Trivia: An actor who hovered far too long on the brink of stardom before getting his due recognition, Adrien Brody spent much of his early career falling victim to the slings and arrows of outrageous PR. Possessing undeniable talent and looks that recall both the wasted elegance of an Aubrey Beardsley illustration and a young and hungry Al Pacino, Brody spent much of the 1990s as a candidate for his generation's "next big thing." But despite roles in two high-profile movies -- Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998) and Spike Lee's Summer of Sam (1999) -- and the publicity that accompanied them, it was not until Brody was cast as the lead in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002) that he won the recognition which had previously eluded him.Born on April 14, 1973, in New York City, Brody was raised in Queens. The son of a schoolteacher and a celebrated photojournalist, he was drawn to acting from an early age. Brody's first taste of show business came when he was 12-years-old and performed as a magician at children's parties; with his mother's encouragement, he subsequently enrolled in acting classes, attending both the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the High School for the Performing Arts. He found his earliest work in off-Broadway productions, and made his television debut in 1998 with a PBS movie and a turn as Mary Tyler Moore's son in the comedienne's ill-fated sitcom Annie McGuire. Following his professional debut, the actor returned to school and attended a year of college before being cast in Steven Soderbergh's 1993 Depression-era drama King of the Hill. The film, which cast Brody as its protagonist's delinquent mentor, met with wide critical acclaim and presented him with new opportunities. He won roles in several films, including 1994's Angels in the Outfield and 1997's The Last Time I Committed Suicide, a paean to the beat generation that co-starred Keanu Reeves, Gretchen Mol, and Claire Forlani. That same year, Brody had lead parts in The Undertaker's Wedding and Six Ways to Sunday, two fairly obscure films that paved the way for both more high-profile work and a turn as one of Vanity Fair's "Hot, Young, and Full of Fun" cover boys. With the 1999 cover and principal roles in two highly anticipated films, The Thin Red Line and Summer of Sam, Brody seemed perfectly positioned to step into the limelight. Unfortunately, his scenes in the former ended up on the cutting room floor, victims of time constraints. But Brody's turn as a bisexual punk in the latter earned positive notices, and was hailed by numerous critics as one of the strongest points in Lee's flawed but compelling film. Brody continued to do solid work in films like Barry Levinson's Liberty Heights (1999) and Ken Loach's Bread and Roses (2000), but it wasn't until he was cast as the eponymous protagonist of Roman Polanksi's The Pianist that critics -- and the Academy -- really took notice of his work. For his portrayal of the real-life Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish pianist struggling to survive the Holocaust in the Warsaw Ghetto, Brody invested himself mentally, emotionally, and physically in the role, and was rewarded for his dedication with numerous honors, including the French César and an Oscar that made him the youngest-ever recipient of the Best Actor award. Many observers felt the quality of his performance in the film was matched by that of his acceptance speech, given only days after the U.S. went to war with Iraq: after bestowing a long kiss on a very surprised Halle Berry, who presented him with the award, he went on to give a speech that managed to combine heartfelt gratitude with an eloquent plea for peace and goodwill. It was an accomplishment that brought much of the ceremony's audience to a standing ovation and ensured that although fame had eluded him in the past, Brody had finally and deservedly won his time in the limelight.Brody followed up his triumph as The Village idiot in M. Night Shyamalan's allegorical film, and starred in the little-seen psychological thriller The Jacket. However, in 2005, Brody starred in Peter Jackson's gargantuan remake of King Kong. He returned to more independent films as a man attempting to unravel the mysterious death of George Reeves in Hollywoodland, and teamed with Todd Haynes in his unconventional Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan. Brody would cement himself as a leading in Hollywood over the coming years, with appearances in everything from precocious, indie-fare like Darjeeling Limited and The Brothers Bloom to action explosions like Predators and Wrecked.

