Trivia: One of the most celebrated actresses of her generation, as well as one of the few child stars to make a successful transition to adult roles, Christina Ricci has been impressing audiences and critics with her unnervingly accurate performances since debuting in 1990's Mermaids.The daughter of a lawyer and a former Ford model and the youngest of four children, Ricci was born in Santa Monica, CA, on February 12, 1980. Following her family's move to New York when she was eight, Ricci got her start acting in commercials. Her big screen debut came shortly after, when director Richard Benjamin cast her as Cher's younger daughter in Mermaids. Although much attention went to Winona Ryder, who played Ricci's older sister, the young actress made enough of an impression to land more work: The following year, she starred as the morbidly precocious Wednesday Addams in the hit film adaptation of The Addams Family. The role would help to establish Ricci as an actress known for playing dark, unconventional characters; she went on to play Wednesday again in the film's 1993 sequel Addams Family Values. Following a series of films both good and bad, including Now and Then, in which she played the young Rosie O'Donnell, and the critically panned but commercially successful Casper, Ricci starred as the troubled, sexually precocious Wendy Hood in Ang Lee's widely praised The Ice Storm. The actress handled the part with uncanny maturity, leading many observers to conclude that she was truly beginning to come into her own. This assessment was solidified with Ricci's subsequent roles in films like Buffalo '66 (in which she played Vincent Gallo's unwitting abductee-turned-girlfriend), John Waters' Pecker, and Don Roos' The Opposite of Sex, the last of which cast her as Dedee, a delightfully loathsome girl who wreaks tabloid-style havoc on everyone she encounters, whether they be dead or alive. For her performance as Dedee, Ricci was nominated for a Golden Globe and attained the unofficial title of the Sundance Film Festival's 1998 "It" Girl.Now riding high as an indie teen queen, Ricci went on in 1999 to headline the much-anticipated but ultimately disappointing 200 Cigarettes; the same year, she could be seen in Desert Blue, which featured 200 Cigarettes co-stars Casey Affleck and Kate Hudson, and Sleepy Hollow, in which she played Gothic princess Katrina Van Tassel opposite Johnny Depp's Ichabod Crane in Tim Burton's adaptation of Washington Irving's ghostly tale.In 2000, Ricci starred in Sally Potter's The Man Who Cried, in which she played a young Jewish woman who flees from Germany to Paris during World War II, and Bless the Child, a supernatural thriller that also starred Kim Basinger and Rufus Sewell.Though rumors of a stateside release date for Ricci's 2001 drama Prozac Nation continued to linger, the dark young starlet would move on to such unconventional efforts as The Laramie Project (2002) and the offbeat romantic comedy Pumpkin, which found her as a popular sorority girl who risks becoming a social outcast after falling for a mentally disabled young athlete whom she has volunteered to help train. Though subsequent efforts as Miranda and The Gathering (both 2002) fell beneath the radar at the box office, Ricci was a hit with Ally McBeal fans when she appeared in a recurring role in the Fox show that same year. Audiences who caught Woody Allen's 2003 comedy Anything Else found her as charming as ever (despite her sometimes shrill characterization in the film). At festivals that year, Ricci could be seen in supporting roles in actor Adam Goldberg's dark drama I Love Your Work, as well as in director Patty Jenkins' Aileen Wuornos biopic Monster.She next appeared in the werewolf film Cursed, before moving on to Penelope with Reese Witherspoon, and Black Snake Moan with Samuel L. Jackson. In 2006 Ricci turned in a memorable guest appearance on the popular medical drama Grey's Anatomy as an EMT put in the difficult position of keeping a bomb stuck inside a patient from exploding. A role in the big-budget bomb Speed Racer quickly followed, but in 2011 Ricci returned to television in ABC's Pan Am -- an ambitious but shortlived period piece series following a crew of glamourous flight attendants as they tended to travelers on "The World's Most Experienced Airline." Once Pam Am was canceled, Ricci returned to films, with a supporting role in the Rob Pattinson drama Bel Ami and a voice role in 2013's sequel The Smurfs 2.

Trivia: An alumnus of State University of New York and the University of Massachusetts, American actor Bill Pullman excelled in both wacky comedy and intense drama during his stage years, working with such repertory companies as the Folger Theatre Groupe and the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Before college, he attended a technical institute and studied building construction (years later he used those skills to build his own house in California). In films, Pullman could be relied upon to almost invariably lose the girl, as witness his brace of 1993 films, Sleepless in Seattle and Somersby. He almost lost his screen wife Geena Davis to Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own (1992), but this gratuitous plot point was eliminated from the script. Only since 1994 has Pullman won the heroine's hand with any regularity. The summer of 1995 found Bill Pullman with back-to-back leading roles in two of the season's biggest box-office successes: While You Were Sleeping and Casper: The Movie. Pullman gained even more recognition for his heroic portrayal of the self-sacrificing U.S. president in the special effects blockbuster Independence Day. Up to this point, Pullman was pretty well typecast in "nice guy" roles. In David Lynch's Lost Highway (1996), he broke that mold by appearing as a deeply disturbed husband. In 1995, Pullman began a side career as a producer when he founded his own production company Big Town.

Trivia: At 18, Bronx-born blonde Cathy Moriarty had precisely no acting experience, which suited director Martin Scorsese just fine. Scorsese wanted a thoroughly natural, spontaneous actress to portray the bethumped Vickie La Motta, wife of volatile boxing champ Jake La Motta (Robert DeNiro), in the 1980 biopic Raging Bull. Moriarty won an Academy Award nomination for her fascinating portrayal of Vickie; alas, her next project was the much-maligned Neighbors (1981), which effectively killed her starring career before it had even begun. Her professional problems were exacerbated by a 1982 automobile accident. After back surgery and extensive emotional healing, Moriarty made a tentative film comeback in 1987. The film assignments began improving after 1990; she was terrific as a daytime-drama diva in Soapdish (1991), and even better as monotoned horror film star Ruth Corday in Matinee (1992). There have been a few setbacks during Moriarty's career renaissance (she was cut from the final print of Sean Penn's maiden directorial effect The Indian Runner), but there have been many more highs than lows, notably her winning the Cable ACE award for her work on a 1995 episode of Tales From the Crypt. Even if Cathy Moriarty never makes the uppermost ranks in stardom, she can always rely upon her trendy New York pizza parlor for a steady income.

Trivia: The "matinee idol" of the motley Monty Python crew, Eric Idle attended Cambridge University, where he served as president of the Footlights Revue. Idle's fellow college troupers included future Pythonites John Cleese and Graham Chapman. After getting his start on such TV series as Do Not Adjust Your Set and The Frost Report, Idle served as performer and co-writer for the zany weekly series Monty Python's Flying Circus. He remained a loyal Python throughout the group's many film, TV-special and book projects. On his own, Idle has co-starred in such films as The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989), Nuns on the Run (1990), Mom and Dad Save the World (1992), and Casper (1995). One of his best screen showings was his sidesplitting bit as an accident-prone cyclist in National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985). Among Idle's contributions to American television was his star turn as snobbish ghost Grant Pritchard in the 1989 comedy/fantasy series Nearly Departed. He starred in the 1990 farce Nuns on the Run, and three years later wrote and starred in the comedy Splitting Heirs. He continued to appear in various projects, often lending his voice to animated works like Quest for Camelot, The Secret of NIMH II, and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. He directed a second Rutles movie in 2003, and that same year appeared in the documentary about the tribute concert performed after George Harrison's death. He narrated Ella Enchanted in 2004, but the next year he would have one of the biggest successes of his career when he masterminded Spamalot, a smash-hit Broadway musical that reworked Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He appeared in the documentary The Aristocrats, and voiced Merlin in Shrek the Third. In 2011 he was one of the many pepole who discussed his relationship with George Harrison in Martin Scorsese's documentary about the former Beatle.

Trivia: Blonde, blue-eyed, and bearing the kind of glossy looks that lend themselves equally to teen idoldom and Noxema spokesmanship, Devon Sawa was one of the young actors to coast into the pop culture consciousness on the late-1990s wave of Hollywood teensploitation. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on September 7, 1978, Sawa developed an interest in acting when he appeared in a few kindergarten plays. Following work in local theatrical productions, the young actor secured an agent and began making appearances on various Canadian TV shows. Tiring of television, he broke into film with the 1994 kids' comedy Little Giants, in which he played the quarterback of a misfit football team.A small but apparently very memorable role as the human incarnation of the titular ghost in Casper (1995) made Sawa immensely popular with any number of teenage girls; his popularity received an additional boost that same year, thanks to his role as the neighborhood bully who locks lips with Christina Ricci in Now and Then (the two had previously shared a screen kiss in Casper). More work followed, with Sawa starring in such straight-to-video releases as The Boys Club (1996) and Wild America (1997). Sawa got his first real chance to carry a mainstream movie with the 1999 Idle Hands. A teen horror-comedy that took advantage of the genre craze originally inspired by the Scream series, it starred Sawa as a young man whose right hand gets possessed by a homicidal demon. Unfortunately, the film was released shortly before the Columbine High School tragedy; surprisingly enough, audiences, sickened by the recent spate of real-life teen violence, stayed away in droves. The following year, Sawa was given another crack at film stardom with Final Destination, a psychological thriller that featured the young actor as a high school student who discovers that cheating death is a very tricky matter indeed.Sawa kept a relatively low profile for the next couple of years, appearing in smaller films like Extreme Ops (2002) and Devil's Den (2006) before landing on the CW action series Nikita. What started as a guest role in season 1 was expanded to a recurring gig in season 2, before being promoted to a series regular for season 3.

Trivia: One of the most vibrant comic personalities of the 1970s and '80s, as well as a noted actor and screenwriter, Dan Aykroyd got his professional start in his native Canada. Before working as a standup comedian in various Canadian nightclubs, Aykroyd studied at a Catholic seminary from which he was later expelled. He then worked as a train brakeman, a surveyor, and studied Sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa, where he began writing and performing comedy sketches. His success as a comic in school led him to work with the Toronto branch of the famed Second City improvisational troupe. During this time -- while he was also managing the hot nightspot Club 505 on the side -- Aykroyd met comedian and writer John Belushi, who had come to Toronto to scout new talent for "The National Lampoon Radio Hour." In 1975, both Aykroyd and Belushi were chosen to appear in the first season of Canadian producer Lorne Michaels' innovative comedy television series Saturday Night Live. It was as part of the show that Aykroyd gained notoriety for his dead-on impersonations of presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. He also won fame for his other characters, such as Beldar, the patriarch of the Conehead clan of suburban aliens, and Elwood, the second half of the Blues Brothers (Jake Blues was played by Belushi). Aykroyd made his feature-film debut in 1977 in the Canadian comedy Love at First Sight, but neither it nor his subsequent film, Mr. Mike's Mondo Video, were successful. His first major Hollywood screen venture was as a co-lead in Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979). But Aykroyd still did not earn much recognition until 1980, when he and Belushi reprised their popular SNL characters in The Blues Brothers, a terrifically successful venture that managed to become both one of the most often-quoted films of the decade and a true cult classic. Aykroyd and Belushi went on to team up one more time for Neighbors (1981) before Belushi's death in 1982. Aykroyd's subsequent films in the '80s ranged from the forgettable to the wildly successful, with all-out comedies such as Ghostbusters (1984) and Dragnet (1987) falling into the latter category. Many of these films allowed him to collaborate with some of Hollywood's foremost comedians, including fellow SNL alumni Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and Eddie Murphy, as well as Tom Hanks and the late John Candy. In such pairings, Aykroyd usually played the straight man -- typically an uptight intellectual or a latent psycho. He tried his hand at drama in 1989 as Jessica Tandy's son in Driving Miss Daisy and received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. During the '90s, Aykroyd's career faltered just a bit as he appeared in one disappointment after another. Despite scattered successes like My Girl (1991), Chaplin (1992), Casper (1995), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), and Antz (1998), the all-out flops -- The Coneheads (1993), Exit to Eden (1994), Sgt. Bilko (1996) -- were plentiful. Likewise, the long-awaited Blues Brothers sequel, Blues Brothers 2000 (1998), proved a great disappointment. Aykroyd, however, continued to maintain a screen profile, starring as Kirk Douglas' son in the family drama Diamonds in 1999. During the next few years, he found greater success in supporting roles, with turns as a shifty businessman in the period drama The House of Mirth (2000), Woody Allen's boss in The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), pop star Britney Spears' father in her screen debut, Crossroads (2002), and (in a particularly amusing turn) as Dr. Keats in the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore comedy 50 First Dates. Aykroyd also appeared in the 2005 Christmas with the Kranks, alongside Tim Allen and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry with Adam Sandler in 2006. He also provided the voice of Yogi Bear in the big screen adaptation of the titular cartoon -- but none of these projects did particularly well with fans. Aykroyd soon planned to revive the smashing success of the Ghostbusters franchise, collaborating with Harold Ramis to create a script and reunite the original four stars. However, ongoing hold-ups, including the public refusal of pivotal member Bill Murray to participate, continued to push the project back. In the meantime, Akroyd played a recurring role on TV shows like According to Jim, The Defenders, and Happily Divorced.Since 1983, Aykroyd has been married to the radiant Donna Dixon, a model who holds the twin titles of Miss Virginia 1976, and Miss District of Columbia 1977; the two co-starred in the 1983 Michael Pressman comedy Doctor Detroit. In Aykroyd's off time, he claims a varied number of interests, including UFOs and supernatural phenomena (his brother Peter works as a psychic researcher), blues music (he co-owns the House of Blues chain of nightclubs/restaurants), and police detective work.

Trivia: Possessing an earthy, natural brunette beauty which allows her to effortlessly shift from glamorous to down-to-earth at the drop of a hat, actress Amy Brenneman first caught the attention of television viewers with her Emmy-nominated performance on the popular television series NYPD Blue. Though she would later gravitate to a feature career with roles in such films as Heat (1995), Daylight (1996), and Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), her television career continued to flourish as she took on the role of a single mother and Family Court judge in Judging Amy. Born the youngest of three children in New London, CT, Brenneman's mother was a superior court judge and her father an environmental attorney while she was growing up in nearby Glastonbury. Her love for acting blossoming in her pre-teen years, Brenneman would later study comparative religion at Harvard University. During her college years, performances with the American Repertoire Theater and the Harvard-Radcliffe Summer Theater found the burgeoning actress honing her skills in the work of such playwrights as Shakespeare and Aeschylus. In addition to acting during college, Brenneman also founded the Cornerstone Theater Company, a traveling troupe dedicated to performing around the country and encouraging locals to participate in the show. Relocating to New York City following a five-year stint with Cornerstone, Brenneman found work as a substitute teacher in Brooklyn while continuing to appear frequently on-stage. Brenneman made her small-screen debut in a 1992 episode of Murder She Wrote, and was soon headlining her own series with that same year's Middle Ages. After her yearlong stint on NYPD Blue it was time to make the leap to the big screen, and following 1995's Bye Bye, Love, Brenneman would go on to appear in features while gradually climbing the credits. With the exception of her leading-lady role in the little-seen Nevada, Brenneman's frequent supporting roles would always manage to stand out no matter how formidable her co-stars' talents. Putting her childhood experiences to creative use in Judging Amy, the show proved an enduring success with its sincere blend of drama and family conflict. Moving into the new millennium, Brenneman essayed the role of artist Mary Cassatt in the made-for-television feature Mary Cassatt: An American Impressionist (1999), and took on substantial roles in the theatrical releases Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her (2000) and Off the Map (2003). Brenneman is married to director Brad Silberling, whom she met while working on NYPD Blue. When Judging Amy ended its run in 2004, she had a three year layoff, reappearing in The Jane Austen Book Club, and taking a major part in the Grey's Anatomy spinoff Private Practice. Her small-screen commitments didn't keep her out of movie houses; she was cast in 88 Minutes and Mother and Child.

Trivia: Was in the same grade as journalist Carl Bernstein in high school; Goldie Hawn was one year behind them. In the 1970s, worked as a speech writer and lawyer for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Early big-screen roles included small parts in the comedies Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Beginning in 1997, hosted the Daytime-Emmy-winning Comedy Central quiz show Win Ben Stein's Money for several years. Has written columns for a number of major publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The American Spectator. Has authored, co-authored and published dozens of fiction and nonfiction books.

Trivia: If ever there was a "late bloomer," it was American comedian Rodney Dangerfield. His father was a vaudeville pantomimist who was known professionally as Phil Roy, thus when Dangerfield struck out on his own stand-up comedy career at age 19 (he'd been writing jokes for other comics since 15), he called himself Jack Roy. For nine years he labored in some of the worst clubs on the East Coast, giving it all up at age 28 in order to support his new wife. Unfortunately, the marriage was an unhappy one, soon ending in divorce. In 1963 the comic returned to performing, using the name "Rodney Dangerfield" to distance himself from his miserable "Jack Roy" days. Four more years passed before Dangerfield finally got his big break on The Ed Sullivan Show, for which he'd auditioned by sneaking in during a dress rehearsal. By this time, Dangerfield had fully developed his belligerently neurotic stage persona, tugging at his tie and mopping his brow while he delineated the variety of ways in which he "don't get no respect." On top at last, Dangerfield opened his own nightclub in 1969, where many major comics of the 1970s and 1980s got their first opportunities; fiercely competitive onstage, Dangerfield is known to be more than generous to new talent offstage. In films since his turn as a nasty theatre manager in the 1970 low-budgeter The Projectionist, Dangerfield has exuded a movie image somewhat different than his paranoid nightclub character; he often plays a crude-and-rude "nouveau riche" type who delights in puncturing the pomposity of his "old money" opponents (Caddyshack). Rodney Dangerfield's best screen role was, significantly, his nicest--in Back to School (1985), he played a blunt but decent self-made millionaire who decides to join his son in getting an expensive college education.

Trivia: With his rugged good looks and icon status, Clint Eastwood was long one of the few actors whose name on a movie marquee could guarantee a hit. Less well-known for a long time (at least until he won the Academy Award as Best Director for Unforgiven), was the fact that Eastwood was also a producer/director, with an enviable record of successes. Born May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, Eastwood worked as a logger and gas-station attendant, among other things, before coming to Hollywood in the mid-'50s. After his arrival, he played small roles in several Universal features (he's the pilot of the plane that napalms the giant spider at the end of Tarantula [1955]) before achieving some limited star status on the television series Rawhide. Thanks to the success of three Italian-made Sergio Leone Westerns -- A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) -- Eastwood soon exchanged this limited status for bona fide international stardom.Upon his return to the U.S., Eastwood set up his own production company, Malpaso, which had a hit right out of the box with the revenge Western Hang 'Em High (1968). He expanded his relatively limited acting range in a succession of roles -- most notably with the hit Dirty Harry (1971) -- during the late '60s and early '70s, and directed several of his most popular movies, including 1971's Play Misty for Me (a forerunner to Fatal Attraction), High Plains Drifter (1973, which took as its inspiration the tragic NYC murder of Kitty Genovese), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Though Eastwood became known for his violent roles, the gentler side of his persona came through in pictures such as Bronco Billy (1980), a romantic comedy that he directed and starred in. As a filmmaker, Eastwood learned his lessons from the best of his previous directors, Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, who knew just when to add some stylistic or visual flourish to an otherwise straightforward scene, and also understood the effect of small nuances on the big screen. Their approaches perfectly suited Eastwood's restrained acting style, and he integrated them into his filmmaking technique with startling results, culminating in 1993 with his Best Director Oscar for Unforgiven (1992). Also in 1993, Eastwood had another hit on his hands with In the Line of Fire. In 1995, he scored yet again with his film adaptation of the best-selling novel The Bridges of Madison County, in which he starred opposite Meryl Streep; in addition to serving as one of the film's stars, he also acted as its director and producer.Aside from producing the critical and financial misstep The Stars Fell on Henrietta in 1995, Eastwood has proven to be largely successful in his subsequent efforts. In 1997, he produced and directed the film adaptation of John Berendt's tale of Southern murder and mayhem, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and he followed that as the director, producer, and star of the same year's Absolute Power, 1999's True Crime, and 2000's Space Cowboys. With Eastwood's next movie, Blood Work (2002), many fans pondered whether the longtime actor/director still had what it took to craft a compelling film. Though some saw the mystery thriller as a fair notch in Eastwood's belt, many complained that the film was simply too routine, and the elegiac movie quickly faded at the box office. If any had voiced doubt as to Eastwood's abilities as a filmmaker in the wake of Blood Work, they were in for quite a surprise when his adaptation of the popular novel Mystic River hit screens in late 2003. Featuring a stellar cast that included Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon, Mystic River was a film that many critics and audiences cited as one of the director's finest. A downbeat meditation on violence and the nature of revenge, the film benefited not only from Eastwood's assured eye as a director, but also from a screenplay (by Brian Helgeland) that remained fairly faithful to Dennis Lehane's novel and from severely affecting performances by its three stars -- two of whom (Penn and Robbins) took home Oscars for their efforts. With Eastwood's reputation as a quality director now cemented well in place thanks to Mystic River's success, his remarkable ability to craft a compelling film was nearly beginning to eclipse his legendary status as an actor in the eyes of many. Indeed, few modern directors could exercise the efficiency and restraint that have highlighted Eastwood's career behind the camera, as so beautifully demonstrated in his 2004 follow-up, Million Dollar Baby. It would have been easy to layer the affecting tale of a young female boxer's rise from obscurity with the kind of pseudo-sentimental slop that seems to define such underdog-themed films, but it was precisely his refusal to do so that ultimately found the film taking home four of the six Oscars for which it was nominated at the 77th Annual Academy Awards -- including Best Director and Best Picture. Eastwood subsequently helmed two interrelated 2006 features that told the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from different angles. The English-language Flags of Our Fathers relayed the incident from the American end, while the Japanese-language Letters from Iwo Jima conveyed the event from a Japanese angle. Both films opened to strong reviews and were lauded with numerous critics and industry awards, with Letters capturing the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film before being nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Nowhere near slowing down, Eastwood would direct and star in the critically acclaimed Gran Torino, as well as helming critical favorites like Invictus, the Changeling, Hereafter, and J. Edgar, racking up numerous awards and nominations. In 2014, he helmed the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Jersey Boys, to mixed reviews, and the biographical adaptation American Sniper.A prolific jazz pianist who occasionally shows up to play piano at his Carmel, CA restaurant, The Hog's Breath Inn, Eastwood has also contributed songs and scores to several of his films, including The Bridges of Madison County and Mystic River. Many saw his critically championed 1988 film Bird, starring Forest Whitaker (on the life of Charlie "Bird" Parker), as the direct product of this interest. Eastwood also served as the mayor of Carmel, CA, from 1986 until 1988.

Trivia: Despite a thick Australian accent in some of his earlier films, actor Mel Gibson was born in Peeksill, NY, to Irish Catholic parents on January 3rd, 1956. One of eleven children, Gibson didn't set foot in Australia until 1968, and only developed an Aussie accent after his classmates teased him for his American tongue. Mel Gibson's looks have certainly helped him develop a largely female following similar to the equally rugged Harrison Ford, but since his 1976 screen debut in Summer City, Gibson has been recognized as a critical as well as physiological success.Though he had, at one point, set his sights on journalism, Gibson caught the acting bug by the time he had reached college age, and studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, Australia, despite what he describes as a crippling ordeal with stage fright. Luckily, this was something he overcame relatively quickly -- Gibson was still a student when he filmed Summer City and it didn't take long before he had found work playing supporting roles for the South Australia Theatre Company after his graduation. By 1979, Gibson had already demonstrated a unique versatility. In the drama Tim, a then 22-year-old Gibson played the role of a mildly retarded handy man well enough to win him a Sammy award -- one of the Australian entertainment industry's highest accolades -- while his leather clad portrayal of a post-apocalyptic cop in Mad Max helped the young actor gain popularity with a very different type of audience. Gibson wouldn't become internationally famous, however, until after his performance in Mad Max 2 (1981), one of the few sequels to have proved superior to its predecessor. In 1983, Gibson collaborated with director Peter Weir for the second time (though it was largely overlooked during the success of Mad Max 2, Gibson starred in Weir's powerful WWI drama Gallipoli in 1981) for The Year of Living Dangerously, in which he played a callous reporter responsible for covering a bloody Indonesian coup. Shortly afterwards, Gibson made his Hollywood debut in The Bounty with Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins, and starred opposite Sissy Spacek in The River during the same year. He would also star in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) alongside singer Tina Turner.After the third installment to the Mad Max franchise, Gibson took a two-year break, only to reappear opposite Danny Glover in director Richard Donner's smash hit Lethal Weapon. The role featured Gibson as Martin Riggs, a volatile police officer reeling from the death of his wife, and cemented a spot as one of Hollywood's premier action stars. Rather than letting himself become typecast, however, Gibson would surprise critics and audiences alike when he accepted the title role in Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990). Though his performance earned mixed reviews, he was applauded for taking on such a famously tragic script.In the early '90s, Gibson founded ICON Productions, and through it made his directorial debut with 1993's The Man Without a Face. The film, which also starred Gibson as a horrifically burned teacher harboring a secret, achieved only middling box-office success, though it was considered a well-wrought effort for a first-time director. Gibson would fare much better in 1994 when he rejoined Richard Donner in the movie adaptation of Maverick; however, it would be another year before Gibson's penchant for acting, directing, and producing was given its due. In 1995, Gibson swept the Oscars with Braveheart, his epic account of 13th century Scottish leader William Wallace's lifelong struggle to forge an independent nation. Later that year, he lent his vocal talents -- surprising many with his ability to carry a tune -- for the part of John Smith in Disney's animated feature Pocahontas. Through the '90s, Gibson's popularity and reputation continued to grow, thanks to such films as Ransom (1996) and Conspiracy Theory (1997). In 1998, Gibson further increased this popularity with the success of two films, Lethal Weapon 4 and Payback. More success followed in 2000 due to the actor's lead role as an animated rooster in Nick Park and Peter Lord's hugely acclaimed Chicken Run, and to his work as the titular hero of Roland Emmerich's blockbuster period epic The Patriot (2000). After taking up arms in the battlefield of a more modern era in the Vietman drama We Were Soldiers in 2002, Gibson would step in front of the cameras once more for Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan's dramatic sci-fi thriller Signs (also 2002). The film starred Gibson as a grieving patriarch whose rural existence was even further disturbed by the discovery of several crop circles on his property.Gibson would return to more familiar territory in Randall Wallace's We Were Soldiers -- a 2002 war drama which found Gibson in the role of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, commander of the First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry -- the same regiment so fatefully led by George Armstrong Custer. In 2003, Gibson starred alongside Robert Downey Jr. and Robin Wright-Penn in a remake of The Singing Detective. The year 2004 saw Gibson return to the director's chair for The Passion of The Christ. Funded by 25 million of Gibson's own dollars, the religious drama generated controversy amid cries of anti-Semitism. Despite the debates surrounding the film -- and the fact that all of the dialogue was spoken in Latin and Aramaic -- it nearly recouped its budget in the first day of release.The actor stepped behind the camera again in 2006 with the Mayan tale Apocalypto and was preparing to product a TV movie about the Holocaust, but by this time, public attention was not pointed at Gibson's career choices. That summer, he was pulled over for drunk driving at which time he made extremely derogatory comments about Jewish people to the arresting officer. When word of Gibson's drunken, bigoted tirade made it to the press, the speculation of the actor's anti-Semitic leanings that had circulated because of the choices he'd made in his depiction of the crucifixion in Passion of the Christ seemed confirmed. Gibson's father being an admitted holocaust denier hadn't helped matters and now it seemed that no PR campaign could help. Gibson publicly apologized, expressed extreme regret for his comments, and checked himself into rehab. Still, the plug was pulled on Gibson's Holocaust project and the filmmaker's reputation was irreparably tarnished.

Trivia: First job, at age 15, involved doing voices, such as those of Western stars like John Wayne and Walter Brennan.Is a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity.Was mentored by voice actor Daws Butler, who famously voiced Quick Draw McGraw, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Elroy Jetson, among others.Has been the voice of Goofy since January, 1987.Also frequently provides the voice of Pluto.Has lent his voice to a number of other animated films such as Toy Story, Cars, Kung Fu Panda, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Sing, and The Iron Giant, among many others.

Trivia: California native Harry Shearer was one of the busier child actors of the 1950s. He appeared in such films as The Robe (1953) (as the boy David) and Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953); he could be heard on such radio programs as Suspense, Lux Radio Theatre, and the Jack Benny Show; and among his many TV guest roles was the character who would evolve into Eddie Haskell in the 1955 Leave It to Beaver pilot. After attending U.C.L.A., Shearer flourished as a standup comedian and comedy writer. He was frequently employed on the writing staff for such TV laughspinners as Laverne and Shirley and America 2Night; he also worked both sides of the camera in the 1984 rockumentary parody This Is Spinal Tap, co-starring as rock idol Derek Smalls and co-writing the script with director Rob Reiner and fellow cast members Christopher Guest and Michael McKean. In league with another top satirist, Albert Brooks, Shearer concocted the screenplay for another faux documentary, 1979's Real Lampoon. During the 1984-1985 TV season, Shearer joined the Not Ready for Prime Time Players on NBC's Saturday Night Live. The soft-spoken, saturnine Harry Shearer is most famous however for lending his voice to the Fox Network cartoon series The Simpsons.