Trivia: Scottish actor Gerard Butler spent seven miserable years studying law before trying his hand at acting on the London stage. Half a decade later, a much happier Butler had over a dozen theater, movie, and television credits under his belt, including starring roles in the stage version of Trainspotting (1996) and the award-winning film Mrs. Brown (1997).Born on November 13, 1969, in Glasgow, Butler is the youngest of Margaret and Edward Butler's three children; he has a sister and a brother. When Butler was barely six months old, his family relocated to Montréal, Canada, where his father undertook several failed business ventures. A year and a half later, Butler's parents divorced, and his mother took the children back to Scotland. He saw his father once more when he was four years old, and then not again until he was 16. In the meantime, Butler grew up in his mother's hometown of Paisley, where he frequented a nearby movie theater. Enamored with acting, he convinced his mother to take him to auditions, eventually joining the Scottish Youth Theatre and playing a street urchin in Oliver! at the Kings Theatre in Glasgow. An exceptional student, Butler graduated at the top of his class. Hoping to please his family and his teachers, who felt acting was an unrealistic career choice, Butler enrolled in Glasgow University's law program. He served as the president of the school's law society and earned an honor's degree. After finishing college, Butler took a year and a half off to live in Los Angeles, where he appeared as an extra in the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston vehicle The Bodyguard (1992). He then traveled to Canada to be at his father's bedside as he succumbed to cancer. Shortly after his father's death, Butler returned to Scotland to begin a two-year law traineeship in Edinburgh at one of the country's top firms. But he was bored and discontented as a lawyer, and still dreamed about performing. He went to see Trainspotting on-stage at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh and knew he had made the wrong career choice. Soon enough, Butler's unhappiness began to show in his work, and his firm fired him with only a week left in his training. Two days later, at age 25, he moved to London to begin his acting career. Butler took on a series of odd jobs -- from waiting tables to demonstrating clockwork toys at a trade show -- while looking for work as an actor. He was supposed to be serving as a casting assistant for the play Coriolanus at the Mermaid Theatre when he ran into the show's director, actor Steven Berkoff, at a coffee bar and asked to read for a part. Impressed with the ex-barrister's moxie, Berkoff agreed and Butler secured his first professional acting role. While rehearsing for Coriolanus, he accompanied one of the other actors to an audition for the same stage adaptation of Trainspotting he had seen in Edinburgh and landed the lead part of Mark Renton. In 1997, with his theater career firmly established, Butler made his big-screen debut opposite Billy Connolly and Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown. Sometime later, he had returned to the film's shooting location, Taymouth Castle, for a picnic when he saw a child drowning in the nearby River Tay. Butler dove into the water and saved the boy. The actor received a Certificate of Bravery from the Royal Humane Society for his selfless act. That same year, he earned a small speaking part as a bad guy in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies before spoofing ex-Wet Wet Wet singer Marti Pellow for the 1998 series The Young Person's Guide to Becoming a Rock Star. Butler finished out the '90s by appearing in the television comedy Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, as well as returning to the stage to appear opposite Sheila Gish and Rachel Weisz in Suddenly, Last Summer in London's West End. Butler began the new millennium with supporting parts in the gangster film Shooters (2000) and the war drama Harrison's Flowers (2000). He then simultaneously landed the high-profile title roles in Wes Craven's Dracula 2000 (2000) and the USA television movie Attila (2001). Produced by the creators of The Mummy franchise, Attila chronicled the life of the eponymous fifth century barbarian and co-starred veteran actors Tim Curry and Powers Boothe. It also re-teamed Butler with his Coriolanus director, Berkoff, who played his uncle in the film. The hype that surrounded both Dracula 2000 and Attila was fueled by CNN's announcement that Butler was the frontrunner to replace Pierce Brosnan as the next James Bond. The following months, however, were anticlimactic for Butler. Dracula 2000 bombed at the box office and Attila, though one of the year's highest-rated television miniseries, proved