Trivia: Actress, tabloid fodder, provocative Vanity Fair cover piece: the husky-voiced brunette Demi Moore is nothing if not an unforgettable roadside attraction on the pop culture highway. Rising to prominence with a string of successful films during the '80s and early '90s, Moore became known for both her onscreen and offscreen ability to draw attention for everything from her grin-and-bare-it roles in films like Striptease to her well-publicized marriage to (and divorce from) Bruce Willis.Born Demetria Guynes in Roswell, NM, on November 11, 1962, Moore led a troubled childhood. To call it tumultuous would be something of an understatement: along with her mother, half-brother and stepfather, she moved no less than 30 times before her adolescence, thanks to her stepfather's job as a newspaper ad salesman. The problems that went along with such an itinerant lifestyle were compounded by the dysfunctional, sometimes abusive relationship between Moore's mother and stepfather. The latter committed suicide when Moore was 15, around the time that she discovered that he was not her biological father. She dropped out of school a year later and did some modeling in Europe. When she was 18, Moore married rocker Freddy Moore; the union lasted four years, during which time the actress landed her first role playing Jackie Templeton on the TV daytime drama General Hospital. Moore made her film debut in 1981, appearing in both the coming-of-age drama Choices and the schlock-tastic Parasite. Following a bit role in 1982's Young Doctors in Love, she had her first lead role in No Small Affair (1984) as an aspiring rock singer opposite Jon Cryer. Her real breakthrough came the next year, when she starred as an unstable member of a group of college friends in St. Elmo's Fire. Apparently, her onscreen instability mirrored her offscreen condition at the time; she was reportedly fired from the film at one point and then rehired after going into drug rehab. The film was a hit, and Moore, along with such co-stars as Emilio Estevez (to whom she was engaged for three years), Rob Lowe, and Ally Sheedy, became a member of the infamous "Brat Pack."Fortunately for Moore, she managed to avoid the straight-to-oblivion fate of other Brat Pack members, increasing her fame and resume with films like About Last Night (1986) and The Seventh Sign (1988). Her fame further increased in 1987 when she wed Bruce Willis in a Las Vegas ceremony presided over by singer Little Richard. In 1990, Moore had her biggest hit to date with Ghost, a romantic drama that cast her as the grieving girlfriend of the deceased Patrick Swayze. A huge success, Ghost secured Moore a place on the A-list, something she managed to sustain despite the subsequent twin flops of The Butcher's Wife and Mortal Thoughts, both released in 1991. That same year, Moore gained exposure of a different sort when she appeared nude and hugely pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair; the resulting hoopla gained her more attention than either of her movies that year. She was back on the magazine's cover the following year, nude again but fetus-free and sporting a layer of artfully applied body paint. The controversy surrounding her cover-girl appearances may have helped Moore weather similar flak around her next feature, 1993's Indecent Proposal. The story of a woman (Moore) who agrees to a one-night stand with a wealthy man (Robert Redford) for one million dollars after she and her husband (Woody Harrelson) find themselves in dire financial straits, Proposal was decried by a number of feminist groups as well as various film critics and went on to be another big, if controversial, hit for Moore.Following the commercial success of Indecent Proposal, Moore's career hit something of a downward spiral. 1994's Disclosure proved a disappointment, and the following year's Now and Then (which she also produced) staged a similarly wan performance at the box office; however, it was Moore's other film that year, a "free,"or, as some would say, staggeringly misguided, adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, that had critics howling and audiences cowering like small children being forced to watch German expressionist films. An unintentionally hilarious rendering of the classic tale, it featured Moore's Hester Prynne exposing plenty of skin, luxuriating in what must have been one of Puritan New England's few hot tubs, having steamy sex on a shifting bed of grain, and walking off into the sunset with her beloved Reverend Dimmesdale (a moody Gary Oldman). Following this debacle, Moore took refuge on safer grounds, lending her voice to Disney's animated The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1996; however, that same year, she encountered another career pitfall in the form of Striptease. Based on Carl Hiaasen's satirical novel about a divorcée who turns to stripping so that she can raise money to win back custody of her daughter, the tonally inconsistent film proved a failure, despite titillating advertisements promising that Moore would bare all for audiences. The actress' career suffered a further blow with the disappointment of Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane in 1997, and she found herself getting more attention for her offscreen life as she was, by that point, embroiled in a very public divorce from Willis. The two formally separated in 1998. Although her career in front of the camera suffered, Moore managed to do well for herself as a producer. In 1997, she produced the hugely successful Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and served in the same capacity for its mega-hit sequels, 1999's Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and 2002's Austin Powers in Goldmember. In 2000, Moore returned to the screen to star in Alain Berliner's Passion of Mind, a psychological drama that cast the actress in a dual role as two women who lead different lives but are tied by a single identity.The year 2003 brought Moore back to the spotlight in a big way -- not only did the 41-year-old actress play the shockingly buff-bodied bad guy in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, she gave the paparazzi something of a godsend by dating Punk'd and That '70s Show heartthrob Ashton Kutcher, sixteen years her junior. The two wed in late September 2005, at a ceremony attended by hundreds, including Bruce Willis and his three daughters with Moore; they later divorced amid tremendous media scrutiny in 2011. Moore maintained a lower profile after this union, but returned to the spotlight for former flame Estevez's ambitious political period-ensemble Bobby, about the events leading up to Robert Kennedy's assasination. Among the star-studded cast, Moore was given a showy, standout role as an alcoholic lounge singer; there was room, too, for Kutcher, as an acid-dropping hippie. The film garnered decidedly mixed reviews, even if Moore attracted some attention for her part.In 2007 the actress joined the cast of director Bruce A. Evans's psychological thriller Mr. Brooks, as a tough-as-nails detective on the trail of Kevin Costner's titular, obsessive suburban serial killer. The movie suffered an ignominious fate at the box office, and Moore was singled out by critics for her implausibility. This didn't stop her from taking on new projects, however, starring with Parker Posey in the 2009 comedy Happy Tears in 2009, and playing the female lead in the 2011 Wall Street drama Margin Call, before joining the cast of the romantic comedy LOL in 2012.

Trivia: An actress whose love-her-or-hate-her screen presence can often be traced to the disastrous 1995 comic-book adaptation that should have been her breakout role, Lori Petty has endured the lingering failure of Tank Girl to prove herself capable of much more than battling maniacal super-villains with the aid of renegade kangaroos. The Chattanooga, TN, native first set herself apart from the pack as the first female editor of her high school newspaper in Sioux City, and the ambitious future actress was also active with the yearbook and the debate team. It wasn't long before Petty turned to acting as a creative outlet, and after making her television debut in a 1987 episode of The Equalizer she went on to appear in both Head of the Class and Miami Vice. Her roles in the made-for-television Bates Motel and the short-lived series The Thorns went largely unnoticed, and it wasn't until the early '90s that audiences truly got their first glimpse of the rising starlet. Following a brief but scene-stealing turn in the 1990 comedy Cadillac Man, Petty made her first big impression with a role as Keanu Reeves' surfing instructor in the following year's Point Break. When her appearance in the 1992 women's baseball comedy drama A League of Their Own found Petty practically stealing the limelight from such screen heavies as Madonna and Geena Davis, casting agents took notice, and she subsequently landed roles in such high-profile releases as Free Willy (1993), Poetic Justice (1993), and the Pauly Shore comedy In the Army Now (1994). Though Petty's solid dramatic performance in the 1994 police drama The Glass Shield earned her kudos from the critics, the film only received limited release and her contributions went largely unseen. Of course, it was only a matter of time before Petty was given the chance to headline a film, and after beating out the likes of Spice Girl Geri Halliwell and Emily Lloyd she took the lead in the much-maligned 1995 film Tank Girl. A loud, brash and ultimately misguided attempt to bring the punkish comic-book heroine to the screen, the film was ultimately done in by its own excess. Fans were pleased to see Petty bounce back the following year in the shortlived sitcom Lush Life, though the years that followed found her cast in a slew of B-level thrillers including Countdown (1996), The Arrangement (1999), Firetrap, and Route 666 (both 2001). After stepping into the director's chair and pulling double duty both in front of and behind the camera on 2001's Horrible Accident, Petty rocked her heart out in search of a record contract in the 2003 musical drama Prey for Rock & Roll.

Trivia: American brothers Rob and Chad Lowe became actors in childhood (Chad would ultimately win an Emmy for his TV work). Rob was acting from the age of eight in 1972; seven years later, he was a regular on the TV series A New Kind of Family, playing the teenaged son of star Eileen Brennan. That series was shot down quickly, but Lowe's film career picked up when newspaper and magazine articles began aligning the handsome, sensitive young actor with the burgeoning Hollywood "brat pack," which included such new talent as Molly Ringwald, Matt Dillon, Charlie Sheen, and Anthony Michael Hall. Along with several fellow "packers" (Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and Emilio Estevez), Lowe starred in 1985's St. Elmo's Fire; this film and the earlier Hotel New Hampshire (1984) represent the most memorable projects in Lowe's otherwise negligible film output. In 1989, Lowe's already flagging film stardom received a severe setback when he was accused of videotaping his sexual activities with an underage girl (the evidence has since become a choice item on the sub-rosa video cassette circuit). Arrested for his misdeeds, Lowe performed several hours' worth of community service, then tried to reactivate his career. Since then, Lowe has matured into something of a brat-pack George Hamilton, successfully lampooning his previous screen image in such comedies as Wayne's World (1992) and Tommy Boy (1995).Though his comedic endeavors would continue throughout the 1990s in films such as Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) and its sequel, Lowe gained notice for such dramatic roles as that of the mute and strangely plague-immune Nick Andros in the long-anticipated TV miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand (1994). Lowe's roles throughout the '90s may have not been the prominently featured roles in A-list films that his early shooting-star may have suggested, though he did maintain steady work in an interesting variety of small-budget projects. Lowe's casting on the popular political drama The West Wing brought the actor back into the public eye in what many considered to be one of the most intelligently written dramatic series on television. His turn as quick-witted liberal speechwriter Sam Seaborn brought Lowe through the dark days of his scandalous past, back to an audience who may have forgotten his charm as an actor. He would stay with the series until 2005, all while continuing to pick new projects that involved creativity and an open mind. He tested his limits with roles in films like Salem's Lot and Thank You For Smoking, and in 2004, he began starring in his own TV series, playing Dr. Billy Grant on the crime drama Dr. Vegas. The show lasted until 2008, by which time he had already signed on for the prime time dramedy Brothers & Sisters, starring alongside Calista Flockhart. He had a major part in The Invention of Lying in 2009, and that same year he landed a regular gig on the well-reviewed NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation. In 2011 he was the executive producer and one of the leads in the ensemble film I Melt With You.

Trivia: Through a cruel twist of fate, American actor Sam Elliott came to films at just the point that the sort of fare in which he should have thrived was dying at the box office. A born cowboy star if ever there was one, the stage-trained Elliot made his debut in a tiny role in the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Within a few years, the western market had disappeared, and Elliot had to settle for standard good-guy roles in such contemporary films as Lifeguard (1976). Never tied down to any one type, Elliot's range has embraced sexy "other men" (Sibling Rivalry [1989]) and vicious rapist/murderers (the TV movie A Death in California [1986]). Still, one yearned to see Elliot playing frontiersmen; fortunately, the western genre had not completely disappeared on television, and Elliot was well-served with such hard-riding projects as The Sacketts (1977), I Will Fight No More Forever (1981), The Shadow Riders (1982), Houston: The Legend of Texas (1986) and Conagher (1991), in which he appeared with his wife, actress Katherine Ross. When westerns began showing up on the big screen again in the 1990s, Elliot was there, prominently cast as Virgil Earp in Tombstone (1993) and the made-for-cable sagebrusher The Desperate Trail (1995). Awarded Bronze Wrangler trophies for his involvement in Conagher, The Hi-Lo Country, and You Know My Name, Elliot also made an impression on Cohen Brothers fans with a memorable performance as the laid back Stranger in the cult hit The Big Lebowski. A featured role in the 2000 made for television remake Fail Safe found Elliot hanging up his duster to revisit rising Cold War tensions, and later that same year he would finally make the leap into the new millennium with his role as a presidential aid in Rod Lurie's Oscar-nominated hit The Contender. Rewarded with a double hernia as a result of his intense training efforts to prepare for a role in the 2002 Vietnam War drama We Were Soldiers, the then fifty-seven-year-old endured the pain through the entire production and put of surgery until shooting had wrapped. Though Elliot would remain in the armed forces to portray a military general hell-bent on destroying the Hulk in 2003, his onscreen authority would weaken somewhat when he was cast as a cancer-riddled Marlboro Man in the 2005 comedy Thank You for Smoking. After traveling to the far corners of the globe to carry out a little vigilante justice in the 2006 made for television thriller Avenger, Elliot would next break a little new ground by venturing into the world of animation by lending his distinctive voice to the character of Ben the Cow in Steve Oedekerk's rural family romp Barnyard. He co-starred with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig in The Golden Compass (2007), a film adaptation of the first installment of the wildly successful book series from author Philip Pullman. In 2009 he took on a role in the award winning comedy drama Up in the Air, and co-starred as an eccentric billionaire in director Tony Krantz's The Big Bang in 2011. He joined Robert Redford and Julie Christie to play a supporting role in 2012's comedy drama The Company You Keep.

Trivia: An athlete practically from birth, Patrick Swayze was a football player in high school and then earned a gymnastics scholarship to pay for college. His father had been a dancer/choreographer, and Swayze began to study dance early on, eventually working with the prestigious Harkness and Joffrey Ballet companies. He made his professional debut as a dancer with the lead role of Prince Charming in a traveling company of Disney on Parade, but an old knee injury from his football days threatened to cut his dancing career short at any moment. Hedging his bets, Swayze opened his repertoire up to acting and made the transition to Broadway, landing the role of Danny in the hit musical Grease before heading to Los Angeles to make yet another transition, this time to the screen.Swayze cut his teeth on TV guest appearances, scoring a memorable role as a dying soldier in an episode of M*A*S*H. Finally, he got a role in Francis Ford Coppola's youth ensemble film The Outsiders (1983), a film of massive critical acclaim and box-office success. Steadily continuing his upward trajectory, he followed The Outsiders with the Cold War classic Red Dawn (1984) and with the Civil War TV miniseries North and South (1985). His real big break came in 1987, however, with a starring role in the hit Dirty Dancing. The film gave Swayze the chance to showcase both his acting and dancing abilities and, additionally, he wrote and performed one of the film's songs, "She's Like the Wind," which went on to become a major hit. The role made Swayze an undisputed star, and he scored big again with a tough-guy role in the movie Road House, as well as the romantic lead in the supernatural drama Ghost (1990), a box-office smash that ended up grossing more than $200 million.The '90s had started out for Swayze with a bang, but with so much of his success wrapped up in the films of the 1980s, the actor soon found himself fighting against the mentality that he was out of date. He found iconic roles like surfer Bodhi in the police thriller Point Break and even played a drag queen in 1995's To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, but transitioning into the next phase of his career proved challenging. In 2001, Swayze found a film to help him facilitate this change with the role of twisted self-help guru Jim Cunningham in the dark mystery drama Donnie Darko. There was an element of self-parody in Swayze's portrayal of the über-positive, deceptively clean-cut Cunningham, and audiences found the role refreshing. He continued to pick up projects as they appealed to him, appearing in everything from the romantic drama One Last Dance to the quirky British comedy Keeping Mum.Sadly, however, by the late 2000s some upsetting news arrived. Swayze announced to the press in March 2008 that he was suffering from inoperable stage IV pancreatic cancer. The star battled his illness for a reported 20 months, but in the end it took his life. He died at the relatively young age of 57 in September 2009.

Trivia: Contemporary American actress Kelly Lynch has been playing leads in Hollywood films since the late 1980s, but has yet to make it big. The daughter of show people, she has been acting since age four. Lynch studied dance and then spent two summers training to be a director at the Guthrie Theater. As a young woman she moved to New York to study drama with Sanford Meisner and Marilyn Fried. After briefly encountering the head of the Elite modeling agency in an elevator one day, Lynch was signed up for a $250,000 per year modeling contract. During the three years she modeled, Lynch made occasional TV appearances. She made her feature-film debut playing a bit part in Bright Lights, Big City (1988) but did not play her first leading role until the following year in Road House. Lynch first gained widespread acclaim for her portrayal of a suburban drug addict in Van Sant's Drug Store Cowboy (1989); it was a role she could relate to, as she had broken both legs in an auto accident when she was 20 and had come dangerously close to being addicted to painkillers. Though major stardom has as yet eluded Lynch, she has recently proven herself to be a competent and versatile actress, capable of playing in everything from light romantic comedies to high drama.

Trivia: American actress Jennifer Grey grew up among the sort of people who'd be her co-workers later in life. She was the granddaughter of comedian Mickey Katz and the daughter of Broadway star Joel Grey and actress Jo Wilder. Childhood dance lessons helped her get a start dancing in television commercials. After spending time with the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater in New York, Grey appeared in the off-Broadway production Album. More theatrical experience followed. Grey made her screen debut in the 10th-billed role of Cathy Bennario in the 1984 romantic drama Reckless. That year, she also played small roles in The Cotton Club and Red Dawn. Her first real break came when she played Matthew Broderick's sister in the hit teen comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986). Grey followed up that success with an even bigger one starring opposite Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing (87): coincidentally, the film was set in a Catskill Mountains resort, the same kind of establishment where Grey's father and grandfather began their careers. Though her performance won her accolades, Grey subsequently experienced the all too common difficulty that many teen actors faced, attempting to enter the ream of adult acting. She would appear in a handful of films like Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989) and Portraits of a Killer (1996), before finding her footing with films like Bounce and Redbelt, as well as TV series like It's Like You Know, John from Cincinnati, and The New Adventures of Old Christine.

