Trivia: After her parents divorced, she moved to Mexico with her mother. Cut her hair to play a boy in her film debut, Pecado, in 1951. Began working in telenovelas at the age of 16, with the series Cartas de amor. Released her self-titled debut album in 1962. Sat on the judging panel for a Spanish-language children's (ages 8-16) version of The X-Factor. Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2016.

Trivia: Joan Chen has been one of a very few actors to have a viable career both in Hollywood and in Hong Kong. Whether playing a wizened Vietnamese peasant woman or the doomed Empress of China, she lends her characters a natural elegance and a beguiling vulnerability.Chen was born tp a family of doctors on April 26, 1961, in Shanghai, China. She tasted fame early in her life when she made her film debut in Xie Jin's Youth (1976) at age 14. She soon enrolled in the prestigious Shanghai Foreign Language Institute while making a couple more feature films, including Zhang Zheng's Little Flower (1979), which eventually won her a Best Actress Prize at the Hundred Flowers Awards (the Mainland Chinese equivalent of the Oscars). Having reached the pinnacle of fame in her own country, Chen made the unusual step to leave China -- not for Hong Kong as many later Chinese stars such as Gong Li and Jet Li did -- but for the United States. While studying at California State University in Northridge, she landed a small role in Wayne Wang's Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (1985), a gentle portrait of Chinese-American family life.In true Hollywood style, she was summarily cast as May-May in the adventure-epic Tai-Pan (1986) after being spotted in the Lorimar parking lot. Though it was savaged by critics (Leonard Maltin called it "silly") and bombed at the box-office, Tai-Pan did allow Chen to segue into her breakthrough role. As Empress Wan Jung in Bernardo Bertolucci's Oscar-award winning The Last Emperor (1987), Chen brilliantly played a woman whose love and life are tragically destroyed by China's rigidly patriarchal culture and the machinations of fate. Hollywood roles being notoriously hard to land for Asian and Asian-American actors, Chen's newfound fame did not immediately lead to better movie offers. She appeared in such low-budget fare as The Blood of Heroes (1989) before she attracted public attention again as Josie Packard in David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks. In 1993, she played a Vietnamese mother who suffers for a lifetime in a country at war in Oliver Stone's Heaven and Earth.That same year, she returned to Asia to make a pair of critically successful films. She played a supernatural temptress in Clara Law's Temptation of a Monk (1993), a historical epic with the sweep and visual flare of a Sergio Leone film with a pronounced erotic edge. The role was a brave one to tackle as it not only featured Chen as the movie's clear villain, but it also featuring an unusually graphic sex scene for a mainstream Chinese film. In Stanley Kwan's Red Rose, White Rose (1994), which was nominated for Berlin's Golden Bear, Chen played another deliciously evil vixen opposite Winston Chao. For her effort, she won a Best Actress Golden Horse award, Taiwan's equivalent of the Oscar. Her return to the U.S. was marked by another succession of subpar flicks, including On Deadly Ground (1994) and Judge Dredd (1995). Chen also co-produced and starred in The Wild Side (1995), a lesbian romantic thriller in which she played opposite a still-in-the-closet Anne Heche.In 1998, Chen made her directorial debut with Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, a lyrical, harrowing tale about the loss of innocence and respect during the tumult of the Chinese cultural revolution. Featuring sumptuous cinematography and subtle, remarkably assured direction, Xiu Xiu won armfuls of international prizes, including a virtual sweep of the Golden Horse awards and a nomination for a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. In 1999, Chen climbed back into the director's chair and began production of Autumn in New York, starring Richard Gere and Winona Ryder.Over the next several years, Chen would cement her position as one of the most loved and respected actresses in film, especially on the Eastern side of the globe, appearing in movies like Sunflower, Lust, Caution, Love in Disguise, and 1911.

Trivia: An eighth-generation Texan, actor Tommy Lee Jones, born September 15th, 1946, attended Harvard University, where he roomed with future U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Though several of his less-knowledgeable fans have tended to dismiss Jones as a roughhewn redneck, the actor was equally at home on the polo fields (he's a champion player) as the oil fields, where he made his living for many years.After graduating cum laude from Harvard in 1969, Jones made his stage debut that same year in A Patriot for Me; in 1970, he appeared in his first film, Love Story (listed way, way down the cast list as one of Ryan O'Neal's fraternity buddies). Interestingly enough, while Jones was at Harvard, he and roommate Gore provided the models for author Erich Segal while he was writing the character of Oliver, the book's (and film's) protagonist. After this supporting role, Jones got his first film lead in the obscure Canadian film Eliza's Horoscope (1975). Following a spell on the daytime soap opera One Life to Live, he gained national attention in 1977 when he was cast in the title role in the TV miniseries The Amazing Howard Hughes, his resemblance to the title character -- both vocally and visually -- positively uncanny. Five years later, Jones won further acclaim and an Emmy for his startling performance as murderer Gary Gilmore in The Executioner's Song. Jones spent the rest of the '80s working in both television and film, doing his most notable work on such TV miniseries as Lonesome Dove (1989), for which he earned another Emmy nomination. It was not until the early '90s that the actor became a substantial figure in Hollywood, a position catalyzed by a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role in Oliver Stone's JFK. In 1993, Jones won both that award and a Golden Globe for his driven, starkly funny portrayal of U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard in The Fugitive. His subsequent work during the decade was prolific and enormously varied. In 1994 alone, he could be seen as an insane prison warden in Natural Born Killers; titular baseball hero Ty Cobb in Cobb; a troubled army captain in Blue Sky; a wily federal attorney in The Client; and a psychotic bomber in Blown Away. Jones was also attached to a number of big-budget action movies, hamming it up as the crazed Two-Face in Batman Forever (1995); donning sunglasses and an attitude to play a special agent in Men in Black (1997); and reprising his Fugitive role for the film's 1998 sequel, U.S. Marshals. The following year, he continued this trend, playing Ashley Judd's parole officer in the psychological thriller Double Jeopardy. The late '90s and millennial turnover found Jones' popularity soaring, and the distinguished actor continued to develop a successful comic screen persona (Space Cowboys [2000] and Men in Black II [2002]), in addition to maintaining his dramatic clout with roles in such thrillers as The Rules of Engagement (2000) and The Hunted (2003).2005 brought a comedic turn for the actor, who starred in the madcap comedy Man of the House as a grizzled police officer in tasked to protect a house full of cheerleaders who witnessed a murder. Jones also took a stab at directing that year, helming and starring in the western crime drama The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. In 2006, Jones appeared in Robert Altman's film adaptation of A Prairie Home Companion, based on Garrison Keillor's long running radio show. The movie's legendary director, much loved source material and all-star cast made the film a safe bet for the actor, who hadn't done much in the way of musical comedy. Jones played the consumate corporate bad guy with his trademark grit.2007 brought two major roles for the actor. He headlined the Iraq war drama In the Valley of Elah for director Paul Haggis. His work as the veteran father of a son who died in the war earned him strong reviews and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. However more people saw Jones' other film from that year, the Coen brothers adaptation of No Country for Old Men. His work as a middle-aged Texas sheriff haunted by the acts of the evil man he hunts earned him a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The actor co-starred with Stanley Tucci and Neal McDonough for 2011's blockbuster Captain America: The First Avenger, and reprised his role as a secret agent in Men in Black 3 (2011). In 2012 he played a Congressman fighting to help Abraham Lincoln end slavery in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, a role that led to an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Trivia: A obstetrician and gynecologist in his native Cambodia, Dr. Haing S. Ngor was plunged into a five-year hell when his country was overwhelmed by the Khmer Rouge. Ngor spent four years as a slave laborer, subjected to endless persecution and torture. Things would have been even worse had his captors known of his medical and intellectual background. To avoid extermination, he went without his much-needed eyeglasses, and was forced to stand by helplessly when his pregnant wife died after going into premature labor. Finally escaping to the U.S. in 1980, he was unable to secure work in his chosen profession because his French medical qualifications weren't recognized. His fortunes took a dramatic swing upward when director Roland Joffe cast him as real-life Cambodian translator Dith Pran in The Killing Fields (1981). Having already literally "lived" his role, Ngor delivered a powerhouse performance, one which earned him an Academy Award. Careful to avoid exploiting or cheapening this triumph (at the Oscar ceremony, he dedicated his win to the memory of his murdered family), Ngor chose his subsequent films carefully. His best post-Killing Fields roles include the heroine's father in Oliver Stone's Heaven and Earth and The General in the syndicated TV series Vanishing Son (1994). For Ngor, acting was always secondary to tireless fund-raising efforts on behalf of his fellow Cambodians, and his dogged determination to bring his Khmer Rouge persecutors to justice. In 1988, he wrote his chillingly graphic autobiography, Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey. After enduring so much hardship and heartbreak, Ngor's death was particularly tragic: he was murdered while standing next to his car in the garage of his Los Angeles home. For a while, suspicion fell upon Khmer Rouge assassins; it turned out, however, that Haing Ngor's killers were nothing more than drug-dealing street gang members.

Trivia: Raised in Richmond, CA. Decided to pursue acting while in college. Stage debut came in 1977's The Year of the Dragon with the San Francisco-based Asian American Theatre Company. Appeared in the 1981 off-Broadway production of Family Devotions. Played Data's father in the 1985 film The Goonies. His first TV series was the 1994 syndicated drama Valley of the Dolls. Provided the voice for Jimmy Ho on Fox's animated comedy The PJs. Likes to ride, build and restore single-speed bikes.