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: Standing over six feet-four inches tall, the bony Swedish actor Max von Sydow spent much of his acting career portraying stern, oppressive characters. Born to a family of academics in Lund, Sweden, von Sydow studied at the Royal Dramatic School in Stockholm, where he made his screen debut in Only a Mother and married his first wife, actress Christina Olin. In 1956, he moved to Malmö and met director Ingmar Bergman at the Malmo Municipal Theatre. After starring in The Seventh Seal, von Sydow went on to star in more than a dozen films with Bergman, including Wild Strawberries, Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, and Winter Light. He worked almost exclusively with Bergman's acting company until 1965, when he took the role as Jesus in George Stevens' epic The Greatest Story Ever Told. This part opened the door to American films, where he was often typecast in strong, humorless roles, like the rigid missionary Abner Hale in Hawaii. In the '70s, he went back to Sweden to work with Bergman in four more films and appeared opposite frequent co-star Liv Ullmann in Jan Troell's two-part saga The Emigrants and The New Land. It wasn't until 1973 that he made his first big Hollywood blockbuster with the role of Father Merrin The Exorcist, which he reprised in Exorcist II: The Heretic. Moving to Rome in the '80s, von Sydow had a fun role as Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon, played Barbara Hershey's intense artist boyfriend in Hannah and Her Sisters, and received his first Oscar nomination and numerous other awards for his work in Pelle the Conqueror (1988). After making his directorial debut with Katinka, he worked in several theater projects and a couple of biblical TV miniseries (Sampson & Delilah and Quo Vadis). It was during this time that he was cast as the devil in the Stephen King film adaptation Needful Things, marking von Sydow as the only actor to play both God and Satan. He also appeared in Judge Dredd and Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World. He continued acting sporadically in Hollywood for What Dreams May Come and Snow Falling on Cedars. Moving on to the international circuit, he appeared in Intacto (Spain), Vercingetorix (France), and Non ho Sonno (Italy). In 2002, he co-starred with Tom Cruise for the Steven Spielberg blockbuster Minority Report.He continued to work steadily throughout the decade in projects as diverse as Rush Hour 3, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Shutter Island. Coming nearly sixty years after his earliest film work, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close earned the venerable actor his second Oscar nomination - a Best Supporting Actor nod for his portrayal of a mute grandfather.

Trivia: Her name may not ring any bells, but talented actress Dana Ivey has a face familiar to audiences thanks to countless supporting roles in such high-profile films as The Color Purple (1985), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Sabrina (1995), and Legally Blonde 2 (2003). And though she was almost always at least halfway down the credits list, Ivey consistently added dimension and personality to even the most minor roles. A Georgia native who got her start on-stage, Ivey appeared in numerous American and Canadian theater productions before making her home in New York during the 1980s. It wasn't long before she rose through the ranks of the New York stage scene and made her Broadway debut in Noël Coward's Present Laughter. Roles in Quartermaine's Terms and Driving Miss Daisy (as the eponymous character) earned Ivey two Obies and found her reputation as an actress growing. Subsequent work in the Broadway production of Heartbreak Hotel earned her two supporting actress Tony nominations in the mid-'80s. In 1978, Ivey made her television debut in the daytime soap opera Search for Tomorrow, and soon her small-screen career blossomed in such efforts as the NBC miniseries Little Gloria... Happy at Last. Though Ivey simultaneously nurtured a feature career with supporting roles in Explorers and The Color Purple, it was her performance in the 1986 sitcom Easy Street that truly found her coming into her own on the television. After recalling her previous stage exploits with Heartbreak House and Sunday in the Park With George in 1986, Ivey joined the cast of All My Children in 1989 and spent the majority of the following decade in such features as The Addams Family (1991), Sabrina (1995), and Simon Birch (1998). Although her career leaned increasingly toward feature work, Ivey also remained true to her stage roots, appearing in such plays as The Glass Menagerie in 1998 and Major Barbara in 2001.

Trivia: Began his film career at age 5. Toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company in a 1999 production of King Lear, with Nigel Hawthorne playing the title role. Won a Japanese Academy Award for his work in The Twilight Samurai (2002). Received an honorary MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in 2002. Has a black belt in karate.

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: Thanks to his darkly unique perspective and grim, often nihilistic approach to storytelling, director Roman Polanski has left an indelible mark on world cinema. Although his films have been compared to those of Alfred Hitchcock, with their use of gallows humor, tension, and occasional surrealism to tell amoral stories of ordinary men struggling to cope in a hostile, ironic world, Polanski, unlike Hitchcock, has chosen to experiment with a variety of genres. In this regard, the director has considered himself a "cinematic playboy" intent on exploring the possibilities of all film categories. A uniformly pessimistic viewpoint provides the clearest link to entries in Polanski's body of work, something that is widely traced back to years of childhood trauma.The son of a Polish Jew and a Russian immigrant, Polanski was born in Paris on August 18, 1933. When he was three, his family moved to the Polish town of Krakow, an unfortunate decision given that the Germans invaded the city in 1940. Things went from bad to worse with the formation of Krakow's Jewish ghetto, and Polanski's family was the target of further persecution when his parents were deported to a concentration camp. Just before he was to be taken away, however, Polanski's father helped his son escape, and the boy managed to survive with help from kindly Catholic families, although he was at times forced to fend for himself. (At one point, the Germans decided to use Polanski for idle target practice.) It was during this period that Polanski became a devoted cinephile, seeking refuge in movie houses whenever possible. The cinemas provided him a type of protection that was brutally absent in the outside world. Shortly after sustaining serious injuries in an explosion, Polanski learned of his mother's death at Auschwitz. His father survived the camps, and moved back to Krakow with his son. Following his father's remarriage, the adolescent Polanski left home. Although still coping with great personal turmoil, he managed to nurture his love of the cinema; two films that particularly influenced him at the time were Laurence Olivier's Hamlet and Carol Reed's Odd Man Out. Following a near-fatal incident at the age of 16 -- which involved Polanski nearly becoming the next victim of a man who had just killed three people -- his father enrolled him in a technical school. He left in 1950 to attend film school, concurrently becoming an actor with the Krakow Theater and made his onscreen acting debut in Andrzej Wajda's 1954 Pokolenie/A Generation.That same year, Polanski was one of six applicants accepted into the rigorous director's course at Lodz's prestigious State Film School. In 1957, he made his first student film Rozbijemy Zabawe/Break up the Dance, an account of paid thugs destroying a school party (a stunt that almost got him expelled). Polanski's next film, Dwaj Ludzie z Szafa/Two Men and a Wardrobe, proved to be one of his most famous, winning him five international awards. This and subsequent shorts such as Le Gros et le Maigre/The Fat and the Lean (made in 1961 after his graduation) all featured the black humor that would characterize his later features. Polanski made his feature film debut in 1962 with Noz w Wodzie/Knife in the Water; as with most of his subsequent features, he also worked on the screenplay, in this case collaborating with Jerzy Skolimowski and Jakub Goldberg. A suspenseful, symbolic psychological drama set aboard a sailboat, the film told the story of a husband's misbegotten attempts to impress his wife and a potential rival, a young hitchhiker they bring aboard on a whim. It is considered the first Polish film not to deal with World War II, and was applauded for its visual precision (another characteristic of Polanski's work). It was also the only full-length feature the director made in Poland.Polanski moved to England to make his next two films, the first of which, Repulsion, became a cornerstone of contemporary psychological thrillers and, despite poor box-office returns, is said to be the director's favorite film. Polanski made his Hollywood debut in 1968 with the horror classic Rosemary's Baby. As with his earlier works, the film was more concerned with psychological terror than cheap shocks, creating a sense of foreboding terror that many directors have since tried to emulate with limited success. Polanski's next film, Macbeth, was a faithful but controversial adaptation of Shakespeare. Made shortly after his wife Sharon Tate was brutally murdered by the Manson Family, its graphic violence was said to reflect the director's grief and outrage.Polanski then shifted gears, making a sex comedy (What?)in Italy before returning to Hollywood to direct one of his finest efforts, Chinatown (1974), a film that revitalized the nearly dead film noir movement and earned Polanski an Oscar nomination and a British Academy Award. He followed up this success in 1976 with the suspenseful and surrealistic Le Locataire/The Tenant. A sinister, paranoid tale of madness, manipulation, and vengeance, it was reportedly filmed in the neighborhood where Polanski lived when he first came to Paris. The next year, the director made the news for a different and altogether disastrous reason: While in Hollywood working on a project, he was charged of having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Barred from working in Hollywood, Polanski fled the country and resettled in Paris (he had acquired French citizenship in 1976) and did not make another film until 1979. An adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel, the three-hour long Tess, starring 17-year-old Nastassja Kinski (with whom Polanski was also involved), was the most expensive film made in France at the time. But despite its cost, it proved to be a success, netting Polanski an Oscar nomination and a César award for Best Direction.While Tess was marked by a kind of lyrical romanticism, Polanski's next film, Pirates (1986), was an all-out spoof. As with his other comedies, it was not a success. In fact, after the much-lauded Tess, Polanski's work became intermittent and of spotty quality. Frantic, his 1988 thriller with Harrison Ford, failed to garner either critical or commercial favor, and his next effort, the perversely erotic thriller Bitter Moon (1992) received notice mainly because it starred a then-unknown Hugh Grant. Polanski found greater critical success in 1994 with Death and the Maiden, his adaptation of Ariel Dorfman's play, starring Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver. Two years later, he branched out with the experimental Gli Angeli, and, in 1999, returned to mystery-thriller territory with The Ninth Gate, starring his third wife Emmanuelle Seigner. (Barbara Lass was his first wife; Tate, his second.)Though The Ninth Gate would barely register a blip on the box-office radar, it was Polanski's next film that would show that the director was still very much at the top of his game. Based upon the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman and admittedly inspired by his own shattering childhood experiences, Polanski's The Pianist told the heart-wrenching tale of a brilliant pianist who eludes his Nazi captors by hiding out in the ruins of Warzaw. The film began collecting accolades from its premiere at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, where it received the top prize, the Palme d'Or, to the Academy Awards, where it snagged seven nominations including Best Picture. In what would be a night of many surprises, The Pianist upset such favored competition as the popular musical Chicago and Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York to win three Oscars, including Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director, although the latter prize went unclaimed, as Polanski was still a fugitive from Los Angeles County and therefore unable to enter the country.Over the years, Polanski also continued to nurture an interest in the theater, directing Berg's Lulu, Verdi's Rigoletto, and Tales of Hoffman at various theaters around Europe. In 1981, he directed and starred in the Warsaw production of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, which he re-staged successfully in Paris in 1982. In 1988, he played the leading role in Stephen Berkoff's adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis (again on the Paris stage). He's also contributed some occasional film acting, playing opposite Gerard Depardieu in Giuseppe Tornatore's Una Pura Formalità/A Pure Formality in 1994, as well as appearing in his own films.In September of 2009, on route to attend a career retrospective at the Zurich Film Festival, Polanski was taken into custody by Swiss officials becuase of a warrant issued by the United States in regard to his flight from justice at the time of his 1977 arrest for child molestation. The arrest interrupted the production of Polanski's 2010 film The Ghost Writer -- a political thriller starring Ewan McGregor and based on writer/former BBC reporter Robert Harris' novel The Ghost -- though it hardly had any impact on the controversial director's career momentun; the following year he adapted Yasmina Reza stage play The God of Carnage to the big screen in Carnage -- a scathing comedy starring Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, and Christoph Waltz as four parents attempting to resolve a bullying issue between their young sons, but ultimately proving themselves to be just as childish as their feuding offspring.

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.