Trivia: One who graduated from obscure actor to Hollywood icon in just a few years, Matt Damon became an instant sensation when he co-wrote and starred in Good Will Hunting with longtime buddy and collaborator Ben Affleck. A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was born on October 8, 1970, Damon grew up in prosperous surroundings with his tax preparer father, college professor mother, and older brother. At the age of ten, he befriended Affleck, a boy two years his junior who lived down the street. Educated at Cambridge's Rindge and Latin School, Damon landed his first role in a Hollywood production before the age of 18, with a one-scene turn in Mystic Pizza (1988). Not long after, Damon gained acceptance to Harvard University, where he studied for three years before dropping out to pursue his acting career. During his time there, he had to write a screenplay for an English class, that served as the genesis of Good Will Hunting. Arriving in Hollywood, Damon scored his first big break with a plum role in School Ties opposite Affleck. As the film was a relative flop, Damon's substantial role failed to win him notice, and he was back to laboring in obscurity. It was around this time, fed up with his Hollywood struggles, that Damon contacted Affleck, and the two finished writing the former's Harvard screenplay and began trying to get it made into a film. It was eventually picked up by Miramax, with Gus Van Sant slated to direct and Robin Williams secured in a major role, opposite Damon as the lead. Before Good Will Hunting was released in late 1997, Damon won some measure of recognition for his role as a drug-addicted soldier in Courage Under Fire; various industry observers praised his performance and his dedication to the part, for which he lost forty pounds and suffered resulting health problems. Any praise Damon may have received, however, was overshadowed the following year by the accolades he garnered for Good Will Hunting. His Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay win alongside Damon, and strong performance in the film virtually guaranteed industry adulation and steady employment, a development that became readily apparent the following year with lead roles in two major films. The first, John Dahl's Rounders, cast Damon as a card shark with a serious gambling addiction, who risks his own personal safety when he becomes entangled with a reckless loser buddy (Edward Norton). Damon's second film in 1998, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, brought him even greater recognition. As Ryan's title character, Damon headlined an all-star line-up and received part of the lavish praise heaped on the film and its strong ensemble cast. The following year, Damon signed for leads in two more highly anticipated films, Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley and Kevin Smith's Dogma. The former cast the actor against type as the title character, a psychotic bisexual murderer, with a supporting cast that included Cate Blanchett, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Dogma also allowed Damon to cut against the grain of his nice-guy persona by casting him as a fallen angel. One of the year's more controversial films, the religious comedy reunited him with Affleck, as well as Smith, who had cast Damon in a bit role in his 1997 film, Chasing Amy. Damon next delivered noteworthy performances in a pair of low-grossing, low-key dramas, The Legend of Bagger Vance and All the Pretty Horses (both 2000), before appearing in director Steven Soderbergh's blockbuster remake of the Rat Pack classic Ocean's Eleven the following year. 2002 found the actor vacillating between earnest indie projects and major Hollywood releases. Behind the camera, Damon joined forces with filmmaker Chris Smith for the Miramax-sponsored Project Greenlight, a screenplay sweepstakes that gave the winner the opportunity to make a feature film and have the process recorded for all to see on an HBO reality series of the same name. Toward the end of 2001, Damon scored a box office triumph with director Doug Liman's jet-setting espionage thriller The Bourne Identity. With this effort, Damon proved once again that he could open a film with just as much star power as his best friend and colleague. Better yet, Bourne reinforced Damon's standings with the critics, who found his performance understated and believable. The press responded less favorably, however, to Damon's reunion project with Van Sant, the experimental arthouse drama Gerry (2003). Also in 2003, Damon starred opposite Greg Kinnear in the Farrelly Brothers' broad comedy Stuck On You, as the shy half of a set of conjoined twins.In 2004, Damon reprised the role of Jason Bourne in The Bourne Supremacy. As the actor's biggest leading-man success to date, it reinforced Damon's continued clout with audiences. Staying on the high-powered sequel bandwagon, he reunited with Brad Pitt and George Clooney for the big-budget neo-rat pack sequel