Trivia: Next to Liv Tyler, Angelina Jolie is the only actress of her generation who can thank her famous father for the lips that have become her trademark. The actress was born Angelina Jolie Voight to the pillow-lipped Jon Voight and actress Marcheline Bertrand on June 4, 1975, in Los Angeles.Raised mostly by her mother after her parents divorced while she was still a baby, Jolie moved around a lot with her mother and brother. She also did a fair amount of traveling as a professional model, living in such places as London, New York, and Los Angeles before settling for a time in New York as a student at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and New York University, where she first started acting in theater productions. The fledgling actress soon moved on to film with a small role in 1993's Cyborg 2, followed in 1995 by her turn as a computer hacker in the more widely seen Hackers. The film gave her her first taste of recognition, as well as an introduction to Trainspotting's Jonny Lee Miller, to whom she was married for a short time.After appearing in a number of mediocre films, Jolie finally hit it big in 1997 with her Golden Globe-winning performance as George Wallace's wife in the highly acclaimed TV movie George Wallace. The role, coupled with her Emmy-nominated performance in the title role of HBO's Gia, provided Jolie with a new level of professional respect and recognition. She was soon appearing on talk shows and in magazines, answering questions about everything from her multiple tattoos to her famous father to her brief marriage.She was also netting roles in high-profile projects: In 1998 Jolie headlined an ensemble cast that included Sean Connery, Gena Rowlands, Anthony Edwards, Gillian Anderson, Ryan Phillippe, and Madeline Stowe in Playing By Heart. The following year, she was part of another high-voltage cast in Mike Newell's Pushing Tin, co-starring alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. Although the film was neither a critical nor a financial success, it did little to diminish the rapid ascent of the career of the actress, who was in hot demand for projects that would further elevate her already rising star. In 2000, Jolie's star received one of its greatest boosts to date when the actress won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of a volatile mental patient in Girl, Interrupted. Later that year, her personal life also got a boost in the form of her April marriage to Billy Bob Thornton.Onscreen, Jolie was hard to miss in 2000. She starred in a number of films, including the crime thriller Gone in Sixty Seconds, in which she co-starred as a car thief alongside Nicolas Cage, and Original Sin, a thriller that featured her as the bad-seed bride of a Cuban tycoon (Antonio Banderas). If she was hard to miss in 2000, Jolie was impossible to escape in 2001 with her turn as shapely video-game adventuress Lara Croft in the long anticipated film adaptation of the popular Tomb Raider video-game franchise. Carrying on the tradition of video-game movies that are light on plot but heavy on the action, Tomb Raider (2001) and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life (2003) scored with summer audiences and quickly shot to number one at the box office despite disparaging reviews citing an incoherent story line, unlike Life or Something Like It, the 2002 romantic comedy-drama that critics and audiences alike would rather not have seen. On July 18th, 2002, Jolie filed for divorce from Thornton, claiming that their priorities no longer meshed after having adopted a Cambodian son, Maddox. Though the famously quirky couple were no longer, Angelina's film schedule remained hectic. In 2003 she would play a rich-girl-turned-humanitarian in Beyond Borders, while 2004 saw a host of parts for Jolie, including a role in Oliver Stone's Alexander, an epic biography of Alexander the Great starring Colin Farrell, as well as a turn alongside fellow Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and a role as a tough FBI agent in the thriller Taking Lives. Finally, Jolie closed out the year by lending her voice to Dreamworks' animated kid-flick Shark Tale.While the Jolie-starring Mr. and Mrs. Smith proved one of Summer 2005's biggest money-makers, the actress's name fell on the lips of gossip-mongers for most of the year not for the film itself, but rather for Jolie's relationship with costar Brad Pitt. Though the couple long shirked and denied rumors of an affair, the paparazzi regularly caught them together in public, and Pitt eventually filed for divorce from wife Jennifer Aniston. Subsequently, they not only conceived a child in fall 2005 (whom they named Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, but became foster parents to two adopted children, Maddox and an Ethiopian girl, Zahara Marley. Jolie delivered Shiloh in Namibia, via caesarian section, as May 2006 wrapped, and the couple flew an ob-gyn in from Los Angeles to assist with the birth. By mid-2006, Jolie - as an actress, personality, and sex symbol - claimed an almost matchless status in Hollywood popularity, rivaled only by Jennifer Aniston, ironically. That year saw Jolie claim a supporting role in Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd, and announce her forthcoming role in Beowulf. By late 2007, talk had begun to swirl in the trades regarding Jolie's enlistment in a high-budget action franchise based on the life and adventures of U.S. intelligence operative Kathi Lynn Austin. In 2007, her portrayal of Marianne Pearl in Michael Winterbottom's adaptation of A Mighty Heart earned her strong reviews and nominations for Best Actress from a number of organizations including the Screen Actors Guild. Although Oscar snubbed her for that performance, she landed in the big race the following year with her work in Clint Eastwood's The Changeling. As a mother searching for her kidnapped son, Jolie again garnered nominations from the Hollywood Foreign Press, and the Screen Actors Guild, as well as securing her first Oscar nod since winning years earlier for Girl, Interrupted. For her next several projects, Jolie kept things upbeat and intense, starring in action movies like Wanted, The Tourist, and most notably, 2010's Salt, in which Jolie's performance as the title character Evelyn Salt had many reviewers calling her the female James Bond. Jolie would also provide the voice of Tigress in the childrens' animated film Kung Fu Panda and its sequel, before taking on her next big hurdle: stepping behind the camera.Never timid when it comes to new challenges, Jolie dove into her new role full force, directing as well as producing the 2012 war drama In the Land of Blood and Honey, a tragic love story that takes place during the Bosnian War. The film's uncompromising depiction of the war atrocities that marked the conflict caused some stir in Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia, but her choices were largely celebrated by Bosnians, as well as most critics in the U.S. and Europe.Jolie returned to acting in 2014, playing the title character in Disney's Maleficent, which would prove to Jolie's biggest live-acting hit, passing the box office totals for Mr. & Mrs. Smith, taking in $600 million.

