Trivia: Actor Henry Cavill studied drama at Stowe School in England before trying his hand at a professional career in show business, beginning with a small role in The Count of Monte Cristo in 2001. Cavill was 18 and had already developed the square jaw and piercing stare that would soon make him a successful leading man, going up for roles like Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins and even James Bond in Casino Royale. He lost those roles to more well-known actors, but had no trouble building up his résumé with supporting roles in movies like Tristan & Isolde, before scoring the prominent role of Charles Brandon on the Showtime series The Tudors in 2007. He enjoyed a small part in the Woody Allen movie Whatever Works, and had a larger role in the action film Immortals in 2011. He was tapped to take over the iconic role of Superman in the planned 2013 project Man of Steel.

Trivia: An actress with a knack for light comedy, Amy Adams was born in Italy and raised in Castle Rock, Colorado. After high school, she studied dance and worked in regional dinner theater until age 20, when she moved to Minnesota with her family after being spotted by a visiting Minneapolis producer and recruited to work in his dinner theater there. She landed her first film role in the satiric 1999 comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous, which was, appropriately enough, set in Minnesota. After appearing in the independent comedy Psycho Beach Party, Adams made guest appearances on a number of television series, including That 70s Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The West Wing; she was also cast as a regular in Manchester Prep, a TV spin-off of the hit film Cruel Intentions. Manchester Prep, however, was never aired when its network decided that the show's sexual content was too strong for television, although several episodes were eventually re-edited into a direct-to-video feature entitled Cruel Intentions 2. 2002 proved to be a very busy year for Adams, who appeared in no fewer than four features, including the eagerly anticipated Catch Me if You Can, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks.Adams took a 2 year break following Catch Me If You Can, reemerging in 2004 to appear with Fred Savage in the low-key comedy/drama The Last Run. The next year she took a substantial role in the romantic comedy The Wedding Date, but the part that proved to be a career-shaping one was the very innocent, very pregnant Ashley in Phil Morrison's independent film Junebug. Adams was adored by audiences and praised by critics for her quirky, sensitive performance, and she netted a Best Supporting Actress nomination in the process.The young actress rounded out 2005 with a brief series of regular appearances on the wildly popular TV comedy The Office. In 2006 Amy co-starred in the NASCAR comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, alongside Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen. 2007 provided a big boost to her lead-actress stock in the form of Disney's Enchanted, a Splash-like confection in which Adams played a fairytale princess inadvertently plopped into the alternate universe of modern-day New York City. The family-friendly Thanksgiving release racked up considerable praise and millions of box-office dollars. Adams picked up her second Academy Award nomination in 2008 for her work in John Patrick Shanley's adaptation of his award winning play Doubt. In addition to that honor, she scored nods from the Screen Actors Guild, and the Hollywood Foreign Press. The following year, Adams teamed with Doubt star Meryl Streep again, to play a young amateur chef who attempts to cook every recipe in a massive cookbook by Julia Child (Streep) in the Nora Ephron-directed Julie and Julia.The following year, Adams played the romantic interest of Mark Wahlberg in the Oscar contender The Fighter, earning tremendous critical acclaim both for her tough performance and spot-on Boston accent. Then in 2011, Adams teamed up with funnyman Jason Segel for a much anticipated relaunching of Jim Henson's beloved Muppets franchise. In 2012 she played the controlling wife of a cult leader in Paul Thomas Anderson's drama The Master, and captured her fourth Best Supporting Actress nomination in just eight years for her work in that film. In 2013 she took on the legendary part of Lois Lane in the Superman reboot Man of Steel.

