Trivia: Onscreen for nearly a decade at the time he was cast in director Kevin McDonald's The Last King of Scotland, Glasgow-born actor James McAvoy seemed to many an overnight sensation. The fact is, however, that the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama alumnus had already formed the foundation of an enduring career at the time he was charged with holding his own opposite the formidable -- and, eventually, Oscar-winning -- Forest Whitaker.McAvoy's parents divorced when he was just seven years old. In the aftermath, he and his mother would go to live with his grandparents in Glasgow's housing projects, with the youngster's notable interest in stage and film work eventually leading him to study at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. At 16, McAvoy made his professional acting debut in the child abuse drama The Near Room, with a role in the long-running British crime drama The Bill following in short order. On the heels of a part in 2001's Emmy Award-winning WWII miniseries Band of Brothers, McAvoy caught the eye of critics in the small-screen adaptation White Teeth before being cast in a pivotal role in the sci-fi effort Children of Dune. While roles in such U.K. television dramas as Early Doors, Shameless, and State of Play found McAvoy growing increasingly comfortable on the small screen, feature performances in Bright Young Things, Wimbledon, and Inside I'm Dancing (aka, Rory O'Shea Was Here) brought him to the attention of Hollywood. In 2005, the actor went global in a very big way with a pivotal appearance as Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. But it was his Last King role the following year, as a hard-partying doctor who gradually becomes a captive to one of the 20th century's most notorious dictators, that truly propelled him to international acclaim. With his star-making role in The Last King of Scotland, McAvoy became not only a critical darling, but a serious dramatic talent whose future appeared to hold great things as well. Indeed, his follow-ups to Last King proved to feature him in one lead role after another. He romanced Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane, a story about the young Jane Austen; anguished over his separation from Keira Knightley in the Oscar-nominated WWII-era romance Atonement; and fell unexpectedly in love with Christina Ricci in the fantasy Penelope. After this string of romantic leading-man roles, McAvoy did an about-face and co-starred as a reluctant but innately talented assassin in the action-packed thriller Wanted opposite Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. He had the lead role in 2009's drama The Last Station, and played a layer in the historical drama The Conspirator one year later. He voiced the part of Gnomeo in the animated family film Gnomeo & Juliet in 2011, and that same year he was cast as the young Professor X in the action spectacle X-Men: First Class. That role kept him busy for the next couple of years, as he reprised the character in several sequels, including X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).

Trivia: Was scouted as a model at age 16, while walking outside Harrods Department Store by Sarah Doukas of Storm Management.Previously trained in ballet.Made her film debut playing Feeder Girl in the 2014 comedy Vampire Academy.First lead role in a film was Thomasin in the 2015 horror film The Witch. Played the lead in the music video for Skrillex's remix of GTA's Red Lips.

Trivia: Texas-born actress Betty Buckley decided upon a theatrical career when, at a very early age, she was taken by her mother to a Fort Worth production of The Pajama Game. A trained singer and dancer, Ms. Buckley made her professional bow on the musical stage, reaching Broadway at age 22 as Mrs. Thomas Jefferson in the original production of 1776. Additional Broadway credits include two seasons' worth of Pippin (73-75), three years in Cats (82-85) (for which she won a Tony Award), and a healthy run in 1985's The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Betty's first film was Carrie (76), in which she played the tough girl's gym coach whose punishment of Carrie's tormentors set the plot in motion. One year after Carrie, she replaced the late Diana Hyland on the popular TV "dramedy" Eight is Enough, playing the stepmother of a eight-kid brood (at the time, she was two years younger than the oldest kid!) Always on the lookout for an opportunity to sing, Betty took a fraction of her salary to play a Tammy Wynette-style country western star in 1983's Tender Mercies. In 1995, amidst a flurry of press attention, Betty Buckley successfully took over for Glenn Close as "Norma Desmond" in the Broadway production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Sunset Boulevard (Betty had already scored a hit in the London production).

