and Louis Malle (Black Moon), by whom she had a daughter, Justine. On television, Alexandra Stewart was seen in the miniseries Mistral's Daughter (1984) and Sins (1986).

Trivia: Lead actress, onscreen from the late '80s.

Trivia: Born to an Italian father and Welsh mother, actor/writer/director Victor Spinetti attended the College of Music and Drama at Cardiff. Following his debut at a 1953 concert party in Wales, Spinetti built up a solid reputation as a surefire laugh-getter in various theatrical revues and West End plays. In 1964, he won a Tony Award for his interpretation of the Drill Sergeant Major (his favorite part) in the London/Broadway musical hit Oh, What a Lovely War! That same year, Spinetti made an auspicious film bow as the neurotic TV director in The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. Even funnier was his portrayal of mad scientist Doctor Foot ("With a ring like that I can--dare I say it?--rule the world...with the proper government grant") in the Fab Four's follow-up feature Help! Spinetti's association with the Beatles extended to his theatrical work when, in 1969, he adapted and directed a stage version of John Lennon's book In His Own Write. Other films blessed with Spinetti's presence include Taming of the Shrew (1967), Start the Revolution Without Me (1970), Under a Cherry Moon (1986) and The Krays (1990). In addition to his many theatrical directing assignments, Spinetti has kept busy as a cartoon voiceover artist for such projects as the droll TV weekly Superted. When asked in 1980 if he had any hobbies, Victor Spinetti listed "Writing, talking and occasionally listening."