Trivia: As the son of comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara Ben Stiller's decision to establish himself as a comic writer and actor surprised almost no one.Born in New York City on November 30, 1965, Stiller began to shoot his own comic films from the age of ten. After high-school graduation, Stiller attended UCLA and landed bit parts in several features, notably the Steven Spielberg-directed, Tom Stoppard and Menno Meyjes-scripted, late 1987 opus Empire of the Sun.Meanwhile, Stiller continued to turn out comedy shorts, including the 30-minute Elvis Stories (1989), a spoof of obsessive Elvis fans featuring an already-established John Cusack. One of Stiller's shorts, a Tom Cruise parody called The Hustler of Money, won him a spot as a writer and player on Saturday Night Live in 1989. His stint on the show was short-lived, but led to his own eponymous series, The Ben Stiller Show, first on MTV (1990) and later on Fox (1992-1993). The program failed to draw a substantial audience, and folded within a couple of months on each network, but Stiller netted an Emmy for comedy writing in 1993.The following year, Stiller debuted as a feature film director with the twentysomething angst romcom Reality Bites (1994), in which he also starred alongside Winona Ryder and a memorably grungy Ethan Hawke. The film was a relative critical and commercial success and scored with Gen-Xers; unfortunately, Stiller's next directorial effort, 1996's The Cable Guy failed to register with critics and audiences. After a small part as nursing-home orderly Hal in the Adam Sandler comedy Happy Gilmore (1996), Stiller rebounded with a starring role in David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster (1996). The relatively positive reception afforded to that comedy helped to balance out the relative failure of Stiller's other film that year, If Lucy Fell. It was not until two years later, however, that Stiller truly stepped into the limelight. Thanks to starring roles in three wildly, wickedly different films, he emerged as an actor of versatility, equally adept at playing sensitive nice guys and malevolent hellraisers. In the smash gross-out comedy There's Something About Mary (1998), Stiller appeared as the former type, making comic history for outrageous sight gags that involved misplaced bodily fluids and mangled genitalia. That same summer, Stiller did time as a gleefully adulterous theatrical instructor in Neil LaBute's jet-black evisceration of contemporary sexual mores, Your Friends and Neighbors. Finally, Stiller starred in the intensely graphic and disturbing addiction drama Permanent Midnight, earning critical acclaim for his portrayal of writer-cum-heroin addict Jerry Stahl -- a personal friend of the Stiller family from Stahl's days scripting the TV series ALF. Now fully capable of holding his own in Hollywood, with the license to prove it, Stiller starred alongside William H. Macy, Paul Reubens, Hank Azaria, and pal Janeane Garofalo in the fantasy comedy Mystery Men (1999) as the leader of a group of unconventional superheroes. Stiller also landed a supporting role in The Suburbans, a comedy about the former members of a defunct new wave band. The following year, Stiller starred as a rabbi smitten with the same woman as his best friend, a Catholic priest (Edward Norton), in the well-received romantic comedy Keeping the Faith (2000), which Norton also co-produced and directed. Stiller found his widest audience up to that point, however, with the Jay Roach-directed madcap comedy Meet the Parents. As the tale of a nutty father-in-law to be (Robert De Niro) who wreaks unchecked havoc on his daughter's intended (Stiller) via covert CIA operations and incessant interrogation, this disastrously humorous tale of electrical interference gone wild scored with ticket-buyers and qualified as the top box-office draw during the holiday season of 2000.In the autumn of 2001, Stiller brought one of his most popular MTV Video Music Awards incarnations to the big screen in the outrageously silly male-model comedy Zoolander, in which he successfully teamed with (real-life friend) Owen Wilson to carry stupidity to new heights.In 2001 Stiller once again teamed with Wes Anderson collaborator Wilson for the widely praised comedy drama The Royal Tenenbaums. Cast as the estranged son of eccentric parents who returns home, Stiller infused his unmistakable comic touch with an affecting sense of drama that found him holding his ground opposite such dramatic heavies as Gene Hackman and Anjelica Huston. Though his work in 2002 offered little more than a few cameo performances and some vocal contributions to various animated children's shows, the busy comedic actor returned to the big screen for the 2003 comedy Duplex, directed by Danny DeVito. Though the film pairs Stiller and Hollywood bombshell Drew Barrymore as a couple willing to go to horrific extremes to land the much-desired eponymous living space, reviews were unkind and the comedy died a quick death at the box office. Stiller's next film -- the romantic comedy Along Came Polly -- fared considerably better on a fiscal level, but suffered from an implausible premise.Spring 2004 promised a rebound when the electrifying duo of Stiller and Owen Wilson returned to the big screen with director Todd Phillips' celluloid recycling job Starsky & Hutch. Though Stiller and Wilson seemed the ideal pair for such a conceptually rich re-imagining of 1970s television, and the film boasted wonderful villainous turns by rapper Snoop Dogg and Vince Vaughn, reviews were once again lackluster and the film struggled to find an audience. Yet Starsky & Hutch did actually reap a profit, which (in a business sense) placed it miles ahead of Stiller's next film. Released a mere two months after Starsky & Hutch, the Barry Levinson comedy Envy sports a wacky premise; it explores the comic rivalry that erupts between two longtime friends and neighbors when one invents a product that makes dog excrement disappear. It also boasts a marvelous cast, replete with Stiller, the maniacal Jack Black, and the brilliant Christopher Walken. But for whatever reason (speculated by some as the film's inability to exploit the invention at the story's center) the film's sense of humor failed to catch fire and Envy died a quick box-office death. Stiller fared better with the ribald, anarchic summer 2004 comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, starring himself, Vince Vaughn, and Rip Torn. For the following two years, Stiller once again contented himself largely with bit parts (2004's Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy, 2006's Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny) until the Christmas 2006 release A Night at the Museum. In this effects-heavy fantasy, adapted from the popular children's book by Milan Trenc, Stiller plays Larry Daley, the new night watchman at New York City's Museum of Natural History, who discovers that the exhibits all spring to life after hours, from a giant skeletal Tyrannosaurus Rex to a waxen Teddy Roosevelt -- and seem content to hold Larry hostage. The effort split critical opinion, but shot up to become one of the top three box-office draws during the holiday season of 2006.Meanwhile, Stiller signed on to team with the Farrelly brothers for The Heartbreak Kid (2007), a remake of the 1972 Elaine May comedy of the same title; he also produced Blades of Glory, a comedy with Will Ferrell and Jon Heder as rival figure-skating champions vying with one another for Olympic gold. He wrote, directed and starred in the hit comedy Tropic Thunder (2008) as a moronic Hollywood actor toplining a war film, voiced Alex in the same year's animated picture Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, and in 2009, reprised his Larry Daley role for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Stiller's emphasis on sequels then continued with 2010's Little Fockers and 2012's Madagascar 3. In 2013, Stiller picked up the role originally made famous by Danny Kaye, as the lead in the remake The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which Stiller also directed and produced. The following year, he appeared in the next film in the Night at the Museum series, Secret of the Tomb.