Trivia: Diane Lane was born in New York City in 1965, the daughter of drama coach Burt Lane and Playboy centrespread Colleen Farrington; her eyes seemed to sparkle with stars from the tender age of six. Cast in a La Mama Experimental Theatre production of Medea, Lane would subsequently appear on stage in numerous productions, both in her native New York and abroad. It wasn't long before the late-'70s found Lane reaching the apex of her early career, and in 1978 she made her film debut in director George Roy Hill's A Little Romance. Cast alongside no less than Sir Laurence Olivier, Lane held her own in the role of an American student who finds love while studying abroad, and as a result gained remarkable exposure on the cover of Time Magazine in August of the following year. Lane was touted as one of the most promising actors of her generation, and this success parlayed her into a series of neglected films. In a number of these instances, she could not be faulted for choosing substandard material; her appearance in Lamont Johnson's fresh and rousing female western Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), for example (alongside Amanda Plummer, Burt Lancaster and Rod Steiger) drew lavish critical praise even as the studio inexplicably threw the film into the wastecan. Lane fared better with twin roles in a pair of teen dramas from director Francis Ford Coppola in 1983 (The Outsiders and Rumble Fish) once again earned the burgeoning film actress the spotlight and reminded audiences of her immense talent; she became a Coppola favorite, but didn't fare as well with his Cotton Club, a massive critical and commercial flop that did little to boost her career, even as it introduced her to co-star Richard Gere (with whom she would reteam, professionally, years later).After rounding out the decade with yet another memorable turn in the television miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989), Lane's career once again became a more low-key affair, though her performances frequently outshined the otherwise unremarkable series of films she appeared in.Though roles in such efforts as Chaplin (1992), A Streetcar Named Desire (1995), and Jack (1996) kept her from falling off the radar, Lane didn't truly shine again until her role as a housewife who embarks on a fragile extramarital affair in A Walk on the Moon (1998). Following that film with a pair of memorable performances in My Dog Skip and The Perfect Storm (both in 2000), Lane's career seemed to have achieved some stability, but it wasn't before a pair of forgettable features (Hardball and The Glass House, both in 2001) that Lane scored with yet another tale of marital infidelity. Director Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful, a retooling of Claude Chabrol's La Femme Infidèle, once again found Lane in the throes of an alluring stranger. Unfaithful - the anticipated onscreen reunion of Lane with Richard Gere - pondered the crushing reverberations of extramarital carnality, and Lane provided an ample and intriguing center of gravity for the film. When February 2003 rolled around and the Academy announced its nominations for the previous year, Lane received her first-ever Oscar nod for her emotional turn in Unfaithful. It did not pay off with a win, but Lane's follow-ups with roles in substantial fare including Just Like Mona (2002) and the wildly-popular Under the Tuscan Sun (2003) suggested that Lane's career had finally found solid box-office ground. Time validated this assertion: 2005's Must Love Dogs, a romantic comedy vehicle co-starring Lane and John Cusack, drew positive responses from many moviegoers and did decent, if not spectacular, box office, despite the excoriation of some critics (Salon's Stephanie Zacharek moaned, "It's ostensibly about adults, but there's nothing remotely adult about it.") 2006's Hollywoodland casts Lane in a mystery about the enigmatic demise of Superman's George Reeves. Over the next several years, Lane would prove she had no intention of slowing down , appearing in films like Untraceable, Nights in Rodanthe, and Secretariat. She appeared in the Superman reboot Man of Steel in 2013 as Martha Kent.Married to Highlander Christopher Lambert from 1988 to 1994 (with a single daughter from that marriage), Lane wed actor Josh Brolin in late 2004, before divorcing in 2013. In addition to her high-profile movie career, she is also an avid photographer; the January 2005 issue of InStyle Magazine prominently published a series of landscapes that Lane shot during one of her road trips into the American west.

