Trivia: Thomas Dekker first appeared as a child actor in the mid-'90s, with a couple of television guest appearances, and then a small role in Star Trek Generations, playing Thomas Picard, the son of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in an alternate timeline. At the age of seven, he toke on a more elaborate part, playing one of the homicidal, otherworldly tykes in John Carpenter's sci-fi horror remake Village of the Damned (1995). After a couple of appearances that same year as Henry on Star Trek: Voyager, and assignments voicing anthropomorphic mouse Fievel in two direct-to-video American Tail sequels, Dekker played Nick, one of the Szalinski kids, on the TV series version of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which ran for three seasons. He also portrayed the young pop star Donny Osmond in the 2001 telemovie Inside the Osmonds. In the ensuing years, Dekker continued to primarily work in television, in guest roles on such popular series as Boston Public and House. He also took on a recurring part in 2005 as Vincent on the long-running family drama 7th Heaven, but he didn't truly break through to major success until he was cast on the soon-to-be major hit show Heroes in 2006. Though Dekker only played the unlikely friend of indestructable cheerleader Claire Bennet, the exposure helped earn him one of his biggest roles yet, that of young hero-to-be John Connor on the heavily promoted sci-fi film-to-TV adaptation Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (premiering in 2008).Over the following years, Dekker would continue to act in movies like My Sister's Keeper and on shows like The Secret Circle.

Trivia: Naples, FL, native Haley Bennett entered show business in the mid- to late 2000s, juggling ambitions as a singer, songwriter, actress, and poet. The multihyphenate (who reportedly began authoring poetry and songs at the age of 14) moved with her mother to Southern California immediately after high school graduation to accommodate her dreams of becoming a Hollywood star and promptly landed both representation and a key role as a pop diva in the Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore romantic comedy Music and Lyrics. The part, of course, suited Bennett perfectly, as it enabled her to demonstrate her abilities in multiple spheres; as a follow-up, the ingénue switched genres altogether to star in the title role of the psychological thriller The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008); in that film, she played a high school student whose torturous past suddenly and shockingly catches up with her. The same year, Bennett starred in the teen-oriented sex farce College as co-ed Kendall. Meanwhile, at about the same time, Bennett began work on her first pop album.

Trivia: Played quarterback for his high-school football team. Turned down a scholarship to play football at Ohio State in order to pursue an acting career. Began his career as a model, appearing in national campaigns for Calvin Klein and Diesel jeans.

Trivia: The daughter of director Julien Temple (The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle) and producer Amanda Temple, English actress Juno Temple distinguished herself onscreen via a unique presence in such acclaimed dramas as Notes on a Scandal (2006), as the backward and slightly brooding daughter of schoolteacher Cate Blanchett, and Atonement (2007), as a sexually curious young woman. She continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including The Other Boleyn Girl, Year One, Greenberg, The Three Musketeers, and Killer Joe.

Trivia: Perhaps best known for his work as a black-clad muse for Gregg Araki, James Duval has built a career on playing alienated, melancholic lost boys. Part of his ability to capture such alienation comes from the actor's own real-life experiences: of French, Vietnamese, Native American and Irish descent, he was constantly picked on by schoolmates while growing up. A native of Detroit, Michigan, where he was born on September 10, 1973, Duval made his way to Hollywood, where, eighteen and down on his luck after a band to pursue an acting career, he had his fateful encounter with Araki. The two met in a café that Duval frequented; Araki approached him, asked if he was an actor, and proceeded to cast him in Totally F***ed Up, the first installment of his so-called "teen-angst trilogy." The 1993 film, which focused on a group of alienated gay teens in Los Angele, was a cult hit, giving its director cult status and Duval more employment opportunities. After a turn as a biker in Mod Fuck Explosion, Jon Moritsugu's 1994 tale of urban teen dysfunction, Duval again collaborated with Araki, this time on The Doom Generation (1995). Cast as Jordan White, a lamb-for-the-slaughter role Araki had written specifically for him, the actor again got to demonstrate his capacity for disillusioned brooding and his readiness to take on less than salubrious subjects. The second installment of Araki's "teen-apocalypse" trilogy, The Doom Generation was also the most controversial, mainly due to its liberal inclusion of graphic violence--the most shocking of which centered on Duval's character. No such controversy surrounded Araki and Duval's subsequent collaboration, 1997's Nowhere. The last of the trilogy, it starred Duval as yet another bored, alienated Los Angeles teen and covered Araki's familiar stomping grounds of sexual experimentation, urban disillusionment, and the search for true love amid L.A.'s cultural wasteland. It met with a degree of success on the independent circuit, further establishing Duval as one of Araki's most visible mouthpieces. Aside from his work with Araki, Duval has also appeared in a number of independent films, including SLC Punk and Doug Liman's Go (both 1999). He has also made the occasional foray into mainstream film, appearing in the 1996 summer blockbuster Independence Day.

Trivia: Contemporary American actress Kelly Lynch has been playing leads in Hollywood films since the late 1980s, but has yet to make it big. The daughter of show people, she has been acting since age four. Lynch studied dance and then spent two summers training to be a director at the Guthrie Theater. As a young woman she moved to New York to study drama with Sanford Meisner and Marilyn Fried. After briefly encountering the head of the Elite modeling agency in an elevator one day, Lynch was signed up for a $250,000 per year modeling contract. During the three years she modeled, Lynch made occasional TV appearances. She made her feature-film debut playing a bit part in Bright Lights, Big City (1988) but did not play her first leading role until the following year in Road House. Lynch first gained widespread acclaim for her portrayal of a suburban drug addict in Van Sant's Drug Store Cowboy (1989); it was a role she could relate to, as she had broken both legs in an auto accident when she was 20 and had come dangerously close to being addicted to painkillers. Though major stardom has as yet eluded Lynch, she has recently proven herself to be a competent and versatile actress, capable of playing in everything from light romantic comedies to high drama.

Trivia: Author and filmmaker Catherine Breillat has gained a reputation as one of the most controversial women in contemporary arts and letters for her work, which often focuses on the erotic and emotional lives of young women, as told from the woman's perspective. Born in Bressuire, France, in 1948, Breillat developed a reputation for challenging public mores early on; at the age of 17, she published her first novel, L'homme Facile, which became a cause célèbre for its blunt language and open depiction of sexual subject matter. The controversy generated by L'homme Facile gave Breillat enough recognition that she was able to pursue a career as a writer, and between 1968 and 1975, she published three novels and a stage drama, as well as making her acting debut with a small role in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. In 1975, Breillat moved behind the camera by writing, designing, and directing Une Vraie Jeune Fille, which was adapted from one of Breillat's novels. An unexploitive but unusually explicit depiction of the sexual obsessions of an adolescent girl, Une Vraie Jeune Fille generated a certain amount of controversy, which would doubtless have been greater had it found wide release at the time -- financial problems on the part of the film's producers prevented it from receiving a proper launch at the time. After writing two more films (one of them, significantly, was Bilitis, a drama about the sexual awakening of teenage girls directed by erotic photographer David Hamilton) and taking on another acting role in the horror spoof Dracula Père et Fils, Breillat directed her second feature, 1979's Tapage Nocturne, which was also based on one of her novels. The story concerned the obsessive sexual desires of one young woman, and her unblinking depiction of the theme resulted in the film receiving a rating that prevented anyone under 18 from seeing the film, generally the kiss of death at the French box office. After directing two films that had garnered plenty of (often hostile) press but very little money, Breillat's career as a director was put on hold. Breillat continued to write screenplays (including Police and Federico Fellini's E La Nave Va), but it wasn't until 1988 that she was in charge of another feature, 36 Fillette. Depicting the burgeoning sexuality of a 14-year-old girl, and a middle-aged man intent on seducing her, 36 Fillette generated the expected storms of controversy, but it also fared well enough at the box office that Breillat was able to make another film only two years later, Sale Comme un Ange. Breillat's real international breakthrough, though, came in 1999; Romance, concerning a schoolteacher whose relationship with her boyfriend has gone sour, leading her into a variety of sexual liaisons with other men, was one of the first films to play mainstream cinemas in Europe and the United States that clearly depicted explicit intercourse and fellatio, and as a result generated no small amount of press attention. Romance also spawned a number of positive reviews and think pieces in major newspapers and magazines, and finally confirmed Breillat's status as a major filmmaker outside her native France. (The success of Romance also resulted in Une Vraie Jeune Fille finally receiving a belated theatrical and home video release in Europe and the United States.) Breillat once again revisited her favorite themes with her usual degree of intelligence but bold honesty with 2001's A Ma Soeur, which concerns two sisters -- one overweight, one attractive -- who are each coming to unhappy terms with their budding sexuality. She continued with other provocative features including 2003's Anatomy of Hell, 2007's The Last Mistress, Bluebeard from 2008, and Sleeping Beauty in 2010.