Trivia: The top-tiered action director of his generation, as well as one of the most allegedly demanding and precise, James Cameron reshaped 1980s and '90s Hollywood with a string of lucrative multimillion-dollar films remarkable for their marriage of technical wizardry and human sentiment. The son of an electrical engineer, Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada, on August 16, 1954. He was fascinated with movies from a young age and would later cite Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey as an early influence. Thanks to his father's job, Cameron and his family moved to southern California in 1971, and the director studied physics at California State University. Following his graduation, Cameron, who had already decided he wanted to pursue a film career, took a job as a truck driver to support his early screenwriting efforts.Cameron received his first break at the hands of the legendary Roger Corman, who hired him as a model maker at his Roger Corman Studios. There, the director worked on his first movie, as art director for 1980s Battle Beyond the Stars. Thanks to a combination of skill and dedication, Cameron quickly ascended through the ranks, and the following year, was appointed second unit director and production designer for the schlock-fest Galaxy of Terror. The same year, he made his inauspicious directorial and screenwriting debut with Piranha II: The Spawning (1981), a natural horror picture about a government-engineered breed of mutated flying fish that descend on a Caribbean resort. Piranha II: the Spawning was delayed for two years and ultimately took its stateside bow in late December 1983.Next, the professional relationship between Cameron and Hollywood mega-producer Gale Anne Hurd yielded one of the top grossers of 1984, which Hurd and Cameron co-scripted, Cameron directed, and Hurd produced. Something of an unofficial, moderately budgeted Americanization of George Miller's Mad Max series, The Terminator opens in the year 2024, when the ongoing battles between humankind and "The Machines" have sparked a nuclear holocaust and reduced much of contemporary civilization to dust. When humankind ultimately wins out, however, The Machines send a seemingly unstoppable warrior (Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to 1984 with a mission to kill the infant who would grow up into the man ultimately responsible for their destruction, which sends his mother (Linda Hamilton) and her futuristic warrior-protector (Michael Biehn) on the lam. When it premiered in October 1984, The Terminator earned sensational reviews and became an instant runaway smash. That same year, Cameron scripted Rambo: First Blood Part II (released 1985) for director George Pan Cosmatos, then signed to direct Aliens (1986), the sequel to the 1979 Ridley Scott sci-fi opus Alien. In retrospect, the connection between Cameron and the Alien franchise hardly seems capricious given Cameron's predilection for tough-as-steel heroines as his main characters, typified by Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. In the late '80s, Cameron began to envision and plan another mega-budgeted opus, this one about an oil rig crew's dangerous attempt to rescue the team on a sunken nuclear submarine. Released in August 1989, The Abyss performed disappointingly at the American box office, despite strong performances from all involved. In 1990, Cameron rebounded from the disappointment of The Abyss by writing, producing, and directing Terminator 2: Judgement Day and enjoying the massive acclaim that it generated. The movie made an asteroid-sized splash at the box office and Cameron drew high praise for its revolutionary special effects and use of CG imagery. The director then inked one of the most infamous and lucrative studio deals in recent history, a five-picture contract signed with Fox in 1992. Cameron's next directorial effort, 1994's action comedy True Lies, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Tom Arnold, cost over $100 million; it also reeled in a massive take. After a producing and screenwriting stint on the 1995 dystopian saga Strange Days Cameron shifted course and revisited the historical inspiration for many of the underwater sequences in The Abyss: that of the 1912 USS Titanic disaster. Titanic was troubled from the beginning on many fronts; by a budget of astronomical proportions, by on-set injuries and mishaps, and by the difficulty of filming the actual Titanic wreck on the ocean floor. Yet it reeled in Titanic-sized profits (over $600 million in the U.S. alone). The film would receive a record-tying 14 Oscar nominations, eventually winning 11, and pulled in well over $1 billion at the international box office. Upon receiving the film's Best Picture Oscar and after winning Best Director earlier in the evening, Cameron exulted "I'm the king of the world!" -- a line exclaimed by Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack Dawson in the film itself. After Titanic, Cameron temporarily retired from the production of big-screen fictional narratives, and segued into other areas of filmed entertainment, most immediately the Fox network's highly touted action series Dark Angel (2000-2002). Though hopes swung high for Dark Angel, the series was canceled after only two seasons.After producing the 2002 Steven Soderbergh-directed remake Solaris (the original having been directed by Tarkovsky), Cameron segued into several underwater-themed documentaries, notably an official follow-up to Titanic called Ghosts of the Abyss (2003). In that effort, Cameron and friend Bill Paxton (who co-starred in the Titanic movie) take 3D cameras underwater to locate and film the "final resting place" of the infamous, ill-fated 1912 vessel, from the inside and out. The IMAX picture received generally (if not unanimously) enthusiastic reviews when it premiered in spring 2003. For Cameron's follow-up documentary, the 2005 Aliens of the Deep, the director pursued far more ambitious concepts, and (perhaps as a result) reactions waxed far more favorably. In that picture, Cameron used advanced CG imaging, a team of NASA researchers, and concepts from astrobiology to "imagine" what