Trivia: Until she headlined Jerry Maguire opposite Tom Cruise in late 1996, Renée Zellweger claimed extremely limited public recognition. Though Zellweger essayed several key roles before Maguire, the vulnerability and versatility that the actress exhibited as Cruise's (long undeclared) love interest in Cameron Crowe's seriocomedy netted much-deserved praise from critics and audiences alike. Though the Academy passed her over when that year's Oscar nominations rolled around, she received several other laurels for her work in Maguire, including the title of Best Breakthrough Performer by the National Board of Review.Born April 25th, 1969, the willowy, strawberry blonde Zellweger began life in Katy, TX, a small town on the outskirts of Houston. The town was so small that it possessed neither cable television nor a movie theater. As a result, Zellweger reportedly did not see her first art film until she was a student at the University of Texas in Austin. Her career at U.T. was an exceptional one; a regular on the Dean's List, she graduated a year early with a B.A. in Radio, Film, and Television. While in college, Zellweger took an acting class and discovered a knack for performing; following graduation, she made her feature-film debut with a bit part in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused (1993). She then landed a role playing a whacked-out waitress in Love and a .45 (1994), for which she won her first Independent Spirit Award nomination; she won a second nomination for The Whole Wide World (1996), earning additional acclaim at various film festivals.Following the tremendous success of Jerry Maguire, Zellweger went on to prove herself as a versatile actress able to play roles ranging from an ambitious journalist (who temporarily shelves her career to care for her mother) in One True Thing (1998) to a rebellious Hassidic Jew in Boaz Yakin's A Price Above Rubies (1998). She then exhibited a capacity for romantic comedy in The Bachelor (1999), starring as the long-suffering girlfriend of a commitment-phobic Chris O'Donnell. Zellweger's second role as a deeply confused soap opera fanatic in Neil LaBute's offbeat crime comedy Nurse Betty won her the Best Actress in a Comedy Award at the 2000 Golden Globes. Nominated for yet another Golden Globe the following year for her memorable performance in Bridget Jones' Diary (2001), that same role also earned Zellweger her maiden Oscar nod. The following few years found Zellweger's leading lady status growing and numerous lucrative film offers flowing in, and the release of White Oleander (2002) the starlet received numerous positive reviews despite the film's lackluster performance. Later that same year, Zellweger was on top of the world when she received rave reviews for her role in Chicago. Based on the popular Broadway musical of the same name, director Rob Marshall's flashy cinematic extravaganza received nearly unanimous praise accompanied by multiple Academy Award nominations, including a second Best Actress in a Leading Role nod to Ms. Zellweger for her lively performance.Zellweger lost the award bid to Nicole Kidman, and then teamed up with that actress for Anthony Minghella's epic Cold Mountain. The performance netted Zellweger her third Oscar nomination, and on February 29, 2004, her losing streak ended as she took home the award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Attempting to keep up the momentum, Zellweger then returned to the character that earned her her first Oscar nod, starring in the sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004). Unfortunately, that outing (directed by To Wong Foo helmer Beeban Kidron) failed to draw the critical acclaim of its predecessor and was widely greeted with public apathy in the States, but in the final analysis, it grossed nearly as much as the premier outing (with a massive overseas take). After the second Bridget Jones installment, Zellweger's screen activity decrescendoed somewhat, but she placed a heightened emphasis on more offbeat and unusual roles, including a portrayal of children's author Beatrix Potter in the Weinstein Company outing Miss Potter (2006), and a throwback role to the days of classic Hollywood screwball comedy, as the romantic lead of George Clooney and John Krasinski in the period sports outing Leatherheads (2008). The actress lent her voice to the animated children's fantasy Monsters vs. Aliens, and will reprise her role as Bridget Jones for Bridget Jones' Baby. Off-camera, Zellweger has been romantically linked to funnyman Jim Carrey and to rocker Jack White, of The White Stripes. She was married very briefly to Kenny Chesney; the two received an annulment in less than a year.

Trivia: Ewan McGregor rocketed to fame over a short period of time, thanks to a brilliant turn as a heroin addict in Trainspotting and the good fortune of being selected by George Lucas and co. to portray the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace. Because Menace arrived amid concomitant fanfare and massive prerelease expectations in early summer 1999, McGregor's appearance in the new trilogy drew a whirlwind of media attention and elicited a series of roles in additional box-office blockbusters, launching the then 28-year-old actor into megastardom. Born on March 31, 1971, in the Scottish town of Crieff, on the southern edge of the Highlands, McGregor joined the Perth Repertory Theatre after high school graduation and subsequently trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His studies at Guildhall led to a key role in Dennis Potter's 1993 Lipstick on Your Collar, a made-for-television musical comedy set during the Suez Crisis. That same year, McGregor received first billing in the British television miniseries Scarlet & Black, an adaptation of Henri Beyle Stendhal's 1830 period novel about a young social climber in post-Napoleonic, late 19th century Europe. McGregor made a well-pedigreed cinematic debut, with a bit part in Bill Forsyth's episodic American drama Being Human (1993), starring Robin Williams. The picture, however, undeservedly flopped and closed almost as soon as it opened, rendering McGregor's contribution ineffectual. The actor continued to turn up on television on both sides of the Atlantic until late 1996; some of his more notable work during this period includes his turn as a beleaguered gunman in an episode of ER and the Cold War episode of Tales From the Crypt, in which he plays a vampiric thief. McGregor landed his cinematic breakthrough role with Danny Boyle's noirish, heavily stylized Shallow Grave (1994). In that film, he essays the role of Alex, a journalist who finds himself in a horrendous position after a murder. He appeared in Carl Prechezer's little-seen British surfing parable Blue Juice (1995) and Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book (1996) before losing almost 30 pounds and shaving his head for his turn as heroin addict Mark Renton in Trainspotting, his sophomore collaboration with Danny Boyle, which gained the attention of critics and audiences worldwide. McGregor then took a 180-degree turn (and projected unflagging versatility) by portraying Frank Churchill in the elegant historical comedy Emma (1996).McGregor continued to work at an impressive pace after Emma, with appearances in Brassed Off (1996), Nightwatch (1998), The Serpent's Kiss (1997), and yet another project with Danny Boyle, the 1997 fantasy A Life Less Ordinary. (The latter film concludes on a raffish note, with an animated puppet of Ewan McGregor dressed in a kilt that bears the McGregor family tartan). In 1998, the actor signed to appear in the Star Wars prequels. (Lucas' decision to hire McGregor for Obi-Wan in the Star Wars prequels was hardly capricious; his uncle, Denis Lawson, had appeared as Wedge Antilles, decades earlier, in the original three installments of the series.) That same year, McGregor contributed a fine performance to Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine, with his portrayal of an iconoclastic, Iggy Pop-like singer during the 1970s glam rock era.As the new millennium dawned, McGregor had a full slate of projects before him, including several for his own production shingle, Natural Nylon, co-founded by McGregor and fellow actors Jude Law, Sean Pertwee, Sadie Frost, and fellow Trainspotter Jonny Lee Miller. Pat Murphy's biopic Nora (2000, co-produced by Wim Wenders' banner Road Movies Filmproduktion and by Metropolitan pictures), represented one of the first films to emerge from this production house. As a dramatization of the real-life relationship between James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, Nora stars McGregor as Joyce and Susan Lynch as the eponymous Nora. The actor stayed in period costume for his other film that year, Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge. Set in 1899 Paris, it stars McGregor as a young poet who becomes enmeshed in the city's sex, drugs, and cancan scene and embarks on a tumultuous relationship with a courtesan (Nicole Kidman). Following a turn in Black Hawk Down (2001), McGregor reprised his role as a young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the eagerly anticipated Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones. 2003 saw McGregor taking advantage of an odd quirk. Years prior, a magazine had commented on the uncanny resemblance between the young Scotch actor and the legendary Albert Finney as a young man. In dire need of a twenty- or thirty-something to portray Finney's younger self for his fantasy Big Fish, Tim Burton cast McGregor in the role; he fit the bill with something close to utter perfection. In that same year's erotic drama Young Adam (directed by David Mackenzie and originally screened at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival), McGregor plays one of two barge workers unlucky enough to dredge up the nearly naked corpse of a young woman. The young actor also starred alongside Renée Zellweger, who, fresh from the success of Chicago, played the unlikely love interest of McGregor's preening, sexist Catcher Block in Down With Love, director Peyton Reed's homage to '60s romantic comedies. McGregor returned to the role of Obie-Wan Kenobi once again in 2005 for Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, the final film in George Lucas' epic saga. That same year, he lent his voice to the computer-animated family film Robots and starred opposite Scarlett Johansson in Michael Bay's big-budget sci-fi actioner The Island. He also secured the lead role of Sam Foster, a psychiatrist attempting to locate a suicidal patient, in Finding Neverland director Marc Forster's follow-up to that earlier hit, the mindbender Stay. Though that picture died a quick death at the box office, McGregor returned the following year as Ian Rider, a secret agent whose assassination sparks the adventure of a lifetime for his young nephew, in Geoffrey Sax's Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker. The film only had a limited run in the U.S., and was panned by critics.In late 2006, McGregor once again demonstrated his crossover appeal with turns in two much artier films: Scenes of a Sexual Nature and Miss Potter. The former -- Ed Blum's directorial debut, from a script by Aschlin Ditta -- is an ensemble piece about the illusions and realities in the relationships of seven British couples over the course of an afternoon on Hampstead Heath. The latter -- director Chris Noonan's long-awaited follow-up to his 1995 hit Babe -- is a biopic on the life of the much-loved children's author Beatrix Potter (played by Renée Zellweger). McGregor portrays Norman, her editor and paramour.McGregor was next cast in Marcel Langenegger's 2007 thriller The Tourist as Jonathan, an accountant who meets his dream girl at a local strip club but immediately becomes the prime suspect when the woman vanishes, and is accused of a multimillion-dollar theft. Over the coming years, McGregor would appear in a number of successful films, like Incendiary, Cassandra's Dream, I Love You, Phillip Morris, Amelia, Beginners, and Haywire.McGregor married French-born production designer Eve Mavrakis in 1995, with whom he has three children.

Trivia: With soulful, saucer-like eyes and a coy smile that hints at playfulness, Oscar-nominated actress Emily Watson burst onto the scene with her shattering performance in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves, a role that almost went to period-piece queen Helena Bonham Carter. Born the daughter of an architect and an English professor in Islington, a borough of London, England, in January 1967, a sheltered upbringing initially led Watson to seek studies in English Literature. After studying in Bristol for three years, Watson made her first bid for drama school only to face disheartening rejection. After three years of working as a waitress and a secretary, she was eventually accepted into the London Drama Studio. It was during this early phase in her career that Watson would meet future husband Jack Waters.Launching her career upon joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1992, Watson soon set her sights on film. Fate intervened when actress Helena Bonham Carter pulled out of director Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves at the last minute due to the film's explicit sexuality. Despite her lack of big-screen experience, Watson landed the female lead in the film after only one brief screen test. Playing a spiritually driven woman whose oil-rig worker husband (Stellan Saarsgaard) becomes paralized, she exhibited a brash, religiously transcendent sexuality, stunning art-house audiences and recieving an Oscar nomination in the process. Though the subsequent marriage dramedy Metroland proved to be a nostalgia trip by comparison, Watson's honest performance again earned accolades. Watson's reputation continued to grow with her intimate, conflicted portrayal of the Multiple Sclerosis-stricken concert cellist Jacqueline Du Pre in Hilary and Jackie (1998), for which she was again Oscar-nominated, as well as when she played the love interest of an eccentric chess champion in The Luzhin Defence (2000).After joining the talented ensemble of Robert Altman's acclaimed comedy-mystery Gosford Park, Watson made serious inroads into Hollywood, first in 2002 as the love interest of a temperamental (to say the least) small-business owner played by Adam Sandler in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love. That same fall also saw her playing the love interest of a murderous psychopath in Brett Ratner's Hannibal prequel Red Dragon, and re-teaming with Metroland co-star Christian Bale in the little-seen sci-fi action vehicle Equilibrium. After doing voice work for Tim Burton's animated gothic Corpse Bride -- alongside the very woman she replaced in Breaking the Waves, Helena Bonham-Carter -- she returned to the British art-house scene with strong performances in such films as Separate Lives and director Richard E. Grant's autobiographical Wah-Wah.She appeared in the biopic Miss Potter, and the family fantasy film The Water Horse. In 2008 she was part of Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut Synecdoche, New York. Three years later she played the mother of a boy devoted to his beloved equine mate in Steven Spielberg's adaptation of War Horse, and in 2012 she appeared in Joe Wright's adaptation of Anna Karenina. The following year, she appeared in the film adaptation of the popular book The Book Thief. In 2014, she played Jane Hawking's mother in The Theory of Everything.

Trivia: A graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Stage, Bill Paterson made a name for himself in Scotland's burgeoning "alternative theatre" movement. He was most prominently associated with a theatrical aggregation known as the 7:84 Company--which, as virtually every chronicler of the 1970s British theatrical scene has duly noted--referred to the percentage of property owners and the amount of owned property in England. Making a bizarre first TV appearance in 1971's Licking Hitler, Paterson waited until 1978 to give movies a try. His star-making part was the recently jilted radio DJ in director Bill Forsyth's deliciously unpredictable Comfort and Joy (1984). Bill Paterson's TV credits include the hallucinatory Dennis Potter miniseries The Singing Detective.

Trivia: Appeared in repertory theatre after graduating from drama school. Played the role of Goneril in a 1997 National Theatre production of King Lear, reprising the role in the BBC adaptation the following year. In 2006, was nominated for the OFTA Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture or Miniseries for her performance in Elizabeth I. Is perhaps best known for playing Mrs Jamieson in period drama Cranford between 2007 and 2009. In 2020, played the role of Councillor Bone in the ITV sitcom Kate & Koji.

Trivia: Best known as a mainstay on several U.K. television series during the 1990s and 2000s -- including All in the Game, Get Real, Monarch of the Glen, and The Innocence Project -- British actor Lloyd Owen branched out into big-screen work in the early 2000s, then reached his largest audience to date with the Miramax release Miss Potter (2006), as William Heelis, a bucolic attorney. Owen also lent a supporting role to Deepa Mehta's 2003 romance The Republic of Love. In 2007, he was cast as the lead actor on Viva Laughlin, the American remake of the U.K. series Viva Blackpool. Also featuring movie stars Hugh Jackman and Melanie Griffith, the musical-mystery-dramedy follows the exploits of gambler Ripley Holden (Owen) as he tries to open up his own casino in Laughlin, NV. In 2011 he was in the found-footage outer-space horror film Apollo 18.

Trivia: Joined the dramatic society at university where he made most of his friends, including his best friend to this day. Although he had trained as an architect, he watched a British Council screening of a film about the RSC and Stratford-upon-Avon in Nigeria where he was working as a trainee architect, and knew straightaway that he wanted to become an actor. While studying at RADA in 1977, he won the Bancroft Gold Medal for acting. Frequently performs with the Royal Shakespeare Company; played Bolingbroke in Richard II in 1990 and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew in 1992. Has been associated with reading novels by Charles Dickens for Naxos Audio Books since 2012, including Oliver Twist. Is a patron of the Lynx Animal Welfare Trust. In 2013, for two months played the part of Robin Carrow in Ambridge Extra, a BBC Radio 4 Extra spin-off from the BBC Radio 4 drama The Archers. Was announced a public supporter of Chapel Lane Theatre Company located in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK in 2015.

Trivia: Walkden, England, native David Bamber nearly avoided the proscenium altogether, with early plans to enter a training program for special education instructors. At the last yawning moment, however, Bamber decided to jump ship and head into acting, courtesy of the dramatic arts program at Bristol University and -- later -- a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). As a student, the thespian distinguished himself from many of his colleagues by acquiring a marked preference for contemporary material over classicist plays. As a stage actor, Bamber (though openly heterosexual, with a wife and children) sustained a particularly fine reputation for convincing portrayals of (often repressed) gay characters in such plays as My Night with Reg and Pride and Prejudice. He also gained recognition for comic physicality deemed brilliant by many critics. In terms of on-camera work, Bamber's work (somewhat ironically) has leaned more toward period material than his stage efforts. Following an appearance in the all-star British seriocomedy Privates on Parade (1982), he signed for roles in such projects as the made-for-television outings The Merchant of Venice (2001) and Pollyanna (2002), and the HBO miniseries Rome (2005) as Marcus Tillius Cicero. In 2008, Bamber joined co-stars Tom Cruise, Tom Wilkinson, Kenneth Branagh, and others for the Cruise-produced Hitler assassination thriller Valkyrie with a frightening turn as Adolf Hitler.

Trivia: An esteemed actress, known both for her portrayals of flinty, dry-witted women and her real-life role as the mother of actresses Emma and Sophie Thompson, Phyllida Law has been acting in her native Britain for over 40 years. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1932 and married to fellow actor Eric Thompson until his death in 1982, Law has spent much of her career working as a character actress both on television and in film. She has done particularly notable work in Douglas McGrath's 1996 adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, which cast her as the meddlesome Mrs. Bates (and daughter Sophie Thompson as her equally meddlesome daughter Miss Bates); Alan Rickman's acclaimed drama The Winter Guest, in which she and daughter Emma starred as an estranged mother and daughter; and Nigel Cole's Saving Grace (2000), a comedy in which she portrayed the busybody neighbor of a woman (Brenda Blethyn) who has taken to growing pot in her backyard. An accomplished performer on stage, screen, and even radio plays, Law also authored books in which she discussed her experiences caring for her mother, who suffered from dementia, with refreshing, light hearted humor and wit.

Trivia: Actress Lucy Boynton entered filmdom during early adolescence, with two urbane roles that took full advantage of her English origins: that of a young Beatrix Potter (played as an adult by Renée Zellweger) in the Chris Noonan-directed biopic Miss Potter (2006), and that of a British adoptee with ballet dreams in the family-oriented drama Ballet Shoes (2008).

Trivia: English character actor John Woodvine could be seen in roles both sizeable and fleeting in several British films of the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Woodvine was in the casts of Darling (1965), The Devils (1971), Young Winston (1971), Tales of Beatrix Potter (1975), and An American Werewolf in London (1981) (fourth billed in the role of Dr. Hirsch). American Masterpiece Theatre devotees saw plenty of John Woodvine at the beginning of the 1989-1990 season. The actor was one of the four stars (Joan Plowright, Tom Watt, and Phyllis Logan were the other three) of the miniseries And a Nightingale Sang.