Trivia: For a long time, Matt Dillon was a teen idol known mostly for his Tiger Beat-ready looks, but he was able to make a successful transition from pubescent star to adult actor. As he grew, his physical attributes -- the dark, pretty-boy eyes and glacier-cut cheekbones -- matured with him, making him well-suited to portray characters whose golden-boy pasts have been eclipsed by adult experience. A native of New Rochelle, NY, where he was born on February 18, 1964, Dillon was a product of a pop-culture milieu. The nephew of comic-strip artist Alex Raymond, creator of Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, and Rip Kirby, he was named for the protagonist of the TV Western Gunsmoke. Dillon was raised as the second oldest of the five sons and one daughter of a stockbroker and a homemaker. He began acting in elementary school, and, at the age of 14, he was discovered by Warner Bros. talent scouts while cutting class. After making a memorable impression on casting director Vic Ramos with an eerily accurate impersonation of the character he was asked to audition for, Dillon won the part and made his film debut as a school bully in Jonathan Kaplan's 1979 teenage drama Over the Edge. His work in the film opened the floodgates for roles in similar teen movies, and over the next few years, Dillon could be seen as the photogenic mouthpiece for adolescent discontent in such films as My Bodyguard (1980), Little Darlings (1980), Tex (1982), Rumble Fish (1983), and that seminal exploration of teenage alienation, The Outsiders (1983). By the mid-'80s, Dillon sought to move beyond the teen mold and began taking more adult roles. His breakthrough into the grown-up realm came with his somber, unheroic portrayal of a junkie trying to come clean in Gus Van Sant's acclaimed Drugstore Cowboy (1989). His status as an adult performer firmly established, Dillon went on to star in films of varying quality, doing some of his most memorable work in Singles (1992), as the egocentric slacker head of a terrifically bad grunge band; To Die For (1995), as the well-meaning but tragically dim husband of a psychotic weather girl (Nicole Kidman); Kevin Spacey's Albino Alligator (1995), as a small-time New Orleans crook; and Beautiful Girls (1996), in which Dillon was perfectly cast as a small-town snow plower unable to make good on the promise of his high-school glory days.Dillon had pivotal roles in several Hollywood hits between 1997 and 1998. The first, In & Out, called for him to caricature himself as a peroxided movie star who unwittingly outs his ex-high school teacher on national television. The following year, he again proved his capacity for bottom-dwelling when he played a woefully unqualified high-school guidance counselor in the delightfully trashy Wild Things and once more when he starred alongside then-girlfriend Cameron Diaz in There's Something About Mary as a sleazy personal investigator, only to drop off the radar for three years before starring in the disappointing One Night at McCool's (2001) with John Goodman and Liv Tyler. The year 2002 found Dillon in the director's chair as well as on the big screen in The City of Ghosts, in which he played a young man under suspicion of insurance fraud. Though the film -- which Dillon also helped write -- received mixed reviews critically, Dillon was lauded for a nonetheless impressive directorial debut. The same year featured Dillon as a mobster in director Scott Kalvert's Deuces Wild and later as an interviewee in the documentary Rockets Redglare!, which also included Steve Buscemi and Willem Dafoe. After participating in 2003's Breakfast With Hunter, which centered on gonzo writer Hunter S. Thompson, Dillon went on to film 2004's Employee of the Month with Steve Zahn and Christina Applegate, which screened at that year's installment of the Sundance Film Festival.2005 would prove to be quite a big year for Dillon, with him appearing a no less than four films of varying size. In addition to the lead in the low-budget Charles Bukowski adaptation Factotum, the actor could also be seen in two ensemble dramas: the Kevin Bacon-directed Loverboy and Crash, a film from Million Dollar Baby scribe Paul Haggis about the intertwining lives of a group of Los Angelenos that would earn Dillon his first Oscar nomination. He also appeared as the villain in the rebirth of Disney's classic Lovebug series, Herbie: Fully Loaded.Dillon would spent the coming years appearing in a wide variety of projects, like the Oscar winning ensemble drama Crash, the wacky comedy You, Me and Dupree, and the action thriller Armored.

Trivia: With mournful eyes that suggest deep contemplation lurking beneath a sometimes imposing exterior, French actor Jean Reno (born July 30th, 1948) has carved a particular niche in cinema by portraying men who prefer to define themselves through action rather than words. Though his characters may often resort to violence without pause when necessary, that isn't to say that they are without the sort of honor or dignity that has served to define some of the screen's most memorable action stars. Born Juan Moreno Errere y Rimenes in Casablanca, Morocco, the future star spent his early, more carefree days roaming the beaches with friends to escape the searing summer heat. Reno was captivated by the likes of such screen legends as John Wayne, Marlon Brando, and Jean Gabin, who would form the foundation of his screen persona much later in life. An early stint in drama school found Reno exploring his acting abilities, but little did the aspiring talent know that his life would soon take a new and unexpected turn. Though Reno's life to that point had been somewhat idyllic, Morocco's increasing instability forced Reno's family to flee to France to start anew. Unfortunately, his new homeland was in the midst of turbulent civil unrest. In order to gain his citizenship, Reno had to sign up with the national service, and he was quickly recruited into the army. When his superiors noticed that he had previously been to drama school, they placed him in charge of arts and entertainment, and after a year of service, Reno set his sights on Paris. More drama school was soon to follow, and throughout the 1970s, Reno gained experience through stage and television work. After being singled out by critics for memorable appearances in such plays as Costa-Gavras' Clair de Femme (a role that he would later revisit in the 1979 film of the same name) and touring Europe with Didier Flamand's theater troupe, Reno made his screen debut in the 1979 Raúl Ruiz film The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting. Throughout the 1980s, Reno made a name for himself playing screen heavies with little dialogue, and in 1981, things began to look up for the rising star when he teamed with hot young French director Luc Besson for the short film L'Avant Dernier. In the years that followed, Reno and Besson not only became close personal friends, but Reno would also appear in almost every one of the director's films. With small parts in Le Dernier Combat (1983) and Subway slowly elevating his star status, it was only a matter of time until Reno landed his breakout role. Of course, it came as no surprise to many that that particular role was in one of Besson's films, and with the release of Besson's Le Grand Bleu in 1988, Reno's time finally came. Cast as the comic rival of diver Jacques Mayhol (Jean-Marc Barr), Reno received international exposure when the film became a worldwide hit with both critics and audiences. In his home country of France, Reno was even nominated for a Best Supporting Actor César. He took a somewhat darker turn two years later when he was cast as a taciturn hit man in Besson's art-house action hit Nikita. By the time Reno took the lead in the 1993 time travel comedy Les Visiteurs (which quickly became the most successful film in French box-office history), he had truly established himself as a lucrative box-office draw. Though the film was indeed a massive success in France, it was deemed "too French" for U.S. distribution, and only the most die-hard fans and critics outside of Reno's native country were truly aware of his star power. If Reno's rise in France had been successfully boosted thanks, in part, to old friend Besson, so would his international exposure thanks to Besson's masterful 1994 effort Léon (released stateside as The Professional). With Reno once again cast in the role of a hit man, Léon told the remarkably tender tale of a sympathetic killer who befriends a young orphan named Mathilda (memorably portrayed by screen newcomer Natalie Portman) after her family is wiped out by a corrupt DEA agent (an unhinged Gary Oldman). Despite the fact that the heart of Léon and Mathilda's relationship was edited out of the U.S. release after being deemed too intense for stateside audiences (the film would eventually find release in the U.S. uncut thanks to a 2000 DVD release of the original version), the movie still possessed a soulful display of character generally lacking in the action genre, and audiences took to the film in droves. Reno was now a bankable star worldwide, though his unpredictable film choices continued to surprise audiences while also informing them that he was capable of much more than high-octane gunplay. In the years that followed, Reno made it a point to act in one French film for each American film in which he appeared, and with stateside roles in French Kiss (1995), Mission: Impossible (1996), and Roseanna's Grave (1997), Reno successfully pleased both his testosterone-driven male fan base and his more sensitive female followers. 1998 would prove a remarkably successful year for Reno in both the U.S. and his native France when, after completing the sequel Corridors of Time: The Visitors II, he turned up in both the disastrous wannabe summer blockbuster Godzilla (for which he turned down the role of Agent Smith in The Matrix) and Manchurian Candidate director John Frankenheimer's masterful action thriller Ronin. Holding his own opposite screen legend Robert De Niro, Reno was clearly a talent to be reckoned with. Before adapting The Visitors for U.S. audiences (as Just Visiting), Reno faced unspeakable danger in the Seven-esque French thriller The Crimson Rivers (2000). In between such action efforts as the Besson-produced Wasabi (2001) and the misguided sci-fi remake Rollerball (2002), Reno found time for love in the romantic comedy Jet Lag (also 2002) with Juliette Binoche. Despite the fact that action in such efforts as 2001's Wasabi and 2003's Ruby & Quentin tended to lean toward the comic angle, Reno proved he wasn't afraid to get a little dirty by once again facing danger in Crimson Rivers 2: Angels of the Apocalypse (2004). Roles in the French-language flicks L'Corse Enquête and L'Empire des loups were quick to follow in 2004 and 2005 respectively, and shortly after starring opposite Roberto Benigni and Tom Waits in Benigni's 2005 effort The Tiger and the Snow, Reno would head back into blockbuster territory stateside with supporting performances in The Pink Panther and The Da Vinci Code. In 2006 Reno would take to the skies with some determined American fighter pilots in the World War I war adventure Flyboys. Reno continued to work in films throughout the 2000s, appearing in The Pink Panther 2, Flushed Away, and Couples Retreat.

Trivia: Dramatic actor Laurence Fishburne gained widespread acclaim and an Oscar nomination for his gripping performance as the Svengali-like Ike Turner in the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got to Do With It (1993) and went on to rack up an impressive string of credits playing leads and supporting roles on stage, screen, and television.Born in Augusta, GA, the sole child of a corrections officer and an educator, Fishburne was raised in Brooklyn following his parents' divorce. An unusually sensitive child with a natural gift for acting, he was taken to various New York stage auditions before landing his first professional role at the age of ten. Two years later, he made his feature film debut with a major role in Cornbread, Earl and Me (1975). A turning point in the young actor's career came when he lied about his age and won the role of a young Navy gunner in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. On location in the Philippines, the teenage actor effectively bade farewell to childhood as he endured the many legendary problems that befell Coppola's production over the next two years. In between shooting days, Fishburne hung out with the adult actors, often exposing himself to their offscreen drinking and drugging antics.Back in Hollywood by the late '70s, he continued playing small supporting roles in features and on television. Like many black actors, he was frequently relegated to playing thugs and young hoodlums. He would continue to appear in Coppola productions like Rumble Fish (1983) and The Cotton Club (1984) throughout the 1980s. Wanting a change from playing heavies, he accepted a recurring role as friendly Cowboy Curtis opposite Paul Reubens on the loopy CBS children's series Pee-Wee's Playhouse. By the early '90s, Fishburne had begun to escape the stereotypical roles of his early career. In 1990, he played a psychotic hit man opposite Christopher Walken in Abel Ferrara's King of New York and a chess-playing hustler in Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993). Following his great success in the Tina Turner biopic, he became one of Hollywood's most prolific actors, appearing in films such as John Singleton's Higher Learning (1995). Fishburne, who had known Singleton when the latter was a security guard on the Pee-Wee's Playhouse set, had previously appeared in the director's debut film Boyz 'N the Hood (1991). After Higher Learning came Othello (1995) and Always Outnumbered, which he also produced. Fishburne had previously produced Hoodlum (1997), in which he also starred. In 1999, he stepped into blockbuster territory with his starring role in the stylish sci-fi action film The Matrix. Increasingly geared towards action films, Fishburne could be seen in the fast and furious motorcycle flick Biker Boyz as fans prepared for the release of the upcoming Matrix sequels. Indeed, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) earned Fishburne further praise from both fans and critics. The same year, Fishburne co-starred with Tim Robbins and Sean Penn in the role of a homicide detective for the Academy Award-winning thriller Mystic River. The actor went on to star as a cop-killing mobster for the crime drama Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), and as a somber professor of English in the critically acclaimed urban drama Akeelah and the Bee (2006). He would co-star in the ensemble political docudrama chronicling the life and death of Robert F. Kennedy (also in 2006), and join the cast of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer in 2007. Fishburne found success again in director Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011), and co-stars in the Superman reboot Man of Steel (2013) as the editor-and-chief of "The Daily Planet". In addition to his work in cinema, Fishburne has established a distinguished stage career, winning a Tony Award in 1992, for his role in August Wilson's Two Trains Running.

