Trivia: Though perhaps best-known internationally for playing tough-guy roles in Romper Stomper (1993), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Gladiator (2000), New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe has proven himself equally capable of playing gentler roles in films such as Proof (1991) and The Sum of Us (1992). No matter what kind of characters he plays, Crowe's weather-beaten handsomeness and gruff charisma combine to make him constantly watchable: his one-time Hollywood mentor Sharon Stone has called him "the sexiest guy working in movies today."Born in Wellington, New Zealand, on April 7, 1964, Crowe was raised in Australia from the age of four. His parents made their living by catering movie shoots, and often brought Crowe with them to work; it was while hanging around the various sets that he developed a passion for acting. After making his professional debut in an episode of the television series Spyforce when he was six, Crowe took a 12-year break from professional acting, netting his next gig when he was 18. In film, he had his first major roles in such dramas as The Crossing (1990) and Jocelyn Moorhouse's widely praised Proof (1991) (for which he won an Australian Film Institute award). He then went on to gain international recognition for his intense, multi-layered portrayal of a Melbourne skinhead in Geoffrey Wright's controversial Romper Stomper (1992), winning another AFI award, as well as an Australian Film Critics award. It was Sharon Stone who helped bring Crowe to Hollywood to play a gunfighter-turned-preacher opposite her in Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead (1995). Though the film was not a huge box-office success, it did open Hollywood doors for Crowe, who subsequently split his time between the U.S. and Australia. In 1997, the actor had his largest success to date playing volatile cop Bud White in Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997). Following the praise surrounding both the film and his performance in it, Crowe found himself working steadily in Hollywood, starring in two films released in 1999: Mystery, Alaska and The Insider. In the latter, he gave an Oscar-nominated lead performance as Jeffrey Wigand, a real-life tobacco industry employee whose personal life was dragged through the mud when he chose to blow the whistle on his former company's questionable business practices.In 2000, however, Crowe finally crossed over into the public's consciousness with, literally, a tour de force performance in Ridley Scott's glossy Roman epic Gladiator. The Dreamworks/Universal co-production was a major gamble from the outset, devoting more than 100 million dollars to an unfinished script (involving the efforts of at least half a dozen writers), an untested star (stepping into a role originally intended for Mel Gibson), and an all-but-dead genre (the sword-and-sandals adventure). Thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign and mostly positive notices, however, the public turned out in droves the first weekend of the film's release, and kept coming back long into the summer for Gladiator's potent blend of action, grandeur, and melodrama -- all anchored by Crowe's passionate man-of-few-words performance.Anticipation was high, then, for the actor's second 2000 showing, the hostage drama Proof of Life. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- the widely publicized affair between Crowe and his co-star Meg Ryan, the film failed to generate much heat during the holiday box-office season, and attention turned once again to the actor's star-making role some six months prior. In an Oscar year devoid of conventionally spectacular epics, Gladiator netted 12 nominations in February 2001, including one for its lead performer. While many wags viewed the film's eventual Best Picture victory as a fluke, the same could not be said for Crowe's Best Actor victory: nudging past such stiff competition as Tom Hanks and Ed Harris, Crowe finally nabbed a statue, affirming for Hollywood the talent that critics had first noticed almost ten years earlier.Crowe's 2001 role as real-life Nobel Prize-winning schizophrenic mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. brought the actor back into the Oscar arena. The film vaulted past the 100-million-dollar mark as it took home Golden Globes for Best Picture, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, and Actor and racked up eight Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor nod for Crowe. The film cemented Crowe as a top-tier leading man, and he would spend the following years proving this again and again, with landmark roles in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Cinderella Man, A Good Year, 3:10 to Yuma, Robin Hood, and State of Play.

