Trivia: Australian actor Chris Hemsworth became a favorite face in his native country when he wasn't yet a teenager, appearing on Australian TV shows like Neighbours and Home and Away in the early 2000s. He would go on to cross the pond, appearing in American movies like 2009's Star Trek, in which he played George Kirk. His next big splash in Hollywood would come in the years to follow, as he was cast as Thor in the big screen adaptations of The Avengers and Thor. The Avengers turned out to be a mega-smash, lending even more luster to his other films from that year including Snow White and the Huntsman and the remake of Red Dawn. In 2013, he played British race car driver James Hunt in Rush, before picking up the hammer again in Thor: The Dark World.

Trivia: With an Oscar before the age of 30, repeated comparisons to Audrey Hepburn, and the drool of a thousand critics at her feet, Natalie Portman has emerged as one of the most promising actresses of her generation. Born in Jerusalem on June 9, 1981, to an artist mother and doctor father, Portman moved to New York when she was three. Raised on Long Island, she was discovered by a modeling agent who signed her on the spot. Her modeling stint led to an audition for Luc Besson's Leon (or The Professional, as it was called in the United States). Due to her age (she was 12 when the film was cast), Portman was initially turned down for the lead role of Mathilda, a girl who asks a hit man (Jean Reno) to train her as an assassin to avenge her brother's death and falls innocently in love with him in the process. However, she ultimately won the part and her 1994 film debut earned a number of positive notices. In interviews, Portman allowed that making her first film in the toughest sections of Spanish Harlem was frightening, but not quite so frightening, she claimed, as going back to school once shooting wrapped.Portman then took on the role of Al Pacino's step-daughter in another demanding film, Michael Mann's Heat (1995). She followed this up with lighter fare, like Mars Attacks! (1996), Everyone Says I Love You, and Beautiful Girls. After turning down title roles in both Lolita and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Portman took on another title role with her 1997 Broadway debut in The Diary of Anne Frank. She stayed with the show until May 1998, during which time she received positive notices for her performance. After lending her voice to The Prince of Egypt (1998), Portman took on her most talked-about role to date, that of Queen Amidala in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). Despite very mixed reviews, the film went into box-office hyperdrive, further propelling Portman toward her status as a rapidly emerging talent for the new millennium. She would end the 20th century with projects like Wayne Wang's Anywhere But Here and Where the Heart Is. Offscreen, Portman also did some growing up, enrolling for her college education at Harvard University. A psychology major, she made it clear upon her enrollment that, aside from her role as Queen Amidala in the Star Wars films, she would not accept any film roles for the duration of her education. Perhaps to the disappointment of fans, she stuck to her word, remaining absent from the screen (save Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones) until she received her degree in 2003. Luckily, upon her return to acting, it was immediately evident that it had been worth the wait.Portman's first foray following graduation was the 2003 Civil War ensemble drama Cold Mountain, alongside Renee Zellweger and Nicole Kidman. But in 2004, Portman was at the forefront of both Garden State, a moody dramedy that endeared her to fans, and Closer, a taught, intimate drama that earned her massive critical accolades, as well as her first Oscar nomination. In 2005, as the curtain finally closed on the Star Wars franchise with the release of Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Portman could be seen with a now iconic pixie haircut after shaving her head for a role in the graphic-novel adaptation V for Vendetta. The dystopic action thriller received mixed reviews, but Portman's performance, as usual, earned accolades. Per her usual M.O. as an actress, she would complete a number of independent, arthouse, or otherwise challenging projects for every blockbuster under her belt, like the 2006 Milos Forman directed period drama Goya's Ghosts, and the Wes Anderson 2007 road (or rather, train) movie The Darjeeling Limited. After appearing opposite Scarlett Johansson and Eric Bana as Anne Boleyn, the famously beheaded wife of King Henry VII in the 2008 period drama The Other Boleyn Girl, Portman turned her high-brow image on its ear the very next year, playing a small town cheerleader turned army wife in the Iraq War drama Brothers. Portman had even more impressive turns awaiting her, however, as 2010 brought the lead role in the hallucinatory Darren Aronofsky film The Black Swan, about an obsessively diligent ballerina who, in order to play both the innocent and dark sides of femininity with the leading role in Swan Lake, must battle her own conflicting inner demons as a woman. Portman trained in ballet rigorously for six months to perform the role, and her efforts paid dividends. Her performance received massive adoration from critics and audiences alike, and she emerged with an Academy Award for Best Actress - which Portman accepted while five months pregnant with a baby she was expecting with fiancé Benjamin Millepied, her choreographer whom she met while filming.Professionally, Portman had a mind to keep a balance with her choice of roles. In a change of pace from the gritty material in The Black Swan, she appeared in the stoner comedy Your Highness, the rom-com No Strings Attached, and the comic-book action thriller Thor.Portman had her first child with husband Benjamin Millepied in June of 2011.

