Trivia: With his electrifying gaze, elegant comportment, and lips that look as if they could breathe life into concrete, Ralph Fiennes has caused many a jaded filmgoer to reaffirm the existence of British sex appeal. Since 1993, when he first impressed international audiences in the decidedly unglamorous role of Nazi sadist Amon Goeth in Schindler's List, Fiennes has delivered performances marked by dignified passion and relentless intensity.The oldest of six children, Fiennes was born in Suffolk on December 22, 1962. His father was a self-taught photographer and his mother a novelist who wrote under the pen name Jennifer Lash, professions which virtually ensured a unique upbringing. Fiennes' family moved a number of times while he was growing up, and the children were encouraged in their creative pursuits. Thus, it is less than surprising that four out of the six Fiennes siblings went on to work in the entertainment business, with Ralph and his brother Joseph becoming actors, his two sisters a director and a producer, and another brother a musician. Originally wanting to be a painter, Fiennes enrolled at the Chelsea College of Art and Design before transferring to London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to study acting. Following graduation, he joined the Royal National Theatre in 1987, and he became part of the Royal Shakespeare Company a year later. While a member of the company, he performed a wide range of the classics, playing everyone from Romeo to King Lear's Edmund. Fiennes first became known to a wider audience in 1991, when he starred as the title character in the acclaimed British television production of A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia. The next year, he gained additional exposure, making his film debut as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Starring opposite Juliette Binoche, Fiennes glowered his way across the screen with suitable aplomb, something that he would do again to devastating effect the next year in Schindler's List. As the psychotic Nazi commandant Amon Goeth, Fiennes blended quiet yet absolute menace with surprising charisma (even more surprising given that he had gained over 30 pounds for his role) to such great effect that he earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and a British Academy Award for his portrayal. Fiennes' work in the film incited a flurry of interest in the actor, whose intensity and odd name (its correct pronunciation is "Rafe Fines") made him the subject of many a magazine article.Interest in Fiennes only increased the following year, when, back to his normal weight and sporting an American accent, he played the more sympathetic (but tragically flawed) Charles Van Doren in Robert Redford's Quiz Show. Critics loved him in the role, and he further consolidated his acclaim two years later in Anthony Minghella's Oscar-winning adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, which won Fiennes Oscar and Golden Globe nominations as Best Actor. Given his newfound heartthrob status, many audience members were surprised to see Fiennes next turn up in the title role of the gawkish, ginger-haired minister with a gambling problem (playing opposite a then-unknown Cate Blanchett) in Oscar and Lucinda (1997). He gave a highly eccentric performance in the film, which received a mixed critical reception. Where Oscar and Lucinda was only vaguely disappointing, Fiennes' next project, a 1998 film version of the popular 1960s TV series The Avengers, was one of the most lambasted films of the year. Fiennes somehow managed to avoid most of the critical wrath directed at the film, and in 1999 he could be seen starring in no less than three disparate projects. In Onegin, directed by his sister, Martha, Fiennes played the title character, a blasé Russian aristocrat; in The End of the Affair, directed by Neil Jordan, he portrayed a novelist embroiled in an adulterous affair with the wife (Julianne Moore) of his best friend (Stephen Rea); while in Sunshine, directed by István Szabó, he played three different roles in a saga tracing 150 years of the affairs and intrigues of a family of Hungarian Jews.If his roles to date had served to showcase Fiennes' talent at about the rate of a solid performance per year, 2002 provided a trio of diverse and demanding roles that would prove just how well he could perform under pressure. In Red Dragon -- the first of those efforts to hit stateside screens that year -- Fiennes' chilling performance as serial killer Francis Dolarhyde shifted between meekness and menace at the drop of a hat. Thankfully eschewing the grandiose theatrics of Hannibal for a tone more in keeping with the original Silence of the Lambs, the film proved a hit at the box office, and Fiennes' performance rivaled that of Ted Levine's in providing the film with a chilling villain straight from the pages of the most lurid true-crime encyclopedia (Fiennes' character was purportedly based on the exploits of an uncaptured Wichita serial killer who went by the name "Bind, Torture, Kill"). A few short months later, audiences were treated to yet another deeply disturbed characterization by Fiennes, that of a schizophrenic man haunted by his childhood in director David Cronenberg's dark psychological drama Spider, based on author Patrick McGrath's bleak novel of the same name. Fiennes' performance substituted the menace of Red Dragon with a more sympathetic protagonist whose memory slowly regresses to reveal a scarring childhood tragedy. No doubt having had his fill of disturbed characters that year, Fiennes once again caught audiences off guard with a disarmingly charming role in the romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan.Fiennes would continue to find substantial and challenging roles in the years to come, most notably in his sister's film Chromophobia, the Merchant-Ivory film The White Countess, The Constant Gardener, the James Bond film Skyfall, and the ever-popular Harry Potter series, in which Fiennes played baddie Lord Voldemort. Fiennes would also earn accolades for directing and starring in a cinematic adaptation of William Shakespeare's war epic Coriolanus.

Trivia: An international star of extraordinary, almost otherworldly beauty, French actress Juliette Binoche was born March 9, 1964, in Paris. The daughter of a sculptor/theater director and an actress, Binoche studied acting at the National School of Dramatic Art of Paris. After graduation, she followed in her mother's footsteps and became a stage actress, occasionally taking small parts in French feature films. Binoche first earned recognition in 1985 for playing a modernized, teenaged version of the Virgin Mary in Jean-Luc Godard's controversial Je Vous Salue, Marie (Hail Mary). The actress became a bona fide French star the same year with an acclaimed performance in André Téchiné's Rendez-Vous. Though she was the darling of the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, Binoche did not gain true international acclaim until she played Tereza in Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being in 1988.In the meantime, Binoche become involved with Leos Carax, a then-hot young filmmaker who cast her in a lead role in his chilling Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood). While involved with Carax, Binoche appeared in his Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (Lovers on the Bridge), a film they began in 1988 but did not finish until 1991 due to financial difficulties. She and Carax parted ways two years later after Binoche's great success starring opposite Jeremy Irons in Louis Malle's Damage (1992). The same year, the actress appeared with future English Patient co-star Ralph Fiennes in a new film version of Wuthering Heights, and followed that with the lead role in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blue (1993). (She also appeared briefly in the trilogy's other installments, Red and White.) Following her work in that acclaimed film, Binoche took time off to have a son and did not return to her career until 1995 with Le Hussard sur le Toit (The Horseman on the Roof). In 1996, Binoche earned further international recognition with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar (as well as a host of other awards) for her role in The English Patient. Returning to her native France amidst a golden haze of critical acclaim, Binoche appeared in the same year's Un Divan à New York (A Couch in New York), a romantic comedy in which she starred opposite William Hurt. In 1998, she again collaborated with director Téchiné, this time on the romantic drama Alice et Martin.Revered as near royalty by the French press (who often simply refer to her as "La Binoche") and a beloved star worldwide, Binoche's remarkable second wind found her popularity soaring and her screen presence more powerful than ever. Binoche's daring and intense performance as 19th-century literary icon George Sand in the misguided drama The Children of the Century (1999) indeed impressed audiences and critics, though the film itself failed to live up to expectations. Of course, it wouldn't take long before Binoche was cast in a film whose quality would match her ample talent, and The Widow of Saint-Pierre (2000) would serve as just that cinematic endeavor. Not only did the redemption-themed drama perform smashingly at the international box office, but it also found its star honored with a César nomination for Best Actress. A collaboration with notorious feel-bad filmmaker Michael Haneke resulted in the intersecting lives drama Code Unknown (2000), though that role was ultimately overshadowed by Binoche's captivating performance in that same year's arthouse hit Chocolat. Cast opposite Johnny Depp as the free-spirited owner of a chocolate shop located in a small French town, the dedicated actress actually prepared for the role by learning to make chocolate at a popular Paris sweetshop. The film was an international runaway hit, and the beloved starlet was nominated for best actress awards across the globe. Following a lighthearted performance opposite French icon Jean Reno in the romantic comedy Jet Lag (2002), Binoche appeared with American star Samuel L. Jackson in director John Boorman's politically oriented drama Country of My Skull in 2004. Binoche maintained her status as one of the most respected actresses in the world by appearing in the well-regarded thriller Cache. She also co-starred with Richard Gere in the drama Bee Season. In 2006 she would appear alongside other stars as Jude Law, Robin Wirght Penn, and Ray Winstone in Anthony Minghella's drama Breaking & Entering.Binoche took on a starring role as Suzanne, a voice actress in a puppet theater and mother to a young boy in the award-winning drama Flight of the Red Balloon (2007), and found success once more with a co-starring part in filmmaker Peter Hedges' comedy Dan in Real Life (2007). The actress played another mother figure in 2008's Paris, a critically lauded romantic drama following a group of friends who find themselves at a crossroads in matters of love, health, and career. Binoche played yet another starring role Certified Copy, which followed the relationship between a British author and a French art-gallery owner (Binoche). 2012 found Binoche co-starring with Paul Giamatti and Keira Knightly for David Cronenberg's sci-fi thriller Cosmopolis, and in another lead role for the drama Open Heart.

Trivia: Known for the darkly eccentric characters he often plays, Willem Dafoe is one of the screen's more provocative and engaging actors. Strong-jawed and wiry, he has commented that his looks make him ideal for playing the boy next door -- if you happen to live next door to a mausoleum.Although his screen persona may suggest otherwise, Dafoe is the product of a fairly conventional Midwestern upbringing. The son of a surgeon and one of seven siblings, he was born on July 22, 1955 in Appleton, Wisconsin. Dafoe began acting as a teenager, and at the age of seventeen he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Growing weary of the university's theatre department, where he found that temperament was all too often a substitute for talent, he joined Milwaukee's experimental Theatre X troupe. After touring stateside and throughout Europe with the group, Dafoe moved to New York in 1977, where he joined the avant-garde Wooster Group. Dafoe's 1981 film debut was a decidedly mixed blessing, as it consisted of a minor role in Michael Cimino's disastrous Heaven's Gate . Ultimately, Dafoe's screen time was cut from the film's final release print, saving him the embarrassment of being associated with the film but also making him something of a nonentity. He went on to appear in such films as The Hunger (1983) and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) before making his breakthrough in Platoon (1986). His portrayal of the insouciant, pot-smoking Sgt. Elias earned him Hollywood recognition and a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.Choosing his projects based on artistic merit rather than box office potential, Dafoe subsequently appeared in a number of widely divergent films, often taking roles that enhanced his reputation as one of the American cinema's most predictably unpredictable actors. After starring as an idealistic FBI agent in Mississippi Burning (1988), he took on one of his most memorable and controversial roles as Jesus in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Dafoe then portrayed a paralyzed, tormented Vietnam vet in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), his second collaboration with Oliver Stone. Homicidal tendencies and a mouthful of rotting teeth followed when he played an ex-marine in David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990), before he got really weird and allowed Madonna to drip hot wax on his naked body in Body of Evidence (1992). Following a turn in Wim Wenders' Faraway, So Close in 1993, Dafoe entered the realm of the blockbuster with his role as a mercenary in Clear and Present Danger (1994). That same year, he earned acclaim for his portrayal of T.S. Eliot in Tom and Viv, one of the few roles that didn't paint the actor as a contemporary head case. His appearance as a mysterious, thumbless World War II intelligence agent in The English Patient (1996) followed in a similar vein. In 1998, Dafoe returned to the contemporary milieu, playing an anthropologist in Paul Auster's Lulu on the Bridge and a member of a ragingly dysfunctional family in Paul Schrader's powerful, highly acclaimed Affliction. He then extended his study of dysfunction as a creepy gas station attendant in David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (1999). After chasing a pair of killers claiming to be on a mission from God in The Boondock Saints, Dafoe astounded audiences as he transformed himself into a mirror image of one of the screens most terrfiying vampires in Shadow of the Vampire (2000). A fictional recount of the mystery surrounding F.W. Murnau's 1922 classic Nosferatu, Dafoe's remarkable transformation into the fearsome bloodsucker had filmgoers blood running cold with it's overwhelming creepiness and tortured-soul humor. After turning up as a cop on the heels of a potentially homicidal yuppie in American Psycho that same year, the talented actor would appear in such low-profile releases as The Reconing and Bullfighter (both 2001), before once again thrilling audiences in a major release. As the fearsome Green Goblin in director Sam Raimi's long-anticipated big-screen adaptation of Spider-Man Dafoe certainly provided thrills in abundance as he soared trough the sky leaving death and destruction in his wake. His performace as a desperate millionare turned schizphrenic supervillian proved a key component in adding a human touch to the procedings in contrast to the dazzling action, and Dafoe next headed south of the border to team with flamboyant director Robert Rodriguez in Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Dafoe impressed critics with his performance of John Carpenter in the Bob Crane biopic Auto Focus. In 2003 he voiced one of the fish in the dentist's tank in Finding Nemo, and the next year he reprised his role as the Green Goblin in Spider-Man 2. He played a small role for Martin Scorsese in 2004's The Aviator, and had a memorable supporting turn in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou that same year. In 2005 he appeared in Lars Von Trier's Manderlay. He appeared in Spike Lee's successful heist thriller Inside Man. In 2007 he appeared as a film director in Mr. Bean's Holiday. In 2009 he reteamed with two different directors he's worked with before; he voiced the role of the rat in Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, and played a husband in Lars Von Trier's audience-dividing Antichrist. In 2012 he lent his vocal talents to the infamous Disney flop John Carter.

Trivia: Early in her career, it looked as though actress Kristin Scott Thomas was going to be relegated to playing the kind of elegantly bloodless British women she portrayed in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), but with her role as the aristocratic but passionate Katharine Clifton in The English Patient (1996), Scott Thomas broke the mold, proving herself capable of projecting a good deal of sensuality and heat as her character embarked on a tragic affair with a Hungarian adventurer (Ralph Fiennes). The daughter of a Royal Navy pilot who died in an air crash when she was five, Scott Thomas was born the eldest of five children, in Cornwall, on May 24, 1960. When she was 11, tragedy struck again when her stepfather, also a military pilot, met a demise identical to her father's. Scott Thomas was left to help her mother look after the family and -- in contrast to what her film roles would suggest -- her situation was far from aristocratic. Although she had an interest in acting, her mother loathed the idea and sent her daughter to the Cheltenham Ladies College. Scott Thomas dropped out at age 16, spent some time in a convent, and eventually enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama to take a teacher training course. Unable to resist the call of the stage, however, Scott Thomas quietly began studying drama. Unfortunately, the school's drama department advised her to pursue other professions. Scott Thomas was 18 at the time and in addition to being hurt by the drama department's rejection, she was also fed up with school. Seeking to gain perspective on her life, she went to visit some friends in Paris. What originally began as a two-week vacation ended in a permanent change of residence, after Scott Thomas took an au pair job and then fell in love with a Frenchman (she eventually married, and divorced, obstetrician François Olivennes, with whom she has two sons and a daughter).Though her new French friends teased her for being a funny little English girl, Scott Thomas found herself at home in Paris and decided to try acting again. At the encouragement of her friends, she enrolled in L'Ecole Nationale des Arts et Techniques de Theatres, honing her skills and finding the French school to be more supportive than its English counterpart. She gained experience playing small roles on-stage and soon went on to do some television work. After an inauspicious debut playing a headstrong heiress in Prince's Under the Cherry Moon (1986), she worked in a number of French films. In 1988, she was given her first lead in an English film, playing a cool-blooded aristocrat in A Handful of Dust.It wasn't until the 1990s that Scott Thomas began to attain recognition outside of Europe. Two years after starring as Hugh Grant's wife in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992), she came to the attention of an international audience in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Her second outing with Grant, the film was a sleeper hit, becoming the highest-grossing British film in the country's history. Following the film's success, Scott Thomas applied her talents to smaller films, appearing as Alfred Hitchcock's thorny assistant in the French-Canadian Le Confessionnal (1994) and a plain-Jane entomologist who finds herself embroiled in family dysfunction in Angels & Insects (1995). In 1996, the year of The English Patient, Scott Thomas fully stepped into the glare of the international spotlight, earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role in the widely acclaimed film. That same year, she did less-heralded but no less respectable work in Richard III, in which she played the enigmatic Lady Anne, and Mission: Impossible, her first truly big-budget film. With Hollywood now taking full notice, Scott Thomas was cast in a coveted lead role in Robert Redford's 1998 adaptation of Nicholas Evans' The Horse Whisperer. The film proved something of a disappointment, although the actress was praised for her strong performance. The following year, she found herself involved in another high-profile project, starring opposite Harrison Ford in Random Hearts. Playing a woman who discovers that her husband, who died in a plane crash, was having an affair with Ford's wife, who also died in the crash, Scott Thomas again got to demonstrate her ability at embracing roles that went far beyond the confines of the tea-sipping British aristocracy. Subsequent work in Gosford Park and Tell No One kept Thomas busy over the course of the next few years, but it was back-to-back BAFTA nominations in 2009 (I've Loved You So Long) and 2010 (Nowhere Boy) that helped to end the decade on a decidedly positive note for the veteran actress. In 2011, she appeared in Salmon FIshing in the Yemen, and in 2012, played a Frenchwoman seduced by the much younger Robert Pattinson in Bel Ami. The following year, she re-teamed with Ralph Fiennes for The Invisible Woman.

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: Julian Wadham understands what it was like for boy actors to play female roles in the Shakespeare era. When he was attending Ampleforth College Junior School -- a Catholic academy in Yorkshire for boys eight to 13 -- he portrayed Queen Elizabeth I in a school play. The experience not only taught him a lesson in stage history, but it also trained him in the rudiments of acting and whet his appetite for theater. Today, critics recognize him as one of Britain's better actors. His roles in Our Country's Good, Serious Money, and Another Country helped those dramas win Best Play Laurence Olivier Awards in the 1980s. He also won Royal Television Society Awards for Goodbye Cruel World in 1992 and Blind Justice in 1989. If one may gauge an actor -- in part, at least -- by the reputation of his co-stars, then Wadham measures up. Among the actors with whom he has exchanged dialogue are Bob Hoskins, John Hurt, Gérard Depardieu, Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Ian Holm, Ben Kingsley, and Wendy Hiller.Wadham was born in England on August 7, 1958. After graduating from London's Central School of Speech and Drama in 1980, he performed in various television and stage productions over the next decade, earning a 1983 nomination as Most Promising Newcomer from the London Theatre Critics for his role in Falkland South. In the 1990s, he achieved worldwide recognition for roles as Sir James Chettam in the acclaimed TV miniseries Middlemarch and Madox in the Oscar-winning film The English Patient. His role as Queen Elizabeth in his youth foreshadowed later parts as government leaders, including portrayals of William Pitt in The Madness of King George, the prime minister in The Commissioner, King Polixines in The Winter's Tale, and the assistant commissioner in The Secret Agent. His good looks and aristocratic bearing make him a popular choice among casting directors seeking a proper gentleman at home with beautiful women and high society. Wadham performs frequently for Britain's National Theatre in productions of such esteemed directors and producers as Richard Eyre, Harold Pinter, Peter Gill, Stuart Burge, and Max Stafford-Clark.

Trivia: British actor Naveen Andrews first attracted international attention as Kip, Juliette Binoche's Sikh boyfriend in The English Patient (1996). A graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Andrews got his start on television, starring in the popular -- to say nothing of racy -- 1993 miniseries The Buddha of Suburbia. The same year that he appeared in The English Patient, the actor portrayed a haughty king in Mira Nair's Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, a film whose content inspired no shortage of controversy in India. He subsequently worked in a variety of films on both sides of the Atlantic, including Mighty Joe Young, A Question of Faith, and Bride and Prejudice. After landing a starring role on the landmark TV series Lost in 2004, Andrews became a household face in the United States, and he soon found himself in movies like Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, and Jodi Foster's The Brave One. After Lost concluded, Andrews kept his hand in television as well, with a starring role in the UK costume series Sinbad in 2012.

Trivia: A descendant of Thomas Whately, a leading merchant and writer who became director of the Bank of England, and Major Robert Thompson, a pioneer tobacco plantation owner in Virginia. His maternal grandmother, Doris Phillips, was a professional concert singer, and his great-great-grandfather, Richard Whately, was Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. Began studying accountancy before becoming an actor. Was an amateur actor at the People's Theatre in Newcastle, England, in the 1970s, before turning professional. In 2011, he returned to celebrate the theatre's centenary. Earned a living as a folk singer when he was young. Presented with the honorary Doctor of Arts award by the University of Bedfordshire in 2013, for his outstanding achievements in acting. Almost turned down the opportunity to reprise his signature role as Robbie Lewis in the spin-off ITV crime series, Lewis. Announced his retirement from acting in 2015 after the end of the ninth and final series of Lewis after playing the character intermittently for 28 years. Was the patron of the Central School of Speech and Drama Full House Theatre Company in 2011. In 2014, was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing the hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the UK in the Independence Referendum. Enjoys rock music and plays the guitar. Would like to have played cricket professionally for England.

Trivia: Has appeared on stage many times and was a member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company in the 1970s. Appeared as Sherlock Holmes on BBC Radio 4 from 1989 to 1998. Played the Headmaster in the 2006 radio adaptation of The History Boys.

Trivia: Italian lead actor Nino Castelnuovo began appearing in films in 1960.

Trivia: One of Canada's leading actors, Lothaire Bluteau has repeatedly been hailed for his ability to capture the emotional pain of the characters he plays. The Quebec-born Bluteau began appearing in Canadian films in the early 1980s, and since then, his career has included a roster of diverse projects for international cinema, television, and stage. In 1989, the actor first came to the attention of an international audience with his performance in Denys Arcand's Jesus of Montreal. His turn as an actor who may or may not be Jesus won him a Genie, Canada's equivalent of the Oscar. After gaining additional acclaim two years later for his performance in Bruce Beresford's Black Robe, Bluteau worked on a diverse series of films. He appeared in supporting roles in Orlando (1992), I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), and The English Patient (1996) and in leads in a number of other films. While these films allowed him to demonstrate his talent, it was his work in Le Confessionnal (1994) and Bent (1997) that gave audiences the best grasp of the actor's gifts. Playing a photographer trying to come to grips with his family in the former and a gay concentration camp inmate in the latter, Bluteau communicated both pain and beauty with uncanny grace.

Trivia: Childhood ambition was to be an optometrist. Moved to England at age 18 to apprentice under voice coach Patsy Rodenburg. Won a Canadian Gemini Award in 2000 for Best Actress in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role for The City. Her rescue dog, Sedgewick, had two cameos on Stargate Atlantis, appearing in her character Dr. Elizabeth Weir's flashback scenes.

Trivia: An actor since the age of 14, Berlin-born Jürgen Prochnow was firmly established on stage and TV when he was featured in his first film, Zoff, in 1971. Prochnow has been able to harness his well-modulated voice, versatile facial features, and athletic frame to portray both the most admirable of heroes and the most despicable of villains. It was for his portrayal of a character in the former category that the actor achieved international fame. He appeared as the stern but humanistic submarine commander in the 1981 Oscar-winning Das Boot. In the latter category, Prochnow all but entreated hisses and tossed tomatoes with his portrayal of the sadistic South African secret police captain in 1989's A Dry White Season. Prochnow's career has subsequently had its fair share of highs and lows, with his appearances in such high profile projects as The English Patient (1996), Air Force One (1997), and The Replacement Killers (1998) helping to sustain him as a fixture in international cinema. Over the coming decades, Prochnow would remain an active force on screen, appearing in a host of German projects, as well as projects like The Da Vinci Code and Beerfest, and the TV series 24.