Trivia: The son of a trucking company manager, Brad Pitt was born December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, OK. Raised in Missouri as the oldest of three children, and brought up in a strict Baptist household, Pitt enrolled at the University of Missouri, following high school graduation, studying journalism and advertising. However, after discovering his love of acting, he dropped out of college two credit hours before he could graduate and moved to Hollywood. Once in California, Pitt took acting classes and supported himself with a variety of odd jobs that included chauffeuring strippers to private parties, waiting tables, and wearing a giant chicken suit for a local restaurant chain. His first break came when he landed a small recurring role on Dallas, and a part in a teenage-slasher movie, Cutting Class (1989) (opposite Roddy McDowall), marked his inauspicious entrance into the world of feature films. The previous year, Pitt's acting experience had been limited to the TV movie A Stoning in Fulgham County (1988). 1991 marked the end of Pitt's obscurity, as it was the year he made his appearance in Thelma & Louise (1991) as the wickedly charming drifter who seduces Geena Davis and then robs her blind. After becoming famous practically overnight, Pitt unfortunately chose to channel his newfound celebrity into Ralph Bakshi's disastrous animation/live action combo Cool World (1992). Following this misstep, Pitt took a starring role in director Tom Di Cillo's independent film Johnny Suede. The film failed to score with critics or at the box office and Pitt's documented clashes with the director allegedly inspired Di Cillo to pattern the character of the vain and egotistical Chad Palomino, in his 1995 Living in Oblivion, after the actor. Pitt's next venture, Robert Redford's lyrical fly-fishing drama A River Runs Through It (2002), gave the actor a much-needed chance to prove that he had talent in addition to physical appeal.Following his performance in Redford's film, Pitt appeared in Kalifornia and True Romance (both 1993), two road movies featuring fallen women and violent sociopaths. Pitt's next major role did not arrive until early 1994, when he was cast as the lead of the gorgeously photographed Legends of the Fall. As he did in A River Runs Through It, Pitt portrayed a free-spirited, strong-willed brother, but this time had greater opportunity to further develop his enigmatic character. Later that same year, fans watched in anticipation as Pitt exchanged his outdoorsy persona for the brooding, gothic posturing of Anne Rice's tortured vampire Louis in the film adaptation of Interview With the Vampire. Pitt next starred in the forgettable romantic comedy The Favor (1994) before going on to play a rookie detective investigating a series of gruesome crimes opposite Morgan Freeman in Seven (1995). In 1997, Pitt received a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a visionary mental patient in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys; the same year, Pitt attempted an Austrian accent and put on a backpack to play mountaineer Heinrich Harrar in Seven Years in Tibet. The film met with mixed reviews and generated a fair amount of controversy, thanks in part to the revelation that the real-life Harrar had in fact been a Nazi. Following Tibet, Pitt traveled in a less inflammatory direction with Alan J. Pakula's The Devil's Own, in which he starred with fellow screen icon Harrison Ford. Despite this seemingly faultless pairing, the film was a relative critical and box-office failure. In 1998, Pitt tried his hand at romantic drama, portraying Death in Meet Joe Black, the most expensive non-special effects film ever made. Pitt's penchant for quirk was prevalent with his cameo in the surreal comic fantasy Being John Malkovich (1999) and carried over into his role as Tyler Durden, the mysterious and anti-materialistic soap salesman in David Fincher's controversial Fight Club the same year. The odd characterizations didn't let up with his appearance as the audibly indecipherable pugilist in Guy Ritchie's eagerly anticipated follow-up to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch (2000).In July of 2000, the man voted "Most Sexy Actor Alive" by virtually every entertainment publication currently in circulation crushed the hearts of millions of adoring female fans when he wed popular film and television actress Jennifer Aniston in a relatively modest (at least by Hollywood standards) and intimate service.Pitt's next turn on the big screen found him re-teamed with Robert Redford, this time sharing the screen with the A River Runs Through It director in the espionage thriller Spy Game (2001). A fairly retro-straight-laced role for an actor who had become identified with his increasingly eccentric roles, he was soon cast in Steven Soderbergh's remake of the Rat Pack classic Ocean's 11 (2001), the tale of a group of criminals who plot to rob a string of casinos. Following a decidedly busy 2001 that also included a lead role opposite Julia Roberts in the romantic crime-comedy The Mexican, Pitt was virtually absent from the big-screen over the next three years. After walking away from the ambitious and troubled Darren Aronofsky production The Fountain, he popped up for a very brief cameo in pal George Clooney's 2002 directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and lent his voice to the animated adventure Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, but spent the majority of his time working on the historical epic Troy (2004). Directed by Wolfgang Peterson, the film employed a huge cast, crew and budget.The media engulfed Pitt's next screen role with tabloid fervor, as it cast him opposite bombshell Angelina Jolie. While the comedic actioner Mr. and Mrs. Smith grossed dollar one at the box office, the stars' off-camera relationship that made some of 2005's biggest headlines. Before long, Pitt had split from his wife Jennifer Aniston and adopted Jolie's two children. The family expanded to three in 2006 with the birth of the couple's first child, to four in 2007 with the adoption of a Vietnamese boy, and finally to six in 2008, with the birth of fraternal twins.In addition to increasing his family in 2006, Pitt also padded his filmography as a producer on a number of projects, including Martin Scorsese's The Departed, the Best Picture Winner for 2006. He also acted opposite Cate Blanchett in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's drama Babel. Interestingly, that film hit theaters the same year as The Fountain, a film that was originally set to star the duo. Pitt also stayed busy as an actor, reteaming with many familiar on-screen pals for Ocean's Thirteen. At about the same time, Pitt teamed up with Ridley Scott to co-produce a period western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Pitt also stars in the film, as James. The year 2007 found Pitt involved, simultaneously, in a number of increasingly intelligent and distinguished projects. He signed on to reteam with David Fincher for the first occasion since Fight Club, with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - a bittersweet fantasy, adapted by Forrest Gump scribe Eric Roth from an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, about a man who falls in love while he is aging in reverse. When the special effects heavy film hit theaters in time for awards season in 2008, Pitt garnered a Best Actor nomination from both the Academy and the Screen Actors Guild. Also in 2007, Pitt produced an adaptation of Marianne Pearl's memoir A Mighty Heart that starred Angelina Jolie. In the years that followed, Pitt remained supremely busy. He delivered a funny lead performance as Lt. Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino's blistering World War II saga Inglourious Basterds (2009), then did some of the most highly-praised work of his career as a disciplinarian father in Terence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011) - a sprawling, cerebral phantasmorgia on the meaning of life and death that became one of the critical sensations of the year. He also won a great deal of praise for his turn as Billy Beane in Bennett Miller's adaptation of the non-fiction book Moneyball, a role that not only earned him critical raves but Best Actor nominations from the Academy, BAFTA, the Broadcast Film Association, the Golden Globes, and won him the New York Film Critics Circle award (though the institution also recognized his work in Tree of Life as figuring into their decision).In 2013, Pitt's Plan B production company produced 12 Years a Slave (he also appeared in the film, in a small supporting role), which earned Pitt an Academy Award when the film won Best Picture. The next year, Pitt won an Emmy as part of the producing team of the HBO tv movie The Normal Heart.

Trivia: Was discovered by Gerard Depardieu, who offered her a role in an upcoming project while she was visiting the set of the movie Asterix et obelix contre Cesar. Felt a connection to her role in Inglourious Basterds, because her Jewish grandfather was deported from Poland due to the Nazi occupation. Contributed to a special cover recording of the song "Beds Are Burning," to benefit the Kofi Annan Global Humanitarian Forum. Recorded and released an album in 2011, En T'Attendant. Hosted the opening ceremonies at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Trivia: Austrian-born actor Christoph Waltz began his career on the stage, making a name for himself at prestigious venues like Zurich's Schauspielhaus Zürich and Vienna's Burgtheater. He would eventually study at the Lee Strausberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York, and branch out into on-camera acting, appearing in Austrian TV productions. His film career blasted into the stratosphere in 2009, however, when he was cast as Colonel Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. His role as the feared "Jew Hunter" earned him the best supporting actor award from just about every critics group in the country, as well as from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.Flush with this worldwide success, he played bad guys in The Green Hornet and The Three Musketeers, and played the heavy in Water for Elephants, but he earned his best reviews as part of the foursome in Roman Polanski's adaptation of the award-winning play Carnage. In 2012 he reteamed with Tarantino, playing a bounty hunter in Django Unchained, again earning superb revierws as well as a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar at that year's Academy Awards ceremony.

Trivia: Ask any horror filmmaker about the influences for their celluloid nightmares and chances are they'll come back with something about their childhood fears and attempting to realize the things that scare them most. For Hostel and Cabin Fever director Eli Roth it has ultimately become a deeply disturbing mixture of the two. Roth's proliferation in the horror genre coupled with his giddy willingness to play the role of cinema outlaw came at just the time the PG-13 blues were leading many genre aficionados to wonder if there really were anymore filmmakers out there who were still willing to break the rules.As a young horror fanatic, the future New York Film School graduate obsessed over keeping pace with the career trajectory of Evil Dead director Sam Raimi. With a target of 21 as the age by which he should direct his first feature, the ambitious 20-year-old sat down to write a script based on a series of frightening medical incidents that happened to him in his youth. Paralyzed at 12 by a rare virus that strikes one in a million, stricken with a water-borne parasite for which he had to drink poison to stop from eating his insides at 17, and infected with a bacteria that literally caused his skin to peel from his face at 19, Roth adapted the ailments that plagued him into a script for the alternately funny and frighteningly repulsive Cabin Fever in 1995 along with a little help from friend Randy Pearlstein. An independent homage to the 1970s and '80s shockers on which Roth was weaned, Cabin Fever was shot for a paltry 1.5 million dollars in the same North Carolina woods in which his childhood idol had filmed The Evil Dead and went on to spark an unprecedented bidding war when it premiered at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival. When Lion's Gate released Cabin Fever into theaters the following year, Roth was immediately hailed by many horror fans as the true future of the genre. Though some were turned off to the humorous approach that Roth had taken to terror, the more grotesque aspects of Roth's bacterial skin-crawler hinted at a filmmaker not afraid to break from genre convention and play dirty in order to keep his audience squirming in their seats. Of course when your first film creates as big a buzz as Cabin Fever did, what's a filmmaker supposed to do for a follow-up? Armed with the knowledge that his sophomore effort could either make him or break him in the eyes of the horror community, Roth pondered a Cabin Fever sequel and pored through studio scripts in an effort to find the idea that truly terrified him. As fate would have it, friend and fellow film fanatic Harry Knowles of the popular movie website "Ain't it Cool News" contacted Roth just around this time with a story concerning a website that had been brought to his attention where, for a nominal fee, anyone wishing to experience death firsthand could personally murder another human being; the resulting profit generally going to the unfortunate participant's impoverished family. The groundwork for Hostel had been laid. Frustrated by the American film machine and encouraged by like-minded horror fan Quentin Tarantino to press forward with the idea at all costs, Roth locked himself away to pound out the screenplay for the brutally unforgiving Hostel while still thriving on the energy of the Red Sox win at the 2004 World Series. Filmed in Prague for under five million dollars as a way for Roth to visit a place he had always loved (and deliver a notable kiss-off to American unions), Hostel told the tale of two hard-partying American backpackers and their horny Icelandic friend who, while backpacking through Europe, all fall into a grim trap after being lured to a small Slovakian town with the promise of plentiful drugs and beautiful women. By largely abandoning the humor of Cabin Fever to set a more ominous and menacing tone and not allowing his camera to flinch during some of the film's more sanguine moments, Roth proved with Hostel that he could stand alongside such genre innovators as Takashi Miike to effectively test the limits of even the most desensitized genre fan. A financial success at the box office in addition to being one of the few horror films released at the time that wasn't a sequel or a remake, Hostel truly delivered on the promises made in Cabin Fever to prove that Roth's initial success was indeed no fluke. Outside of his feature directorial work, Roth has also teamed with filmmakers Boaz Yakin and Scott Spiegel to form Raw Nerve, an exclusively horror-oriented production company dedicated to producing truly boundary-pushing genre films that never compromise the filmmaker's vision. Roth's hilariously obscene, foul-mouthed produce-howler The Rotten Fruit proved that the playful director was even fairly adept at stop-motion animation. Of course, American horror pictures -- particularly those crafted by intelligent and intuitive directors (and Roth fits the bill on both counts) -- tend to rake in unholy profits at the box office, and Hostel was no exception. It grossed almost 20 million (from a 4.6-million-dollar budget) in its opening weekend alone, paving the way, of course, for a sequel, that picks up directly following the final shot of the original. 2007's Hostel: Part II reprised the formula of the first film, substituting an ensemble of girls for the boys of the original picture. This film follows several backpackers, visiting Rome, who discover that the torture palace from the original Hostel is actually a small part of an international "chain," and find themselves subjected to endless sadism and brutality. Alongside that sequel, Roth juggled an overwhelmingly busy schedule. He assumed production duties on the 2006 big-screen adaptation of television's Baywatch, and helmed the same year's throwback teen sex comedy Scavenger Hunt, a madcap farce that sends a bunch of crazy adolescents on a wild goose chase for a bevy of diverse objects. He contributed the trailer for Thanksgiving to Grindhouse, and teamed up with Tarantino in 2009 for his most prominent acting role as the Bear Jew in Inglorious Basterds. In 2011 he contributed to Corman's World, a documentary about the legendary exploitation producer/director Roger Corman, and he had a brief cameo in the jukebox musical Rock of Ages. Roth continued to work as a producer, director and screenwriter, doing all three for films like The Green Inferno (2014).

Trivia: German-born, Irish-raised actor Michael Fassbender first caught many viewers' attention with the role of Sergeant Burton Pat on the HBO-produced WWII series Band of Brothers in 2001. He would make waves again with roles on a number of popular British TV series, like Murphy's Law and Hex, but Fassbender would ingrain himself in the minds of American audiences when he was cast in the role of Spartan warrior Stelios in the 2006 blockbuster 300, even uttering the iconic line "Then we will fight in the shade." Fassbender would continue to find exciting roles in film, appearing in movies like the critically acclaimed Hunger, and Quentin Tarantino's World War II epic Inglourious Basterds. He quickly became one of the most sought-after and respected young actors in the business earning rave reviews in 2011 for his work as a sex-addict in Shame, and that same year played Magneto in the successful X-Men prequel. The next year he continued to work with revered directors, playing an assassin in Steven Soderbergh's Haywire, and landing a lead role in Ridley Scott's sci-fi summer film Prometheus.In 2013, he re-teamed with his Hunger and Shame director Steve McQueen for 12 Years a Slave, earning Fassbender his first Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actor. He reprised his role of Magneto in X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014. The following year, he tackled "the Scottish play," playing Lord Macbeth opposite Marion Cotillard's Lady Macbeth, and earned rave reviews (and a second Oscar nomination) playing Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.