Trivia: From bringing the characters of Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest), Jane Austen (Mansfield Park), and Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary) to life on the big screen to escaping into the outback with a wanted man (Kiss or Kill), nurturing an android (A.I.), and even inspiring a man to sell his soul to the Devil (Bedazzled), there's little that Golden Globe-nominated actress Frances O'Connor hasn't accomplished -- both literary and otherwise -- since emerging onscreen in the mid-'90s.As a young girl, O'Connor always knew that she wanted to become an actor, and after making her screen debut on the Australian television series Law of the Land, she was well on her way to achieving her dream. Later, after making a name for herself on Australian television, O'Connor achieved her breakthrough role -- as a desperate fugitive in the stylish 1997 crime thriller Kiss or Kill. Not only did that film earn O'Connor the first of two Best Actress nominations at the 1997 Australian Film Institute awards (the other being for her performance in the romantic comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie), but it also brought her the international attention that eventually led to roles in such lavish period pieces as Mansfield Park and Madame Bovary (the later of which earned O'Connor a Golden Globe nomination). In 2000, O'Connor crossed the Atlantic to appear as the waitress who prompts a hapless line cook to sell his soul to the Devil in Harold Ramis' Bedazzled, and the following year she remained stateside to film Steven Spielberg's A.I. -- in which she played a grieving mother who turns to technology after her son is stricken with an incurable disease.By this point in O'Connor's career, audiences across the globe were beginning to catch on to the rising star's talent. She returned to the classics with The Importance of Being Earnest, followed by a pair of misfires (Windtalkers and Timeline); nonetheless, prominent roles in Piccadilly Jim, Iron Jawed Angels, Book of Love, and The Lazarus Child followed in short order. In 2007, O'Connor could be seen opposite Lucy Liu in the sexy ABC comedy Cashmere Mafia, which was executive produced by Sex and the City writer/executive producer/director Darren Star. That show ended quickly, but O'Connor went on to appear in Blessed, Darwin's Darkest Hour, and The Hunter.

Trivia: Fans of Steven Spielberg's acclaimed Schindler's List (1993) will recognize actress Embeth Davidtz for playing the abused Jewish maid Helen Hirsch, while those who love Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series may remember her for playing the two-faced Sheila in the third Evil Dead installment, Army of Darkness (1992). Still others will recognize the actress for her strong work in such period dramas as Feast of July (1995) and Mansfield Park (1998).Born in Indiana but raised in South Africa, Davidtz is fluent in English and Afrikaans, having studied classical and contemporary drama in both languages. A graduate of Rhodes University, she made an auspicious theatrical debut with the country's National Theater Company, as Juliet in a production of Shakespeare's classic romantic tragedy, and she subsequently garnered considerable accolades for her theatrical work. Davidtz entered films playing the daughter of an interracial couple in the South African television movie A Private Life (1988) and went on to win the country's equivalent of an Oscar in the Afrikaaner psychological drama Night of the Nineteenth. As her early work might indicate, Davidtz has shown a preference for appearing in political dramas from her first days in film.A resident of the U.S. since 1991, Davidtz has appeared in numerous television movies and miniseries, including the 1992 crime thriller Deadly Matrimony. In 1995, she won more critical praise for her work as a young woman who causes a family crisis after being impregnated and deserted by her callous lover in an acclaimed adaptation of H.E. Bates' novel The Feast of July. As a change of pace, she played a kindhearted teacher in Danny DeVito's darkly comic adaptation of Roald Dahl's novel Mathilda (1996) and then it was back to straight political drama with Garden of Redemption (1997). In 1998, Davidtz co-starred with Kenneth Branagh, in Robert Altman's adaptation of John Grisham's novel The Gingerbread Man, as a low-rent caterer with more than her share of dirty secrets. That same year, she continued in a similarly sly vein as the conniving Mary Crawford in Patricia Rozema's controversial adaptation of Mansfield Park, injecting the proceedings with a savory dollop of manipulative eroticism.Over the coming years, Davidz would remain as active on screen as ever, appearing in films like Mansfield Park and Fracture, and on shows like Citizen Baines, In Treatment, Californication, and Mad Men.

Trivia: The grandson of Bernard Lee (better known to the world as M in the James Bond movies), Jonny Lee Miller ironically became famous for his portrayal of the Sean Connery-obsessed Sick Boy in the 1996 film Trainspotting. Contrary to popular belief, the actor is English, not Scottish, and was born outside of London on November 15, 1972. Interested in the theater from an early age, Lee Miller participated in a number of school productions and made his television debut at the age of 11, in the miniseries Mansfield Park. Following appearances in a number of other productions, including 1993's Prime Suspect 3, Lee Miller made his film debut in Iain Softley's Hackers in 1995. His turn as a cyberpunk gave the actor both a wider audience and an introduction to co-star Angelina Jolie, whom he would marry in 1995 (they divorced in 1999). Lee Miller's big break came with his casting as Sick Boy, in director Danny Boyle's film adaptation of the Irvine Welsh novel Trainspotting. The film became an international hit, boosting the careers of Lee Miller and his co-stars, Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle. Lee Miller chose to remain on Scottish soil for his next project, Gillies MacKinnon's Regeneration (1997). Subsequently, Lee Miller headlined an all-star cast in the relationship drama Afterglow, in which he co-starred with Nick Nolte, Lara Flynn Boyle, and the formidable Julie Christie. In 1999, the actor reunited with Trainspotting co-star Robert Carlyle to star in Plunkett & Maclean, which also featured Liv Tyler. Though subsequent roles in lowbrow fare like Dracula 2000, Mindhunters, and Aeon Flux hinted that the talented actor's career was circling the drain, Lee Miller's memorable performances in the shortlived ABC series Eli Stone (in which he played the title character) and Dexter (as a malevolent motivational speaker) helped both to keep in in the public eye, and offer further proof of his versitilty. In 2011 Lee Miller shared an Oliver Award with actor Benedict Cumberbatch for their performances in Boyle's stage production of Frankenstein (the two actors alternated between playing Dr. Frankenstein and the Creature), and the following year he kept up the gothic vibe with his turn as the shady Roger Collins in Tim Burton's feature adaptation of the spooky soap opera Dark Shadows.

Trivia: Often mistaken for British, Alessandro Nivola has established himself as one of the American actors most likely to assume a flawless English accent in his films. Nivola, whose combination of charismatic good looks, vowel-laden name, and work in a number of British films have both confused and delighted critics and viewers, is actually a product of the East Coast. The son of an Italian-born academic father and a Boston blue-blood mother, Nivola was born and raised in Boston. Taking an early interest in acting, he grew up attending drama camp in the summer and got an internship at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in Waterford, Connecticut, where he began acting on the stage. His love of acting continued while he was a student at the Tony Philips Exeter Academy and Yale University; by the time he was a sophomore at Yale, he had landed an agent and was making regular trips to New York City for auditions.Nivola got his first professional jobs with the Yale Repertory Theatre and a Seattle-based company. He broke into films in 1997 with a small role in Inventing the Abbotts and the more substantial part of Nicolas Cage's psychotic genius brother in John Woo's Face/Off. He then crossed the ocean, and the accent barrier, to star in the British noir drama I Want You (1998), which cast him as an enigmatic man with a dark past, and in Patricia Rozema's saucy adaptation of Mansfield Park (1998). It was the latter film that gave Nivola his first significant dose of recognition and respect, with critics and viewers alike marveling at his portrayal of the dashing and morally dubious Henry Crawford, not to mention his seamless English accent. Nivola again worked with a largely British cast and crew the following year to make Kenneth Branagh's musical version of Love's Labour's Lost (2000), in which he played a king whose vow to forsake love for intellectual enlightenment becomes severely jeopardized by the arrival of a comely French princess (Alicia Silverstone) and her ladies in waiting. That same year, he returned to the other side of the Atlantic to portray a Backstreet Boys-type singer in Mike Figgis' Time Code 2000, an experimental feature filmed entirely in one take. In the years to come, Nivola would remain a consistent presence on screen, appearing in movies like Junebug, Grace is Gone, and The Eye, as well as on the TV series The Company.

Trivia: It is difficult to determine what was in the psychological makeup of Briton Harold Pinter that resulted in a playwriting style distinguished by tension-filled pregnant pauses. Possibly this minimal use of wordage stemmed from Pinter's own communication problems with his Portuguese-born Jewish father. In the 1950s, Pinter attended RADA and hoped to be an actor under the Anglo-Saxon professional name David Baron. Instead he turned to writing, penning his first play, The Room, for the Bristol University drama department. After a lukewarm response to his first professionally produced play, The Birthday Party (1958), Pinter rose to fame with the 1960 stage production The Caretaker. With 1963's The Servant, Pinter made his bow as a screenwriter, and also essayed his first film role (he has since acted in other films, such as 1985's Turtle Diary, but hasn't declared any intention of making this his life's work). While many of his films (The Caretaker, The Birthday Party, the Oscar-nominated Betrayal) are adapted from his own plays, just as many have been screen originals. Pinter's film scripts aren't quite as enigmatic or confusing as his plays, in fact many have been models of clarity and succinctness, notably his Oscar-nominated adaptation of John Fowles' complex The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981). For a man who wasn't overly fond of excess verbiage, Pinter had considerable success on BBC radio, but here again it's what is not said in Pinter's plays that's most important. In 1974, Harold Pinter ventured into film directing with Butley, an over-the-top comedy by Peter Gray that's as far removed from the usual Pinter style as a Marx Brothers film.

Trivia: All that glitters is not Hollywood gold, Scottish actress Lindsay Duncan believes. Although she could easily command million-dollar paychecks for performing in big-budget American films, she prefers acting in new or vintage stage plays and in screen adaptations of classic novels. So she does Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Henry Fielding, and Oscar Wilde. But her loyalty to literary giants such as these is not without its rewards: She won the 2002 Olivier Award as best actress for her performance in Noël Coward's Private Lives, a 1988 London Evening Standard Award as best actress for her performance in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and a 1987 Tony nomination as leading actress for her performance in Pierre Cholderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses. However, she is not averse to accepting an occasional fun role in a major Hollywood film. For example, she was the voice of protocol droid TC-14 in Star Wars, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. For her ability to bring to life characters of every description, whether futuristic robots or here-and-now reprobates, critics agree that she is one of Britain's most talented actresses. Duncan was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 7, 1950. After studying at London's Central School of Drama, she labored in mostly unheralded theater roles before graduating to television productions in the 1980s. These productions included On Approval (1982), Reilly: The Ace of Spies (1983), Dead Head (1985), and Traffik (1989). In the 1990s, well seasoned and ready for limelight drama, Duncan picked herself a bouquet of choice roles that put her on prestigious London stages, in movie theaters from Liverpool to Los Angeles, and in the living rooms of television viewers throughout the English-speaking world. One well-known production that exhibits her talents is the 1999 TV miniseries Oliver Twist, in which she portrays Elizabeth Leeford, a woman so evil that the devil himself would fear her. Duncan also appears in the 1999 film adaptation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park in dual roles as the heroine's mother and drug-addicted aunt, in the 1997 TV miniseries A History of Tom Jones: A Foundling as Lady Ballaston, in the 1996 film adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as Hippolyta and Titania, and in the 1993 TV miniseries A Year in Provence as the wife of author Peter Mayle. Her real-life husband, Hilton McRae, is also an actor. They have one son, born in 1990.

Trivia: While only in her mid-twenties, British actress Victoria Hamilton won laudatory reviews from every important London newspaper for roles in the plays of William Shakespeare and Henrik Ibsen and in film adaptations of the novels of Jane Austen. "I have rarely seen an actress more movingly convey the ravages of time and experience," a Daily Telegraph critic wrote in May 1997 of her performance as Nina in Ibsen's The Seagull. "Victoria Hamilton's Cressida...is a remarkable creation," a Guardian critic opined in July 1996 after seeing Hamilton play Cressida in Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida. In October 1995, a Daily Mail critic wrote of her stage presence in Ibsen's The Master Builder: "There are moments when a new young artist arrives on a stage and instantly the performance ignites the entire production." For her Master Builder performance as Hilde Wangel, she earned a nomination for a 1995 Ian Charleson Award for Best Classical Actor (under the age of 30). In 1996, she won the London Critics' Circle Award for Best Newcomer and, in 2000, the London Critics' Circle Award as Best Actress for her role as Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It. These achievements helped win her the lead role as Queen Victoria (1819-1901) in a major TV miniseries, Victoria and Albert. After the production debuted in 2001, she received the commendation of critics worldwide as an actress of rare talent. While preparing for the role, she made a spooky discovery: Her height (5'4"), head, wrist, and ankle size were exactly the same as the queen's. While growing up in Guildford, Surrey, Hamilton attended Priors Field, a private school where her curriculum included drama. One week before she was to enroll at Bristol University to work toward an English degree, she told her father (a Guildford advertising executive) and mother (a teacher) that she had decided to study acting instead. But after she performed auditions for the most important drama schools, they rejected her one after another, saying her acting was poor. One year after these rejections, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art finally accepted her and trained her in the classical tradition. After another year passed, she was performing on the London stage in Sir Peter Hall's production of The Master Builder. Though self-effacing and sweetly pretty, Hamilton can breathe fire and exude sensuality when performing -- but only if she is serving art and the scenes are tasteful. Because she is devoted to classic literature, she has rejected roles in high-profile, Hollywood-style movies in favor of parts in film and television productions such as Mansfield Park (1999), King Lear (1997), The Merchant of Venice (1996), Pride and Prejudice (1995), and Persuasion (1995). However, she has not ruled out performances in big-budget motion pictures for sometime in the future.

Trivia: Long before she recited her first line as an actress, Justine Waddell was playing roles -- real-life roles. First, she was a South African child, then a Scottish adolescent, and finally an English teenager after her family planted itself in London. There, Waddell took root and blossomed as one of Britain's finest young actresses. But she wasn't finished with multiculturalism. During and after her education at Cambridge University, she played characters in adaptations of English, Norwegian, French, and Russian authors. Then, in Dracula 2000, based on Irish-born author Bram Stoker's Dracula, she played an Englishman's daughter living in America who is pursued by a Transylvania vampire. Obviously, the world has been very much with Waddell, as Wordsworth might observe, and it is no wonder that she studied political science and sociology at Cambridge's Emmanuel College. There are, however, at least two constants in Waddell's life: one, striking beauty; two, extraordinary acting talent. The latter quality is, of course, the more important. But it doesn't hurt for an actress to have a stunning face and a symmetrical body when she is trying out to play Tess in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles or Estella in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Waddell played both roles, to the delight of audiences and critics, in TV miniseries.Waddell was born in Johannesburg in 1976. Her Scottish-born father, Gordon Waddell, was a member of Parliament and an employee of De Beers, the world's largest producer and distributor of diamonds. Her South African-born mother, Cathy Gallagher Waddell, was a fashion designer who also operated a small shop in Soweto, a ghetto southwest of Johannesburg that rebelled often against unfair laws. To escape the dangerous social climate in South Africa, the Waddells moved to Kelso, Scotland, near the tranquil River Tweed, in the mid-'80s. About four years later, they moved to London, where Justine Waddell attended a school on Baker Street and eventually enrolled in Cambridge. Though not a school of drama as such, it did offer courses that introduced her to acting. While still a student there, she played Joan of Arc in the Edinburgh Festival's production of Jean Anouilh's drama The Lark. Then came roles in period costume dramas requiring her to squeeze into corsets and plumb the keen insights she gleaned as a cultural hybrid. Among the roles that challenged her were Sasha (opposite Ralph Fiennes) in Chekhov's Ivanov, performed in London and Moscow, and Nina in Ibsen's The Seagull, performed in Stratford-upon-Avon. She also played Laura in Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, Countess Nordston in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Tess in Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Julia in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Estella in Dickens' Great Expectations, and Molly in Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters.

Trivia: A classically trained British actor who nearly became the successor to the James Bond franchise, handsome and talented James Purefoy made himself known to stateside audiences with roles in such high-profile releases as A Knight's Tale (2001) and Resident Evil (2002). Born James Brian Mark Purefoy (his surname meaning "good faith" in Norman French) in Taunton, Somerset, England, in 1964, Purefoy received his early education at the all-boys Sherbourne School (alma mater to such actors as Jeremy Irons) before later refining his acting abilities at the London School of Drama. After receiving his Actor's Equity Card following a stage performance of Equus, Purefoy joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and essayed stage roles in performances of such classics as King Lear and The Tempest. It wasn't long before Purefoy began to hunger for something more, and after making his small-screen debut in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (1990), a career in television and films soon followed. Alternating between the small (Sharpe's Sword [1995], The Tide of Life [1996]) and silver (Jilting Joe [1997], Mansfield Park [1999]) screens for the majority of the 1990s, Purefoy began to gain more prominent roles in such romantic comedies as Bedrooms and Hallways (1998) and Maybe Baby (2000) around the time of the millennial turnover. The inevitable Hollywood becoming too much to resist, the talented actor began to turn up in such big-budgeted fare as A Knight's Tale and Resident Evil soon thereafter.

Trivia: Wrote plays as a child that he performed with friends. Archbishop Rowan Williams was one of his teachers when he attended the University of Cambridge. Worked with the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company after college. First met his wife, Lulu, when they were in their teens. They drifted apart, but became reacquainted during their 30s. Made his professional acting debut in 1986 as an understudy to Ralph Fiennes in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Supports Merlin, a medical charity, and Scene & Heard, a mentoring program that pairs inner-city children from Somers Town, London, with theatre professionals.

Trivia: Theatre, television and film actor. Played Richard Hannay in the 2006 West End production of The 39 Steps; he later transferred with the show to Broadway. Nominated for Best Actor at the Evening Standard Awards in 2011 for his role in Much Ado About Nothing at the National Theatre, directed by Peter Hall. Nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Whatsonstage Awards in 2012 for his role as Oberon in Twelfth Night, opposite Judi Dench as Titania. In March 2017, starred as Henry Higgins in Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady in the Brisbane and Melbourne seasons, presented by Opera Australia and directed by Dame Julie Andrews. Took on the lead role of fictional King Henry lX in the TV series Henry lX for SKY channel Gold, which aired first in 2017.

Trivia: A conservative, bourgeois vicar's daughter who reportedly made a concerted effort to avoid errant behavior as a young woman, the refined and genteel British actress Sophia Myles paradoxically found herself typecast, throughout her early years, in rebellious and "edgy" roles. Myles specialized in tackling parts in adaptations of the classics, and was particularly memorable, for example, as Agnes Fleming in Oliver Twist (1999), Kate in Nicholas Nickleby (2000), and Isolde in Tristan & Isolde (2005). With Myles' transition to Hollywood material, she branched out into more conventional buttered-popcorn fare, such as the effects-heavy sci-fi opuses Underworld: Evolution (2006) and Outlander (2008), and similarly essayed one of the main roles on the fantasy television series Moonlight (2007), playing a beautiful investigative reporter whose life is saved by the program's vampiric lead character. In the years to come, Myles would continue to find success on the small screen, particularly with the British series MI-5.

Trivia: When she initially bowed as a miniseries star in her native Britain, just after the dawn of the new millennium, striking raven-haired actress Amelia Warner suddenly appeared everywhere in the U.K. -- from fashion spreads to magazine covers and talk programs -- and prompted many a journalist to tag her, perceptively, as "poised for stardom." Then only 19, Warner indeed turned numerous heads with her skillful portrayal of the title character in the 2001 telefilm adaptation of R.D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone -- a huge BBC television event that Christmas. In subsequent years, Warner often revealed a preference for low-key, subtly played, intelligent psychological dramas and quiet character studies, including the underpraised Winter Passing (2004), Love's Brother (2004), and Alpha Male (2005). For better or worse, Warner's crossover to more internationally oriented work embodied a commercialization; her first two major Hollywood assignments were supporting roles in the superhero fantasy Aeon Flux (2005) and the elephantine fantasy adventure The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (2007).

Trivia: Born in 1988, British screen performer Anna Popplewell debuted as a child actress in the late '90s, predominantly honing in on efforts produced in her native Britain, such as the telemovie Frenchman's Creek (1998) and the miniseries Dirty Tricks (2000). Popplewell attained more widespread global recognition when cast in Patricia Rozema's critically acclaimed, big-screen version of Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park in 1999, and several years later, when she landed a small role in Peter Webber's romantically tinged historical drama Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), alongside Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth. Fantasy lovers may best remember Popplewell, however, for her portrayals of Susan Pevensie in Walden Media's Chronicles of Narnia series, adapted from the best-selling C.S. Lewis novels.