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).

Trivia: Although he made his name playing ruthless, genteel villains like Die Hard's Hans Gruber and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves' Sheriff of Nottingham, Alan Rickman proved himself equally remarkable in romantic, comic, and good-guy dramatic roles. An actor of brooding charisma who intones his lines in a deep, milky baritone, Rickman began his career on-stage, building up a sizable résumé before embarking on a film career.Of Irish and Welsh parentage, Rickman was born in London's Hammersmith district on February 21, 1946. His father, who was a painter and decorator, died of cancer when the actor was eight, leaving behind Rickman, his mother, and three siblings. After winning a scholarship to West London's Latymer Upper School, Rickman began acting at the encouragement of his teachers. He also developed an interest in art, and he went on to study graphic design at the Royal College of Art. He founded a Soho-based design company, but after deciding that his heart was in acting, he abandoned the company when he was 26 to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He spent three years there, serving as a dresser to such actors as Ralph Richardson and Nigel Hawthorne. After leaving RADA, Rickman began to make his name on the stage, first appearing in repertory and then landing lead roles in London productions. He gained particular acclaim for his portrayal of Valmont in a West End production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, eventually reprising his role for the Broadway production and winning a Tony nomination.In 1988, Rickman got his first dose of big-screen recognition with Die Hard. After the film's huge success, and praise for his delightfully nasty portrayal of the film's villain, he went on to make a couple of poorly received features, including 1989's The January Man and 1990s Quigley Down Under. Success greeted him again in 1991: playing Kevin Costner's nemesis, the vile and loathsome Sheriff of Nottingham, in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Rickman proved to audiences why being bad could be so much fun. The same year, he endeared himself as a markedly more sympathetic character in Truly, Madly, Deeply. As a deceased cellist who reappears to comfort his lover (Juliet Stevenson), Rickman proved himself adept at romantic comedy, and began to accrue a reputation as a thinking woman's sex symbol (something he vocally resented).The actor spent the remainder of the decade turning in solid performances in a number of diverse films: he could be seen as an actor with a troubled past in An Awfully Big Adventure (1994), a very sympathetic Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility (1995), Eamon de Valera in Michael Collins (1996), a has-been sci-fi television star in Galaxy Quest (1999), and a grumpy angel in Dogma (1999). In 1997, Rickman branched out into directing, making his debut with The Winter Guest. Starring real-life mother and daughter Phyllida Law and Emma Thompson as an estranged mother and daughter, the film won a number of positive notices, further establishing Rickman as a man of impressive versatility, both in front of and behind the camera. Though Rickman's voice would be featured on the animated television series King of the Hill in 2003, he wasn't truly absorbed into mainstream pop-culture among the kid circuit until after starring in the movie adaptations of author J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Rickman played the sinister Professor Snape in the films, one of the few post-pubescent constants in the franchise.In 2005, just months before the fourth installment in the Potter series, Rickman showed up in the first big-screen adaptation of another literary series with a rabid fan base, lending his voice to the character of Marvin the neurotic robot in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.He went on to appear in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and in 2007 he played Judge Turpin in Tim Burton's adaptation of Sweeney Todd. E reteamed with the director for Alice in Wonderland in 2010, and the next year saw the final installment of the Harry Potter franchise hitting screens. In 2013, he played President Ronald Reagan in Lee Daniels' The Butler and club owner Hilly Kristal in CBGB. The following year, Rickman directed his second feature film, A Little Chaos, and also appeared in the film as King Louis XIV. Rickman died in 2016, at age 69.

Trivia: One of the more underrated actresses working in the cinema, Bonnie Bedelia has been impressing critics and audiences with her strong and understated screen presence for over three decades. Frequently cast as put-upon wives and mothers, Bedelia did particularly memorable work in this capacity in the first two Die Hard movies and in Presumed Innocent (1990), all of which allowed her to provide depth and complexity to what could have been stock characters.Born Bonnie Bedelia Culkin (she is the sister of Kit Culkin, father of Macaulay) in New York City on March 25, 1946, Bedelia began performing for an audience at a young age, beginning her study of ballet at the age of four and joining George Balanchine's School of Ballet three years later. At the advanced age of nine, she made her off-Broadway debut in a production of Tom Sawyer, then spent the next four years dancing professionally with the New York City Ballet and working in various summer stock and off-Broadway productions. Her television debut as a regular on the daytime soap Love of Life followed when Bedelia was 13; while working on the show, she also attended high school, studied at the Quintano School of Acting with Uta Hagen, and appeared in four Broadway productions. In 1967, Bedelia earned a Theatre World Award for her performance in the play My Sweet Charlie and subsequently joined actors Martin Sheen and Louis Gossett Jr. in their formation of a classical acting troupe in Los Angeles. Bedelia made her film debut with a supporting role in The Gypsy Moths, a 1969 drama directed by John Frankenheimer that starred Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. That same year, she earned great acclaim for her work in Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, which cast her as the pregnant wife of a hapless drifter (Bruce Dern). A role as a young bride-to-be in the similarly feted Lovers and Other Strangers followed in 1970, and Bedelia spent the remainder of the decade appearing largely in TV movies.1983 provided Bedelia with a meaty starring role in the theatrical feature Heart Like a Wheel, the true-life tale of drag racer Shirley "Cha-Cha" Muldowney. Though the movie made minor waves in theaters, Bedelia's hardscrabble portrayal received universal praise, so much so that there was strong Academy Awards buzz surrounding the actress. A Best Actress nomination eluded her, although she was duly recognized with a nod from the Golden Globes in 1984. She continued to do prolific television work in the 1980s, but also had enthusiastically received turns in such films as The Boy Who Could Fly (1986), a family drama that cast her as the widowed mother of two children, and Die Hard (1988), the action blockbuster that saw her prove an able foil for star Bruce Willis in her role as Willis' estranged wife. She reprised her role in the latter for Die Hard 2 two years later, and that same year gave a haunting portrayal of Harrison Ford's neglected and embittered wife in Alan J. Pakula's Presumed Innocent. Bedelia subsequently continued to do much of her work on TV, earning an Emmy nomination for her performance in the noirish made-for-cable Fallen Angels (1993) and a Cable Ace Award nomination for Any Mother's Son (1997), a drama about a young Navy seaman who was murdered for being gay. She made a colorful return to the big screen in 2000 as one of the stars of Sordid Lives, Del Shores' campy comedy about the reunion of three generations of a dysfunctional Texas family. The micro-budgeted film became something of a cult hit, and Bedelia parlayed the success into a starring role on the Lifetime network's police drama The Division. Though the award-winning series would eventually go off the air after four seasons, Bedelia continued to nurture a fruitful and rewarding career with series director Bobby Roth when she appeared in both his 2003 Jack the Dog follow-up Manhood, and his 2005 Vietnam-era drama Berkeley.She then took a five-year hiatus from movies and TV before returning in 2010 with a part in the NBC drama Parenthood.

Trivia: African-American actor Reginald VelJohnson is the ideal choice for "urban everyman" roles: his sour-apple facial expression, bald pate, and chubby frame are perfectly suited for the many policemen and blue-collar workers he has played over the years. Beginning in small parts in films like Ghostbusters (1984), VelJohnson gained a following with supporting roles in Crocodile Dundee (1986) and Die Hard (1988). A guest spot as an undercover cop on a 1989 episode of TV's Perfect Strangers led to VelJohnson's longest professional engagement to date. In the company of former Perfect Strangers regular Jo-Marie Payton-France, Reginald VelJohnson, since the fall of 1989, starred as Chicago cop Carl Winslow on the weekly comedy series Family Matters.