Trivia: Standing a burly 6'4", Liam Neeson was once described by a theatre critic as a "towering sequoia of sex." To say that he has undeniable charisma is certainly accurate, but it is a charisma composed as much of impressive talent as of broken-nosed physical appeal. Bearing both versatility and quiet forcefulness, Neeson has been touted as one of the most compelling actors of the late 20th century.Born June 7, 1952, in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, Neeson had an upbringing partially defined by his involvement in boxing. He became active in the sport as a teenager, earning his distinctive broken nose in the process; he stayed with boxing until he began experiencing black-outs from repeated blows to the head. Initially interested in a career as a teacher, Neeson attended Belfast's Queens College, but he aborted his studies after developing a desire to act. In 1976, he joined Belfast's Lyric Theatre, and two years later he began performing the classics at Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre. While he was with the Abbey, Neeson was discovered by director John Boorman, who cast him as Gawain in 1981's Excalibur. Following his part in that action fantasy, Neeson had supporting roles in such films as The Mission (1986), and he was featured in leads opposite Cher in Suspect (1987) and Diane Keaton in The Good Mother (1988). He got his first starring vehicle in 1990 with Sam Raimi's Darkman; unfortunately, the film was a relative disappointment. Neeson continued to do starring work in such films as Big Man (1991), which featured him as a boxer, Ethan Frome (1992), and Under Suspicion (1992), but ironically, it was his work on the stage that led to his true screen breakthrough. In 1992, the actor was turning in a Tony-nominated performance in Anna Christie opposite Natasha Richardson (whom he would marry in 1994) on Broadway. His work attracted the notice of Steven Spielberg, who was so impressed with what he saw that he cast Neeson as Oskar Schindler in his landmark Holocaust drama Schindler's List (1993). Neeson received Best Actor Oscar and British Academy Award nominations for his performance, and he subsequently didn't have to worry about finding work in Hollywood, or elsewhere, again.More high-profile work followed for Neeson, who went on to star in such films as Nell (1994), Rob Roy (1995), and Michael Collins (1996). However acclaimed his previous work had been, none of it received the hype of one of Neeson's 1999 projects, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Although the film, which starred Neeson as a Jedi master, ultimately earned a galaxy's worth of negative reviews, it mined box office millions. Its success further enhanced Neeson's status as one of the world's most visible actors, and it even helped to downplay the disappointment of The Haunting, his other film that year.Neeson would enter the new millennium with a variety of projects on his to-do list, appearing in the Martin Scorsese period piece Gangs of New York in 2002, and the extremely popular romantic comedy Love Actually in 2003. The following year would find him tackling a meatier role, however, as he singed on to portray pioneering scientist and researcher on human sexuality Alfred Kinsey in the biopic Kinsey. The part would earn Neeson a Golden Globe nomination, and Neeson would follow its success with performances in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, as well as one in the blockbuster superhero reboot Batman Begins in 2005. He would also sign on to provide the voice of lion king Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia fantasy franchise.In 2008, Neeson starred in the thriller Taken, portraying a former CIA officer who employs his brutal skills learned on the job to find his kidnapped daughter. Audiences weren't accustomed to seeing the actor hold down the lead in an action film, but Neeson succeeded and the film was a categorical success. Sadly, the following year, Liam's wife actress Natasha Richardson died suddenly after suffering a severe head injury during a skiing accident. Neeson was left in care of their two children, Michael and Daniel, but was later able to resume his career. Neeson would find himself appearing in many action/adventure films over the coming years. He starred as the cigar-chomping ohn "Hannibal" Smith in the big-screen adaptation of The A-Team in 2010, and a man fleeing for his life and fighting for his identity in 2011's Unknown. The following year, Neeson played an oil driller stranded amid a pack of wolves in The Grey.

Trivia: Bearing sharp, blue-eyed features and the outward demeanor of an everyday Joe, Ed Harris possesses a quiet, charismatic strength and intensity capable of electrifying the screen. During the course of his lengthy career, he has proven his talent repeatedly in roles both big and small, portraying characters both villainous and sympathetic.Born Edward Allen Harris in Tenafly, NJ, on November 28, 1950, Harris was an athlete in high school and went on to spend two years playing football at Columbia University. His interest in acting developed after he transferred to the University of Oklahoma, where he studied acting and gained experience in summer stock. Harris next attended the California Institute of the Arts, graduating with a Fine Arts degree. He went on to find steady work in the West Coast theatrical world before moving to New York. In 1983, he debuted off-Broadway in Sam Shepard's Fool for Love in a part especially written for him. His performance won him an Obie for Best Actor. Three years later, he made his Broadway debut in George Firth's Precious Sons and was nominated for a Tony. During the course of his career, Harris has gone on to garner numerous stage awards from associations on both coasts. Harris made his screen debut in 1977's made-for-television movie The Amazing Howard Hughes. The following year, he made his feature-film debut with a small role in Coma (1978), but his career didn't take off until director George Romero starred Harris in Knightriders (1981). The director also cast him in his next film, Creepshow (1982). Harris' big break as a movie star came in 1983 when he was cast as straight-arrow astronaut John Glenn in the film version of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. Twelve years later, Harris would again enter the world of NASA, this time playing unsung hero Gene Krantz (and earning an Oscar nomination) in Ron Howard's Apollo 13.The same year he starred in The Right Stuff, Harris further exhibited his range in his role as a psychopathic mercenary in Under Fire. The following year, he appeared in three major features, including the highly touted Places in the Heart. In addition to earning him positive notices, the film introduced him to his future wife, Amy Madigan, who also co-starred with him in Alamo Bay (1985). In 1989, Harris played one of his best-known roles in The Abyss (1989), bringing great humanity to the heroic protagonist, a rig foreman working on a submarine. He did further notable work in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, and turned in a suitably creepy performance as Christof, the manipulative creator of Truman Burbank's world in Peter Weir's The Truman Show (1998). Harris earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work. The following year, he could be seen in The Third Miracle, starring as a Catholic priest who finds his faith sorely tested.The new millennium found Harris' labor of love, the artist biopic Pollock, seeing the light of day after nearly a decade of development. Spending years painting and researching the modernist painter, Harris carefully and lovingly oversaw all aspects of the film, including directing, producing, and starring in the title role. The project served as a turning point in Harris' remarkable career, showing audiences and critics alike that there was more to the man of tranquil intensity than many may have anticipated; Harris was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for his work. 2001 saw Harris as a German sniper with his targets set on Jude Law in the wartime suspense-drama Enemy at the Gates, and later as a bumbling Army captain in the irreverent Joaquin Phoenix vehicle Buffalo Soldiers. With his portrayal of a well known author succumbing to the ravages of AIDS in 2002's The Hours, Harris would recieve his fourth Oscar nominattion. 2004 found the actor working with Zooey Deschanel for Winter Passing, a psychological drama in which he played a one-time popular novelist who claims he is working on one last book. Harris was praised for his work in Empire Falls (2005), a two-part miniseries from HBO chronicling a middle-aged man who is concerned he has wasted his life, though his work as a scarred stranger with a score to settle in David Cronenberg's award-winning psychological thriller A History of Violence was his biggest success in 2005. In 2007, Harris played a Boston police detective in Ben Affleck's adaptation of author Dennis Lehane's Gone, Baby, Gone. A year later, Harris wrote, starred, directed, and produced Appaloosa, a western following a small town held under the thumb of a ruthless rancher and his crew, and continued to work throughout 2009 and 2010 in films including Once Fallen, Virginia, and The Way Back. Praise came his way once more in 2011's What I Am, a gentle coming-of-age comedy in which Harris plays a teacher who is a catalyst for the friendship of two young boys. In 2012, he earned Emmy and SAG nominations and a Golden Globe award for playing John McCain in the HBO movie Game Change. The next year had him appearing in six films, including playing a detective in Pain & Gain and voicing mission control in Gravity, a throwback to his earlier work in Apollo 13.

Trivia: Holds American and Swedish citizenships. His mother is Swedish and his father is American. Went to high school in Texas for one year. One of his sisters, Melinda Kinnaman, is an actress in Sweden. Won the 2010 Guldbagge Award in the Best Supporting Actor category for his work in Snabba Cash.

Trivia: An actor whose hulking presence belies his ability to slip quietly into an astonishing variety of roles, Vincent D'Onofrio is one of Hollywood's most unpredictable and compelling performers. Throughout his career, D'Onofrio has played a diverse range of characters, from Full Metal Jacket's fatally unhinged army recruit to a wholly convincing Orson Welles in Ed Wood to a bisexual porn star in The Velocity of Gary.Born in Brooklyn, NY, on June 30, 1959, D'Onofrio was raised in the diverse locales of Hawaii, Colorado, and Miami's Hialeah section. His career as an actor began on the stage, with study under Sonia Moore of New York's American Stanislavsky Theatre and Sharon Chatten at the Actors Studio. D'Onofrio's early years in the theater were filled with an obligatory helping of obscurity and miniscule paychecks (so miniscule that he worked for a time as a bouncer to help pay the bills). His fortunes began to shift in 1984, when he joined the American Stanislavsky Theatre as a performer. There, he appeared in such well-regarded productions as Of Mice and Men and David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and also made his Broadway debut in Open Admissions.D'Onofrio debuted onscreen in the straight-to-oblivion 1983 comedy The First Turn-On!, but it was not until his haunting portrayal of Pvt. Pyle (a role for which the actor gained 70 pounds) four years later in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket that he earned much-deserved notice for his work. Defying easy categorization, D'Onofrio next appeared in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza (1988), slimming down to his normal weight and giving a convincing portrayal as Lili Taylor's lovestruck boyfriend.Having thus given audiences a glimpse of his remarkable versatility, D'Onofrio spent the next few years making his presence felt in such films as JFK (1991), in which he played assassination witness Bill Newman; The Player (1992), which cast him in the pivotal role of ill-fated screenwriter David Kahane; and Nancy Savoca's Household Saints (1993), which, through a particularly odd feat of casting, had him playing the father of Lili Taylor. Although D'Onofrio worked at a prolific pace, it was not until he portrayed Conan the Barbarian author Robert E. Howard in the 1996 The Whole Wide World that he really had his screen breakthrough. A low-key romantic drama about the relationship between Howard and a schoolteacher (Renée Zellweger), the film allowed D'Onofrio to take center stage, rather than lend support to better-known co-stars. Critics roundly applauded his performance, but although the actor kept working steadily, he was by no means a Hollywood fixture. Eschewing the limelight, he turned in particularly memorable performances in Feeling Minnesota (1996) as Cameron Diaz's cuckolded fiancé and in the 1997 blockbuster Men in Black, which cast him as the film's resident bad guy.D'Onofrio had long since become an established actor by the 2000's, and he would remain a solid force on screen in such films as The Cell, Happy Accidents, Steal This Movie, andThumbsucker. D'Onofrio would also find just as much notoriety on the small screen, most notably as Detective Robert Goren on the phenomenally successful Law & Order spin-off Criminal Intent, and even step behind the camera, penning, helming and starring in the drama Mall.

Trivia: Husky American actor Bruce McGill made his film debut in Citizen's Band (1978), but it was his next film role, frat-brat "D Day" in National Lampoon's Animal House, that gained him a following. McGill repeated his D-Day characterization in the spin-off TV series Delta House (1979), then co-starred with David Hasselhoff in the 1980 weekly-TV version of the 1977 theatrical football comedy Semi-Tough. He went on to play a string of brusque authority types in films (Cliffhangers) and television (MacGiver, Live Shot). Fans of the fantasy series Quantum Leap (1989-93) may recall McGill's occasional guest shots, which ranged from mildly eccentric to truly weird. In 1987, Bruce McGill enjoyed one of his few feature-film leading roles in Waiting for the Moon. But it wasn't until the 1990s that casting directors really began to utilize McGill's unique range, and though he never won any awards, he shifted between film (A Perfect World, Timecop, The Insider) and television (Babylon 5, Star Trek: Voyager) with the skill of a seasoned pro. Any genre was fair game, and all were tackled with equal aplomb. At the dawn of the 2000s McGill seemed to shift his focus toward feature films, with roles in Ali, The Sum of All Fears, and Collateral helping to make him both a Michael Mann regular, and one of those welcomed faces that seems to turn up everywhere. Still TV just seemed to be in McGill's blood and after lending his voice to both Family Guy and The Cleveland Show he could be seen as a regular on the TNT detective series Rizzoli and Isles.

Trivia: Supporting actress, onscreen from 1955.

Trivia: Best known for his individualistic promulgation of jazz-rap during the 1990s -- a decade when gangsta rap threatened to take over much of the urban music scene -- underground rapper Common attained recognition for the sophisticated lyrics and ever-present political subtexts in his raps. Something of a critics' favorite, Common also achieved commercial success with such albums as Can I Borrow a Dollar? (1992, his debut), Like Water for Chocolate (2000), Electric Circus (2002), and Be (2005). During the first 15 years or so of his career, the Chicago native's filmed activity remained generally confined to music videos, performance films, and also urban and rap-themed documentaries such as the 2003 Soundz of Spirit, the 2004 Letter to the President, and 2005's jubilant Dave Chappelle's Block Party. By 2007, Common began branching out into dramatic roles. That year, the rapper landed supporting parts in such films as Joe Carnahan's darkly comic action thriller Smokin' Aces and Ridley Scott's period crime drama American Gangster.In 2008 he appeared in Wanted, and the next year he landed a role in the high-profile sequel Terminator Salvation. He played the part of an scary bad guy in the comedy Date Night in 2010, the same year he played the lead opposite Queen Latifah in the romantic comedy Just Wright. He was one of the many members of the ensemble cast in 2011's New Year's Eve, and lent his vocal talents to Happy Feet Two that same year. In 2012 he appeared in the family fantasy film The Odd Life of Timothy Green.

Trivia: At 14, ran away from home and took a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles to pursue a career as an actor, but his parents tracked him down and sent him to a boarding school in Ireland. After graduating from high school in Omaha, he studied French, art history and theatre in Paris. Was cast as an understudy in the Broadway production of Biloxi Blues. As a 46-year-old training for the lead role in the FX series Lights Out, McCallany fulfilled a lifelong dream to fight in an amateur boxing competition, winning a three-round decision against a German heavyweight.

Trivia: Interned at Liberty Studios before attending college. Appeared in the LMFAO music video "Party Rock Anthem." Made his feature film directorial debut in 2010 with A True Story.

Trivia: At age 28 became a model after being discovered while working as a carpenter at a theatre. Went on to model for designer brands such as Gucci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs. Aside from acting he plays the banjo and guitar, and is a sculptor who has held several exhibitions. Sent director Gus Van Sant a script, which lead to him being given his first acting role, in the film Milk.

Trivia: Her parents named her after the British rock band Genesis. Began school at the Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart when she was only 2-and-a-half. During her early acting days, she had a recurring role on Days of Our Lives, as Becky Ferrer. In 2014, was named in a list of 8 Young Women Poised to Take Over Hollywood by Elle magazine. Is fluent in both Spanish and English and has had many roles on both American and Spanish television shows. Has done work as a L'Oreal Paris USA brand ambassador.