Trivia: The younger sister -- by four years -- of actress Dakota Fanning (The Cat in the Hat, War of the Worlds), angel-faced Elle Fanning broke into show business as a child star about three years after her ascendant sibling. Born in 1998, Elle started out as an actress with traditionally child-oriented roles in family-friendly material; she provided a voice for the American version of Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, then appeared in such pictures as the 2003 Daddy Day Care (as one of Eddie Murphy's young charges) and the 2005 Because of Winn-Dixie before making the broad leap to adult-oriented content. Subsequent projects included Babel (2006) and The Nines (2007). Fanning first received premier billing in not a feature but a short -- Brent Hanley's Day 73 with Sarah (2007) -- as a little girl who teams up with the ghost of her dead father to liberate her beleaguered mom from an abusive relationship. She played the young Daisy in the Oscar nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2008. And two years later earned strong reviews as the daughter of a spoiled, emotionally stunted actor in Sofia Coppola's Somwhere. In 2011 she earned the best reviews of her career in Super 8, and appeared in the hit family film We Bought a Zoo. In 2012 she appeared in Francis Coppola's unique horror film Twixt.

Trivia: Often mistaken for British, Alessandro Nivola has established himself as one of the American actors most likely to assume a flawless English accent in his films. Nivola, whose combination of charismatic good looks, vowel-laden name, and work in a number of British films have both confused and delighted critics and viewers, is actually a product of the East Coast. The son of an Italian-born academic father and a Boston blue-blood mother, Nivola was born and raised in Boston. Taking an early interest in acting, he grew up attending drama camp in the summer and got an internship at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in Waterford, Connecticut, where he began acting on the stage. His love of acting continued while he was a student at the Tony Philips Exeter Academy and Yale University; by the time he was a sophomore at Yale, he had landed an agent and was making regular trips to New York City for auditions.Nivola got his first professional jobs with the Yale Repertory Theatre and a Seattle-based company. He broke into films in 1997 with a small role in Inventing the Abbotts and the more substantial part of Nicolas Cage's psychotic genius brother in John Woo's Face/Off. He then crossed the ocean, and the accent barrier, to star in the British noir drama I Want You (1998), which cast him as an enigmatic man with a dark past, and in Patricia Rozema's saucy adaptation of Mansfield Park (1998). It was the latter film that gave Nivola his first significant dose of recognition and respect, with critics and viewers alike marveling at his portrayal of the dashing and morally dubious Henry Crawford, not to mention his seamless English accent. Nivola again worked with a largely British cast and crew the following year to make Kenneth Branagh's musical version of Love's Labour's Lost (2000), in which he played a king whose vow to forsake love for intellectual enlightenment becomes severely jeopardized by the arrival of a comely French princess (Alicia Silverstone) and her ladies in waiting. That same year, he returned to the other side of the Atlantic to portray a Backstreet Boys-type singer in Mike Figgis' Time Code 2000, an experimental feature filmed entirely in one take. In the years to come, Nivola would remain a consistent presence on screen, appearing in movies like Junebug, Grace is Gone, and The Eye, as well as on the TV series The Company.

Trivia: Christina Hendricks jump-started her career on television in the early 2000s, with a particularly effective multi-episode contribution to the medical drama ER. On that program, she played Joyce, a battered housewife given solace -- and shelter -- by one of the female employees of Cook County Hospital. Also in 2002, Hendricks appeared in a memorable role on the short-lived cult sci-fi series Firefly as the seductive, scheming conwoman Saffron (in two episodes, one of which never aired). She continued to find steady work on television, notably co-starring with Taye Diggs on the short-lived legal drama Kevin Hill (2004-2005). In 2007, Hendricks took on a prominant role on one of the most promising and original new series of 2007: Mad Men. Her work as Joan on the show earned her strong reviews as the show became the most respected on television winning the Emmy for best drama series each of its first four seasons. She parlayed that into a film career that includes appearances in I Don't Know How She Does It, Detachment, and the cult hit Drive, where she played a lethal criminal.

Trivia: Attended schools in New York, London, New Zealand, Rome and Australia while travelling around with her family. Appeared in her mother's short film The Water Diary (2006). Experienced heatstroke while filming Singularity in India.

Trivia: British adolescent and ingenue actress, onscreen from age 13 in A World Apart (1988).

Trivia: Although some of her recognition may stem from her 1992 marriage to Warren Beatty, Annette Bening has established herself as an actress capable of far more than domesticating one of Hollywood's most notorious playboys. After winning raves for her role in 1990's The Grifters, Bening turned in a series of strong performances in films ranging from The American President to Richard III to American Beauty.Born in Topeka, Kansas, on May 29, 1958, Bening moved with her family to San Diego, California when she was very young. It was there that she began to pursue her career, first as a dancer in various productions at a local college. Eventually graduating from San Francisco University (an education she paid for by working as a cook on a charter boat), Bening acted with San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre before moving to New York to further her stage experience. Her career in New York had its auspicious moments, such as winning a Tony Award nomination and a Clarence Derwent Award for Outstanding Debut Performance for her performance in Coastal Disturbances, but Bening endured a five-year struggle before breaking into film.She made her debut as Dan Aykroyd's irritable wife in The Great Outdoors in 1988; more substantial work followed in the form of Milos Forman's Valmont, a 1989 adaptation of Chodleros de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses that featured Bening as the scheming, manipulative Marquise de Merteuil. The film suffered in comparison to Stephen Frears's Dangerous Liaisons, which had been released the previous year; fortunately, the same couldn't be said of Bening's next major effort, 1990's The Grifters. Frears's gripping, stylish adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel of the same name, The Grifters met with almost unanimous critical acclaim, much of which was aimed at the performances of Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, and Bening as the film's protagonists. Bening won special praise for her portrayal of an ill-fated con artist, accruing Best Supporting Actress nominations from the Academy, the New York Film Critics Circle, and the British Academy.Her performance also won the attention of Warren Beatty, who was so impressed with her work that he cast her as his love interest in his 1991 Bugsy. Although the film proved a relative disappointment, it did result in both a Golden Globe nomination for Bening and a 1992 marriage for her and Beatty. The two could be seen collaborating again onscreen two years later in Love Affair, a remake of the 1957 An Affair to Remember. Unfortunately, the film fared poorly, both at the box office and at the hands of disapproving critics. Bening had more luck with her subsequent role as Michael Douglas' presidential love interest in Rob Reiner's The American President (1995), and then went on to explore politics of a different sort with Richard Loncraine's 1996 adaptation of Richard III. Her starring turn as the embattled Queen Elizabeth drew praise, and the attention she garnered for her performance helped to lighten the load of antipathy directed toward Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!, the actress' other film that year.Following lead roles in 1998's underperforming The Siege and 1999's ill-fated In Dreams, Bening could be seen in American Beauty (also 1999) as Kevin Spacey's status-obsessed, control-freak wife. As part of the film's superb ensemble cast, which also featured Chris Cooper, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, and Mena Suvari, the actress won praise for her work, and the added distinction of being part of what many hailed as one of the best films of the year. Her first Best Actress Oscar nomination followed, although Bening's near-lock on the award was stolen away from her by Hilary Swank, a newcomer almost as auspicious as she once was.Adding insult to injury, Bening lost the Oscar at the same time she could be seen in theaters alongside Garry Shandling in the much-derided sci-fi comedy What Planet Are You From? Perhaps as a result of this -- or due to her decision to spend more time with her four children -- the actress chose her parts very carefully in the coming years. She re-emerged in a leading role in 2003 opposite Kevin Costner in the sleeper-hit western Open Range, and followed that comeback with a triumphant diva turn as the title character in Being Julia, an adaptation of M. Somerset Maugham's back-stabbing, backstage comic melodrama Theater. Though little-seen, the film garnered immense praise for Bening -- including a Best Actress nod from the National Board of Review -- and an eventual Best Actress Oscar nomination. However, in a moment of Hollywood irony that echoed both her character's situation in Being Julia and the fate of the 2000 awards ceremony, Bening was denied the award in favor of Hilary Swank's tour-de-force as a doomed boxer in Oscar favorite Million Dollar Baby.She was the mother in the cinematic adaptation of Running With Scissors, and had a major part in the big-budget misfire remake of The Women. In 2010 she won the SAG award for best actress and was nominated for the Oscar in that same category for her work as a lesbian mother of two who finds out her partner is cheating on her in the comedy The Kids Are All Right.

Trivia: Earthy, ofttimes disheveled comic actor Oliver Platt has been essaying film roles large and small since the early '90s. Among his earliest appearances was as one of villain Dean Jones' henchmen in the 1992 sleeper Beethoven. He has since popped up as Eric in Benny and Joon, Jack Harrell in The Temp, and Jeremy in Indecent Proposal -- all in 1993. That same year, he shared top billing with Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, and Chris O'Donnell as Porthos in The Three Musketeers. Oliver Platt carries the whole show in the little-seen Funny Bones (1995), wherein he portrays a failed standup comic (the son of Jerry Lewis and Leslie Caron) who licks his wounds in a rundown British coastal town.

Trivia: Perhaps the actor most closely associated with director Mike Leigh, Timothy Spall has acted in productions for the director on both the stage and screen. Spall made a particularly strong impression in Leigh's Life is Sweet (1991), which cast him as a socially awkward gourmet chef, and Secrets & Lies (1996), in which his starring performance as a portrait photographer struggling with marital problems earned him award nominations from the British Academy and the London Film Critics Circle. In addition to his work with Leigh, Spall has appeared in a number of disparate productions. He made his film debut with a supporting role in the Who's Quadrophenia in 1979 and spent the next decade splitting his time and energy between the stage and screen. He acted extensively for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, and he also did acclaimed work on television, most notably as Mr. Venus in the BBC production of Charles Dicken's Our Mutual Friend, for which he received a BAFTA Best Actor nomination.Spall began to gain recognition and respect as a film actor in the 1990s, thanks in large part to his collaborations with Leigh. In addition to his work with the director, Spall was particularly memorable in Brian Gibson's Still Crazy (1998), a comedy that cast him as the drummer for a defunct 1970s rock band trying to make a come-back. In 1999, the actor enjoyed another collaboration with Leigh in Topsy-Turvy, an acclaimed drama about the partnership between Gilbert and Sullivan that featured Spall as an effeminate opera diva. The following year, he could be seen as Don Armado in Kenneth Branagh's musical adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost, and heard as a chicken farm denizen in Nick Park's animated Chicken Run. In recognition of his contributions to the arts, Spall was named an Officer of the Order of British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth on New Year's Eve, 1999.

Trivia: In 2003, opened an exhibition featuring 14 Northumbrian artists at the Garden Station in Langley. Was honeymooning in Sri Lanka when the 2004 tsunami struck; organised a cricket match on his return to London to raise funds for the disaster appeal. Voiced the character of Nicholas Nickleby in the BBC Radio 4 drama of the Charles Dickens story in 2008. Voiced the characters of Bartholomew Roberts and John Standish in the video game Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. Opened the London restaurant Kitty Fisher in 2015.