Trivia: Considered one of the best actors of his generation, Robert De Niro built a durable star career out of his formidable ability to disappear into a character. The son of artists, De Niro was raised in New York's Greenwich Village. The young man made his stage debut at age 10, playing the Cowardly Lion in his school's production of The Wizard of Oz. Along with finding relief from shyness through performing, De Niro was also entranced by the movies, and he quit high school at age 16 to pursue acting. Studying under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, De Niro learned how to immerse himself in a character emotionally and physically. After laboring in off-off-Broadway productions in the early '60s, De Niro was cast alongside fellow novice Jill Clayburgh in film-school graduate Brian De Palma's The Wedding Party (1969). He followed this with small movies like Greetings, Hi, Mom!, Sam's Song, and Bloody Mama.De Niro's professional life took an auspicious turn, however, when he was re-introduced to former Little Italy acquaintance Martin Scorsese at a party in 1972. Sharing a love of movies as well as their neighborhood background, De Niro and Scorsese hit it off. De Niro was immediately interested when Scorsese asked him about appearing in his new film, Mean Streets, conceived as a grittier, more authentic portrait of the Mafia than The Godfather. De Niro's appearance in the film made waves with critics, as did his completely different performance as a dying simple-minded catcher in the quiet baseball drama Bang the Drum Slowly (1973). Francis Ford Coppola was impressed enough by Mean Streets to cast De Niro as the young Vito Corleone in the early 1900s portion of The Godfather Part II. Closely studying Brando's Oscar-winning performance as Don Corleone in The Godfather, and perfecting his accent for speaking his lines in subtitled Sicilian, De Niro was so effective as the lethally ambitious and lovingly paternal Corleone that he took home a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role.De Niro next headed to Europe to star in Bernardo Bertolucci's opus, 1900 (1976) before returning to the U.S. to collaborate with Scorsese on the far leaner (and meaner) production, Taxi Driver. After working for two weeks as a Manhattan cabbie and losing weight, De Niro transformed himself into disturbed "God's lonely man" Travis Bickle. One of the definitive films of the decade, Taxi Driver earned the Cannes Film Festival's top prize and several Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and De Niro's first nod for Best Actor. Controversy erupted about the film's violence, however, when would-be presidential assassin John W. Hinckley cited Taxi Driver as a formative influence in 1981.De Niro and Scorsese would reteam for the lavish musical New York, New York (1977), and though the film was a complete flop, De Niro quickly recovered with another risky and ambitious project, Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978). One of the first wave of Vietnam movies, The Deer Hunter starred De Niro as one of three Pennsylvania steel-town friends thrown into the war's inferno who emerged as profoundly changed men. Though the film provoked an uproar over its portrayal of Viet Cong violence as (literally) Russian roulette, The Deer Hunter won several Oscars.Returning to the realm of more personal violence, De Niro followed The Deer Hunter with his and Scorsese's masterpiece, Raging Bull, a tragic portrait of boxer [%Ray La Motta]. Along with his notorious 60-pound weight gain that rendered him unrecognizable as the middle-aged Jake, De Niro also trained so intensely for the outstanding fight scenes that La Motta himself stated that De Niro could have boxed professionally. Along with his physical dedication, De Niro won over critics with his ability to humanize La Motta without softening him. Raging Bull received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.Though he was well suited to star in Sergio Leone's epic homage to gangster films, Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Leone's tough, transcendent vision couldn't survive the studio's decision to hack 88 minutes out of the American release version. De Niro next took a breather from films to return to the stage, playing a drug dealer in the New York Public Theater production Cuba and His Teddy Bear. During his theater stint, De Palma made De Niro a movie offer he couldn't refuse when he asked him to play a small role in his film version of The Untouchables (1987). As the rotund, charismatic, bat-wielding Al Capone, De Niro was a memorable adversary for Kevin Costner's upstanding Elliot Ness, and The Untouchables became De Niro's first hit in almost a decade. De Niro followed The Untouchables with his first comedy success, Midnight Run (1988), costarring as a bounty hunter opposite Charles Grodin's bail-jumping accountant.Though he earned an Oscar nomination for his touching performance as a patient in Penny Marshall's popular drama Awakenings (1990), movie fans were perhaps more thrilled by De Niro's return to the Scorsese fold, playing cruelly duplicitous Irish mobster Jimmy "The Gent" opposite Ray Liotta's turncoat Henry Hill in the critically lauded Mafia film Goodfellas (1990). De Niro worked with Scorsese again in the thriller remake Cape Fear (1991), sporting a hillbilly accent and pumped-up physique. It was Scorsese and De Niro's biggest hit together and earned another Oscar nod for the star. De Niro subsequently costarred as a geeky cop in the Scorsese-produced Mad Dog and Glory (1993).De Niro also revealed that he had learned a great deal from his work with Scorsese with his own directorial debut, A Bronx Tale (1993). A well-observed story of a boy torn between his father and the local mob, A Bronx Tale earned praise, but De Niro was soon back to working with Scorsese, starring as Vegas kingpin Sam Rothstein in Casino (1995) -- based on the story of real-life handicapper Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal -- staged with Scorsese's customary visual brilliance and pairing De Niro with his Raging Bull brother and Goodfellas associate Joe Pesci.Appearing in as many as three films a year after 1990, De Niro was particularly praised for his polished reserve in Michael Mann's glossy policer Heat (1995), which offered the rare spectacle of De Niro and Pacino sharing the screen, if only in two scenes. After indifferently received turns in The Fan (1996), Sleepers (1996), and Cop Land (1997), De Niro stepped outside his comfort zone to play an amoral political strategist in Barry Levinson's sharp satire Wag the Dog (1997) and a dangerously dimwitted crook in Quentin Tarantino's laid-back crime story Jackie Brown (1997). De Niro was front and center -- and knee deep in self-parody -- in the comedy Analyze This (1999), aided and abetted by a nicely low-key Billy Crystal as his reluctant psychiatrist. De Niro would continue to lampoon his own tough-guy image in the sequel Analyze That, as well as the popular Meet the Parents franchise. As the decade wore on, De Niro took on roles that failed to live up to his acclaimed earlier work, such as with lukewarm thrillers like The Score, Godsend, Righteous Kill, and Hide and Seek. However, De Niro continued to work on his ambitious and long-planned next foray behind the camera, the acclaimed CIA drama The Good Shepherd.He continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including Stardust, What Just Happened, and Everybody's Fine. He became a Kennedy Center honoree in 2009. He reteamed with Ben Stiller for Little Fockers in 2010, and played a corrupt politician in Machete that same year. In 2011 he appeared opposite Bradley Cooper in the thriller Limitless, which seemingly laid the groundwork for their reteaming as father and son in the 2012 comedy Silver Linings Playbook. For his work in that movie, De Niro earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Trivia: With mournful eyes that suggest deep contemplation lurking beneath a sometimes imposing exterior, French actor Jean Reno (born July 30th, 1948) has carved a particular niche in cinema by portraying men who prefer to define themselves through action rather than words. Though his characters may often resort to violence without pause when necessary, that isn't to say that they are without the sort of honor or dignity that has served to define some of the screen's most memorable action stars. Born Juan Moreno Errere y Rimenes in Casablanca, Morocco, the future star spent his early, more carefree days roaming the beaches with friends to escape the searing summer heat. Reno was captivated by the likes of such screen legends as John Wayne, Marlon Brando, and Jean Gabin, who would form the foundation of his screen persona much later in life. An early stint in drama school found Reno exploring his acting abilities, but little did the aspiring talent know that his life would soon take a new and unexpected turn. Though Reno's life to that point had been somewhat idyllic, Morocco's increasing instability forced Reno's family to flee to France to start anew. Unfortunately, his new homeland was in the midst of turbulent civil unrest. In order to gain his citizenship, Reno had to sign up with the national service, and he was quickly recruited into the army. When his superiors noticed that he had previously been to drama school, they placed him in charge of arts and entertainment, and after a year of service, Reno set his sights on Paris. More drama school was soon to follow, and throughout the 1970s, Reno gained experience through stage and television work. After being singled out by critics for memorable appearances in such plays as Costa-Gavras' Clair de Femme (a role that he would later revisit in the 1979 film of the same name) and touring Europe with Didier Flamand's theater troupe, Reno made his screen debut in the 1979 Raúl Ruiz film The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting. Throughout the 1980s, Reno made a name for himself playing screen heavies with little dialogue, and in 1981, things began to look up for the rising star when he teamed with hot young French director Luc Besson for the short film L'Avant Dernier. In the years that followed, Reno and Besson not only became close personal friends, but Reno would also appear in almost every one of the director's films. With small parts in Le Dernier Combat (1983) and Subway slowly elevating his star status, it was only a matter of time until Reno landed his breakout role. Of course, it came as no surprise to many that that particular role was in one of Besson's films, and with the release of Besson's Le Grand Bleu in 1988, Reno's time finally came. Cast as the comic rival of diver Jacques Mayhol (Jean-Marc Barr), Reno received international exposure when the film became a worldwide hit with both critics and audiences. In his home country of France, Reno was even nominated for a Best Supporting Actor César. He took a somewhat darker turn two years later when he was cast as a taciturn hit man in Besson's art-house action hit Nikita. By the time Reno took the lead in the 1993 time travel comedy Les Visiteurs (which quickly became the most successful film in French box-office history), he had truly established himself as a lucrative box-office draw. Though the film was indeed a massive success in France, it was deemed "too French" for U.S. distribution, and only the most die-hard fans and critics outside of Reno's native country were truly aware of his star power. If Reno's rise in France had been successfully boosted thanks, in part, to old friend Besson, so would his international exposure thanks to Besson's masterful 1994 effort Léon (released stateside as The Professional). With Reno once again cast in the role of a hit man, Léon told the remarkably tender tale of a sympathetic killer who befriends a young orphan named Mathilda (memorably portrayed by screen newcomer Natalie Portman) after her family is wiped out by a corrupt DEA agent (an unhinged Gary Oldman). Despite the fact that the heart of Léon and Mathilda's relationship was edited out of the U.S. release after being deemed too intense for stateside audiences (the film would eventually find release in the U.S. uncut thanks to a 2000 DVD release of the original version), the movie still possessed a soulful display of character generally lacking in the action genre, and audiences took to the film in droves. Reno was now a bankable star worldwide, though his unpredictable film choices continued to surprise audiences while also informing them that he was capable of much more than high-octane gunplay. In the years that followed, Reno made it a point to act in one French film for each American film in which he appeared, and with stateside roles in French Kiss (1995), Mission: Impossible (1996), and Roseanna's Grave (1997), Reno successfully pleased both his testosterone-driven male fan base and his more sensitive female followers. 1998 would prove a remarkably successful year for Reno in both the U.S. and his native France when, after completing the sequel Corridors of Time: The Visitors II, he turned up in both the disastrous wannabe summer blockbuster Godzilla (for which he turned down the role of Agent Smith in The Matrix) and Manchurian Candidate director John Frankenheimer's masterful action thriller Ronin. Holding his own opposite screen legend Robert De Niro, Reno was clearly a talent to be reckoned with. Before adapting The Visitors for U.S. audiences (as Just Visiting), Reno faced unspeakable danger in the Seven-esque French thriller The Crimson Rivers (2000). In between such action efforts as the Besson-produced Wasabi (2001) and the misguided sci-fi remake Rollerball (2002), Reno found time for love in the romantic comedy Jet Lag (also 2002) with Juliette Binoche. Despite the fact that action in such efforts as 2001's Wasabi and 2003's Ruby & Quentin tended to lean toward the comic angle, Reno proved he wasn't afraid to get a little dirty by once again facing danger in Crimson Rivers 2: Angels of the Apocalypse (2004). Roles in the French-language flicks L'Corse Enquête and L'Empire des loups were quick to follow in 2004 and 2005 respectively, and shortly after starring opposite Roberto Benigni and Tom Waits in Benigni's 2005 effort The Tiger and the Snow, Reno would head back into blockbuster territory stateside with supporting performances in The Pink Panther and The Da Vinci Code. In 2006 Reno would take to the skies with some determined American fighter pilots in the World War I war adventure Flyboys. Reno continued to work in films throughout the 2000s, appearing in The Pink Panther 2, Flushed Away, and Couples Retreat.

Trivia: An actress whose refinement is evident in both her coolly regal beauty and well-measured performances, Natascha McElhone first impressed international critics and audiences with her portrayal of Francoise Gilot, the long-suffering but ultimately triumphant wife of Pablo Picasso in Merchant Ivory's Surviving Picasso (1996). Born Natasha Taylor in Hampstead, London, on March 23, 1971, McElhone was raised in Brighton as the only daughter (she has several brothers) of journalist parents. After studying drama for three years at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, McElhone began her career in the theatre. She worked extensively on the London stage in a number of productions, and she also toured nationally with the Leicester Haymarket's production of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard. McElhone made her television debut in 1994, playing an army officer in the BBC's A Breed of Heroes, and subsequently appeared in several British TV series, including Absolutely Fabulous. Following her well-received screen debut in Surviving Picasso, McElhone played the young Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. Dalloway (1997), and she had substantial roles in The Devil's Own (1997) and John Frankenheimer's Ronin (1998), the latter of which featured her as a tactical strategist who organizes a team of experts to steal a mysterious briefcase from a group of criminals. She also popped up as Truman Burbank's long-lost love interest in The Truman Show (1998), and in 2000, she could be seen singing and dancing her way across the Bard's iambic pentameter in Kenneth Branagh's musical adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost. Two short years later audiences would find McElhone cast opposite George Clooney in director Steven Soderbergh's psycholgical sci-fi effort Solaris. She appeared as Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl in 2003, and continued to work steadily landing one of her most high-profile gigs when she landed the part of Karen on the Showtime series Californication.

Trivia: Before enrolling in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Sean Bean was going to enter his father's Sheffield steel fabrication business as a welder. He changed his mind after he garnered praise for acting in a few roles in local theater while taking an art class at Rotherham College. Bean received a scholarship to the prestigious academy and graduated a few years later with the Silver Medal for his performance in Waiting for Godot. Shortly thereafter, Bean performed in several West End productions. He also appeared in Romeo and Juliet with the Glasgow Citizens Theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon. In the first he played Tybalt and in the second he played Romeo. Following more stage experience, Bean made his feature film debut in 1986 in Derek Jarman's Carvaggio. Two years later, after returning to the stage, Bean appeared in Mike Figgis' Stormy Monday and in another Jarman effort, War Requiem. In addition to his filmwork, Bean also has a thriving television career that began in the mid-'80s. Notable television work includes Clarissa (1992) and Sharpe (1993). It is as a "bad guy" in films such as Patriot Games and Golden Eye that Bean is best-known in the U.S., though in the 1997 remake of Anna Karenina, he plays the dashing and romantic Count Vronsky. After joining Robert De Niro and Jean Reno for some international espionage in John Frankenheimer's Ronin (1998), taking a psychotic turn in Essex Boys (2000) and kidnapping the daughter of a respected adolescent therapist in Don't Say a Word (2001), Bean made his way to New Zealand for a role in director Peter Jackson's highly-successful Lord of the Rings trilogy.Bean maintained his career working in diverse projects such as Equilibrium, the old fashioned sword and sandal epic Troy, and National Treasure.He scored a supporting part in 2005's drama North Country, as well as a major part in Michael Bay's sci-fi spectacle The Island. He returned to the role of Sharpe for 2006's Sharpe's Challenge as well as 2008's Sharpe's Peril, and in between took on the role of the serial killer made famous by Rutger Hauer in the remake of The Hitcher.The steadily working actor continued his hot streak in such projects as Percy Jackson & the Olympians and Death Race 2, and he found success on the small screen when he was cast in a pivotal part in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones.

Trivia: After college, worked for a year as an apprentice winemaker in Virginia. A member of New York's Rumble in the Redroom sketch-comedy group. A singer-songwriter who co-founded the acoustic rock band, Minus Ted. An amateur racing-and-stunt driver, he did almost all the vehicular stunt work and costarred in Ronin. Has narrated a number of audio books, including Donald Trump's Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education in Business and Life and Peter S. Canellos' Last Lion: the Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy. In 2010, was given a special commendation from the New York Senate for his involvement with the Friends of Firefighters organization.

Trivia: Welsh native Jonathan Pryce switched from art studies to acting after winning a RADA scholarship, and quickly became both a critically viable and immediately recognizable screen presence. In numerous screen assignments, Pryce's subtle intensity and mania - deftly but not deeply buried beneath a placid exterior - could be parlayed with equal aplomb into roles as an angst-ridden everyman or a manipulative sociopath. In the majority of Pryce's characterizations, he projected a frightening degree of intelligence and sophistication almost by default.After a few seasons with the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, Pryce scored a London theatrical success in Comedians, winning a Tony award when the play moved to Broadway in 1976. Thereafter, he starred in the Broadway musicals Miss Saigon and Oliver!. Pryce's subsequent effectiveness in villainous roles threatened to typecast him as Machiavellian heavies, such as his icewater-veined personification of "reason and logic" in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989). As time rolled on, however, Pryce began to demonstrate his ability to add layers of offbeat and intriguing eccentricity to roles that, in other hands, could easily become caricatures or stock parts - a gift apparent as early as Pryce's leading turn in Gilliam's Brazil (1985), as a beleaguered everyman enmeshed in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare. The actor was particularly arresting, for example, as James Lingk, a bar patron with not-so-subtle homosexual inclinations, who falls prey to the machinations of hotshot salesman Ricky Roma (Al Pacino), in James Foley's 1992 screen adaptation of the David Mamet play Glengarry Glen Ross. He commanded equally powerful screen presence as Henry Kravis, a cunning entrepreneur and the "master of the leveraged buyout" (who bilks corporate giant F. Ross Johnson for a fortune) in the Glenn Jordan-directed, Larry Gelbart-scripted boardroom comedy Barbarians at the Gate (1993). In 1995, Jonathan Pryce won a Cannes Film Festival best actor award for his portrayal of homosexual writer Lytton Strachey in Carrington, opposite Emma Thompson. In subsequent years, Pryce's screen activity crescendoed meteorically; he remained extremely active, often tackling an average of three to five films a year, and demonstrated a laudable intuition in selecting projects. Some of his more prestigious assignments included roles in Evita (1996), Ronin (1998), De-Lovely (2004) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007). The Brothers Grimm (2005) re-united the Welsh actor with Brazil and Baron Munchausen collaborator Terry Gilliam. In 2008, Pryce teamed up with George Clooney, Renee Zellweger and John Krasinski for a supporting role in the Clooney-directed sports comedy Leatherheads (2008); Pryce plays C.C. Frazier, the manager of a 1920s collegiate football player (Krasinski). Many American viewers may continue to associate Pryce with his television commercial appearances as the spokesman of Infiniti automobiles.

Trivia: As one of the world's most prominent and revered figure skaters, Katarina Witt was born in Staaken, East Germany, and began professional skating during her teens, quickly ascending to the Olympic level (where she won two gold medals) and earning the titles of World, European, and National skating champion four, six, and eight times, respectively. Witt began occasional feature film appearances in the 1990s, first with a bit part as herself in the Tom Cruise comedy-drama Jerry Maguire (1996) and then with a supporting role (as Natacha Kirilova) alongside Robert De Niro and Jean Reno in John Frankenheimer's Ronin (1998). Also in 1998, Witt posed for Playboy, to astronomical sales figures. In 2009, Witt made headlines once again by emceeing the skating-themed competitive reality show Battle of the Blades, produced in Canada.

Trivia: A Swedish actor who has become known to American audiences thanks to roles in Breaking the Waves and Good Will Hunting, Stellan Skarsgård is one of Scandinavia's best-known and most well-respected performers. Renowned for giving measured characterizations that draw their strength from a delicate complexity, Skarsgård is one of those rare actors who is able to do strong work regardless of the quality of the material he is in, displaying the sort of quiet fortitude that allows him to survive even the worst screen fiascos.Born in Gothenburg on June 13, 1951, Skarsgård became a star in his country, when, as a teenager, he was cast on the TV series Bombi Bitt och jag. After his film debut in 1972, he did years of stage work with Stockholm's Royal Dramatic and made a number of dramas with the director Hans Alfredson, the most notable of which, Den Enfaldige Mordaren, featured Skarsgård in a Silver Berlin Bear-winning performance as a misunderstood man with a deformity. In 1988, Skarsgård got a tentative introduction to a transatlantic audience with a small role in Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being; two years later, he had a similarly minor role in another international hit, The Hunt for Red October.Skarsgård's true international breakthrough came courtesy of his role as Emily Watson's husband in Lars Von Trier's highly acclaimed Breaking the Waves (1996). The actor more than held his own opposite Watson, who gave one of the year's most lauded performances, and he found previously unimagined opportunities available to him in Hollywood. In 1997, he starred as a frustrated mathematician in Gus Van Sant's award-winning Good Will Hunting and was also featured in Steven Spielberg's Amistad; his work in both films culminated in an Outstanding European Achievement in World Cinema award from the European Film Academy. Later that same year, the actor appeared in My Son the Fanatic as a German businessman with the unfortunate surname of Schitz -- he also gave a stellar portrayal of a detective who slowly loses his mind while investigating a murder in the Norwegian film Insomnia.A prolific actor, Skarsgård appeared in a number of small ambitious projects in 2000, including Passion of Mind with Demi Moore, Mike Figgis' Time Code, and Harlan County War. The following year, while he showed up in the poorly-received thriller The Glass House, Skarsgård gained critical praise for his performance in Taking Sides.2003 saw Skarsgård taking a role in Lars von Trier's highly anticipated Dogville and signing on for the oft-plagued The Exorcist: The Beginning. After several debacles, the prequel to the horror classic finally found its way to movie theaters in 2004, the same year the actor costarred in Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur. After going toe-to-toe with the Devil himself in 2005's Exorcist: The Beginning (as well as Paul Schrader's alternate cut Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist), Skarsgård joined the crew of the Flying Dutchman in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and its follow-up Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and went medieval in the Swedism Arn films. A chilling turn as the ruthless warden in the fact-based King of Devil's Island showed a downright malevolent side to Skarsgård, though it was subsequent roles in the Marvel Comics features Thor and the Avengers, as well as a turn as the mysterious Martin Vanger in David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, that offered the veteran actor the most international exposure in the wake of his voyage on the high seas.

Trivia: His mother was a cryptographer for the OSS during World War II. High school classmates included actor Reginald VelJohnson and former CIA director George Tenet. An appearance in a 1978 issue of Playgirl magazine led to an adult-film director offering him a movie deal. Was a consultant on 9 1/2 Weeks (1987) and Boogie Nights (1997). Is the subject of the 2001 documentary Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy, and published his memoir, Ron Jeremy: The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz, in 2007. In February, 2013, had back-to-back emergency surgeries for an aneurysm near his heart. Has appeared in more than 2000 adult films and directed more than 280 of them, and has had roles in more than 60 mainstream movies and more than a dozen music videos. Had a limited-edition rum, Ron de Jeremy, named after him. Garnered a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Appearances in Adult Films. Had roles in five John Frankenheimer films.

Trivia: French leading man onscreen from the '60s.