Trivia: Though he has never achieved the high profile or widespread acclaim of a Robert De Niro, Jeff Daniels ranks as one of Hollywood's most versatile leading men and over his career he has played everything from villains and cads to heroes and romantic leads to tragic figures and lovably goofy idiots, in movies of almost every genre. Daniels has also worked extensively on television and stage, where he first distinguished himself by winning an Obie for a production of Johnny Got His Gun. Blonde, cleft-chinned, and handsome in a rugged all-American way, Daniels made his screen debut playing PC O'Donnell in Milos Forman's Ragtime (1981). His breakthrough came when he was cast as Debra Winger's inconstant husband in Terms of Endearment (1983). Daniels has subsequently averaged one or two major feature films per year with notable performances, including: his memorable dual portrayal of a gallant movie hero/self-absorbed star who steps out of celluloid to steal the heart of lonely housewife Mia Farrow in Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo (1984); his turn as a man terrified of spiders who finds himself surrounded by them in the horror-comedy Arachnophobia; and his role as Union officer Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, who led his troops into doom in Gettysburg (1993). In 1994, Daniels took a radical turn away from drama to star as one of the world's stupidest men opposite comic sensation Jim Carrey in the Farrelly brothers' hyperactive Dumb and Dumber. This lowest-common-denominator comedy proved one of the year's surprise hits and brought Daniels to a new level of recognition and popularity. Since then, Daniels has alternated more frequently between drama and comedy. His television credits include a moving portrayal of a troubled Vietnam vet in a Hallmark Hall of Fame production, Redwood Curtain. Daniels still maintains his connection to the stage and manages his own theatrical company. Before launching his acting career, he earned a degree in English from Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, MI. The later '90s found Daniels turning homeward and venturing into new territories through his labor of love, the Purple Rose Theater. Located in the small town of Chelsea, MI, the bus garage turned playhouse was designed to give Midwestern audiences the opportunity to enjoy entertainment generally reserved for big-city dwellers. Though he continued to appear in such films as Fly Away Home (1996) and Pleasantville (1998), Daniels made his feature directorial debut with the celluloid translation of his successful Yooper stage comedy Escanaba in da Moonlight (2000). Set in the Michigan's Upper Peninsula (U.P., hence "Yooper"), the tale of redemption by means of bagging a buck mixed the regionally accented humor of Fargo with the eccentricities inherent to northerners and served as an ideal directorial debut for the Michigan native. A modest regional success, Daniels would subsequently appear in such wide releases as Blood Work and The Hours (both 2002) before returning to the director's chair for the vacuum-salesman comedy Super Sucker (also 2002). Later reprising his role as Lt. Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain from Gettysburg, Daniels once again went back in time for the Civial War drama Gods and Generals (2002). In 2004 he appeared in the adaptation of fellow Michigander Mitch Albom's best-seller The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and the next year he earned rave reviews for his role as a self-absorbed academic and terrible father in The Squid and the Whale. He continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including the Robin Williams vehicle RV, the indie thriller The Lookout, and Away We Go. He portrayed a Senator in the American remake of the British miniseries State of Play in 2009, and three years later he was cast as the lead in Aaron Sorkin's first cable series, The Newroom, playing the host of a cable news program who decides to tell it like it really is.

Trivia: New Zealander Anna Paquin made her stage bow in the coveted role of a skunk in a grade school play. After attracting attention for her work in a TV commercial, Paquin was selected from some 5,000 applicants to portray Holly Hunter's precocious daughter in director Jane Campion's dour period piece The Piano. The film was completed in 1992 when Paquin was nine. She kept busy for the next year or so in a series of American TV ads for a computer company, portraying an androgynous "young DaVinci" type. In 1994, an amazed 11-year-old Paquin rushed on the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion to accept the best supporting actress award for her performance in The Piano. Paquin played her first adult role in Hurly Burly (1998).

Trivia: American actress Dana Delany, a graduate of Phillips Academy and Wesleyan University, began making television appearances in the mid-1980s on such programs as Moonlighting and the movie A Winner Never Quits (1986). In 1988, she was cast as Army nurse Lt. Colleen McMurphy in the Vietnam-era TV drama China Beach, which ran until 1990. In her film appearances (Moon Over Parador [1988], Patty Hearst [1988], Light Sleeper [1992]), Delany has leaned toward characters governed by their neuroses and eccentricities. In 1994, Delany starred in the much-touted "bondage" comedy/mystery Exit to Eden (from a novel by Ann Rice). When the film showed less than successful results, Delany immediately recovered with a strong portrayal as birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger in a made-for-cable TV biopic, and played another strong female in 1997's True Women.Though Delany continued to take on interesting film roles throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, the actress found no small amount of success on the television screen. After starring in Pasadena (2001) and Presidio Med (2003), Delany could be seen in guest roles on TV hits including Law & Order: SVU (2004) and Battlestar Galactica (2006).Among Delany's more unique accomplishments include her portrayal of the Superman franchise favorite Lois Lane in the Warner Brothers' animated series for a decade (1996-2006), and a pivotal role in Kidnapped, one of the few major television series to air exclusively online.The actress is involved in a variety of charitable causes, most notably being the Scleroderma Research Foundation. Her dedication to the cause even led to a television role as a scleroderma sufferer in ABC's powerful television movie For Hope (1996). Much later in 2008, Delany famously underwent what turned out to be an eventful mammogram on camera for the inspiring Stand Up 2 Cancer, which aired during a live telethon simultaneously cast on four major television networks.

Trivia: Some actors have such defining traits that they seem to have "leading man" written all over them, while others, like Terry Kinney, succeed with an uncanny ability to drastically alter their appearance at the drop of a hat. Though his chameleon-like skills have helped the actor land numerous roles on the stage and screen, it's his talent that ultimately formed the backbone of his enduring career. After graduating from high school, the Lincoln, IL, native attended Illinois State University. It was there that he befriended aspiring actor Jeff Perry, who invited Kinney to Chicago to watch his best friend perform in a stage production of Grease. Perry's friend was an ambitious young actor named Gary Sinise, and the three soon began planning to open their own regional theater. Though it was founded in 1974, the Steppenwolf Theater wouldn't quite get off the ground until two years later -- when Kinney and Perry graduated from I.S.U. The venture was largely unprofitable at first, so its founders supported themselves and their dream through a series of odd jobs before the theater moved from a Highland Park church basement to the old St. Nicholas Theater building in the early '80s. The change of scenery proved to be just what the theater needed to flourish, and it was soon drawing good crowds. In the years that followed, the company moved once again -- this time to a permanent location in Chicago -- and Kinney served as Steppenwolf's artistic co-director alongside Sinise. During this profitable period, Kinney and his co-founders were nominated for numerous theatrical awards, while their productions made headway on Broadway. Kinney, of course, had aspirations beyond regional theater, and, in 1986, made his film debut with a small part in the romantic comedy Seven Minutes in Heaven. The remainder of the '80s found the actor landing bit parts in No Mercy (1986) and Sinise's Miles From Home (1988), in addition to a brief stint on television with thirtysomething. It wasn't until the following decade, however, that his film career truly began to blossom. Following an appearance in The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Kinney drew favorable reviews for his top-billed turn in Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers, and his billing remained high with The Firm (1993), Fly Away Home (1996), and Sleepers (1998). In 1997, Kinney landed an extended gig on the acclaimed HBO prison drama Oz. Cast as Cell Block Five Unit Manager Tim McManus, Kinney's hardened performance lent the show both dimension and a certain foundation. Kinney frequently balanced his role on this series with a number of feature performances, including such films as The Young Girl and the Monsoon (1999, his second lead), Luminous Motion (1998), and The House of Mirth (2000). Although the bulk of his work in Save the Last Dance (2001) ended up on the cutting room floor, audiences could still get a good look at Kinney in such features as The Laramie Project (2001) and the 2004 soccer drama The Game of Their Lives.

