Trivia: Over the course of a single decade - the 1990s - Leonardo DiCaprio graduated from supporting work in television to a status as one of the most sought-after Hollywood actors under 30. After leading roles in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and James Cameron's Titanic, the actor became a phenomenon, spawning legions of websites and an entire industry built around his name. DiCaprio was born November 11, 1974, in Hollywood, CA. The son of a German immigrant mother and an underground comic book artist father who separated shortly after Leonardo's birth, he was raised by both of his parents, who encouraged his early interest in acting. At the age of two and a half, the fledgling performer had his first brush with notoriety and workplace ethics when he was kicked off the set of Romper Room for what the show's network deemed "uncontrollable behavior." After this rather inauspicious start to his career, DiCaprio began to hone his skills with summer courses in performance art while he was in elementary school. He also joined The Mud People, an avant-garde theater group, with which he performed in Los Angeles. In high school, DiCaprio acted in his first real play and began doing commercials, educational films, and the occasional stint on the Saturday morning show The New Lassie. In 1990, after securing his first full-time agent at the age of 15, DiCaprio landed a role as a teenage alcoholic on the daytime drama Santa Barbara. He also continued to appear on other TV shows, such as The Outsiders and Parenthood, and made his film debut in the 1991 horror film Critters 3. The actor got the first of many big breaks with a recurring role on the weekly sitcom Growing Pains. His portrayal of a homeless boy won him sufficient notice to get him an audition for Michael Caton-Jones's harrowing screen adaptation of Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life. DiCaprio won the film's title role after beating out 400 other young actors and it became his career breakthrough. The 1993 film, and DiCaprio's performance opposite Robert DeNiro, won raves and the actor further increased the adulation surrounding him when, later that year, he played Johnny Depp's mentally retarded younger brother in Lasse Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape. DiCaprio won an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance, and at the tender age of 19, was hailed as an actor to watch. Subsequent roles in three 1995 films, Sam Raimi's Western The Quick and the Dead; Total Eclipse (as the bisexual poet Rimbaud) and The Basketball Diaries (as a struggling junkie) all put the actor in the limelight, but it wasn't until the following year that he became a bona fide star, thanks to his portrayal of Romeo opposite Claire Danes in director Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996). The success of the film brought DiCaprio international fame, many lucrative opportunities, and frequent comparisons to predecessors such as James Dean. After starring with Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, and DeNiro in Marvin's Room (1996), DiCaprio achieved iconic status with his starring role in James Cameron's Titanic. With Kate Winslet as the female lead, the film became a box office sensation, earning garnered 14 Oscar nominations, winning 11, including Best Picture and Best Director, and earned a whopping 1.8 billion dollars at the global box office. DiCaprio's much-discussed exclusion from the Oscar nominations did nothing to hurt his popularity, and somewhat ironically, he next chose to parody his own celebrity with an appearance in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998) as a badly behaved movie star. After displaying his nastier side, he tackled a dual role as twins in the same year's swashbuckler The Man in the Iron Mask, opposite Jeremy Irons, Gabriel Byrne, John Malkovich, and Gérard Depardieu. Following the commercial success of the film, DiCaprio then traveled in a completely different direction, with a lead role in Danny Boyle's screen adaptation of Alex Garland's novel The Beach. The film met with eager anticipation from its first day of shooting, as Leo fans everywhere waited with baited breath to see what kind of impression their golden child would next make on the film world; unfortunately, the muddled Beach drew neither praise nor box-office success. In 2002, DiCaprio began what became a series of collaborations with the legendary director Martin Scorsese, starting with the the epic Gangs of New York (2002) - a sprawling tale of gangland violence in early America. Reportedly delayed by a year given much-publicized disagreements between director Scorsese and producer Harvey Weinstein, the film was ultimately released in time for the 2002 holiday/Oscar