Trivia: Rough-hewn and soulful, Terence Stamp was one of the most recognizable faces of 1960s British cinema. During that decade, he became immortalized on the screen and off, his working-class charisma and battered good looks making him both a natural for leading man roles and a poster boy for the swinging Sixties lifestyle.Born in Stepney, London on July 22, 1939, Stamp made his film debut in 1962 as the martyred hero in Peter Ustinov's adaptation of Herman Melville's Billy Budd. He turned in a star-making performance that earned him an Oscar nomination and established him as part of a new wave of talent in British cinema. Stamp next made his mark in William Wyler's The Collector (1965), winning a Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his portrayal of a warped recluse who kidnaps an art student he has lusted after from afar. Stamp spent the rest of the decade earning recognition for both his work and real-life exploits. On the screen, he worked with the likes of John Schlesinger (Far From the Maddening Crowd), Joseph Losey (Modesty Blaise), Ken Loach (Poor Cow), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Teorema), and, for Tre Passi nel Delirio, Federico Fellini, Roger Vadim, and Louis Malle. Off the screen, Stamp was known for his friendships with the likes of Michael Caine and his relationships with such preeminent beauties as Julie Christie and model Jean Shrimpton. He and Christie were immortalized in Ray Davies's song "Waterloo Sunset" in the lines, "Terry and Julie cross over the river, where they feel safe and sound."Despite the promise of his early career, Stamp spent much of the next couple of decades in relative obscurity. He popped up in a number of fairly forgettable films and was cast as a villain in the first two Superman movies. He also appeared in such disparate projects as Legal Eagles (1986), Wall Street (1987), and Young Guns (1988). In 1994, Stamp truly re-entered the filmgoing consciousness, going delightfully against type to play a world-weary transsexual in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The film was a surprise success, and Stamp's portrayal was singled out for particular notice. Once one of the cinema's most reliable hard men, Stamp revived his career with a poignent portrayal of a character who wore more make-up than most of the screen's actresses put together.Stamp followed this success with a turn as a mysterious tantric sex therapist in Bliss (1996). In 1999, he could be seen doing supporting work in Bowfinger, in which he had a hilarious turn as a L. Ron Hubbard-esque "guru;" and Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace. That same year, he starred in Steven Soderbergh's The Limey, back in top form as a grizzled ex-con bent on avenging his daughter's death. One of the film's highlights was the inclusion of footage from the 1968 Poor Cow, which allowed Stamp to appear as a younger version of himself. Building off the best buzz he'd had in quite some time, Stamp began the 21st century in Red Planet, and voiced Jor-El on the television series Smallville, before appearing in Get Smart, Valkyrie, Yes Man, The Adjustment Bureau, and Song for Marion.

Trivia: A graduate of Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art, blond, idiosyncratic leading man Hugo Weaving made his feature film debut in the socially conscious low-budget drama The City's Edge (1983), purportedly one of the first Australian films to sympathetically portray the adverse conditions suffered by aborigines. In 1991, Weaving received Best Actor kudos from the Australian Film Institute for his portrayal of a blind photographer in Jocelyn Moorhouse's Proof. In 1994, the actor earned international acclaim playing Tick, a drag queen with a secret, in the cult favorite The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). The following year, Weaving was involved in another audience pleaser when he lent his voice to play the sheep dog Rex in Babe. Weaving occasionally appears in U.S. television productions, notably the CBS miniseries Dadah Is Death, in which he played opposite Julie Christie and Sarah Jessica Parker. He also continues to work steadily in Australia, in addition to appearing in big-budget Hollywood affairs such as The Matrix, in which he starred as an evil agent opposite Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne. Following his turn in The Matrix with a few low-key romantic comedies (Strange Planet [also 1999] and Russian Doll [2001]), Weaving made a return to big-budgeted special effects extravaganzas with his involvement in director Peter Jackson's enormous adaptation of author J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. For the sequels to The Matrix, Weaving would return with a vengeance; with hundreds of Agent Smith clones sent to stop Neo (Keanu Reeves) from leading the revolution against the machines. An affiliation with another hit sci-fi series emerged when Weaving provided the voice of Megatron in Michael Bay's Transformers (as well as its two sequels), though it was the actor's affecting performance in 2009's Last Ride that earned him a nomination for Best Lead Actor at that year's Australian Film Institute awards. Cast as a dangerous Australian fugitive who flees from the law with his young son in tow, Weaving gave viewers a glimpse of the talent that was often overshadowed in his many larger-than-life roles, though it was his scenery-chewing performance as Johann Schmidt/Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger that got him back on the big screen in the U.S. following the disappointment of The Wolfman. Meanwhile, the busy screen veteran prepared for roles in Cloud Atlas (a sprawling sci-fi epic from Tom Tykwer and Andy and Lana Wachowski), and Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy.

Trivia: With classic, square-jawed good looks, Australian actor Guy Pearce brings to mind the leading men of Hollywood's Golden Age; however, the actor is a thoroughly modern one, using his talents to play characters ranging from flamboyant drag queens to straight-arrow Los Angeles policemen. Pearce was born October 5, 1967, in Cambridgeshire, England. His father, who was a member of the Royal Air Force, moved his family to Australia when Pearce was three. Following the elder Pearce's tragic death in a plane crash, Pearce's mother decided to keep her family in Australia when young Pearce was eight, and it was there that he grew up. Interested in acting from a young age, he wrote to various members of the Australian television industry requesting a screen test when he was 17. His efforts proved worthwhile, as he was invited to audition for a new soap called Neighbours. Pearce won a significant part on the show and was part of it from 1986 to 1990. Following his stint on Neighbours, Pearce found other work in television and made his screen debut in the 1992 film Hunting. He acted in a few more small films and in My Forgotten Man, a 1993 TV biopic of Errol Flynn, before coming to the attention of film audiences everywhere in the 1994 sleeper hit The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. As the flamboyant and often infuriating Adam/Felicia, Pearce gave a performance that was both over the top and immensely satisfying. The role gave him the international exposure he had previously lacked and led to his casting in Curtis Hanson's 1997 adaptation of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential. The film was an all-around success and drew raves for Pearce and his co-stars, who included Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, Kim Basinger (who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance) and fellow Australian Russell Crowe.After the success of L.A. Confidential, Pearce went on to make the independent A Slipping Down Life, which premiered at Sundance in 1999. He followed that with the highly original but fatally unmarketable Ravenous (1999), Antonia Bird's tale of chaos and cannibalism which cast Pearce alongside the likes of David Arquette and Robert Carlyle. Though his role in the following year's military drama Rules of Engagement would offer a commendable performance by the rising star, it was another film that same year that would cement his status as one of the most challenging and unpredictable performers of his generation. Cast as a vengeance seeking, tattoo-covered widower whose inability to form new memories hinders his frantic search for his wife's killer, Pearce's unforgettable performance in the backwards-structured thriller Memento drove what would ultimately become one of the biggest sleepers in box office history. Pearce was now officially hot property on the Hollywood scene, and producers wasted no time in booking him for as many upcoming blockbusters as they could. A memorable performance as the villain in The Count of Monte Cristo found Pearce traveling back in time for his next film, and his subsequent role in The Time Machine would find him blasting so far into the future that mankind had reverted to the days of prehistoric times. A trip to the land down under found Pearce next appearing as a hapless bank robber in the critically panned crime effort The Hard Word, and the popular actor would remain in Australia for the elliptical drama Till Human Voices Wake Us (2002). In 2004, Pearce played a lion hunter in the family-oriented epic Two Brothers.Yet despite his increasing prominence as an international movie star, Pearce continued to display a flair for unusual, often demanding roles that would send lesser actors running. His performance as an outlaw tasked with killing his own brother in John Hillcoat's The Proposition earned Pearce a well-deserved AFI nomination for Best Lead Actor in 2005 (an honor he would share with his co-star Ray Winstone, though the award ultimately went to Hugo Weaving for Little Fish), and on the heels of an appearance as Andy Warhol in George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl he could be seen as famed magician Harry Houdini in Gillian Armstrong's Death Defying Acts -- a role which found a second AFI award slipping though his fingers. Though Pearce's turn as a military man in 2008's The Hurt Locker found him in fine form, it was Jeremy Renner who stole the show in Katherine Bigelow's multiple Oscar-winner and, curiously enough, the actor's next AFI nomination would come from his appearance in the Adam Sandler fantasy/comedy Bedtime Stories. A brief reunion with Hillcoat in The Road preceded a grim turn as a grieving father in the harrowing 2009 true crime drama In Her Skin, and in 2010 Pearce lost yet another AFI award to a talented co-star when Joel Edgarton took home the Best Supporting Actor award for his memorable performance in Animal Kingdom (which found Pearce cast in the role of an honest cop reaching out to a troubled youth). As if to balance out all of the awards disappointment in recent years, Pearce nabbed an Emmy for his performance opposite Kate Winslet in the made-for-cable drama Mildred Pierce following a brief appearance as KIng Edward VIII in the Oscar-winning historical drama The King's Speech, with additional roles in Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and Lockout proving that respected actors can still have a bit of fun on the big screen from time to time. Meanwhile, after an almost unrecognizable appearance in Ridley Scott's quasi-Alien prequel Prometheus, Pearce prepared to team up with his frequent collaborator Hillcoat once again, this time as a special agent determined to get his piece of the bootlegging pie in Lawless, which also starred Tom Hardy and Shia LeBeouf. He played the main antagonist, Aldrich Killian, in Iron Man 3, and earned an AACTA nomination for Best Lead Actor for his work in the dystopian film The Rover (2014).

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the '70s.