Trivia: Although he first appeared as just one of the latest crop of golden-skinned English imports to caress the hormones of American filmgoers, Jude Law is steadily proving that his talents lie beyond his ability to smolder seductively in front of the camera. Since 1995, when Law made the transition from British soap opera to Broadway via Sean Mathias' Indiscretions (in which he co-starred with Kathleen Turner), his work has increasingly garnered favorable notice from critics and moviegoers alike.Born in London on December 29, 1972, Law started acting as a teenager. Before Indiscretions, his most notable role was in Shopping (1994), a British production that gave him both initial recognition and an introduction to his future wife, actress Sadie Frost (the couple has two children). After the critical and commercial success of Indiscretions, Law began finding more work in film, starring as Claire Danes' boyfriend in I Love You, I Love You Not (1997) and as the genetically privileged man who sells his identity to Ethan Hawke in Gattaca (1997). Also in 1997, Law took on the plum role of Alfred Lord Douglas (or Bosie), Oscar Wilde's volatile lover in Wilde. Although none of these films received unanimously positive critical (or box-office) attention, they did help to further establish Law as an actor to be taken seriously. Law followed them with a small part in Bent (1997) and the more pivotal role of Billy, Jim Williams' hotheaded and ill-fated lover in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). Following that film, Law went on to make a few smaller films, including Music From Another Room (also starring a still unknown Gretchen Mol) and The Final Cut, in which he played a sinister, deceased version of himself.In 1999, Law appeared in David Cronenberg's cyberific eXistenZ and completed filming Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley alongside Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, and Cate Blanchett. The film earned widespread acclaim upon its release, much of which was lavished on Law's portrayal of the serially charming and devastatingly superficial Dickie Greenleaf. Law garnered both a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance, further cementing his reputation as one of the more promising up-and-coming actors on either side of the ocean.After a turn as a Russian marksman facing off against a Nazi sniper in Enemy at the Gates (2001), Law returned to sci-fi with his role as love machine Gigolo Joe in Steven Spielberg's eagerly anticipated A.I.In addition to his acting commitments, Law kept busy with Natural Nylon, the production company he founded with Sadie Frost, Sean Pertwee, Ewan McGregor, and Jonny Lee Miller. In 2002, Law starred alongside film veterans Tom Hanks and Paul Newman in the multiple Oscar-winning Road to Perdition and was on the path to an Oscar once again for his performance in Cold Mountain (2003) with Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger, who took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. After appearing in only two films in as many years, Law was virtually unavoidable in the last third of 2004, with substantial roles in a grand total of six films. First up, he played the title role in the blue-screened sci-fi action flick Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, starring alongside the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, and a "resurrected" Laurence Olivier. A month later, he could be found starring in the remake of Alfie as well as in the ensemble cast of David O. Russell's comedy I Heart Huckabees. And before the close of the year, audiences could catch him in Mike Nichols' romantic drama Closer, as Errol Flynn in Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, and providing the voice of the title character in the big-screen adaptation of Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events. Produced on an elephantine, effects-heavy budget by the wunderkind, billon-dollar powerhouse Scott Rudin (The Firm, Sister Act) and starring Jim Carrey, the film opened in December 2004 and received average to positive notices; such commentators as Newsweek's Sean Smith, The Washington Post's Desson Thomson, and others championed it (one referred to it as "a Tim Burton movie without the weird shafts of adolescent pain"); others were nonplussed. Roger Ebert complained, "It's odd, how the movie's gloom and doom are amusing at first, and then dampen down the humor. Although many Unfortunate Events do indeed occur in "Lemony Snicket," they cannot be called exciting because everyone is rather depressed by them." The picture nevertheless did excellent box office. Alfie - a remake of the 1966 Michael Caine vehicle, with Law taking over the Caine role - didn't fare so well with critics but performed adequately at the box. Law ducked out of films for a year or so between 2004 and 2005, which led Variety to ask, "Where in the world is Jude Law?" The actor apparently needed a vacation, but his absence was short lived: Law ended his sabbatical after a year or so, and triumphantly returns to cinemas in 2006. In All the King's Men, Law plays second-string fiddle to an over-the-top Sean Penn. A political tale adapted from Robert Penn Warren's novel by Schindler's List scribe Steven Zaillian (who also directs), the movie weaves the tale of a Huey Long-like southern demagogue (Penn). The film will hit cinemas across the U.S. in September '06. Law is also re-teaming with his Cold Mountain collaborator, Anthony Minghella, in Breaking & Entering. Over the next several years, Law would enjoy his status as a leading man, appearing in a number of films like the Sherlock Holmes franchise, Hugo, and Contagion. He played Alexei Karenin in Anna Karenina in 2012, and appeared in The Grand Budpest Hotel in 2014.

Trivia: With outrageously long-lashed brown eyes and darkly sensuous looks, Joseph Fiennes has joined his older brother Ralph as the English embodiment of sex for scores of women the world over. After years of working in his brother's shadow, Joseph emerged in 1998 as one of the movie industry's hottest properties, thanks to roles in two back-to-back hits, Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love.Born May 27, 1970, in Salisbury, England, Fiennes and his twin brother, Jacob, were the youngest of six children, Ralph being the eldest. The son of a photographer father and a novelist mother who went under the nom de plume of Jennifer Lash, Joseph and his siblings had a fairly nomadic upbringing, moving 14 times over the course of the actor's childhood. His parents had strong artistic leanings, something they encouraged among their children, and so Fiennes grew up in a very creative atmosphere. After leaving art school, he began working with the Young Vic Theatre Company and then trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He made his first professional stage appearance in A Month in the Country, in which he performed opposite Helen Mirren. After two seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Fiennes was cast in a cameo role in the 1991 television drama A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia, in which Ralph played the titular hero. Joseph's next role of any importance was in the British TV series The Vacillations of Poppy Carew, which cast him opposite Tara Fitzgerald. Following this, Fiennes made his feature debut in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1996 film Stealing Beauty, in which he had a fairly small part but was able to act in the company of individuals such as Jeremy Irons, Sinéad Cusack, and Liv Tyler. It was 1998 that proved to be Fiennes's breakthrough year. With consecutive roles as Cate Blanchett's lover in Elizabeth and as William Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love, he commanded the audience's attention with performances that were marked by a mix of intensity, charm, and brooding charisma. The fact that he didn't look ridiculous in tights also helped, and by the end of the year, with both films having garnered a score of awards (including seven Oscars for Shakespeare alone), it looked as though Fiennes had finally emerged from behind his brother's shadow, proving that talent, as well as a favorable gene pool, were common currency among his family members.Though Fiennes worked in several films throughout the early 2000s (Dust, Luther, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas), he wouldn't find success similar to that of Shakespeare in Love until he took on the role of Bassiano in director Michael Radford's The Merchant of Venice (one of Shakespeare's most celebrated comedies) in 2004. Following a lead role in Running with Scissors (2006), an adaptation of Augusten Boroughs' biography of the same name, Fiennes played tough guy Lenny in The Escapist (2008), a cerebral thriller following a group of criminals seeking to free themselves from the confines of prison. The actor also enjoyed success on the television screen, including the ABC science-fiction series FlashFoward (2009-2010), and Camelot (2011), a 10-part miniseries from Starz.

Trivia: A British actress whose name and dark looks effortlessly conjure up associations with Eastern European exoticism, Rachel Weisz first earned the attention of an international audience with her role as the spoiled daughter of a sculptor in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty (1996). The daughter of a Jewish-Hungarian inventor and an Austrian psychoanalyst (both sides of the family fled Fascist Europe during the '30s), Weisz was born in London on March 3, 1971. Much of her adolescence was spent modeling, and after attending Cambridge to study English, she broke into acting with a role in Sean Mathias' West End revival of Noel Coward's Design for Living.Weisz's performance in the play won her the Critics' Circle Best Newcomer award, and she subsequently took advantage of this recognition with a starring role in the BBC's TV adaptation of Scarlet & Black (1993), and then in 1996 with her aforementioned part in Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty. Although most attention was paid to Liv Tyler in her role as the film's protagonist, Weisz managed to garner notice of her own, and this recognition was furthered by her top billing opposite Keanu Reeves in Chain Reaction that same year. Unfortunately, the big-budget thriller was an unmitigated turkey; Weisz followed it with leads in smaller films such as The Land Girls (1997), a WWII drama that cast her as a young socialite sent to work on a farm; and Going All the Way (1997), a post-war coming-of-age drama starring Ben Affleck and Jeremy Davies that saw Weisz play Wasp, Affleck's Jewish girlfriend.After returning to Britain to star as a hairdresser in the noirish drama I Want You (1998), Weisz reappeared on the Hollywood radar as Brendan Fraser's damsel in distress in the 1999 summer blockbuster The Mummy. That same year, she played yet another love interest, that of a womanizing Ralph Fiennes in Sunshine, István Szabó's epic drama about three generations of a family of Hungarian Jews. Weisz' subsequent turn in the period drama Enemy at the Gates (2000) saw her play the inamorata of yet another Fiennes brother, Joseph. As a Russian-American sniper caught between the affections of a Russian party official (Fiennes) and a legendary sniper (Jude Law), the actress again returned to the early part of the 20th century (this time the Battle of Stalingrad) and to the deep end of the Fiennes family gene pool.Dutifully returning for The Mummy Returns a few short months later, that same year found the starlet gaining positive notice for her role in director Neil LaBute's biting stage drama The Shape of Things. Cast as a young art student whose latest "piece" is a strikingly original form of sculpture, Weisz's character would attempt to transform her boyfriend from schlub to stud to surprising effect. When the play was adapted to film in 2001, the team stuck together with Weisz and co-star Paul Rudd stepping before LaBute's all-seeing lens. For her role in the 2003 crime drama Confidence, Weisz would join a band of talented con artists in a daring bid to take a banker with ties to organized crime for all he's worth. Though the film may not have struck box-office gold, it did prove something of a sleeper and drew generally favorable reviews from critics. Confidence would be one of two films that found Weisz cast alongside screen legend Dustin Hoffman in 2003, the other being the courtroom thriller Runaway Jury. If her last few years had been slightly weighed down in drama, audiences could be assured that things would lighten up considerably when Weisz joined the cast of the Barry Levinson comedy Envy (2004).In 2005 she starred alongside Keanu Reeves again in the comic book adaptation Constantine. The dark film about a man trying to avoid his fate in hell by battling demons on Earth helped keep Weisz's name in circulation, but her next project would create the biggest buzz of her career thus far. Her role in Fernando Meirelles' The Constant Gardener garnered praise from critics and audiences alike, winning her an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Weisz played a British activist working in Kenya whose investigations into government corruption cause her to turn up dead, prompting her husband, Ralph Fiennes, to embark on an epic search to reveal the truth behind her murder. On the heels of this tremendous success, she joined the cast of Darren Aronofsky's psychological science-fiction film The Fountain-a story spanning a thousand years and exploring issues of love, death, and spirituality. Weisz joined Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo for The Brothers Bloom (2008), and worked with celebrated director Alejandro Amenabar in Agora (2009), a historical drama featuring Weisz in the lead role. In 2010, Weisz played a major role in The Whistleblower, which was inspired by a true story of a corporation involved in human trafficking, and later worked opposite Daniel Craig in director Terrence Malick's thriller Dream House (2011).

Trivia: Bearing sharp, blue-eyed features and the outward demeanor of an everyday Joe, Ed Harris possesses a quiet, charismatic strength and intensity capable of electrifying the screen. During the course of his lengthy career, he has proven his talent repeatedly in roles both big and small, portraying characters both villainous and sympathetic.Born Edward Allen Harris in Tenafly, NJ, on November 28, 1950, Harris was an athlete in high school and went on to spend two years playing football at Columbia University. His interest in acting developed after he transferred to the University of Oklahoma, where he studied acting and gained experience in summer stock. Harris next attended the California Institute of the Arts, graduating with a Fine Arts degree. He went on to find steady work in the West Coast theatrical world before moving to New York. In 1983, he debuted off-Broadway in Sam Shepard's Fool for Love in a part especially written for him. His performance won him an Obie for Best Actor. Three years later, he made his Broadway debut in George Firth's Precious Sons and was nominated for a Tony. During the course of his career, Harris has gone on to garner numerous stage awards from associations on both coasts. Harris made his screen debut in 1977's made-for-television movie The Amazing Howard Hughes. The following year, he made his feature-film debut with a small role in Coma (1978), but his career didn't take off until director George Romero starred Harris in Knightriders (1981). The director also cast him in his next film, Creepshow (1982). Harris' big break as a movie star came in 1983 when he was cast as straight-arrow astronaut John Glenn in the film version of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. Twelve years later, Harris would again enter the world of NASA, this time playing unsung hero Gene Krantz (and earning an Oscar nomination) in Ron Howard's Apollo 13.The same year he starred in The Right Stuff, Harris further exhibited his range in his role as a psychopathic mercenary in Under Fire. The following year, he appeared in three major features, including the highly touted Places in the Heart. In addition to earning him positive notices, the film introduced him to his future wife, Amy Madigan, who also co-starred with him in Alamo Bay (1985). In 1989, Harris played one of his best-known roles in The Abyss (1989), bringing great humanity to the heroic protagonist, a rig foreman working on a submarine. He did further notable work in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, and turned in a suitably creepy performance as Christof, the manipulative creator of Truman Burbank's world in Peter Weir's The Truman Show (1998). Harris earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work. The following year, he could be seen in The Third Miracle, starring as a Catholic priest who finds his faith sorely tested.The new millennium found Harris' labor of love, the artist biopic Pollock, seeing the light of day after nearly a decade of development. Spending years painting and researching the modernist painter, Harris carefully and lovingly oversaw all aspects of the film, including directing, producing, and starring in the title role. The project served as a turning point in Harris' remarkable career, showing audiences and critics alike that there was more to the man of tranquil intensity than many may have anticipated; Harris was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for his work. 2001 saw Harris as a German sniper with his targets set on Jude Law in the wartime suspense-drama Enemy at the Gates, and later as a bumbling Army captain in the irreverent Joaquin Phoenix vehicle Buffalo Soldiers. With his portrayal of a well known author succumbing to the ravages of AIDS in 2002's The Hours, Harris would recieve his fourth Oscar nominattion. 2004 found the actor working with Zooey Deschanel for Winter Passing, a psychological drama in which he played a one-time popular novelist who claims he is working on one last book. Harris was praised for his work in Empire Falls (2005), a two-part miniseries from HBO chronicling a middle-aged man who is concerned he has wasted his life, though his work as a scarred stranger with a score to settle in David Cronenberg's award-winning psychological thriller A History of Violence was his biggest success in 2005. In 2007, Harris played a Boston police detective in Ben Affleck's adaptation of author Dennis Lehane's Gone, Baby, Gone. A year later, Harris wrote, starred, directed, and produced Appaloosa, a western following a small town held under the thumb of a ruthless rancher and his crew, and continued to work throughout 2009 and 2010 in films including Once Fallen, Virginia, and The Way Back. Praise came his way once more in 2011's What I Am, a gentle coming-of-age comedy in which Harris plays a teacher who is a catalyst for the friendship of two young boys. In 2012, he earned Emmy and SAG nominations and a Golden Globe award for playing John McCain in the HBO movie Game Change. The next year had him appearing in six films, including playing a detective in Pain & Gain and voicing mission control in Gravity, a throwback to his earlier work in Apollo 13.

Trivia: Although Bob Hoskins first became widely known to American audiences as a detective assigned to investigate a cartoon rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), the balding, burly actor had long been recognized in his native England as a performer of exceptional versatility, capable of playing characters from working-class toughs to Shakespearean villains.Born in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, on October 26, 1942, where his mother had been sent to get away from the then-raging London Blitz, Hoskins was sent back to London with his mother when he was only two weeks old. Growing up in a solidly working-class family in post-war London, Hoskins stayed in school until he was 15, and he then abandoned formal education in favor of a string of diverse jobs. Over the course of the next ten years, he worked as a Covent Garden porter, member of the Norwegian Merchant Marines, steeplejack, plumber's assistant, banana picker, circus fire-eater, trainee accountant, and even spent time working on a kibbutz in Israel. At the age of 25, having garnered a lifetime's worth of unusual experiences, Hoskins got into acting. Hanging out at a pub one night with a friend who was auditioning for a play, he was asked to read for a part in the production. He got the part, and in the course of performing, was approached by an agent who suggested that Hoskins take up acting professionally and began arranging auditions for him. From there, Hoskins began acting onstage, working throughout the '60s, '70s, and '80s with such theatres as London's Royal Court and National Theatre and as a member of such troupes as The Royal Shakespeare Company.Hoskins made his film debut in 1972 with a minor role in the comedy Up the Front. Three years later he got his first substantial film role in the forgettable Inserts, but in 1980, he made a significant breakthrough, turning in a brilliant portrayal of a successful gangster whose world suddenly begins to fall apart in The Long Good Friday. He found even greater success six years later portraying a gangster-turned-chauffeur assigned to a high-priced call girl in Mona Lisa. His performance earned him Best Actor awards from the British Academy, the Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle, and a Best Actor Academy Award nomination. For all of the acclaim surrounding his work, it was not until he starred in the aforementioned Who Framed Roger Rabbit? in 1988 that Hoskins became known to a mainstream American audience. His American accent in the film was so convincing, that in addition to earning him a Golden Globe nomination, it led some viewers to assume that he was actually an American actor.Hoskins could subsequently be seen in a number of American films in addition to those he made in Britain, appearing in such features as Mermaids (1990), in which he played Cher's love interest; Heart Condition (1990), in which he played an unhinged racist detective; and Nixon (1995), which featured him as another crazed law enforcement official, J. Edgar Hoover. In 1997, he returned to his roots in Twentyfourseven, earning a European Film Academy Best Actor Award for his portrayal of a man trying to set up an amateur boxing league for working-class young men in economically depressed, Thatcher-era England. Two years later, Hoskins turned in a similarly gripping performance as a caterer with a dangerous secret in Felicia's Journey, a psychological thriller directed by Atom Egoyan.Hoskins continued to work steadily into the beginning of the next decade in a variety of projects including acting opposite Michael Caine in Last Orders and playing a supporting role in the Jennifer Lopez romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan. He continued to appear in an eclectic series of films including Kevin Spacey's Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Seas, as a very bad guy in the martial-arts film Unleashed, the costume drama Vanity Fair, and earning strong reviews playing opposite an Oscar nominated Judi Dench in Mrs. Henderson Presents. He also lent his very distinctive voice to one of the animated characters in the sequel Gairfield: A Tale of Two Kitties. That same year he portrayed a movie studio chief who may have had something to do with the death of George Reeves in the drama Hollywoodland opposite Ben Affleck, Adrien Brody, and Diane Lane. He appeared in Disney's A Christmas Carol, Made in Dangenham, and 2012's Snow White and the Huntsman. In addition to acting, Hoskins has worked behind the camera in a number of capacities. In 1989, he made his directorial and screenwriting debut with The Raggedy Rawney, a drama about a band of gypsies set during World War II. He also served as an executive producer for The Secret Agent in 1996.In August of 2012 Hoskins announced his retirement from acting in part because he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He passed away after a bout of pneumonia in 2014, at age 71.

Trivia: Ron Perlman grew up in the Washington Heights section of New York City, where his father was a radio/TV repairman and his mother an employee with the city's Department of Health. A profoundly unhandsome youth, Perlman was nonetheless very active in high school theater by virtue of his height (6-foot-2) and his deep, rolling voice. He continued studying drama at Lehman College and later at the University of Minnesota, where he graduated with a master's degree in theater arts. He went to work with New York's Classic Stage Company, an organization specializing in Elizabethan and Restoration plays. Perlman starred in several Manhattan and touring productions staged by Tom O'Horgan of Hair fame before accepting his first film role as a Neanderthal man in 1981's Quest for Fire. Emotionally drained, Perlman backed off from acting after finishing the movie, but was soon back in the groove, essaying such attention-getting roles as the hunchbacked Salvatore in The Name of the Rose (1986). Most often cast as brooding, inarticulate, villainous characters in films (such as Pap in 1993's The Adventures of Huck Finn), Perlman became best known for his performance as the beneficent, albeit hideously ugly, sewer-dwelling Vincent in the late-'80s TV series Beauty and the Beast. Though this remained the actor's defining role for years after the show's run had drawn to a close, he was busier than ever through the '90s. Appearing in everything from obscure arthouse hits (Cronos [1993] and The City of Lost Children [1995]) to voice-over work for television (Aladdin) and video games (Fallout, A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game) to overblown Hollywood blockbusters (Alien Resurrection), Perlman left few stones unturned in terms of flexibility and experimentation in new media. He continued this trend into the early 2000s, alternating between various arenas with remarkable ease and refusing to be pigeonholed, appearing in such high-profile releases as Titan A.E. (2000), Enemy at the Gates (2001), and Blade II (2002). Though his recognition factor seemed higher than ever, few could foresee the opportunity just ahead when Blade II and Cronos director Guillermo del Toro announced that Perlman would star in the film adaptation of Mike Mignola's popular comic book Hellboy, although it seemed highly unlikely that studios would invest the millions of dollars needed to bring the comic to life with an actor of such minimal "marquee value." They wanted Vin Diesel for the role, but del Toro, with the blessing and encouragement of character originator Mignola, eventually won out to have Perlman play the Nazi-creation-turned-superhero in the 2004 fantasy-action film.

Trivia: Grew up in communist East Germany, where he only had one TV channel.The fall of the Berlin Wall happened when he was 17.Traveled to the United States as an exchange student when he was 17, he stayed there for a year studying English and acting in theater.Started his acting career in theater.Has performed at the Theater Junge Generation, the Schauspielhaus Zürich and the Schauspiel Frankfurt.Speaks multiple languages, including German, Russian, English, Italian and French.He dubs his Game of Thrones character in German.

Trivia: Is of Turkish descent.Moved to Brinkum near Bremen, Germany in 1968 with his family.Directed the play Caligula while working with the Berliner Tacheles, and played the titular lead.Made his theatrical feature film debut in the 1988 drama Welcome To Germany a.k.a. Der Passagier, which also starred the legendary Tony Curtis.Released his album Parasiten Der Ohnmacht in 2011.