Trivia: Best known for her role as the fearsome Xena: Warrior Princess in the long-running series of the same name, athletic worldly beauty Lucy Lawless didn't achieve the fame in her native New Zealand that flooded her in the U.S. until much later in her career, due to the fact that the wildly popular adventure series didn't air there until long after it was a staple of American television.Born into water at her home in Mount Albert, Aukland, New Zealand, in 1968 to the mayor of that city, Lawless began acting early and frequently appeared in school plays in her youth. A active child of diverse interests and with many siblings, Lawless went on to study German, French, and Italian at Aukland University for a year before traveling through Europe with boyfriend and eventual first husband Garth. They worked odd jobs to finance their trip and eventually ending up in Australia. Working in a gold-mining camp in Kalgoorlie to finance the final leg of their journey, the couple was married in Australia in 1988 and soon returned home to bear a daughter.Crowned Mrs. New Zealand the following year, the busy new mother got her first acting experience in Funny Business, a popular TV comedy troupe. Studying acting in Vancouver, Canada, at the William Davis Center for Actors Study, Lawless soon landed small roles in films (The End of Golden Weather [1991]) and television (For the Love of Mike [1991]), with her next regular job as of co-host on television's Air New Zealand Holiday. After appearing in The Rainbow Warrior in 1992, Lawless landed the role that would propel her to stardom and become her calling card into the new millennium. Initially appearing in the role of Lysia in Hercules and the Amazon Women, Lawless went on to appear as Xena in three episodes of Hercules before spinning off into her own series in 1995. It was a physically demanding adventure series in which the sporty actress performed many of her own stunts; Lawless ironically broke her pelvis after falling off of a horse while preparing to make a grand entrance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in 1996. After a quick recovery, Lawless made her Broadway debut as Rizzo in Grease the following year. Her first marriage dissolved, Lawless was remarried to Xena producer Rob Tapert in October 1999, two years before the final episode of Xena. Lawless woudl continue to act on the small screen over the next several years, appearing on Tarzan, Battlestar Galactica, Spartacus, and No Ordinary Family.

Trivia: An actor of remarkable intensity whether playing comedy, drama, or classical-stage roles, Marton Csokas first became familiar to stateside audiences as Borias on the hit television series Xena: Warrior Princess. And though American audiences may not have been privy to his early stage and screen work, his performance in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring made him a familiar face. Born in New Zealand in June 1966, Csokas' early schooling didn't exactly encourage creativity, and the future actor didn't discover his passion for the stage and screen until his late teens. While studying literature and art history for a year at Canterbury and Christchurch, Csokas became involved with a writer's club and theater company before graduating from the New Zealand Drama School and co-founding the The Stronghold Theater. Steadily gaining experience and harboring a growing passion for classical-stage drama, the actor landed a role in the television series Shortland Street before making his feature debut in Jack Brown Genius (1994). Numerous small film roles followed, and, after becoming a recognizable star in his native country, Csokas began to familiarize himself with American television audiences with Xena and such small-screen features as The Three Stooges (2000). His experience in the fantasy world of Xena prepared him well for his role as Celeborn in the first Lord of the Rings movie in 2001, and American audiences later saw the versatile actor as a villainous criminal mastermind bent on world domination in XXX (2002). He appeared in director Alex Proyas' decidedly upbeat Garage Days the same year and in Richard Donner's time travel fantasy Timeline in 2003.

Trivia: A performer aptly named "The King of Voiceovers" for his everpresent vocal work (especially on movie trailers), Don La Fontaine ultimately grew so prolific that the sound of his voice became a veritable staple of American pop culture. La Fontaine's distinguished sound emerged in early adolescence; he began his professional life as an audio engineer, producing radio spots for Floyd Peterson, but quickly segued into voiceovers for a myriad of projects, commencing with the trailer of the 1965 MGM movie Gunfighters of Casa Grande. (He allegedly got that job when the man assigned to do it called in sick). Thousands of additional assignments followed, often rolling in at a rate of 10 per day. Throughout, La Fontaine's voice waxed grave, somber, and a bit chilling -- qualities that made him perfect for suspense and action fare. (At one point he developed a permanent association with the phrase, "In a world where..."). La Fontaine also turned up at one point on a series of television spots for Geico insurance, parodying himself. He died of complications from the treatment of an unspecified illness in early September 2008, at the age of 68.