Trivia: After a series of very brief appearances in low-rent Hollywood films and studio products including Junior (1986), Short Circuit 2 (1988), and Welcome Home (1989), Canadian character actor Jeremy Ratchford revealed a predilection for slightly dark, crime-themed material, even as he occasionally branched off into other genres. Career highlights include a portrayal of Deputy Andy Russell in Clint Eastwood's 1992 Oscar winner Unforgiven, Harvey Sanders in the made-for-television docudrama Getting Gotti (1994), and Darryl Marquette in a guest appearance on NYPD Blue. In 2006, Ratchford accepted the regular role of investigator Nick Vera on the detective series Cold Case.

Trivia: Canadian lead actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Was the first theatre graduate of Ryerson Institute of Technology. Was a founding member of Obsidian Theatre in 2000. Appeared in the 2007 stage productions of Othello and Of Mine and Men at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Was the Toronto Sun's Performance Artist of the Year in 2011. Served as Vice President of the Board for the Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre.

Trivia: American stage leading man Linden Chiles made his first film appearance as Randy in the 1961 adaptation of William Faulkner's Sanctuary. When time came for Chiles to settle into character roles, he was most often cast as a businessman -- honest and otherwise -- and suburban father. His TV-series work includes the role of Chief Officer Steve Kirland in Convoy (1965) and the title character's dad in James at 15 (1978). Linden Chiles also spent several years as Edward Nichols on the NBC daytime drama Santa Barbara (1984-1992).

Trivia: Contemporary filmmaker Carroll Ballard has not made many films, but the ones he has are memorable. The son of a boatwright, Ballard was raised at Lake Tahoe. He experimented with his father's trade after high school and built a catamaran before enlisting in the army where he served in the South as a cameraman. Three films inspired Ballard to enroll in the UCLA film school in the early 1960s: Teinosuke Kinugasa's Gate of Hell (1953), Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) and Ordet (1955) by Danish filmmaker Carl Dreyer. In school, where Francis Ford Coppola was one of his classmates, he made several short fiction and documentary films, most of which were about animals. In 1967, he earned his first Oscar nomination for producing the documentary Harvest. He made his directorial debut with The Black Stallion (1979) and followed it with another outdoor film in 1983, Never Cry Wolf. His films are noted for their exquisite use of cinematography. The painting-like images he uses do as much to tell his stories as does the dialog. His 1996 effort Fly Away Home is no exception; while it received mixed-reviews for its content, was hailed for its breathtaking shots of geese flying in formation with an ultralight plane.

Trivia: Versatile musician Mark Isham is both a Grammy award-winning recording artist and one of the most noteworthy film composers of the 1980s and beyond. Born in New York to a violinist and a music teacher, Isham studied trumpet, violin, and piano as a child, and began his professional career as a classical and jazz trumpeter in California. Adding synthesizers to his repertoire, he worked as a jazz, rock, and New Age musician throughout the 1980s and 1990s, winning a Grammy award for his 1990 CD Mark Isham.Isham began his parallel career as a film composer in the 1980s, providing the scores for the Arctic adventure Never Cry Wolf (1983) and the Mel Gibson-Diane Keaton period romance Mrs. Soffel (1984). Forging a fruitful collaboration with iconoclastic director Alan Rudolph, Isham scored Trouble in Mind (1985), Mortal Thoughts (1991), Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), Afterglow (1997), and won the Los Angeles Film Critics prize for The Moderns (1988). Named one of the top composers of the 1980s by the AFI, the composer's film career continued to surge in the 1990s. Drawing on his varied background for an eclectic range of films, Isham scored such critical hits as Reversal of Fortune (1990), Robert Altman's Raymond Carver interpretation Short Cuts (1993), and Robert Redford's Quiz Show (1994), as well as more mainstream box-office fare, including Timecop (1994), Kiss the Girls (1997), Blade (1998), and Varsity Blues (1999). Isham received an Oscar nomination for Redford's A River Runs Through It (1992) and a Golden Globe nod for Nell (1994). Adding TV to his résumé, he provided the music for CBS' hospital drama Chicago Hope and won an Emmy in 1997 for his theme to E Z Streets.