Trivia: Though perhaps best-known internationally for playing tough-guy roles in Romper Stomper (1993), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Gladiator (2000), New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe has proven himself equally capable of playing gentler roles in films such as Proof (1991) and The Sum of Us (1992). No matter what kind of characters he plays, Crowe's weather-beaten handsomeness and gruff charisma combine to make him constantly watchable: his one-time Hollywood mentor Sharon Stone has called him "the sexiest guy working in movies today."Born in Wellington, New Zealand, on April 7, 1964, Crowe was raised in Australia from the age of four. His parents made their living by catering movie shoots, and often brought Crowe with them to work; it was while hanging around the various sets that he developed a passion for acting. After making his professional debut in an episode of the television series Spyforce when he was six, Crowe took a 12-year break from professional acting, netting his next gig when he was 18. In film, he had his first major roles in such dramas as The Crossing (1990) and Jocelyn Moorhouse's widely praised Proof (1991) (for which he won an Australian Film Institute award). He then went on to gain international recognition for his intense, multi-layered portrayal of a Melbourne skinhead in Geoffrey Wright's controversial Romper Stomper (1992), winning another AFI award, as well as an Australian Film Critics award. It was Sharon Stone who helped bring Crowe to Hollywood to play a gunfighter-turned-preacher opposite her in Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead (1995). Though the film was not a huge box-office success, it did open Hollywood doors for Crowe, who subsequently split his time between the U.S. and Australia. In 1997, the actor had his largest success to date playing volatile cop Bud White in Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997). Following the praise surrounding both the film and his performance in it, Crowe found himself working steadily in Hollywood, starring in two films released in 1999: Mystery, Alaska and The Insider. In the latter, he gave an Oscar-nominated lead performance as Jeffrey Wigand, a real-life tobacco industry employee whose personal life was dragged through the mud when he chose to blow the whistle on his former company's questionable business practices.In 2000, however, Crowe finally crossed over into the public's consciousness with, literally, a tour de force performance in Ridley Scott's glossy Roman epic Gladiator. The Dreamworks/Universal co-production was a major gamble from the outset, devoting more than 100 million dollars to an unfinished script (involving the efforts of at least half a dozen writers), an untested star (stepping into a role originally intended for Mel Gibson), and an all-but-dead genre (the sword-and-sandals adventure). Thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign and mostly positive notices, however, the public turned out in droves the first weekend of the film's release, and kept coming back long into the summer for Gladiator's potent blend of action, grandeur, and melodrama -- all anchored by Crowe's passionate man-of-few-words performance.Anticipation was high, then, for the actor's second 2000 showing, the hostage drama Proof of Life. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- the widely publicized affair between Crowe and his co-star Meg Ryan, the film failed to generate much heat during the holiday box-office season, and attention turned once again to the actor's star-making role some six months prior. In an Oscar year devoid of conventionally spectacular epics, Gladiator netted 12 nominations in February 2001, including one for its lead performer. While many wags viewed the film's eventual Best Picture victory as a fluke, the same could not be said for Crowe's Best Actor victory: nudging past such stiff competition as Tom Hanks and Ed Harris, Crowe finally nabbed a statue, affirming for Hollywood the talent that critics had first noticed almost ten years earlier.Crowe's 2001 role as real-life Nobel Prize-winning schizophrenic mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. brought the actor back into the Oscar arena. The film vaulted past the 100-million-dollar mark as it took home Golden Globes for Best Picture, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, and Actor and racked up eight Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor nod for Crowe. The film cemented Crowe as a top-tier leading man, and he would spend the following years proving this again and again, with landmark roles in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Cinderella Man, A Good Year, 3:10 to Yuma, Robin Hood, and State of Play.

Trivia: A memorable voice and a major talent, Chicago-born Harry J. Lennix first caught audiences' attention with the role of Dr. Greg Fischer on the medical drama ER. He would go on to make waves in films like Collateral Damage, The Matrix sequels, and Ray. as the 2000's and 2010's unfolded, Lennix would add more prominent TV roles to his resume, memorably starring on 24, Commander in Chief, and Dollhouse.

Trivia: Character actor Richard Schiff has done prolific work on both the large and small screens, and has appeared in films ranging from Seven (1995) to Living Out Loud (1998). Appearing as a cross between Wallace Shawn and Kevin Spacey, Schiff, a native of the East Coast, began his career as a stage director in New York. After founding and serving as the artistic director of the Manhattan Repertory Theatre and directing a number of on- and off-Broadway productions, he realized that he wanted to act. As such, Schiff began performing on both the stage and in independent films, then moved to Los Angeles so as to better pursue an acting career. He continued to work in the theatre, joining Tim Robbins' Actors Gang, and gradually broke into film. Appearances in such films as Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992), the Coen Brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), and Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) helped to put Schiff on the map as a character actor and led to substantial roles in Living Out Loud, which cast him as Danny De Vito's brother, and Dr. Dolittle (1998), in which he played one of Eddie Murphy's fellow men of medicine.Schiff also continued to do a great deal of work on television, appearing in shows ranging from Ally McBeal to E.R. In 2000, he joined the cast of the acclaimed NBC series The West Wing, playing the Chief Press Advisor to the President (Martin Sheen). That same year, he received a Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Emmy nomination for his portrayal. In the years to come, Schiff would remain active on screen, appearing on TV series like Past Life, The Cape, and House of Lies.

Trivia: Perhaps most famous for his dramatic work on TV series like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Christopher Meloni has also been praised for his comedic appearances on screens of all sizes. His resumé proves him a versatile actor, indeed, with experience on television, in feature films -- both comedic and dramatic -- and even on-stage. (He acted in the 2001 Williamstown Theatre Festival.)He was born on April 2, 1961, in Washington, D.C., and earned his degree in 1983 at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Having grown interested in acting in college, he next studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City with Sandford Meisner. First noted for his role that began in 1990 on the hit series The Fanelli Boys on NBC, Meloni's accomplished television background consists of appearances on NYPD Blue (1993), the HBO's prison series Oz (1997), and numerous other series and TV movie roles. His lengthy list of supporting appearances on film includes major features like 12 Monkeys (1995), Bound (1996), and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). In 1999, he played one of Julia Roberts' husbands-to-be in Runaway Bride. Building upon his Oz experience, he starred in the PBS feature Shift in 2001, in a dramatic role as a prison inmate lovesick over a woman whom he only knows via telephone, and who doesn't know his whereabouts. Also in that year, he played a crazy 'Nam vet chef -- who provided some of the most accessible laughs of the absurd comedy -- at summer camp in David Wain's Wet Hot American Summer.In the years to come Meloni would appear in films like Nights in Rodanthe, Carriers, and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, as well as the series True Blood.

Trivia: One of Hollywood's most prominent strong, silent types, Kevin Costner was for several years the celluloid personification of the baseball industry, given his indelible mark with baseball-themed hits like Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and For Love of the Game. His epic Western Dances with Wolves marked the first break from this trend and established Costner as a formidable directing talent to boot. Although several flops in the late '90s diminished his bankability, for many, Costner remained one of the industry's most enduring and endearing icons.A native of California, Costner was born January 18, 1955, in Lynnwood. While a marketing student at California State University in Fullerton, he became involved with community theater. Upon graduation in 1978, Costner took a marketing job that lasted all of 30 days before deciding to take a crack at acting. After an inauspicious 1974 film debut in the ultra-cheapie Sizzle Beach USA, Costner decided to take a more serious approach to acting. Venturing down the usual theater-workshop, multiple-audition route, the actor impressed casting directors who weren't really certain of how to use him. That may be one reason why Costner's big-studio debut in Night Shift (1982) consisted of little more than background decoration, and the same year's Frances featured the hapless young actor as an off-stage voice.Director Lawrence Kasdan liked Costner enough to cast him in the important role of the suicide victim who motivated the plot of The Big Chill (1983). Unfortunately, his flashback scenes were edited out of the movie, leaving all that was visible of the actor -- who had turned down Matthew Broderick's role in WarGames to take the part -- to be his dress suit, along with a fleeting glimpse of his hairline and hands as the undertaker prepared him for burial during the opening credits. Two years later, a guilt-ridden Kasdan chose Costner for a major part as a hell-raising gunfighter in the "retro" Western Silverado (1985), this time putting him in front of the camera for virtually the entire film. He also gained notice for the Diner-ish buddy road movie Fandango. The actor's big break came two years later as he burst onto the screen in two major films, No Way Out and The Untouchables; his growing popularity was further amplified with a brace of baseball films, released within months of one another. In Bull Durham (1988), the actor was taciturn minor-league ballplayer Crash Davis, and in the following year's Field of Dreams he was Ray Kinsella, a farmer who constructs a baseball diamond in his Iowa cornfield at the repeated urging of a voice that intones "if you build it, he will come."Riding high on the combined box-office success of these films, Costner was able to make his directing debut. With a small budget of 18 million dollars, he went off to the Black Hills of South Dakota to film the first Western epic that Hollywood had seen in years, a revisionist look at American Indian-white relationships titled Dances With Wolves (1990). The supposedly doomed project, in addition to being one of '90s biggest moneymakers, also took home a slew of Academy Awards, including statues for Best Picture and Best Director (usurping Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas).Costner's luck continued with the 1991 costume epic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; this, too, made money, though it seriously strained Costner's longtime friendship with the film's director, Kevin Reynolds. The same year, Costner had another hit -- and critical success -- on his hands with Oliver Stone's JFK. The next year's The Bodyguard, a film which teamed Costner with Whitney Houston, did so well at the box office that it seemed the actor could do no wrong. However, his next film, A Perfect World (1993), directed by Clint Eastwood and casting the actor against type as a half-psycho, half-benign prison escapee, was a major disappointment, even though Costner himself garnered some acclaim. Bad luck followed Perfect World in the form of another cast-against-type failure, the 1994 Western Wyatt Earp, which proved that Lawrence Kasdan could have his off days.Adding insult to injury, Costner's 1995 epic sci-fi adventure Waterworld received a whopping amount of negative publicity prior to opening due to its ballooning budget and bloated schedule; ultimately, its decent box office total in no way offset its cost. The following year, Costner was able to rebound somewhat with the romantic comedy Tin Cup, which was well-received by the critics and the public alike. Unfortunately, he opted to follow up this success with another large-scaled directorial effort, an epic filmization of author David Brin's The Postman. The 1997 film featured Costner as a Shakespeare-spouting drifter in a post-nuclear holocaust America whose efforts to reunite the country give him messianic qualities. Like Waterworld, The Postman received a critical drubbing and did poorly with audiences. Costner's reputation, now at an all-time low, received some resuscitation with the 1998 romantic drama Message in a Bottle, and later the same year he returned to the genre that loved him best with Sam Raimi's baseball drama For Love of the Game. A thoughtful reflection on the Cuban missile crisis provided the groundwork for the mid-level success Thirteen Days (2000), though Costner's next turn -- as a member of a group of Elvis impersonating casino bandits in 3000 Miles to Graceland -- drew harsh criticism, relegating it to a quick death at the box office. Though Costner's next effort was a more sentimental supernatural drama lamenting lost love, Dragonfly (2002) was dismissed by many as a cheap clone of The Sixth Sense and met an almost equally hasty fate.Costner fared better in 2003, and returned to directing, with Open Range, a Western co-starring himself and the iconic Robert Duvall -- while it was no Dances With Wolves in terms of mainstream popularity, it certainly received more positive feedback than The Postman or Waterworld. In 2004, Costner starred alongside Joan Allen in director Mike Binder's drama The Upside of Anger. That picture cast Allen as an unexpectedly single, upper-middle class woman who unexpectedly strikes up a romance with the boozy ex-baseball star who lives next door (Costner). Even if divided on the picture as a whole, critics unanimously praised the lead performances by Costner and Allen.After the thoroughly dispiriting (and critically drubbed) quasi-sequel to The Graduate, Rumor Has It..., Costner teamed up with Fugitive director Andrew Davis for the moderately successful 2006 Coast Guard thriller The Guardian, co-starring Ashton Kutcher and Hollywood ingenue Melissa Sagemiller.Costner then undertook another change-of-pace with one of his first psychological thrillers: 2007's Mr. Brooks, directed by Bruce A. Evans. Playing a psychotic criminal spurred on to macabre acts by his homicidal alter ego (William Hurt), Costner emerged from the critical- and box-office failure fairly unscathed. He came back swinging the following year with a starring role in the comedy Swing Vote, playing a small town slacker whose single vote is about to determine the outcome of a presidential election. Costner's usual everyman charm carried the movie, but soon he was back to his more somber side, starring in the recession-era drama The Company Men in 2010 alongside Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones. As the 2010's rolled on, Costner's name appeared often in conjunction with the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained prior to filming, but scheduling conflicts would eventually prevent the actor from participating in the project. He instead signed on for the latest Superman reboot, playing Clark Kent's adoptive dad on Planet Earth in Man of Steel.

Trivia: After essaying a series of roles in her native Israel that carried her through her thirties, actress Ayelet Zurer relocated to Los Angeles and achieved a dual breakthrough in 2005: Steven Spielberg cast her as the wife of a Mossad agent in his period thriller Munich, and Israeli producers recruited her to play one of the leads on BeTipul ("In Treatment"), a blockbuster prime-time drama on local television in Israel. Zurer subsequently chalked up a covetable series of Hollywood roles, typically playing characters of variable Middle Eastern origin; projects included Paul Schrader's Holocaust-themed drama Adam Resurrected (2007) and Pete Travis' assassination-themed political thriller Vantage Point (2008, as a European paramedic with possible ties to clandestine groups).

Trivia: Dramatic actor Laurence Fishburne gained widespread acclaim and an Oscar nomination for his gripping performance as the Svengali-like Ike Turner in the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got to Do With It (1993) and went on to rack up an impressive string of credits playing leads and supporting roles on stage, screen, and television.Born in Augusta, GA, the sole child of a corrections officer and an educator, Fishburne was raised in Brooklyn following his parents' divorce. An unusually sensitive child with a natural gift for acting, he was taken to various New York stage auditions before landing his first professional role at the age of ten. Two years later, he made his feature film debut with a major role in Cornbread, Earl and Me (1975). A turning point in the young actor's career came when he lied about his age and won the role of a young Navy gunner in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. On location in the Philippines, the teenage actor effectively bade farewell to childhood as he endured the many legendary problems that befell Coppola's production over the next two years. In between shooting days, Fishburne hung out with the adult actors, often exposing himself to their offscreen drinking and drugging antics.Back in Hollywood by the late '70s, he continued playing small supporting roles in features and on television. Like many black actors, he was frequently relegated to playing thugs and young hoodlums. He would continue to appear in Coppola productions like Rumble Fish (1983) and The Cotton Club (1984) throughout the 1980s. Wanting a change from playing heavies, he accepted a recurring role as friendly Cowboy Curtis opposite Paul Reubens on the loopy CBS children's series Pee-Wee's Playhouse. By the early '90s, Fishburne had begun to escape the stereotypical roles of his early career. In 1990, he played a psychotic hit man opposite Christopher Walken in Abel Ferrara's King of New York and a chess-playing hustler in Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993). Following his great success in the Tina Turner biopic, he became one of Hollywood's most prolific actors, appearing in films such as John Singleton's Higher Learning (1995). Fishburne, who had known Singleton when the latter was a security guard on the Pee-Wee's Playhouse set, had previously appeared in the director's debut film Boyz 'N the Hood (1991). After Higher Learning came Othello (1995) and Always Outnumbered, which he also produced. Fishburne had previously produced Hoodlum (1997), in which he also starred. In 1999, he stepped into blockbuster territory with his starring role in the stylish sci-fi action film The Matrix. Increasingly geared towards action films, Fishburne could be seen in the fast and furious motorcycle flick Biker Boyz as fans prepared for the release of the upcoming Matrix sequels. Indeed, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) earned Fishburne further praise from both fans and critics. The same year, Fishburne co-starred with Tim Robbins and Sean Penn in the role of a homicide detective for the Academy Award-winning thriller Mystic River. The actor went on to star as a cop-killing mobster for the crime drama Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), and as a somber professor of English in the critically acclaimed urban drama Akeelah and the Bee (2006). He would co-star in the ensemble political docudrama chronicling the life and death of Robert F. Kennedy (also in 2006), and join the cast of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer in 2007. Fishburne found success again in director Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011), and co-stars in the Superman reboot Man of Steel (2013) as the editor-and-chief of "The Daily Planet". In addition to his work in cinema, Fishburne has established a distinguished stage career, winning a Tony Award in 1992, for his role in August Wilson's Two Trains Running.

Trivia: Started modeling at age 2 and began acting at age 3. Studied martial arts as a kid. Plays the guitar and was in an alternative rock band. Listens to music prior to auditions to help him get into character. Was unaware he was auditioning to play a young Clark Kent when he initially auditioned for Man of Steel—the role and title of the film were both kept secret. Is protective of his older brother, who has cerebral palsy. Is a fan of comic books and superheroes.

Trivia: Onscreen performer Michael Kelly specialized in slightly rough-hewn, working-class character roles. Kelly premiered on the big screen with occasional bit parts in the late '90s, but achieved much greater prominence by playing a security guard in the 2004 supernatural horror remake Dawn of the Dead, and by essaying one of the supporting roles in the Ericson Core-directed inspirational sports drama Invincible (2006), starring Mark Wahlberg and Greg Kinnear. Kelly also acted regularly on the small screen, with numerous guest roles as well as a longer stint on The Sopranos as FBI agent Ron Goddard. In 2007, Kelly signed to appear in Tooth & Nail, a post-apocalyptic thriller about a courageous band of holocaust survivors who hole up in a hospital and try valiantly to defend themselves from invading cannibals. He had a major part in Clint Eastwood's period drama Changeling as well as a small part in the thriller Law Abiding Citizen. In 2010 he appeared in the political biopic Fair Game, and the next year he had a major part opposite Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau. He was in the sci-fi hit Chronicle in 2012.

Trivia: Canadian born Tahmoh Penikett studied at the Victoria Motion Picture School and the Lyric School of Acting before trying his hand at a professional career in show business. He began making minor appearances on Canadian television in the late '90s, and eventually transitioned into acting for American audiences, with appearances on The L Word and Losing It. Then in 2003, Penikett was cast in a four-hour mini-series "reimagining" of the '70s science fiction show Battlestar Galactica, which was being filmed in Vancouver. Penikett was cast in the role of Karl "Helo" Agathon, an officer in a fleet of massive spacecraft that serve as the nomadic home for the human race following the nuclear destruction of planet Earth. The mini-series was a big hit with test audiences and earned surprisingly stunning accolades from critics, who were impressed to see such drama and subtext in a Sci-Fi Network production. A full season was commissioned based on the series, and the show instantly garnered a solid core following, coming back for numerous seasons. Meanwhile, Penikett joined the cast of another sci-fi show in 2009, playing FBI agent Paul Ballard on the Joss Whedon project Dollhouse.

Trivia: Before pursuing an acting career, he spent a year backpacking in Europe and the Middle East, and also lived on a Kibbutz in Israel. Made his film debut in the 1998 thriller Disturbing Behavior. Got his big break in the 2000 comedy Snow Day. Wanted to be a hockey player and got a chance to play one in the 2002 film Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice. After portraying deceased snowboarder Beck McKaye in the Canadian drama series Whistler (2006-07), he returned to television as sniper Sam Braddock on the police drama Flashpoint (which premiered in 2008 and has aired in the United States as well as in Canada).

Trivia: Distinguished character actor Michael Shannon essayed a diverse series of characterizations onscreen, beginning just after the start of the new millennium. A veteran member of Chicago's experimental Red Orchid theatrical troupe, Shannon specialized in small, multidimensional portrayals that added to the overall effectiveness of each project -- per his contributions to Vanilla Sky (2001), 8 Mile (2002), and Bad Boys II (2003). Whenever necessary, Shannon imperceptibly blended into the material at hand. He played a therapist in Nicole Kassell's psychodrama The Woodsman (2004), yet by virtue of his emotional intensity and eccentric look, Shannon evinced an ability to dominate with his onscreen presence, as well. Nowhere was this tendency more evident than in William Friedkin's psychological thriller Bug (2006). As adapted by Tracy Letts from his own stage play, the film concerns a shabby and skanky drifter (Shannon, reprising his role from the play) with a serious complex of delusional schizophrenia, who believes that bugs are crawling beneath his skin and enters a terrifying pas de deux with a young waitress (Ashley Judd). Shannon followed it up with a memorable contribution to Oliver Stone's World Trade Center -- as a military man desperate to help in any way possible during the 9/11 tragedy -- and Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), a crime thriller about two brothers who team up to rob a jewelry store. Shannon grabbed his first taste of stardom with his breakout role as a mentally disturbed man in Sam Mendes' adaptation of Revolutionary Road. His truthful, menacing character cut through the main characters' self-deception, and Shannon's off-kilter delivery won him glowing notices from critics, as well as a nomination for Best Supporting Actor from the Academy. He worked steadily after that success appearing in The Greatest, Jonah Hex, and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. In 2010 he had a pair of critical successes that included his work as a repressed federal agent on the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, and his portrayal of the eccentric rock entrepreneur Kim Fowler in The Runaways. In 2011 he again earned raves for his work a schizophrenic in Take Shelter. His intensity got him cast relatively often as bad guys, something he put to great effect in the 2012 action film Premium Rush and in the criminal biopic The Iceman.

Trivia: Sang in the British Columbia Boys Choir for most of his childhood. Made his TV debut at age 11 in the MacGyver episode "The Madonna." Studied opera while in college and performed in a Vancouver opera troupe; occasionally appeared as a guest artist with the University of British Columbia Ensemble. Has worked as a sound designer and composer on a number of small independent films. Frequently performs onstage in Vancouver when not filming.

Trivia: After a series of small child-actor roles starting at age 11, his big break came at age 15 when he landed his starring turn in the 1979 Canadian television series, Huckleberry Finn and His Friends. Decided to take a break from acting after high school and credits a stint setting up lights on film sets for teaching him the most about the business. Expanded his career by directing two episodes of the 2001 series Da Vinci's Inquest, which led to other directing gigs.

Trivia: Was an ensemble member of the Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in Chicago from 2009 to 2015.Landed her first leading role in a feature film in 2010's Earthlings.Has previously performed with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

Trivia: Was named the associate artistic director for Teatro Vista in Chicago in 2009. Appeared in the Goodman Theatre's production of A Christmas Carol in the 2011-12 season. Had a memorable recurring role on the Starz series Boss where his character's ears were cut off. Shared an apartment with his Chicago Fire castmates Yuri Sardarov and Charlie Barnett when the show was first picked up.

Trivia: British actress Julia Ormond had several solid years of stage work to her credit -- not to mention the starring role in the made-for-cable Catherine the Great biography Young Catherine (1991) -- when, at 27, she co-starred in the expensive HBO biopic Stalin (1992). Most of the publicity guns were aimed at Robert Duvall's heavily accented portrayal of the Soviet dictator, but at least one observer singled out Ormond's performance as the long-suffering Mrs. Stalin as one of the highlights of the picture. That observer was director Edward Zwick, then preparing his own big-budget theatrical feature Legends of the Fall. Thanks to her excellent showing in the formidable company of Fall co-stars Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn, and Henry Thomas, Ormond found herself, on the verge of 30, as Hollywood's ingénue du jour. Born in Epsom, Surrey, on January 4, 1965, Ormond was a child when her parents, a businessman and a laboratory technician, divorced. A self-admitted tomboy who excelled at field hockey, she became involved with the theater in school plays, and, following a stint at art school (both of her grandparents were abstract artists), she studied drama at London's Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts. Following graduation, she landed her first professional work in TV commercials, and then acted in a series of plays until she had her breakthrough with Catherine the Great.Before 1995, her Hollywood breakthrough year, was over, the graceful, silken-haired Ormond had played Guinevere opposite Sean Connery's King Arthur in First Knight and had been cast in the title role of Sydney Pollack's ill-advised remake of Sabrina. When asked by Premiere magazine what her future plans were, Ormond replied, "Along with Godzilla and the rest of the acting community, I'd like to direct." But although she did set up her own production company, the actress opted to stick with working in front of the camera, starring in Bille August's much-publicized filmization of Peter Hoeg's best-selling Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997). Unfortunately, the film proved to be a virtual nonentity both at the box office and amongst critics, and Ormond disappeared from the radars for a couple of years, only popping up to star in Nikita Mikhalkov's Sibirsky Tsiryulnik (1999). In 2000, she reemerged in front of Hollywood cameras alongside Vince Vaughn in Prime Gig, a drama about the life, loves, and losses of a California telemarketer. She was interviewed for the documentary Searching for Debra Winger over the next few years she did show up in diverse productions ranging from David Lynch's Inland Empire to the failed thriller I Know Who Killed Me. In 2008 she was the mother in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, and appeared in the sprawling biopic Che. Two years later she was in the award-winning TV movie Temple Grandin, and the year after that she portrayed Vivien Leigh in My Week With Marilyn.