creatures on neighboring planets might look like. Hailed by critics, Aliens of the Deep caught fire with the public when it premiered in January 2005.Cameron then decided to return to feature filmmaking for the first occasion in over 10 years, with 2009's mega-budgeted sci-fi opus Avatar. The original story of the picture, as authored by Cameron in the late '80s, tells of a paraplegic military veteran (Sam Worthington) who undertakes a colossal interstellar journey and settles on an alien planet. The finished product was widely considered to be a technological state-of-the-art spectacle, and proceeded to shatter box-office records around the world. Cameron was nominated for best director by the Director's Guild and the Academy, and won that trophy at that year's Golden Globes ceremony. In the period that immediately followed, speculation swirled around the question of what Cameron would do next. The trades announced not one but two Avatar sequels slated for production and release - Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 - each with Cameron directing.In 2012 he appeared in the documentary Side By Side, extolling the virtues of digital technology over traditional celluloid.

Trivia: Australian-born actor Sam Worthington got his first break in the Belvoir Street Theatre production Judas Kiss, shortly after graduating from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art. He eventually made the transition to the screen, appearing in the Australian movie Bootmen. Worthington earned small roles in other films such as Hart's War, and eventually won the lead in the drama Dirty Deeds opposite Toni Collette. He later earned a prominent role in the critically acclaimed Somersault, which won a slew of awards, including an AFI for Worthington in the category of Best Actor. In 2006, he joined many young men of the acting community in going up for the role of James Bond, and while the legendary part went to Daniel Craig, Worthington took the title role in a modern retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth, garnering the 30-year-old actor a lot of attention. He caught the eye of director James Cameron, who cast Worthington as the lead in his sci-fi thriller Avatar. That film would become one of the biggest box-office successes in movie history and he would follow up that newfound celebrity with turns in another effects-laden extravaganza Clash of the Titans, as well as the indie drama Last Night. In 2012 he returned to the role of Perseus for Wrath of the Titans, and starred in the thriller Man on a Ledge. In 2013, he appeared in the Australian film Drift, followed by another Australian film, Paper Planes, in 2014. The following year, he appeared in Cake, opposite Jennifer Aniston, and in the disaster film Everest.

Trivia: Rarely do beauty and talent combine in a form so complimentary to each other than in the case of actress Zoe Saldana. Whether gracefully gliding across the stage in dance, pounding the boards in a play, or lighting up the screen in such popular films as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the multi-faceted Saldana seems capable of achieving anything she puts her mind to. The New Jersey native was raised in Queens until the age of ten, when her family relocated to the Dominican Republic. The move proved a fateful blessing when young Saldana discovered her love of dance and enrolled in the ECOS Espacio de Danza Academy shortly thereafter, where she would study ballet, jazz, and modern Latin dance. Following her sophomore year in high school, Saldana and her family returned to the U.S. It was while completing her primary studies stateside that Saldana became involved with the Faces theater troupe, whose aim was to make a positive impact on teenage audiences by performing improvisational skits on such issues as substance abuse and sexuality. Involvement with another troupe, the New York Youth Theater, provided more traditional stage experience through such productions as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, and it was while performing with that troupe that a talent agent recognized great potential in the burgeoning actress. In 1999, Saldana received what seemed to be the ideal first film role when she was cast as a talented but snippy dancer vying for a spot at the fictional American Ballet Company in the dance drama Center Stage. Other film roles followed, including Get Over It, Snipes, and a featured part in the Britney Spears teen drama Crossroads, which offered Saldana's first major theatrical release. Widely panned by critics but performing moderately at the box office thanks to legions of Spears fans, Crossroads proved just the fuel needed to get Saldana's struggling feature career running. The following year, she was back on the big screen in Drumline, which found her once again utilizing her dance skills as a college dance major and love interest of the talented but conflicted protagonist. Though her subsequent role as the sole female pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean offered little screen time, her performance as the only woman able to cast a spell over Johnny Depp's charismatic Jack Sparrow offered one of the film's most memorable comic scenes. Back on the indie circuit, Saldana headlined the 2003 rock musical Temptation as a talented singer facing hard times. A brief turn as a by-the-books customs officer in Steven Spielberg's The Terminal found the charming Saldana slowly warming to an immigrant stuck in bureaucratic limbo (played by Tom Hanks).She was the female lead in Guess Who in 2005 and continued to work steadily. However, in 2009 she broke through in a big way when she was cast as Uhura in J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot, and later that year she was the female lead in James Cameron's mega-smash Avatar. She followed that up with the action film The Losers in 2010, and was front and center in another action spectacle, Columbiana, the year after that. She reprised her role in the sequel Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013, and played Gamora in the 2014 smash Guardians of the Galaxy, ensuring her place in yet another action franchise.

Trivia: Though she is a classically trained dramatic actress and has played a variety of roles, Sigourney Weaver is still best known for her portrayal of the steel-jawed, alien-butt-kicking space crusader Ellen Ripley from the four Alien movies. The formidably beautiful, 5'11'' actress was born Susan Weaver to NBC president Pat Weaver and actress Elizabeth Inglis. Her father had a passion for Roman history and originally wanted to name her Flavia, but after reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby at the age of 14, Weaver renamed herself Sigourney, after one of the book's minor characters. After being schooled in her native New York City, Weaver attended Stanford University and then obtained her master's at the Yale School of Drama where, along with classmate Meryl Streep, she appeared in classical Greek plays. After earning her degree, Weaver was only able to find work in experimental plays produced well away from Broadway, as more conventional producers found her too tall to perform in mainstream works. After getting her first real break in the soap opera Somerset (1970-1976), she made her film debut with a bit part in Woody Allen's Annie Hall in 1977. Weaver had her first major role in Madman which was released just prior to Alien in 1979. Though the role of Ripley was originally designed for Veronica Cartwright (who ultimately played the doomed Lambert), scouts for director Ridley Scott saw Weaver working off-Broadway and felt she would be perfect for the part. The actress' take on the character was laced with a subtlety that made her a new kind of female action hero: Intelligent, resourceful, and unconsciously sexy, Weaver's Ripley was a woman with the guts to master her fear in order to take on a terrifying unknown enemy. Alien proved to be one of the year's biggest hits and put Weaver on Hollywood's A-list, though she would not reprise her character for another seven years. In between, she worked to prove her versatility, playing solid dramatic roles in Eyewitness (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), while letting a more playful side show as a cellist who channels a fearsome demon in Ghostbusters (1984). In 1986, Aliens burst into the theater, even gorier and more rip-roaring than its predecessor. This time, Weaver focused more on the maternal side of her character, which only served to make her tougher than ever. Her unforgettable performance was honored with a Best Actress Oscar nomination, and was followed up by Weaver's similarly haunting portrayal of doomed naturalist/animal rights activist Diane Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist (1988). The role won Weaver her second Best Actress Oscar nomination, and that same year, she received yet another Oscar nomination -- this time for Best Supporting Actress -- for her deliciously poisonous portrayal of Melanie Griffith's boss in Working Girl. After 1992's Alien 3, Weaver had her next big hit playing President Kevin Kline's lonely wife in the bittersweet romantic comedy Dave (1993). She then gave a gripping performance as a rape/torture victim who faces down the man who may or may not have been her tormentor in Roman Polanski's moody thriller Death and the Maiden (1994). During the latter half of the decade, Weaver appeared in Alien Resurrection -- perhaps the most poorly received installment of the series -- but increasingly surfaced in offbeat roles such as the coolly fragile Janey in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm and the psychotic, wicked Queen in the adult-oriented HBO production The Grimm Brothers' Snow White (both 1997). In 1999, she starred in the sci-fi spoof Galaxy Quest, making fun of her image as a sci-fi goddess while continuing to prove her remarkable versatility.Weaver's first high-profile project of the new millenium saw her swindling Ray Liotta and Gene Hackman as a sexy con-woman teamed up with Jennifer Love Hewitt. Already into her fifties, Weaver proved she still possessed plenty of sex-appeal even alongside a substantially younger starlet like Hewitt. She played up her sultry side some more in the well-received 2002 indie-comedy Tadpole, but changed gears a bit in 2003, playing a villain in the family sleeper hit Holes.In 2004, Weaver could be seen as part of the ensemble cast in M. Night Shyamalan's summer thriller The Village. She played a tough-as-nails network executive in the satire The TV Set, and provided the voice of the ship's computer in WALL-E. In 2008 she appeared in projects as diverse as Baby Mama and Be Kind Rewind. She had a major role in the box-office blockbuster Avatar - teaming up with director James Cameron again. Her very busy 2011 included the role of a government official in the sci-fi comedy Paul, the girlfriend of a sheltered insurance salesman in Cedar Rapids, and a part in Oren Moverman's cop drama Rampart.Weaver has been married to stage director Jim Simpson since 1984. When not appearing in films, she continues to be active in theater.

