Trivia: Multi-talented actor/writer Paul Gross stayed true to his Canadian roots and became famous as the crime-busting Royal Canadian Mountie in the TV series Due South. Born in Calgary, Army brat Gross was inspired by his high school drama teacher to become an actor, and he entered the University of Alberta in Edmonton to study the craft. Leaving school early to forge a dual career as an actor and writer, Gross appeared in several TV productions and wrote the screenplay for Atom Egoyan's TV movie In This Corner (1985). By the late '80s and early '90s, he began to score more prominent roles in Canadian and American films, including the Canadian TV movies Getting Married at Buffalo Jump (1989) and Cold Comfort (1990), the well-received TV adaptation of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (1993), the marital dramedy Married to It (1993), and the skiing drama Aspen Extreme (1993). Gross also worked again with Egoyan as the screenwriter for Egoyan's 1993 TV movie Gross Misconduct. After appearing in the Canadian features Paint Cans (1994) and Whale Music (1994), Gross became a primetime regular when his TV movie Due South (1994), about a Mountie who heads to Chicago to track a killer, became a series. Running from 1994 to 1998, Due South's hunky fish-out-of-water hero earned Gross an avid following on both sides of the Canadian border. After Due South went off the air, Gross continued to stick with Canadian TV, starring in the telefilm Murder Most Likely (1999). In the several years to follow, Gross would find success with a number of TV series, like Slings and Arrows, Eastwick, Men with Brooms, and The Yard.

Trivia: One of Canada's fastest-rising actors, Callum Rennie (also known as Callum Keith Rennie) came into the business at an age when most actors are considered to be heading steadily over the hill. Rennie had his breakthrough when he was 34, starring alongside Sandra Oh in Mina Shum's acclaimed Double Happiness (1994). Nominated for a Genie (Canada's equivalent of the Oscar) for his portrayal of Mark, the endearingly geeky guy who falls in love with Oh's character, Rennie was effectively introduced to audiences across Canada, many of whom wondered where he had been for so long.Born in Sunderland, Tyne-and-Wear, England, on September 14, 1960, Rennie moved to Edmonton, Alberta, with his family when he was barely out of diapers. Raised as the second of three sons in a middle-class family, he first thought about becoming an actor at the age of 18 and began appearing in local theatre productions. Unfortunately, any career aspirations he had took a back seat to an addiction to alcohol, one that would control his life until he was 33. Drinking heavily, Rennie continued his involvement with the theatre, appearing in a number of stage productions, but his work -- which often met with substantial acclaim -- was largely overshadowed by his addiction. Things finally began to change for Rennie in 1993, when he got into a bar fight that resulted in glass in his left eye and a vow to quit drinking. His ensuing sobriety was accompanied by a change in his career, marked by an increasing number of supporting roles on various TV programs, including a recurring spot on the CBC's My Life as a Dog, for which he won a Genie. Rennie's 1994 screen breakthrough in Double Happiness opened the door for more screen work, including Bruce McDonald's wickedly good but woefully little-seen Hard Core Logo (1997), a pseudo rock documentary that cast Rennie as an aging punk rocker. He also landed a starring role on Due South, an popular Canadian TV series that cast him as a hard-bitten Chicago cop.In 1998, Rennie won one of the most important roles of his career to date in Don McKellar's Last Night. An acclaimed film about the end of the world, it cast the actor as a man intent on trying every possible sexual variation imaginable in the time he has left. Rennie won a Genie for his performance, which imbued the character with more charm than smarm and captured both his efficacious self-assurance and surprising awkwardness. The film also allowed the actor to collaborate again with Sandra Oh, as well as director David Cronenberg; the following year, Cronenberg cast him in a substantial role in eXistenZ.As the 21st century began, Rennie could be seen in The Last Stop as well as Christopher Nolan's breakthrough hit Memento. He jumped back and forth between small and big-screen projects such as Bliss, Dark Angel, The Butterfly Effect, Blade: Trinity, The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, and 24, finding one of his biggest successes when he was cast in the AMC mystery series The Killing as Rick Felder.

Trivia: A native of Yellow Knife, Northwest Territories, clean-cut Canadian actor Dustin Milligan gamely established himself as a Hollywood presence during the mid- to late 2000s. As one interested in drama from a tender age, Milligan initially moved to Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada's premier film community), where he signed with the agency Lucas Talent; by 2004, however, he transitioned to Hollywood and began signing for bit parts in projects including the feature Perfect Romance and the docudrama telemovie Amber Frey: Witness for the Prosecution (based on the infamous Scott Peterson homicide case). Milligan maintained a much higher profile as Henry Rader, the son of framed and threatened Washington, D.C., district attorney Paul Rader (Donnie Wahlberg) on the CW network's short-lived thriller series Runaway (2006); following a small supporting role in director Jon Kasdan's feature In the Land of Women (2007), Milligan signed on to play Southern California high school student Ethan Ward in the Beverly Hills 90210 spinoff series 90210 (2008). In the years to come, Milligan would find ongoing success in movies like Extract, Repeaters, and The Campaign.

Trivia: Though it's a typical trend for models to attempt acting careers in Hollywood, a close look at the career of British model-turned-actress Sienna Guillory reveals that she is anything but the "typical" case. Despite the fact that it was likely her role as a Hugo Boss girl that first got the talented and attractive blonde beauty noticed on U.S. shores, she had actually been acting long before embarking on a career as a model, and in fact, simply stumbled onto a career on the catwalks quite by accident. More content to be labeled an "actor" than a "star," the down-to-earth starlet no doubt possesses the kind of selflessness displayed by Charlize Theron in Monster that would allow her talent to take precedence over her physical appearance when the role demands it. The daughter of Cuban-born guitarist Isaac Guillory, Sienna was born in London in May of 1975; her childhood was marked by the kind of bohemian upbringing that encouraged creativity and artistic experimentation. It wasn't long before the ambitious youngster was considering a career as an actress, and in 1993, at the age of 16, Guillory landed her first role with a bit part in the cheeky, equestrian-themed U.K. miniseries Riders. Those who caught a brief glimpse of the up-and-coming talent no doubt agreed that the camera took a special shine to her, and a bit part in the U.K. period drama The Buccaneers following in short order. Guillory's appearance in The Buccaneers prompted her to study her craft more closely, but her course was somewhat altered when, at the age of 21, she accompanied a friend to the Select modeling agency and was immediately signed by the powerhouse. Though a stint as the Hugo Boss girl (not to mention campaigns for Armani and Dolce & Gabbana, to name only a few) did offer Guillory notable exposure, it did little to sway her dedication to acting, and she was soon honing her skills at the New World School of Dramatic Arts and later the Paris Conservatoire. By the time Guillory returned to the screen with a substantial role in the 2000 thriller Sorted, she had began to develop a unique style that would continue to impress in such features as Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang) and Late Night Shopping. A winning-turn as the virginal heroine of Kingsley Amis' novel A Girl Like You got Guillory positive critical notice when the television adaptation was aired in the U.K. in 2001, and it wasn't long before she had set her sights on Hollywood. If Guillory's turn as the romantic interest of lead Guy Pearce's character in the 2002 sci-fi adventure The Time Machine did little to further her career when the film generally failed to live up to expectations at the box office, she could at least take comfort in the fact that she would soon be portraying one of the most legendary beauties of all in the made-for-television adventure Helen of Troy. That film, too, was met with a somewhat lukewarm response, and though she would remain decidedly loyal to British television with roles in such efforts as 2004's Beauty, it was obvious by parts in such movies as Love Actually and Resident Evil: Apocalypse that she was eager to expand her horizons beyond typical costume drama fare and into mainstream Hollywood territory. In 2004, Guillory began preparation for roles in the fraternity-themed horror film Victims and director Keoni Waxman's Poolhall Prophets.

Trivia: With his mountainous, imposing, and slightly terrifying presence, it seemed fitting that Hollywood character actor Tyler Mane achieved his greatest recognition in the first decade of his career by donning a mask, seizing a butcher knife, and stalking coeds as psychopath Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's 2007 gorefest Halloween. The film, of course, constituted a remake of John Carpenter's seminal horror classic, and Mane inherited the role from Tony Moran and others, but few doubted that Mane and Zombie would make it their own. Prior to this turn, Mane waxed equally threatening as the furry, ravenous villain Sabretooth in the effects-laden blockbuster X-Men (2000), and wielded massive force as two barrel-chested heroes of old: Ajax in Wolfgang Petersen's historical epic Troy (2004) and Antaeus in Roger Young's HBO miniseries Hercules (2005). Mane grew up in Saskatoon, Canada. Reportedly something of an underdog, who suffered from relentless bullying as a child, he took this mistreatment and spun it into determination, with an aggressive immersion into all forms of martial arts -- including karate, judo, and tae kwon do. Then wrestling beckoned; Mane trained from the age of 19 on, first in Calgary, Alberta, then in Los Angeles. From 1986 through 1999, this Canuck import assumed the characterization of Big Sky (in a tag team with Kevin Nash) and as Nitron, and competed in professional wrestling tournaments around the world for the WCW and UWF. The jump from wrestling to acting constituted a short one, and Mane took that leap with X-Men. His resumé also includes portrayals in such features as Black Mask 2 and Joe Dirt, and he first worked with Zombie in The Devil's Rejects (2005); Halloween thus represented their sophomore collaboration. Mane publicly described his evocation of Myers as "demanding...both physically and emotionally," because of the extent to which Zombie sought to lay bare the maniac's psychopathology in the film.

Trivia: A full-blooded Oneida from the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, Canada, actor Graham Greene is best known for playing Native American roles; his characters are almost always positive and very dignified. Though he has provided a strong role model and has proved that there is a place for Native American actors outside the Western genre, he considers himself neither a spokesperson for Native rights, nor a great trail blazer paving the way for other Native American actors in film and television. Instead Greene prefers to think of himself simply as an actor capable of playing any role that comes his way, and indeed, in the rare instances when he is cast in other parts, such as that of a New York detective in Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), he excels.Unlike other performers, Greene did not grow up with a burning desire to act. Rather his becoming an actor was literally due to the luck of the draw. It happened in the early '70s when he was working as a sound engineer for a popular Canadian band. One of his cohorts thought Greene might make a good actor, but Greene was indifferent. They discussed the matter for a week before they decided to cut a deck of cards. If he lost, he would become an actor. Shortly thereafter, Greene found work on the London stage. It took almost a decade of hard work -- he made his feature film debut in the 1983 sports drama Running Brave -- before he made a name for himself with his Oscar-nominated performance as Kicking Bird in Kevin Costner's epic directorial debut Dances With Wolves (1990). Following his success with Costner's film, Greene became a guest star on various television series, notably L.A. Law, Murder She Wrote, and Northern Exposure, where he had a recurring role as a medicine man/teacher. He also appeared in the PBS American Playhouse production Where the Spirit Lives (1990) and in the well-wrought HBO film The Last of His Tribe (1992). In 1992, he also was excellent as a Sioux policeman who acts as a foil/teacher to starchy FBI agent Val Kilmer in Michael Apted's Thunderheart (1992). In addition to a continued but sporadic film career that included the 1997 Canadian release Wounded, in which he played a recently rehabilitated alcoholic detective who helps solve the murder of a slain forest ranger, Greene appeared on-stage -- most frequently in Toronto -- and did television work that included hosting documentaries. In March of 1997, Greene was reportedly hospitalized following a several hours-long stand-off with Toronto police. Depressed over family and other personal matters, Greene was suicidal and according to the person who called the police, he had guns in his home, though no weapons were used during the encounter which ended peacefully. Greene shares his name with a renowned British author and essayist.