Ben Affleck
Though he was born in California, Ben Affleck and his family moved early on to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where, in keeping with tradition, he soon learned to love the Boston Red Sox while despising the New York Yankees. Affleck’s father, Tim, was an old friend of Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman and a former regular at the Theater Company of Boston, which meant that acting and performance were in his blood.
Anne Hathaway
Early on, Anne Hathaway’s core religious values in Catholicism were guiding her toward a future filled with religious faith rather than Hollywood fame. Though her mother, Kate McCauley, was an actress, and Anne Hathaway enjoyed playing dress-up and imagining herself as various creative characters, her first career ambition was to become a nun. This career path changed abruptly at 15 when she realized that her religious background would put her at odds with her brother, who was atheist. Based on that, Anne Hathaway chose acting instead, and movie audiences would come to be all the better for it.
Cate Blanchett
Catherine Elise Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969, in Melbourne, Australia. With an Aussie mother and a Texan father, she was exposed to a range of cultures. When Cate was merely 10 years old, her father passed away, leaving her mother to take care of not only Cate, but also a younger sister and older brother. Her first taste of acting came when she joined a drama group at her Methodist College, playing small roles in small-time plays.
Marion Cotillard spent her childhood in Orleans, France, where her acting and artistically-inclined parents continually inspired her to become a performer. Though Cotillard’s actor mom, Niseema Theillaud, and actor-director dad, Jean-Claude Cotillard, were often filming in exotic countries or traveling with their performance group, they would come back from destinations like Asia and South America with inspirational mementos for their daughter.
Orlando Bloom is an extraordinary success story. Has any actor ever been as famous without ever headlining a major picture? And which other actor can boast a US box office average of well in excess of $100 million per movie, even if the calculation includes the films he’s made but not yet released? The man’s rise has been meteoric, to say the least. And, given the projects he has in the pipeline, it can only continue.
Penelope Cruz was the first Spanish-born actress to take an Academy Award home for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Never forgetting her roots in Spanish cinema, the actress is still the once and future muse of famed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, starring in a total of four of his films, including his most recent Broken Embraces.
Benicio Del Toro was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but relocated with his family to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania after his mother died of hepatitis when he was just nine years old. Feeling pressure from his father, Benicio pursued a business degree at the University of California in San Diego. It was only after he had taken an elective drama course that he discovered his true calling. Without telling his father, Benicio dropped out of school and began studying with the legendary Stella Adler in Los Angeles, as well as at the Circle in the Square Acting School in New York City.
Julianne Moore was born on December 3, 1960, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The daughter of a social psychiatrist and a military judge, young Julianne lived the nomadic lifestyle that often characterizes army families, and called nearly two dozen places home throughout her formative years.
Abrupt moves between such distinct locales as Panama, Germany and Alaska made for a childhood of perpetual transition, but one static element in Julianne Moore’s life was her passion for acting.
An actor who hovered far too long on the brink of stardom before getting his due recognition, Adrien Brody spent much of his early career falling victim to the slings and arrows of outrageous PR. Possessing undeniable talent and looks that recall both the wasted elegance of an Aubrey Beardsley illustration and a young and hungry Al Pacino, Brody spent much of the 1990s as a candidate for his generation’s “next big thing.” But despite roles in two high-profile movies — Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998) and Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam (1999) — and the publicity that accompanied them, it was not until Brody was cast as the lead in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002) that he won the recognition which had previously eluded him.
First making an impression on international audiences with her role as the sweet, virginal Hero in Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (1993), pale-skinned, fine-boned British actress Kate Beckinsale has since stepped beyond period pieces to prove that she is anything but a fragile English rose. The daughter of a BBC casting director and famed television actor Richard Beckinsale (known for roles on Porridge and Rising Damp), Beckinsale was born July 26, 1973.
Over the course of nearly forty years, Robert De Niro has established himself as one of the most respected and iconic screen actors in history. This is a position he’s achieved both through the relentless perfectionism of his approach to his work, and the ferocity with which he protects his private life. Apart from the very occasional tabloid snippet, we hear nothing about the man, only ever seeing him when he’s playing someone else - which is, of course, exactly how he wants it to be.
Undoubtedly the hottest Italian star since Sophia Loren, Monica Bellucci has attained the sort of respect that most models can only dream about. Having appeared in almost 50 movies and television shows, Monica Bellucci’s status within the industry — both in North America and abroad — is nothing short of remarkable. Monica Anna Maria Bellucci was born on September 30, 1964, in Perugia, Italy. The daughter of a painter and a businessman, Monica grew up with dreams of becoming a lawyer — though it eventually became clear that her calling lay in the arts.
Woody Harrelson can be forgiven for being a little bit different. After all, this Midland, Texas, native is the son of a contract killer who once murdered a federal judge. Fortunately, Harrelson was removed from his father’s criminal influence in 1964 when his parents divorced and his mother moved Woody and his two brothers to the sleepy town of Lebanon, Ohio. It was there that Harrelson first discovered a passion for drama and he starred in numerous high school plays before graduating from Indiana’s Hanover College in 1983 with a degree in English and theater arts.
Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra — known as Meg or Peggy to family and friends — was born November 19, 1961, in Fairfield, Connecticut. The daughter of Harry, a teacher, and Susan, a teacher, former actress and casting director, Meg did not intend to become the Hollywood cutie she is known as today. With original intentions of pursuing a journalistic career, one would think that perhaps Meg inherited the acting talent from her mother, who left a 15-year-old Meg, her two sisters and her brother to become an actress.
Despite a hard exterior reminiscent of a recent parolee—tightly-wound and on the verge of hurting anyone who looks at him the wrong way—French actor Vincent Cassel has amassed6 in his career an impressive and varied list of on-screen roles. The son of actor Jean-Pierre Cassel, who made his career in romantic comedies, Cassel was warned by his parents to stay away from the profession. At first he agreed, but later found himself pulled into a world that has led the versatile8 actor to pursue roles not for fame or money, but for art.
James Cameron is one of the most successful and notorious filmmakers in Hollywood’s storied history. His resume boasts a number of contemporary classics, including 1984’s The Terminator, 1986’s Aliens and 1997’s Titanic. His cutting-edge work in the realm of special effects has influenced countless filmmakers and has earned him a wealth of technical awards, while his movies have launched the careers of such familiar faces as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Paxton and Edward Furlong.
It's a common complaint amongst actresses who started out as models or beauty queens that no one takes them seriously. They're seen, they believe, merely as eye candy, girlfriend material, lacking the talent to take on the meatier female roles. Many the more bloody minded among them rebel against this stereotyping, work hard to widen their scope, and eventually succeed in earning their peers' respect. Michelle Pfeiffer was a glowing example of this, and the first four years of the new millennium saw two others follow her. First Halle Berry took the Best Actress Oscar for Monster's Ball then, two years later, Charlize Theron for Monster. 
Gary Oldman is one of Hollywood's true chameleons and a master of dialects. His diverse body of work includes critically praised roles as Sid Vicious, Beethoven, Dracula, Lee Harvey Oswald, as well as Sirius Black and Lt. James Gordon in the Harry Potter and Batman franchises.
“I’m not 25 years old anymore, nor do I want to be. I wouldn’t even want to go back to being 30. You know what I mean? That journey, I’ve done it already. I don’t want to do it again. It’s a lot of work to get through it, and I am excited about moving forward. I think that people get caught up in getting back to some place that they already passed or to a place where you cannot stay.” 
When, in February, 2003, Meryl Streep was Oscar-nominated for her performance in Adaptation, she overtook Katherine Hepburn to become the most successful actress in Hollywood history: 13 nominations in 26 years (Hepburn took 48 over her 12). 
"I love humor. I always will fall back on humor. That’s something that I think you can’t ever get enough of and, if it’s done well, it’s great. When it’s bad, it’s horrible."
“Talent is funny, I’ve always looked at talent like what the hell does talent really mean? Talent is to actors what luck is to card players. It’s not really anything, it’s just a fictitious word that people have created and labeled things. Talent is like you know I never really believed in talent, I believed in drive and determination and preparation but talent is sort of like luck. I wouldn’t want to think of myself as talented it doesn’t seem like there’s any validity in that. I like to think of myself as an ordinary man with extra ordinary determination. That’s it.”
Lindsay Lohan is an American actress, model, and pop singer. Lohan started in show business as a child fashion model for magazine advertisement and television commercials. At age 10, she began her acting career in the soap opera Another World; at 11, she made her motion picture debut by playing identical twins in Disney’s 1998 remake of The Parent Trap.
Do you need any arguments that Tom Hanks is one of the most accomplished and successful actors around? Consider this; he has a winning streak of 10 consecutive movies he has starred in that have grossed over $100 domestically in the US. That’s a record. Remember The Green Mile, Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Saving Private Ryan, You’ve Got Mail, Apollo 13, Forrest Gump, Philadelphia, Sleepless in Seattle, A League of Their Own, and Cast Away? If that wasn’t enough, how about his two Oscars for Best Actor? Even among A-list actors, he tops the list.
It’s a mark of Australia’s cultural strength that they’ve provided so many of today’s top-line cinematic greats. Mel Gibson and Cate Blanchett, Judy Davis and Naomi Watts, Sam Neill and Russell Crowe. And, of course, there’s the woman who is the hottest of the lot, the ex-Mrs Cruise but a fine actress and Oscar-winner in her own right – Nicole Kidman.