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: Actor Djimon Hounsou first gained acting attention in Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997). Born April 24th, 1964 in West Africa, he moved with his family to Paris, France, at age 13. When he left school, he became homeless and spent a couple of years wandering the streets of Paris before being discovered by fashion designer Thierry Mugler. After he resettled himself, Hounsou moved to Los Angeles to try his hand at acting. While on the way to stardom, Hounsou appeared in music videos, including those of Madonna, Janet Jackson, and Steve Winwood. After his turn as a rebellious slave in Amistad, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, he found increasingly steady employment on both the big and small screens, becoming a semi-regular on the hospital drama ER and appearing in such films as the historical epic Gladiator (2000). After such high-profile projects, Hounsou's success in the following two years would prove no surprise to anyone who glanced at his filmography. Aside from prominent roles in such high-profile French films as 2002's Le Boulet (Dead Weight) and the following year's Muraya -- l'Expérience Secrète de Mike Blueberry (The Adventures of Mike S. Blueberry), Hounsou's bid for screen stardom was simultaneously on display in such stateside features as The Four Feathers (2002), Biker Boyz, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider -- The Cradle of Life (both 2003).In 2003, Hounsou received his first Oscar nomination for his acclaimed supporting role in Jim Sheridan's In America. And while he spent much of the next three years appearing in films that earned mixed reactions from both audiences and critics, he was back in top form in 2006's Blood Diamond, which found him opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. The film appeared on a number of Top Ten lists, garnered Hounsou accolades from countless critics groups and snagged him his second Oscar nod.Following the success of Blood Diamond, Hounsou made several guest appearances on th popular television show Alias, and joined filmmaker Michae Bay's 2005 action drama The Island, which co-stars Scarlet Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Sean Bean. In 2009, Hounsou played the rle of n aget determined to thwart the plans of a group of telekinetic American ex-pats. The actor joined the Academy-award winning actress Helen Mirren in the 2011 film adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, in which Mirren played the traditionally male role of Prospero.

Trivia: Appearing to be a blend of Steve Buscemi and Nick Cave, Noah Taylor made his name playing Danny Embling, a young man juggling inner torment and sexual anxiety in John Duigan's The Year My Voice Broke (1987) and Flirting (1991). In 1996, he gained further international recognition and respect for his role as the younger version of piano prodigy David Helfgott in Scott Hicks' Shine. The son of journalists, Taylor was born in Melbourne, Australia, on September 4, 1969. Although he spent his early years wanting to be a spy or a commando, he began his acting career at the age of 16 when he left school and joined the city's St. Martin's Youth Theatre. His work with the theater led to his casting as Danny Embling in The Year My Voice Broke. Following the critical success of both Year and its sequel, Flirting, Taylor became known as one of his country's most promising actors. His widely praised performance in Shine further solidified this status, and he was able to do steady work in a number of diverse projects both at home and abroad. In 1998, Taylor starred in Ben Hopkins' acclaimed period drama Simon Magus, and the following year he starred alongside Daniel Auteuil in Michel Blanc's Mauvaise Passe and won a coveted role in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, the semi-autobiographical tale of an aspiring teen rock journalist. Taylor would work again with Crowe the very next year, taking a role in the director's remake of Alejandro Amenábar's Open Your Eyes, entitled Vanilla Sky. Heading into action territory with the high-profile video game-to-screen adaptation Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2001, Taylor straddled the line between big-budget excess and independent credibility with an appearance in the little seen but curiously titled He Died With a Felafel in His Hand that same year. In 2002, Taylor gained notable media attention for his controversial portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the independent drama Max. The film presented an intimate view of the future Nazi leader as a young aspiring artist, leading numerous groups to protest its humanization of such a feared and monstrous figure. Though the reviews of the film itself were generally fairly positive, Max soon disappeared from arthouse screens with Taylor's performance going largely unseen. If audiences had missed Taylor in Max, however, they would no doubt have a chance to catch him on the screen the very next year in the Tomb Raider sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. Taylor next showed up in the anticipated Wes Anderson adventure comedy The Life Aquatic alongside an all-star cast, including Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, and Willem Dafoe.

Trivia: Handsome German actor Til Schweiger was voted one of the Most Erotic Male Actors in a 2000 poll in Germany's Cinema magazine. After his film debut in the comedy Manta, Manta, he won an award for Best Young Actor at the 1993 Max Ophüls Festival. He has since built up acting credits in dozens of German and international movies, in addition to work as a writer, director, and producer. On the small screen, he has appeared on some of Germany's most popular TV series and appeared as himself on Pop 2000. After his first starring role in Maybe...Maybe Not in 1994, he stuck with comedies until he found a place for himself in action-thrillers and dramas. He combined genres for the road movie Knockin' on Heaven's Door in 1997; he co-authored the screenplay and won an award from the Moscow Film Festival for his lead performance. The next year he stayed behind the scenes to direct Der Eisbär (The Polar Bear). Returning to acting, he quickly gained international appeal with Bandyta and eventually ended up in Hollywood for small roles in The Replacement Killers, Judas Kiss, and SLC Punk. He went on to star in the comedy Magicians, the action-thriller Driven, and What to Do in Case of Fire. In 2003, he stuck with Hollywood for U-Boat, Sea Devils, and Lara Croft and the Cradle of Life: Tomb Raider 2. Over the coming years, Schweiger would continue to remain active on screen, appearing in films like Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo and Inglorious Basterds.

Trivia: Made his debut as an actor in school plays.Was encouraged by his teacher, Director Robert Tanitch, to audition to drama school.Has claimed that theater represents his first love.Has had an extensive career in theaters over the years. Moved to the United States in 2009.

Trivia: Made his television debut in a 1983 episode of Reilly, Ace of Spies. Between 1994 and 1997, starred as Bernard Green in BBC sitcom Common As Muck. Between 2000 and 2004, starred as Alan Ashburn in ITV drama Fat Friends. As of 2019, has voiced the character of Daddy Pig in Peppa Pig since 2004. In 2016, was nominated for the BTVA Video Game Voice Acting Award for Best Male Vocal Performance in a Video Game in a Supporting Role, for his work on Tearaway Unfolded.

Trivia: Grew up in an artistic family, father is a filmmaker and artist, and mother is a sculptor.Studied law for a year before realizing it was not what she wanted.Studied theater and music in her native Switzerland.Was a professional singer and songwriter.Co-founder of Viscus Film.

Trivia: His family left Glasgow when he was a child and lived in Canada, the USA and England before settling in New Zealand. At school, he and a friend would write and perform comedy sketches, which resulted in his playing a role in Sheridan's The Rivals after the principal actor fell ill. Early in his career, worked at the Dundee Repertory with colleagues Jimmy Logan and Robert Robertson and at the repertory theatres in London's West End. Played Clarence in Richard III, directed by Brian Cox, at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in London in 1995. Has voiced characters in several video games, including the Call of Duty and Uncharted franchises for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Took part in the 2013 Kiltwalk campaign to raise money to support Scottish children's charities. Took the role of the 17th Grand Marshall of New York City's Tartan Day Parade in April 2015.