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: Educated in Switzerland and England, Irish actress Fionnula Flanagan studied for her trade at Dublin's Abbey Theatre. With her portrayal of Gerty McDowell in the 1967 film version of Ulysses, Flanagan established herself as one of the foremost interpreters of James Joyce. She made her 1968 Broadway bow in Brian Friel's Lovers then appeared in such Joycean theatrical projects as Ulysses in Nighttown and James Joyce's Women (1977). The last-named project earned her "Critic's Circle" awards in Los Angeles and San Francisco; it was subsequently committed to film in 1988, with Flanagan repeating her portrayal of Harriet Shaw Weaver. A familiar presence in American television, Flanagan has appeared in several made-for-TV movies, among them The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975), Mary White (1977), The Ewok Adventure (1984) and A Winner Never Quits (1986). She won an Emmy for her work as Clothilde in the 1976 network miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man. Fionnula Flanagan's weekly-series stints have included Aunt Molly Culhane in How the West Was Won (1977), which earned her a second Emmy nomination; Lt. Guyla Cook in Hard Copy (1987) and Kathleen Meacham, wife of police chief John Mahoney (another transplant from the British Isles) in Help (1990).

Trivia: A remarkable actor who brings a vibrant intensity to his performances, Christopher Eccleston is widely held to be one of the most talented British actors of the 1990s. Primarily known for his portrayals of working-class men, Eccleston, who possesses a lanky, stone-faced physical appeal, has won international attention for his work in such films as Jude and Elizabeth.A product of the Northwestern English town of Salford, where he was born on February 16, 1964, Eccleston enjoyed a happy working-class upbringing. A poor student with a love of television, he initially wanted to be a professional soccer player. At the age of 19, however, he realized that acting was his calling, and enrolled in London's Central School of Speech and Drama. As an actor, his early influences had been Ken Loach's Kes and Albert Finney's performance in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, but he soon found himself interpreting the classics, performing the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Molière. At the age of 25, he made his professional stage debut in the Bristol Old Vic's production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Relatively unemployed as an actor for some years after his graduation, Eccleston took a variety of odd jobs at a supermarket, on building sites, and as an artist's model. His luck began to change in 1991, when he was chosen to play the protagonist of Let Him Have It. He won acclaim for his haunting portrayal of Derek Bentley, whose real-life murder of a policeman and subsequent hanging for the crime was the subject of dispute in the British legal system, as Bentley had the mental age of a nine-year-old. Eccleston's handling of the role paved the way for more work, and he was soon starring opposite Robbie Coltrane in Cracker, a popular British television series. He stayed with the show from 1993 until 1994, when he was cast in Shallow Grave, the stylish thriller from Danny Boyle, John Hodge, and Andrew MacDonald, the team who would later make Trainspotting. The film, which starred Eccleston, Ewan McGregor, and Kerry Fox as three flatmates with a corpse on their hands, proved a success, and Eccleston won praise for his portrayal of an unhinged accountant.More television work followed in the form of Hillsborough (1996), and that same year, Eccleston won the title role in Michael Winterbottom's Jude. Co-starring with Kate Winslet, he garnered widespread praise for his interpretation of Thomas Hardy's tragic hero, and he began to attract the attention of American audiences. This attention was heightened two years later when he was cast as the dastardly Duke of Norfolk in Elizabeth; both his chilling performance and the film itself received wide acclaim. The same year, Eccleston starred alongside Renée Zellweger as an Orthodox Jew in A Price Above Rubies. The film was a relative disappointment, but it did allow the actor to break away from the character types that he usually played. In 1999, Eccleston could be seen in David Cronenberg's eXistenZ and in Heart, a black comedy in which he starred as a man so consumed with jealousy over his wife -- whom he believes to be having an affair -- that he gives himself a heart attack. The same year, he collaborated again with director Winterbottom on With or Without You, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.He found no small amount of success in 2005 and 2006, when he took on the role of the ninth incarnation of Dr. Who in the fantastical television series of the same name, and a man with the ability to become invisible in the first season of NBC's Heroes. In 2009 he co-starred in Amelia, a biopic chronicling the life of the legendary aviator Amelia Earhart. He took on the starring role of Beatle John Lennon in Lennon Naked (2010), another biopic, and continued to work steadily throughout the 2010s.

Trivia: Working his way up from the British radio scriptwriting pool, comedian Eric Sykes launched his film career with amusing supporting roles in such films as Charley Moon (1954) and Tommy the Toreador (1959). He was seen to good advantage in Watch Your Stern (1961), Heavens Above (1963) and other comedies, and was allowed a few serious moments in the 1962 war film Invasion Quartet (1964). Like most British comedians of the '60s, Sykes played cameos in such all-star laughspinners as Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965) and Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (1969). Eric Sykes was allowed to direct one film, The Plank (1968), and gained a considerable following with his starring TV program, in which he appeared with rotund Carry On regular Hattie Jacques.

Trivia: Was sent to a borstal at age 15 for stealing. Co-wrote New Order's UK number one hit single, "World in Motion," in 1990 as the England national team anthem for the FIFA World Cup in Italy. In 1998, for the FIFA World Cup in France, he penned a second football inspired anthem, "Vindaloo," which reached number two in the UK charts. Supporter of British football team, Fulham Football Club. His documentary film, Unlawful Killing, about the death of Princess Diana, was banned from being seen in Britain. In 2000, appeared in two Harold Pinter plays at the Almeida Theatre, playing roles in Celebration and The Room. Took part in the BBC Two television programme Art School in 2005 along with Ulrika Jonsson and John Humphrys, where he discovered a passion for painting. He and his partner opened a diner in Stroud in 2017.

Trivia: Parents operated a tavern in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Got her start in drama with the Ulster Youth Theatre. Made London stage debut in 1986. Played the killer in the Inspector Morse puzzler The Way Through the Woods, which aired on PBS's Mystery! in 1997. Made Broadway debut in The Weir in 1999. Earned a 2008 supporting-actress nomination for an Olivier (the British equivalent of the Tony Awards) for her role as Emilia in Othello. Played Hermione Granger's mother in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (Parts 1 and 2).