Trivia: Bearing the kind of sensitive-man good looks that have led many to think he would be perfect for a career as a tortured, latte-chugging intellectual, Ethan Hawke instead emerged in the 1990s as both a talented actor and a thinking girls' poster boy. In addition to acting, Hawke penned two novels -- The Hottest State, which is rumored to be based on a former relationship he had with singer/songwriter Lisa Loeb, and the best-selling Ash Wednesday. Born November 6, 1970, in Austin, TX, to teenage parents who separated when he was a toddler, Hawke was raised by his mother. The two led an itinerant existence until she married again, and the family settled in Princeton Junction, NJ. There Hawke began to study acting at Princeton's McCarter Theatre, and at the age of 14, he made his film debut in Explorers (1985). A sci-fi fantasy flick that starred the actor alongside River Phoenix, it didn't make much of an impact upon its theatrical release, but thanks to the presence of both Hawke and Phoenix, it went on to a second life on cable.Following his debut, Hawke stopped acting professionally to attend Carnegie Mellon University. His college career didn't last long, however; while still a student, Hawke was chosen to play one of the young protagonists of Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society. The 1989 film, which marked the beginning of Robin Williams' turn toward more dramatic roles, was a success, and Hawke, in his role as the shy, cringing Todd Anderson, made prep school angst look so photogenic that he soon had something of a teenage following. After starring as Ted Danson's son in Dad the same year, Hawke went on to make a string of movies that allowed him to demonstrate his talent but never quite propelled him further into the realm of stardom. White Fang (1991) provided him with a go at adventure by casting him as a young gold miner who forms a bond with the titular canine, while Waterland (1992) had Hawke plumbing the depths of mild delinquency as the troublesome student of an emotionally estranged Jeremy Irons. Unfortunately, almost nobody saw Waterland, and the same could be said of Hawke's other film that year, the WWII drama A Midnight Clear. Lack of an audience obscured the actor's strong performances in both films, and it was not until 1994 that he began to gain recognition for something besides Dead Poets Society. In that year, Hawke created something of a reputation for himself, both on- and offscreen. Offscreen, he became tabloid fodder when he was caught dancing with a then-married Julia Roberts and thus gained a certain -- if fleeting -- kind of notoriety. On screen, the actor starred in Ben Stiller's Reality Bites, portraying the kind of goateed, ennui-mired, more-sensitive-than-thou slacker that helped get him labeled as such in real life. Matters weren't helped when, that same year, the actor published The Hottest State, a meditation on love from the point-of-view of an angst-ridden twentysomething that was scorned by many critics as pretentious posturing.After starring as another sensitive student of life in Richard Linklater's romantic talkathon Before Sunrise (1995), Hawke went back to his sci-fi roots with Gattaca (1997), a near-future parable about the dangers of genetic engineering. Although the film was a relative disappointment, it did present Hawke with an introduction to co-star Uma Thurman, whom he married in 1998 and had a daughter with later that same year. Also in 1998, the actor starred opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations; despite mixed reviews, the film heightened Hawke's profile while further establishing him as one of the leading interpreters of sensitive-boy artistic angst. After a starring turn as one of the titular Newton Boys alongside Matthew McConaughey, Skeet Ulrich, and Vincent D'Onofrio in Richard Linklater's neglected 1998 Western, Hawke took on an entirely different role in 1999. Starring in Scott Hicks' Snow Falling on Cedars, he portrayed a journalist investigating the murder of a Japanese-American man in post-WWII Washington State. The same year, he appeared in Joe the King, the directorial debut of his friend and Midnight Clear co-star Frank Whaley.In addition to his film work, Hawke has remained active in the theater. He was the artistic director of the now-defunct Malaparte, a New York theater company that he co-founded with a group of actors including Robert Sean Leonard, Frank Whaley, and Josh Hamilton. He has also worked behind the camera, directing the music video for Lisa Loeb's "Stay" in 1994.Hawke subsequently earned some of the best reviews of his career to date as the title character of Michael Almereyda's 2000 adaptation of Hamlet. Set in modern-day New York, the film allowed Hawke to give the famously tortured prince a slackerish spin that more than one critic noted seemed to come naturally to the actor. The following year, he could be seen in an altogether different feature, portraying a rookie cop opposite Denzel Washington in Training Day, Antoine Fuqua's gritty cop drama. He also collaborated again with director Linklater, first for Tape, a drama co-starring Robert Sean Leonard and wife Thurman, and then for Waking Life, a groundbreaking animated feature in which the actor reprised the role of Before Sunrise's Jesse. 