Trivia: To some, it might have seemed as though British actor Daniel Day-Lewis burst out of nowhere to star in 1989's My Left Foot, but in fact he'd been in films since 1971. The son of British Poet Laureate C. Day Lewis and actress Jill Balcon and grandson of British film executive Michael Balcon, Day-Lewis had neither the time nor the inclination for boarding schools and social training, and by age 13 he'd dropped out of his privileged life style. Thanks to his granddad's influence, Day-Lewis managed to secure a bit part as a teenage hoodlum in John Schlesinger's Sunday, Bloody, Sunday (1971), but he didn't take acting seriously until he was 15. He trained at the Bristol Old Vic and made his legitimate stage debut in 1982, and shortly afterward appeared in small roles in such films as Gandhi (1983) and The Bounty (1985). Day-Lewis first caught the eyes of critics with his performance as an insufferable young aristocrat in Merchant-Ivory's Room with a View (1985); other early performances of note could be seen in My Beautiful Launderette (1984) and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)--films that, though designed for limited audience, managed to break into big-time distribution. Day-Lewis won an Academy Award for the role of true-life paralyzed artist/writer Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989), then assured the film extra publicity attention with his near-monastic protection of his own privacy. My Left Foot opened the doors for subsequent superlative Daniel Day-Lewis appearances: He was a virile Hawkeye in Last of the Mohicans (1992); offered an astonishingly restrained performance in The Age of Innocence (1993) as a man trapped by the sexual mores of the 19th century; and in In the Name of the Father (1993), Day-Lewis played real-life character Gerry Conlon, the Belfast man, one of the Guildford Four, falsely imprisoned for a terrorist bombing. He turned in a powerful performance as Irish boxer Danny Flynn, who after serving a twelve year sentence for IRA activities, returns to Belfast to try and establish a non-denominational boxing club in the tragic The Boxer (1996).

Trivia: The daughter of a California-based civil engineer and a Costa Rican émigré, Madeleine Stowe attended the University of Southern California, but cut classes to watch plays. Her life as a waitress came to an end when she was fired for being "too spacey," but she was anything but spacey when it came to pursuing an acting career on the California theater circuit. Stowe eventually attracted the attention of Richard Dreyfuss' agent -- not for her stage work, but because the agent spotted her watching one of Dreyfuss' performances. This serendipitous turn of events enabled Stowe to get a bit part in the TV series Baretta, which led to more substantial roles on other shows. While working on the mid-'80s miniseries The Gangster Chronicles, the actress met her husband, future Dream On star Brian Benben. Stowe's screen career during the 1980s and '90s was not exactly a string of blockbusters, but she usually garnered excellent reviews and positive audience response, so that when she was in a bona fide hit, such as 1992's The Last of the Mohicans, reviewers were often inclined to credit her for at least some of the film's success. Stowe also starred in Robert Altman's critically-acclaimed Short Cuts in 1993 and Terry Gilliam's sci-fi cult film 12 Monkeys in 1995. She disappeared from screen for the next three years, but reappeared as part of the ensemble in Playing By Heart, and followed that up next year with The General's Daughter. She appeared in the made-for-TV remake of The Magnificent Ambersons, and co-starred opposite Sylvester Stallone in 2002's Avenging Angelo. She tried her hand at TV with 2007's Raines.

Trivia: Once described as "the most famous American Indian since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse," Oglala/Lakota Sioux Russell Means made a name for himself as an activist two decades before he became an actor. Born in Pine Ridge, SD, near the storied Black Hills, Means joined the late '60s cultural foment as an avid advocate for American Indian rights and recognition. As the first national director of the American Indian Movement (he disdained the term "Native American") and a participant in the 1972 standoff with the government at Wounded Knee, Means became a prominent voice calling for self-determination and the preservation of American Indian heritage. Furthering his activist reach during the 1980s, Means traveled abroad to support freedom for other indigenous peoples worldwide, and ran for president as the Libertarian Party candidate in 1988. Seeing the potential in synergy, Means became a multimedia presence in the 1990s. Along with recording two albums and authoring his autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread, Means also went into acting. Making his movie debut in Michael Mann's florid adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Means starred as the titular Chingachgook, father figure to Daniel Day-Lewis' Hawkeye. Taking his cue from such prior Native American actors as Chief Dan George and Will Sampson, Means portrayed Indians in a range of films and with humor as well as dignity. Following the ultra-serious Last of the Mohicans, Means appeared in the Western spoof Wagons East! (1994), and played the spiritually portentous Old Indian in Oliver Stone's bloody media satire Natural Born Killers (1994). Along with voicing Chief Powhatan in Disney's animated features Pocahontas (1995) and Pocahontas: Journey to a New World (1998), Means put his stamp on other well-known American Indian tales, reprising his role as Chingachgook in an adaptation of Cooper's The Pathfinder (1996), and appearing in the movie version of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha (1997). Responding to charges that his Hollywood career was a sell-out, Means noted that he poured his earnings back into such activist projects as American Indian education and continued to act. Means finished the decade with several films, including the crime drama Black Cat Run (1998) and the children's fantasy Thomas and the Magic Railroad (2000). He died of throat cancer in 2012, a few weeks before his 73rd birthday.

Trivia: A prolific Canadian actor of German and Inuit decent, Eric Schweig has excelled onscreen since his feature debut in the 1990 drama The Shaman's Source. A notable key player in such subsequent features as The Last of the Mohicans, Squanto: A Warrior's Tale, and Ron Howard's The Missing, the stocky, physically imposing Schweig has built a lucrative career in Hollywood by both embracing his Inuit heritage and delivering performances that are thoughtful and moving. Schweig was adopted by a German family living in the Western Arctic shortly after his birth in the Canadian Northwest Territories in the summer of 1967, and though he would spend much of his youth living in Bermuda with his adopted family, the clan eventually returned to Canada to settle in Northern Ontario. Striking out on his own at the age of 16, the resourceful teen made a living by framing houses in his native Canada before a role in a 1987 Ontario stage production of The Cradle Will Fall sparked an interest in acting. In 1992, Schweig's career received just the boost it needed when he was hired by director Michael Mann to appear in The Last of the Mohicans, and the remainder of the 1990s found his onscreen career flourishing thanks to roles in such features as Squanto: A Warrior's Tale, The Scarlet Letter, and Tom and Huck. Schweig's 2000 portrayal of a quiet and unassuming general store owner who unexpectedly falls for a New York artist in the independent drama Big Eden offered what was perhaps his most emotionally complex role to date, and the grateful actor earned almost unanimous critical praise for his memorable performance. Though Schweig's strong leading performance as a policeman attempting to save his brother from self-destruction in Skins also earned positive critical notice, the film unfortunately went largely unseen. Following a pair of supporting roles in 2003's Mrs. Barrington and Cowboys and Indians: The J.J. Harper Story, Schweig could next be seen as the menacing mystic whose powers border on the supernatural in acclaimed director Ron Howard's brutal Western The Missing. In addition to his acting career, Schweig has also gained a solid reputation as an artist thanks to his remarkable series of Inuit-inspired masks.

Trivia: British adolescent and ingenue actress, onscreen from age 13 in A World Apart (1988).