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: Sydney Pollack -- one of Meryl Streep's collaborators time and again -- once proclaimed her the most gifted film actress of the late 20th century. Most insiders would concur with this assessment. To avid moviegoers, she represents the essence of onscreen dramatic art. Like Hoffman (and De Niro), she demonstrates a transcendent ability to plunge into her characters and lose herself inside of them, transforming herself physically to meet the demands of her roles. A luminous blonde with nearly translucent pale skin, intelligent blue eyes, and an elegant facial bone structure, Streep sustains a fragile, fleeting beauty that allows her to travel the spectrum between earthily plain (Ironweed), and ethereally glamorous and radiant (Manhattan, Heartburn).Born June 22, 1949, in Summit, NJ, Streep took operatic voice lessons, and subsequently cultivated a fascination with acting while she attended Bernards High School. Upon graduation, Streep studied drama at Vassar, Dartmouth, and Yale, where she appeared in 30 to 40 productions with the Yale Repertory Theater. With a five-star education and years of collegiate stage work under her belt, Streep headed for the New York footlights and launched her off-Broadway career. Streep's performance in Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, for which she received a Tony nomination, constitutes a particularly strong theatrical highlight from this period. She made her television debut in Robert Markowitz's The Deadliest Season (1977). That year she also appeared onscreen for the first time in Fred Zinnmann's Julia (1977) as Anna Marie, opposite heavyweights Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, and Hal Holbrook. The following year, Streep picked up an Emmy for her performance in Marvin J. Chomsky's miniseries Holocaust. She first teamed with De Niro in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978).Around this time, Streep became involved with the diminutive performer John Cazale, whom she met on the set of the Cimino film. Tragically, this marriage was ill-fated from day one, Cazale's frail body ridden with bone cancer. Forty-two at the time, he passed away in March 1978, nine months prior to the premiere of The Deer Hunter. Streep later wed Don Gummer, who was not associated with Hollywood in any capacity.Streep next appeared as Woody Allen's ruthless lesbian ex-wife in his elegiac comedy drama Manhattan (1979) and Alan Alda's Southern mistress in the scathing political satire The Seduction of Joe Tynan. Her shattering interpretation of the scarred and torn Joanna Kramer opposite Dustin Hoffman in Robert Benton's heartbreaking divorce saga Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1980 -- which she famously left on top of a toilet at the festivities -- alongside a plethora of L.A. Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle, and Golden Globe Awards for the Allen, Benton, and Alda films.Streep continued her ascent over the next decade by establishing herself as Hollywood's top box-office draw and a critical darling. Her double performance in the innovative Karel Reisz/Harold Pinter triumph The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), her gut-wrenching interpretation of the titular Holocaust survivor in Alan J. Pakula's haunting adaptation Sophie's Choice (1982), and her thoughtful evocation of Karen Silkwood in Mike Nichols' drama Silkwood were highlights of the period. In the latter, she portrays a real-life victimized nuclear-plant worker who mysteriously disappears just prior to turning in crucial evidence against her employers.Streep's decision to headline Sydney Pollack's lush epic Out of Africa (1985), as Karen Blixen, sustained her reputation. She would go on over the next decade to appear in projects like but Ironweed, Heartburn, She-Devil, Postcards from the Edge, and Death Becomes Her. In 1994, she again surprised her fans when she appeared as a muscular expert whitewater rafter who must fight a raging river and two dangerous fugitives to save her family in the action thriller River Wild (1994). In interviews, she said she did the film because she wanted to have an adventure like Harrison Ford and to overcome a few of her own fears.Streep returned to the depth and multifacetedness of her early roles -- with much concomitant success -- when she took a more low-key role as a dowdy, Earthbound farm wife who finds Illicit love with an itinerant photographer (Clint Eastwood) in The Bridges of Madison County. Following the critical and commercial heights of Bridges, Streep picked up yet another Oscar nomination for her performance as a terminally ill wife and mother in Carl Franklin's One True Thing (1998).Streep then signed on to replace Madonna as the lead in 1999's Music of the Heart, tackling what outwardly appeared to be a cookbook Hollywood plot (a teacher on a mission to teach violin to a class of inner-city youth in Harlem) with absolute commitment, teaching herself to play the violin by practicing six hours a day for eight weeks. In the new millennium, Streep hit audiences with the back-to-back with lauded performances in Adaptation and The Hours, earning an Oscar nomination for the former and a Golden Globe nomination for the latter.On the heels of this success, Streep won an Emmy in 2004 for her participation in longtime friend and collaborator Mike Nichols' Angels in America mini-series. She soon afterward won even greater audience and critic approval for her biting role as a corporate and political conspirator in Jonathan Demme's remake of the 1962 thriller The Manchurian Candidate. Streepfollowed this up with a part in the lighthearted comedies Prime, A Prairie Home Companion, and The Devil Wears Prada.In 2007 Streep starred in a pair of timely dramas about the Iraq War, Lions for Lambs and Rendition, before returning to the musical comedy milieu with 2008's Mamma Mia!. The adaptation of the smash stage musical shattered box-office records, becoming the highest grossing film in the history of the United Kingdom, and the biggest American hit of her illustrious career. She followed that up with the lead role in John Patrick Shanley's adaptation of his award-winning play Doubt, a performance that earned her fifteenth acting nomination from the Academy, as well as nods from the Screen Actors Guild, and the Hollywood Foreign Press.The renowned actress was nominated yet again for the Academy Award and the Screen Actors Guild the following year for her turn as Julia Child in the comedy Julie & Julia, a role that also garnered her a win for Best Actress from the New York Film Critics as well as the Golden Globes. That same year she played the lead for Nancy Myers in the box office hit It's Complicated, only to dive directly back into the Oscar spotlight again the next year with her acclaimed performance as English Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 2012's The Iron Lady. The role garnered Streep her 17th Academy Award nomination -- resulting in her third win, this time for Best Actress, in addition to Best Actress wins from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Golden Globes. She was back in the Oscar race in 2014, securing yet another nomination in the Best Supporting Actress category for her work as the wicked witch in Rob Marshall's big-screen adaptation of the musical Into the Woods.

Trivia: A goggle-eyed, ditzy blonde, Goldie Hawn's looks alone make her a natural for the kind of breathless comedy in which she originally made her name. Though she has built a lucrative career with her screen persona of a vivacious, giggly, and befuddled naif, Hawn's onscreen antics conceal her real-life level-headedness: Beneath the wide expanse of her blue eyes lies a shrewd, intelligent, and multi-talented woman. Born November 21st, 1945, Hawn was the daughter of a musician in Washington, D.C., though she grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in suburban Maryland. At the age of three, she took her first dance lesson, and by the age of 17, she was managing a dance studio while studying drama at American University. In 1964, she danced professionally at the Texas Pavilion of the New York World's Fair, and then began appearing in chorus lines in such musicals as Kiss Me Kate, Guys and Dolls, and The Boyfriend. She eventually moved to California, where her first break came when an agent saw her dancing on the Andy Griffith Show and cast her in Good Morning World, a short-lived comedy series. From there she was cast as a dancer in an innovative comedy-variety show hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. It was on Laugh-In (1968-1970) that Hawn became popular. Originally a dancer on the show, her bikini-clad body painted with funny slogans and designs, she was given a few lines and proved herself a talented performer in a winning, air-headed way.Hawn made her first foray into feature films as a dancer in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968). Her acting debut came a year later playing Walter Matthau's ditzy, bohemian mistress in Cactus Flower (1969); she won an Oscar for her role, making it an inarguably auspicious debut. Later that year she appeared opposite Peter Sellers in There's a Girl in My Soup. These first two films and the subsequent Dollars (1971) utilized Hawn's "blonde" persona, but in 1972, she hinted that she concealed more than a talent for perkiness and comedy when she played a young woman who helps her blind lover deal with his past in Butterflies Are Free. Hawn showed even more depth as a wife who springs her husband from jail in hopes of keeping her child in Sugarland Express, Steven Spielberg's 1973 feature-film directorial debut. Two years later, she starred as Warren Beatty's girlfriend in Shampoo, further exhibiting her capacity as both a comedic and dramatic actress.Subsequently, Hawn continued to work steadily throughout the '80s and '90s, appearing in films of widely varying quality. Some highlights include the successful Private Benjamin (1980), for which Hawn earned her second Best Actress Oscar nomination, Seems Like Old Times (1982), and The First Wives Club (1996), in which she co-starred with Diane Keaton and Bette Midler. Hawn has two children by her second husband, comedian Bill Hudson, and one by her companion since 1986, actor Kurt Russell. She and Russell met on the set of Swing Shift (1984) and have since starred together in such films as Overboard (1987). Following daughter Kate Hudson's success in the wake of Almost Famous (2000), Hawn hit the big screen again in the notorious box-office bomb Town and Country (2001). Though that film did little to re-ignite her appeal as a box office draw, her turn as a free spirited former groupie in the following year's The Banger Sisters drew favorable reviews from critics and audiences and proved a solid indicator that the talented comic actress still had what it takes to bring in the laughs.