Trivia: Decided he wanted to become an actor at age 13. Spotted in a Cambridge production of A Streetcar Named Desire by a talent agent, which led to his being cast in an ITV production of Nicholas Nickleby. Won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Newcomer to the London stage in 2008 for his performance in Cymbeline; he was also nominated for his performance in Othello. Auditioned for the title role in the 2011 film Thor and made it to the final five before being turned down; instead offered (and accepted) the part of Loki.

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

Trivia: Born in London on September 6, 1972, and raised in the Hackney borough, Elba pursued acting as a high school student at the behest of a drama teacher. Elba paid his dues with many supporting roles on British television, including such series as Bramwell, The Bill, Degrees of Error, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, and The Governor. The actor grew deeply frustrated, however, over the seemingly irrepressible tendency of British casting directors to peg him in supporting roles. "Back in London," he later recalled, "I was always just going to be the best friend, or the crook or the detective on the side." When Elba could take no more of this, he immigrated to the United States. Within a few years, Elba landed a starring role on what would come to be known as one of the best TV series of all time, The Wire.Elba's performance as pusher "Stringer" Bell attained widespread popularity with viewers and helped put Elba on the map. Elba then transitioned into big-screen roles in movies like The Gospel, The Reaping, Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls, 28 Weeks Later, and the Alien prequel Prometheus. Elba also enjoyed more stateside TV success on shows like The Office and Luther.

Trivia: A remarkable actor who brings a vibrant intensity to his performances, Christopher Eccleston is widely held to be one of the most talented British actors of the 1990s. Primarily known for his portrayals of working-class men, Eccleston, who possesses a lanky, stone-faced physical appeal, has won international attention for his work in such films as Jude and Elizabeth.A product of the Northwestern English town of Salford, where he was born on February 16, 1964, Eccleston enjoyed a happy working-class upbringing. A poor student with a love of television, he initially wanted to be a professional soccer player. At the age of 19, however, he realized that acting was his calling, and enrolled in London's Central School of Speech and Drama. As an actor, his early influences had been Ken Loach's Kes and Albert Finney's performance in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, but he soon found himself interpreting the classics, performing the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Molière. At the age of 25, he made his professional stage debut in the Bristol Old Vic's production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Relatively unemployed as an actor for some years after his graduation, Eccleston took a variety of odd jobs at a supermarket, on building sites, and as an artist's model. His luck began to change in 1991, when he was chosen to play the protagonist of Let Him Have It. He won acclaim for his haunting portrayal of Derek Bentley, whose real-life murder of a policeman and subsequent hanging for the crime was the subject of dispute in the British legal system, as Bentley had the mental age of a nine-year-old. Eccleston's handling of the role paved the way for more work, and he was soon starring opposite Robbie Coltrane in Cracker, a popular British television series. He stayed with the show from 1993 until 1994, when he was cast in Shallow Grave, the stylish thriller from Danny Boyle, John Hodge, and Andrew MacDonald, the team who would later make Trainspotting. The film, which starred Eccleston, Ewan McGregor, and Kerry Fox as three flatmates with a corpse on their hands, proved a success, and Eccleston won praise for his portrayal of an unhinged accountant.More television work followed in the form of Hillsborough (1996), and that same year, Eccleston won the title role in Michael Winterbottom's Jude. Co-starring with Kate Winslet, he garnered widespread praise for his interpretation of Thomas Hardy's tragic hero, and he began to attract the attention of American audiences. This attention was heightened two years later when he was cast as the dastardly Duke of Norfolk in Elizabeth; both his chilling performance and the film itself received wide acclaim. The same year, Eccleston starred alongside Renée Zellweger as an Orthodox Jew in A Price Above Rubies. The film was a relative disappointment, but it did allow the actor to break away from the character types that he usually played. In 1999, Eccleston could be seen in David Cronenberg's eXistenZ and in Heart, a black comedy in which he starred as a man so consumed with jealousy over his wife -- whom he believes to be having an affair -- that he gives himself a heart attack. The same year, he collaborated again with director Winterbottom on With or Without You, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.He found no small amount of success in 2005 and 2006, when he took on the role of the ninth incarnation of Dr. Who in the fantastical television series of the same name, and a man with the ability to become invisible in the first season of NBC's Heroes. In 2009 he co-starred in Amelia, a biopic chronicling the life of the legendary aviator Amelia Earhart. He took on the starring role of Beatle John Lennon in Lennon Naked (2010), another biopic, and continued to work steadily throughout the 2010s.

Trivia: Grew up in London and Nigeria. Modeled in London and Milan before turning to acting (and after obtaining a master's degree in law); moved to the U.S. to pursue an acting career in 1994. Appeared in the music videos for EnVogue's "Giving Him Something He Can Feel" and Mary J. Blige's "Love No Limit." Nominated for NAACP Image Awards in the Best Supporting Actor: Drama Series category for his role in HBO's Oz in 1997 and 2000. The meaning of his name: "ade" (crown); "wale" (to come home); "akin" (warrior); "nuoye" (chief); "agbaje" (wealth, prosperity). Came up with the name of his Lost character, Mr. Eko, himself. Nickname is "Triple A."

Trivia: Born in Bryn Mawr, PA, actress Kat Dennings broke into television before she could drive, landing a one-off appearance on Sex and the City. She continued to work steadily on the small screen in a variety of shows including Raising Dad, Less Than Perfect, and Without a Trace. While still a teenager, Dennings landed a role in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, as well as a supporting turn in the independent drama Down in the Valley. She had a recurring role on ER as Zoe Butler, and continued her work on the big screen with a supporting turn in the high-school comedy Charlie Bartlett. She had a part in the 2008 Anna Farris comedy The House Bunny, and starred opposite Michael Cera in the 2009 romantic comedy Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. She played Caroline Wexler in the 2010 adaptation of Daydream Nation, and was cast in the 2011 blockbuster Thor (she also appeared in the 2013 sequel, Thor: The Dark World). That same year she enjoyed success on the small-screen with the hit CBS comedy 2 Broke Girls.

Trivia: Born the middle child of a Royal Air Force pilot and an Irishwoman, actor Ray Stevenson was born in Ireland but was largely raised in North East England. His parents would frequently drop him and his brothers off at the local cinema on Saturday mornings, and as a little boy staring up at the big screen, he knew that he wanted to become an actor but just didn't think it was a realistic dream. Though Stevenson entered into a career as an interior designer, the acting bug slowly ate away at him well into young adulthood. It was only after gaining courage through drink that he shared his dreams with a helpful Australian actor, who convinced him to enroll in evening classes, and Stevenson secured a spot at the Bristol Old Vic Theater School at the tender age of 27. Later, after training on the boards and honing is talents with a series of small-screen roles, Stevenson gradually transitioned to film work with parts in Paul Greengrass' The Theory of Flight and Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur. In 2005, the handsome star landed his highest profile role to date as the passionate Roman soldier Titus Pullo on the critically acclaimed BBC/HBO television co-production Rome.

Trivia: Actor Zachary Levi began acting on-stage in community and regional theater when he was just a kid, but it was a very grown-up performance as Hank in the play Marvin's Room that booked him an agent. His first big break onscreen was a supporting role in the FX TV movie Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie. Among other TV work, he played Kipp Steadman on the sitcom Less Than Perfect. Eventually, he scored the lead role of geeky unlikely hero Chuck Bartowski on the spy comedy TV series Chuck, which began airing in 2007. While Chuck ran for 5 seasons, he tried his hand at big-screen success in projects such as Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel. He had his biggest hit voicing the good guy in the animated hit Tangled. In 2013, he replaced Josh Dallas (who was busy working on Once Upon a Time on TV) in Thor: The Dark World, playing Fandral. Levi was scheduled to play the role in the first Thor movie, but scheduling conflicts with Chuck forced him to have to drop out. In 2015, he was cast in the Heroes TV series reboot, titled Heroes Reborn.

Trivia: Born on December 31, 1937, as the only son of a baker, Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins was drawn to the theater while attending the YMCA at age 17, and later learned the basics of his craft at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1960, Hopkins made his stage bow in The Quare Fellow, and then spent four years in regional repertory before his first London success in Julius Caesar. Combining the best elements of the British theater's classic heritage and its burgeoning "angry young man" school, Hopkins worked well in both ancient and modern pieces. His film debut was not, as has often been cited, his appearance as Richard the Lionhearted in The Lion in Winter (1968), but in an odd, "pop-art" film, The White Bus (1967).Though already familiar to some sharp-eyed American viewers after his film performance as Lloyd George in Young Winston (1971), Hopkins burst full-flower onto the American scene in 1974 as an ex-Nazi doctor in QB VII, the first television miniseries. Also in 1974, Hopkins made his Broadway debut in Equus, eventually directing the 1977 Los Angeles production. The actor became typed in intense, neurotic roles for the next several years: in films he portrayed the obsessed father of a girl whose soul has been transferred into the body of another child in Audrey Rose (1976), an off-the-wall ventriloquist in Magic (1978), and the much-maligned Captain Bligh (opposite Mel Gibson's Fletcher Christian) in Bounty (1982). On TV, Hopkins played roles as varied (yet somehow intertwined) as Adolph Hitler, accused Lindbergh-baby kidnapper Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.In 1991, Hopkins won an Academy Award for his bloodcurdling portrayal of murderer Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. With the aplomb of a thorough professional, Anthony Hopkins was able to follow-up his chilling Lecter with characters of great kindness, courtesy, and humanity: the conscience-stricken butler of a British fascist in The Remains of the Day (1992) and compassionate author C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands (1993). In 1995, Hopkins earned mixed acclaim and an Oscar nomination for his impressionistic take (done without elaborate makeup) on President Richard M. Nixon in Oliver Stone's Nixon. After his performance as Pablo Picasso in James Ivory's Surviving Picasso (1996), Hopkins garnered another Oscar nomination -- this time for Best Supporting Actor -- the following year for his work in Steven Spielberg's slavery epic Amistad. Following this honor, Hopkins chose roles that cast him as a father figure, first in the ploddingly long Meet Joe Black and then in the have-mask-will-travel swashbuckler Mask of Zorro with Antonio Banderas and fellow countrywoman Catherine Zeta-Jones. In his next film, 1999's Instinct, Hopkins again played a father, albeit one of a decidedly different stripe. As anthropologist Ethan Powell, Hopkins takes his field work with gorillas a little too seriously, reverting back to his animal instincts, killing a couple of people, and alienating his daughter (Maura Tierney) in the process.Hopkins kept a low profile in 2000, providing narration for Ron Howard's live-action adaptation of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas and voicing the commands overheard by Tom Cruise's special agent in John Woo's Mission: Impossible 2. In 2001, Hopkins returned to the screen to reprise his role as the effete, erudite, eponymous cannibal in Ridley Scott's Hannibal, the long-anticipated sequel to Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991). The 160-million-dollar blockbuster did much for Hopkins' bank account but little for his standing with the critics, who by and large found Hannibal to be a stylish, gory exercise in illogical tedium. Worse yet, some wags suggested that the actor