Trivia: Possessing the sort of stylish, model-esque good looks that wouldn't be out of place in the glossy pages of Vogue, actress Rachel McAdams got her start on Canadian television before graduating to Hollywood features. Though McAdams' early screen roles found her specializing in the bitchy teen princess to maximum effect, closer inspection reveals a skilled dramatic actress who no doubt has the talent to move beyond the high-school trappings of such comedies as The Hot Chick and Mean Girls.Born to a truck driver and a nurse in London, Ontario, Canada, McAdams warmed to the spotlight early on by taking up competitive skating at just four years old. Though she would remain on the ice well into her teens, the toll of constant competition eventually frazzled her nerves, and she soon began gravitating toward the stage. Beginning in summer theater camp at the age of 13, the burgeoning actress' smooth handling of Shakespeare eventually led her to enroll in theater studies at York University. In the years that followed, McAdams' comfort on the stage translated exceptionally well to the screen, and a role as a bulimic teen in the popular Disney series The Famous Jett Jackson found the rising starlet making an impressive small-screen debut. Supporting roles in such television series as Shotgun Love Dolls and made-for-TV features such as Guilt by Association were quick to follow. After climbing the credits to make her feature debut in My Name is Tanino, McAdams was nominated for a Genie award (the Canadian equivalent of an Oscar) for her performance in 2002's Perfect Pie. The film, which cast her as a small-town girl whose best friend makes the big time by becoming a celebrated opera singer, provided McAdams with her breakout role, and she soon set her sights on Hollywood. Her bags packed for the trip west and stars shining in her eyes, the talented McAdams soon caught the eyes of studio heavies and was cast as a popular but excruciatingly cruel high-school teen who learns a hard lesson in The Hot Chick. McAdams made a move to weekly television in 2003 with a supporting role in Slings and Arrows before once again returning to torment the unpopular crowd in 2004's Mean Girls. A big-screen adaptation of Rosalind Wiseman's popular book Queen Bees and Wannabes, the film was also notable as the screenwriting debut of Saturday Night Live writer/cast member Tina Fey. Moving away from the cruel halls of high school, McAdams next appeared opposite Ryan Gosling in The Notebook, the feature adaptation of author Nicholas Sparks' top-selling novel. A romantic drama concerning a young couple separated by war, The Notebook found McAdams in a notably more sympathetic role.In 2005, she pulled off an impressive triple-feat with roles in three very different movies. First, she played the female lead in Wedding Crashers, a surprise, raunchy comedic hit. Her next film was in the thriller Red Eye, where she squared off against Cillian Murphy. Her third film of the year was the family dramedy The Family Stone, with McAdams playing the sardonic younger sister of the family. After this busy year, McAdams opted to take a nearly two-year break.She returned quietly, doing some smaller films, before returning in 2009 to main-stream fare with State of Play and The Time Traveler's Wife, and finally, playing Irene Adler in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. In 2011, she was nominated for a SAG Ensemble Award for Midnight in Paris, once again paired up with Owen Wilson (her co-star from Wedding Crashers), in a film that won Woody Allen an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. She also reprised her role in the Sherlock Holmes sequel, A Game of Shadows. In 2012, McAdams returned to her romantic-drama roots and starred in The Vow, opposite Channing Tatum.McAdams continued to alternate between romcoms and other genres, like Richard Curtis' About Time and Brian De Palma's thriller Passion. In 2015, she took on a supporting role in Spotlight, earning McAdams her first Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actress.

Trivia: A soft-spoken, fair-skinned actor with startling blue eyes, a penchant for playing volatile characters, and a reluctance to forsake his critically lauded stage career for a life in film, American audiences may best know Irish actor Cillian Murphy as the bike courier making his way through infected London in director Danny Boyle's apocalyptic thriller 28 Days Later. Though the film may have been Murphy's first to find wide stateside exposure, he has been appearing onscreen in the U.K. and his native Ireland since 1997. Born in Douglas, Cork, Ireland, in 1974, Murphy's father was a school inspector and his mother a French teacher. Attending school at Presentation Brothers College Cork while intending to enter into a career in law, Murphy was an avid rugby player who was turned on to the Concordia Theater's unique stage productions in his fourth year. Murphy soon signed up for a workshop with Concordia's Pat Tiernan and it quickly became apparent that he had a natural flair for the stage. Soon cast as the wildly emotional Pig in Concordia's production of Disco Pigs, Murphy debuted to rave reviews and was soon skipping school to go on tour with the production. Though his acting had initially begun as a hobby and a way to kill time on the weekends, it was quickly taking over his life and a career in law seemed less and less appealing. Though he would attempt to continue his law studies, it was soon obvious to Murphy that his heart just wasn't in it.Subsequently cast in a series of interesting and complex roles, Murphy made his feature debut in the 1998 film Sweety Barrett and quickly followed with the coming-of-age comedy drama Sunburn. Though it was obvious that his stage talents translated well to the silver screen, Murphy still maintained that the rush of theater couldn't be touched by celluloid. The problem in Ireland of suicide and poor mental health among young men prompted Murphy to accept a role in the 2000 drama On the Edge, and his role of a suicidal psychiatric patient proved memorable and affecting. Following How Harry Became a Tree (2001), it was time to adapt Disco Pigs into a feature film, and with director Kirsten Sheridan at the helm, Murphy reprised his role of Pig to enthusiastic results. By the time 28 Days Later rolled around, it seemed that everyone except United States audiences were familiar with the rising star, and with the stateside release of the film in mid 2003, all that was soon to change. Noting that, in his opinion, the best actors alternate frequently between stage and screen, Murphy strived to keep a balance as his growing popularity found his film career taking precedence. Following 2003's Zonad, Murphy began preparation for such features as Intermission and Girl With a Pearl Earring (both 2003).Murphy's resumé amassed higher and higher profile roles. 2005 brought his most popular film to date as he played the villain opposite hero Christian Bale in Batman Begins. Murphy's "boy next door" face seemed to make his performance as the menacing Scarecrow all the more disturbing, and he would go on to play the bad guy again later that same year in Red Eye, though this time he wore makeup to cover his boyish features. Soon he was donning even more makeup, however, as a transsexual in the indie hit Breakfast on Pluto. Playing both a victim and a hero in the U.K. of the 1970s, Murphy's ethereal performance as a boy who leaves his Ireland home to live as a woman in London was praised by critics, and the film was a cult success. He followed it up with another passion project in 2006: Ken Loach's award-winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a look at the Irish Republicans of the early 20th century and the anti-British rebellion that would continue to tear families apart for decades to come. He next signed on to star with Lucy Liu in the romantic comedy Watching the Detectives, another independent venture that would find Murphy playing a shy film geek who's pulled out of his movie collection and into the real world when he meets a real-life femme fetal, played by Liu. Also on Murphy's calendar for 2007 was the Danny Boyle psychological sci-fi thriller Sunshine, about a small crew of astronauts sent to reignite Earth's dying sun. Over the next few years, Murphy would apper in a number of other films, like Inception, Retreat, and Broken.

Trivia: Growing up in Scotland, the descendent of Irish immigrants, Brian Cox always felt an affinity to American cinema that eventually led him to pursue his career stateside. Born on June 1, 1946, in Dundee, Scotland, Cox knew he wanted to act from an early age, but identified more with the characters portrayed in American films than in "zany British comedies," to use his phrase. While working at the local theater, where he started by mopping the stage, the 15-year-old Cox would watch the actors and study their styles to separate the wheat from the chaff. He attended drama school in London and got caught up in British theater and television during the 1970s. Cox landed on Broadway in the early '80s, but found more closed doors than open ones. It was while performing a play transplanted from the U.K. that a casting agent for Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986) noticed him. The film would become the first cinematic treatment of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter (spelled "Lecktor" at the time) character, which Anthony Hopkins would make his own in Silence of the Lambs (1991). Cox was cast in the role, paving the way for the success that had eluded him until his 40th year.Despite the breakthrough, Cox remained better identified with television than film during the late '80s and early '90s, though his roles significantly increased in number. His initiation to regular film work came through appearances in two 1995 sword epics, Braveheart and Rob Roy. Over the latter half of the 1990s he materialized in character-actor roles -- police officers, doctors, fathers -- in such films as The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), Kiss the Girls (1997), Rushmore (1998), and The Minus Man (1999). Although he appears more often in American than British cinema, Cox has also paid homage to his Scottish and Irish roots, such as playing an IRA heavy in Jim Sheridan's The Boxer (1997).In 2001, Cox secured major acclaim -- and an American Film Institute nomination for best supporting actor -- with the release of L.I.E., the debut film of director Michael Cuesta. Like Todd Solondz' critical darling Happiness (1998), the film presents a child molester (Cox) as one of its major characters without condemning him, if not actually leaving him altogether unjudged. Cox's complicated, intense portrayal enabled such shades of gray, raising the character above the bottom rung of the morality food chain.As the decade continued, so did Cox's visibility in bigger hollywood films. In 2002 alone, he took on substantial roles in The Bourne Identity, The Rookie, The Ring, The 25th Hour, and Adaptation, a film that saw him stealing scenes with an appropriately over-the-top turn as blowhard screenwriting guru Robert McKee. The following year audiences could see him in the blockbuster comic-book sequel X2: X-Men United, and in 2004 he starred alongside Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in the epic retelling of the Iliad, Troy. He returned to the Bourne franchise for The Bourne Supremacy, and appeared in the thriller Red Eye. He was the psychiatrist in the comedy Running With Scissors, and in 2007 portrayed Melvin Belli in David Fincher's Zodiac. He was cast in the geriatric action film Red, and joined up with Wes Anderson a second time to lend his voice to a bit part in Fantastic Mr. Fox. In 2011 Ralph Finnes tapped Cox to play Menenius in his big-screen adaptation of The Bard's Coriolanus.

Trivia: Actress Jayma Mays began her big-screen career by focusing on somber material: she made a big impression on audiences as an assistant hotel manager forced to navigate her way through the night from hell in Wes Craven's 2005 thriller Red Eye, prompting one prominent critic to chalk the effort up as a "wonderful movie debut." Following a small role as a nurse in director Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima epic Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Mays discovered a flair for comedy (often filling the role of the straight man or the pretty romantic interest) in titles including Epic Movie (2007), Smiley Face (2007), and the Kevin James vehicle Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009). In 2009 she was cast as the love interest for the dutiful teacher in the hit FOX music series Glee, and in 2011 she could be seen as one of the humans in the big-screen version of The Smurfs.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: Supporting and occasional leading actress Dey Young made her screen debut playing Kate in the rollicking Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979). Her sister Leigh Taylor-Young is also an actress.

Trivia: Actor Kyle Gallner commenced film and television roles in the early 2000s; he specialized in supporting portrayals of individuals who fall prey to the destructive influences of more dominant and malevolent characters. Though Gallner began his Hollywood tenure with guest roles on series including Touched by an Angel, Third Watch, and Judging Amy, he quickly moved into more prominent assignments, including season-long runs on the youth-oriented detective show Veronica Mars (as Beaver Casablancas, the younger brother of a twisted bully and the victim of child abuse), and season three of CSI: NY (as Reed Garrett, a former foster child-turned-kidnapping victim). Gallner subsequently moved into feature roles; he was particularly memorable as the son of a mentally ill, emotionally tortured mother (Marisa Tomei) in the independent feature Danika (2006), and Harold, an accomplice of a twisted teen who shoots an old man's dog, in the revenge-fueled thriller Red (2008).

Trivia: Marc Macaulay is an actor who's just got one of those faces -- you know you've seen it somewhere before but you just can't seem to put your finger on it. Of course, one glance at the screen veteran's credit list and movie fanatics will instantly realize that they have indeed seen Macaulay numerous times on screens both large and small, it's just that he has a way of immersing himself in the role so effectively that it's difficult to distinguish which performance stood out the most. It was during his junior year of college that the aspiring commercial illustrator accepted a dare to audition for an upcoming play, yet while the friend who issued that challenge was well on his way to becoming a professional actor, Macaulay himself had never even considered a career in the performing arts. When the cast list was posted and Macaulay discovered that he had landed one of the lead roles, however, the course of his entire life would suddenly be altered by the decision of one single casting director. After receiving a scholarship for acting and graduating with a BFA in theater, Macaulay relocated to Jupiter, FL, in order to attend the Burt Reynolds Institute of Theatre Training. While a move to New York seemed only natural for Macaulay upon finishing his training in Florida, acting gigs in the Big Apple were few and far between. After racking up a few film credits and continuing his studies at H.B. Studios, Macaulay eventually returned to the Sunshine State to audition for a new series called Miami Vice (1984). Over the course of the following decade, Macaulay was swept up in a whirlwind of supporting roles. From short-lived series like B.L. Stryker and Wiseguy to major motion pictures such as Edward Scissorhands, Passenger 57, Contact, and The Truman Show, the workman-like actor could always be counted on to deliver a convincing, well-mannered performance. While frequent roles in such shows as Matlock, Walker, Texas Ranger, and Nash Bridges provided a bit of stability in a notoriously volatile industry, the increasingly busy actor largely earned his keep by continually leaping from the big screen to the small -- all the while displaying impressive footing on both. By the year 2000, casting directors were finally wising up to the true talent at their disposal, and Macaulay was landing consistent work in feature films. Never tied to just one genre, Macaulay turned in impressive performances in films as diverse as From Justin to Kelly, Monster, Transporter 2, and The Hawk Is Dying (opposite Academy Award-nominee Paul Giamatti). A minor role in the 2006 feature film Miami Vice served well to bring Macaulay's career full circle. In 2006, Macaulay could be seen in a recurring role on the popular Fox drama Prison Break, with subsequent parts in the feature films Premonition and Walking Tall 2 preceding yet another small-screen recurring role in the weekly USA Network thriller Burn Notice in 2007.

Trivia: Got her start on MTV's Undressed series. Had big-screen bit parts in Nurse Betty, Red Eye and Rumor Has It... Kicked off 2005 with the third season of the filmmaking reality series Project Greenlight, which resulted in the production of the horror movie Feast. She returned to play her character of Honey Pie in two Feast sequels. Guest starred on CSI: NY and Pushing Daisies. Landed a recurring role in the second season of Reaper.