Trivia: Born Walter Willis -- an Army brat to parents stationed in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany -- on March 19, 1955, Bruce Willis grew up in New Jersey from the age of two. As a youngster, he developed a stutter that posed the threat of social alienation, but he discovered an odd quirk: while performing in front of large numbers of people, the handicap inexplicably vanished. This led Willis into a certified niche as a comedian and budding actor. After high-school graduation, 18-year-old Willis decided to land a blue-collar job in the vein of his father, and accepted a position at the DuPont Chambers Works factory in Deep Water, NJ, but withdrew, shaken, after a co-worker was killed on the job. He performed regularly on the harmonica in a blues ensemble called the Loose Goose and worked temporarily as a security guard before enrolling in the drama program at Montclair State University in New Jersey. A collegiate role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof brought Willis back in touch with his love of acting, and he instantly decided to devote his life to the profession.Willis made his first professional appearances on film with minor roles in projects like The First Deadly Sin, starring Frank Sinatra, and Sidney Lumet's The Verdict. But his big break came when he attended a casting call (along with 3000 other hopefuls) for the leading role on Moonlighting, an ABC detective comedy series. Sensing Willis' innate appeal, producers cast him opposite the luminous Cybill Shepherd. The series, which debuted in 1985, followed the story of two private investigators working for a struggling detective agency, with Willis playing the fast-talking ne'er-do-well David Addison, and Shepherd playing the prim former fashion model Maddie Hayes. The show's heavy use of clever dialogue, romantic tension, and screwball comedy proved a massive hit with audiences, and Willis became a major star. The show ultimately lasted four years and wrapped on May 14, 1989. During the first year or two of the series, Willis and Shepherd enjoyed a brief offscreen romantic involvement as well, but Willis soon met and fell in love with actress Demi Moore, who became his wife in 1987.In the interim, Willis segued into features, playing geeky Walter Davis in the madcap 1987 comedy Blind Date. That same year, Motown Records -- perhaps made aware of Willis' experiences as a musician -- invited the star to record an LP of blue-eyed soul tracks. The Return of Bruno emerged and became a moderate hit among baby boomers, although as the years passed it became better remembered as an excuse for Willis to wear sunglasses indoors and sing into pool cues.Then in 1988, Willis broke major barriers when he convinced studios to cast him in the leading role of John McClane in John McTiernan's explosive action movie Die Hard. Though up until this point, action stars had been massive tough guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, execs took a chance on Willis' every-guy approach to the genre - and the gamble paid off. Playing a working-class cop who confronts an entire skyscraper full of terrorists when his estranged wife is taken hostage on Christmas Eve, Willis' used his wiseacre television persona to constantly undercut the film's somber underpinnings, without ever once damaging the suspenseful core of the material. This, coupled with a smart script and wall-to-wall sequences of spectacular action, propelled Die Hard to number one at the box office during the summer of 1988, and made Willis a full-fledged movie star.Willis subsequent projects would include two successful Die Hard sequels, as well as other roles the 1989 Norman Jewison drama In Country, and the 1989 hit comedy Look Who's Talking, in which Willis voiced baby Mikey. Though he'd engage in a few stinkers, like the unsuccessful Hudson Hawk and North, he would also continue to strike told with hugely popular movies like The Last Boyscout , Pulp Fiction, and Armageddon.Willis landed one of his biggest hits, however, when he signed on to work with writer/director M. Night Shyamalan in the supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense. In that film, Willis played Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist assigned to treat a young boy (Haley Joel Osment) plagued by visions of ghosts. The picture packs a wallop in its final minutes, with a now-infamous surprise that even purportedly caught Hollywood insiders off guard when it hit U.S. cinemas in the summer of 1999. Around the same time, tabloids began to swarm with gossip of a breakup between Willis and Demi Moore, who indeed filed for divorce and finalized it in the fall of 2000.Willis and M. Night Shyamalan teamed up again in 2000 for Unbreakable, another dark fantasy about a man who suddenly discovers that he has been imbued with superhero powers and meets his polar opposite, a psychotic, fragile-bodied black man (Samuel L. Jackson). The movie divided critics but drew hefty grosses when it premiered on November 22, 2000. That same year, Willis delighted audiences with a neat comic turn as hitman Jimmy the Tulip in The Whole Nine Yards, which light heartedly parodied his own tough-guy image. Willis followed it up four years later with a sequel, The Whole Ten Yards.In 2005, Willis was ideally cast as beaten-down cop Hartigan in Robert Rodriguez's graphic-novel adaptation Sin City. The movie was a massive success, and Willis was happy to reteam with Rodriguez again the next year for a role in the zombie action flick Planet Terror, Rodriguez's contribution to the double feature Grindhouse. Additionally, Willis would keep busy over the next few years with roles in films like Richard Donner's 16 Blocks, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation, and Nick Cassavetes' crime drama Alpha Dog. The next year, Willis reprised his role as everyman superhero John McClane for a fourth installment of the Die Hard series, Live Free or Die Hard, directed by Len Wiseman. Though hardcore fans of the franchise were not overly impressed, the film did expectedly well at the box office.In the latter part of the decade, Willis would keep up his action star status, starring in the sci-fi thriller Surrogates in 2009, but also enjoyed poking fun at his own persona, with tongue-in-cheek roles in action fare like The Expendables, Cop Out, and Red. He appeared as part of the ensemble in Wes Anderson's quirky Moonrise Kingdom and in the time-travel action thriller Looper in 2012, before appearing in a string of sequels -- The Expendables 2 (2012), A Good Day to Die Hard, G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Red 2 (all 2013) and Sin City: A Dame to Die For (2014).