Trivia: Onstage, on television, in the movies or in a serious interview, listening to and watching comedian/actor Robin Williams was an extraordinary experience. An improvisational master with a style comparable to Danny Kaye, his words rushed forth in a gush of manic energy. They punctuated even the most basic story with sudden subject detours that often dissolved into flights of comic fancy, bawdy repartee, and unpredictable celebrity impressions before returning earthward with some pithy comment or dead-on observation.Born in Chicago on July 21st, 1951, Williams was raised as an only child and had much time alone with which to develop his imagination, often by memorizing Jonathan Winters' comedy records. After high school, Williams studied political science at Claremont Men's College, as well as drama at Marin College in California and then at Juilliard. His first real break came when he was cast as a crazy space alien on a fanciful episode of Happy Days. William's portrayal of Mork from Ork delighted audiences and generated so great a response that producer Garry Marshall gave Williams his own sitcom, Mork and Mindy, which ran from 1978 to 1982. The show was a hit and established Williams as one of the most popular comedians (along with Richard Pryor and Billy Crystal) of the '70s and '80s.Williams made his big screen debut in the title role of Robert Altman's elaborate but financially disastrous comic fantasy Popeye (1980). His next films included the modestly successful The World According to Garp, The Survivors, Moscow on the Hudson, Club Paradise, The Best of Times. Then in 1987, writer-director Barry Levinson drew from both sides of Williams - the manic shtickmeister and the studied Juliard thesp - for Good Morning, Vietnam, in which the comedian-cum-actor portrayed real-life deejay Adrian Cronauer, stationed in Saigon during the late sixties. Levinson shot the film strategically, by encouraging often outrageous, behind-the-mike improvisatory comedy routines for the scenes of Cronauer's broadcasts but evoking more sober dramatizations for Williams's scenes outside of the radio station. Thanks in no small part to this strategy, Williams received a much-deserved Oscar nomination for the role, but lost to Michael Douglas in Wall Street.Williams subsequently tackled a restrained performance as an introverted scientist trying to help a catatonic Robert De Niro in Awakenings (1990). He also earned accolades for playing an inspirational English teacher in the comedy/drama Dead Poets Society (1989) -- a role that earned him his second Oscar nomination. Williams's tragi-comic portrayal of a mad, homeless man in search of salvation and the Holy Grail in The Fisher King (1991) earned him a third nomination. In 1993, he lent his voice to two popular animated movies, Ferngully: The Last Rain Forest and most notably Aladdin, in which he played a rollicking genie and was allowed to go all out with ad-libs, improvs, and scads of celebrity improvisations.Further successes came in 1993 with Mrs. Doubtfire, in which he played a recently divorced father who masquerades as a Scottish nanny to be close to his kids. He had another hit in 1995 playing a rather staid homosexual club owner opposite a hilariously fey Nathan Lane in The Birdcage. In 1997, Williams turned in one of his best dramatic performances in Good Will Hunting, a performance for which he was rewarded with an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.Williams kept up his dramatic endeavors with both of his 1998 films: the comedy Patch Adams and What Dreams May Come, a vibrantly colored exploration of the afterlife. He next had starring roles in both Bicentennial Man and Jakob the Liar, playing a robot-turned-human in the former and a prisoner of the Warsaw ghetto in the latter. Though it was obvious to all that Williams' waning film career needed an invigorating breath of fresh air, many may not have expected the dark 180-degree turn he attempted in 2002 with roles in Death to Smoochy, Insomnia and One Hour Photo. Catching audiences off-guard with his portrayal of three deeply disturbed and tortured souls, the roles pointed to a new stage in Williams' career in which he would substitute the sap for more sinister motivations.Absent from the big-screen in 2003, Williams continued his vacation from comedy in 2004, starring in the little-seen thriller The Final Cut and in the David Duchovny-directed melodrama The House of D. After appearing in the comic documentary The Aristocrats and lending his voice to a character in the animated adventure Robots in 2005, he finally returned full-time in 2006 with roles in the vacation laugher RV and the crime comedy Man of the Year. His next project, The Night Listener, was a tense and erosive tale of literary trickery fueled by such serious issues as child abuse and AIDS.Williams wasn't finished with comedy, however. He lent his voice to the cast of the family feature Happy Feet and Happy Feet 2, played a late night talk show host who accidentally wins a presidential election in Man of the Year, portrayed an enthusiastic minister in License to Wed, and played a statue of Teddy Roosevelt that comes to life in Night at the Museum and its sequel Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. He would also enjoy family-friendly comedic turns in World's Greatest Dad, Shrink, and Old Dogs.In 2013, he returned to television, playing the head of an advertising agency in The Crazy Ones; the show did well in the ratings, but was canceled after only one season. He also played yet another president, Dwight Eisenhower, in Lee Daniel's The Butler. Williams died in 2014 at age 63.

Trivia: Whether he's acting or co-writing brilliantly quirky character studies with director/writing partner Wes Anderson, Owen C. Wilson's work exudes an insouciant yet earnest charm and eccentric comic sensibility, making him one of the most promising new talents to emerge in the 1990s.Born in Dallas on November 18th, 1968, Wilson raised enough hell in high school to get expelled from one institution in tenth grade, but he managed to attend college at the University of Texas in Austin and graduate in 1991. Along with his degree, Wilson's Austin years resulted in a budding partnership with a like-minded creative classmate, aspiring filmmaker Wes Anderson. Their first film together, a short about a bookstore heist called Bottle Rocket, played at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, attracting the attention of producer Polly Platt and writer/director James L. Brooks. With Brooks' support, Wilson and Anderson expanded the short into a feature, indie cult favorite Bottle Rocket (1996). Though it made little impression at the box office, Anderson and Wilson's distinctly offbeat, wry, and optimistic tale about aspiring criminal Dignan and his best friend Anthony (played by Wilson's brother Luke Wilson) earned ardent fans among cinéastes. Wilson's inspired performance as Dignan, not to mention his blond hair, large grin, and affable drawl, became his Hollywood calling card. That same year, Wilson also began a fertile association with actor/director Ben Stiller, appearing in one memorable scene as a smooth, ill-fated date in Stiller's black comedy The Cable Guy (1996).Alternating between supporting roles in Hollywood spectacles, collaborations with Anderson and Stiller, and smaller independent projects, Wilson worked steadily for the rest of the 1990s. Though he always seemed to fill the generic slot of Guy Marked for Death, Wilson still managed to bring a reliably laid-back, humorous spark to the bombastic proceedings in Anaconda (1997), Armageddon (1998), and The Haunting (1999). On a more artistically successful front, Wilson's next script with Anderson resulted in the lauded coming-of-age film Rushmore (1998). With its singular cast of characters, distinctive combination of deadpan humor and true emotion, and superb performances by Jason Schwartzman as teen prodigy Max Fischer and Bill Murray as depressed millionaire Blume, Rushmore earned prizes from the critics (if not the Academy) and proved that Bottle Rocket was no fluke. As far as acting, Wilson's ability to suggest complexity beneath a breezy surface earned positive notice for his unsettling performance as a laconic, self-styled Good Samaritan serial killer in indie thriller The Minus Man (1999).By 2000, Wilson began to take center stage in larger Hollywood projects as well. Though it was another Jackie Chan vehicle, Wilson's hilarious co-starring turn as a surfer dude-tinged outlaw in the chop socky Western Shanghai Noon (2000) nearly stole the movie. Wilson's brief appearance as a Jesus-loving, super rich romantic rival to Ben Stiller's put-upon Greg Focker was a comic highlight of the hit Meet the Parents (2000). Stiller's supermodel farce Zoolander (2001) further sealed Wilson's status as a superlative comic actor. As Zoolander's rival Hansel, Wilson's offbeat timing made him the ultimate bubble-headed mannequin; his catwalk competition with Stiller provided the biggest laughs in a hit-or-miss movie. Even as he flourished in broad Hollywood comedy, Wilson continued his partnership with Wes Anderson, co-writing with Anderson and co-starring (with his brother Luke and Stiller among others) in the unusual family story The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). Branching out into serious roles, Wilson then co-starred with The Royal Tenenbaums patriarch Gene Hackman in the military drama Behind Enemy Lines (2001). An increasingly prevalent figure in action films following the millennial turnover, Wilson followed Behind Enemy Lines with I Spy (2002) and the Shanghai Noon sequel Shanghai Knights (2003) before appearing opposite Morgan Freeman in the critical and commercial disappointment The Big Bounce and co-starring in the underwhelming big screen adaptation of Starsky & Hutch. He made his third appearance in a Jackie Chan vehicle in the 2004 Disney production Around the World in 80 Days; though poised to be a blockbuster, the mega-budgeted film was one of the biggest flops of the season.A rebound was in order, and if his supporting turn in the 2004 holiday-season blockbuster sequel Meet the Fockers wasn't enough, Wilson found his greatest leading-man success to date as foil to the bawdy Vince Vaughn in 2005's raunchy, runaway hit The Wedding Crashers. The Wilson-Vaughn pairing challenged the Wilson-Stiller hilarity quotient as a pair of divorce consultants who bide their free time crashing weddings to get laid. The $200-million smash was indeed a tough act to follow, and while 2006's You, Me and Dupree - a thematic reprise of his Wedding Crashers role in which he plays an irritating houseguest who refuses to vacate - was something of a letdown, Wilson more than made up for it that same year with a leading voice role in Pixar's Cars and a supporting turn in Stiller's special-effects comedy A Night at the Museum.For the next couple of years, Wilson continued to stick with what worked - collaborations with Anderson (The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)) and sequels in his hit franchises (Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian (2009), Little Fockers (2010) and Cars 2 (2011)). He also starred in Woody Allen's Mightnight in Paris (2011), earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.Romantically linked, by turns, with a pre-Ashton Demi Moore, rocker Sheryl Crow, and actress Kate Hudson, Wilson, with his shaggy blond mane, blue eyes, and (as one magazine cited humorously in its front cover headline) "unusual nose," also found himself the unlikely forebear of a new wave of Hollywood sex symbols.

Trivia: Steve Coogan's inspired, off-the-cuff lead performance in 2002's Brit-rock biopic 24 Hour Party People had American critics heralding the arrival of a unique new talent -- but to U.K. audiences, his star turn was the next logical step for one of that country's most celebrated comics. Born into a working-class, Catholic family in Manchester, England, Coogan took to performance in his teens, and hit the standup scene soon thereafter. It was there that television casting agents took notice of his spot-on impersonations of world leaders, pop stars, and sundry celebrities, and they soon put him to work playing various comedic bit parts in network shows. One of his early breakthroughs came when he provided several recurring voices on the long-running puppet show Spitting Image, a weekly satirical review that took aim at Margaret Thatcher, Michael Jackson, and Ronald Reagan, among others.Coogan's talents led him away from the small screen to radio, where he made an even bigger splash with the comedy program On the Hour. The show gave the comedian free reign to try out a number of vocal characterizations, among them the arrogant, ignorant radio announcer Alan Partridge, whose hilariously lame puns and non-sequiturs quickly made him -- and, by proxy, Coogan -- an audience favorite. Coogan parlayed the Partridge character into a mini-empire, first with his own mock radio talk show -- cheekily titled Knowing Me, Knowing You...With Alan Partridge -- then in the flesh on 1994's BBC 2 news satire The Day Today, and finally with the wildly successful TV show Knowing Me, Knowing You...With Alan Partridge.Not content to rest on Partridge's laurels, Coogan developed many other characters through the '90s, taking them on the road for a wildly successful standup tour late in the decade. It was around this time that he was approached by iconoclastic director Michael Winterbottom to play the part of Tony Wilson, the charismatic Manchester TV personality who found himself the unlikely founder of one of the most influential record labels of the '80s. 24 Hour Party People charted the rise and fall of Factory Records, home to such bands as Joy Division, New Order, and the Happy Mondays, all of which were nurtured by the intuitive, unpredictable Wilson. In Coogan, Winterbottom saw a spiritual heir: Both men were born and raised in Manchester, and both had been impetuous on-air performers. The director wouldn't take "no" for an answer, and as the two forged ahead on the picture, Coogan began to develop his own slant on Wilson, improvising dialogue and talking directly to the camera. The unconventional biopic won raves at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, with Coogan in particular singled out for the wit and ingenuity of his freewheeling interpretation. Though touted in the press as British cinema's "next Trainspotting," 24 Hour Party People failed to perform at the U.K. box office, where it was effectively steamrolled by two other hit British comedies, Bend It Like Beckham and Ali G: Indahouse. 24 Hour's arthouse U.S. run later that year was solid, if unremarkable, as American audiences had less of a vested interest in the subject matter. Still, Hollywood casting agents were duly impressed with Coogan, and lured him to Tinseltown for the plum role of Phileas Fogg in the big-budget updating of Around the World in 80 Days, which was prepped for a high-profile summer 2004 release.Coogan would continue to enjoy his success on screen over the coming years in films like Hamlet 2 and The Trip.

Trivia: Born in Reading, England, Ricky Gervais worked in the music industry as a radio DJ, band manager, and music supervisor before getting into comedy. As a writer, he provided scripts for the U.K. television series Bruiser and The Sketch Show. As an actor, he was seen quite a bit on The 11 O'Clock Show and provided the voice of the Penguin in the animated show Robbie the Reindeer: Legend of the Lost Tribe. In 2000, he had his own show called Meet Ricky Gervais. On the big screen, Gervais appeared as the bouncer in the U.K. comedy Dog Eat Dog. He's most known, however, as the writer/director/star of the hit BBC comedy series The Office. He plays David Brent, regional manager of the Wernham Hogg paper company in the London industrial suburb of Slough. A brilliant observation of the contemporary workplace, the show has won a variety of awards over in Britain. Gervais received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Comedy Series in 2003. Projects for 2004 include voice work on the animated film Valiant and producing an Americanized version of The Office with director Greg Daniels. He created and starred in Extras, another bitingly funny TV series, this one about a struggling actor. In 2008 he had a leading role for the first time in an American film, the supernatural comedy Ghost Town. The next year he wrote, directed, and starred in the acerbic comedy The Invention of Lying. He earned a ton of buzz in 2010 for his prickly hosting of the Golden Globes, a job he would repeat the next two years as well. In 2011 he debuted a new show he created with actor Warwick Davis, Life's Too Short.

Trivia: Adopted at birth by middle-class teachers. Knew he wanted to become an actor while in primary school. Honed his acting chops with Britain's National Youth Theatre. Pursued stand-up comedy for a time during his college years. Joined the amateur theatrical Footlights Dramatic Club while at Cambridge. Discovered by British theatrical-film director Peter Hall, who spotted him in a Footlights production of Macbeth opposite Hall's daughter Rebecca. Editor-at-large for the Junket, an online quarterly magazine. Writes a column for the Sunday Telegraph (a British newspaper).

Trivia: Parents show dogs professionally. Encouraged her siblings, Ryot and Liberty, to try out for the first season of Amazing Race Australia. Contracted malaria while serving a year in South Africa as a Rotary International Youth Ambassador from Australia. Became a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig in Australia in 2011. Trained at the New York Film Academy and the Second City Training Center, after receiving a scholarship via the Australian Theatre for Young People. Launched her own clothing line, for Torrid, in 2015.

Trivia: Chameleon-like British actor Ben Kingsley has proven he can play just about anyone, from Nazi war criminals to Jewish Holocaust survivors to quiet British bookshop owners. For many viewers, however, he will always be inextricably linked with his title role in Gandhi, a film that won him an Oscar and the undying respect of critics and filmgoers alike.Of English, East Indian, and South African descent, Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji on December 31, 1943 in Snaiton, Yorkshire, England. The son of a general practitioner, Kingsley started out in amateur theatricals in Manchester before making his professional debut at age 23. In 1967 he made his first London appearance at the Aldwych theater and then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, devoting himself almost exclusively to stage work for the next 15 years (with the exception of two obscure films, Fear Is the Key [1972] and Hard Labour [1973]). When asked about his favorite stage roles, he listed Hamlet, The Tempest's Ariel, and Volpone's Mosca.American audiences first saw Kingsley in 1971, when he made his Broadway debut with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1982, actor and director Richard Attenborough selected Kingsley for the demanding title role in the epic Gandhi. The film swept the international awards that year, earning the 39-year-old actor overnight success. Among the several awards he was honored with, Kingsley won a Best Actor Oscar. Adamantly refusing to recycle the same roles, Kingsley spent the next decade playing a wide spectrum of characters. Among his more notable parts were an Arab potentate in Harem (1985), an introverted bibliophile and "social rebel" in Turtle Diary (also 1985), a spy of little import in Pascali's Island (1988), an incorruptible American vice president in Dave (1992), New York gangster Meyer Lansky in Bugsy (1992), a Jewish bookkeeper in Schindler's List (1993), and a suspected Nazi war criminal in Death and the Maiden (1994). So many of his characters have been either taciturn or downright villainous that, upon being cast in a good-guy role in the escapist sci-fier Species (1995), Kingsley publicly expressed his relief in several widely circulated magazine articles.In the latter half of the 1990s, Kingsley continued to embrace a variety of eclectic roles, with turns as the Fool in Trevor Nunn's 1996 film adaptation of Twelfth Night, a media mogul in the 1997 made-for-HBO satire Weapons of Mass Distraction, and the barbarous barber Sweeney Todd in John Schlesinger's 1998 The Tale of Sweeney Todd. Kingsley also took Broadway by storm with his one-man show Edward Kean (later taped for cable), which was directed by his wife, Alison Sutcliffe. Though Kingsley had retained the variety in his career that he had so diligently pursued, the ever-sharp actor remained as focused as ever heading into the new millennium. For his role as a manipulative criminal with a strong power for persuasion in Sexy Beast (2001), Kingsley earned both a Golden Globe nomination and a third Oscar nomination. His fourth Academy nod would come just 2 years later with his role as a proud Arab-American patriarch in The House of Sand and Fog. Along with the Best Actor Oscar nomination, the role also netted Kingsley Golden Globe and Screen Actor's Guild nominations. Kingsley lost his Oscar bid for House to Sean Penn, who collected the statue for his contribution to Clint Eastwood's Mystic River. Over the next several years, Sir Ben Kingsley's acting choices often demonstrated the degree of difficulty that A-listers may encounter when seeking multilayered roles in respectable films, with solid scripts and direction; like many of his contemporaries, the magnificent thespian Kingsley turned up in more than one schlocky Hollywood stinker after House of Sand and Fog -- from Jonathan Frakes's ugly Thunderbirds revamp (2004) to Uwe Boll's horrendous, gothic fx-extravaganza BloodRayne (2006) (as evil ruler Lord Kagan). If anyone could ferret out the creme-de-la-creme of roles, however, Kingsley could, and he simultaneously proved it with contributions to the interesting 2005 biopic Mrs. Harris (as the ill-fated Scarsdale Diet Doctor) and the wondrous documentary I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Rosenthal (2007).2007 marked a banner year for Kingsley - his most active in quite some time, with contributions to no less than seven key pictures. In the most prominent, the John Dahl-directed crime comedy You Kill Me, Kingsley plays Frank Falenczyk, an alcoholic hit man who travels to Los Angeles to dry out, takes a job in a morgue, and strikes up a relationship with a relative of one of his victims. That same year, Kingsley re-projected his innate ability to essay ethnic roles convincingly, with his turn as one of two Russian police offers investigating an espionage case on a train, in Brad Anderson's thriller Trans-Siberian.Later that same year, Kingsley appeared opposite lead Dan Fogler in English director Chase Palmer's Number Thirteen - a period drama about Alfred Hitchcock's ill-fated attempt to realize one of his first movie projects.

Trivia: In 2007, moved to California with his family. Spent his senior year in Vancouver filming Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014). Ben Stiller and Robin Williams helped him with his "promposal" video.

Trivia: Is of Egyptian heritage. Has an identical twin brother who is four minutes younger. Starred in Johnny Boy at the Falcon Theater in Los Angeles in 2004. Appeared in a 2007 production of The Credeaux Canvas with Vitality Productions in Los Angeles. Played an ancient Egyptian in both The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 and Night at the Museum, but per his direction on set, he played each character with a different accent.

Trivia: Born in Missouri, entertainer Dick Van Dyke was raised in Danville, Illinois, where repeated viewings of Laurel & Hardy comedies at his local movie palace inspired him to go into show business. Active in high school and community plays in his teens, Van Dyke briefly put his theatrical aspirations aside upon reaching college age. He toyed with the idea of becoming a Presbyterian minister; then, after serving in the Air Force during World War II, opened up a Danville advertising agency. When this venture failed, it was back to show biz, first as a radio announcer for local station WDAN, and later as half of a record-pantomime act called The Merry Mutes (the other half was a fellow named Philip Erickson). While hosting a TV morning show in New Orleans, Van Dyke was signed to a contract by the CBS network. He spent most of his time subbing for other CBS personalities and emceeing such forgotten endeavors as Cartoon Theatre. After making his acting debut as a hayseed baseball player on The Phil Silvers Show, Van Dyke left CBS to free-lance. He hosted a few TV game shows before his career breakthrough as co-star of the 1959 Broadway review The Girls Against the Boys. The following year, he starred in the musical comedy Bye Bye Birdie, winning a Tony Award for his portrayal of mother-dominated songwriter Albert Peterson (it would be his last Broadway show until the short-lived 1980 revival of The Music Man). In 1961, he was cast as comedy writer Rob Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, which after a shaky start lasted five seasons and earned its star three Emmies.He made his movie bow in the 1963 filmization of Bye Bye Birdie, then entered into a flexible arrangement with Walt Disney Studios. His best known films from that era include Mary Poppins (1964), Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN and The Comic, in which he played an amalgam of several self-destructive silent movie comedians. His TV specials remained popular in the ratings, and it was this fact that led to the debut of The New Dick Van Dyke Show in 1971. Despite the creative input of the earlier Dick Van Dyke Show's maven Carl Reiner, the later series never caught on, and petered out after three seasons. A chronic "people pleaser," Van Dyke was loath to display anger or frustration around his co-workers or fans, so he began taking solace in liquor; by 1972, he had become a full-fledged alcoholic. Rather than lie to his admirers or himself any longer, he underwent treatment and publicly admitted his alcoholism -- one of the first major TV stars ever to do so. Van Dyke's public confession did little to hurt his "nice guy" public image, and, now fully and permanently sober, he continued to be sought out for guest-star assignments and talk shows. In 1974, he starred in the TV movie The Morning After, playing an ad executive who destroys his reputation, his marriage and his life thanks to booze. After that Van Dyke, further proved his versatility when he began accepting villainous roles, ranging from a cold-blooded wife murderer in a 1975 Columbo episode to the corrupt district attorney in the 1990 film Dick Tracy. He also made several stabs at returning to weekly television, none of which panned out--until 1993, when he starred as Dr. Mark Sloan in the popular mystery series Diagnosis Murder. He made a few more movie appearances after Diagnosis Murder came to an end, most notably as a retired security guard in the hit family film Night at the Museum. As gifted at writing and illustrating as he is at singing, dancing and clowning, Van Dyke has penned two books, Faith, Hope and Hilarity and Those Funny Kids. From 1992 to 1994, he served as chairman of the Nickelodeon cable service, which was then sweeping the ratings by running Dick Van Dyke Show reruns in prime time. Van Dyke is the brother of award-winning TV personality Jerry Van Dyke, and the father of actor Barry Van Dyke.

Trivia: A versatile American screen actor and former juvenile star who made up in energy what he lacked in height, Mickey Rooney was born Joe Yule Jr. on September 23, 1920, in Brooklyn, NY. The son of vaudevillians, Rooney first became a part of the family act when he was 15-months-old, and was eventually on-stage singing, dancing, mimicking, and telling jokes. He debuted onscreen at the age of six in the silent short Not to Be Trusted (1926), playing a cigar-smoking midget. His next film was the feature-length Orchids and Ermine (1927). Over the next six years, he starred in more than 50 two-reel comedies as Mickey McGuire (a name he legally adopted), a series based upon a popular comic strip, "Toonerville Folks." In 1932, he changed his name to "Mickey" Rooney when he began to appear in small roles in feature films. He was signed by MGM in 1934 and gave one of the most memorable juvenile performances in film history as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935). A turning point in Rooney's career came with his 1937 appearance as Andy Hardy, the wise-cracking son of a small-town judge, in the B-movie A Family Affair. The film proved to be such a success that it led to a string of 15 more Andy Hardy pictures over the next twenty years. The films were sentimental light comedies that celebrated small-town domestic contentment and simple pleasures, and the character became the one with which the actor became most identified. Rooney went on to a memorable role in Boys Town (1938) and several high-energy musicals with Judy Garland. Added to his Andy Hardy work, these performances caused his popularity to skyrocket, and, by 1939, he was America's biggest box-office attraction. Rooney was awarded a special Oscar (along with Deanna Durbin) in 1939 for his "significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth, and, as a juvenile player, setting a high standard of ability and achievement." His popularity peaked in the early '40s with his appearances in such films as The Human Comedy (1943) and National Velvet (1944), the latter with a young Elizabeth Taylor. After his World War II service and subsequent military discharge, however, his drawing power as a star decreased dramatically, and was never recovered; suddenly he seemed only acceptable as a juvenile, not a grown man. In the late '40s Rooney formed his own production company, but it was a financial disaster and he went broke. To pay off his debts, he was obliged to take a number of low-quality roles. By the mid-'50s, though, he had reinvented himself as an adult character actor, starring in a number of good films, including the title role in Baby Face Nelson (1957). Rooney continued to perform in both film, television, stage, and even dinner theater productions over the next four decades, and debuted on Broadway in 1979 with Sugar Babies. Although his screen work was relatively erratic during the '90s, he managed to lend his talents to diverse fare, appearing in both Babe: Pig in the City (1998) and the independent Animals (And the Tollkeeper) (1997). In 2006 Rooney was back on the big screen in the comedy hit A Night at the Museum, with a slew of subsequent roles on low-budget fare preceding an appearance in 2011's The Muppets. That same year, Rooney made headlines when he testified before Congress on the issue of elder abuse, and revealing himself as one of many seniors who had been victimized as a result of their age. Rooney continued working until his death in 2014 at age 93.During the course of his career, Rooney received two Best Actor and two Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominations, the last of which for his work in 1979's The Black Stallion. He also won a Golden Globe for the 1981 TV movie Bill. In 1983, while undergoing a well-publicized conversion to Christianity, he was awarded a special Lifetime Achievement Oscar "in recognition of his 60 years of versatility in a variety of memorable film performances." Rooney published his autobiography, Life Is Too Short, in 1991. His eight wives included actresses Ava Gardner and Martha Vickers.

Trivia: Character actor Bill Cobbs began his acting career relatively late in life after working odd jobs in Cleveland, OH. At the age of 36, he moved to New York and joined the Negro Ensemble Company, making his Broadway debut in First Breeze of Summer. His film career started in the late '70s with small film roles and guest appearances on television. In the early '80s, he worked on several performances for the NBC Live Theatre series and a PBS anthology with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Usually cast as the token old black man dispensing words of wisdom, Cobbs' weathered-yet-honest looks got him several guest spots on TV shows from Good Times to The West Wing. He did end up with a few reoccurring roles on sitcoms like The Slap Maxwell Story, The Gregory Hines Show, and The Michael Richards Show. He even had a part in The Others, the NBC sci-fi drama answer to The X-Files. Perhaps his most memorable television appearance is his role as Regina Taylor's father on I'll Fly Away as well as in the TV movie version I'll Fly Away: Then and Now. Throughout his film career, he has built a long list of credits playing kindly fathers, grandfathers, and even Moses (in The Hudsucker Proxy). He was Whitney Houston's manager in The Bodyguard, an old man in New Jack City, and Grandpa Booker in The People Under the Stairs. Though he appears in nearly all genres of Hollywood films, he occasionally gets meatier roles in made-for-TV dramas like Carolina Skeletons, Nightjohn, and Always Outnumbered. In 2002, he played wisened elders in Sunshine State, Enough, and Sweet Deadly Dreams.

Trivia: From her debut as an improvisational comic on the hit series SCTV to her later status as a voice-over artist for such popular children's shows as Sesame Street and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Emmy-winning actress Andrea Martin has remained a recognizable performer to generations of television viewers. A native of Maine whose relocation to the Great White North found her signing on with the Toronto branch of the famed Second City comedy troupe, Martin formed close working relationships with such fellow improv-ers as Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara. Fueled by a powerhouse group of comic talent that included such future stars as John Candy, Martin Short, and Rick Moranis, the Second City troupe gained a loyal following and after small roles in such features as Cannibal Girls and Black Christmas, Martin followed the troupe to the small screen with Second City TV in 1976. Equally, if not more hilarious than its American counterpart Saturday Night Live in the eyes of many comedy fans, SCTV ultimately went through three small-screen incarnations including SCTV: Network 90 and SCTV Channel before calling it quits in 1984. Though she would remain closely involved with her former cast-mates on such projects as Club Paradise, Innerspace, The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, and Camp Candy (the latter two marking her entrance into voice-over work), Martin also branched out on her own as the title character in the 1987 television series Roxie and as a cast member in the 1991 version of The Carol Burnett Show. The '90s found her frequently alternating between television and film, and though roles in such features as Boris and Natasha and Bogus did little to further her career, fans could still catch a glimpse of the old magic when Martin joined former cast-mate Short in 1994's short-lived The Martin Short Show. On the heels of more voice-over work in such efforts as television's Recess: School's Out and the hit Disney feature Anastasia, Martin joined the cast of Sesame Street in 1998, marking something of a shift to more family-oriented material (save for an appearance in the 2001 musical comedy Hedwig and the Angry Inch) that would keep her very busy into the new millennium. Even as a voice-over artist, Martin still got the occasional opportunity to perform alongside old friends Levy (The Kid) and Martin (Prince Charming). Even if the next generation would remember her face mainly from appearances in My Big Fat Greek Wedding and New York Minute, the release of SCTV on DVD in 2004 offered parents with fond memories of the series a chance to share it with their children and show them where all the fun began.

Trivia: Comedic blonde actress Rachael Harris has found plenty of ways to make audiences laugh, whether it meant commenting on pop culture for VH1's I Love the '80s or appearing in quirky commercials for Quaker rice cakes. A veteran of the Los Angeles improve troupe the Groundlings, Harris transitioned to the screen as a correspondent for the popular news-parody The Daily Show. With her horn-rimmed glasses and tightly wound persona, Harris immediately found her niche in on-screen comedy, garnering fans with her own brand of straight-faced delivery. Harris would occasionally take on completely different characters for TV and film roles like her part in 2009's The Soloist, but the comedian more often played off of her own signature style, especially for comedies like Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, The Hangover, and Evan Almighty. In 2010, she played the lead character's mother in Diary of Wimpy Kid, reprising the role in two sequels. Harris would also find continued success on the small screen,on shows like Reno 911!, In the Motherhood, and Notes from the Underbelly and as a prolific guest star on a number of series. In 2016, Harris landed a series regular role on Lucifer, playing Lucifer's theraprist.

Trivia: Raised in Woodland Hills, CA, and the son of a hearing aid specialist who worked in geriatrics and a full-time housewife, Garrett began performing stand-up at various Los Angeles Comedy Clubs upon graduation from high school. Spending six weeks at UCLA before his fateful appearance on the Tonight Show, the young comedian later felt the wrath of that show's grudge after telling a joke that the talent booker had warned him against. Garrett has since never been invited back. Nevertheless he continued on strongly, opening for Frank Sinatra and soon finding roles in such popular television shows as Roseanne, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Seinfeld, and perhaps most famously, Everybody Loves Raymond. Offering his voice to numerous animated features since his breakout in the early '80s, Garrett voice acted in family films like Casper (1995), A Bug's Life (1998), Ratatouille, Tarzan II, Garfield, Tangled, and Finding Nemo. Garrett has also appeared in several movies, like Music and Lyrics, The Pacifier, and Night at the Museum.

Trivia: Is the son of Egyptian parents. Became interested in the entertainment industry at the age of 14, at which time he began working as a DJ for weddings and school dances. Speaks French fluently. Is an avid martial artist who practices jiu jitsu, capoeira and kali. Founded an on-camera acting school, Vancouver Studio, with his wife and fellow actor, Kyra Zagorsky. Is the co-director of a non-profit organization, Fulfilling Young Artists, which mentors young actors, writers and directors. Teaches dialect and accent classes at Vancouver Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Trivia: It's likely that nothing American actor Matt Frewer ever did while training with Britain's Old Vic prepared him for the role that would boost him to stardom. In the early 1980s, Frewer began making appearances on a British music video show in the role of Max Headroom, an ostensibly computer-generated "talking head". Decked out in sunglasses and loud preppie clothes, Max Headroom would break into the middle of videos making nonsensical, obtrusive comments, his voice metallicized and distorted; Max' trademark was an electronic stutter, virtually indescribable on paper. In 1985 Max began conducting celebrity interviews, forever digressing from the conversation with self-involved harangues about his favorite subject, golf. So popular was Frewer as Headroom that Britain's Channel 4 devised a one-hour "documentary" titled Rebus: The Max Headroom Story, which alleged that Max had once been a flesh-and-blood TV newsman who was killed by an oppressive government to keep him from divulging secrets: his name, it was explained, was derived from the last words the "live" Max ever saw, a warning on a bridge reading "Maximum Headroom." This premise was modified a bit when Frewer starred on the 1986 American satirical talk show Max Headroom, which first appeared on the Cinemax cable service. Frewer continued the characterization into a local New York program, then played the dual role of Max and futuristic investigative reporter Edison Carter on ABC's brief Max Headroom comedy adventure series. In addition, Frewer essayed Max for a series of widely-imitated Coca Cola commercials. In 1989, Matt Frewer abandoned Max Headroom to seek out roles that didn't require computer enhancement; he subsequently starred in a few sitcoms, and in 1993 provided the voice of the title character in a new series of Pink Panther TV cartoons.

Trivia: Lived in his hometown, St. John's, until he was 11.Made his film debut in the 2008 drama Down to the Dirt, playing six-year-old Keith.First speaking role was in the 2009 drama Crackie, where he played Takeout Boy, at 7 years old.First recurring TV role was Simon Brooks on the crime series Murdoch Mysteries, from 2014 to 2015.Won best actor at the Atlantic Film Festival for his performance in 2014's Cast No Shadow.

Trivia: Grew up in Bangalore, India, then moved to London, England, to study, and 15 years later moved to Vancouver, Canada.A trained dancer in Bharatanatyam and Contemporary.Performed with the Royal Shakespeare company.Studied her M.A. degree in England on a Charles Wallace Scholarship.Performed with the Shobana Jaysingh Dance Company.