Trivia: Actress Jessica Chastain studied her craft at the Julliard School in New York, before launching into her professional career. After landing a few appearances on TV shows like Veronica Mars and ER, Chastain eventually landed the title role in the 2008 independent film Jolene, and soon found herself in other prominent roles, like a Mossaad agent in the 2009 mystery The Debt, though that film didn't reach American screens unti 2011, a year in which Chastain seemes to be in every movie. In addition to playing the loving mother in Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, and playing the struggling wife of a schizophrenic in the underrated Take Shelter, and being cast as the wife to Ralph Finnes' Coriolanus, and earning good reviews for the indie drama Texas Killing Fields, Chastain played a kooky, mentally unstable Southern woman in the box office smash The Help, and earned her first Oscar nomination for her supporting work in the film. She was back in the Oscar race the very next year, this time in the Best Actress field for her work as a determined CIA agent hunting Osama Bin Laden in Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty.

Trivia: Onscreen for nearly a decade at the time he was cast in director Kevin McDonald's The Last King of Scotland, Glasgow-born actor James McAvoy seemed to many an overnight sensation. The fact is, however, that the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama alumnus had already formed the foundation of an enduring career at the time he was charged with holding his own opposite the formidable -- and, eventually, Oscar-winning -- Forest Whitaker.McAvoy's parents divorced when he was just seven years old. In the aftermath, he and his mother would go to live with his grandparents in Glasgow's housing projects, with the youngster's notable interest in stage and film work eventually leading him to study at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. At 16, McAvoy made his professional acting debut in the child abuse drama The Near Room, with a role in the long-running British crime drama The Bill following in short order. On the heels of a part in 2001's Emmy Award-winning WWII miniseries Band of Brothers, McAvoy caught the eye of critics in the small-screen adaptation White Teeth before being cast in a pivotal role in the sci-fi effort Children of Dune. While roles in such U.K. television dramas as Early Doors, Shameless, and State of Play found McAvoy growing increasingly comfortable on the small screen, feature performances in Bright Young Things, Wimbledon, and Inside I'm Dancing (aka, Rory O'Shea Was Here) brought him to the attention of Hollywood. In 2005, the actor went global in a very big way with a pivotal appearance as Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. But it was his Last King role the following year, as a hard-partying doctor who gradually becomes a captive to one of the 20th century's most notorious dictators, that truly propelled him to international acclaim. With his star-making role in The Last King of Scotland, McAvoy became not only a critical darling, but a serious dramatic talent whose future appeared to hold great things as well. Indeed, his follow-ups to Last King proved to feature him in one lead role after another. He romanced Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane, a story about the young Jane Austen; anguished over his separation from Keira Knightley in the Oscar-nominated WWII-era romance Atonement; and fell unexpectedly in love with Christina Ricci in the fantasy Penelope. After this string of romantic leading-man roles, McAvoy did an about-face and co-starred as a reluctant but innately talented assassin in the action-packed thriller Wanted opposite Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. He had the lead role in 2009's drama The Last Station, and played a layer in the historical drama The Conspirator one year later. He voiced the part of Gnomeo in the animated family film Gnomeo & Juliet in 2011, and that same year he was cast as the young Professor X in the action spectacle X-Men: First Class. That role kept him busy for the next couple of years, as he reprised the character in several sequels, including X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).

Trivia: One of the top leading men of the '80s, William Hurt, born March 20th, 1950, is notable for his intensity and effective portrayals of complex characters. Although born in Washington, D.C., Hurt had already seen much of the world by the time he was grown, as his father worked for the State Department. His early years spent in the South Pacific near Guam, Hurt moved to Manhattan with his mother after his parents divorced when he was six years old. He spent the summers with his father, vacationing in a variety of international locales, including Sudan. At the age of ten, Hurt's life again changed dramatically when he became a stepson to Henry Luce III, the heir to the Time-Life empire. His mother's second marriage indirectly led to Hurt's initial involvement with the theater: sent away to a boarding school in Massachusetts, he found comfort in acting.After going on to Tufts University to study theology for three years at his stepfather's urging, Hurt married aspiring actress Mary Beth Supinger and followed her to London to study drama. Upon their return to the U.S., Hurt studied drama at Juilliard. By this time, under the realization that his marriage was failing, Hurt divorced his wife, got a motorcycle, and headed cross country for the Shakespeare festival in Ashland, OR, where he made his professional debut in a production of Hamlet. He later joined New York's Circle Repertory Company, and went on to receive critical acclaim for his work on the New York stage.Hurt made his feature film debut in Ken Russell's Altered States in 1980, but it was not until he appeared opposite Kathleen Turner in Body Heat (1981) that he became a star and sex symbol. Four years later, he won Best Actor Oscar and British Academy awards as well as a similar honor at Cannes for his sensitive portrayal of a gay prisoner in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985). He was again nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his two subsequent films, Children of a Lesser God (1986) and Broadcast News (1987). Further success followed in 1988 when he starred in The Accidental Tourist.As bright as his star shone on stage and screen, by the end of the '80s, a darker side of Hurt was exposed when he was sued by his former live-in love and mother of his daughter Alex, ballet dancer Sandra Jennings, who claimed to be his common-law wife. Despite his personal problems, Hurt continued to stay relatively busy, beginning the new decade with a fine turn in Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World (1991). He subsequently appeared in such acclaimed films as Smoke (1995), Jane Eyre (1996), One True Thing (1998), and Dark City (1998). In 1998, Hurt appeared as the patriarch of one of televisions most beloved sci-fi families in the big-budgeted remake of Lost in Space, and as a gubernatorial candidate with a shadowy past in George Hickenlooper's political drama The Big Brass Ring (1999).Still alternating between stage and screen into the new millennium, Hurt stuck mainly to the small screen in the next few years. After lending his voice to the animated portrayal of the life of Jesus Christ in The Miracle Maker, appearing in the mini-series Dune, and taking the title role of The Contaminated Man in 2000, Hurt returned to features with his role in director Steven Spielberg's long anticipated (post-mortem) collaboration with the late Stanley Kubrick, A.I. As the well-intending scientist who sets the story of an artificial boy capable of learning and love into motion, Hurt's character seemed to provide the antithesis of the regressive experiments his previous character had flirted with in Altered States.Hurt played a supporting role in Changing Lanes (2002), an thought-provoking thriller following two very different New York City residents whose lives fatefully intersect following a car accident, and again in the political thriller Syriana, which would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2005. The actor was praised the same year for his work as a supporting character in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. In 2007, Hurt starred as the murderous alter ego of a businessman in Mr. Brooks, and co-starred with Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, and Dennis Quaid for the political thriller Vantage Point (2008). Hurt stars as an ex-con looking to start over for The Yellow Handkerchief (2008), and Gen. Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, Bruce Banner's nemesis, in The Incredible Hulk (2008).In 2009, Hurt reunited with Vantage Point director Pete Travis for the historical thriller Endgame, for which he played the leading role of philosophy Professor Willie Esterhuyse, an essential member of a team dedicated to securing the release of Nelson Mandela. Director Julie Gavras' 2011 romantic comedy found Hurt starring alongside the legendary Isabella Rossallini. Hurt is slated to work in the The Host, a dystopian thriller adapted from a novel from author Stephanie Meyers, in 2013.

Trivia: One of the most enduring and respected actresses in French cinema, Isabelle Huppert is known for her versatile portrayals of characters ranging from the innocent to the sultry to the comic. Born March 16, 1953, in Paris, Huppert graduated from the Paris Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique and made her first film, Faustine et le Bel Été, when she was 16. Her career accelerated rapidly, and she soon found work with such acclaimed directors as Bertrand Blier, with whom she made Les Valseuses (1974), a film also notable for making a star out of Gérard Depardieu; Otto Preminger, for whom she appeared in Rosebud (1975); and Claude Chabrol, with whom she would make a series of films, starting with 1978's Violette Nozière, for which she won a Best Female Performance award at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. Also in 1978, she won a British Academy Award for Best Newcomer for her role in La Dentellière (The Lacemaker).Huppert's career in the 1980s commenced fairly inauspiciously, with a part in the legendary flop Heaven's Gate (1981), but it soon picked up with starring roles in Bertrand Tavernier's Coup de Torchon (1981), Jean-Luc Godard's Passion (1982), and Diane Kurys' celebrated Entre Nous (1983). Throughout the 1980s and '90s, Huppert made an impressive number of films in her native country, collaborating with Claude Chabrol on 1988's Une Affaire de Femmes (Story of Women), the widely acclaimed Madame Bovary (1991), and La Cérémonie (1995), for which she won a 1996 Best Actress César. Since the Heaven's Gate fiasco, Huppert's work in American film has been minimal, a worthwhile exception being her role as a nun-turned-nymphomaniac writer of pornographic fiction in Hal Hartley's Amateur (1994). In her native France, Huppert has become something of an institution, continuing to work prolifically on such films as Benoît Jacquot's L'École de la Chair (1998) and serving as the 24th president of the César Awards in March 1999.Despite the fact that American audiences remained sadly unaware of Huppert's success overseas, her performances in Jacquot's False Servant and the historical drama Saint-Cyr (both 2000) found her meeting challenging roles head on to captivating effect. The sometimes disturbing films she appeared in may not have been the easiest for audiences to digest, but they certainly cemented her belief that the art of acting is a means of "living out one's insanity," and no matter what the subject matter or quality of the actual film, Huppert remained a consistently compelling screen presence. Huppert's success in Chabrol's Merci Pour le Chocolat (2000) came as no surprise to many given her successful track record with the enduring director, and the following year she would once again come under the international spotlight for her remarkable performance as a sexually repressed and self-destructive piano teacher in director Michael Haneke's confrontational drama The Piano Teacher (2001). Her fearless powerhouse performance shocked audiences worldwide and earned Huppert a Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was soon counterbalanced by director François Ozon's popular international black comedy 8 Women the following year. A campy, freewheeling musical mystery starring some of the biggest female stars in French cinema, the film came as an unexpected but infectious jolt of originality to audiences whose skin had been worn thin by a recent spat of heavy dramas. Huppert's performance as an opinionated hooker who forms an unexpected bond with her illegitimate daughter in 2002's Ghost River benefited the touching drama well, and the following year, she was back with Haneke for the disturbing The Time of the Wolf. As with many of Haneke's films, The Time of the Wolf sharply divided audiences -- some of whom saw the film as celluloid perfection and others who viewed it as unrelentingly downbeat garbage. In 2003, Huppert would appear under the direction of an American director for the first time since 1994's Amateur with a role in Three Kings director David O. Russell's comedy I Heart Huckabees.

Trivia: Actress Jess Weixler grew up in Louisville, KY, then later attended and graduated from the drama program at Juilliard. She scored her first major screen role as a stripper taking a swim class in Ishai Setton's comedy drama The Big Bad Swim (2005), but attained much broader recognition as a young virgin cursed with a bizarre and grisly anatomical aberration in Mitchell Lichtenstein's eccentric horror comedy Teeth (2007).

Trivia: Square-jawed comedic actor Bill Hader emerged as an onscreen presence in the mid- to late 2000s, both as a regular player on the hallowed Saturday Night Live and as an occasional performer in movies such as the animated Doogal (2004) and the Owen Wilson vehicle You, Me and Dupree (2006). Hader rose to higher billing with his guffaw-inducing turn in the frat-boy comedy Superbad (2007), playing a seriously irresponsible cop and the partnered with Seth Rogen. He was the brother to Jason Segel's character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, had a brief but memorable cameo right at the beginning of Pineapple Express, and played a sycophantic assistant to Tom Cruise's monstrous Hollywood mogul in Tropic Thunder, all in 2008. The next year he had a huge hit voicing a character in the animated smash Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and earned good reviews for his work in Adventureland. He appeared in the sci-fi comedy Paul in 2011. Hader continued to appear in supporting and cameo roles in films, appearing in an impressive nine films in 2013 (many of them voice roles, including Monsters University and reprising his role in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2), before annoucing he was leaving Saturday Night Live. Once leaving SNL, he stretched his acting legs by starring opposite Kristen Wiig in the dramedy The Skeleton Twins in 2014.

Trivia: A graduate of the Juilliard School, Viola Davis built an exceptional background in theater productions and has continued to perform on-stage throughout her television and film career. Making her feature-film debut in 1996 as a nurse in The Substance of Fire, she followed that up with several TV movies and guest-star appearances on dramatic series like Law & Order and NYPD Blue. She went on to play another nurse in City of Angels, a hospital drama with a predominately African-American cast that didn't last long on CBS. She began collaborating with Steven Soderbergh for Out of Sight, and went on to star in two of the director's next few films, Traffic and Solaris. In 2001, she appeared in Kate and Leopold and in Oprah Winfrey's television presentation of Amy & Isabelle. The next year she played parts in both Far From Heaven and Denzel Washington's directorial debut, Antwone Fisher.Davis continued to work steadily in a variety of notable projects including Steven Soderbergh's Solaris, Syriana, and played a notable part in the television movie biopic of American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino. However, in 2008 she landed the small but crucial role of the mother in John Patrick Shanley's adaptation of his award-winning play Doubt. Although her screen time is minimal, her indelible performance garnered her Best Supporting Actress nominations from the Hollywood Foreign Press, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy. Davis became a well known entity almost instantly, and was soon filling her docket with projects like 2009's State of Play, 2010's Knight and Day and Eat Pray Love, and an arc on the series United States of Tara.Davis next appeared in the box office hit 2011 big screen adaptation of Kathryn Sockett 's period novel The Help, garnering still more praise as well as Best Actress nominations from the Academy, BAFTA, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild. Her performance was still making waves when the critics began lauding her agian, this time for her role in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close that same year.

Trivia: Is bilingual in English and Ukrainian due to her parents' Ukrainian heritage. Became interested in performing at the age of 3 when she participated in a poetry recital. Studied at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Made her Broadway debut as Billie Dawn in a stage production of Born Yesterday opposite Jim Belushi. Played Vanda in a 2011 Broadway production of David Ives' Venus in Fur, a role that led to her first Tony award. Named Stage Star of the Year by New York Magazine in 2011. Featured in Forbes' 2011 list of Top 30 Under 30 in entertainment.

Trivia: Was raised in Denver, Colorado.Got interested in performing at a young age.Was always supported by his parents to pursue a career as an actor.Played lacrosse and soccer while he was at school.Started acting in the local theatre in Denver while he was in high school.

Trivia: His father is from Honduras and his mother from Colombia.Moved to the Poconos in Pennsylvania with his family when he was seven.Started doing comedy while attending college.Moved to New York City after his college graduation, where he began to work in television production and study at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.Is a member of Homes4Families, a Non-profit organization that helps homeless veterans.

Trivia: In 2005, while studying theater at USC, was one of 14 students (out of more than 100) to land a part in a revival of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sidney Kingsley's 1935 drama, Dead Men, at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles. Other stage work includes a role in Wendy Graf's Leipzig in 2006. Made film debut in the title role of Con: The Corruption of Shawn Helm, a short written and directed by his childhood friend, Brandon Bennett. Sings and plays piano and guitar in a band called Eleanor Avenue.

Trivia: An Irish actor of charisma and talent, Ciarán Hinds has applied his skills to screen, stage, and television. A towering, burly man whose jagged features make him a natural for playing strong, silent types, Hinds has won respect and recognition from critics and drooling women alike.Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on February 9, 1953, Hinds was the fifth child of a doctor and an amateur actress. He attended Belfast's Queen's University for a year with an eye toward studying law, but he left to pursue acting. After studying at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Hinds found employment with the Glasgow Citizens Company, where he made his professional debut playing the back end of a horse in Cinderella. He acted with the company for the better part of the next decade, splitting his time between Glasgow and Ireland. In 1987, he received one of his first big breaks, at the hands of esteemed director Peter Brook, who selected him as a member of his Paris-based theatrical company; the actor was soon performing all over the globe.Hinds made his film debut in John Boorman's 1981 Excalibur, but he did not make another movie until 1989. That year, he appeared in a supporting role in Peter Greenaway's stylishly horrifying The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. After sharing the screen with actors like Richard Bohringer, Tim Roth, and Excalibur co-star Helen Mirren, Hinds went on to make December Bride the next year, and in 1993 he won acclaim for his performance in the made-for-TV Hostages. Two years later, Hinds began to win recognition outside of the U.K., first for his small role as a university professor in the popular Circle of Friends and then for his more sizable performance in Roger Michell's acclaimed adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion. As Captain Frederick Wentworth, captor of heroine Anne Elliot's repressed affections, Hinds caused many an audience member to wonder where he had been for so long, and, more important, when and where he would reappear. When was the following year and where was Some Mother's Son, a drama based on a 1981 hunger strike in a Belfast prison. Hinds had a supporting role in the film, which reunited him with Mirren, but the next year he had a more substantial part in Gillian Armstrong's Oscar and Lucinda, in which he played a reverend. That character was a far cry from his next role, a man trapped in the Irish conflict in 1970s Belfast in Titanic Town (1998). In 1999, Hinds could be seen in Chris Menges' The Lost Son with Daniel Auteuil, Bruce Greenwood, and Natassja Kinski, and in Il Tempo Dell'Amore, which was shown at that year's Toronto Film Festival.The new millennium seemed to bring about something of a re-birth for Hinds' enduring career, with featured roles in such widely-seen films as The Sum of All Fears, The Road to Perdition, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, and The Phantom of the Opera hinting that Hollywood may have finally grown savvy to the impressive talents of the physically-imposing actor. Of course it wasn't all Hollywood glamor, with roles in such limited-release but critically-praised independents as The Weight of Water and Veronica Guerin, and Calendar Girls serving well to help Hinds balance out the big-budget blockbusters. In 2006 Hinds would step into the sandals of no less that Julius Caesar when he essayed the role of the notorious Roman general in HBO's lavish historical drama Rome, with a subsequent role in director Steven Spielberg's 2005 drama Munich preceding a turn as a hard-charging FBI agent in Michael Mann's high-octane action thriller Miamy Vice in 2006. In 2007 he played the closest associate of oil tycoon Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson' Oscar-winning There Will Be Blood, and appeared in Margot at the Wedding. He was in Todd Solondz's sort-of sequel to Happiness, Life During Wartime, and was prominent in the well-reviewed 2011 adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. He joined the cast of Harry Potter in that successful series' final entry, and a very busy 2012 found him with major roles in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, The Woman in Black, and providing a voice in the infamous box-office flop John Carter.In addition to his screen work, Hinds has kept busy both on television and the stage. On the small screen, he has appeared in series like Prime Suspect 3 (1993), A Dark Adapted Eye (1994), Jane Eyre (1997), and Ivanhoe (also 1997). On the stage, Hinds has taken part in a number of productions, perhaps most notably the London and Broadway productions of Patrick Marber's Closer in 1998 and 1999. As part of an ensemble cast including Natasha Richardson, Rupert Graves, and Anna Friel, Hinds won raves for his work, further establishing himself as an actor of international acclaim.

Trivia: Is a first-generation American, with her mother being from Haiti and her father from St. Vincent in the British West Indies. Began singing at church at the age of 5. In 1999, was nominated for a Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Award for her performance in her high school's production of Hello, Dolly! and subsequently attended Paper Mill's summer conservatory. Made her Broadway debut as Sabina Temple in the short-lived musical The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at Minskoff Theatre in 2001 while she was still pursuing her degree at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Performed the role of Dorothy in The Wiz at La Jolla Playhouse, earning her a 2006 Craig Noel Award for Theatrical Excellence. In 2008, starred in two leading roles at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Cleopatra in Caesar and Cleopatra, opposite Christopher Plummer. Originated the role of Nabulungi in the widely-acclaimed Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, a role for which she won the 2011 Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Musical. Played the role of Éponine in the 2014 Broadway revival of Les Misérables. Worked on a PSA for the United Negro College Fund with Spike Lee.