season. The tireless actor re-united with director Steven Spielberg with the release of Catch Me if You Can, the true-life tale of Frank Abagnale, Jr., a scam artist so effective that he eluded authorities while assuming a number of high-profile false identities and racking-up over $2.5 million in fraudulent checks. Two years later, DiCaprio and Scorsese embarked on a sophomore collaboration - the biopic The Aviator (2004), with DiCaprio in a critically-praised, star-making turn as eccentric billionaire genius Howard Hughes in The Aviator. DiCaprio and Scorsese scaled even greater heights in 2006 with The Departed, a crime drama in which DiCaprio played an undercover cop trying to bring down criminal Jack Nicholson. Doubling up during Oscar season yet again, that same year he played the lead in Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond, as an Afrikaner who must team up with a South African mercenary in order to find a rare gem of great value to both of them. Both films opened to praise and box-office success, resulting in dual Golden Globe nominations. Perhaps pushing its luck, Warner Bros. -- the studio behind both films -- campaigned DiCaprio for a lead Oscar in Diamond and a supporting one in Departed; Oscar voters only nominated him for Diamond. In the years that followed, DiCaprio showed no signs of tapering off when it came to challenging and even iconic roles. He joined Titanic co-star Kate Winslet, megaproducer Scott Rudin and others for the blistering marriage drama Revolutionary Road (2008), teamed with Scorsese a fourth time for the thriller Shutter Island (2010), toplined Christopher Nolan's complex, elusive sci-fi drama Inception (2010), and in 2011, worked with director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black on the biopic J. Edgar (2011), playing the famous titular FBI director. Meanwhile, DiCaprio also signed on for another collaboration with Baz Luhrmann - a new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, co-starring Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan, not to mention a first-time collaboration with Quinten Tarantino for Django Unchained. In 2013, he and Scorsese joined forces yet again for The Wolf of Wall Street, earning DiCaprio two Oscar nominations, for both Best Actor and Picture.DiCaprio took the next two years off, focusing on environmental causes, but came back in 2015 in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's The Revenant. He nabbed his sixth Oscar nom for the film and finally landed his first win, for Best Actor.The hybrid-car driving DiCaprio has also been an outspoken proponent of environmentalism, a topic he is so passionate about he was allowed to interview then-President Bill Clinton on the issue in a 2000 televised prime-time special.

Trivia: Despite the fact that veteran Japanese actor Ken Watanabe has been appearing in films since the early '80s (foreign film buffs may remember him from a supporting role in the 1985 art-house "noodle Western" Tampopo), it wasn't until his breakthrough role in the Tom Cruise adventure The Last Samurai that the frequent onscreen samurai eventually came to the attention of stateside audiences. Watanabe has been a mainstay of Japanese cinema beloved by legions of older fans overseas, but his performance as the last in a long line of ancient warriors in The Last Samurai is what finally found the modest actor courting international success. Watanabe was born in Niigata to schoolteacher parents -- his father taught calligraphy and his mother general education. A blissful childhood spent exploring the countryside and skiing with his brother Jun was rounded out by Watanabe's love of the trumpet and his involvement with the school band, and though he studied acting early on, he was hesitant to pursue a career before the cameras. Convinced by a director from England's National Theater Company that he was truly gifted in the art of performing, the then 24-year-old hopeful soon landed his first film role. Initial bliss was followed by harsh uncertainty when Watanabe was diagnosed with leukemia shortly thereafter, but the disease would eventually go into remission and his career would skyrocket. Though Watanabe has portrayed many different types of characters in his long and varied career, it is his skill with a sword that has truly cemented his status as a star in Japan -- he has played more samurai than even he can keep track of. It was this magnetism that attracted the attention of Last Samurai director Edward Zwick, who quickly made the decision to cast him in the popular blockbuster. His impressive performance in the film found him nominated for both a 2003 Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Watanabe's son is an actor and his daughter a model.

Trivia: A soft-spoken, fair-skinned actor with startling blue eyes, a penchant for playing volatile characters, and a reluctance to forsake his critically lauded stage career for a life in film, American audiences may best know Irish actor Cillian Murphy as the bike courier making his way through infected London in director Danny Boyle's apocalyptic thriller 28 Days Later. Though the film may have been Murphy's first to find wide stateside exposure, he has been appearing onscreen in the U.K. and his native Ireland since 1997. Born in Douglas, Cork, Ireland, in 1974, Murphy's father was a school inspector and his mother a French teacher. Attending school at Presentation Brothers College Cork while intending to enter into a career in law, Murphy was an avid rugby player who was turned on to the Concordia Theater's unique stage productions in his fourth year. Murphy soon signed up for a workshop with Concordia's Pat Tiernan and it quickly became apparent that he had a natural flair for the stage. Soon cast as the wildly emotional Pig in Concordia's production of Disco Pigs, Murphy debuted to rave reviews and was soon skipping school to go on tour with the production. Though his acting had initially begun as a hobby and a way to kill time on the weekends, it was quickly taking over his life and a career in law seemed less and less appealing. Though he would attempt to continue his law studies, it was soon obvious to Murphy that his heart just wasn't in it.Subsequently cast in a series of interesting and complex roles, Murphy made his feature debut in the 1998 film Sweety Barrett and quickly followed with the coming-of-age comedy drama Sunburn. Though it was obvious that his stage talents translated well to the silver screen, Murphy still maintained that the rush of theater couldn't be touched by celluloid. The problem in Ireland of suicide and poor mental health among young men prompted Murphy to accept a role in the 2000 drama On the Edge, and his role of a suicidal psychiatric patient proved memorable and affecting. Following How Harry Became a Tree (2001), it was time to adapt Disco Pigs into a feature film, and with director Kirsten Sheridan at the helm, Murphy reprised his role of Pig to enthusiastic results. By the time 28 Days Later rolled around, it seemed that everyone except United States audiences were familiar with the rising star, and with the stateside release of the film in mid 2003, all that was soon to change. Noting that, in his opinion, the best actors alternate frequently between stage and screen, Murphy strived to keep a balance as his growing popularity found his film career taking precedence. Following 2003's Zonad, Murphy began preparation for such features as Intermission and Girl With a Pearl Earring (both 2003).Murphy's resumé amassed higher and higher profile roles. 2005 brought his most popular film to date as he played the villain opposite hero Christian Bale in Batman Begins. Murphy's "boy next door" face seemed to make his performance as the menacing Scarecrow all the more disturbing, and he would go on to play the bad guy again later that same year in Red Eye, though this time he wore makeup to cover his boyish features. Soon he was donning even more makeup, however, as a transsexual in the indie hit Breakfast on Pluto. Playing both a victim and a hero in the U.K. of the 1970s, Murphy's ethereal performance as a boy who leaves his Ireland home to live as a woman in London was praised by critics, and the film was a cult success. He followed it up with another passion project in 2006: Ken Loach's award-winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a look at the Irish Republicans of the early 20th century and the anti-British rebellion that would continue to tear families apart for decades to come. He next signed on to star with Lucy Liu in the romantic comedy Watching the Detectives, another independent venture that would find Murphy playing a shy film geek who's pulled out of his movie collection and into the real world when he meets a real-life femme fetal, played by Liu. Also on Murphy's calendar for 2007 was the Danny Boyle psychological sci-fi thriller Sunshine, about a small crew of astronauts sent to reignite Earth's dying sun. Over the next few years, Murphy would apper in a number of other films, like Inception, Retreat, and Broken.

Trivia: May 31, 1949, University of Missouri graduate Tom Berenger began his theater work in regional repertory. Once he hit New York, he was employed in several TV soap operas, most prominently as the ill-fated Timmy Siegel on One Life to Live. His first film acting ranged from the grittier urban demands of Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) to the cavalier heroics of Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979). After such relatively sympathetic assignments as The Big Chill in 1983, Berenger followed in the role of the sociopathic, battle-scarred Sergeant Barnes in Platoon (1986), a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. This did not, however, stop the versatile actor from trying future good-guy roles like the irresponsible baseball player in Major League (1988). Berenger continued to successfully fluctuate between heroes and villains into the '90s, with a few side trips into television, notably in an amusing, unheralded guest stint in the waning days of the sitcom Cheers. In 1998, he gave a particularly good portrayal of a villainous low life in Robert Altman's adaptation of John Grisham's The Gingerbread Man. Berenger continued to take on supporting roles, and starred in TNT's short-lived television series Nightmares & Dreamscapes in 2006. Other notable work includes a role alongside Armand Assante and Busta Rhymes in the 2009 thriller Breaking Point, and his turn of the wealthy father of Robert Michael Fischer (Cillian Murphy) in 2010's Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page.

