Trivia: Christian Bale is one of the few actors in Hollywood whose child stardom has successfully translated to steady and respectable adult employment. With a wistful handsomeness to complement his impressive, sometimes underrated talent, Bale has become something of a quiet sensation, netting choice roles in a number of unconventional, critically acclaimed films.Born January 30, 1974, in Pembrokeshire, Wales, Bale was raised in England, Portugal, and the U.S. The product of a creative family (his mother was a dancer and both of his grandfathers were part-time actors), Bale made his stage debut at the age of ten, playing opposite British comedian Rowan Atkinson in The Nerd. In 1986, he debuted on television as Alexis in the miniseries Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna. His film debut came the following year with the lead role in Steven Spielberg's adaptation of J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun. Although the film met with very mixed reviews, Bale received almost ubiquitous praise for his portrayal of a young boy interned in a Japanese prison camp during World War II. Following a starring role in a Swedish film, Mio min Mio, Bale next appeared in Kenneth Branagh's celebrated 1988 adaptation of Henry V and in 1990, starred opposite Charlton Heston in a highly-regarded cable adaptation of Treasure Island. In 1992, Bale appeared in his first adult role in the musical Newsies, in which he could be seen singing, dancing, and sporting a fairly convincing American accent. His next film, Swing Kids (1993), also featured him dancing, this time alongside Robert Sean Leonard in wartime Germany. Although the film failed to impress most critics, it succeeded in making a favorable impact on teenage girls and swing afficionados everywhere. The following year, Bale appeared as Laurie in Gillian Armstrong's acclaimed adaptation of Little Women and then went on to lend his voice to Disney's animated film Pocahontas, which proved to be one of 1995's biggest box-office draws. The actor next appeared in The Secret Agent (1996), which, despite a strong cast including Gérard Depardieu, Bob Hoskins, and Patricia Arquette, was widely unseen in the U.S. After a tragically small role in the same year's The Portrait of a Lady, Bale was finally given the opportunity to step into the limelight with the 1997 film Metroland, an adaptation of Julian Barnes' novel. Starring alongside Emily Watson, Bale played a young husband and father wallowing in discontented nostalgia and received overwhelmingly positive notices for his thoughtful, complex portrayal. The film was not released in the U.S. until the following year, when he also had lead roles in Todd Haynes' eagerly anticipated Velvet Goldmine and All the Little Animals, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to strong reviews. The following year, Bale starred alongside Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Rupert Everett in a lavish adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In addition to the exposure he (literally) received in his role as Demetrius, Bale got a different kind of recognition for his part in the well-documented controversy surrounding the casting of Mary Harron's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho. After winning and then losing the film's lead role to Leonardo DiCaprio, Bale then won it back, prompting a wave of media coverage and at least one publication's decision to describe him as everyone's favorite underdog. It was a title that, deserved or not, seemed to fit an actor who, beneath all of the hyperbole and hype, was one of Hollywood's most engaging and underrated treasures. Bale next starred in the humans versus dragons opus Reign of Fire (2002), followed by the dystopian thriller Equilibrium before returning to the present day with the low-key sexual comedy drama Laurel Canyon (2002). Bale was about to make a breakthrough move into blockbuster film, however, as he was cast as the superhero Batman in Christopher Nolan's latest entry in the franchise, Batman Begins. The franchise reboot would prove overwhelmingly successful, especially with the dark, crime-drama style sequel, The Dark Knight (2008). Though Bale would become something of an infamous fixture in viral media for an explosively angry outburst at an on-set crewmember that was caught on audio, this did nothing to upset the actor's star power. He would also collaborate with Nolan on The Prestige (2006), before starring in the critically acclaimed western 3:10 to Yuma. Bale would also take on the infamous role of John Conner in a long-awaited Terminator Salvation in 2009, before playing a hard-nosed FBI agent on the trail of Johnny Depp's John Dillinger in Public Enemies that same year. In 2010, Bale joined the cast of the hard hitting sports drama The Fighter, directed by David O. Russell, playing the troubled brother and coach of an underdog boxer played by Mark Wahlberg. Bale would take home the Oscar and Golden Globes for Best Supporting Actor for his performance, but he was soon onto his next project, the period war drama Flowers of War. Soon, he was gearing up to don the cowl once again, with the third and final installment in Nolan's Batman franchise, The Dark Knight Rises. He reteamed with Russell to play a con man in American Hustle, earning Bale a second Oscar nomination. In 2014, he played Moses in Ridley Scott's bible epic Exodus: Gods and Kings. The following year, he returned in the ensemble film The Big Short, garnering Bale a third Oscar nomination.

Trivia: Making an art out of portraying dysfunctional losers and likable freaks, Steve Zahn worked for years before getting his due as one of the most engaging and unconventionally gifted actors in Hollywood. Hailing from Marshall, MN, where he was born in 1968, Zahn was first introduced to improvisational acting in high school. Following a year at Gustavus-Adolphus College, he was accepted at the prestigious American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA, where he trained for two years. After completing his tenure there, Zahn settled in Hoboken, NJ, and tried to support himself with acting in New York, working a variety of odd jobs on the side. He found work in various theater productions, including a 13-month road tour of Bye, Bye Birdie, which provided both steady employment and an introduction to his wife, who was a dancer in the musical.Zahn's break came when he was cast in Sophistry, a play that also starred Ethan Hawke. His performance was seen by Ben Stiller, who offered him a role in his upcoming film, Reality Bites. Zahn took the part of Sammy, Winona Ryder's amiable, slightly conflicted gay friend. The film, which was released in 1994, was actually Zahn's second feature, the first being the 1993 drama Rain Without Thunder. Reality Bites met with relative success and helped to jump-start not only Zahn's career, but those of Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo, as well. Zahn proceeded to take a significant role in Eric Bogosian's play SubUrbia and his work in the production led to his casting in the 1995 submarine thriller Crimson Tide, starring Denzel Washington. The following year, he won a leading role in Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do! and subsequently re-created his SubUrbia role for the play's film adaptation, which also featured Giovanni Ribisi and Parker Posey. In 1998, Hollywood began to take notice of the actor, as he was featured in four different films. Three of them, You've Got Mail, Out of Sight, and The Object of My Affection, proved to be box-office successes; the other one, Safe Men, was released into general obscurity. The following year, Zahn made an appearance in the romantic comedy Forces of Nature, co-starring Ben Affleck and Sandra Bullock, and had a leading role in Happy, Texas, which was released at Sundance. For his performance as a con artist forced to play gay, Zahn won a special acting award at the festival, a much-deserved token of appreciation for an actor as underrated as he is original.In the years that followed, Zahn elevated his portrayal of lovable losers to a virtual art form. Though he would head up an impressive cast in the 2000 feature Chain of Fools, the film would be inexplicably relegated to cinematic limbo and audiences would next catch an unexpected glimpse of the rising star in director Michael Almereyda's Hamlet (2000). If the following year's Saving Silverman found Zahn back to his usual antics, abysmal reviews and poor audience reaction quickly sunk the romantic comedy and audiences would catch their next glimpse of him in John Dahl's edge-of-your-seat thriller Joy Ride (also 2001). His portrayal of Drew Barrymore's character's well-intending but hopeless husband in the 2001 comedy drama Riding in Cars with Boys showed a dramatic side many audiences had yet to experience from Zahn, and after a brief break from the screen Zahn returned in 2003 with a pair of high profile comedies. After joining comedian/actor Martin Lawrence as one half of a pair of hapless security guards in the 2003 comedy National Security, Zahn attempted to bring up baby opposite actor/comedian Eddie Murphy in the family friendly comedy Daddy Day Care. A series of supporting performances in Shattered Glass, Speak and Employee of the Month (all 2004) were quick to follow, ensuring that audiences who couldn't get their fill of Zahn's unique and endearing quirkiness wouldn't be left out in the lurch for long.Behind the camera, Zahn has provided vocal work for such family films as Stuart Little (as well as its 2002 sequel), Doctor Dolittle 2 and Chicken Little (2005). In 2006, Zahn again tried his hand at more dramatic work with a role in the Werner Herzog POW film Rescue Dawn, but soon he was going back to his comedic roots with 2008's Sunshine Cleaning and Strange Wilderness. He was one of the stars of the thriller A Perfect Getaway in 2009. Zahn then changed gears by taking on the role of dad Frank Heffley in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

Trivia: Jeremy Davies has made a name for himself playing a series of damaged and offbeat characters that highlight the young actor's considerable talents. Born October 28, 1969, in Rockford, IA, the skinny, dark-haired Davies trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, CA. After making his television debut in a Suzuki commercial, he worked on various television shows. The actor made his film debut in the Drew Barrymore film Guncrazy (1992), but it was not until his turn as a young man being manipulated into an Oedipal relationship by his mother in David O. Russell's Spanking the Monkey (1994) that the actor began to garner wide respect and recognition. The film earned the actor considerable rave reviews, indie credibility, and an eventual role in the Jodie Foster movie Nell. In 1997, Davies went on to do The Locusts, co-starring Ashley Judd and Vince Vaughn. His role as Flyboy, the emotionally crippled son of an abusive mother, further added to the actor's reputation of playing victimized, internally conflicted young men. He next played a similarly conflicted character in the Mark Pellington adaptation of Dan Wakefield's coming-of-age novel Going All the Way, in which he co-starred with Ben Affleck. Davies' knack for choosing roles that allow him to go beyond Hollywood's conventions and mine the complexities of the human spirit was further reflected in his portrayal of the battle-shy Corporal Upham in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and his role as a despondent officer in Ravenous (1999). 2001 found Davies stepping in front of the camera as a director whose attempt at finishing a film with a troubled production history proves exceptionally grating in CQ, the directorial debut of the legendary Francis Ford Coppola's son Roman Coppola.Davies two most memorable roles in 2002 saw him developing a twitchy eccentricity that would become a trademark in many of his films. The dark sexual comedy Secretary had him as a lovelorn suitor opposite a masochistic Maggie Gyllenhal and the sci-fi drama Solaris offered him the opportunity to work under the direction of Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh.Having proven time and again his ability to pull off quirky, Davies tried his hand at all-out madness in 2004 when he starred as the infamous Charles Manson in the made-for-television remake of Helter Skelter. He worked with director Lars Von Trier on Manderlay, and starred in Rescue Dawn. In 2008 he started a three-year term as a time-traveling scientist on the hit ABC series Lost, and in 2010 he was cast as a compassionate hospital employee overseeing a psychiatric ward in It's Kind of a Funny Story.

Trivia: Bell is a supporting actor, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: Of German, Irish and Russian Jewish descent.Started his career in Chicago, Illinois, at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.In 1998, moved to Los Angeles, California.Former member of the comedy troupe The Pretty Okay Ho-hum Spectacular on Ice!Played two roles in Magnolia (1999), the pharmacist in the prologue and the pharmacist in the scene of Julianne Moore's profane meltdown.

Trivia: With an astonishing resumé that incorporates everything from Seinfeld to Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill, character actor Toby Huss qualifies as a staple of American pop culture. Born December 12, 1966 in Marshalltown, IA (the birthplace of many an actor or actress), Huss grew up in the American heartland, then briefly attended the University of Iowa after high school before dropping out and heading to Tinseltown. The elusiveness of Huss' name recognition is tied inextricably to his versatility -- most viewers will remember such inimitable creations as Cotton Hill (on Mike Judge's King of the Hill); Artie -- The Strongest Man in the World (on The Adventures of Pete & Pete); and The Wiz ("Nobody beats me, cause I'm the Wiz!"), a nutty appliance salesman who dates Elaine, on Seinfeld -- but only the most incisive of viewers could tie them to the same person. Huss also portrayed Felix "Stumpy" Dreifuss on the HBO period drama Carnivàle (2003-2005) and Big Mike on the irreverent Comedy Central series Reno 911! (2003-2007). In addition to his television work, Huss has graced nearly 40 feature films with his presence, and nearly all are laugh-fests that take full advantage of the actor's comic flair. These include: Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996), Harold Ramis' Bedazzled (2000), and The Country Bears (2002). As Beavis and Bears demonstrate, Huss is particularly adept at voice work.

Trivia: An actor whom you've probably seen in more films than you realize, Zach Grenier possesses the rare ability to take the smallest of roles and transform them into memorable appearances that stick with audiences long after the credits have finished -- even if his frequently unsympathetic characters have often met an unpleasant demise. It was this ability and skill that found Grenier steadily building a career with appearances in such blockbusters as Cliffhanger (1993), Donnie Brasco (1997), Shaft (2000), and Swordfish (2001). Born in February 1954, Grenier's family lived a somewhat nomadic existence in his early years, moving 18 times before the worldly teen graduated from high school, where, in his junior year, the young man discovered his love of the stage while performing in a production of Shakespeare's Henry V. Continuing to hone his acting skills and frequently appearing on-stage following graduation, Grenier appeared in such other plays as Talk Radio and A Question of Mercy, and made his film debut in the 1987 drama The Kid Brother (aka Kenny). Soon appearing in such films as Working Girl and Talk Radio in 1988, and See No Evil, Hear No Evil the following year. The actor's parts may have been small, but his talent was growing and appearances memorable; his roles continued to expand throughout the '90s, and viewers saw the rising star in Twister and Maximum Risk (both 1996), among several other movies. A turn as Joseph Goebbels in that year's Mother Night gave him a chance to prove his dramatic skills in front of the camera, and a subsequent role in David Fincher's cult hit Fight Club (1999) found him holding his own well against the film's talented leads. Alternating between television and movies in subsequent work, Grenier starred in the little-seen thriller Chasing Sleep (2000) and joined the cast of the popular weekly suspense series 24 in 2001.

Trivia: The tough, sinewy Asian-American character actor Galen Yuen played a number of bit parts in Hollywood action and martial arts films, from the early '90s onward. At least in the beginning, these constituted stock roles -- such as an appearance as a cleaning man in the 1990 Revealing Evidence: Stalking the Honolulu Strangler, a desk bookie in the same year's Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Lionheart, and a smuggler in the 1991 Van Damme starrer Double Impact. Yuen stepped behind the camera to helm a segment of the omnibus-style urban drama Riot in the Streets (1997), and received his highest billing up through that time with his role as Y.C. in maverick director Werner Herzog's Vietnam-era actioner Rescue Dawn.