Trivia: American actor C. Thomas Howell (the "C" is for Christopher) began his acting career at the age of four, when he was a regular on the TV series Little People; he went on to appear on two other series: Two Marriages and Into the Homeland. This led to a big break when he was cast at the age of 16 in a secondary role in Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), one of the most successful films of all time. Following that, Francis Ford Coppola gave him the lead (in part due to Howell's "pretty-boy" good looks) in The Outsiders (1983), which has led to a consistent film career. However, most of his movies (with the exception of The Hitcher, 1986, in which he is stalked by a killer) have fared badly at the box office. Besides being an actor, Howell is also a former junior rodeo circuit champion. He is married to actress Rae Dawn Chong, with whom he co-starred in Soul Man (1986). The two divorced in 1990, but Howell remarried Sylvie Anderson in 1992.Howell would continue to appear in several projects a year, playing such notable roles as Lt. Thomas D. Chamberlain in 1993's Gettysburg, and the title role in 1995's Baby Face Nelson. In 1995, he tried his hand at directing, helming the drama Hourglass. In 1996 he directed The Big Fall and Pure Danger, and later, Howell added writing and producing to his resume as well, earning both screenwriter and producer credits for 2004's Hope Ranch and 2005's Blind Injustice. Howell also never gave up acting, appearing in such varied films as 2004's Hidalgo and 2007's Hoboken Hallow. He continued to work steadily, directing projects like The Day the Earth Stopped, The Land That Time Forgot, and The genesis Code in addition to acting in various films. He enjoyed his highest profile success in many years when he played the father of a young boy rescued by a superhero in The Amazing Spider Man.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the '80s. He is the brother of actor Patrick Swayze.

Trivia: Lisa Niemi is best known as the wife of actor Patrick Swayze. She met Swayze in 1970, when the 15 year old was taking dance lessons from the actor's mother. The two were married five years later. She wrote, directed, and starred (alongside her husband) in the 2003 feature One Last Dance.

Trivia: Steeped in the traditions of British stage and television, director Roland Joffé has fashioned a career which veers between highbrow, left-leaning historical epics and sexually charged high camp, sometimes within the same film. Born and raised in Manchester, England, Joffé leapt into the theater scene with the Young Vic troupe; after graduating from Manchester University, he found a career with the troupe's counterpart, the aptly named Old Vic. In the late '70s, the director began to dabble in documentary and dramatic television. The journalistic style he developed on the small screen would brilliantly inform his feature debut, The Killing Fields, in 1984. Based upon true accounts of Cambodia's bloody Kahmer Rouge takeover in the mid-'70s, the politically charged film managed to connect with both critics and audiences, winning Academy awards for cinematography, editing, and Best Supporting Actor (the latter for Dr. Haing S. Ngor, who had experienced the injustices of Cambodia firsthand). Joffé followed up on his auspicious debut with The Mission (1986), a tragic story of two disparate but equally disastrous attempts to settle 18th century Latin America. Though the picture got a positive-to-mixed reception from critics, it garnered a boatload of Academy award nominations as well as the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival.The director's output since The Mission has been wildly varied in tone and quality. The high-minded, thinly conceived, and unfortunately titled Fat Man and Little Boy was notable only for having the first "grown-up" performance from former teen star John Cusack. 1992's film adaptation of Dominique Lapierre's novel City of Joy seemed a return to form, as it touched upon many of the director's pet themes: culture clashes, the sometimes-disillusioning effects of altruism, and the splendor of nature. While many critics admired Joffé's effort (and the lead performance of an against-type Patrick Swayze), the Calcutta-set film went largely ignored by moviegoers. Unfortunately, Joffé would be far from ignored -- at least by critics -- when he unleashed his "freely adapted" (read "sexed-up") version of The Scarlet Letter on the public in 1995. Garnering an orgy of guffaws from the press ("It makes Hester's secret seem more like Victoria's," wrote Richard Corliss in Time), the flop almost single-handedly destroyed Demi Moore's career.In 1999, Joffé meekly emerged from his own Hester Prynne-like exile to attempt a hip, youthful neo-noir, Goodbye Lover. As star-studded as it was convoluted, the film (which had languished on Warner Bros.' shelf for some time) received the briefest of releases before its appearance on cable television. Perhaps in a further bid for the coveted youth market, the 54-year-old director also decided that same year to lend his name as executive producer to the MTV network's vapidly explicit teen soap opera Undressed. The one-two punch of Undressed and Lover prompted many to opine that the once-prestigious Joffé had "lost his way."Those fears were assuaged -- at least thematically -- when the director's lavish costume drama Vatel was chosen to open the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Starring Gérard Depardieu as the legendary French chef chosen to serve King Louis XIV, the Tom Stoppard-penned film was prepped for a high-profile domestic release that Christmas.