Trivia: At once earthy and modern, yet effortlessly capable of projecting the aura of a glamorous, silent-era film starlet, French actress Marion Cotillard has achieved fame in her home country with substantial roles in such high-profile blockbusters as the Taxi series, and such critically acclaimed arthouse hits as Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement and Olivier Dahan's La Vie en Rose. The Paris native got in tune with her desire to become a performer early in life, and soon began honing her talents as both an actress and a singer. As fate would have it, Cotillard's parents were both active members of the Paris theater community who lovingly nurtured their daughter's creative talents and encouraged her to pursue a career on the stage and screen. Cotillard debuted onscreen at just 16 years old, in the 1994 Philippe Harel romance The Story of a Boy Who Wanted to Be Kissed. While Cotillard's sensitive performance in the film indeed marked the arrival of a skilled young actress, it wasn't until the release of Taxi in 1998 that audiences truly perked up to the promise of this emerging talent. Cotillard was nominated for a Most Promising Actress award at the 1999 César ceremonies thanks to her performance in that movie. She went on to appear in the second and third installments of the series while simultaneously drawing notice for performances in Haute Tension director Alexandre Aja's 1999 debut, Furia, and Gilles Paquet-Brenner's dark family drama Pretty Things -- which earned Cotillard her second César nomination. While the elusive César award had been well within her grasp twice before, Cotillard finally won the coveted trophy as the result of her role in Amélie director Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement. Cast as a vengeful prostitute who sets out to punish the person responsible for the death of her love, Cotillard was awarded the Best Supporting Actress César in 2005, cementing her arrival as a formidable onscreen talent.At this point in her career, Cotillard was an increasingly familiar face to stateside film fans thanks to supporting roles in such films as Tim Burton's Big Fish and Jeunet's international arthouse hit, yet as with any great actress, she was still willing to take the kind of risks needed to take her career to the next level. Subsequent roles in Guillaume Nicloux's A Private Affair and Abel Ferrara's Mary proved that she was most certainly up to the task, serving nicely to offset the mainstream sweetness of efforts like the airy 2003 romance Love Me If You Dare. In 2006, Cotillard was back on stateside screens, this time opposite international superstar Russell Crowe in director Ridley Scott's A Good Year. If anyone at this point had doubted Cotillard's abilities as an actress, those reservations would be put to the ultimate test when she assumed the role of a lifetime in the 2007 Edith Piaf biopic La Vie en Rose. Cast as the enigmatic French songstress who went from being a common street busker to a national icon, Cotillard found the perfect cinematic vehicle to combine her duel interests in acting and music (though audio recordings of Piaf were used in the film), and drew near unanimous praise from critics both foreign and domestic. In addition to netting another César, she captured a host of year-end accolades in the States including Best Actress awards from the Golden Globes and the L.A. Film Critics, as well as a nomination from the Screen Actors Guild. Most impressive of all, Cotillard won the much-coveted Best Actress Oscar, launching her into another level of international success and marketability. Her next roles were of the prestigious Hollywood variety, in the Michael Mann period crime drama Public Enemies, opposite Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, and the Rob Marshall musical drama Nine, alongside Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz.In 2010 she showed up as the woman of Leonardo DiCaprio's nightmares in Inception for director Christopher Nolan - and earned a spot in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises in the process. 2011 saw the Oscar winner tackling both Steven Soderbergh's killer virus thriller Contagion as well as Woody Allen's Oscar winning comedy Midnight in Paris. In 2014 she scored strong reviews in a pair of dramas that included The Immigrant and Two Days, One Night. Her work in the latter film garnered a number of year-end accolades including an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

Trivia: Born April 16, 1976, to a painter father and singer/screenwriter mother, actor Lukas Haas was discovered at age four in his West Hollywood, CA, elementary school. Haas' kindergarten principal spotted acting potential in the young student and encouraged his parents to set their sights on a movie career for the boy. They did so and Haas got his first film role in 1983's Testament, in which he played the youngest of the doomed children of post-apocalyptic housewife Jane Alexander. In 1985, Haas got his big break in the title role of Witness (1985), playing an Amish boy who witnesses a murder and must accept the protection of cop Harrison Ford. Haas received positive reviews for his performance in the widely lauded film and went on to further raves -- and an Emmy nomination -- four years later for his TV portrayal of AIDS victim Ryan White in The Ryan White Story. In-between came roles in such high-grade, sensitive teen fare as The Lady in White and The Wizard of Loneliness (both 1988).Haas then disappeared for awhile, making occasional appearances in films such as Rambling Rose (1991), which cast him as a sweet, sexually inquisitive adolescent. 1996 marked the beginning of a new stage in his career, when he appeared in four very different films. No longer the cute little Amish boy in Witness, the now tall, gawky actor showcased his talents in Woody Allen's musical comedy Everyone Says I Love You, Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!, the coming-of-age Boys (in which he co-starred with Winona Ryder), and Johns, in which he and David Arquette played down-and-out prostitutes in Los Angeles.In 1998, the indignity of having his scenes deleted from Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line was partially allayed by the praise Haas received for his lead role in David and Lisa, a made-for-TV movie co-produced by Oprah Winfrey. He went on to star as Bunny Hoover in the screen adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, a role which put him in the company of such actors as Albert Finney, Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte, and Barbara Hershey.After a smattering of minor roles -- and a stint in a band with Vincent Gallo -- Haas was very much in demand as an edgy supporting player as he approached his 30th birthday. Festival audiences got a double-dose of the actor in two high-profile 2005 indies: First as the gang kingpin known simply as Pin in the high-school noir Brick, then in a minor but memorable part as a friend to Michael Pitt's doomed rock star in Gus Van Sant's Last Days. Two higher-profile films of wildly different stripes followed: 2006's gritty crime drama Alpha Dog and the Duff sisters' bubblegum flop Material Girls.

Trivia: Born in Los Angeles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt grew up in front of the camera as a child and teen actor. Winning his first major role at age seven in the TV movie Stranger on My Land (1988), Gordon-Levitt appeared in a number of TV movies and series during the late '80s and early '90s, including a recurring role on the hit sitcom Roseanne from 1993 to 1995. After making his feature film debut as the young version of Craig Sheffer in A River Runs Through It (1992), the young actor garnered further notice as the boy whose prayers are answered in the sleeper Angels in the Outfield (1994) and as Demi Moore's son in The Juror (1996). Gordon-Levitt achieved considerable TV fame, though, when he was cast in NBC's critical and popular hit Third Rock From the Sun (1996-present). As old/young alien Tommy Solomon, he cracked wise with multiple Emmy-winner John Lithgow and attracted teen fans. Making the most of the late-'90s teen movie resurgence during the series' hiatuses, Gordon-Levitt appeared in the teen slasher sequel Halloween: H20 (1998) and starred as one of the romantic schemers in the popular Shakespeare-via-high school comedy 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). After voicing the lead in the expensive animated flop Treasure Planet, Levitt made a conscious decision to shed his TV image. He appeared in a series of challenging indie films including Mysterious Skin, Brick, and The Lookout, and succeeded in redefining his public image. He appeared in Spike Lee's Miracle At St. Anna and the Iraq War drama Stop-Loss in 2008. The next year he starred in the big-budget action film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, but earned better reviews and more respect as the lead in the hit indie romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer. He was cast opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception the next year, and earned arguably the best reviews of his career in 2011 when he starred in the cancer comedy 50/50 as a young man learning to cope with an unexpected, and possibly lethal, illness. He would team with director Chriotpher Nolan again in 2012 as part of the cast in The Dark Knight Rises, and Steven Spielberg cast him as Robert Todd in the director's long gestating biopic Lincoln. Levitt made his feature-length directorial debut in 2013, with Don Jon, which he also wrote and starred in.

Trivia: Born February 21, 1987 Elliot Page has done everything in their power to set themself apart from the mainstream. Beginning their career in their native Canada, Page debuted in the 1997 TV movie Pit Pony when they were only ten years old, playing the role of Maggie Mclean; the movie was then spun off into a series, in which they reprised his role from the film. Their ability to handle complex emotions and dialogue at a young age impressed directors, and they continued to build up their resumé, consciously avoiding the typical teenage girl roles of most movies, which they found to be sexist. In 2005, Page took on the challenging lead role in Hard Candy, a film about a young girl who lures in and traps a man she believes is a sexual predator. Their performance was praised as haunting and real, and soon after that Page contrasted it with a lighter role, playing Kitty Pryde in 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand. By then, audiences and critics alike were noticing Page's impressive screen presence, and they signed on for several projects for the next year, including Juno with Michael Cera. They also joined the cast of An American Crime, playing a true-life victim of torture and murder at the hands of a demented housewife played by Catherine Keener.As the pregnant title character in Jason Reitman's Best Picture Oscar nominee Juno, Page served up a brilliant portrait of an articulate teen dealing with the ramifications of such a major life event. Their witty, touching work earned them universal praise, as well as Best Actress nominations from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy, and a host of kudos that dubbed them the breakout star of the year. Following the success of Juno, Page appeared in Smart People (2008), Peacock (2009), and Super (2010). Though all of those film were relatively well-received, Page wouldn't experience a resurgence in popularity until they co-starred with Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2010 psychological sci-fi Inception. Soon, Page was enjoying their immense reputation by appearing in films like Woody Allen's To Rome with Love.