Trivia: Tall, gangly, and oddly handsome, stage, screen, and television actor Jeff Goldblum is an unlikely sex symbol. But for many women, especially those fond of eccentric intellectual types, he fits the role perfectly. Known for the range of quirky, often otherworldly characters he has portrayed, Goldblum is adept at playing lead and supporting roles in dramas and comedies alike. A native of Pittsburgh, PA, where he was born October 22, 1952, Goldblum moved to New York at the age of 17 to pursue an acting career. He got his start at Sanford Meisner's distinguished Neighborhood Playhouse, and in the '70s began performing in a wide variety of on and off-Broadway productions. When he was 22, Goldblum made his film debut with a small role as a rapist in Michael Winner's brutal revenge drama Death Wish (1974). He was performing on-stage in the El Grande de Coca Cola review when Robert Altman gave him a small part in California Split (1974) and a slightly larger role in Nashville (1975). Afterwards, Goldblum was steadily employed as a bit player in both major and minor features, turning in one of his most notable performances as a nervous houseguest struggling to remember his mantra in the Los Angeles-set segment of Annie Hall (1977). In 1980, Goldblum branched out into television, starring opposite Ben Vereen in the short-lived television detective comedy Tenspeed and Brown Shoe. As Brown Shoe, Goldblum played an uptight stockbroker trying to make it as a hardboiled private detective. Although the role may have given him greater recognition, the actor gained his first really favorable reviews playing a tabloid magazine reporter in The Big Chill (1983). This led to leading roles in such films as Into the Night (1985), where Goldblum played an aerospace engineer opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, and Silverado (also 1985), which cast him as a villainous gambler. In 1986, he had his first hit movie with David Cronenberg's terrifying sci-fi-horror film The Fly (1986), playing a driven scientist whose research turns him into a gruesome mutant. His co-star was his then-wife, Geena Davis, whom he met while they were on the set of the comedy-thriller Transylvania 6-5000 (1985). The couple divorced in the early '90s and Goldblum then embarked on a highly publicized relationship with actress Laura Dern that broke up in the mid-'90s.In 1989, Goldblum made a favorable transatlantic impression in the British romantic comedy The Tall Guy, playing a perpetually unemployed actor who is cast as the lead of a musical about the Elephant Man. He continued to work steadily throughout the subsequent decade, appearing in films of markedly varying quality. He found great success in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, playing a mathematician in one of the decade's biggest blockbusters. In 1996, Goldblum again explored blockbuster territory with a leading role as a computer genius in Independence Day. He reprised his role from Jurassic Park in that film's sequel 1997 sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park. He starred opposite Eddie Murphy in the notorious bomb Holy Man.At the beginning of the next decade Goldblum worked primarily in independent films such as Burr Steers' debut Igby Goes Down, and playing the romantic and professional rival to Bill Murray in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. In 2006 he scored a role in his most mainstream film in quite sometime as part of the impressive ensemble in Barry Levinson's satire Man of the Year. In 2009, Goldblum joined the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent in the show's eighth season to play the role of Detective Zach Nichols. 2010 found the actor co-starring with Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton for the showbiz comedy Morning Glory. In 2014, he re-teamed with Anderson in The Grand Budapest Hotel. The following year, he appeared opposite Johnny Depp in Mortdecai and began filming his role in the long-awaited Indepdendence Day sequel, due in 2016.

Trivia: Boasting talent, versatility, and one of the most distinctive heads of hair in Hollywood, Julianne Moore has proven herself equally adept in both mainstream blockbusters and smaller, more intelligent films. The daughter of a military judge and a Scottish social worker, Moore was born in Fayetteville, NC, on December 3, 1961. After attending Boston University, she began her acting career via the taxing world of soap opera. From 1985 until 1988, she was best-known for her role as Franny Hughes on As the World Turns. The part, which on occasion required her to play twins, won Moore a 1988 Daytime Emmy Award.The actress made her entrance into the big-screen arena with a 1990 debut in the schlocktastic Tales From the Darkside: The Movie (which also featured Steve Buscemi). Two years later, after making various TV movies, Moore reappeared in feature films with supporting parts in Curtis Hanson's tale of a babysitter gone bad, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and the comedy The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag. The following year, her exposure increased further thanks to roles in four different films that ranged from the half-baked thriller Body of Evidence to the sweetly quirky Benny and Joon to the big-budget smash The Fugitive to Robert Altman's epic Short Cuts. The last film gave Moore literal exposure in addition to the more figurative kind: she was required to play one scene naked from the waist down, something that predictably won the attention of critics and filmgoers.The intermittent praise that had been afforded Moore was amplified in 1994 with her performance as Yelena in Vanya on 42nd Street. The object of adjectives ranging from "luminescent" to "radiant" to "revelatory," the actress went on to play a very different character in Todd Haynes' Safe (1995). Moore won an Independent Spirit Award nomination for her portrayal of a woman (literally) sickened by the environment around her and further proved that she was an actress of distinct versatility. The same year she again demonstrated this ability with a starring role opposite Hugh Grant in the comedy Nine Months.Following a turn as one of Picasso's numerous lovers in Surviving Picasso (1996), a lead in the family drama The Myth of Fingerprints (she would later have a son with the film's director, Bart Freundlich), and a substantial part in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Moore nabbed what was one of the plum roles of her career in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights. For her portrayal of a porn actress, she won Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. A substantial role as an erotic artist in Ethan Coen's and Joel Coen's The Big Lebowski followed in 1998, along with a turn as Marion Crane's sister in Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake. The next year, Moore starred in a number of high-profile projects, beginning with Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune, in which she was cast as the dim sister of a decidedly unhinged Glenn Close. A portrayal of the scheming Mrs. Cheveley followed in Oliver Parker's An Ideal Husband, with a number of critics asserting that Moore was the best part of the movie. The actress then enjoyed another collaboration with director Anderson in Magnolia, an epic telling of nine interweaving stories inspired by Short Cuts and featuring an impressive cast that included Anderson regulars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Baker Hall, and John C. Reilly. The same year, Moore also starred in the drama The End of the Affair, with Ralph Fiennes and Stephen Rea, and portrayed a grieving mother in A Map of the World, which premiered at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival.2001 found the popular actress stepping into dark territory with the role of FBI Agent Clarice Starling in Ridley Scott's Hannibal, the long-awaited and eagerly anticipated follow-up to Jonathan Demme's numbingly suspenseful Silence of the Lambs. A few short months later, Moore lightened the mood substantially with her humorous turn as a bumbling government scientist in the sci-fi comedy Evolution. Increasingly comfortable alternating between big-budget features and more personal art-house films, Moore bowled over audiences with a pair of powerhouse performances in both Far From Heaven and The Hours. A detailed throwback to the forgotten Hollywood melodrama, the former featured Moore's Oscar nominated role as a housewife who enters into a controversial relationship after discovering her husband's homosexuality and provided audiences a dose of Douglas Sirk that hadn't been tasted since the mid-1950s. A variation on the themes presented in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, the film version of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer prize winning novel The Hours once again found Moore Oscar nominated for her role as a repressed 1950s era housewife, this time taking a special shine to Mrs. Dalloway while pondering an escape from her stifling marriage. In the wake of arguably her most successful year to date, Moore began to dabble behind the scenes for the first time, serving as executive producer on the 2003 independent adaptation of Wallace Shawn's play Marie and Bruce, a film that she also starred in. The following year, audiences could find Moore onscreen opposite Pierce Brosnan in the romantic comedy The Laws of Attraction and in the poorly-received thriller The Forgotten. In 2005 she earned good reviews for The Prize Winner of Defiance, OH, but the film failed to catch on with audiences. She continued to work steadily starring opposite Sam Jackson in the adaptation of Richard Price's Freedomland, and starring opposite Clive Owen in Alfonso Cuaron's futuristic thriller Children of Men. She once again teamed with her director husband Bart Freundlich in the relationship comedy Trust the Man. Shortly after returning to television with a recurring role on the hit comedy series 30 Rock, the talented actress earned numerous positive reviews for her nuanced performance in The Kids Are All Right, and while she failed to earn a BAFTA Award as one half of a same sex couple attempting to help their children come to terms with being adopted, Moore's memorable performance as a frustrated housewife in 2011's Crazy, Stupid, Love. showed an actress still capable of balancing drama and comedy to striking effect. On the heels of her performance in Paul Weitz's Being Flynn the following year, it was announced that Moore would be following in the formidable footsteps of Piper Laurie in the 2013 remake of the Stephen King's Carrie starring Chloe Grace Moritz (Let Me In, Hugo). One year later she earned a slew of year-end accolades, including an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, for her work playing an accomplished professor deteriorating from Alzheimer's in Still Alice.

Trivia: Was a drama teacher before becoming an actor. Studied at the Bristol Old Vic Drama School in Bristol, England. Appeared in plays with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. Breakthrough film performance came playing the role of a violent father in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988). His role in In the Name of the Father (1993) won him widespread acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. First portrayed a romantic lead in 1997's Among Giants. In 2002, he performed in the one-man play Scaramouche Jones. Awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 2004. Appeared in the 2009 climate-change film The Age of Stupid. Portrayed Spyros, the adoptive father of Perseus, in 2010's Clash of the Titans. Passed away in January 2011 after a lengthy battle with cancer.

Trivia: American actor Arliss Howard was born in Missouri, but he became well known to moviegoers of 1987 as a Texan named "Cowboy" in Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam picture Full Metal Jacket. Many viewers assumed that this tall, lithe actor made his film debut in the Kubrick picture, but Howard had in fact been showing up in "hick" roles for several years, notably as the naive vacuum cleaner salesman in Door To Door (84). After his tour of duty with Kubrick, Howard was back to baby-faced roles with his performance as a 24-year-old detective posing as a high schooler in Plain Clothes (88). Howard has developed into something of a George Brent for the 1990s, willing to play second fiddle (albeit a very good one) to some of the more dynamic actresses of the era. He was one of lovelorn Jessica Lange's many "Mr. Perfect" candidates in Men Don't Leave (90); he was second-billed to Goldie Hawn as a disturbed Vietnam vet in Crisscross (92); and in 1991's For the Boys, Howard appeared unbilled as USO performer Bette Midler's doomed GI husband. Arliss Howard's TV movie appearances have included I Know My First Name is Stephen (89) and Iran: Days of Crisis (91).