Trivia: Appeared in productions with the Villa Montesorri School, Desert Stages and the Valley Youth Theatre in her hometown of Phoenix. Danced with the Cannedy Performing Arts company. Moved to Los Angeles at age 16 to pursue an acting career. Was a dancer in Xbox Kinect's Dance Central games. Took gymnastics classes as a child, but hadn't done any in over a decade when she was cast as a competitive gymnast in The Bronze (2015).

Trivia: Travelled widely with her parents as a child, living in New York and attending school in Trinidad and Tobago. Thought she'd botched her audition for Skins because she was so timid in the group scene she'd been asked to perform, but the producers liked her reticence and cast her as Grace. Was pursued by real police officers after shooting a loud shoplifting scene for Skins at a Bristol shopping centre. The production crew had to intervene on her behalf to prevent her arrest.

Trivia: Attended the University of Arizona on a football scholarship. Played for the Denver Broncos in 1989. Made his film debut in the 1996 Ellen DeGeneres comedy Mr. Wrong. Taught classes for the acting coach Ivana Chubbuck; later opened his own acting studio.

Trivia: His mother is Italian and Russian and his father is Uruguayan. His great grandparents were royals; Prince Ioann Konstantinovich of Russia and Princess Helen of Serbia. Made his Broadway debut in Rent in 1996. Met his wife Stephanie J. Block while performing together on Broadway in Wicked in 2006.

Trivia: Actor Neal Huff obtained an MFA in acting from New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts in 1992. Since then, the multi-talented performer has found success on television (acclaimed HBO drama The Wire); on stage (Broadway productions such as The Tempest and Take Me Out); and on the big screen (1999's Big Daddy; 2011's Meek's Cutoff).

Trivia: A director who struck gold with the 1999 blockbuster The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan came out of almost nowhere to become one of the year's greatest sensations. The second biggest moneymaker of 1999 (the first being Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace), The Sixth Sense also proved to be a critical favorite, earning a slew of Oscar nominations that included Best Director and Best Picture.Born in Madras, India, on August 6, 1970, Shyamalan was raised in the posh Philadelphia suburb of Penn Valley. The son of doctors, he developed a passion for filmmaking when he was given a Super-8 camera at the age of eight. By the time he was 17, Shyamalan -- who idolized Steven Spielberg -- had made 45 home movies, and after receiving a Catholic school education, he studied filmmaking at the Tisch School of the Arts. He graduated in 1992, and that same year he made his first feature film, Praying with Anger, which was based to some extent on his trip back to the country of his birth.Shyamalan's first major theatrical effort was Wide Awake (1998), a film he partially shot in the Catholic school he had attended, as well as Bryn Mawr College. The story of a young Catholic school student attempting to cope with the death of his grandfather (Robert Loggia), the film -- which also starred Rosie O'Donnell, Dana Delany, and Denis Leary -- quickly plummeted into box office oblivion. Shyamalan had considerably better luck with his next project, 1999's The Sixth Sense. A supernatural thriller about a young boy (Oscar-nominated Haley Joel Osment) who is able to communicate with the spirits of dead people, it was a sleeper hit and gave its director his unequivocal career breakthrough. Graced with an understated cast of performers and a twist ending, the film garnered incredible word-of-mouth among audiences and became the must-see film of the late summer, well into the fall. The Academy in turn showered the film with seven Oscar nominations, including nods for Shyamalan's script and direction. He enjoyed further success that same year as the screenwriter for Stuart Little, earning praise for his smart, funny script.Following the success of The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan -- who continued to reside in the Philadelphia suburbs with his wife and daughter -- directed another supernatural thriller, Unbreakable. Starring Bruce Willis (who had also starred in The Sixth Sense) as a man who undergoes mysterious changes following a train accident, the mannered, pensive thriller was released in 2000 to mixed critical reviews and a healthy -- if brief -- box-office run. A curiously low-key film considering its comic-book underpinnings, Unbreakable retained much of The Sixth Sense's sharp direction, though its lukewarm reception found the director hesitant to expand the film into a trilogy as originally planned. Approached by producer Frank Marshall to pen the fourth chapter in the further adventures of Indiana Jones, Shyamalan gracefully turned down the offer citing his reluctance to enter a collaborative effort with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Harrison Ford, and rejected yet another offer shortly thereafter, this time to direct the third Harry Potter film .Deciding instead on a begin work on an entirely new project, Shyamalan penned a screenplay concerning a rural family who discover crop circles on their farm, selling it to Disney in April of 2001. Though the role of the family patriarch was originally intended for an older actor, Shyamalan made a few minor alterations when Mel Gibson expressed interest in starring in the film, with You Can Count on Me star Mark Ruffalo cast as his brother. Another unforeseen casting change beset the production when Ruffalo pulled out of the film due to health problems, and Joaquin Phoenix stepped in to assume the role with production moving along as planned following the brief delay. If Unbreakable was a subdued hit, then Signs was a full-blown blockbuster, easily exceeding the 200-million-dollar mark.With late-summer firmly established as Shyamalan's most-profitable stomping grounds, he began work on his 2004 project, the buzzed-about period allegory The Village. After many casting rumors and changes -- including the mention of Ashton Kutcher for the lead -- the director locked in a group of talented actors ranging from newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of Ron), to the recently Oscar-anointed Adrien Brody, to distinguished Hollywood veterans like William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver. Reuniting with Signs star Joaquin Phoenix for the lead role, Shyamalan wove an intricate -- or convoluted, according to critics -- tale of a remote pioneer-style community where the village residents dress in muted browns and yellows and live in fear of "those we do not speak of," namely, scampering creatures with thorny exoskeletons. Touchstone Pictures' marketing push ensured a colossal opening for the film, but when word-of-mouth spread about The Village's rug-pulling final twist, box office dropped off considerably.Regrouping after the critical drubbing and somewhat lackluster returns of his 2004 film, Shyamalan returned in 2006 with a film he curiously dubbed "a bedtime story," the somber fable Lady in the Water. A subdued take on the mermaid-out-of-water tale put forth in Ron Howard's comedy Splash some twenty years earlier, Shyamalan's film once again starred Howard's daughter Bryce -- this time cast as a water nymph who mysteriously appears one night to a apartment-complex superintendent played by Sideways' schlub laureate Paul Giamatti. Though the film did little to disprove the theory that Shyamalan's career was on a downward slide, it was a virtual masterpiece compared to his laughable 2008 film The Happening. A ham-fisted tale of nature-run-amuck, The Happening became the butt of jokes for critics across the globe, and even had longtime supporters howling with laughter as the film's terrified protagonists attempted to outrun the wind. Fortunately with The Happening, Shyamalan only managed to disappoint his own fans, though with his next film The Last Airbender -- a live action adaptation of the popular animated television series, the director managed to upset a whole new crowd.

Trivia: Born Walter Willis -- an Army brat to parents stationed in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany -- on March 19, 1955, Bruce Willis grew up in New Jersey from the age of two. As a youngster, he developed a stutter that posed the threat of social alienation, but he discovered an odd quirk: while performing in front of large numbers of people, the handicap inexplicably vanished. This led Willis into a certified niche as a comedian and budding actor. After high-school graduation, 18-year-old Willis decided to land a blue-collar job in the vein of his father, and accepted a position at the DuPont Chambers Works factory in Deep Water, NJ, but withdrew, shaken, after a co-worker was killed on the job. He performed regularly on the harmonica in a blues ensemble called the Loose Goose and worked temporarily as a security guard before enrolling in the drama program at Montclair State University in New Jersey. A collegiate role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof brought Willis back in touch with his love of acting, and he instantly decided to devote his life to the profession.Willis made his first professional appearances on film with minor roles in projects like The First Deadly Sin, starring Frank Sinatra, and Sidney Lumet's The Verdict. But his big break came when he attended a casting call (along with 3000 other hopefuls) for the leading role on Moonlighting, an ABC detective comedy series. Sensing Willis' innate appeal, producers cast him opposite the luminous Cybill Shepherd. The series, which debuted in 1985, followed the story of two private investigators working for a struggling detective agency, with Willis playing the fast-talking ne'er-do-well David Addison, and Shepherd playing the prim former fashion model Maddie Hayes. The show's heavy use of clever dialogue, romantic tension, and screwball comedy proved a massive hit with audiences, and Willis became a major star. The show ultimately lasted four years and wrapped on May 14, 1989. During the first year or two of the series, Willis and Shepherd enjoyed a brief offscreen romantic involvement as well, but Willis soon met and fell in love with actress Demi Moore, who became his wife in 1987.In the interim, Willis segued into features, playing geeky Walter Davis in the madcap 1987 comedy Blind Date. That same year, Motown Records -- perhaps made aware of Willis' experiences as a musician -- invited the star to record an LP of blue-eyed soul tracks. The Return of Bruno emerged and became a moderate hit among baby boomers, although as the years passed it became better remembered as an excuse for Willis to wear sunglasses indoors and sing into pool cues.Then in 1988, Willis broke major barriers when he convinced studios to cast him in the leading role of John McClane in John McTiernan's explosive action movie Die Hard. Though up until this point, action stars had been massive tough guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, execs took a chance on Willis' every-guy approach to the genre - and the gamble paid off. Playing a working-class cop who confronts an entire skyscraper full of terrorists when his estranged wife is taken hostage on Christmas Eve, Willis' used his wiseacre television persona to constantly undercut the film's somber underpinnings, without ever once damaging the suspenseful core of the material. This, coupled with a smart script and wall-to-wall sequences of spectacular action, propelled Die Hard to number one at the box office during the summer of 1988, and made Willis a full-fledged movie star.Willis subsequent projects would include two successful Die Hard sequels, as well as other roles the 1989 Norman Jewison drama In Country, and the 1989 hit comedy Look Who's Talking, in which Willis voiced baby Mikey. Though he'd engage in a few stinkers, like the unsuccessful Hudson Hawk and North, he would also continue to strike told with hugely popular movies like The Last Boyscout , Pulp Fiction, and Armageddon.Willis landed one of his biggest hits, however, when he signed on to work with writer/director M. Night Shyamalan in the supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense. In that film, Willis played Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist assigned to treat a young boy (Haley Joel Osment) plagued by visions of ghosts. The picture packs a wallop in its final minutes, with a now-infamous surprise that even purportedly caught Hollywood insiders off guard when it hit U.S. cinemas in the summer of 1999. Around the same time, tabloids began to swarm with gossip of a breakup between Willis and Demi Moore, who indeed filed for divorce and finalized it in the fall of 2000.Willis and M. Night Shyamalan teamed up again in 2000 for Unbreakable, another dark fantasy about a man who suddenly discovers that he has been imbued with superhero powers and meets his polar opposite, a psychotic, fragile-bodied black man (Samuel L. Jackson). The movie divided critics but drew hefty grosses when it premiered on November 22, 2000. That same year, Willis delighted audiences with a neat comic turn as hitman Jimmy the Tulip in The Whole Nine Yards, which light heartedly parodied his own tough-guy image. Willis followed it up four years later with a sequel, The Whole Ten Yards.In 2005, Willis was ideally cast as beaten-down cop Hartigan in Robert Rodriguez's graphic-novel adaptation Sin City. The movie was a massive success, and Willis was happy to reteam with Rodriguez again the next year for a role in the zombie action flick Planet Terror, Rodriguez's contribution to the double feature Grindhouse. Additionally, Willis would keep busy over the next few years with roles in films like Richard Donner's 16 Blocks, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation, and Nick Cassavetes' crime drama Alpha Dog. The next year, Willis reprised his role as everyman superhero John McClane for a fourth installment of the Die Hard series, Live Free or Die Hard, directed by Len Wiseman. Though hardcore fans of the franchise were not overly impressed, the film did expectedly well at the box office.In the latter part of the decade, Willis would keep up his action star status, starring in the sci-fi thriller Surrogates in 2009, but also enjoyed poking fun at his own persona, with tongue-in-cheek roles in action fare like The Expendables, Cop Out, and Red. He appeared as part of the ensemble in Wes Anderson's quirky Moonrise Kingdom and in the time-travel action thriller Looper in 2012, before appearing in a string of sequels -- The Expendables 2 (2012), A Good Day to Die Hard, G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Red 2 (all 2013) and Sin City: A Dame to Die For (2014).