Ocean's Twelve later that year. 2005 was somewhat lower-key for the actor, as he toplined Terry Gilliam's disappointing The Brothers Grimm and joined the sprawling ensemble of Syriana. After working seemingly non-stop for a few years, Damon claimed only a call from Martin Scorsese would get him to give up his resolve to take some time off. Sure enough, that call came. The Departed, an American remake of the Hong Kong mob-mole thriller Infernal Affairs, co-starred Jack Nicholson and Leonardo DiCaprio. Playing the squirmy, opportunistic cop to DiCaprio's moral, tormented mobster, Damon underplayed his part to perfection while holding his own opposite his two co-stars. Damon then took the lead role in the Robert De Niro-directed CIA drama The Good Shepherd. In 2007, the actor once again returned to box office franchises for the sequels Ocean's Thirteen and The Bourne Ultimatum, the latter of which netted him -- by far -- the largest opening-weekend take of his career to that point. 2009 was another great year for the hard-working star. His turn as the unstable federal informant in Steven Soderbergh's wicked comedy The Informant! earned him rave reviews, and his supporting work in Clint Eastwood's Invicus, as the leader of the South African rugby team, earned Damon nominations from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy. In 2010 he reteamed with Eastwood for the supernatural drama Hereafter, and continued working with the best filmmakers of his time by landing a supporting role in the Coen brothers remake of True Grit. Meanwhile, Damon tried his hand at small screen work with a memorable recurring role as Carol, an airline pilot and sometime boyfriend of Liz Lemon, on the NBC situation comedy 30 Rock and a lauded turn opposite Michael Douglas' Liberace in the TV movie Behind the Candelabra. Damon had long since established himself as an A-list movie star, however, and would continue to star in big screen projects for years to come, including notable titles like Contagion, The Adjustment Bureau, and We Bought a Zoo. Damon next turned in performances in three films set in outer space: Neill Blomkamp's Elysium (2013), a supporting role in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (2014) and an Oscar-nominated spin in Ridley Scott's The Martian (2015).

Trivia: Best known to international audiences for her portrayal of the flame-haired, hyper-kinetic heroine of Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (1998), Franka Potente is one of Germany's fastest rising young actresses. Born on July 22, 1974, in the town of Dülmen, Potente was educated at Munich's Otto Falkenberg Schule and the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York. According to legend, she was "discovered" as an actress by a casting agent who saw her in a bar restroom one night and asked her to describe herself in one sentence.Potente made an auspicious film debut in Hans-Christian Schmid's 1996 film Nach Fünf im Urwald, for which she won that year's Bavarian Film Prize for Young Talent; she subsequently did a good deal of television work before enjoying her international breakthrough in Run Lola Run. A huge hit in Germany and a sleeper success in the States, the film featured Potente in a state of constant locomotion, running through time and fate to save her boyfriend from the clutches of his gangster employers. Her performance, which combined urgency, unflappable verve, and surprising warmth, earned her the respect of any number of critics, and she found herself -- alongside director and then-boyfriend Tom Tykwer -- being hailed as one of the European cinema's most exciting new talents.Earning a German Shooting Stars award from the European Film Promotion in 1998, Potente went on to do starring work in a number of films, including Tykwer's The Princess and the Warrior (2000), which cast her as a lonely mental hospital nurse who falls in love with a disturbed army veteran-cum-thief. The actress' growing international stature was also reflected in her casting as Johnny Depp's girlfriend in Blow (2001), Ted Demme's account of the life of George Jung (Depp), a drug dealer who was instrumental in the rise of cocaine use in the 1970s. International fame continued to grow for the striking actress when, following a small role in the Todd Solandz satire Storytelling (2001), she was cast opposite Matt Damon in director Doug Liman's fast-paced thriller The Bourne Identity. Inspired by Run Lola Run (it not only utilized that film's star, but prominently featured a track from the Lola soundtrack in its advertising campaign), the action thriller started to expand Potente's strong cult appeal into full-blown commercial viability.After spending the next two years mostly absent from movie houses, Potente re-teamed with Damon for the sequel, The Bourne Supremacy in 2004. Potente would continue to enjoy stateside success in the years to come, appearing on shows like The Shield and House M.D., and starring on the series Copper.

Trivia: Growing up in Scotland, the descendent of Irish immigrants, Brian Cox always felt an affinity to American cinema that eventually led him to pursue his career stateside. Born on June 1, 1946, in Dundee, Scotland, Cox knew he wanted to act from an early age, but identified more with the characters portrayed in American films than in "zany British comedies," to use his phrase. While working at the local theater, where he started by mopping the stage, the 15-year-old Cox would watch the actors and study their styles to separate the wheat from the chaff. He attended drama school in London and got caught up in British theater and television during the 1970s. Cox landed on Broadway in the early '80s, but found more closed doors than open ones. It was while performing a play transplanted from the U.K. that a casting agent for Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986) noticed him. The film would become the first cinematic treatment of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter (spelled "Lecktor" at the time) character, which Anthony Hopkins would make his own in Silence of the Lambs (1991). Cox was cast in the role, paving the way for the success that had eluded him until his 40th year.Despite the breakthrough, Cox remained better identified with television than film during the late '80s and early '90s, though his roles significantly increased in number. His initiation to regular film work came through appearances in two 1995 sword epics, Braveheart and Rob Roy. Over the latter half of the 1990s he materialized in character-actor roles -- police officers, doctors, fathers -- in such films as The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), Kiss the Girls (1997), Rushmore (1998), and The Minus Man (1999). Although he appears more often in American than British cinema, Cox has also paid homage to his Scottish and Irish roots, such as playing an IRA heavy in Jim Sheridan's The Boxer (1997).In 2001, Cox secured major acclaim -- and an American Film Institute nomination for best supporting actor -- with the release of L.I.E., the debut film of director Michael Cuesta. Like Todd Solondz' critical darling Happiness (1998), the film presents a child molester (Cox) as one of its major characters without condemning him, if not actually leaving him altogether unjudged. Cox's complicated, intense portrayal enabled such shades of gray, raising the character above the bottom rung of the morality food chain.As the decade continued, so did Cox's visibility in bigger hollywood films. In 2002 alone, he took on substantial roles in The Bourne Identity, The Rookie, The Ring, The 25th Hour, and Adaptation, a film that saw him stealing scenes with an appropriately over-the-top turn as blowhard screenwriting guru Robert McKee. The following year audiences could see him in the blockbuster comic-book sequel X2: X-Men United, and in 2004 he starred alongside Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in the epic retelling of the Iliad, Troy. He returned to the Bourne franchise for The Bourne Supremacy, and appeared in the thriller Red Eye. He was the psychiatrist in the comedy Running With Scissors, and in 2007 portrayed Melvin Belli in David Fincher's Zodiac. He was cast in the geriatric action film Red, and joined up with Wes Anderson a second time to lend his voice to a bit part in Fantastic Mr. Fox. In 2011 Ralph Finnes tapped Cox to play Menenius in his big-screen adaptation of The Bard's Coriolanus.

Trivia: With a number of high-profile projects, a variety of magazine covers, and a spot on Teen People's 21 Hottest Stars Under 21 list in 1999 under her belt, actress Julia Stiles has come a remarkably long way in a very short time. Born March 28, 1981, in New York City, Stiles was interested in performing from a very young age. When she was eleven years old, she wrote a letter to a Manhattan theater director asking to be cast in a production and was soon acting on-stage in avant-garde plays at both the La Mama and Kitchen Theaters. In 1996, Stiles made her film debut with a small part in I Love You, I Love You Not and the following year had her television debut in the Oprah Winfrey Presents: Before Women Had Wings, in which she played an abused child. The same year, she made a brief appearance as Harrison Ford's daughter in The Devil's Own and followed with roles in two 1998 films, Wide Awake and the Sundance entry Wicked. The year 1999 proved to be Stiles' breakthrough year, as she played a prominent part in the television miniseries The '60s and the lead role in 10 Things I Hate About You, the latest film to mine gold and produce endorsements out of William Shakespeare. The film was a hit, and Stiles was soon being heralded as one of the hottest, young actors of her generation. With her name attached to a number of future projects, it seemed that Stiles would indeed have success in living up to this label.Sure enough, Stiles was almost immediately cast in two modernized-for-MTV-generation Shakespeare flicks, namely director Michael Almereyda's Hamlet (2000) with Ethan Hawke and O, a teen-oriented adaptation of Othello starring Josh Hartnett and Mekhi Phifer. As classic literature once again fell in place behind predictable romantic comedies, Stiles could be found playing the romantic lead in Down to You with teen movie veteran Freddie Prinze Jr., and alongside Sean Patrick Thomas in Save the Last Dance, which featured Stiles in the role of a grieving ballet dancer who attends an inner-city school and eventually finds love within a primarily black high school. Though the film was not a critical success, Save the Last Dance (2001) and 10 Things I Hate About You nonetheless helped construct Stiles a respectable fan base, and the young actress -- now with a Saturday Night Live credit under her belt -- would continue to build her resumé throughout the early 2000s. In the film adaptation of novelist Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity, Stiles had the chance to participate in a film starring Hollywood golden boy Matt Damon and returned to the role in 2004's The Bourne Supremacy. Stiles was praised for holding her own against Stockard Channing in The Business of Strangers (2001), which was shown at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and fared decently in A Guy Thing, a romantic comedy-of-errors co-starring Jason Lee and Stiles' fellow Down to You alumna Selma Blair. In 2003, Stiles would play opposite the Oscar-winning Julia Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile, which finds Stiles playing a conservative '50s college student whose beliefs undergo some serious scrutiny after coming in contact with an uncharacteristically progressive teacher (Roberts). The year 2004 promised more teen-styled roles; Stiles played the eccentric title character in Carolina under the direction of Dutch filmmaker Marleen Gorris and worked with director Martha Coolidge and 28 Days Later's Luke Mably in The Prince & Me. A key role in opposite William H. Macy in director Stuard Gordon's critically lauded but little seen David Mamet adaptation Edmond served well to remind audiences of Stiles acting abilities, and the following year the wholesome-looking beauty would serve as mother to the ultimate evil in the high profile horror remake The Omen. Jumping genres to action with The Bourne Ultimatum the following year, Stiles quickly ventured back into dark territory when she joined the cast of the popular Showtime series Dexter in late 2010. Cast as vengeful rape victim Lumen Ann Pierce, the versatile young actress proved an unlikely partner for the murderous protagonist, and earned an Emmy nomination for her role in the process. In 2012, Stiles had a small role in the award-winning Silver Linings Playbook.

Trivia: Considering his previous experience essaying the recurring role of Julius Caesar on the popular small screen fantasy adventure series Xena: Warrior Princess, it seems only natural that New Zealand born actor Karl Urban would advance to slay orcs in Peter Jackson's epic Lord of the Rings trilogy. Appearing as a somewhat more rugged version of screen heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio, it's obvious from his work in such films as The Price of Milk that the handsome young actor has the looks and the skills to make it on his own. A Wellington native and son of a leather goods manufacturer, Urban's first acting experience came with an appearance in a New Zealand television show at the age of eight. Though he would subsequently eschew an acting career until after graduating from high school, Urban was drawn back in front of the cameras when he was offered the opportunity to appear on an evening soap opera entitled Shortland Street while preparing to attend Victoria University. The acting bug was a bit harder to shake the second time around, and after a mere year at Victoria, Urban abandoned higher education for a career on the stages of Wellington. A relocation to Auckland found Urban gaining exposure on New Zealand television, and after a turn as a heroin addict in Shark in the Park, he made an impression in the 1998 Scott Reynolds thriller Heaven. An unaired pilot for a show called Amazon High was eventually incorporated into an episode of Xena, and Urban would next take to the screen for the gory horror outing The Irrefutable Truth About Demons. A turning point of sorts came when Urban was cast as the lead in the romantic fantasy The Price of Milk, and his performance as a milk farmer whose relationship is on the rocks found him gaining increasing recognition on the international art house circuit. Though mainstream American audiences would begin to get acquainted with Urban courtesy of his role in the seafaring horror outing Ghost Ship, his role in the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers later that same year ensured that audiences would be seeing plenty more of him in the future. Following his escapades in Middle Earth, Urban would take to the stars opposite Vin Diesel in The Chronicles of Riddick (2004). Action roles continued to come at a clip when, after dodging bullets in the fast-moving sequel The Bourne Supremacy, Urban jettisoned to Mars to do battle with a particularly nasty breed of evil in the video game-to-screen adaptation Doom. From the far future to the distant past, Urban next laid down his plasma rifle to take up sword against his own people when he assumed the role of a Viking boy raised by Native Americans in director Marcus Nispel's 2006 fantasy adventure Pathfinder. He had his widest success to that point when he was cast as Bones in J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek, returning for the first of that franchise's sequel as well. In between he could be seen in the action comedy RED, as well as the 3D comic-book adaptation Dredd.

Trivia: Tall, lissome, and lovely, Gabriel Mann has lent his blonde choirboy looks to characters more suited to a confessional than a choir. A native of Connecticut and a former model, Mann first made an impression on art house audiences as Radha Mitchell's ineffectual, easily dismissed boyfriend in High Art (1998). He then reached a wider audience with his role as a wormy, self-serving prep school boy in the Farrelly brothers' Outside Providence in 1999; that same year, he starred in the independent romantic comedy No Vacancy, playing one of the denizens of a run-down Los Angeles motel. The young actor had a number of projects lined up in 2000, including Cherry Falls, yet another entry into the teen horror genre. Revolving around a small town terrorized by a serial killer intent on murdering all of the town's virgins, the film cast Mann as the boyfriend of a young woman (Brittany Murphy) whose status as the sheriff's daughter and a practicing virgin made her an appealing target for the killer. Following Cherry Falls Mann would drop in on Josie and the Pussycats in 2001, and turn up in the romantic comedy Summer Catch later that same year. Subsequent roles in The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy kept Mann busy over the next few years, and on the heels of a recurring role on AMC's Mad Men in 2008 the youthful actor became increasingly active on the small screen -- first as a the voice of Bruce Banner on the animated series The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, and later as a regular on ABC's Revenge.

Trivia: Largely underappreciated for years in Hollywood before her Oscar-nominated turn as the First Lady in Nixon (1995), Joan Allen has had a distinguished career encompassing the stage, screen, and television. A native of Rochelle, Illinois, where she was born August 20, 1956, the blond, swanlike actress developed an interest in acting while in high school. Voted Most Likely to Succeed by her senior class, Allen went on to study theatre at Eastern Illinois University. She then moved to Chicago, where she became one of the founding members of the vaunted Steppenwolf Theatre Company, along with such respected talents as Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.Allen made her screen debut with a small role in the 1985 film Compromising Positions and a year later played two wildly different characters in Manhunter and Peggy Sue Got Married. Her portrayals of a tragically confused young woman who attempts to seduce a serial killer in the former film and a brainy high school student in the latter impressed a number of critics, but it was on the stage that Allen was most appreciated. In 1988, she won a Tony award for her Broadway debut performance in Burn This, and a year later she earned her second Tony nomination for her role in Wendy Wasserstein's highly acclaimed The Heidi Chronicles.Following increasingly substantial roles in such films as In Country (1989), Ethan Frome (1992), and Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), Allen won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her stunning portrayal of First Lady Pat Nixon in Oliver Stone's Nixon. The acclaim surrounding her performance in the 1995 film finally gave Allen the Hollywood recognition she deserved; the following year this recognition was further enhanced with her Oscar-nominated turn as the long-suffering Elizabeth Proctor in Nicholas Hytner's adaptation of The Crucible.More praise came Allen's way in 1997, when she headlined a stellar ensemble cast in Ang Lee's lauded adaptation of Rick Moody's The Ice Storm. Starring as a troubled upper middle-class Connecticut housewife alongside the likes of Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci, and Tobey Maguire, Allen gave repression a stirring, beautifully nuanced name. That same year she went in a completely different direction, starring as the wife of an FBI agent (John Travolta) in John Woo's popular action thriller Face/Off. Allen returned to the realm of the repressed housewife in 1998, starring (and reuniting with Maguire) in the acclaimed 1950s-set comedy drama Pleasantville. The turn of the century found Allen taking leads in a trio of issue-oriented dramas: In the multi-character handgun treatise All the Rage (released on video in 2000), she played the wife of a short-fused lawyer (reuniting with Pleasantville's Jeff Daniels in the process); in the Irish production When the Sky Falls, she teamed with The Long Good Friday (1980) director John Mackenzie to tell the true, tragic story of a Dublin crime reporter; and in Rod Lurie's The Contender, Allen nabbed her biggest role to date -- and her first Best Actress Oscar nomination -- as a would-be U.S. vice president who finds herself at the center of a sex scandal.After all the attention for The Contender, the savvy Allen continued to oscillate between big roles in low-profile independent films and small roles in big-budget popcorn fare, to even greater success. She featured prominently in two of the biggest box-office hits of 2004: the sentimental romance The Notebook and the wildly successful second installment of the Jason Bourne franchise, The Bourne Supremacy. In the latter, she dug into a meaty, sympathetic supporting role as an all-business CIA agent who pursues the framed title character. Spring 2005 saw the near-concurrent release of two of her indie films, both of which premiered at Sundance Festivals from years prior: Campbell Scott's lapsed-hippie family drama Off the Map and Mike Binder's Terms of Endearment-ish saga The Upside of Anger. The former cast Allen against type as a let-it-all-hang-out New Mexico naturalist who finds her family coming apart at the seams in the mid-1970s. More widely acclaimed was her Anger appearance: As a drunk, headstrong, suburban Detroit housewife who lashes out at her four daughters -- and everyone else -- after her husband leaves the family, Allen turned in a performance that was both caustic and relatable, and garnered some of the best notices of her film career.In 2008 she played the bad guy in the action film Death Race, and the year after that she starred as Georgia O'Keefe in the biopic about her directed by Bob Balaban. She returned to the role of Pamela Landy for The Bourne Legacy, the Tony Gilroy directed reboot of the popular franchise that featured Jeremy Renner taking over the title role.

Trivia: An actor of remarkable intensity whether playing comedy, drama, or classical-stage roles, Marton Csokas first became familiar to stateside audiences as Borias on the hit television series Xena: Warrior Princess. And though American audiences may not have been privy to his early stage and screen work, his performance in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring made him a familiar face. Born in New Zealand in June 1966, Csokas' early schooling didn't exactly encourage creativity, and the future actor didn't discover his passion for the stage and screen until his late teens. While studying literature and art history for a year at Canterbury and Christchurch, Csokas became involved with a writer's club and theater company before graduating from the New Zealand Drama School and co-founding the The Stronghold Theater. Steadily gaining experience and harboring a growing passion for classical-stage drama, the actor landed a role in the television series Shortland Street before making his feature debut in Jack Brown Genius (1994). Numerous small film roles followed, and, after becoming a recognizable star in his native country, Csokas began to familiarize himself with American television audiences with Xena and such small-screen features as The Three Stooges (2000). His experience in the fantasy world of Xena prepared him well for his role as Celeborn in the first Lord of the Rings movie in 2001, and American audiences later saw the versatile actor as a villainous criminal mastermind bent on world domination in XXX (2002). He appeared in director Alex Proyas' decidedly upbeat Garage Days the same year and in Richard Donner's time travel fantasy Timeline in 2003.

Trivia: It may be difficult to believe that the slightly wiry and gaunt Czech actor Karel Roden is the same presence who made the Earth tremble as barrel-chested Grigori Rasputin in Hellboy (2004) -- consider it a testament not only to the magnificence of Hollywood special effects, but to Roden's raw versatility. Born in Ceské Budejovice, Czechoslovakia, in 1962, Roden studied drama in Prague and evinced a stunning ability to immerse himself into -- and flesh out -- almost any character. This quality soon carried over into his film and television roles. He tackled most of his early parts in his native country, in such little-seen-abroad films as the 1990 Cas Sluhu and the 1999 Praha Ocima. 2002's Blade II, however -- produced by Marvel Comics and Avi Arad -- finally brought Roden the attention of a wide international audience. He followed it up with a number of additional Hollywood pictures done in a similar genre vein -- usually effects-heavy action or fantasy romps. These included not only the aforementioned Hellboy, but Romeo Is Bleeding (1994), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and Running Scared (2006). In 2007, he appeared in the comedy Mr. Bean's Holiday as a Russian film director named Emil.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the late '80s.