Trivia: One of England's most respected actors and directors, Sir Richard Attenborough made numerous contributions to world cinema both in front of and behind the camera. The son of a Cambridge school administrator, Attenborough began dabbling in theatricals at the age of 12. While attending London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1941, he turned professional, making his first stage appearance in a production of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! He made his screen debut as the Young Sailor in Noel Coward and David Lean's In Which We Serve (1943), before achieving his first significant West End success as the punkish, cowardly, petty criminal Pinkie Brown in Brighton Rock. After three years of service with the Royal Air Force, Attenborough rose to film stardom in the 1947 film version of Brighton Rock -- a role that caused him to be typecast as a working-class misfit over the next few years. One of the best of his characterizations in this vein can be found in The Guinea Pig (1948), in which the 26-year-old Attenborough was wholly credible as a 13-year-old schoolboy. As the '50s progressed, he was permitted a wider range of characters in such films as The Magic Box (1951), The Ship That Died of Shame (1955), and Private's Progress (1956). In 1959, he teamed up with director Bryan Forbes to form Beaver Films. Before the partnership dissolved in 1964, Attenborough had played such sharply etched personalities as Tom Curtis in The Angry Silence (1960) and Bill Savage in Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964); he also served as producer for the Forbes-directed Whistle Down the Wind (1962) and The L-Shaped Room (1962). During the '60s, Attenborough exhibited a fondness for military roles: POW mastermind Bartlett in The Great Escape (1963); hotheaded ship's engineer Frenchy Burgoyne in The Sand Pebbles (1966); and Sgt. Major Lauderdale in Guns at Batasi (1964), the performance that won him a British Academy Award. He also played an extended cameo in Doctor Dolittle (1967), and sang "I've Never Seen Anything Like It in My Life," a paean to the amazing Pushmi-Pullyu. This boisterous musical performance may well have been a warm-up for Attenborough's film directorial debut, the satirical anti-war revue Oh, What a Lovely War (1969). He subsequently helmed the historical epics Young Winston (1972) and A Bridge Too Far (1977), then scaled down his technique for the psychological thriller Magic (1978), which starred his favorite leading man, Anthony Hopkins. With more and more of his time consumed by his directing activities, Attenborough found fewer opportunities to act. One of his best performances in the '70s was as the eerily "normal" real-life serial killer Christie in 10 Rillington Place (1971). In 1982, Attenborough brought a 20-year dream to fruition when he directed the spectacular biopic Gandhi. The film won a raft of Oscars, including a Best Director statuette for Attenborough; he was also honored with Golden Globe and Director's Guild awards, and, that same year, published his book In Search of Gandhi, another product of his fascination with the Indian leader. All of Attenborough's post-Gandhi projects were laudably ambitious, though none reached the same pinnacle of success. Some of the best of his latter-day directorial efforts were Cry Freedom, a 1987 depiction of the horrors of apartheid; 1992's Chaplin, an epic biopic of the great comedian; and Shadowlands (1993), starring Anthony Hopkins as spiritually motivated author C.S. Lewis. Attenborough returned to the screen during the '90s, acting in avuncular character roles, the most popular of which was the affable but woefully misguided billionaire entrepreneur John Hammond in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993), a role he reprised for the film's 1997 sequel. Other notable performances included the jovial Kriss Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street (1994) and Sir William Cecil in Elizabeth (1998). The brother of naturalist David Attenborough and husband of actress Sheila Sim, he was knighted in 1976 and became a life peer in 1993. Attenborough has chaired dozens of professional organizations and worked tirelessly on behalf of Britain's Muscular Dystrophy Campaign.In 1998 the venerable screen legend has a small part in the Oscar-nominated Elizabeth, and in 1999 he directed Grey Owl. Then, in 2007, at the age of 84 he directed the seeping World War II epic romance Closing the Ring with a stellar cast that included Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, Brenda Fricker, and Pete Postlethwaite. In 2008, he suffered several health setbacks and retired from filmmaking. He died in 2014, just before his 91st birthday.

Trivia: An actor whose strong features and sinewy 6'4" physique appear to have been chiseled from a slab of testosterone, Vince Vaughn is Hollywood's closest human approximation of a Chevy pick-up. Born March 28th, 1979, Vaughn's roles invariably reflect these qualities, and have given him a genial affability among middle Americans. Thanks to Vaughn's skills as a performer, however, he continues to resist typecasting, lending effortless portrayals to characters ranging from slick bachelors to raging psychopaths to morally conflicted limo drivers. A tried-and-true Midwestern boy, Vaughn was born in Minneapolis on March 28, 1970, and raised in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Lake Forest. The son of a self-made businessman and a stock and real-estate broker, Vaughn diverged from the upwardly mobile path forged by his parents. A hyperactive teen (and lackluster student), Vaughn spent time in special ed. and ran with a fast crowd (though he later claimed that he never felt the need for all-out rebellion). Despite his poor scholastic performance, Vaughn derived ambition from his interest in acting -- an interest that first blossomed at the age of seven -- and even served as senior class president. Upon graduation, with only his diploma and a role in a Chevy commercial as his credentials, Vaughn headed for Hollywood. Upon arrival, he proceeded to work in almost complete obscurity for the next seven years.During this period, Vaughn made the acquaintance of Jon Favreau, another struggling actor who hailed from the East. Their ensuing friendship and real-life adventures provided the inspiration for their ticket to the bigtime, 1996's Swingers. Directed by Doug Liman, the comedy stars Vaughn and Favreau (who also co-wrote the script) as two amiable, Rat Pack-obsessed, "so money" bachelors prowling the streets and bars of L.A. for "beautiful babies" and the occasional job opportunity. This irreverent-but-insightful Miramax release became a bona-fide sleeper hit. Vaughn, whose character, Trent, was the film's resident fast-talking ladies' man, emerged as a sex symbol in the making. A supporting role in Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park heightened the actor's profile and revealed his ability to transition with great fluidity between indie films and box-office blockbusters. Nevertheless, Vaughn subsequently took the small, quiet film route, starring in The Locusts (1997), an overheated but half-baked melodrama in debt to both Tennessee Williams and East of Eden, and A Cool, Dry Place, a family drama that garnered a cool, dry reception from both audiences and critics. In 1998, the actor fared substantially better with his turn as a limo driver who is called upon to make a great sacrifice for a friend in Joe Ruben's Return to Paradise, and he brought a fine admixture of dark humor and sublimated menace to his part as a charismatic sociopath in Clay Pigeons. Vaughn evoked colossal mental dysfunction as Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant's truly ugly and ill-advised remake of Psycho that same year. Critics and viewers regarded his performance -- like the film itself -- with a tepid blend of indifference and bewilderment. After that egregious misfire, Vaughn wisely took a couple of years off before re-emerging with a number of projects in 2000. These included The Cell, a surrealistic horror picture co-starring Jennifer Lopez and Vincent D'Onofrio, Prime Gig, with Vaughn as California's best telemarketer, and South of Heaven, West of Hell, an ensemble western that marked the directorial debut of country singer Dwight Yoakam. Following-up with a part in writer Favreau's Made, Vaughn's next big role arrived in the form of a deceptive stepfather harboring a dark secret in the thriller Domestic Disturbance. Unfortunately, the film bombed on a critical front. Vaughn again ducked out of sight for several years, but Todd Phillips's 2003 comedy Old School brought him back to the top of the heap. Teaming Vaughn with Will Ferrell and Luke Wilson as a trio of over-the-hill party animals who relive their Animal House days by returning to frat house life, Old School became a sleeper hit, and inspired the press to term Vaughn, Wilson, Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Jack Black and others as The Frat Pack. The next of the "Frat Pack" vehicles arrived in 2004, with Todd Phillips's spoofy retread of the 1970s hit Starsky & Hutch, featuring Vaughn as the slimy villain, Reese Feldman. The picture (predictably) became a mega-hit, and the actor's newfound momentum continued to build when, only a few months later, he starred in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Apparently channeling Bill Murray circa-1985, Vaughn received positive reviews for playing the good-guy opposite muscle-bound baddie Ben Stiller.Vaughn next graced the Will Ferrell vehicle Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) with a small but memorable role, before he made an about-face for the comedy-drama Thumbsucker. Vaughn impressed critics with his characterization and received praise for his funny and heartfelt performance. He returned to the popcorn humor that initially made him a star, however (and joined the $200-million-gross club in the process) with a leading part in the comedy The Wedding Crashers, a raunchy, R-rated film that proved once and for all the actor could open a movie.Throughout 2006, rumors swarmed about Vaughn's offscreen life, and alleged romantic relationship with newly divorced Jennifer Aniston -- a relationship that blossomed on the set of The Break-Up (ironically, a comedy about an couple ending their two-year relationship and trying to divide their possessions, friends and condo without killing each other). Gossip amped up anticipation and heightened curiosity. Meanwhile, Aniston aggressively denied rumors of an engagement. Upon release, The Break-Up bolstered Vaughn's reputation as a strong comic lead, and became another surprise hit.In the holiday comedy Joe Claus -- which marks Vaughn's third outing with director David Dobkin -- he plays the title character, the no-account, loser brother of Santa Claus who teams up with his more famous sibling at the North Pole to defeat villain Kevin Spacey. Vaughn undertook a personal venture for the documentary Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show, tooling around the country on a tour bus with four aspiring stand-up comics as they travel from gig to gig. And he stayed true to form with another "Frat Pack" comedy, Outsourced. In the years to come, Vaughn would remain an ever present force in the comedy world, appearing in movies like Four Christmases, Couples Retreat, and The Watch, as well as producing projects like The Internship and the sitcom Sullivan & Son.

