Trivia: A star in his native Australia thanks to his work on television and in musical theatre, actor Hugh Jackman became known to American audiences through his role as Logan/Wolverine in Bryan Singer's lavish adaptation of the popular Marvel comic X-Men (2000). Born of English parentage in Sydney on October 12, 1968, Jackman was raised as the youngest of five children. After earning a communications degree as a journalism major from Sydney's University of Technology, he attended the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts, where he studied drama. The fledgling actor got his first big break immediately after graduation, when he was offered a starring role on the popular TV series Corelli; his casting proved to be doubly serendipitous, as it provided him with an introduction to his future wife, actress Deborra-Lee Furness, with whom he would have a son. Jackman starred in a number of other TV series -- and also began to earn recognition for his work on the stage in such productions as Beauty and the Beast, Sunset Boulevard, and Trevor Nunn's acclaimed Royal National Theatre production of Oklahoma!, the latter of which featured the actor in an Olivier-nominated performance as Curly McLain. In 1999, a year after being nominated for the Olivier, Jackman was again honored, this time with a Best Actor nomination from the Australian Film Institute for his portrayal of a man estranged from his brother in the urban drama Erskineville Kings. The actor's winning streak continued when he was hired to replace Dougray Scott as Wolverine in Bryan Singer's high-profile adaptation of X-Men. The film, whose cast also included Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Anna Paquin, James Marsden, and Halle Berry, opened to strong reviews and box-office to become one of the biggest hits of the summer. Jackman's rising international popularity was reflected by his casting in Tony Goldwyn's Someone Like You, a romantic comedy also starring Ashley Judd and Greg Kinnear. Jackman was hard to ignore in 2001, appearing just a few short months later in John Travolta's latest comback, Swordfish.2003 saw the return of the X-Men and, with them, Jackman's Wolverine in X2: X-Men United, a film that not only repeated the first film's financial success, but was considered by many to be the rare sequel that outdoes its predecessor. Sticking with the action genre, Jackman could next be seen in the title role of the 2004 ultra-big-budget film Van Helsing. Although Van Helsing was met with critical disdain, and underperformed at the box office, Jackman rebounded by earning rave reviews as the lead in the Broadway musical The Boy From Oz. That same year he hosted the annual Tony awards, again to great acclaim.Fans had numerous opportunities to see Jackman on the big screen in 2006. He took a humorous turn that summer as a possible serial killer in Woody Allen's comedy Scoop, and in fall he starred opposite Oscar winner Rachel Weisz in the stylish The Fountain as a man who searches through three different time periods concurrently, on a single spiritual journey. That same autumn, Jackman could also be seen in the dark fantasy The Prestige, playing a turn of the century magician who some speculate performs real magic, and before winter, audiences were hearing his vocal work in a pair of animated films, Flushed Away and Happy Feet. 2006 also proved to be the year Jackman announced he would produce and star in a big-screen adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.Jackman would spend the following years appearing in numerous films, like X-Men: First Class, Butter, and Real Steel. He would enjoy one of his biggest successes playing Jean Valjean in Tom Hooper's adaptation of the stage musical Les Miserables, a role that earned Jackman a Best Actor nomination from the Academy, his first Oscar nod.

Trivia: As the offspring of producer/writer Naomi Foner and director Stephen Gyllenhaal, it is not surprising that Jake Gyllenhaal has been acting since childhood. Raised in Los Angeles, Gyllenhaal acted in school plays and made his winsome screen debut when he was in the fifth grade, playing Billy Crystal's son in the blockbuster summer comedy City Slickers (1991). Keeping it in the family while acting with some of the industry's most notable talents, Gyllenhaal subsequently appeared in his parents' 1993 adaptation of the novel A Dangerous Woman with Debra Winger, and played Robin Williams' son in a 1994 episode of TV's Homicide that was directed by his father. Poised to make the transition from child to adult actor, Gyllenhaal earned rave reviews, heralding him as a star in the making, for his emotionally sincere performance as real-life rocket builder Homer Hickam in the warmly received drama October Sky (1999). Though he opted to stay in school and attend college at Columbia University, Gyllenhaal continued his creative pursuits, playing in a rock band and starring as the oddball title character alongside Drew Barrymore in the Barrymore-produced Sundance Film Festival entrant Donnie Darko (2001). Gyllenhaal could be seen later that same year as the titular character in the ill-fated Bubble Boy.After co-starring on the London stage in This Is Our Youth in spring 2002, Gyllenhaal was declared one half of Entertainment Weekly's "It Gene Pool" (with sister Maggie Gyllenhaal) for his aversion to taking the easy, teen flick route. In keeping with his preference for off-center work, Gyllenhaal coincidentally played the younger love object of choice in two consecutive indie comedies, appearing as Catherine Keener's sensitive boss in Nicole Holofcener's slyly witty Lovely & Amazing (2002) and Jennifer Aniston's enticing yet disturbed co-worker in Miguel Arteta's sardonic The Good Girl (2002). As further proof that he had the acting chops to go with his sad-eyed good looks, Gyllenhaal subsequently co-starred with Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon as a young man enmeshed in his dead fiancée's family in Moonlight Mile (2002).With his star on the rise and his status as a heartthrob all but cemented, it became impossible for Gyllenhaal to avoid the draw of a big summer blockbuster. In 2004, he starred alongside Dennis Quaid in the mega-budgeted The Day After Tomorrow, and the success of that film put him in another league altogether. What followed was an interesting, challenging mix of roles for the young actor. He could be seen in the fall of 2005 starring in no less than three high-profile prestige films, all of them adaptations: the delayed big-screen version of the Pulitzer-prize winning play Proof, with Gwyneth Paltrow; the Gulf War memoir Jarhead, directed by American Beauty wunderkind Sam Mendes; and Ang Lee's cowboy romance Brokeback Mountain. The first two films received an indifferent response by critics, even though Jarhead's opening-weekend gross confirmed Gyllenhaal's bankability. Lee's film, however, garnered the most acclaim of 2005, and offered him perhaps his riskiest, most rewarding role to date. Playing the closeted, romantically frustrated rancher Jack Twist, Gyllenhaal added heartbreaking shades of vulnerability to his usual frat-boy cockiness, and more than held his own opposite a memorably gruff, taciturn Heath Ledger. As praise was heaped out upon the film and its two male leads, Gyllenhaal found himself the recipient of a BAFTA award, a National Board of Review notice, and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Gyllenhaal would spend the next several years enjoying his status as a leading man, appearing in projects like Zodiac, Brothers, Love and Other Drugs, and Source Code.

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: Born in Pennsylvania c. 1967, Maria Bello attended Villanova University as a political science major, but acting ability - evident from an early drama class - altered her career plans. Following graduation, Bello honed her acting skills in a number of New York theater productions before she broke through to the public as one of the leads in the short-lived TV spy comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1996). Bello gained broader primetime exposure as Dr. Anna Del Amico on NBC's blockbuster ER during the 1997 season and segued into films with her performance as recovering junkie Ben Stiller's confidante in the film-a-clef Permanent Midnight (1998), adapted from Jerry Stahl's harrowing book.Bello scored her first pop hit as Mel Gibson's beautiful cohort in the harsh crime drama Payback (1999). Poised to potentially become one of the select group of actors who transition smoothly from television to film, Bello co-starred as one of the bottle-tossing, bar-stomping babes in charge of the titular drinking establishment in the Bruckheimer-produced hellraiser Coyote Ugly (2000). When Coyote Ugly failed to live up to box office hopes, Bello starred as Suzi Loomis in Bruce Paltrow's Duets, and as Ruth Harkness in the IMAX feature China: The Panda Adventure (2001), based on her real-life experiences with the eponymous creatures. Bello scored a bona fide critical, if not financial, hit with Paul Schrader's biopic about slain Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane, Auto Focus (2002). As Crane's co-star and second wife Patricia, Bello holds her own opposite Greg Kinnear's bravura performance as the nymphomaniacal Crane, evoking the complex emotions of a spouse who accepts yet ultimately cannot contend with her husband's desires.A year after Auto Focus, Bello would score even bigger with the critics with a starring role alongside William H. Macy in the gritty Vegas romance The Cooler. As the cocktail waitress who falls for Macy's sadsack ne'er-do-well, Bello brought a sense of extreme realism to her character. The film netted her a Best Supporting Actress nomination from the Screen Actors Guild and a runner-up prize from The National Society of Film Critics.In early 2004, Bello appeared as Johnny Depp's estranged wife in the Stephen King adaptation The Secret Window, and in John Sayles' well-received political thriller Silver City. Though subsequent appearances in the fairly forgettable Assault on Precinct 13, The Dark, and The Sisters followed in 2005, Bello's Golden Globe-nommed performance as an unassuming housewife who married into mystery in A History of Violence, coupled with her prominent performance as a determined alcohol lobbyist in the critically-acclaimed Thank You for Smoking, helped to get her back in the good graces of critics and end the year on a decidedly high note. When 2006 arrived, Bello joined Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena, and Maggie Gyllenhall in World Trade Center, Oliver Stone's docudrama/survival picture that recounted the experiences of two Port Authority firefighters trapped beneath the rubble of the destroyed buildings. Bello joins the cast of the same year's Flicka, adapted from the seminal children's novel by Mary O'Hara (and incarnated decades prior as the movie and TV series My Friend Flicka) , alongside Alison Lohman and country singer Tim McGraw.Bello had a lead part in Alan Ball's feature film directorial debut Towelhead in 2007, and tackled the indie horror film Downloading Nancy the next year. In 2010 she scored a small part in the Adam Sandler comedy Grown Ups as well as major parts in a couple of dramas - The Company Men and Beautiful Boy.She next returned to television, taking the lead role in the NBC remake of the British series Prime Suspect in 2011. The show was cancelled after only 13 episodes, but Bello quickly booked another television role, in the second season of Fox's Touch, opposite Kiefer Sutherland. That show was also canceled after that season, and Bello returned to film, reprising her role in Grown Up 2 in 2013.Active in social causes as well, Maria Bello co-founded the Harlem not-for-profit arts and education program, Dream Yard Drama Project for Kids.

Trivia: Though Terrence Howard's great grandmother Minnie Gentry was a successful New York stage actress, Howard didn't venture onto the screen himself until the age of twenty. Raised in a multiracial Jehovah's Witness household, the young man studied chemical engineering at Pratt Institute before being discovered on the street in New York. This quickly led to appearances on such television shows as Coach, Street Legal, Living Single, and Picket Fences. His breakout role in 1995's Mr. Holland's Opus helped pave the way for Howard's film career, as did his critically acclaimed performance as Cowboy in the Hughes brothers film Dead Presidents. By the time he took the role of Quentin in 1999's The Best Man, Howard had established a reputation as an actor of both skill and integrity. The new millennium finally brought Howard work that showcased his talent and made him a well-known name, like his role in the Paul Haggis film Crash, as well as his work in the John Singleton's Four Brothers. He also attracted the spotlight on the small screen with parts in the acclaimed TV films Their Eyes Were Watching God with Halle Berry, and Lackawanna Blues with S. Epatha Merkerson. This set the stage for his career-making performance as a pimp desperate to create a new life for himself as a musician in Hustle & Flow, for which he earned an Oscar nomination. Over the coming years, Howard would remain a vital force on screen, appearing in several films, likeGet Rich or Die Tryin', Idlewild, Iron Man, and On the Road. In 2013, he played a supporting role in Lee Daniel's The Butler and reprised his role in The Best Man Holiday. Howard returned to television in Fox's smash-hit Empire, playing music mogul Lucious Lyon.

Trivia: After supporting roles in a handful of small films and a short stint on the soap opera All My Children, New York-born Melissa Leo gained prominence on the critically-acclaimed Barry Levinson-produced television drama Homicide: Life on the Streets. After leaving the show in 1997, Leo continued to appear in a range of features, including 1999's 24 Hour Woman. But it was her role as Benicio Del Toro's wife in 2003's 21 Grams that gave Leo her first exposure to a wide moviegoing audience. The performance also won her recognition from the L.A. Film Critics Association, who named Leo the runner-up for the Best Supporting Actress honor.Leo continued to work steadily in a series of independent films including American Gun, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and Stephanie Daley. In 2008 she landed the lead role in Courtney Hunt's debut feature Frozen River. As a financially strapped woman who turns to human-trafficking in order to earn a living, Leo earned thunderous critical praise as well as Best Actress nominations from both the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy.Frozen River led her to steady work un a variety of projects, but it was as the matriarch of the boxing brothers in The Fighter that Leo had the biggest success of her career capturing numerous year-end critics awards as well as the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. In the years after that she appeared in works as diverse as the remake of Mildred Pierce for HBO, and Kevin Smith's Red State.

Trivia: Paul Dano first caught major attention in 2006, when he played the grumpy, nihilistic teenager Dwayne in the sleeper hit Little Miss Sunshine. Dano had actually been paying his dues in the industry for five years when the indie comedy put him on the map, first starring in the tense 2001 drama L.I.E. at the age of 17, when he performed under the name Paul Franklin Dano. Even before that, young Dano appeared in several Broadway productions including A Christmas Carol and Ragtime. He went on to appear in the crime thriller Taking Lives as well as the critically acclaimed The Ballad of Jack & Rose. Then, in 2006, Dano took the infamous role in Little Miss Sunshine of a surly teenage brother who's taken a vow of silence. He immediately followed it with the subversive Fast Food Nation before signing on to re-team with his Ballad of Jack & Rose co-star Daniel Day-Lewis in the Paul Thomas Anderson historical drama There Will Be Blood. Dano also lent his voice to the big-screen computer-animated adaptation of the classic children's book Where the Wild Things Are, voicing the main character of Alexander. He continued to jungle indie fare like Gigantic, Meek's Cutoff, and Being Flynn with supporting turns in more high-profile projects including Knight and Day as well as Cowboys & Indians.

Trivia: Started his career as a child model. Featured in commercials for Tide and GMC. Played a young Charlie Sheen in an episode of Two and a Half Men and portrayed a young Michael Scofield in episodes of Prison Break. Appeared in the music video for Shinedown's "The Crow & the Butterfly." Won a battle-of-the-bands contest with his band, the Feaver, landing the group a gig on the 2011 Vans Warped Tour.

Trivia: After beefing up his bank account as a sales clerk (handling everything from men's clothing to farm machinery), Canadian actor Len Cariou began his formal theatrical training at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre. Cariou's first professional appearance was in the chorus of the Canadian company of Damn Yankees. On Broadway from 1968, Cariou was prominently featured in such long-running musicals as Applause and A Little Night Music. In 1972, he was appointed artistic director of his old stomping grounds, the Tyrone Guthrie; and in 1979 he won a Tony award for his portrayal of the title character in the Stephen Sondheim musical drama Sweeney Todd. His film roles include Frederick in A Little Night Music (1978) and Nick Callan in The Four Seasons (1981). On television, Len Cariou was perhaps never busier than during the 1993-1994 season, when he appeared in five made-for-TV movies, including Charles Bronson's remake of The Sea Wolf. Over the coming years, Cariou would remain active on screen, appearing in movies like The Greatest Game Ever Played and on TV shows like Brotherhood, Damages, and Blue Bloods.

Trivia: Of English, Irish, Italian, Iranian and Armenian descent.Grew up in Kansas.Was going to play college football but received a scholarship to study acting.Worked as a fisherman, playwright, movie theater usher and circus performer.Has played a disciple of Batman's villain the Joker multiple times, including The Dark Knight (2008) and the television series Gotham.The film Animals (2014) was inspired by his experience with heroin addiction, which earned him the Special Jury Prize for Courage in Storytelling at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival.A member of Caffeine Theatre and Shattered Globe Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois.