Trivia: A wickedly debonair blend of Cary Grant and Joan Crawford, British actor Rupert Everett almost single-handedly conquered Hollywood with his turn as the man who dances off into the sunset with Julia Roberts in My Best Friend's Wedding. As the handsome, elegant, and gay George, Everett (who had been openly gay for some years) ushered in a different kind of gay sensibility in Hollywood, one that, rather than begging audiences for acceptance, flatly told them to get over it.Born in Norfolk, England, to a wealthy family on May 29, 1959, Everett was sent away for schooling at the age of seven. Taught by Benedictine monks at Amplesforth College, he was a good student and trained to be a classical pianist. After he discovered acting at the age of 15, he dropped out of school and ran off to London, where he supported himself as a prostitute for a couple of years (something he admitted in a 1997 interview with US magazine) and eventually enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Unfortunately, Everett clashed frequently with instructors and eventually dropped out, choosing to flee to Scotland. It was there that he got his first professional job as an apprentice with the Citizen's Theatre of Glasgow, and in the early '80s, his career began to bud. In 1982, he created the role of Guy Bennett for the West End production of Another Country, which also featured a very young Kenneth Branagh. Everett won raves for his portrayal of the younger version of real-life spy Guy Burgess, and in 1984 re-created the role for the play's film version. The following year, he starred with Miranda Richardson in Dance With a Stranger, turning in a strong performance in the critically acclaimed film. Although it seemed Everett's career was on the rise, the actor unfortunately opted for near-nonentity status with his 1987 U.S. film debut in Hearts of Fire, a rock & roll drama co-starring Bob Dylan. Following this flop, Everett disappeared for a while, taking up residence in Paris and writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Hello, Darling, Are You Working?.In 1991, Everett resurfaced with a lead role in The Comfort of Strangers opposite Natasha Richardson before appearing in 1993's Inside Monkey Zetterland, a film featuring a bizarre title, large ensemble cast (which included Patricia Arquette and Sandra Bernhard), and miserable reviews. Everett's subsequent feature, Prêt-à-Porter (1994), also featured an unconventional title, a large ensemble cast (including Julia Roberts, Sophia Loren, Stephen Rea, and Tim Robbins), and miserable reviews, but in its favor, it also featured a director named Robert Altman. Furthermore, Everett actually managed to make a favorable impression as a philandering fashion house scion, favor that was magnified, during the same year, with his hilarious turn as the fat and lazy Prince of Wales in Nicholas Hytner's The Madness of King George. However, for all of the positive attention he received, Everett incurred only bafflement with his next two films, the Italian schlock-fest Dellamorte, Dellamore (1994) and Dunston Checks In (1996), in which the actor starred with Faye Dunaway and an orangutan.1997 marked the turning point in Everett's career, as it brought with it his star-making role in My Best Friend's Wedding. The actor caused something of a sensation among male and female filmgoers alike, who wanted more of the handsome actor with the languorous wit. They got more of him the following year, in Shakespeare in Love, in which Everett had a supporting role as playwright Christopher Marlowe, and in B. Monkey, in which he played Jonathan Rhys Meyers' criminal lover. 1999 proved to be a very fruitful year for the actor -- who by this time was being hailed as Hollywood's Gay Prince -- as it featured the actor in leading roles in three films. He first played Oberon in Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which he was part of an all-star cast including Michelle Pfeiffer, Kevin Kline, Christian Bale, and Calista Flockhart. Next came Oliver Parker's adaptation of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, for which Everett netted positive reviews in his central role as the delightfully idle Lord Goring. Finally, he camped and vamped it up as the resident villain of Inspector Gadget, once again demonstrating to audiences why it could feel so good to be so bad.In 2000 he appeared opposite Madonna in the comedy The Next Best Thing. Two years later he was cast in The Importance of Being Earnest, and followed that up with parts in Stage Beauty, Separate Lies, and People as well as lending his voice to effects heavy and animated projects like The Chronicles of Narnia and Shrek the Third. In 2011 he had a scene-stealing turn in the period sex comedy Hysteria.

Trivia: As Mr. Darcy in the acclaimed 1995 television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Colin Firth induced record increases in estrogen levels on both sides of the Atlantic. Imbuing his role as one of literature's most obstinate lovers with surly, understated charisma, Firth caused many a viewer to wonder where he had been for so long, even though he had in fact been appearing in television and film for years.The son of two university lecturers, Firth was born in England's Hampshire county on September 10, 1960. Part of his early childhood was spent in Nigeria with missionary grandparents, but he returned for schooling in his native country and eventually enrolled in the Drama Centre in Chalk Farm. While playing Hamlet in a school production during his final term, the actor was discovered, and he went on to make his London stage debut in the West End production of Julian Mitchell's Another Country. Starring opposite Rupert Everett, Firth played Tommy Judd, a character based on spy-scandal figurehead Donald Maclean (Everett played Guy Bennett, based on real-life spy Guy Burgess). He went on to reprise his role for the play's 1984 film version, again playing opposite Everett. Despite such an auspicious beginning to his career, Firth spent the rest of the decade and half of the next working in relative obscurity; he starred in a number of television productions -- including the highly acclaimed 1993 Hostages -- and worked steadily in film. Some of his more notable work included A Month in the Country, in which he played a World War I veteran opposite Kenneth Branagh and Natasha Richardson, and Valmont, Milos Forman's 1989 adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, in which Firth starred in the title role. The film also provided him with an introduction to co-star Meg Tilly, with whom he had a son.However, it was not until he again donned breeches and a waistcoat that Firth started to emerge from the shadows of BBC programming. With his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the popular TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Firth was propelled into the media spotlight, touted in a number of articles as the latest in the long line of thinking women's crumpets; he was further rewarded for his work with a BAFTA award. The same year, he appeared as an amorous cad in the similarly popular Circle of Friends and went on the next year to appear as Kristin Scott Thomas' cuckolded husband in The English Patient. Firth garnered praise for his role in the film, which went on to win international acclaim and Academy Awards.After a turn as a morally ambiguous man who gets involved with both Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer in A Thousand Acres, Firth took a comically sinister turn as Gwyneth Paltrow's intended husband in the 1998 Shakespeare in Love. The following year, he starred in two very different movies: My Life So Far, a tale of family dysfunction in the Scottish Highlands, and Fever Pitch, initially released in the U.K. in 1997, in which Firth played a rabid English football fan forced to choose between his love of the sport and the woman in his life. Headlining the low-key comedy My Life So Far the following year, Firth's performance as the father of a family living in a post World War I British estate was only one of five roles that the busy actor would essay that particular year (including that of William Shakespeare in Blackadder Back and Forth). His finale of the year -- Donovan Quick -- offered a memorable updating of the legend of Don Quixote with Firth himself in the titular role. Firth's supporting role in the 2001 comedy Bridget Jones's Diary preceded a more weighty performance in the chilling drama Conspiracy, with the former earning him a BAFTA nomination and the latter an Emmy nod. Comic performances in Londinium (2001) and The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) found Firth continuing to maintain his reputation as one of England's most talented comic exports, and if his lead in 2003's Hope Springs failed to capitalize on his recent string of success, his role as teen starlet Amanda Bynes' celluloid father in What a Girl Wants (2003) at least endeared him to a new generation of moviegoers before the adult-oriented drama Girl With a Pearl Earring hit theaters later that same year. After rounding out the busy year with a return to romantic comedy in Love Actually, Firth kicked off 2004 with a turn as a haunted widower in Trauma while preparing to return to familiar territory in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.Firth continued to work steadily in projects ranging from the family friendly Nanny McPhee with Emma Thompson to the hit musical Mama Mia, playing one of the three men who might have fathered Meryl Streep's daughter. But it was his leading role in fashion designer Tom Ford's directorial debut, A Single Man, that garnered him awards attention like he had never received previously. For his work as a gay professor grieving the death of his lover, Firth scored nominations from the Screen Actors Guild, the Academy, and the Independent Spirit Awards.After appearing in the 2009 adaptation of A Christmas Carol, Firth would achieve further accolades for his role as the stuttering King George VI in director Tom Hooper's breathtaking historical drama The King's Speech (2010). In addition to taking home the Academy Award for Best Actor, Firth also took home awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the L.A. Film Critics Association, and the Screen Actors Guild. 2011 was no less exciting a year for the actor, who co-starred with Gary Oldman in Let the Right One In director Tomas Alfredson's award winning spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, an adaptation of John Le Carré's novel about an ex-British agent who comes out of retirement in hopes of solving a dangerous case. Firth is slated to star in Bridget Jone's Baby, Gambit, and The Railway Man in 2013.

Trivia: From bringing the characters of Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest), Jane Austen (Mansfield Park), and Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary) to life on the big screen to escaping into the outback with a wanted man (Kiss or Kill), nurturing an android (A.I.), and even inspiring a man to sell his soul to the Devil (Bedazzled), there's little that Golden Globe-nominated actress Frances O'Connor hasn't accomplished -- both literary and otherwise -- since emerging onscreen in the mid-'90s.As a young girl, O'Connor always knew that she wanted to become an actor, and after making her screen debut on the Australian television series Law of the Land, she was well on her way to achieving her dream. Later, after making a name for herself on Australian television, O'Connor achieved her breakthrough role -- as a desperate fugitive in the stylish 1997 crime thriller Kiss or Kill. Not only did that film earn O'Connor the first of two Best Actress nominations at the 1997 Australian Film Institute awards (the other being for her performance in the romantic comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie), but it also brought her the international attention that eventually led to roles in such lavish period pieces as Mansfield Park and Madame Bovary (the later of which earned O'Connor a Golden Globe nomination). In 2000, O'Connor crossed the Atlantic to appear as the waitress who prompts a hapless line cook to sell his soul to the Devil in Harold Ramis' Bedazzled, and the following year she remained stateside to film Steven Spielberg's A.I. -- in which she played a grieving mother who turns to technology after her son is stricken with an incurable disease.By this point in O'Connor's career, audiences across the globe were beginning to catch on to the rising star's talent. She returned to the classics with The Importance of Being Earnest, followed by a pair of misfires (Windtalkers and Timeline); nonetheless, prominent roles in Piccadilly Jim, Iron Jawed Angels, Book of Love, and The Lazarus Child followed in short order. In 2007, O'Connor could be seen opposite Lucy Liu in the sexy ABC comedy Cashmere Mafia, which was executive produced by Sex and the City writer/executive producer/director Darren Star. That show ended quickly, but O'Connor went on to appear in Blessed, Darwin's Darkest Hour, and The Hunter.

Trivia: As one of the most impressively talented members of the emerging New Hollywood of the early 21st century, Reese Witherspoon has proven that she can do far more than just pose winsomely for the camera. Born March 22, 1976, in Nashville, TN, Witherspoon was a child model and acted in television commercials from the age of seven. She had a part in the 1991 Lifetime cable movie Wildflower before making her 1991 film debut in the coming-of-age story The Man in the Moon (1991). The 14-year-old Witherspoon made an immediate impact on critics and audiences alike, netting widespread praise for her portrayal of a tomboy experiencing love for the first time.While still in high school, Witherspoon completed two more feature films, Jack the Bear (1993), starring Danny De Vito, and Disney's A Far Off Place (1993), which required the actress to spend several months living in the Kalahari Desert. Following a supporting role in the 1993 CBS miniseries Return to Lonesome Dove and a lead in the critically disembowelled S.F.W., Witherspoon temporarily set aside her career to study English literature at Stanford University. She then returned to film as the abused girlfriend of a psychotic Mark Wahlberg in the thriller Fear (1996). In the same year, she had to deal with yet another crazed male in Freeway, a satirical version of Little Red Riding Hood in which Witherspoon co-starred with Kiefer Sutherland, who took on the role of the aforementioned crazed male.Her career began to take off in 1998, with roles in two high-profile films. The first, Twilight, saw her sharing the screen with Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon, and Paul Newman. The film received mixed reviews and lackluster box office, but Pleasantville, her other project that year, proved to be both a critical and financial hit. The actress won wide recognition for her leading role as Tobey Maguire's oversexed sister, and this recognition -- along with critical respect -- increased the following year with another leading role, in Alexander Payne's acclaimed satire Election. Starring opposite Matthew Broderick, Witherspoon won raves for her hilarious, high-strung portrayal of student-council presidential candidate Tracy Flick. The character stood in stark contrast to the one Witherspoon subsequently portrayed in Cruel Intentions, Roger Kumble's delightfully trashy all-teen update of Dangerous Liaisons. As the virginal Annette, Witherspoon was convincing as the object of Ryan Phillippe's reluctant affection, perhaps due in part to her real-life relationship with the actor, whom she married in June 1999.After turning up in an amusing minor role as serial killer Patrick Bateman's burnt-out yuppie girlfriend in American Psycho (2000), Witherspoon again pleased critics and audiences alike with her decidedly Clueless-esque role in 2001's Legally Blonde. Her star turn as a seemingly dimwitted sorority blonde-turned-Harvard law-school-prodigy unexpectedly shot the featherweight comedy to number one, despite such heavy summer contenders as Steven Spielberg's A.I. and the ominously cast heist thriller The Score. The 18-million-dollar film went on to gross nearly 100 million dollars, proving that Witherspoon had finally arrived as a box-office draw.Though she would test out her chops in the Oscar Wilde adaptation The Importance of Being Earnest, Witherspoon's proper follow-up to Legally Blonde came in the form of 2002's Sweet Home Alabama, a culture-clash romantic comedy as embraced by audiences as it was rejected by critics. As with Drew Barrymore before her, Witherspoon used her newfound standing among the Hollywood elite to start her own production company, Type A Films, as well as to up her asking price to the rarefied 15-million-dollar range for the sequel to Legally Blonde. Though Blonde 2 didn't perform quite as well as the first film, the power player/doting mother of two wasted no time in prepping other projects for the screen, taking the lead in 2004's elaborate costume drama Vanity Fair as Becky Sharp, a woman who strives to transcend class barriers in 19th century England. For all its lavish costumes and sets, Vanity Fair received mixed reviews, but Witherspoon's winning performance still garnered praise.The next year, she appeared in the heaven-can-wait romantic comedy Just Like Heaven with Mark Ruffalo, as well as James Mangold's biopic Walk the Line as June Carter Cash, wife of country music legend Johnny Cash. This role proved to be a pivotal one, earning Witherspoon both a Best Actress Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her performance, and cementing her as an actress whose abilities go far beyond her charm and pretty face.As with others before her, however, the Best Actress statue portended a breakup between her and her husband; in October, 2006, she and Phillippe began their divorce proceedings, shortly after his starring turn in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers. Career-wise, however, she didn't miss a beat, continuing to appear in popular romantic comedies like Four Christmases and Just Like Heaven, before getting more serious for the 1930's period drama Water for Elephants in 2011. By the next year, Witherspoon was crossing genres, playing the femme fatale at the center of a love triangle between two deadly secret agents in the action comedy This Means War.She did strong work in a supporting role in Mud, and in 2014 she returned to the Oscar race, garnering a Best Actress nomination for her work in Wild, playing a recovering addict who takes a grueling hike through California and Oregon in order to purge herself of her problems.

Trivia: One of Britain's most respected and popular actresses, Judi Dench can claim a decades-old career encompassing the stage, screen, and television. A five-time winner of the British Academy Award, she was granted an Order of the British Empire in 1970 and made a Dame of the British Empire in 1988.Born in York, England, on December 9, 1934, Dench made her stage debut as a snail in a junior school production. After attending art school, she studied acting at London's Central School of Speech and Drama. In 1957, she made her professional stage debut as Ophelia in the Old Vic's Liverpool production of Hamlet. A prolific stage career followed, with seasons spent performing with the likes of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Dench broke into film in 1964 with a supporting role in The Third Secret. The following year, she won her first BAFTA, a Most Promising Newcomer honor for her work in Four in the Morning. Although she continued to work in film, Dench earned most of her recognition and acclaim for her stage work. Occasionally, she brought her stage roles to the screen in such film adaptations as A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968) and Macbeth (1978), in which she was Lady Macbeth to Ian McKellen's tormented king. It was not until the mid-'80s that Dench began to make her name known to an international film audience. In 1986, she had a memorable turn as a meddlesome romance author in A Room with a View, earning a Best Supporting Actress BAFTA for her tart portrayal. Two years later, she won the same award for her work in another period drama, A Handful of Dust.After her supporting role as Mistress Quickly in Kenneth Branagh's acclaimed 1989 adaptation of Henry V, Dench exchanged the past for the present with her thoroughly modern role as M in GoldenEye (1995), the first of the Pierce Brosnan series of James Bond films. She portrayed the character for the subsequent Brosnan 007 films, lending flinty elegance to what had traditionally been a male role. The part of M had the advantage of introducing Dench to an audience unfamiliar with her work, and in 1997 she earned further international recognition, as well as an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe award, for her portrayal of Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown.While her screen career had taken on an increasingly high-profile nature, Dench continued to act on both television and the stage. In the former medium, she endeared herself to viewers with her work in such series as A Fine Romance (in which she starred opposite real-life husband Michael Williams) and As Time Goes By. On the stage, Dench made history in 1996, becoming the first performer to win two Olivier Awards for two different roles in the same year. In 1998, Dench won an Oscar, garnering Best Supporting Actress honors for her eight-minute appearance as Queen Elizabeth in the acclaimed Shakespeare in Love. Her win resulted in the kind of media adulation usually afforded to actresses one-third her age. Dench continued to reap both acclaim and new fans with her work in Tea with Mussolini and another Bond film, The World is Not Enough. For her role as a talented British writer struggling with Alzheimer's disease in Iris (2001), Dench earned her third Oscar nomination. Sadly, that same year Dench's husband died of lung cancer at the age of 66.The prophetic artist continued to act in several films a year, wowing audiences with contemporary dramas like 2001's The Shipping News and period pieces like 2002's Oscar Wilde comedy The Importance of Being Earnest. She reprised the role of M again that same year for Brosnan's last Bond film Die Another Day, before appearing in projects in 2004 and 2005 such as The Chronicles of Riddick, Pride & Prejudice, and an Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated performance as a wealthy widow who shocks 1930s audiences by backing a burlesque show in Mrs. Henderson Presents. In 2006, she followed the Bond franchise into a new era, maintaining her hold on the role of M as Brosnan retired from playing the title character and Daniel Craig took over. Casino Royale was the first Bond movie to be based on an original Ian Fleming 007 novel in 30 years, and it was a great success. In 2008, Dench rejoined the Bond franchise for Quantum of Solace.Dench shared the screen with Cate Blanchett for the critical smash Notes on a Scandal (2006). The film's emotional themes ran the gamut from possession and desire to loathing and disgust, and Dench rose to the challenge with her usual strength and grace, earning her a sixth Oscar nomination and seventh Golden Globe nomination.Dench joined the cast of 2011's Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides, as well as taking on the pivotal role of Mrs. Fairfax in Cary Fukunaga's adaptation of Jane Eyre. The actress also joined Leonardo DiCaprio to play the intimidating mother of J. Edgar Hoover in J. Edgar (2011). In 2012, Dench starred alongside fellow film great Maggie Smith in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a compassionate comedy-drama following a group of senior citizens' experience with a unique retirement program in India.

Trivia: A popular British character actor, Tom Wilkinson specializes in playing men suffering from some sort of emotional repression and/or pretensions of societal grandeur. Active in film and television since the mid-'70s, Wilkinson became familiar to an international audience in 1997 with his role as of one of six unemployed workers who strip for cash in Peter Cattaneo's enormously successful comedy The Full Monty. That same year, he was featured in Gillian Armstrong's Oscar and Lucinda, and as the rabidly unpleasant father of Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's young lover in Wilde. Wilkinson was also shown to memorable effect as a theater financier with acting aspirations in Shakespeare in Love (1998); also in 1998, he acted in one of his few leading roles in The Governess, portraying a 19th century photographer with an eye for the film's title character (Minnie Driver). Though he would appear in such popular mainstream films as Rush Hour (1998) and The Patriot (2000) over the next few years, it was his role in director Todd Field's emotionally intense In the Bedroom that earned Wilkinson (as well as co-star Marisa Tomei) an Oscar nod. After that success, his career began to really take off, and in just the next few years, he would appear in over a dozen films in roles of varying size. In 2003, he starred in HBO movie Normal as a married, middle-aged man who decides to start living his life as a woman and eventually have a sex-change operation. Acting alongside Jessica Lange, Wilkinson earned both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his brave and moving performance. In addition, he would also play a menacing, licentious patron of the arts in Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003) and an experimental doctor erasing his patient's memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), written by Charlie Kaufman and starring Jim Carrey.Now an established star thanks to his impressive body of work, Wilkinson was called upon to appear in a number of high profile Hollywood hits, and could always be counted on to deliver in spades. Still, Wilkinson had the talent and foresight to always offset each blockbuster with at least one low-key, character-driven drama, and for every scenery-chewing Batman Begins villain, a serious-minded Separate Lies lawyer or Ripley Under Ground Scotland Yard detective would be quick to follow. After doing battle with Beelzebub in 2005's frightening, fact-based horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Wilkinson would once again shift gears with impressive grace to portray the patriarch of a Texas family whose attempts to maintain order over his wildly dysfunctional family lead to a wild night on the town that ultimately helps him to restore his perspective in Night of the White Pants. Later that same year Wilkinson would pull back a bit for a supporting role in The Last Kiss - a romantic comedy drama starring Scrubs' Zach Braff and directed by Tony Goldwyn. 2007 brough WIlkinson yet another role that earned him uniformly strong reviews. His mentally unhinged lawyer in Michael Clayton garnered him a slew of year end accolades including Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor. That same year he became part of the Woddy Allen family with a starring role in Cassandra's Dream. In 2008 he appeared as Ben Franklin in the award-winning HBO miniseries John Adams, as well as Valkyrie and RocknRolla. He reteamed with Michael Clayton mastermind Tony Gilroy for 2009's Duplicity, playing the CEO of a multinational corporation, and appeared in The Ghost Writer for director Roman Polanski the next year. In 2012 he was part for the all-star British ensemble put together for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Trivia: The second child of actors Raymond Massey and Adrienne Allen, Anna Massey made her own film bow as the spunky daughter of Jack Hawkins in John Ford's Gideon's Day (1958). Anna was one of the few members of the female cast of the controversial Peeping Tom (1960) who was not murdered by psycho photographer Karl Boehm; conversely, she was the second victim of the necktie strangler in Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972) (she's the one whose murder occurs off-camera, as Hitchcock dollies from a second-floor flat to the street below). Maturing into a versatile character actress in her 40s, Massey had an amazing facility for appearing in TV redos of earlier films: she played Miss Ronberry in the 1979 remake of The Corn is Green, Mrs. Danvers in the 1981 remake of Rebecca, and Betsy in the 1985 remake of Anna Karenina. In 1994, Anna Massey was among the stars of the weekly British sitcom Nice Day at the Office.

Trivia: The brother of film star James Fox, British actor Edward Fox spent the first few years of his career in the shadow of his longer-established younger sibling. All this changed when Edward was cast as the charismatic but cold-blooded international assassin The Jackal in 1973's Day of the Jackal; so determined was Fox's character to go through with his assignment to kill Charles De Gaulle that at times the audience believed he was actually going to get away with it! Never a major box-office attraction, Fox has aged into a dynamic character player, busy throughout the 1980s in such films as Never Say Never Again (1983), The Shooting Party (1984) and Wild Geese II. In 1991, Fox could be seen by TV fans as King Richard in Robin Hood, the "rival" production to Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.