Trivia: With his golden curls, sensuous mouth, and sculpted body, Ryan Phillippe looks more like he was peeled off a Botticelli canvas than "discovered" in a Delaware barbershop. Phillippe, who was born September 10, 1974, in New Castle, DE, rose from obscurity to become one of the most talked-about actors of his generation, attracting at first numerous admirers of his good looks, and later fans of risk-taking performers.Phillippe got his first break on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, on which he portrayed daytime's first gay teenager, Billy Douglas. The role, which he played from 1992 to 1993, won him both favorable notices and increasing recognition. After quitting the show to focus on his screen career, Phillippe got a small part in 1995 submarine action thriller Crimson Tide. More work -- and more boat-oriented action -- followed in 1996 with Ridley Scott's White Squall, in which Phillippe was given a prominent role alongside two other up-and-coming actors, Ethan Embry and Scott Wolf. After this mainstream, big-budget venture, Phillippe took a walk down the yellow brick road of independent filmmaking, first with his starring role as an abused trailer-park teen in Little Boy Blue (1997), and then in Gregg Araki's Nowhere (1997), as the latest of Araki's trademark ultra-horny boys.Phillippe's major screen break came with his role in the formulaic 1997 slasher pic I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which he starred alongside fellow Next-Big-Things Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Sarah Michelle Gellar. The film's success, coupled with Phillippe's exposure from previous films, was enough to propel him into two leading roles in 1998, first as a blue-haired club baby in Playing by Heart, and then as a starry-eyed bartender in the critically disembowelled 54, a film which showcased Phillippe's abs over his acting.Following 54, Phillippe opted to play a naïve dope farmer in the obscure Homegrown (1998), in which he co-starred with Billy Bob Thornton and Hank Azaria. This preceded his next big break as the petulantly seductive trust-fund brat Sebastian Valmont in 1999's Cruel Intentions, a film that was essentially a present-day, all-teen adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Co-starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as his scheming stepsister and Phillippe's real-life wife-to-be Reese Witherspoon, the film proved to be one of the year's most guilty pleasures, winning Phillippe further acclaim in the hearts and minds of lust-struck women and men alike.Subsequently teetering on the brink of all-out superstardom, Phillippe faltered a bit with the late summer 2000 action thriller The Way of the Gun, co-starring Benicio Del Toro. Though some saw the film as a smartly penned meditation on violence, others brushed it aside as just another post-Tarantino study in excess, and the film faded quickly from the box-office radar -- with the following year's AntiTrust dissipating almost immediately following its January 2001 release. But the tables turned for Phillippe in the years to come, with involvement in films that consistently found dual favor with critics and audiences -- and thus helped the young actor transition from a widespread reputation as a heartthrob to a reputation as an immensely gifted dramatist graced with a succession of plum roles (and suggested a keen instinct for script selection). This turnaround began with the actor's participation in director Robert Altman's critically worshipped mystery comedy Gosford Park. Phillippe (as Henry Denton) was not among the top-billed members of the ensemble cast, but his work shone brightly alongside such luminaries as Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, and Kristin Scott Thomas -- no small feat for a relative newcomer. The following year, Phillippe drew raves for his work in Burr Steers's sleeper hit Igby Goes Down (2002) -- a commercial and critical indie darling -- as the spoiled, conceited older brother of the title character. Thereafter, Phillippe's screen activity declined just a bit (perhaps because of his off decision to father and raise additional children with wife Witherspoon), but he also became increasingly selective. His star rose higher with 2005's Best Picture winner Crash, directed by Paul Haggis. A Gaghan-esque muckracking drama with a massive ensemble cast that included the gifted Don Cheadle, Matt Dillion, and Brendan Fraser, the picture meditated on modern-day racism through multiple interlocking stories that unfold throughout the City of Angels.2006 marked a fortuitous year for Phillippe. He secured a leading role in director Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, the American half of the director's two-part dramatization of the Battle of Iwo Jima (as Bradley, a man who learns of his father's heroism in that conflict decades later). In that same year's Lionsgate release Five Fingers, helmed by neophyte Laurence Malkin, Phillippe plays the difficult role of a brilliant Dutch pianist abducted by terrorists and threatened with having his fingers lopped off one by one. At about the same time, Phillippe signed on (alongside Chris Cooper and Laura Linney) to play Eric O'Neill in director Billy Ray's Breach, which the studio slated for a 2007 release. The picture -- a docudrama -- concerns real-life FBI turncoat Robert Hanssen (Cooper). Phillippe plays the "mole" assigned to catch Hanssen in the act.Also in the fall of 2006, the busy Phillippe had to contend with drama in his personal life in the form of a highly public divorce from Witherspoon, announced that October. Over the course of the next few years Philippe's career seemed to be more hit than miss, though high profile roles in MacGruber and The Lincoln Lawyer served well to keep in the public eye, and in 2012 he essayed an extended guest appearance on the hit FX series Damages. After his solid turn there, he stuck with TV, with a main role on the first season of Secrets and Lies.

Trivia: A native of Lynnwood, WA, Randy Couture established himself as one of the top-tiered Mixed Martial Arts champions and professional Greco-Roman wrestlers in the world. Couture served six years in the army, where he subjected himself to intense training as a boxer alongside the standard basic-training routines. He then underwent 25 years of training as a Greco-Roman wrestler and delved into MMA with full abandon, cultivating a unique fighting method dubbed "Ground and Pound" that involved flooring and pinning down an opponent and pounding the individual with one's fists. Occupationally, Couture held a six-year post as a strength conditioning and assistant wrestling coach at Oregon State University. In 1997 (at age 33), he formally entered the Ultimate Fighting Championship competitions and chalked up a formidable record, courageously taking on, and defeating, such formidable opponents as Chuck Liddell, Pedro Rizzo, and Kevin Randleman; he also moved into announcing on pay-per-view fighting events.In terms of film work, the majority of Couture's early on-camera appearances consist, unsurprisingly, of live wrestling and MMA events. He moved into dramatic roles, however, under the aegis of no less than David Mamet, in the esteemed playwright-cum-director's 2008 martial arts saga Redbelt. Coincident with this, Couture also signed on to star opposite Rob Schneider and David Carradine in the crime comedy Big Stan (2008) and appeared as the villain in the straight-to-DVD Universal sequel The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior.

Trivia: Hard-working character actor James Remar has been mainly typecast as a psychopathic killer in a wide variety of thrillers, both blockbusters and low-budget straight-to-video. A native of Boston, he studied acting at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse and made his Broadway debut with Bent, opposite Richard Gere. His first major film role was gangster Ajax in Walter Hill's 1979 action drama The Warriors. The film gained a minor cult following and seemed to cement Remar's reputation as a bad guy. He would continue to work with director Hill for Windwalker (1980), 48 Hrs. (1982), and Wild Bill (1995).During the '80s, he played psycho gangster Dutch Schultz in Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club, a maniac killer in Rent-a-Cop, and a Neanderthal in The Clan of the Cave Bear. He got a little break in 1989 as the cop Gentry in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy. During the '90s, he made a deal with the devil in Tales From the Darkside: The Movie and appeared in many movies that ended up on TV or home video. He had played so many villains that he was able to spoof himself as Max Shady in the comedic thriller parody Fatal Instinct. A few gentle comedy dramas followed with Penny Marshall's Renaissance Man and Herbert Ross' Boys on the Side.Many film roles opened up in the late '90s, from Victor Salva's independent comedy Rites of Passage to the big-budget Robert Zemeckis mystery What Lies Beneath. After playing Frank Cisco on the TV series Total Security, he showed up on HBO's Sex and the City as Richard, Samatha's (Kim Cattrall) rich boyfriend of the moment. He then joined the cast of the USA original series The Huntress as fugitive Tiny Bellows, the love interest of Dottie Thorson (Annette O'Toole). In 2003, he could be seen in feature films from the action moneymaker 2 Fast 2 Furious to the light comedy Duplex.

Trivia: At age 11, was on the federation ski team in New England.At age 16, was ranked sixth in junior tennis in the USA and first in Florida.Played tennis for Duke University on a full scholarship and won the indoor NCAAs with her team.Is a musician, plays guitar and produces her own music.Had top requested songs on the radio in Florida.Known for her role as Pamela in the Netflix original series Marvel's Jessica Jones.

Trivia: Born Curtis James Jackson III in Queens, NY, superstar hardcore rapper 50 Cent -- more than any of his contemporaries -- lived out the mythology of the "urban gangsta," to such a degree that he's quite fortunate to be alive, let alone a pop-culture superstar. The product of a broken home, 50 Cent survived stabbings, shootings, crack dealing, multiple incarcerations, and many other calamities and near-misses, and then drew lyrically from his own violent personal history, using this authentic material (with the help of Run-D.M.C.'s Jam Master Jay and Eminem) to establish himself as one of the most important rap acts of the early 21st century. 50 Cent's albums Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2003) and The Massacre (2005) thrived on the songster's outstanding hooks, clever lyrics, and superlative production values; consequently, each album sold several million copies and turned the rapper into an American icon. The musician's look also turned heads: tall, rippled, and tattooed, frequently sporting a bulletproof vest and a large pistol, he became the newest spokesperson for the "gangsta" subculture. The leap from rap superstardom to movie stardom can be a short one, as Ice-T and Ice Cube demonstrated. Although 50 Cent launched his cinematic career as an onscreen subject -- in the 2003 documentaries 50 Cent: The New Breed and 50 Cent: Unauthorized -- Shoot First -- he soon branched out into more challenging material. In 2005, 50 Cent headlined a gritty big-screen biopic of his own life, Get Rich or Die Tryin', directed by My Left Foot helmer Jim Sheridan. In that movie, the rapper hearkened back to his given name, with billing as Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. In 2008, he went on to co-star in the cop thriller Righteous Kill, directed by Jon Avnet, with legendary actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as a pair of Manhattan cops on the trail of a serial murderer. He continued to appear in music-related documentaries and concert films, and in 2011 he produced the Mario Van Peebles film All Things Fall Apart. The next year he appeared in the thriller Odd Thomas as part of a cast that includes Anton Yelchin, Willem Dafoe, and Patton Oswalt.

Trivia: Korean-American actor Will Yun Lee began training for a career in action movies almost from birth. His father is a Taekwondo grandmaster, and Lee attended UCLA on an athletic scholarship for the school's Taekwondo team. He began his acting career with projects like the family comedy What's Cooking?, the Asian-American drama Face, and the TNT fantasy-action series Witchblade. Then in 2002, he was named as one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People, making him a more familiar face and landing him more high-profile jobs, like Die Another Day, Torque, and Elektra. In 2006, he appeared in the documentary The Slanted Screen, discussing the history of how Asians and Asian Americans have been portrayed in film. That same year, he signed on to the cast of the show Thief, followed by a remake of The Bionic Woman in 2007. Also that year, Lee was named by People as one of the "Sexiest Men Alive." In the years to come, Lee would appear in several films, like the Total Recall and Red Dawn remakes, as well as on the remake of Hawaii Five-0.

Trivia: Was about to enter law school when he decided to pursue acting instead. Did regional theater in the Midwest before moving to the West Coast to act in Shakespeare festivals. Met The Shield creator Shawn Ryan at a playwriting retreat in Virginia.

Trivia: A former dancer whose sizzling moves alongside such musical icons as P. Diddy, Janet Jackson, and Ricky Martin found her well prepared to step into the spotlight on the big screen, brunette beauty Jenna Dewan lit up the stage with the best of them before making her screen debut as the vengeful Tamara in the supernatural thriller of the same name. It was on the small screen that Dewan would receive her first big break, with appearances in a variety of heavily-circulated music videos preceding a pair of early appearances on the television sitcoms Quintuplets and Joey. Intense in her spirituality despite her witchy onscreen debut, Dewan would get her first taste of success when tabloids began falsely speculating on a romance with fellow dancer Justin Timberlake. Easy to shrug off the rumors and quick to stay on her feet, it was Dewan's impressive footwork that landed her a subsequent role in the 2006 Antonio Banderas musical drama Take the Lead. Though Dewan's screen time may have been a bit brief in that particular effort, a role in the same year's dance romance Step Up found the rising star doing precisely that as she danced away juvenile delinquency alongside She's the Man's Channing Tatum in a role that truly allowed her to cut loose for the cameras. Dewan married her Step Up co-star Tatum in 2009 and the two went on to found their own production company, 33andOut Productions. In addition to roles in several independent films throughout the 2000s, Dewan starred in NBC's much-hyped, but ultimately short-lived, prime time drama The Playboy Club in 2011.