Trivia: The son of actor Lloyd Bridges, Jeff Bridges made his screen bow as a petulant infant in the arms of his real-life mother, Dorothy, in the 1950 Jane Greer melodrama The Company She Keeps; his troublesome older brother in that film was played by his real older brother Beau. The younger Bridges made a more formal debut before the cameras at age eight, in an episode of his dad's TV series Sea Hunt. After serving in the Coast Guard reserve, the budding actor studied acting at the Herbert Berghof school. While older brother Beau was developing into a character player, Bridges, thanks in equal parts to his ability and ruggedly handsome looks, became a bona fide leading man. He had his first major success with a leading role in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Two years later, he won yet another Oscar nomination, this time for Best Supporting Actor in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). Bridges worked steadily throughout the rest of the 1970s, starring in a number of films, including Hearts of the West (1975) and Stay Hungry (1976). The 1980s brought further triumph, despite starting out inauspiciously with a part in the notoriously ill-fated Heaven's Gate (1981). In 1984, Bridges won yet another Oscar nomination for his leading role in Starman and continued to find acclaim for his work, in such movies as The Morning After (1986) and The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). The latter featured Bridges and brother Beau as struggling musicians, as well as Michelle Pfeiffer in a performance marked by both the actress' own talent and her ability to roll around on a piano wearing a figure-hugging red velvet dress. Bridges began the 1990s with Texasville, the desultory sequel to The Last Picture Show. Things began to improve with acclaimed performances in Fearless (1993) and American Heart (1995) (the latter marked his producing debut), and the actor found commercial, if not critical, success with the bomb thriller Blown Away in 1994. More success followed, with a lead role in the Barbra Streisand vehicle The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), and as a hapless and perpetually stoned bowling aficionado in the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski (1998). In 1999, Bridges returned to the thriller genre with Arlington Road, playing the concerned neighbor of urban terrorist Tim Robbins, and then switched gears with Albert Brooks' comedy drama The Muse. In addition to his acting achievements, Bridges has also written some 200 songs, a talent which he memorably incorporated in The Fabulous Baker Boys.Bridges delivered a typically strong performance in 1999's Simpatico, which featured the actor as a horse-breeder embroiled in a complicated scam orchestrated by a once good friend, while The Contender (2000) found him playing a happy-go-lucky U.S. President suddenly forced to decide if his Vice Presidential candidate's rumored sexual escapades will affect his ultimate decision. Though K-PAX (2001) fared badly in theaters, Jeff's performance as Kevin Spacey's character's psychiatrist was solid, as was his role of a soft-spoken kidnapping victim in director Dominique Forma's Scenes of the Crime. 2003 was a polarizing year in terms of critical success -- despite an A-list cast including Bridges himself, Penelope Cruz, and Jessica Lange, Masked and Anonymous went unseen by most, and disliked by the rest. Luckily, Seabiscuit catapulted Bridges back into Hollywood's spotlight, as did Tod Wiliams' Door in the Floor, based on John Irving's novel A Widow for One Year.In 2008, Bridges landed the plum role of the bad guy in the box-office blockbuster Iron Man, but it was his turn as fading country music star Bad Blake in Crazy Heart that earned him the accolades that had eluded the respected actor throughout his career. For his work in that film Bridges captured the SAG award, the Golden Globe, and his fifth Oscar nomination -- marking his second nod in the lead category 25 years after his first for Starman.The next year Bridges would be up for the Best Actor award again, this time for the way he tackled one of John Wayne's iconic role's, Rooster Cogburn, in the Coen brother's hit remake of True Grit. That same year, he would return as Kevin Flynn in the sequel Tron: Legacy.

Trivia: With a talent as large as his girth, John Goodman proved himself both a distinguished character actor and engaging leading man. A native of St. Louis, MO, Goodman went to Southwest Missouri State University on a football scholarship, but an injury compelled him to seek out a less strenuous major. He chose the university Drama Department, attending classes with such stars-to-be as Tess Harper and Kathleen Turner. Moving to New York in 1975, he supported himself by performing in children's and dinner theater, appearing in television commercials, and working as a bouncer. Goodman made his off-Broadway debut in a 1978 staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and, a year later, graduated to Broadway in Loose Ends. His best Broadway showing was as the drunken, brutish Pap in Big River, Roger Miller's 1985 musical adaptation of Huckleberry Finn. Goodman has occasionally played out and out villains or louts (The Big Easy, Barton Fink), but his essential likeability endeared him to audiences even when his onscreen behavior was at its least sympathetic. He contributed topnotch supporting appearances to such films as Everybody's All-American (1988), Sea of Love (1989), Stella (1989), and Arachnophobia (1990), and starred in such films as King Ralph (1991), The Babe (1992, as Babe Ruth), Born Yesterday (1993), and The Flintstones (1994, as Fred Flintstone). Goodman did some of his best work in Matinee (1992), in which he starred as William Castle-esque horror flick entrepreneur Lawrence Woolsey, and topped himself in The Big Lebowski (1998), playing a quirky security-store owner. He was seen the following year with Nicolas Cage and Ving Rhames in Martin Scorsese's Bringing out the Dead as an ambulance driver.Between 1988 and 1996, Goodman appeared as blue-collar patriarch Dan Conner on the hit TV sitcom Roseanne, a role that earned him four Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe award; his additional TV credits included two 1995 made-for-cable movies: the title role in Kingfish: A Story of Huey P. Long and Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire, for which he earned another Emmy nomination. Announcing that the 1996-1997 season of Roseanne would be his last, Goodman limited himself to infrequent appearances on the series, his absences explained away as a by-product of a heart attack suffered by his character at the end of the previous season.After making his 10th appearance on Saturday Night Live (2000), Goodman could be seen playing a red-faced bible salesman in director Joel Coen's award winning O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000), and participated in Garry Shandling's film debut What Planet Are You From? (2000). He could be spotted playing an Oklahoma cop in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000), while Coyote Ugly (2000) and Storytelling (2001) found Goodman stepping back into the role of over-protective father. Interestingly enough, he donned hippie-gear to play a goth-chick's Leelee Sobieski dad in 2001's My First Mister. Though Goodman's status as an amiable big guy was well established by the early 2000's, he didn't actually appear on-screen for two of his most beloved roles. In The Emperor's New Groove (2000), Goodman lent his vocal talents for the part of Pacha, a poor farmer who taught a spoiled prince (David Spade) some valuable lessons about life, love, and the meaning of societal standing. Any film-going youngster will recognize Goodman's voice as Monsters, Inc.'s kind-hearted Sully, the furry blue monster who risked life and limb to return a little girl to her home; and who other than Goodman would have been appropriate to voice the part of Baloo, The Jungle Book 2's (2003) freewheeling bear? 2001's ill received One Night at McCool's features Goodman as one of three men lusting after Liv Tyler's character, while 2002's Dirty Deeds took John to Australia, where he played an American mafia-goon thoroughly ill suited to the intricacies of culture down under. Though 2003's Masked and Anonymous was skewered by fans and critics alike, it did give Goodman the chance to work with industry bigwigs Jessica Lange, Jeff Bridges, Penélope Cruz, and legendary singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. In 2004, Goodman got even more involved in the realm of family friendly movies and TV, lending his voice to the character of Larry on the animated show Father of the Pride. The next few years in his career would include many more such titles, like Cars, Evan Almighty, and Bee Movie, and in 2008, he played Pops Racer in the candy-colored big screen adaptation of the popular cartoon Speed Racer. By this time, Goodman had become a go-to guy for PG fare, and signed on next to provide the voice of Big Daddy for the jazz-age animated film The Princess and the Frog. He earned good reviews for his work in the made-for-HBO biopic of Jack Kervorkian You Don't Know Jack in 2010. The next year he appeared in The Artist, the Best Picture Oscar winner, as the head of a Hollywood studio, and in another of the Best Picture nominees playing the doorman in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Trivia: Boasting talent, versatility, and one of the most distinctive heads of hair in Hollywood, Julianne Moore has proven herself equally adept in both mainstream blockbusters and smaller, more intelligent films. The daughter of a military judge and a Scottish social worker, Moore was born in Fayetteville, NC, on December 3, 1961. After attending Boston University, she began her acting career via the taxing world of soap opera. From 1985 until 1988, she was best-known for her role as Franny Hughes on As the World Turns. The part, which on occasion required her to play twins, won Moore a 1988 Daytime Emmy Award.The actress made her entrance into the big-screen arena with a 1990 debut in the schlocktastic Tales From the Darkside: The Movie (which also featured Steve Buscemi). Two years later, after making various TV movies, Moore reappeared in feature films with supporting parts in Curtis Hanson's tale of a babysitter gone bad, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and the comedy The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag. The following year, her exposure increased further thanks to roles in four different films that ranged from the half-baked thriller Body of Evidence to the sweetly quirky Benny and Joon to the big-budget smash The Fugitive to Robert Altman's epic Short Cuts. The last film gave Moore literal exposure in addition to the more figurative kind: she was required to play one scene naked from the waist down, something that predictably won the attention of critics and filmgoers.The intermittent praise that had been afforded Moore was amplified in 1994 with her performance as Yelena in Vanya on 42nd Street. The object of adjectives ranging from "luminescent" to "radiant" to "revelatory," the actress went on to play a very different character in Todd Haynes' Safe (1995). Moore won an Independent Spirit Award nomination for her portrayal of a woman (literally) sickened by the environment around her and further proved that she was an actress of distinct versatility. The same year she again demonstrated this ability with a starring role opposite Hugh Grant in the comedy Nine Months.Following a turn as one of Picasso's numerous lovers in Surviving Picasso (1996), a lead in the family drama The Myth of Fingerprints (she would later have a son with the film's director, Bart Freundlich), and a substantial part in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Moore nabbed what was one of the plum roles of her career in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights. For her portrayal of a porn actress, she won Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. A substantial role as an erotic artist in Ethan Coen's and Joel Coen's The Big Lebowski followed in 1998, along with a turn as Marion Crane's sister in Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake. The next year, Moore starred in a number of high-profile projects, beginning with Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune, in which she was cast as the dim sister of a decidedly unhinged Glenn Close. A portrayal of the scheming Mrs. Cheveley followed in Oliver Parker's An Ideal Husband, with a number of critics asserting that Moore was the best part of the movie. The actress then enjoyed another collaboration with director Anderson in Magnolia, an epic telling of nine interweaving stories inspired by Short Cuts and featuring an impressive cast that included Anderson regulars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Baker Hall, and John C. Reilly. The same year, Moore also starred in the drama The End of the Affair, with Ralph Fiennes and Stephen Rea, and portrayed a grieving mother in A Map of the World, which premiered at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival.2001 found the popular actress stepping into dark territory with the role of FBI Agent Clarice Starling in Ridley Scott's Hannibal, the long-awaited and eagerly anticipated follow-up to Jonathan Demme's numbingly suspenseful Silence of the Lambs. A few short months later, Moore lightened the mood substantially with her humorous turn as a bumbling government scientist in the sci-fi comedy Evolution. Increasingly comfortable alternating between big-budget features and more personal art-house films, Moore bowled over audiences with a pair of powerhouse performances in both Far From Heaven and The Hours. A detailed throwback to the forgotten Hollywood melodrama, the former featured Moore's Oscar nominated role as a housewife who enters into a controversial relationship after discovering her husband's homosexuality and provided audiences a dose of Douglas Sirk that hadn't been tasted since the mid-1950s. A variation on the themes presented in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, the film version of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer prize winning novel The Hours once again found Moore Oscar nominated for her role as a repressed 1950s era housewife, this time taking a special shine to Mrs. Dalloway while pondering an escape from her stifling marriage. In the wake of arguably her most successful year to date, Moore began to dabble behind the scenes for the first time, serving as executive producer on the 2003 independent adaptation of Wallace Shawn's play Marie and Bruce, a film that she also starred in. The following year, audiences could find Moore onscreen opposite Pierce Brosnan in the romantic comedy The Laws of Attraction and in the poorly-received thriller The Forgotten. In 2005 she earned good reviews for The Prize Winner of Defiance, OH, but the film failed to catch on with audiences. She continued to work steadily starring opposite Sam Jackson in the adaptation of Richard Price's Freedomland, and starring opposite Clive Owen in Alfonso Cuaron's futuristic thriller Children of Men. She once again teamed with her director husband Bart Freundlich in the relationship comedy Trust the Man. Shortly after returning to television with a recurring role on the hit comedy series 30 Rock, the talented actress earned numerous positive reviews for her nuanced performance in The Kids Are All Right, and while she failed to earn a BAFTA Award as one half of a same sex couple attempting to help their children come to terms with being adopted, Moore's memorable performance as a frustrated housewife in 2011's Crazy, Stupid, Love. showed an actress still capable of balancing drama and comedy to striking effect. On the heels of her performance in Paul Weitz's Being Flynn the following year, it was announced that Moore would be following in the formidable footsteps of Piper Laurie in the 2013 remake of the Stephen King's Carrie starring Chloe Grace Moritz (Let Me In, Hugo). One year later she earned a slew of year-end accolades, including an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, for her work playing an accomplished professor deteriorating from Alzheimer's in Still Alice.

Trivia: One of the most important character actors of the 1990s, Steve Buscemi is unmatched in his ability to combine lowlife posturing with weasely charisma. Although active in the cinema since the mid-'80s, it was not until Quentin Tarantino cast Buscemi as Mr. Pink in the 1992 Reservoir Dogs that the actor became known to most audience members. He would subsequently appear to great effect in other Tarantino films, as well as those of the Coen Brothers, where his attributes blended perfectly into the off-kilter landscape.Born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 13, 1957, Buscemi was raised on Long Island. He gained an interest in acting while a senior in high school, but he had no idea of how to pursue a professional career in the field. Working as a fireman for four years, he began to perform stand-up comedy, but he eventually realized that he wanted to do more dramatic theatrical work. After moving to Manhattan's East Village, he studied drama at the Lee Strasberg Institute, and he also began writing and performing skits in various parts of the city. His talents were eventually noticed by filmmaker Bill Sherwood, who was casting his film Parting Glances. The 1986 drama was one of the first feature films to be made about AIDS (Sherwood himself died from AIDS in 1990), and it starred Buscemi as Nick, a sardonic rock singer suffering from the disease. The film, which was a critical success on the independent circuit, essentially began Buscemi's career as a respected independent actor.Buscemi's resume was given a further boost that same year by his recurring role as a serial killer on the popular TV drama L.A. Law; he subsequently began finding steady work in such films as New York Stories and Mystery Train (both 1989). In 1990, he had another career breakthrough with his role in Miller's Crossing, which began his longtime collaboration with the Coen brothers. The Coens went on to cast Buscemi in nearly all of their films, featuring him to particularly memorable effect in Barton Fink (1991), in which he played a bell boy; Fargo (1996), which featured him as an ill-fated kidnapper; and The Big Lebowski (1998), which saw him portray a laid-back ex-surfer. Although Buscemi has done his best work outside of the mainstream, turning in other sterling performances in Alexandre Rockwell's In the Soup (1992) and Tom Di Cillo's Living in Oblivion (1995), he has occasionally appeared in such Hollywood megaplex fare as Con Air (1997), Armageddon (1998), Big Daddy (1999), and 28 Days (2000), the last of which cast him against type as Sandra Bullock's rehab counselor. Back in indieville, Buscemi would next utilize his homely persona in a more sympathetic manner as a soulful loner with a penchant for collecting old records in director Terry Zwigoff's (Crumb) Ghost World. Despite all indicators pointing to mainstream prolifieration in the new millennium, Buscemi continued to display his dedication to independent film projects with roles in such efforts as Alaxandre Rockwell's 13 Moons and Peter Mattei's Love in the Time of Money (both 2002). Of course there are exceptions to every rule, and Buscemi's memorable appearances in such big budget efforts as Mr Deeds and both Spy Kids 2 and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over served to remind audiences that Buscemi was still indeed at the top of his game, perhaps now more than ever. In 1996, Buscemi made his screenwriting and directorial debut with Trees Lounge, a well-received comedy drama in which he played a down-on-his-luck auto mechanic shuffling through life on Long Island. He followed up his directorial debut in 2000 with Animal Factory, a subdued prison drama starring Edward Furlong as a young inmate who finds protection from his fellow prisoners in the form of an older convict (Willem Dafoe). Moving to the small screen, Buscemi would next helm an episode of the acclaimed HBO mob drama The Sopranos. Called Pine Barrens, the episode instantly became a fan-favorite.In 2004, Buscemi stepped in front of the camera once again to join the cast of The Sopranos, costarring as Tony Blundetto, a recently paroled mafioso struggling to stay straight in the face of temptation to revert back to his old ways. In 2005 Buscemi reteamed with Michael Bay for The Island in the same year that he directed another low-budget film, Lonesome Jim, with a stellar cast that included Seymour Cassel, Mary Kay Place, Liv Tyler, Casey Affleck, and Kevin Corrigan. He also played one of the leads in John Turturro's musical Romance & Cigarettes. His very busy 2006 included an amusing cameo in Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential, and continued work in animated films, with vocal appearances in Monster House and Charlotte's Web (2006). His contributions to those projects earned critical acclaim; Buscemi achieved an even greater feat, however, that same year, when he mounted his fifth project as director, Interview (2007). Like Trees Lounge (1996), Lonesome Jim (2005) and other Buscemi-helmed outings, this searing, acerbic comedy-drama spoke volumes about Buscemi's talent and intuition, and arguably even suggested that his ability as a filmmaker outstripped his ability as a thespian. With great precision and insight, the narrative observed a roving paparazzi journalist (Buscemi) during his unwanted yet surprisingly pretension-stripping pas-de-deux with a manipulative, coke-addled prima donna actress (Sienna Miller).At about the same time, the quirky player geared up for a host of substantial acting roles including parts in We're the Millers (2008), Igor (2008) and Keep Coming Back (2008). He appeared as the father of a deceased soldier in The Messenger in 2009, and the next year he landed the lead role of Nucky Thompson, an Irish gangster, in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire. His work on that show would earn him Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe awards.

Trivia: With a cool stoic gaze suggesting unmentionable thoughts lurking somewhere deep behind those deep, blank eyes, popular character actor Peter Stormare offered American audiences slightly discomforting comic relief in Joel and Ethan Coen's popular dark comedy Fargo (1996), though his versatility and adaptability have since led him to roles in everything from major Hollywood blockbusters to the stripped-down Dogma 95 efforts of eccentric Danish director Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (2000). Born Peter Rolf Stormare in Arbra, Sweden, on August 27th,1953, the dynamic Nordic actor began his career with an 11-year stint with the Royal National Theater of Sweden. Aside from appearing in such productions as Don Juan and The Curse of the Starving Class, Stormare would pen such original plays as El Paso and The Electric Boy. Later earning positive critical reception in such classic Shakespearian productions as King Lear, the actor made his big-screen debut, and began a 15-year association with legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, with a brief appearance in Fanny and Alexander in 1982. Later earning positive critical reception for his role in the legendary filmmaker's stage adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet in 1988, Stormare continued to gain career trajectory with numerous memorable stage and film roles in his native country. In 1990, Stormare became the Associate Artistic Director at the Tokyo Globe Theatre and made his American screen debut as a neurochemist who questions Robin Williams' experimental medical tactics in the touching Awakenings. Subsequently appearing in numerous international films (Freud's Leaving Home [1991] and Damage [1992]), Stormare hit his stateside stride with his chilling turn as a woodchipper-happy kidnapper in Fargo. Though he would continue to make appearances in such Swedish efforts as Ett Sorts Hades and Bergman's In the Presence of a Clown (1996 and 1997 respectively), his Hollywood star was on the rise with memorable roles in such increasingly mega-budgeted efforts as The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Armageddon (1998). Equally adept in comparatively low-budget efforts such as director George Romero's Bruiser (2000) and the aforementioned Dancer -- two roles which couldn't possibly be more polar opposites -- Stormare branched out into sitcom territory with his turn as Julia Louis-Dreyfuss' enamored superintendent in the ill-fated Watching Ellie in 2002. It wasn't long before Stormare was back on the silver screen, and with the same year potential blockbuster triple threat of The Tuxedo, Windtalkers, and Minority Report, it appeared as if Stormare's unique talents were as in-demand as ever. 2002 also found the established actor branching out with his role as producer of the romantic comedy The Movie Nut and His Audience.In 2005 he joined the cast of The Brothers Grimm in the role of an interogator, and took on a regular role in the television drama Prison Break. Stormare made guest appearances on a variety of television stand-outs throughout the 2000s, among them including Weeds, Monk, Entourage, and Hawaii Five-0.

Trivia: Big-framed character actor (and sometime leading man) David Huddleston worked in virtually every film and television genre there is, from Westerns to crime dramas to science fiction. Born in Vinton, Virginia, he attended the Fork Union Military Academy before entering the United States Air Force, where he received a commission as an officer. After returning to civilian life, Huddleston enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his television debut in 1961, at age 31, in an episode of the Western series Shotgun Slade. Two years later, the actor made his first big-screen appearance with a small role in All the Way Home (1963). A year later, he showed up in Black Like Me; and in 1968, Huddleston was back on the big screen in the thriller A Lovely Way to Die. He got considerably busier in the years that followed, mostly on television series such as Adam 12, Then Came Bronson, and Room 222, in roles of ever-increasing size. These were broken up by the occasional film job, of which the most notable at the time was the part of the comically helpful town dentist in Howard Hawks' Western Rio Lobo (1970), which gave Huddleston some extended (and humorous) screen-time alongside John Wayne. At the time, his feature-film work was weighted very heavily toward Westerns, while on television Huddleston played everything from service-station attendants to teachers to devious executives, primarily in crime shows. With his deep voice and prominent screen presence, plus a sense of humor that never seemed too far from his portrayals -- even of villains -- Huddleston was one of the busier character actors of the 1970s. Indeed, 1974 comprised a year of credits that any actor in the business could envy: John Wayne used Huddleston in McQ, one of the aging star's efforts to get away from Westerns, but Huddleston was back doing oaters in Billy Two Hats and aided Mel Brooks in parodying the genre in Blazing Saddles (all 1974). As comical as Huddleston could be, he could play sinister equally well, as he proved in Terence Young's The Klansman (1974) -- and that doesn't even count his television roles. By the end of the 1970s, he had graduated to a starring role in the series Hizzoner (1979), about a small-town mayor; and in the 1980s he had recurring roles in series such as The Wonder Years. Huddleston's big-screen breakthrough came with the title role in Santa Claus: The Movie (1985), and he became a ubiquitous figure on the small screen with a series of orange-juice commercials. His subsequent big-screen appearances included Frantic (1988) and The Big Lebowski (1998), playing the title character, and he continued working into the first decade of the 21st century. In 2004, Huddleston essayed one of the most interesting and challenging roles of his screen career, in the short film Reveille. Working without dialogue alongside James McEachin (with whom he'd previously worked in the series Tenafly), he helped tell the story of a sometimes comical, ultimately bittersweet rivalry between two veterans of different armed services. Huddleston died in 2016, at age 85.

Trivia: One of the most original, versatile, and steadily employed actors in Hollywood, Philip Seymour Hoffman made a name for himself playing some of the most dysfunctional characters in movie history. Although he had been acting for years, most audiences were first introduced to the actor in the award-winning Boogie Nights, where he played a nebbishy soundman with a jones for Mark Wahlberg's Dirk Diggler. Imbuing his character with both humor and poignant complexity, Hoffman was one of the more memorable aspects of an unforgettable film.Born in Fairport, NY, in 1968, Hoffman trained at New York's Tisch School of Drama. Before breaking into film, he did a host of theater work, performing in New York, Chicago, and on a European tour. He made his film debut in the 1992 film Scent of a Woman, a critically acclaimed picture starring Al Pacino and Chris O'Donnell. Roles in a number of films of varying quality followed, including My New Gun (1992) and When a Man Loves a Woman (1994). The actor then nabbed a sizable role in Jan de Bont's 1996 tornado thriller Twister and the same year began an ongoing working relationship with Paul Thomas Anderson by appearing in his directorial debut Hard Eight. The crime drama, which also starred Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson, received positive critical attention, although it didn't create more than a minor blip at the box office. However, Hoffman's next feature and second collaboration with Anderson, Boogie Nights (1997), was both a critical and financial success, scoring a host of Academy Award nominations and simultaneously reviving the careers of some of its stars, such as Burt Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg, while providing a breakthrough for others, such as Heather Graham and Hoffman himself. He next appeared in the Robin Williams comedy Patch Adams (1998), and the same year starred in two critically acclaimed independent films, Todd Solondz's Happiness and Brad Anderson's Next Stop Wonderland. The prolific actor added an appearance in The Big Lebowski (also 1998) to his already impressive resumé. In addition to his burgeoning acting career, Hoffman won favorable notices for his directing debut with the off-Broadway In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings. Hoffman came into his own with three notable performances in 1999. He reunited with Paul Thomas Anderson to play empathic hospice nurse Phil Parma, one of the emotional anchors in Magnolia. His portrayal of upper-crust snob Freddie Miles in The Talented Mr. Ripley earned him strong notices from many critics. Hoffman's peers awarded him with a Screen Actors Guild nomination for his role as a cross dresser in Flawless opposite Robert De Niro. He returned to the Broadway stage with fellow Anderson regular John C. Reilly to play very different brothers in Sam Shepard's True West. They took a risk by switching the lead roles every three days. Their hard work earned critical raves, and each was nominated for a Tony award. In 2000, Cameron Crowe cast Hoffman as Crowe's childhood hero Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, and David Mamet tapped him to be part of the impressive ensemble in State and Main.Hoffman maintained his status as one of the most respected and hardest-working actors in the new decade by delivering an excellent supporting turn in Red Dragon as an unctuous tabloid reporter. That same year he co-starred in Spike Lee's 25th Hour, and played the bad guy for old collaborator Paul Thomas Anderson in the offbeat romantic comedy Punch-Drunk Love. 2002 also saw the release of Love Liza, a very low-budget film scripted by Hoffman's brother and directed by actor Todd Louiso that starred Phil as a grieving husband addicted to huffing gas fumes. The next year found Hoffman starring as a gambling addict in the small scale Canadian drama Owning Mahowny, and turning in a memorable supporting performance as an amoral preacher in the big screen adaptation of Cold Mountain. Hoffman was in theaters again at the beginning of 2004 as the best friend in the Ben Stiller comedy Along Came Polly. He was also part of yet another outstanding ensemble in the small screen adaptation of Richard Russo's Pulitzer prize-winning novel Empire Falls.In 2005, Hoffman took the role of a lifetime when he assumed the title role in Bennett Miller's Capote. The film had critics in agreement that Hoffman's portrayal of complex and idiosyncratic real-life author Truman Capote was the stuff of Hollywood legend. Hoffman not only mastered the character's distinct body-language and speech but also hauntingly interpreted the subtle psychological and emotional self that made the character whole-leading many to declare that he very nearly made the film everything it was. The performance earned him the Oscar for Best Actor, as well as a Golden Globe and countless other accolades. The attention also provided a boost in profile for the actor who had for so long proved his worth in the background. After playing the bad guy in the third Mission Impossible movie opposite Tom Cruise, Hoffman had a remarkable 2007, a year that saw him play a central part in three well-regarded films. His conniving brother in Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was a model of self-loathing fermenting into fatal action. In addition to a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor, his highly-educated, emotionally fractured brother to Laura Linney's neurotic sister in The Savages offered him the chance to play numerous subtle and sharply observed scenes with her, the first meeting of these two revered performers. But it was his turn as the intense CIA operative in Charlie Wilson's War that won Hoffman the most widespread praise including Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor.Hoffman continued to solidify his status as one of his generation's finest actors in 2008 with two very different roles. By choosing to play the lead in Charlie Kaufmann's directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, Hoffman again displayed his fearlessness, as well as his desire to work with the very best writers and directors he can find. That willfully difficult film never connected with mainstream audiences, but that was not true at all for Hoffman's other picture of 2008, Doubt. John Patrick Shanley's cinematic adaptation of his own award-winning play earned acting nominations for Hoffman and his three costars (Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis) from both the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy.Over the following years, Hoffman would continue to appear in a variety of interesting films, like Pirate Radio, The Ides of March, and Moneyball. In 2012 he again collaborated with Paul Thomas Anderson, playing a cult leader in the drama The Master opposite Joaquin Phoenix. For his work in that movie, Hoffman got a Best Supporting Actor nomination from both the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The following year, he appeared in the smash The Hunger Games: Catching Fire as rebel Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee. Sadly, personal problems cut his illustrious career short, as Hoffman was found dead in his apartment of an apparent drug overdose at age 46.

Trivia: Known to legions of fans as a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, bassist Flea has also maintained a side career as a supporting player in feature films. Born Michael Balzary, Flea moved from Australia to Los Angeles as a teen; it was there that he met eventual Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis in high school. Flea acted in his first major film, Penelope Spheeris' suburban punk story The Wild Side (1983), the same year he co-founded the band. Merging both of his performing interests, he appeared with the Chili Peppers in Tough Guys (1986) and Thrashin' (1986), as himself in Bruce Weber's Chet Baker documentary Let's Get Lost (1988), and played musicians in Less Than Zero (1987), the hip nostalgic road movie Roadside Prophets (1992), and Terry Gilliam's unpopular adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). Flea has also worked solely as an actor, playing small roles most notably in Back to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990), and in Gus Van Sant's Shakespearean street hustler tale My Own Private Idaho (1991); he has also added his voice to the animated TV show The Wild Thornberries (1998). Playing off his distinctive rock star image, Flea appeared as one of the black-clad nihilists in Joel Coen and Ethan Coen's bowling comedy/western/caper The Big Lebowski (1998). Departing from his more frequent bit-player status, Flea stepped into a more substantial part in the indie crime drama Liar's Poker (1999). He lent his voice to The Wild Thornberrys Movie as well as Rugrats Go Wild, and has contributed to various documentaries including Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, Patti Smith: Dream of Life, and The Other F Word.

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: As one of the stars of the 1999 summer smash American Pie, Tara Reid experienced an almost meteoric ascent into overnight celebrity. Possessing the kind of buxom blond good looks that ensure future employment and Internet shrines, Reid was best-known for her role as The Big Lebowski's trophy wife, Bunny Lebowski, before being cast in Pie. A native of Wyckoff, New Jersey, where she was born on November 8, 1975, Reid broke into acting at the age of six, when she was a contestant on the CBS children's game show, Child's Play. She went on to study at New York's Professional Children's School, where her classmates included Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jerry O'Connell, and Macaulay Culkin. After appearing in commercials for such products as Jell-O and Crayola, Reid landed a role on the sitcom Saved by the Bell: the New Class in 1994 and then had a recurring role on the daytime drama Days of Our Lives the following year. She got her first substantial film roles in 1998, appearing in the Ed Wood-scripted I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, The Big Lebowski, the independent film Around the Fire, and Urban Legend, the latest in a long line of teen slasher flicks. Reid won some amount of recognition for the last film, which featured a Who's-Who line-up of post-pubescent stars and cast her as a campus radio talk show host. The following year, Reid earned a form of screen immortality with her role as the girlfriend of one of four high school guys who make a pact to lose their virginity in American Pie. She also appeared in more low-profile roles in the independent film Girl and in Cruel Intentions, which featured her as one of Ryan Phillippe's more unfortunate conquests. Later that year, she had a starring role in Body Shots, playing one of a group of twenty-something friends on the prowl for love and/or sex in Los Angeles.Edging ever closer to leading woman status, Reid's star continued to rise as the vibrant young actress took on roles in such high profile efforts as Dr. T and the Women (2000), Josie and the Pussycats (2001) and, of course, American Pie 2 (also 2001). After taming the savage party animal in the lowbrow comedy Van Wilder, Reid gave screen heartthrob Ashton Kutcher the runaround in the romantic comedy My Boss's Daughter. Sadly, Reid's star dwindled throughout the 2000s with a series of critical and commerical flops that failed in comparison to her highly publicized personal troubles. Reid was able to find some success when she rejoined the original cast of American Pie for American Reunion in 2012.

Trivia: One of the top character actors of his era, John Turturro is a fixture of the contemporary American independent filmmaking landscape. Born February 28, 1957, in Brooklyn, NY, Turturro became fascinated by movies during childhood, and after graduating from college he won a scholarship to study at the prestigious Yale School of Drama. He first gained notice in regional theater and off-Broadway, earning an Obie Award for his starring role in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. He made his film debut in Martin Scorsese's 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull but did not reappear onscreen prior to 1984's The Exterminator 2. That same year, he debuted on Broadway in Death of a Salesman.Small roles in diverse fare including Susan Seidelman's 1985 comedy Desperately Seeking Susan, Scorsese's 1986 drama The Color of Money, and Woody Allen's masterful Hannah and Her Sisters kept Turturro busy throughout much of the decade, but his breakthrough performance did not arrive until Spike Lee cast him as a bigoted pizzeria worker in 1989's Do the Right Thing. A scene-stealing turn in the Coen brothers' 1990 gangland drama Miller's Crossing followed, and in 1991 the Coens cast him as the titular Barton Fink, a performance which garnered Best Actor honors at the Cannes Film Festival. Subsequent lead roles were infrequent, although in 1992 he wrote, directed, and starred in Mac, a little-seen indie feature that won him a Golden Camera award for Best First Feature at the 1992 Cannes Festival. Supporting turns in acclaimed offerings including Quiz Show, Clockers, and Grace of My Heart (in which he expertly portrayed a Phil Spector-like music producer) followed before Turturro's next starring role, in Tom DiCillo's whimsical 1996 comedy Box of Moonlight. In 1998, the actor again collaborated with both Lee and the Coen brothers, working with the former on He Got Game and the latter on The Big Lebowski. Also in 1998, Turturro wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Illuminata, a comedy set against the backdrop of a struggling, turn-of-the-century New York theater company. The following year, he again took on the New York theater, appearing in Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock, an exploration of the relationship between art and politics set in 1930s New York.He remained an in-demand character actor, as well as an occasional director into the next century, starting the 2000s with a leading role in the chess drama The Luzhin Defence, reteaming with the Coen brothers for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and working with Adam Sandler on Mr. Deeds. In 2004 he worked for Spike Lee yet again in She Hate Me. In 2005 he wrote, directed, and acted in the blue-collar musical Romance & Cigarettes. He appeared in The Good Shepherd in 2006, and the next year he appeared in the sci-fi blockbuster Transformers. In 2008 he joined up with Lee yet again to play a soldier in his World War II film Miracle At. St. Anna, and teamed with Sandler again for You Don't Mess With the Zohan. The next year he appeared in the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, and the Transformers sequel. He would return to that franchise for the third film in 2011, and that same year he would join the Pixar family voicing Lightnin' McQueen's rival in Cars 2.

Trivia: The second of three children, David Thewlis grew up in an apartment above his family's combination toy store and wallpaper shop. He received his training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. A veteran of the London stage and English television (Prime Suspect 3), Thewlis found his particular cinematic niche as the antihero of director Mike Leigh's Naked (1993). From the moment that Thewlis, playing an indigent from Manchester, showed up unannounced at the doorstep of his old girlfriend and immediately proceeded to verbally trash everyone in sight, the audience knew it wasn't in for a Noël Coward revival. The result of Thewlis's antisocial screen behavior was the unqualified praise of discriminating moviegoers, not to mention awards from the Cannes jury, the New York Film Critics, and the National Society of Film Critics. He went on to demonstrate his versatility in a number of diverse roles, including Paul Verlaine in 1995's Total Eclipse, an animated earthworm in James and the Giant Peach (1996), a mountaineer in Seven Years in Tibet (1997, a role for which the actor was subsequently banned from entering China), and an expatriate British composer living in Rome in Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged in 1998. Also that year, Thewlis could be seen doing a brief but hilarious turn as a giggling conceptual artist in The Big Lebowski. As rare as it is for an actor to possess the versatility needed to alternate between such adult-oriented fare as director Mike Leigh's Naked and such innocent fun as James and the Giant Peach, Thewlis could be as effective in the former as he was endearing in the latter. Following a chilling performance as the leader of a London gang in the 2002 crime drama Gangster No. 1, Thewlis switched gears somewhat to portray the villain in the made-for-television family adventure Dinotopia shortly thereafter. In 2003, Thewlis expanded his resumé by making his feature directorial debut with Cheeky, a comedy drama concerning a mournful widower (Thewlis) whose life takes a change for the better after appearing in a popular game show of questionable taste. His profile steadily increasing thanks to roles in such high-profile releases as Timeline and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (as Professor Remus Lupin), the actor began to make as big a name for himself in large-scale Hollywood blockbusters as he previously had in intimate independent dramas. Of course, that's not to say that Thewlis had lost his taste for smaller-scale films, just that his skills were now in increased demand stateside as a direct result of his powerful early-career performances. After a busy year in 2005 with roles in the historical dramas Kingdom of Heaven and The New World, Thewlis drifted back into modern times to play a small but pivotal role in an American-shot segment of the international short anthology All the Invisible Children -- a powerful meditation on the modern mistreatment of youth by the increasingly jaded adult population. A brief turn as the Scotland Yard homicide detective trailing Sharon Stone in the belated and ill-fated sequel Basic Instinct 2 may have gone unseen by many fans after the film received considerably negative word of mouth, though a fun turn as the paranoid, bubblegum-chomping reporter hot on the trail of the young Antichrist in the 2006 remake of The Omen gave audiences much more to chew on and offered Thewlis the opportunity to have a bit of fun, to the delight of fans everywhere. The following year, Thewlis reprised his role of Prof. Lupin in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and appeared in the title role in The Inner Life of Martin Frost. He could next be seen in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, a film adaptation of the John Boyne Holocaust novel, which focuses on the friendship that develops between the child of a Nazi commander at a concentration camp and a young Jewish prisoner. Thewlis enjoyed a high-profile 2011 when the last of the Harry Potter films hit screens, as did other films he was cast in including the Shakespearean drama Anonymous, and Steven Spielberg's Oscar nominated War Horse.

Trivia: Both an accomplished character actor and leading man, Ben Gazzara made a name for himself on the stage, screen, and television. The son of an Italian immigrant, Gazzara was born in New York City on August 28, 1930. He channeled his excess energy into acting after dropping out of the engineering department at the City College of New York. After studying at the Actors Studio and with private coach Erwin Piscator, Gazzara exploded onto the Broadway scene in 1953, playing warped military academy upper-classman Jocko De Paris in End as a Man. He went on to create the role of Brick in the original 1955 production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He later starred in Michael V. Gazzo's A Hatful of Rain, only to see his role go to Don Murray in the 1957 movie version, just as Paul Newman would portray Brick in the 1958 film version of Cat. Fortunately, Gazzara was permitted top film billing in 1957, reprising his stage role in End as a Man in the heavily laundered film-version, The Strange One. Two years later, Gazzara played arrogant murder-trial defendant Lieutenant Manion -- the one with the "irresistible impulse" -- in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder, slyly stealing scenes from the film's "official" star, James Stewart. After this promising beginning in films, Gazzara had trouble finding adequate movie roles. He turned to television in 1963, first as a co-star with Chuck Connors in the experimental 90-minute crime weekly Arrest and Trial. In 1965, Gazzara starred as Paul Bryan, an ex-lawyer with only a short time to live, on the TV popular series Run for Your Life; in spite of his character's fatal illness, Gazzara was able to remain with Run for three healthy seasons. With 1970's Husbands, Gazzara made the first of four film appearances under the direction of his old Actors Studio buddy John Cassavetes. Four years later, Gazzara starred as the Leon Uris counterpart in television's first miniseries, QB VII (1974). In the decades that followed, Gazzara took roles that, while not always prestigious, permitted him ample creative elbow room; a fascinating example of this was his bisexual villain in the Patrick Swayze vehicle Road House (1989). In 1998, he did some of the best work of his career portraying a series of beautifully dysfunctional characters in Buffalo '66, Happiness, and the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski. The following year, he traveled into the realm of slick international caper with a supporting role in The Thomas Crown Affair, and then returned to his New York roots to portray the leader of organized crime in the Bronx in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam. Gazzara remained active up through the end of the following decade, continuing to make onscreen appearances even after severe throat cancer that ravaged his vocal chords. He tackled two of his last assignments in the 2006 omnibus picture Paris, je t'aime and the 2008 comedy-drama Looking for Palladin, prior to his death at age 86 in early February 2012.Gazzara was divorced from the late actress Janice Rule.

Trivia: Went to college to study marine biology before turning his focus to acting. Trained at Playhouse West in North Hollywood and later became a teacher there. Film debut was in 1987's Fatal Beauty. Was nominated along with the rest of the cast of 2005's Capote for a Screen Actors Guild Award (Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture). Known for playing several supernatural characters: the mysterious near-immortal Jacob on Lost, Lucifer on Supernatural and a vampire boss on Being Human. Studies various types of martial arts.

Trivia: Salt-and-pepper-haired, frequently mustachioed African-American character player Richard Gant tackled supporting roles in a plethora of Hollywood A-list features during the 1980s and '90s. Among other efforts, his resumé from that period includes Suspect (1987), Rocky V (1990), Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993), and CB4: The Movie (1993). Gant continued his big-screen roles through the tail end of that decade and well into the 2000s, but also achieved substantial recognition and audience identification on the small screen, with a regular role as Sgt. Bill Dornan on Steven Bochco's hit cop drama NYPD Blue. Gant later appeared memorably as the livery stable owner Hostetler on the HBO Western drama Deadwood, and joined the cast of long-running soap opera General Hospital as Dr. Russell Ford in 2007.

Trivia: A native of rural Humboldt, IA, character actor Christian Clemenson left his home state when a scholarship that he netted as part of his paperboy route afforded him the opportunity to attend the prestigious Phillips Academy preparatory school in Andover, MA. That experience imparted Clemenson with a deep-seated love of theatrics, and he spent his Iowan summers during college acting in local stage productions. The upstart subsequently attended Harvard as an undergraduate and Yale Drama School as a grad student, then moved to Los Angeles in the mid-'80s, where he accepted a long series of bit parts and supporting roles in A-list features, typically cast as nebbishy professional types. Early films in which Clemenson appeared included Heartburn (1986), Legal Eagles (1986), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Broadcast News (1987).Beginning in the late '90s, Clemenson began placing a stronger emphasis on television work, with guest roles in series including Ally McBeal, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The West Wing, and NYPD Blue. He received critical kudos for his portrayal of ill-fated executive Thomas E. Burnett Jr., a victim of the September 11th terrorist attacks, in Paul Greengrass' feature United 93 (2006), then joined William Shatner, Candice Bergen, and James Spader of David E. Kelley's offbeat seriocomedy Boston Legal in a recurring capacity during the show's second season; on the program, Clemenson played Jerry "Hands" Espenson, a troubled lawyer plagued by Asperger's Syndrome. He went on to win Best Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2006 for that role, and continued to appear on the show, later attaining regular status and staying with the series until it folded in 2009. Clemenson would continue to appear regularly on screen as the years went on, appearing on shows like CSI: Miami and Harry's Law.

Trivia: Played JV basketball at Miami's Biscayne College. Has been nominated six times for an American Comedy Award. Has made more appearances at Montreal's Just for Laughs Festival and Kilkenny, Ireland's Cat Laughs Festival than any other American comic. Was No. 79 on Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Standups of All-Time.

Trivia: Typically cast as a criminal or a cop, beefy, bald, American character actor Jon Polito has appeared on stage, television, and in feature films, notably the Coen brothers' Miller's Crossing (1990) and Barton Fink (1991). Polito can be recognized for his pencil-thin moustache. He launched his career on Broadway in 1977. In 1981, Polito debuted in the feature film The Killing Hour and then portrayed mobster Tommy Lucchese on the television series The Gangster Chronicles.

Trivia: Singer/songwriter Aimee Mann is probably best known for her fights with major record labels regarding her artistic freedom, but she's also made a name for herself by scoring or taking small roles in quirky, acclaimed films. Mann was born in Virginia on September 8, 1960. After dropping out of the Berklee School of Music in the early '80s, Mann formed a few bands, most notably 'Til Tuesday, and launched a solo career after that band folded in 1989.But her solo career found her constantly at odds with various record labels (Imago, Geffen, Interscope) and she ended up buying back her master recordings. This left Mann with a lot of animosity towards the music industry and some spare time, wherein she took a memorable role as a German nihilist who sacrifices her toe for a big payoff in the Coen brothers' 1996 screwball-noir The Big Lebowski. Her most memorable contributions to cinema, however, were the haunting songs she penned for the soundtrack to pal Paul Thomas Anderson's Altman-esque multi-character opus Magnolia (1999). An unabashed fan, Anderson writes in the soundtrack's liner notes that his dysfunctional ensemble drama is basically an interpretation of Mann's music. The album earned Mann commercial and critical success, and resulted in a Best Song Oscar nomination for "Save Me", which was passed over in favor of popster-turned-Disney-troubadour Phil Collins. She is married to fellow singer/songwriter Michael Penn.

Trivia: Working alongside his brother Joel, Ethan Coen is widely considered one of the most visionary and idiosyncratic filmmakers of the late 20th century. Combining thoughtful eccentricity, wry humor, arch irony, and often brutal violence, the films of the Coen brothers have become synonymous with a style of filmmaking that pays tribute to classic American movie genres -- especially film noir -- while sustaining a firmly postmodern feel. Born in St. Louis Park, MN, in 1957, Ethan Coen studied philosophy at Princeton University. Soon after he graduated, he and his brother began writing their first screenplays, and, in 1984, they made their debut with Blood Simple. Both of them wrote and edited the film (using the name Roderick Jaynes for the latter duty), while Joel took the directing credit and Ethan billed himself as the producer. It earned considerable critical acclaim and established the brothers as fresh, original talent. Their next major effort (after Crimewave, a 1985 film they wrote that was directed by Sam Raimi), 1987's Raising Arizona was a screwball comedy miles removed from the dark, violent content of their previous movie, and it won over critics and audiences alike. Their fan base growing, the Coens went on to make Miller's Crossing (1990), a stark gangster epic with a strong performance from John Turturro, whom the brothers also used to great effect in their next film, Barton Fink (1991). Fink earned Joel a Best Director award and a Golden Palm at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, as well as the festival's Best Actor award for Turturro. A surreal, nightmarish movie revolving around a writer's creative block, it was a heavily stylized, atmospheric triumph that further established the Coens as visionary arbiters of the bizarre.Their 1994 follow-up to Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, was a relative critical and commercial disappointment, though it did boast the sort of heavily stylized, postmodern irony that had so endeared the brothers to their audience. Whatever failings The Hudsucker Proxy exhibited, however, were more than atoned for by the unquestionable success of the Coens' next film, Fargo (1996). A black, violent crime comedy with a surprisingly warm heart, it recalled Blood Simple in its themes of greed, corruption, and murder, but provided more redemptive sentiment than was afforded to the characters of the previous film. The brothers shared a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for their work, and another Oscar, for Best Actress, went to Frances McDormand, to whom Joel had been married since 1984. Following Fargo, the Coens went on to make The Big Lebowski in 1998. A blend of bungled crime and warped comedy, Lebowski was a laid-back, irreverent revision of the hardboiled L.A. detective genre. It met with mixed critical reception, though it did receive a Golden Bear nomination for Joel Coen at the Berlin Film Festival. In 1999, Ethan closed out the decade by publishing Gates of Eden, a collection of his short stories.The Coens next served up the depression-era comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), which turned out to be their biggest box-office success at that time and spawned a Grammy-winning soundtrack. 2001 saw the release of The Man Who Wasn't There, yet another ode to film noir and another award winner at Cannes. In 2003, Ethan and Joel were credited as executive producers on Terry Zwigoff's hit comedy Bad Santa largely due to the fact that the origin of the film's story came from the Coens. That same year, the brothers re-teamed with George Clooney (one of the stars of O Brother) for the screwball comedy Intolerable Cruelty. In 2004, the duo released The Ladykillers starring Tom Hanks, a remake of the classic British comedy. The film marked the first time Ethan Coen officially shared the directing credit with Joel, as well as the first time they shared producer credit.After a three year layoff from movies, the brothers returned with an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. The taut but philosophically minded thriller opened to nearly universal praise and became one of the two films to dominate year end critics and industry awards. Joel and Ethan won the best Director award from the Director's Guild of America, and found themselves nominated as directors, writers, and producers at that year's Oscar telecast. That same year, Coen saw three short plays he wrote staged off-Broadway.They followed their award-winning film with the jet-black comedy Burn After Reading, but in 2009 they released one of their most idiosyncratic movies, A Serious Man. That film earned the brothers another nomination for Best Screenplay from the Academy.Their remarkable run continued with 2010's remake of True Grit, a film that once again garnered Oscar nominations for directing, screenwriting, and Best Picture, in addition to acting nods in various categories.

Trivia: Working with his brother Ethan, screenwriter/director Joel Coen has built a reputation as one of the most visionary and idiosyncratic filmmakers of the late 20th century. Combining thoughtful eccentricity, wry humor, arch irony, and often brutal violence, the films of the Coen brothers have become synonymous with a style of filmmaking that pays tribute to classic American movie genres -- especially film noir -- while sustaining a firmly postmodern feel. Beginning with Blood Simple, their brutal, stylish 1984 debut, the brothers have amassed a body of work that has established them as two of the most compelling figures in American and world cinemas.Born in St. Louis Park, MN, in 1954, Joel Coen studied at New York University before moving into filmmaking in the early '80s. He and his younger brother began writing screenplays while Joel worked as an assistant editor on good friend Sam Raimi's 1983 film The Evil Dead. In 1984, they made their debut with Blood Simple. Both of them wrote and edited the film (using the name Roderick Jaynes for the latter duty), while Joel took the directing credit and Ethan billed himself as the producer. It earned considerable critical acclaim and established the brothers as fresh, original talent. Their next major effort (after Crimewave, a 1985 film they wrote that was directed by Raimi), 1987's Raising Arizona was a screwball comedy miles removed from the dark, violent content of their previous movie, and it won over critics and audiences alike. Their fan base growing, the Coens went on to make Miller's Crossing (1990), a stark gangster epic with a strong performance from John Turturro, whom the brothers also used to great effect in their next film, Barton Fink (1991). Fink earned Joel a Best Director award and a Golden Palm at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, as well as the festival's Best Actor award for Turturro. A surreal, nightmarish movie revolving around a writer's creative block, it was a heavily stylized, atmospheric triumph that further established the Coens as visionary arbiters of the bizarre.Their 1994 follow-up to Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, was a relative critical and commercial disappointment, though it did boast the sort of heavily stylized, postmodern irony that had so endeared the brothers to their audience. Whatever failings The Hudsucker Proxy exhibited, however, were more than atoned for by the unquestionable success of the Coens' next film, Fargo (1996). A black, violent crime comedy with a surprisingly warm heart, it recalled Blood Simple in its themes of greed, corruption, and murder, but provided more redemptive sentiment than was afforded to the characters of the previous film. The brothers shared a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for their work, and another Oscar, for Best Actress, went to Frances McDormand, to whom Joel had been married since 1984.Following Fargo, the Coens went on to make The Big Lebowski in 1998. A blend of bungled crime and warped comedy, Lebowski was a laid-back, irreverent revision of the hardboiled L.A. detective genre. It met with mixed critical reception, though it did receive a Golden Bear nomination for Joel Coen at the Berlin Film Festival. The year 2000 brought the Coens into the depression-era with O Brother, Where art Thou? An admittedly loose adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey, O Brother starred George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson as escaped convicts on a surreal journey through 1930s Mississippi. Wasting no time in production of their next feature, the following year found Joel the recipient of his third Best Director award at Cannes for the darkly comic, monochromatic post-noir The Man Who Wasn't There. Starring Billy Bob Thornton as a humble, small-town barber who gets mixed up in a tangled web of blackmail and deceit, the moody atmosphere of The Man Who Wasn't There eschewed the wacky antics of O Brother in favor of a darker, more moody tone that recalled such earlier Coen efforts as Blood Simple and Barton Fink.Two years later, Joel and Ethan re-teamed with Clooney for Intolerable Cruelty, a film that represented their version of a '30s screwball comedy. The film was noteworthy in that it was the first movie made by the brothers that did not originate with them; they rewrote a script that was already in existence. Joel and Ethan were also listed as executive producers on the 2003 Terry Zwigoff film Bad Santa, a story that came from one of their original ideas. 2004 saw the release of the Coens' first remake, The Ladykillers starring Tom Hanks. That film also marked the first time Joel shared directorial credit with Ethan.After a three year layoff from movies, the brothers returned with an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. The taut but philosophically minded thriller opened to nearly universal praise and became one of the two films to dominate year end critics and industry awards. Joel and Ethan won the best Director award from the Director's Guild of America, and found themselves taking home awards for Directing, Writing, and Best Picture from that year's Oscar telecast.They followed their award-winning film with the jet-black comedy Burn After Reading, but in 2009 they released one of their most idiosyncratic movies, A Serious Man. That film earned the brothers another nomination for Best Screenplay from the Academy.Their remarkable run continued with 2010's remake of True Grit, a film that once again garnered Oscar nominations for directing, screenwriting, and Best Picture, in addition to acting nods in various categories.