Trivia: With her regal and elegant visage, Aussie actress Cate Blanchett broke through the mob of aspiring actors and instantly ascended the ranks to Hollywood stardom with her Academy Award-nominated turn as Elizabeth I in Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth (1998). Her concomitantly poignant and fierce portrayal won admiration from critics and filmgoers, but she had maintained a low enough profile in years prior (and her celebrity materialized so quickly) that the Elizabeth triumph appeared to pull the heretofore unseen actress from out of thin air and caught just about everyone off guard. Born in Melbourne on May 14, 1969, Catherine Elise Blanchett entered the world as the daughter of an Australian mother and a Texas-born American father, with two siblings. Her dad died of a heart attack when she was ten; her mother subsequently raised her. Blanchett studied economics and fine art at the University of Melbourne, but -- reeling from ennui and dissatisfaction -- she set off in search of an alternate vocation and traveled for a period of time, perhaps in search of herself. Blanchett ultimately landed in Egypt, where a chance bit part in an Arabic boxing film introduced her to a newfound love of acting. Taking this as a firm cue, Blanchett harkened back to Sydney, where she enrolled in (and ultimately graduated from) the highly esteemed National Academy of Dramatic Art. Blanchett later joined the Sydney Theatre Company, where she earned positive notices in a production of Caryl Churchill's Top Girls. A subsequent role in Timothy Daley's musical Kafka Dances won Blanchett a 1993 New Comer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle, an honor doubled that same year when she gleaned a Rosemont Best Actress Award for her performance opposite future Elizabeth co-star Geoffrey Rush in David Mamet's Oleanna. The considerable prestige that accompanied these theatrical triumphs led Blanchett to the small screen, where she appeared in various programs for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, including the drama Heartland and the cop series Police Rescue. Her television performances caught the attention of director Bruce Beresford, who cast her in his 1997 POW drama Paradise Road as a shy Australian nurse, opposite Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. 1997 proved to be a busy year as it also found her staring in the comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie, for which she netted an Australian Film Institute Best Actress Award. By the end of the year she had an even bigger event than any successful acting gigs as she was married in December to British film technician Andrew Upton. With the considerable amount of praise and recognition Blanchett was receiving in her native country and a partner in her personal life to share it with, it was only a matter of time and opportunity before she became known to a wider audience. Her opportunity arrived that very same year, with her role in Gillian Armstrong's adaptation of Peter Carey's novel Oscar and Lucinda. Opposite Ralph Fiennes, Blanchett won almost uniform praise for her performance in a tepidly received film. Blanchett came first-billed in the following year's Elizabeth. The film drew swift and unequivocal praise, and Blanchett's portrayal of the queen turned her into Los Angeles' newest cause célèbre. A plethora of awards greeted Kapur's feature and Blanchett's performance, including a Best Actress Academy Award nomination and eight additional Oscar nods. The actress won a Golden Globe and British Academy Award, in addition to a host of critics' circle awards. With that experience under her belt, Blanchett starred opposite Angelina Jolie, John Cusack, and Billy Bob Thornton in the Mike Newell comedy Pushing Tin (1999). Although the film dive-bombed at the box office, critics singled out Blanchett's fine performance as a Long Island housewife. The same year, she played another domestic, albeit one of an entirely different stripe, in Oliver Parker's adaptation of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. Despite a uniformly strong cast including Jeremy Northam, Rupert Everett, and Julianne Moore, the film divided critics, although Blanchett herself again earned favorable notices.Blanchett maintained a busy schedule after the Newell project, appearing in a plethora films throughout the early 2000s. She joined Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci with her role as a kindhearted albeit materialistic showgirl in The Man Who Cried, then starred as a fortune-teller who holds the key to a mysterious murder in director Sam Raimi's The Gift, an unwitting accomplice in the crime comedy Bandits, a British schoolteacher in Tom Tykwer's Kieslowski update Heaven, and Galadriel, Queen of Lothlórien, in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Blanchett also appeared in 2001's The Shipping News (as Petal) and director Gillian Armstrong's Charlotte Gray as the title character. That same year, she gave birth to her first son, Dashiell John.Blanchett's appeared as ill-fated Irish journalist Veronica Guerin in director Joel Schumacher and producer Jerry Bruckheimer's eponymously titled 2003 biopic. The film drew very mixed reviews and died a quick death in cinemas during its late-autumn run, but those reviewers who did respond favorably again singled out the actress' stunning interpretation of the role. The following year, Blanchett appeared in Wes Anderson's quirky film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou alongside Bill Murray and Owen Wilson. Blanchett wore a prosthetic belly in the film for her role as a seven months pregnant journalist and, interestingly enough, she later found that she was actually pregnant during filming. She gave birth to her second son, Roman Robert, later that same year. First, however, she effortlessly lit up the screen with a performance as film legend Katharine Hepburn in director Martin Scorsese's lavish Howard Hughes epic The Aviator. If The Aviator's Best Picture loss to Million Dollar Baby proved somewhat disappointing to Scorsese fans when the Oscars were handed out, Blanchett landed her greatest triumph that evening: she won the Best Supporting Actress award for her turn as Hepburn. Perhaps despairing the paucity of solid scripts in Hollywood, Blanchett went global after the Scorsese affair. She returned to her native Australia for a low-key follow-up, Rowan Woods' harrowing and skillful Little Fish (2005). 2006's multi-national production Babel, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, won the Best Director Award at Cannes; one of the narrative strands in its array of subplots featured Blanchett and Brad Pitt as husband and wife, grieving over the death of a child, and thrust into a desperate situation. Babel turned out to be a major critical success, as did another film Blanchett appeared in that same year, Notes on a Scandal. In the film, Blanchett played a mother and schoolteacher who becomes deeply embroiled in a maze of power and deception when she betrays her job and family by carrying on an affair with a student. The tautly suspenseful and intimate film also starred Judi Dench as Blanchett's friend and confidant, who soon becomes a source of emotional blackmail. The actresses were each praised for their performances, and each received both Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for their work in the film. Blanchett went on to play Lena Brandt in The Good German, Steven Soderbergh and Paul Attanasio's tale of a man (George Clooney) searching for his former mistress (Blanchett) in post-WWII Berlin. She also signed on for Poison helmer Todd Haynes' I'm Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan, slated for release in 2007. The eccentric bio of the pop singer co-starred Richard Gere, Julianne Moore, Adrien Brody, and Charlotte Gainsbourg with numerous varied performers playing the musician in different sequences. Also set for release in 2007 was Blanchett's return to one of her greatest triumphs as Elizabeth I in The Golden Age, Shekhar Kapur's sequel to his 1998 arthouse hit Elizabeth, which would take place later in the Virgin Queen's reign. Geoffrey Rush agreed to reprise his role as Sir Francis Walsingham, and the film would also feature Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh, establisher of the first New World colony and controversial figure of the Elizabethan court. Blanchett also agreed to join the cast of the David Fincher-directed fantasy The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- a critically acclaimed hit of 2008 -- before moving on to play a nefarious baddie in the unique thriller Hanna in 2012. Soon, the actress was reprising the role of elvin queen Galadriel for the Lord of the Rings prequel, The Hobbit. In 2013, she won her second Academy Award, this time for Lead Actress, for her portrayal of an unhinged socialite in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine. In 2015, Blanchett played the evil stepmother in the live-action version of Cinderella, took on a supporting role in Terrence Malick's Knight of Cups and earned her seventh Oscar nomination for Todd Haynes' Carol.

