Trivia: British director Guy Ritchie frequently attributes the success of his unorthodox crime films -- 1998's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, 2000's Snatch -- to the fact that his offbeat miscreants are more than believable, they are real. Preferring to cast for authenticity rather than resumé, Ritchie handpicks many of his actors from the true-life cult figures and rascals of London's underbelly. Actor Jason Statham is among the best of them.A one-time Olympic diver, fashion model, and black-market salesman, Statham came to acting by way of commercials and "street theater" -- a euphemism for hustling tourists on London's Oxford Street. Raised in Syndenham, London, he was the second son of a lounge singer and a dressmaker turned dancer. Although Statham had the familial background to go immediately into entertainment, he excelled first on the high dive. He was a member of the 1988 British Olympic Team in Seoul, Korea, and remained on the National Diving Squad for ten years. In the late '90s, a talent agent specializing in athletes landed Statham a gig in an ad campaign for the European clothing retailer French Connection. This led to an appearance in a Levi's Jeans commercial and a fledgling modeling career. Meanwhile, Statham had also earned local fame as a street corner con man, selling stolen jewelry and counterfeit perfume out of a briefcase. Thus, when French Connection's owner became one of the biggest investors in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, he naturally introduced the diver/model/hustler to knave-hunting Ritchie.Intrigued by Statham's past and impressed by his modeling work, Ritchie invited him to audition for a part in the film. The director challenged Statham to impersonate an illegal street vendor and convince him to purchase a piece of imitation gold jewelry. Statham was evidently so persuasive that Ritchie bought four sets. When the director attempted to return his worthless acquisition -- pretending that the gold had turned to stainless steel -- Statham was so graciously inflexible that Ritchie hired him.This unorthodox audition resulted in Statham's big screen debut as Bacon, one of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels' four primary characters engaged in a risky get-rich-quick scheme to repay a massive gambling debt. Bacon supplies a streetwise discipline and restraint that the other characters lack and a sense of humility crucial to Ritchie's film. In the director's follow-up crime comedy, Snatch, Ritchie rehired Statham to play Turkish, a smalltime hood vainly trying to break into the world of underground boxing. As this amateur but respectable hoodlum, Statham is attractive, urbane, immaculate, and smart enough to be bewildered by even his own laughable criminal ineptitude. The role began as a small supporting part in Snatch's star-filled ensemble cast but expanded throughout shooting. By the time of the film's theatrical release, Statham received top billing as its narrator and chief anti-hero.The Guy Ritchie oeuvre that supplied his breakthrough performances is not Statham's only acting arena. In 2000, he made his American film debut as a British drug dealer in Robert Adetuyi's Turn It Up starring Pras Michel. By 2001, he had finished shooting John Carpenter's sci-fi thriller Ghosts of Mars and joined Delroy Lindo in the cast of the Jet Li vehicle The One. A chance to reteam with former Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrel co-star Vinnie Jones proved too fun an opportunity to resist, and Stratham would round out a particularly busy 2001 with his role in the prison-bound sports remake Mean Machine. Just as audiences were finally standing up to take notice of the amiable tough-guy, Stratham stepped into his own as the action lead of the explosive 2002 adrenaline ride The Transporter. A sizable hit that would earn Statham increasingly prominent roles in such high profile pics as The Italian Job, and Cellular, The Transporter established Stratham as a bankable international action star and was eventually followed by a 2005 sequel that miraculously managed the improbable feat of upping the ante of the previous installment's over-the-top cartoon violence. A starring role in Ritchie's 2005 crime thriller Revolver found Stratham re-teaming with the director who launched his career with decidedly mixed results, and the following year it was off to race the clock and rescue the girl as a reformed assassin looking to make good in the hyper-intense action entry Crank. The positively outrageous Crank: High Voltage upped the ante (and the ampage) in every possible way in 2009, but not before Statham got behind the wheel for Resident Evil director Paul W.A. Anderson for the 2008 remake Death Race, discovered just how far a foolproof heist could go awry in The Bank Job, and once again put the pedal to the metal in The Transporter 3. All of this left little doubt that Statham had quickly become one of the most bankable action stars of his generation, and in 2010 he teamed with none other than Sylvester Stallone for the all-star action flick The Expendables. The action just kept coming in The Mechanic, Blitz, Killer Elite (which paired him with screen legend Robert DeNiro), Safe, and the super-sized The Expendables 2 in 2012. Statham next joined another franchise, making a cameo appearance in Fast & Furious 6. He also reprised his role in The Expendables 3. In 2015, Statham appeared in Furious 7 and flexed his comedy chops in Spy, opposite Melissa McCarthy, earning favorable reviews and opening him to another genre.

Trivia: An actor who is equally adept at donning wigs and machine guns for period dramas and modern gangster films alike, Jason Flemyng is one of Britain's more versatile, unpredictable, and underrated performers. Born in London on September 25, 1966, Flemyng made his stage debut at the age of ten as the Tin Man in a school production of The Wizard of Oz. After studying drama at the National Youth Theatre and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, he was accepted into the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he stayed for three years. Flemyng broke into film and television in 1992, appearing in a number of made-for-TV movies and in John Schlesinger's Question of Attribution, an adaptation of Alan Bennett's play about the 1950s Burgess-Maclean-Philby spy scandal. Supporting roles and a lead in Indian Summer (1996), which cast him as a dancer with AIDS, followed, and in 1996, the actor garnered a measure of international recognition for his work in two films. One, Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty, saw him sharing a scene with Liv Tyler, while the searing family drama Hollow Reed featured Flemyng as a white-collared child abuser who beats his girlfriend's young son.After a turn as an 18th-century composer in François Girard's The Red Violin (1998), Flemyng starred in perhaps his most internationally successful film to date, Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). An incredibly stylish crime comedy set in London's rough East End, the film -- which starred Flemyng as one of a group of friends trying to pull off a heist -- was a surprise hit in both the U.K. and overseas, which resulted in widespread attention for its director and cast. Flemyng re-teamed with Ritchie in 2000 for Snatch, another heist picture. That same year, he also had a number of other projects lined up, including Bruiser, a thriller about a put-upon magazine grunt who strikes back at everyone who has wronged him, and The Body, a religious drama in which he appeared alongside Antonio Banderas and Derek Jacobi. Gaining increasing exposure in such films as Rock Star and From Hell (both 2001), Flemyng would soon re-team with Snatch co-star Vinnie Jones in the The Longest Yard remake Mean Machine (2001) before taking the lead in the comedy Lighthouse Hill (2002) and gearing up to go schizophrenic as the malevolent Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde in the eagerly anticipated comic book adaptation The League of Extrodinary Gentlemen (2003).

Trivia: Adept at essaying a broad array of roles, Michael Peña launched his career with guest appearances on such series as NYPD Blue, Homicide: Life on the Street, and ER, as well as longer stints on Felicity and The Shield. Though his big-screen work officially stretches back several years prior to Million Dollar Baby (2004), that Clint Eastwood-directed Best Picture winner represented Peña's first major Hollywood credit. His involvement only amounted to a small part, but he re-teamed with Baby scripter Paul Haggis for higher (supporting) billing in the latter's Crash (2005) -- also a Best Picture Winner, and this one a searing, acerbic indictment of inner-city racism. Peña scored one of his first leads under the aegis of director Oliver Stone, co-starring opposite Nicolas Cage in the taut, suspenseful thriller World Trade Center (2006) -- a docudrama about the two New York City Port Authority rescue workers trapped beneath the rubble of the fifth building when the towers fell. Peña followed it up with a turn as a genial, resourceful FBI agent who assists a government-conned scapegoat (Mark Wahlberg) in Antoine Fuqua's conspiracy thriller Shooter (2007), and essayed a key supporting role in director Robert Redford's ensemble drama Lions for Lambs, opposite Redford, Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise. As the years followed, Peña would find continued success in comedy endeavours like Observe and Report, 30 Minutes or Less, and Tower Heist, as well as on the TV series Eastbown & Down.

Trivia: A square-jawed, stark-countenanced actor whose features naturally projected more than a passing undercurrent of menace, David Harbour gravitated almost by default to edgy characterizations. He debuted on-camera with appearances on television series programs including Hack and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, then transitioned to the big screen with a portrayal of Robert Kinsey, a relative of controversial sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, in Bill Condon's well-received period biopic Kinsey (2004), before signing for additional supporting roles in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005) and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005). In the meantime, Harbour also eked out an impressive stage career, reaching his pinnacle as Nick in the 2005 Broadway revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opposite Kathleen Turner, Bill Irwin, and others.

Trivia: Won a British Soap Award for Best Newcomer and Villain of the Year in his debut year as Brendan Brady in the soap opera, Hollyoaks. Upon leaving Hollyoaks, his iconic moustache was shaven off by his on-screen sister and on-screen lover. Initially tested for the lead role of John Constantine in the NBC series Constantine. Although he didn't get the role, the producers liked him so much they brought him back to play the role of Jim Corrigan.