Trivia: Though she is a classically trained dramatic actress and has played a variety of roles, Sigourney Weaver is still best known for her portrayal of the steel-jawed, alien-butt-kicking space crusader Ellen Ripley from the four Alien movies. The formidably beautiful, 5'11'' actress was born Susan Weaver to NBC president Pat Weaver and actress Elizabeth Inglis. Her father had a passion for Roman history and originally wanted to name her Flavia, but after reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby at the age of 14, Weaver renamed herself Sigourney, after one of the book's minor characters. After being schooled in her native New York City, Weaver attended Stanford University and then obtained her master's at the Yale School of Drama where, along with classmate Meryl Streep, she appeared in classical Greek plays. After earning her degree, Weaver was only able to find work in experimental plays produced well away from Broadway, as more conventional producers found her too tall to perform in mainstream works. After getting her first real break in the soap opera Somerset (1970-1976), she made her film debut with a bit part in Woody Allen's Annie Hall in 1977. Weaver had her first major role in Madman which was released just prior to Alien in 1979. Though the role of Ripley was originally designed for Veronica Cartwright (who ultimately played the doomed Lambert), scouts for director Ridley Scott saw Weaver working off-Broadway and felt she would be perfect for the part. The actress' take on the character was laced with a subtlety that made her a new kind of female action hero: Intelligent, resourceful, and unconsciously sexy, Weaver's Ripley was a woman with the guts to master her fear in order to take on a terrifying unknown enemy. Alien proved to be one of the year's biggest hits and put Weaver on Hollywood's A-list, though she would not reprise her character for another seven years. In between, she worked to prove her versatility, playing solid dramatic roles in Eyewitness (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), while letting a more playful side show as a cellist who channels a fearsome demon in Ghostbusters (1984). In 1986, Aliens burst into the theater, even gorier and more rip-roaring than its predecessor. This time, Weaver focused more on the maternal side of her character, which only served to make her tougher than ever. Her unforgettable performance was honored with a Best Actress Oscar nomination, and was followed up by Weaver's similarly haunting portrayal of doomed naturalist/animal rights activist Diane Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist (1988). The role won Weaver her second Best Actress Oscar nomination, and that same year, she received yet another Oscar nomination -- this time for Best Supporting Actress -- for her deliciously poisonous portrayal of Melanie Griffith's boss in Working Girl. After 1992's Alien 3, Weaver had her next big hit playing President Kevin Kline's lonely wife in the bittersweet romantic comedy Dave (1993). She then gave a gripping performance as a rape/torture victim who faces down the man who may or may not have been her tormentor in Roman Polanski's moody thriller Death and the Maiden (1994). During the latter half of the decade, Weaver appeared in Alien Resurrection -- perhaps the most poorly received installment of the series -- but increasingly surfaced in offbeat roles such as the coolly fragile Janey in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm and the psychotic, wicked Queen in the adult-oriented HBO production The Grimm Brothers' Snow White (both 1997). In 1999, she starred in the sci-fi spoof Galaxy Quest, making fun of her image as a sci-fi goddess while continuing to prove her remarkable versatility.Weaver's first high-profile project of the new millenium saw her swindling Ray Liotta and Gene Hackman as a sexy con-woman teamed up with Jennifer Love Hewitt. Already into her fifties, Weaver proved she still possessed plenty of sex-appeal even alongside a substantially younger starlet like Hewitt. She played up her sultry side some more in the well-received 2002 indie-comedy Tadpole, but changed gears a bit in 2003, playing a villain in the family sleeper hit Holes.In 2004, Weaver could be seen as part of the ensemble cast in M. Night Shyamalan's summer thriller The Village. She played a tough-as-nails network executive in the satire The TV Set, and provided the voice of the ship's computer in WALL-E. In 2008 she appeared in projects as diverse as Baby Mama and Be Kind Rewind. She had a major role in the box-office blockbuster Avatar - teaming up with director James Cameron again. Her very busy 2011 included the role of a government official in the sci-fi comedy Paul, the girlfriend of a sheltered insurance salesman in Cedar Rapids, and a part in Oren Moverman's cop drama Rampart.Weaver has been married to stage director Jim Simpson since 1984. When not appearing in films, she continues to be active in theater.

Trivia: As the preeminent godfather of the contemporary television nature documentary, who not only carved out an audience niche for such programs but laid down the basic structural framework for much of the current science material on The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, and PBS, Sir David Attenborough has built much of his career around the conviction that the natural world is a beautiful and complex place, and the admonition that humankind is in danger of being severed from its natural environs by technology and civilization. Attenborough perceives it as his role to reunite the two spheres via filmmaking, and spent the preponderance of his life doing so -- with limitless success. Born May 8, 1926, in Isleworth, England -- as the son of the head of University College in Leicester; the younger brother of soon-to-be stage and cinema actor, film director, and film producer Lord Richard Attenborough; and the older brother of John Attenborough (read: middle child) -- David Attenborough first cultivated his fascination with nature as a young man via reptile and bird-watching trips to the local marshes and fields. Attenborough won an open scholarship to the coveted natural science tripos at Cambridge, then attended Clare College as a young man, and after graduation signed on to work full time for a publisher of educational materials. In the early '50s, he completed a training program at the then-fledgling BBC television network, where he worked his way, over the course of a decade, up through positions as writer, editor, director, producer, and ultimately controller of BBC-2 in the early '60s. From the beginning, Attenborough had to forge his own path. Nature programs were virtually nonexistent, so that in his early years, the young tyro came closest to his true passion with contributions to the BBC quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (1952-1953), not exactly anyone's idea of a groundbreaking nature documentary. More pointedly, Attenborough later became involved with Zoo Quest -- a program that carried Attenborough and his crew to exotic reaches of the world and watched, cameras rolling, as London Zoo personnel collected species for that institution. One of Attenborough's running complaints in the early years of British television centered around the studio format for presenting animals -- wherein exotic specimens were dragged out in front of studio lights on talk programs (much as Johnny Carson would do later in his career), presumably after being tossed into a sack or a crate "in the middle of the night." Noting the animals' tendencies to behave oddly in this unfamiliar environment, Attenborough championed new cinematographic technologies that enabled nature documentarians to film animals, unobtrusively, in their natural habitats -- a current that became increasingly widespread and commonplace as the years passed. Attenborough served as a narrator on innumerable BBC multipart documentaries during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, including but not limited to: Song Hunter (1953), People of Paradise (1960), Travelers' Tales (1960), Adventure (1962-1966), Natural Break (1973), Explorers (1975), and Wildlife on One (1977-1979). As a production executive, he commissioned BBC series programs ranging from the legendary Kenneth Clark's epic 11-hour miniseries Civilisation to Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-1974). Civilisation marked a watershed moment for Attenborough -- a source of limitless inspiration for him, where he came face to face, for the first time, with the potential inherent in televised documentary scripting. Clark's program, in fact, served as the primary structural and conceptual influence for Attenborough's three greatest contributions to filmed documentary work: the epic multi-part series Life on Earth (1979); its sequel, The Living Planet (1984); and The Trials of Life (1990). Each of these endeavors demanded years of preparation; in the preproduction stage, Attenborough would pen his outlines in longhand; the subjects of the series were wickedly ambitious and massive in their scope. They carried Attenborough (as narrator and host) and his crew to far reaches of the world -- often to multiple continents in the same page -- and required literally dozens of cinematographers -- which suggests the massive budget required for each of the productions. Commentators reportedly scoffed at these endeavors early on, because of their scope and naked, raw ambition, but the towering success of each (which drew tens of millions of viewers, attained vast popularity as exports, and scored in ancillary markets) silenced everyone. As for subjects: Life on Earth explores the evolution of various species in the animal kingdom into life as we know it; The Living Planet examines all of the major variations in the topography of the earth, from freshwater lakes to volcanic terrain to jungle to desert to polar regions; and The Trials of Life charts the behavior of different animal species. The three efforts are now considered among the most astonishing television documentaries ever produced. Attenborough has also authored a prolific number of nature books, including The Private Life of Plants, Life in the Undergrowth, The Life of Birds, and a 2002 autobiography, Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster. He continues to script and host documentary programs, well into his ninth decade. Attenborough was married to Jane Oriel for 47 years, from 1950 until her death in 1997. They have two children.

Trivia: Worked as a child actor in the early 1970s. Made his debut documentary The Willow in 1984. Appointed an OBE in 2010 for services to wildlife photography and conservation. In 2011, received an honorary fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. Is president emeritus of the Wildlife Trusts.