Trivia: A handful of actresses carry such a wellspring of inner grace and presence that they appear destined for celebrity from birth. Natalie Wood had it, as did Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly; many would doubtless place Kate Winslet among their ranks. A tender 11 when she commenced her formal dramatic training, 19 when she debuted cinematically, and 20 when she received her first Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, Winslet never "ascended" to stardom; she became a star overnight. The possessor of an hourglass-figured, full-lipped beauty that lends itself effortlessly to costume dramas, Winslet was roundly hailed by the press for standing in stark, proud contrast to her more conventional Hollywood peers. Born on October 5, 1975, and raised in Reading, England, as the daughter of stage actors and the granddaughter of a repertory theater manager, Winslet inherited the "drama bug" from her folks. After training exhaustively as a child and securing professional representation she went on the air as a spokesgirl for a popular British cereal, and later attended a performing-arts secondary school. Following an early graduation in 1991 (prior to the age of 16), Winslet launched her regional stage career, highlighted by roles in adaptations of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and Peter Pan. It would be difficult to imagine a more auspicious film bow than the role of Juliet Hulme in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures -- or a more difficult one. This characterization -- that of an extroverted adolescent who constructs an incestuously exclusive fantasy world with her best friend (Melanie Lynskey) -- put Winslet on the map, and opened the door for follow-ups in international megahits such as Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995), as the willful, passionate Marianne; and James Cameron's Titanic (1997), as the object of Leonardo Di Caprio's affections, Rose DeWitt Bukater. She received dual Oscar nominations for those roles, but, surprisingly, failed to net either one.Meanwhile, Winslet concurrently shied away from the high gloss of Cameron and unveiled her stage origins, traveling the arthouse circuit with such productions as Michael Winterbottom's Jude (1996), as Sue Bridehead; and Kenneth Branagh's disappointing, overbaked, four-hour Hamlet (1996), as Ophelia. Hideous Kinky embodied a turn on a much smaller scale. Directed by Scottish helmer Gillies MacKinnon (and scripted by his brother, Billy), the film casts Winslet as a freewheeling young hippie who takes her children to Morocco in order to pursue spiritual enlightenment. Beyond the positive reviews gleaned by the film and the praise that critics lavished onto Winslet's performance, one of the most alluring sidelights happened off camera, when Winslet dated and then married James Threapleton, the third assistant director on the MacKinnon film. The couple divorced in 2001.During 1999 and 2000, Winslet dove into two roles that required her to cut loose and break free of all inhibitions. First, she played another young woman in search of spiritual enlightenment, this time in Jane Campion's Holy Smoke. Starring as an Australian girl who joins a cult on a visit to India, and is then "deprogrammed" by Harvey Keitel, Winslet's role pushed her beyond the limits of propriety and embarrassment (one scene has her standing naked and urinating in front of Keitel). Unfortunately, one or two brave performances did not an unequivocal masterpiece make; the picture sharply divided critics, falling far short of the praise heaped onto Campion's The Piano six years earlier. Even gutsier (though more successful on a dramatic level) was Winslet's turn as a laundress who delivers the Marquis de Sade's manuscripts to the outside world in Phil Kaufman's Quills. Winslet reentered the Oscar limelight with yet another Academy-nommed performance as a youthful Iris Murdoch in director Richard Eyre's Iris, but the gold statuette eluded her a third time when Jennifer Connelly netted it for A Beautiful Mind. In early 2003, she hit a low point as Bitsey Bloom, opposite Kevin Spacey in The Life of David Gale. Based on the experience of a University of Texas professor -- an avid anti-death-penalty activist faced with execution after a false conviction -- Winslet portrayed the reporter who broke the story in a desperate attempt to discover the truth behind the mysterious and brutal crime for which Gale was convicted. As scripted by Charles Randolph and directed by Alan Parker, the picture opened and closed almost simultaneously, to devastating, brutal reviews. Winslet fared better in 2004, as the love interest opposite Jim Carrey in Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This humorous and poignant mindbender, with a tender romance at its core, scored on all fronts, as did Winslet's performance, earning her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. She followed it up with a return to period film in Finding Neverland (2005), a movie about Victorian author J.M. Barrie, played by Johnny Depp. Playing the inspiration for the character of Wendy in the beloved novel Peter Pan seemed only natural for the charming actress, who had long since proven herself a similarly charismatic onscreen force. The next year, 2006, found Winslet in a quintet of back-to-back projects. In the CG-animated Flushed Away -- from Aardman and Dreamworks -- she voiced Rita, a scavenging sewer rat who helps Hugh Jackman's Roddy escape from the city of Ratropolis and return to his luxurious Kensington origins. That year, she also headlined the political drama All the King's Men, opposite Sean Penn. Written and directed by Schindler's List's Steven Zaillian, the picture cast Winslet as Jude Law's childhood sweetheart; while overflowing with talent, the long-gestating remake was a major misfire with critics and audiences. Perhaps more fortuitously, Winslet joined the cast of Todd Field's Little Children, an ensemble comedy drama about fear and loathing in an upper-class suburb in New England. The film would net her her fifth Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress. More financially successful was her involvement in Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy Holiday, as Iris, a British woman who temporarily "swaps homes," as part of a vacation ploy, with Cameron Diaz's Amanda, and has an affair with Jack Black. Meanwhile, Winslet and Johnny Depp reunited for the first occasion since Finding Neverland as narrators of the IMAX documentary Deep Sea 3D (2006), filmmaker Howard Hall's lavish exploration of the aquatic depths, designed for young viewers.After taking some time off in 2007, Winslet returned in 2008 with a pair of award-winning performances. Playing opposite her Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary Road earned her Best Actress nominations from both the Screen Actors Guild and the Hollywood Foreign Press, as well as a healthy number of year-end critics awards. But it was her work in Stephen Daldry's adaptation of The Reader that provided her with the sixth Academy nomination of her career, as well as Best Supporting Actress nods from the Screen Actors Guild and the Golden Globes. The Hollywood Foreign Press made history that year selecting her the winner in both the Best Actress in a drama and the Best Supporting Actress categories at that year's Golden Globes.In 2011, Winslet would win an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild award for her performance in HBO's 5-part miniseries Mildred Pierce, and take on a lead role in Contagion, a disaster film directed by Steven Soderbergh. In 2013, she starred in Labor Day and joined the Divergent film series, returning for the film's sequel, Insurgent, in 2015. She also starred in Steve Jobs, and earned her seventh Oscar nomination.

Trivia: Named for her great-grandmother, Oona O'Neill Chaplin, who was playwright Eugene O'Neill's daughter and Charlie Chaplin's fourth wife. Raised in Spain, Switzerland and Cuba; English is her third language, after Spanish and French. Impersonated her grandfather while playing the character Bottom in a reimagination of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2003. Attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with Gemma Arterton.

Trivia: The daughter of country-music superstar Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley Cyrus got her start in the entertainment industry on an episode of her father's PAX TV medical series Doc before appearing in Tim Burton's fantastical 2003 adventure Big Fish. A fateful appearance as the character Hannah Montana in the Disney Channel series The Suite Life of Zack and Cody followed in 2006, and her character proved so popular that a spin-off series called Hannah Montana was launched shortly thereafter. In the series, Cyrus portrayed a fun-loving California teen who just happens to be moonlighting as a world-famous pop star. Only Hannah's family (which includes her real-life father on the series) and her two closest friends, Lilly (Emily Osment) and Oliver (Mitchel Musso), know the truth about Hannah's remarkable secret life. The series would spawn a big picture adaptation in 2009, as well as a concert movie in 2010, but Cyrus also took on other acting roles, like the part of a rebellious delinquent in 2010's The Last Song, and a tech-savvy teenager in 2012's LOL. In 2013, Cyrus staged a music comeback, releasing her album Bangerz and spent the majority of 2014 on tour, supporting the album; she also appeared in a TV special promoting the tour. In 2015, she appeared on Saturday Night Live's 40 Anniversary Special, singing a cover of Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover."