Trivia: Whether playing a punk rocker, an assassin, a war vet, or a ghoul, Gary Oldman has consistently amazed viewers with his ability to completely disappear into his roles. Though capable of portraying almost any type of character, Oldman has put his stamp on those of the twisted villain/morally ambiguous weirdo variety, earning renown for his interpretations of the darker side of human nature.Born Leonard Gary Oldman in New Cross, South London, on March 21, 1958, Oldman was raised by his mother and two sisters after his father, an alcoholic welder, left them when Oldman was seven. Nine years later, Oldman left high school to work in a sporting goods store; in his spare time, he studied literature and later acting under the tutelage of Roger Williams. He went on to act with the Greenwich Young People's Theatre and, after attending drama school on a scholarship, worked with the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. Oldman next worked in London's West End, where, in 1985, he won a Best Actor and a Best Newcomer award for his performance in The Pope's Wedding. By this time, he had made his film debut in Remembrance (1982) and had appeared in two television movies, notably Honest, Decent and True (1985). Oldman got his first big break when he was cast as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (1986), Alex Cox's disturbing docudrama account of the punk rocker's tragic relationship with Nancy Spungen. Oldman's unnervingly accurate portrayal of the doomed rocker won rave reviews and effectively propelled him out of complete obscurity. The following year, he turned in a completely different but equally superb performance as famed playwright Joe Orton in Stephen Frears' Prick Up Your Ears and earned a Best Actor nomination from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for his work. After moving to the U.S. that same year, Oldman appeared in Nicolas Roeg's Track 29 (1988), and in 1990, he had one of his most memorable -- to say nothing of cultish -- roles as Rosencrantz opposite Tim Roth as Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard's brilliant Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.Oldman's first American role in a major Hollywood film was that of alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone's JFK (1991). He then gave a creepy, erotic performance in the title role of Francis Ford Coppola's rendition of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), a lavish film that proved to be the most commercially successful (next to JFK) of Oldman's career to date. In addition to playing such eccentrics as Drexl Spivey, a white pimp with dreadlocks who tries to prove himself a black Rastafarian in True Romance (1993), Oldman went on to play more conventional characters, as evidenced by his straightforward portrayal of a crooked cop in Luc Besson's The Professional (1994), his performance as Beethoven in Immortal Beloved (1994), and his role as Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in the disastrous 1995 adaptation The Scarlet Letter.In 1997, Oldman made his directorial bow with Nil by Mouth, a bleak, semi-autobiographical drama about a dysfunctional blue-collar London family that Oldman dedicated to his late father. The film proved to be a controversial hit at that year's Cannes Festival, and the first-time director won a number of international awards and a new dose of respect for his work. He subsequently returned to acting with Luc Besson's The Fifth Element that same year, made while he took a break from editing Nil by Mouth. He also gave an enduringly cheesy portrayal of the sinister Russian terrorist bent on wresting world domination from American president Harrison Ford in the blockbuster Air Force One (1997) and followed that up by playing yet another villain in the 1998 feature-film version of the classic TV series Lost in Space.Two years later, the veteran actor was earning accolades on screens big and small with both his critically acclaimed performance in Rod Lurie's Oscar-nominated political drama The Contender, and his Emmy-nominated guest appearance in the popular TV sitcom Friends. Meanwhile, after escaping the clutches of the silver screen's most notorious cannibal in Ridley Scott's Hannibal (2001), Oldman joined the casts of not one but two of the most successful film franchises of the 2000s: The Harry Potter Series and Christopher Nolan's brooding Batman saga. As benevolent wizard Sirius Black in the former, he helped Hogwarts' most famous student battle the forces of evil, and as Lt. Jim Gordon in the later, he aided The Dark Knight in defeating some of Gotham's most powerful supervillains. And while he wasn't performing exorcisms in The Unborn or searching unlimited power in The Book of Eli, Oldman was showing his versatility by voicing characters in such popular video games as The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning and Call of Duty: Black Ops. In 2011, as if to remind audiences that he could still be a compelling lead in addition to a strong supporting player, Oldman tackled the role of veteran MI6 spy George Smiley -- who comes out of retirement to sniff out a Russian mole in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. A highly stylized take on the classic John le Carre novel, the film not only drew rave reviews from critics, but also an Academy Award-nomination for Oldman. Oldman wrapped up his work in Harry Potter the same year, with a cameo in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 and Nolan's Batman trilogy finished the following year with The Dark Knight Rises. In 2014, he appeared in the remake of RoboCop, followed by a major role in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Trivia: The great-grandson of famous 20th century oil tycoon Armand Hammer, Armie Hammer Jr. seemed poised for movie stardom thanks to his poster-boy looks and his imposing, muscular, 6'5" frame. Hammer landed two of his first major roles at polar opposite ends of the dramatic spectrum: one playing the young Christian evangelical minister Billy Graham in actor-turned-director Robby Benson's chronicle of Graham's early life, Billy: The Early Years (2008), and another playing the son of Satan on the small screen fantasy adventure series Reaper. His huge breakthrough came in 2010 when David Fincher cast him as both the Winklevoss twin, the privileged duo who claim Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them. He was next seen as Clyde Tolson in Clint Eastwood's biopic J. Edgar in 2011. The next year he appeared in Mirror Mirror, and was cast opposite Johnny Depp as the title character in The Lone Ranger.

Trivia: Discovered by a modeling agent in her native Canada, Evangeline Lilly ultimately passed on the catwalk and opted for an acting career. After working briefly as an extra, she was plucked from obscurity and cast as ex-con Kate Austen on ABC's hit island drama Lost. In 2007, she received a Golden Globe nomination for her work on the show. She would parlay her fame into a larger career, appearing in movies like The Hurt Locker, Real Steel, and The Hobbit.

Trivia: With the handsome looks and winning sarcasm that befit a late-night television talk show host, it is no surprise that Greg Kinnear first shot to stardom as the host of the E! channel's Talk Soup. More surprising, and thus more impressive, has been Kinnear's success in making the leap from television to the big screen. With only his fourth major celluloid outing, As Good As It Gets, Kinnear scored his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, effectively establishing himself as someone whose scope included screens small and large.Born June 17, 1963, in Logansport, IN, as the youngest of three sons, Kinnear led a peripatetic childhood. His father was a Foreign Services diplomat for the State Department, and his family accompanied him to places as far-flung as Beirut and Athens. While a student in Athens, Kinnear first ventured into the role of talk show host with his radio show School Daze With Greg Kinnear. Returning to the States for a college education, Kinnear attended the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he graduated in 1985, with a degree in broadcast journalism. From Arizona, he headed out to Los Angeles, where he landed his first job as a marketing assistant with Empire Entertainment. It was there that Kinnear got his first taste of show business, creating promotional campaigns for such films as Space Sluts in the Slammer. Following this stint, Kinnear found a job with the Movietime cable channel. Using an audition tape from a failed attempt at an MTV VJ position, Kinnear became a host and on-location reporter for the channel. All went swimmingly until he was fired, when Movietime became the E! Entertainment Network, and Kinnear soon found himself taking bit parts on such television shows as L.A. Law and Life Goes On.His luck began to change, however, when he became the creator, co-executive producer, and host of Best of the Worst, which aired from 1990 to 1991. In a more ironic and satisfying twist of fate, Kinnear was then hired back by E! to host Talk Soup, the network's new talk show. The show proved to be hugely popular, and Kinnear acted as its host and eventual executive producer until 1994, when he left the show for the NBC late-night talk show Later With Greg Kinnear. It was also in 1994 that he had his first big-screen role, as -- wait for it -- a talk show host in the Damon Wayans comedy Blankman. In 1995, he snared the part that was to give him more prominence among film audiences -- that of the irresponsible David Larrabee in Sydney Pollack's remake of Billy Wilder's 1954 classic romance Sabrina. The film was less than a success, but it did nothing to prevent Kinnear from getting the lead role in the 1996 comedy Dear God. That film, too, had a somewhat unfortunate fate, but Kinnear (now resigned from Later) more than rebounded with his next effort, James L. Brooks' As Good As It Gets (1997). The film was an unqualified hit, netting seven Oscar nominations and winning two, a Best Actor for Jack Nicholson and a Best Actress for Helen Hunt. Kinnear himself had the honor of both a Best Supporting Actor nomination and a Golden Globe nomination. Kinnear's next film, the romantic comedy A Smile Like Yours, had him starring opposite Lauren Holly as one-half of a couple trying to have a baby. The film met with lukewarm reviews and fairly anemic box-office results, but Kinnear's subsequent film, 1998's You've Got Mail, struck gold. He played Meg Ryan's significant other, a newspaper columnist wholly unlike what was to be his next character, that of Captain Amazing in the 1999 summer action film Mystery Men. With a stellar cast, including Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Janeane Garofalo, Lena Olin, and Tom Waits, Kinnear was indeed in good company, further proof of how far he had come in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, both Mystery Men and the subsequent Garry Shandling comedy What Planet Are You From (in which Kinnear amusingly portrayed Shandling's sleazy co-worker) fared poorly with both critics and audiences, and by the time he landed the role of a much-desired soap-opera star in Nurse Betty, it seemed that his star may have faded a bit. His role as a smug, one-dimensional college professor in the 2000 comedy Loser seemed near the bottom of the barrel for the formerly Oscar-nominated actor. Despite the fact that none of these failures were necessarily the fault of everyone's favorite smirky former talk-show host, his choice of projects left many wondering what had become of Kinnear. Of course, where there's darkness there will always be room for hope, and thankfully for Kinnear, the choices he was making began to pay off.In 2000, Kinnear essayed the role of a missing woman's grieving fiancé in the dark Sam Raimi thriller The Gift; the film seemed to mark the beginning of a comeback. His next role as the catalyst for an investigative report into the nature of male behavioral patterns in Someone Like You (2001) proved a step in the right direction, and following supporting performances in Dinner With Friends (2001) and We Were Soldiers (2002), Kinnear's comeback had been primed. Cast as ill-fated television star Bob Crane in Paul Schrader's disturbing 2002 biopic Auto Focus, Kinnear's spot-on performance was so eerie that it made the film almost discomforting to watch. The spotlight was somewhat stolen however, by co-star Willem Dafoe's indescribably creepy turn as the man generally believed to have caused Crane's untimely death. The following year Kinnear lightened the mood considerably when he was cast (literally) alongside Matt Damon as one-half of a pair of conjoined twins in the Farrelly Brothers' comedy Stuck on You. Intent on following his dreams of becoming an actor, Kinnear's character drags his reluctant brother to Hollywood to hilarious results.Kinnear's next role would come as the grieving father of a dead son who goes to desperate lengths to recapture his former happiness in the horror flavored Godsend (2004).A fun turn as a salesman who becomes involved with in hitman in the Golden Globe-nominated crime comedy The Matador went largely unseen despite generally favorable critical response, and after lending his voice to the animated Robots and berating little-league players in The Bad News Bears, Kinnear later join an impressive ensemble cast to investigate America's love affair with burgers and fries in director Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation. Later that same year, Kinnear would take family dysfunction to a whole new level as a motivational speaker attempting to get his daughter to a beauty pageant in Little Miss Sunshine, with a role as NFL coach Dick Vermeil following shortly thereafter in the inspirational sports drama Invincible. Kinnear would spend the following years maintaining his status as a bankable actor, appearing in films like Baby Mama, Green Zone, I Don't Know How She Does It, and the mini series The Kennedys.

Trivia: As legend has it, when director Karyn Kusama was casting the lead for her directorial debut, Girlfight, she wanted to find a young woman who would radiate the powerful, surly charisma of the young Marlon Brando. Her search for an actor with this enviable but elusive quality ended when Michelle Rodriguez, a 20-year-old Latina whose previous experience was limited to work as an extra, answered an ad in Backstage magazine that Kusama had posted. Cast as Diana Guzman, the fierce and vibrant protagonist of Kusama's story of a high school girl who takes up boxing, Rodriguez went on to earn almost universal acclaim for her powerful portrayal, winning the admiration of audiences and critics from Sundance to Toronto.Of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, Rodriguez was born in Bell County, TX, on July 12, 1978. She moved around throughout her childhood and adolescence, living for a time in Texas, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Jersey City, NJ. It was while she was working as an extra in various film productions that she answered Kusama's ad for actors; after being cast as Girlfight's protagonist, she trained intensively to condition her body like that of a boxer to such a degree that, at one point, she was even asked to go pro. Her dedication to the physical and emotional demands of her character paid off lavishly, when Girlfight premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival it received the Grand Jury Prize, with Rodriguez's performance singled out as one of the most exciting breakthroughs in years; among the many kudos she subsequently received was the National Board of Review's prize for Best Breakthrough Performance.Rodriguez's status as one of the year's New Hot Young Thangs on the Block was duly reflected by the attention she was subsequently paid in both the media and Hollywood. In the following year, her projects included Rob Cohen's The Fast and the Furious, an urban adrenaline extravaganza in which she played the tough girlfriend of a gang leader alongside Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Jordanna Brewster, and 3 A.M., a made-for-cable drama which cast her as a taxi driver and was screened at the Sundance Festival.Striving to maintain the balance between sexy and tough, Rodriguez would take on zombies in Resident Evil (2002) before hitting the waves in Blue Crush. Though neither film proved a bona fide box-office smash, they did offer the up and coming actress the exposure needed to develop an enduring career. Rodriguez could next be seen opposite Colin Farrell in the hard-hitting action thriller S.W.A.T. In 2005, Rodriguez appeared briefly on the first season of NBC's endlessly enigmatic primetime drama Lost as Ana Lucia Cortez, a tough cop with a shady past. She reprised the role in the following season, when she clashed heads with fellow flight survivor Jack (Matthew Fox) and struggled with her changing status within the group. The actress also starred in The Breed and Battle in Seattle, and co-stars as a tough-as-nails pilot in Avatar (2009), director James Cameron's science fiction adventure.

Trivia: At the age of 10, he appeared in a youth theater production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Went to college planning to major in film but only attended for a year. Originally dubbed himself Lil Scott before deciding on Kid Cudi. His music career took off after he moved to Brooklyn and released the mixtape A Kid Named Cudi. Scored an Internet hit with his 2008 single "Day 'n' Nite." Released his debut album, Man on the Moon: The End of the Day, in 2009.

Trivia: Father was Indian, mother Swiss and part Italian. Once considered becoming a mime. As she told WhatsOnStage.com, she displayed acting chops as a child: She had a bunk bed with curtains, and used to "tell stories and convince people I was someone else." Trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. On stage, has appeared in works by Shakespeare, Harold Pinter, David Hare, Anton Chekhov, Noel Coward and Thornton Wilder. Her musical tastes sometimes tend more toward pop and rock, though, including Wilco and Michael Jackson. Her 1996 film debut was as the star of Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, which was banned in India and Pakistan. In 2005 and 2007, played a young wife, Niobe, in the HBO series Rome. In 2010, took on the role of billionaire Ilsa Pucci in the Fox action series Human Target.

Trivia: Grew up between the family homes in France and Los Angeles.Met actress Harley Quinn Smith in kindergarden.In school, participated in dance and music performances, and the debate team.Her acting debut role on Tusk (2014) was written for her by writer and director Kevin Smith.Her father has her name tattooed on his chest.Speaks English and French.

Trivia: Canadian actress Mia Kirshner is known in her native country and beyond for her portrayals of moderately to deeply troubled young women who often harbor dark secrets. Born in Toronto in 1975, where she was raised by a journalist father and a teacher mother, Kirshner broke into films in 1993. That year, she starred as a bad seed teenager intent on seducing her mother's boyfriend in Cadillac Girls and played a dominatrix in Denys Arcand's Love and Human Remains.Kirshner had another career breakthrough the following year playing a young stripper with a surprising past identity in Atom Egoyan's widely acclaimed Exotica. The actress' work in the celebrated film attracted the notice of American casting agents, who promptly cast her in supporting roles in Murder in the First (1995) and the Southern gothic coming-of-age tale The Grass Harp (also 1995). Although she subsequently won lead roles in The Crow: City of Angels (1996) -- in which she played up her dark Goth looks as the tattoo artist who befriends Vincent Perez -- and Mad City (1997), which cast her as journalist Dustin Hoffman's intern, Kirshner has had difficulty making a name for herself in Hollywood. She continues to appear in both lead and supporting roles in such independent and/or small features as Saturn (1999), a drama that cast her as the hedonistic girlfriend of a young man (Scott Caan) caring for his Alzheimer's-stricken father. Keeping busy well into the new millennium, Kirshner would later appear in the real-time television series 24, as well as Not Another Teen Movie (both 2001), a parody of the recent wave of high school themed films. A featured role in the popular Showtime series The L Word found Kirshner continuing to court success on the small screen, and in 2006 she would head back to the big screen as the ill-fated actress who sparks a legendary Hollywood investigation in director Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia. Kirshner woudl spend the next several years earrning acclaim for her roles on The L Word and The Vamprie Diaries, as well as movies like 30 Days of Night.

Trivia: German actress Veronica Ferres studied acting in Munich, where she began her career on the stage. She knew from a young age that she wanted to be an internationally recognized actress, Americanizing the spelling of her name when she was just 15 by replacing the K with a C, so that it would be a familiar spelling to the eyes of Hollywood. Her stage career would continue to blossom, but Ferres also transitioned onto the screen, appearing in German movies and TV shows, and steadily becoming a more recognizable name. She gained particular notoriety in the U.S. when she appeared in the made-for-TV production of Les Misérables starring Gérard Depardieu in 2000, playing the tyrannical Madame Thénardier. She made another notable splash with American audiences in 2006's Klimt before signing on for the sobering drama Adam Resurrected, about an asylum for Holocaust survivors.

Trivia: Was a narrator for the Dogs With Jobs series. Played Frank Sinatra in the made-for-TV movie Power and Beauty. Landed recurring roles on Instant Star and Strange Days at Blake Holsey High. Cast as the iconic villain Ming in the Flash Gordon TV series.

Trivia: Welsh-born Luke Evans won a scholarship to The London Studio Centre in Kings Cross, London, in 1997 at age 18. He took the knowledge he gained there onto the stage, beginning his professional acting career with many prominent roles in productions on London's West End, like Rent and Miss Saigon. Evans took his time branching out into on-screen acting, landing his first film audition at age 30. He made his big-screen debut as the Greek god Apollo in 2010's Clash of the Titans. He then played Aramis in 2011's The Three Musketeers before taking on the role of another Greek god in 2011's Immortals, this time tackling the king of the pantheon, Zeus.

Trivia: Most recognizable as a Hal Hartley regular, tall, lanky Martin Donovan has made an indelible impression, gaining widespread respect as one of the more underrated figures in the film industry.Born August 19, 1957, in Reseda, CA, Donovan attended the American Theater of Arts in Los Angeles before working for a number of theaters in Los Angeles and New York. Donovan's first starring role came in the 1984 drama Hard Choices, which also starred John Sayles and J.T. Walsh. 1991 marked his first collaboration with Hartley, as he starred in both Surviving Desire (made for PBS' American Playhouse) and Trust. The latter became an art house favorite, helping to establish Hartley's reputation. The following year, Donovan made his next film with Hartley, 1992's Simple Men.Following his role in Hartley's critically acclaimed Amateur (1994), Donovan performed in a steady number of films throughout the rest of the decade. For Hartley, he appeared in Flirt (1995) and The Book of Life (1999), in which he played a modern-day Christ opposite PJ Harvey's Magdalena. Other notable work for the versatile actor included his role as Nicole Kidman's consumptive confidant in The Portrait of a Lady (1996); a turn as a divorced gay father in the unsettling Hollow Reed (1996); the part of Holly Hunter's philandering husband in Living Out Loud (1998); and his triumphantly understated portrayal of Christina Ricci's too-tolerant half-brother in Don Roos' black comedy The Opposite of Sex (1998). It was this last role, in particular, that helped to thrust Donovan a little further into the spotlight, introducing him to an audience that was eager to learn more about this multi-talented, multifaceted actor.