Trivia: American leading actor Tom Hanks has become one of the most popular stars in contemporary American cinema. Born July 9, 1956, in Concord, CA, Hanks spent much of his childhood moving about with his father, an itinerant cook, and continually attempting to cope with constantly changing schools, religions, and stepmothers. After settling in Oakland, CA, he began performing in high-school plays. He continued acting while attending Cal State, Sacramento, and left to pursue his vocation full-time. In 1978, Hanks went to find work in New York; while there he married actress/producer Samantha Lewes, whom he later divorced.Hanks debuted onscreen in the low-budget slasher movie He Knows You're Alone (1979). Shortly afterward he moved to Los Angeles and landed a co-starring role in the TV sitcom Bosom Buddies; he also worked occasionally in other TV series such as Taxi and Family Ties, as well as in the TV movie Mazes and Monsters. Hanks finally became prominent when he starred opposite Daryl Hannah in the Disney comedy Splash!, which became the sleeper hit of 1984. Audiences were drawn to the lanky, curly headed actor's amiable, laid-back style and keen sense of comic timing. He went on to appear in a string of mostly unsuccessful comedies before starring in Big (1988), in which he gave a delightful performance as a child in a grown man's body. His 1990 film Bonfire of the Vanities was one of the biggest bombs of the year, but audiences seemed to forgive his lapse. In 1992, Hanks' star again rose when he played the outwardly disgusting, inwardly warm-hearted coach in Penny Marshall's A League of Their Own. This led to a starring role in the smash hit romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle (1993).Although a fine comedic actor, Hanks earned critical respect and an even wider audience when he played a tormented AIDS-afflicted homosexual lawyer in the drama Philadelphia (1993) and won that year's Oscar for Best Actor. In 1994 he won again for his convincing portrait of the slow-witted but phenomenally lucky Forrest Gump, and his success continued with the smash space epic Apollo 13 (1995). In 1996, Hanks tried his hand at screenwriting, directing, and starring in a feature: That Thing You Do!, an upbeat tale of a one-hit wonder group and their manager. The film was not particularly successful, unlike Hanks' next directing endeavor, the TV miniseries From Earth to the Moon. The series was nominated for and won a slew of awards, including a series of Emmys. The success of this project was outdone by Hanks' next, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998). Ryan won vast critical acclaim and was nominated for 11 Oscars, including a Best Actor nomination for Hanks. The film won five, including a Best Director Oscar for Spielberg, but lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love, a slight that was to become the subject of controversy. No controversy surrounded Hanks' following film, Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail (1998), a romantic comedy that paired Hanks with his Sleepless co-star Meg Ryan. Although the film got mixed reviews, it was popular with filmgoers, and thus provided Hanks with another success to add to his resumé. Even more success came soon after when Hanks took home the 2000 Golden Globes' Best Actor in a drama award for his portrayal of a shipwrecked FedEx systems engineer who learns the virtues of wasted time in Robert Zemeckis' Cast Away. Though absent from the silver screen in 2001, Hanks remained in the public eye with a role in the acclaimed HBO mini-series Band of Brothers as well as appearing in September 11 television special America: A Tribute to Heroes and the documentary Rescued From the Closet. Next teaming with American Beauty director Sam Mendes for the adaptation of Max Allan Collins graphic novel The Road to Perdition (subsequently inspired by the Japanese manga Lone Wolf and Cub, the nice-guy star took a rare anti-hero role as a hitman (albiet an honorable and fairly respectable hitman) on the lam with his son (Tyler Hoechlin) after his son witnesses a murder. That same year, Hanks collaborated with director Spielberg again, starring opposite Leonardo Dicaprio in the hit crime-comedy Catch Me if You Can.For the next two years, Hanks was essentially absent from movie screens, but in 2004 he emerged with three new projects: The Coen Brothers' The Lady Killers, yet another Spielberg helmed film, The Terminal, and The Polar Express, a family picture from Forrest Gump and Castaway director Robert Zemeckis. 2006 was a very active year for Hanks starting with an appearance at the Oscar telecast that talented lip-readers will remember for quite some time. In addition to helping produce the HBO Series Big Love, he scored a major international success by reteaming with director Ron Howard for the big-screen adaptation of {Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, which was such a success that he signed on for the sequel in 2009, Angels and Demons. His Playtone production company would have a hand in the animated feature The Ant Bully in 2008, and that same year he filmed The Great Buck Howard co-starring his son Colin Hanks. He also signed on to co-star with Julia Roberts in two different films: Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War in 2008 and the romcom Larry Crowne in 2011. Later that same year, Hanks would make dramatic waves in the post-9/11 drama Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture.Ranked by Empire Magazine as 17th out of "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" in October 1997, Hanks is married to actress Rita Wilson, with whom he appeared in Volunteers (1985). The couple have two children in addition to Hanks' other two from his previous marriage.

Trivia: After her debut film Mississippi Masala (1992) became an art house hit, Sarita Choudhury was determined not to "go Hollywood," focusing her acting energies on independent film instead. Raised in Jamaica, Mexico, and Italy, the half-Indian, half-English Choudhury studied economics at Queens University in Ontario before switching to acting. She casually auditioned for Mississippi Masala and wound up cast as the lead opposite Denzel Washington in the singular interracial romance between a Southern African American man and a transplanted Indian woman. Despite the film's surprise success, Choudhury stuck to her non-Hollywood roots, putting her exotic looks and talent to versatile use as a Pakistani country-western singer in Wild West (1992), a Chilean maid in Bille August's adaptation of The House of the Spirits (1993), and a lesbian mother in Fresh Kill (1994). Choudhury worked with Mississippi Masala director Mira Nair again in The Perez Family (1995) and played the cuckolded queen Tara in Nair's frankly-sensual feminist parable Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996). By the late 1990s, Choudhury added a touch of Hollywood to her repertoire with supporting roles in the glossy Alfred Hitchcock remake A Perfect Murder (1998) and the John Cassavetes retread Gloria (1999).Back in more original territory, Choudhury regained her footing somewhat with a series of television roles on such small-screen dramas as Homicide: Life on the Streets, Deadline, 100 Centre Street, and Law and Order. A series of key roles in such little-seen independents as Rhythm of the Saints, Marmalade, and Indocumentados was offset by lesser roles in wuch wide-release efforts as It Runs in the Family, She Hate Me, and M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water, proving that even if she didn't headline every movie she appeared in, Choudhury was still a worthy supporting player who was always worth watching.

Trivia: Tom Skerritt is probably the best-known actor whose name is never remembered. A rugged "outdoors" type, Skerritt briefly attended Wayne State University and UCLA before making his film bow in War Hunt (1962). His subsequent film and TV roles were sizeable, but so adept was Skerritt at immersing himself in his character that he seemed to have no tangible, recurrent personality of his own. Billed second as "Duke" in the original M*A*S*H* (1970), Skerritt did his usual finely-honed job, but audiences of the time preferred the demonstrative, mannered acting technique of Elliott Gould, Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall; significantly, Skerritt's character was not carried over into the even more unsubtle M*A*S*H TV series. Finally, in 1980, Skerritt began to attain a following with his authoritative performance in Alien. Since that time, there's been no stopping him. He posed in a popular series of "Guess?" Jeans ads, appeared as a 1987-88 regular on "Cheers," starred in 1992's A River Runs Through It (directed by his long-ago War Hunt costar Robert Redford), and won a 1994 Emmy for his work on the TV series "Picket Fences."Skerritt would continue to work at a remarkable pace, usually appearing in several projects a year. From 1999's family drama The Other Sister to 2003's war thriller Tears of the Sun, the actor could be spotted by fans of seemingly every area of film throughout the 90's and 2000's. In 2006, he took a recurring role in the hit primetime drama Brothers and Sisters, and in 2008 he signed on for the redneck comedy Beer for my Horses. He went on to appear in Whiteout, Multiple Sarcasms, and he made a cameo as himself in the R rated talking teddy bear movie Ted.

Trivia: Not long after British actor Ben Whishaw debuted onscreen in the late '90s, he began to reveal a gift (and a proclivity) for essaying some of the more intense and unusual characterizations in contemporary cinema, occasionally delivering uncanny evocations of real-life figures. Whishaw was memorable as a young Keith Richards in Stephen Woolley's Brian Jones biopic Stoned (2005), then portrayed a demented young man so determined to capture "the scent of womanhood" that he resorts to serial murder in Tom Tykwer's psychological thriller Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006). Whishaw evoked a young Bob Dylan (one of many) in Todd Haynes' controversial avant-garde biopic of the folk singer, I'm Not There (2007), then signed on to portray famed author John Keats in director Jane Campion's dramatization of the Keats/Fanny Brawne romance, Bright Star (2008). That same year, audiences could catch Whishaw's portrayal of Sebastian in Julian Jarrold's big-screen Evelyn Waugh adaptation , Brideshead Revisited (2008). In the years to come, Winshaw would remain a bankable actor, with prominent roles in films like Skyfall and Cloud Atlas.

Trivia: Spent part of her childhood in Africa while her parents did volunteer work. Moved to Paris at age 18 to study acting, including spending some time at a school for miming. Worked in the theatre upon returning to Denmark before making her film debut in the mostly-improvised Let's Get Lost (1997). Played the lead in a pilot production of Dogville (from Danish director Lars von Trier), to make sure the staging of the film would work; Nicole Kidman eventually played the role in the feature film. Was nominated for an International Emmy Award for her work on Bergen.

Trivia: Is an alumnus of the performing-arts summer camp Stagedoor Manor. Made his film debut acting alongside Tom Hanks in 2016's A Hologram for the King. Prepared for his role in A Hologram for the King, in which he plays an Arab, by traveling to Saudi Arabia, recording people to get a handle on how they talked, and working with a dialect coach. Stated that he and Tom Hanks did their swimming scenes in A Hologram for the King without the use of doubles as the filmmakers discovered both were good swimmers. For the short film Tim, he gained 40 lbs. to play the lead, then dropped 40 lbs. and packed on 15 lbs. of muscle to play Tim's Ego.