Trivia: Michelle Monaghan enjoyed a successful modeling career with plans to pursue a career in journalism before a full-time acting career became an option. She'd made some minor appearances on TV shows such as Young Americans and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as well as some nationally run commercials, but it was a recurring role on the acclaimed series Boston Public in 2002 that really opened doors for the young actress. Over the next few years, she scored big-screen parts in It Runs in the Family, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and The Bourne Supremacy. She shortly thereafter scored a role alongside Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand in North Country and a starring role in the black comedy Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang with Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer. In 2005, she appeared as the love interest of Tom Cruise in the hotly anticipated Mission: Impossible III, making her a far more familiar face and name. She immediately signed on to next appear in the Ben Affleck film Gone, Baby, Gone, which she followed with a starring role in the critically acclaimed independent film Trucker. She would go on to keep up her interest in the thriller genre, with roles in Eagle Eye in 2008 and Source Code in 2011.

Trivia: Though a multihyphenate ad extremis who racked up a litany of influential accomplishments in the theater, modern art, and film worlds, distinguished Tomas Arana is perhaps best known for his contributions to cinema as a character actor, where he initially specialized in portrayals of period figures from ancient times. Over the course of his career Arana set himself apart from the pack by refusing to limit himself to productions from one country; he seemed equally at home working in the U.S., Italy, and Japan.A native of San Francisco, Arana received formal, classical training in stage work at the American Conservatory Theatre, then hitchhiked all over Europe, working as an itinerant artist and collaborating with giants including Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Joseph Beuys. Upon returning to the States, Arana began signing for film roles; memorable studio parts included Lazarus in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Leginov the cook in The Hunt for Red October (1990), and Quintus in Ridley Scott's Best Picture winner Gladiator (2000). As time rolled on, Arana also turned up in independent films such as the porn star coming of age drama This Girl's Life (2003) and the natural horror shlockfest Frankenfish (2004). International directors with whom he collaborated include Liliana Cavani, Carlo Verdone, and Michele Soavi. Theatrically, Arana made headlines by serving as producer and starring in numerous productions with the Naples-based theatrical ensemble Falso Movimento.

Trivia: His father is a pediatric cardiologist. Studied political philosophy and English literature at the University of Vermont; originally planned to be a college professor. Started his acting career while still in college, when his car broke down outside New York City and he decided to look for work; he landed the ABC Afterschool Special Taking a Stand. Made his film debut in 1995's Higher Learning. Was filming a fight scene for 2004's The Bourne Supremacy when Matt Damon actually broke his nose. Has worked multiple times with George Clooney (Leatherheads) and J.J. Abrams (Super 8).

Trivia: Renowned for his startling realism, British-born director Paul Greengrass got his start working on the U.K. documentary series World in Action before taking his first stab at a feature with 1989's The Resurrection. The harsh anti-war film followed a soldier in the aftermath of the Falklands war and was nominated for the Golden Bear award at that year's Berlin Film Festival.Throughout most of the '90s, Greengrass worked primarily in television, helming such well-received TV movies as Open Fire and The One That Got Away, but he returned to the big screen in 1998 with the romantic comedy drama The Theory of Flight. The film had a lighter tone compared to Greengrass' other work and was met with mixed reviews. However, his next project, 2002's Bloody Sunday, was a return to form and garnered nearly unanimous acclaim. The fictional account of the titular massacre netted the director both another Golden Bear and the audience prize at Sundance.Greengrass' next film would find him taking a more commercial turn, as he took over directing reigns from Doug Liman for the sequel The Bourne Supremacy. Despite the dark tone of the action film, it was a box-office hit, and Greengrass earned enough cred to land a directing gig on United 93, Universal's docudrama about the ill-fated airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, after passengers overtook a group of hijackers. Using a cast of relative unknowns, Greengrass created a stark and unglamorized portrait of the tragedy and those involved. Though many approached the film with trepidation for fear that it was an attempt to exploit and capitalize on a still-open wound, it won high praise from audiences and critics alike, landing on several year-end best-of lists and earning Greengrass his first Academy Award nomination.In 2007, Greengrass returned to the Jason Bourne saga with The Bourne Ultimatum, the third and arguably most-intense entry in the espionage series. The pared-down action and striking handheld camerawork won over audiences and critics, even more so than Supremacy. Greengrass worked with Matt Damon again in 2010 when he directed Green Zone, a thriller following the unraveling of a conspiracy in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion.