Trivia: Scottish, versatile, and for a long time underappreciated, Alan Cumming is chameleon-like in both his choice of roles and his ability to inhabit them convincingly. Born January 27, 1965, in Perthshire, Scotland, Cumming studied drama at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama before embarking on a career that would have its roots on the stage. For years, Cumming worked steadily in the theater as a member of repertory companies, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1992 he had his film debut in the largely unheard of Prague, which was essentially a historical overview of the city. In 1994 American audiences were introduced to the sound of Cumming's voice thanks to his role as the narrator of Black Beauty, but it wasn't until 1995 (Cumming's other 1994 film, Second Best notwithstanding) that they actually saw him, this time via his small but memorable role as a Russian computer programmer in Goldeneye.Wider exposure followed, thanks to two successful films. The first, Circle of Friends (1995), featured Cumming as Minnie Driver's slimy, unwelcome suitor, and the second, 1996's Emma, saw Cumming playing yet another unwelcome suitor, this time to Gwyneth Paltrow. More sympathetic roles followed in For My Baby, Buddy, and Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (in which he played a sweetly awkward nerd with a crush on Lisa Kudrow), all released in 1997. Work in Spice World came next in 1998, as did the stage role that was to give Cumming critical acclaim, a host of awards, and the wider respect he deserved. That role was Cabaret's Emcee, and Cumming managed to make the character -- previously the sole territory of Joel Grey -- all his own, giving a wickedly delicious performance that was unabashedly dark, sly, androgynous, and altogether terrifying. His performance won him all three New York theater awards: a Tony, a Drama Desk, and an Outer Critics Circle. This triumph resulted in a new range of opportunities for the actor, one of which was the chance to be a part of what was to be Stanley Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Although Cumming's role as a hotel desk clerk was a small one, the actor turned in a sly and insinuating performance that reflected his ability to make the most out of even the most limited opportunities.Cumming was subsequently given almost unlimited opportunities to showcase his flamboyance in Julie Taymor's Titus, her 1999 adaptation of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. In his role as the queen's (Jessica Lange) debauched lover, he gave a performance that was as over-the-top and rococo as the film itself, leading some critics to say his portrayal had a little too much in common with a Christmas ham.Fortunately, Cumming surprised critics and audiences alike when he directed, with Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Anniversary Party (2001), a marital comedy-drama that starred him and Leigh as a husband and wife whose anniversary party exposes the many flaws of their fragile marriage. Featuring a cast that included Kevin Kline, Phoebe Cates, Gwyneth Paltrow, John C. Reilly, and Jennifer Beals, the film, which was shot on digital video, earned a fairly warm reception from critics, many of whom praised Cumming for his work both behind and in front of the camera.Cumming took the part of the bad guy in the first Spy Kids movie, a role he would repeat in the film's first two sequels. He also played the evil corporate manipulator in Josie and the Pussycats. He appeared in the musical remake of Reefer Madness in 2004, and that same year voiced a cat in the live action Garfield the movie. He worked steadily in a variety of projects including Gray Matters, Eloise: Eloise in Hollywood, and Dare, but found his biggest critical success on the small screen as part of the cast in the highly-respected CBS drama The Good Wife which began its run in 2009.