Trivia: Actress Felicity Jones paid her dues as a teenager, playing a recurring character on the low-budget U.K. fantasy series The Worst Witch. Her next big break would be a TV role, as well, but part of Zoe Brogan on the drama Cape Wrath would come with considerably more prestige. Jones then branched out with a part in the 2008 of the novel Brideshead Revisited and a prominent role in the 2009 Stephen Frears film Chéri. Jones co-starred in the well-received romantic drama Like Crazy, and scored her first Oscar nomination for her work in 2014's The Theory of Everything playing the wife of celebrated scientist Stephen Hawking.

Trivia: With classic, square-jawed good looks, Australian actor Guy Pearce brings to mind the leading men of Hollywood's Golden Age; however, the actor is a thoroughly modern one, using his talents to play characters ranging from flamboyant drag queens to straight-arrow Los Angeles policemen. Pearce was born October 5, 1967, in Cambridgeshire, England. His father, who was a member of the Royal Air Force, moved his family to Australia when Pearce was three. Following the elder Pearce's tragic death in a plane crash, Pearce's mother decided to keep her family in Australia when young Pearce was eight, and it was there that he grew up. Interested in acting from a young age, he wrote to various members of the Australian television industry requesting a screen test when he was 17. His efforts proved worthwhile, as he was invited to audition for a new soap called Neighbours. Pearce won a significant part on the show and was part of it from 1986 to 1990. Following his stint on Neighbours, Pearce found other work in television and made his screen debut in the 1992 film Hunting. He acted in a few more small films and in My Forgotten Man, a 1993 TV biopic of Errol Flynn, before coming to the attention of film audiences everywhere in the 1994 sleeper hit The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. As the flamboyant and often infuriating Adam/Felicia, Pearce gave a performance that was both over the top and immensely satisfying. The role gave him the international exposure he had previously lacked and led to his casting in Curtis Hanson's 1997 adaptation of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential. The film was an all-around success and drew raves for Pearce and his co-stars, who included Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, Kim Basinger (who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance) and fellow Australian Russell Crowe.After the success of L.A. Confidential, Pearce went on to make the independent A Slipping Down Life, which premiered at Sundance in 1999. He followed that with the highly original but fatally unmarketable Ravenous (1999), Antonia Bird's tale of chaos and cannibalism which cast Pearce alongside the likes of David Arquette and Robert Carlyle. Though his role in the following year's military drama Rules of Engagement would offer a commendable performance by the rising star, it was another film that same year that would cement his status as one of the most challenging and unpredictable performers of his generation. Cast as a vengeance seeking, tattoo-covered widower whose inability to form new memories hinders his frantic search for his wife's killer, Pearce's unforgettable performance in the backwards-structured thriller Memento drove what would ultimately become one of the biggest sleepers in box office history. Pearce was now officially hot property on the Hollywood scene, and producers wasted no time in booking him for as many upcoming blockbusters as they could. A memorable performance as the villain in The Count of Monte Cristo found Pearce traveling back in time for his next film, and his subsequent role in The Time Machine would find him blasting so far into the future that mankind had reverted to the days of prehistoric times. A trip to the land down under found Pearce next appearing as a hapless bank robber in the critically panned crime effort The Hard Word, and the popular actor would remain in Australia for the elliptical drama Till Human Voices Wake Us (2002). In 2004, Pearce played a lion hunter in the family-oriented epic Two Brothers.Yet despite his increasing prominence as an international movie star, Pearce continued to display a flair for unusual, often demanding roles that would send lesser actors running. His performance as an outlaw tasked with killing his own brother in John Hillcoat's The Proposition earned Pearce a well-deserved AFI nomination for Best Lead Actor in 2005 (an honor he would share with his co-star Ray Winstone, though the award ultimately went to Hugo Weaving for Little Fish), and on the heels of an appearance as Andy Warhol in George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl he could be seen as famed magician Harry Houdini in Gillian Armstrong's Death Defying Acts -- a role which found a second AFI award slipping though his fingers. Though Pearce's turn as a military man in 2008's The Hurt Locker found him in fine form, it was Jeremy Renner who stole the show in Katherine Bigelow's multiple Oscar-winner and, curiously enough, the actor's next AFI nomination would come from his appearance in the Adam Sandler fantasy/comedy Bedtime Stories. A brief reunion with Hillcoat in The Road preceded a grim turn as a grieving father in the harrowing 2009 true crime drama In Her Skin, and in 2010 Pearce lost yet another AFI award to a talented co-star when Joel Edgarton took home the Best Supporting Actor award for his memorable performance in Animal Kingdom (which found Pearce cast in the role of an honest cop reaching out to a troubled youth). As if to balance out all of the awards disappointment in recent years, Pearce nabbed an Emmy for his performance opposite Kate Winslet in the made-for-cable drama Mildred Pierce following a brief appearance as KIng Edward VIII in the Oscar-winning historical drama The King's Speech, with additional roles in Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and Lockout proving that respected actors can still have a bit of fun on the big screen from time to time. Meanwhile, after an almost unrecognizable appearance in Ridley Scott's quasi-Alien prequel Prometheus, Pearce prepared to team up with his frequent collaborator Hillcoat once again, this time as a special agent determined to get his piece of the bootlegging pie in Lawless, which also starred Tom Hardy and Shia LeBeouf. He played the main antagonist, Aldrich Killian, in Iron Man 3, and earned an AACTA nomination for Best Lead Actor for his work in the dystopian film The Rover (2014).

Trivia: Often mistaken for British, Alessandro Nivola has established himself as one of the American actors most likely to assume a flawless English accent in his films. Nivola, whose combination of charismatic good looks, vowel-laden name, and work in a number of British films have both confused and delighted critics and viewers, is actually a product of the East Coast. The son of an Italian-born academic father and a Boston blue-blood mother, Nivola was born and raised in Boston. Taking an early interest in acting, he grew up attending drama camp in the summer and got an internship at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in Waterford, Connecticut, where he began acting on the stage. His love of acting continued while he was a student at the Tony Philips Exeter Academy and Yale University; by the time he was a sophomore at Yale, he had landed an agent and was making regular trips to New York City for auditions.Nivola got his first professional jobs with the Yale Repertory Theatre and a Seattle-based company. He broke into films in 1997 with a small role in Inventing the Abbotts and the more substantial part of Nicolas Cage's psychotic genius brother in John Woo's Face/Off. He then crossed the ocean, and the accent barrier, to star in the British noir drama I Want You (1998), which cast him as an enigmatic man with a dark past, and in Patricia Rozema's saucy adaptation of Mansfield Park (1998). It was the latter film that gave Nivola his first significant dose of recognition and respect, with critics and viewers alike marveling at his portrayal of the dashing and morally dubious Henry Crawford, not to mention his seamless English accent. Nivola again worked with a largely British cast and crew the following year to make Kenneth Branagh's musical version of Love's Labour's Lost (2000), in which he played a king whose vow to forsake love for intellectual enlightenment becomes severely jeopardized by the arrival of a comely French princess (Alicia Silverstone) and her ladies in waiting. That same year, he returned to the other side of the Atlantic to portray a Backstreet Boys-type singer in Mike Figgis' Time Code 2000, an experimental feature filmed entirely in one take. In the years to come, Nivola would remain a consistent presence on screen, appearing in movies like Junebug, Grace is Gone, and The Eye, as well as on the TV series The Company.

Trivia: Born to French parents. A founding member of the Vasistas Theatre Company. Was nominated for the Cesar Award for her performance in Fidelio, l'odyssee d'Alice. Starred in her husband's first English-languge film The Lobster.

Trivia: Left Australia for the United Kingdom in 1969; shortly after his arrival, he saw Ian McClellan perform on the stage in Richard II and decided to become an actor. Was an original cast member of Not the Nine O'Clock News; left the show when it underwent heavy cast changes for the second season. Is an Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company; performed in the RSC's tour of King Lear in 2007, opposite Ian McKellan. Is an accomplished singer and painter.