to be forgettable. The rumors surrounding his involvement with 007 were quickly quelled when Brosnan announced that he was staying on for at least two more Bond films, and the series' producers never contacted Butler. Determined to get back on his feet, Butler signed on with a new agency. He returned to British television for ITV's miniseries The Jury (2002), which also featured Derek Jacobi and Antony Sher, while simultaneously filming a role as Christian Bale's dragon-slaying best friend in the special-effects spectacle Reign of Fire (2002). He then quickly landed a supporting role in Renny Harlin's Mindhunters with Val Kilmer and LL Cool J, but pulled out of the project to play the lead in Richard Donner's long-awaited adaptation of Michael Crichton's best-selling novel Timeline (2003). Butler also turned heads as Angelina Jolie's hunky love interest in the sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life that same year.Though, to this point in his career, Butler had no doubt displayed immense talent as an actor, the films he had appeared in had almost consistently disappointed in terms of box-office returns. In 2004, that disheartening trend continued as Butler donned the famous mask of the disfigured musical genius made popular on the stage by actor Michael Crawford in the big-screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, with subsequent roles in The Game of Their Lives and Beowulf & Grendel doing little to increase his international recognizability. By 2006, it seemed that Butler was finally poised to break big, and as he prepared to lead the soldiers of Sparta in battle against the overwhelming forces of the Persian Empire in Dawn of the Dead director Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's popular graphic novel 300, it appeared as if he was determined to do so in style.The movie was a huge international box-office hit, and Butler followed it up with the Guy Ritchie film RocknRolla the next year. In 2009 he took the starring role in the thriller Law Abiding Citizen, and appeared in the virtual reality action film Gamer. 2010 saw the release of his romantic comedy The Bounty Hunter opposite Jennifer Aniston, and in 2011 he starred in the drama Machine Gun Preacher. That same year he played the arch enemy of Coriolanus in Ralph Fiennes adaptation of that Shakespearean tragedy.

Trivia: From Neil LaBute mainstay to romantic lead and brainy action hero, versatile screen presence Aaron Eckhart has the talent to convincingly portray everything from the most despicable misogynist to affable love interests with equal zeal. How many other actors could purposefully and gleefully crush the soul of an innocent deaf woman before successfully charming one of the '90s most notable onscreen feminists with equal conviction? Born on March 12, 1968, to a computer executive father and a mother who wrote children's books in Santa Clara County, CA, Eckhart spent most of his childhood in Cupertino before moving with his family to England and Australia in his teens. Although he dropped out of high school before graduation, Eckhart eventually earned his equivalency before taking a few years off to hit the waves in Hawaii and the slopes in France. He later attended Brigham Young University as a film major, and it was there that he made the acquaintance of a young, aspiring director named Neil LaBute. Eckhart eventually moved to Manhattan and found himself swimming in a virtual sea of unemployed actors, though he did land a few notable commercial parts before returning to L.A., where he worked in a series of small supporting roles. He had done well enough on his own to this point, but it was only under the direction of his old college friend that he truly broke out of the mold and crafted one of the most despised cinematic characterizations of the decade. Cast in the lead of LaBute's pitch-black debut In the Company of Men, Eckhart's performance of a woman-hating, low-level executive was a cruel, but three-dimensional, villain that both repelled and fascinated moviegoers. After sticking with LaBute and gaining 30 pounds for the role of a sexually frustrated husband in LaBute's follow-up, Your Friends & Neighbors, Eckhart branched out in 1999 with a pair of memorable and entirely unexpected performances: Molly and Any Given Sunday. Cast as a caring brother of an autistic sibling in the former and a gridiron giant in the latter, his versatility began to attract casting agents. By the time he romanced Julia Roberts' eponymous character in Steven Soderbergh's acclaimed drama Erin Brockovich, Eckhart had become one to watch. He re-teamed with LaBute for Nurse Betty and Possession, but by this point, the rising star was gaining quite a reputation on his own. In 2001, Sean Penn tapped him to appear opposite Jack Nicholson in the searing drama The Pledge, and soon Eckhart was plunging headfirst into the center of the Earth alongside Oscar-winner Hilary Swank in the big-budget summer disaster flick The Core. By this time, the actor had truly established himself as a diverse talent capable of donning many hats, and following his role in Ron Howard's brutal thriller The Missing, the action flew fast and furious in John Woo's Paycheck. Eckhart next appeared in Suspect Zero (2004), which was experimental filmmaker E. Elias Merhige's eagerly anticipated follow-up to 2000's acclaimed Shadow of the Vampire.If some fans had lamented the gifted Eckhart's turn towards overly seriously roles as of late, a scathing performance in director Jason Reitman's critically-acclaimed 2005 comedy Thank You for Smoking would serve as a refreshingly funny change of pace. Alas, the laughs wouldn't keep coming for long, as it was soon back to grim dramatics with his turn as a well-schooled psychiatrist in the dramatic mystery Neverwas preceding a turn as a determined L.A. detective whose attempts to solve a particularly confounding murder lead him down a dark path of Hollywood corruption in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia. In 2008 he starred alongside Christian Bale inThe Dark Knight as good-man-gone-bad Harvey Dent/Two-Face, while 2010 found the actor co-starring with Nicole Kidman in the film Rabbit Hole (2010). In 2011, Eckhart played a wealthy real estate developer in The Rum Diary, an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's autobiography of the same name.

Trivia: Morgan Freeman has enjoyed an impressive and varied career on stage, television, and screen. It is a career that began in the mid-'60s, when Freeman appeared in an off-Broadway production of The Niggerlovers and with Pearl Bailey in an all-African-American Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968. He went on to have a successful career both on and off-Broadway, showcasing his talents in everything from musicals to contemporary drama to Shakespeare. Before studying acting, the Memphis-born Freeman attended Los Angeles Community College and served a five-year stint with the Air Force from 1955 to 1959. After getting his start on the stage, he worked in television, playing Easy Reader on the PBS children's educational series The Electric Company from 1971 through 1976. During that period, Freeman also made his movie debut in the lighthearted children's movie Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow? (1971). Save for his work on the PBS show, Freeman's television and feature film appearances through the '70s were sporadic, but in 1980, he earned critical acclaim for his work in the prison drama Brubaker. He gained additional recognition for his work on the small screen with a regular role on the daytime drama Days of Our Lives from 1982 to 1984. Following Brubaker, Freeman's subsequent '80s film work was generally undistinguished until he played the dangerously emotional pimp in Street Smart (1987) and earned his first Oscar nomination. With the success of Street Smart, Freeman's film career duly took off and he appeared in a string of excellent films that began with the powerful Clean and Sober (1988) and continued with Driving Miss Daisy (1989), in which Freeman reprised his Obie-winning role of a dignified, patient Southern chauffeur and earned his second Oscar nomination for his efforts. In 1989, he also played a tough and cynical gravedigger who joins a newly formed regiment of black Union soldiers helmed by Matthew Broderick in Glory. The acclaim he won for that role was replicated with his portrayal of a high school principal in that same year's Lean on Me.Freeman constitutes one of the few African-American actors to play roles not specifically written for African-Americans, as evidenced by his work in such films as Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), in which he played Robin's sidekick, and Clint Eastwood's revisionist Western Unforgiven (1992). In 1993, Freeman demonstrated his skills on the other side of the camera, making his directorial debut with Bopha!, the story of a South African cop alienated from his son by apartheid. The following year, the actor received a third Oscar nomination as an aged lifer in the prison drama The Shawshank Redemption. He went on to do steady work throughout the rest of the decade, turning in memorable performances in films like Seven (1995), in which he played a world-weary detective; Amistad (1997), which featured him as a former slave; Kiss the Girls (1997), a thriller in which he played a police detective; and Deep Impact, a 1998 blockbuster that cast Freeman as the President of the United States. Following an appearance opposite Renee Zellweger in director Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty, Freeman would return to the role of detective Alex Cross in the Kiss the Girls sequel Along Came a Spider (2001). Freeman continued to keep a high profile moving into the new millennium with roles in such thrillers as The Sum of All Fears (2002) and Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, and the popular actor would average at least two films per year through 2004. 