Trivia: One of the most popular African-American comedians of the late 1990s, TV star turned screen actor Jamie Foxx was born Eric Marlon Bishop in the small town of Terrell, Texas, on December 13, 1967. Foxx was raised by his grandparents after his parents separated. He enjoyed a happy upbringing, going to church every day with his grandparents and excelling at everything from academics to music to football. During his teen years he had his first taste of the entertainment business as his church's choir director and music director, and also started his own R&B band. Foxx studied music while a student at the U.S. International University in San Diego; it was during his college days that he got his start as a stand-up comedian. Attending a comedy club one night with some friends, he was encouraged to take the stage and perform some impersonations, which proved incredibly popular with the audience. Foxx's enthusiastic reception led to his decision to move to L.A. and pursue a comedy career. At the age of 22 he was hired for In Living Color, and he subsequently landed a recurring role on Charles Dutton's sitcom Roc. Foxx eventually broke through onto the big screen with small appearances in movies like The Truth About Cats and Dogs, The Great White Hype, and Booty Call. Foxx's big break in film came in 1999 with Any Given Sunday, and he would henceforth find himself on a short list of bankable dramatic actors in Hollywood. He would go on to star in Michael Mann's Ali and Collateral, before playing legendary musician Ray Charles for the biopic Ray, which found Foxx taking home a Golden Globe and an Oscar for his performance. Foxx would continue to remain a top-tier actor, starring in major films like Stealth, Jarhead, Miami Vice, Dreamgirls, The Soloist, Law Abiding Citizen, Django Unchained, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the 2014 remake of Annie.

Trivia: Austrian-born actor Christoph Waltz began his career on the stage, making a name for himself at prestigious venues like Zurich's Schauspielhaus Zürich and Vienna's Burgtheater. He would eventually study at the Lee Strausberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York, and branch out into on-camera acting, appearing in Austrian TV productions. His film career blasted into the stratosphere in 2009, however, when he was cast as Colonel Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. His role as the feared "Jew Hunter" earned him the best supporting actor award from just about every critics group in the country, as well as from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.Flush with this worldwide success, he played bad guys in The Green Hornet and The Three Musketeers, and played the heavy in Water for Elephants, but he earned his best reviews as part of the foursome in Roman Polanski's adaptation of the award-winning play Carnage. In 2012 he reteamed with Tarantino, playing a bounty hunter in Django Unchained, again earning superb revierws as well as a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar at that year's Academy Awards ceremony.

Trivia: Over the course of a single decade - the 1990s - Leonardo DiCaprio graduated from supporting work in television to a status as one of the most sought-after Hollywood actors under 30. After leading roles in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and James Cameron's Titanic, the actor became a phenomenon, spawning legions of websites and an entire industry built around his name. DiCaprio was born November 11, 1974, in Hollywood, CA. The son of a German immigrant mother and an underground comic book artist father who separated shortly after Leonardo's birth, he was raised by both of his parents, who encouraged his early interest in acting. At the age of two and a half, the fledgling performer had his first brush with notoriety and workplace ethics when he was kicked off the set of Romper Room for what the show's network deemed "uncontrollable behavior." After this rather inauspicious start to his career, DiCaprio began to hone his skills with summer courses in performance art while he was in elementary school. He also joined The Mud People, an avant-garde theater group, with which he performed in Los Angeles. In high school, DiCaprio acted in his first real play and began doing commercials, educational films, and the occasional stint on the Saturday morning show The New Lassie. In 1990, after securing his first full-time agent at the age of 15, DiCaprio landed a role as a teenage alcoholic on the daytime drama Santa Barbara. He also continued to appear on other TV shows, such as The Outsiders and Parenthood, and made his film debut in the 1991 horror film Critters 3. The actor got the first of many big breaks with a recurring role on the weekly sitcom Growing Pains. His portrayal of a homeless boy won him sufficient notice to get him an audition for Michael Caton-Jones's harrowing screen adaptation of Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life. DiCaprio won the film's title role after beating out 400 other young actors and it became his career breakthrough. The 1993 film, and DiCaprio's performance opposite Robert DeNiro, won raves and the actor further increased the adulation surrounding him when, later that year, he played Johnny Depp's mentally retarded younger brother in Lasse Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape. DiCaprio won an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance, and at the tender age of 19, was hailed as an actor to watch. Subsequent roles in three 1995 films, Sam Raimi's Western The Quick and the Dead; Total Eclipse (as the bisexual poet Rimbaud) and The Basketball Diaries (as a struggling junkie) all put the actor in the limelight, but it wasn't until the following year that he became a bona fide star, thanks to his portrayal of Romeo opposite Claire Danes in director Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996). The success of the film brought DiCaprio international fame, many lucrative opportunities, and frequent comparisons to predecessors such as James Dean. After starring with Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, and DeNiro in Marvin's Room (1996), DiCaprio achieved iconic status with his starring role in James Cameron's Titanic. With Kate Winslet as the female lead, the film became a box office sensation, earning garnered 14 Oscar nominations, winning 11, including Best Picture and Best Director, and earned a whopping 1.8 billion dollars at the global box office. DiCaprio's much-discussed exclusion from the Oscar nominations did nothing to hurt his popularity, and somewhat ironically, he next chose to parody his own celebrity with an appearance in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998) as a badly behaved movie star. After displaying his nastier side, he tackled a dual role as twins in the same year's swashbuckler The Man in the Iron Mask, opposite Jeremy Irons, Gabriel Byrne, John Malkovich, and Gérard Depardieu. Following the commercial success of the film, DiCaprio then traveled in a completely different direction, with a lead role in Danny Boyle's screen adaptation of Alex Garland's novel The Beach. The film met with eager anticipation from its first day of shooting, as Leo fans everywhere waited with baited breath to see what kind of impression their golden child would next make on the film world; unfortunately, the muddled Beach drew neither praise nor box-office success. In 2002, DiCaprio began what became a series of collaborations with the legendary director Martin Scorsese, starting with the the epic Gangs of New York (2002) - a sprawling tale of gangland violence in early America. Reportedly delayed by a year given much-publicized disagreements between director Scorsese and producer Harvey Weinstein, the film was ultimately released in time for the 2002 holiday/Oscar season. The tireless actor re-united with director Steven Spielberg with the release of Catch Me if You Can, the true-life tale of Frank Abagnale, Jr., a scam artist so effective that he eluded authorities while assuming a number of high-profile false identities and racking-up over $2.5 million in fraudulent checks. Two years later, DiCaprio and Scorsese embarked on a sophomore collaboration - the biopic The Aviator (2004), with DiCaprio in a critically-praised, star-making turn as eccentric billionaire genius Howard Hughes in The Aviator. DiCaprio and Scorsese scaled even greater heights in 2006 with The Departed, a crime drama in which DiCaprio played an undercover cop trying to bring down criminal Jack Nicholson. Doubling up during Oscar season yet again, that same year he played the lead in Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond, as an Afrikaner who must team up with a South African mercenary in order to find a rare gem of great value to both of them. Both films opened to praise and box-office success, resulting in dual Golden Globe nominations. Perhaps pushing its luck, Warner Bros. -- the studio behind both films -- campaigned DiCaprio for a lead Oscar in Diamond and a supporting one in Departed; Oscar voters only nominated him for Diamond. In the years that followed, DiCaprio showed no signs of tapering off when it came to challenging and even iconic roles. He joined Titanic co-star Kate Winslet, megaproducer Scott Rudin and others for the blistering marriage drama Revolutionary Road (2008), teamed with Scorsese a fourth time for the thriller Shutter Island (2010), toplined Christopher Nolan's complex, elusive sci-fi drama Inception (2010), and in 2011, worked with director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black on the biopic J. Edgar (2011), playing the famous titular FBI director. Meanwhile, DiCaprio also signed on for another collaboration with Baz Luhrmann - a new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, co-starring Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan, not to mention a first-time collaboration with Quinten Tarantino for Django Unchained. In 2013, he and Scorsese joined forces yet again for The Wolf of Wall Street, earning DiCaprio two Oscar nominations, for both Best Actor and Picture.DiCaprio took the next two years off, focusing on environmental causes, but came back in 2015 in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's The Revenant. He nabbed his sixth Oscar nom for the film and finally landed his first win, for Best Actor.The hybrid-car driving DiCaprio has also been an outspoken proponent of environmentalism, a topic he is so passionate about he was allowed to interview then-President Bill Clinton on the issue in a 2000 televised prime-time special.

Trivia: Actress Kerry Washington's strong background in theater and academics found the talented and ambitious young starlet, even at the start of her career, setting her sights on producing, screenwriting, and eventually directing -- a goal that certainly seemed reachable given her early success in such films as Lift and Save the Last Dance. The daughter of a real-estate broker, Washington was born in New York City and attended the Spence School of Manhattan before enrolling in George Washington University's theater program. It wasn't long after her 1998 graduation that the aspiring actress made her feature debut in the 2000 drama Our Song, with nominations for the film at the Independent Spirit Awards and the Sundance Film Festival serving to increase her exposure among cinephiles, even if the film did go largely unseen by the masses. Of course it would take more than a small independent film to truly set Washington apart from the pack, and many saw her performance in the 2001 romantic drama Save the Last Dance as one of the few redeeming qualities in the otherwise forgettable teen drama. Though her only true experience as a thief resulted in the stealing of an apple from a New York deli when directors DeMane Davis and Khari Streeter encouraged her to engage in a minor bit of thievery in preparation for her role as a shoplifter in the 2001 drama Lift, Washington ultimately proved so convincing and effective in the role that she received a nomination as Best Female Lead at the 2002 Independent Spirit Awards. Of course the all-too-honest actress would return to the deli to pay for the apple following completion of the film. By this point there was little doubt as to Washington's talent, and despite the fact that she would be overshadowed by such big names as Anthony Hopkins and Meg Ryan in such subsequent efforts as Bad Company, The Human Stain, and Against the Ropes, she still managed to make an impression with a series of memorable supporting roles. A substantial role as a lesbian looking to be impregnated by her ex-boyfriend in director Spike Lee's 2004 comedy drama She Hate Me threatened to put an end to the trend of casting Washington almost exclusively in supporting roles; a role as the wife of legendary musician Ray Charles in the same year's Ray truly took her career to the next level. Despite her recent onscreen success, Washington remains true to her stage roots by remaining active in theater and has also begun to branch out by attempting to make a name for herself as a writer and producer as well.Still, it was on the screen that Washington truly earned her keep, and following roles in Sexual Life, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Fantastic Four, Washington took a trip to the courtroom for a supporting role on David E. Kelley's Emmy-winning television comedy Boston Legal. In 2006 Washington would find herself the recipient of a most unusual houseguest when a diminutive thief appeared on her doorstep disguised as an abandoned toddler in the Wayans brothers comedy Little Man. She was in Chris Rock's romantic comedy I Think I Love My Wife, and appeared in Spike Lee's World War II movie Miracle at St. Anna. As the 2010's approached, Washington soon found herself a bonified star, remaining adored and in demand due to performances in high profile features like Django Unchained and her star turn as Olivia Pope in ABC's smash hit Scandal.

Trivia: After spending the 1980s playing a series of drug addict and character parts, Samuel L. Jackson emerged in the 1990s as one of the most prominent and well-respected actors in Hollywood. Work on a number of projects, both high-profile and low-key, has given Jackson ample opportunity to display an ability marked by both remarkable versatility and smooth intelligence.Born December 21, 1948, in Washington, D.C., Jackson was raised by his mother and grandparents in Chattanooga, TN. He attended Atlanta's Morehouse College, where he was co-founder of Atlanta's black-oriented Just Us Theater (the name of the company was taken from a famous Richard Pryor routine). Jackson arrived in New York in 1977, beginning what was to be a prolific career in film, television, and on the stage. After a plethora of character roles of varying sizes, Jackson was discovered by the public in the role of the hero's tempestuous, drug-addict brother in 1991's Jungle Fever, directed by another Morehouse College alumnus, Spike Lee. Jungle Fever won Jackson a special acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival and thereafter his career soared. Confronted with sudden celebrity, Jackson stayed grounded by continuing to live in the Harlem brownstone where he'd resided since his stage days. 1994 was a particularly felicitous year for Jackson; while his appearances in Jurassic Park (1993) and Menace II Society (1993) were still being seen in second-run houses, he co-starred with John Travolta as a mercurial hit man in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. His portrayal of an embittered father in the more low-key Fresh earned him additional acclaim. The following year, Jackson landed third billing in the big-budget Die Hard With a Vengeance and also starred in the adoption drama Losing Isaiah. His versatility was put on further display in 1996 with the release of five very different films: The Long Kiss Goodnight, a thriller in which he co-starred with Geena Davis as a private detective; an adaptation of John Grisham's A Time to Kill, which featured him as an enraged father driven to murder; Steve Buscemi's independent Trees Lounge; The Great White Hype, a boxing satire in which the actor played a flamboyant boxing promoter; and Hard Eight, the directorial debut of Paul Thomas Anderson.After the relative quiet of 1997, which saw Jackson again collaborate with Tarantino in the critically acclaimed Jackie Brown and play a philandering father in the similarly acclaimed Eve's Bayou (which also marked his debut as a producer), the actor lent his talents to a string of big-budget affairs (an exception being the 1998 Canadian film The Red Violin). Aside from an unbilled cameo in Out of Sight (1998), Jackson was featured in leading roles in The Negotiator (1998), Sphere (1998), and Deep Blue Sea (1999). His prominence in these films added confirmation of his complete transition from secondary actor to leading man, something that was further cemented by a coveted role in what was perhaps the most anticipated film of the decade, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), the first prequel to George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy. Jackson followed through on his leading man potential with a popular remake of Gordon Parks' seminal 1971 blaxploitation flick Shaft. Despite highly publicized squabbling between Jackson and director John Singleton, the film was a successful blend of homage, irony, and action; it became one of the rare character-driven hits in the special effects-laden summer of 2000.From hard-case Shaft to fragile as glass, Jackson once again hoodwinked audiences by playing against his usual super-bad persona in director M. Night Shyamalan's eagerly anticipated follow-up to The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable (2000). In his role as Bruce Willis' brittle, frail antithesis, Jackson proved that though he can talk trash and break heads with the best of them, he's always compelling to watch no matter what the role may be. Next taking a rare lead as a formerly successful pianist turned schizophrenic on the trail of a killer in the little-seen The Caveman's Valentine, Jackson turned in yet another compelling and sympathetic performance. Following an instance of road rage opposite Ben Affleck in Changing Lanes (2002), Jackson stirred film geek controversy upon wielding a purple lightsaber in the eagerly anticipated Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Despite rumors that the color of the lightsaber may have had some sort of mythical undertone, Jackson laughingly assured fans that it was a simple matter of his suggesting to Lucas that a purple lightsaber would simply "look cool," though he was admittedly surprised to see that Lucas had obliged him Jackson eventually saw the final print. A few short months later filmgoers would find Jackson recruiting a muscle-bound Vin Diesel for a dangerous secret mission in the spy thriller XXX.Jackson reprised his long-standing role as Mace Windu in the last segment of George Lucas's Star Wars franchise to be produced, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). It (unsurprisingly) grossed almost four hundred million dollars, and became that rare box-office blockbuster to also score favorably (if not unanimously) with critics; no less than Roger Ebert proclaimed it "spectacular." Jackson co-headlined 2005's crime comedy The Man alongside Eugene Levy and 2006's Joe Roth mystery Freedomland with Julianne Moore and Edie Falco, but his most hotly-anticipated release at the time of this writing is August 2006's Snakes on a Plane, a by-the-throat thriller about an assassin who unleashes a crate full of vipers onto a aircraft full of innocent (and understandably terrified) civilians. Produced by New Line Cinema on a somewhat low budget, the film continues to draw widespread buzz that anticipates cult status. Black Snake Moan, directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow) dramatizes the relationship between a small-town girl (Christina Ricci) and a blues player (Jackson). The picture is slated for release in September 2006 with Jackson's Shaft collaborator, John Singleton, producing.Jackson would spend the ensuing years appearing in a number of films, like Home of the Brave, Resurrecting the Champ, Lakeview Terrace, Django Unchained, and the Marvel superhero franchise films like Thor, Iron Man, and The Avengers, playing superhero wrangler Nick Fury.

Trivia: Born November 10th, 1971, the fresh-faced, southern-born character actor Walton Goggins specializes in portrayals of hot-headed and rebellious types, often with an authoritarian or aggressive edge. Raised in Lithia Springs, GA, Goggins began his film career in his twenties with small supporting roles in A-list features, including Forever Young (1992), The Next Karate Kid (1994), and The Apostle (1997). He signed for his most successful and enduring role, however, as the sharp-tempered, racist detective Shane Vendrell on the FX network's popular police drama The Shield, a role Goggins held for multiple seasons, beginning with the program's debut in 2002. Beginning not long after this, Goggins stepped behind the camera to produce and turned out a number of noteworthy efforts, including the Billy Bob Thornton-headlined psychological drama Chrystal (2004) and the crime comedy Randy and the Mob, both directed by Ray McKinnon and both co-starring Goggins.Following the conclusion of The Shield in 2007, Goggins worked as an actor and producer in That Evening Sun, a psychological drama following the efforts of an aging farmer to keep his farm after his son betrays him by leasing the property to an old nemesis. The actor joined a cast including Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Sam Rockwell for Cowboys & Aliens in 2011's Cowboys & Aliens, and continued to enjoy television success on the police drama Justified.

Trivia: American actor Dennis Christopher's Italian upbringing served him well early in his career when he appeared fleetingly in Fellinis Roma (1972). Stage and TV work followed his graduation from Temple University, then several American movies, September 30, 1955 (1977) and A Wedding (1978). In Breaking Away (1978), Christopher dominated the proceedings as the Indiana-born teenaged bicyclist who adopted an Italian accent and mannerisms to draw attention to himself. Few of Christopher's subsequent film appearances were up to this level; when last heard from, he was starring in such direct-to-video potboilers as Dead Women in Lingerie (1991), with a few above-average assignments such as the made-for-TV Stephen King's It! (1991). Outside of Breaking Away, Dennis Christopher had at least one other "cult" film to his credit: Fade to Black (1979), in which he played a disturbed young cineast who murders his enemies while dressed up as famous movie villains.

Trivia: Hard-working character actor James Remar has been mainly typecast as a psychopathic killer in a wide variety of thrillers, both blockbusters and low-budget straight-to-video. A native of Boston, he studied acting at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse and made his Broadway debut with Bent, opposite Richard Gere. His first major film role was gangster Ajax in Walter Hill's 1979 action drama The Warriors. The film gained a minor cult following and seemed to cement Remar's reputation as a bad guy. He would continue to work with director Hill for Windwalker (1980), 48 Hrs. (1982), and Wild Bill (1995).During the '80s, he played psycho gangster Dutch Schultz in Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club, a maniac killer in Rent-a-Cop, and a Neanderthal in The Clan of the Cave Bear. He got a little break in 1989 as the cop Gentry in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy. During the '90s, he made a deal with the devil in Tales From the Darkside: The Movie and appeared in many movies that ended up on TV or home video. He had played so many villains that he was able to spoof himself as Max Shady in the comedic thriller parody Fatal Instinct. A few gentle comedy dramas followed with Penny Marshall's Renaissance Man and Herbert Ross' Boys on the Side.Many film roles opened up in the late '90s, from Victor Salva's independent comedy Rites of Passage to the big-budget Robert Zemeckis mystery What Lies Beneath. After playing Frank Cisco on the TV series Total Security, he showed up on HBO's Sex and the City as Richard, Samatha's (Kim Cattrall) rich boyfriend of the moment. He then joined the cast of the USA original series The Huntress as fugitive Tiny Bellows, the love interest of Dottie Thorson (Annette O'Toole). In 2003, he could be seen in feature films from the action moneymaker 2 Fast 2 Furious to the light comedy Duplex.

Trivia: Is of Ghanaian descent. First tried acting in college, when he auditioned for a production of Paper Moon on a dare. Took acting classes at the Acting Studio in New York. Appeared in an off-Broadway production of Tallboy Walking. Cofounded the writing and performance group the Defiant Ones. Published a stage play, Black Thang, in 2003.

Trivia: Born December 15th, 1949, film and television actor Don Johnson first studied his trade at the University of Kansas and the American Conservatory Theatre. A professional actor by his late teens, Johnson's earliest stage and screen assignments frequently found him cast as a fallen innocent. Johnson first gained national press coverage as the 20-year-old star of the counterculture comedy The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970). His next significant credit was the 1975 cult favorite A Boy and His Dog, based on a trenchant Harlan Ellison yarn. Personal and professional entanglements kept him alternately on and offscreen until 1984, when he staged a comeback as Sonny Crockett, a rough-shod yet impossibly hip, sailboat-dwelling Miami-area vice squad detective assigned to work opposite Detective Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas), in Michael Mann's seminal small-screen cop drama Miami Vice (1984-89). To call the program (and Johnson's role in it) "trend-setting" would be a massive understatement; the character of Crockett, with his pastel sports jackets worn atop scoop-neck t-shirts, dark sunglasses, pants without socks, and a two or three-day growth of unshaven beard, rewrote the rules of men's haute-couture for almost a decade and posited Johnson as one of American culture's top male sex symbols for a lengthy duration as well (for a time, it became seemingly impossible to look at the cover of GQ or Esquire without spotting the actor). As the series rolled on, it witnessed Crockett's character undergoing many life changes, including the violent deaths of numerous colleagues on the force and a strange, strange plot point in which he accidentally began to confuse his own identity with that of his drug-pushing alter ego in the Miami crime world. During this second flush of fame, Johnson also distinguished himself as a dependable TV-movie leading man (notably as Ben Quick in the 1985 remake of The Long Hot Summer) and a champion powerboat racer. He also played a series of interesting leading roles in films of extremely variable quality, including Dennis Hopper's post-noir thriller The Hot Spot (1990), Mary Agnes Donoghue's romantic drama Paradise (1991) (opposite longtime partner Melanie Griffith) and Kevin Costner's hard-living buddy in Ron Shelton's gentle sports-themed romantic comedy Tin Cup (1996). During the 1995-96 season, Johnson enjoyed another career renaissance that distinctly mirrored his Vice success, as star of the TV weekly Nash Bridges. On that program, Johnson played the title character, a tough-as-nails San Francisco cop working the beat as an inspector with the municipal police department's Special Investigators Unit. Episodes found him artnered up, from assignment to assignment, with the wiseacre Hispanic detective Joe Dominguez (Cheech Marin). With relentless devotion to the demands of the force and an ere-present jocularity, Bridges worked his way through a series of seemingly impossible criminal investigations over the course of five seasons. He also attempted to balance life on the squad with a difficult personal life that included a strained relationship with his ex (Annette O'Toole) and the provision of much-needed paternal guidance for his teenage daughter (Jodi O'Keefe). No matter where he has stood careerwise, Johnson has always proven good copy for the gossip columns and tabloids thanks to his on-again off-again marriage to actress Melanie Griffith, whom he wed and divorced twice over the course of twenty years; the two ended their union for the second time in 1996. Though he found little in the way of success, Johnson worked steadily through out the late nineties and early 2000s on films including Goodbye Lover (1999), Word of Honor (2003), and Moondance Alexander (2007). The actor also played a small role in the action thriller Machete in 2010.

Trivia: Manhattan-born character actor James Russo has been showing up in hard-bitten film supporting roles since 1981. In the otherwise teen-oriented Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Russo brought a welcome gust of reality as a nasty robber. His gangster characters have borne spell-it-out names like Bugsy (1982's Once Upon a Time in America) and Vince Hood (1984's Cotton Club). Even in such westerns as 1994's Bad Girls, James Russo could be counted upon to show up as a Bad Boy (in this instance, a worthy by the name of Kid Jarret).

Trivia: To Gen-X'ers, particularly those who grew up hooked on prime-time television, Tom Wopat will be forever inseparable from his role as Luke Duke, the more intelligent and responsible of two cousins who spent their days charging around the rural South in a souped-up Dodge Charger and evading the wiles of corrupt politician Boss Hogg (Sorrell Booke), on the comedy-adventure series The Dukes of Hazzard (1979-1985). Born on a dairy farm in Lodi, WI, Wopat attended the University of Wisconsin as a young man, where he displayed strong musical ambition as a trombone player and a singer. Wopat spent his post-collegiate years touring in musical theater productions before being tapped for the Duke role in 1979. The CBS series, of course, took off like a rocket and netted a huge fan base (particularly among preteen boys). By 1982, however, it ran into a snag. Wopat and co-star John Schneider (who played Bo Duke) took issue with Warner Brothers Television over their salaries and shares of Hazzard merchandising revenues; the production company in fact snubbed their demands by bringing in two substitute actors for a single season, only to discover that the ploy didn't work. Wopat and Schneider thus returned in 1983 and stuck with the series for two more seasons, until it wrapped in August 1985. In the mean time, Wopat parlayed his Hazzard recognition into a recording career as a country singer. An eponymous debut album appeared in 1983 to generally favorable reviews, followed by a sophomore effort, the Capitol release Don't Look Back, in 1990, and a third effort, the Epic release Learning to Love, in 1992. The performer continued to cut his acting chops as well from time to time, signing for roles in such little-seen features as Contagious (1997) and Meteorites! (1998). He scored one of his more prominent post-Hazzard roles in a supporting turn opposite leads Kathy Bates, Jessica Lange, and Joan Allen in the female buddy comedy Bonneville (2006). Wopat also portrayed Jeff Robbins, ex-husband of actress Cybill Sheridan (Cybill Shepherd) in the first season of the CBS sitcom Cybill (1995-1998), and remained extremely active in various musical theater productions.

Trivia: Tousle-haired juvenile actor Russ Tamblyn began taking up dancing and acrobatics at the age of six. Needing very little prodding from his parents, the eager Tamblyn embarked on his professional career in the late '40s, performing in radio and Los Angeles musical revues. His first "straight" acting assignment was opposite Lloyd Bridges in the 1947 play Stone Jungle. He entered films in 1948, then was given an "introducing" screen credit for his first starring role in The Kid From Cleveland (1949). Signed by MGM, the young actor changed his billing from Rusty to Russ when cast as an army trainee in 1953's Take the High Ground. Beginning with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Tamblyn became a popular musical star, playing the title role in Tom Thumb (1958) and co-starring as gang leader Riff in the Oscar-winning West Side Story (1961). He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as the teenaged swain of Allison McKenzie (Diane Varsi) in 1958's Peyton Place. By the late '60s, Tamblyn's career had waned, and he was accepting roles in such cheapjack exploitation flicks as Satan's Sadists (1970) and Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). Russ Tamblyn stuck it out long enough to make a healthy comeback in the late '80s, notably in the role of psychiatrist Lawrence Jacoby on the cult-TV favorite Twin Peaks (1990).

Trivia: As the daughter of American child star-turned-cult favorite Russ Tamblyn (Peyton Place, Twin Peaks), Hollywood heartthrob and ingenue Amber Tamblyn inherited the stunning red hair, fair complexion, and acting chops of her famous dad. Born in the early '80s to Russ and wife Bonnie Murray, Tamblyn was discovered by an agent at her school during her preteen years, and soon landed a prominent role as the maniacal tot Emily Quartermaine on General Hospital -- a turn she sustained from 1995 to 2001.Tamblyn guested on such series as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Boston Public in the early 2000s, and tackled a small role in Gore Verbinski's 2002 shocker The Ring (as one of Samara's unfortunate victims), but the actress failed to generate a sizeable fan base prior to the advent of the fantasy-tinged drama series Joan of Arcadia in 2003. Tamblyn received first billing in that program as Joan Girardi, a seemingly average high school teenager who is tapped by the Almighty to perform various assignments. Joan drew a substantial cult following and outstanding critical assessments (USA Today pegged it as the most promising dramatic series of 2003), but unfortunately, its popularity failed to spread beyond a small enthusiastic band of adherents and it folded within two years.Tamblyn then segued back into film work, with first billing in Ken Kwapis' coming-of-age comedy drama The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants in 2005, as one of four teenage girlfriends (alongside America Ferrera, Blake Lively, and Alexis Bledel) who make a good-luck pact; the picture received outstanding reviews and ensured continued stardom for Tamblyn. In 2006, the young actress essayed the title role in Hilary Brougher's fine psychological drama Stephanie Daley, about a troubled teenager accused of killing her newborn child. Tamblyn also traveled the programmer route that year with a turn in the horror sequel The Grudge 2. The following year, the actress starred in Beth Schacter's teen comedy Normal Adolescent Behavior and Rigoberto Castaneda's indie thriller Blackout. In the latter -- a high-wire suspense picture about a bunch of people trapped in a hospital elevator -- Tamblyn played a young woman desperate to reach her grandmother before the elderly woman dies. In 2008, she reprised her Traveling Pants role in the sequel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.Amber Tamblyn is also a prolific poet and runs her own website, The Rebel Asylum, with postings of her work. Her volume of poetry Free Stallion was published by Simon & Schuster in 2005.

Trivia: Bruce MacLeish Dern is the scion of a distinguished family of politicians and men of letters that includes his uncle, the distinguished poet/playwright Archibald MacLeish. After a prestigious education at New Trier High and Choate Preparatory, Dern enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, only to drop out abruptly in favor of Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio. With his phlegmatic voice and schoolyard-bully countenance, he was not considered a likely candidate for stardom, and was often treated derisively by his fellow students. In 1958, he made his first Broadway appearance in A Touch of the Poet. Two years later, he was hired by director Elia Kazan to play a bit role in the 20th Century Fox production Wild River. He was a bit more prominent on TV, appearing regularly as E.J. Stocker in the contemporary Western series Stoney Burke. A favorite of Alfred Hitchcock, Dern was prominently cast in a handful of the director's TV-anthology episodes, and as the unfortunate sailor in the flashback sequences of the feature film Marnie (1964). During this period, Dern played as many victims as victimizers; he was just as memorable being hacked to death by Victor Buono in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965) as he was while attempting to rape Linda Evans on TV's The Big Valley. Through the auspices of his close friend Jack Nicholson, Dern showed up in several Roger Corman productions of the mid-'60s, reaching a high point as Peter Fonda's "guide" through LSD-land in The Trip (1967). The actor's ever-increasing fan following amongst disenfranchised younger filmgoers shot up dramatically when he gunned down Establishment icon John Wayne in The Cowboys (1971). After scoring a critical hit with his supporting part in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Dern began attaining leading roles in such films as Silent Running (1971), The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), and Smile (1975). In 1976, he returned to the Hitchcock fold, this time with top billing, in Family Plot. Previously honored with a National Society of Film Critics award for his work in the Jack Nicholson-directed Drive, He Said (1970), Dern received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of an unhinged Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978), in which he co-starred with one-time Actors' Studio colleague (and former classroom tormentor) Jane Fonda. He followed this triumph with a return to Broadway in the 1979 production Strangers. In 1982, Dern won the Berlin Film Festival Best Actor prize for That Championship Season. He then devoted several years to stage and TV work, returning to features in the strenuous role of a middle-aged long distance runner in On the Edge (1986).After a humorous turn in the 1989 Tom Hanks comedy The 'Burbs, Dern dropped beneath the radar for much of the '90s. He would appear in cult favorites like Mulholland Falls and the Walter Hill Yojimbo re-make Last Man Standing (both 1996), as well as The Haunting (1999) and All the Pretty Horses (2000). As the 2000's unfolded, Dern would continue to act, apperaing most notably in film like Monster and Django Unchained.Formerly married to actress Diane Ladd, Bruce Dern is the father of actress Laura Dern.

Trivia: Notorious for his uncanny portrayals of jocks, rednecks, hellraisers, and good ol' boys, the rough-hewn American character actor M.C. Gainey built a career for himself as the prototypical onscreen lowlife. Gainey observed in an interview, "With a face like this, there aren't a lot of lawyers or priest roles coming my way. I've gotta face that was meant for a mug shot and that's what I've been doing for the past 30 years...by and large I play cowboys, bikers, and convicts."Born in Jackson, MS, in 1947, Gainey debuted onscreen -- effectively portraying a young police officer -- in Herbert Ross' fascinating, ambitious, and stillborn musical film version of the Dennis Potter miniseries Pennies from Heaven (alongside Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, and Christopher Walken). Some might call Gainey's evocation of a cop uncharacteristic, given his later turns, but at least two additional roles as a policeman followed during the '80s, in John Carpenter's Starman (1984) and Sondra Locke's ill-advised sentimental fantasy Ratboy (1986). Gainey landed a number of additional assignments through the end of that decade, but his career did not fully catch fire until the '90s, when he sustained several turns per year. Additional films during this period include 1993's Geronimo: An American Legend (as a miner), 1996's Citizen Ruth (as Harlan), 1997's Con Air (as the villain Swamp Thing), 1999's Happy, Texas (as Bob Allen), and 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (as a bouncer).In the late '90s and early 2000s, Gainey delivered two particularly memorable and dark performances that gave him instant recognition among viewers. In the first picture -- Jonathan Mostow's Breakdown (1997) -- Gainey played Earl, one of the psychopathic redneck kidnappers who torments Kurt Russell. In the second, Alexander Payne's character comedy Sideways (2004), Gainey played the unnamed husband of waitress Cammi, who chases intruder Thomas Haden Church out of his house while fully naked.Gainey found his broadest exposure to date, however, as Mr. Friendly/Tom -- seemingly the leader of the Others and as enigmatic as can be -- in the blockbuster ABC series Lost. In 2006 he began a six episode run as Bow Crowder in the popular FX crime drama series Justified, with feature roles in The Babymakers and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained following in 2012.

Trivia: Rustic character actor Cooper Huckabee has been active in films since the early 1970s. Huckabee's first major film role was high-school jock Hardin Tough in the enjoyably sleazy Pom Pom Girls (1976). He went on to portray any number of sheriffs, security guards and small-town political hacks. Cooper Huckabee's film credits include Foul Play (1978), Cohen and Tate (1989), Gettysburg (1993, as Henry T. Harrison) and Bad Girls (1994).

Trivia: Born and raised in Los Angeles, Jonah Hill first started to find success in show business as a cast member of the brilliant but canceled Judd Apatow series Undeclared. Like many of the actors who were fortunate to work for the successful writer/director/producer, Hill became a part of Apatow's extended stock company, going on to appear in a number of films including The 40-Year-Old Virgin, as a young man who really wants to buy some boots, and Knocked Up, as the buddy who suggested his friend's pregnant girlfriend get "something that rhymes with smushmortion." He also starred alongside his onetime roommate Justin Long in a variety of projects, including the college comedy Accepted. Hill re-teamed with Apatow and company for their second major effort of summer 2007, the Greg Mottola-directed, Seth Rogen-scripted comedy Superbad, but on that occasion, Hill scored his first lead. He starred as Seth, a slightly geeky high school senior desperate for sex and suffering from some fairly serious adolescent angst. The film rang in as a blockbuster and won critical raves across the board. At about the same time, Hill signed on for a much different screen assignment (and target audience), agreeing to provide one of the voices in the animated outing Horton Hears a Who (2008). He followed that up with a small but funny role in the heartbreak comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall as a starstruck hotel worker who really, really wants a visiting rock star to listen to his demo.He scored laughs in the Judd Apatow-directed Funny People, and worked again with Russell Brand in Get Him to the Greek. Hill shored up his indie cred by starring in the Duplass Brothers comedy Cyrus as a young man who is way too attached to his mother.2011 found Hill earning the best notices of his career in Moneyball, as the numbers-crunching Ivy Leaguer who helps Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) build the Oakland A's into a first-rate baseball team with seemingly second-rate players. His work in the movie brought him Best Supporting Actor nods from the Academy, BAFTA, the Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild. Soon however, the actor was ready to get back to his comedic roots, pairing with Chaning Tatum for a satirical big-screen take on the 80's TV show 21 Jump Street, and following that up starring alongside Ben Stiller in The Watch.

Trivia: An actress based in and around Seattle, WA, for many years, screen performer Misty Upham drew heavily from her Native American ancestral background in selecting roles, which often reflected an ethnic angle; the majority of her early film projects also dealt explicitly with Native American issues. Upham first bowed onscreen in the early 2000s, in two projects helmed by the celebrated Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals): Skins and Skinwalkers (both 2002). Upham essayed one of her first leads in the 2008 Frozen River, as a Mohawk Indian who sustains herself economically by smuggling illegal immigrants over the border. She appeared in 2012's Django Unchained and had a major supporting role in August: Osage County (2013). On October 5, 2014, Upham was last seen leaving her sister's apartment on the Muckleshoot Reservation (near Auburn, WA) and was not seen again; her father reported her as missing the next day. On October 16, 2014, her body was found in the woods in Auburn, WA.

Trivia: The son of entertainer Clarence Stroud, Don Stroud made his first film appearance in the 1967 Diabolique clone Games (1967). Handsome and solidly built, Stroud has prospered in meaty second-lead and character roles. Most frequently cast as a short-fused detective, Stroud was seen on television as Sgt. Mike Varrick on Kate Loves a Mystery (1979), as Captain Pat Chambers on Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (1984-87) and as Captain Lussen on the 1989 syndicated revival of Dragnet. Don Stroud has remained active into the 1990s, frequently in such instant-videocassette fare as Carnosaur 2 (1995).

Trivia: A stuntwoman-turned-action star, New Zealander Zoe Bell established herself by standing in for A-list actresses on some of filmdom's most dangerous and intimidating stunts. Bell achieved her first major career coup in her native country, by doubling for Lucy Lawless on the hit fantasy-action series Xena: Warrior Princess, and accompanied that with additional stunt work on small-screen programs including The Chosen, Shortland Street, and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Bell subsequently moved to Hollywood and commenced a multi-film collaboration with Quentin Tarantino that included the pictures Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004), and Tarantino's Death Proof segment of the omnibus Grindhouse (2007), before signing to headline her own action feature in 2008. Aside from her Tarantino collaborations, Bell's Hollywood resumé also includes such pictures as Catwoman (2004) and Poseidon (2006). The documentary Double Dare (2003) provided biographical portraits of Bell and fellow stuntwoman Jeannie Epper.

Trivia: Prolific and versatile, actor Michael Bowen joined the casts of some of the most critically respected and lucrative pictures of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, nearly always enlisted as an unremarkable everyman. Bowen launched his career with bit parts in such pictures as Valley Girl (1983), Iron Eagle (1985), and Less Than Zero (1987), then graduated to supporting roles by the late '90s. He was particularly memorable as cop Mark Dargus, the partner of ATF agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction follow-up, Jackie Brown (1997), then turned in a haunting portrayal of Rick, the dysfunctional father of game show contestant Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) in Paul Thomas Anderson's mosaic of contemporary L.A. life, Magnolia (1999). In the following decade, Bowen re-teamed with Tarantino for the neo-martial arts opus Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) and delivered an intense performance as a cruel and vile counselor at a rehab center in first-time director Monty Lapica's psychodrama, Self-Medicated (2005). He also took on a recurring role on the hit TV drama Lost as Danny Pickett, a hotheaded, tough member of the Others, during the second and third seasons of the series (2006-2007).

Trivia: Lead actor-singer, onscreen from 1971. He is best known as Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973).

Trivia: Dubbed "The Godfather of Gore" for his brilliant make-up and special effects work on countless horror movies, Tom Savini has grossed people out as the guy behind the gore on films ranging from Friday the 13th to Night of the Living Dead to Quentin Tarantino's From Dusk Till Dawn.Developing an interest in magic and illusion as a child, when he was inspired by the 1957 Lon Chaney biopic Man of a Thousand Faces, Savini spent most of his youth in his room, inventing characters and experimenting with make-up techniques. After studying acting and directing at Carnegie Mellon University, he went to Vietnam as a combat photographer for the Army; ironically, he would later gain fame for simulating on the screen the same kind of carnage he witnessed first-hand during the war.Savini first began working as a make-up and special effects man on horror movies during the early 1970s. Some of his more notable work during that decade and the subsequent years includes George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985), Friday the 13th (1980), the Creepshow series, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), Dario Argento's Trauma (1992), a 1995 re-make of Romero's Night of the Living Dead, which Savini also directed, and Tarantino's From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).In addition to his make-up and special effects work, Savini has a number of acting and directing credits to his name on the stage, screen, and television. He has also written a number of books about his trade and has been the subject of the documentary series Scream Greats.

Trivia: Brando-esque leading man Michael Parks was one of five children of an itinerant laborer. Like the rest of his family, Parks drifted from job to job in his early teens, briefly marrying at 15. When he wasn't nickel-and-diming it as a migrant worker, Parks acted with amateur theater groups up and down the California coast. Discovered by an agent in 1960, Parks was signed to a Universal contract, spending most of his time on suspension due to his ornery outspokenness. He settled down long enough to play an au naturel Adam in John Huston's The Bible (1966) and to star as a young motorcyclist in search of the Real America on the 1969 TV series Then Came Bronson. Parks astonished his anti-establishment fans in 1968 when he supported George Wallace for the presidency. Parks' film appearances since then have been confined to second-string productions, though he managed to attract attention in 1977 by portraying Bobby Kennedy in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover. In 1990, Parks co-produced as well as starred in Caged Fury, though it was his turn as Canadian mobster Jean Renault in David Lynch's Twin Peaks that offered him the most exposure that year. Numerous film and television roles followed, and in 1996 director Quentin Tarantino gave Parks a career-boost by casting him in the violent horror/crime hybrid From Dusk Till Dawn (a role that the actor would reprise in Kill Bill, Vol. 1, Death Proof, and Planet Terror). A turn as the volatile leader of a religious cult in Kevin Smith's Red State capitalized on Parks' intense onscreen charisma, and in 2012 he could be spotted in director Ben Affleck's Argo. And though the documentary Kevin Smith: Burn in Hell found the outspoken Clerks director jokingly chiding "View Askewniverse" veteran Affleck for "cherry-picking" Parks on the strength of his Red State performance, few would deny that the talented Parks would have likely won the role on his own merit. Parks died in 2017, at age 77.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Born March 27th, 1963, director/screenwriter/actor/producer Quentin Tarantino was perhaps the most distinctive and volatile talent to emerge in American film in the early '90s. Unlike the previous generation of American filmmakers, Tarantino learned his craft from his days as a video clerk rather than as a film-school student. Consequently, he developed an audacious fusion of pop culture and independent arthouse cinema; his films were thrillers that were distinguished as much by their clever, twisting dialogue as their outbursts of extreme violence. Tarantino initially began his career as an actor (his biggest role was as an Elvis impersonator on an episode of The Golden Girls), taking classes while he was working at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, CA. During his time at Video Archives, the fledgling filmmaker began writing screenplays, completing his first, True Romance, in 1987. With his co-worker, Roger Avary (who would later also become a director), Tarantino tried to get financial backing to film the script. After years of negotiations, he decided to sell the script, which wound up in the hands of director Tony Scott. During this time, Tarantino wrote the screenplay for Natural Born Killers. Again, he was unable to come up with enough investors to make a movie and gave the script to his partner, Rand Vossler. Tarantino then used the money he made from True Romance to begin pre-production on Reservoir Dogs, a film about a failed heist. Reservoir Dogs received financial backing from LIVE Entertainment after Harvey Keitel agreed to star in the movie. Word-of-mouth on Reservoir Dogs began to build at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, which led to scores of glowing reviews, making the film a cult hit. While many critics and fans were praising Tarantino, he developed a sizable number of detractors. Claiming he ripped off the obscure Hong Kong thriller City on Fire, the critics only added to the director/writer's already considerable buzz. During 1993, Tarantino wrote and directed his next feature, Pulp Fiction, which featured three interweaving crime storylines; Tony Scott's big-budget production of True Romance was also released that year. In 1994, Tarantino was elevated from a cult figure to a major celebrity. Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that May, beginning the flood of good reviews for the picture. Before Pulp Fiction was released in October, Oliver Stone's bombastic version of Natural Born Killers hit the theaters in August; Tarantino distanced himself from the film and was only credited for writing the basic story. Pulp Fiction soon eclipsed Natural Born Killers in both acclaim and popularity. Made for eight million dollars, the film eventually grossed over 100 million dollars and topped many critics' top ten lists. Pulp Fiction earned seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (Tarantino and Avary), Best Actor (John Travolta), Best Supporting Actor (Samuel L. Jackson), and Best Supporting Actress (Uma Thurman); it won one, for Tarantino and Avery's writing.After the film's success, Tarantino was everywhere, from talk shows to a cameo in the low-budget Sleep With Me. At the beginning of 1995, he directed a segment of the anthology film Four Rooms and acted in Robert Rodriguez's sequel to El Mariachi, Desperado, and the comedy Destiny Turns on the Radio, in which he had a starring role. Tarantino also kept busy with television, directing an episode of the NBC TV hit ER and appearing in Margaret Cho's sitcom All-American Girl.The latter half of the '90s saw Tarantino continue his multifaceted role as an actor, director, screenwriter, and producer. In 1996, he served as the screenwriter and executive producer for the George Clooney schlock-fest From Dusk Till Dawn, and the following year renewed some of his earlier acclaim as the director and screenwriter of Jackie Brown. The film, in which Tarantino had a voice-over cameo, reunited him with Fiction star Samuel L. Jackson and won him the raves that had been missing for much of his post-Fiction career. Also in 1997, Tarantino appeared in Full Tilt Boogie, a documentary about the making of From Dusk Till Dawn. His film work the following year was essentially confined to a role in friend Julia Sweeney's God Said, Ha!, and in 1999, he was back behind the camera as the producer for From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money. Though Tarantino would lay relatively low in the early years of the new millennium, he did make a prominent guest-starring appearance in 2001 on a two-episode story arc of the spy show Alias. In late 2002/early 2003, hype would soon start to build around his fourth feature, Kill Bill (2003). Though originally envisioned to be a single release, Kill Bill was eventually seperated into two films entitled Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 when it became obvious that the story was simply too far-reaching to be contained in a single film. A kinetic homage to revenge movies of the 1970s, Kill Bill Vol. 1 featured Uma Thurman as a former assassin known as "The Bride." While the first film in the pair was an eye-popping homage to Asian cinema and all things extreme, the outrageous violence of Kill Bill Vol. 1 stood in stark contrast to the dialogue-driven second installment that concluded the epic tale of revenge and betrayal. The gambit of separate releases paid off, as both earned a combined sum of more than 130 million dollars domestically.In the wake of the Kill Bill films, rumors abounded concerning Tarantino's next feature, and eager fans were shocked to see his name mentioned as being a potential candidate to helm everything from the next Friday the 13th film to a remake of the James Bond classic Casino Royale.In 2005, Tarantino did step back into the director's chair to helm a segment of Robert Rodriguez's eagerly anticipated comic book adaptation Sin City. A longtime friend of Rodriguez, Tarantino agreed to take part in the filming of Sin City, not only to repay the versatile filmmaker for providing soundtrack music for the Kill Bill films, but also to try his hand at digital filmmaking -- a process increasingly championed by the seemingly inexhaustable Rodriguez. After this, the two directors joined forces again, for one of the most ballyhooed and hotly anticipated pictures of 2007: Grindhouse. A no-holds-barred elegy to the sleazy, seedy, often half-dilapidated inner-city theaters of the 1970s that would churn out similarly sleazy movies, Tarantino and Rodriguez divided Grindhouse into two portions: the first half, Death Proof, directed by Tarantino, starred Kurt Russell in homage to the high-octane auto thrillers of the '70s. Merging low-brow thrills with blunt, existential dialogue, the Tarantino segment garnered the lion's share of the film's considerable critical praise, although the three-hour-plus Grindhouse ultimately failed to connect with audiences, much to the dismay of The Weinstein Company, who released it. Separate versions of Death Proof and Rodriguez's Planet Terror were then prepped for European release, with Tarantino's effort screened in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.In 2009 Tarantino issued Inglorious Basterds, a sprawling World War II epic abuot a band of Jewish American soldiers fighting an Apache resistence behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France. The film, strring Brad Pitt, was a hit around the world, and garnered Tarantino nominations from the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild, the Hollywood Foreign Press, and the Academy for his screenplay and his direction.He took three years to craft his follow up, Django Unchained, a revenge tale set in the pre-Civil War American south that follows a slave who teams up with a bounty hunter to get his wife away from a sadistic plantation owner. The film was a another international box office hit, and earned a number of year-end awards including a second Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Tarantino.

Trivia: Gerald McRaney was 14 when he was possessed with the notion to become an actor. Five years later, McRaney landed a job with a New Orleans rep company, laboring away as an oil-field worker during the off-season. In 1969, he made his film bow in the Southern-fried cheapie The Night of Bloody Horror. Moving to LA in 1971, he took acting lessons with Jeff Corey, struggling to lose his Mississippi accent, and drove a cab between TV jobs. For nearly a decade, McRaney paid the rent by playing murderers, psychos and rapists. The actor was finally "humanized" as down-home, college-educated private eye Rick Simon on the breezy detective series Simon and Simon, which ran from 1981 to 1988. After this, he was briefly considered for the starring role in Coach; instead, he was cast as Marine major J. D. "Mac" McGillis in the long-running (1989-93) family sitcom Major Dad. He made his directorial debut with the 1991 TV movie Love and Curses...And All That Jazz, in which he also starred. In 1995, he was brought in to hypo the flagging CBS drama series Central Park West; when this series tanked, he resurfaced as the star of the "family values" weekly drama Promised Land (1996), a spin-off of his guest appearance on TV's Touched by an Angel. McRaney's second wife was Designing Woman co-star Delta Burke.

Trivia: Despite spending the first 25 years of his life in Adelaide, Australia, Anthony LaPaglia is best known for playing street-savvy Italian New Yorkers. This was not, however, LaPaglia's original plan. Rather than testing the waters of show business, LaPaglia traveled to the United States intending to pursue a full-time teaching career. As luck would have it, however, one of LaPaglia's odd jobs was a small role in Cold Steel (1987), a low-budget detective drama. LaPaglia began pursuing theater and television in his spare time -- one of his more notable early performances was in 1988's Frank Nitti: The Enforcer -- and considered himself a full-time actor by 1989, when he made his feature-film debut in Slaves of New York. It was 1990, however, when the young actor earned critical recognition for his role as an exceedingly polite mobster in Betsy's Wedding.LaPaglia continued to build his résuméthroughout the early '90s, most of which he spent playing either kindly policemen or good-hearted mobsters, and was delighted to work alongside a variety of noted actors so early in his career. Among those actors were Alan Alda in Betsy's Wedding, Michael Keaton in One Good Cop (1991), and Nathan Lane, Sharon Stone, and Kevin Bacon in He Said, She Said (1992). Later in 1992, LaPaglia could be found playing his first leading role in George Gallo's gangster farce 29th Street. Though the film did not fare particularly well, audiences were nonetheless impressed with LaPaglia's intensity, and he played a more serious gangster with great success opposite Susan Sarandon in The Client (1994). The actor switched gears for his next handful of films; in Mixed Nuts (1994) he played a disillusioned Santa Claus, while Empire Records (1995) found him as a down-on-his-luck store manager, and the Australian-helmed Brilliant Lies (1996) featured him as the defendant in a sketchy sexual-harassment case.Despite a smattering of mediocre films between 1995 and the early 2000s, LaPaglia continued to earn critical acclaim for many of his endeavors, such as Steve Buscemi's directorial debut, Trees Lounge (1996), for which LaPaglia joined a star-studded supporting cast, as well as for his role as a detective in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam (1999). Luckily for him, 2000 and 2001 proved excellent for his career, as it was during this period that he played a wealthy businessman in The House of Mirth and an adulterous police detective in Lantana. In addition to receiving international success, Lantana earned LaPaglia the prestigious Best Actor award from the Australian Film Institute, as well as a nomination from the Film Critics Circle. In the meantime, he was adding several major television credits to his résumé, including a starring role as the head of the FBI's Missing Persons Squad on CBS's Without a Trace, and a recurring role on the long-running sitcom Frasier, a performance for which he would receive an Emmy in 2002. Far removed from his fledgling days as a teacher, 2002 also found LaPaglia working with Val Kilmer for The Salton Sea; Sigourney Weaver for The Guys; Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal in Analyze That; and Eric Stoltz in Happy Hour. In 2003, after filming Manhood with Janeane Garofalo and the late John Ritter, LaPaglia agreed to star in director Josh Sternfeld's Winter Solstice (2004).Over the next several years, LaPaglia would appear in a number of big screen projects, like Balibo (2009), Overnight (2012) and A Good Marriage (2014).