Trivia: Began acting at age 7 in the local after school program in Culver City.Contributed to the Obama campaign in 2008 with funds he raised from a lemonade stand and was subsequently invited to Washington, D.C. to attend the inauguration.Was discovered and considered for the Disney Channel musical Z-O-M-B-I-E-S when casting director Amber Horn saw him performing as Roger in a production of Rent.Volunteered with the Venice Family Clinic, worked with disabled students at the McBride Elementary getting them involved with the arts; and for several years has been involved with Robert Kennedy Jr.'s Waterkeeper Alliance.Has worked as an advocate teen suicide prevention, and is actively involved in other organizations such as Pediatric Aids, Poke for Puppies, Bread and Roses, Foster Cares and Buy Life.

Trivia: Internationally known for his charisma and smoldering good looks, Antonio Banderas is the ultimate manifestation of the Latin heartthrob. Born in Málaga, Spain on August 10, 1960, Banderas wanted to become a professional soccer player until a broken foot sidelined his dreams at the age of fourteen. He went on to enroll in some drama classes, eventually joining a theatre troupe that toured all over Spain. His work in the theatre, and his performances on the streets, eventually landed him a spot with the National Theatre of Spain. While performing with the theatre, Banderas caught the attention of director Pedro Almodóvar, who cast the young actor in his film debut, Laberinto de Pasione (Labyrinth of Passion) (1982). He went on to appear in the director's La Ley del Deseo (Law of Desire) (1984), making headlines with his performance as a gay man, which required him to engage in his first male-to-male onscreen kiss. After Banderas appeared in Almodóvar's Matador (1986), the director cast him in his internationally acclaimed Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) (1988). The recognition Banderas gained for his role increased two years later when he starred in Almodóvar's controversial Atame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!) as a mental patient who kidnaps a porn star (Victoria Abril) and keeps her tied up until she returns his love.Banderas made his first stateside appearance as an unwitting object of Madonna's affections in Truth or Dare (1991). The following year, still speaking next to no English, he starred in his first American film, The Mambo Kings. It was a testament to his acting abilities that, despite having to learn all of his lines phonetically, Banderas still managed to turn in a critically praised performance as a struggling musician. He broke through to mainstream American audiences as the gay lover of AIDS-afflicted lawyer Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) in Philadelphia (1993). The film's success earned Banderas wide recognition, and the following year he was given a substantial role in Neil Jordan's high-profile adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, which allowed him to share the screen with the likes of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Banderas subsequently appeared in a number of films of widely varying quality, doing particularly strong work in Desperado (1995), Evita (1998), and The Mask of Zorro (1998). In 1999, he made his first foray into directing with Crazy in Alabama, a black comedy starring Melanie Griffith, to whom he had been married since 1996. The following year he starred as an aspiring boxer opposite Woody Harrelson in Play It to the Bone, portrayed a Cuban tycoon with a bad seed bride (Angelina Jolie) in Original Sin, and starred alongside Bob Hoskins and Wes Bentley in The White River Kid. Well established as a hearthrob and a talented dramatic actor by the end of the 1990s, the fact that Desperato director Robert Rodriguez was the only director to have expolored Banderas' comic potential (Banderas provided one of the few memorable performances in Rodriguez's segment of the otherwise abysmal Four Rooms (1995)) hinted at a heretofore unexplored but potentially lucrative territory for the actor. Later approached by Rodriguez to portray the super-spy patriarch in the family oriented adventure comedy Spy Kids (2001), Banderas charmed children and adults alike with his role as a kidnapped agent whose children must discover their inner stregnth in order to rescue their mother and father. After reprising his role in the following year's Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, Banderas would next return to more adult oriented roles in both Brian DePalma's Femme Fatale and the ill-fated Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (both 2002). After essaying a more historic role in the dramatic biopic Frida (also 2002), the remarkably diverse actor would one again team with Rodriguez for the sprawling Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003). In 2004 he joined the highly successful Shrek franchise voicing Puss In Boots, and the character became so popular that he appeared in each of the following sequels, and was the subject of his own feature in 2011. In 2005 he played Zorro again, and he had a major part in the dance film Take the Lead. In 2011 he reteamed for the first time in two decades with Pedro Almodovar in the Hitchcock-inspired The Skin I Live In, and the next year he appeared as a mysterious international espionage figure in the action film Haywire. He appeared in a small role in Rodriguez's Machete Kills (2013) and later appeared in The Expendables 3 (2014).

Trivia: Acclaimed as one of Britain's funniest standup comedians, Omid Djalili also retained the distinction of being the country's sole Iranian standup act. Following the smashing success in the 1995 Edinburgh Festival and such satirical U.K. efforts as Small Potatoes (2001) and Between Iraq and a Hard Place (2003), Djalili seemed poised to take the U.S. by storm with his supporting role in the new Whoopi Goldberg sitcom Whoopi. Born to an Iranian journalist and photographer who had settled in London in 1957, Djalili's father was both a contributor to Iran's top newspapers and a translator for the Iranian embassy. Severing his ties with the Iranian government following the 1979 Iranian revolution, the elder Djalili opened a medical hostile for Iranian immigrants, and it was there that young Omid witnessed his father's unique ability to entertain and began to get a true sense of the cultural differences between native-born Londoners and their Iranian immigrant counterparts. His enrollment in London's multi-cultural Holland Park school also served to provide young Djalili with a strong catalog of various foreign accents that would later prove key to his success as a standup act. Djalili graduated from the University of Ulster with a degree in English and theater arts in 1988, and embarked on a series of odd jobs after returning to London and being rejected from 16 different drama schools. Gradually working his way from the outskirts of the theater scene to small roles on stage and screen, it wasn't long before Djalili met his future wife, Annabel Knight, at a friends wedding and the two began collaborating on various projects. After working themselves into the experimental theater scene in the Czech Republic via a cultural exchange program, the couple was preparing to have their first child when Mrs. Knight decided to pen a one man play for her husband to star in. An introspective, humorous, and honest depiction of the struggle for truth in the face of religious prosecution, A Strange Bit of History proved an enormous hit after debuting in Edinburgh to capacity crowds. His crossover appeal in part the result of his ability to relate to numerous foreign cultures, Djalili took home the coveted LWT Stand Up Award in 1997 and has since gone on to numerous film and television roles. Djalili endeared himself to U.K. television audiences in the late '90s, and after making his film debut in the 1999 Hollywood blockbuster The Mummy, it seemed as if his appeal had made the sometimes difficult translation from the U.K. to the U.S. Alternating between work in Europe and America into the new millennium, Djalili received stateside exposure with roles in such high-profile releases as The World is Not Enough (1999) and Spy Game (2001) while maintaining U.K. credibility with supporting performances in Mean Machine (2001) and The Calcium Kid (2003). Following the premiere of Whoopi, Djalili began preparation for his role as Pablo Picasso in the feature Modigliani (2004). Over the next several years, Djalili would continue to remain a force on screen, appearing in films like Casanova and The Infadel, as well as TV series like The Paul Reiser Show.

Trivia: Raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In 2003, was approached about a job working at a call center while backpacking in India because of his American accent. Seven years later, was cast in the NBC series Outsourced, a comedy about a call center in Mumbai. Had recurring roles on three different network series in 2009 (Privileged, Three Rivers and Better Off Ted).