Trivia: Born October 28th, 1967, Georgia native Julia Roberts was raised in a fervently pro-theater environment. Her parents regularly hosted acting and writing workshops, and both of the Roberts children (Julia and her brother Eric) showed an interest in the performing arts at an early age. Ironically enough, Eric was the first to break into film; in 1978, one year after their father died of lung cancer at 47, Eric Roberts starred in director Frank Pierson's psychological drama King of the Gypsies. Though her older brother would go on to have a solid acting career, it was, of course, Julia Roberts who earned a spot among Hollywood's elite.After making her film debut in Blood Red -- which wouldn't be released until 1989, despite having been completed in 1986 -- and appearing in several late '80s television features, Roberts got her first real break in the 1988 made-for-cable drama Satisfaction. That role, consequently, led to her first significant supporting role -- a feisty pizza parlor waitress in 1989's Mystic Pizza with Annabeth Gish, Lili Taylor, and a then 19-year-old Matt Damon. While Mystic Pizza was not a star-making film for Roberts, it certainly helped earn her the credentials she needed to land the part of Shelby, an ill-fated would-be mother in Steel Magnolias. The 1989 tearjerker found her acting alongside Sally Field and Shirley MacLaine, and culminated in an Oscar nomination for Roberts. While the success of Steel Magnolias played no small part in launching Roberts' career, and undoubtedly secured her role in the mediocre Flatliners (1990) with former flame Kiefer Sutherland, it was director Garry Marshall's romantic comedy Pretty Woman with Richard Gere that served as her true breakthrough role. Roberts' part in Pretty Woman (a good-hearted prostitute who falls in love with a millionaire client) made the young actress a household name and cemented what would become a permanent spot in tabloid fodder. Roberts broke off her engagement with Sutherland in 1991, just three days before they were scheduled to be married, and surprised the American public in 1993, when she began her two-year marriage to country singer Lyle Lovett. Roberts' personal life kept her name in the spotlight despite a host of uneven performances throughout the early '90s (neither 1991's Dying Young or Sleeping With the Enemy garnered much acclaim), as did a reputed feud with Steven Spielberg during the filming of Hook (1991). Luckily, Roberts made decidedly less embarrassing headlines in 1993, when her role alongside future Oscar winner Denzel Washington in The Pelican Brief reaffirmed her status as a dramatic actress. Her career, however, took a turn back to the mediocre throughout the following year; both Prêt-à-Porter and I Love Trouble proved commercial flops, and Mary Reilly (1996) fizzled at the box office as well. The downward spiral reversed directions once again with 1996's Michael Collins and Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson, and led to several successful comic roles including Notting Hill with Hugh Grant, Runaway Bride, and most notably, My Best Friend's Wedding with Rupert Everett and a then virtually unknown Cameron Diaz. Roberts' biggest success didn't present itself until 2000, though, when she delivered an Oscar-winning performance playing the title role in Steven Soderbergh's Erin Brockovich. The film, based on the true story of Erin Brockovich, a single mother who, against all odds, won a heated battle against corporate environmental offenders, earned Roberts a staggering 20-million-dollar salary. Officially the highest paid actress in Hollywood, Roberts went on to star in 2001's America's Sweethearts with Billy Crystal, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and John Cusack, as well as The Mexican with Brad Pitt. While on the set of The Mexican, Roberts met cameraman Danny Moder, whom she would marry in 2001 almost immediately after ending a four-year relationship with fellow actor Benjamin Bratt. Indeed, 2001 was a banner year for Roberts; in addition to America's Sweethearts and The Mexican, Roberts starred in the crime caper Ocean's Eleven, in which she rejoined former co-stars Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, and acted for the first time with George Clooney and Don Cheadle. Julia Roberts worked with Soderbergh once again in 2002's Full Frontal, which, despite a solid cast including Mary McCormack and Catherine Keener, among others, did not even begin to fare as well as Erin Brockovich. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), which featured Roberts as a femme fatale alongside George Clooney, Sam Rockwell, and Drew Barrymore did much better, and preceded 2003's Mona Lisa Smile with young Hollywood's Julia Stiles, Kirsten Dunst, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. In 2004, Roberts signed on for the sequel to Ocean's Eleven -- the aptly titled Ocean's Twelve. A supporting performance in the animated 2006 feature The Ant Bully marked the glamorous Hollywood beauty's first foray into the world of animation, which she would continue for Christmas of 2006 with the role of everone's favorite selfless spider in Charlotte's Web. In the coming years, Roberts would reteam with Tom Hanks for Charlie Wilson's War in 2007, and then again for Larry Crowne in 2011. In the meantime, the A-lister would keep busy with a critically acclaimed performance in 2010's Eat, Pray, Love, in which she portrayed a divorcee on a journey of self discovery, and 2012's retelling of Snow White, Mirror, Mirror.

Trivia: Though actress Annabeth Gish is not, as has frequently been reported, related to silent-film legend Lillian Gish (she is decidedly not the never-married Lillian's granddaughter!), Annabeth does have one thing in common with her famous namesake: she began acting at a very early age, and achieved film stardom before she was 20. Born in Albuquerque, Annabeth moved to Cedar Falls, Iowa, when her college-professor dad accepted a position there. From age eight onward, Gish was active in local community and children's theatre; by the time she was 11, she was a professional model. Her first film appearance was in 1986's Desert Bloom, in which, as a troubled preteen plagued by family squabbles and nuclear testing, she all but stole the show. Gish's career went into Drive when she starred in the cult favorite Mystic Pizza, though when the film is now shown on television, the supporting appearance of Julia Roberts is the focus of ad-campaign attention. A most attractive young lady, Gish scored as one of four beautiful vacationing teens in 1988's Shag (her screen chums were Phoebe Cates, Bridget Fonda and Paige Hannah). In 1993, Annabeth Gish briefly interrupted her film career to earn a BA in English; within a year, she was back at work in the theatrical film Wyatt Earp and the made-for-TV Scarlet. In 1997, Gish appeared alongside Angelina Jolie and Dana Delaney for a starring role in the TV movie True Women; however, she would find more significant success on the small screen in 2001, when she joined the cast of The X-Files to play feisty FBI Agent Monica Reyes. Gish and Robert Patrick effectively became the lead characters during the show's 8th and 9th seasons, though ratings indicated that their onscreen chemistry couldn't compete with that of Duchnovy and Anderson, who had become beloved as the characters of Mulder and Scully. In 2006, Gish took on the starring role of Eileen Caffee in Brotherhood, a drama from Showtime, and joined the cast of A&E's TV miniseries Stephen King's Bag of Bones in 2011, and played a therapist with demons of her own in ABC's Pretty Little Liars the same year.

Trivia: One of the most versatile actresses working in film today, Lili Taylor is known for taking on complex, thorny roles that many of her more glamorous colleagues avoid. In the 1990s, she became a staple of the independent film circuit, turning in one engaging performance after another in films like The Addiction (1995), Girls Town (1996), and Pecker (1998). A native of Glencoe, IL, where she was born on February 20, 1967, Taylor was raised in a comfortable middle-class household as the second youngest of six children. She started acting in grade school and briefly attended DePaul University's Goodman Theater School before launching her professional career in local and regional theater. She acted for a time with Evanston's Piven Theater, performing in the company of such future notables as John Cusack, Aidan Quinn, and Jeremy Piven. In 1987, she spent a season on-stage in Czechoslovakia, returning stateside the following year to make her New York City stage debut in a production of What Did He See? That same year, Taylor ventured into feature films with a bit part in the John Hughes comedy She's Having a Baby. Though the role brought Taylor little recognition, she scored big with her sophomore effort, a starring role in Mystic Pizza (1988) as one of three amorous pizzeria girls (the other two were Julia Roberts and Annabeth Gish) working in a small Connecticut coastal town. More recognition followed for Say Anything... (1989), in which Taylor played John Cusack's hilariously obsessive best friend; she continued to shine in films like Bright Angel (1991), in which she was cast as the drifter sister of a jailbird, and in Dogfight (1991), in which she was the obligatory "ugly duckling" who both transformed and was transformed by her reluctant date, River Phoenix. From the late '80s through the 1990s, Taylor proved to be a willing and able ensemble player in the works of several respected directors: Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Nancy Savoca's Household Saints (1993), Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), and Alan Rudolph's Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994). She also did notable work in independent films, starring in Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995); Girls Town (1996), a drama about four high school girls trying to cope with everyday hardship, for which she also co-wrote the screenplay; and I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), which cast her in one of her most memorable roles as the mad, murderous Valerie Solanas. In 1998, Taylor played the uncharacteristically glamorous role of an art dealer who tries to seduce the young hero of John Waters' Pecker, and also tried her hand at screwball comedy with Stanley Tucci's The Imposters. Having demonstrated her range in a number of genres, Taylor then took on big-budget horror in 1999 with her starring role in Jan de Bont's The Haunting. However, staying true to her indie loyalties, she could also be seen playing an ordinary woman who begins to lead an extraordinary life in Toni Kalem's adaptation of Anne Tyler's A Slipping Down Life, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of that year.As the new century began Taylor could be seen alongside her old co-star John Cusack in High Fidelity, and in 2001 she tackled the historical role of Miep Gies in a retelling of Anne Frank. She had a memorable role on the HBO series Six Feet Under. She continued to work steadily in diverse projects such as The Secret, Starting Out in the Evening, Brooklyn's Finest, Public Enemies, and Being Flynn.

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: Expressive comic actress Conchata Ferrell attended drama classes at West Virginia University and Marshall University. Ferrell's first off-Broadway appearance was as good-natured hooker April Green in Lanford Wilson's Hot L Baltimore (1972), a role she would reprise in the short-lived 1975 TV sitcom version. In 1973, she won an Obie Award for her performance in The Sea Horse. Her first major film role was feisty frontier widow Elinore in the 1981 western Heartland, a performance that earned her a "Wrangler Award" from the Cowboy Hall of Fame. She has also been seen in Network (1976), Mystic Pizza (1988) and Edward Scissorhands (1991), to name but a few. As active on TV as elsewhere, Conchata Ferrell has played such regular TV-series roles as female cop Wilhelmina "The Fox" Johnson in BJ and the Bear (1979), café owner Vangie Cruise in McClain's Law (1981), nurse Joan Thor in the original ER (1984), zoo secretary Kate Galindo in A Peaceable Kingdom (1989), entertainment lawyer Susan Bloom in LA Law (1991-92 season, earning an Emmy nomination in 1992), and cynical psychologist/advice columnist Dr. Madeline Stoessinger in Hearts Afire (1993-95).

Trivia: UCLA grad Joanna Merlin made her first film appearance in 1956, as one of Jethro's daughters in the Cecil B. DeMille superspectacular The Ten Commandments. Five years later she first stepped on a Broadway stage in Jean Anouilh's Becket. Her subsequent theatrical credits include the role of Tzeitel in the original 1964 production of Fiddler on the Roof. In films, she has specialized in such ethnically oriented character roles as the landlady in Hester Street (1975). From bag ladies to judges, Merlin has played 'em all. More recently, Joanna Merlin has functioned as a Hollywood casting director.

Trivia: Actor, magician, and standup comedian Arthur Walsh specialized in light dramas and romantic fare during the '40s and '50s. For his live act, Walsh billed himself as Madman Walsh and Slippery. In addition to his film career, Walsh also appeared on television during the '50s and '60s as a guest star on shows such as I Love Lucy and Laugh-In.

Trivia: One who graduated from obscure actor to Hollywood icon in just a few years, Matt Damon became an instant sensation when he co-wrote and starred in Good Will Hunting with longtime buddy and collaborator Ben Affleck. A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was born on October 8, 1970, Damon grew up in prosperous surroundings with his tax preparer father, college professor mother, and older brother. At the age of ten, he befriended Affleck, a boy two years his junior who lived down the street. Educated at Cambridge's Rindge and Latin School, Damon landed his first role in a Hollywood production before the age of 18, with a one-scene turn in Mystic Pizza (1988). Not long after, Damon gained acceptance to Harvard University, where he studied for three years before dropping out to pursue his acting career. During his time there, he had to write a screenplay for an English class, that served as the genesis of Good Will Hunting. Arriving in Hollywood, Damon scored his first big break with a plum role in School Ties opposite Affleck. As the film was a relative flop, Damon's substantial role failed to win him notice, and he was back to laboring in obscurity. It was around this time, fed up with his Hollywood struggles, that Damon contacted Affleck, and the two finished writing the former's Harvard screenplay and began trying to get it made into a film. It was eventually picked up by Miramax, with Gus Van Sant slated to direct and Robin Williams secured in a major role, opposite Damon as the lead. Before Good Will Hunting was released in late 1997, Damon won some measure of recognition for his role as a drug-addicted soldier in Courage Under Fire; various industry observers praised his performance and his dedication to the part, for which he lost forty pounds and suffered resulting health problems. Any praise Damon may have received, however, was overshadowed the following year by the accolades he garnered for Good Will Hunting. His Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay win alongside Damon, and strong performance in the film virtually guaranteed industry adulation and steady employment, a development that became readily apparent the following year with lead roles in two major films. The first, John Dahl's Rounders, cast Damon as a card shark with a serious gambling addiction, who risks his own personal safety when he becomes entangled with a reckless loser buddy (Edward Norton). Damon's second film in 1998, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, brought him even greater recognition. As Ryan's title character, Damon headlined an all-star line-up and received part of the lavish praise heaped on the film and its strong ensemble cast. The following year, Damon signed for leads in two more highly anticipated films, Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley and Kevin Smith's Dogma. The former cast the actor against type as the title character, a psychotic bisexual murderer, with a supporting cast that included Cate Blanchett, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Dogma also allowed Damon to cut against the grain of his nice-guy persona by casting him as a fallen angel. One of the year's more controversial films, the religious comedy reunited him with Affleck, as well as Smith, who had cast Damon in a bit role in his 1997 film, Chasing Amy. Damon next delivered noteworthy performances in a pair of low-grossing, low-key dramas, The Legend of Bagger Vance and All the Pretty Horses (both 2000), before appearing in director Steven Soderbergh's blockbuster remake of the Rat Pack classic Ocean's Eleven the following year. 2002 found the actor vacillating between earnest indie projects and major Hollywood releases. Behind the camera, Damon joined forces with filmmaker Chris Smith for the Miramax-sponsored Project Greenlight, a screenplay sweepstakes that gave the winner the opportunity to make a feature film and have the process recorded for all to see on an HBO reality series of the same name. Toward the end of 2001, Damon scored a box office triumph with director Doug Liman's jet-setting espionage thriller The Bourne Identity. With this effort, Damon proved once again that he could open a film with just as much star power as his best friend and colleague. Better yet, Bourne reinforced Damon's standings with the critics, who found his performance understated and believable. The press responded less favorably, however, to Damon's reunion project with Van Sant, the experimental arthouse drama Gerry (2003). Also in 2003, Damon starred opposite Greg Kinnear in the Farrelly Brothers' broad comedy Stuck On You, as the shy half of a set of conjoined twins.In 2004, Damon reprised the role of Jason Bourne in The Bourne Supremacy. As the actor's biggest leading-man success to date, it reinforced Damon's continued clout with audiences. Staying on the high-powered sequel bandwagon, he reunited with Brad Pitt and George Clooney for the big-budget neo-rat pack sequel Ocean's Twelve later that year. 2005 was somewhat lower-key for the actor, as he toplined Terry Gilliam's disappointing The Brothers Grimm and joined the sprawling ensemble of Syriana. After working seemingly non-stop for a few years, Damon claimed only a call from Martin Scorsese would get him to give up his resolve to take some time off. Sure enough, that call came. The Departed, an American remake of the Hong Kong mob-mole thriller Infernal Affairs, co-starred Jack Nicholson and Leonardo DiCaprio. Playing the squirmy, opportunistic cop to DiCaprio's moral, tormented mobster, Damon underplayed his part to perfection while holding his own opposite his two co-stars. Damon then took the lead role in the Robert De Niro-directed CIA drama The Good Shepherd. In 2007, the actor once again returned to box office franchises for the sequels Ocean's Thirteen and The Bourne Ultimatum, the latter of which netted him -- by far -- the largest opening-weekend take of his career to that point. 2009 was another great year for the hard-working star. His turn as the unstable federal informant in Steven Soderbergh's wicked comedy The Informant! earned him rave reviews, and his supporting work in Clint Eastwood's Invicus, as the leader of the South African rugby team, earned Damon nominations from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy. In 2010 he reteamed with Eastwood for the supernatural drama Hereafter, and continued working with the best filmmakers of his time by landing a supporting role in the Coen brothers remake of True Grit. Meanwhile, Damon tried his hand at small screen work with a memorable recurring role as Carol, an airline pilot and sometime boyfriend of Liz Lemon, on the NBC situation comedy 30 Rock and a lauded turn opposite Michael Douglas' Liberace in the TV movie Behind the Candelabra. Damon had long since established himself as an A-list movie star, however, and would continue to star in big screen projects for years to come, including notable titles like Contagion, The Adjustment Bureau, and We Bought a Zoo. Damon next turned in performances in three films set in outer space: Neill Blomkamp's Elysium (2013), a supporting role in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (2014) and an Oscar-nominated spin in Ridley Scott's The Martian (2015).