Trivia: With his electrifying gaze, elegant comportment, and lips that look as if they could breathe life into concrete, Ralph Fiennes has caused many a jaded filmgoer to reaffirm the existence of British sex appeal. Since 1993, when he first impressed international audiences in the decidedly unglamorous role of Nazi sadist Amon Goeth in Schindler's List, Fiennes has delivered performances marked by dignified passion and relentless intensity.The oldest of six children, Fiennes was born in Suffolk on December 22, 1962. His father was a self-taught photographer and his mother a novelist who wrote under the pen name Jennifer Lash, professions which virtually ensured a unique upbringing. Fiennes' family moved a number of times while he was growing up, and the children were encouraged in their creative pursuits. Thus, it is less than surprising that four out of the six Fiennes siblings went on to work in the entertainment business, with Ralph and his brother Joseph becoming actors, his two sisters a director and a producer, and another brother a musician. Originally wanting to be a painter, Fiennes enrolled at the Chelsea College of Art and Design before transferring to London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to study acting. Following graduation, he joined the Royal National Theatre in 1987, and he became part of the Royal Shakespeare Company a year later. While a member of the company, he performed a wide range of the classics, playing everyone from Romeo to King Lear's Edmund. Fiennes first became known to a wider audience in 1991, when he starred as the title character in the acclaimed British television production of A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia. The next year, he gained additional exposure, making his film debut as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Starring opposite Juliette Binoche, Fiennes glowered his way across the screen with suitable aplomb, something that he would do again to devastating effect the next year in Schindler's List. As the psychotic Nazi commandant Amon Goeth, Fiennes blended quiet yet absolute menace with surprising charisma (even more surprising given that he had gained over 30 pounds for his role) to such great effect that he earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and a British Academy Award for his portrayal. Fiennes' work in the film incited a flurry of interest in the actor, whose intensity and odd name (its correct pronunciation is "Rafe Fines") made him the subject of many a magazine article.Interest in Fiennes only increased the following year, when, back to his normal weight and sporting an American accent, he played the more sympathetic (but tragically flawed) Charles Van Doren in Robert Redford's Quiz Show. Critics loved him in the role, and he further consolidated his acclaim two years later in Anthony Minghella's Oscar-winning adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, which won Fiennes Oscar and Golden Globe nominations as Best Actor. Given his newfound heartthrob status, many audience members were surprised to see Fiennes next turn up in the title role of the gawkish, ginger-haired minister with a gambling problem (playing opposite a then-unknown Cate Blanchett) in Oscar and Lucinda (1997). He gave a highly eccentric performance in the film, which received a mixed critical reception. Where Oscar and Lucinda was only vaguely disappointing, Fiennes' next project, a 1998 film version of the popular 1960s TV series The Avengers, was one of the most lambasted films of the year. Fiennes somehow managed to avoid most of the critical wrath directed at the film, and in 1999 he could be seen starring in no less than three disparate projects. In Onegin, directed by his sister, Martha, Fiennes played the title character, a blasé Russian aristocrat; in The End of the Affair, directed by Neil Jordan, he portrayed a novelist embroiled in an adulterous affair with the wife (Julianne Moore) of his best friend (Stephen Rea); while in Sunshine, directed by István Szabó, he played three different roles in a saga tracing 150 years of the affairs and intrigues of a family of Hungarian Jews.If his roles to date had served to showcase Fiennes' talent at about the rate of a solid performance per year, 2002 provided a trio of diverse and demanding roles that would prove just how well he could perform under pressure. In Red Dragon -- the first of those efforts to hit stateside screens that year -- Fiennes' chilling performance as serial killer Francis Dolarhyde shifted between meekness and menace at the drop of a hat. Thankfully eschewing the grandiose theatrics of Hannibal for a tone more in keeping with the original Silence of the Lambs, the film proved a hit at the box office, and Fiennes' performance rivaled that of Ted Levine's in providing the film with a chilling villain straight from the pages of the most lurid true-crime encyclopedia (Fiennes' character was purportedly based on the exploits of an uncaptured Wichita serial killer who went by the name "Bind, Torture, Kill"). A few short months later, audiences were treated to yet another deeply disturbed characterization by Fiennes, that of a schizophrenic man haunted by his childhood in director David Cronenberg's dark psychological drama Spider, based on author Patrick McGrath's bleak novel of the same name. Fiennes' performance substituted the menace of Red Dragon with a more sympathetic protagonist whose memory slowly regresses to reveal a scarring childhood tragedy. No doubt having had his fill of disturbed characters that year, Fiennes once again caught audiences off guard with a disarmingly charming role in the romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan.Fiennes would continue to find substantial and challenging roles in the years to come, most notably in his sister's film Chromophobia, the Merchant-Ivory film The White Countess, The Constant Gardener, the James Bond film Skyfall, and the ever-popular Harry Potter series, in which Fiennes played baddie Lord Voldemort. Fiennes would also earn accolades for directing and starring in a cinematic adaptation of William Shakespeare's war epic Coriolanus.

Trivia: Scottish actor Gerard Butler spent seven miserable years studying law before trying his hand at acting on the London stage. Half a decade later, a much happier Butler had over a dozen theater, movie, and television credits under his belt, including starring roles in the stage version of Trainspotting (1996) and the award-winning film Mrs. Brown (1997).Born on November 13, 1969, in Glasgow, Butler is the youngest of Margaret and Edward Butler's three children; he has a sister and a brother. When Butler was barely six months old, his family relocated to Montréal, Canada, where his father undertook several failed business ventures. A year and a half later, Butler's parents divorced, and his mother took the children back to Scotland. He saw his father once more when he was four years old, and then not again until he was 16. In the meantime, Butler grew up in his mother's hometown of Paisley, where he frequented a nearby movie theater. Enamored with acting, he convinced his mother to take him to auditions, eventually joining the Scottish Youth Theatre and playing a street urchin in Oliver! at the Kings Theatre in Glasgow. An exceptional student, Butler graduated at the top of his class. Hoping to please his family and his teachers, who felt acting was an unrealistic career choice, Butler enrolled in Glasgow University's law program. He served as the president of the school's law society and earned an honor's degree. After finishing college, Butler took a year and a half off to live in Los Angeles, where he appeared as an extra in the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston vehicle The Bodyguard (1992). He then traveled to Canada to be at his father's bedside as he succumbed to cancer. Shortly after his father's death, Butler returned to Scotland to begin a two-year law traineeship in Edinburgh at one of the country's top firms. But he was bored and discontented as a lawyer, and still dreamed about performing. He went to see Trainspotting on-stage at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh and knew he had made the wrong career choice. Soon enough, Butler's unhappiness began to show in his work, and his firm fired him with only a week left in his training. Two days later, at age 25, he moved to London to begin his acting career. Butler took on a series of odd jobs -- from waiting tables to demonstrating clockwork toys at a trade show -- while looking for work as an actor. He was supposed to be serving as a casting assistant for the play Coriolanus at the Mermaid Theatre when he ran into the show's director, actor Steven Berkoff, at a coffee bar and asked to read for a part. Impressed with the ex-barrister's moxie, Berkoff agreed and Butler secured his first professional acting role. While rehearsing for Coriolanus, he accompanied one of the other actors to an audition for the same stage adaptation of Trainspotting he had seen in Edinburgh and landed the lead part of Mark Renton. In 1997, with his theater career firmly established, Butler made his big-screen debut opposite Billy Connolly and Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown. Sometime later, he had returned to the film's shooting location, Taymouth Castle, for a picnic when he saw a child drowning in the nearby River Tay. Butler dove into the water and saved the boy. The actor received a Certificate of Bravery from the Royal Humane Society for his selfless act. That same year, he earned a small speaking part as a bad guy in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies before spoofing ex-Wet Wet Wet singer Marti Pellow for the 1998 series The Young Person's Guide to Becoming a Rock Star. Butler finished out the '90s by appearing in the television comedy Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, as well as returning to the stage to appear opposite Sheila Gish and Rachel Weisz in Suddenly, Last Summer in London's West End. Butler began the new millennium with supporting parts in the gangster film Shooters (2000) and the war drama Harrison's Flowers (2000). He then simultaneously landed the high-profile title roles in Wes Craven's Dracula 2000 (2000) and the USA television movie Attila (2001). Produced by the creators of The Mummy franchise, Attila chronicled the life of the eponymous fifth century barbarian and co-starred veteran actors Tim Curry and Powers Boothe. It also re-teamed Butler with his Coriolanus director, Berkoff, who played his uncle in the film. The hype that surrounded both Dracula 2000 and Attila was fueled by CNN's announcement that Butler was the frontrunner to replace Pierce Brosnan as the next James Bond. The following months, however, were anticlimactic for Butler. Dracula 2000 bombed at the box office and Attila, though one of the year's highest-rated television miniseries, proved to be forgettable. The rumors surrounding his involvement with 007 were quickly quelled when Brosnan announced that he was staying on for at least two more Bond films, and the series' producers never contacted Butler. Determined to get back on his feet, Butler signed on with a new agency. He returned to British television for ITV's miniseries The Jury (2002), which also featured Derek Jacobi and Antony Sher, while simultaneously filming a role as Christian Bale's dragon-slaying best friend in the special-effects spectacle Reign of Fire (2002). He then quickly landed a supporting role in Renny Harlin's Mindhunters with Val Kilmer and LL Cool J, but pulled out of the project to play the lead in Richard Donner's long-awaited adaptation of Michael Crichton's best-selling novel Timeline (2003). Butler also turned heads as Angelina Jolie's hunky love interest in the sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life that same year.Though, to this point in his career, Butler had no doubt displayed immense talent as an actor, the films he had appeared in had almost consistently disappointed in terms of box-office returns. In 2004, that disheartening trend continued as Butler donned the famous mask of the disfigured musical genius made popular on the stage by actor Michael Crawford in the big-screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, with subsequent roles in The Game of Their Lives and Beowulf & Grendel doing little to increase his international recognizability. By 2006, it seemed that Butler was finally poised to break big, and as he prepared to lead the soldiers of Sparta in battle against the overwhelming forces of the Persian Empire in Dawn of the Dead director Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's popular graphic novel 300, it appeared as if he was determined to do so in style.The movie was a huge international box-office hit, and Butler followed it up with the Guy Ritchie film RocknRolla the next year. In 2009 he took the starring role in the thriller Law Abiding Citizen, and appeared in the virtual reality action film Gamer. 2010 saw the release of his romantic comedy The Bounty Hunter opposite Jennifer Aniston, and in 2011 he starred in the drama Machine Gun Preacher. That same year he played the arch enemy of Coriolanus in Ralph Fiennes adaptation of that Shakespearean tragedy.

Trivia: Dignified, passionate Vanessa Redgrave is widely regarded as one of Great Britain's finest modern dramatic actresses. She is perhaps the most internationally famous of the Redgrave dynasty of actors that includes her father Sir Michael Redgrave, mother Rachel Kempson and siblings Corin and Lynn Redgrave. Born January 30, 1937 in London, Redgrave studied drama at London's Central School of Music and Dance. She made her theatrical debut in 1957 and her film debut the following year in the dreadful Behind the Mask, which starred her father. Redgrave would not venture into films again for another eight years, and during the early '60s established herself as a key member of the distinguished Stratford-Upon-Avon Theater Company. During her time with the repertory, she gave life to Shakespeare's works with some of her country's finest performers and met her future husband, the director Tony Richardson.Redgrave returned to films in 1966, making an unbilled appearance as Anne Boleyn in Fred Zinneman's all-star adaptation of A Man for All Seasons, and co-starring in Karel Reisz's comedy Morgan. In the same year, she played a small but key role as the girl in the photograph in Michelangelo Antonioni's first English language film, Blow-Up. In 1967, Redgrave appeared in the first of several films directed by her husband, Red and Blue and The Sailor from Gibralter. Also in 1967, she made a radiant Guenevere opposite Richard Harris' King Arthur in Joshua Logan's adaptation of the stage musical Camelot. That same year, Redgrave divorced Richardson on grounds of adultery. She had two children, Joely and Natasha Richardson, by him, and in 1969 had a child by her Camelot co-star Franco Nero. During these early years of her career, Redgrave hovered on the brink of stardom, due in large part to the uneven quality of the films in which she appeared. In 1968, she played the title role in Isadora, the biography of avant garde dancer Isadora Duncan, earning her first Oscar nomination and her second best actress award at Cannes (her first was for Morgan). The film represented one of Redgrave's first attempts at creating an independent, strong-willed, feminist character with strong socialist leanings. Throughout the 1970s, Redgrave continued to appear in films of varying quality, although her characters were almost always complex and controversial; the highlights from this period include The Trojan Women (1971), her Oscar-nominated turn in Mary Queen of Scotts (1971) and most notably the tragic Julia (1977), which won Redgrave an Oscar for best supporting actress. At the Oscar ceremony, the actress generated considerable controversy during her acceptance speech by using the ceremony as a forum for her tireless campaign for Palestinian rights in Israel. That, coupled with her outspoken support for the communist-oriented Workers' Revolutionary Party, made life difficult for Redgrave, who at one time was considered the British equivalent to actress/social activist Jane Fonda. Though she continued appearing in mainstream as well as politically oriented films and documentaries such as Roy Battersby's The Palestinians (1977), her views cost Redgrave roles on stage and screen and damaged her popularity, particularly in the U.S. Redgrave's television debut in Playing for Time (1980) generated further controversy when Redgrave won an Emmy for her portrayal of a Jewish violinist interned in a Nazi death camp who is ordered to help serenade women on their way to the gas chambers. Due to her anti-Zionist stand, many, including Fana Fenelon, the real-life violinist whom Redgrave was portraying, objected to her playing a Jewish woman. During the '80s, Redgrave came into her own as a leading character actress. She has subsequently appeared in a number of distinguished television movies, including Second Serve (1986) and a remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1991), which co-starred her sister Lynn Redgrave. Her film work also remains distinguished and she has received Oscar nominations for James Ivory's The Bostonians (1984) and Howards End (1992). Her taste for playing a variety of characters has not changed, as evidenced by portrayals ranging from Oscar Wilde's mother in Wilde (1997) to her role as a doomed earthling in the 1998 summer blockbuster Deep Impact. Redgrave's television work was singled-out for recognition as she took home the 2000 Golden Globe for Best TV Series Supporting Actress in for her role in If These Walls Could Talk 2.She continued working steadily into the next decade appearing in Sean Penn's drama The Pledge, and the historical drama The Gathering Storm. She joined the cast of Nip/Tuck in 2004, and appeared opposite Peter O'Toole in Venus two years later. She played the grown-up version of the main character in the Oscar-nominated WWII drama Atonement. In 2011 she lent her voice to Cars 2, earned rave reviews for her work as the mother of Ralph Fiennes' Coriolanus, and portrayed Queen Elizabeth in Anonymous.

Trivia: Growing up in Scotland, the descendent of Irish immigrants, Brian Cox always felt an affinity to American cinema that eventually led him to pursue his career stateside. Born on June 1, 1946, in Dundee, Scotland, Cox knew he wanted to act from an early age, but identified more with the characters portrayed in American films than in "zany British comedies," to use his phrase. While working at the local theater, where he started by mopping the stage, the 15-year-old Cox would watch the actors and study their styles to separate the wheat from the chaff. He attended drama school in London and got caught up in British theater and television during the 1970s. Cox landed on Broadway in the early '80s, but found more closed doors than open ones. It was while performing a play transplanted from the U.K. that a casting agent for Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986) noticed him. The film would become the first cinematic treatment of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter (spelled "Lecktor" at the time) character, which Anthony Hopkins would make his own in Silence of the Lambs (1991). Cox was cast in the role, paving the way for the success that had eluded him until his 40th year.Despite the breakthrough, Cox remained better identified with television than film during the late '80s and early '90s, though his roles significantly increased in number. His initiation to regular film work came through appearances in two 1995 sword epics, Braveheart and Rob Roy. Over the latter half of the 1990s he materialized in character-actor roles -- police officers, doctors, fathers -- in such films as The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), Kiss the Girls (1997), Rushmore (1998), and The Minus Man (1999). Although he appears more often in American than British cinema, Cox has also paid homage to his Scottish and Irish roots, such as playing an IRA heavy in Jim Sheridan's The Boxer (1997).In 2001, Cox secured major acclaim -- and an American Film Institute nomination for best supporting actor -- with the release of L.I.E., the debut film of director Michael Cuesta. Like Todd Solondz' critical darling Happiness (1998), the film presents a child molester (Cox) as one of its major characters without condemning him, if not actually leaving him altogether unjudged. Cox's complicated, intense portrayal enabled such shades of gray, raising the character above the bottom rung of the morality food chain.As the decade continued, so did Cox's visibility in bigger hollywood films. In 2002 alone, he took on substantial roles in The Bourne Identity, The Rookie, The Ring, The 25th Hour, and Adaptation, a film that saw him stealing scenes with an appropriately over-the-top turn as blowhard screenwriting guru Robert McKee. The following year audiences could see him in the blockbuster comic-book sequel X2: X-Men United, and in 2004 he starred alongside Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in the epic retelling of the Iliad, Troy. He returned to the Bourne franchise for The Bourne Supremacy, and appeared in the thriller Red Eye. He was the psychiatrist in the comedy Running With Scissors, and in 2007 portrayed Melvin Belli in David Fincher's Zodiac. He was cast in the geriatric action film Red, and joined up with Wes Anderson a second time to lend his voice to a bit part in Fantastic Mr. Fox. In 2011 Ralph Finnes tapped Cox to play Menenius in his big-screen adaptation of The Bard's Coriolanus.

Trivia: Actress Jessica Chastain studied her craft at the Julliard School in New York, before launching into her professional career. After landing a few appearances on TV shows like Veronica Mars and ER, Chastain eventually landed the title role in the 2008 independent film Jolene, and soon found herself in other prominent roles, like a Mossaad agent in the 2009 mystery The Debt, though that film didn't reach American screens unti 2011, a year in which Chastain seemes to be in every movie. In addition to playing the loving mother in Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, and playing the struggling wife of a schizophrenic in the underrated Take Shelter, and being cast as the wife to Ralph Finnes' Coriolanus, and earning good reviews for the indie drama Texas Killing Fields, Chastain played a kooky, mentally unstable Southern woman in the box office smash The Help, and earned her first Oscar nomination for her supporting work in the film. She was back in the Oscar race the very next year, this time in the Best Actress field for her work as a determined CIA agent hunting Osama Bin Laden in Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty.

Trivia: Born and raised in Northern Ireland, actor James Nesbitt didn't plan on becoming an actor until a teacher suggested he join the theater. Since then, he has gone on to appear in many international feature films set in Ireland, but he is mostly known as Adam Williams on Cold Feet, the popular British sitcom about three couples in their thirties living in the Manchester area. After his feature-film debut in 1991, he landed a regular spot on the British comedy series Ballykissangel. After a brief stint with serious subjects in the war drama Welcome to Sarajevo and the thriller Resurrection Man, Nesbitt found a place for himself working in comedies with the sleeper hit Waking Ned Devine. In 1999, he starred in two wicked comedies: Women Talking Dirty and The Most Fertile Man in Ireland. His first leading role came in A Lucky Break, the crime caper from the director of The Full Monty, but it was not as successful as it was projected to be. In 2002, he returned to more somber material with Bloody Sunday, a docudrama about the murder of peaceful protesters in Northern Ireland during the early '70s. In 2003, he moved on to musical comedy for John Irvin's The Great Ceili War.

Trivia: Is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role 1986 for his role in The Normal Heart. Nominated for a Scottish Critics' Award 2004 for his role in Death of a Salesman.

Trivia: Studied theater at Haifa University because it struck him as an easy profession. Formerly worked with Israel's Kameri theater company. Auditioned for United States movies for six years prior to being casting in the 2007 film The Kingdom.

Trivia: Got expelled from Liverpool University for taking part in an anti-apartheid student protest. Worked at a centre for young homeless people in London and spent a year as a VSO volunteer in Uganda. In 1973, began his career as a reporter at LBC, Britain's first commercial radio station. Received a BAFTA award for the Best Factual Contribution to Television in 2005. Was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from University of the Arts London in 2013. In 2014, presented the One World Media awards, which promotes media in developing countries. Cycles to work everyday and is the president of the cycling charity CTC.

Trivia: Born in Nigeria, her father's home country, but was raised in the U.K. and Antigua by her mother. Aspired to be a professional dancer, but a back injury led her to pursue acting as a career. Performed in numerous productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest and The Servant of Two Masters. Met her husband, fellow actor Geoffrey Streatfeild, while on tour with the RSC in Japan. Played the role of Viola in a stage production of Twelfth Night with Bristol Old Vic Theatre Company, a role that earned her an Ian Charleson award nomination in 2004. Starred as Eurydice in Moira Buffini's Welcome to Thebes at the Royal National Theatre in 2010.

Trivia: Performed as part of the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre for three years in the early 1970s. Between 1974 and 1976, performed in the National Theatre Repertoire Season. Starred as the Prince of Wales in 1981 drama film Chariots of Fire. In 2000, won the Clarence Derwent Award for Best Supporting Male (UK), for his role in Richard III. Between 2006 and 2013, appeared as George in ITV Drama Agatha Christie's Poirot.