Trivia: A popular and easygoing Australian comedian whose keen adaptability lent itself well to aggressive-oriented early film roles, Eric Bana's hatred of firearms may seem ironic in contrast to the Aussie funnyman's fledgling film portrayals of real-life mass murderer (and popular cult celebrity figure in the land Down Under) Mark "Chopper" Read (Chopper [2000]) and a military man caught in heated battle on a rescue mission (Black Hawk Down [2001]). Born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, Bana's career as a comedian began while working as a bartender at his native city's Castle Hotel in 1991. Television offers began flowing in a few short years later, and in 1993, Bana took his sharp wit to the small screen as he assumed the roles of both writer and performer on one of Australia's top comedy programs, Full Frontal. His star on the rise, the increasingly popular comedian made audiences laugh even harder when he co-produced and starred in his own 1996 comedy special Eric (later to become a series) and kicked off The Eric Bana Show Live the following year. 1997 proved to be a busy year for Bana as he also made his feature debut in The Castle, though all of his hard work would pay off when he took a feature role in Australian television's Something in the Air in 2000 and was voted Australia's Most Popular Comedy Performer at the Logies. Bana next took on the role of notorious Aussie author/murderer Mark "Chopper" Read in Chopper (2000). Hollywood was soon calling for Bana, and he answered by accepting a role in the tense true story of the Battle of Mogadishu, Black Hawk Down, followed by the title role in Ang Lee's The Hulk. While Lee's adaptation of the comic would be universally panned, Bana continued his upward trajectory, playing a major role in the acclaimed film Munich, playing the head of the squadron assigned to avenge the murder of Israeli athletes at the 172 Olympics. He then showcased his range by playing opposite Drew Barrymore in the Curtis Hanson film Lucky You, followed by a turn as infamous Henry VIII in The Other Boleyn Girl. Bana would round out the next few years with roles that cemented his position in Hollywood, like Star Trek, Funny People, The Time Traveler's Wife, Hanna, and Deadfall.

Trivia: With an Oscar before the age of 30, repeated comparisons to Audrey Hepburn, and the drool of a thousand critics at her feet, Natalie Portman has emerged as one of the most promising actresses of her generation. Born in Jerusalem on June 9, 1981, to an artist mother and doctor father, Portman moved to New York when she was three. Raised on Long Island, she was discovered by a modeling agent who signed her on the spot. Her modeling stint led to an audition for Luc Besson's Leon (or The Professional, as it was called in the United States). Due to her age (she was 12 when the film was cast), Portman was initially turned down for the lead role of Mathilda, a girl who asks a hit man (Jean Reno) to train her as an assassin to avenge her brother's death and falls innocently in love with him in the process. However, she ultimately won the part and her 1994 film debut earned a number of positive notices. In interviews, Portman allowed that making her first film in the toughest sections of Spanish Harlem was frightening, but not quite so frightening, she claimed, as going back to school once shooting wrapped.Portman then took on the role of Al Pacino's step-daughter in another demanding film, Michael Mann's Heat (1995). She followed this up with lighter fare, like Mars Attacks! (1996), Everyone Says I Love You, and Beautiful Girls. After turning down title roles in both Lolita and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Portman took on another title role with her 1997 Broadway debut in The Diary of Anne Frank. She stayed with the show until May 1998, during which time she received positive notices for her performance. After lending her voice to The Prince of Egypt (1998), Portman took on her most talked-about role to date, that of Queen Amidala in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). Despite very mixed reviews, the film went into box-office hyperdrive, further propelling Portman toward her status as a rapidly emerging talent for the new millennium. She would end the 20th century with projects like Wayne Wang's Anywhere But Here and Where the Heart Is. Offscreen, Portman also did some growing up, enrolling for her college education at Harvard University. A psychology major, she made it clear upon her enrollment that, aside from her role as Queen Amidala in the Star Wars films, she would not accept any film roles for the duration of her education. Perhaps to the disappointment of fans, she stuck to her word, remaining absent from the screen (save Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones) until she received her degree in 2003. Luckily, upon her return to acting, it was immediately evident that it had been worth the wait.Portman's first foray following graduation was the 2003 Civil War ensemble drama Cold Mountain, alongside Renee Zellweger and Nicole Kidman. But in 2004, Portman was at the forefront of both Garden State, a moody dramedy that endeared her to fans, and Closer, a taught, intimate drama that earned her massive critical accolades, as well as her first Oscar nomination. In 2005, as the curtain finally closed on the Star Wars franchise with the release of Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Portman could be seen with a now iconic pixie haircut after shaving her head for a role in the graphic-novel adaptation V for Vendetta. The dystopic action thriller received mixed reviews, but Portman's performance, as usual, earned accolades. Per her usual M.O. as an actress, she would complete a number of independent, arthouse, or otherwise challenging projects for every blockbuster under her belt, like the 2006 Milos Forman directed period drama Goya's Ghosts, and the Wes Anderson 2007 road (or rather, train) movie The Darjeeling Limited. After appearing opposite Scarlett Johansson and Eric Bana as Anne Boleyn, the famously beheaded wife of King Henry VII in the 2008 period drama The Other Boleyn Girl, Portman turned her high-brow image on its ear the very next year, playing a small town cheerleader turned army wife in the Iraq War drama Brothers. Portman had even more impressive turns awaiting her, however, as 2010 brought the lead role in the hallucinatory Darren Aronofsky film The Black Swan, about an obsessively diligent ballerina who, in order to play both the innocent and dark sides of femininity with the leading role in Swan Lake, must battle her own conflicting inner demons as a woman. Portman trained in ballet rigorously for six months to perform the role, and her efforts paid dividends. Her performance received massive adoration from critics and audiences alike, and she emerged with an Academy Award for Best Actress - which Portman accepted while five months pregnant with a baby she was expecting with fiancé Benjamin Millepied, her choreographer whom she met while filming.Professionally, Portman had a mind to keep a balance with her choice of roles. In a change of pace from the gritty material in The Black Swan, she appeared in the stoner comedy Your Highness, the rom-com No Strings Attached, and the comic-book action thriller Thor.Portman had her first child with husband Benjamin Millepied in June of 2011.

Trivia: Universally known as one of the sexiest women in Hollywood, Scarlett Johansson has actually been acting professionally since the age of eight. A native of New York City, where she was born on November 22, 1984, Johansson was raised -- along with her twin brother -- as the youngest of four children, and she developed an interest in acting at the age of three. After enrolling in classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute for Young People, she made her stage debut opposite Ethan Hawke in the off-Broadway production of Sophistry. Her film debut followed in 1994, when she had a supporting role in North, and she subsequently appeared in the little-seen Just Cause (1995) and If Lucy Fell (1996). Johansson had her first significant screen breakthrough with her role as one of two orphaned teenaged sisters in Manny & Lo (1996), a coming-of-age drama directed by Lisa Krueger. Johansson, who shared the screen with Aleksa Palladino and Mary Kay Place, earned an Independent Spirit Award Best Actress nomination for her work in the film, and she soon found herself being tapped by Robert Redford to star as Kristin Scott Thomas' daughter in The Horse Whisperer (1998). Although the film met with a very mixed reception, Johansson was widely praised for her portrayal of a girl who loses her leg and her best friend in a horrific accident.In 2000, the actress signed on to play one of the heroines (alongside Thora Birch) of Terry Zwigoff's screen adaptation of Ghost World, Daniel Clowes' celebrated comic about the adventures of two teen girls grappling with post-high school life. That same year, she starred in American Rhapsody, in which she portrayed a young girl who escapes communist Hungary in the 1950s and travels to the U.S.Though she would take a brief detour into camp with the 2002 giant spider fiasco Eight Legged Freaks, the respect Johansson had gained in the film industry as a result of her previous dramatic roles found the young actress in high demand among indie directors while quickly catching the eye of the Hollywood elite. With Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, Johansson's touching performance as a young girl who strikes a tentative friendship with a washed-up American actor (memorably portrayed by Bill Murray) left no doubts regarding her dramatic skills, and although a Best Actress Oscar nomination eluded her, she received a boatload of nods from critics' groups and the Golden Globes. The rising starlet was soon cast in the lead of such subsequent films as The Girl with the Pearl Earring (2003) and The Perfect Score (2003).After sticking to form in 2004 with roles in In Good Company and A Love Song for Bobby Long, Johansson took her first stab at a lead role in a big budget Hollywood flick, starring opposite Ewan MacGregor in Michael Bay's futuristic actioner The Island. While the picture was panned by critics and avoided by audiences, it did nothing to slow the young star down. She closed out the year by receiving virtually unanimous praise for her performance in Woody Allen's Match Point.She immediately reteamed with Allen, who was full of praise for the young actress after their first collaboration, for the supernatural comedy/murder mystery Scoop in 2006. Johansson would spend the next several years enjoying her status as an A-list actress, appearing in a wide range of projects, like The Nanny Diaries and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. In 2012, she joined The Avengers as Natasha Romanoff, playing the character in several more films in the series.

Trivia: American audiences first caught suave and dashing British actor Jim Sturgess via his portrayal of Jude -- the paternally shorn young man who travels to the U.S. amid the raging throes of the late '60s and falls in love with musician Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) -- in Julie Taymor's hallucinatory Beatles drama Across the Universe (2007). This indeed represented Sturgess' preeminent international bow, but prior to it, he sustained almost a decade of roles in British productions -- mostly telefilms -- including I'm Frank Morgan (2000), Hawkins (2001), and the three installments of the Quest series. He followed up Across The Universe with the gambling thriller 21 and the period drama The Other Boleyn Girl. He lent his voice to Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole in 2010, and in 2011 he appeared opposite Anne Hathaway in the romantic drama One Day.

Trivia: Better known for his work on the English stage than for his onscreen roles, Mark Rylance made a name for himself on the American art house circuit in 2001 with his performance in Patrice Chéreau's controversial melodrama Intimacy. For his portrayal of Jay, a self-destructive bartender engaged in a torrid affair with a married woman, Rylance was required to strip off both his clothes and his emotional inhibitions. He earned raves for his efforts, as well as ribbing from the press in London, where he was the artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.Born in Ashford, Kent, on January 18, 1960, Rylance grew up in Milwaukee, where both of his parents were English teachers. Although he was raised in the U.S., the actor felt a strong sense of British identity and returned to his home country at 18 to study theater in London. Accepted into the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Rylance was soon making a name for himself in productions of Hamlet, Henry V, and Much Ado About Nothing. Rylance first made a notable impression on audiences on both sides of the Atlantic in 1995 -- the same year he became the Globe's director -- when he portrayed an explorer/scientist who marries into an insidiously dysfunctional family in Philip Haas' Angels and Insects. The film, adapted from a novel by A.S. Byatt, earned critical kudos but limited recognition, and Rylance didn't appear onscreen again until he starred in Intimacy. Picked for his starring role opposite Kerry Fox after Chéreau saw his performance as an alcoholic boxer in the 1991 BBC drama The Grass Arena, Rylance turned in a strong portrayal that tended to be overshadowed by the film's graphic content. Its frank sex scenes, which included full frontal nudity and unsimulated oral sex, caused a sensation among the British press who criticized Rylance, a public figure in the theater world, for his willingness to let it all hang out for the public to see. However, Intimacy went on to win critical raves at film festivals across the globe, and in the process allowed Rylance to be recognized as an actor who added up to more than the mere sum of his parts.Rylance continued to take on-screen roles in between theatre jobs, such as playing Thomas Boleyn, the father of Anne Boleyn, in The Other Boleyn Girl, and in the British drama The Government Inspector. In 2015, he was thrown into the American awards circuit for his work in two projects. First, he played Thomas Cromwell (opposite Damian Lewis' King Henry VIII) in the BBC/PBS miniseries Wolf Hall, earning Rylance an Emmy and Golden Globe nomination. Then, he played captive KGB spy Rudolf Abel in Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, which nabbed Rylance his first Oscar nomination and win, for Best Supporting Actor (Rylance became only the second actor, after Daniel Day-Lewis, to win an acting Oscar for a Spielberg film). He continued his association with Spielberg for his next big-screen role, playing the title character in The BFG.

Trivia: Extremely prolific British actor David Morrissey sounded off as a vociferous, intense player in English pictures such as Peter Greenaway's Drowning by Numbers (1988, as an unfortunate victim of mariticide), Stephen Gyllenhaal's drama Waterland (1992, as the simple-minded brother of Jeremy Irons), and Hilary and Jackie (1998, as a loving and devoted husband). He forsook British arthouse material for more mainstream Hollywood fare with key performances in the seamy Basic Instinct 2 (2006) and ascended to top billing as the male lead of Hilary Swank in The Reaping (2007), a religious-themed horror outing. That same year, Showtime tapped Morrissey to headline the series Meadowlands, as an English patriarch attempting at all costs to help his wife and children escape the family's crime-saturated past. Over the coming years, he would go on to find even more notable success on the zombie series The Walking Dead.

Trivia: When British actor Benedict Cumberbatch signed for his first cinematic roles in the early 2000s, he immediately unveiled a proclivity -- and a gift -- for essaying a diverse array of characterizations. Cumberbatch began with BBC television productions, notably a supporting part in the lesbian-themed period drama Tipping the Velvet (2002) and the lead role of the brilliant, physically disabled scientist Stephen Hawking in the BBC telemovie Hawking (2004). Cumberbatch landed one of his first significant international crossover roles (and his first major big-screen assignment) as one of the leads in Michael Apted's arthouse hit Amazing Grace (2006) -- portraying William Pitt, an 18th century British prime minister who crusaded against slavery. While appearing on the British stage and in British television shows, Cumberbatch slowly built up an impressive résumé of supporting film roles. He had a small (but significant) part in Joe Wright's period drama Atonement (2007), and played William Carey, Mary Boleyn's husband in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008).In 2010, Cumberbatch took on his breakout role, playing Sherlock Holmes in a BBC series reboot. His career exploded after the show took off. He played The Necromancer/Smaug in The Hobbit trilogy, Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness, a plantation owner in 12 Years a Slave and nabbed his first true starring role playing Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate. In 2014 Cumberbatch portrayed the pioneering British mathematician Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, and his work earned him a Best Actor nomination from the Academy, the first nod of his career.

Trivia: Early in her career, it looked as though actress Kristin Scott Thomas was going to be relegated to playing the kind of elegantly bloodless British women she portrayed in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), but with her role as the aristocratic but passionate Katharine Clifton in The English Patient (1996), Scott Thomas broke the mold, proving herself capable of projecting a good deal of sensuality and heat as her character embarked on a tragic affair with a Hungarian adventurer (Ralph Fiennes). The daughter of a Royal Navy pilot who died in an air crash when she was five, Scott Thomas was born the eldest of five children, in Cornwall, on May 24, 1960. When she was 11, tragedy struck again when her stepfather, also a military pilot, met a demise identical to her father's. Scott Thomas was left to help her mother look after the family and -- in contrast to what her film roles would suggest -- her situation was far from aristocratic. Although she had an interest in acting, her mother loathed the idea and sent her daughter to the Cheltenham Ladies College. Scott Thomas dropped out at age 16, spent some time in a convent, and eventually enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama to take a teacher training course. Unable to resist the call of the stage, however, Scott Thomas quietly began studying drama. Unfortunately, the school's drama department advised her to pursue other professions. Scott Thomas was 18 at the time and in addition to being hurt by the drama department's rejection, she was also fed up with school. Seeking to gain perspective on her life, she went to visit some friends in Paris. What originally began as a two-week vacation ended in a permanent change of residence, after Scott Thomas took an au pair job and then fell in love with a Frenchman (she eventually married, and divorced, obstetrician François Olivennes, with whom she has two sons and a daughter).Though her new French friends teased her for being a funny little English girl, Scott Thomas found herself at home in Paris and decided to try acting again. At the encouragement of her friends, she enrolled in L'Ecole Nationale des Arts et Techniques de Theatres, honing her skills and finding the French school to be more supportive than its English counterpart. She gained experience playing small roles on-stage and soon went on to do some television work. After an inauspicious debut playing a headstrong heiress in Prince's Under the Cherry Moon (1986), she worked in a number of French films. In 1988, she was given her first lead in an English film, playing a cool-blooded aristocrat in A Handful of Dust.It wasn't until the 1990s that Scott Thomas began to attain recognition outside of Europe. Two years after starring as Hugh Grant's wife in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992), she came to the attention of an international audience in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Her second outing with Grant, the film was a sleeper hit, becoming the highest-grossing British film in the country's history. Following the film's success, Scott Thomas applied her talents to smaller films, appearing as Alfred Hitchcock's thorny assistant in the French-Canadian Le Confessionnal (1994) and a plain-Jane entomologist who finds herself embroiled in family dysfunction in Angels & Insects (1995). In 1996, the year of The English Patient, Scott Thomas fully stepped into the glare of the international spotlight, earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role in the widely acclaimed film. That same year, she did less-heralded but no less respectable work in Richard III, in which she played the enigmatic Lady Anne, and Mission: Impossible, her first truly big-budget film. With Hollywood now taking full notice, Scott Thomas was cast in a coveted lead role in Robert Redford's 1998 adaptation of Nicholas Evans' The Horse Whisperer. The film proved something of a disappointment, although the actress was praised for her strong performance. The following year, she found herself involved in another high-profile project, starring opposite Harrison Ford in Random Hearts. Playing a woman who discovers that her husband, who died in a plane crash, was having an affair with Ford's wife, who also died in the crash, Scott Thomas again got to demonstrate her ability at embracing roles that went far beyond the confines of the tea-sipping British aristocracy. Subsequent work in Gosford Park and Tell No One kept Thomas busy over the course of the next few years, but it was back-to-back BAFTA nominations in 2009 (I've Loved You So Long) and 2010 (Nowhere Boy) that helped to end the decade on a decidedly positive note for the veteran actress. In 2011, she appeared in Salmon FIshing in the Yemen, and in 2012, played a Frenchwoman seduced by the much younger Robert Pattinson in Bel Ami. The following year, she re-teamed with Ralph Fiennes for The Invisible Woman.

Trivia: When he began signing for cinematic parts, British lead Eddie Redmayne took full advantage of his sweet, open-faced, and congenial appearance, ironically selecting a series of roles that required him to project an undercurrent of intransigent, occasionally pathological emotional extremity blanketed by a cover of innocence. He made his first significant mark in 2006 with two such psychologically demanding roles: that of Alex Forbes, a young murderer cracking under the weight of a severely dysfunctional friendship with his second victim and his own father's mistreatment in the psychological thriller Murderous Intent; and that of Edward Wilson Jr., a CIA suit's son reeling from his father's emotional removal in Robert De Niro's ambitious period drama The Good Shepherd. In 2007, Redmayne waxed equally intense as a young homosexual who commits rueful matricide in Tom Kalin's Savage Grace, and -- on a slightly different note -- donned period costume for a small role in Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth: The Golden Age. He stayed in his Tudor garb for a small role as Mary Boleyn's husband in The Other Boleyn Girl. In 2011, he played future filmmaker Colin Clark in My Week With Marilyn, chronicling Clark's time as a production assistant on the set of the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl. Redmayne next showcased his singing voice as revolutionary Marius in 2012's Les Miserables. He followed that up with a star-making turn playing theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014), a part that earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor. Redmayne had similar success the following year, nabbing another Academy Award nomination for The Danish Girl.

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: Actor Andrew Garfield arrived on the Hollywood scene in the mid- to late 2000s, with supporting roles in a pair of big-screen releases: he performed alongside Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, and Meryl Streep in Redford's directorial outing Lions for Lambs (2007) and then signed for a part in Terry Gilliam's fanciful morality tale Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009). But it turned out to be another 2009 project that gave him his breakthrough when he earned strong reviews for his work in the Red Riding trilogy. He parlayed that into an impressive 2010 when he starred in the Never Let Me Go, and played the co-founder of Facebook in David Fincher's The Social Network. Hot from that, he signed to play Spider-Man in a reboot of the successful superhero franchise. The first film in that new series hit screens in summer of 2012.

Trivia: Best known for his role as Tyres O'Flaherty the bicycle riding raver in the sitcom Spaced. Before finding fame, his previous jobs included cycle courier and club DJ. Shared an flat with Spaced co-stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in the 1990s. Began doing stand-up in 1993, after accepting a bet at an open-mic night. He then became a regular at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Has two children with his second wife, English journalist and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer. Won Best Supporting Actor at the 2011 British Independent Film Awards for his role in Kill List.

Trivia: Had a small role, with sister Lily Allen, in Oscar-nominated Elizabeth (1998), on which their mother, Alison Owen, was a producer. Is the subject of "Alfie," a song on Lily's debut album, Alright, Still (2006). Claims to be one of the first children in the United Kingdom to be given Ritalin after being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD). In 2008, succeeded Daniel Radcliffe in the role of troubled teen Alan Strang of Peter Shaffer's Equus for a revival tour of the 1973 play.

Trivia: Moved to Wales at the age of 3. Her parents owned the medieval castle fortification turned hotel Ruthin Castle in Wales. Performed in the Cambridge Footlights while at university where she met Tilda Swinton. Used to work as a drama teacher at Leicester Polytechnic. The satirical NHS drama Getting On which she co-wrote with Jo Brand and Vicki Pepperdine, earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Female Performance in a Comedy and a BAFTA Television Craft nomination for screenwriting in 2011 and 2013. Her stage work includes working with Thea Starrock in the production of Cloud 9 at the Almeida Theatre and Top Girls; with Rufus Norris in Vernon God Little at the Young Vic; and appearing in Polly Teale's production of Madame Bovary.