Trivia: The first time that American actor Bruce Boxleitner set foot on stage, it was with a total of four hours' preparation. While in high school, Boxleitner was forced to jump into the role of My Fair Lady's Henry Higgins when the young man originally cast in the part came down with mononucleosis the day before the show. The applause that greeted Boxleitner's debut was enough to inspire him to continue studying drama at the Goodman Theatre. His first Broadway play flopped, but he managed to secure steady work in a series of villainous supporting roles in Hollywood. With the help of fabled super-agent Jay Bernstein, Boxleitner climbed to stardom, reaching a particularly lofty rung with his four season-stint (from 1983 to 1987) as government agent Lee Stetson on the TV series Scarecrow and Mrs. King. More recently, Bruce Boxleitner was seen as fictional ballplayer "Jumpin' Joe Dugan" in the 1992 Babe Ruth biopic The Babe.

Trivia: Isabella Rossellini was one of the twin daughters born to actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini in 1952. After growing up in Italy, she came to America when she was19 and studied at Finch College and the New School for Social Research. She then returned to Rome, where she worked as a translator and TV journalist (not unlike her New York-based half-sister Pia Lindström). Just for fun, Rossellini made her first movie appearance in 1976, playing a bit in her mother's film A Matter of Time. She found acting to her liking, appearing in several European TV dramas before her first big-screen starring role in 1979's The Meadow. In the early 1980s, Rossellini put her film activities on the back burner to concentrate on her modelling career on behalf of Lancome Cosmetics. After her first marriage (to Hollywood director Martin Scorsese) ended in 1983, she began a relationship with ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov, with whom she co-starred in White Nights (1985). She was later involved was filmmaker David Lynch, who cast her in her breakthrough role as a much-abused small-town nightclub singer in Blue Velvet (1986). (Her other romantic partners have included her second husband John Wiedeman -- the father of her daughter Elettra -- and actor Gary Oldman). Rossellini continued seeking out offbeat, challenging film roles into the '90s, including Anna Maria Ermody in the controversial Beethoven biopic Immortal Beloved and no-nonsense frontierswoman Big Nose Kate in Wyatt Earp (both 1994). She also starred in Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci's delicious drama Big Night in 1996.She was the matriarch of a gangster family in The Funeral, and reteamed with Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci for The Imposters. She has a major part in Roger Dodger, and in 2003 she featured prominently in Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World, a working relationship they would continue on other projects such as My Dad Is100 Years Old. She directed Green Porno in 2008, and that same year played mother to a troubled Joaquin Phoenix in the underrated drama Two Lovers. She would follow-up Green Porno with Scandalous Sea in 2009. She would team up with Maddin yet again for Keyhole in 2011, and that same year she would appear in Chicken With Plums.

Trivia: British stage and film actor Ian Ogilvy was able to obtain leading-man roles in both mediums despite his relatively short, slight frame. His entree into films was by way of such horrific productions as The Sorcerers (1967) and The Witchfinder General (1968). Casual American TV viewers first became aware of Ogilvy through his appearances in such Masterpiece Theatre serials as "The Spoils of Poynton" and "Upstairs Downstairs;" and in 1978, the actor stepped into the Simon Templar role vacated by Roger Moore in TV's The Return of the Saint. Ian Ogilvy also appeared as Reginald Hewitt in the American-produced daytime drama Generations, which ran from 1989 to 1991.

Trivia: Supporting actress Nancy Fish first appeared onscreen in the '60s.

Trivia: Taught English and theatre at Hollywood High School and Beverly Hills High School for 30 years; former pupils include Albert Brooks and Nicolas Cage. Became a full-time actor after retiring from teaching at age 57. Best known for playing Edward Quartermaine on General Hospital.

Trivia: Sydney Pollack was born to first generation Russian-Jewish Americans on July 1, 1934. After graduating from his Indiana high school, he went to New York and became a student at the Neighborhood Playhouse, a celebrated Greenwich Village school, where he studied under Sanford Meisner. He served two years in the army before returning to the Neighborhood Playhouse in 1958 as a teacher, and began appearing as an actor in live television dramas. His appearance in a John Frankenheimer-directed television production led him to a job as dialogue coach in the filmmaker's 1961 crime drama The Young Savages. He quickly moved into television, directing on programs such as "The Defenders," "The Naked City," "The Fugitive," "Dr. Kildare," and "Ben Casey" during the early and mid 1960s, and in 1965 made his feature film debut in the director's chair with The Slender Thread.Pollack established himself as a competent, if unexceptional, director in such works as This Property Is Condemned, and one sequence of the Frank Perry-directed drama The Swimmer (based on a work of John Cheever). However, his real breakthrough came in 1969 with the downbeat period drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, a brutal Depression-era piece set against the backdrop of a dance marathon contest, starring Jane Fonda and Gig Young. Young won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor while Pollack and Fonda were nominated for Best Director and Best Actress, respectively. (Fonda was said to have lost only because of the controversy surrounding her anti-Vietnam War activities.) Pollack again proved his skill at handling period drama four years later with The Way We Were, a romantic drama starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford that became one of the most popular serious movies of the decade. During the mid 1970s, Pollack also delved into the action genre with The Yakuza, about a kidnapping committed by Japanese gangsters. He achieved much greater success in 1975 with Three Days of the Condor, a post-Watergate suspense thriller starring Redford, Cliff Robertson and Faye Dunaway that proved an enduring favorite among genre fans as well as a hit with general audiences. Four years later, The Electric Horseman united his two top leads, Fonda and Redford, in a predictable but very successful update of the '30s screwball comedy, while Absence of Malice (1981), starring Paul Newman and Sally Field, took a much more serious tone in dealing with a story of an innocent man whose career is ruined by an ambitious reporter. In 1982, Pollack returned to comedy in top form with Tootsie, the story of an out-of-work actor (Dustin Hoffman) who achieves success by masquerading as a woman. The film scored a Best Director Oscar nomination for Pollack, as well as a win in the same category from the New York Critics Film Circle, and became the second highest grossing film of its year after E.T.. More success followed for the director with Out Of Africa (1985); starring Redford, it was one of a dwindling number of serious romantic dramas aimed at middle-class, middle-brow, middle-aged audiences that scored big at the box office. Unfortunately, another such outing with Redford, the 1990 Havana, was a notorious failure. Pollack was back on top in 1993 with The Firm, a wildly successful adaptation of John Grisham's thriller that starred Tom Cruise. However, mirroring the unpredictable fluctuations of fortune in Hollywood, his next directorial effort, a 1995 remake of Sabrina starring Harrison Ford, proved to be a colossal critical and financial flop. In 1999, Pollack and Ford reunited to make Random Hearts, a drama about a man and a woman Kristin Scott Thomas who discover that their respective spouses--who died in a plane crash--were lovers.In addition to directing, Pollack has also served as a producer on a number of films (including The Fabulous Baker Boys, Presumed Innocent, Dead Again and Sense and Sensibility) and frequently appears as an actor, both in his own films and those of other directors (he had a starring role in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives). In 1999, he could be seen portraying a wealthy man with some questionable pastimes in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.The 21st century found Pollack working far more often as a producer than as a director thanks in part to the production company he ran with director Anthony Minghella, Mirage. Those credits include such award-winning films as Iris, The Quiet American, and the big-screen adaptation of the novel Cold Mountain. After a layoff of over five years, Pollack returned to the director's chair twice in 2005. He created both his first documentary, Sketches of Frank Gehry about the famous architect, and The Interpreter, an old-fashioned political thriller with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman. In 2006 Pollack handled the producing duties on Anthony Minghella's drama Breaking & Entering, which reunited them with Cold Mountain star Jude Law. Pollack died of cancer at age 73 in May 2008.