2003's Jim Carrey vehicle Bruce Almighty cast Freeman as God (a tall role indeed, and one he inherited from both George Burns and Gene Hackman). The story finds the Supreme Being appearing on Earth and giving Carrey temporary control over the universe - to outrageous comic effect. By the time Freeman appeared opposite Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood in Eastwood's acclaimed 2004 boxing drama Million Dollar Baby, his reputation as one of Hollywood's hardest-working, most-respected actors was cemented in place. When Freeman took home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar at the 77th Annual Academy Awards for his performance as the former boxer turned trainer who convinces his old friend to take a scrappy female fighter (Hilary Swank) under his wing, the award was considered overdue given Freeman's impressive body of work.The Oscar reception lifted Freeman to further heights. In summer 2005, Freeman was involved in three of the biggest blockbusters of the year, including War of the Worlds, Batman Begins and March of the Penguins. He joined the cast of the first picture as the foreboding narrator who tells of the destruction wrought by aliens upon the Earth. The Batman Begins role represented the first in a renewed franchise (the second being 2008's The Dark Knight), with the actor playing Lucius Fox, a technology expert who equips Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) with his vast assemblage of gadgetry. Freeman also provided narration for the most unpredictable smash of the year, the nature documentary March of the Penguins.That fall, Miramax's drama An Unfinished Life cast Freeman in a difficult role as Mitch, a bear attack victim reduced to near-paraplegia, living on a derelict western ranch. The picture was shelved for two years; it arrived in cinemas practically stillborn, and many critics turned their noses up at it. After a brutal turn as a sociopathic mob boss in Paul McGuigan's Lucky Number Slevin (2006), Freeman reprised his turn as God in the 2007 Bruce Almighty sequel Evan Almighty; the high-budgeted picture flopped, but Freeman emerged unscathed. Versatile as ever, he then opted for a much different genre and tone with a key role in the same year's detective thriller Gone, Baby, Gone. As written and directed by Ben Affleck (and adapted from the novel by Dennis Lehane) the film wove the tale of two detectives searching for a missing four-year-old in Boston's underbelly. He returned to the Batman franchise in The Dark Knight, a film that broke box-office records, in 2008, and he would stick with the franchise for its final installment, The Dark Knight Rises, in 2012. Freeman would remain a top tier actor in years to come, appearing in such films as Red, Invictus (which saw him playing Nelson Mandela), Conan the Barbarian, and The Magic of Belle Isle.

Trivia: After supporting roles in a handful of small films and a short stint on the soap opera All My Children, New York-born Melissa Leo gained prominence on the critically-acclaimed Barry Levinson-produced television drama Homicide: Life on the Streets. After leaving the show in 1997, Leo continued to appear in a range of features, including 1999's 24 Hour Woman. But it was her role as Benicio Del Toro's wife in 2003's 21 Grams that gave Leo her first exposure to a wide moviegoing audience. The performance also won her recognition from the L.A. Film Critics Association, who named Leo the runner-up for the Best Supporting Actress honor.Leo continued to work steadily in a series of independent films including American Gun, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and Stephanie Daley. In 2008 she landed the lead role in Courtney Hunt's debut feature Frozen River. As a financially strapped woman who turns to human-trafficking in order to earn a living, Leo earned thunderous critical praise as well as Best Actress nominations from both the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy.Frozen River led her to steady work un a variety of projects, but it was as the matriarch of the boxing brothers in The Fighter that Leo had the biggest success of her career capturing numerous year-end critics awards as well as the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. In the years after that she appeared in works as diverse as the remake of Mildred Pierce for HBO, and Kevin Smith's Red State.

Trivia: A respected actress of the stage, screen, and television, Angela Bassett has been one of the few African-American actresses to break Hollywood's color boundary. She has specialized in playing strong women familiar with adversity and has worked in genres from "chick flick" (Waiting to Exhale) to sci-fi action (Strange Days) to biography (What's Love Got to Do with It?), the last of which featured her in a star-making performance as Tina Turner.Born in New York City on August 16, 1958, Bassett was raised in St. Petersburg, Florida by her mother. Growing up in a household where money was tight, she was taught determination and independence. These values were called into service after an eleventh grade Upward Bound trip to Washington, D.C., when Bassett saw James Earl Jones in a Kennedy Center production of Of Mice and Men. Deciding that acting was her calling, she became involved in a number of local productions in St. Petersburg. She continued to act at Yale University, where she earned a scholarship; after completing a B.A. in African-American studies, she also spent three years at the Yale School of Drama. One of Bassett's mentors at Yale was the drama school's dean, stage director Lloyd Richards, who was so impressed with her talent that he cast her in two of his productions, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Although she enjoyed relative success on the stage, Bassett, like other African-American actors, had a difficult time finding roles in television and film.In 1986, Bassett made her screen debut in the cult favorite F/X. Following supporting roles in Kindergarten Cop (1990) and John Sayles' City of Hope (1991), she had her first significant screen role in John Singleton's acclaimed Boyz 'N the Hood, playing a struggling single mother. Two years later, after playing the wife of civil rights leader Malcolm X in Spike Lee's biopic and the Jackson Family matriarch in the made-for-TV The Jacksons: An American Dream, Bassett had her screen breakthrough as Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It?, a performance that earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe. As her newfound status allowed her to expand her range of work, Bassett went on to star in a series of diverse films. In 1995, a foray into futuristic action in Strange Days was complemented by a lead in the successful women's ensemble drama Waiting to Exhale (based on the novel by Terry McMillan), in which Bassett starred alongside Whitney Houston, Lela Rochon, and Loretta Devine. In 1998, she starred as the title character in another McMillan adaptation, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, playing a divorcee whose discontent is ably assuaged by a hunky twenty-year-old (Taye Diggs). The following year, she had a supporting role in Music of the Heart and again tried her hand at action in Supernova, a sci-fi thriller. Starring in former Orson Welles collaborator and blacklisted director John Berry's critically panned swansong Boesman and Lena in 2000, Bassett (along with co-star Danny Glover) earned praise for their sensitive performances as a troubled South African couple striving to seek stability in the face of Apartheid.Her career continued to evolve with a part in The Score in 2001. The next year she executive produced and starred in a biopic about civil rights figure Rosa Parks. She was part of the large ensemble John Sayles brought together for Sunshine State, and co-starred opposite Bernie Mac in the sports comedy Mr. 3000. In 2006 she played the mother in the spelling bee drama Akeelah and the Bee, and she continued to land parts in big-budget blockbusters such as Green Lantern and This Means War.Since 1997, Bassett has been married to actor Courtney B. Vance, whom she had known since their days at Yale.

Trivia: Knew she wanted to pursue acting after playing Captain Hook in a school play at age 9. After graduating from university, co-wrote a play called Shaking Cecilia, which won the Sunday Times Student Playwright Award in 2004. When she auditioned for the role of Cathy in the 2009 adaptation of Wuthering Heights, she had never read the book itself before. Away from acting, she performs as a member of a 1940s doo-wop band The Flirtinis. Is an avid painter in her spare time. Won the lead role in the BBC drama Press in 2018, which was cancelled after the first series. Played the role of Lottie/Ghost of Christmas Present in 2019 in the BBC mini-series A Christmas Carol, based on the Charles Dickens novel of the same name.

Trivia: Small, blonde, and Australian, Radha Mitchell first made an impression on international audiences as the paramour of a heroin-addled photographer (Ally Sheedy) in Lisa Cholodenko's High Art (1998). Mitchell, a native of Melbourne, began acting when she was still in high school and had her professional debut on the popular Aussie soap Neighbours in 1994. Two years later, she made her film debut in the romantic comedy Love and Other Catastrophes, in which she starred as a college student experiencing a messy breakup with her girlfriend (Frances O'Connor). The film proved to be fairly popular in Australia, but it wasn't until she was cast in High Art that Mitchell gained an introduction to a wider audience. The critical success of High Art made it possible for her to do more international work, and her increasing popularity was reflected by her subsequent casting in a number of projects. Among them were Pitch Black (2000), a sci-fi horror film in which Mitchell played a pilot whose ship crashes on a hostile planet, and Everything Put Together (2000), a drama about a suburban woman (Mitchell) shunned by her peers after the death of her baby. Her career continued with a diverse run of films including Nobody's Baby, Man on Fire, Finding Neverland, and landing the lead in Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda. Those last three films all hit screens in 2004, and although kept working steadily, she never quite capitalized on the buzz she generated that year. Her other credits include Silent Hill, Henry Poole Is Here, Surrogates, and the horror film The Crazies.

Trivia: The career of Jackie Earle Haley should be inspirational for any former child star or out-of-work actor. In his preteen years, Haley earned his living as a TV commercial actor and voice-over artist (he voiced the son on Hanna-Barbera's animated All in the Family clone Wait Till Your Father Gets Home). At 13, Haley was cast as the juvenile delinquent with home-run power in Michael Ritchie's superb little-league comedy The Bad News Bears, earning a cult following for his portrayal of the swaggering, cool loner. He repeated the iconic role in two sequels, one of the few members of the original cast to do so. Peter Yates cast Haley, alongside future celebrities Dennis Quaid and Daniel Stern, as a member of the bike-racing team in the Oscar-winning Breaking Away (1979). Earle disappeared from screens after some fitful television work through the '80s, but stayed busy behind the camera as a writer and an accomplished director of commercials. After more than a decade off the big screen, Haley made a spectacular return in 2006, first as the menacing bodyguard/driver Sugar Boy in All the King's Men, and then with an Oscar-nominated turn as a suburban pedophile in Todd Field's Little Children. He had a small part in the 2008 Will Ferrell comedy Semi-Pro, and the next year he was cast as Rorschach, arguably the most psychotic member of The Watchmen. In 2010 he appeared in a memorable one-scene cameo in Shutter Island and took the iconic part of Freddy Kruger in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Two years later he was cast by Tim Burton in his big-screen version of Dark Shadows and by Steven Spielberg in the director's long-planned biopic Lincoln.

Trivia: Describing his career as a "five-years upwards first act and a 25-year sliding second act," actor Robert Forster finally got to settle into a satisfying third act when Quentin Tarantino worked his '70s resurrection magic by casting Forster in Jackie Brown (1997). Born and raised in Rochester, NY, Forster was a high school and college athlete, and occasional school thespian. After graduating from the University of Rochester (his third college) with a degree in psychology, Forster opted for acting over law school. Honing his craft in local theater, Forster subsequently moved to New York City where he landed his first Broadway role in 1965. After garnering attention in a 1967 production of A Streetcar Named Desire opposite Julie Harris, Forster made his movie debut in John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) as the au natural horseback-riding private who ignites military officer Marlon Brando's desire. Holding out for interesting offers after Reflections, Forster retreated to Rochester with his wife and worked as a substitute teacher and manual laborer.Enticed back into movies with a role opposite Gregory Peck in Robert Mulligan's Western The Stalking Moon (1968), Forster impressed cinephiles with his third film, Haskell Wexler's seminal counterculture work Medium Cool (1969). As a TV cameraman forced to confront the implications of the tumultuous events he so coolly records, Forster and his co-star, Verna Bloom, were thrust into the real-life turmoil surrounding the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, while Forster's nuanced performance illuminated his narcissist's metamorphosis. Despite its timely subject, however, Medium Cool made little impression at the box office. Though he continued to work in such varied films as George Cukor's widescreen spectacle Justine (1969) and the location-shot Indian reservation drama Journey Through Rosebud (1972), Forster attempted to move to potentially greener TV pastures as the eponymous '30s detective in the series Banyon (1972). Banyon, however, lasted only one season, as did Forster's subsequent TV stint as a Native American lawman in the series Nakia (1974).Forster's slide into B-movie oblivion was hardly stanched by his forays into TV. Though he managed to acquit himself well onscreen in different kinds of parts, Forster professed no illusions about the quality of such movies as The Don Is Dead (1973), Stunts (1977), Disney's sci-fi The Black Hole (1979), and the Rock Hudson disaster flick Avalanche (1978). The smartly comic, John Sayles-scripted creature feature Alligator (1980) failed to thrive beyond its schlock status; Vigilante (1983), starring Forster as a, well, vigilante, was described by one critic as "truly distasteful." Trying his hand behind the camera, Forster produced, wrote, directed, and starred in, alongside his daughter, Katherine Forster, the detective spoof Hollywood Harry (1986), but he got more mileage that same year out of his performance as an Arab terrorist embarking on jihad in Delta Force (1986). Playing a host of bad guys as well as the occasional not-so-bad-guy, Forster put his four children through college from the late '80s into the early '90s with such video fodder as The Banker (1989) and Peacemaker (1990), as well as the TV series Once a Hero (1987) and the well-received indie 29th Street (1991).His career languishing by the mid-'90s, Forster taught acting classes between occasional roles and maintained an optimistic hope that, "some kid who liked me when he was young was going to turn into a filmmaker and hire me." Two casting near-misses for Reservoir Dogs (1992) and True Romance (1993) later (Lawrence Tierney and Christopher Walken respectively got the parts), the by then agent-less Forster finally got his wish when Banyon and B-movie fan Quentin Tarantino cast him in Jackie Brown (1997). Beating out bigger names for the part, Forster proceeded to steal the film from flamboyant co-stars Robert De Niro and Samuel L. Jackson with his subtle performance as weathered, rueful bail bondsman Max Cherry. Though stellar co-star Pam Grier got more attention as Tarantino's latest career rescue, Forster garnered Jackie Brown's sole Oscar nomination. After his Jackie Brown triumph, Forster's image of low-key, regular guy authority kept him steadily employed. Along with playing the de facto voice of sanity in the TV remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1998) and Gus Van Sant's retread of Psycho (1998), Forster faced down space (and production) chaos in Walter Hill's ill-fated Supernova (2000) and played the straight man as Jim Carrey's commanding officer in Me, Myself & Irene (2000). Though his brief appearance suggests David Lynch had more in mind for Forster's role in the aborted TV series, Forster's performance as a deadpan police detective still made it into the critically acclaimed film version of Mulholland Drive (2001).He continued to work in a variety of projects including the kids basketball movie Like Mike and the quirky biopic Grand Theft Parsons. He moved to the small screen to play the father of Karen Sisco in the short-lived TV series of the same name. He also appeared occasionally in the cable series Huff, and had a recurring role in the NBC series Heroes. He had his highest profile success in yeas in 2011 when he played the father of George Clooney's comatose wife in Alexander Payne's Oscar-winning The Descendants.

Trivia: Owen Davis, Jr., was perhaps best known, thanks to his name, as the son of one of America's most successful -- if not respected -- playwrights of the early twentieth century. But he also enjoyed an acting career in his own right of some three decades and had embarked on a second career as a producer in the new field of television shortly before his death in a boating accident in 1949. Davis was born in New York City, the son of Owen Davis, Sr., a vastly prolific author of plays. He attended Choate and Yale University, where he majored in drama and was also captain of the boxing team for a time. He studied under George Pierce Baker and later attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In his early twenties, he toured with Walter Huston in one production, and later made his Broadway debut in Carry On, a play written by Owen Davis, Sr. Davis' first credited screen role was in They Had to See Paris (1929), directed by Frank Borzage and starring Will Rogers; portraying Rogers' college-age son, he essayed the first of the male ingenue parts that would characterize most of his roles over the next decade of his career. One major exception was his next film, Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), a serious and intense drama, which seems to have shown Davis his limitations as a film actor. Following his work in that movie, he walked away from film work for more than five years, vowing to deepen and broaden his range and experience, which he initially did by joining a company led by actor Richard Bennett, and then an experimental theater company in Maine, where he worked in over 100 roles. By 1936, he was back in Hollywood and this time seemed a candidate for potential stardom, again playing young male leads, with a contract from RKO. He was an attractive type on-screen, specializing in the sort of poor-but-honest go-getter heroes who populate B-dramas, mostly comedies, and the occasional satire, and would that he had been lucky enough to get any of the latter, he might even have found a future in such roles.But the studio's interest waned after a pair of B pictures, the romantic comedy Bunker Bean and the mystery/comedy Grand Jury (both 1936), and by the following year Davis was working at Republic Pictures and Monogram, both part of Hollywood's "second division." He kept busy with supporting roles in some of his father's plays (including the Broaday production of Jezebel), as well as doing B-pictures for MGM and Republic, and ended his screen career with a supporting role in Warner Bros.' Knute Rockne, All American (1940). On-stage, meanwhile, his career peaked a little later with his starring role -- opposite Anita Louise -- in Mr. and Mrs. North, an adaptation of Richard Lockridge's detective stories authored by Davis, Sr.; by the time that play was adapted to the screen (with William Post, Jr. as the male lead), the younger Davis was serving in the armed forces, in military intelligence, following America's entry into the Second World War. After the end of the war, he returned to civilian life and embarked on a new career as a producer at NBC on anthology series such as Chevrolet on Broadway and NBC Repertory Theater. One weekend in late May 1949, Davis and an advertising executive friend decided to go out on Long Island Sound. While the friend was asleep below, Davis remained up on deck as the sloop apparently hit a snag near Hart's Island; when the friend came back on deck, Davis was nowhere to be found. He went ashore to report the disappearance, and while he was at the police station giving a description, an officer in the field called in the description of a drowning victim found by two fishermen that morning. Davis was 41 years old and unmarried at the time of his death.

Trivia: Began her career in Australian theatre. In 1976, made her television debut in Australian soap opera Bellbird. Moved to the United Kingdom in the early 1980s, making her British television debut in a 1984 episode of Minder. In 1991, was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress, for her performance as Marianne in Scenes from a Marriage. Appeared as Gertrude in a 2008 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet, and its 2009 television adaptation. Is an associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Trivia: Sited by Pierce Brosnan himself as a shining candidate to portray the first black James Bond, British actor Colin Salmon has made a name for himself across the pond with appearances in such Bond flicks as Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World is Not Enough (1999), and Die Another Day (2002); however, the handsome and silky-voiced actor admits to feeling a little too close to his punkish roots to take on such a worldly character this early in his career. Born in London, England, in 1965, Salmon found early fame as authoritative Sgt. Robert Oswald in the acclaimed television miniseries Prime Suspect 2 (1992). Even opposite such formidable talent as Helen Mirren, Salmon commanded the screen with his bold posturing and dense screen presence. Though the following decade brought frequent television work for Salmon in the U.K., it was through his turn as M's right-hand man in Tomorrow Never Dies that international audiences got a true sampling of his talent. As Salmon's overseas exposure began to gain the actor a wider fan base, his ability to alternate between relatively low-key British television and flashy Hollywood blockbusters proved a testament to Salmon's remarkable abilities as an actor. A role in British director Paul Anderson's Resident Evil (2002) proved a physically grueling start to a busy year, and with subsequent work in that same year's Dinotopia and Die Another Day, Salmon's career as a recognized actor truly began to flourish. In addition to his film work, Colin Salmon often lends his richly reverberating vocal chords to voice-over work, and he can frequently be found on the London stage.