Trivia: A screen performer from his early twenties, Columbus Short began his career as a movie actor with somewhat conventional roles in youth-oriented films, such as the 2006 releases Save the Last Dance 2 and Accepted. He worked his way into more serious and substantial material in the years to follow, however -- beginning with the role of Darius on Aaron Sorkin's critically praised but short-lived showbiz drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006-2007). Short received critical kudos and added attention for his contribution to the family-oriented ensemble comedy This Christmas, playing an African-American man who arrives at his family's home to celebrate the Yuletide holiday -- without telling them that he has married a Caucasian woman. Additional assignments included the lead role in Quarantine (2008), directors John E. Dowdle and Drew Dowdle's remake of the Spanish horror film [REC]; and -- on a nostalgic note -- an evocation of blues maestro "Little Walter" Jacobs in director Darnell Martin's ambitious homage to the blues in 1950s Chicago, Cadillac Records (2008). His career continued with Armored, the remake of Death at a Funeral, The Losers and The Girl Is In Trouble. In 2012 he was cast in the TV series Scandal.

Trivia: From his first onscreen appearance opposite Winona Ryder in the 1996 coming-of-age tale Boys, Skeet Ulrich has invited comparisons with actors ranging from Johnny Depp to James Dean. With his cool stare and glacier-cut cheekbones, Ulrich has repeatedly been hailed as one of Young Hollywood's hottest, brightest stars, an accolade he has attempted to live up to with steady, if uneven, work.Born Brian Ray Ulrich on January 20, 1970, the actor was raised in North Carolina by his divorced father. Ulrich acquired his unusual nickname from a Little League coach who dubbed him "Skeeter" because he was small, like a mosquito. Following high school, Ulrich enrolled at New York University where he was "discovered" by playwright David Mamet, who invited him to join his celebrated Atlantic Theater Company as an apprentice. Ulrich performed in a number of productions, and during one of them, he was spotted by director Stacy Cochran, who cast him in an ABC Afterschool Special. Cochran then gave Ulrich his first screen role in Boys, in which he was cast as Winona Ryder's brutish boyfriend. 1996 proved to be a prolific year for the newly discovered actor, who followed his debut with performances in The Craft (which also featured his future Scream co-star, Neve Campbell), the Sharon Stone prison drama Last Dance, Albino Alligator, and, most notably, Scream, in which Ulrich played Campbell's unhinged boyfriend.1997 emerged as a quieter year for Ulrich, who appeared only in a small part (that, it should be noted, was much larger before the tyranny of the cutting-room floor) in James L. Brooks' critically acclaimed As Good As It Gets, and in the leading role in the largely unseen Touch. 1998 saw Ulrich take part in two more films: the obscure Vietnam drama A Soldier's Sweetheart (in which Ulrich starred with his future wife, Georgina Cates) and Richard Linklater's much-anticipated The Newton Boys, a film expected to mine box-office gold in part because of its ridiculously photogenic cast, which, in addition to Ulrich, included Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke, and Vincent D'Onofrio. Despite such a powerful combination of tanned skin, flawless dentistry, and charmingly exuded testosterone, the film failed to find favor among critics or audiences. Ulrich's next feature, 1999's Chill Factor, met a similar fate, causing some to ponder what would come next for an actor who just three years earlier had been toasted as one of the most tantalizing samples that Hollywood had to offer. Ulrich fared somewhat better with Ride With the Devil: a Civil War drama directed by Ang Lee and co-starring Tobey Maguire, Jonathan Rhys Myers, Jeffrey Wright, and Jewel, it received a moderately favorable critical response.

Trivia: Puerto Rican born Amaury Nolasco had no intention of becoming an actor when he was studying biology at the University of Puerto Rico on the road to becoming a doctor, but a casting director who recruited him into an appearance in a commercial changed his plans, and within a few gigs he was hooked. He packed his bags and moved to New York, where he enrolled at the American-British-Dramatic-Arts School and began appearing on shows like CSI and ER. Within a few years, Nolasco had built up a resumé that made him more viable for substantial movie roles. In 2003, he landed a small part in 2 Fast 2 Furious, and in 2004 he scored a role in the Bernie Mac comedy Mr. 3000. These big breaks were nothing, however, compared to the job he got in 2005 when he was cast as series regular Fernando Sucre on the hit series Prison Break. On the heels of this success, Nolasco nabbed a supporting role in the David Spade comedy The Benchwarmers, but much more impressive was the role he signed up for later that year, joining the cast of the hotly anticipated big-screen version of Transformers, slated for release in 2007.

Trivia: Tall, outdoorsy, easygoing, and known for giving consistently well-wrought, naturalistic performances, Fred Ward seems to have all the makings of a leading man, but for some reason he has had more success in supporting and character roles. He became an actor after a three-year Air Force stint and time spent studying at New York's Herbert Berghof Studio and in Rome. While in Italy he dubbed Italian movies and worked as a mime until he made his debut in two Roberto Rossellini films. Upon returning stateside in the early '70s, Ward spent time working in experimental theater and doing some television work. He made his first American film appearance playing a truck driver in Ginger in the Morning (1973). His first major role came in the Clint Eastwood vehicle Escape From Alcatraz (1979) as fellow escapee John Anglin. For Ward, 1983 was a very good year as he played key roles in three major films, Uncommon Valor, as an anguished Vietnam vet-turned-sculptor, Silkwood, as a brave union activist, and in a scene-stealing performance as Virgil "Gus" Grissom in Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff. In 1985, Ward starred in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, a James Bond-ian spy thriller; this was to be the film that made Ward a leading man. Unfortunately, it fizzled at the box office. This led to more leading roles, but again, none were particularly successful and he returned to major supporting roles. Notable performances from the '90s include that of a beaten-down, humiliated cop in Miami Blues, (Ward also co-produced it), a fascinating portrayal of author Henry Miller in Henry & June (both 1990), and as the studio security chief in The Player (1992). His role alongside Kevin Bacon in 1990's Tremors found Ward's comic abilities sharp and in tact, and after again appearing alongside Tim Robbins in the 1992 satire Bob Roberts, the talented actor would continue through the 1990s with role in The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994), and the Keanu Reeves thriller Chain Reaction (1996). Increasingly busy into the new millennium, Ward continued to move effortlessly between television and film roles, displaying his sense of humor in Joe Dirt and Corky Romano (both 2001), and his penchant for action in The Chaos Factor (2000) and Full Disclosure the following year. He worked continuously in projects such as Enough and Sweet Home Alabama (both 2002), the Bob Dylan vehicle Masked and Anonymous, and appeared briefly on the hit television series Grey's Anatomy. In 2010 he was part of the cast of The United States of Tara, and the next year he appeared in the crime comedy 30 Minutes or Less.

Trivia: Born July 8th, 1977, by the time Milo Ventimiglia graduated from high school in 1994, the bright lights of Hollywood had already shone their way to his Orange County home, and within the next year, the young actor was making his first onscreen appearance with a walk-on role on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The part was the first of many, as Ventimiglia proceeded to spend the late '90s and early 2000s with similar roles in movies like She's All That and on shows like CSI. In 2004, Ventimiglia nabbed what most actors would consider a big break when he landed a recurring role on the hit series American Dreams, but a much bigger break was still in store. He joined the regular cast of the WB series Gilmore Girls in 2005, playing the part of Jess Mariano and making millions of viewers familiar with his face. The boost to his star-power no doubt influenced casting directors, who cast him as the son of Sylvester Stallone in 2006's Rocky Balboa, and then as a young man who discovers he harbors superpowers on the smash-hit sci-fi series Heroes. Ventimiglia appeared in the sci-fi action thriller Gamer in 2009, and took on a supporting role in the 2012 Adam Sandler vehicle That's My Boy.

Trivia: From the time of his onscreen debut in the mid-'80s, character actor Robert Harvey specialized in earnest portrayals of everyman professional types, nearly always in a bit capacity, roles such as firemen, prison wardens, countermen, bartenders, and physicians. He took his premier onscreen bow in the Clint Eastwood-headlined, Richard Tuggle-directed psychothriller Tightrope (1984) and thereafter appeared in dozens of motion pictures over the following decades. These included Above the Rim (1994), The Patriot (1998), The Contender (2000), Reign Over Me (2007), and Nothing But the Truth (2008).

Trivia: Like most children of the 1960s, Sam Raimi grew up acting out his fantasies with the benefit of an 8 mm movie camera. The film gauge "grew to 35" when Raimi, with the aid of friends and relatives, raised 500,000 dollars to film a horror feature, The Evil Dead (1983). Not your average sliced-up-teenager epic, Evil Dead was a marvelously wicked assault on the senses, belying its tiny budget with several extremely clever (if nausea-inducing) set pieces. Raimi switched to slapstick comedy with Crimewave (1985), a wild Detroit-based crime caper co-scripted by Raimi's friends and fellow devotees of the bizarre, Joel and Ethan Coen. Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987) giddily expanded the scope and splat-stick humor of the initial installment, and quickly became a cult classic with it s over-the-top gore and imaginative direction. Evil Dead 2 was the mark of a director truly at the top of his creative game, and with that film a foundation was cemented between Raimi and Bruce Campbell that would reach almost mythical status among the hardcore fans of the series. Raimi next came out guns-blazing for Darkman (1990), a comic-book inspired fantasy/adventure representing the director's biggest production budget to date. Though it performed only moderately at the box office, fans clamored to see Raimi's first major release and got an extra kick out of longtime friend and Evil Dead cohort Bruce Campbell in an all-too-brief closing-scene cameo. Also expensively mounted was Army of Darkness (1992), a time-travel swashbuckler that gave evidence of extensive post-production tinkering (notably its skimpy 80-minute running time). A sequel to the first two Evil Dead flicks, the film was released under the more ambiguous title lest it be associated with the outrageously gory previous installments. In the following years the now-established director would hone his talents as a producer with such big-budget action releases as Hard Target (1993) and Timecop (1994). The mid-'90s also found Raimi producing two tele-films that would become the genesis of television's massively popular Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (Raimi would continue as executive producer during the series' four-year run) as well as executive producing Hercules arguably more successful companion series, Xena: Warrior Princess.In 1995, Raimi once again stepped back behind the camera to helm The Quick and the Dead, a revisionist Western starring Sharon Stone. It earned only a lukewarm reception, and it was three years before Raimi directed another feature. 1998's A Simple Plan was a far greater success than The Quick and the Dead: Starring Billy Bob Thornton and Bill Paxton as brothers driven to mistrust and paranoia after discovering four million dollars in the woods, it was Raimi's most lauded film to date, earning a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination for Scott B. Smith and a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Thornton. The following year, Raimi submerged himself fully in the mainstream, directing the Kevin Costner baseball vehicle For Love of the Game. Unfortunately, the film met with a very mixed reaction from critics and audiences alike, many of whom longed for the days when Bruce Campbell, demonic mutilation, and possessed appendages reigned supreme. The Southern gothic trappings of Raimi's next film, The Gift (2000), found the director's longtime fan base hesitantly re-embracing the one-time cult figure with its tale of the supernatural and quietly creepy atmosphere. A frightening performance by the usually non-threatening Keanu Reeves caught jaded filmgoers off guard and the decidedly low-key film contained enough scares to prove that while it may have been temporarily dulled, Raimi had certainly not lost his edge.Although Raimi's next effort may not have been the long-anticipated fourth chapter in the Evil Dead saga (a fanboy fantasy that Raimi and Campbell had cheerfully dismissed on numerous occasions), the long-anticipated release of Spider-Man found the director back on familiar ground with its wild visuals and comic-book origins. Though numerous A-list directors (including James Cameron and David Fincher) had been attached to helm the film during its extended incubation, Raimi's childhood love for the well-loved web-slinger eventually won him the opportunity (and formidable challenge) of bringing the story of Spider-Man to the big screen. With Tobey Maguire in the lead, Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson, and Willem Dafoe suiting up as the Green Goblin, Spider-Man shattered all expectations with overwhelmingly positive word of mouth and a historical opening weekend box-office take of 114 million dollars. With its respect to the source material remaining unusually faithful and a talented cast lending the film as much solid story as thrilling action, fans immediately hungered for more, to which Raimi responded with the wildly popular and equally frenetic Spider Man II. Though Raimi would remain true to the hit series he had so skillyfully crafted by promising Spider Man III as his next directorial outing, it was around this time that the tireless filmmaker began turning his attentions as a producer away from television to focus on the big screen with his production company Ghost House Pictures. The wildly successful horror remake The Grudge being the first outing by the comapny, Raimi subsequently removed any doubt that he was still interested in terrifying audiences when he announced that Ghost House would be producing such eagerly-anticipated horror outings as 30 Days of Night, The Messengers, The Grudge 2, and, of course, the long-rumored remake of his classic shocker The Evil Dead. Spider-Man III arrived, amid much hoopla and fanfare, in early May 2007 - seemingly the perfect cap-off to the summer movie season of that year. With Raimi helming, megamogul Laura Ziskin producing, and Alvin Sargent on board, once again, to co-script, many regarded the picture as an ace in the hole even before it hit cinemas. To be certain, the box office mojo soared. Some critical responses waxed decidedly less enthusiastic than they had for the first two installments, however; one high-profile reviewer complained openly about the strain placed on Raimi and his co-scripters (Sargent and brother Ivan Raimi) to concoct yet another variation on a formula that perhaps didn't demand reiteration except to gross dollar one. The story in question finds Spidey coming into contact with a space particle that blackens his suit and turns him into a raging egomaniac (didn't the scenarists hear scary echoes of Superman 3?). He must then take on not one but three baddies: the son of the Green Goblin from the second Spiderman (James Franco); escaped criminal Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church), who morphs into The Sandman; and reporter Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), who transforms into the fanged villain Venom. Sadly for Raimi and company, many die-hard fans of the Spider-Man series considered the second sequel to be a lackluster cap on an otherwise solid trilogy and the character was subsequently handed over to director Mark Webb for a reboot.In the wake of his Spider-Man series Raimi dived back into the genre pool with 2009's Drag Me to Hell -- a highly original horror comedy about an ambitious loan officer cursed by a vengeful old gypsy -- yet despite a torrent of positive critical nods, the film failed to make an impression at the box office. But even that perceived failure did little to slow the creativity of the visionary director, and shortly thereafter Raimi was back behind at the helm with Oz: The Great and Powerful -- a high-profile prequel to The Wizard of Oz inspired by the writings of L. Frank Baum and featuring an imperssive cast that included James Franco, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams, and Zach Braff. Meanwhile, as a producer, Raimi teamed with Mandate Pictures and longtime filmmaking partner Rob Tapert to launch Ghost House Pictures, a genre-oriented studio that shocked thick-skinned moviegoers with The Grudge, 30 Days of Night, The Possession, and The Evil Dead (2013) among others.