Trivia: Displaying an off-kilter beauty and an ability to embrace the comically bizarre, Parker Posey has been repeatedly referred to as "The Queen of the Indies." Following her indie debut in Richard Linklater's 1993 Dazed and Confused, Posey went on to star in no less than 15 independent features over the next five years, proving time and again how worthy she was of her royal title.Born in Baltimore on November 8, 1968, Posey was named after '50s model and sometimes-actress Suzy Parker. At the age of 12, she moved with her parents and twin brother to Laurel, MS, where her father owned a Chevrolet dealership. After attending the North Carolina School of the Arts, Posey enrolled at S.U.N.Y. Purchase, where she studied acting and roomed with future ER doctor Sherry Stringfield. She dropped out just three weeks before graduation when opportunity came knocking in the form of a role on As the World Turns. As bad girl Tess Shelby, Posey stayed with the show from 1991 until 1992. The following year, Posey crossed over to celluloid with roles in three movies. Two of these, The Coneheads and Joey Breaker, featured the actress as little more than a glorified extra, but the third, Linklater's Dazed and Confused, allowed Posey to make a distinct impression. As cheerleader Darla, she used her relatively brief screen time to display the nastier side of teen popularity. She played a similar character the same year on the small screen, taking a memorable turn as ex-pep queen turned good-time girl Connie Bradshaw in PBS' Tales of the City (she would later reprise the role for More Tales of the City in 1998).Following secondary to miniscule parts in films like Sleep With Me, Amateur, and Mixed Nuts (all 1994), Posey had her breakthrough role as the titular heroine of Daisy von Scherler Mayer's Party Girl in 1995. She caused an art-house sensation with her portrayal of Mary, a downtown diva forced to take a day job as a librarian and began to ascend the ranks of indie royalty. Appearances in Hal Hartley's Flirt, Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation, and Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming the same year further enhanced her reputation. Posey's work over the next two years reads like a Sundance Film Festival program: in 1996, she could be seen as a Dairy Queen waitress in the ensemble-driven Waiting for Guffman, famed gallery owner Mary Boone in Basquiat, and Hope Davis' sister in The Daytrippers. In 1997, Posey starred in no less than five independent films, including Henry Fool, her third Hartley outing; the temps-in-hell comedy drama Clockwatchers; Linklater's adaptation of Eric Bogosian's SubUrbia; and The House of Yes. For this last film, Posey garnered particular acclaim as the film's fabulously demented focal point. She shined as a young woman obsessed with both Jackie Onassis and her own twin brother (Josh Hamilton). Her performance, which perfectly displayed the hyperkinetic comic energy and sardonic wit that came to characterize many of the actress' portrayals, won her a "special recognition for acting" at Sundance that year.The year 1998 brought more independent work in the form of The Misadventures of Margaret, a romantic comedy in which Posey had the title role and a foray into mainstream features with a turn as Tom Hanks' book-editor girlfriend in Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail. The following year, she took another stab, so to speak, at mainstream fare with a part in Wes Craven's third installment of his Scream series, the aptly titled Scream 3. Though she wasn't necessarily known as a "method" actress to this point, Posey actually had real braces installed for her subsequent role in Waiting for Guffman and director Christopher Guest's popular dog show comedy Best in Show. Cast as the better half of a neurotic, hypertensive couple who will stop at nothing to see their pet win the number-one spot in the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show, Posey nearly stole the show with her hysterical, shrieking performance. Best in Show was immediately embraced by critics and audiences and went on to live a long and prosperous life on cable and DVD. By this point, Posey had gained quite a reputation for her effortless transitions between indies and blockbusters, and a role as a malicious recording industry boss in Josie and the Pussycats (2001) added much flavor to the energetic, pop-flavored comedy. If Posey was somewhat lost in the cast of the 2001 miniseries Further Tales of the City, she would certainly go on to impress in the popular indies The Anniversary Party (2001) and Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (2002). Her role as a philandering housewife in Personal Velocity in particular gave Posey an opportunity to truly shine.Her profile would fade a bit in the following few years despite a role in the widely released (but ill fated) comedy The Sweetest Thing (2002), and after performing at her bitchy best in the made-for-television Hell on Heels: The Battle of Mary Kay (2003) she was included in Reuters 2003 "What Ever Happened to" list. Ironically, it was that same year that Posey essayed her first lead role in quite some time with the independent drama The Event. Cast as a district attorney who is investigating a mysterious suicide, Posey was backed by a stellar cast that included Sarah Polley and Olympia Dukakis. Though she would once again join Guest for the 2003 mockumentary A Mighty Wind, she was pretty much lost in the shuffle in the divisive effort. With the approach of 2004, audiences were no doubt set to find out "What Ever Happened to" Posey with her roles in the high-profile efforts The Laws of Attraction and Blade: Trinity. Posey continued her work in independent films with large parts in The Oh in Ohio, The Sisters of Mercy, and Adam & Steve, but once again appeared in a Hollywood blockbuster as Lex Luthor's significant other in Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. At the end of 2006 she once again collaborated with Christopher Guest on his Hollywood satire For Your Consideration.Posey continued to build on her affinity for independent films by reteaming with Hal Hartley for 2006's Fay Grim, in which she reprised the self titled role from 1997's Henry Fool. Critical response to the film was mixed, but Posey was balancing her career with other projects, some of which had a broader audience, like the recurring role of Marlene Stanger on the hit show Boston Legal. She balanced her indie side with her Hollywood side once again the next year, appearing both in the Jessica Alba thriller The Eye, and in the indie dramedy Broken English. Posey spent much of 2011 working in television, appearing on the popular NBC series Parks and Recreation, Showtime's The Big C, and CBS' The Good Wife.

Trivia: Tall, gangly, and oddly handsome, stage, screen, and television actor Jeff Goldblum is an unlikely sex symbol. But for many women, especially those fond of eccentric intellectual types, he fits the role perfectly. Known for the range of quirky, often otherworldly characters he has portrayed, Goldblum is adept at playing lead and supporting roles in dramas and comedies alike. A native of Pittsburgh, PA, where he was born October 22, 1952, Goldblum moved to New York at the age of 17 to pursue an acting career. He got his start at Sanford Meisner's distinguished Neighborhood Playhouse, and in the '70s began performing in a wide variety of on and off-Broadway productions. When he was 22, Goldblum made his film debut with a small role as a rapist in Michael Winner's brutal revenge drama Death Wish (1974). He was performing on-stage in the El Grande de Coca Cola review when Robert Altman gave him a small part in California Split (1974) and a slightly larger role in Nashville (1975). Afterwards, Goldblum was steadily employed as a bit player in both major and minor features, turning in one of his most notable performances as a nervous houseguest struggling to remember his mantra in the Los Angeles-set segment of Annie Hall (1977). In 1980, Goldblum branched out into television, starring opposite Ben Vereen in the short-lived television detective comedy Tenspeed and Brown Shoe. As Brown Shoe, Goldblum played an uptight stockbroker trying to make it as a hardboiled private detective. Although the role may have given him greater recognition, the actor gained his first really favorable reviews playing a tabloid magazine reporter in The Big Chill (1983). This led to leading roles in such films as Into the Night (1985), where Goldblum played an aerospace engineer opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, and Silverado (also 1985), which cast him as a villainous gambler. In 1986, he had his first hit movie with David Cronenberg's terrifying sci-fi-horror film The Fly (1986), playing a driven scientist whose research turns him into a gruesome mutant. His co-star was his then-wife, Geena Davis, whom he met while they were on the set of the comedy-thriller Transylvania 6-5000 (1985). The couple divorced in the early '90s and Goldblum then embarked on a highly publicized relationship with actress Laura Dern that broke up in the mid-'90s.In 1989, Goldblum made a favorable transatlantic impression in the British romantic comedy The Tall Guy, playing a perpetually unemployed actor who is cast as the lead of a musical about the Elephant Man. He continued to work steadily throughout the subsequent decade, appearing in films of markedly varying quality. He found great success in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, playing a mathematician in one of the decade's biggest blockbusters. In 1996, Goldblum again explored blockbuster territory with a leading role as a computer genius in Independence Day. He reprised his role from Jurassic Park in that film's sequel 1997 sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park. He starred opposite Eddie Murphy in the notorious bomb Holy Man.At the beginning of the next decade Goldblum worked primarily in independent films such as Burr Steers' debut Igby Goes Down, and playing the romantic and professional rival to Bill Murray in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. In 2006 he scored a role in his most mainstream film in quite sometime as part of the impressive ensemble in Barry Levinson's satire Man of the Year. In 2009, Goldblum joined the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent in the show's eighth season to play the role of Detective Zach Nichols. 2010 found the actor co-starring with Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton for the showbiz comedy Morning Glory. In 2014, he re-teamed with Anderson in The Grand Budapest Hotel. The following year, he appeared opposite Johnny Depp in Mortdecai and began filming his role in the long-awaited Indepdendence Day sequel, due in 2016.

