Trivia: One who graduated from obscure actor to Hollywood icon in just a few years, Matt Damon became an instant sensation when he co-wrote and starred in Good Will Hunting with longtime buddy and collaborator Ben Affleck. A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was born on October 8, 1970, Damon grew up in prosperous surroundings with his tax preparer father, college professor mother, and older brother. At the age of ten, he befriended Affleck, a boy two years his junior who lived down the street. Educated at Cambridge's Rindge and Latin School, Damon landed his first role in a Hollywood production before the age of 18, with a one-scene turn in Mystic Pizza (1988). Not long after, Damon gained acceptance to Harvard University, where he studied for three years before dropping out to pursue his acting career. During his time there, he had to write a screenplay for an English class, that served as the genesis of Good Will Hunting. Arriving in Hollywood, Damon scored his first big break with a plum role in School Ties opposite Affleck. As the film was a relative flop, Damon's substantial role failed to win him notice, and he was back to laboring in obscurity. It was around this time, fed up with his Hollywood struggles, that Damon contacted Affleck, and the two finished writing the former's Harvard screenplay and began trying to get it made into a film. It was eventually picked up by Miramax, with Gus Van Sant slated to direct and Robin Williams secured in a major role, opposite Damon as the lead. Before Good Will Hunting was released in late 1997, Damon won some measure of recognition for his role as a drug-addicted soldier in Courage Under Fire; various industry observers praised his performance and his dedication to the part, for which he lost forty pounds and suffered resulting health problems. Any praise Damon may have received, however, was overshadowed the following year by the accolades he garnered for Good Will Hunting. His Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay win alongside Damon, and strong performance in the film virtually guaranteed industry adulation and steady employment, a development that became readily apparent the following year with lead roles in two major films. The first, John Dahl's Rounders, cast Damon as a card shark with a serious gambling addiction, who risks his own personal safety when he becomes entangled with a reckless loser buddy (Edward Norton). Damon's second film in 1998, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, brought him even greater recognition. As Ryan's title character, Damon headlined an all-star line-up and received part of the lavish praise heaped on the film and its strong ensemble cast. The following year, Damon signed for leads in two more highly anticipated films, Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley and Kevin Smith's Dogma. The former cast the actor against type as the title character, a psychotic bisexual murderer, with a supporting cast that included Cate Blanchett, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Dogma also allowed Damon to cut against the grain of his nice-guy persona by casting him as a fallen angel. One of the year's more controversial films, the religious comedy reunited him with Affleck, as well as Smith, who had cast Damon in a bit role in his 1997 film, Chasing Amy. Damon next delivered noteworthy performances in a pair of low-grossing, low-key dramas, The Legend of Bagger Vance and All the Pretty Horses (both 2000), before appearing in director Steven Soderbergh's blockbuster remake of the Rat Pack classic Ocean's Eleven the following year. 2002 found the actor vacillating between earnest indie projects and major Hollywood releases. Behind the camera, Damon joined forces with filmmaker Chris Smith for the Miramax-sponsored Project Greenlight, a screenplay sweepstakes that gave the winner the opportunity to make a feature film and have the process recorded for all to see on an HBO reality series of the same name. Toward the end of 2001, Damon scored a box office triumph with director Doug Liman's jet-setting espionage thriller The Bourne Identity. With this effort, Damon proved once again that he could open a film with just as much star power as his best friend and colleague. Better yet, Bourne reinforced Damon's standings with the critics, who found his performance understated and believable. The press responded less favorably, however, to Damon's reunion project with Van Sant, the experimental arthouse drama Gerry (2003). Also in 2003, Damon starred opposite Greg Kinnear in the Farrelly Brothers' broad comedy Stuck On You, as the shy half of a set of conjoined twins.In 2004, Damon reprised the role of Jason Bourne in The Bourne Supremacy. As the actor's biggest leading-man success to date, it reinforced Damon's continued clout with audiences. Staying on the high-powered sequel bandwagon, he reunited with Brad Pitt and George Clooney for the big-budget neo-rat pack sequel Ocean's Twelve later that year. 2005 was somewhat lower-key for the actor, as he toplined Terry Gilliam's disappointing The Brothers Grimm and joined the sprawling ensemble of Syriana. After working seemingly non-stop for a few years, Damon claimed only a call from Martin Scorsese would get him to give up his resolve to take some time off. Sure enough, that call came. The Departed, an American remake of the Hong Kong mob-mole thriller Infernal Affairs, co-starred Jack Nicholson and Leonardo DiCaprio. Playing the squirmy, opportunistic cop to DiCaprio's moral, tormented mobster, Damon underplayed his part to perfection while holding his own opposite his two co-stars. Damon then took the lead role in the Robert De Niro-directed CIA drama The Good Shepherd. In 2007, the actor once again returned to box office franchises for the sequels Ocean's Thirteen and The Bourne Ultimatum, the latter of which netted him -- by far -- the largest opening-weekend take of his career to that point. 2009 was another great year for the hard-working star. His turn as the unstable federal informant in Steven Soderbergh's wicked comedy The Informant! earned him rave reviews, and his supporting work in Clint Eastwood's Invicus, as the leader of the South African rugby team, earned Damon nominations from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy. In 2010 he reteamed with Eastwood for the supernatural drama Hereafter, and continued working with the best filmmakers of his time by landing a supporting role in the Coen brothers remake of True Grit. Meanwhile, Damon tried his hand at small screen work with a memorable recurring role as Carol, an airline pilot and sometime boyfriend of Liz Lemon, on the NBC situation comedy 30 Rock and a lauded turn opposite Michael Douglas' Liberace in the TV movie Behind the Candelabra. Damon had long since established himself as an A-list movie star, however, and would continue to star in big screen projects for years to come, including notable titles like Contagion, The Adjustment Bureau, and We Bought a Zoo. Damon next turned in performances in three films set in outer space: Neill Blomkamp's Elysium (2013), a supporting role in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (2014) and an Oscar-nominated spin in Ridley Scott's The Martian (2015).

Trivia: Since 1994, audiences have watched as Claire Danes has matured from awkward teen to one of the most popular actresses of her generation. Whether portraying the angst-ridden Angela Chase on My So-Called Life or trailer park trash in Oliver Stone's U-Turn, Danes has consistently displayed an uncommon maturity and insight in her performances that belies her relative inexperience. Her ability has won over countless critics and fans and has allowed her the opportunity to work with luminaries ranging from Jeanne Moreau to Jodie Foster and Francis Ford Coppola. Claire Catherine Danes was born April 12, 1979 in New York City and began acting shortly thereafter. With the support of her artistically-inclined parents (a painter mother and photographer father), Danes enrolled in an acting class at the Lee Strasberg Studio when she was nine years old. After attending the Professional Performing Arts School for the sixth and seventh grade, she went to Los Angeles in the hopes of being cast in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (Danes had previously appeared in an episode of Law and Order and in Dreams of Love, an obscure film produced by Milos Forman). While she was waiting for Spielberg's decision, serendipity struck in the form of the makers of a new TV show called My So-Called Life, who wanted Danes to star in their production. Danes agreed to do the show after turning down the role that Spielberg had decided to give her. Always someone interested in learning, Danes rejected Spielberg's offer because she wouldn't be able to receive schooling in Poland, where the movie was to be filmed.Premiering in 1994, My So-Called Life lasted only a couple of seasons, but garnered critical praise and a cult following during its brief lifetime. Moreover, it made Danes, if not a star, then a star in the making. Hollywood opened its bleary eyes and took notice, and soon Danes was being touted as the Next Big Thing. During the run of My So-Called Life, Danes starred as the saintly, sickly Beth in Gillian Armstrong's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women (1994). The film was a success, and allowed Danes to perform in the company of such well-respected actors as Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, and Gabriel Byrne (who would later play her father in Polish Wedding). Danes followed up Little Women with How to Make an American Quilt (1995), which, despite a stellar cast including Anne Bancroft, Alfre Woodard, and the great Jean Simmons, failed to make much of a critical or popular impression. Danes' next project, Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays, met with a similar fate, but afforded Danes the chance to work with Foster, who became a sort of mentor to the young actress.After making two more films, which continued Danes' pattern of starring in movies that behaved badly at the box office despite having bankable actors (Jeanne Moreau in the straight-to-video I Love You, I Love You Not (1996) and Michelle Pfeiffer in To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday (1996)), Danes hit it big with Baz Luhrmann's wildly popular William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996). Her portrayal of Juliet broke the hearts and opened the tear ducts of many, while her pairing with Hot Young Thing Leonardo DiCaprio undoubtedly caused mass swooning incidents in theatres the world over. The critical and commercial success of the film meant that Danes was soon in great demand, as evidenced by the people she was able to work with over the next couple of years. After Romeo + Juliet, Danes worked with Oliver Stone on the lunatics-in-a-small-desert-town picture U-Turn (1997), a film that caused consternation among critics and at the box office. Danes' turn as Joaquin Phoenix's trashy girlfriend represented a departure from her previous, more innocent roles, something that she embellished upon in both Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker, where she played Andrew Shue's abused wife, and A Polish Wedding (1998), in which she portrayed the rebellious Hala. Neither movie was particularly successful, an unfortunate bit of luck that continued with Danes' next two efforts, Les Miserables (1998) and The Mod Squad (1998), the latter of which, despite the high anticipation surrounding its release, was panned by critics who complained it looked more like a Diesel ad than a movie, and largely ignored by the public.Through it all, Danes has remained in the media spotlight, appearing on countless magazine covers and as the object of speculation for many. Aside from the bad publicity surrounding remarks she made about the Phillipines during the making of Brokedown Palace (1999), and her subsequent banning from that country, she has continued to attract positive attention for everything from her enrollment at Yale University in 1998 to her boyfriends, who include the Australian rocker Ben Lee.Despite a series of misses during the late 90's, Danes came back with several small but critically acclaimed roles. In Igby Goes Down (2002), she played the confused love interest of the title character, starred alongside Sean Penn in director Thomas Vinterburg's It's All About Love (2002), and took part in the Academy-Award winning The Hours (2002). While her performance in The Rage at Placid Lake (a 2003 Australian production featuring her boyfriend Ben Lee) went largely unnoticed, mainstream audiences got their chance to see Danes butting heads on screen with Arnold Schwarzenegger and newcomer Nick Stahl in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. In 2005, Danes joined Steve Martin in the adaptation of Martin's bestselling novella, Shopgirl. That same year, she could be seen as Sarah Jessica Parker's sister in the dysfunctional-family comedy The Family Stone. Dane's career continued to build momentum in 2007, when she appeared in an eclectic trio of projects: the romantic drama Evening, the adventure fantasy Stardust, and the taut thriller The Flock, which cast her as the law-enforcement protege of a veteran played by Richard Gere.In 2009 she played a young woman looking to make it in showbiz by working for the greatest talent of his generation in Richard Linklater's Me & Orson Welles. She followed that up playing the lead in the made-for-cable biopic Temple Grandin, a project that earned her a Golden Globe and an Emmy. She took the most prominent role in the new Showtime series Homeland, playing a law-enforcement officer with personal problems, and again won a Golden Globe for her work in that show's initial season.

Trivia: Perhaps no Hollywood actor continually stirs up more of a gleeful admixture of feelings in his viewers than Danny DeVito. Singlehandedly portraying characters with mile-long, obnoxious jerk streaks that are nonetheless somehow loveable, DeVito -- with his diminutive stature, balding head, and broad Jersey accent -- made an art form out of playing endearingly loathsome little men.Born November 17, 1944, in Neptune, NJ, Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. survived a Catholic school upbringing and started his career from the ground up, laboring as a cosmetician in his sister's beauty parlor. Working under the name "Mr. Danny," DeVito decided to enter New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts for the purpose of acquiring additional makeup expertise. However, he soon discovered his true theatrical calling and made his screen debut with a small part in the 1968 drama Dreams of Glass. After a few discouraging experiences within the film industry, DeVito decided to concentrate on stage work. During this time, he met actress Rhea Perlman, whom he later married in 1982. In 1972, the actor made his way back into films with a role in Lady Liberty, a comedy starring Sophia Loren. His first notable film part came three years later, when he reprised his stage role of Martini, a sweet-natured mental patient, in Milos Forman's screen version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Produced by DeVito's old friend Michael Douglas and co-scripted by Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman, the film won wide acclaim and nine Oscar nominations, eventually gleaning five statuettes (including Best Picture). Despite the adulation surrounding the film, DeVito's screen career remained lackluster, but he skyrocketed to fame three years later with his role as the obnoxious dispatcher Louie on the long-running television sitcom Taxi. From there, DeVito's career swung upward and he spent the next decade playing similarly repugnant characters with enormous success. He reunited with Douglas for Romancing the Stone (1984) and its 1985 sequel, Jewel of the Nile, teamed up with co-star Joe Piscopo and director Brian De Palma (as a scam artist on the run) in Wise Guys (1986), and signed with Disney's R-rated offshoot, Touchstone, for two comedies, the 1986 Ruthless People, and the 1987 Barry Levinson-directed Tin Men.Throw Momma from the Train (1987) marked DeVito's premier directorial outing. A madcap farce directed from a script by Benson and Soap scribe Stu Silver, Momma cast DeVito as Owen, a dim-bulb student living under the thumb of his loudmouthed mother, who is enrolled in a writing course taught by failing novelist Larry Donner (Billy Crystal). Stumbling into a repertory screening of Strangers on a Train one night, Owen has the not-so-bright idea of emulating the film, by bumping off Larry's conniving ex-wife in exchange for having Larry rub out his momma -- without asking Larry first.Throw Momma from the Train opened during the Christmas season of December 1987 and received mixed reviews. The picture nonetheless became a massive hit, grossing upwards of 57 million dollars, and thus paving the way for future DeVito-directed efforts. The War of the Roses (1989) recast DeVito with his Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile co-stars, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, but could not have been any more different in terms of theme, content, tone, or intended audience. Co-adapted by Warren Adler and Michael Leeson (from Adler's novel), this acerbic, black-as-coal comedy tells the story of Oliver and Barbara Rose, a seemingly happy and well-adjusted married couple whose nuptials descend into a violent hell when Barbara announces that she wants a divorce -- and Oliver refuses to give her one. DeVito plays the cherubic lawyer who relays their story to another client, and famously reflects, "If love is blind, then marriage must be like having a stroke." The picture instantly grossed dollar one, garnered legions of fans, and delighted critics across the board.Ida Random produced Momma, and DeVito's Taxi collaborator, James L. Brooks, produced War, but by the early '90s, DeVito gained additional autonomy by branching out into production duties himself, with the establishment of his own Jersey Films. Some of Jersey's more successful endeavors were 1994's Pulp Fiction (on which DeVito served as executive producer), Reality Bites (1994), Get Shorty (1995), Gattaca (1997), Out of Sight (1998), and Living Out Loud (1998). In the meantime, DeVito continued to act in a number of movies throughout the late '80s and '90s, his most notable being Twins (1988, in which he played the "twin" of Arnold Schwarzenegger), the disappointing Jack the Bear (1993), the delightful Other People's Money (1991, for which he took on the role of corporate monster Larry the Liquidator), Barry Sonnenfeld's Get Shorty, the screen adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda (1996, which he also directed and produced), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Living Out Loud. For the last of these DeVito won particular acclaim, impressing critics with his touching, sympathetic portrayal of a lonely elevator operator. In 1999, he added to his already impressive resumé with a role in Milos Forman's biopic of Taxi co-star Andy Kaufman, Man on the Moon, and a supporting turn in Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides.Despite solid performances in a series of recent high-profile hits and decades of big-screen success, the millennial turnover found DeVito's star somewhat clouded as such efforts as Screwed (2000), What's the Worst That Could Happen? (2001), Death to Smoochy (2002), and Duplex (2003) failed to live up to box-office potential. DeVito fared only slightly better as producer of the critically acclaimed 2003 television series Karen Sisco and the ugly Get Shorty sequel, Be Cool. He also acted as executive producer for the acclaimed Zach Braff dramedy Garden State and could be spotted in director Tim Burton's imaginative fable Big Fish. As 2005 rolled around, audiences could spot DeVito in films such as The OH in Ohio, as well as on television as the actor found himself accepting a role in the quirky, taboo-busting series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.During 2006, DeVito balanced a full plate of work, temporarily retiring from the director's chair, but juggling small roles in no less than three A-list features. These included Brad Silberling's 10 Items or Less, a drama about the unlikely friendship that evolves between a has-been Hollywood star (Morgan Freeman) and a supermarket checkout clerk (Paz Vega); Jake Paltrow's directorial debut, The Good Night, a slice-of-life dramedy starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Penélope Cruz; and the holiday comedy Deck the Halls. The latter starred DeVito and Matthew Broderick as neighbors who go to "war" with competing decorations at Christmastime to see who can be the first to make his house visible from space. The film co-starred Kristin Davis and Kristin Chenoweth. Meanwhile, Jersey Films geared up to produce the 2007 Freedom Writers, directed by Richard LaGravenese -- a kind of retread of Stand and Deliver and Dangerous Minds, with Hilary Swank as a teacher determined to break through to her difficult students. Also in 2007, DeVito starred in Randall Miller's violent black comedy Nobel Son, DeVito joined longtime friend and collaborator Michael Douglas with a supporting role in the 2009 Solitary Man, then in 2012 voiced Dr. Seuss's title character in the classic animated fable The Lorax. DeVito and Perlman have three children.

Trivia: The son of a Czech-American golf pro, Jon Voight was active in student theatricals in high school and at Catholic University. In 1960 he began studying privately with Neighborhood Playhouse mentor Sanford Meisner, and made his off-Broadway debut that same year in O Oysters, receiving a daunting review which opined that he could "neither walk nor talk." Fortunately, Voight persevered, and in 1961 took over the role of "singing Nazi" Rolf in the Broadway hit The Sound of Music (his Liesl was Laurie Peters, who became his first wife).Blessed with handsome, Nordic features, Voight kept busy as a supporting player on such TV series as Gunsmoke, Coronet Blue, and NYPD, and in 1966 spent a season with the California National Shakespeare Festival. The following year, he won a Theatre World Award for his stage performance in That Summer, That Fall. Thus, by the time he became an "overnight" star in the role of wide-eyed hustler Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy (1969), he had nearly a decade's worth of experience under his belt. The success of Midnight Cowboy, which earned Voight an Oscar nomination, prompted a fast-buck distributor to ship out a double feature of two never-released mid-'60s films: Fearless Frank, filmed in 1965, starred Voight as a reluctant superhero, while Madigan's Millions was a 1968 turkey featuring Voight's Cowboy co-star (and longtime friend) Dustin Hoffman.Entering the 1970s with dozens of producers clamoring for his services, Voight refused to accept roles that banked merely on his youth and good looks. Instead, he selected such challenging assignments as crack-brained Army officer Milo Minderbinder in Catch 22 (1970), a political activist known only as "A" in The Revolutionary (also 1970), reluctant rugged individualist Ed Gentry in Deliverance (1972), and real-life teacher/novelist Pat Conroy in Conrack (1974). In 1978, he won both the Oscar and the Cannes Film Festival award for his portrayal of paraplegic Vietnam veteran Luke Martin in Hal Ashby's Coming Home. The following year, he earned additional acclaim for his work in the remake of The Champ.Devoting increasing amounts of time to his various sociopolitical causes in the 1980s and 1990s, Voight found it more and more difficult to fit film roles into his busy schedule. A reunion project with Ashby, on the godawful gambling comedy Lookin' to Get Out (produced 1980, released 1982), failed dismally, with many reviewers complaining about Voight's terrible, overmodulated performance, and the paper-thin script, which the actor himself wrote. Voight weathered the storm, however, and enjoyed box-office success as star of the 1983 weeper Table for Five. He also picked up another Oscar nomination for Andrei Konchalovsky's existential thriller Runaway Train (1985), and acted in such socially-conscious TV movies as Chernobyl: The Final Warning (1991) and The Last of His Tribe (1992). He also produced Table for Five and scripted 1990's Eternity. Voight kept busy for the remainder of the decade, appearing in such films as Michael Mann's Heat (1995), Mission: Impossible (1996), and The General, a 1998 collaboration with Deliverance director John Boorman, for which Voight won acclaim in his role as an Irish police inspector. During the same period of time, a bearded Voight also essayed a wild one-episode cameo on Seinfeld - as himself - with a scene that required him to bite the hand of Cosmo Kramer from a parked vehicle. In 1999, Voight gained an introduction to a new generation of fans, thanks to his role as James Van Der Beek's megalomaniacal football coach in the hit Varsity Blues, later appearing in a handful of other films before teaming onscreen with daughter Angelina Jolie for Tomb Raider in 2001. After essaying President Roosevelt later that same year in Pearl Harbor, Voight went for laughs in Ben Stiller's male-model comedy Zoolander, though his most pronounced role of 2001 would come in his Oscar nominated performance as iconic newsman Howard Cosell in director Michael Mann's Mohammad Ali biopic, Ali.Taken collectively, all of Voight's aformentioned roles during the mid-late 1990s demonstrated a massive rebound, from the gifted lead of '70s American classics to a character actor adept at smaller and more idiosyncratic character roles in A-list Hollywood fare ( the very same transition, for instance, that Burt Reynolds was wrongly predicted to be making when he signed to do Breaking In back in 1989). To put it another way: though Voight rarely received first billing by this point, his volume of work per se soared high above that of his most active years during the '70s. The parts grew progressively more interesting as well; Voight was particularly memorable, for instance, in the Disney comedy-fantasy Holes, as Mr. Sir, the cruel, sadistic right-hand-man to camp counselor Sigourney Weaver, who forces packs of young boys to dig enormous desert pits beneath the blazing sun for a mysterious reason. Voight then signed for a series of parts under the aegis of longtime-fan Jerry Bruckheimer, including the first two National Treasure installments (as John Patrick Henry) and - on a higher-profiled note - the audience-rouser Glory Road (2005), about one of the first all-black basketball teams in the U.S.; in that picture, Voight plays Adolph Rupp, the infamous University of Kentucky coach (nicknamed 'Baron of the Bluegrass') with an all-white team vying against the competitors at the center of the story.In 2007, Voight tackled roles in two very different high-profile films: he played one of the key characters in Michael Bay's live-action extravaganza Transformers, and portrayed a Mormon bishop who perishes in a Brigham Young-instigated massacre, in the period drama September Dawn, directed by Christopher Cain (Young Guns. He appeared in 24: Redemption, and became a part of that show's regular cast for its seventh season. Voight is the father of Angelina Jolie, and has often been the subject of tabloid coverage because of their occasionally fraught public bickering.

Trivia: University of Tulsa graduate Mary Kay Place hightailed it to Hollywood in hopes of becoming a writer and performer of comedy material. She was hired for 1970s The Tim Conway Comedy Hour as a production assistant to both star Conway and producer Norman Lear. It was Conway who gave her her first on-camera break, while Lear saw to it that Place received her first writing credit on his subsequent All in the Family. Lear displayed her to even better advantage in the role of senseless, tactless, and eminently lovable would-be C&W star Loretta Haggers on the satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976-1977). She won an Emmy for her work as Loretta, and was later nominated for a Grammy for her spin-off musical album, Tonight! At the Capri Lounge...Loretta Haggers. She wrote scripts for such TV sitcoms as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Phyllis, and MASH, usually in collaboration with her professional partner (and future Designing Women producer), Linda Bloodworth. In films since 1976's Bound for Glory, Place has only occasionally been given a chance to shine on the big screen; the best of her movie roles include the washout nightclub singer who briefly replaces Liza Minnelli in New York, New York (1976), and the reconstituted "child of the '60s" who eagerly volunteers for surrogate motherhood in The Big Chill (1983). Place then continued to work on a variety of projects throughout the 80's and 90's, playing family friend Camille Chersky on the tragically-cancelled dramatic series My So-Called Life, and directing episodes of TV shows like Friends and Arli$$. With the new millennium, Place turned once again towards the big screen, enjoying appearances in films like Being John Malkovich and Girl, Interrupted, but she continued to work in TV as well, with a recurring role on the Showtime series Big Love -- which earned her an Ammy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress on a Drama Series in 2010.

Trivia: Mickey Rourke originally aspired to careers as a pro baseball player and - later - a championship boxer, but did a 180 away from the ring and cut his chops as an actor instead. Rourke launched his career with small roles in 1941 (1979) and Heaven's Gate (1981) before gaining broader notice as a pyro expert in Body Heat (1981) and one of the raunchier leads in Barry Levinson's Diner (1982). He followed with admirable work in Rumble Fish (1983) and The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), and gave a bravura performance as fanatically determined police captain Stanley White in Year of the Dragon (1985). When the film was slammed by critics, Rourke defended director Michael Cimino and snubbed all interview requests. He immediately gained a reputation as a perfectionist, agreeing only to work with directors and on projects that met with his high standards. His 1987 performances in Angel Heart, A Prayer for the Dying, and Barfly attest to this, but starring roles in Adrian Lyne's infamous 9 1/2 Weeks (1986) and Zalman King's Wild Orchid (1990) gave him a "Eurotrash" taint, only enhanced by his hot temper and maverick nature. These qualities, however, while career poison in the U.S., did nothing to hurt Rourke's reputation in France, where filmgoers adored him.From the late '80s through the early '90s, the career of this disillusioned actor with the potential of Robert De Niro spiraled down, down, down, with his co-starring appearance in Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991) just one nadir. He wrote, produced, and starred in Homeboy (1988), a film about a near brain-dead prize fighter. It skipped theatrical release and went straight to home video. The masochistic connection between this film and Rourke's subsequent resumption of his boxing career (from 1991-1994) was undeniable, though he continued to appear sporadically in small films and supporting roles. In 1997, Rourke reprised his role as an s&m fetishist in Another 9 1/2 Weeks, a virtual remake of the original, only sans the redeeming presence of Kim Basinger. Although Rourke's career consisted primarily of direct-to-video titles for several years, he had enough friends and respect among his contemporaries that he hung on to his rebound potential, and his small role in Francis Ford Coppola's 1997 adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker marked something of a comeback. The following year, Vincent Gallo, an unapologetic fan of Rourke's, cast him as the antagonist in Gallo's directorial debut, Buffalo '66; the long-dormant Terrence Malick also cast Rourke in his critically-worshipped Thin Red Line (1998), but Malick excised the actor's scenes from the final cut, probably to reduce the film's whopping length. Rourke showed flashes of his former brilliance in Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory (2000), joined the cast of the Sly Stallone-headlined Get Carter remake that same year, and gave an impressive supporting performance in Sean Penn's police procedural-cum-harrowing study of obsession, The Pledge (2001). Rourke also signed on with director Robert Rodriguez for the third of that helmer's Mariachi films, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, in 2003. As a harbinger of things to come, a powerful creative bond formed between the weathered, iconic Rourke and the tireless director on the Mexico set. In 2005 the duo again teamed for Rodriguez's and Frank Miller's eagerly anticipated big screen adaptation of Miller's Sin City comics. Cast as lovelorn brute Marv, Rourke delivered an impressive performance as an imposing beast of a fellow bent on avenging the death of an angelic prostitute in this stylish noir comic book come to life, which gave him cult status among a new generation of fans. In 2004, Rourke delivered a memorable supporting performance in Tony Scott's Man on Fire alongside Denzel Washington; it marked the first film in a two-picture creative partnership between Scott and Rourke, the second half of which came to fruition with 2005's Domino.2006 saw Rourke appearing in Stormbreaker (co-starring Bill Nighy and Ewan McGregor) with Rourke as the nasty villain opposite Alex Pettyfer's "teen spy" Alex Ryder. Killshot, with Rourke as the hitman who attempts to rub out married Federal Witnesses Diane Lane and Thomas Jane, ended up being sitting on the studio's shelf for nearly three years. The film marked Rourke's first collaboration with Lane since Francis Coppola's critically-championed 1983 cult film Rumble Fish. With the release of 2008's The Wrestler, Rourke pulled off one of the most remarkable career comeback stories of the era. His role as the aging professional grappler Randy "The Ram" earned him the strongest reviews he'd received in over two decades, and secured him his first acting nomination from the Academy as well as a nod from Screen Actors Guild, and he took home the Golden Globe for best actor in a drama. Rourke would enjoy sustained success in the years to follow, appearing in films like Iron Man 2, The Expendables, and Immortals.Rourke was married to Debra Feuer from 1981-89 and Wild Orchid co-star Carre Otis from 1992-1998. Both marriages ended in divorce.

Trivia: Fans of the science fiction television series Quantum Leap will know supporting and character actor Dean Stockwell as the scene-stealing, cigar chomping, dry-witted, and cryptic hologram Al. But to view him only in that role is to see one part of a multi-faceted career that began when Stockwell was seven years old.Actually, his ties with show business stretch back to his birth for both of his parents were noted Broadway performers Harry Stockwell and Nina Olivette. His father also provided the singing voice of the prince in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1931). Stockwell was born in North Hollywood and started out on Broadway in The Innocent Voyage (1943) at age seven. Curly haired and beautiful with a natural acting style that never descended into cloying cuteness, he made his screen debut after contracting with MGM at age nine in Anchors Aweigh (1945) and continued on to play sensitive boys in such memorable outings as The Mighty McGurk (1946), The Boy With Green Hair (1948), and The Secret Garden (1949). He would continue appearing in such films through 1951 when he went into the first of several "retirements" from films. When Stockwell resurfaced five years later it was as a brooding and very handsome 20-year-old who specialized in playing introverts and sensitive souls in roles ranging from a wild, young cowboy in Gun for a Coward (1957) to a murderous homosexual in Compulsion (1958) to an aspiring artist who cannot escape the influence of his domineering mother in Sons and Lovers (1960). Stockwell topped off this phase of his career portraying Eugene O'Neill in Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962). Stockwell would spend the next three years as a hippie and when he again renewed his career it was in such very '60s efforts as Psych-Out (1968) and the spooky and weird adaptation of a Lovecraft story, The Dunwich Horror. During this period, Stockwell also started appearing in television movies such as The Failing of Raymond (1971). In the mid-'70s, the former flower child became a real-estate broker and his acting career became sporadic until the mid-'80s when he began playing character roles. It was in this area, especially in regard to comic characters, that Stockwell has had his greatest success. Though he claims it was not intentional, Stockwell has come to be almost typecast as the king of quirk, playing a wide variety of eccentrics and outcasts. One of his most famous '80s roles was that of the effeminate and rutlhess sleaze, Ben, in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986). Stockwell had previously worked with Lynch in Dune and says that when the director gave him the script for Velvet, his character was not specifically mapped out, leaving Stockwell to portray Ben in any way he felt appropriate. The actor's intuition has proven to be one of his greatest tools and helped create one of modern Hollywood's most creepy-crawly villains. Whenever possible, Stockwell prefers working by instinct and actively avoids over-rehearsing his parts. His career really picked up after he landed the part of Al in Quantum Leap. Since the show's demise, Stockwell has continued to appear on screen, starring on series like Battlestar Galactica.

Trivia: After apprenticing at the Wharf Theater in Provincetown, MA, she debuted on Broadway in 1938 as the lead's understudy in Our Town; the following year her performance in the ingénue part in Life With Father caught film mogul Samuel Goldwyn's attention, and he signed her to a screen contract. Wright debuted onscreen in The Little Foxes (1941), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. The following year she was nominated in both the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories for her third and fourth films, The Pride of the Yankees and Mrs. Miniver, respectively; she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She remained busy onscreen through 1959, after which she appeared in only a handful of films during the next three decades. From 1942 to 1952, she was married to novelist and screenwriter Niven Busch; later she married, divorced, and remarried playwright Robert Anderson. In the '70s, she appeared in TV dramas. Her later stage work included Mary, Mary (1962) and the Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman (1975).

Trivia: Although she garnered some attention at the outset of her Hollywood career, Virginia Madsen found her star eclipsed in the 1990s by her older brother Michael's jolting, thuggish performances for director Quentin Tarantino. After landing a plum role in the acclaimed 2004 indie Sideways, however, Madsen was showered with the kind of praise she'd been denied for nearly two decades in the business.A native of the Chicago suburbs and the daughter of a PBS documentarian, Madsen learned her trade in city theater productions and summer performance camps. She made her way to Hollywood in the early '80s with her then-fiancé/fellow performer Billy Campbell. Making an inauspicious debut at the age of 19 as Andrew McCarthy's would-be first-time conquest in the teen sex comedy Class, she would go on to more noteworthy roles in director David Lynch's sci-fi epic Dune and the slick but heartfelt romantic comedy Electric Dreams (both 1984). The rest of the decade wouldn't be quite as kind, as Madsen shuffled from part to part, appearing in a supporting capacity in both ambitious arthouse fare (1987's Slamdance) and forgettable Hollywood comedies (1988's Hot to Trot and Mr. North, the latter of which sparked a relationship with -- and three-year marriage to -- director Danny Huston). The beginning of the next decade fared somewhat better for Madsen. After a memorably brassy turn opposite Don Johnson in Dennis Hopper's steamy, seamy The Hot Spot (1990), she raked in some box-office cash in the minor horror hit Candyman (1992). Small performances in the high-profile, prestige pics Ghosts of Mississippi and The Rainmaker notwithstanding, Madsen all but disappeared from the late-'90s feature marketplace, as most of her films were either made for television or delivered directly to video-store rental shelves. Finding a more receptive outlet on weekly TV, Madsen snagged prominent recurring roles on NBC's Frasier and American Dreams around the turn of the century.But it was writer/director Alexander Payne's low-budget character study Sideways that had Madsen clamoring for the ever-elusive "role of a lifetime." Payne was mostly unfamiliar with the actress' work, but her audition for the part of Maya -- a weary, contemplative divorcée with a fine-tuned taste for wine -- convinced him that she was the perfect complement to lead performer Paul Giamatti's high-strung sad sack Miles. Toning down her Hollywood glamour for the film, Madsen turned the small part into something of a revelation, and as reviewers showered praise upon the film in late 2004, the actress hauled in a truckload of awards from critics' groups as well as Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress.Although Madsen lost the Oscar bid to Cate Blanchett, high-profile offers rolled in after her Sideways coup. Early in 2006, she played Beth Stanfield, the wife of Harrison Ford's technology executive Jack Stanfield, in Richard Loncraine's disappointing hostage thriller Firewall; that summer, she also claimed an enigmatic part as a beguiling angel of death in Robert Altman's swan song, A Prairie Home Companion. Madsen began 2007 with two supporting turns in the same February weekend: in Michael Polish's The Astronaut Farmer, a quirky drama about a retired NASA astronaut turned farmer (Billy Bob Thornton) who builds a spacecraft in his barn; and in the higher-profile supernatural thriller The Number 23, playing wife to an unraveling Jim Carrey.

Trivia: Remembered by many as the loveable Billy Campbell from the nighttime soap Melrose Place, Andrew Shue began his acting career not long before the show's premiere in 1992. His sister, actress Elisabeth Shue, found success as the star of 1987's Adventures in Babysitting when he began making appearances in movies as an extra while attending Dartmouth College. He graduated in 1989, and after traveling to Zimbabwe to play soccer for the Bulawayo Highlanders, he returned home to return to acting. When his big break came in 1992, he devoted his acting energy to the series, though he also played a number of games for the Los Angeles Galaxy Major Soccer Team in 1996. He stayed with Melrose Place until 1998, and later collaborated with his sister to write, produce, and appear in 2007's Gracie.

Trivia: Burly character actor, onscreen from the '60s. He was Elvis Presley's bodyguard.

Trivia: One of the most unique and distinguished of all Hollywood actors, Roy Scheider first hit his career peak in the 1970s, and will forever be associated with the "American film renaissance" of that decade thanks to his prominent billing in four vital motion pictures from the period: The French Connection (1971), Klute (1971), Jaws (1975), and All That Jazz (1979). As this list demonstrates, Scheider exhibited versatility in choice of material. He also, however, established a trademark persona that carried him from project to project: that of a slightly sardonic, wizened everyman who nonetheless evinced an unmistakable degree of sensitivity and emotional fragility beneath a tough exterior. Born November 10, 1932, in Rutgers, New Jersey, Scheider attended Rutgers University, as well as Franklin and Marshall College, where he studied history; meanwhile, an early boxing injury (in the New Jersey Diamond Gloves Competition) left Scheider with a broken nose that would soon become one of his trademarks. He subsequently joined the United States Air Force and served three years, ascending to the rank of first lieutenant, then returned to Franklin and Marshall for drama work, beginning with a much-acclaimed performance in Shakespeare's Richard III. Scheider inaugurated his professional career as a thespian by cutting his chops on the New York stage, as Mercutio in the New York Shakespeare Festival's 1961 production of Romeo and Juliet, and appeared in a couple of shoestring-budget cheapies (such as the 1963 Curse of the Living Corpse). Additional movie roles followed, but the actor really only made his breakthrough in 1971, with two of the said parts -- in Klute (as the pimp of hooker Bree Daniels) and in William Friedkin's groundbreaking cop thriller The French Connection (as Buddy Russo, the somewhat low-key and subdued partner of Gene Hackman's manic Popeye Doyle). An additional cop role, in The Seven-Ups (1973), followed, but by this point, Scheider had reportedly grown concerned that he would be pegged and typecast as a policeman and decided to branch out with an offbeat turn in the romantic comedy Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York (1975). When that picture unequivocally flopped, Steven Spielberg helped rescue Scheider (and in many ways put the actor on the proverbial map) by casting him as the lead, Police Chief Martin Brody, in the blockbuster shocker Jaws (1975). After this, roles proliferated; Scheider evoked a death-wish-laden Bob Fosse in the gonzo musical drama All That Jazz (1979, a part he inherited from Jaws co-star Richard Dreyfuss), and also chalked up a series of leads in Hitchcockian thrillers including Jonathan Demme's The Last Embrace (1979) and Robert Benton's Still of the Night (1982). Scheider remained equally active through the 1980s and '90s, though his choice of projects waxed slightly more uneven, ranging from the inspired (1986's 52 Pick-Up, 1990's The Russia House) to the abysmal (1986's The Men's Club). The actor retained a firm hold on his craft, however, and delivered some of the finest work of his career late in the game, with prominent roles in David Cronenberg's 1991 Naked Lunch (as a wiseacre physician) and Bart Freundlich's family-themed psychodrama The Myth of Fingerprints (1997, as a seriously deranged father with a seedy and twisted past). The 1990s also found Scheider embarking on a television career for the first time, with a regular role as Captain Nathan Hale Bridger in Steven Spielberg's sci-fi adventure series seaQuest DSV (1993-1996). Scheider would return to television a decade later, with a recurring portrayal of Fyodor Chevchenko on the prime-time drama Third Watch; in the mean time, the actor continued to tackle roles in additional features and even direct-to-video movies, including Time Lapse (2001), Red Serpent (2002), Wes Craven Presents Dracula II: Ascension (2003), and The Poet (2007). By the mid-2000s, Scheider contracted multiple myeloma and began to suffer from related health problems; he died in February 2008 of complications from a staph infection. The actor was 75.

Trivia: Performed with his older brother Ricky when they were both younger. Worked as a cook and dishwasher (when he wasn't singing on stage) at the Nashville Palace in the early 1980s. Storms of Life, his 1986 debut album, sold more than 4 million copies. Inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1986. Has an uncredited cameo in Young Guns (1988). Appeared in seven episodes of Touched By An Angel and also lent the song "When Mama Prayed" to the series finale. Released Anniversary Celebration in 2011, a collection of duets and collaborations in honor of the 25 years since the release of his debut album. Suffered a stroke in 2013.

Trivia: A distinguished actor of the stage and screen, Danny Glover is known for his work in both Hollywood blockbusters and serious dramatic films. Towering and quietly forceful, Glover lends gravity and complexity to the diverse characters he has portrayed throughout his lengthy career.A native of San Francisco, where he was born July 22, 1947, Glover attended San Francisco State and received his dramatic training at the American Conservatory Theatre's Black Actors' Workshop. He made his film debut in Escape from Alcatraz (1979). In the early '80s, Glover made his name portraying characters ranging from the sympathetic in Places in the Heart (1984) to the menacing in Witness (1985) and The Color Purple (1984). He reached box-office-gold status with the three Lethal Weapon flicks produced between 1987 and 1992, playing the conservative, family-man partner of "loose cannon" L.A. cop Mel Gibson. Glover carried over his fiddle-and-bow relationship with Gibson into his off-screen life, and also contributed an amusing cameo (complete with his Lethal Weapon catch-phrase "I'm gettin' too old for this!") in Maverick (1994). In 1998, Glover again reprised his role for the blockbuster-proportioned Lethal Weapon 4, and that same year gave a stirring performance in the little-seen Beloved.In the following years Glover would walk the line between Hollywood heavyweight and serious-minded independent actor with a skill most actors could only dream of, with an affectinate role in Wes Anderson's 2001 comedy drama The Royal Tenenbaums and a surprising turn toward horror in Saw serving well to balance out lesser-seen but equally powerful turns in Boseman and Lena, 3 A.M., and Lars von Trier's Manderlay. The same year that Glover retreated into the woods as a haunted Vietnam veteran in the low-key drama Missing in America, he would turn in a series of guest appearances on the long-running television medical drama E.R. Despite a filmography that seemed populated with an abundance of decidedly serious dramas in the years following the millennial turnover, Glover did cut loose in 2006 when he took a role as Tim Allen's boss in The Shaggy Dog and stepped into the studio to offer vocal performances in the animated kid flicks The Adventures of Brer Rabbit and Barnyard. On television, Glover played the title role in Mandela (1987), cowpoke Joshua Deets in the 1989 miniseries Lonesome Dove, legendary railroad man John Henry in a 1988 installment of Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales, and the mercurial leading character in the 1989 "American Playhouse" revival of A Raisin in the Sun. For his role in Freedom Song as a caring father struggling to raise his young son in 1960s-era Mississippi, Glover was nominated for an Emmy award and took home an Image award for Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series, or Dramatic Special. Glover played a proprietor of a struggling blues club in John Sayles' musical drama Honeydripper in 2007, and went on to participate in The Garden (2008), a documentary about a produce garden developed in the aftermath of the L.A. riots. He continued to tackle complex social issues as an executive producer for Trouble the Water, a 2008 documentary following the struggles of New Orleans residents in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and as an associate producer for The Time That Remains (2009), a poignant series of short stories about Palestinians in Israel. Glover also worked as an associate producer for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, an avante-gard fantasy drama that received the Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

Trivia: Actor Johnny Whitworth racked up a lengthy resumé tackling everyman roles in American films, honing in largely on supporting parts in mainstream studio features, with the occasional indie effort. His film credits, which run the gamut in terms of quality and genre, include such outings as the John Grisham legal drama The Rainmaker (1997), the slasher picture Valentine (2001), and the Andy Warhol-centered drama Factory Girl (2006), about the tragic life of Edie Sedgwick.