Trivia: Actress Andrea Riseborough caused a veritable sensation in her native Britain during the 2000s, with a succession of remarkable portrayals (character and lead roles) that resisted typecasting through their stunning diversity. A native of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Riseborough left school at age 17 and resisted the idea of attending university at first, but ultimately enrolled at London's legendary Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), where she began to specialize in playing virginal innocents. The homogeneity of those assignments was reportedly frustrating for the blossoming thespian, though she had the epiphany that "all virgins are different," and began to excel by locating the psychological and dramatic uniqueness (the core) of each new character. The ability to do so helped the upstart secure a highly regarded agent by her third year at RADA. Following graduation, the then-ingenue spent time waitressing, directed a succession of short films, launched a greeting-card firm, and took Cantonese language lessons, but soon found herself magnetically drawn back to acting. In that sphere, two remarkable tendencies emerged: a chameleon-like ability to adapt her personality and behavior to suit the material at hand, and a proclivity for exhaustively researching parts prior to beginning work. Her research, for example, carried her to Croatia for a lengthy period (as preparation for The Pain and the Itch) and prompted her to read everything she could get her hands on about onetime prime minister Margaret Thatcher (as preparation for her portrayal of a young Thatcher in the English telemovie Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley [2008]). Also in 2008, she teamed up with succès d'estime Mike Leigh for a small supporting role, as Dawn, in that director's seriocomedy Happy-Go-Lucky.Significantly, Riseborough remained equally active in other venues, particularly theater, with acclaimed performances in productions of Miss Julie, Dog Days, A Brief History of Helen of Troy, and other plays. She could also be seen on television, where she turned viewers' heads as the sexually voracious Kirsty on the series Party Animals.

Trivia: A professional actor since the age of nine, Jennifer Jason Leigh earned her Screen Actors Guild card at 16 and dropped out of high school to study at the Lee Strasberg Institute and star in seedy made-for-TV movies. Born to actor Vic Morrow and writer/actress Barbara Turner in Hollywood, CA, Jennifer picked up the middle name Jason from family friend Jason Robards Jr. Throughout her career, she has made a name for herself portraying helpless, damaged, or mentally unsound characters, often performing at a higher level than the material. Also known for extensively researching her roles, Leigh dropped down to less than 90 pounds for one of her first features as an anorexic teenager in the TV-movie The Best Little Girl in the World. Never one to shy away from touchy subject matter, her breakthrough role came in 1982 as the naïve high school girl who gets an abortion in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. After a decade of developing a repertoire of various troubled characters, she was nominated for two Critics Circle awards in 1990 for playing prostitutes in both Miami Blues and Last Exit to Brooklyn. She would continue to play vulnerable characters in dangerous situations as the rookie narcotics officer-turned-drug addict in Rush. This was followed by her notorious role as the psycho roommate Hedra who tries to steal the identity of her roommate (Bridget Fonda) in Single White Female. She played a phone sex worker in the ensemble film Short Cuts, her first of three projects involving director Robert Altman. Leigh occasionally stepped out of her down-and-out roles, and in 1994 she shined as Amy Archer in The Hudsucker Proxy. Her comic turn as a plucky undercover journalist was said to recall the work of legendary actresses like Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck. She delivered critically acclaimed performances in her next two films, with a Golden Globe nomination for Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle and an Independent Spirit nomination for Georgia. After playing an angry daughter in Dolores Claiborne, a spitfire kidnapper in Kansas City, and a domestic violence survivor in Bastard out of Carolina, she took another dramatic turn toward a period film. In Agnieszka Holland's Washington Square, Leigh proved her range by portraying a shy, clumsy girl as she evolves into adulthood. She returned to more showy roles for two films dealing with Shakespeare's King Lear: A Thousand Acres with Jason Robards Jr. and the fourth Dogme 95 film, The King Is Alive. Not limiting herself to dramas, Leigh appeared as an isolated computer programmer in David Cronenberg's thriller eXistenZ and as an over-the-top mom in the comedy Skipped Parts. Around that time, she also appeared on-stage in Broadway and off-Broadway plays, most notably as dancer Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Testing out new ground in 2001, she and fellow Cabaret star Alan Cumming wrote, directed, and starred in the ensemble comedy The Anniversary Party, a digital video project inspired by Dogme 95. Continuing to evolve as a respected actress, she went on to work in the crime genre, first as a hitman's wife in Road to Perdition, and then in Jane Campion's thriller In the Cut. In the several years to come, Leigh would remain an active force on screen, appearing most memorably in films like Margot at the Wedding, Synecdoche, New York, and on the series Weeds. After several years of quiet films, she made a splash in 2015 with two very different movies - the stop-motion film Anomalisa (directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson) and The Hateful Eight, a western homage by Quentin Tarantino. Leigh nabbed an Oscar nomination for her work The Hateful Eight, the first in her career.

Trivia: Named for documentary filmmaker Frédéric Rossif. Started acting when the lead actor in a short film he was directing dropped out and he stepped in to replace him. Studied under Harold Guskin. Worked with his father, Donald Sutherland, on the 2010 film The Con Artist.

Trivia: After moving to New York to attend school, took odd jobs, including carpentry, before getting into acting. While attending community college, took a theater class and was inspired to pursue it as a career. First acting jobs were in two Off-Broadway plays: Good Boys and True, and Mouth to Mouth. Made Broadway debut in The House of Blue Leaves, acting alongside Ben Stiller and Edie Falco.

Trivia: First name comes from a nickname her grandmother used to call her mother. Was a member of Bristol Old Vic Youth Theatre. Made her West End debut in the 2013 revival of Graham Greene's The Living Room.

Trivia: Before enrolling in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Sean Bean was going to enter his father's Sheffield steel fabrication business as a welder. He changed his mind after he garnered praise for acting in a few roles in local theater while taking an art class at Rotherham College. Bean received a scholarship to the prestigious academy and graduated a few years later with the Silver Medal for his performance in Waiting for Godot. Shortly thereafter, Bean performed in several West End productions. He also appeared in Romeo and Juliet with the Glasgow Citizens Theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon. In the first he played Tybalt and in the second he played Romeo. Following more stage experience, Bean made his feature film debut in 1986 in Derek Jarman's Carvaggio. Two years later, after returning to the stage, Bean appeared in Mike Figgis' Stormy Monday and in another Jarman effort, War Requiem. In addition to his filmwork, Bean also has a thriving television career that began in the mid-'80s. Notable television work includes Clarissa (1992) and Sharpe (1993). It is as a "bad guy" in films such as Patriot Games and Golden Eye that Bean is best-known in the U.S., though in the 1997 remake of Anna Karenina, he plays the dashing and romantic Count Vronsky. After joining Robert De Niro and Jean Reno for some international espionage in John Frankenheimer's Ronin (1998), taking a psychotic turn in Essex Boys (2000) and kidnapping the daughter of a respected adolescent therapist in Don't Say a Word (2001), Bean made his way to New Zealand for a role in director Peter Jackson's highly-successful Lord of the Rings trilogy.Bean maintained his career working in diverse projects such as Equilibrium, the old fashioned sword and sandal epic Troy, and National Treasure.He scored a supporting part in 2005's drama North Country, as well as a major part in Michael Bay's sci-fi spectacle The Island. He returned to the role of Sharpe for 2006's Sharpe's Challenge as well as 2008's Sharpe's Peril, and in between took on the role of the serial killer made famous by Rutger Hauer in the remake of The Hitcher.The steadily working actor continued his hot streak in such projects as Percy Jackson & the Olympians and Death Race 2, and he found success on the small screen when he was cast in a pivotal part in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones.