Trivia: Though she came to prominence in the 1980s, Kathleen Turner, with her blend of raw sexuality, beauty, intelligence, and drive, could give golden age-sirens like Lana Turner and Ava Gardner a run for their money. After years of working as a relative unknown in way-off-Broadway productions and in the television soap opera The Doctors, Turner burst onto the movie scene in a star-making blaze when she was cast as femme fatale Matty opposite William Hurt in Lawrence Kasdan's neo-noir thriller Body Heat (1981). She continued to wreak havoc on the opposite sex throughout the decade, appearing in a variety of popular movies that ranged from drama to lighthearted adventure to jet-black comedy. The daughter of a U.S. ambassador, Turner experienced a peripatetic upbringing in a fiercely competitive environment. Living in Canada, Cuba, Washington, D.C., Venezuela, and England, she learned to adjust to new situations at a very young age. She later claimed the experience molded her as an actress and taught her to constantly refashion herself to meet the needs of particular situations. Turner first became conscious of wanting to be an actress while living in England, where, during her weekly visits to the theater, she was thrilled by the work of Diana Rigg, Christopher Plummer, Angela Lansbury, and others. While attending high school, Turner enrolled in classes at London's Central School of Speech and Drama. She studied there until 1973, when her father's death forced her mother to move the family back to her hometown of Springfield, MO. It was there that Turner would take voice lessons at Southwest Missouri State University, where she later enrolled. Finding the campus devoid of the culture she craved, however, Turner transferred to the University of Maryland and in 1977 graduated with a degree in theater. Following graduation, she moved to New York and, in between waiting tables, found work in television commercials and obscure stage productions until deciding it was time to try Hollywood. Turner had just finished an unsuccessful audition when, fortuitously enough, she encountered the casting agent for Body Heat. Her subsequent portrayal of the murderous Matty proved to be her breakthrough and led to a series of widely varied starring roles. For her sophomore effort, she tried her hand at comedy with The Man With Two Brains (1983), in which she starred opposite Steve Martin. Again, as with her previous role, she played a woman who used her feminine wiles to manipulate a man. In the erotic Crimes of Passion (1984), she once more was cast as a woman using sex for manipulation, playing a fashion designer/hooker who gets involved with a street preacher. Understandably not wanting to get typecast by this point, Turner next played a dowdy author who finds herself caught up in an exciting South American adventure with dashing Michael Douglas and sleazy Danny De Vito in Romancing the Stone (1984). The film was a smash hit and Turner found herself a star. The following year, the trio reunited for the sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, and in 1989, they once again collaborated for The War of the Roses, Danny DeVito's grimly funny dissection of a messy divorce. Other high points of that period included Turner's performance as a beautiful but ruthless hit woman in Prizzi's Honor (1985) and her Oscar-nominated turn as a dissatisfied housewife who gets a second chance to alter her life in Francis Ford Coppola's moving Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). In 1988, Turner re-teamed with William Hurt for a supporting role in Kasdan's The Accidental Tourist (1988). That same year, she gave a devastatingly sexy performance as the voice of Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Unfortunately, despite these successes, Turner subsequently had a hard time finding quality roles, and her appearances during the early to mid-'90s were sporadic. One highlight of this period was her turn as the completely psychotic suburban housewife who goes on a killing spree in John Waters' funny but uneven Serial Mom (1994). In the latter half of the 1990s, Turner began to find more quality work in films like Moonlight and Valentino (1995) and The Real Blonde (1997). In 1999, she could be seen starring in the children's comedy Baby Geniuses, The Prince of Central Park, and Sofia Coppola's eagerly awaited adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, which cast Turner as the matriarch of a profoundly dysfunctional family.As the 21st century began, Turner made a handful of appearances as Chandler's drag-queen dad on Friends. On the big screen she lent her distinctive husky tones to the animated project Monster House. In 2008 she acted in the hit Marley & Me, and in 2012 had one of her best leading film roles in quite some time as the Catholic mother of a dysfunctional clan in The Perfect Family.

Trivia: Actor Nicolas Cage has always strived to make a name for himself based on his work, rather than on his lineage. As the nephew of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, Cage altered his last name to avoid accusations of nepotism. (He chose "Cage" both out of admiration for avant-garde musician John Cage and en homage to comic book hero Luke Cage). Even if he had retained the family name, it isn't likely that anyone would consider Cage holding fast to his uncle's coattails. Time and again, Cage travels to great lengths to add verisimilitude to his roles.Born January 7, 1964, in Long Beach, CA, to a literature professor father and dancer/choreographer mother, Cage first caught the acting bug while a student at Beverly Hills High School. After graduation, he debuted on film with a small part in Amy Heckerling's 1982 classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Following a lead role in Martha Coolidge's cult comedy Valley Girl (1983), Cage spent the remainder of the decade playing endearingly bizarre and disreputable men, most notably as Crazy Charlie the Appliance King in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Hi McDonough in Raising Arizona (1987), and Ronny Cammareri in the same year's Moonstruck, the last of which won him a Golden Globe nomination and a legion of female fans, ecstatic over the actor's unconventional romantic appeal.The '90s saw Cage assume a series of diverse roles, ranging from a violent ex-con in David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990) to a sweet-natured private eye in the romantic comedy Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) to a dying alcoholic in Mike Figgis' astonishing Leaving Las Vegas (1995). For this last role, Cage won a Best Actor Oscar for his quietly devastating portrayal, and, respectability in hand, gained an official entrance into Hollywood's higher ranks. After winning his Oscar, along with a score of other honors for his performance, Cage switched gears in a way that would prove to be, with the occasional exception, largely permanent. He dove into a series of action movies like the Michael Bay thriller The Rock, the prisoners-on-a-plane movie Con Air, and the infamous John Woo flick Face/Off. Greeted with hefty paychecks and audience approval, Cage forged ahead on a career path lit largely with explosions.There would be exceptions, like 1998's City of Angels, a remake of Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, and Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead, and the the lightly dramatic romantic comedy The Family Man, but Cage stuck mostly to thrillers and action movies. A spate of such films would fill his resume, like Gone in 60 Seconds, The Life of David Gale, 8MM, and Snake Eyes, but Cage would briefly revisit his roots in character work, teaming with Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze in 2002 for a duel role in the complex comedy Adaptation (2002). With Cage appearing as both screenwriter Charlie Kaufman as well as his fictional brother Donald, Adaptation followed Charlie's attempt to adapt author Susan Orlean's seemingly unfilmable novel The Orchid Thief as a feature film, and Donald's parallel efforts to write his own hacky yet lucrative script by following the guidance of a caustic, Syd Field-like screenwriting instructor (Brian Cox). A weighty role that demanded an actor capable of portraying characters that couldn't differ more emotionally despite their outward appearance, Adaptation brought Cage his second Oscar nomination -- and he was soon back to business as usual.2004 saw the release of the megahit adventure film National Treasure, which cast Cage as an archaeologist convinced there's a treasure map on the back of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The outrageous film would earn a sequel in 2007, but first Cage made the ill-advised decision to star in Neil LaBute's reworking of the Robin Hardy/Anthony Shaffer collaboration The Wicker Man (2006). Though video compilations of the movie's most hilariously hackneyed moments would become popular on the internet, Cage was soon portraying a motorcycle-driving stuntman who sells his soul to Mephistopheles -- in Mark Steven Johnson's live-action comic book adaptation Ghost Rider. Upon premiering in the States, the film became a big success. In the same year's sci-fi thriller Next, directed by Lee Tamahori, Cage plays Cris Johnson, a man who attains the ability to see into the future and must suddenly decide between saving himself and saving the world; the film failed to ignite the way Ghost Rider did just a couple months before it. Next came Bangkok Dangerous, Knowing, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans, Drive Angry, Seeking Justice, and Trespass -- all high octane, high adrenaline movies that found Cage diving, leaping, and shooting his way through the story. Cage found himself with a surprise hit in Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass (2010), playing a vigilante former cop in the black comedy film. He voiced the main character in 2013's animated The Croods, but then mostly stuck to action-crime-thriller-type movies for the next couple of years, including films like Left Behind (2014), The Runner (2015) and The Trust (2016).

Trivia: Barry Miller has played leads and supporting roles on stage, screen, and television. In movies, he made his debut at age 16 playing the younger version of notorious gangster Louis "Lepke" Buchalter (played by Tony Curtis). One of his best-known film roles is that of the depressed Bobby C., who drunkenly falls off the Verrazano Narrow Bridge after accidentally impregnating a girl in Saturday Night Fever (1977). Miller debuted on Broadway in 1980 and five years later earned a Tony and a Drama Desk Award for his role in Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues (1985). The son of actors Sidney Miller and Dorothy Green, Miller is frequently cast in "ethnic" roles.

Trivia: American actress Catherine Hicks was educated at St. Mary's Notre Dame and Cornell University; after several seasons of stage work, she launched a lengthy TV career. Hicks was seen regularly on the sitcom The Bad News Bears (1978) and starred in the quasi-fantasy detective series Tucker's Witch (1979); she also portrayed Dr. Faith Coleridge on the ABC daytime drama Ryan's Hope. On two occasions, Catherine has had the uneviable task of recreating roles essayed by well-known actresses in earlier films. She played the Gene Tierney role in Bill Murray's remake of The Razor's Edge (1984), and the Barbara Parkins role in the made-for-TV Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls (1990). In most films, Hicks has provided strong support to the name-above-the-title stars, notably in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1984) and Garbo Talks (1984). Leading roles came to Catherine Hicks in several films of the late '80s and early '90s: In She's Out of Control (1989), Catherine is Tony Danza's lady friend, and in Child's Play (1988) she's the unlucky mom of the unluckier kid (Alex Vincent) who owns the malevolent "Chucky" doll.

Trivia: Largely underappreciated for years in Hollywood before her Oscar-nominated turn as the First Lady in Nixon (1995), Joan Allen has had a distinguished career encompassing the stage, screen, and television. A native of Rochelle, Illinois, where she was born August 20, 1956, the blond, swanlike actress developed an interest in acting while in high school. Voted Most Likely to Succeed by her senior class, Allen went on to study theatre at Eastern Illinois University. She then moved to Chicago, where she became one of the founding members of the vaunted Steppenwolf Theatre Company, along with such respected talents as Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.Allen made her screen debut with a small role in the 1985 film Compromising Positions and a year later played two wildly different characters in Manhunter and Peggy Sue Got Married. Her portrayals of a tragically confused young woman who attempts to seduce a serial killer in the former film and a brainy high school student in the latter impressed a number of critics, but it was on the stage that Allen was most appreciated. In 1988, she won a Tony award for her Broadway debut performance in Burn This, and a year later she earned her second Tony nomination for her role in Wendy Wasserstein's highly acclaimed The Heidi Chronicles.Following increasingly substantial roles in such films as In Country (1989), Ethan Frome (1992), and Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), Allen won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her stunning portrayal of First Lady Pat Nixon in Oliver Stone's Nixon. The acclaim surrounding her performance in the 1995 film finally gave Allen the Hollywood recognition she deserved; the following year this recognition was further enhanced with her Oscar-nominated turn as the long-suffering Elizabeth Proctor in Nicholas Hytner's adaptation of The Crucible.More praise came Allen's way in 1997, when she headlined a stellar ensemble cast in Ang Lee's lauded adaptation of Rick Moody's The Ice Storm. Starring as a troubled upper middle-class Connecticut housewife alongside the likes of Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci, and Tobey Maguire, Allen gave repression a stirring, beautifully nuanced name. That same year she went in a completely different direction, starring as the wife of an FBI agent (John Travolta) in John Woo's popular action thriller Face/Off. Allen returned to the realm of the repressed housewife in 1998, starring (and reuniting with Maguire) in the acclaimed 1950s-set comedy drama Pleasantville. The turn of the century found Allen taking leads in a trio of issue-oriented dramas: In the multi-character handgun treatise All the Rage (released on video in 2000), she played the wife of a short-fused lawyer (reuniting with Pleasantville's Jeff Daniels in the process); in the Irish production When the Sky Falls, she teamed with The Long Good Friday (1980) director John Mackenzie to tell the true, tragic story of a Dublin crime reporter; and in Rod Lurie's The Contender, Allen nabbed her biggest role to date -- and her first Best Actress Oscar nomination -- as a would-be U.S. vice president who finds herself at the center of a sex scandal.After all the attention for The Contender, the savvy Allen continued to oscillate between big roles in low-profile independent films and small roles in big-budget popcorn fare, to even greater success. She featured prominently in two of the biggest box-office hits of 2004: the sentimental romance The Notebook and the wildly successful second installment of the Jason Bourne franchise, The Bourne Supremacy. In the latter, she dug into a meaty, sympathetic supporting role as an all-business CIA agent who pursues the framed title character. Spring 2005 saw the near-concurrent release of two of her indie films, both of which premiered at Sundance Festivals from years prior: Campbell Scott's lapsed-hippie family drama Off the Map and Mike Binder's Terms of Endearment-ish saga The Upside of Anger. The former cast Allen against type as a let-it-all-hang-out New Mexico naturalist who finds her family coming apart at the seams in the mid-1970s. More widely acclaimed was her Anger appearance: As a drunk, headstrong, suburban Detroit housewife who lashes out at her four daughters -- and everyone else -- after her husband leaves the family, Allen turned in a performance that was both caustic and relatable, and garnered some of the best notices of her film career.In 2008 she played the bad guy in the action film Death Race, and the year after that she starred as Georgia O'Keefe in the biopic about her directed by Bob Balaban. She returned to the role of Pamela Landy for The Bourne Legacy, the Tony Gilroy directed reboot of the popular franchise that featured Jeremy Renner taking over the title role.

Trivia: Goodman graduate Barbara Harris was among the earliest members of Chicago's Second City improvisational troupe. Harris' "everybody's best friend" demeanor, her good looks and offbeat sense of humor assured her steady work both off and on Broadway. In 1967 she won a Tony Award for her work in the whimsical Broadway musical The Apple Tree. Harris made her film debut as the heart-on-sleeve social worker Sandra (which happened to be her real first name) in 1965's A Thousand Clowns. She then re-created her Broadway role in the hot-and-cold movie version of Arthur Kopit's Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad. In 1971, Harris was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Who is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (did she enjoy selecting films with long-winded titles?) Her subsequent film appearances were as infrequent as they were unpredictable. Only director Robert Altman would have had the inspired notion of casting the very urban Barbara as a country-western wannabe in Nashville (1975); and only Alfred Hitchcock would have come up with the brilliant idea of casting Barbara as a lovably crooked psychic in Family Plot (1976). Both were out-of-left-field casting choices, and both worked superbly -- a tribute not only to the directors' intuition but also to Barbara Harris' boundless versatility.

Trivia: The son of show business people, he studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He worked in stock, then in 1951 he debuted on Broadway in The Rose Tattoo. In 1952 he was drafted to fight in the Korean War, but he was exempted as a conscientious objector; instead, he worked with refugees. Not until 1955 did he return to acting, appearing in Broadway's The Skin of Our Teeth; Joshua Logan spotted him in the play, and signed him to appear in Bus Stop (1956), his screen debut; for his portrayal of a cowboy who romances Marilyn Monroe he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. While making the film he met actress Hope Lange, and the two of them were married that same year; they divorced in 1961. With a few exceptions, his later screen roles were unrewarding, though he remained fairly busy through the mid '60s; he has continued appearing on screen intermittently. He has occasionally produced, directed, and/or co-written films. He starred in the late '60s TV series The Outcasts, and later costarred in the series Knots Landing. He is known as a highly principled man of strong social and political convictions.

Trivia: Educated in London and Paris, the breathtakingly beautiful Maureen O'Sullivan was discovered for films by director Frank Borzage while both were attending a horse show in Dublin. She made her screen debut in 1930 opposite Irish tenor John McCormick in Song O' My Heart, which earned her a contract with Fox studios. After appearing in such Fox blockbusters as Just Imagine (1930) and A Connecticut Yankee (1931), she moved to MGM, where her first assignment was the role of Jane Parker in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). She repeated this characterization in Tarzan and His Mate (1934), causing a minor sensation with her bikini-like costume and a nude swimming scene. Somewhat more modestly garbed, she went on to co-star in four more Tarzan pictures over the next eight years. Though MGM kept her busy in a variety of films, ranging from such costume dramas as The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) and David Copperfield (1935) to the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races (1937), she is best remembered for her appearances as Jane, a fact that has been a source of both pride and irritation for the actress (she liked her co-star Johnny Weissmuller but despised Cheeta the chimpanzee, who bit her more than once). She retired from films in 1942 to devote her time to her husband, director John Farrow, and her many children, two of whom grew up to be actresses Mia Farrow and Tisa Farrow. She returned to the screen in 1948, averaging a film every two years until 1958. An early arrival on TV, she hosted a local children's program in New York and the syndicated series Irish Heritage, and in 1964 was hired by NBC to co-anchor The Today Show (her replacement the following year was Barbara Walters). In 1964 she starred with Paul Ford in the Broadway production Never Too Late, playing a fortysomething suburbanite who suddenly finds herself pregnant; the following year she and Ford repeated their roles in the screen version. Widowed in 1963, she remarried 20 years later, sporadically reviving her screen activities in such films as Hannah and Her Sisters (1985), in which she and Lloyd Nolan played the combative parents of her real-life daughter Mia Farrow. As regally beautiful as ever, Maureen O'Sullivan showed up again on TV in the mid-'90s as one of the interviewees in a Tarzan retrospective.

Trivia: Hollywood's favorite "dear old dad," Leon Ames began his stage career as a sleek, dreamy-eyed matinee idol in 1925. He was still billing himself under his real name, Leon Waycoff, when he entered films in 1931. His best early leading role was as the poet-hero of the stylish terror piece Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). In 1933, Ames was one of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild, gaining a reputation amongst producers as a political firebrand--which may have been why his roles diminished in size during the next few years (Ironically, when Ames was president of the SAG, his conservatism and willingness to meet management halfway incurred the wrath of the union's more liberal wing). Ames played many a murderer and caddish "other man" before he was felicitously cast as the kindly, slightly befuddled patriarch in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). He would play essentially this same character throughout the rest of his career, starring on such TV series as Life With Father (1952-54) and Father of the Bride (1961). When, in 1963, he replaced the late Larry Keating in the role of Alan Young's neighbor on Mr. Ed, Ames' fans were astounded: his character had no children at all! Off screen, the actor was the owner of a successful, high profile Los Angeles automobile dealership. In 1963, he was the unwilling focus of newspaper headlines when his wife was kidnapped and held for ransom. In one of his last films, 1983's Testament, Leon Ames was reunited with his Life With Father co-star Lurene Tuttle.

Trivia: A precociously talented youngster, Helen Hunt was drawing paychecks as a television actress from the age of ten. Before she was 17, she had appeared as a regular on two series, Swiss Family Robinson (1975) and The Fitzpatricks (1977). Hunt proved she was more than just a workaday child actor with her starring performance in the fact-based 1981 TV movie The Miracle of Kathy Miller, in which she played a high school athlete who overcame severe mental and physical damage brought on by a highway accident. While she had been appearing in films as early as Rollercoaster in 1977, Hunt was never groomed as a star player, and it is possible that her resemblance to another child actress, Jodie Foster, held her back from more important roles.After taking on her first adult role in the 1982 sitcom It Takes Two, Hunt's film assignments improved, with sizable roles in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Project X (1987), Next of Kin (1989), and The Waterdance (1991). She also gained a small measure of cult status by appearing in a brace of science fiction films, including Trancers II (1991) and Trancers III (1992). That same year, Hunt landed her longest-lasting acting assignment to date, as the co-star of the Paul Reiser-created comedy series Mad About You. During the show's seven-year run, she won both Emmy and Golden Globe awards for her portrayal of Jamie Buchman. In 1996, Hunt had her most successful film role to date in the blockbuster Twister. The following year, she topped that when she received a Best Actress Oscar for playing a caring waitress and single mother who befriends acerbic, obsessive-compulsive author Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson, who also won an Oscar for his performance) in As Good As It Gets. After Mad About You ended in 1999, Hunt appeared in films by several veteran directors, including Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away [2000]), Robert Altman (Dr. T and The Women [2000]), and Woody Allen (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion [2001]). She starred in Life x 3 on Broadway in 2003.In 2005, Hunt joined the star-studded cast of HBO's two-part miniseries Empire Falls in the role of Janine, ex-wife of Miles (Ed Harris), the story's central character. The actress made her feature directorial debut in Then She Found Me (for which Hunt also starred, produced, and wrote the screenplay), an adaptation of Elinore Lipman's best-selling novel of the same name. The story follows a Philadelphia schoolteacher (Hunt) whose long-lost birth mother (Bette Miller) reappears at just as her daughter is careening into a midlife crisis. Hunt played a supportive mother in Soul Surfer (2011), an inspirational drama based on the true tale of a surfer who returned to the sport after tragically losing an arm. In 2012 she played a sex surrogate helping a man in an iron lung lose his virginity for director Ben Lewin in The Sessions, a part that earned her rave reviews and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Trivia: Though best known to modern filmgoers as a horror star, cadaverous John Carradine was, in his prime, one of the most versatile character actors on the silver screen. The son of a journalist father and physician mother, Carradine was given an expensive education in Philadelphia and New York. Upon graduating from the Graphic Arts School, he intended to make his living as a painter and sculptor, but in 1923 he was sidetracked into acting. Working for a series of low-paying stock companies throughout the 1920s, he made ends meet as a quick-sketch portrait painter and scenic designer. He came to Hollywood in 1930, where his extensive talents and eccentric behavior almost immediately brought him to the attention of casting directors. He played a dizzying variety of distinctive bit parts -- a huntsman in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a crowd agitator in Les Miserables (1935) -- before he was signed to a 20th Century Fox contract in 1936. His first major role was the sadistic prison guard in John Ford's Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), which launched a long and fruitful association with Ford, culminating in such memorable screen characterizations as the gentleman gambler in Stagecoach (1939) and Preacher Casy ("I lost the callin'!") in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Usually typecast as a villain, Carradine occasionally surprised his followers with non-villainous roles like the philosophical cab driver in Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and Abraham Lincoln in Of Human Hearts (1938). Throughout his Hollywood years, Carradine's first love remained the theater; to fund his various stage projects (which included his own Shakespearean troupe), he had no qualms about accepting film work in the lowest of low-budget productions. Ironically, it was in one of these Poverty Row cheapies, PRC's Bluebeard (1944), that the actor delivered what many consider his finest performance. Though he occasionally appeared in an A-picture in the 1950s and 1960s (The Ten Commandments, Cheyenne Autumn), Carradine was pretty much consigned to cheapies during those decades, including such horror epics as The Black Sleep (1956), The Unearthly (1957), and the notorious Billy the Kid Meets Dracula (1966). He also appeared in innumerable television programs, among them Twilight Zone, The Munsters, Thriller, and The Red Skelton Show, and from 1962 to 1964 enjoyed a long Broadway run as courtesan-procurer Lycus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Though painfully crippled by arthritis in his last years, Carradine never stopped working, showing up in films ranging from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) to Peggy Sue Got Married (1984). Married four times, John Carradine was the father of actors David, Keith, Robert, and Bruce Carradine.

Trivia: Perhaps it makes sense that a woman whose earliest memory was on the set of Apocalypse Now would grow up to direct a dark fable about five adolescent girls who unapologetically and unceremoniously kill themselves, but for Sofia Coppola, the path to the director's chair was an uncertain one. Literally christened into a filmmaking career, the third child and only daughter of Francis Ford and Eleanor Coppola was born in Manhattan in the spring of 1971, during the production of her father's masterpiece, The Godfather. When it came time to shoot the baptism scene near the end of the film, the elder Coppola didn't have to look very far for an infant, and the epic became the impromptu actress' first, uncredited role. He found another bit part for the tiny Sofia in The Godfather Part II before her memorable experience on the tumultuous set of Apocalypse, as recorded in Eleanor's 1991 documentary of the making of the film, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Coppola continued to pop up in her father's films in the early '80s and even ventured outside of the clan for a spot in 1987's Anna. It wasn't until father and daughter collaborated on a segment in the 1989 anthology film New York Stories, however, that Sofia began to attract critical attention -- albeit of a disparaging ilk. She and Francis co-wrote the half-hour children's fantasy Life Without Zoe in an attempt to evoke the glamorous, candy-colored world of the classic Eloise children's tales. In her dual role as costume designer, the 17-year-old swathed the film's lead characters in lavish designer jewelry and threads. Unfortunately, the Coppola portion of the film almost universally bewildered critics, who found it too trifling for adults and too baffling for children. By then a high school graduate, Sofia retreated from the world of filmmaking and concentrated on fashion design, contributing her costuming talents to The Spirit of '76 (1990), a Dazed and Confused-style comedy co-written by her brother Roman. Fate intervened, however, when cloudy circumstances forced Winona Ryder to bow out of Francis' much-anticipated The Godfather Part III. Sofia was swiftly cast in the role of Mary Corleone, and rumors regarding her acting chops -- or lack thereof -- began to swirl before she even shot a scene. When the film was released in late 1990, critics had a field day with her minor, but rather wooden, performance, finding it "hopelessly amateurish" and unintentionally comical. Even her aquiline profile became fodder for ridicule, and in March 1991, the Razzie Awards gave her the dubious distinction of Worst Supporting Actress as well as Worst New Star. Again, Coppola recoiled from Hollywood, entering the fine arts program at the California Institute of the Arts. There she began to nurture her interests in photography as well as costuming and experimented with video shorts. As their first post-graduate effort, she and some friends created the TV series High Octane, an offbeat news magazine on cable's Comedy Central network. The show was discontinued in 1994 after just four episodes, and Coppola continued to work on her brother's projects, primarily music videos. Around this time, Coppola read Jeffrey Eugenides' 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides and was captivated by its dark, haunting take of adolescent sexuality. More significantly, she relished the challenge of translating the fervid, pubescent-male viewpoint of the book to the big screen, and she began writing her own screen adaptation of the text. Coppola was undaunted when she found that the rights to the book were already secured by Muse Productions, whose script was much more violent and overtly sexual than hers. Impressed with her work, Muse scrapped their version and backed Coppola. After securing a stellar cast -- including James Woods, Kathleen Turner, and Kirsten Dunst -- and the production assistance of her father, she began shooting the film in Toronto. When the finished work premiered in the Directors Fortnight of the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, the reception was an about-face from her previous run-ins with the press. Critics applauded Coppola's delicate, evocative handling of the tale, as well as her subtle, dream-like visual sense, aided by ace cinematographer Edward Lachman. Paramount Classics picked up the film for distribution in May 2000, when it received a brisk arthouse run. In the summer of 1999, Coppola indoctrinated yet another filmmaker into her already distinguished clan of actors, composers, and auteurs when she married director Spike Jonze, whom she had met on the set of a Sonic Youth music video at the beginning of the decade. Jonze shot his first feature -- the critically acclaimed Being John Malkovich -- at the same time Coppola was helming her debut. Just as her husband was faced with the challenge of following up such a promising debut, Coppola too spent the years after The Virgin Suicides dabbling in TV production (on the ill-fated UPN hip-hop soap Platinum) and developing her sophomore feature. This time, however, she chose to fashion a screenplay not based on existing material but on her own experiences visiting Japan in her early twenties. The resulting character study, 2003's Lost in Translation, drew from a disparate set of memories: her father's work on a liquor ad with Akira Kurosawa in the mid-'70s, her memories of a former mentor in the fashion industry, and her own uncertainty over her future. Starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson as two similarly displaced, maritally dissatisfied Americans toiling away the hours in a posh Tokyo hotel, the film built upon Suicides' ethereal, deliberate pace and tone as it offered Murray one of the most textured, soulful roles of his career. An autumn arthouse smash that managed to cross over to mainstream audiences, Translation remained in theaters well into the new year, as the film, its director, and two leads were showered with accolades from critics' groups and industry organizations. After winning Golden Globes for Best Screenplay and Picture (Comedy or Musical), the young filmmaker took home the prize for Best Original Screenplay at the 2004 Academy Awards. Coppola also made history by becoming the first American woman to receive a Best Director Oscar nomination, though she ultimately lost the award to Peter Jackson. Lost in Translation's success garnered attention of another sort: critics and audiences speculated that Coppola's marriage to Jonze was not-so-discreetly mirrored in one of Translation's plot threads -- the distant relationship between Johansson's character and her flighty photographer husband, played with a Jonze-like intensity by Giovanni Ribisi. Sure enough, Coppola and Jonze announced their divorce plans in December 2003, and the indie film world lost its nascent royal couple. After the mirrored triumphs of Suicides and Lost, rumors swirled in the trades surrounding Coppola's tertiary effort in the director's chair, which she announced as an adaptation of Antonia Fraser's historical novel Marie Antoinette: The Journey. The 2006 period piece/costume drama starred Virgin lead Kirsten Dunst as the titular queen of France and archduchess of Austria, alongside a four-star cast highlighted by the presence of Jason Schwartzman (the director's cousin), Judy Davis, and the venerable Rip Torn as King Louis IV. She returned four years later with Somewhere a story about the relationship between a jaded actor played by Stephen Dorff and his young daughter.

Trivia: Arguably the top screen comedian of the 1990s, Canadian-born entertainer Jim Carrey has combined equal parts of his idol Jerry Lewis, his spiritual ancestor Harry Ritz, and the loose-limbed Ray Bolger into a gleefully uninhibited screen image that is uniquely his own.Carrey's life wasn't always a barrel of laughs; he was born on January 17, 1962, into a peripatetic household that regularly ran the gamut from middle-class comfort to abject poverty. Not surprisingly, Carrey became a classic overachiever, excelling in academics while keeping his classmates in stitches with his wild improvisations and elastic facial expressions. His comedy club debut at age 16 was a dismal failure, but Carrey had already resolved not to be beaten down by life's disappointments (as his father, a frustrated musician, had been). By age 22, he was making a good living as a standup comic, and was starring on the short-lived sitcom The Duck Factory -- a series which curiously did little to take advantage of its star's uncanny physical dexterity. Throughout the 1980s, Carrey appeared in supporting roles in such films as Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and Earth Girls are Easy (1990). Full television stardom came Carrey's way in 1990 as the resident "white guy" on Keenan Ivory Wayans' Fox TV comedy In Living Color. The most popular of the comedian's many characterizations on the program was the grotesquely disfigured Fire Marshal Bill, whose dubious safety tips brought down the wrath of real-life fire prevention groups -- and also earned Carrey the ultimate accolade of being imitated by other comics. 1994 proved to be "The Year of Carrey," with the release of three top-grossing comedy films to his credit: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber. By the end of the year, Carrey was commanding seven to ten million dollars per picture. In 1995, the actor/comedian took over for Robin Williams as The Riddler in the blockbuster film Batman Forever, and, in 1996, he tried his hand at a darker and more menacing role as a maniacal cable repairman in The Cable Guy. The film, and Carrey's at-times frightening performance, received decidedly mixed reviews from critics and audiences. Despite the generally negative response to the film, Carrey still retained an interest in branching out into more dramatic roles. Following a return to all-out comedy in Liar, Liar (1997) as a chronically dishonest attorney, Carrey explored new territory with his lead role in the highly acclaimed The Truman Show (1998), Peter Weir's eerie comedy drama about the perils of all-consuming media manipulation. Critical respect in hand, Carrey returned to comedy of a different sort with the lead role in Milos Forman's Man on the Moon (1999), a much-anticipated biopic of the legendary comic Andy Kaufman. Although the film boasted a powerhouse performance from Carrey, it earned less than stellar reviews and did poor business at the box office. Such was the strength of the actor's portrayal, however, that his exclusion from the Best Actor nominations at that year's Academy Awards was a source of protest for a number of industry members. Carrey returned to straight comedy the following year with the Farrelly brothers' Me, Myself & Irene, in which he starred as a cop with a split personality, both of whom are in love with the same woman (Renée Zellweger). Though that film fared the least successful of the Farrellys' efforts to that point, Carrey's anarchic persona was given seemingly free range and the result was his most unhinged role since The Mask. That same year, he assumed the lead role in Ron Howard's Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas, raking in the money at the box-office and receiving a Golden Globe nomination despite widespread critical-contempt for the film. Continuing to seek acceptance as a skilled dramatist, Carrey next appeared in the 2001 box-office bomb The Majestic.Undeterred by the failure of The Majestic, Carrey returned again to both comedy and box-office success with 2003's Bruce Almighty. After handily proving that his power as a big-screen star was very much intact, Carrey wasted no time switching gears once again as he embarked on his most ambitious project to date, the 2004 mind-bending romantic-dramedy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Scripted by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry, the film garnered rave reviews and featured what was arguably Carrey's most subtly complex and subdued performance to date.Carrey's cartooney presence on screen would make him a natural fit for the kids' movie Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events in 2004, as well as other family films over the coming years like A Christmas Carol and Mr. Popper's Penguins. The actor would continue to explore dramatic roles, however, such as the dark thriller The Number 23 and the critically acclaimed I Love You, Phillip Morris.

Trivia: A stage-trained actress whose brief foray in daytime drama eventually led her into a feature-film career, Lucinda Jenney's star has been on the rise since the early 1980s. Alternating effortlessly between television and film throughout the course of her career, the talented and attractive blonde actress always had a slant toward the dramatic. A Long Island-native whose impressive run in the Broadway production of Gemini (1977-1981) proved the catalyst for her subsequent onscreen career, Jenney's first feature roles came with the made-for-TV efforts First Steps and Out of the Darkness (both 1985). Roles in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and Rain Man (1988) were quick to follow, and, in 1989, the actress rounded out her impressive first decade as John Belushi's onscreen wife in the biopic Wired. Though the film was widely panned, it proved Jenney's most substantial role thus far and she escaped relatively unscathed. As the 1990s rolled in, she was nominated for a Best Actress Independent Spirit Award for her performance in 1993's American Heart and a recurring role on the television series High Incident found her gaining something of a following on the small screen. With her performance as one of Demi Moore's sole allies in G.I. Jane (1997), Jenney continued to balance bit roles in such efforts as Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and Thinner (1996) with meatier, more dramatically substantial parts. Supporting roles in high-profile Hollywood releases became increasingly common for Jenney, and following key roles in Thirteen Days (2000) and The Mothman Prophecies (2002), she joined the cast of the acclaimed police drama The Shield. The following year, Jenney appeared in the action thriller S.W.A.T.

Trivia: Kentucky native Glenn Withrow began his career in the late '70s with roles in films like Studs Lonigan and The Lady in Red. By the mid-'80s, he was scoring major roles in films like Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, and Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders. In 1991, he married actress Hallie Todd, and the two eventually began running a multimedia production facility and acting conservatory in California called In House Media. The business proved a success, and Withrow bowed out of acting to serve as the full-time CEO for the company.

Trivia: Lead actress, onscreen from the late '80s.