Trivia: One of the top leading men of the '80s, William Hurt, born March 20th, 1950, is notable for his intensity and effective portrayals of complex characters. Although born in Washington, D.C., Hurt had already seen much of the world by the time he was grown, as his father worked for the State Department. His early years spent in the South Pacific near Guam, Hurt moved to Manhattan with his mother after his parents divorced when he was six years old. He spent the summers with his father, vacationing in a variety of international locales, including Sudan. At the age of ten, Hurt's life again changed dramatically when he became a stepson to Henry Luce III, the heir to the Time-Life empire. His mother's second marriage indirectly led to Hurt's initial involvement with the theater: sent away to a boarding school in Massachusetts, he found comfort in acting.After going on to Tufts University to study theology for three years at his stepfather's urging, Hurt married aspiring actress Mary Beth Supinger and followed her to London to study drama. Upon their return to the U.S., Hurt studied drama at Juilliard. By this time, under the realization that his marriage was failing, Hurt divorced his wife, got a motorcycle, and headed cross country for the Shakespeare festival in Ashland, OR, where he made his professional debut in a production of Hamlet. He later joined New York's Circle Repertory Company, and went on to receive critical acclaim for his work on the New York stage.Hurt made his feature film debut in Ken Russell's Altered States in 1980, but it was not until he appeared opposite Kathleen Turner in Body Heat (1981) that he became a star and sex symbol. Four years later, he won Best Actor Oscar and British Academy awards as well as a similar honor at Cannes for his sensitive portrayal of a gay prisoner in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985). He was again nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his two subsequent films, Children of a Lesser God (1986) and Broadcast News (1987). Further success followed in 1988 when he starred in The Accidental Tourist.As bright as his star shone on stage and screen, by the end of the '80s, a darker side of Hurt was exposed when he was sued by his former live-in love and mother of his daughter Alex, ballet dancer Sandra Jennings, who claimed to be his common-law wife. Despite his personal problems, Hurt continued to stay relatively busy, beginning the new decade with a fine turn in Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World (1991). He subsequently appeared in such acclaimed films as Smoke (1995), Jane Eyre (1996), One True Thing (1998), and Dark City (1998). In 1998, Hurt appeared as the patriarch of one of televisions most beloved sci-fi families in the big-budgeted remake of Lost in Space, and as a gubernatorial candidate with a shadowy past in George Hickenlooper's political drama The Big Brass Ring (1999).Still alternating between stage and screen into the new millennium, Hurt stuck mainly to the small screen in the next few years. After lending his voice to the animated portrayal of the life of Jesus Christ in The Miracle Maker, appearing in the mini-series Dune, and taking the title role of The Contaminated Man in 2000, Hurt returned to features with his role in director Steven Spielberg's long anticipated (post-mortem) collaboration with the late Stanley Kubrick, A.I. As the well-intending scientist who sets the story of an artificial boy capable of learning and love into motion, Hurt's character seemed to provide the antithesis of the regressive experiments his previous character had flirted with in Altered States.Hurt played a supporting role in Changing Lanes (2002), an thought-provoking thriller following two very different New York City residents whose lives fatefully intersect following a car accident, and again in the political thriller Syriana, which would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2005. The actor was praised the same year for his work as a supporting character in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. In 2007, Hurt starred as the murderous alter ego of a businessman in Mr. Brooks, and co-starred with Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, and Dennis Quaid for the political thriller Vantage Point (2008). Hurt stars as an ex-con looking to start over for The Yellow Handkerchief (2008), and Gen. Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, Bruce Banner's nemesis, in The Incredible Hulk (2008).In 2009, Hurt reunited with Vantage Point director Pete Travis for the historical thriller Endgame, for which he played the leading role of philosophy Professor Willie Esterhuyse, an essential member of a team dedicated to securing the release of Nelson Mandela. Director Julie Gavras' 2011 romantic comedy found Hurt starring alongside the legendary Isabella Rossallini. Hurt is slated to work in the The Host, a dystopian thriller adapted from a novel from author Stephanie Meyers, in 2013.