Trivia: Character actor Lance E. Nichols spent the first two decades of his career (from the late '80s through the early 2000s) appearing as a number of standard urban professional types, including cops, taxi drivers, and physicians, with small guest appearances in such series programs as Cheers, Murder, She Wrote, Matlock, and NYPD Blue. Nichols took on a rare lead role in 2008, in Leslie Small's drama A Good Man Is Hard to Find, as Deacon Smith; as adapted from the popular gospel-themed stage production, the work dramatizes the stories of three African-American women battling personal and professional crises.

Trivia: British director Guy Ritchie frequently attributes the success of his unorthodox crime films -- 1998's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, 2000's Snatch -- to the fact that his offbeat miscreants are more than believable, they are real. Preferring to cast for authenticity rather than resumé, Ritchie handpicks many of his actors from the true-life cult figures and rascals of London's underbelly. Actor Jason Statham is among the best of them.A one-time Olympic diver, fashion model, and black-market salesman, Statham came to acting by way of commercials and "street theater" -- a euphemism for hustling tourists on London's Oxford Street. Raised in Syndenham, London, he was the second son of a lounge singer and a dressmaker turned dancer. Although Statham had the familial background to go immediately into entertainment, he excelled first on the high dive. He was a member of the 1988 British Olympic Team in Seoul, Korea, and remained on the National Diving Squad for ten years. In the late '90s, a talent agent specializing in athletes landed Statham a gig in an ad campaign for the European clothing retailer French Connection. This led to an appearance in a Levi's Jeans commercial and a fledgling modeling career. Meanwhile, Statham had also earned local fame as a street corner con man, selling stolen jewelry and counterfeit perfume out of a briefcase. Thus, when French Connection's owner became one of the biggest investors in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, he naturally introduced the diver/model/hustler to knave-hunting Ritchie.Intrigued by Statham's past and impressed by his modeling work, Ritchie invited him to audition for a part in the film. The director challenged Statham to impersonate an illegal street vendor and convince him to purchase a piece of imitation gold jewelry. Statham was evidently so persuasive that Ritchie bought four sets. When the director attempted to return his worthless acquisition -- pretending that the gold had turned to stainless steel -- Statham was so graciously inflexible that Ritchie hired him.This unorthodox audition resulted in Statham's big screen debut as Bacon, one of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels' four primary characters engaged in a risky get-rich-quick scheme to repay a massive gambling debt. Bacon supplies a streetwise discipline and restraint that the other characters lack and a sense of humility crucial to Ritchie's film. In the director's follow-up crime comedy, Snatch, Ritchie rehired Statham to play Turkish, a smalltime hood vainly trying to break into the world of underground boxing. As this amateur but respectable hoodlum, Statham is attractive, urbane, immaculate, and smart enough to be bewildered by even his own laughable criminal ineptitude. The role began as a small supporting part in Snatch's star-filled ensemble cast but expanded throughout shooting. By the time of the film's theatrical release, Statham received top billing as its narrator and chief anti-hero.The Guy Ritchie oeuvre that supplied his breakthrough performances is not Statham's only acting arena. In 2000, he made his American film debut as a British drug dealer in Robert Adetuyi's Turn It Up starring Pras Michel. By 2001, he had finished shooting John Carpenter's sci-fi thriller Ghosts of Mars and joined Delroy Lindo in the cast of the Jet Li vehicle The One. A chance to reteam with former Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrel co-star Vinnie Jones proved too fun an opportunity to resist, and Stratham would round out a particularly busy 2001 with his role in the prison-bound sports remake Mean Machine. Just as audiences were finally standing up to take notice of the amiable tough-guy, Stratham stepped into his own as the action lead of the explosive 2002 adrenaline ride The Transporter. A sizable hit that would earn Statham increasingly prominent roles in such high profile pics as The Italian Job, and Cellular, The Transporter established Stratham as a bankable international action star and was eventually followed by a 2005 sequel that miraculously managed the improbable feat of upping the ante of the previous installment's over-the-top cartoon violence. A starring role in Ritchie's 2005 crime thriller Revolver found Stratham re-teaming with the director who launched his career with decidedly mixed results, and the following year it was off to race the clock and rescue the girl as a reformed assassin looking to make good in the hyper-intense action entry Crank. The positively outrageous Crank: High Voltage upped the ante (and the ampage) in every possible way in 2009, but not before Statham got behind the wheel for Resident Evil director Paul W.A. Anderson for the 2008 remake Death Race, discovered just how far a foolproof heist could go awry in The Bank Job, and once again put the pedal to the metal in The Transporter 3. All of this left little doubt that Statham had quickly become one of the most bankable action stars of his generation, and in 2010 he teamed with none other than Sylvester Stallone for the all-star action flick The Expendables. The action just kept coming in The Mechanic, Blitz, Killer Elite (which paired him with screen legend Robert DeNiro), Safe, and the super-sized The Expendables 2 in 2012. Statham next joined another franchise, making a cameo appearance in Fast & Furious 6. He also reprised his role in The Expendables 3. In 2015, Statham appeared in Furious 7 and flexed his comedy chops in Spy, opposite Melissa McCarthy, earning favorable reviews and opening him to another genre.

Trivia: Born in Boston in October 1980, he began to realize his passion for acting after attending the Interlochen Theater Arts Summer Program. After writing, directing, and starring in his first play at the age of 12, it wasn't long before the venom of the acting bug had successfully worked its way into the budding thespian's blood. Devoting his life to acting, Foster dropped out of high school at 16 and prepared to face the challenges that accompany such a career. In 1999, Foster won his breakthrough role in Liberty Heights. Set in 1950s Baltimore, Foster starred as a Jewish high school student whose socially taboo relationship with an African-American classmate (Rebekah Johnson) finds him facing negative pressure from his family and friends. He would go on to appear in many other films, like The Laramie Project, Big Trouble, 30 Days of Night, Alpha Dog, 3:10 to Yuma, Pandorum, Rampart, and more. Foster would also have a succesful TV run, with a role on the popular HBO series Six Feet Under. He played William Burroughs in 2013's Kill Your Darlings and also appeared in Ain't Them Bodies Saints and Lone Survivor the same year. Foster also focused on his stage work, starring in A Streetcar Named Desire in London in 2014.

Trivia: The grandson of movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn, actor Tony Goldwyn favored his grandmother's side of the family (she was film actress Frances Howard) by pursuing an acting rather than an executive career. Goldwyn's first major film was 1987's Gaby: A True Story, in which he was eighth-billed. His breakthrough feature was 1990's Ghost, in which he played Carl, the "lying snake" who sets up the murder of his best friend (Patrick Swayze) and then callously moves in on the dead man's grieving girlfriend (Demi Moore). A master at playing charming-but-shallow yuppies, Goldwyn went on to appear in films ranging from The Pelican Brief (1994) to Nixon (1995) to the thriller Kiss the Girls (1997). In 1998, Goldwyn played astronaut Neil Armstrong in the made-for-TV docudrama series From the Earth to the Moon; the following year he made his directorial debut with the similarly-titled A Walk on the Moon. Starring Diane Lane as a dissatisfied housewife who finds physical and emotional enlightenment with a blouse salesman (Viggo Mortensen) in 1969 upstate New York, the film enjoyed an overwhelmingly favorable reception. Also in 1999, Goldwyn earned additional kudos for voicing the title character of Disney's animated Tarzan. Audiences were able to see more of the actor in 2000, when he appeared in Don Roos' romantic drama Bounce and in the Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi thriller The 6th Day. When his sophomore effort as a director, the romantic comedy Someone Like You..., failed to generate much interest, Goldwyn would turn toward television to helm episodes of The L Word, Without a Trace, Grey's Anatomy, and Law & Order (many of which he also appeared in as an actor) while racking up an impressive list of credits in such efforts as the Christian-themed drama Joshua, The Last Samurai, and as a haunted writer whose attempt to clean the skeletons out of the family closet lead to tragedy in Ghosts Never Sleep. A 2005 performance as a cop whose life is profoundly affected by a firearm in American Gun found Goldwyn as strong as ever in front of the camera, and the following year it was time once again to take the reins for the romantic comedy drama re-make The Last Kiss; a contemporary tale of love and anxiety starring Scrubs and Garden State actor Zach Braff. .

Trivia: Certainly one of the most distinctive looking men ever to be granted the title of movie star, Donald Sutherland is an actor defined as much by his almost caricature-like features as his considerable talent. Tall, lanky and bearing perhaps the most enjoyably sinister face this side of Vincent Price, Sutherland made a name for himself in some of the most influential films of the 1970s and early '80s.A native of Canada, Sutherland was born in New Brunswick on July 17, 1935. Raised in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, he took an early interest in the entertainment industry, becoming a radio DJ by the time he was fourteen. While an engineering student at the University of Toronto, he discovered his love for acting and duly decided to pursue theatrical training. An attempt to enroll at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art was thwarted, however, because of his size (6'4") and idiosyncratic looks. Not one to give up, Sutherland began doing British repertory theatre and getting acting stints on television series like The Saint. In 1964 the actor got his first big break, making his screen debut in the Italian horror film Il Castello dei Morti Vivi (The Castle of the Living Dead). His dual role as a young soldier and an old hag was enough to convince various casting directors of a certain kind of versatility, and Sutherland was soon appearing in a number of remarkably schlocky films, including Dr. Terror's House of Horrors and Die! Die! Darling! (both 1965). A move into more respectable fare came in 1967, when Robert Aldrich cast him as a retarded killer in the highly successful The Dirty Dozen. By the early '70s, Sutherland had become something of a bonafide star, thanks to lead roles in films like Start the Revolution without Me and Robert Altman's MASH (both 1970). It was his role as Army surgeon Hawkeye Pierce in the latter film that gave the actor particular respect and credibility, and the following year he enhanced his reputation with a portrayal of the titular private detective in Alan J. Pakula's Klute.It was during this period that Sutherland became something of an idol for a younger, counter culture audience, due to both the kind of roles he took and his own anti-war stance. Offscreen, he spent a great deal of time protesting the Vietnam War, and, with the participation of fellow protestor and Klute co-star Jane Fonda, made the anti-war documentary F.T.A. in 1972. He also continued his mainstream Hollywood work, enjoying success with films like Don't Look Now (1973), The Day of the Locust (1975), and Fellini's Casanova (1976). In 1978, he won a permanent place in the hearts and minds of slackers everywhere with his portrayal of a pot-smoking, metaphysics-spouting college professor in National Lampoon's Animal House.After a starring role in the critically acclaimed Ordinary People (1980), Sutherland entered a relatively unremarkable phase of his career, appearing in one forgettable film after another. This phase continued for much of the decade, and didn't begin to change until 1989, when the actor won raves for his starring role in A Dry White Season and his title role in Bethune: The Making of a Hero. He spent the 1990s doing steady work in films of widely varying quality, appearing as the informant who cried conspiracy in JFK (1991), a Van Helsing-type figure in Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1992), a wealthy New Yorker who gets taken in by con artist Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation (1993), and a general in the virus thriller Outbreak (1995). In 1998, the actor did some of his best work in years (in addition to the made-for-TV Citizen X (1995), for which he won an Emmy and a Golden Globe) when he starred as a track coach in Without Limits, Robert Towne's biopic of runner Steve Prefontaine. In 2000, Sutherland enjoyed further critical and commerical success with Space Cowboys, an adventure drama that teamed the actor alongside Tommy Lee Jones, Clint Eastwood, and James Garner as geriatric astronauts who get another chance to blast into orbit.Sutherland didn't pause as the new millennium began, continuing to contribute to several projects a year. He won a Golden Globe for his performance in the 2003 Vietnam era HBO film Path to War, and over the next few years appeared in high-profile films such as The Italian Job, Cold Mountain, and Pride and Prejudice, while continuing to spend time on smaller projects, like 2005's Aurora Borealis. The next year, Sutherland appeared with Mira Sorvino in the TV movie Human Trafficking, which tackled the frightening subject matter of modern day sexual slave trade. He also joined the cast of the new ABC series Commander in Chief, starring Geena Davis as the American vice president who assumes the role of commander in chief when the president dies. Sutherland's role as one of the old boys who is none too pleased to see a woman in the Oval Office earned him a Golden Globe nomination in 2006, as did his performance in Human Trafficking. In 2006, Sutherland worked with Collin Farrell and Salma Hayek in one of screenwriter Robert Towne's rare ventures into film direction with Ask the Dust. Sutherland has also earned a different sort of recognition for his real-life role as the father of actor and sometimes tabloid fodder Kiefer Sutherland. The elder Sutherland named his son after producer Warren Kiefer, who gave him his first big break by casting him in Il Castello dei Morti Vivi. In 2009 he voiced the part of President Stone in the film Astro Boy, an adventure comedy for children. Sutherland played a supporting role in the action thriller The Mechanic (2011), and joined the cast of The Hunger Games in the role of the coldhearted President Stone.