Trivia: Born Walter Willis -- an Army brat to parents stationed in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany -- on March 19, 1955, Bruce Willis grew up in New Jersey from the age of two. As a youngster, he developed a stutter that posed the threat of social alienation, but he discovered an odd quirk: while performing in front of large numbers of people, the handicap inexplicably vanished. This led Willis into a certified niche as a comedian and budding actor. After high-school graduation, 18-year-old Willis decided to land a blue-collar job in the vein of his father, and accepted a position at the DuPont Chambers Works factory in Deep Water, NJ, but withdrew, shaken, after a co-worker was killed on the job. He performed regularly on the harmonica in a blues ensemble called the Loose Goose and worked temporarily as a security guard before enrolling in the drama program at Montclair State University in New Jersey. A collegiate role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof brought Willis back in touch with his love of acting, and he instantly decided to devote his life to the profession.Willis made his first professional appearances on film with minor roles in projects like The First Deadly Sin, starring Frank Sinatra, and Sidney Lumet's The Verdict. But his big break came when he attended a casting call (along with 3000 other hopefuls) for the leading role on Moonlighting, an ABC detective comedy series. Sensing Willis' innate appeal, producers cast him opposite the luminous Cybill Shepherd. The series, which debuted in 1985, followed the story of two private investigators working for a struggling detective agency, with Willis playing the fast-talking ne'er-do-well David Addison, and Shepherd playing the prim former fashion model Maddie Hayes. The show's heavy use of clever dialogue, romantic tension, and screwball comedy proved a massive hit with audiences, and Willis became a major star. The show ultimately lasted four years and wrapped on May 14, 1989. During the first year or two of the series, Willis and Shepherd enjoyed a brief offscreen romantic involvement as well, but Willis soon met and fell in love with actress Demi Moore, who became his wife in 1987.In the interim, Willis segued into features, playing geeky Walter Davis in the madcap 1987 comedy Blind Date. That same year, Motown Records -- perhaps made aware of Willis' experiences as a musician -- invited the star to record an LP of blue-eyed soul tracks. The Return of Bruno emerged and became a moderate hit among baby boomers, although as the years passed it became better remembered as an excuse for Willis to wear sunglasses indoors and sing into pool cues.Then in 1988, Willis broke major barriers when he convinced studios to cast him in the leading role of John McClane in John McTiernan's explosive action movie Die Hard. Though up until this point, action stars had been massive tough guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, execs took a chance on Willis' every-guy approach to the genre - and the gamble paid off. Playing a working-class cop who confronts an entire skyscraper full of terrorists when his estranged wife is taken hostage on Christmas Eve, Willis' used his wiseacre television persona to constantly undercut the film's somber underpinnings, without ever once damaging the suspenseful core of the material. This, coupled with a smart script and wall-to-wall sequences of spectacular action, propelled Die Hard to number one at the box office during the summer of 1988, and made Willis a full-fledged movie star.Willis subsequent projects would include two successful Die Hard sequels, as well as other roles the 1989 Norman Jewison drama In Country, and the 1989 hit comedy Look Who's Talking, in which Willis voiced baby Mikey. Though he'd engage in a few stinkers, like the unsuccessful Hudson Hawk and North, he would also continue to strike told with hugely popular movies like The Last Boyscout , Pulp Fiction, and Armageddon.Willis landed one of his biggest hits, however, when he signed on to work with writer/director M. Night Shyamalan in the supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense. In that film, Willis played Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist assigned to treat a young boy (Haley Joel Osment) plagued by visions of ghosts. The picture packs a wallop in its final minutes, with a now-infamous surprise that even purportedly caught Hollywood insiders off guard when it hit U.S. cinemas in the summer of 1999. Around the same time, tabloids began to swarm with gossip of a breakup between Willis and Demi Moore, who indeed filed for divorce and finalized it in the fall of 2000.Willis and M. Night Shyamalan teamed up again in 2000 for Unbreakable, another dark fantasy about a man who suddenly discovers that he has been imbued with superhero powers and meets his polar opposite, a psychotic, fragile-bodied black man (Samuel L. Jackson). The movie divided critics but drew hefty grosses when it premiered on November 22, 2000. That same year, Willis delighted audiences with a neat comic turn as hitman Jimmy the Tulip in The Whole Nine Yards, which light heartedly parodied his own tough-guy image. Willis followed it up four years later with a sequel, The Whole Ten Yards.In 2005, Willis was ideally cast as beaten-down cop Hartigan in Robert Rodriguez's graphic-novel adaptation Sin City. The movie was a massive success, and Willis was happy to reteam with Rodriguez again the next year for a role in the zombie action flick Planet Terror, Rodriguez's contribution to the double feature Grindhouse. Additionally, Willis would keep busy over the next few years with roles in films like Richard Donner's 16 Blocks, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation, and Nick Cassavetes' crime drama Alpha Dog. The next year, Willis reprised his role as everyman superhero John McClane for a fourth installment of the Die Hard series, Live Free or Die Hard, directed by Len Wiseman. Though hardcore fans of the franchise were not overly impressed, the film did expectedly well at the box office.In the latter part of the decade, Willis would keep up his action star status, starring in the sci-fi thriller Surrogates in 2009, but also enjoyed poking fun at his own persona, with tongue-in-cheek roles in action fare like The Expendables, Cop Out, and Red. He appeared as part of the ensemble in Wes Anderson's quirky Moonrise Kingdom and in the time-travel action thriller Looper in 2012, before appearing in a string of sequels -- The Expendables 2 (2012), A Good Day to Die Hard, G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Red 2 (all 2013) and Sin City: A Dame to Die For (2014).

Trivia: One of the crop of bright-eyed, dewy-skinned young actors to attain teen idoldom and a regular paycheck during the late 1990s, Jessica Alba closed out the century as one of Hollywood's more promising new talents. Born in Pomona, California, on April 28, 1981, Alba, whose father was in the Air Force, moved with her family to Biloxi, Mississippi, when she was an infant, but she eventually moved back to California nine years later. It was back in California that she embarked on an acting career; having been in love with the idea of acting since she was five, Alba took her first acting class at the age of 12, and nine months later, she landed her first agent. She got her start on television, making appearances on shows like Beverly Hills 90210, and she made her film debut in the 1994 kids comedy Camp Nowhere. Originally cast in a minor role in the film, she got her first big break when the principal actress dropped out and she was asked to take over. Following her debut, Alba did a great deal of work on television. She got her first substantial film role as the object of the protagonist's disastrous affection in the teen horror comedy Idle Hands in 1999; that same year, she played one of the nasty popular girls who terrorize Drew Barrymore in the romantic comedy Never Been Kissed.The following year Alba made waves on the small screen when she was cast in the much hyped Fox series Dark Angel, executive produced by James Cameron. She was cast as a genetically-engineered woman who escapes from the lab and joins a cyberjournalist named Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly) in his neverending fight against crime in a post-apocalyptic future. Though the series was cancelled after two seasons, Alba continued to appear in such indie features as Paranoid (2000) and The Sleeping Dictionary (2002); the little-seen Glitter-esque dancer drama Honey similarly did little to enhance her profile.All that would change, however, when Alba became one of the core members of the quartet of the Fantastic Four franchise. Mostly reviled by critics but a solid success with audiences, her role as the spontaneously invisible Susan Storm endeared her to 10-year-old sci-fi geeks everywhere. Now a blockbuster actress, Alba attempted to balance this heightened profile with a wide variety of genre roles, appearing in thrillers (Into the Blue, The Killer Inside Me, The Eye), grindhouse fare and pulp noirs (Sin City, Machete) and comedies (Good Luck Chuck, Valentine's Day, A.C.O.D.). Alba even appeared in the 2010 Meet the Fockers sequel, Little Fockers, as well as the kids' adventure flick Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D.

