Trivia: Despite a thick Australian accent in some of his earlier films, actor Mel Gibson was born in Peeksill, NY, to Irish Catholic parents on January 3rd, 1956. One of eleven children, Gibson didn't set foot in Australia until 1968, and only developed an Aussie accent after his classmates teased him for his American tongue. Mel Gibson's looks have certainly helped him develop a largely female following similar to the equally rugged Harrison Ford, but since his 1976 screen debut in Summer City, Gibson has been recognized as a critical as well as physiological success.Though he had, at one point, set his sights on journalism, Gibson caught the acting bug by the time he had reached college age, and studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, Australia, despite what he describes as a crippling ordeal with stage fright. Luckily, this was something he overcame relatively quickly -- Gibson was still a student when he filmed Summer City and it didn't take long before he had found work playing supporting roles for the South Australia Theatre Company after his graduation. By 1979, Gibson had already demonstrated a unique versatility. In the drama Tim, a then 22-year-old Gibson played the role of a mildly retarded handy man well enough to win him a Sammy award -- one of the Australian entertainment industry's highest accolades -- while his leather clad portrayal of a post-apocalyptic cop in Mad Max helped the young actor gain popularity with a very different type of audience. Gibson wouldn't become internationally famous, however, until after his performance in Mad Max 2 (1981), one of the few sequels to have proved superior to its predecessor. In 1983, Gibson collaborated with director Peter Weir for the second time (though it was largely overlooked during the success of Mad Max 2, Gibson starred in Weir's powerful WWI drama Gallipoli in 1981) for The Year of Living Dangerously, in which he played a callous reporter responsible for covering a bloody Indonesian coup. Shortly afterwards, Gibson made his Hollywood debut in The Bounty with Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins, and starred opposite Sissy Spacek in The River during the same year. He would also star in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) alongside singer Tina Turner.After the third installment to the Mad Max franchise, Gibson took a two-year break, only to reappear opposite Danny Glover in director Richard Donner's smash hit Lethal Weapon. The role featured Gibson as Martin Riggs, a volatile police officer reeling from the death of his wife, and cemented a spot as one of Hollywood's premier action stars. Rather than letting himself become typecast, however, Gibson would surprise critics and audiences alike when he accepted the title role in Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990). Though his performance earned mixed reviews, he was applauded for taking on such a famously tragic script.In the early '90s, Gibson founded ICON Productions, and through it made his directorial debut with 1993's The Man Without a Face. The film, which also starred Gibson as a horrifically burned teacher harboring a secret, achieved only middling box-office success, though it was considered a well-wrought effort for a first-time director. Gibson would fare much better in 1994 when he rejoined Richard Donner in the movie adaptation of Maverick; however, it would be another year before Gibson's penchant for acting, directing, and producing was given its due. In 1995, Gibson swept the Oscars with Braveheart, his epic account of 13th century Scottish leader William Wallace's lifelong struggle to forge an independent nation. Later that year, he lent his vocal talents -- surprising many with his ability to carry a tune -- for the part of John Smith in Disney's animated feature Pocahontas. Through the '90s, Gibson's popularity and reputation continued to grow, thanks to such films as Ransom (1996) and Conspiracy Theory (1997). In 1998, Gibson further increased this popularity with the success of two films, Lethal Weapon 4 and Payback. More success followed in 2000 due to the actor's lead role as an animated rooster in Nick Park and Peter Lord's hugely acclaimed Chicken Run, and to his work as the titular hero of Roland Emmerich's blockbuster period epic The Patriot (2000). After taking up arms in the battlefield of a more modern era in the Vietman drama We Were Soldiers in 2002, Gibson would step in front of the cameras once more for Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan's dramatic sci-fi thriller Signs (also 2002). The film starred Gibson as a grieving patriarch whose rural existence was even further disturbed by the discovery of several crop circles on his property.Gibson would return to more familiar territory in Randall Wallace's We Were Soldiers -- a 2002 war drama which found Gibson in the role of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, commander of the First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry -- the same regiment so fatefully led by George Armstrong Custer. In 2003, Gibson starred alongside Robert Downey Jr. and Robin Wright-Penn in a remake of The Singing Detective. The year 2004 saw Gibson return to the director's chair for The Passion of The Christ. Funded by 25 million of Gibson's own dollars, the religious drama generated controversy amid cries of anti-Semitism. Despite the debates surrounding the film -- and the fact that all of the dialogue was spoken in Latin and Aramaic -- it nearly recouped its budget in the first day of release.The actor stepped behind the camera again in 2006 with the Mayan tale Apocalypto and was preparing to product a TV movie about the Holocaust, but by this time, public attention was not pointed at Gibson's career choices. That summer, he was pulled over for drunk driving at which time he made extremely derogatory comments about Jewish people to the arresting officer. When word of Gibson's drunken, bigoted tirade made it to the press, the speculation of the actor's anti-Semitic leanings that had circulated because of the choices he'd made in his depiction of the crucifixion in Passion of the Christ seemed confirmed. Gibson's father being an admitted holocaust denier hadn't helped matters and now it seemed that no PR campaign could help. Gibson publicly apologized, expressed extreme regret for his comments, and checked himself into rehab. Still, the plug was pulled on Gibson's Holocaust project and the filmmaker's reputation was irreparably tarnished.

Trivia: Wide-eyed young actor Nick Stahl made his feature debut opposite Mel Gibson and courted the late-'90s teen crowd with a role in the thriller Disturbing Behavior (1998), but a number of his movies have not been the average box-office fluff.Raised in Dallas, Stahl began acting at the age of four in commercials and local theater. After his first TV movie, Stranger at My Door (1991), Stahl soon moved to feature films with a starring role as the boy tutored by Mel Gibson's deformed recluse in the Gibson-directed drama The Man Without a Face (1993). Continuing to work with Hollywood heavyweights, Stahl played one of Susan Sarandon's sons in Safe Passage (1994) and acted with Walter Matthau in the TV film Incident in a Small Town (1994). After the young teen starred in the Disney film Tall Tale (1994), Stahl was back to TV movies with family drama Blue River (1995). Alternating between mainstream fare and more challenging work, Stahl began to aim for a slightly older audience with a role in the independent rural crime drama and Sundance Film Festival entrant Eye of God (1997). Though Stahl joined the late-'90s teen movie brigade co-starring alongside Katie Holmes in the thriller Disturbing Behavior (1998), he also appeared that same year as a Charlie Company soldier who dies too young in Terrence Malick's hypnotic anti-war anti-epic The Thin Red Line (1998). Stahl began 2001 with roles in two Sundance Film Festival critical favorites, Todd Field's family drama In the Bedroom (2001) and iconoclast Christopher Munch's The Sleepy Time Gal (2001). On his way to becoming an indie fixture, Stahl then took on the unappealing role of the doomed titular character in controversial photographer-turned-director Larry Clark's exploration of true-life violent teen anomie, Bully (2001). Stahl, however, finished 2001 on the critical high note with which it began when In the Bedroom, featuring Stahl as Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson's son, earned raves and prizes as one of the best films of the year.Though to this point Stahl's film roles had consisted of mainly low-budget and independent fare, all of this would change with the release of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003. Rumored to have taken over the role of John Conner following original star Edward Furlong's much publicized bout with drug abuse, Stahl eagerly stepped up to the role. The summer of 2003 also found Stahl gearing up for the premier of his the new HBO series Carnivàle.

Trivia: Margaret Whitton billed herself as Peggy Whitton when she made her off-Broadway debut in 1973's Baba Goya. Whitton made her first Broadway appearance nine years later in Steaming. In films, she has been effectively cast as what is vulgarly known as the "rich bitch" -- never more effectively than as avaricious baseball-team owner (and former exotic dancer) Rachel Phelps in the two Major League pictures. Margaret Whitton's TV-series work included the 1991 soap-opera spoof Good and Evil, in which the producers cunningly pulled a typecasting reversal, hiring Whitton as "good" Genny and Teri Garr as "evil" Denise. She retired from acting in the mid-'90s and moved to directing and producing for the rest of her career. Whitton died in 2016, at age 67.

Trivia: The daughter of Viva Hoffmann, better known simply as Viva, the model and Warhol protege, Gaby Hoffmann had an upbringing that was in many ways suited for the unconventional lifestyle that accompanies an acting career. Born January 8, 1982, Hoffmann spent much of her childhood living with her mother and sister in New York's notorious Chelsea Hotel. When she and her friends weren't spying on the drug dealers across the hall, Hoffmann began her acting career, making her first commercials at the age of four to help pay the bills. However, she quickly tired of the work and quit; her early retirement ended when, at the age of seven, she was cast alongside Macaulay Culkin in John Hughes' Uncle Buck and as Kevin Costner's daughter in Field of Dreams. Both films proved to be huge hits, and Hoffmann decided to give acting a second try.Many of the films Hoffmann made throughout her early teens proved to be fairly forgettable, although she did have strong supporting roles in Nora Ephron's This Is My Life (1992) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), as well as The Man Without a Face (1993), Now and Then (1995), which cast her as the teenage version of Demi Moore's character, and Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You (1996). Toward the end of the decade, Hoffmann began being identified as one of the up-and-coming actors of Generation Y, a fact that was demonstrated with her being cast in the ensemble film 200 Cigarettes, the controversial girls-on-top sex comedy Coming Soon, and James Toback's Black and White, which featured Hoffmann as part of an eclectic cast that included Robert Downey Jr., Jared Leto, and Brooke Shields.In the early 2000s, she took a break from acting, enrolling in Bard Collage. She resumed her acting career in 2011 with roles in indie films (like The Surrogate Nanny), but the public noticed her more for several high-profile TV guest spots, including an episode each on Private Practice, The Good Wife and Homeland. She had a higher-profile guest spot on FX's Louie, playing a soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend of Louie, and then had a four-episode arc on HBO's Girls, playing Adam's sister, Caroline. Hoffmann took a series regular role on the hit Netflix series, Transparent, in 2014.

Trivia: A graduate of NYU, American actor Richard Masur has been seen in supporting TV and movie roles since the early 1970s. His pliable facial features, boyish demeanor and indeterminate age have enabled Masur to play a rich variety of roles: a mentally retarded stockboy on All in the Family, a hotshot program manager on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and even a "friendly stranger" child molester in the 1981 TV movie Fallen Angel. Masur's film credits include Semi-Tough (1977); Who'll Stop the Rain (1978); My Girl (1991), as Jamie Lee Curtis' prickly ex-husband; and the deservedly maligned Heaven's Gate (1980). Masur has also been a regular on several TV series: From 1975 through 1976, for example, he was divorcee Bonnie Franklin's much-younger boyfriend (and almost her second husband) on One Day at a Time. In 1987, Masur made his film directorial bow with the Oscar-nominated short subject Love Struck, but he continues to work primarily as an actor in both TV and film.

Trivia: Viva, also known as Viva Superstar and originally known on her birth certificate as Janet Susan Mary Hoffman, was one of the more famous members of the Andy Warhol entourage. A talented painter and novelist, Viva was less accomplished as an actress, though her screen appearances had the saving grace of humor. In recounting her explicit sex scene in Warhol's F**k (aka Blue Movie, 1968), one recalls not the penetration but the foreplay, wherein Viva blithely chatters away on a variety of social and political topics. Her most famous "mainstream" appearances include her semi-autobiographical turn as Greenwich Village reveller Gretchen McAlbertson in Midnight Cowboy (1969), and her portrayal of Jennifer, Woody Allen's nymphomaniac blind date (who, after prattling on about sexual liberation, reacts to Woody Allen's advances by screaming "What kind of a girl do you take me for???") in Play It Again, Sam (1972). Outlasting the fifteen minutes of fame proscribed by her mentor Andy Warhol, Viva was recently seen as Mrs. Cooper in Mel Gibson's Man Without a Face (1993). Hal Erickson, Rovi

Trivia: An actor whom you've probably seen in more films than you realize, Zach Grenier possesses the rare ability to take the smallest of roles and transform them into memorable appearances that stick with audiences long after the credits have finished -- even if his frequently unsympathetic characters have often met an unpleasant demise. It was this ability and skill that found Grenier steadily building a career with appearances in such blockbusters as Cliffhanger (1993), Donnie Brasco (1997), Shaft (2000), and Swordfish (2001). Born in February 1954, Grenier's family lived a somewhat nomadic existence in his early years, moving 18 times before the worldly teen graduated from high school, where, in his junior year, the young man discovered his love of the stage while performing in a production of Shakespeare's Henry V. Continuing to hone his acting skills and frequently appearing on-stage following graduation, Grenier appeared in such other plays as Talk Radio and A Question of Mercy, and made his film debut in the 1987 drama The Kid Brother (aka Kenny). Soon appearing in such films as Working Girl and Talk Radio in 1988, and See No Evil, Hear No Evil the following year. The actor's parts may have been small, but his talent was growing and appearances memorable; his roles continued to expand throughout the '90s, and viewers saw the rising star in Twister and Maximum Risk (both 1996), among several other movies. A turn as Joseph Goebbels in that year's Mother Night gave him a chance to prove his dramatic skills in front of the camera, and a subsequent role in David Fincher's cult hit Fight Club (1999) found him holding his own well against the film's talented leads. Alternating between television and movies in subsequent work, Grenier starred in the little-seen thriller Chasing Sleep (2000) and joined the cast of the popular weekly suspense series 24 in 2001.