Trivia: After spending the 1980s playing a series of drug addict and character parts, Samuel L. Jackson emerged in the 1990s as one of the most prominent and well-respected actors in Hollywood. Work on a number of projects, both high-profile and low-key, has given Jackson ample opportunity to display an ability marked by both remarkable versatility and smooth intelligence.Born December 21, 1948, in Washington, D.C., Jackson was raised by his mother and grandparents in Chattanooga, TN. He attended Atlanta's Morehouse College, where he was co-founder of Atlanta's black-oriented Just Us Theater (the name of the company was taken from a famous Richard Pryor routine). Jackson arrived in New York in 1977, beginning what was to be a prolific career in film, television, and on the stage. After a plethora of character roles of varying sizes, Jackson was discovered by the public in the role of the hero's tempestuous, drug-addict brother in 1991's Jungle Fever, directed by another Morehouse College alumnus, Spike Lee. Jungle Fever won Jackson a special acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival and thereafter his career soared. Confronted with sudden celebrity, Jackson stayed grounded by continuing to live in the Harlem brownstone where he'd resided since his stage days. 1994 was a particularly felicitous year for Jackson; while his appearances in Jurassic Park (1993) and Menace II Society (1993) were still being seen in second-run houses, he co-starred with John Travolta as a mercurial hit man in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. His portrayal of an embittered father in the more low-key Fresh earned him additional acclaim. The following year, Jackson landed third billing in the big-budget Die Hard With a Vengeance and also starred in the adoption drama Losing Isaiah. His versatility was put on further display in 1996 with the release of five very different films: The Long Kiss Goodnight, a thriller in which he co-starred with Geena Davis as a private detective; an adaptation of John Grisham's A Time to Kill, which featured him as an enraged father driven to murder; Steve Buscemi's independent Trees Lounge; The Great White Hype, a boxing satire in which the actor played a flamboyant boxing promoter; and Hard Eight, the directorial debut of Paul Thomas Anderson.After the relative quiet of 1997, which saw Jackson again collaborate with Tarantino in the critically acclaimed Jackie Brown and play a philandering father in the similarly acclaimed Eve's Bayou (which also marked his debut as a producer), the actor lent his talents to a string of big-budget affairs (an exception being the 1998 Canadian film The Red Violin). Aside from an unbilled cameo in Out of Sight (1998), Jackson was featured in leading roles in The Negotiator (1998), Sphere (1998), and Deep Blue Sea (1999). His prominence in these films added confirmation of his complete transition from secondary actor to leading man, something that was further cemented by a coveted role in what was perhaps the most anticipated film of the decade, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), the first prequel to George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy. Jackson followed through on his leading man potential with a popular remake of Gordon Parks' seminal 1971 blaxploitation flick Shaft. Despite highly publicized squabbling between Jackson and director John Singleton, the film was a successful blend of homage, irony, and action; it became one of the rare character-driven hits in the special effects-laden summer of 2000.From hard-case Shaft to fragile as glass, Jackson once again hoodwinked audiences by playing against his usual super-bad persona in director M. Night Shyamalan's eagerly anticipated follow-up to The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable (2000). In his role as Bruce Willis' brittle, frail antithesis, Jackson proved that though he can talk trash and break heads with the best of them, he's always compelling to watch no matter what the role may be. Next taking a rare lead as a formerly successful pianist turned schizophrenic on the trail of a killer in the little-seen The Caveman's Valentine, Jackson turned in yet another compelling and sympathetic performance. Following an instance of road rage opposite Ben Affleck in Changing Lanes (2002), Jackson stirred film geek controversy upon wielding a purple lightsaber in the eagerly anticipated Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Despite rumors that the color of the lightsaber may have had some sort of mythical undertone, Jackson laughingly assured fans that it was a simple matter of his suggesting to Lucas that a purple lightsaber would simply "look cool," though he was admittedly surprised to see that Lucas had obliged him Jackson eventually saw the final print. A few short months later filmgoers would find Jackson recruiting a muscle-bound Vin Diesel for a dangerous secret mission in the spy thriller XXX.Jackson reprised his long-standing role as Mace Windu in the last segment of George Lucas's Star Wars franchise to be produced, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). It (unsurprisingly) grossed almost four hundred million dollars, and became that rare box-office blockbuster to also score favorably (if not unanimously) with critics; no less than Roger Ebert proclaimed it "spectacular." Jackson co-headlined 2005's crime comedy The Man alongside Eugene Levy and 2006's Joe Roth mystery Freedomland with Julianne Moore and Edie Falco, but his most hotly-anticipated release at the time of this writing is August 2006's Snakes on a Plane, a by-the-throat thriller about an assassin who unleashes a crate full of vipers onto a aircraft full of innocent (and understandably terrified) civilians. Produced by New Line Cinema on a somewhat low budget, the film continues to draw widespread buzz that anticipates cult status. Black Snake Moan, directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow) dramatizes the relationship between a small-town girl (Christina Ricci) and a blues player (Jackson). The picture is slated for release in September 2006 with Jackson's Shaft collaborator, John Singleton, producing.Jackson would spend the ensuing years appearing in a number of films, like Home of the Brave, Resurrecting the Champ, Lakeview Terrace, Django Unchained, and the Marvel superhero franchise films like Thor, Iron Man, and The Avengers, playing superhero wrangler Nick Fury.

Trivia: One of the most celebrated actresses of her generation, as well as one of the few child stars to make a successful transition to adult roles, Christina Ricci has been impressing audiences and critics with her unnervingly accurate performances since debuting in 1990's Mermaids.The daughter of a lawyer and a former Ford model and the youngest of four children, Ricci was born in Santa Monica, CA, on February 12, 1980. Following her family's move to New York when she was eight, Ricci got her start acting in commercials. Her big screen debut came shortly after, when director Richard Benjamin cast her as Cher's younger daughter in Mermaids. Although much attention went to Winona Ryder, who played Ricci's older sister, the young actress made enough of an impression to land more work: The following year, she starred as the morbidly precocious Wednesday Addams in the hit film adaptation of The Addams Family. The role would help to establish Ricci as an actress known for playing dark, unconventional characters; she went on to play Wednesday again in the film's 1993 sequel Addams Family Values. Following a series of films both good and bad, including Now and Then, in which she played the young Rosie O'Donnell, and the critically panned but commercially successful Casper, Ricci starred as the troubled, sexually precocious Wendy Hood in Ang Lee's widely praised The Ice Storm. The actress handled the part with uncanny maturity, leading many observers to conclude that she was truly beginning to come into her own. This assessment was solidified with Ricci's subsequent roles in films like Buffalo '66 (in which she played Vincent Gallo's unwitting abductee-turned-girlfriend), John Waters' Pecker, and Don Roos' The Opposite of Sex, the last of which cast her as Dedee, a delightfully loathsome girl who wreaks tabloid-style havoc on everyone she encounters, whether they be dead or alive. For her performance as Dedee, Ricci was nominated for a Golden Globe and attained the unofficial title of the Sundance Film Festival's 1998 "It" Girl.Now riding high as an indie teen queen, Ricci went on in 1999 to headline the much-anticipated but ultimately disappointing 200 Cigarettes; the same year, she could be seen in Desert Blue, which featured 200 Cigarettes co-stars Casey Affleck and Kate Hudson, and Sleepy Hollow, in which she played Gothic princess Katrina Van Tassel opposite Johnny Depp's Ichabod Crane in Tim Burton's adaptation of Washington Irving's ghostly tale.In 2000, Ricci starred in Sally Potter's The Man Who Cried, in which she played a young Jewish woman who flees from Germany to Paris during World War II, and Bless the Child, a supernatural thriller that also starred Kim Basinger and Rufus Sewell.Though rumors of a stateside release date for Ricci's 2001 drama Prozac Nation continued to linger, the dark young starlet would move on to such unconventional efforts as The Laramie Project (2002) and the offbeat romantic comedy Pumpkin, which found her as a popular sorority girl who risks becoming a social outcast after falling for a mentally disabled young athlete whom she has volunteered to help train. Though subsequent efforts as Miranda and The Gathering (both 2002) fell beneath the radar at the box office, Ricci was a hit with Ally McBeal fans when she appeared in a recurring role in the Fox show that same year. Audiences who caught Woody Allen's 2003 comedy Anything Else found her as charming as ever (despite her sometimes shrill characterization in the film). At festivals that year, Ricci could be seen in supporting roles in actor Adam Goldberg's dark drama I Love Your Work, as well as in director Patty Jenkins' Aileen Wuornos biopic Monster.She next appeared in the werewolf film Cursed, before moving on to Penelope with Reese Witherspoon, and Black Snake Moan with Samuel L. Jackson. In 2006 Ricci turned in a memorable guest appearance on the popular medical drama Grey's Anatomy as an EMT put in the difficult position of keeping a bomb stuck inside a patient from exploding. A role in the big-budget bomb Speed Racer quickly followed, but in 2011 Ricci returned to television in ABC's Pan Am -- an ambitious but shortlived period piece series following a crew of glamourous flight attendants as they tended to travelers on "The World's Most Experienced Airline." Once Pam Am was canceled, Ricci returned to films, with a supporting role in the Rob Pattinson drama Bel Ami and a voice role in 2013's sequel The Smurfs 2.

Trivia: S. Epatha Merkerson is a Tony-nominated and Obie-winning, African-American stage actress, but is best known for her portrayal of detective squad chief Lt. Anita Van Buren in the series Law and Order. Born and raised in Detroit as the youngest of five children, she was a fine arts graduate of Wayne State University and began her New York theater career in the late 1970s. Merkerson was nominated for a Tony award for Best Actress for her performance as Berniece in The Piano Lesson and won an Obie award in 1992 for her work in I'm Not Stupid. Her screen credits include Jacob's Ladder and Loose Cannons and, perhaps most visibly, her role as Joe Morton's terrified wife in James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Merkerson made her television debut as Reba, the Mail Lady on Pee Wee's Playhouse, and has appeared on The Cosby Show, among other series, but her most important single television appearance may have been in the first season Law and Order show "Mushrooms," in which she portrayed the grief-stricken mother of an 11-month-old boy who is shot accidentally. Her work was not only memorable to the audience during that key first season, but also to the producers, who later picked Merkerson for the role of the new detective squad chief in the series' fourth season--a role she continued to play for over ten years. Merkerson's talent on the small screen led to roles in numerous TV movies such as Breaking Through and A Mother's Prayer, as well as roles in such films as Radio and The Rising Place. Still, her monumental gifts in both presence and interpretation may not have truly been utilized until she took the part of a strong matriarch who runs a 1960's boarding house in HBO's mini series Lackawanna Blues. Her first leading role in almost twenty years on screen, her performance earned her an Emmy Award as well as a Golden Globe. After her triumphant turn in Lackawanna Blues she returned to the big-screen in Craig Brewer's follow-up to Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan co-starring Christina Ricci and Samuel L. Jackson.Over the coming years, Merkerson would appear in a number of films, like The Six Wives of Henry Lefay and Mother and Child.

Trivia: Notorious for spearheading the "teen pop revolution" of the mid to late '90s, alongside Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and others (and the inheritor of superstardom from male heartthrobs of earlier generations such as David Cassidy and Donny Osmond), Justin Timberlake attained a reputation as one of the pop music scene's most talked about celebs. He also became a source of constant tabloid fodder -- not only for his relationships with Spears, Cameron Diaz, and others, but for his allegedly unbridled private life.Timberlake launched his career as a youngster on the Mickey Mouse Club set, then made his name as a member of *NSYNC and as a soloist before branching out into films in the very early 2000s. As an actor, he began small, with a cameo appearance in the Ben Stiller-directed Zoolander -- an off-the-wall farce about a bunch of inane male models led by Stiller and Owen Wilson. While Timberlake's walk-on was a bit part at most, the exposure helped him expand his range and his repertoire, while the subject of the film coyly spoofed his public image. Small-screen appearances on The Osbournes and Saturday Night Live followed, but it wasn't until 2005 that the then 24-year-old Timberlake became a top-billed movie star. In that year's Edison Force, in which Timberlake co-starred with movie giants Kevin Spacey and Morgan Freeman, the former teen idol played Joshua Pollack, a straight-faced, straight-arrow journalist determined to take on a league of crooked rollers. The picture was released straight to DVD in late 2006 and earned tepid reviews.The singer upped his film appearances in 2006, with a plethora of first-run roles. He stuck to the crime thriller genre with his follow-up to Edison, Alpha Dog (2006). Directed by Nick Cassavetes (She's So Lovely, John Q.) from his own script, the picture stars Emile Hirsch (The Girl Next Door) as an über-powerful drug dealer who kidnaps a youngster to collect a ransom the boy's older brother's tab; Timberlake plays one of Hirsch's henchmen, who inducts the tyke into the wild side of life. In 2007's Black Snake Moan, Timberlake plays the boyfriend of Christina Ricci's nympho Rae -- a girl who becomes the hostage of an aging African-American blues musician (Samuel L. Jackson). Timberlake also appears in a supporting role in Southland Tales (2006, directed by Donnie Darko's Richard Kelly) and voices the rebellious prince Artie (a young King Arthur) alongside longtime paramour Diaz in 2007's Shrek the Third. In 2008 he played potent hockey player Jacque "Le Coq" Grande in Mike Myers comedy The Love Guru, but he scored the most high-profile success of his film career in 2010 when he played Napster founder Sean Parker in David Fincher's award-winning Facebook film The Social Network. He followed that up in 2011 with the romantic comedy Friends With Benefits and the sci-fi film In Time. The next year he appeared in the Coen brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis.

Trivia: Started her acting career as an actress at a young age participating in Easter and Christmas pageants.Was part of the choir when she was young.Performed her first solo perfomance while she was a teenager, and also in several churches.Earned a scholarship to study in music and theater in Lambuth University and pursue her career as a professional actress.Made her debut as an actress in Broadway shortly after graduating college.

Trivia: Kim Richards began her acting career as a child, appearing on 70's TV shows like Nanny and the Professor, Here We Go Again, and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, as well as movies like The Car and Escape to Witch Mountain. Richards retired from acting in the early 80's, but returned to the business as an adult, appearing in Black Snake Moan and a remake of her childhood hit, Race to Witch Mountain.

Trivia: Studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute Theatre in New York. Appeared in The Petrified Forest at the Pantheon Theatre in 2001. Was a recurring character during the second season of Once Upon a Time before being promoted to a series regular for the third season.

Trivia: After a stint at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, writer and director Craig Brewer moved back to Memphis, where he'd grown up. When his father passed away a short time later, the young filmmaker dealt with his grief by using his inheritance to finance his first feature film, The Poor and the Hungry, about a car thief who falls in love with one of his victims. He entered the project into competition at a number of film festivals in 2000, and was eventually purchased by the Independent Film Channel. For his next movie, Brewer perfected a script inspired by his own struggle to succeed in his chosen art form. He called it Hustle & Flow, and it piqued the interest of producer John Singleton, who signed on to produce the film. Actor Terrence Howard played the lead role of Djay, a hustler with a gift for words and music that he's never taken further than the street corner. After hearing that a platinum-selling rapper will be visiting town, Djay decides to invest in the hope of leaving the street life, despite the pervasive threat of disappointment that has kept him, and everyone else who shares his bleak, urban life, from trying. The tale of hope and redemption was praised by critics and garnered several awards and nominations, including an Oscar in the category of Best Original Song for the hip-hop group Three 6 Mafia, some of whom had led Brewer through the ghetto streets of Memphis to help him research for the film. For his next project, Brewer would direct Christina Ricci, Samuel L. Jackson, S. Epatha Merkerson, and Justin Timberlake for another film he'd penned called Black Snake Moan, the story of a nymphomaniac looking to be "cured" of her problem with the help of an older bluesman.

Trivia: Becoming, at the age of 24, the youngest individual and the first African American ever to be nominated for a Best Director Academy Award, John Singleton made movie history with Boyz 'N the Hood, his astonishing 1991 directorial debut. An intensely personal portrait of life and death in South Central L.A. that was inspired by the director's own experiences, the film earned Singleton comparisons to past wunderkind Orson Welles and heralded him as one of Hollywood's most important new directors.Born January 6, 1968, in the South Central L.A. neighborhood he would later immortalize on celluloid, Singleton was the son of a mortgage broker father and a company sales executive mother. Raised jointly by his divorced parents, he went on to attend the University of Southern California, where he majored in film writing. While a student at U.S.C., Singleton won a number of writing awards that led to a deal with the Creative Artists Agency during his sophomore year. At the age of 23, he wrote and directed Boyz 'N the Hood, a coming-of-age drama that centered on an intelligent 17-year-old's (Cuba Gooding Jr.) efforts to make it out of his neighborhood alive. Featuring a strong cast that included Gooding Jr., Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, and Laurence Fishburne, and deft direction that humanized the violence of South Central L.A. rather than sensationalized it, the film was a major critical and commercial triumph. One of the highest-grossing films in history to have been directed by an African American, Boyz 'n the Hood also made history with its twin Best Screenplay and Best Director Oscar nominations for its young writer/director. In addition to those nominations, Singleton was also honored with the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best First-Time Director.Singleton followed Boyz 'N the Hood with Poetic Justice in 1993. Starring Janet Jackson as its heroine, a South Central L.A. hairdresser coping with the shooting death of her boyfriend, the film boasted magnetic performances from its entire cast, which also included rapper Tupac Shakur as Jackson's love interest. Although it was profitable, Poetic Justice failed to find favor with most critics, some of whom noted that it lacked the power and urgency of Singleton's previous effort. The director's subsequent project, Higher Learning (1995), also fared rather poorly among critics. A drama about racial, gender, and political conflict on a college campus, it benefited from the performances of its ensemble cast, which included Omar Epps, Laurence Fishburne, Ice Cube, and Kristy Swanson, but was weighed down by the presence of one too many one-dimensional characters that existed to highlight the issues Singleton was attempting to explore. Ironically, it was Singleton's most critically appreciated effort since Boyz 'N the Hood that was virtually ignored by audiences. Rosewood, a powerful drama based on the real-life 1923 massacre and destruction of an African-American town in Florida by whites from a neighboring community, was widely considered Singleton's strongest film since his directorial debut. A dense and ultimately depressing multi-character epic fueled by the presence of such talented actors as Ving Rhames, John Voight, and Don Cheadle, the film did not attempt to make a happy ending out of its stark material, which may have accounted for its inability to win a large audience.In 2000, Singleton returned with his biggest project to date, a glossy, expensive remake of Shaft. Starring Samuel L. Jackson as its titular, Armani-clad hero, the nephew of original Shaft Richard Roundtree (who had a cameo in the new film), the film was an exercise in flamboyant, unapologetic political incorrectness, featuring easily distinguishable bad guys and good guys and meaty helpings of bad-ass attitude. Shaft earned decidedly mixed reviews but was a summer audience pleaser, putting its director back on the map. Finding his way back into familiar territory, Singleton's next film, Baby Boy (2001), was constructed as a loose follow up to Boyz 'N the Hood. Starring vocalist/model Tyrese Gibson and Omar Gooding, the film marked a notable return to the sensative issues that Singleton had touched upon in the past after the flashily entertaining but ultimately inconsequencial departure of Shaft. Singleton made a rare appearance in front of the camera for BAADASSSSS! before helming the hit sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious. He produced {Craig Brewer's Oscar winning Hustle & Flow, a film that ended up overshadowing his directorial effort form that same year, Four Brothers. He maintained his working relationship with Brewer by producing his Hustle & Flow follow-up Black Snake Moan. In 2010 he made a documentary about shamed Olympian Marion Jones, and the next year he helmed the Taylor Lautner action vehicle Abduction