Trivia: Once relegated to decorative parts for years and long acknowledged as the wife of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman spent the latter half of the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium earning much-deserved critical respect. Standing a willowy 5'11" and sporting one of Hollywood's most distinctive heads of frizzy red hair, the Australian actress first entered the American mindset with her role opposite Cruise in Days of Thunder (1990), but it wasn't until she starred as a homicidal weather girl in Gus Van Sant's 1995 To Die For that she achieved recognition as a thespian of considerable range and talent. Though many assume that the heavily-accented Kidman hails from down under, she was actually born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on June 20, 1967, to Australian parents. Her family, who lived on the island because of a research project that employed Kidman's biochemist father, then moved to Washington, D.C. for the next three years. After her father's project reached completion, Nicole and her family returned to Australia.Raised in the upper-middle-class Sydney suburb of Longueville for the remainder of the 1970s and well into the eighties, Kidman grew up infused with a love of the arts, particularly dance and theatre. Kidman took refuge in the theater, and landed her first professional role at the age of 14, when she starred in Bush Christmas (1983), a TV movie about a group of kids who band together with an Aborigine to find their stolen horse. Brian Trenchard-Smith's BMX Bandits (1983) -- an adventure film/teen movie -- followed , with Kidman as the lead character, Judy; it opened to solid reviews. Kidman then worked for the gifted John Duigan (The Winter of Our Dreams, Romero) twice, first as one of the two adolescent leads of the Duigan-directed "Room to Move" episode of the Australian TV series Winners (1985) and, more prestigiously, as the star of Duigan's acclaimed miniseries Vietnam (1987).In 1988, Kidman got another major break when she was tapped to star in Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm (1989). A psychological thriller about a couple (Kidman and Sam Neill) who are terrorized by a young man they rescue from a sinking ship (Billy Zane), the film helped to establish the then-21-year-old Kidman as an actress of considerable mettle. That same year, her starring performance in the made-for-TV Bangkok Hilton further bolstered her reputation. By now a rising star in Australia, Kidman began to earn recognition across the Pacific. In 1989, Tom Cruise picked her for a starring role in her first American feature, Tony Scott's Days of Thunder (1990). The film, a testosterone-saturated drama about a racecar driver (Cruise), cast Kidman as the neurologist who falls in love with him. A sizable hit, it had the added advantage of introducing Kidman to Cruise, whom she married in December of 1990.Following a role as Dustin Hoffman's moll in Robert Benton's Billy Bathgate (1991), and a supporting turn as a snotty boarding school senior in the masterful Flirting (1991), which teamed her with Duigan a third time, Kidman collaborated with Cruise on their second film together, Far and Away (1992). Despite their joint star quality, gorgeous cinematography, and adequate direction by Ron Howard, critics panned the lackluster film.Kidman's subsequent projects, My Life and Malice ( both 1993), were similarly disappointing, despite scattered favorable reviews. Batman Forever (1995), in which she played the hero's love interest, Dr. Chase Meridian, fared somewhat better, but did little in the way of establishing Kidman as a serious actress even as it raked in mile-high returns at the summer box office. Kidman finally broke out of her window-dressing typecasting when Gus Van Sant enlisted her to portray the ruthless protagonist of To Die For (1995). Directed from a Buck Henry script, this uber-dark comedy casts Kidman as Suzanne Stone, a television broadcaster ready and eager to commit one homicide after another to propel herself to the top. Displaying a gift for impeccable comic timing, she earned Golden Globe and National Broadcast Critics Circle Awards for Best Actress. Further critical praise greeted Kidman's performance as Isabel Archer in Jane Campion's 1996 adaptation of Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady. Now regarded as one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood, Kidman starred opposite George Clooney in the big-budget action extravaganza The Peacemaker (1997) and opposite Sandra Bullock in the frothy Practical Magic (1998). In 1999, Kidman starred in one of her most controversial films to date, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle and cloaked in secrecy from the beginning of its production, the film also stars Cruise as Kidman's physician husband. During the spring and summer of 1999, the media unsurprisingly hyped the couple's onscreen pairing as the two major selling points. However, despite an added measure of intrigue from Kubrick's death only weeks after shooting wrapped, Eyes Wide Shut repeated the performance of prior Kubrick efforts by opening to a radically mixed reaction.As the new millennium arrived, problems began to erupt between Kidman and Tom Cruise; divorce followed soon after, and the tabloids swirled with talk of new relationships for the both of them. She concurrently plunged into a string of daring, eccentric film roles much edgier than what she had done before. The trend began with a role in Jez Butterworth's Birthday Girl (2001) as a Russian mail order bride, and Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge (2001), which cast her, in the lead, as a courtesan in a 19th century Paris hopped up with late 20th century pop songs. The picture dazzled some and alienated others, but once again, journalists flocked to Kidman's side.Following this success (the picture gleaned a Best Picture nod but failed to win), Kidman gained even more positive notice for her turn as an icy mother after the key to a dark mystery in Alejandro Amenabar's spooky throwback, The Others. When the 59th Annual Golden Globe Awards finally arrived, Kidman received nominations for her memorable performances in both films. Though it couldn't have been any further from her flamboyant turn in Moulin Rouge, Kidman's camouflaged role as Virginia Woolf in the following year's The Hours (2002) (she wears little makeup and a prosthetic nose), for which she delivered a mesmerizing and haunting performance, kept the Oscar and Golden Globe nominations steadily flowing in for the acclaimed actress. The fair-haired beauty finally snagged the Best Actress Oscar that had been so elusive the year before. Post-Oscar, Kidman continued to take on challenging work. She played the lead role in Lars von Trier's Dogville, although she declined to continue in Von Trier's planned trilogy of films about that character. She swung for the Oscar fences again in 2003 as the female lead in Cold Mountain, but it was co-star Renee Zellweger who won the statuette that year. Kidman did solid work for Jonathan Glazer in the Jean-Claude Carriere-penned Birth, as a woman revisited by the incarnation of her dead husband in a small child's body, but stumbled with a pair of empty-headed comedies, Frank Oz's The Stepford Wives and Nora Ephron's Bewitched (both 2005), that her skills could not save. She worked with Sean Penn in the political thriller The Interpreter in 2005. For the most part, Kidman continued to stretch herself with increasingly demanding and arty roles throughout 2006. In Steven Shainberg's Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, Kidman plays controversial housewife-cum-photographer Diane Arbus. Meanwhile, Kidman returned to popcorn pictures by playing Mrs. Coulter in Chris Weitz's massive, $150-million fantasy adventure The Golden Compass (2007), adapted from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series of books. She also headlined the sci-fi thriller The Invasion, a loose remake of the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Also in 2007, Kidman teamed up with Noah Baumbach for a starring role as a supremely dysfunctional mother in Margot at the Wedding (2007). The actress then set out to recapture her Moulin Rouge musical success with a turn in director Rob Marshall's 8 1/2 remake Nine (2009), teamed up with indie cause-célèbre John Cameron Mitchell and Aaron Eckhart for the psychologically-charged domestic drama Rabbit Hole (2010), and starred opposite Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler in the Dennis Dugan-helmed comedy Go With It (2011). Kidman would spend the next few years continuing her high level of activity, appearing in movies like Trespass and The Paperboy.

Trivia: British actor Daniel Craig grew up in Liverpool before moving to London and studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He made his film debut in The Power of One, directed by John G. Avildsen. A few made-for-TV movies followed before his role of Master Kane in the Disney adventure A Kid in King Arthur's Court. Returning to the U.K., he starred in the miniseries Our Friends in the North, the four-part series Moll Flanders, and the TV mystery The Ice House. In 1997 he worked with German director Peter Sehr on Obsession where he met his future girlfriend, German actress/VJ Heike Makatsch. His first leading role in the U.K. came in 1998 with his portrayal of George Dyer, the intimate friend of painter Francis Bacon (played by Derek Jacobi) in John Maybury's Love Is the Devil. Other leading roles followed in the U.K. films Love & Rage, The Trench, Some Voices, and Hotel Splendide. In Hollywood, he had smaller roles in I Dreamed of Africa, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Road to Perdition. In 2002, he played the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in the BBC historical drama Copenhagen. His first mainstream leading role came in 2003 as Ted Hughes, the partner of Sylvia Plath (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) in Christine Jeffs' Sylvia. In 2004, he can be seen in the U.K. films Layer Cake and Enduring Love.

Trivia: Possessing the kind of tall, dark good looks that could easily get him mistaken for David Duchovny's British brother, Jeremy Northam has impressed transatlantic audiences as the type of actor who can make everything from giant cockroaches to Jane Austen look sexy.The fourth child of two Cambridge University professors, Northam was born in Cambridge on December 1, 1961. Following his family's move to Bristol in 1972, he got his first taste of the theatrical world when he took a backstage job at a local playhouse. He went on to study English at London University, but after deciding that acting was his true vocation, left school to pursue his career. Drama studies at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, a stint as a singing waiter, and a role in the 1987 TV movie Suspicion followed. In 1989, Northam got his first -- albeit unexpected -- big break when, as an understudy in a production of Hamlet, he took over at the last minute for Daniel Day-Lewis, who suffered a nervous breakdown one night during his performance as the title character. Receiving positive notices for his impromptu portrayal, the actor found further acclaim the following year, with his performance as Edward Voysey in the Royal National Theatre's production of The Voysey Inheritance. Northam won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Newcomer for his work, and after appearing in 1992's Wuthering Heights and the 1995 Canadian feature Voices, he traveled to Los Angeles, where he landed a leading role in The Net (1995) within five days of his arrival. Playing Jack Devlin, Northam managed to make a mark on audiences as the charismatic villain who tries to off heroine Sandra Bullock while still finding time to sleep with her. Later that year, the actor appeared as a ne'er-do-well of a different sort, when he played one of Dora Carrington's army of lovers in Carrington. Although his role was essentially limited to a brief maritime seduction of the illustrious lady (played by Emma Thompson), Northam had already landed the considerably more substantial part of Mr. Knightley in Douglas MacGrath's 1996 adaptation of the Austen novel Emma. Starring opposite Gwyneth Paltrow, Northam won both critical praise and the distinction of being that year's thinking woman's luxury import.The following year, the actor played a supporting role in Steven Spielberg's Amistad and then went on to explore completely different territory with a turn as Mira Sorvino's husband in the big-budget giant cockroach thriller Mimic. In 1998, Northam played another married man when he starred as Parker Posey's husband in the romantic comedy The Misadventures of Margaret. He then returned to the world of corsets and BBC English, first as a lawyer in David Mamet's 1999 adaptation of Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy and then as An Ideal Husband in Oliver Parker's adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play. Having gotten the gentrified leading man role down to an science, Northam next went in an entirely different direction as a con man forced to pose as accomplice Steve Zahn's gay lover in a small Texas town in Happy, Texas, which had its premiere at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.

Trivia: Actor Jeffrey Wright has earned an estimable reputation as one of the most versatile character actors of his generation, both on-stage and onscreen. Jeffrey Wright was born in Washington, D.C., in late 1965. Wright's father died when he was only a year old, and his mother, a lawyer working with the United States Customs Department, raised him with the help of her sister, a nurse. A strong student, Wright attended the prestigious St. Alban's School for Boys in Washington, D.C., and went on to receive a B.A. in Political Science at Amherst College in 1987. While at Amherst, Wright developed an interest in acting, and decided to continue his studies in the Theater department at New York University. While Wright was good enough to win an acting scholarship at N.Y.U., after only two months he opted to strike out on his own as a professional. Roles in off-Broadway plays followed, and Wright scored his first film role in 1990 with a bit part in Presumed Innocent. After a number of television roles and much theater work, in 1994 Wright got his big break when he was cast as Belize, Roy Cohn's nurse, in the acclaimed Broadway drama Angels In America: Perestroika; his performance won him a Tony Award. In 1996, Wright scored a breakthrough film role when he was cast in the lead of Basquiat, delivering a strong performance alongside a veteran cast which included Gary Oldman, Willem Dafoe, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, and Benicio del Toro. A steady flow of character roles followed, including showy supporting work in Celebrity, Ride With the Devil, and Shaft, while Wright gave a compelling performance as Dr. Martin Luther King in the made-for-cable film Boycott. Wright continued to pursue his love of live theater as well, winning an Obie Award in 2002 for his performance (opposite Don Cheadle) in Suzan-Lori Parks' play Topdog/Underdog. Critically-acclaimed screen roles in Lackawanna Blues, Broken Flowers, and Syriana kept Wright on the short list for producers in search of quality supporting players, and by bridging the gap between stage and screen with his multi-tiered role in the acclaimed HBO miniseries Angels in America, the actor would would earn both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. In 2006 Wright could be seen performing opposite Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard in director M. NIght Shyamalan's modern fairytale Lady in the Water.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from the early '70s.

Trivia: Born and raised in South Carolina, character actress Celia Weston has played many a tough Southern gal despite her theater training in both London and New York. Working both on and off Broadway in the '70s, she moved over to television as the snappy Mel's Diner waitress Jolene Hunnicut on the CBS sitcom Alice. After that, she appeared in Southern-tinged feature films like Honky Tonk Freeway and Stars and Bars. Also adept at playing matronly types, she played the mother of Beastie Boy Adam Horowitz in Lost Angels, the mother of one of the victims in Dead Man Walking, and the supposed mother of Ben Stiller in Flirting With Disaster. Back on the stage in 1997, she earned a Tony nomination for her role as Southern Jew Reba Freitag in Alfred Uhry's Last Night at Ballyhoo and returned to Broadway in 2000 as Mom in the revival of Sam Shepard's True West. She made a comeback to films as well with supporting roles in Ride With the Devil, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Snow Falling on Cedars. In 2001, she played a Southern belle mental patient in K-PAX followed by the gossip-hound Mona in Far From Heaven, the Fowler's family friend in In the Bedroom, and the guardian of teenaged Bruce Banner in The Hulk. In 2003 she was back to the small screen as a cast member on the Showtime original series Out of Order. Her career continued to gain momentum throughout the decade thanks to roles in films like The Village, Observe & Report, The Box, and Knight and Day, then in 2010 Weston beat out Delta Burke, Dianne Wiest and Kathy Bates to secure the role of Cameron's mother on the ABC sitcom Modern Family. That same year Weston joined the cast of TNT's Memphis Beat, though the series was cancelled after just two seasons.

Trivia: With his dark eyes and small frame, the classically trained British actor Roger Rees was perfectly cast as Nicholas Nickleby in the theatrical production of Dickens' novel. He performed this lead role with the Royal Shakespeare Company, earning him a Tony award, Olivier award, and an Emmy nomination for the televised version in the early '80s. He performed with the company since 1968, when he worked as a scenery painter. Perhaps he is most recognized for his role as Robin Colcord, Kirstie Alley's wealthy jet-set boyfriend on Cheers during the 1989 season. He also had a memorable role as Melvin, the Sheriff of Rotingham in Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights in 1993. Rees continued to work mainly in theater, but he also appeared in several TV movies and sitcoms. He put his crisp British pronunciation to work as a voice actor in several cartoons and books on tape. In 2002, he returned to films with a few featured roles, including Guillermo Kahlo in Julie Taymor's biography Frida. He also landed the starring role of Virginia farmer Nat Banks in the drama Crazy Like a Fox during the same year. Rees had a recurring role on The West Wing, playing the British Ambassador, and later had recurring roles on Grey's Anatomy, Warehouse 13 and Elementary. In 2012, he was nominated for a Tony award for directing Peter and the Starcatcher, and continued to work on the stage until his death. In 2015, he appeared in the musical The Visit, opposite Chita Rivera. He withdrew from the show, for health reasons, in May 2015; he passed away two months later.

Trivia: UCLA grad Joanna Merlin made her first film appearance in 1956, as one of Jethro's daughters in the Cecil B. DeMille superspectacular The Ten Commandments. Five years later she first stepped on a Broadway stage in Jean Anouilh's Becket. Her subsequent theatrical credits include the role of Tzeitel in the original 1964 production of Fiddler on the Roof. In films, she has specialized in such ethnically oriented character roles as the landlady in Hester Street (1975). From bag ladies to judges, Merlin has played 'em all. More recently, Joanna Merlin has functioned as a Hollywood casting director.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: An actress with the kind of versatile beauty that has allowed her to effortlessly alternate between earthy and glamorous roles, Veronica Cartwright's steel-blue eyes have a strange way of piercing through the screen and transcending their two-dimensional restraints. Having successfully made the transition from child actor to seasoned screen veteran, Cartwright continued a career which allowed her to explore roles that ran the gamut from straight drama to chilling horror. A native of Bristol, England, Cartwright's family emigrated to the United States when she was still very young. Following a series of modeling jobs and print ads, the aspiring actress became a familiar face to television viewers as the "Kellogg's Girl" in a series of breakfast cereal commercials. She made her screen debut in the 1958 war drama In Love and War, and, in the years that followed, alternated between film and TV work with roles in such features as The Children's Hour (1961) and The Birds (1963), in addition to a turn as Lumpy's sister on the small-screen classic Leave It to Beaver. From 1964-1968, the actress endeared herself to television viewers as Jemima Boone on the popular Daniel Boone series. Although the transition from adorable child star to serious adult actor has been a serious stumbling block for generations of young stars, Cartwright skillfully avoided this pitfall with a series of memorable roles in the 1970s. Playing opposite such heavies as Richard Dreyfuss in Inserts (1975) and Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Cartwright was well on her way to crafting an enduring film career. A role as the ill-fated navigator in the 1979 sci-fi horror classic Alien found her taking part in what would become one of the most lucrative and prolific franchises in cinema history, and a memorable performance in the 1983 space program drama The Right Stuff (in which she worked again with Body Snatchers director Philip Kaufman) helped to sustain her career through the '80s. Subsequent roles in Flight of the Navigator (1986) and Wisdom (1987) offered little in the way of dramatic depth, though Cartwright's winning performance in George Miller's The Witches of Eastwick (1987) found her nearly stealing the show from stars Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Despite the fact that Cartwright kicked off the '90s with a memorable turn in the popular weekly drama L.A. Law, the roles which followed were mostly comprised of thankless appearances in made-for-TV features and forgettable horror sequels. Although she remained busy, her parts just weren't as rich as they had been. Despite the dry spell, however, Cartwright was nominated for an Emmy for three memorable appearances in the popular small-screen chiller The X Files. The following decade found her edging back toward memorable film work with appearances in In the Bedroom (2001), Scary Movie 2 (2001), and Just Married (2003). After facing off against a cat-munching alien in the 2002 short Mackenheim, Cartwright essayed a substantial role in Richard Day's 2004 comedy Straight Jacket. She played the wife of famous sexual researcher Alfred Kinsey in the 2004 biopic of the man, and appeared in the 2007 sci-fi film The Invasion. In 2009 she returned to familiar ground with a part in the small-screen adaptation Eastwick, and she landed a major part in the 2011 thriller InSight.