Trivia: An actor whose name became synonymous with all-American entertainment, Tom Cruise spent the 1980s as one of Hollywood's brightest-shining golden boys. Born on July 3, 1962 in Syracuse, NY, Cruise was high-school wrestler until he was sidelined by a knee injury. Soon taking up acting, he found that the activity served a dual purpose: performing satiated his need for attention, while the memorization aspect of acting helped him come to grips with his dyslexia. Moving to New York in 1980, Cruise's first big hit was Risky Business in 1982, in which he entered movie-trivia infamy with the scene wherein he celebrates his parents' absence by dancing around the living room in his underwear. The Hollywood press corps began touting Cruise as one of the "Brat Pack," a group of twenty-something actors who seemed on the verge of taking over the movie industry in the early '80s. Top Gun 1985 established Cruise as an action star, but again he refused to be pigeonholed, and followed it up with a solid characterization of a fledgling pool shark in the Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money in 1986, for which co-star Paul Newman earned an Academy Award. In 1988, he played the brother of an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, a dramatic turn for sure, though Cruise had not yet totally convinced critics he was more than a pretty face.His chance came in 1989, when he played a paraplegic Vietnam vet in Born on the Fourth of July. Though his bankability faltered a bit with the expensive disappointment Far and Away in 1990 (though it did give him a chance to co-star with his-then wife Nicole Kidman), 1992's A Few Good Men brought him back into the game. By 1994, the star was undercutting his own leading man image with the role of the slick, dastardly vampire Lestat in the long-delayed film adaptation of the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire. Although the author was vehemently opposed to Cruise's casting, Rice famously reversed her decision upon seeing the actor's performance, and publicly praised Cruise's portrayal.In 1996, Cruise scored financial success with the big-budget action film Mission: Impossible, but it was with his multilayered, Oscar-nominated performance in Jerry Maguire that Cruise proved once again why he is considered a major Hollywood player. 1999 saw Cruise reunited onscreen with Kidman in a project of a very different sort, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. The film, which was the director's last, had been the subject of controversy, rumor, and speculation since it began filming. It opened to curious critics and audiences alike across the nation, and was met with a violently mixed response. However, it allowed Cruise to once again take part in film history, further solidifying his position as one of Hollywood's most well-placed movers and shakers.Cruise's enviable position was again solidified later in 1999, when he earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as a loathsome "sexual prowess" guru in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. In 2000, he scored again when he reprised his role as international agent Ethan Hunt in John Woo's Mission: Impossible II, which proved to be one of the summer's first big moneymakers. He then reteamed with Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe for a remake of Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar's Abre los Ojos titled Vanilla Sky. Though Vanilla Sky's sometimes surreal trappings found the film receiving a mixed reception at the box office, the same could not be said for the following year's massively successful sci-fi chase film Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg , or of the historical epic The Last Samurai, directed by Edward Zwick.For his next film, Cruise picked a role unlike any he'd ever played; starring as a sociopathic hitman in the Michael Mann psychological thriller Collateral. He received major praise for his departure from the good-guy characters he'd built his career on, and for doing so convincingly. By 2005, he teamed up with Steven Spielberg again for the second time in three years with an epic adaptation of the H.G. Wells alien invasion story War of the Worlds.The summer blockbuster was in some ways overshadowed, however, by a cloud of negative publicity. It began in 2005, when Cruise became suddenly vocal about his beliefs in Scientology, the religion created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise publicly denounced actress Brooke Shields for taking medication to combat her postpartum depression, calling going so far as to call the psychological science a "Nazi science" in an Entertainment Weekly interview. On June 24, 2005, he was interviewed by Matt Lauer for The Today Show during which time he appeared to be distractingly argumentative in his insistence that psychiatry is a "pseudoscience," and in a Der Spiegel interview, he was quoted as saying that Scientology has the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world.This behavior caused a stirring of public opinion about Cruise, as did his relationship with 27-year-old actress Katie Holmes. The two announced their engagement in the spring of 2005, and Cruise's enthusiasm for his new romantic interest created more curiosity about his mental stability. He appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show on May 23, where he jumped up and down on the couch, professing his love for the newly-Scientologist Holmes. The actor's newly outspoken attitude about Scientology linked to the buzz surrounding his new relationship, and the media was flooded with rumors that Holmes had been brainwashed.Some audiences found Cruise's ultra-enthusiastic behavior refreshing, but for the most part, the actor's new public image alienated many of his viewers. As he geared up for the spring 2006 release of Mission: Impossible III, his ability to sell a film based almost purely on his own likability was in question for the first time in 20 years.Despite this, the movie ended up performing essentially as expected, and Cruise moved on to making headlines on the business front, when -- in November 2006 -- he and corporate partner Paula Wagner (the twin forces behind the lucrative Cruise-Wagner Productions) officially "took over" the defunct United Artists studio. Originally founded by such giants as Douglas Fairbanks and Charles Chaplin in 1921, UA was all but completely defunct. The press announced that Cruise and Wagner would "revive" the studio, with Wagner serving as Chief Executive Officer and Cruise starring in and producing projects.One of the fist films to be produced by the new United Artists was the tense political thriller Lions for Lambs, which took an earnest and unflinching look at the politics behind the Iraq war. This was followed by the World War II thriller Valkyrie. Cruise would find a solid footing as the 2010s progressed, with films like Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and Rock of Ages. Cruise and Holmes would announce they were divorcing in 2012.

Trivia: Once relegated to decorative parts for years and long acknowledged as the wife of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman spent the latter half of the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium earning much-deserved critical respect. Standing a willowy 5'11" and sporting one of Hollywood's most distinctive heads of frizzy red hair, the Australian actress first entered the American mindset with her role opposite Cruise in Days of Thunder (1990), but it wasn't until she starred as a homicidal weather girl in Gus Van Sant's 1995 To Die For that she achieved recognition as a thespian of considerable range and talent. Though many assume that the heavily-accented Kidman hails from down under, she was actually born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on June 20, 1967, to Australian parents. Her family, who lived on the island because of a research project that employed Kidman's biochemist father, then moved to Washington, D.C. for the next three years. After her father's project reached completion, Nicole and her family returned to Australia.Raised in the upper-middle-class Sydney suburb of Longueville for the remainder of the 1970s and well into the eighties, Kidman grew up infused with a love of the arts, particularly dance and theatre. Kidman took refuge in the theater, and landed her first professional role at the age of 14, when she starred in Bush Christmas (1983), a TV movie about a group of kids who band together with an Aborigine to find their stolen horse. Brian Trenchard-Smith's BMX Bandits (1983) -- an adventure film/teen movie -- followed , with Kidman as the lead character, Judy; it opened to solid reviews. Kidman then worked for the gifted John Duigan (The Winter of Our Dreams, Romero) twice, first as one of the two adolescent leads of the Duigan-directed "Room to Move" episode of the Australian TV series Winners (1985) and, more prestigiously, as the star of Duigan's acclaimed miniseries Vietnam (1987).In 1988, Kidman got another major break when she was tapped to star in Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm (1989). A psychological thriller about a couple (Kidman and Sam Neill) who are terrorized by a young man they rescue from a sinking ship (Billy Zane), the film helped to establish the then-21-year-old Kidman as an actress of considerable mettle. That same year, her starring performance in the made-for-TV Bangkok Hilton further bolstered her reputation. By now a rising star in Australia, Kidman began to earn recognition across the Pacific. In 1989, Tom Cruise picked her for a starring role in her first American feature, Tony Scott's Days of Thunder (1990). The film, a testosterone-saturated drama about a racecar driver (Cruise), cast Kidman as the neurologist who falls in love with him. A sizable hit, it had the added advantage of introducing Kidman to Cruise, whom she married in December of 1990.Following a role as Dustin Hoffman's moll in Robert Benton's Billy Bathgate (1991), and a supporting turn as a snotty boarding school senior in the masterful Flirting (1991), which teamed her with Duigan a third time, Kidman collaborated with Cruise on their second film together, Far and Away (1992). Despite their joint star quality, gorgeous cinematography, and adequate direction by Ron Howard, critics panned the lackluster film.Kidman's subsequent projects, My Life and Malice ( both 1993), were similarly disappointing, despite scattered favorable reviews. Batman Forever (1995), in which she played the hero's love interest, Dr. Chase Meridian, fared somewhat better, but did little in the way of establishing Kidman as a serious actress even as it raked in mile-high returns at the summer box office. Kidman finally broke out of her window-dressing typecasting when Gus Van Sant enlisted her to portray the ruthless protagonist of To Die For (1995). Directed from a Buck Henry script, this uber-dark comedy casts Kidman as Suzanne Stone, a television broadcaster ready and eager to commit one homicide after another to propel herself to the top. Displaying a gift for impeccable comic timing, she earned Golden Globe and National Broadcast Critics Circle Awards for Best Actress. Further critical praise greeted Kidman's performance as Isabel Archer in Jane Campion's 1996 adaptation of Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady. Now regarded as one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood, Kidman starred opposite George Clooney in the big-budget action extravaganza The Peacemaker (1997) and opposite Sandra Bullock in the frothy Practical Magic (1998). In 1999, Kidman starred in one of her most controversial films to date, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle and cloaked in secrecy from the beginning of its production, the film also stars Cruise as Kidman's physician husband. During the spring and summer of 1999, the media unsurprisingly hyped the couple's onscreen pairing as the two major selling points. However, despite an added measure of intrigue from Kubrick's death only weeks after shooting wrapped, Eyes Wide Shut repeated the performance of prior Kubrick efforts by opening to a radically mixed reaction.As the new millennium arrived, problems began to erupt between Kidman and Tom Cruise; divorce followed soon after, and the tabloids swirled with talk of new relationships for the both of them. She concurrently plunged into a string of daring, eccentric film roles much edgier than what she had done before. The trend began with a role in Jez Butterworth's Birthday Girl (2001) as a Russian mail order bride, and Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge (2001), which cast her, in the lead, as a courtesan in a 19th century Paris hopped up with late 20th century pop songs. The picture dazzled some and alienated others, but once again, journalists flocked to Kidman's side.Following this success (the picture gleaned a Best Picture nod but failed to win), Kidman gained even more positive notice for her turn as an icy mother after the key to a dark mystery in Alejandro Amenabar's spooky throwback, The Others. When the 59th Annual Golden Globe Awards finally arrived, Kidman received nominations for her memorable performances in both films. Though it couldn't have been any further from her flamboyant turn in Moulin Rouge, Kidman's camouflaged role as Virginia Woolf in the following year's The Hours (2002) (she wears little makeup and a prosthetic nose), for which she delivered a mesmerizing and haunting performance, kept the Oscar and Golden Globe nominations steadily flowing in for the acclaimed actress. The fair-haired beauty finally snagged the Best Actress Oscar that had been so elusive the year before. Post-Oscar, Kidman continued to take on challenging work. She played the lead role in Lars von Trier's Dogville, although she declined to continue in Von Trier's planned trilogy of films about that character. She swung for the Oscar fences again in 2003 as the female lead in Cold Mountain, but it was co-star Renee Zellweger who won the statuette that year. Kidman did solid work for Jonathan Glazer in the Jean-Claude Carriere-penned Birth, as a woman revisited by the incarnation of her dead husband in a small child's body, but stumbled with a pair of empty-headed comedies, Frank Oz's The Stepford Wives and Nora Ephron's Bewitched (both 2005), that her skills could not save. She worked with Sean Penn in the political thriller The Interpreter in 2005. For the most part, Kidman continued to stretch herself with increasingly demanding and arty roles throughout 2006. In Steven Shainberg's Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, Kidman plays controversial housewife-cum-photographer Diane Arbus. Meanwhile, Kidman returned to popcorn pictures by playing Mrs. Coulter in Chris Weitz's massive, $150-million fantasy adventure The Golden Compass (2007), adapted from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series of books. She also headlined the sci-fi thriller The Invasion, a loose remake of the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Also in 2007, Kidman teamed up with Noah Baumbach for a starring role as a supremely dysfunctional mother in Margot at the Wedding (2007). The actress then set out to recapture her Moulin Rouge musical success with a turn in director Rob Marshall's 8 1/2 remake Nine (2009), teamed up with indie cause-célèbre John Cameron Mitchell and Aaron Eckhart for the psychologically-charged domestic drama Rabbit Hole (2010), and starred opposite Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler in the Dennis Dugan-helmed comedy Go With It (2011). Kidman would spend the next few years continuing her high level of activity, appearing in movies like Trespass and The Paperboy.

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.

Trivia: A bona fide jack-of-all-trades, Todd Field is one of the film industry's more multifaceted members, having worked in varying capacities as an actor, director, producer, composer, and screenwriter. Probably most recognizable to art house audiences thanks to his work in such films as Nicole Holofcener's Walking and Talking (1996) and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Field has also composed scores for features ranging from Gross Anatomy (1989) to Ruby in Paradise (1993) -- both of which featured him in supporting roles -- and has directed, written, and produced a number of independent projects. Born in Pomona, CA, on February 24, 1964, Field broke into professional acting in his early twenties with work in television. After making his film debut as a singer in Woody Allen's Radio Days (1987), he went on to do supporting work in a multitude of features, until in 1993, he earned some measure of recognition and an Independent Spirit Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a greenhouse worker in Victor Nunez's Ruby in Paradise. Further independent work followed for the actor in the ensemble romantic drama Sleep With Me (1994) and Walking and Talking, which cast him as Anne Heche's fiancé; he also did more mainstream work as a member of the tornado trackers in the 1996 blockbuster Twister, and appeared in Jan de Bont's 1999 remake of The Haunting. Following his turn as a piano player in Eyes Wide Shut, Field landed the role of David Cassilli on the acclaimed ABC series Once and Again. In addition to his work in front of the camera, he kept busy behind it. Having debuted as a director in 1992 with the short Too Romantic, Field made a name for himself in 1995 when his short Nonnie & Alex won the Special Jury Award at that year's Sundance Festival. Five years later, the Sundance Festival welcomed the talented renaissance man back, choosing his drama In the Bedroom for its 2001 competition. Based on a story by Andre Dubus, the film starred Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, and Marisa Tomei.