Trivia: A suave, darkly handsome actor reminiscent of the young Sean Connery in looks and charisma, Clive Owen first came to international attention with his sinuous, understated portrayal of the amoral protagonist of Mike Hodges' Croupier (1998). A flop in Britain, where Owen had long been a staple of various BBC TV series, the film was a sleeper hit in the States, its success duly generating a flurry of interest in the relatively unknown actor who lent the film its seductive intensity. A product of Coventry, Warwickshire, Owen got a bumpy start in his chosen career, living on the dole for two years after he left school. Fortunately, respite arrived in the form of an acceptance to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1984, and following his graduation from RADA, the young actor joined the Young Vic Theatre Company, where he performed a number of the classics. Owen broke into TV in 1986 with a guest appearance on the series Boon, and subsequently made his film debut in Beeban Kidron's Vroom (1988), a road movie co-starring David Thewlis and Diana Quick. More television work followed in the form of Chancer, a popular miniseries that cast Owen as its heroic protagonist. The actor also found himself increasingly busy with big-screen performances, turning in a complex portrayal of a man involved in an obsessive and incestuous relationship with his sister (Saskia Reeves) in Close My Eyes (1991). Owen received one of his biggest roles to date in Sean Mathias' 1997 screen adaptation of Martin Sherman's Bent, a Holocaust drama in which Owen starred as a bisexual concentration camp inmate who falls in love with a fellow prisoner (Lothaire Bluteau). Although the film earned a substantial degree of critical acclaim and boasted the talents of such luminaries as Ian McKellen and Mick Jagger, it failed to garner much commercial notice. Owen finally broke through to an international audience with Hodges' Croupier, earning almost unanimous acclaim for his portrayal of a struggling writer who becomes caught up in an intricate scam after taking a job in a casino. He subsequently starred as a prisoner who takes up gardening in Greenfingers, a comedy that also starred Helen Mirren and had its premiere at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival. The actor also remained active on the stage, even as his screen work thrived, starring in the original 1997 London production of Patrick Marber's highly feted Closer, and performing alongside Rachel Weisz and Paul Rhys in Sean Mathias' acclaimed revival of Noël Coward's Design for Living at London's Donmar Warehouse.The new millennium saw Owen appearing in an eclectic range of projects. In 2001, he starred as the only recurring character in BMW's Hire series of ambitious short films by directors such as Ang Lee and Guy Ritchie and also appeared in Robert Altman's acclaimed Gosford Park. Following a memorable supporting performance opposite Matt Damon in 2002's popular The Bourne Identity, Owen moved up to a starring role as an international relief worker who has an affair with Angelina Jolie in 2003's Beyond Borders. The next year, he took on the title role in King Arthur, Antoine Fuqua's non-fantasy retelling of the legendary story, with then it-girl Keira Knightley as his Guinevere. Both Beyond Borders and King Arthur failed to garner much of an audience, with the latter especially disappointing in light of its 120-million-dollar budget. Despite buzz about the possibility of Owen taking over the James Bond role in the iconic series, his prospects as a Hollywood leading man seemed to be faltering. Also in 2004, Owen appeared stateside in a smaller-budget U.K. film from Croupier director Mike Hodges called I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, about a former gangster investigating the mysterious death of his younger brother. Starring an impressive cast that included Charlotte Rampling, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, and Malcolm McDowell, the film was well-received by critics but relegated to only small arthouse exposure in the States. Later that year, Owen appeared in the big-screen adaptation of Closer, directed by Mike Nichols and co-starring such big names as Julia Roberts, Jude Law, and Natalie Portman. In 2005, Owen joined an even more star-studded cast with a role in Robert Rodriguez' adaptation of Frank Miller's comic Sin City, and he would also star opposite Julianne Moore in Savage Grace and Jennifer Aniston in Derailed.His biggest success to date came in early 2006, when he played the criminal mastermind behind a savvy bank heist in director Spike Lee's first blockbuster genre picture, The Inside Man. He would follow that with Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, a futuristic thriller where Owen plays a man protecting a pregnant woman at a time when no human beings have been born in nearly two decades. Owen also took a part in Shekar Kapur's Elizabeth: The Golden Age, a sequel to his Oscar nominated biopic Elizabeth.Owen would spend the following several years enjoying his leading man status with films like Killer Elite, Shadow Dancer, and Blood Ties.

Trivia: Mickey Rourke originally aspired to careers as a pro baseball player and - later - a championship boxer, but did a 180 away from the ring and cut his chops as an actor instead. Rourke launched his career with small roles in 1941 (1979) and Heaven's Gate (1981) before gaining broader notice as a pyro expert in Body Heat (1981) and one of the raunchier leads in Barry Levinson's Diner (1982). He followed with admirable work in Rumble Fish (1983) and The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), and gave a bravura performance as fanatically determined police captain Stanley White in Year of the Dragon (1985). When the film was slammed by critics, Rourke defended director Michael Cimino and snubbed all interview requests. He immediately gained a reputation as a perfectionist, agreeing only to work with directors and on projects that met with his high standards. His 1987 performances in Angel Heart, A Prayer for the Dying, and Barfly attest to this, but starring roles in Adrian Lyne's infamous 9 1/2 Weeks (1986) and Zalman King's Wild Orchid (1990) gave him a "Eurotrash" taint, only enhanced by his hot temper and maverick nature. These qualities, however, while career poison in the U.S., did nothing to hurt Rourke's reputation in France, where filmgoers adored him.From the late '80s through the early '90s, the career of this disillusioned actor with the potential of Robert De Niro spiraled down, down, down, with his co-starring appearance in Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991) just one nadir. He wrote, produced, and starred in Homeboy (1988), a film about a near brain-dead prize fighter. It skipped theatrical release and went straight to home video. The masochistic connection between this film and Rourke's subsequent resumption of his boxing career (from 1991-1994) was undeniable, though he continued to appear sporadically in small films and supporting roles. In 1997, Rourke reprised his role as an s&m fetishist in Another 9 1/2 Weeks, a virtual remake of the original, only sans the redeeming presence of Kim Basinger. Although Rourke's career consisted primarily of direct-to-video titles for several years, he had enough friends and respect among his contemporaries that he hung on to his rebound potential, and his small role in Francis Ford Coppola's 1997 adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker marked something of a comeback. The following year, Vincent Gallo, an unapologetic fan of Rourke's, cast him as the antagonist in Gallo's directorial debut, Buffalo '66; the long-dormant Terrence Malick also cast Rourke in his critically-worshipped Thin Red Line (1998), but Malick excised the actor's scenes from the final cut, probably to reduce the film's whopping length. Rourke showed flashes of his former brilliance in Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory (2000), joined the cast of the Sly Stallone-headlined Get Carter remake that same year, and gave an impressive supporting performance in Sean Penn's police procedural-cum-harrowing study of obsession, The Pledge (2001). Rourke also signed on with director Robert Rodriguez for the third of that helmer's Mariachi films, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, in 2003. As a harbinger of things to come, a powerful creative bond formed between the weathered, iconic Rourke and the tireless director on the Mexico set. In 2005 the duo again teamed for Rodriguez's and Frank Miller's eagerly anticipated big screen adaptation of Miller's Sin City comics. Cast as lovelorn brute Marv, Rourke delivered an impressive performance as an imposing beast of a fellow bent on avenging the death of an angelic prostitute in this stylish noir comic book come to life, which gave him cult status among a new generation of fans. In 2004, Rourke delivered a memorable supporting performance in Tony Scott's Man on Fire alongside Denzel Washington; it marked the first film in a two-picture creative partnership between Scott and Rourke, the second half of which came to fruition with 2005's Domino.2006 saw Rourke appearing in Stormbreaker (co-starring Bill Nighy and Ewan McGregor) with Rourke as the nasty villain opposite Alex Pettyfer's "teen spy" Alex Ryder. Killshot, with Rourke as the hitman who attempts to rub out married Federal Witnesses Diane Lane and Thomas Jane, ended up being sitting on the studio's shelf for nearly three years. The film marked Rourke's first collaboration with Lane since Francis Coppola's critically-championed 1983 cult film Rumble Fish. With the release of 2008's The Wrestler, Rourke pulled off one of the most remarkable career comeback stories of the era. His role as the aging professional grappler Randy "The Ram" earned him the strongest reviews he'd received in over two decades, and secured him his first acting nomination from the Academy as well as a nod from Screen Actors Guild, and he took home the Golden Globe for best actor in a drama. Rourke would enjoy sustained success in the years to follow, appearing in films like Iron Man 2, The Expendables, and Immortals.Rourke was married to Debra Feuer from 1981-89 and Wild Orchid co-star Carre Otis from 1992-1998. Both marriages ended in divorce.

Trivia: Tall, strikingly handsome Dutch actor Rutger Hauer, the son of drama teachers, ran away from his Amsterdam home at age 15 and spent a year aboard a freighter. After coming home, he took a variety of odd jobs while attending night classes to study acting. Afterwards he joined an experimental theater troupe, remaining with them for five years. He then landed a role in a Dutch TV series in which he played a swashbuckler. He debuted onscreen as the lead in Paul Verhoeven's erotically graphic film Turkish Delight (1973); his English-speaking debut came two years later in Ralph Nelson's The Wilby Conspiracy (1975), but it failed to establish him in Hollywood and he returned to making European films. He finally broke through in America as the sociopathic cold-blooded terrorist in the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Nighthawks (1981), after which he was frequently cast as steel-cold heavies in American films. However, his range extends beyond bad guys, as shown (for example) in his role oppposite Michelle Pfeiffer in the medieval romance Ladyhawke (1985). Most of his films since 1981 have been made in America.

Trivia: Known for his dark intensity and idiosyncratic performances, Benicio Del Toro became one of Hollywood's more unique actors. His looks suggesting a hidden background as Wednesday Addams' hunky older brother, he first became known to film audiences in 1995 with his breakthrough performance in The Usual Suspects. Born February 19, 1967 in Santurce, Puerto Rico, Del Toro was the son of lawyers. His mother died when he was nine, and, four years later, his father moved the family to Mercersberg, PA, where they lived on a farm. While attending the University of California at San Diego, where he was working toward a business degree, Del Toro took an acting class and was soon hooked. He appeared in a number of student productions, one of which led to a stint performing at a drama festival at New York's Lafayette Theatre. Del Toro decided to remain in New York to study acting at the Circle in the Square Acting School and won a scholarship to the Stella Adler Conservatory.A move to Los Angeles, where he studied at the Actors Circle Theatre, led to Del Toro's first television roles, which included a guest spot on Miami Vice and an appearance as a drug dealer on the miniseries Drug Wars: The Camarena Story (1990). The actor also began showing up in feature films, perhaps most notably as Duke the Dog-Faced Boy in Big Top Pee-wee (1988). Despite fairly steady work, Del Toro was still virtually unknown when he was cast as the eccentric criminal Fenster in Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects. His slurred, otherworldly performance earned widespread praise, an Independent Spirit Award, and, coupled with the film's great success, Del Toro was soon thrust into the limelight that had hitherto eluded him. The actor followed up The Usual Suspects with a supporting role as the titular artist's best friend in Julian Schnabel's Basquiat (1996). Despite intriguing subject matter and a stellar cast, the film was something of a critical and commercial disappointment, although Del Toro's work did earn him a second Independent Spirit Award. Having thus put his trademark on offbeat character acting -- something that was also helped by his role as a gangster in Abel Ferrara's The Funeral (1996) -- Del Toro played a romantic lead opposite Alicia Silverstone in Excess Baggage (1997), a botched caper comedy that cast the actor as a bumbling car thief.Del Toro's next film, Terry Gilliam's much anticipated 1998 adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, would receive an intensely mixed critical reception. A drug-addled, hallucinatory odyssey, it starred Del Toro as Dr. Gonzo, protagonist Raoul Duke's (Johnny Depp basically playing Thompson) partner in crime. Del Toro earned strong notices for his portrayal of the portly, freewheeling, Samoan lawyer (based on real-life Thompson cohort Oscar Acosta), and his performance was widely touted as one of the best aspects of the film. Del Torogained further notice when he won several awards -- including the Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe and Oscar -- for his role as a Mexican cop entangled in the international drug-trade war in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000). The next year, Del Toro played a mentally disabled man wrongly accused of murder in director Sean Penn's sad tale of obsession, The Pledge, and earned his second Academy Award nomination for his performance in 21 Grams in 2003. Del Toro made his directorial debut in 2004, reuniting with Depp for an adaptation of another Hunter Thompson book, The Rum Diaries. He was also starred in Che (2008), Terrence Malick's biopic about Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. This role led t many awards, including the Best Actor Award at the celebrated Cannes Film Festival. Later, in 2010, Del Toro starred in a remake of The Wolf Man, the classic creature feature from Lon Chaney, Jr.

Trivia: With a distinctly natural and youthful earthy beauty that can alternate between ultra-glamour and wholesome field-frolicking nymph with the change of the breeze, former worldly model turned actress Alexis Bledel built a sturdy fan base with her role on television's Gilmore Girls before falling for a young immortal in 2002's Tuck Everlasting. A native of Houston, TX, whose native tongue was Spanish, Bledel's parents encouraged her to try community theater at the age of eight to overcome shyness. The aspiring actress would subsequently appear in local productions of Our Town and The Wizard of Oz before being scouted at a local mall and whisked into life on the catwalks. Traveling through Europe and Japan before graduating from Houston's Saint Agnes Academy, Bledel would also graduate from the Page Parkes Center for Modeling and Acting before enrolling as a film major at N.Y.U. Though it may come as no surprise to many that the ethereal young actress was voted one of People magazine's Hottest Stars Under 25 in 2002, the firmly grounded actress appeared to have a promising career in store for her whether it be on the pages of Vogue or under the bright lights of Tinseltown. Fans with a quick eye could also catch a brief glimpse of Bledel's film debut, as an uncredited extra, in Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998).In 2005, Bledel co-starred in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, a coming-of-age drama following four teenagers who find a very special pair of blue jeans (the actress reprised this role in 2008 for the film's sequel), as well as in director Robert Rodriguez' post-noir crime thriller Sin City. Bledel continued to work in film following the cancellation of The Gilmore Girls in 2007, appearing in the films including The Good Guy (2009), Post Grad (2009), and The Conspirator (2010). The actress played a young assassin in the 2011 action comedy Violet & Daisy, and continues to be active in film and television, including a recurring role as a suburban housewife in season 5 of AMC's Mad Men.

Trivia: American character actor Powers Boothe was born in Texas and studied at Southern Methodist University before spending several years in regional theater. He began showing up in films and TV during the '80s. He won an Emmy for his intense portrayal of the Reverend Jim Jones, a minister who led a mass suicide in the two-part CBS miniseries Guyana Tragedy. In 1983, Boothe joined the distinguished company of Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, and Humphrey Bogart when he stepped into the role of cool private eye Philip Marlowe for a series of HBO specials. Throughout the rest of the '80s, he played authority figures in action movies like Red Dawn, Extreme Prejudice, Rapid Fire, and Tombstone.However good at being a tough guy, Boothe excelled at his dramatic opportunities as well. In 1987 he played a father searching for his son in John Boorman's The Emerald Forest. In 1995, he portrayed Alexander Haig in Oliver Stone's biopic Nixon. Boothe then re-teamed with the director for his next film, U-Turn. In 2000 he starred as Navy mentor Captain Pullman in Men of Honor with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert De Niro. The next year he portrayed the Roman General Flavius Aetius in the USA network original miniseries Attila. After returning to his home state of Texas to play Agent Wesley Doyle in Bill Paxton's directorial debut, Frailty, Boothe joined the cast of the 2004 HBO Western series Deadwood.In addition to his work on Deadwood, Boothe joined the cast of the post-noir crime thriller Sin City (2005) in the role of a powerful senator, and played another politician (this time the Vice President of the United States) in the popular television series 24. Boothe co-starred with SNL alumni Maya Rudolph and Will Forte for the 2010 comedy MacGruber, and played one of the World Security Councilmen in Marvel's The Avengers (2012). Boothe was a series regular on Nashville for several seasons, and then reprised his role in the MCU in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, playing villain Gideon Malick for a multi-episode arc. Boothe died in 2017, at age 68.

Trivia: Wide-eyed young actor Nick Stahl made his feature debut opposite Mel Gibson and courted the late-'90s teen crowd with a role in the thriller Disturbing Behavior (1998), but a number of his movies have not been the average box-office fluff.Raised in Dallas, Stahl began acting at the age of four in commercials and local theater. After his first TV movie, Stranger at My Door (1991), Stahl soon moved to feature films with a starring role as the boy tutored by Mel Gibson's deformed recluse in the Gibson-directed drama The Man Without a Face (1993). Continuing to work with Hollywood heavyweights, Stahl played one of Susan Sarandon's sons in Safe Passage (1994) and acted with Walter Matthau in the TV film Incident in a Small Town (1994). After the young teen starred in the Disney film Tall Tale (1994), Stahl was back to TV movies with family drama Blue River (1995). Alternating between mainstream fare and more challenging work, Stahl began to aim for a slightly older audience with a role in the independent rural crime drama and Sundance Film Festival entrant Eye of God (1997). Though Stahl joined the late-'90s teen movie brigade co-starring alongside Katie Holmes in the thriller Disturbing Behavior (1998), he also appeared that same year as a Charlie Company soldier who dies too young in Terrence Malick's hypnotic anti-war anti-epic The Thin Red Line (1998). Stahl began 2001 with roles in two Sundance Film Festival critical favorites, Todd Field's family drama In the Bedroom (2001) and iconoclast Christopher Munch's The Sleepy Time Gal (2001). On his way to becoming an indie fixture, Stahl then took on the unappealing role of the doomed titular character in controversial photographer-turned-director Larry Clark's exploration of true-life violent teen anomie, Bully (2001). Stahl, however, finished 2001 on the critical high note with which it began when In the Bedroom, featuring Stahl as Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson's son, earned raves and prizes as one of the best films of the year.Though to this point Stahl's film roles had consisted of mainly low-budget and independent fare, all of this would change with the release of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003. Rumored to have taken over the role of John Conner following original star Edward Furlong's much publicized bout with drug abuse, Stahl eagerly stepped up to the role. The summer of 2003 also found Stahl gearing up for the premier of his the new HBO series Carnivàle.

Trivia: Chances are that by the time you saw model-turned-actress Devon Aoki step behind the wheel in 2 Fast 2 Furious you were already asking yourself, "where have I seen that face before?" With an impressive modeling background that has included campaigns for such world-famous designers as Chanel and Versace -- not to mention appearances on the covers of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Interview -- the answer to that question could be one of many. A seemingly ubiquitous presence in the world of modeling in the millennial changeover, Aoki has since gone on to craft an impressive career onscreen as well thanks to roles in such high-profile Hollywood features as the aforementioned Fast and the Furious sequel, the high-school secret agent comedy D.E.B.S., and director Robert Rodriguez's Sin City. Devon Aoki was born in New York City to Benihana restaurant founder Rocky Aoki and Anglo-Bavarian jewelry designer Pamela Hilburger; the Aoki family subsequently settled briefly on the West Coast before returning back East when young Devon was 13 years old. It was shortly after their return to New York that Aoki was spotted by a photographer while attending a Rancid concert, and following a move to London shortly thereafter, Aoki's modeling career skyrocketed. A hot property on both the magazine scene and the runway circuit, Aoki soon began considering other means by which to expand her career. Already comfortable in front of the camera and a big fan of the movies, Aoki convinced filmmakers to give her a shot at the big screen, and despite the fact that she didn't have a driver's license and had never driven a car, the striking young model was soon cast in director John Singleton's 2 Fast 2 Furious. A role as a brainy schoolgirl who joins an elite national-defense group in D.E.B.S. was quick to follow in 2004, and the following year Aoki used the very sword that Uma Thurman wielded in the Kill Bill saga to air out Oscar-winner Benicio Del Toro in the brutally violent and visually vibrant comic book film Sin City.

Trivia: Standing 6'5" and weighing over 300 pounds, African American actor Michael Clarke Duncan inarguably possesses one of Hollywood's more unforgettable figures. A former bodyguard and bouncer, Duncan first gained attention when he appeared as one of a group of oil drillers sent to stop an asteroid from annihilating the Earth in the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon. A year later, Duncan's career got another significant boost when the actor earned lavish critical plaudits for his portrayal of a wrongfully convicted death row inmate in The Green Mile.Born in Chicago on December 10, 1957, Duncan was raised on the city's south side by his single mother. A serious student, Duncan decided that he wanted to play football in high school; after his mother refused to let him, fearing he would get hurt, he developed an interest in acting instead. Following his graduation from high school, the aspiring actor studied communications at Mississippi's Alcorn State University. His studies were cut short when he returned to Chicago to attend to his mother, who had fallen ill. He subsequently found work digging ditches with the Peoples Gas Company and moonlighted as a club bouncer. His work led to a chance encounter with a stage producer who hired him as a security guard for a traveling theatre company, which eventually brought Duncan to Hollywood. Upon his arrival in L.A., Duncan, who was hovering dangerously close to bankruptcy, secured further work as a security guard and found his first agent. He got his professional start on television, appearing in commercials, sitcoms, and on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. He started his film career playing -- surprisingly enough -- bouncers in such films as The Players Club and Bulworth (both 1998), finally getting his big break -- and the first role that didn't require him to boot people out of clubs -- in Armageddon. Thanks to the great commercial success of Armageddon, Duncan was able to find subsequent employment in a number of productions, most notably The Green Mile. He earned overwhelmingly strong reviews for his portrayal of doomed, saintly John Coffey, a man whose conviction for a brutal double murder seems at odds with his exceedingly gentle, almost child-like demeanor. Duncan garnered Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for his work in the film. He next switched genre gears, re-teaming with Armageddon co-star Bruce Willis to star in the comedy The Whole Nine Yards, which cast him a brutish thug who terrorizes mild-mannered dentist Matthew Perry. Once again utilizing his massive girth to maximum effect in the following year's The Planet of the Apes Duncan followed up the big budget remake with the made-for-television They Call Me Sirr before once again flexing formidably, this time opposite The Rock, in The Scorpion King. Later turning up as the villainous Kingpin in the comic book superhero film Daredevil (2003), Duncan would also loan his voice to the same character in Spider-Man: The Animated Series later that same year. A string of vocal performances in such animated efforts as Kim Possible: A Stitch in Time, The Proud Family, and Crab Nebula found Duncan's vocal chords in increased demand in television, films, and even videogames, yet by 2005 the hard-working actor was back on the big screen with roles in both Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, and Michael Bay's The Island. Though action may have always been the best genre for the physically imposing actor to make an impression on the big screen, fans would take note that the hulking Duncan also had a keen sense of humor, a point made all the more evident by his role in the 2006 Will Ferrell NASCAR laugher Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Duncan continued to work in television in the following years, making appearances on popular shows including Chuck, Two and a Half Men, and Bones. In 2012, Duncan landed a starring role in The Finder, a short-lived series in which he once again took on the role of former lawyer Leo Knox, whom he had portrayed in Bones. In July of that same year, Duncan suffered a heart attack and never fully recovered; he died on September 3rd at the age of 54.

Trivia: New York-born and bred actress Rosario Dawson made her screen debut in Larry Clark's controversial Kids (1995). Literally picked off the street to play Ruby, one of the film's titular teens, Dawson -- who is of Puerto Rican, Cuban, Black, Irish, and Native American heritage -- had never acted before being cast in the film. Following Kids, she next appeared in Spike Lee's He Got Game (1998) and that same year starred in Side Streets, a series of vignettes about life in New York's five boroughs. Faithful to her New York roots through and through, Dawson has continued to star in films set in her hometown, including Light It Up and Down to You.Soon, Dawson branched into mainstream film, appearing in populist projects like Josie and the Pussycats, Men in Black 2, The Rundown, and the big-screen adaptation of Rent. The actress would also appear in harder films, like Sin City and Death Proof, as well as damanding dramatic roles, like that of a rape victim struggling to recover in Descent.

Trivia: A native of Sarasota, FL, Gugino spent most of her youth being shuttled by her mother to various locations in California. At age 15, she and her mom were living in San Diego, when Gugino was convinced to try a modeling career in New York City. She succeeded, but soon found the fast pace of high-fashion modeling too much for her and moved to Los Angeles, where she took advice from an aunt, model Carol Merril, and enrolled in acting classes to study under drama coach Gene Bua. Gugino soon made her film debut in the comedy Troop Beverly Hills (1986). More features followed, until she got her first supporting major role, that of Norma in the Robert De Niro/Leonardo Di Caprio drama This Boy's Life (1993), and later scored a co-starring role on the Michael J. Fox sitcom Spin City. As her star continued to rise, Gugino would spend the subsuquent years appearing in a wide variety of high profile projects, like Spy Kids, Out of Sight, Sin City, Night at the Museum, Sucker Punch, Watchmen, and Mr. Popper's Penguins. Gugino would also find major success on the small screen, with roles on shows like Entourage and Californication.

Trivia: One of the crop of obscenely attractive young stars to pop up during the late 1990s, Josh Hartnett has the kind of strong-jawed, puppy-eyed looks that make him equally suited for both movie stardom and Tommy Hilfiger ads. Hartnett was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 21, 1978. Following his high school graduation, he attended New York's SUNY-Purchase, but his time there ended after he was offered a role on the short-lived TV series Cracker. He also did a number of TV commercials and plays, and in 1998 he got his screen break with the plum role of Jamie Lee Curtis' son in Halloween: H20. Although the film received poor reviews, it did moderately well at the box office, and that same year Hartnett's profile further increased when he starred in The Faculty. One of a number of films to exploit the current trend in teen horror movies, it featured Hartnett fighting off alien teachers alongside the likes of fellow up-and-comers Elijah Wood and Shawn Hatosy. Although the film didn't do as well as expected, thanks in part to the fact that the teen horror craze was beginning to lose steam, it in no way interfered with the increasing number of opportunities available to the young actor.Hartnett could subsequently be seen in a number of diverse films; among his projects in 2000 alone, he played an Iago-like character in O, the teen re-telling of Othello; the son of Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in the comedy-drama Town and Country; and the paramour of the eldest of the ill-fated Lisbon sisters in Sofia Coppola's adaptation of The Virgin Suicides. His pattern of starring in films with steadily-increasing budgets reached its apex in 2001 when Hartnett appeared in director Michael Bay's World War II action drama Pearl Harbor, playing Danny, a young soldier who falls in love with his best friend's main squeeze amid the chaos of the titular conflict. Later that same year Hartnett would fight a whole new war in Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning war drama Black Hawk Down, and shortly after swearing off sex for 40 Days and 40 Nights and hitting the street beat with Harrison Ford in the coolly-received buddy cop comedy Hollywood Homicide, the handsome heartthrob would make public his desire to shift his attentions away from blockbuster territory in order to focus his talents on smaller films of increased quality - even if it did mean a leaner paycheck. Though subsequent rumors of his potential involvement with the long-in-development Superman film would seem to betray this sentiment, lower-profile roles in such independent-minded efforts as Sin City and Mozart and the Whale ultimately served to underscore the maturing actor's sincerity. Of course Hartnett wasn't averse to appearing in the occasional mainstream effort, with roles in Wicker Park and Lucky Number Sleven serving to occupy a curious cinematic middle ground between the indie and blockbuster mindsets.By the time Hartnett took a prominent role in Brian De Palma's 2006 true crime drama The Black Dahlia, it appeared as if the actor's willingness to challenge himself onscreen had finally begun to pay off. A dark look at the Hollywood underbelly based on author James Ellroy's best-selling novel, The Black Dahlia preceded an introspective turn as an emerging sports writer who befriends a former boxing champ many had thought dead in Resurrecting the Champ, and a highly challenging role as legendary jazz trumpeter Chet Baker in director Bruce Beresford's The Prince of Cool. Hartnett plays a former police officer who agrees to investigate the disappearance of the son of a wealthy businessman in I Come With Rain (2008), and joined the cast of the highly stylized fantasy drama Bunraku (2010). The actor played a supporting role in the critically acclaimed independent drama Stuck Between Stations in 2011.In 2014, Hartnett returned to his TV roots in the horror drama series Penny Dreadful.

Trivia: A successful model (and, despite her masculine-sounding first name, most certainly not a man), James King has gone from gracing the pages of the world's leading fashion magazines to a promising career as an actress. Jaime King (James is a stage name) was born in Omaha, NE, in 1979; King's statuesque beauty became evident at a young age, and in her early teens, she began attending a local modeling school. When King was 14, a representative from a New York modeling agency saw her in a show, and a year later King's career was in high gear. King's picture had appeared in Vogue, Glamour, Allure, Harper's Bazaar, and Mademoiselle before she'd reached the age of 17, and she'd also become an in-demand runway model, with her lean good looks being used to promote the latest designs from Christian Dior, Marithe and Francois Girbaud, and Chanel. However, after rising to fame, King succumbed to the pressures and temptations of the high-pressure world of modeling, and she began to abuse alcohol and drugs, leading to a brief addiction to heroin; King had also become romantically involved with photographer David Sorrenti, and after he died of a drug overdose in 1997, King was inspired to get clean and sober and has remained drug-free since then.King's acting career really took flight, with appearances in the biopic Blow, the blockbuster Pearl Harbor, and the teen-horror satire Happy Campers. The actress would spend the 2000's cementing her role as an in-demand starlet, appearing in films like Sin City, Two for the Money, and Fanboys, as well as numerous TV shows, like The Class, Gary Unmarried, and Heart of Dixie.

Trivia: Brittany Murphy first came to the attention of film audiences as Tai, one of Alicia Silverstone's airhead friends, in the 1995 comedy Clueless. Though convincing as a dim-bulb character, Murphy cuts dramatically against this grain off-camera, as a ferociously intelligent and ambitious young performer who had acting in her blood from early childhood. As a teenager and young adult, she gave expression to the scope of her talent and versatility with a series of engaging film and television roles.Born in Atlanta on November 10, 1977, Murphy was raised by her single mother in Edison, New Jersey; she later indicated, in interviews, that her mom struggled financially - that they were forced to eat spaghetti night after night, and that on certain occasions, she had to beg her mother to buy clothes at KMart; this would later account for Murphy's marked social investment in homeless causes, as discussed in a February 2003 Glamour article.A precocious child who began putting on shows when she was a toddler, Murphy was acting in regional theatre productions by the age of nine. Work in various commercials followed, and in 1990 she landed her first television appearance at the age of twelve, on the sitcom Blossom. She also secured a supporting role as Brenda Drexell, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Dabney Coleman's fifth grade teacher Otis Drexell, on the (mercifully) short-lived 1991 FOX sitcom Drexell's Class. The following year, Murphy took her first cinematic bow in the dysfunctional family drama Family Prayers. Murphy's talent for portraying, dramatically, all degrees on the spectrum of behavioral dysfunction further came to light in three successive projects through 1999: the blackly comic Reese Witherspoon trailer trash odyssey Freeway (1996) (as a disfigured lesbian who befriends Witherspoon's Vanessa); a mental patient in Lloyd Kramer's made-for-TV David and Lisa (1998), and James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted (1999) (as yet another resident at a mental institution).Meanwhile, on a less ambitious (albeit more whimsical) note, Murphy also became a fixtureon King of the Hill, Mike Judge's long-running contemporary cartoon of suburban life in the southern U.S., as Luanne Platter, the hair stylist niece who comes to live with Hank Hill's family. Murphy kept a full plate as the millennium wrapped. In addition to her work for Mangold in 1999,she also explored the collective insanity of the beauty pageant world in Drop Dead Gorgeous, while on the small screen, she covered much darker thematic ground with the well-received Holocaust drama The Devil's Arithmetic (also 1999). In 2001, Murphy appeared in the Michael Douglas thriller Don't Say a Word, and alongside Drew Barrymore in Riding in Cars With Boys.Cast opposite Eminem in director Curtis Hanson's 2002 drama 8 Mile, Murphy performed compellingly as an aspiring rap star's unapologetic muse; in 2004, Murphy headlined Nick Hurran's thoroughly disappointing rom-com Little Black Book. She also made a splash in Robert Rodriguez's innovative graphic novel adaptation Sin City, as the arrogant waitress who becomes the prize in a heated rivalry between Benicio del Toro and Clive Owen. Murphy made appearances in four features in 2006. In Alex Keshishian's progressive romantic comedy Love and Other Disasters, she played a London-based American expatriate, employed at Vogue, who tries to fix up her gay roommate; in Ed Burns's sixth directorial outing, the Big Chill-like romantic comedy The Groomsmen, she played the expectant girlfriend of Burns's Paulie. She also portrayed a member of the ensemble in Karen Moncrieff's murder mystery The Dead Girl, about a group of seemingly disconnected individuals whose lives intersect as a girl's murderer comes to light, and one of the lead voices in George "Babe" Miller's Happy Feet, an animated penguin tale.Murphy's appearance alongside Ashton Kutcher in Just Married was - to some degree - a case of art imitating life: offscreen, Murphy and Kutcher began to date as well (and became a hot tabloid item), though unlike their onscreen counterparts, they never wed.In the several years that followed, Murphy remained active, both in front of and behind the camera; she lent her voice to the CG-animated George Miller comedy Happy Feet (2006), and starred in and produced a Robert Allan Ackerman directed comedy-drama, The Ramen Girl, that suggested tremendous promise (though it went straight to home video). Murphy also starred in a made-for-television movie on the Lifetime network, Nora Roberts' Tribute (2009). That marked the end of her career, however: the actress's life was tragically cut short when she died in December 2009 at the age of 32.

Trivia: Born January 28, 1981, Elijah Wood has grown up to be one of the most well-respected and steadily employed actors of his generation. Born in Cedar Rapids, IA, Wood modeled and did local commercials before moving with his family to Los Angeles in 1988. It was there that Wood got his first break, a small role in a Paula Abdul video. Film work almost instantly followed, with a bit part in the 1989 Back to the Future II. It was Wood's role as Aidan Quinn's son in Barry Levinson's 1990 Avalon (the third film in the Baltimore trilogy containing Diner [1982] and Tin Men [1987]) that first gave Wood attention, as the film received widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for four Academy Awards. After a small part in the Richard Gere potboiler Internal Affairs (1990), Wood secured his first starring role in Paradise (1991), in which he played a young boy who brings estranged couple Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson back together. He received good reviews for his performance -- some said it was one of the best things about the film -- and from there went on to co-star with Mel Gibson and Jamie Lee Curtis in Forever Young and in Radio Flyer (both 1992). In 1993, Wood co-starred with Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son, which was a failure both at the box office and with filmgoers who couldn't stomach the idea of the little blond boy from Home Alone as a pre-teen psychopath. In casting Wood as the good to Culkin's evil, the film helped further establish the kind of characters Wood was to become known for: thoughtful, well meaning, and perhaps a bit confused. Wood's next film, the same year's The Adventures of Huck Finn, provided a departure from this type of character, but The War (1994) with Kevin Costner marked something of a return. Also in 1994, Wood had the title role in North, a film remarkable for the volume of bad reviews and bad box office it received, but also for the fact that practically every bad review contained a positive assessment of Wood's performance. Wood's follow-up, the 1996 Flipper, was hardly an improvement, but the subsequent critical and financial success of Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997) provided a positive development in the young actor's career. As the soulfully dazed and confused Mikey Carver, Wood gave a portrayal remarkable for its rendering of the thoughtfulness and exquisite hopelessness inherent in the character. 1998's Deep Impact and The Faculty did not allow Wood the same degree of character development, but were great financial successes and further stepping stones in Wood's evolution from winsome child star to impressive young actor. Following a brief turn as the boyfriend of a wannabe hip-hop groupie in James Toback's problematic Black and White (1999), Wood further evolved as an actor in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first installation of director Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. His most hotly anticipated project, the 2001 film gave Wood top billing as Frodo Baggins alongside a glittering cast that included Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, and Liv Tyler. That same year the young actor could be seen in less mystical surroundings courtesy of Ed Burns' Ash Wednesday, a crime drama that also featured Oliver Platt and Rosario Dawson. In 2002, Wood let his vocal chords for Disney's straight-to-video release of The Adventures of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina. Of course, his most substantial role of 2002 is unarguably his return to the role of hobbit Frodo Baggins in the second installment of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy; specifically, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.2003 proved to be a similar year for Wood -- after two relatively small jobs (his role credited only as "The Guy" in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over and his stint as First Assistant Director in Sean Astin's The Long and Short of It served purely as a break for Elijah), the young actor once again resumed his role for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Though Return of the King is the last in the Tolkien trilogy, 2004 nonetheless looks to be a significant year for Wood, as he is slated to star in soccer flick Hooligans, as well work alongside Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in director Michel Gondry's fantasy feature Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In the latter, Wood significantly stretched his image by playing the Machiavellian Patrick, who slimily attempts to wheedle Kate Winslet away from Jim Carrey by trading on insider knowledge of the couple's sweet nothings. Riding high on the quadruple successes of the three Rings films and Eternal Sunshine, Wood projected wisdom and demonstrated great care in selecting his projects over the course of 2005 - his three features from that year scored with reviewers and at the box. Those included: Robert Rodriguez's critical darling Sin City, a testosterone-infused, live action adaptation of a comic book; Green Street Hooligans, where Wood tackles the challenging role of an expulsionary Harvard student thrust into the brutality of English football; and Liev Schrieber's bittersweet comedy-drama Everything is Illuminated, as Jonathan, a young man who travels to the Ukraine on a quest to find the woman who saved his grandmother's life. Over the course of 2006, Wood's fans can catch him in the period piece Bobby (on the assassination of RFK), the animated feature Happy Feet, and the military drama Day Zero, on the reinstatement of the USAF draft. He voiced the lead role in Happy Feat, and had a major role for internationally respected director Alex de la Iglesia in The Oxford Murders. He lent his voice to the title character in the movie 9, and starred again in the sequel Happy Feet Two. In 2011 he took the leading part on the odd FX series Willard which concerns a man who sees his next door neighbor's canine as a man in a dog suit. In 2012 he returned to his iconic role playing Frodo Baggins for director Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Hobbit.

Trivia: Was athletic as a kid and teen; once hit three home runs in an All-Star game and later pitched a 10-inning no-hitter with 20 strikeouts. Played football at Brown University. Loved movies so much he decided to take an acting class in college and immediately knew acting was his calling. Early TV roles included guest spots on The Equalizer, Spenser: For Hire and Kate & Allie before landing pivotal roles in movies Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Appeared in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) as Romulan commander Suran. Best known for playing the Presidential Chief of Staff on 24 and the principal on Everybody Hates Chris. Co-founded theatrical production company the Eumenides Group. Is an acclaimed singer and has recorded four CDs; tours with the Jude Ciccolella Band.

Trivia: Was persuaded to try acting by his friend and fellow actor Robert Carlyle. Got his start with a theater company in his native Glasgow in the early 1990s after working as a dance-club DJ. First TV roles were in a 1992 episode of the BBC anthology series Screen One and a '93 episode of Taggart, a long-running Scottish detective series. His breakout movie was Braveheart (1995). The scars on his face are the result of a mugging by knife-wielding assailants, an incident that occurred before he began acting.

Trivia: Many know actor Rick Gomez as "Endless Mike" Hellstrom on the cult hit series The Adventures of Pete & Pete. The New Jersey native moved to New York City after graduating from high school, where he started auditioning for parts, and gaining small appearances in films like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He soon found regular work in TV and movies, and eventually branched into voice acting as well. In 2006, Gomez found himself cast in two different TV series, scoring the role of Slips on the series My Gym Partner's a Monkey, and in the part of Dave on the series What About Brian.

Trivia: A kohl-eyed actor who has oozed a steady stream of low-key testosterone through a series of films that include Dazed and Confused (1993), A Time to Kill (1996), and The Limey (1999), Nicky Katt has brought life to a stable of idiosyncratic, often dysfunctional characters that have established him as one of the more adventurous young performers in Hollywood. A former child actor who first worked on shows ranging from V to Father Murphy, Katt got his adult breakthrough in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, a film that also helped to launch the careers of such castmates as Parker Posey, Matthew McConaughey, and Joey Lauren Adams. He went on to do prolific supporting work, showing up to particularly memorable effect as a one-armed convenience store clerk in Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation (1995), as a belligerent redneck in Joel Schumacher's A Time to Kill (1996), and as Renee Zellweger's ambitious attorney boyfriend in One True Thing (1998). One of his most memorable roles came courtesy of Steven Soderbergh's The Limey, which featured Katt as a dreadlocked, sociopathic hitman whose running (and largely improvised) commentaries on various passersby provided some of the film's most unnerving comic moments. Although he has been seen mainly in a supporting capacity, Katt has also done notable lead work, particularly in Linklater's SubUrbia (1997), in which he managed to stand out from a talented ensemble cast with his portrayal of an alcoholic and xenophobic ex-Air Force recruit. The actor also starred in and executive produced Adam Goldberg's Scotch and Milk (1998), an acclaimed post-noir drama that featured him as one of a group of aimless friends skulking and posing their way around Los Angeles. With a growing list of credits and further roles in such well-received films as Boiler Room (2000), which cast him as a money-grubbing broker, Katt began the 21st century on a very promising note. With roles in such high-profile releases as Insomnia and director Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal (both 2002), Katt continued to hold that note, all the while maintaining a growing fan base with his role as geology teacher Harry Senate on the popular evening drama Boston Public.He continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including the indie I Love Your Work, doing a cameo for Richard Linklater in School of Rock, Planet Terror, and appearing opposite Jodie Foster in the vigilante drama The Brave One.

Trivia: Actor Nick Offerman honed an immediately identifiable image -- that of a rugged, imposing presence with an unmistakably menacing onscreen aura, occasionally tempered by nuttiness -- and parlayed it into a long string of offbeat characterizations. After guest spots on such prime-time series as ER and Gilmore Girls, and bit parts in features including Treasure Island (1999), Groove (2000), and November (2003), Offerman graduated to lead status with a decidedly wacky triple role in Martin Hynes' road movie The Go-Getter (2007). That same year, audiences could also catch Offerman via his small supporting role as a cop in Goran Dukic's jet-black comic romance Wristcutters: A Love Story. Meanwhile, Offerman also signed for one of the lead roles -- as an auto mechanic -- on the satirical Comedy Central series American Body Shop (2007). In 2009 he was cast as Ron Swanson in the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, and this turned out to be his breakthrough role. He parlayed that success into appearances in films like The Men Who Stare at Goats, All Good Things, Casa de me Padre, and the big-screen comedy version of 21 Jump Street.

Trivia: An actress whose fresh-faced girl-next-door beauty has adapted easily to both comic and dramatic roles, Marley Shelton was born in southern California on April 12, 1974. Her mother was a schoolteacher who dabbled in acting while her father worked as a director for film, television, and the stage. During her high-school days, Shelton was a member of the cheerleading squad and was named prom queen in her senior year. She began to develop an interest in acting, and in 1991 won her first film role, a slam supporting part in Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon. In the next two years, Shelton made a few appearances on episodic television and appeared in the made-for-TV movie In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco, but it was in 1993's The Sandlot that she made her first real impression on the big screen as Wendy, the lust-inducing teenage lifeguard. That same year, Shelton earned a recurring role on the dramatic television series Angel Falls, alongside fellow cast members Jean Simmons, Shirley Knight, Peggy Lipton, and James Brolin, but the show only lasted one season. More television work followed, including key roles in several made-for-TV movies and appearances on Hercules and the revived Fantasy Island, before Shelton's film career began to take hold. She played Tricia Nixon in Oliver Stone's biopic Nixon and a beautiful but fickle teenager in the little-seen comedy Trojan War, but her first major hit came in 1998 with Pleasantville, in which she played Margaret, the love interest of leading man Tobey Maguire (and one of the first teens to become "colorful"). In 1999, she played Kristin, one of the "popular girls" in Never Been Kissed, and two years later scored her first leading role, in which she got to put her cheerleading skills to use as Diane, the pep-squad girl-turned-teenage mother and criminal in Sugar & Spice. Offscreen, in 2001, Shelton married television and movie producer Beau Flynn, who helped cast her as Chloe, the beautiful girl next door in the comedy Bubble Boy.In the following few years, Shelton's onscreen career seemed to plateau somewhat when a variety of indie projects including Just a Kiss, Dallas 362, Grand Theft Parsons, and Moving Alan -- directed by her father, Christopher, and starring her sister Samantha -- failed to achieve mainstream success. Nevertheless the actress remained busy, and it was shortly after appearing in a failed updating of the once-popular gothic soap opera Dark Shadows that Shelton landed the role which, however small, seems to have been a turning point in her career. Though her role opposite Josh Hartnett in Robert Rodriguez's violent comic-book adaptation Sin City amounted to little more than a glorified cameo, it did provide wide-scale exposure in addition to connecting her with one of the most innovative and tireless filmmakers of his generation. Subsequent roles in Wim Wenders' Don't Come Knocking, Paul Weitz's American Dreamz, and the Paul Haggis-scripted The Last Kiss were quick to follow, and in 2007, Shelton reunited with Sin City director Rodriguez for a substantial role in "Planet Terror" -- Rodriguez' zombie-filled contribution to the ambitious double-feature throwback Grindhouse. Shelton would go on to appear in films like W. and Scream 4, as well as on the TV series Eleventh Hour.

Trivia: Is half Colombian. Made her big-screen debut in the Nicolas Cage dramedy The Family Man (2000), for which she won a Young Artist Award. Has landed series-regular roles on ABC sitcom the Geena Davis Show and CBS drama The Good Wife.

Trivia: A veteran of the British stage, Arie Verveen had his first leading movie role as Nick, a mysterious drifter who becomes a replacement son for a pair of New Jersey fishmongers, in Robert M. Young's Caught (1996). The Irish native learned to act in London, where he studied under David Bennett. He then involved himself with a few Fringe productions, including A Hatful of Rain. Upon immigrating to New York, Verveen made a name for himself appearing in short films. Prior to Caught, he also had bit parts in two independent films.