American Gods casting

Jeffrey Dean Morgan endeared himself to audiences with his recurring role on ABC's smash hit series Grey's Anatomy (2005). His dramatic arc as heart patient Denny Duquette, who wins the heart of intern Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) in a star-crossed romance, made him a universal fan favorite. He also had recurring roles on The CW and Warner Bros' television series Supernatural (2005), The Good Wife (2009), and on Showtime and Lions Gate Television's award-winning comedy series Weeds (2005). He currently stars as Negan on the hit AMC series, The Walking Dead (2010).

Morgan starred in Warner Bros.' Watchmen (2009), director Zack Snyder's (300 (2006)) adaptation of the iconic graphic novel. He played the pivotal role of the Comedian, a Vietnam War vet who is a member of a group of heroes called the Minutemen. He next appeared in producer Joel Silver's The Losers (2010), for Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of DC-Vertigo's acclaimed comic book series about a band of black ops commandos who are set up to be killed by their own government. The team barely survives and sets out to get even. James Vanderbilt adapted the screenplay, and Sylvain White directed. He appeared in Focus Features' Taking Woodstock (2009), directed by Oscar-winning director Ang Lee. He also starred opposite Uma Thurman in Yari Film Group's romantic comedy The Accidental Husband (2008). Additional feature credits include a cameo role opposite Rachel Weisz in Warner Bros.' comedy Fred Claus (2007), and the independent office comedy Kabluey (2007), in which he played a charismatic yet smarmy co-worker of Lisa Kudrow's character.

In 2011, the in-demand actor starred in the independent murder mystery Texas Killing Fields (2011). In the film, based on a true story, Morgan plays a detective transplanted from New York who teams with a local investigator (Sam Worthington) to work on a series of unsolved murders in industrial wastelands surrounding Gulf Coast refineries, where as many as 70 bodies turned up over the past two decades. Together, they wage a war against the unknown assailants. Michael Mann produced the film, while his daughter, Ami Canaan Mann, directed. The actor traveled to Thailand, where he filmed the Weinstein Company's period drama Shanghai (2010), under the direction of Mikael Håfström (1408 (2007)). John Cusack stars as an American who returns to a corrupt, Japanese-occupied Shanghai four months prior to Pearl Harbor and learns that his friend Connor (Morgan) was killed. While trying to solve the murder, he discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding. In addition, Morgan has a role in Michael London's Groundswell Productions' All Good Things (2010), starring Kirsten Dunst and Ryan Gosling, also for the Weinstein Co.

He also stars opposite two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank in the suspense thriller The Resident (2011), for Hammer Films. It is the story of a young doctor (Swank) who moves into a Brooklyn loft and becomes suspicious that she is not alone. Morgan plays Max, her charming new landlord whom she discovers has developed a dangerous obsession with her. Morgan previously co-starred with Swank in Warner Bros.' P.S. I Love You (2007).

Morgan also appeared in the MGM/UA reboot of the 1984 action movie Red Dawn (2012). The plot focuses on a group of teenagers who form an insurgency called the Wolverines when their town is invaded by Cuban and Russian soldiers. Morgan plays the role of Lieutenant Andrew Tanner, the leader of the US Special Forces who finds the Wolverines.

Morgan was born in Seattle, Washington, to Sandy Thomas and Richard Dean Morgan. In his spare time, Morgan enjoys barbecuing on the grill, reading, watching movies, and listening to his favorite band, Eagles. He also loves to root for his home team, the Seattle Seahawks. He resides in Los Angeles with his dogs, Honey Dog and Bandit Morgan, a puppy he rescued in Puerto Rico while filming. He resides in a farm in New York's Hudson Valley, where he is also part-owner of a small coffee shop with business partner The Losers (2010).

Christine Woods was born on 3 September 1983 in Lake Forest, California, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Hello Ladies (2013), Perfect Couples (2010) and Flashforward (2009). She has been married to Jonathan Sadoff since 2020. They have one child.

Brendan Gleeson was born in Dublin, Ireland, to Pat and Frank Gleeson. From a very young age, he loved to learn, especially reading classical text in and outside the classroom. He took great attention to Irish play writers such as Samuel Beckett, which eventually led to him performing in his high school play production of "Waiting for Godot", and paying great attention to detail in his high school drama classes. Upon finishing 12th grade, he spent a couple of years with the Dublin Shakespeare Festival, and under the advice of a director there, headed across to London and auditioned for drama schools. Soon to follow, he was invited to audition for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon, and spent a couple of seasons back in England on the stage. He then, at the age of thirty five, decided to audition for films in the UK and began to build a very respectable resume playing many different diverse characters.

He made his debut as a quarryman in The Field (1990). He had several small roles in major Hollywood movies based in Ireland, such as Far and Away (1992) and Into the West (1992). Memorably played historical Irish figure "Michael Collins" in The Treaty (1991). Made his breakthrough in Scottish themed Braveheart (1995), which was largely filmed in Ireland, opposite Mel Gibson. He played Gibson's right-hand man "Hamish". Since then, he has appeared in numerous major films such as Mission: Impossible II (2000), Lake Placid (1999), Turbulence (1997). He has made a name for himself taking the titular role in The General (1998), based on the life of Irish criminal "Martin Cahill", for which he won the Boston Society of Film Critics Award. He appears in director John Boorman's film The Tailor of Panama (2001) as well as Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002) and Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001).

Ever since, he has continued to bring his huge stage presence to the screen, always delivering the character in full development to his audience. He is married to his lovely wife, Mary, since 1982. They have four sons.

Garrett Morris was born on 1 February 1937 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Coneheads (1993), Saturday Night Live (1975) and How High (2001). He has been married to Freda Morris since 20 September 1996.

Lead and supporting actor of the American stage and films, with sandy colored hair, and pale complexion. He won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Deer Hunter (1978), and has been seen in mostly character roles, often portraying psychologically unstable individuals, though that generalization would not do justice to Walken's depth and breadth of performances.

Walken was born in Astoria, Queens, New York. His mother, Rosalie (Russell), was a Scottish emigrant, from Glasgow. His father, Paul Wälken, was a German emigrant, from Horst, who ran Walken's bakery. Christopher learned his stage craft, including dancing, at Hofstra University & ANTA, and picked up a Theatre World award for his performance in the revival of the Tennessee Williams play "The Rose Tattoo". Walken then first broke through into cinema in 1969 appearing in Me and My Brother (1968), before appearing alongside Sean Connery in the sleeper heist movie The Anderson Tapes (1971). His eclectic work really came to the attention of critics in 1977 with his intense portrayal of Diane Keaton suicidal younger brother in Annie Hall (1977), and then he scooped the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award in 1977 for his role as Nick in the electrifying The Deer Hunter (1978). Walken was lured back by The Deer Hunter (1978) director Michael Cimino for a role in the financially disastrous western Heaven's Gate (1980), before moving onto surprise audiences with his wonderful dance skills in Pennies from Heaven (1981), taking the lead as a school teacher with telepathic abilities in the Stephen King inspired The Dead Zone (1983) and then as billionaire industrialist Max Zorin trying to blow up Silicon Valley in the 007 adventure A View to a Kill (1985). Looking at many of Walken's other captivating screen roles, it is easy to see the diversity of his range and even his droll comedic talents with humorous appearances in Biloxi Blues (1988), Wayne's World 2 (1993), Joe Dirt (2001), Mousehunt (1997) and America's Sweethearts (2001). Most recently, he continued to surprise audiences again with his work as a heart broken and apologetic father to Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can (2002).

Guy Edward Pearce was born October 5, 1967 in Cambridgeshire, England, UK to Margaret Anne and Stuart Graham Pearce. His father was born in Auckland, New Zealand, to English and Scottish parents, while Guy's mother is English. Pearce and his family initially traveled to Australia for two years, after his father was offered the position of Chief test pilot for the Australian Government. Guy was just 3-years-old. After deciding to stay in Australia and settling in the Victorian city of Geelong, Guy's father was killed 5 years later in an aircraft test flight, leaving Guy's mother, a schoolteacher, to care for him and his older sister, Tracy.

Having little interest in subjects at school like math or science, Guy favored art, drama and music. He joined local theatre groups at a young age and appeared in such productions as "The King and I," "Fiddler on the Roof," and "The Wizard of Oz." In 1985, just two days after his final high school exam, Guy started a four-year stint as "Mike Young" on the popular Aussie soap Neighbours (1985). At age 20, Guy appeared in his first film, Heaven Tonight (1989), then, after a string of appearances in film, television and on the stage, he won the role of an outrageous drag queen in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994).

Most recently, he has amazed film critics and audiences, alike, with his magnificent performances in L.A. Confidential (1997), Memento (2000), The Proposition (2005), Factory Girl (2006), The Hurt Locker (2008), The King's Speech (2010) and the HBO mini-series, Mildred Pierce (2011). Next to acting, Guy has had a life-long passion for music and songwriting.

Guy likes to keep his private life very private. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, which is also where he married his childhood sweetheart, Kate Mestitz in March 1997.

Lisa Olivia Munn was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Her mother, Kimberly Schmid, lived in Vietnam, and is of Chinese ancestry, while her father, Winston Barrett Munn, is from a family with deep roots in the American South. Olivia's parents divorced when she was two years old, and she was raised by her mother and stepfather, a member of the United States Air Force. Although the family departed Oklahoma and resided in many locations, she was mainly raised in Tokyo, Japan. During this time, she appeared in a number of local theater productions and later became a model in the Japanese fashion industry. When the family eventually returned to the United States, Olivia moved to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. After a few small roles, her career took a very promising turn when she landed the role of Mily Acuna on the Hawaii-lensed TV series Beyond the Break (2006) and the role of Rob Schneider's receptionist in A Prueba De Hombres (2007). She hosts "The Daily Nut" and the "Formula D" Podcasts on G4.

Dev Patel was born in London's Harrow district to Anita, a caregiver, and Raj, who works in IT; hailing from Nairobi, Kenya, they are both of Gujarati-Indian descent. Patel secured his first professional acting gig playing Anwar on the cult hit television series Skins (2007), where he starred for two seasons. His mainstream breakout came soon thereafter, when he was cast as Jamal in Danny Boyle's Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire (2008), for which he received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor.

Subsequent film projects have included The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), Chappie (2015), Hotel Mumbai (2018), and The Green Knight (2021). For his portrayal of real-life Australian businessman Saroo Brierley in Lion (2016), where he co-starred with Nicole Kidman, Patel received glowing reviews and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His directorial debut was the critically lauded Monkey Man (2024), in which he also starred.

Max Giorgio Choa Minghella is an English-born actor and filmmaker. He was born in Hampstead, London, England, the son of choreographer Carolyn Choa and the late Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella. He is the half-brother of Hannah Minghella, who has also worked in film.

Minghella is a former member of the National Youth Theatre. He attended Columbia University (2005-2009).

Minghella's acting credits include 'The Internship', 'The Ides of March' and 'The Social Network' (Minghella was nominated for a SAG award for his ensemble work). Minghella also starred alongside Blake Lively in cult favorite 'Elvis & Anabelle'.

In 2013, Minghella executive produced 'The Two Faces of January' for Working Title.

In 2014, Minghella directed the music video for Christopher Owens' 'Nothing More Than Everything To Me'.

Miramax's 'The 9th Life of Louis Drax' was Minghella's screen writing debut, and his first film as director was 'Teen Spirit' from 2018.

Minghella dated actress Kate Mara from 2010-2014.

His father was British (though of Italian descent) and his mother was born in Hong Kong (of over half Chinese, and smaller amounts of Indian Jewish, Parsi Indian, English, Irish, and Swedish, ancestry).

Donald Frank Cheadle was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on November 29, 1964. His childhood found him moving from city to city with his family: mother Bettye (née North), a teacher; father Donald Frank Cheadle Sr., a clinical psychologist; sister Cindy; and brother Colin. After graduating from high school in Denver, Colorado, Cheadle attended and graduated from the California Institute of the Arts with a bachelor¹s degree in fine arts. Encouraged by his college friends, he attended a variety of auditions and landed a recurring role on the hit series Fame (1982), which led to feature film roles in Dennis Hopper's Colors (1988) and John Irvin's Hamburger Hill (1987).

Early in his career, Cheadle was named Best Supporting Actor by the Los Angeles Film Critics for his breakout performance opposite Denzel Washington in Devil in a Blue Dress (1995). His subsequent film credits include Traitor (2008), an international thriller that he produced, starring opposite Guy Pearce; Kasi Lemmons's Talk to Me (2007), with Chiwetel Ejiofor; the 2006 Oscar-winning Best Picture, Crash (2004), which Cheadle also produced; Hotel Rwanda (2004), for which his performance garnered Oscar, Golden Globe, Broadcast Film Critics and Screen Actors Guild award nominations for Best Actor; Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven (2001), Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007), starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney; Mike Binder's Reign Over Me (2007) with Adam Sandler; the Academy Award-winning Traffic (2000) and Out of Sight (1998), with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, both films also directed by Soderbergh; Paul Thomas Anderson's acclaimed Boogie Nights (1997) with Julianne Moore and Mark Wahlberg; Bulworth (1998), directed by and starring Warren Beatty; Swordfish (2001), with John Travolta and Halle Berry; Mission to Mars (2000) with Tim Robbins and Gary Sinise; John Singleton's Rosewood (1997), for which Cheadle earned an NAACP Image Award nomination; Brett Ratner's The Family Man (2000), starring Nicolas Cage; and the independent features Manic (2001) and Things Behind the Sun (2001).

Cheadle was honored by the CineVegas Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Festival and received ShoWest's Male Star of the Year award. He is also well-recognized for his television work, including his portrayal of Sammy Davis Jr. in HBO's The Rat Pack (1998), for which he received a Golden Globe Award and a Best Supporting Actor Emmy nomination. That same year, he also received an Emmy nomination for his starring role in HBO's adaptation of the best-selling novel A Lesson Before Dying (1999), opposite Cicely Tyson and Mekhi Phifer.

He also starred for HBO in Eriq La Salle's Rebound: The Legend of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (1996). Cheadle's TV series credits include his two-year stint in David E. Kelley's acclaimed series Picket Fences (1992), a guest-starring role on ER (1994) (earning yet another Emmy nomination) and a regular role on The Golden Palace (1992) He also starred in the live television broadcast of Fail Safe (2000) opposite George Clooney, James Cromwell, Brian Dennehy, Richard Dreyfuss, and Harvey Keitel. He also co-executive produced the TV version of Crash (2008).

His most recent big-screen appearances have been in Antoine Fuqua's ensemble crime thriller Brooklyn's Finest (2009) and Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 (2010), another mainstream breakthrough where he played Lt. Col. James 'Rhodey' Rhodes, replacing Terrence Howard from the first film. The Guard (2011), an art-house hit directed by John Michael McDonagh and co-starring Brendan Gleeson, followed.

Cheadle stars in House of Lies (2012) on Showtime. Late in 2012, he was seen in Flight (2012), Robert Zemeckis's return to live-action filmmaking. In 2013, he reprised his role as Rhodey in Iron Man 3 (2013). Among his projects in development is a movie based on the life of jazz legend Miles Davis.

A talented musician who plays saxophone, writes music and sings, he is also an accomplished stage actor and director and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2004 for Best Spoken Word Album for his narration/dramatization of the Walter Mosley novel 'Fear Itself.'

Other notable off-stage achievements include the 2007 BET Humanitarian Award for the cause of the people of Darfur and Rwanda, and sharing the Summit Peace Award by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in Rome with George Clooney for their work in Darfur.

Anthony Marc Shalhoub was born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin. His father, Joseph Shalhoub, who owned a grocery chain, emigrated from Lebanon to the United States as an orphan at age ten, later marrying Shalhoub's mother, Helen (Seroogy), who herself was born in Wisconsin, to Lebanese parents. When Tony was six, he was introduced to the theater, in a school production of "The King and I". He graduated from Green Bay East High, and then graduated with a Bachelor's degree in drama from the University of Southern Maine before progressing to the Yale School of Drama, which he left with a Master's degree in Fine Arts.

After a time in the American Repertory Theatre, he moved to Broadway where he met his future wife, Brooke Adams, whom he married in 1992. She had an adopted daughter, Josie, who was three years old at the time that Tony and Brooke married. Tony adopted Brooke's own adopted child, Josie Lynn (born 1989) when she was eight. In 1994, the couple adopted another daughter, Sophie (born 1993). Tony's first audition after arriving in Los Angeles was for Italian cabdriver Antonio Scarpacci in the long-running sitcom Wings (1990), which also starred Tim Daly and Steven Weber.

Tony next had roles in Men in Black (1997), Men in Black II (2002), Galaxy Quest (1999) and Thir13en Ghosts (2001). However, his biggest break came, playing the obsessive-compulsive detective Adrian Monk in Monk (2002). The series made him a star and earned him four straight Emmy Award nominations between 2003 and 2006, for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. Tony won the award in 2003, 2005 and 2006, proving how popular he has become after the success of "Monk", which has been both brilliant and popular work during all its seasons.

Born and raised in Brisbane, Australia. Daughter of a British father. Adelaide Clemens began working as an actress on Australian television while in high school. She guest-starred in a 2006 episode of Blue Water High (2005) as Juliet, and in 2007, she starred in the children's series Pirate Islands: The Lost Treasure of Fiji (2007) as Alison. Clemens played Harper in the Showtime drama Love My Way (2004) that year, and was nominated for the Graham Kennedy Award for Most Outstanding New Talent at the 2008 Logie Awards for the role. Clemens was seen in the 2008 MTV Networks Australia dramatic film Dream Life (2008), alongside Sigrid Thornton, Xavier Samuel, Linda Cropper and Andrew McFarlane. She had small roles in the television series All Saints (1998), and the film X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), in 2009. She became the face of Jan Logan's jewelry that year. Clemens relocated to Los Angeles, California in 2009 and starred in the 2010 film Wasted on the Young (2010) as Xandrie. In 2012, Clemens starred in Camilla Dickinson (2012), alongside Gregg Sulkin, Cary Elwes, and Samantha Mathis. The drama was an adaptation of the 1951 novel of the same name by young-adult fiction author Madeleine L'Engle. She portrayed teenager Heather Mason in Silent Hill: Revelation (2012). The horror film was based on the survival horror video game Silent Hill 3 (2003), and was a sequel to the film Silent Hill (2006). That year, Clemens also played a lead role as the young suffragette Valentine Wannop in Parade's End (2012), a television mini-series adaptation of the Ford Madox Ford tetra-logy co-produced by HBO and BBC Two. Clemens appeared in the horror film No One Lives (2012) starring Luke Evans. She also appeared in the film The Great Gatsby (2013), based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel of the same name. She played Catherine, the sister of Myrtle Wilson, played by Isla Fisher. Clemens starred as Tawney Talbot in the Sundance Channel television miniseries Rectify (2013), created by Ray McKinnon. She will also star with Natalie Dormer, Stephen Graham and Zachary Quinto in the independent drama, The Girl Who Invented Kissing.

The iconoclastic gifts of the highly striking and ferociously talented actress Tilda Swinton have been appreciated by art house crowds and international audiences alike. After her stunning Oscar-winning turn as a high-powered corporate attorney in the George Clooney starring and critically lauded legal thriller Michael Clayton (2007), however, her androgynous looks and often bizarre appeal have been embraced by more mainstream crowds as well.

She was born Katherine Mathilda Swinton into a patrician Scottish military family on November 5, 1960, in London, England. Her mother, Judith Balfour, Lady Swinton (née Killen), was Australian, and her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton, an army officer, was English-born. Her ancestry is Scottish, Northern Irish, and English, including a long tapestry of prominent Scottish ancestors. Educated at an English and a Scottish boarding school, Tilda subsequently studied Social and Political Science at Cambridge University and graduated in 1983 with a degree in English Literature.

During her tenure as a student, she performed countless stage productions and proceeded to work for a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company where she appeared in such productions as "Measure for Measure." The rebel insider her, however, was strong and she left the company after a year as her approach and interests began to shift dramatically. With a pungent taste for the unique and seldom tried, Tilda found some gender-bending stage roles come her way. She portrayed Mozart in Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri", and as a working class woman impersonating her dead husband during World War II, in Manfred Karge's "Man to Man," a role she later committed to film (Man to Man (1992)).

In 1985, the tall, slender performer with alabaster skin and carrot-topped hair began a professional association with gay experimental director Derek Jarman. She continued to live and work with the groundbreaking writer/director/cinematographer for the next nine years, involving herself in seven of his often notorious films. This quirky, highly fascinating alliance would produce such stark and radical turns as the Berlin International Film Festival winners Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), The Garden (1990) and Edward II (1991) (playing Isabella, in which she won "Best Actress" at the Venice Film Festival) and Wittgenstein (1993), as well as the films Soursweet (1988) (a movie with no spoken dialogue) and the Stockholm Film Festival Award winner Blue (1993).

Jarman succumbed to complications from AIDS in 1994. His untimely demise left a devastating void in Tilda's life for quite some time. Her most notable performance of her Jarman period, however, came from a non-Jarman film. For the vivid title role in Orlando (1992), her nobleman character lives for 400 years while changing sex from man to woman. The film, which Swinton spent years helping writer/director Sally Potter develop and finance, continues to this day to have a worldwide devoted fan following.

Over the years, Tilda has preferred art to celebrity, opening herself to experimental projects with new and untried directors and mediums, delving into the worlds of installation art and cutting-edge fashion. Consistently off-centered roles in Female Perversions (1996), Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), Teknolust (2002), Young Adam (2003), Broken Flowers (2005) and Béla Tarr's The Man from London (2007) have added to her mystique. Back in 1995, she delved into a performance art piece in the Serpentine Gallery, London, where she was put on display to the public for a week, asleep (or apparently so), in a glass case.

Following the birth of her twins in 1997, Tilda would leave lean for a time towards Hollywood mainstream filming. The thriller The Deep End (2001), earned her a number of critic's awards and her first Golden Globe nomination. Other visible U.S. pictures included The Beach (2000) with Leonardo DiCaprio, fantasy epic Constantine (2005) with Keanu Reeves, her Oscar-decorated performance in Michael Clayton (2007) and, of course, her iconic White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).

Into the millennium, Tilda continued to amaze starring in the crime drama Julia (2008) and in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). She learned Italian and Russian for Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love (2009), starred in the psychological thriller We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Bong Joon Ho's Snowpiercer (2013), and earned fine notice in Terry Gilliam's The Zero Theorem (2013). She also starred in the dark romantic fantasy drama Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) directed by Jim Jarmusch, had a small role in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), starred in Judd Apatow's comedy Trainwreck (2015), and played a rock star in Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash (2015).

Showing no signs of slowing up, Tilda continues to make creative, visual impressions in such films as the Coen Brothers' Hail, Caesar! (2016) where she reunited with Clooney and had a dual role playing twin journalists, and as the wise Asian teacher of Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) in the Marvel Comics action film Doctor Strange (2016), while repeating the part of The Ancient One in Avengers: Endgame (2019). She gave another eccentric, unhinged performance in the action adventure message movie Okja (2017), played Betsy Trotwood in a contemporary telling of The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) and teamed up again with writer/director Jim Jarmusch in the thoroughly offbeat fantasy horror comedy The Dead Don't Die (2019).

Julie Christie, the British movie legend whom Al Pacino called "the most poetic of all actresses," was born in Chabua, Assam, India, on April 14, 1940, the daughter of a tea planter and his Welsh wife Rosemary, who was a painter. The young Christie grew up on her father's plantation before being sent to England for her education. Finishing her studies in Paris, where she had moved to improve her French with an eye to possibly becoming a linguist (she is fluent in French and Italian), the teenager became enamored of the freedom of the Continent. She also was smitten by the bohemian life of artists and planned on becoming an artist before she enrolled in London's Central School of Speech Training. She made her debut as a professional in 1957 as a member of the Frinton Repertory of Essex.

Christie was not fond of the stage, even though it allowed her to travel, including a professional gig in the United States. Her true métier as an actress was film, and she made her debut in the science-fiction television series A for Andromeda (1961) in 1961. Her first film was a girlfriend part in the Ealing-like comedy Crooks Anonymous (1962), which was followed up by a larger ingénue role in another comedy, The Fast Lady (1962). The producers of the James Bond series were sufficiently intrigued by the young actress to consider her for the role that subsequently went to Ursula Andress in Dr. No (1962), but dropped the idea because she was not busty enough.

Christie first worked with the man who would kick her career into high gear, director John Schlesinger, when he choose her as a replacement for the actress originally cast in Billy Liar (1963). Christie's turn in the film as the free-wheeling Liz was a stunner, and she had her first taste of becoming a symbol if not icon of the new British cinema. Her screen presence was such that the great John Ford cast her as the young prostitute in Young Cassidy (1965). Charlton Heston wanted her for his film The War Lord (1965), but the studio refused her salary demands.

Although Amercan magazines portrayed Christie as a "newcomer" when she made her breakthrough to super-stardom in Schlesinger's seminal Swinging Sixties film Darling (1965), she actually had considerable work under her professional belt and was in the process of a artistic quickening. Schlesinger called on Christie, whom he adored, to play the role of mode Diana Scott when the casting of Shirley MacLaine fell through. (MacLaine was the sister of the man who would become Christie's long-time paramour in the late 1960s and early '70s, Warren Beatty, whom some, like actor Rod Steiger, believe she gave up her career for. Her "Dr. Zhivago" co-star, Steiger -- a keen student of acting -- regretted that Christie did not give more of herself to her craft.)

As played by Christie, Diana is an amoral social butterfly who undergoes a metamorphosis from immature sex kitten to jaded socialite. For her complex performance, Christie won raves, including the Best Actress Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the British Film Academy. She had arrived, especially as she had followed up "Darling" with the role of Lara in two-time Academy Award-winning director David Lean's adaptation of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago (1965), one of the all-time box-office champs.

Christie was now a superstar who commanded a price of $400,000 per picture, a fact ruefully noted in Charlton Heston's diary (his studio had balked at paying her then-fee of $35,000). More interested in film as an art form than in consolidating her movie stardom, Christie followed up "Zhivago" with a dual role in Fahrenheit 451 (1966) for director François Truffaut, a director she admired. The film was hurt by the director's lack of English and by friction between Truffaut and Christie's male co-star Oskar Werner, who had replaced the the more-appropriate-for-the-role Terence Stamp. Stamp and Christie had been lovers before she had become famous, and he was unsure he could act with her, due to his own ego problems. On his part, Werner resented the attention the smitten Truffaut gave Christie. The film is an interesting failure.

Stamp overcame those ego problems to sign on as her co-star in John Schlesinger's adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), which also featured two great English actors, Peter Finch and Alan Bates. It is a film that is far better remembered now than when it was received in 1967. The film and her performance as the Hardy heroine Bathsheba Everdene was lambasted by film critics, many of whom faulted Christie for being too "mod" and thus untrue to one of Hardy's classic tales of fate. Some said that her contemporary Vanessa Redgrave would have been a better choice as Bathsheba, but while it is true that Redgrave is a very fine actress, she lacked the sex appeal and star quality of Christie, which makes the story of three men in love with one woman more plausible, as a film.

Although no one then knew it, the period 1967-68 represented the high-water mark of Christie's career. Fatefully, like the Hardy heroine she had portrayed, she had met the man who transformed her life, undermining her pretensions to a career as a movie star in their seven-year-long love affair, the American actor Warren Beatty. Living his life was always far more important than being a star for Beatty, who viewed the movie star profession as a "treadmill leading to more treadmills" and who was wealthy enough after Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to not have to ever work again. Christie and Beatty had visited a working farm during the production of "Madding Crowd" and had been appalled by the industrial exploitation of the animals. Thereafter, animal rights became a very important subject to Christie. They were kindred souls who remain friends four decades after their affair ended in 1974.

Christie's last box-office hit in which she was the top-liner was Petulia (1968) for Richard Lester, a film that featured one of co-star George C. Scott's greatest performances, perfectly counter-balanced by Christie's portrayal of an "arch-kook" who was emblematic of the '60s. It is one of the major films of the decade, an underrated masterpiece. Despite the presence of the great George C. Scott and the excellent Shirley Knight, the film would not work without Julie Christie. There is frankly no other actress who could have filled the role, bringing that unique presence and the threat of danger that crackled around Christie's electric aura. At this point of her career, she was poised for greatness as a star, greatness as an actress.

And she walked away.

After meeting Beatty, Julie Christie essentially surrendered any aspirations to screen stardom, or at maintaining herself as a top-drawer working actress (success at the box office being a guarantee of the best parts, even in art films.) She turned down the lead in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), two parts that garnered Oscar nominations for the second choices, Jane Fonda and Geneviève Bujold. After shooting In Search of Gregory (1969), a critical and box office flop, to fulfill her contractual obligations, she spent her time with Beatty in Calfiornia, renting a beach house at Malibu. She did return to form in Joseph Losey's The Go-Between (1971), a fine picture with a script by the great Harold Pinter, and she won another Oscar nomination as the whore-house proprietor in Robert Altman's minor classic McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) that she made with her lover Beatty. However, like Beatty himself, she did not seek steady work, which can be professional suicide for an actor who wants to maintain a standing in the first rank of movie stars.

At the same time, Julie Christie turned down the role of the Russian Empress in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), another film that won the second-choice (Janet Suzman) a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Two years later, she appeared in the landmark mystery-horror film Don't Look Now (1973), but that likely was as a favor to the director, Nicolas Roeg, who had been her cinematographer on "Fahrenheit 451," "Far From the Madding Crowd" and "Petulia." In the mid '70s, her affair with Beatty came to an end, but the two remained close friends and worked together in Shampoo (1975) (which she regretted due to its depiction of women) and Heaven Can Wait (1978).

Christie was still enough of a star, due to sheer magnetism rather than her own pull at the box-office, to be offered $1 million to play the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Onassis character in The Greek Tycoon (1978) (a part eventually played by Jacqueline Bisset to no great acclaim). She signed for but was forced to drop out of the lead in Agatha (1979) (which was filled by Vanessa Redgrave) after she broke a wrist roller-skating (a particularly southern Californian fate!). She then signed for the female lead in American Gigolo (1980) when Richard Gere was originally attached to the picture, but dropped out when John Travolta muscled his way into the lead after making twin box-office killings as disco king Tony Manera in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and greaser Danny Zuko in Grease (1978). Christie could never have co-starred with such a camp figure of dubious talent. When Travolta himself dropped out and Gere was subbed back in, it was too late for Christe to reconsider, as the part already had been filled by model-actress Lauren Hutton. It would take 15 years for Christie and Gere to work together.

Finally, the end of the American phase of her movie career was realized when Christie turned down the part of Louise Bryant in Reds (1981), a part written by Warren Beatty with her in mind, as she felt an American should play the role. (Beatty's latest lover, Diane Keaton, played the part and won a Best Actress Oscar nomination.) Still, she remained a part of the film, Beatty's long-gestated labor of love, as it is dedicated to "Jules."

Julie Christie moved back to the UK and become the UK's answer to Jane Fonda, campaigning for various social and political causes, including animal rights and nuclear disarmament. The parts she did take were primarily driven by her social consciousness, such as appearing in Sally Potter's first feature-length film, The Gold Diggers (1983) which was not a remake of the old Avery Hopwood's old warhorse but a feminist parable made entirely by women who all shared the same pay scale. Roles in The Return of the Soldier (1982) with Alan Bates and Glenda Jackson and Merchant-Ivory's Heat and Dust (1983) seemed to herald a return to form, but Christie -- as befits such a symbol of the freedom and lack of conformity of the '60s -- decided to do it her way. She did not go "careering," even though her unique talent and beauty was still very much in demand by filmmakers.

At this point, Christie's movie career went into eclipse. Once again, she was particularly choosy about her work, so much so that many came to see her, essentially, as retired. A career renaissance came in the mid-1990s with her turn as Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh's ambitious if not wholly successful Hamlet (1996). As Christie said at the time, she didn't feel she could turn Branagh down as he was a national treasure. But the best was yet to come: her turn as the faded movie star married to handyman Nick Nolte and romanced by a younger man in Afterglow (1997), which brought her rave notices. She received her third Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, and showed up at the awards as radiant and uniquely beautiful as ever. Ever the iconoclast, she was visibly relieved, upon the announcement of the award, to learn that she had lost!

Christie lived with left-wing investigative journalist Duncan Campbell (a Manchester Guardian columnist) since 1979, first in Wales, then in Ojai, California, and now in London's East End, before marrying in January 2008. In addition to her film work, she has narrated many books-on-tape. In 1995, she made a triumphant return to the stage in a London revival of Harold Pinter's "Old Times", which garnered her superb reviews.

In the decade since "Afterglow," she has worked steadily on film in supporting roles. Christie -- an actress who eschewed vulgar stardom -- proved to be an inspiration to her co-star Sarah Polley, the remarkably talented Canadian actress with a leftist political bent who also abhors Hollywood. Of her co-star in No Such Thing (2001) and The Secret Life of Words (2005), Polley says that Christie is uniquely aware of her commodification by the movie industry and the mass media during the 1960s. Not wanting to be reduced to a product, she had rebelled and had assumed control of her life and career. Her attitude makes her one of Polley's heroes, who calls her one of her surrogate mothers. (Polley lost her own mother when she was 11 years old.)

Both Christie and Polley are rebels. Sarah Polley had walked off the set of the big-budget movie that was forecast as her ticket to Hollywood stardom, Almost Famous (2000), to have a different sort of life and career. She returned to her native Canada to appear in the low-budget indie The Law of Enclosures (2000), a prescient art film in that director John Greyson offset the drama with a background of a perpetual Gulf War three years before George W. Bush invaded Iraq, touching off the second-longest war in U.S. history. Taking a hiatus from acting, Polley went to Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre to learn to direct, and direct she has, making well-regarded shorts before launching her feature film debut, Away from Her (2006), which was shot and completed in 2006 but held for release until 2007 by its distributor.

Polley, who had longed to be a writer since she was a child actress on the set of the quaint family show Avonlea (1990) wrote the screenplay for her adaptation of Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" with only one actress in mind: Julie Christie. Polley had first read the short story on a flight back from Iceland, where she had made "No Such Thing" with Christie, and as she read, it was Julie whom she pictured as Fiona, the wife of a one-time philandering husband, who has become afflicted with Alzheimer's disease and seeks to save her hubby the pain of looking after her by checking herself into a home.

After finishing the screenplay, it took months to get Christie to commit to making the film. Julie turned her down after reading the script and pondering it for a couple of months, saying "No" even though she liked the script. Polley then had to "twist her arm" for another couple of months. But alas, Julie has a weakness for national treasures: Just like with Branagh a decade ago, the legendary Julie Christie could not deny the Great White North's Sarah Polley, and commit she did. Polley then found out why Christie is so reticent about making movies:

"She gives all of herself to what she does. Once she said yes, she was more committed than anybody."

According to David Germain, a cinema journalist who interviewed Christie for the Associated Press, "Polley and Christie share a desire to do interesting, unusual work, which generally means staying away from Hollywood.

"'It's been a kind of greed and a kind of egotism, but it's not necessarily wanting to avoid the Hollywood thing, but in fact, it incorporates wanting to avoid the Hollywood thing, because the Hollywood thing is so inevitably not original,' Christie said. 'It's avoiding non-originality, so that means you're really down to a very small choice.'"

The collaboration between the two rebels yielded a small gem of a film. Lions Gate Films was so impressed, it purchased the American distribution rights to the film in 2006, then withheld it until the following year to build up momentum for the awards season.

Julie Christie's performance in "Away From Her" is superb, and already has garnered her the National Board of Review's Best Actress Award. She will likely receive her fourth Academy Award nomination, and quite possibly her second Oscar, for her unforgettable performance, a labor of love she did for a friend.

We, the Julie Christie fans who have waited decades for the handful of films made by the numinous star: Would we have wanted it any other way? We are the Red Sox fans of the movies, once again rewarded with a world-class masterpiece by our heroine. Perhaps, like all human beings, we want more, but we have learned over the last thirty-five years to be content with the diamonds that are Julie's leading performances that she gives just once a decade, content to feel that these are a surfeit of riches, our surfeit of riches, so great is their luminescence.

Sofía Margarita Vergara Vergara was born and raised in Barranquilla, Colombia. Her mother, Margarita Vergara Dávila de Vergara, is a housewife. Her father, Julio Enrique Vergara Robayo, provides cattle to the meat industry. She has five siblings. She was educated at a private bilingual Spanish/English school. She then went on to study pre-dentistry. However, Sofía was discovered by a photographer, whilst at the beach, and this led to various jobs in modeling and television. At age 23, she was a runway model. From 1995 to 1998, she co-hosted a travel show, Fuera de serie (1995), which gave her exposure in the United States. Her first film role was the criminal comedy Big Trouble (2002). Her breakthrough role was as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on the American television series Modern Family (2009). In 2010-2013, she received four Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for this role. Sofía resides in Los Angeles, California with her son, Manolo.

Patrick Joseph Wilson was born in Norfolk, Virginia and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, the son of Mary Kathryn (Burton), a voice teacher and professional singer, and John Franklin Wilson, a news anchor.

Wilson has a B.F.A. in Drama from Carnegie-Mellon University. His theater work has produced many nominations and awards. He was nominated for Best Actor in a Musical for The Full Monty, a Drama League Award for "Fascinating Rhythm", a Drama Drama League Award for "Bright Lights, Big City", an Encores nomination for "Tenderloin". He had national tours in "Carousel" (Drama Logue Award winner and L.A. Ovation nomination) and "Miss Saigon". Regionally, he has appeared in "Sweet Bird of Youth" (La Jolla), "Cider House Rules" (Mark Taper Forum), "Romeo and Juliet: The Musical" (Ordway), "Lucky in the Rain" (Goodspeed), "Harmony" (La Jolla), and "The Full Monty" (Globe).

Patrick Wilson is married to actress Dagmara Dominczyk; the couple has two children.

Julianna Margulies was born on June 8, 1966, in Spring Valley (near New York City), as the youngest of three daughters of Francesca (Goldberg), a teacher and dancer in American ballet, and Paul Margulies, an advertising writer and philosopher. She is of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage (from Romania, Austria, Hungary, and Russia). Until beginning high school in New Hampshire at age 14, she lived several years with her family in Paris and in England. She obtained a B.A. degree in liberal arts from Sarah Lawrence College, where she appeared in several plays on campus. She jobbed as a waitress until her first role as a prostitute looking to go straight in Out for Justice (1991). It took more than a year to find another role; during that time, she managed to support herself from several regional theater productions and national TV ads. Until she became a regular in ER (1994), she guest starred in several television series and a pilot. Since then, she has starred in several films, including Ghost Ship (2002), