Trivia: A master of several Japanese martial arts, Steven Seagal is a popular action movie hero whose films combine spiritual concepts and social/environmental consciousness with high-voltage violence. Born in Lansing, MI, on April 10, 1951, Seagal traveled to Japan at the age of 17. There, he taught English, studied Zen, and perfected his martial arts, earning black belts in Aikido, karate, judo, and kendo. Afterwards, he became the first Westerner to open a martial arts school in Japan. During this time, Seagal occasionally choreographed fight scenes in movies and coached such stars as Sean Connery and Toshiro Mifune. He also became interested in Eastern religion: in a November 1997 interview for the Shambala Sun, he stated that his relationship with Tibetan Buddhism resulted from his study of acupuncture. According to Seagal, several ailing Tibetan lamas, suffering from malnutrition, exhaustion, and the effects of Chinese torture, were sent to him for treatment, which led him to become a director of secret security operations and setting up special safe houses. Regarding other incidents from his past, Seagal has remained secretive, though he was allegedly a bounty hunter and occasionally has hinted about involvement with the CIA. Further speculation has surrounded the work he did on behalf of Tibetan freedom fighters, and it was not until 1997 that he mentioned the large amounts of money he claimed to have donated to various religious organizations. Seagal spent about 15 years in Asia before returning to the States, where he opened a new martial arts academy and also worked as a celebrity bodyguard. His clients included his future (now ex-) wife Kelly LeBrock and Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz. With help from Ovitz, Seagal contracted to make martial arts films for Warner Bros. For his first film, he and cinematographer-turned-director Andrew Davis carefully refashioned an average police drama into Above the Law (1988), which stressed characterization and plot as well as high-energy action scenes. It was well received and Seagal found himself an instant star among action aficionados. His next film, Hard to Kill (1989), overflowed with chop-socky violence, casting him as a cop who wakens from a coma and sets out for revenge against those who sent him to the hospital. Seagal attracted mainstream appeal in 1992 when he starred in the Davis-directed hit Under Siege, his most popular movie. In 1994, he made his directorial debut with the environmentally conscious but critically panned On Deadly Ground, in which he single-handedly attempts to save Alaska and the Eskimos from an avaricious oil tycoon. Subsequent action attempts included 1996's Executive Decision and 1998's The Patriot. In 1999, Seagal turned to producing with Prince of Central Park, an uncharacteristically gentle film about a young boy living in the titular park. Following a rollicking time in the corrupt cop thriller Exit Wounds (2001), Segal shook things up behind bars in Half Past Dead (2002). The coming years would find Segal continuing to star in low proifle action fare like Urban Justice and Flight of Fury. He'd also find success starring on the TV series True Justice.In 1997, Seagal publicly announced that one of his prime Buddhist teachers, His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, had proclaimed him a tulku, the reincarnation of a Buddhist lama. Seagal's announcement met with some cynicism, but Penor Rinpoche backed him up with a formal statement at Colorado's Naropa Institute. In subsequent interviews, Seagal has presented himself as a serious student of Buddhism who spends many hours meditating, studying, and practicing the tenets to help him become a teacher and healer.

Trivia: Rap star DMX is following in the footsteps of Ice-T, LL Cool J, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and countless other rappers who have moonlighted as actors. But if the great box office or the critical acclaim he received for his performance in the otherwise-maligned Exit Wounds means anything, chances are moviegoers will be seeing a lot more of him. Born as Earl Simmons on December 18, 1970, in Baltimore, MD, DMX got his start in the music industry as DJ within the Yonkers Street School Projects and rose to prominence guesting on tracks by LL Cool J and the Lox. Shortly after his first album debuted at the top of the Billboard charts, DMX took his first starring role in Belly, hip-hop video director Hype Williams' visually stunning but completely incomprehensible first feature. The film flopped and few noticed DMX's turn as a hyperviolent, drug-addled thug. But Belly's critical and financial shortcomings didn't deter him from acting again. He had a small role in Romeo Must Die and earned critical acclaim for his role as an enigmatic, shady businessman in Exit Wounds, which mirrored DMX's musical career by debuting atop the box office, eventually raking in upwards of 50 million dollars.

Trivia: A respected actor who became one of the more prominent figures in the growing African American cinema of the 1990s, Isaiah Washington has made his name in gritty crime dramas and romantic ensemble comedies alike. A native of Houston, Texas, Washington spent four years in the Air Force before studying drama at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University. Following graduation, he won a role in playwright Ntozake Shange's Spell 7 and then moved to New York to further pursue his career. He appeared in a number of stage productions, and he became one of the founding members of CityKids Repertory, a theatre group that visits high schools and community centers throughout New York.Washington began his screen career on television, appearing in the soap operas As the World Turns and One Life to Live. He made his big screen debut in Spike Lee's Crooklyn (1994), and he subsequently appeared in Lee's Clockers (1995), Girl 6 (1996), and Get on the Bus (1996), the last of which cast him as a gay man on his way to the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, D.C.Some of Washington's other memorable credits during the '90s included the Hughes brothers' Dead Presidents (1995), the warmly received ensemble romantic comedy Love Jones (1997), Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight (1998), in which Washington gave a memorable turn as a scheming con's violent brother-in-law; Warren Beatty's Bulworth (1998), and Clint Eastwood's True Crime (1999), which cast Washington as a man awaiting execution on death row after being falsely accused of murder. In 2000, Washington could be seen starring opposite Chinese action star Jet Li in Romeo Must Die, an urban update of Romeo and Juliet set between rival Asian and African American gangs in Oakland, California.In 2005, Washington was cast as Dr. Preston Burke, one of the leads on the ABC medical-drama Grey's Anatomy. The show quickly became a runaway hit, garnering a large and loyal audience as well as Emmys and Golden Globes. However, through the show, Washington would soon gain a great deal of unwanted notoriety. In late 2006, a controversy exploded after an onset altercation between Washington and costar Patrick Dempsey, wherein the former allegedly used an anti-gay epithet to describe castmate T.R. Knight. Months of media coverage followed, and in June 2007, ABC announced that Washington was being cut from the show.Despite the controversy, it wasn't long before Washington was fielding offers from other networks. In July 2007, NBC announced that they'd nabbed him for an extended arc on the remake of The Bionic Woman.

Trivia: While Anthony Anderson got his start in stand-up, his wide range of genre-spanning credits as a producer and actor in light comedy, pointed satires, food-based reality shows and gritty episodic dramas display his versatility and cross-audience appeal. But even though it's not immediately apparent how the points on his resume connect in one straight line, all of his work harkens back to core values of family, togetherness, responsibility, fairness, justice, and doing right in a sometimes complicated world.Born August 15, 1970, Anderson was one of four kids raised by his mother and stepfather (the man he considered his "only father I knew or cared about") in Compton, Los Angeles, California. While their neighborhood could be rough, his no-nonsense stepfather, who owned three clothing stores, instilled a respect for paternal responsibility and entrepreneurship in Anderson. While Anderson remembers seeing a teenage Dr. Dre perform at Compton's most important hip-hop venue Skateland, U.S.A., his most formative memory of a performer was watching his mother rehearse for an amateur production of A Raisin in the Sun at Compton Community College. Even though both he and his mother agree that she was a terrible actress, the impression of her becoming someone else on stage solidified his ambitions.His ambitions stoked, young Anderson seized every opportunity to perform, whether it was singing at church, competing in spelling bees, or appearing in a commercial at the age of five. After successfully auditioning for Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, he won the top prize in the NAACP's Act-So awards and gained entrance to Howard University's drama program with an audition tape that included monologues from Shakespeare and "The Great White Hope". (Anderson's stepfather, always the pragmatist, took extraordinary measures to push Anderson out of the nest after college by not only insisting he pay rent if he wanted to live at home, but also by padlocking the TV cabinet and freezer, installing a pay phone in the house, and razzing Anderson with Lassie reruns: "That dog's an actor. Where are you acting?")Too-strange-to-be-fiction family lore like that formed the basis of Anderson's stand-up comedy routines that he performed briefly under the name "Tasty Tony" while picking up small roles in TV and movies until 1999, when he landed roles both in the Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy comedy Life, and Barry Levinson's cinematic memoir Liberty Heights. A slew of roles in a wide range of genres followed for the next few years, culminating in recurring roles on Treme as actor-waiter Derek Watson, on The Shield as Antwon Mitchell, the drug boss turned community leader who still keeps one foot in the thug life, and on Law & Order as conservative lawman Detective Kevin Bernard, a role for which he earned four consecutive NAACP Image Award nominations for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series. Anderson's other great passion, for food and cooking, has led to many hosting gigs on shows like Carnival Cravings with Anthony Anderson, Eating America with Anthony Anderson, the web series Anthony Eats America, and his recurring seat at the judge's table on Iron Chef America. While his everyday diet is "vegan-ish" as a way of regulating his type 2 diabetes, he's so devoted to the kitchen arts that he takes weekend classes at famed culinary academy Le Cordon Bleu's Los Angeles outpost. While his first forays into producing the sitcoms All About the Andersons and Matumbo Goldberg (both about domestic life from an African-American perspective) ended after one season, conversations with his screenwriter friend Kenya Barris about their experiences raising their children in affluent, majority-white communities that are so unlike the neighborhoods they grew up in inspired the duo to create and produce black-ish. Taking a page from unflinching sitcoms of the '70s like All In The Family and Good Times that mixed light humor with frank confrontation of social ills, Barris and Anderson folded incidents from their own lives into the show's scripts - such as the time Anderson's teenage son wanted a bar mitzvah party like all his Jewish friends, prompting Anderson to instead offer his son a hip-hop themed "bro mitzvah." Anderson received an Emmy nomination for his role as beleaguered patriarch Andre Johnson in 2015.

Trivia: A black belt in seven karate styles who made his feature debut in The Toxic Avenger II and has appeared in numerous off-Broadway plays, Michael Jai White has a curiously eclectic career and is likely a recognized face to action movie aficionados. A Brooklyn, NY, native who was raised in the sometimes harsh limbo between the impoverished Bridgeport and well-to-do Westport, CT, Jai White grew from an introverted youth to a man comfortable in multiple surroundings. Eventually gaining a reputation as a fearsomely tough street fighter by the age of 14, the strikingly mature-appearing youngster earned his keep by offering karate lessons at the YMCA before graduating high school with honors and setting his sights on college. Bouncing from school to school unsure of what direction to take in life, Jai White took a few acting classes but eventually ended up as a junior high school teacher specializing in emotionally disturbed children. Soon auditioning for roles in Manhattan with the blessing of his students, Jai White would rise through the ranks and eventually land roles in such features as Universal Soldier (1992) and Full Contact (1993). After appearing as Mike Tyson in the 1995 television movie Tyson, the tough actor was cast in the role of a double-crossed assassin who seeks vengeance from the fiery depths of Hell in the eagerly anticipated film adaptation of the cult comic book Spawn. Later appearing in such features as Breakfast of Champions (1999) and Exit Wounds (2001), Jai White gained solid footing as a reliable supporting action figure.

Trivia: Although many would likely recognize Bill Duke from his roles in such high-profile releases as Predator, Menace II Society, and Red Dragon, perhaps only a few connect the face in front of the camera with the name of the man who also directed such features as A Rage in Harlem and Hoodlum. A native of Poughkeepsie, NY, and the first in his family to graduate from college, the actor/director studied speech and drama at Boston University before earning his M.F.A. from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Subsequently penning off-Broadway plays and launching a film career with roles in Car Wash (1976) and American Gigolo (1979), Duke's early breakthrough came with a featured role in the critically acclaimed Alex Haley miniseries Palmerstown U.S.A. in 1980. Deciding to refine his skills behind the camera, the burgeoning actor later studied at the American Film Institute, where his student project The Hero earned him a solid reputation as a director to watch. In the years that followed, Duke earned a reputation as an efficient and effective television director as he took the helm for episodes of Hill Street Blues, Fame, Miami Vice, Spenser: For Hire, and Matlock. He soon moved into feature territory with the PBS drama The Killing Floor (which screened at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival and earned the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival). In 1989, Duke's adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun showed that, although his directing had thus far been limited to the small screen, he also had the potential to launch a lucrative career in theatrical features. After acting in such features as Commando (1985), Predator (1987), and Bird on a Wire (1990), Duke's first theatrical feature, A Rage in Harlem, was released in 1991. An effective crime drama featuring a gangster's moll, a trunk load of gold, and a slew of unsavory heavies, the film was unfairly interpreted by audiences to be a rip-off of the popular 1989 comedy Harlem Nights. For the dark crime thriller Deep Cover, Duke teamed with future collaborator Laurence Fishburne for the first time, and after lightening things up a bit with The Cemetery Club (1993), Duke earned a direct hit at the box office with the popular sequel Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit the same year. The remainder of the '90s found the actor/director evenly dividing his duties on both sides of the camera, and, in 1997, he re-teamed with Fishburne for the throwback gangster drama Hoodlum. With all of his directorial duties, Duke found little time to accept onscreen roles, though performances in Payback and Fever in 1999 reminded audiences that he was still a compelling screen presence. Duke returned to the small screen the following year to direct an episode of City of Angels and the Nero Wolfe mystery The Golden Spiders, and remained in television to shoot episodes of Fastlane and Robbery Homicide Division. In 2003, Duke directed the moving, made-for-TV drama Deacons for Defense. As roles in Red Dragon (2002) and National Security (2003) continued to fuel his feature career, Duke was also seen on the small screen in episodes of Fastlane and the Out of Sight (1998) spin-off Karen Sisco.

Trivia: From busking to blockbusters to small-screen crime drama, worldly actress Jill Hennessey has proven herself as an actress with talent to spare. As easy as it may be to see only her dark beauty, don't mistake the multilingual Hennessey as a one trick pony; she's also established herself as a successful restaurateur and a talented musician. Hennessey was born three minutes after her identical twin sister, Jacqueline, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in November of 1969. Her parents divorced when she was only a young girl, and her grandmother played a large part in raising her and her sister. It was during this time that young Hennessey took up cooking in order to help care for her family, and her passion for food would eventually lead her to open Hennessey's Tavern in Northvale, NJ, after establishing herself as an actress. Hennessey moved to New York following her graduation from Ontario's Grand River Collegiate, and for a time, she busked in the N.Y.C. subway, singing and playing the guitar for money. Though her career in entertainment may not have taken off quickly, it was only a matter of time before she found success. In 1988, both Hennessey and her sister got their first breaks with small roles in director David Cronenberg's acclaimed chiller Dead Ringers. In the following few years, she would repeatedly turn up on the small screen in Friday the 13th: The Series and The Hitchhiker. A three-year stint on television's popular Law & Order as ADA Claire Kincaid gained the rising starlet much exposure, and indie credit came with a supporting role in director Mary Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol. After roles in A Smile Like Yours and Most Wanted made 1997 a memorable year for her, Hennessey took the lead opposite pop star-turned-actor Jon Bon Jovi in the 1998 drama Row Your Boat. Subsequent films such as Komodo may have done little to advance Hennessey's career as a serious thespian, but she expanded into writing and directing with her all-star comedy The Acting Class in 2000. With more roles coming her way every day, Hennessey took on the daunting task of portraying none other that Jackie Kennedy in the 2001 miniseries Jackie, Ethel, Joan: The Women of Camelot. Later that year she took the lead role in the small-screen drama Crossing Jordan, and it seemed as if she had finally arrived when the show proved to be a success, running for six years.Hennessy would wpend the next several years appearing in a number or projects, like the horse racing series Luck.

Trivia: Brash, bullyish American comic actor Tom Arnold held down a number of "Joe" jobs after college--meat packer, box stacker, bartender, bouncer--before giving stand-up comedy at try. He was very funny in a blunt sort of way, but did not really make it big until his notorious union with comedienne Roseanne Barr in 1990. At the behest of his powerful spouse, who featured him as a semi-regular on her smash hit ABC sitcom Roseanne and made him a producer, Tom starred in two expensive network sitcoms, playing an obnoxious TV comedy star in one (The Jackie Thomas Show) and a standard-issue "lovable dad" in the other (Tom). Despite the strenuous efforts of Roseanne's production staff, neither program clicked with the public, though Arnold proved in both instances that he had the talent to stand on his own without the input of his wife. The Roseanne/Tom marriage went down in flames in 1993, with scorching and libelous incriminations from both parties. Industry pundits predicted that Tom Arnold was washed up, but he confounded his enemies with a well-received performance as a gregarious secret agent in the blockbuster Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle True Lies (1994). He then did a memorable turn in the Hugh Grant vehicle Nine Months (1995). Subsequently, Arnold has steadily worked in a number of decidedly mediocre films including the roundly panned McHales Navy (1997) in which he played the role created by Ernest Borgnine for his mid-1960s television series of the same name.Over the next several years, Arnold's film roles primarily consisted of straight-to-video comedies like National Lampoon's Golf Punks and Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The 13th, but in 2001 he became one of the hosts of Fox Sports' The Best Damn Sports Show Period. The talk-show became one of the network's most popular series with Arnold remaining on full-time for four years and continuing to make guest appearances thereafter.After leaving The Best Damn Sports Show, Arnold tried his hand at screenwriting with the 2005 comedy The Kid & I, which he also produced and starred in. The film failed to excite critics or audiences, but that same year, Arnold turned in an impressive and rare dramatic performance in the indie dramedy Happy Endings.In 2007, Arnold could be seen in supporting roles in two sports dramas, Pride and The Final Season. He continued to work steadily in projects such as The Great Buck Howard, National Lampoon's Stoned Age, Restitution, and the romantic drama One Day. In 2012 he appeared in Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection, and the Dax Shepard directed action comedy Hit and Run. He had a regular role on the Yahoo series Sin City Saints in 2015.

Trivia: Husky American actor Bruce McGill made his film debut in Citizen's Band (1978), but it was his next film role, frat-brat "D Day" in National Lampoon's Animal House, that gained him a following. McGill repeated his D-Day characterization in the spin-off TV series Delta House (1979), then co-starred with David Hasselhoff in the 1980 weekly-TV version of the 1977 theatrical football comedy Semi-Tough. He went on to play a string of brusque authority types in films (Cliffhangers) and television (MacGiver, Live Shot). Fans of the fantasy series Quantum Leap (1989-93) may recall McGill's occasional guest shots, which ranged from mildly eccentric to truly weird. In 1987, Bruce McGill enjoyed one of his few feature-film leading roles in Waiting for the Moon. But it wasn't until the 1990s that casting directors really began to utilize McGill's unique range, and though he never won any awards, he shifted between film (A Perfect World, Timecop, The Insider) and television (Babylon 5, Star Trek: Voyager) with the skill of a seasoned pro. Any genre was fair game, and all were tackled with equal aplomb. At the dawn of the 2000s McGill seemed to shift his focus toward feature films, with roles in Ali, The Sum of All Fears, and Collateral helping to make him both a Michael Mann regular, and one of those welcomed faces that seems to turn up everywhere. Still TV just seemed to be in McGill's blood and after lending his voice to both Family Guy and The Cleveland Show he could be seen as a regular on the TNT detective series Rizzoli and Isles.

Trivia: A fiercely independent actress who refuses to be pressed into a conventional mode or typecast, Eva Mendes was studying marketing in the late '90s when an agent stumbled across her photo while perusing Mendes's neighbor's portfolio. She soon appeared in an Aerosmith video and made her film debut in Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror. Mendes next appeared in a few made-for-television productions and hammed it up with Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan in A Night at the Roxbury before being cast in a prominent role in Urban Legends: Final Cut. Working against typecasting despite her teen horror resumé, Mendes next took roles in Exit Wounds, Training Day, and All About the Benjamins. Mendes next began work on a children's book titled Crazy Leggs Beshee in which she wanted to introduce art, history, vocabulary, and values to children in a fun and easily comprehendable medium.In 2003, Mendes' career took off, with the actress taking on large roles in an ecclectic quartet of high-profile films. In 2 Fast 2 Furious she played a customs agent working with Paul Walker to bring down a Miami drug cartel. Out of Time found her reteaming with Training Day costar Denzel Washington. Flexing her comedic chops, Mendes was the love interest of half a pair of conjoined twins in the Farrelly brothers' Stuck on You. And in Once Upon a Time in Mexico she played another government agent, this time opposite Johnny Depp.Mendes would go on to appear in a number of films over the coming years, like The Wendell Baker Story, Hitch, Ghost Rider, The Other Guys, and Girl in Progress. She took several years off in order to focus on her growing family, but in 2015, it was announced she would reprise her role from 2 Fast 2 Furious in a future Fast film.

Trivia: Is the youngest of five children. Began his career as a stand-up comic at Toronto's Second City Cafe Mainstage. Was nominated for a Gemini Award for Best Ensemble Performance in a Comedy Program or Series in 2008 for Billable Hours.

Trivia: Was a narrator for the Dogs With Jobs series. Played Frank Sinatra in the made-for-TV movie Power and Beauty. Landed recurring roles on Instant Star and Strange Days at Blake Holsey High. Cast as the iconic villain Ming in the Flash Gordon TV series.

Trivia: A British character actor best known for two feats -- his lengthy tenure as a participant in the small-screen sketch comedy program The Fast Show, and his multi-film portrayal of the genial and sweet-natured patriarch Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter movies -- Mark Williams in fact chalked up a lengthy series of feature roles that extended far beyond the scope of those projects, beginning in the early '80s. Throughout, he tended to specialize in average-looking everyman types but made his strongest impression in fantasy-themed material. He debuted on the big screen in the 1982 Privileged (during his early twenties) and subsequently signed for projects including The Master (1989), Kill Line (1991), and The Borrowers (1997). Fantasy lovers will invariably associate Williams with his Weasley characterization, but may also remember his portrayal of Billy (a goat who had been changed into human form) in the Robert De Niro-Michelle Pfeiffer fantasy adventure Stardust (2007).

Trivia: Versatile cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak has filmed a number of big-budget Hollywood films. Early in his career, during the early '80s, Bartkowiak worked with Sidney Lumet. As the decade progressed he became increasingly in demand and has filmed everything from melodramas (Terms of Endearment [1983]) to comedies (Twins [1989]) to high-energy actioners (Speed [1994]) to special-effects extravaganzas, like Dante's Peak (1997).