Trivia: Tall, dark, and scarecrow-thin, James Urbaniak is probably best known to art house audiences for his work in Hal Hartley's Henry Fool (1997) and The Book of Life (1998). Urbaniak, who met Hartley in the mid-1990s, made his film debut courtesy of the director, who cast the actor in his short Comedy Central film Opera No. 1 (1994), which also featured Adrienne Shelly and future Henry Fool co-star Parker Posey.A product of New Jersey, where he was born in 1963, Urbaniak graduated from high school in 1981. Following a brief stint at community college, he spent the next several years "bumming around" (in his own words) New Jersey, working odd jobs, and doing community theatre. A 1987 introduction to theatre director Karin Coonrod led to the creation of the Arden Party theatre company, which had its debut on the Jersey shore that same year. The company moved to New York the following year and eventually became something of a downtown theatre institution with productions of such works as The Importance of Being Earnest and Romeo and Juliet. In addition to his work as the co-founder of the Arden Party, Urbaniak also performed with a number of other off-off-Broadway theatre companies, and in 1996, he won a Village Voice Obie award for his performance in avant-garde director and playwright Richard Forman's The Universe.After becoming acquainted with director Hartley, who cast him in his aforementioned 1994 film debut, Urbaniak starred in Henry Fool as Simon Grim, an unassuming and oft-abused garbage man who turns out to be a Nobel Prize-winning literary genius. The film, and Urbaniak's performance, earned a number of positive reviews and a strong art house showing, and the following year the actor could be seen in Hartley's Book of Life, a comedy about Christ's Second Coming that premiered at the Cannes Festival. In addition to his work for Hartley, Urbaniak began appearing in the films of other directors, most notably Hilary Brougher's The Sticky Fingers of Time (1997), which cast him as a 1950s science editor who travels across time; and Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown (1999), which featured the actor in a small role as a musician in Sean Penn's band.

Trivia: A regular in the movies of quirky indie-filmmaker Hal Hartley, actor D.J. Mendel first appeared onscreen in the Hartley-helmed project The Book of Life. In 2003, Mendel wrote, directed, and appeared in his own movie, Make Pretend, and then in 2006, he collaborated with Hartley once again in Fay Grim, the long awaited sequel to Henry Fool.

Trivia: With a remarkably thoughtful, mature gaze and a curious air of adolescent mischief, Liam Aiken established himself as a incredibly expressive actor in such films as Henry Fool (1997) and Stepmom (1998). And though he did not win the coveted role of Harry Potter in the feature films based upon author J.K. Rowlings' popular series of children's books, this might have worked to the advantage of the talented young actor, and helped keep him from being typecast into obscurity by the onset of puberty. Born Liam Padraic Aiken in New York City in January 1990, the boy proved a natural talent who delighted in entertaining family members with magic tricks. The delight of a captive audience found Aiken seeking stage work, and it wasn't long before the decidedly outgoing youngster made his television debut in a Ford Winstar commercial. Fans of Hal Hartley may recognize Aiken from his feature debut in Henry Fool (1997), and subsequent feature roles began to give audiences a glimpse into the true talent of the precocious young actor. The turn of the millennium found him edging closer to leading-boy status, and, following performances in Sweet November (2001) and The Road to Perdition (2002), Aiken took the lead for the adventure comedy Good Boy! in 2003. He played one of the doomed Baudelaire children in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and in 2010 appeared in Michael Winterbottom's lurid adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. In 2012 Austin Chick cast him in the thriller Girls Against Boys.

Trivia: In keeping with the film's aura of all-too-gritty authenticity, Leo Fitzpatrick had no professional acting experience when he was cast as one of the leads in Larry Clark's controversial first feature Kids (1995). One of the New York teens who hung out in the same downtown "skater" milieu as Kids screenwriter Harmony Korine, Fitzpatrick was recruited to play Telly, the self-professed "Virgin Surgeon" and unknowing AIDS carrier. With his callow looks, foul mouth, and hardened self-confidence, Fitzpatrick's Telly was the ultimate adolescent nightmare; or, in Clark and Korine's view, simply a sign of the 1990s times. Critics split over whether the unrated Kids was a fiction-verité classic or vile exploitation, but all agreed that the untrained Fitzpatrick had created a memorable brute. Fitzpatrick disappeared from the acting radar until he played a bit part in Clark's next feature Another Day in Paradise (1998); he subsequently guest starred on The Practice in 2000.By 2001, Fitzpatrick landed roles in more mainstream films as well as art house fare. While he played supporting roles in Rebecca Miller's Sundance Film Festival prizewinner Personal Velocity (2001) and Clark's second troubled teen story Bully (2001), Fitzpatrick also appeared in the short-lived summer comedy Bubble Boy (2001) and the fluffy John Cusack-Kate Beckinsale romance Serendipity (2001). Unlike several other cast members, Fitzpatrick's role survived the editing process for Solondz's Storytelling (2002), which made the festival rounds in 2001 before its early 2002 release. Appearing in the caustic "Fiction" portion, Fitzpatrick made the most of his screen time as a cerebral palsy-afflicted college student whose girlfriend discovers the depths of their writing professor's sadism.

Trivia: Tall, slim, and possessing impossibly large cheekbones, English actress Saffron Burrows first came to the attention of international audiences with her role in Circle of Friends (1995). Burrows, who had made her screen debut two years earlier in Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father, was cast as one of Minnie Driver's titular circle, an Irish girl who makes the mistake of getting involved with an older, morally suspect Englishman (Colin Firth).Thanks to the film's great success, Burrows found herself steadily employed, though not always in films of great quality. In 1999, she earned the label of "star on the rise" thanks to leading roles in four different films. Two of these, Wing Commander and Deep Blue Sea, were big-budget action films, while the others were art-house dramas directed by Mike Figgis. The first, The Loss of Sexual Innocence, cast Burrows as identical twins separated at birth, while the second, Miss Julie, was an adaptation of August Strindberg's play that featured Burrows as the title character, a wealthy young woman who enters into a ruinous affair with a servant.Later gravitating toward television with roles in Boston Legal, My Own Worst Enemy, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Bones, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Burrows continued to hone her skills as a journalist by penning articles for such prominent British publications as The Guardian and The Times of London while she wasn't plying her trade in front of the cameras.

Trivia: Her parents moved from Turkey to West Germany before she was born. Trained as a public administrator and worked for two years at a municipal waste office. After she was nominated for several awards for her work in Head-On (2004), the German press uncovered that she had previously worked in the adult film industry; during one of her acceptance speeches, she publicly complained about the situation. Supports women's rights and volunteers with Terre des Femmes, which fights to end domestic violence against women.