Trivia: One of the most popular film personalities in the world, Jackie Chan came from a poverty-stricken Hong Kong family -- so poor, claims Chan, that he was almost sold in infancy to a wealthy British couple. As it turned out, Chan became his family's sole support. Enrolled in the Chinese Opera Research Institute at the age of seven, he spent the next decade in rigorous training for a career with the Peking Opera, excelling in martial arts and acrobatics. Billed as Cheng Lung, Chan entered films in his mid-teens, appearing in 25 productions before his 20th birthday. Starting out as a stunt man, Chan was promoted to stardom as the potential successor to the late Bruce Lee. In his earliest starring films, he was cast as a stone-cold serious type, determined to avenge Lee's death. Only when he began playing for laughs did Chan truly attain full celebrity status. Frequently referred to as the Buster Keaton of kung-fu, Chan's outlook on life is a lot more optimistic than Keaton's, but in his tireless devotion to the most elaborate of sight gags and the most awe-inspiring of stunts (many of which have nearly cost him his life), Chan is Keaton incarnate. From 1978's The Young Master onward, Chan has usually been his own director and screenwriter. His best Hong Kong-produced films include the nonstop action-fests Project A (1983), Police Story (1985), Armour of God (1986), and the Golden Horse Award-winning Crime Story (1993) -- not to mention the multiple sequels of each of the aforementioned titles. Despite his popularity in Europe and Asia, Chan was for many years unable to make a dent in the American market. He tried hard in such films as The Big Brawl (1980) and the first two Cannonball Run flicks, but American filmgoers just weren't buying.At long last, Chan mined U.S. box-office gold with 1996's Rumble in the Bronx, a film so exhilarating that audiences never noticed those distinctly Canadian mountain ranges looming behind the "Bronx" skyline. Chan remained the most popular Asian actor with the greatest potential to cross over into the profitable English-speaking markets, something he again demonstrated when he co-starred with Chris Tucker in the 1998 box-office hit Rush Hour. In 2000 Chan had another success on his hands with Shanghai Noon, a comedy Western in which he starred as an Imperial Guard dispatched to the American West to rescue the kidnapped daughter (Lucy Liu) of the Chinese Emperor.He maintained his status as one of the biggest movie stars in the world throughout the next decades in a series of films that include Rush Hour 2, The Tuxedo, Shankghai Knights, The Myth, Rush Hour 3. He enjoyed his biggest U.S. hit in quite some time starring in the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid opposite Jaden Smith. Even with his hits in the English-language world, Chan continued to work in China as well, as both an actor and a producer. In 2016, he won an Honorary Academy Award for his more than 50 years of service to the film industry.

Trivia: There is nothing tranquil about comedian/actor Chris Tucker. A limber, wiry fellow with a high-pitched voice and a delivery as fast as a mosquito's wing beats, he seems energy incarnate. In regard to his acting, some have hailed him the next Eddie Murphy; indeed, Murphy was one of Tucker's icons while growing up. A native of Atlanta, GA, Tucker's proclivity for comedy has been lifelong, beginning when he, the youngest of six children, used humor as an attention-getting device and as a way to get his brothers to allow him to hang around them. In addition to Eddie Murphy's comedy, Tucker was heavily influenced by that of Richard Pryor. In high school, Tucker was one of those class clowns who was able to make even his teachers laugh and it was one of his instructors who suggested Tucker display his gifts in a school talent show. He proved a roaring success and following graduation, decided to become a professional. His classmates, having voted him "Most Humorous," supported his efforts. Tucker made his debut at a local comedy club. Because he was underage, Tucker had to sneak in and then do some real fast talking to be allowed to perform. He succeeded and his routine garnered a tremendous response. More local successes followed and this emboldened the then 19-year-old Tucker to try his luck in Los Angeles. Soon after arriving on the West Coast, Tucker had established himself in the major comedy clubs and, after appearing on HBO's Def Comedy Jam found himself a bona fide rising star.Tucker made his film debut with a small but memorable role in House Party 3 (1994). The following year, Tucker appeared in F. Gary Gray's crazy comedy Friday, playing Smokey, a lazy pot-smoking drug dealer who could be quite rich if only he'd stop using the merchandise himself. Tucker's hilarious improvisation during filming helped to make the film a sleeper hit. In his next film, Dead Presidents, directed by brothers Allen Hughes and Albert Hughes, Tucker hinted at some real talent as a dramatic actor. In regard to movies, 1997 proved a very good year for Tucker who was given his first showcase film in the action comedy Money Talks, which he executively produced. He also had a small but memorable role in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown and played a hyper-manic intergalactic DJ in Luc Besson's The Fifth Element. In 1998, Tucker had his second starring role, working opposite international action superstar Jackie Chan in the action-packed comedy Rush Hour. For reasons known only to him, Tucker abruptly put a stop to his film career appearing only in Rush Hour 2 and 3 in the ten years after the original.

Trivia: A popular British character actor, Tom Wilkinson specializes in playing men suffering from some sort of emotional repression and/or pretensions of societal grandeur. Active in film and television since the mid-'70s, Wilkinson became familiar to an international audience in 1997 with his role as of one of six unemployed workers who strip for cash in Peter Cattaneo's enormously successful comedy The Full Monty. That same year, he was featured in Gillian Armstrong's Oscar and Lucinda, and as the rabidly unpleasant father of Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's young lover in Wilde. Wilkinson was also shown to memorable effect as a theater financier with acting aspirations in Shakespeare in Love (1998); also in 1998, he acted in one of his few leading roles in The Governess, portraying a 19th century photographer with an eye for the film's title character (Minnie Driver). Though he would appear in such popular mainstream films as Rush Hour (1998) and The Patriot (2000) over the next few years, it was his role in director Todd Field's emotionally intense In the Bedroom that earned Wilkinson (as well as co-star Marisa Tomei) an Oscar nod. After that success, his career began to really take off, and in just the next few years, he would appear in over a dozen films in roles of varying size. In 2003, he starred in HBO movie Normal as a married, middle-aged man who decides to start living his life as a woman and eventually have a sex-change operation. Acting alongside Jessica Lange, Wilkinson earned both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his brave and moving performance. In addition, he would also play a menacing, licentious patron of the arts in Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003) and an experimental doctor erasing his patient's memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), written by Charlie Kaufman and starring Jim Carrey.Now an established star thanks to his impressive body of work, Wilkinson was called upon to appear in a number of high profile Hollywood hits, and could always be counted on to deliver in spades. Still, Wilkinson had the talent and foresight to always offset each blockbuster with at least one low-key, character-driven drama, and for every scenery-chewing Batman Begins villain, a serious-minded Separate Lies lawyer or Ripley Under Ground Scotland Yard detective would be quick to follow. After doing battle with Beelzebub in 2005's frightening, fact-based horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Wilkinson would once again shift gears with impressive grace to portray the patriarch of a Texas family whose attempts to maintain order over his wildly dysfunctional family lead to a wild night on the town that ultimately helps him to restore his perspective in Night of the White Pants. Later that same year Wilkinson would pull back a bit for a supporting role in The Last Kiss - a romantic comedy drama starring Scrubs' Zach Braff and directed by Tony Goldwyn. 2007 brough WIlkinson yet another role that earned him uniformly strong reviews. His mentally unhinged lawyer in Michael Clayton garnered him a slew of year end accolades including Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor. That same year he became part of the Woddy Allen family with a starring role in Cassandra's Dream. In 2008 he appeared as Ben Franklin in the award-winning HBO miniseries John Adams, as well as Valkyrie and RocknRolla. He reteamed with Michael Clayton mastermind Tony Gilroy for 2009's Duplicity, playing the CEO of a multinational corporation, and appeared in The Ghost Writer for director Roman Polanski the next year. In 2012 he was part for the all-star British ensemble put together for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Trivia: Chinese American actor Tzi Ma has an impressively long résumé, with roles on everything from The Cosby Show to Walker, Texas Ranger. Guest appearances would be Ma's bread and butter, but the versatile actor would also cultivate a successful career in film, portraying many memorable characters in movies, like The Ladykillers. In 2005, Ma took on the recurring part of Chinese Consulate Cheng Zhi for the fourth season of the series 24, a role he would reprise for seasons five and six.

Trivia: Primarily a supporting and character actor, Philip Baker Hall has also played the occasional lead on stage, screen, and television. Hall made his film debut playing a priest in Cowards (1970). He then appeared in three television series during the mid-'70s, including Man From Atlantis (1977). He became best known during the '80s for his portrayal of Richard Nixon in Robert Altman's brilliant Secret Honor (1984), for which Hall also wrote the screenplay. Though the film garnered mixed reviews, the actor's portrayal of Nixon was hailed as a tour de force. Through the '80s and '90s, Hall continued to work steadily in films and on television; his talents were perhaps best, and most famously, utilized by director Paul Thomas Anderson, who cast Hall in substantial roles in Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), and Magnolia (1999), the last of which saw the actor in fine form as a game show host dying of cancer. Hall also had a memorable turn as a private investigator who is far too convinced of the infallibility of his own instincts in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999); that same year, he gave a strong performance as CBS producer Don Hewitt in Michael Mann's The Insider. Clearly, Hall had no intention of slowing down, and he would spend the next several years remaining extremely active, appearing in such films as The Matador, Rush Hour 3, The Lodger, 50/50, and Mr. Popper's Penguins.

Trivia: Character actor Mark Rolston specialized in everyman portrayals with a slightly understated, tough edge to them. Born in Baltimore, MD, in 1956, Rolston broke into film in the early to mid-'80s and scored his first major feature role with a turn as a private in James Cameron's effects-heavy sci-fi blockbuster Aliens (1986). Within a few years, he began turning up in supporting capacities in numerous additional features; the more visible included Weeds (1987), Prancer (1989), Body of Evidence (1993), Rush Hour (1998), and Martin Scorsese's Best Picture winner The Departed (2006). In 2008, Rolston signed on to play Erickson, who comes face to face with Jigsaw's (Tobin Bell) diabolical traps, in the fifth installment of the gore-soaked Saw franchise. Rolston also made television appearances on programs including Touched by an Angel and NYPD Blue.

Trivia: With his bald head and beefy exterior, Hollywood character player Rex Linn quickly built up an acting resumé replete with many portrayals of toughs, feds, cops, thugs, and -- occasionally -- unremarkable, beleaguered everymen. Born in the panhandle of the Lone Star State, Linn came of age in the small Texas town of Spearman. He discovered a lingering interest in drama during his teenage years, but buckled under the weight of discouragement from an acting coach, and put acting on the shelf to focus on career pursuits in banking and the oil industry. Dissatisfied with these fields, Linn convinced an Oklahoma talent agent to sign him, and made the leap from commercials to feature roles with his portrayal of serial murderer Fred Epps in the Peter Masterson-directed thriller Night Game (1989), opposite Roy Scheider. The pleasure of this experience prompted Linn to head to the West Coast, where he worked construction, landed intermittent acting assignments, and studied the craft under the tutelage of Silvana Gallardo in Studio City, CA. Linn was memorable as the rogue treasury agent who assists terrorist John Lithgow in the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Cliffhanger (1993), which brought the actor the recognition he so persistently sought and led to a series of supporting roles in dozens of feature films. Linn's portrayal of Frank McLaury in Wyatt Earp (1994) marked the first in a series of several onscreen collaborations with Kevin Costner that also included the romantic comedy Tin Cup (1996) and the laborious sci-fi epic The Postman (1997). Linn also landed guest appearances on such series as JAG and 3rd Rock From the Sun. He is best known, however, for his fine portrayal of Miami-Dade Police Department detective Frank Tripp on the hit crime series CSI: Miami.

Trivia: New York native Ken Leung studied acting at NYU and at HB Studio before making his onscreen debut with a minor appearance in 1997's Rush Hour. He would continue to find consistent screen work with roles in movies like Red Dragon and Vanilla Sky, while simultaneously cultivating a theater career with roles in Broadway plays like the Tony Award-winning Thoroughly Modern Millie in 2002. Leung would later find a particularly memorable role in 2008, when he was cast as Miles Straume in the mysterious series Lost.

Trivia: Although Chris Penn has achieved little of the critical acclaim and none of the notoriety of his older brother, Sean, the rotund actor has become a familiar supporting player and character actor who hasn't had to rely on Sean, either. The brothers have appeared together only once, in the 1986 film At Close Range; in the meantime, Chris has made a name for himself in projects ranging in tone and purpose from Footloose (1984) to Reservoir Dogs (1992).The son of director Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan, and the brother of singer Michael Penn in addition to actors Sean and Matthew, Chris Penn was born on June 10, 1962, in Los Angeles. The actor, sometimes credited as Christopher Penn, started out in the profession at age 12, under the tutelage of Peggy Feury at the Loft Studio in Los Angeles. His film breakthrough came in Francis Ford Coppola's teen gang movie Rumble Fish (1983), which cast him opposite Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke. But it wasn't until Footloose the following year that Penn captured his first truly memorable role. As the burly best buddy of Kevin Bacon's rebellious dance proponent, Penn's simple decency shone through, especially in the lively production number in which his character awkwardly learns to dance, to the strains of Denise Williams' "Let's Hear It for the Boy."Penn's supporting work continued through the 1980s in films like Pale Rider (1985) before he became affiliated with organized crime movies, on both sides of the law, in the 1990s. Two collaborations with Quentin Tarantino in particular solidified this association. In the first, 1992's Reservoir Dogs, Penn played Nice Guy Eddie, the obedient son of Lawrence Tierney's mob boss. Screenwriting for director Tony Scott, Tarantino then helped Penn get cast in True Romance (1993) as a narcotics officer. From this point on, Penn began appearing in a handful of films each year, first and perhaps most notably as the frustrated husband of a phone sex operator (Jennifer Jason Leigh) in Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993).Penn continued his criminal film streak with such projects as Mulholland Falls (1996), The Funeral (1996), and One Tough Cop (1998). In 2001, he spoofed his tough guy image by appearing as the brother of comedian Chris Kattan, the novice mob operative of the title, in Corky Romano.

Trivia: Film and television player Roger Fan premiered on the small screen in the late '90s, with guest spots on such series as HBO's Arli$$ and NBC's Frasier. After the turn of the millennium, however, he segued into bit parts and supporting roles in theatrical features. These included Corky Romano (2001), Stuck on You (2003), and Annapolis (2006). Fan ascended to star billing as Breeze Loo (a riff on Bruce Lee) in Finishing the Game (2007) -- a martial arts-themed comedy about director Robert Clouse's attempts to polish off the actioner The Game of Death following the death of lead actor Lee.

Trivia: Of Chinese-American nationality. Trained in the martial art of Kung Fu. Has portrayed Chinese ambassadors in The West Wing and Lost. Has voiced characters for tv shows and video games. Best known for Rush Hour (1998), Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) and Starsky & Hutch (2004).

Trivia: Prolific character actor John Hawkes earned a new level of recognition with his role as Bugsy, the slow-witted fisherman who provides Wolfgang Petersen's The Perfect Storm (2000) with a degree of comic relief. Hailing from Austin, TX, Hawkes, who bears a vague resemblance to Tom Selleck, began his career as an actor and musician. After relocating to Los Angeles, where he moved to do further stage work, the actor wrote and performed Nimrod Soul, a one-man show staged at the Theatre at the Improv. He subsequently found work on television and broke into film in the late '80s. In addition to doing supporting turns in a large variety of films, including Flesh and Bone (1993), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), Hawkes also did guest work on such long-running TV shows as E.R. and The X-Files. In 1999, he was cast in one of his first leading roles in A Slipping-Down Life, a well-received big screen adaptation of Anne Tyler's novel of the same name that also starred Lili Taylor and Guy Pearce. With his casting the following year in The Perfect Storm, a summer smash that featured him acting alongside the likes of George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and John C. Reilly, it seemed that Hawkes' career was entering a new and possibly more lucrative phase. Over the next several years, he would appear in a number of films, like Identity, Miami Vice, American Gangster, Winter's Bone, and Higher Ground.

Trivia: Few actors possess the range required to craft some of the most colorful villains ever committed to celluloid before turning around to portray such a benevolent and beloved leader as Martin Luther King Jr., and it's a testament to Clifton Powell's skills as a performer that he could be equally believable doing both. It was during the early '90s that Powell first began to rise to prominence in television and film, with standout roles in Bill Duke's Deep Cover and In the Heat of the Night preceding a pair of memorable supporting roles for the Hughes Brothers in Menace II Society and Dead Presidents. Though Powell would continue to appear in features, it was on the small screen that he gained most of his exposure in the early years. After gradually climbing the credits on such shows as Murder, She Wrote, The Jamie Foxx Show, and NYPD Blue, Powell would leave an indelible mark on viewers with his thoughtful portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr. in director Charles Burnett's Selma, Lord, Selma. With versatile, everyman looks that were something of a blessing and a curse, Powell quickly established himself as an actor capable of truly disappearing into his characters -- sometimes to a fault. While a slew of roles on screens big and small kept Powell a considerably busy man in the mid-'90s, later roles in such efforts as Lockdown, Civil Brand, and Never Die Alone proved that his persistence, talent, and dedication were beginning to pay off. In 2004, Powell and the cast of the wildly popular biopic Ray would be honored with a Screen Actor's Guild nomination, and though they didn't take home the prize it was obvious Powell was finally on the verge of breaking big. His dark turn in the T.D. Jakes screen-adaptation Woman Thou Art Loosed was followed by a series of small-screen appearances in House, M.D., CSI, and Day Break, and in 2007 alone Powell's name would be attached to no less than eight films being prepared for the big screen .

Trivia: Born into a theatrical family, British actor James Fox made his film bow as a child actor in 1950, using his own name, William Fox. Fox's first movie was The Miniver Story (1950), a Hollywood-financed sequel to 1942's Mrs. Miniver. The best of the actor's earliest appearances was in The Magnet (1950), in which 11-year-old Fox played a fun-loving young boy at play with his mates. Fox changed his first name to James when he began assuming adult roles in the early 1960s, a period in which he played upper-class types. It was in one of these roles that Fox appeared with Dirk Bogarde in the brooding, Freudian Harold Pinter drama The Servant (1963); that same year, Fox appeared in the "angry young man" exercise The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which starred Tom Courtenay With his Servant vis-a-vis Sarah Miles, Fox headlined an international cast in the comedy extravaganza Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965). Fox continued in films into the 1980s, generally in class-"A" items like A Passage to India (1984) and The Russia House (1989). Fox continues to play old-blood aristocrats in films, most recently as the foolishly fascistic lord of the manor in Remains of the Day (1993); he also appeared in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) and Heart of Darkness (1994).