Trivia: Moved to the United States from her native England at age 5 following her parents' split. Has done journalistic work for a variety of media outlets, including Nickelodeon and Teen Vogue. Enjoys traveling and while in school often visited places she learned about to further her education. Designed accessories, including ballet flats named after her grandmother, in support of a charity providing low-cost counseling in 2008. Made her film debut in the 2009 movie The Blind Side, playing the daughter of Sandra Bullock's character. Attended the same high school as Beverly Hills 90210 star Tori Spelling, and went on to guest star on the 90210 reboot.

Trivia: The latest in an illustrious line of actors to convince American audiences that the British make the cinema's most sinister and cold-hearted villains, Jason Isaacs earned the vicarious enmity and disgust of filmgoers everywhere in his role as the vile Colonel Tavington in the 2000 summer blockbuster The Patriot. Actually an incredibly versatile performer whose previous characterizations included a priest, a brilliant scientist, and a drug dealer, the tall, blue-eyed actor won admiration and respect for his performance, and soon found himself being hailed in the American press as one of the most exciting British imports of the early 21st century.The third of four sons of a Liverpool merchant, Isaacs was born in his father's hometown on June 6, 1963. He initially planned to go into law -- a white-collar profession that would have fit nicely with those of his brothers, who became a doctor, lawyer, and accountant -- but was swayed by acting early in the course of his law studies at Bristol University. Although he first became interested in acting in part because "it was a great way to meet girls," Isaacs soon found deeper meaning in the theater (in one interview he was quoted as saying "I could release myself into acting in a way that I was not released socially") and duly dropped out of Bristol to hone his skills at London's Central School of Speech and Drama. Once in London, Isaacs began landing professional work almost immediately, appearing on the stage and on television. He made his big-screen debut in 1989 with a minor turn as a doctor in Mel Smith's The Tall Guy and that same year won a steady role on the TV series Capital City. Isaacs exhibited his versatility in several more TV series and on-stage in such productions as the Royal National Theatre's 1993 staging of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America. He also began to find more work onscreen, receiving his first nod of Hollywood recognition in his casting in the Bruce Willis blockbuster Armageddon (1998). Initially called upon to take a fairly substantial role, Isaacs was eventually cast in a much smaller capacity as a planet-saving scientist so that he could accommodate his commitment to Divorcing Jack (1998), a comedy thriller he was making with David Thewlis. After portraying a priest opposite Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes in Neil Jordan's acclaimed adaptation of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, Isaacs got his biggest international break to date when he was picked to portray Colonel Tavington, the resident villain of Roland Emmerich's Revolutionary War epic The Patriot. Starring opposite Mel Gibson, who (naturally) played the film's hero, Isaacs made an unnervingly memorable impression as a man whose pastimes included infanticide, rape, and church- burning, emerging as one of summer 2000s most indelible screen presences. Although his work in the film earned him comparisons to Ralph Fiennes' portrayal of evil Nazi Amon Goeth in Schindler's List and talks of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, the actor was not content to be typecast in the historical scum mold. Thus, he logically signed on to play none other than a drag queen for his next project, Sweet November (2001), a romantic comedy-drama starring Charlize Theron and Keanu Reeves. For his lead portrayal in the 2007 miniseries The State Within, Isaacs received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television. Over the next several years, Isaacs appeared in films like Green Zone and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Part 2. He would also star in TV series like Case Histories and Awake.

Trivia: His father is a pediatric cardiologist. Studied political philosophy and English literature at the University of Vermont; originally planned to be a college professor. Started his acting career while still in college, when his car broke down outside New York City and he decided to look for work; he landed the ABC Afterschool Special Taking a Stand. Made his film debut in 1995's Higher Learning. Was filming a fight scene for 2004's The Bourne Supremacy when Matt Damon actually broke his nose. Has worked multiple times with George Clooney (Leatherheads) and J.J. Abrams (Super 8).

Trivia: The daughter of an attorney father and writer mother, German-born Elisabeth Röhm spent the majority of her childhood and adolescence coming of age in New York. Röhm discovered an innate love of acting during her collegiate years (in the early '90s) and thereafter landed a regular role on the daytime drama One Life to Live. She graduated to fame, however, by virtue of two prime-time roles: Detective Kate Lockley on the supernatural drama series Angel (1999) and Assistant District Attorney Serena Southerlyn on NBC's Law & Order. Big-screen roles include supporting turns in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005) and Aftermath (2008).

Trivia: An esteemed African-American playwright and actor whose roles almost invariably contend with the politics and dynamics of race (frequent collaborator Spike Lee once famously described him as a "racial cheerleader"), thespian Roger Guenveur Smith grew up in Berkeley and debuted onscreen in the late '80s. Over the ensuing years, Smith cultivated and sustained a reputation for tackling demanding, challenging, and thought-provoking assignments with immense aplomb. He achieved much of his success thanks to repeated collaborations with Lee, who cast him as Yoda in the musical School Daze (1988) and Smiley, the hipster street philosopher in Do the Right Thing (1989); in fact, Lee later noted that Smith was the one who devised the idea for the juxtaposed photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in one of Thing's pivotal scenes. Meanwhile, Smith remained extremely active in regional theater, both by authoring his own efforts (such as a musical about Christopher Columbus that painted commonly accepted versions of the man's life story as historical revisionism) and by teaching drama to juvenile delinquents. As the years passed, Smith's onscreen activity crescendoed; he signed for plum roles in such contemporary classics as King of New York (1990), Deep Cover (1992), and Eve's Bayou (1997), and, significantly, extended his professional relationship with Lee to many additional projects. The celebrated director cast Smith in such features as Malcolm X (1992), Get on the Bus (1996), He Got Game (1998), and Summer of Sam (1999), all of which received considerable acclaim. Their actor-director working relationship culminated in the little-seen (but arguably brilliant) A Huey P. Newton Story (2001) -- a Lee-directed film of Smith's one-man stage show on the life of controversial Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton. The film preserves the original Smith-authored play, and stars the thespian as Newton; Lee augments the film with visual pyrotechnics and interpolates archival footage to give the feature depth and dimension. Unfortunately, the project failed to receive even a limited theatrical release, and premiered instead on the Black Starz cable network. Thereafter, Smith continued his theatrical work (albeit very infrequently) with such plays as the 2003 Iceland, a psychological drama about four unrelated characters that debuted in Philadelphia. He also continued his frequent film roles, with assignments including Shade (2003), God's Waiting List (2006), Confessions of a Call Girl (2006), and Ridley Scott's American Gangster (2007).

Trivia: New Jersey native Antonique Smith began honing her acting and singing skills in the church choir and in school plays, though her voice didn't begin to develop until her teens. Still, Smith had her sites set on being a star even before her physicality caught up with her ambition -- which it eventually did. As Smith entered her teens, her voice matured, finally reaching a level of strength and control where she was able to achieve the kinds of vocal heights demonstrated by her heroes like Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston.With her instrument in full bloom, Smith embarked on a career in show business, beginning on Broadway, where she first caught public attention with the role of Mimi in Rent. Following her stint with the musical, she then moved onto the screen, appearing in films like Across the Universe, and as R&B star Faith Evans in the 2009 Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious.

Trivia: American actor Dermot Mulroney is decidedly in tune with the 1990s: his film characters are often eccentric, unpredictable, and total strangers to personal hygiene. Curiously, when called upon to appear as a scruffy street kid in Where the Day Takes You (1992), Mulroney seemed a bit too squeaky-clean. An alumnus of Northwestern University, he first made moviegoers' acquaintance in 1988 with Sunset and as part of the Brat Pack western Young Guns. In the acclaimed Longtime Companion (1990), Mulroney played a collar-and-tie type who was still essentially an outsider due to the character's homosexuality and vulnerability to AIDS. Much of Mulroney's subsequent work has gone largely unseen, including the dismal Bad Girls (1994).

Trivia: Becoming, at the age of 24, the youngest individual and the first African American ever to be nominated for a Best Director Academy Award, John Singleton made movie history with Boyz 'N the Hood, his astonishing 1991 directorial debut. An intensely personal portrait of life and death in South Central L.A. that was inspired by the director's own experiences, the film earned Singleton comparisons to past wunderkind Orson Welles and heralded him as one of Hollywood's most important new directors.Born January 6, 1968, in the South Central L.A. neighborhood he would later immortalize on celluloid, Singleton was the son of a mortgage broker father and a company sales executive mother. Raised jointly by his divorced parents, he went on to attend the University of Southern California, where he majored in film writing. While a student at U.S.C., Singleton won a number of writing awards that led to a deal with the Creative Artists Agency during his sophomore year. At the age of 23, he wrote and directed Boyz 'N the Hood, a coming-of-age drama that centered on an intelligent 17-year-old's (Cuba Gooding Jr.) efforts to make it out of his neighborhood alive. Featuring a strong cast that included Gooding Jr., Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, and Laurence Fishburne, and deft direction that humanized the violence of South Central L.A. rather than sensationalized it, the film was a major critical and commercial triumph. One of the highest-grossing films in history to have been directed by an African American, Boyz 'n the Hood also made history with its twin Best Screenplay and Best Director Oscar nominations for its young writer/director. In addition to those nominations, Singleton was also honored with the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best First-Time Director.Singleton followed Boyz 'N the Hood with Poetic Justice in 1993. Starring Janet Jackson as its heroine, a South Central L.A. hairdresser coping with the shooting death of her boyfriend, the film boasted magnetic performances from its entire cast, which also included rapper Tupac Shakur as Jackson's love interest. Although it was profitable, Poetic Justice failed to find favor with most critics, some of whom noted that it lacked the power and urgency of Singleton's previous effort. The director's subsequent project, Higher Learning (1995), also fared rather poorly among critics. A drama about racial, gender, and political conflict on a college campus, it benefited from the performances of its ensemble cast, which included Omar Epps, Laurence Fishburne, Ice Cube, and Kristy Swanson, but was weighed down by the presence of one too many one-dimensional characters that existed to highlight the issues Singleton was attempting to explore. Ironically, it was Singleton's most critically appreciated effort since Boyz 'N the Hood that was virtually ignored by audiences. Rosewood, a powerful drama based on the real-life 1923 massacre and destruction of an African-American town in Florida by whites from a neighboring community, was widely considered Singleton's strongest film since his directorial debut. A dense and ultimately depressing multi-character epic fueled by the presence of such talented actors as Ving Rhames, John Voight, and Don Cheadle, the film did not attempt to make a happy ending out of its stark material, which may have accounted for its inability to win a large audience.In 2000, Singleton returned with his biggest project to date, a glossy, expensive remake of Shaft. Starring Samuel L. Jackson as its titular, Armani-clad hero, the nephew of original Shaft Richard Roundtree (who had a cameo in the new film), the film was an exercise in flamboyant, unapologetic political incorrectness, featuring easily distinguishable bad guys and good guys and meaty helpings of bad-ass attitude. Shaft earned decidedly mixed reviews but was a summer audience pleaser, putting its director back on the map. Finding his way back into familiar territory, Singleton's next film, Baby Boy (2001), was constructed as a loose follow up to Boyz 'N the Hood. Starring vocalist/model Tyrese Gibson and Omar Gooding, the film marked a notable return to the sensative issues that Singleton had touched upon in the past after the flashily entertaining but ultimately inconsequencial departure of Shaft. Singleton made a rare appearance in front of the camera for BAADASSSSS! before helming the hit sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious. He produced {Craig Brewer's Oscar winning Hustle & Flow, a film that ended up overshadowing his directorial effort form that same year, Four Brothers. He maintained his working relationship with Brewer by producing his Hustle & Flow follow-up Black Snake Moan. In 2010 he made a documentary about shamed Olympian Marion Jones, and the next year he helmed the Taylor Lautner action vehicle Abduction