2001 also marked Hawke's first significant foray behind the camera as the director of Chelsea Walls, a multi-character drama about various artists living in New York's famed Chelsea Hotel.In 2002, Hawke played alongside Frank Whaley in The Jimmy Show and made an appearance on the hit television drama Alias the next year. The year 2003 was not a banner one for the actor -- after rumors of an affair between Hawke and a young model began circulating among various television and print tabloids, Uma Thurman announced their official separation after five years of marriage. In 2004, Hawke starred with Angelina Jolie in director D.J. Caruso's Taking Lives and reprised his Before Sunrise role opposite Julie Delpy in Linklater's sequel Before Sunset, a film which also provided the long-time actor with his first screenwriting credit.Hawke appeared in several moderately successful films throughout 2005 and 2006 (Assault on Precinct 13, The Hottest State, Fast Food Nation), but found himself back in the limelight for 2007's crime thriller Before the Devil Know You're Dead, in which the actor played one of two brothers involved in a plan to rob their parents' jewelry store. The film would win the Best Picture from the American Film Institute. He found success yet again for his role in the 2008 crime drama What Doesn't Kill You. The film, which also stars Mark Ruffalo and Donnie Wahlberg, features Hawke as a street-hardened young adult struggling to rise above the dog-eat-dog lifestyle to which he has become accustomed. In 2009 Hawke starred in Daybreaker, in which he played a vampire sympathetic to the human plight, and worked with Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes, and Richard Gere for his role as a narcotics officer in the crime thriller Brooklyn's Finest.In 2013 Hawke scored a minor hit as the star of the horror film The Purge. In that same year he returned with Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater with Before Midnight, their sequel to Before Sunset, which garnered Hawke a second Oscar nomination in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. He returned to Oscar contention in 2014, this time in the Best Supporting Actor category for playing the father in Linklater's Boyhood.

Trivia: Fair-haired and often mustached character actor Seymour Cassel began making film and TV appearances as scruffy hippie types in the 1960s. He studied at the American Theatre Wing and the Actor's Studio before making his film debut in John Cassavetes' first film, Shadows (1959), for which he also served as associate producer. He then co-starred with Cassavetes in Too Late Blues (1961) and The Killers (1964). When Cassavetes turned to directing full-time, he utilized Cassel's talents as often as possible. The actor was Oscar-nominated for his portrayal of an aging hippie in Faces (1968) and later played Moskowitz in Minnie and Moskowitz (1971). A somewhat heavier Seymour Cassel continued as a character actor over the next few decades with roles in Tin Men, Colors, and the made-for-TV movie Blood Feud. In the '90s, he played Sam Catchem in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy, dog-sled adventurer Skunker in the Disney classic White Fang, and a chauffeur in Indecent Proposal. His role as the shyster Joe in the black comedy In the Soup also earned special recognition at Sundance. Cassel then appeared in two romantic comedies with director Andrew Bergman: It Could Happen to You and Honeymoon in Vegas. For the rest of the '90s, his career prospered with small, but memorable, roles in such independent comedies and dramas as Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, Trees Lounge, and Dream for an Insomniac. During this period, he developed a rapport with filmmaker Wes Anderson, who would cast him in many of his projects. Cassel would play Max Fisher's barber father in Rushmore, Royal's friend Dusty in The Royal Tenenbaums, and Steve's late friend Esteban in The Life Aquatic, Cassel would also continue to work consistently in all areas of film, appearing notably in comedies like Stealing Harvard, Stuck on You, Beer League, and L!fe Happens.

