Trivia: Hampshire, England native Martin Freeman can be seen in a variety of television, theater, and radio productions, though he is probably best known for his role as Tim Canterbury in the BBC's award-winning sitcom The Office, and as everyman Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005). Freeman's credits also include the British police comedy Hot Fuzz, a brief appearance in Shaun of the Dead, and the lead role in director Gavin Claxton's The All Together. In addition to his comedy roles, Freeman has turned in a number of dramatic performances, including a turn as Lord Shaftesbury in Charles II: The Power & the Passion, a 2003 BBC historical drama, and the legendary painter Rembrandt in Nightwatching (2007). In 2010 he had a hit on the small screen playing Dr. Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock, and two years later he took the pivotal role of Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Hobbit.

Trivia: Was signed up for Tap Dancing classes at the age of four, to correct his pigeon toes. In order to obtain his Equity Card, he joined a circus in Budapest at the age of 17. Enrolled in drama school at 22 where he completed the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art's (LAMDA) three year program. Got his first experience of acting in a feature film with a one-line role in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). In 2009, he beat international stars Johnny Depp and Daniel Craig to be the winner of the Romantic Novelists' Sexiest Thing on Two Legs award. Agreed to be undergo the experience of water torture for a scene in the seventh season of Spooks (2002) where his character undergoes waterboarding - a practice banned in the UK.

Trivia: Born to a Sicilian mother, whose father had been a priest, and a Scottish father. Was a member of the band Keyhole; several of his band mates later formed The Bay City Rollers in 1966. Supported himself by working as a double glazing salesman while working for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Played a leading role in Dominic Behan's play The Folk Singer in 1972 in Northern Ireland. Won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1995 in the play Broken Glass at the National Theatre, London. Stopped mid-performance while starring in the 2009 West End production of A View From the Bridge to ask several noisy audience members to leave. Made his Broadway debut as a replacement in God of Carnage in 2009. Is a popular choice for voice work for documentaries. Speaks Italian fluently.

Trivia: Born and raised in Northern Ireland, actor James Nesbitt didn't plan on becoming an actor until a teacher suggested he join the theater. Since then, he has gone on to appear in many international feature films set in Ireland, but he is mostly known as Adam Williams on Cold Feet, the popular British sitcom about three couples in their thirties living in the Manchester area. After his feature-film debut in 1991, he landed a regular spot on the British comedy series Ballykissangel. After a brief stint with serious subjects in the war drama Welcome to Sarajevo and the thriller Resurrection Man, Nesbitt found a place for himself working in comedies with the sleeper hit Waking Ned Devine. In 1999, he starred in two wicked comedies: Women Talking Dirty and The Most Fertile Man in Ireland. His first leading role came in A Lucky Break, the crime caper from the director of The Full Monty, but it was not as successful as it was projected to be. In 2002, he returned to more somber material with Bloody Sunday, a docudrama about the murder of peaceful protesters in Northern Ireland during the early '70s. In 2003, he moved on to musical comedy for John Irvin's The Great Ceili War.

Trivia: Did ballroom and Latin American dancing for about 10 years; represented Ireland. Favorite Irish film The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006). Would love to play Napoleon. Met ex-girlfriend Charlene McKenna while on the set of the feature film Porcelain. Is friends in real life with co-stars of the program Being Human (2008) Lenora Crichlow and Russel Tovey. Attended Gaiety School of Acting (2004).

Trivia: Popularly known as "Mr. Ubiquitous" thanks to his versatility as a stage and screen actor, Ian Holm is one of Britain's most acclaimed -- to say nothing of steadily employed -- performers. Although the foundations of his career were built on the stage, he has become an increasingly popular onscreen presence in his later years. Holm earned particular plaudits for his work in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997), in which he played an emotionally broken lawyer who comes to a small town that has been devastated by a recent school bus crash.Born on September 12, 1931, Holm came into the world in a Goodmayes, Ilford, mental asylum, where his father resided as a psychiatrist and superintendent. When he wasn't tending to the insane, Holm's father took him to the theatre, where he was first inspired, at the age of seven, by a production of Les Miserables starring Charles Laughton. The inspiration carried him through his adolescence -- which, by his account, was not a happy one -- and in 1950, Holm enrolled at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Coincidentally, while a student at RADA, he ended up acting with none other than Laughton himself.Following a year of national service, Holm joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, making his stage debut as a sword carrier in Othello. In 1956, after two years with the RSC, he debuted on the London stage in a West End production of Love Affair; that same year, he toured Europe with Laurence Olivier's production of Titus Andronicus. Holm subsequently returned to the RSC, where he stayed for the next ten years, winning a number of awards. Among the honors he received were two Evening Standard Actor of the Year Awards for his work in Henry V and The Homecoming; in 1967, he won a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway production The Homecoming.The diminutive actor (standing 5'6") made his film debut as Puck in Peter Hall's 1968 adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a production that Holm himself characterized as "a total disaster." Less disastrous was that same year's The Bofors Gun, a military drama that earned Holm a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA. He went on to appear in a steady stream of British films and television series throughout the '70s, doing memorable work in films ranging from Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) to Alien (1978), the latter of which saw him achieving a measure of celluloid immortality as Ash, the treacherous android. Holm's TV work during the decade included a 1973 production of The Homecoming and a 1978 production of Les Miserables, made a full 40 years after he first saw it staged with Charles Laughton.Holm began the '80s surrounded by a halo of acclaim garnered for his supporting role as Harold Abrahams' coach in Chariots of Fire (1981). Nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, he won both a BAFTA and Cannes Festival Award in the same category for his performance. Not content to rest on his laurels, he played Napoleon in Terry Gilliam's surreal Time Bandits that same year; he and Gilliam again collaborated on the 1985 future dystopia masterpiece Brazil. Also in 1985, Holm turned in one of his greatest -- and most overlooked -- performances of the decade as Desmond Cussen, Ruth Ellis' steadfast, unrequited admirer in Dance with a Stranger. He also continued to bring his interpretations of the Bard to the screen, providing Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989) with a very sympathetic Fluellen and Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990) with a resolutely meddlesome Polonius.The following decade brought with it further acclaim for Holm on both the stage and screen. On the stage -- from which he had been absent since 1976, when he suffered a bout of stage fright -- he won a number of honors, including the 1998 Olivier Award for Best Actor for his eponymous performance in King Lear; he also earned Evening Standard and Critics Circle Awards for his work in the play, as well as an Emmy nomination for its television adaptation. On the screen, Holm was shown to great effect in The Madness of King George (1994), which cast him as the king's unorthodox physician, Atom Egoyan's aforementioned The Sweet Hereafter (1997), and Joe Gould's Secret (1999), in which he starred in the title role of a Greenwich Village eccentric with a surprising secret. In 2000, Holm took on a role of an entirely different sort when he starred as Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's long awaited adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Holm, who was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1989, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998 for his "services to drama."After the final installment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was released in 2003, Holm took a role in completely different kind of film. 2004's Garden State was a far cry from the epic, big-budget fantasy he'd just starred in and rather, was a quiet, independent film written, directed, produced by and starring the young Zach Braff. Holm's portrayal of the flawed but well-meaning father a confused adult son was a great success, and he went on to play equally complex and enjoyable supporting roles in a variety of films over the next year, from the Strangers with Candy movie to Lord of War. In 2006, Holm signed on to lend his voice to the casts of two animated films: the innovative sci-fi noir, Renaissance, and the family feature Ratatouille--slated for release in 2006 and 2007 respectively. He also joined the cast of the controversial drama O Jerusalem, a movie about a friendship between a Jewish and Arab man during the creation of the state of Israel. After five years away from the big screen, he returned to play Bilbo Baggins yet again in Peter Jackson's adaptations of The Hobbit.

Trivia: After several years in secondary film roles, the skeletal, menacing Christopher Lee achieved horror-flick stardom as the Monster in 1958's The Curse of Frankenstein, the second of his 21 Hammer Studios films. Contrary to popular belief, Lee and Peter Cushing did not first appear together in The Curse of Frankenstein. In Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), in which Cushing plays the minor role of Osric, Lee appears as the cadaverous candle-bearer in the "frighted with false fires" scene, one of his first film roles. In 1958, Lee made his inaugural appearance as "the Count" in The Horror of Dracula, with Cushing as Van Helsing. It would remain the favorite of Lee's Dracula films; the actor later noted that he was grateful to be allowed to convey "the sadness of the character. The terrible sentence, the doom of immortality...."Three years after Curse, Lee added another legendary figure to his gallery of characters: Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist of Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes. With the release eight years later of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Lee became the first actor ever to portray both Holmes and Holmes' brother, Mycroft, onscreen. Other Lee roles of note include the title characters in 1959's The Mummy and the Fu Manchu series of the '60s, and the villainous Scaramanga in the 1974 James Bond effort The Man With the Golden Gun. In one brilliant casting coup, the actor was co-starred with fellow movie bogeymen Cushing, Vincent Price, and John Carradine in the otherwise unmemorable House of Long Shadows (1982). Established as a legend in his own right, Lee continued working steadily throughout the '80s and '90s, appearing in films ranging from Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) to Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999).In 2001, after appearing in nearly 300 film and television productions and being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the international star with the most screen credits to his name, the 79-year-old actor undertook the role of Saruman, chief of all wizards, in director Peter Jackson's eagerly anticipated screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Thought by many to be the millennial predecessor to George Lucas' Star Wars franchise, audiences thrilled to the wondrous battle between Saruman and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) atop the wizard's ominous tower, though Lee didn't play favorites between the franchises when Lucas shot back with the continuing saga of Anakin Skywalker's journey to the dark side in mid-2002. Wielding a lightsaber against one of the most powerful adversaries in the Star Wars canon, Lee proved that even at 80 he still had what it takes to be a compelling and demanding screen presence. He lent his vocal talents to Tim Burton's Corpse Bride in 2005, and appeared as the father of Willy Wonka in the same director's adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic. He appeared as Count Dooku in Revenge of the Sith, and voiced the part for the animated Clone Wars. He appeared in the quirky British film Burke & Hare in 2010, and the next year he could be seen Martin Scorsese's Hugo. In 2012 he teamed with Tim Burton yet again when he appeared in the big-screen adaptation of Dark Shadows.Now nearly into 90s, Lee returned to Middle Earth in 2012 with Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, appearing in the first (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) and third (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies) films. He also reprised the role in a number of video games based on the two series. Lee was still actively working when he died in 2015, at age 93.

Trivia: Performed with Australia's Union Theatre Repertory Company during his early career. Is best known for his alter ego Dame Edna Everage, a character that he first introduced in 1955. Has written two autobiographies: More Please (1992) and My Life as Me (2002). Is a successful landscape painter; studied under Australian painter George Bell. Received an honorary doctorate of law from the University of Melbourne in 2003. Was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2007.

Trivia: Is of Maori descent. Born in New Zealand, but grew up in Australia. Mother and brother Stephen died within a month of each other in 1985, due to two separate car accidents. Took classical dance lessons as a teen. Made his TV debut on the Aussie drama Paradise Beach. Has appeared alongside Lucy Lawless on the syndicated action-adventure series Xena: Warrior Princess and the Starz historical drama Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Big-screen roles include the horror hit 30 Days of Night (2007) and action movies The Marine (2006) and The Condemned (2007).

Trivia: New Zealand-born vocalist, guitarist, and comedic actor Bret McKenzie shot to fame in the early-mid 2000s -- alongside his ever-present co-star, Jemaine Clement -- as one half of the "digifolk" music act Flight of the Conchords. The duo achieved recognition at comedy festivals in their native Australasian country, with touring schtick that involved singing and playing tongue-in-cheek compositions with goofy and cracked lyrics. Similar to parody music acts like Spinal Tap and Tenacious D, with an even wittier and very dead-pan edge, Flight of the Conchords caught the attention of HBO, who offered the duo their own eponymous satirical sitcom. Premiering in mid-2007, the series cut blithely back and forth between stylized music videos of song performances and an ongoing story about the men moving to Manhattan and attempting to make it there. In addition to his work with Flight of the Conchords, McKenzie also noteably appeared in a small role as an elf in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). In 2011 McKenzie had his highest profile success providing songs for The Muppets including "Man or Muppet" which won him the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Trivia: In true Hollywood fashion, composer Howard Shore's "overnight" success with his intensely emotional, yet subtly unnerving score for the epic fantasy film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was, in fact, the culmination of a wildly diverse 20-plus-year career. Born in Toronto, Canada, on October 18, 1946, Shore earned his professional degree from the Berklee School of Music in Boston, MA, and shortly thereafter co-founded the Toronto-based rock outfit Lighthouse. This group managed to earn some small amount of success, while providing Shore the opportunity to display his talents as both a performer and a songwriter. His association with Lighthouse was relatively brief, and after he left the band, the young musician began exploring new mediums for his music. Thus, Shore found himself working closely with two fellow Canadians: Lorne Michaels and David Cronenberg. Under Michaels, Shore directed the musical content for the first five seasons of Saturday Night Live, also writing the instantly familiar original theme music. As his association with Saturday Night Live was ending, Shore was hired to compose the score for David Cronenberg's film The Brood. Shore would go on to orchestrate almost all of Cronenberg's following films -- except 1983's The Dead Zone -- while building an impressive and diverse body of work, including scores for such films as Videodrome, Places in the Heart, Dead Ringers, Big, The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, and High Fidelity. While he received some amount of acclaim for his work after The Brood, Shore would achieve his greatest success with his work on Peter Jackson's highly anticipated adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. The first episode of the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, proved to be a hit with both moviegoers and his musician peers alike, and Shore went on to earn his first Academy Award nomination and -- more importantly -- his first win. Additionally, Shore composed the music for the second and third installments of The Lord of the Rings trilogy -- The Two Towers and The Return of the King -- which, like the filming of the trilogy, were scored concurrently. Following his achievements with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Shore moved on to orchestrate two thrillers -- David Fincher's Panic Room and his tenth collaboration with Cronenberg, the late 2002 release Spider -- and the massive Martin Scorsese historical epic Gangs of New York, further displaying his standing as a preeminent film composer and one of the most hotly sought-after technicians in the industry.In early 2004, while gearing up for Jackson's remake of King Kong, Shore took home his second and third Oscars, one for score and the other for song, when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King swept the awards. That massive success slowed him down not at all as he continued to write scores for a wealth of well-reviewed and award-winning films such as The Aviator, The Departed, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, Doubt, and Hugo. He teamed with Jackson again to create the music for The Hobbit.

Trivia: The notoriously publicity-shy partner and collaborator of Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, screenwriter/producer Frances Walsh is the dark heart of her companion's twisted body of cinematic work. From the early days of Meet the Feebles (1989) to the larger-than-life battle of the Pelennor Fields in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Walsh's vividly drawn characters and subtle story touches have provided the perfect balance to Jackson's wildly over-the-top visuals. Though early gigs as a bassist in a Wellington-based rock band may never have pointed to a successful career in screenwriting for the New Zealand native, the mid-'80s found her making the segue to television as a writer for the popular series Worzel Gummidge Down Under. It was while working on post-production for Jackson's freshman effort Bad Taste (1987) that the rising screenwriter first made the acquaintance of the up-and-coming director, and shortly thereafter, Walsh teamed with Jackson to score and co-write his outrageous sophomore feature Meet the Feebles (1989). In 1992, the gore-drenched duo cooked up their most splatterific fright flick to date with the gag-inducing horror comedy Dead Alive. Two short years later, the couple would surprise the world with the surprisingly restrained, but undeniably affecting, Heavenly Creatures. A chilling account of a harrowing murder committed by two delusional New Zealand schoolgirls in 1954, Heavenly Creatures proved that Walsh and Jackson could accomplish much more than gross-out humor -- earning critical acclaim worldwide and opening numerous doors for the filmmaking duo. Of course, the biggest door opened by Heavenly Creatures was the door to Hollywood, and in 1996, the duo released their first stateside effort, The Frighteners. Largely absent of the tidal wave of gore offered by Bad Taste and Dead Alive, but unabashedly stylish and full of the director/screenwriter team's trademark dark humor, The Frighteners suffered a short life at the box office despite finding a healthy following when released on home video shortly thereafter. If fans had harbored any doubts about Walsh and Jackson's transition to internationally known filmmakers, all questions would be put to rest with the release of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, beginning in 2001. Though adapting the sometimes challenging text of J.R.R. Tolkien would be a difficult task for even the most seasoned screenwriter, Walsh and co-writers Jackson and Philippa Boyens undoubtedly proved up to it -- painting a vivid world of three-dimensional characters and offering an imaginative and engrossing adaptation of the original novels. Walsh also contributed to the trilogy's musical scores, and in addition to winning numerous international film awards, Peter Jackson's better half earned three Oscars when the smoke cleared in early 2003. That same year, production was well underway for the couple's next cinematic endeavor -- a remake of the 1933 fantasy-adventure classic King Kong.

Trivia: When screenwriter Philippa Boyens speaks publicly about the production of Peter Jackson's wildly successful Lord of the Rings trilogy, keen listeners will note that she continually reiterates the role that fate had in the project. Much the same could be said about Boyens' career as a screenwriter, given the fact that she had pretty much abandoned the craft following minor work as a script reader and editor. The New Zealand native was a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic tale from her early youth, so it didn't take long for her to warm to the idea of adapting the novels for the screen -- the tricky part was remaining faithful to the source material while crafting an entertaining trio of films that would hold audiences' attention despite their monstrous running times. Boyens worked closely with similar-minded Tolkien fanatics Jackson and Fran Walsh, and the trio strived for success by keeping the structure of the novel intact and offering the actors the opportunity to explore their characters so they would come alive onscreen. Though a nomination for Best Screenplay for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was the first indicator that Boyens and her collaborators had done justice to the source material, the popularity of each film of the trilogy, combined with a Best Screenplay Oscar for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, seemed to be all the proof needed that Boyens had succeeded in her formidable endeavor. For a first-time screenwriter, Boyens' early success offered quite a start to her film career. Of course, in working together so closely on such a demanding project, Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens had formed quite a bond, and shortly after The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King hit theaters, it was announced that Boyens would once again be teaming with the pair to bring King Kong back to the big screen in 2005.

Trivia: A film prodigy dedicated to Latin American cinema even as his success gave him a ticket to Hollywood, Guillermo del Toro earned a place as one of Time magazine's 50 Young Leaders for the New Millennium before he made his third film.BornOctober 9, 1964 in Guadalajara, Mexico, and raised by his staunchly Catholic grandmother, del Toro was already involved in filmmaking by his teens. A fan of such horror masters as James Whale, Mario Bava, George A. Romero, Alfred Hitchcock, and the work of Britain's Hammer Films, del Toro learned about makeup and effects from The Exorcist's Dick Smith as well as studying screenwriting and making Super-8, 16 mm, and 35 mm short films. Though he executive-produced his first feature, Doña Herlinda and Her Son (1986), at age 21, del Toro initially spent almost a decade as a makeup supervisor, forming his own company, Necropia, in the early '80s. He still found time to produce and direct numerous programs for Mexican television, as well as teach film workshops. Doing his part to turn his hometown into Mexican cinema central, del Toro also co-founded the city's Film Studies Center and the Guadalajara-based Mexican Film Festival.del Toro's feature directorial debut, Cronos (1993), heightened his prominence as a rising star in Mexican film. A low-key, superbly acted horror movie, Cronos' imagery of the vampire as parasite was at once a smart revision of the genre and a veiled allegory about Mexico and the United States. Winner of the critics' prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Cronos put del Toro on the world-cinema and American-independent map. Along with serving on the selection committees for the Sundance Film Festival and the Independent Spirit Awards, del Toro followed Cronos with his first foray into Hollywood filmmaking, Mimic (1997). Starring Mira Sorvino (who took the role partly on the advice of then-boyfriend and del Toro fan Quentin Tarantino), Mimic mined some great scares out of mutant, shape-shifting bugs terrorizing New York City, but having to acquiesce to Hollywood studio demands left del Toro unhappy about the experience.Returning to Mexico, del Toro formed his own production company, The Tequila Gang, and set out to make a more personal thriller. Produced by Pedro Almodóvar and his brother, Agustín Almodóvar, and shot in Spain, The Devil's Backbone (2001) was a more ambitious ghost story set during the end of the Spanish Civil War. Using filters and a mobile camera, del Toro created ominous, sepia-toned visuals that evoked a spectral surveillance over the tragic, politically metaphorical events taking place in an isolated, haunted boys' school for Republican Army orphans. Hailed for its chilling atmosphere, intelligent complexity, and excellent performances from Federico Luppi and Marisa Paredes as the school's left-wing leaders, The Devil's Backbone confirmed del Toro's artistic promise and earned him more critical kudos.Gratified by the experience making The Devil's Backbone and clear-eyed about what Hollywood could offer, del Toro followed his personal movie with the big-budget, Wesley Snipes comic-book vampire thriller sequel Blade 2 (2002). del Toro also began to develop several other American projects, including works with notable Hollywood mavericks James Cameron and Francis Ford Coppola. Though the prospect of del Toro adapting H.P. Lovecraft's chilling short story At the Mountains of Madness gave fans of the horror author hope that someone would finally get his work right on the big screen (no slight to Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon), del Toro's next project would ultimately be an adaptation of a more contemporary supernatural tale. Adapted from and produced by comic-book artist/writer Mike Mignola, Hellboy told the tale of a demon summoned by Nazis in the waning days of World War II (Ron Perlman) who eventually joins the allies in battling the forces of evil.Subsequently preferring to pull back a bit from Hollywood and craft another modestly budgeted dark fairy tale in the vein of The Devil's Backbone, del Toro would next focus his attentions on the production of Pan's Labyrinth. Though Pan's Labyrinth wasn't a direct sequel to The Devil's Backbone in the traditional sense, this unsettling fantasy continued to explore the themes of childhood innocence and tyrannical oppression by following the quest of a young girl who becomes convinced by a mythical faun that she is a lost princess of legend. Once again set during the days of the Spanish Civil War, Pan's Labyrinth merged real-world nightmares with otherworldly wonders with a fluidity seldom seen in contemporary fantasy, and critics were quick to praise the director for his assured handling of the thematically complex material. Pan's Labyrinth became a rare art-house crossover hit, and curried the favor of Academy members, who showered it with Oscar nominations.By this point, Hellboy fans were beginning to wonder whether or not the long-gestating rumors of a sequel to that modestly successful Mike Mignola adaptation would ever bear any tangible fruit. Then, in 2006 Universal announced that they had acquired the rights after Sony withdrew funding from Revolution Studios and were looking to move forward with the film, with director del Toro once again teaming with writer Mignola and stars Ron Perlman and Selma Blair to chronicle the further adventures of everyone's favorite BPRD agent.To the delight of fans, Hellboy II: The Golden Army was eventually released in 2008.In December of 2010, del Toro, along with his long-time cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, director Matthew Cullen, and Executive Producer Javier Jimenez, launched a production company named Mirada. Designed to serve as a collaborative space for artists to work on on the development of a wide variety of digital production (film, television, advertising interactive media, and more), Mirada would find enough success to merit the creation of Motion Theory, another production company.

Trivia: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien -- more commonly known by his pen name, J.R.R. Tolkien -- was born to English parents in the town of Bloemfontein, South Africa. Shortly after his third birthday, Tolkien's family migrated to England, the varied landscapes of which would come to inspire those of Middle-earth in his legendary trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Before he wrote the epic series, however, Tolkien attended England's prestigious Oxford University, where he received a First Class Honors degree in English Language and Literature. Shortly after his graduation and marriage to long-time acquaintance Edith Bratt, the author served briefly in the British Army during World War I. Despite suffering from shell shock, Tolkien, upon his return, immersed himself in creating a mythology which, unbeknownst to him at the time, would have a profound influence not only within the literary world and aspiring gamers, but also in film. The Lord of the Rings and, albeit to a lesser extent, The Hobbit, took the fantasy genre to mainstream movie audiences during the '60s and '70s, and was revitalized to a seemingly insurmountable extent in the early 2000s. This is, of course, is in reference to director Peter Jackson's epic -- and multiple Oscar-winning -- adaptation of the trilogy. Mirroring the novel itself, Jackson's films were vast and complex enough in scope to raise the bar for even the most established of directors. The film inspired an enthusiasm and following not seen since the release of Star Wars in 1977; long-time fans of the novel slept outside of the theaters on opening night, often dressed in traditional Elvin garb, while a new generation lined up to buy the books that inspired the movie. Unfortunately, Tolkien died well before the 2001 release of Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, though his legacy and influence are perhaps stronger than they have ever been. Interestingly enough, the second most popular fantasy series of modern times -- Harry Potter, of course -- was largely inspired by Tolkien's work, according to its author, J.K. Rowling.

Trivia: Orlando Bloom began reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a teenager before abandoning the books in favor of sports and girls. He did not complete the three volumes until his early twenties: first in print, and then on camera as one of a handful of actors carefully selected for New Line Cinema's highly anticipated, $270 million, three-film screen adaptation of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The international success of the trilogy's first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), made Bloom a sought-after young actor. The talented Brit works the talk show circuit, mugs in magazines, and appears at every important award show -- always with a playful demeanor and an uncorrupted smile that suggest he could still be just as easily fulfilled by rugby and romance. Bloom was raised in Canterbury, Kent, with his sister, Samantha. Their mother taught them to enjoy the arts and encouraged them to participate in the local Kent Festival. Bloom began by reciting poetry and prose, displaying an advanced sensitivity to tone and modulation. Yet, it wasn't this precociousness or his frequent trips to the theater that influenced Bloom to become a professional actor. He was in awe of larger-than-life characters -- from Superman to the members of the A-Team -- and knew the only way to become one was to play one on the screen. At 16, Bloom relocated to London and performed with the National Youth Theatre for two seasons before winning a scholarship to train with the British American Drama Academy. At the conclusion of his term with the group, he played the lead in A Walk in the Vienna Woods, and secured an agent. This led to small roles on British television and an appearance in Brian Gilbert's Wilde (1997). Wishing to further his education, Bloom then enrolled at London's prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama (the alma mater of Ewan McGregor, Joseph Fiennes, and Ben Chaplin, among others). There, he acted in several plays, including Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Chekov's Three Sisters, and Sophocles' Antigone. While still in school, Bloom was trying to make it onto a friend's rooftop terrace when he fell three stories and broke his back. The accident almost paralyzed the actor, but surgery let him walk out of the hospital on crutches. Soon afterward, all his peers auditioned for coveted roles in the upcoming The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The extensive and selective casting process took place in every English-speaking country. Bloom good-naturedly tried out for the role of Faramir, a character introduced in the second film, The Two Towers (2002). After meeting with the project's director, Peter Jackson, Bloom was not cast as Faramir. Instead, Jackson asked that he read for the part of Legolas Greenleaf, a much more prominent figure who is featured in all three films. The director offered Bloom the role a few weeks later, only two days before the burgeoning star graduated from drama school. Legolas, Tolkien's warrior elf, has super-human strength, swift reflexes, and heightened sensory awareness. To play him, Bloom trained in archery, swordplay, and horseback riding for two months prior to shooting. He developed a graceful style of combat based on the characters in Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai and worked to manage his posture, poise, and composure. As Legolas, Bloom is immortal, and at 2,931 years old, is a tall, athletic, and skilled fighter of evil -- he truly is larger than life. After finishing The Lord of the Rings -- all three films, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, were shot simultaneously over 18 months in New Zealand -- Bloom headed to Morocco for a role in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. The film chronicles the horrific Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, in which a "simple" mission left 18 U.S. soldiers dead and 73 wounded. Debuting his American accent, Bloom plays a neophyte ranger who breaks his back after falling 70 feet from a helicopter. This combat film opened only a few weeks after The Fellowship of the Ring and received equal acclaim. Following these blockbusters, Bloom performed in several quirky films with limited releases such as Lullaby of Clubland (2001). But it wouldn't be long before Bloom was blowing up the box-office once again with the 2003 crowd-pleaser The Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Bloom showed up opposite Brad Pitt and Black Hawk Dawn costar Eric Bana in the 2004 historical epic Troy, his intense star-power was unquestionable.Bloom faced a down year in 2005, failing to match the box office success of Troy with Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. That same year he stepped into the role once occupied by Ashton Kutcher in Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown, but the film never recovered from the bad press it received after its initial film festival screening, failed to find an audience in theaters, and was unpopular with critics. Bloom rebounded one year later by returning with the other principles in back-to-back filmed sequels for Pirates of the Caribbean, the first of which, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, shattered box office records for opening day and opening weekend, and became the first film to take in one hundred million dollars in just two days. It will hardly strike one as prescient, then, that industry insiders and the trades were advance prepping Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End as one of the most lucrative releases of 2007, possibly of any year. The actor would appear in more down tempo projects in the coming years, like 2010's Main Street, and 2011's The Good Doctor, before hopping on board another swashbuckler, playing the Duke of Buckhingham in The Three Musketeers. Though the film wasn't a huge success in the States, Bloom would have another franchise ticket to cash in the following year, reprising the role of elf Legolas in the Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit.

Trivia: Discovered by a modeling agent in her native Canada, Evangeline Lilly ultimately passed on the catwalk and opted for an acting career. After working briefly as an extra, she was plucked from obscurity and cast as ex-con Kate Austen on ABC's hit island drama Lost. In 2007, she received a Golden Globe nomination for her work on the show. She would parlay her fame into a larger career, appearing in movies like The Hurt Locker, Real Steel, and The Hobbit.