Trivia: Well known for his works as teen heartthrob on the NBC series Freaks and Geeks and films like Never Been Kissed (1999) starring Drew Barrymore, James Franco has the dark, refined looks of a classic movie star. Indeed, he was cast in the TNT film James Dean playing the screen legend himself, for which he won a Golden Globe Award for his performance in 2002.Born on April 19, 1978, Franco has lived in California throughout his life. After high school, he studied acting intensely under Robert Carnegie, Jeff Goldblum, and Tony Savant. He also spent time training at the Playhouse West in North Hollywood. Soon after landing the role as dark and pessimistic Daniel on Freaks and Geeks, where the teenage crowd found his performance accessible and realistic, Franco would earn a series of roles in teen-oriented motion pictures. Along with Never Been Kissed, he appeared in Whatever It Takes, on the set of which he met girlfriend Marla Sokoloff, a fellow actor. In a film about a group of "bad" students called Mean People Suck (2000), Franco appeared in the role of Casey, and then starred in Blind Spot in 2001.After retaining heartthrob status with his award-winning performance as James Dean, he would appear in Deuces Wild (2002), a '50s-style gang drama. That same year, he played the part of Harry Osborn in the live-action rendition of Stan Lee's superhero comic Spider Man, also starring Tobey Maguire, Willem Defoe, and Kirsten Dunst. The following year would find an emerging Franco in his most dramatically challenging role to date, as a murder suspect who happens to be the son of an NYPD police detective (Robert DeNiro) in City by the Sea. Impressed by Franco's turn as flm legend James Dean, DeNiro personally lobbied to have Franco cast in the film. Franco would continue to work with talented collaborators, landing a role in Robert Altman's ballet movie The Company in 2003. He returned to the role of Harry Osbourn in Spider-Man 2 a year after that. 2005 was a busy year for the young actor who directed an adaptation of his own play, The Ape, and starred in a couple of historical dramas. Neither The Great Raid nor Tristan & Isolde made much of an impression with audiences, but the films showed an actor willing to try new things. He was back in theaters early in 2006 with the Naval Academy/boxing movie Annapolis. That fall he again appeared in theaters in the World War 1 drama Flyboys, directed by Tony Bill. He also agreed to reprise the role of Harry Osborn one more time in Spider-Man 3.Having long nurtured an aptitude for painting, Franco had his first public exhibition of his work in 2006, with a show at a Los Angeles gallery. He also began writing and directing his own short films, like 2007's Good Time Max and 2009's The Feast of Stephen. Around this time, Franco made the unexpected decision to enroll at UCLA as an English major. After receiving special permission to take on a heavier than normal course-load, he received his degree in 2008, and promptly began working on his MFA at Columbia University in New York, which he completed in 2010. He next enrolled as a Ph.D. student in English at Yale University. All the while that he was completing his higher education, Franco was living up to the description often given by his co-stars and collaborators as having a superhuman ability to complete numerous projects at once. In 2008, Franco found an awesome vehicle for his comedic chops with the action-stoner-comedy Pineapple Express, pairing him with Seth Rogen as an adorably friendly weed dealer. That same year, he earned accolades for his performance as Scott Smith in the Award Winning biopic Milk, opposite Sean Penn. Even stranger, in 2009 - at the height of success - Franco decided curiously to join the cast of the daytime soap opera General Hospital, as a performance artist, not unlike himself, named Franco. He would later refer to the role as "performance art," but the tongue-in-cheek nature of a heart-throb Hollywood star joining the ranks of daytime TV only added to Franco's fun and mischievous image. He would also appear on the show 30 Rock that year as himself, in an episode in which the actor carries out a fake relationship for the press, in order to draw public attention from rumors that he's in love with a Japanese body pillow.Franco would make appearances in films like Eat, Pray, Love and Date Night over the coming years, but his next big splash came in 2011, when he starred in the gripping thriller 127 Hours. Playing a mountain climber who becomes immovably wedged in an isolated crevice, the almost completely solo performance earned Franco yet more praise from critics and fans, as well as numerous nominations from the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and more. Never standing still after even the biggest victory, however, Franco was soon onto the next project, reteaming with his Pineapple Express director and costars for the 2011 fantasy-stoner-comedy Your Highness.

Trivia: A petite actress with olive skin and pixie features, Ukrainian-born Mila Kunis became a breakout teen star on the FOX sitcom That '70s Show, playing spoiled daddy's girl Jackie Burkhardt. The rare 15-year-old actress to be cast as a 15-year-old character, Kunis also demonstrated her maturity by mastering accent-free English only a few years after immigrating. Her command of slang and teen vocal mannerisms won her work even when her appearance was not being utilized, as she voiced another all-American teen on FOX's animated envelope-pusher, Family Guy.Milena Markovna Kunis was born on August 14, 1983 in Kiev, Ukraine, then moved with her parents to Los Angeles when she was seven years old. Kunis credits listening to the simple vocabulary of Bob Barker on The Price Is Right with helping her develop a speedy fluency in English. She enrolled in acting classes at the Beverly Hills Studio, where she was discovered performing in a showcase. She quickly began appearing in commercials. Kunis filled out her early resumé with such pit stops as Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves (1997), Krippendorf's Tribe (1998), and the infamous WB ratings cellar-dweller Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher (1996). She also played a younger version of Angelina Jolie in the HBO movie Gia (1998). But it was her casting in Mark Brazill's That '70s Show that earned Kunis notice, as her petulant teen queen soon became a standout, able to range from endearing to grating. Her aggravated whining rung true enough to earn her a voice-over role on Family Guy, taking over for Lacey Chabert as Megan Griffin during the 2000 season. As the 2000's roled along, however, Kunis would seem to graduate to the ranks of adult actresses, rather than teen starlets, in seemingly the blink of an eye. Her comic turn in 2008's massively successful comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall kicked off Kunis' new style, followed quickly by roles as a femme fatale in 2008's Max Payne, a seductive grifter in 2009's Extract, and a post apocalyptic heroine in 2010's Book of Eli. 2010 would also find her playing opposite Natalie Portman's Oscar winning performance in Darren Aronofsky's psychological thriller The Black Swan. Though her supporting role offered less opportunity to showcase her talents than her costar's did, Kunis was roundly praised for the skill and presence she brought to the production -- not to mention her commitment to transforming her body for her character, training for months in ballet -- all further cementing her reputation as a serious actress. Kunis would spend the next several years appearing in numerous projects, like Friends with Benefits, The Muppets, Ted, Oz the Great and Powerful and Jupiter Ascending, an epic space drama directed by the Wachowskis.

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

Trivia: As semi-reformed bad girl Jennifer Lindley on Dawson's Creek, actress Michelle Williams garnered a certain type of notoriety unavailable to her more morality-inclined co-stars. In spite of this notoriety--or perhaps because of it--the role provided Williams with a wealth of opportunities, making her one of the foremost teen stars of the late 1990s. Born September 9, 1980 in small-town Kalispell, Montana and raised there until she was ten, Williams started acting after her family moved to San Diego. Beginning with roles in community theatre productions, she was soon shuttling back and forth to Los Angeles for auditions. Williams made her film debut in 1994 with Lassie, and then had a small but memorable part as the young version of the nubile and bloodthirsty alien in Species (1995). After the dismal and virtually unseen Timemaster (1995), Williams moved on to more auspicious fare with Jocelyn Moorhouse's A Thousand Acres (1997). Williams was cast as Michelle Pfeiffer's daughter, and the film's small-town setting must have given her some context for her next role, that of Jenn in Dawson's Creek. The show, which premiered in January of 1998, gave Williams her break-out role, and in short time she was besieged with movie offers and a stream of interviews.Williams' first film to exploit her newfound Dawson's fame was Halloween: H2O (1998), in which she starred opposite Jamie Lee Curtis. The film opened to poor reviews but a strong box office performance, and paved the way for her to star in future films, including 1999's thoroughly weird political satire Dick. The film, which looks at the Watergate scandal from the point of view of two teenage girls (played by Williams and Kirsten Dunst), provided Williams with a chance to expand her range beyond the constraints of her Dawson's Creek character. As the new millennium began, Williams found herself more and more comfortable exploring independent film, participating in smaller but often extremely influential projects like Perfume (2001), The Station Agent (2003) and Prozac Nation (2003). In 2005, Williams signed on to appear in the groundbreaking Ang Lee film Brokeback Mountain. The critical acclaim surrounding the movie was overwhelming, bringing Williams a new level of notoriety. Her popularity was also bolstered when the public learned that she and costar Heath Ledger had become involved during filming. The two became engaged and had a daughter together, Matilda, in 2005, and though they would later separate in 2007, they remained close for the well being of their daughter. Tragically, Ledger was found dead of an accidental overdose the following year. The heartbreaking loss for both Williams and her daughter forced the actress to deal with additional public scrutiny at a time when she was most vulnerable, but she coped with the grief as best she could, by investing more energy in her work. In 2008 alone she would appear in numerous films, including the drama Incendiary with Ewan McGregor and the highly anticipated Charlie Kaufman directorial debut Synecdoche, New York.Williams persisted in working with very good directors, as well as indie helmers who could offer her challenging work. She earned strong reviews for her starring role in Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy, and they worked together again on the western Meek's Cutoff. In addition, she worked with Martin Scorsese in his adaptation of Shutter Island.She also continued to earn awards for a steady string of impressive work including Blue Valentine, where her work as the female half of a failing marriage scored her Oscar, Golden Globe, and Independent Spirit nominations for Best Actress. Then in 2011 she took on the challenge of playing Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn, and was rewarded with rave reviews as well as Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Actress.

Trivia: Character actor Bill Cobbs began his acting career relatively late in life after working odd jobs in Cleveland, OH. At the age of 36, he moved to New York and joined the Negro Ensemble Company, making his Broadway debut in First Breeze of Summer. His film career started in the late '70s with small film roles and guest appearances on television. In the early '80s, he worked on several performances for the NBC Live Theatre series and a PBS anthology with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Usually cast as the token old black man dispensing words of wisdom, Cobbs' weathered-yet-honest looks got him several guest spots on TV shows from Good Times to The West Wing. He did end up with a few reoccurring roles on sitcoms like The Slap Maxwell Story, The Gregory Hines Show, and The Michael Richards Show. He even had a part in The Others, the NBC sci-fi drama answer to The X-Files. Perhaps his most memorable television appearance is his role as Regina Taylor's father on I'll Fly Away as well as in the TV movie version I'll Fly Away: Then and Now. Throughout his film career, he has built a long list of credits playing kindly fathers, grandfathers, and even Moses (in The Hudsucker Proxy). He was Whitney Houston's manager in The Bodyguard, an old man in New Jack City, and Grandpa Booker in The People Under the Stairs. Though he appears in nearly all genres of Hollywood films, he occasionally gets meatier roles in made-for-TV dramas like Carolina Skeletons, Nightjohn, and Always Outnumbered. In 2002, he played wisened elders in Sunshine State, Enough, and Sweet Deadly Dreams.

Trivia: Became an avid drummer during his childhood, and planned to study music at the University of Alabama before committing to acting. Played for the Hollywood Shorties, an all little-person basketball team, during the early 1980s. One of his first Hollywood roles was playing an Ewok in Star Wars' Return of the Jedi. Has appeared in music videos by Eminem and Snoop Dogg.

Trivia: A self-described B-movie actor, Bruce Campbell can claim to have scaled the casualty-littered mountain of cult movie stardom. First attaining more notoriety than fame for his performance in Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1983), which he also executive produced, Campbell went on to star in that movie's two sequels and a number of other schlock-tastic films. He has also occasionally ventured into more reputable territory, thanks to such films as the Coen brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy (1994).Hailing from Royal Oak, MI, where he was born June 22, 1958, Campbell attended Western Michigan University. When he was only 21, he and two of his Detroit friends, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, scraped together 350,000 dollars to make a low-budget horror film. The result, completed piecemeal over four years, was The Evil Dead, an exuberantly awful piece of filmmaking that featured Campbell as its demon-battling hero. The film first earned notoriety in England, and after being personally endorsed by author Stephen King when it was screened at Cannes, it was eventually released in the U.S. in 1983.The Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn followed in 1987, and the third installment in the series, Army of Darkness, was released in 1992. Both were enthusiastically embraced by fans of the series and less so by critics, but one thing that impressed both groups was Campbell's work in both films, thanks in part to his uncanny ability to make it through an entire performance without blinking once.In addition to the Evil Dead films, Campbell has acted in a number of other low-budget films, and, in the case of the Coens' The Hudsucker Proxy and a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in Fargo (1996), a handful of fairly respectable projects as well. He has also acted frequently on television, most notably in the weekly Western The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and Jack of all Trades. In 2001 Campbell made his literary debut with If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor. A humorously detailed account of his rise to B-movie stardom, If Chins Could Kill detailed, among other things, Campbell's uniquely diverse fanbase as well as his relationship with longtime friend and frequent collaborator Sam Raimi. When fans embraced the freewheeling semi-autobiography with more zeal than even Campbell himself may have anticipated, a succesful speaking tour was soon followed by a sophomore novel, the satirical Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way. A highly fictionalized look at what it may be like for Campbell to land a substantial role in a high-profile Hollywood production, Make Love the Bruce Campbell way found the sarcastic B-movie idol hobnobbing with co-star Richard Gere and offering directorial advice to veteran director Mike Nichols. Yet Campbell was hardly one to forget where his bread was truly buttered, and following his brief literary detour, it was time to head back to the big screen for a pair of memorable cameos in pal Raimi's Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, the longtime actor and emerging producer was finally ready to make his feature directorial debut with the outlandish sci-fi comedy The Man with the Screaming Brain. Despite helming the occasional Xena and Hewrcules episode, Campbell had yet to tackle feature films and when the opportunity arose to direct a script that he himself had written, everything just seemed to fall into place. Though the critics weren't so kind, fans were more than willing to indulge as their favorite film and television star finally got a chance to shine on his own. After voicing his most famous character in a pair of Evil Dead videogames, it was finally time for Campbell to return to the role of Ash on the big screen - albiet in a decidedly meta-manner - when he stepped into the role of an actor named Bruce Campbell who is mistaken for the demon-slayer that he played in the movies and forced to to battle with the legions of hell in the 2006 horror comedy They Call Me Bruce; a film that also afforded Campbell his sophomore feature directorial credit. That same year, Campbell would also team with May director Lucky McKee for the chilling horror film The Woods. Campbell found television success in the role of a good natured ex-Navy Seal on Burn Notice beginning in 2007, and lent his voice to animated features including Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Cars 2. Campbell reunited with Raimi for Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), and helped produce the 2013 revamp of The Evil Dead.

Trivia: Began his professional acting career doing industrial films in Detroit for Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. Was a popular radio DJ, a blues harp prodigy, and an active member of the Groves Cinema Society in high school. in 2015, started web series Deathly Spirits wherein he tells classic and original horror stories and offers recipes to alcoholic beverages to accompany each episode's story. Has appeared in many of his brother Sam Raimi's films including each entry in both the Evil Dead and Spider-Man trilogies.

Trivia: Stands 4'1" and has a rare form of dwarfism known as acromicric dysplasia. High-school extracurricular activities included football and drama club. Post-high school, made his acting debut at Radio City Music Hall, where he continued to perform for 10 years. In addition to acting, has worked as a stuntman since the early '90s; credits include movies such as Evan Almighty and Van Helsing. Is close friends with Little People, Big World stars Matt and Amy Roloff and appeared on their show several times. Is an accomplished soccer player who competed in the 2009 World Dwarf games as a member of soccer team the Statesmen. Works with the Coalition for Dwarf Advocacy, a nonprofit foundation formed to assist and advocate for people with dwarfism.

Trivia: Made her feature film debut on The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations, which was filmed in her hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Moved to Los Angeles in 2012 and soon appeared as a guest star on episodes of Shameless, Franklin & Bash and NCIS: Los Angeles. Landed her first television starring role on NBC's Crowded in 2016.

Trivia: Her father was Pensacola surfing legend Yancy Spencer. Began competing in beauty pageants at age 4. Appeared in the musical Annie at age 12. Was a member of the Pensacola Children's Chorus. Portrayed Rebecca Tyree on All My Children from 1999 to 2001 and snagged a Soap Opera Digest Award as Outstanding Female Newcomer for her work. Stayed with family friend Kathie Lee Gifford when she relocated to New York to film AMC. Had a recurring role on season 3 of Mad Men as Suzanne Farrell, Sally Draper's teacher and Don Draper's love interest.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the late '80s.