would have been better off had he followed his Silence co-star Jodie Foster's lead and opted out of the sequel altogether. Later that year, the moody, cloying Stephen King adaptation Hearts in Atlantis did little to repair his reputation with critics or audiences, who avoided the film like the plague.The long-delayed action comedy Bad Company followed in 2002, wherein audiences -- as well as megaproducer Jerry Bruckheimer -- learned that Chris Rock and Sir Anthony Hopkins do not a laugh-riot make. But the next installment in the cash-cow Hannibal Lecter franchise restored a bit of luster to the thespian's tarnished Hollywood career. Red Dragon, the second filmed version of Thomas Harris' first novel in the Lecter series, revisited the same territory previously adapted by director Michael Mann in 1986's Manhunter, with mixed but generally positive results. Surrounding Hopkins with a game cast, including Edward Norton, Ralph Finnes, Harvey Keitel and Emily Watson, the Brett Ratner film garnered some favorable comparisons to Demme's 1991 award-winner, as well as some decent -- if not Hannibal-caliber -- returns at the box office.Hopkins would face his biggest chameleon job since Nixon with 2003's highly anticipated adaptation of Philip Roth's Clinton-era tragedy The Human Stain, a prestige Miramax project directed by Robert Benton and co-starring Nicole Kidman, fresh off her Oscar win for The Hours. Hopkins plays Stain's flawed protagonist Coleman Silk, an aging, defamed African-American academic who has been "passing" as a Jew for most of his adult life. Unfortunately, most critics couldn't get past the hurtle of accepting the Anglo-Saxon paragon as a light-skinned black man. The film died a quick death at the box office and went unrecognized in year-end awards.2004's epic historical drama Alexander re-united Hopkins and Nixon helmer Oliver Stone in a three-hour trek through the life and times of Alexander the Great. The following year, Hopkins turned up in two projects, the first being John Madden's drama Proof. In this Miramax release, Hopkins plays Robert, a genius mathematician who - amid a long descent into madness - devises a formula of earth-shaking proportions. That same year's comedy-drama The World's Fastest Indian saw limited international release in December 2005; it starred Hopkins - ever the one to challenge himself by expanding his repertoire to include increasingly difficult roles - as New Zealand motorcycle racer Burt Munro, who set a land speed record on his chopper at the Utah Bonneville Flats. The quirky picture did limited business in the States but won the hearts of many viewers and critics.He then joined the ensemble cast of the same year's hotly-anticipated ensemble drama Bobby, helmed by Emilio Estevez, about the events at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles just prior to RFK's assassination. Hopkins plays John Casey, one of the hotel proprietors.Hopkins long held true passions in arenas other than acting - specifically, painting and musical composition. As for the former, Hopkins started moonlighting as a painter in the early 2000s, and when his tableaux first appeared publicly, at San Antonio's Luciane Gallery in early 2006, the canvases sold out within six days. Hopkins is also an accomplished symphonic composer and the author of several orchestral compositions, though unlike some of his contemporaries (such as Clint Eastwood) his works never supplemented movie soundtracks and weren't available on disc. The San Antonio Symphony performed a few of the pieces for its patrons in spring 2006.Hopkins would remain a prolific actor over the next several years, appearing in films like The Wolfman, Thor, and 360.Formerly wed to actress Petronella Barker and to Jennifer Lynton, Hopkins married his third wife, actress and producer Stella Arroyave, in March 2003.

Trivia: Because she couldn't sing well and her high school performed a lot of musicals, a teacher asked her to quit the theater group. Was one of a few girls on her high-school wrestling team. Appeared in the 2009 music video "Save You" by Matthew Perryman Jones. Portrays Han Solo in the 2010 web series Ultradome, in which she battles Indiana Jones to determine the best Harrison Ford character. Provides the voice of Sif in the 2011 video game Thor: God of Thunder. Her audition for 2011's Thor was conducted via Skype with director Kenneth Branagh, who was in Sweden at the time. Has the initials of her four brothers tattooed on her right arm.

Trivia: Born February 17th, 1954, former model Rene Russo's first dramatic role of note was on the 1987 TV series Sable, in which she played Eden Kendall, the literary agent to a children's author-turned-crimefighter. Her breakthrough theatrical feature was Major League (1989), wherein the statuesque blonde actress was saddled with portraying the "misguided" heroine who foolishly prefers marriage with a stable, secure lawyer over a relationship with boozing, philandering ballplayer Tom Berenger.Since then, happily, the message conveyed by Russo's characters has been "Don't mess with me: I can cope." In One Good Cop (1991), she played the strongly supportive wife of police officer Michael Keaton, for whom she successfully tackles the sudden responsibility of caring for the surly children of Keaton's late partner. In Lethal Weapon 3 (1993), Russo could be seen as the karate-chopping cop who wins the confidence (and the love) of "loose cannon" Mel Gibson by proudly showing off her line-of-duty wounds and evincing a fascination with the Three Stooges. In In the Line of Fire (1992), Russo was once more partnered on an equal basis with the leading man, in this case Secret Service agent Clint Eastwood; one of her best scenes featured her wired for sound -- despite a most revealing evening gown -- at a Washington social affair. Apparently there are still reviewers out there who can't quite grasp the concept of a leading lady who can match her leading man blow for blow in a tight situation. In 1995, some observers seemed surprised that Russo, playing a biohazard-suited military research operative in Outbreak, was "as good as" her male counterparts Dustin Hoffman and Morgan Freeman. Despite such ill-founded critical misgivings, Russo has continued to do strong work playing strong women: The acclaimed Get Shorty (1995) featured her as a B-movie actress, while she re-teamed with Gibson for Ron Howard's crime thriller Ransom (1996) and Lethal Weapon 4 (1998). She also played a psychologist who puts the swing back into washed-up golfer Kevin Costner's game in the well-received Tin Cup (1996), and generated considerable heat as a crime investigator who hunts and then beds down with art thief Pierce Brosnan in the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.Russo continued worked sporadically through early to mid-2000s, her most recognizable role being that of Natasha Fatale in the live-action adaptation of Rocky and Bullwinkle. In 2005, following her supporting performances in Two for the Money and Yours, Mine, and Ours, Russell took a long break from acting. It wasn't until 2012 that she appeared on the big screen again for the mythological fantasy adventure Thor in the role of Frigga, Thor's mother.

Trivia: A psychology student in her native South Africa, slim, fragile-looking leading lady Alice Krige decided upon an acting career upon moving to London. Krige studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama (at 22, she was nearly the oldest student there), then established her reputation on stage. Her first film appearance was as Sybil, the casual lady friend of Olympic athlete Ben Cross, in the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire (1981). Next she co-starred in Ghost Story as the "avenging angel" who brings well-deserved grief to elderly Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and John Houseman. Her later film roles included Bathsheba in King David (1985) and Mary Godwin (aka Mary Shelley) in Haunted Summer (1988). Alice Krige has also been in more than her share of British and American made-for-TV movies, among them Baja, California (1984), Iran: Days of Crisis (1986) and Max and Helen (1990).

Trivia: Scottish-born Clive Russell is six and a half feet of bone and sinew. Add to his imposing stage presence his impressive acting skill and you have a colossal acting machine that can cry, bend steel, and recite Shakespeare. Russell has used his attributes to play Helfdane the Large in The Thirteenth Warrior, Ajax the Great in Troilus and Cressida, and blacksmith Joe Gargery in Great Expectations. For his portrayal of a gigantic but gentle ex-coal miner in the acclaimed Margaret's Museum, Russell earned a Canadian Academy Award nomination for best actor. Russell's appetite for acting is as big as he is. Between 1997 and 2001, he completed 24 films in addition to TV and other projects, including such high-profile productions as The Mists of Avalon (TV miniseries), Oliver Twist (TV miniseries), and Oscar and Lucinda. No, he probably won't replace Sean Connery as Scotland's most famous actor. But he certainly deserves recognition as one of Scotland's best actors -- right up there among Connery, Ewan McGregor, Dougray Scott, and Robert Carlyle.Russell first performed before an audience in 1960 on the Shari Lewis Show. But it was not until 1980 that he got his first real acting job -- performing on the London stage as the superintendent in Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo's satire The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, about police corruption in Italy. The reviews were good, and he reprised that role for television in 1983. After further honing his skills in various British TV productions and a handful of films -- including Jute City, The Power of One, The Hawk, and Seconds Out -- Russell received exposure before international audiences as Caleb Garth in the celebrated BBC miniseries Middlemarch, based on the George Eliot novel of the same name. A year later, he fell in love on the movie screen with Helena Bonham Carter in Margaret's Museum, earning laudatory reviews worldwide. Clive Russell had arrived. After more TV roles and another film, Russell played Ralph Fiennes' father in another critically acclaimed film, Oscar and Lucinda. Growing recognition of his acting skills then brought him plum roles in four major TV miniseries: Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, The Railway Children, and The Mists of Avalon. In the same year that he made Mists, Russell also performed in The Emperor's New Clothes, starring Ian Holm as Napoleon. In 2002, his career reached new heights when he took on a role in a BBC/Columbia Tristar production about a mountain-rescue team in Scotland.

Trivia: Played Craig in Evan Placey's play Scarberia, Theatre Royal, York in 2012. In 2013, was cast as Dee in Blair's Children at the Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone, in which five actors performed five interchanging monologues. Made his film debut as 'HIM' in the British romcom Love Me Till Monday in 2014. Played both Ligarius and Dardanius in Julius Caesar in the Sheffield Theatres, 2017.

Trivia: Represented Roscommon in Gaelic Football at under-16, minor and under-21 level. Studied politics and sociology in college; and wrote for the college newspaper, the University Observer. Worked construction, in bars and at call centers while pursuing an acting career in London. Won a 2005 BAFTA Scottish Award for his leading role in Festival. Wrote the 2012 series Moone Boy, which is partly based on his childhood in Ireland during the late 1980s. Played Lennie in the 2014 Broadway revival of Of Mice and Men with James Franco and Leighton Meester.

Trivia: In addition to being the man who crafted both the "Marvel Universe" as well as some of the most popular comic book superheroes of modern times, longtime artist and writer Stan Lee played a pivotal role in bringing genuine human emotion into comic book characters, a trait that, up until the creation of such characters as the enduring Spider-Man, was sorely lacking in comics. Born in New York in 1922, it was at the age of 17 that Lee began work as an assistant editor for Timely Comics. Promoted to editor soon thereafter, Lee remained with the company as it changed its name to Atlas and fought slumping sales in the following years. At first simply carrying on with the stories of the characters that had already been created, the company got a fresh burst of creativity when, in 1961, it changed its name from Atlas to Marvel Comics. Soon carrying stories of emotionally complex and multi-dimensional characters such as Spider-Man, The Hulk, and Daredevil, Lee's intelligent story lines -- coupled with artist Jack Kirby's impressive images -- helped Marvel's popularity surge during the '60s. Advancing to the position of publisher and editorial director in 1972, it was during this decade that such popular television series as The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man truly came to life on the small screen. Though many of the characters had appeared in cartoon form on television in the previous decade, their transformation from animated characters to living, breathing humans truly brought comics into a new light and exposed them to audiences who otherwise might have scoffed at such fiction. Of course, this was only the beginning, and throughout subsequent years, Lee's characters made the leap to feature films in such blockbusters as Bryan Singer's X-Men (2000) and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002). In addition to his role as a popular writer in comics, Lee also played a pivotal role in reducing censorship in the medium. Addressing the issue of drug addition in an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man at the request of public health officials, Lee defied the strict rules set by the Comics Code Authority (which banned any portrayal of drug use whether it be in a positive or negative light) and ultimately put the downfall of the CCA into motion. In the decades since, Lee's creations have not only graced the pages of comic books, but have sprung to life as never before with numerous film and television adaptations most successfully in the box-office smash The Avengers.

Trivia: Was offered his first break by actress Jo Kennedy, who was also from the Yarra Valley and gave him a part in her brother's short film. Appeared in a production of The Woman in Black at Lunchbox Theater Productions in Australia. Worked with a rural veterinarian to prepare for his role on McLeod's Daughters. Contributed a photo to the coffee-table book My Diverse Australia to benefit Muscular Dystrophy Australia.

Trivia: Her acting break came after attending an open audition in London for TV detective show Poirot in 2003. In 2011 was named a Brit To Watch by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Once took a zero-gravity flight over California with then-husband Elon Musk and Titanic director James Cameron. A life long writer, she released novel Acts Of Love in 2016 and claimed she was inspired by the reaction to Fifty Shades Of Grey to create a female Christian Grey character. Co-founded app Forge that allows low paid retail and restaurant staff to schedule their own working hours.