Trivia: Initially known as a teen idol thanks to his role on 21 Jump Street and tortured pretty-boy looks, Johnny Depp survived the perils of adolescent heartthrob status to earn a reputation as a respected adult actor. His numerous collaborations with director Tim Burton, as well as solid performances in a number of critically acclaimed films, have allowed Depp to carve a niche for himself as a serious, if idiosyncratic performer, a real-life role that has continuously surprised critics intent on writing him off as just another photogenic Tiger Beat casualty.Born in Kentucky and raised in Florida,Depp had the kind of upbringing that would readily lend itself to his future portrayals of brooding lost boys. After his parents divorced when he was 16, he dropped out of school a year later in the hopes of making his way in the world as a musician. Depp fronted a series of garage bands; the most successful of these, the Kids, was once the opening act for Iggy Pop. During slack times in the music business, Depp sold pens by phone. He got introduced to acting after a visit to L.A. with his former wife, who introduced him to actor Nicolas Cage, who encouraged Depp to give it a try. The young actor made his film debut in 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street (years after attaining stardom, Depp sentimentally played a cameo in the last of the Elm Street series), and his climb to fame was accelerated in 1987, when he replaced Jeff Yagher in the role of Officer Tom Hanson, a cop assigned to do undercover duty by posing as a student in crime-ridden Los Angeles-area high schools, in the Canadian-filmed Fox TV series 21 Jump Street (1987-90). Biding his time in "teen heartthrob" roles, Depp was first given a chance to exhibit his exhausting versatility in the title role of Tim Burton's fantasy Edward Scissorhands (1990).Following the success of Edward Scissorhands, the actor made a conscious effort never to repeat himself. He continued to gain critical acclaim and increasing popularity for his work, most notably in Benny & Joon (1993), What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Ed Wood and Dead Man. Depp continued to ascend the Hollywood ranks. He would continue to play quirky character roles, starring turn as Hunter S. Thompson's alter ego in Terry Gilliam's trippy adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), and teaming with Burton again to play a decidedly mincing Icabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow. Depp's charm still made him a natural romantic lead, however, as he proved in Chocolat.In what was perhaps his most surprising departure since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Depp shed his oftentimes angst-ridden persona for a role as flamboyant pirate Jack Sparrow in 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean. Essaying the crusty role in the manner of a drunken, debauched rock star -- Depp publicly admitted Keith Richards was his inspiration -- the actor added a dose of off-kilter fun to an above-average summer thrill ride, and found himself with his biggest hit and first Oscar nomination ever.The role effectively made Depp both a character actor and full-fledged leading man, and he would continue to appear in several films over the coming years that allowed him to star in large scale productions, playing decidedly quirky characters. Films like Secret Window, Finding Neverland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, Public Enemies, and a slew of massively successful Pirates of the Caribbean sequels would prove again and again how taken audiences were with the star, always playing the hero, but with an unconventional twist.Despite this massive success (or maybe as a result), Depp's career suffered a downswing after a string of critical and commercial flops. Films like The Tourist (opposite Angelina Jolie), Dark Shadows (a rare misstep with Tim Burton) and The Lone Ranger failed to connect with audiences and critics alike and left many to wonder when Depp's career would recover. He continued to have a strong presence in the film industry, though, and in 2016, reprised his role as the Mad Hatter in Alice Through the Looking Glass and began work on a fourth Pirates movie.

Trivia: After accepting supporting roles in several projects produced in Australia (including the 2006 Suburban Mayhem and the 2007 September), beautiful yet distinguished actress Mia Wasikowska -- a Canberra native -- broke through to international acclaim with her role as self-defeating Olympic-hopeful gymnast Sophie on the HBO series drama In Treatment (2008). That assignment predated Wasikowska's starring roles for two A-list directors: a turn as the aviator Elinor Smith in Mira Nair's biopic Amelia (2009), and another as the little girl adrift in a colorful fantasyland in Tim Burton's Lewis Carroll adaptation Alice in Wonderland (2010). Meanwhile, she also acted opposite Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and others in the WWII-era adventure drama Defiance (2008), helmed by Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai). She was the daughter of the lesbian couple at the heart of The Kids Are All Right, and acted for In Treatment show runner Rodrigo Garcia in his period drama Albert Nobbs. She earned strong reviews for her work as Jane Eyre in 2011, and starred as a teen cancer victim in Gus Van Sant's Restless.

Trivia: Perhaps the actress most widely identified with corsets and men named Cecil, Helena Bonham Carter was for a long time typecast as an antiquated heroine, no doubt helped by her own brand of Pre-Raphaelite beauty. With a tumble of brown curls (which were, in fact, hair extensions), huge dark eyes, and translucent pale skin, Bonham Carter's looks made her a natural for movies that took place when the sun still shone over the British Empire and the sight of a bare ankle could induce convulsions. However, the actress, once dubbed by critic Richard Corliss "our modern antique goddess," managed to escape from planet Merchant/Ivory and, while still performing in a number of period pieces, eventually became recognized as an actress capable of portraying thoroughly modern characters. Befitting her double-barreled family name, Bonham Carter is a descendant of the British aristocracy, both social and cinematic. The great-granddaughter of P.M. Lord Herbert Asquith and the grandniece of director Anthony Asquith, she was born to a banker father and a Spanish psychotherapist mother on May 26, 1966, in London. Although her heritage may have been defined by wealth and power, Bonham Carter's upbringing was fraught with misfortune, from her father's paralysis following a botched surgery to her mother's nervous breakdown when the actress was in her teens. Bonham Carter has said in interviews that her mother's breakdown first led her to seek work as an actress and she was soon going out on auditions.She made her screen debut in 1985, playing the ill-fated title character of Trevor Nunn's Lady Jane. Starring opposite Cary Elwes as her equally ill-fated lover, Bonham Carter made enough of an impression as the 16th century teen queen to catch the attention of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, who cast her as the protagonist of their 1986 adaptation of E.M. Forster's A Room With a View. The film proved a great critical success, winning eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. The adulation surrounding it provided its young star with her first real taste of fame, as well as steady work; deciding to concentrate on her acting career, Bonham Carter dropped out of Cambridge University, where she had been enrolled.Unfortunately, although she did indeed work steadily and was able to enhance her reputation as a talented actress, Bonham Carter also became a study in typecasting, going from one period piece to the next. Despite the quality of many of these films, including Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990) and two more E.M. Forster vehicles, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991) and Howards End (1992), the actress was left without room to expand her range. One notable exception was Getting It Right, a 1989 comedy in which she played a very modern socialite. Things began to change for Bonham Carter in 1995, when she appeared as Woody Allen's wife in Mighty Aphrodite and then had the title role in Margaret's Museum. Bonham Carter's work in the film prompted observers to note that she seemed to be moving away from her previous roles, and although she still appeared in corset movies -- such as Trevor Nunn's lush 1996 adaptation of Twelfth Night -- she began to enhance her reputation as a thoroughly modern actress. In 1997, she won acclaim for her performance in Iain Softley's adaptation of The Wings of the Dove, scoring a Best Actress Oscar nomination in the process.After playing a woman stricken with Lou Gehrig's disease opposite offscreen partner Kenneth Branagh in the poorly received The Theory of Flight (1998) and appearing with Richard E. Grant in A Merry War (1998), Bonham Carter landed one of her most talked-about roles in David Fincher's 1999 Fight Club. As the object of Brad Pitt's and Edward Norton's desires, the actress exchanged hair extensions and English mannerisms for a shock of spiky hair and American dysfunction, prompting some critics to call her one of the most shocking aspects of a shocking movie. But Bonham Carter was soon gearing up for another surprising turn in director Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes (2001). If critics were shocked by her unconventional role in Fight Club, they would no doubt be left dumbfounded with her trading of extravagant period-piece costumes for Rick Baker's makeup wizardry as the simian sympathyser to Mark Wahlberg's Homo sapiens' plight.Burton would become Bonham Carter's partner both in film and in life, as the two would go on to cohabitate and have children, as well as continue to collaborate on screen. The actress would appear in Burton's films like Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland, Sweeny Todd, and Dark Shadows. Her often spooky personna in Burton's films no doubt helped her score the role of Beatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter films, but Bonham Carter would also continue to take on more down to earth parts -- though for an actress of Bonham Carter's image, those roles included that of Queen Elizabeth in The King's Speech, and the crazed Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. She played Madame Thénardier in the 2012 adaptation of Les Misérables, and tackled screen icon Elizabeth Taylor in the television movie Burton & Taylor (2013).

Trivia: An actress whose first big screen gig also proved to be her breakthrough, Anne Hathaway became a familiar face to millions of moviegoers thanks to her starring role in Garry Marshall's 2001 hit The Princess Diaries. Cast as a clumsy high school girl who finds out she is the princess of a small country, Hathaway was able to prove her comedic timing opposite no less than Julie Andrews.Hailing from Brooklyn, where she was born November 12, 1982, Hathaway became involved in the theater at a young age, and as a teenager performed with the Barrow Group, a prestigious New York theatre company. She did her first industry work in the short-lived but critically praised TV series Get Real before auditioning for Marshall, who, according to legend, cast the actress as the accident-prone princess after she fell off a chair during her audition. The success of The Princess Diaries opened a number of doors for Hathaway, but she chose the one that led to Vassar College, where she enrolled in 2000, taking some time off from film.Though a supporting performance in the 2002 box-office disappointment Nicholas Nickleby offered Hathaway little chance to shine, a lead performance as the eponymous character in thefantasy-themed romantic comedy Ella Enchanted (2004) found her stepping into some big slippers for another Cinderella-style story not unlike the obligatory Princess Diaries 2 that same year. As if to anounce her acendancy out of the teen fantasy ghetto, Hathaway plunged into edgier territory with the gritty teen drama Havoc (also 2004), although the explicit film merited only a video release. It was her next two roles, however, that would announce the young actor's arrival into adulthood. As one of the two quietly suffering wives in Ang Lee's acclaimed Brokeback Mountain, Hathaway exhibited an irrepressible rodeo-girl spirit broken down over the course of a sham marriage. As the co-star of the chick-lit adaptation The Devil Wears Prada in 2006, she entered the world of contemporary, high-fashion power players, suffering the slings and arrows of a deliciously evil (and Oscar-nominated) Meryl Streep. The film played throughout the summer, becoming a bona-fide sleeper hit. Although initially cast in 2007's runaway summer comedy, Knocked Up, Hathaway backed out of the role that eventually went to Katharine Heigl. She chose instead to follow the period-romance path with Becoming Jane, a Shakespeare in Love-style speculative fiction on the life and one true love of Jane Austen.2008 turned out to be a banner year for the actress who scored a box office hit starring opposite Steve Carell in the big-screen adaptation of Get Smart, and garnered the best reviews of her career thus far for her work as a recovering addict in Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married. That role earned her a number of year-end critics awards, as well as Best Actress nominations from the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy. Hathaway would subsuquently find herself free to enjoy leading lady status, appearing in a number of iconic projects over the coming years, like the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland and a slinky Selina Kyle/Catwoman inThe Dark Knight Rises. In 2012 she landed the part of Fantine in Tom Hooper's adaptation of the phenomenally successful stage musical Les Miserable. Getting to deliver the production's most beloved song, "I Dreamed a Dream", Hathaway made the most of the small but juicy part and was rewarded with the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.In 2014, Hathaway appeared in the indie film Song One and reteamed with her Dark Knight Rises director Christopher Nolan for the sci-fi epic film Interstellar. She next starred in The Intern, opposite Robert De Niro, and reprised her role Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Trivia: First role was the mother-in-law in a school production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Offered a role in a series that filmed in Los Angeles, he turned it down and recommitted to stage acting in London. Was engaged in long-standing prank with Judi Dench in which they tried to hide a black glove in each other's productions. Played both Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson at different points in his career; also wrote two children's books about the Baker Street Irregulars. Awarded the Order of the British Empire for his acting shortly before his death.

Trivia: American actor Crispin Glover, son of actor and drama coach Bruce Glover, debuted on-stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles at age 14 in The Sound of Music. He made his feature-film debut four years later in My Tutor (1982). Glover is known for his peculiar acting style that includes nearly whispered speech punctuated by small karate-like gesticulations. His breakthrough came in the role of the wimpy, nerdy father, George McFly, in Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future (1985), after which he landed increasingly important roles. Glover's reputation as an eccentric was partly borne out of his personal editing and republishing of books such as Rat Catching (a modernized version of a 100-year-old text to which he added new pictures of mutilated rats) and the equally strange Concrete Inspection. But despite his disturbing eccentricities, Glover has been considered by some to be one of the more original and intense actors of his generation.

Trivia: An actor of remarkable intensity whether playing comedy, drama, or classical-stage roles, Marton Csokas first became familiar to stateside audiences as Borias on the hit television series Xena: Warrior Princess. And though American audiences may not have been privy to his early stage and screen work, his performance in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring made him a familiar face. Born in New Zealand in June 1966, Csokas' early schooling didn't exactly encourage creativity, and the future actor didn't discover his passion for the stage and screen until his late teens. While studying literature and art history for a year at Canterbury and Christchurch, Csokas became involved with a writer's club and theater company before graduating from the New Zealand Drama School and co-founding the The Stronghold Theater. Steadily gaining experience and harboring a growing passion for classical-stage drama, the actor landed a role in the television series Shortland Street before making his feature debut in Jack Brown Genius (1994). Numerous small film roles followed, and, after becoming a recognizable star in his native country, Csokas began to familiarize himself with American television audiences with Xena and such small-screen features as The Three Stooges (2000). His experience in the fantasy world of Xena prepared him well for his role as Celeborn in the first Lord of the Rings movie in 2001, and American audiences later saw the versatile actor as a villainous criminal mastermind bent on world domination in XXX (2002). He appeared in director Alex Proyas' decidedly upbeat Garage Days the same year and in Richard Donner's time travel fantasy Timeline in 2003.

Trivia: All that glitters is not Hollywood gold, Scottish actress Lindsay Duncan believes. Although she could easily command million-dollar paychecks for performing in big-budget American films, she prefers acting in new or vintage stage plays and in screen adaptations of classic novels. So she does Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Henry Fielding, and Oscar Wilde. But her loyalty to literary giants such as these is not without its rewards: She won the 2002 Olivier Award as best actress for her performance in Noël Coward's Private Lives, a 1988 London Evening Standard Award as best actress for her performance in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and a 1987 Tony nomination as leading actress for her performance in Pierre Cholderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses. However, she is not averse to accepting an occasional fun role in a major Hollywood film. For example, she was the voice of protocol droid TC-14 in Star Wars, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. For her ability to bring to life characters of every description, whether futuristic robots or here-and-now reprobates, critics agree that she is one of Britain's most talented actresses. Duncan was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 7, 1950. After studying at London's Central School of Drama, she labored in mostly unheralded theater roles before graduating to television productions in the 1980s. These productions included On Approval (1982), Reilly: The Ace of Spies (1983), Dead Head (1985), and Traffik (1989). In the 1990s, well seasoned and ready for limelight drama, Duncan picked herself a bouquet of choice roles that put her on prestigious London stages, in movie theaters from Liverpool to Los Angeles, and in the living rooms of television viewers throughout the English-speaking world. One well-known production that exhibits her talents is the 1999 TV miniseries Oliver Twist, in which she portrays Elizabeth Leeford, a woman so evil that the devil himself would fear her. Duncan also appears in the 1999 film adaptation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park in dual roles as the heroine's mother and drug-addicted aunt, in the 1997 TV miniseries A History of Tom Jones: A Foundling as Lady Ballaston, in the 1996 film adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as Hippolyta and Titania, and in the 1993 TV miniseries A Year in Provence as the wife of author Peter Mayle. Her real-life husband, Hilton McRae, is also an actor. They have one son, born in 1990.

Trivia: Supporting actress, onscreen from 1980.

Trivia: Started his career at the age of 4 in a TV show in the U.K.Both his parents are actors and encouraged him to pursue his acting career.Enrolled in the Playbox Theater at the age of 12, a renowned institution for children and teenagers to develop their acting skills.Acting in the theater is one of his greatest passions.In 2018, starred in the play Curtains, written by his father, Stephen Bill.Has maintained a very private personal life.

Trivia: Has French, Greek and Irish ancestry. Joined the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) in 1965, but left after six years. Is a socialist and was a member of the Workers' Revolutionary Party in the 1970s. Has a son Josh and daughter Tamasin. Most famous for her role as Miss Jones in Rising Damp but in fact has won a Tony Award and three Olivier Awards for her work on the stage. Sister of Andy de la Tour.

Trivia: Was a member of the Stagecoach Theatre Arts School in her hometown of Beverley as a child. Approached her father's agent at the age of 11 and asked to be represented. Left her sixth form college in her last year to concentrate on acting. Studied Angharad Rees' performances in the original Poldark when preparing for her role in the 2015 version of the show. A natural blonde, she had her hair dyed red for the Poldark series, as she thought the colour suited her character better. Was number 56 on the Radio Times TV 100 list in 2018, a list believed to be determined by television executives and experienced broadcasters. In 2019, played the role of Amy in the 2019 BBC TV Series The War of the Worlds, based on the H.G. Wells novel.

Trivia: Was head boy of his high school in his final year. Left the University of Sussex after two years to join a fringe theatre group called the Brighton Combination. Performed with the Madhouse Company of London, a comedy troupe, during the 1970s. Attended a circus school in New York during the 1970s, where he learned to walk the tightrope, ride a unicycle, juggle and perform magic. Met wife Imelda Staunton when they were both cast in a 1982 production of Guys and Dolls at the Royal National Theatre in London. They later worked together in a production of The Wizard of Oz; he was the Cowardly Lion to her Dorothy. Serves as chairman of the Hampstead Cricket Club.

Trivia: Due to Alopecia, lost all his hair at age 6. Attended the same boarding school as Sacha Baron Cohen, who was in Lucas's older brother's class. Met longtime comedy collaborator David Walliams when both attended the National Youth Theater (which also boasts alumni such as Helen Mirren and Daniel Craig). The pair debuted on stage together in 1995 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Lucas and Walliams co-created Little Britain for BBC 4 Radio in 2001, BBC television in 2003 and then HBO (as Little Britain USA) in 2008. Entered into a civil partnership with Kevin McGee at a December 2006 ceremony, which included guests such as Elton John and Courtney Love; the union was legally dissolved in October 2008.