Trivia: Hard-working character actor James Remar has been mainly typecast as a psychopathic killer in a wide variety of thrillers, both blockbusters and low-budget straight-to-video. A native of Boston, he studied acting at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse and made his Broadway debut with Bent, opposite Richard Gere. His first major film role was gangster Ajax in Walter Hill's 1979 action drama The Warriors. The film gained a minor cult following and seemed to cement Remar's reputation as a bad guy. He would continue to work with director Hill for Windwalker (1980), 48 Hrs. (1982), and Wild Bill (1995).During the '80s, he played psycho gangster Dutch Schultz in Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club, a maniac killer in Rent-a-Cop, and a Neanderthal in The Clan of the Cave Bear. He got a little break in 1989 as the cop Gentry in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy. During the '90s, he made a deal with the devil in Tales From the Darkside: The Movie and appeared in many movies that ended up on TV or home video. He had played so many villains that he was able to spoof himself as Max Shady in the comedic thriller parody Fatal Instinct. A few gentle comedy dramas followed with Penny Marshall's Renaissance Man and Herbert Ross' Boys on the Side.Many film roles opened up in the late '90s, from Victor Salva's independent comedy Rites of Passage to the big-budget Robert Zemeckis mystery What Lies Beneath. After playing Frank Cisco on the TV series Total Security, he showed up on HBO's Sex and the City as Richard, Samatha's (Kim Cattrall) rich boyfriend of the moment. He then joined the cast of the USA original series The Huntress as fugitive Tiny Bellows, the love interest of Dottie Thorson (Annette O'Toole). In 2003, he could be seen in feature films from the action moneymaker 2 Fast 2 Furious to the light comedy Duplex.

Trivia: Many may associate the lean, frequently menacing actor Bill Moseley with his repeat work for goremeister Rob Zombie, in whose efforts House of 1,000 Corpses (2002), The Devil's Rejects (2005), and Halloween (2007) he starred, nearly always as a deranged, homicidal lunatic. In truth, seasoned horror aficionados will realize that Moseley had already attained iconic status long prior to his affiliation with Zombie -- particularly given his prominent billing as the maniacal cannibal Chop-Top, opposite Dennis Hopper, in 1986's horror comedy The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. This role (the actor's third) effectively put Moseley, then in his late twenties, on top; in successive years, he did occasional work in features from other genres, such as the 1992 family comedy Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and the Richard Gere-headlined romantic psychodrama Mr. Jones (1993), but remained most commonly tied to horror. Memorable efforts in this vein included The Blob (1988), Silent Night, Deadly Night 3 (1989), Night of the Living Dead (1990), and The Convent (2000). Moseley's affiliation with Zombie began when the two met at a Haunted City Walk in Los Angeles in 1999 and immediately struck up a rapport. They remained friends, and not only worked on the said three features (with Rejects, in particular, benefiting enormously from Moseley's long-haired presence -- his gaunt, weapon-wielding appearance was used as a major selling point for the film), but collaborated on the Zombie-directed featurette to Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse, Werewolf Women of the S.S. (2007). Also in 2007, Moseley starred in the horror outing House, the tale of a bunch of Satanists who keep two couples captive. In addition to his film work, Moseley's professional activities include performing as a musician in the band Cornbugs. He is not to be confused with the actor William Moseley, active in Britain at about the same time.

Trivia: Possessing a drama degree from the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C., and having undergone six weeks of special training for production interns at Walt Disney Pictures in Burbank, Marilese Schneider became a staff coordinator for Buena Vista Pictures distribution. Schneider earned her first credit as a co-producer on Disney's outdoor adventure White Fang (1991). After working briefly with another production company, Schneider teamed with Roger Donaldson and worked on features such as The Getaway (1994) and Dante's Peak (1997).