Trivia: With a cool stoic gaze suggesting unmentionable thoughts lurking somewhere deep behind those deep, blank eyes, popular character actor Peter Stormare offered American audiences slightly discomforting comic relief in Joel and Ethan Coen's popular dark comedy Fargo (1996), though his versatility and adaptability have since led him to roles in everything from major Hollywood blockbusters to the stripped-down Dogma 95 efforts of eccentric Danish director Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (2000). Born Peter Rolf Stormare in Arbra, Sweden, on August 27th,1953, the dynamic Nordic actor began his career with an 11-year stint with the Royal National Theater of Sweden. Aside from appearing in such productions as Don Juan and The Curse of the Starving Class, Stormare would pen such original plays as El Paso and The Electric Boy. Later earning positive critical reception in such classic Shakespearian productions as King Lear, the actor made his big-screen debut, and began a 15-year association with legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, with a brief appearance in Fanny and Alexander in 1982. Later earning positive critical reception for his role in the legendary filmmaker's stage adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet in 1988, Stormare continued to gain career trajectory with numerous memorable stage and film roles in his native country. In 1990, Stormare became the Associate Artistic Director at the Tokyo Globe Theatre and made his American screen debut as a neurochemist who questions Robin Williams' experimental medical tactics in the touching Awakenings. Subsequently appearing in numerous international films (Freud's Leaving Home [1991] and Damage [1992]), Stormare hit his stateside stride with his chilling turn as a woodchipper-happy kidnapper in Fargo. Though he would continue to make appearances in such Swedish efforts as Ett Sorts Hades and Bergman's In the Presence of a Clown (1996 and 1997 respectively), his Hollywood star was on the rise with memorable roles in such increasingly mega-budgeted efforts as The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Armageddon (1998). Equally adept in comparatively low-budget efforts such as director George Romero's Bruiser (2000) and the aforementioned Dancer -- two roles which couldn't possibly be more polar opposites -- Stormare branched out into sitcom territory with his turn as Julia Louis-Dreyfuss' enamored superintendent in the ill-fated Watching Ellie in 2002. It wasn't long before Stormare was back on the silver screen, and with the same year potential blockbuster triple threat of The Tuxedo, Windtalkers, and Minority Report, it appeared as if Stormare's unique talents were as in-demand as ever. 2002 also found the established actor branching out with his role as producer of the romantic comedy The Movie Nut and His Audience.In 2005 he joined the cast of The Brothers Grimm in the role of an interogator, and took on a regular role in the television drama Prison Break. Stormare made guest appearances on a variety of television stand-outs throughout the 2000s, among them including Weeds, Monk, Entourage, and Hawaii Five-0.

Trivia: British character actor, onscreen from the late '60s.

Trivia: Character actor Richard Schiff has done prolific work on both the large and small screens, and has appeared in films ranging from Seven (1995) to Living Out Loud (1998). Appearing as a cross between Wallace Shawn and Kevin Spacey, Schiff, a native of the East Coast, began his career as a stage director in New York. After founding and serving as the artistic director of the Manhattan Repertory Theatre and directing a number of on- and off-Broadway productions, he realized that he wanted to act. As such, Schiff began performing on both the stage and in independent films, then moved to Los Angeles so as to better pursue an acting career. He continued to work in the theatre, joining Tim Robbins' Actors Gang, and gradually broke into film. Appearances in such films as Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992), the Coen Brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), and Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) helped to put Schiff on the map as a character actor and led to substantial roles in Living Out Loud, which cast him as Danny De Vito's brother, and Dr. Dolittle (1998), in which he played one of Eddie Murphy's fellow men of medicine.Schiff also continued to do a great deal of work on television, appearing in shows ranging from Ally McBeal to E.R. In 2000, he joined the cast of the acclaimed NBC series The West Wing, playing the Chief Press Advisor to the President (Martin Sheen). That same year, he received a Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Emmy nomination for his portrayal. In the years to come, Schiff would remain active on screen, appearing on TV series like Past Life, The Cape, and House of Lies.

Trivia: His parents own and operate a dance studio in New York. Was cast as the son of Debra Winger in Shadowlands (1993) and as the son of Meryl Streep in The River Wild (1994). In 1994, he was nominated for a Saturn award and won a Young Artist award for his work in Jurassic Park. Appeared alongside his brother, John, in Simon Birch. In 2007, he wrote, directed, coproduced and starred in Matters of Life and Death.

Trivia: A dark-haired beauty with a devilish smile, Camilla Belle began her acting career long before she grew into her bewitching looks. She began appearing in television commercials in 1987, when she was just nine months old. By the time she started school, she was also appearing in her first dramatic role: a part in the made-for-TV thriller, Trouble Shooters: Trapped Beneath the Earth. Born to an American father and Brazilian mother, Belle grew to be fluent in both English and Portuguese, and was in fact named after a character on a popular Brazilian soap opera. While attending school in Los Angeles, Belle enjoyed trips to Brazil to visit family, as well as a household that embraced the food, music, and culture of both branches of her heritage. By the time she was in high school, she'd gotten her feet wet with appearances in numerous TV and big-screen films, such as Empty Cradle and A Little Princess. In 2004, Belle finally landed the part that would make her a popular name with a role in the independent film The Ballad of Jack & Rose. Starring alongside such greats as Daniel Day-Lewis and Catherine Keener was a tremendous experience for the young actress, and she followed up the role with another independent venture, The Chumscrubber. Finally ready for mainstream success, Belle starred in the 2005 remake of When a Stranger Calls, followed by a role in the thriller The Quiet, in which she played an orphaned deaf girl who is placed in the sordid and incestuous household of her godparents and their daughter, played by another sultry teen star, Elisha Cuthbert. She was cast in the prehistoric action film 10,000 B.C., starred in the poignant drama Adrift, the comedy Father of Invention, and the 2011 laugher From Prada to Nada.

Trivia: Ross Partridge began his career as character actor who specialized in playing everymen (often with an urban edge). He first bowed with a small role in the 1992 Christian Slater police comedy Kuffs, then landed a lead in the direct-to-video shocker Amityville: A New Generation (1993) and a bit part in Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). Shortly thereafter, Partridge became involved with Kevin Spacey's production shingle, Trigger Street Productions, a label that backed his debut as a writer/director, the little-seen and critically panned mystery-psychodrama hybrid Interstate 84 (2000). Partridge's work as a producer for Trigger continued unabated for a time despite the middling success of this debut, with the up-and-comer placing his strongest emphasis on documentaries, notably the 2002 efforts Uncle Frank and America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero. Within a few years, however, he returned to work in front of the camera, with a recurring part in the daytime soap opera As the World Turns, and roles in the A-list shocker Prom Night and the Duplass Brothers' indie darling Baghead (2008).

Trivia: Ian Abercrombie achieved broadest recognition in the mid-'90s for his work in character roles, principally stuffy upper-crust types, including Mr. Pitt, Elaine's employer on Seinfeld, Alfred the butler in the series Birds of Prey, and the staid auctioneer in the climactic sequence of Mouse Hunt. Abercrombie was born in 1936 to a working-class English family, and he showed a natural interest in performing from an early age, taking up tap dancing as a boy. At 17, he left for New York and pursued the beginnings of a career on stage -- among his early engagements, he appeared in a 1955 production of Stalag 17 starring Jason Robards Jr., and he understudied Roddy McDowall in a stock production of Bell, Book and Candle that also starred Maria Riva, the daughter of Marlene Dietrich. He did a short stint in the army, in Special Services, where he directed plays as well as acting in them. A trip to California for a production of a play about W.C. Fields that never materialized ended up putting Abercrombie into movies, and over the next few years he played small roles in pictures like Von Ryan's Express, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, The Molly Maguires, and Young Frankenstein, as well as leading parts in theatrical productions of The Vortex and Crucifer of Blood. Abercrombie was working steadily for most of the 1980s and beyond, appearing in such movies as Army of Darkness, Wild Wild West, and The Lost World. It was with his portrayal on Seinfeld of Mr. Pitt -- lovably eccentric and just sufficiently full of himself to put Julia Louis-Dreyfus's Elaine on the defensive -- that Abercrombie became an actor whose name and face were remembered by the general public. He remained active on prime time television portraying Alfred the butler in the Warner Bros. television series Birds of Prey, while also doing a huge amount of voice-over and radio work, as well as a one-man show entitled Jean Cocteau -- A Mirror Image. Back on the big screen, Ambercrombie could be spotted in both the family comedy Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties and David Lynch's Inland Empire in 2006. Abercrombie died of kidney failure at age 77 in early 2012, not long after being diagnosed with lymphoma.

Trivia: Recalls going to the same barbershop in Inglewood as Magic Johnson and Norman Nixon while growing up. Began acting in minor roles in the 1990s in films such as Geronimo: An American Legend, The Beautician and the Beast and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Has done voice-over work for characters in video games, including Superman: Man of Steel and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Provided the voices of Rhino in The Wild Thornberrys Movie and Cliffjumper in the animated TV series Transformers: Prime. Named in the Los Angeles Times' list of Ones to Watch in 2011. Is the exclusive voice of the United States Marine Corps commercials.

Trivia: The talented, prolific, and in-demand screenwriter David Koepp was the mind behind many of the late-'90s and early-2000s biggest pictures. Writing for directors such as Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Ron Howard, and Brian De Palma, Koepp was responsible for penning some of the highest-grossing films of all time. Comfortable working within any genre, Koepp takes pride in creating both character-driven pieces, like De Palma's Carlito's Way (1993) and his own Stir of Echoes (1999), and unforgettable action sequences like the T-Rex/jeep chase in Spielberg's Jurassic Park and Tom Cruise's aerial infiltration of the CIA in De Palma's Mission: Impossible (1996).Raised in the Midwest, Koepp began writing short stories in grade school. He eventually enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied playwriting and acting (his uncle was actor Claude Akins). More impressed with Koepp's writing than his acting, a professor convinced him to move out West and take up screenwriting. Koepp transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles, and began studying screenwriting techniques and film history. After graduating in 1986, he accepted a full-time position with a film distributor that allowed him time to write at night. Then, while working as a script reader, he met actor/director Martin Donovan who asked Koepp to collaborate on what would become his first feature film.Together with Donovan, Koepp wrote Apartment Zero (1988), a psychosexual thriller featuring Colin Firth as a shy cinephile who rents to a mysterious lodger in order to support his failing movie theater. The project turned out to be a moderate success. In the meantime, Koepp's fifth spec script, a thriller called Bad Influence (1990), had made its way around Hollywood. Universal Studios executive Casey Silver offered to produce the piece if Koepp turned it into a comedy. The screenwriter declined, and held out until director Curtis Hanson agreed to film it as is. Starring James Spader and Rob Lowe, Bad Influence tells the story of a timid financial analyst who becomes entangled with a psychopathic stranger. The final product still dazzled Casey Silver, who offered Koepp a rare and highly coveted job as a contract screenwriter on the Universal lot, which gave him access to the studio's top projects and allowed him to freelance for other companies.Koepp went to work on Daniel Petrie Jr.'s Toy Soldiers (1991). Based on the novel by William P. Kennedy, the film features Sean Astin, Wil Wheaton, and Keith Coogan as teenagers who must defend their boarding school from Colombian terrorists. Reviewers nicknamed the picture "Red Dawn meets Dead Poets Society," but it has since become a cult favorite. Koepp then re-teamed with Martin Donovan to compose Robert Zemeckis' Death Becomes Her (1992), an inventive black comedy starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis. Shortly afterward, Universal asked Koepp to co-write Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (1994). The film -- about a theme park populated with real dinosaurs that are created from prehistoric DNA molecules -- was at the time the highest-grossing movie in history.Despite his success in blockbusters, Koepp made his next two films more personal, people-driven dramas. In 1993, he condensed author Edwin Torres' two-part character study of a professional criminal into Brian De Palma's celebrated Carlito's Way, which stars Al Pacino in the title role. Then, in 1994, he collaborated with his brother, Stephen Koepp (a writer for Time magazine), on Ron Howard's The Paper. Called "the Best Journalism Film Ever," by Larry King, The Paper features Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, and Glenn Close as the eccentric staff of a New York City daily newspaper.After adapting the classic radio series The Shadow (1994), for Russell Mulcahy, Koepp tried his own hand at directing. He wrote and helmed the short film Suspicious, starring Janeane Garofalo and Michael Rooker. Based on the urban legend about a woman that had a man with an ax hiding in the back of her car, the short appeared at film festivals, on PBS, and on the SCI FI Channel. Koepp then co-wrote 1996's Mission: Impossible for De Palma before writing and directing his first feature, The Trigger Effect (1996). The film, which paid distinct homage to an episode of The Twilight Zone that starred Koepp's uncle, featured Dermot Mulroney, Kyle MacLachlan, and Elisabeth Shue as Californians coping with an unexplained national power outage.In the late '90s, Koepp returned to Spielberg's lucrative Jurassic Park franchise to write its second installment, The Lost World (1997). This time, he even gave himself a role in the film: Making his acting debut as "Unlucky Bastard," Koepp is gobbled by a Tyrannosaurus Rex that takes over San Diego. Though he earned 1.5 million dollars for his efforts on the sequel, Koepp chose not to be part of Jurassic Park III (2001). After penning Snake Eyes (1998), his third screenplay for Brian De Palma, Koepp directed his second feature film, Stir of Echoes (1999). Based on pulp writer Richard Matheson's novel (which Koepp discovered while rummaging through a used book store), the psychological thriller follows a telephone lineman (Kevin Bacon) who begins to see ghosts after he is hypnotized at a party. Produced by Artisan Entertainment and shot on location in Chicago, the haunting, low-budget film was a minor hit.The new millennium saw Koepp returning to blockbusters. His spec script for David Fincher's Panic Room (2002) sold in a major bidding war to Columbia Pictures for four million dollars. Starring Jodie Foster as a woman trapped in the "panic room" of a New York City town house that is infiltrated by burglars, the much-hyped film broke box-office records in its opening weekend. Columbia also tapped Koepp to write its highly anticipated big-screen adaptation of Marvel Comics' biggest franchise, Spider-Man (2002). Directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, Koepp remained the only credited screenwriter on the film, which was based on a treatment by James Cameron. Also in 2002, he sold his original script, The Superconducting Supercollider of Sparkle Creek (co-written with John Kamps), to Disney and planned on not only writing but directing the adaptation of Stephen King's novella Secret Window, Secret Garden. He also developed the CBS show Hack -- about a cop-turned-taxi driver -- for the network's Fall 2002 lineup, and made his second onscreen appearance in Barry Sonnenfeld's Big Trouble (2002).

Trivia: Studied political science and theology.In 2006, won the Best Actor award at the Cultures Collide Film Festival.Voiced characters for movies and video games.Best known for Congo (1995) and George of the Jungle (1997).

Trivia: Went to college to study marine biology before turning his focus to acting. Trained at Playhouse West in North Hollywood and later became a teacher there. Film debut was in 1987's Fatal Beauty. Was nominated along with the rest of the cast of 2005's Capote for a Screen Actors Guild Award (Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture). Known for playing several supernatural characters: the mysterious near-immortal Jacob on Lost, Lucifer on Supernatural and a vampire boss on Being Human. Studies various types of martial arts.

Trivia: One of the most famous film personalities to hail from the South Pacific, New Zealand-bred actor Sam Neill possesses the kind of reassuring handsomeness and soft-spoken strength that have made him an ideal leading man. Born Nigel Neill to a military family in Omagh, Northern Ireland, Neill relocated to New Zealand in 1953 at the age of six. There he picked up the nickname that would become his stage name, and attended both the University of Canterbury and the University of Victoria before beginning his acting career. Neill labored as a director/editor/screenwriter for the New Zealand National Film Unit for several years; he made his first movie in 1975 and scored his first significant film success four years later as the romantic lead opposite Judy Davis in director Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career. Shortly thereafter, Neill was brought to England under the sponsorship of star James Mason (who undoubtedly recognized the marked similarity between his acting style and Neill's). The actor's subsequent movie work included two memorable collaborations with actress Meryl Streep and director Fred Schepisi: Plenty (1985) and A Cry in the Dark (1988). Neill's British TV credits were highlighted by his starring role in the unorthodox espionage drama Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983), for which he won the British television BAFTA Best Actor award. He also began working on American films during the '80s, including the 1981 Omen sequel The Final Conflict (in which he demonstrated a considerable breadth of range as Satan's son Damien) and the 1987 TV miniseries Amerika. Neill also kept busy with projects down under, with perhaps his most memorable film being Dead Calm (1989), a masterfully crafted thriller that starred the actor as Nicole Kidman's husband.Neill truly came to international prominence during the '90s (as evidenced by his guest spot as a cat burglar on an episode of The Simpsons). He experienced a bumper-crop year in 1993, portraying the raptor-fearing Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Jurassic Park, before returning to New Zealand to portray Holly Hunter's taciturn, unexpectedly violent husband in The Piano (1993). He was also honored with the Order of the British Empire that same year. Neill continued to work on a wealth of diverse international projects throughout the rest of the decade, notably John Duigan's Sirens (1994), which cast him as a '30s bohemian artist; the Australian satire Children of the Revolution (1996), reuniting him with Judy Davis; Revengers' Comedies (1997), which cast him as a suicidal businessman; the acclaimed miniseries Merlin (1998), in which he played the titular wizard; Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer (1998), as the husband of Kristin Scott Thomas (the two had previously co-starred in Revengers' Comedies); and Bicentennial Man (1999), which featured the actor as the head of a family who purchases an uncannily human robot played by Robin Williams.Though Neill was notably absent from the 1997 sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the second sequel in the series, 2001's Jurassic Park III, found the stalwart actor once again fleeing ornery dinosaurs on a tropical island and living to tell the tale. A turn as Victor Komarovsky in the made-for-TV remake of Doctor Zhivago quickly followed, and over thecourse of the next decade Neill would alternate frequently between television (Triangle, Merlin's Apprentice) and film (Wimbledon, Dayberakers), while still managing to land the occasional meaty role in projects like The Tudors (2007) and Dean Spanley (2008). In 2011, Neill brought an impressive air of menace to the ecological thriller The Hunter with his turn as an outwardly benevolent Aussie with a dark secret, and the following year he returned to television as a federal agent on the trail of convicts who mysteriously vanished without a trace in Alcatraz. In addition to acting and managing a New Zealand winery, Neill directed an acclaimed 1995 documentary about the New Zealand film industry, Cinema of Unease: A Personal Journey by Sam Neill.

Trivia: Ask any horror filmmaker about the influences for their celluloid nightmares and chances are they'll come back with something about their childhood fears and attempting to realize the things that scare them most. For Hostel and Cabin Fever director Eli Roth it has ultimately become a deeply disturbing mixture of the two. Roth's proliferation in the horror genre coupled with his giddy willingness to play the role of cinema outlaw came at just the time the PG-13 blues were leading many genre aficionados to wonder if there really were anymore filmmakers out there who were still willing to break the rules.As a young horror fanatic, the future New York Film School graduate obsessed over keeping pace with the career trajectory of Evil Dead director Sam Raimi. With a target of 21 as the age by which he should direct his first feature, the ambitious 20-year-old sat down to write a script based on a series of frightening medical incidents that happened to him in his youth. Paralyzed at 12 by a rare virus that strikes one in a million, stricken with a water-borne parasite for which he had to drink poison to stop from eating his insides at 17, and infected with a bacteria that literally caused his skin to peel from his face at 19, Roth adapted the ailments that plagued him into a script for the alternately funny and frighteningly repulsive Cabin Fever in 1995 along with a little help from friend Randy Pearlstein. An independent homage to the 1970s and '80s shockers on which Roth was weaned, Cabin Fever was shot for a paltry 1.5 million dollars in the same North Carolina woods in which his childhood idol had filmed The Evil Dead and went on to spark an unprecedented bidding war when it premiered at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival. When Lion's Gate released Cabin Fever into theaters the following year, Roth was immediately hailed by many horror fans as the true future of the genre. Though some were turned off to the humorous approach that Roth had taken to terror, the more grotesque aspects of Roth's bacterial skin-crawler hinted at a filmmaker not afraid to break from genre convention and play dirty in order to keep his audience squirming in their seats. Of course when your first film creates as big a buzz as Cabin Fever did, what's a filmmaker supposed to do for a follow-up? Armed with the knowledge that his sophomore effort could either make him or break him in the eyes of the horror community, Roth pondered a Cabin Fever sequel and pored through studio scripts in an effort to find the idea that truly terrified him. As fate would have it, friend and fellow film fanatic Harry Knowles of the popular movie website "Ain't it Cool News" contacted Roth just around this time with a story concerning a website that had been brought to his attention where, for a nominal fee, anyone wishing to experience death firsthand could personally murder another human being; the resulting profit generally going to the unfortunate participant's impoverished family. The groundwork for Hostel had been laid. Frustrated by the American film machine and encouraged by like-minded horror fan Quentin Tarantino to press forward with the idea at all costs, Roth locked himself away to pound out the screenplay for the brutally unforgiving Hostel while still thriving on the energy of the Red Sox win at the 2004 World Series. Filmed in Prague for under five million dollars as a way for Roth to visit a place he had always loved (and deliver a notable kiss-off to American unions), Hostel told the tale of two hard-partying American backpackers and their horny Icelandic friend who, while backpacking through Europe, all fall into a grim trap after being lured to a small Slovakian town with the promise of plentiful drugs and beautiful women. By largely abandoning the humor of Cabin Fever to set a more ominous and menacing tone and not allowing his camera to flinch during some of the film's more sanguine moments, Roth proved with Hostel that he could stand alongside such genre innovators as Takashi Miike to effectively test the limits of even the most desensitized genre fan. A financial success at the box office in addition to being one of the few horror films released at the time that wasn't a sequel or a remake, Hostel truly delivered on the promises made in Cabin Fever to prove that Roth's initial success was indeed no fluke. Outside of his feature directorial work, Roth has also teamed with filmmakers Boaz Yakin and Scott Spiegel to form Raw Nerve, an exclusively horror-oriented production company dedicated to producing truly boundary-pushing genre films that never compromise the filmmaker's vision. Roth's hilariously obscene, foul-mouthed produce-howler The Rotten Fruit proved that the playful director was even fairly adept at stop-motion animation. Of course, American horror pictures -- particularly those crafted by intelligent and intuitive directors (and Roth fits the bill on both counts) -- tend to rake in unholy profits at the box office, and Hostel was no exception. It grossed almost 20 million (from a 4.6-million-dollar budget) in its opening weekend alone, paving the way, of course, for a sequel, that picks up directly following the final shot of the original. 2007's Hostel: Part II reprised the formula of the first film, substituting an ensemble of girls for the boys of the original picture. This film follows several backpackers, visiting Rome, who discover that the torture palace from the original Hostel is actually a small part of an international "chain," and find themselves subjected to endless sadism and brutality. Alongside that sequel, Roth juggled an overwhelmingly busy schedule. He assumed production duties on the 2006 big-screen adaptation of television's Baywatch, and helmed the same year's throwback teen sex comedy Scavenger Hunt, a madcap farce that sends a bunch of crazy adolescents on a wild goose chase for a bevy of diverse objects. He contributed the trailer for Thanksgiving to Grindhouse, and teamed up with Tarantino in 2009 for his most prominent acting role as the Bear Jew in Inglorious Basterds. In 2011 he contributed to Corman's World, a documentary about the legendary exploitation producer/director Roger Corman, and he had a brief cameo in the jukebox musical Rock of Ages. Roth continued to work as a producer, director and screenwriter, doing all three for films like The Green Inferno (2014).

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: The most commercially successful filmmaker in Hollywood history, Steven Spielberg was born December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, OH. A lifelong cinema buff, he began directing his first short movies while still a child, later studying film at California State University and winning notice for his 1969 short feature Amblin'. He first made his mark in television, directing Joan Crawford in the pilot for Rod Serling's Night Gallery and working on episodes of Columbo and Marcus Welby, M.D. Spielberg's first feature-length effort, 1971's Duel, a taut thriller starring Dennis Weaver, was widely acclaimed as one of the best movies ever made for television. Spielberg permanently graduated to feature films with 1974's The Sugarland Express, but it was his next effort, Jaws, which truly cemented his reputation as a rising star. The most successful film of 1975, this tale of a man-eating Great White shark was widely recognized as the picture which established the summer months as the film industry's most lucrative period of the year, heralding a move toward big-budget blockbusters which culminated two years later with his friend George Lucas' Star Wars. Spielberg's follow-up, 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was another staggering success, employing state-of-the-art special effects to document its story of contact with alien life. With the 1979 slapstick-war comedy 1941, Spielberg made his first major misstep, as the star-studded picture performed miserably at the box office. However, he swiftly regained his footing with 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark. Produced by Lucas, the film was one of the biggest hits of the decade, later launching a pair of sequels as well as a short-lived television series. However, it was Spielberg's next effort which truly asserted his position as the era's most popular filmmaker: 1982's E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, the touching tale of a boy who befriends an alien, was hailed upon release as an instant classic, and became one of the most commercially successful movies of all time. After 1984's Raiders of the Lost Ark sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg went against type to direct The Color Purple, an adaptation of Alice Walker's much-honored novel exploring the lives and struggles of a group of African-American women during the Depression years. The film went on to gross over $100 million at the box office, later securing 11 Academy Award nominations. A 1987 dramatization of J.G. Ballard's novel Empire of the Sun was his next picture, and was one of his few box-office disappointments. A similar fate met the sentimental Always (1989), a remake of the wartime weeper A Guy Named Joe, but Spielberg returned to form with the same year's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.With 1991's 60-million-dollar production of Hook, Spielberg again fell victim to negative reviews and lackluster box-office returns, but in 1993 he returned with a vengeance with Jurassic Park. That same year, he released Schindler's List, an epic docudrama set during the Holocaust. The picture won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director honors. As befitting his role as a major Hollywood player, Spielberg and his company, Amblin Entertainment, also produced a number of highly successful features, including 1982's Poltergeist, 1985's Back to the Future, and 1988's groundbreaking Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He also diversified into television, beginning in 1985 with the anthology series Amazing Stories and later supervising the animated series Tiny Toon Adventures and the underwater adventure Seaquest DSV. However, in the wake of Schindler's List, Spielberg's status as a power broker grew exponentially with the formation of Dreamworks SKG, a production company he headed along with former Disney chief Jeffrey Katzenberg and music mogul David Geffen; consequently, Spielberg spent much of the mid-'90s behind the scenes, serving as executive producer on films such as Twister (1996), Men in Black (1997), and two 1998 films, Deep Impact and The Mask of Zorro. Spielberg returned to the director's chair with the 1997 smash The Lost World, the sequel to Jurassic Park. The same year, he was rewarded with several Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Amistad, a slavery epic for which he served as both director and producer. Whatever disappointment Spielberg may have felt over not actually winning any of the above awards was most likely mollified the following year with Saving Private Ryan. The World War II epic, which Spielberg directed and produced, won a staggering 11 Academy Award nominations. Eventually winning five, the film lost out to Shakespeare in Love for Best Picture. Ryan did win a Golden Globe for Best Picture (in the Drama category), as well a Best Director nod for Spielberg. After taking the helm for a short documentary chronicling American history for the millennial New Years Eve celebration broadcast, Spielberg took another shot at summer blockbuster success with the sci-fi drama A.I.. Featuring Oscar nominated child actor Haley Joel Osment in the role of a robot boy who longs to be human, and adapted from an original idea from Stanley Kubrick, the high-concept film received a decidedly mixed reception at the box office. The following year, however, would find Spielberg once again coming out on top with two remarkably upbeat chase films. Adapted from a short story by revered science fiction author Phillip K. Dick and starring Tom Cruise as a the head of an elite "pre-crime division" of police officers who use a trio of psychics to predicts criminals' crimes so that they can be arrested before they have a chance to commit them, Minority Report proved an exhilarating sci-fi action epic. A mere six-months later, Spielberg's fast-paced crime adventure Catch Me If You Can adapted the real life exploits of legendary con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr. to the big screen to the delight of audiences hungering for an entertaining and lightweight holiday release. 2004 saw Spielberg team with Hanks yet again, this time for the lighthearted comedy The Terminal. Also starring Catherine Zeta Jones, the film centered on a man without a country who takes up residence in an American airport. The following year found the director diving back into the big-budget sci-fi genre with War of the Worlds. Starring Tom Cruise, the ambitious film was adapted from H.G. Wells classic alien-invasion novel of the same name. After this Hollywood juggernaut, Spielberg cinematically visited his Jewish heritage for the first time since Schindler's List with 2005's critically acclaimed Munich. Beginning with the 1972 Munich Olympics at which 11 Israeli athletes were kidnapped and later murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, the film follows the small group of Mossad agents recruited to track down and assassinate those responsible. Praised for its sensitive and painful portrayal of ordinary men grappling with their new lives as killers, Munich earned Spielberg a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, reminding audiences and critics alike of the filmmaker's ability to go far beyond the realm of simple adventure and fantasy. In 2006, Spielberg produced Clint Eastwood's two films about WWII, Flags of Our Fathers, about the American soldiers at Iwo Jima, and Red Sun, Black Sand, which takes a look at what life was like for men in the Japanese military; both films received broad critical acclaim. In 2008, Spielberg re-ignited the Indiana Jones franchise with the fourth installment in the saga, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. While critical response to this outing was mixed, it scored at the box office and satisfied many moviegoers. During the years that followed, the number of efforts that bore Spielberg's producing imprimatur grew exponentially. These included The Lovely Bones (2009), the Coen Brothers' remake True Grit (2010), the J.J. Abrams-directed sci-fi fantasy Super 8 (20011) and the eagerly-awaited sequel Men in Black III (2012). Meanwhile, Spielberg reassumed the director's chair for a varied series of pictures, including The Adventures of Tintin (2011). His long gestating Abraham Lincoln biopic Lincoln hit screens in 2012 starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the iconic president and Sally Field as his first lady, and the movie went on to be nominated for a number of Oscars including Best Director and Best Picture. In 2015, he executive produced Jurassic World, the fourth film in the series, and reteamed with Tom Hanks for Bridge of Spies.

Trivia: After spending the 1980s playing a series of drug addict and character parts, Samuel L. Jackson emerged in the 1990s as one of the most prominent and well-respected actors in Hollywood. Work on a number of projects, both high-profile and low-key, has given Jackson ample opportunity to display an ability marked by both remarkable versatility and smooth intelligence.Born December 21, 1948, in Washington, D.C., Jackson was raised by his mother and grandparents in Chattanooga, TN. He attended Atlanta's Morehouse College, where he was co-founder of Atlanta's black-oriented Just Us Theater (the name of the company was taken from a famous Richard Pryor routine). Jackson arrived in New York in 1977, beginning what was to be a prolific career in film, television, and on the stage. After a plethora of character roles of varying sizes, Jackson was discovered by the public in the role of the hero's tempestuous, drug-addict brother in 1991's Jungle Fever, directed by another Morehouse College alumnus, Spike Lee. Jungle Fever won Jackson a special acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival and thereafter his career soared. Confronted with sudden celebrity, Jackson stayed grounded by continuing to live in the Harlem brownstone where he'd resided since his stage days. 1994 was a particularly felicitous year for Jackson; while his appearances in Jurassic Park (1993) and Menace II Society (1993) were still being seen in second-run houses, he co-starred with John Travolta as a mercurial hit man in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. His portrayal of an embittered father in the more low-key Fresh earned him additional acclaim. The following year, Jackson landed third billing in the big-budget Die Hard With a Vengeance and also starred in the adoption drama Losing Isaiah. His versatility was put on further display in 1996 with the release of five very different films: The Long Kiss Goodnight, a thriller in which he co-starred with Geena Davis as a private detective; an adaptation of John Grisham's A Time to Kill, which featured him as an enraged father driven to murder; Steve Buscemi's independent Trees Lounge; The Great White Hype, a boxing satire in which the actor played a flamboyant boxing promoter; and Hard Eight, the directorial debut of Paul Thomas Anderson.After the relative quiet of 1997, which saw Jackson again collaborate with Tarantino in the critically acclaimed Jackie Brown and play a philandering father in the similarly acclaimed Eve's Bayou (which also marked his debut as a producer), the actor lent his talents to a string of big-budget affairs (an exception being the 1998 Canadian film The Red Violin). Aside from an unbilled cameo in Out of Sight (1998), Jackson was featured in leading roles in The Negotiator (1998), Sphere (1998), and Deep Blue Sea (1999). His prominence in these films added confirmation of his complete transition from secondary actor to leading man, something that was further cemented by a coveted role in what was perhaps the most anticipated film of the decade, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), the first prequel to George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy. Jackson followed through on his leading man potential with a popular remake of Gordon Parks' seminal 1971 blaxploitation flick Shaft. Despite highly publicized squabbling between Jackson and director John Singleton, the film was a successful blend of homage, irony, and action; it became one of the rare character-driven hits in the special effects-laden summer of 2000.From hard-case Shaft to fragile as glass, Jackson once again hoodwinked audiences by playing against his usual super-bad persona in director M. Night Shyamalan's eagerly anticipated follow-up to The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable (2000). In his role as Bruce Willis' brittle, frail antithesis, Jackson proved that though he can talk trash and break heads with the best of them, he's always compelling to watch no matter what the role may be. Next taking a rare lead as a formerly successful pianist turned schizophrenic on the trail of a killer in the little-seen The Caveman's Valentine, Jackson turned in yet another compelling and sympathetic performance. Following an instance of road rage opposite Ben Affleck in Changing Lanes (2002), Jackson stirred film geek controversy upon wielding a purple lightsaber in the eagerly anticipated Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Despite rumors that the color of the lightsaber may have had some sort of mythical undertone, Jackson laughingly assured fans that it was a simple matter of his suggesting to Lucas that a purple lightsaber would simply "look cool," though he was admittedly surprised to see that Lucas had obliged him Jackson eventually saw the final print. A few short months later filmgoers would find Jackson recruiting a muscle-bound Vin Diesel for a dangerous secret mission in the spy thriller XXX.Jackson reprised his long-standing role as Mace Windu in the last segment of George Lucas's Star Wars franchise to be produced, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). It (unsurprisingly) grossed almost four hundred million dollars, and became that rare box-office blockbuster to also score favorably (if not unanimously) with critics; no less than Roger Ebert proclaimed it "spectacular." Jackson co-headlined 2005's crime comedy The Man alongside Eugene Levy and 2006's Joe Roth mystery Freedomland with Julianne Moore and Edie Falco, but his most hotly-anticipated release at the time of this writing is August 2006's Snakes on a Plane, a by-the-throat thriller about an assassin who unleashes a crate full of vipers onto a aircraft full of innocent (and understandably terrified) civilians. Produced by New Line Cinema on a somewhat low budget, the film continues to draw widespread buzz that anticipates cult status. Black Snake Moan, directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow) dramatizes the relationship between a small-town girl (Christina Ricci) and a blues player (Jackson). The picture is slated for release in September 2006 with Jackson's Shaft collaborator, John Singleton, producing.Jackson would spend the ensuing years appearing in a number of films, like Home of the Brave, Resurrecting the Champ, Lakeview Terrace, Django Unchained, and the Marvel superhero franchise films like Thor, Iron Man, and The Avengers, playing superhero wrangler Nick Fury.

Trivia: For his role in the Broadway production of M. Butterfly, talented stage and screen actor B.D. Wong (born Bradley Darryl Wong) would enter into history as the only actor ever to be honored with a Tony, a Drama Desk Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Clarence Derwent Award, and a Theater World Award for a single performance. Proving equally adept onscreen, Wong's memorable early roles in The Freshman (1990) and Father of the Bride (1991) found him simultaneously attempting to break out of the Asian-American cinema stereotype while seeking out roles that would expand his dramatic capabilities. A native of San Francisco whose musical experimentation during his childhood eventually lead to the discovery of acting, Wong's parents were consistently supportive in nurturing his creative energy. Wong worked his way into Bay Area community theater while still a student at Lincoln High School, and his association with the San Francisco Unified School District proved an essential component in developing his skills as an actor. Following his subsequent graduation from San Francisco State University Wong moved to New York City, where he performed in dinner theater and off-Broadway productions. After making his professional bow in a New York Town Hall production of Androcles and the Lion, Wong began to essay small television roles on such series as Simon & Simon and Sesame Street about the time of his feature debut in The Karate Kid II (1986). Soon thereafter, Wong received coaching from Donald Hotton to prepare for his role in M. Butterfly, and following much critical acclaim, Wong slowly gained onscreen momentum with roles in Jurassic Park (1993) and the HBO AIDS-drama And the Band Played On (both 1993). In his constant search to portray original and diverse characters, Wong had a recurring role as Father Ray Makuda on the HBO series Oz. Subsequent performances included roles in Seven Years in Tibet (1997), voice work in the animated Disney film Mulan (1998), and the crime thriller The Salton Sea (2002). Television viewers became acquainted with Wong through his role on Law and Order: Special Victim's Unit.

Trivia: William H. Macy came to acting by way of Bethany and Goddard Colleges. At the latter school, Macy studied under playwright David Mamet, with whom he would be frequently associated throughout his career. After college, Macy was a member of Mamet's theater troupe, the St. Nicholas Company. The actor performed in a number of productions, many of them written by Mamet, until 1978 when he left the company and headed to New York. Some of his earliest work there included commercial voice-overs, such as the now infamous "Secret: Strong enough for a man, but PH balanced for a woman." Macy also continued his theater work, forming the Atlantic Theatre Company with Mamet in 1985 and acting in Broadway and off-Broadway shows. In addition, he worked in television and began doing feature films, debuting in '80s Foolin' Around. He continued to act in supporting roles throughout the decade, appearing in such films as Mamet's directorial debut, House of Games (1987) and Woody Allen's Radio Days (1987). In 1991, he won a more substantial role, in Mamet's Homicide, and subsequently began to find work in more well-known films, including Benny and Joon and The Client.Macy finally got a shot at a leading role with his turn in Mamet's Oleanna. He won positive notices and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his portrayal of a professor accused of sexual harassment. More acclaim followed with his starring role as a hapless car salesman in Joel Coen and Ethan Coen's Fargo (1996), for which he garnered a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. The next year, Macy's star rose a little higher, thanks to his work in three high-profile films, Wag the Dog, Air Force One, and Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights. He was similarly lauded for his versatility through work in such films as Psycho and Pleasantville, and in 1999 he continued his winning streak as an unconventional superhero in Mystery Men, a gay sheriff in Happy, Texas, and a member of the ensemble cast of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. Despite the fact that Macy drew praise for his turn as a reluctant hit man in the 2000 drama Panic, the film went largely unseen, and his next substantial role found him running from dinosaurs in Jurassic Park III. As always Macy continued to intercut his more commercial efforts with such decidedly non-mainstream fare as Focus and Stealing Sinatra. Surprisingly, it was just such work that netted Macy some of his most glowing reviews. Case in point was a memorable performance as a disabled traveling salesman in the 2003 drama Door to Door; a role that earned its convincing lead an Emmy. After sticking to the small screen with the Showtime miniseries Out of Order, Macy went wide with the theatrical hit Seabiscuit and the breathless Larry Cohen-scripted thriller Cellular. That same year, the actor would continue to nurture a succesful ongoing collaboration with famed writer/director David Mamet in the widely-praised but little-seen crime drama Spartan. Macy has also continued to do television work, appearing on such series as Spencer, Law & Order, and ER. For his role in the 2004 made for television drama The Wool Cap (which also found him teaming with writer Steven Schachter to adapt a story originally written by Jackie Gleason), Macy was nominated for multiple awards including a Best Actor at the Golden Globe and an Emmys. In 2005, Macy returned to home turf with the Mamet-scripted thriller Edmond, directed by Stuart "Reanimator" Gordon. The picture reunited the actor and director, who originally collaborated in the early eighties on the stage version of the playwright's Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Adapted from Mamet's 1982 one-acter, Edmond dramatizes the descent of a seemingly normal man (Macy) from sanity to unbridled psychosis. While Edmond didn't exactly bomb critically or commercially after its July 14, 2006 premiere, it fell below the bar of previous Mamet efforts on two levels: first, the studio opened it to decidedly more limited release than Mamet's directorial projects over the previous several years (such as Spartan and Heist), thus ensuring that fewer would see it, and it also suffered from somewhat lackluster reviews. Surprisingly, those who did complain of the work attacked Mamet's script in lieu Gordon's direction. Variety's Scott Foundas observed, "The problem is that, too often, we don't fully understand what motivates Edmond, and many of Mamet's efforts toward explanation -- that life is one big shell game, that we're all latent racists at heart -- feel like specious armchair philosophizing." Macy produced that same year's Transamerica, and graced the cast of Jason Reitman's hearty satire Thank You For Smoking, with a funny turn as senator and anti-tobacco promulgator Ortolan Finistirre. At around the same time, he also voiced a crooked, baseball bat-swiping security guard in that year's family friendly animated feature Everyone's Hero. Meanwhile, audiences geared up for Macy's contribution to the ensemble of actor-cum-director Emilio Estevez's semi-fictional, Altmanesque docudrama Bobby, which recounts the events that preceded RFK's assassination by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel. As the hotel manager, Macy joins a line-up of formidable heavyweights: Helen Hunt, Elijah Wood, Harry Belafonte, Martin Sheen, Estevez himself, Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone, and many others. The picture had journalists and moviegoers across America whispering 'Oscar contender' long before its initial release on November 22, 2006. Shortly after production wrapped, Macy made headlines in mid-late 2006 for a comment that involved his allegedly berating Bobby co-star Lindsay Lohan's on-set behavior, in reference to her constant tardiness. Meanwhile, the trades reported the everpresent Macy's involvement in two 2007 features: the animated Bee Movie (with a lead voice by Jerry Seinfeld), about a honeybee who decides to sue mankind for its use of honey, and Wild Hogs, a farce with Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and John Travolta as a trio of Hell's Angels. Over the coming years, Macy would appear in movies like Shorts, Dirty Girl, and The Lincoln Lawyer, as well as the critically acclaimed series Shameless.In 1997, William H. Macy married Felicity Huffman, with whom he appeared in Magnolia.

Trivia: Often mistaken for British, Alessandro Nivola has established himself as one of the American actors most likely to assume a flawless English accent in his films. Nivola, whose combination of charismatic good looks, vowel-laden name, and work in a number of British films have both confused and delighted critics and viewers, is actually a product of the East Coast. The son of an Italian-born academic father and a Boston blue-blood mother, Nivola was born and raised in Boston. Taking an early interest in acting, he grew up attending drama camp in the summer and got an internship at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in Waterford, Connecticut, where he began acting on the stage. His love of acting continued while he was a student at the Tony Philips Exeter Academy and Yale University; by the time he was a sophomore at Yale, he had landed an agent and was making regular trips to New York City for auditions.Nivola got his first professional jobs with the Yale Repertory Theatre and a Seattle-based company. He broke into films in 1997 with a small role in Inventing the Abbotts and the more substantial part of Nicolas Cage's psychotic genius brother in John Woo's Face/Off. He then crossed the ocean, and the accent barrier, to star in the British noir drama I Want You (1998), which cast him as an enigmatic man with a dark past, and in Patricia Rozema's saucy adaptation of Mansfield Park (1998). It was the latter film that gave Nivola his first significant dose of recognition and respect, with critics and viewers alike marveling at his portrayal of the dashing and morally dubious Henry Crawford, not to mention his seamless English accent. Nivola again worked with a largely British cast and crew the following year to make Kenneth Branagh's musical version of Love's Labour's Lost (2000), in which he played a king whose vow to forsake love for intellectual enlightenment becomes severely jeopardized by the arrival of a comely French princess (Alicia Silverstone) and her ladies in waiting. That same year, he returned to the other side of the Atlantic to portray a Backstreet Boys-type singer in Mike Figgis' Time Code 2000, an experimental feature filmed entirely in one take. In the years to come, Nivola would remain a consistent presence on screen, appearing in movies like Junebug, Grace is Gone, and The Eye, as well as on the TV series The Company.

Trivia: Gaining notice for his bullying role opposite Haley Joel Osment in the massively popular 1999 supernatural sleeper hit The Sixth Sense, Trevor Morgan has quickly risen through the ranks to appear in some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters. Born in Chicago, IL, in November 1986, Morgan found his calling early in life when, at the age of six, he told his parents that he wanted to become an actor. Soon after his family relocated to California in order to pursue his youthful dreams, young Morgan began to win roles in television commercials and in such popular series as Baywatch and Touched By an Angel in 1997. Making his feature debut in Family Man the same year, he began to realize his dreams, taking roles in Barney's Big Adventure and the made-for-television In the Doghouse the year before his role in The Sixth Sense gained him positive notice and widespread recognition. Nominated for Best Performance in TV Movie or Pilot at the Young Artist Awards for his turn as a child genius leading a double life in Disney's Genius the same year, Morgan appeared again alongside Osment in I'll Remember April (1999) before turning up as Mel Gibson's son in The Patriot in 2000. Soon after, Morgan would have his biggest adventure yet, facing off against dinosaurs in Jurassic Park III (2001).

Trivia: With his trademark red moustache, personable smile, and childlike demeanor, longtime character actor Michael Jeter brought smiles to children nationwide with his role on Sesame Street as Mr. Noodle's Brother. Aside from his memorable role on that children's television mainstay, Jeter could also be seen in a number of memorable film roles in such efforts as Miller's Crossing (1990) and The Fisher King (1991). Chances are, if you don't recognize his name you would certainly recognize his face. Born in Lawrenceburg, TN, in August of 1952, Jeter first opted to follow a career in medicine, though a stint at Memphis State University found the creative young student leaning ever closer to a career as an actor. Taking on minor film roles beginning with 1979's Hairspray, the burgeoning young actor would subsequently appear in such films as Milos Foreman's Ragtime (1981) and Woody Allen's Zelig (1983), though early struggles with alcohol and substance abuse threatened to sideline his screen career in the mid-'80s. Abandoning the screen for a career as a legal secretary the same year that Zelig was released, fate guided Jeter back into his true calling when a producer, recalling his role in television's Designing Women, asked that he take a supporting role on the Burt Reynolds' sitcom Evening Shade. Accepting the role as assistant football coach Herman Stiles, Jeter's enthusiasm for acting was re-ignited as he was honored with an Emmy for the role in 1992. A busy stage actor as well, Jeter won a Tony in 1990 for his performance in Grand Hotel. From 1990 on, Jeter maintained his film career with a series of memorably quirky roles. Perhaps his most unique and affecting role came with the release of director Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King. As a homeless transvestite who croons for Amanda Plummer's character after making a flamboyant entrance into her quiet office, Jeter's carefree ditty was a highlight of the film. The 1990s proved a busy decade for Jeter, and roles in such popular films as Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), Air Bud (1997), and The Green Mile (1999) assured that his career would flourish well into the new millennium. Announcing that he had been infected with HIV in 1997, audiences could never have known how quickly the deadly virus would take its toll on the energetic and optimistic actor. Though Jeter would usher in the new millennium with roles in such prominent box-office releases as The Gift (2000) and Jurassic Park III (2001), it was his role on Sesame Street that endeared him to children and made good use of his genuinely playful nature. Sadly, Jeter succumbed to complications from the HIV virus in late March of 2003. Before his untimely death, Jeter would complete roles in Kevin Costner's Open Range (2003) and Robert Zemeckis' family fantasy The Polar Express (2004).

Trivia: On the New York theatrical scene, American actor John Diehl is best known for his work in a variety of avant-garde and experimental productions. Diehl's film characterizations are among the more traditional lines of petty thieves and psycho killers (vide 1984's Angel). After seeing Diehl portray an assortment of punks, wackos, and malcontents, it came as a surprise (and a bit of a relief) to see him cast as a normal suburban dad -- albeit an obnoxious one -- in Falling Down (1993). John Diehl may be most familiar to television viewers for his multi-season stint as laid-back Detective Larry Zito on TV's Miami Vice.

Trivia: Playing characters ranging from wide-eyed virgins to willful sirens to drug-addicted losers, Laura Dern (born February 10, 1967) is among the screen's most interesting modern actresses. Her parents, Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, are both successful actors but initially discouraged her from becoming involved in the profession. Still, acting was Dern's childhood goal, and after her parents divorced, she made her film debut at the age of six in White Lightning (1973).The following year, Dern played a bit part in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. She got her first major role in 1980, playing a teenager in Adrian Lyne's Foxes. By 1983, she had appeared in more films, and in defiance of her parents' wishes, decided to get some formal dramatic training at the Lee Strasberg Institute, where she studied Method acting. She went on to appear in films such as Teachers (1984) and Mask (1985) and gained a reputation for realistic portrayals of goodhearted innocents. Dern could have easily been typecast into such roles had Joyce Chopra not cast her as a rebellious teen anxious to experience a sexual awakening in Smooth Talk (1986). The young actress' portrayal earned her a New Generation Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics. That same year, Dern became an even more marketable actress when she played a fresh-faced young sleuth in David Lynch's disturbing, groundbreaking Blue Velvet. She again worked with Lynch in the flamboyantly bizarre Wild at Heart (1990), in which she played an oversexed 20-year-old on the run with her lover (Nicholas Cage). The film proved to be a family affair, as Ladd played her villainous mother. The two appeared together again the following year in the beautifully wrought Rambling Rose. Dern's naturalistic performance as a troubled 19-year-old who wants love, but has confused it with sex, won her considerable acclaim that culminated in an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Ladd was also nominated, making it the first time a mother-daughter team had been so honored in the same year.In 1993, Dern became a bigger star portraying a courageous paleo-botanist in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Jurassic Park. Three years later, she played one of her most offbeat roles as a paint-huffing, spiteful, pregnant, and dumb as a box-of-doorknobs homeless girl who finds herself caught in the middle of a battle royale between pro- and anti-abortion groups in the black comedy Citizen Ruth. In 1999, she took on two very diverse roles, first playing a supportive high school teacher in October Sky and then returning to the realm of eccentricity -- and to sharing the screen with her mother -- as part of an unconventional Alabama family in Billy Bob Thornton's Daddy and Them. Though audiences were no doubt eager to see what Slingblade director Thornton had up his sleeve for the eagerly anticipated feature, Daddy and Them did recieve stateside release into a full two-years after production wrapped - and when it finally did find it's way into theaters critical and popular response was lukewarm at best.The disappointment was more than counterbalanced that year however when Dern and boyfriend Ben Harper gave birth to their first baby boy Ellery, and in addition to also returning to the land of dinosaurs with Jurassic Park III in 2001. Dern essayed memorable supporting performances in a number of films including Novcaine, Focus and I Am Sam. Stepping back into the lead for her role as true life HMO whistle-blower Linda Peeno in the made-for-HBO film Damaged Goods, many found Dern's performance so moving that whispers of an Emmy nomination began to circulate. That wasn't in the cards however, and the following year Dern returned to feature work with the adulterous drama We Don't Live Here Anymore.In addition to her film career, Dern has appeared on stage and television. In 1992, she won an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe award for performing in the HBO docudrama Afterburn. In 1997, she again proved her versatility by offering a convincing, Emmy-nominated portrayal of a lesbian who is comfortable with her sexuality in a landmark episode of the sitcom Ellen in which star Ellen DeGeneres "comes out of the closet.""In 2000, Dern teamed with Robert Altman for the Texas-based comedy Dr. T & The Women, and co-starred in the films Within These Walls, Focus, and Novocaine. After returning to the Jurrassic Park franchise for a minor role in Jurassic Park III, Dern took on a supporting role in I Am Sam, and starred in 2002's Damaged Care and 2004's We Don't Live Here Anymore. The 2000s would prove a busy period for the actress; in 2005 she joined the ensemble cast of the comedy-drama Happy Endings, appeared in The Prize WInnder of Defiance, Ohio in 2006, reunited with David Lynch for Inland Empire (also in 2006), and worked alongside Molly Shannon, John C. Reilly, and Peter Sarsgaard for Year of the Dog (2007). In 2008, Dern won a Golden Globe award for "Best Supporting Actress" in Recount, a made-for-TV political drama about the United States' controversial Presidential election of 2000. She played a self-destructive woman piecing her life back together for two seasons on the HBO series Enlightened, winning a Golden Globe for her work on the program. In 2014 she played moms in two very different movies. She cared for a teenage daughter living with cancer in the tearjerker The Fault In Our Stars, and she earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination from the Academy for her work in Wild as the mother of a self-destructive former drug addict who tries to get her head straight by going on a grueling hike across the Pacific Northwest.

Trivia: Born June 21, 1979, native Minnesotan actor Chris Pratt scored his first big break on television as the troubled physician's son Bright Abbott on the WB series drama Everwood, opposite Treat Williams and others, and segued into film with a prominent role in the biting satire Strangers with Candy (2005) alongside Amy Sedaris and Stephen Colbert. Successive features included Deep in the Valley (2008), Wanted (2008), and Bride Wars (2009) (as the ineffectual fiancé of Anne Hathaway). In 2009, Pratt joined the NBC sitcom Parks & Recreation as a guest star, but his turn as the dim-witted Andy Dwyer was so well-received that he was promoted to series regular for season 2. While on the show, Pratt also juggled some major movie roles, co-starring with Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill as baseball player Scott Hatteberg in the blockbuster Moneyball (2011) and appearing as a Navy SEAL in 2012's controversial Zero Dark Thirty.

Trivia: Occasionally billed as Bryce Howard Dallas, this promising young talent is the daughter of director Ron Howard and actress Cheryl Howard. Rather than simply using her admittedly well-connected status to break into the acting world, Howard opted to study the craft at New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, and would continue to act at the Stella Adler Conservatory. After landing roles in several off-Broadway productions, Howard made her feature-film debut in director Alan Brown's Book of Love (2003), which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival as part of the drama competition. In 2004, Howard broke into the mainstream with her performance in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, which also features Hollywood heavy-hitters William Hurt, Adrien Brody, and Joaquin Phoenix, among others. For Lars von Trier's Manderlay, Howard took over the role of Grace first played by Nicole Kidman in Dogville. In 2006 she reteamed with Shyamalan playing the title character in The Lady in the Water. That same year she was cast alongside Kevin Kline and Alfred Molina in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like It. She then scored the plum role of Peter Parker's love interest Gwen Stacy in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3. Howard would henceforth remain a consistent presence on screen, appearing in films like Terminator Salvation, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, The Help, and 50/50.

Trivia: Born in Jaipur, India, actor Irfan Kahn earned his master's from the National School of Drama in 1984 before embarking on his career. Beginning with a number of serials for Indian TV, Kahn soon developed a following, eventually transitioning into film work, and becoming a mainstay of the Bollywood film industry. He developed a reputation as a villain and character actor, though in 2005 he would expand his horizons, taking on the leading role in the movie Rog. Also around this time, Kahn began testing the waters of American film, appearing in A Mighty Heart and The Darjeeling Limited. A few years later, in 2008, he appeared in another cross-continental hit, playing a police officer in the Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire.

Trivia: An actor whose hulking presence belies his ability to slip quietly into an astonishing variety of roles, Vincent D'Onofrio is one of Hollywood's most unpredictable and compelling performers. Throughout his career, D'Onofrio has played a diverse range of characters, from Full Metal Jacket's fatally unhinged army recruit to a wholly convincing Orson Welles in Ed Wood to a bisexual porn star in The Velocity of Gary.Born in Brooklyn, NY, on June 30, 1959, D'Onofrio was raised in the diverse locales of Hawaii, Colorado, and Miami's Hialeah section. His career as an actor began on the stage, with study under Sonia Moore of New York's American Stanislavsky Theatre and Sharon Chatten at the Actors Studio. D'Onofrio's early years in the theater were filled with an obligatory helping of obscurity and miniscule paychecks (so miniscule that he worked for a time as a bouncer to help pay the bills). His fortunes began to shift in 1984, when he joined the American Stanislavsky Theatre as a performer. There, he appeared in such well-regarded productions as Of Mice and Men and David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and also made his Broadway debut in Open Admissions.D'Onofrio debuted onscreen in the straight-to-oblivion 1983 comedy The First Turn-On!, but it was not until his haunting portrayal of Pvt. Pyle (a role for which the actor gained 70 pounds) four years later in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket that he earned much-deserved notice for his work. Defying easy categorization, D'Onofrio next appeared in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza (1988), slimming down to his normal weight and giving a convincing portrayal as Lili Taylor's lovestruck boyfriend.Having thus given audiences a glimpse of his remarkable versatility, D'Onofrio spent the next few years making his presence felt in such films as JFK (1991), in which he played assassination witness Bill Newman; The Player (1992), which cast him in the pivotal role of ill-fated screenwriter David Kahane; and Nancy Savoca's Household Saints (1993), which, through a particularly odd feat of casting, had him playing the father of Lili Taylor. Although D'Onofrio worked at a prolific pace, it was not until he portrayed Conan the Barbarian author Robert E. Howard in the 1996 The Whole Wide World that he really had his screen breakthrough. A low-key romantic drama about the relationship between Howard and a schoolteacher (Renée Zellweger), the film allowed D'Onofrio to take center stage, rather than lend support to better-known co-stars. Critics roundly applauded his performance, but although the actor kept working steadily, he was by no means a Hollywood fixture. Eschewing the limelight, he turned in particularly memorable performances in Feeling Minnesota (1996) as Cameron Diaz's cuckolded fiancé and in the 1997 blockbuster Men in Black, which cast him as the film's resident bad guy.D'Onofrio had long since become an established actor by the 2000's, and he would remain a solid force on screen in such films as The Cell, Happy Accidents, Steal This Movie, andThumbsucker. D'Onofrio would also find just as much notoriety on the small screen, most notably as Detective Robert Goren on the phenomenally successful Law & Order spin-off Criminal Intent, and even step behind the camera, penning, helming and starring in the drama Mall.

Trivia: Ty Simpkins caught audiences' attention at the tender age of five, when he appeared in the acclaimed drama Little Children in 2006. He would go on to appear as the son of Colin Farrell's character in the 2008 crime drama Pride and Glory, before reteaming with his Little Children costar Patrick Wilson for the 2011 thriller Insidious.

Trivia: Has six siblings. Began acting in the community-theater program Broadway Bound as a kid in Seattle. By age 11, he was doing repertory theater, working with Seattle's ACT (A Contemporary Theatre), where he won leading roles in productions of A Christmas Carol and To Kill a Mockingbird. On only his second television audition in Los Angeles, he landed the series regular role of Ryder on Melissa & Joey. Plays the ukulele. Is a supporter of the fight to end muscular dystrophy.

Trivia: Actress Judy Greer went to Winston Churchill High School in Livonia, MI, before studying theater at DePaul University. She made her film debut in Stricken, a low-budget horror movie shot on video in 1998, and, that same year, found her place in romantic comedies with Kissing a Fool, starring David Schwimmer. Continuing with comedies throughout her career, Greer then appeared with Rose McGowan in Jawbreaker and got a starring role in the independent romance The Big Split. In 1999, she showed up briefly as a reporter opposite George Clooney in Three Kings. On television, Greer would prove an uncanny knack for playing particularly memorable roles on shows with particularly rabid cult followings, like Arrested Development, Love Monkey, Mad Love, Miss Guided, Glenn Martin DDS, Archer, and Californication. She would also play a recurring role on the popular sitcom Two and a Half Men, and would appear in a number of feature films as well, like The Wedding Planner, Adaptation, The Village, 27 Dresses, and Love and Other Drugs.

Trivia: Actor Jake Johnson began his career in the virgin territory of the Internet, appearing in the popular Michael Cera web series Clark and Michael in 2006. He would go on to make appearances on Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Unit, as well as in the David Mamet film Redbelt, before collaborating with Cera once again for 2009's Paper Heart. He appeared in the comedy Get Him to the Greek, and had a very busy 2011 with parts in No Strings Attached, A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, and a major part in the new FOX sitcom New Girl. He also appeared in the comic big-screen version of 21 Jump Street the next year.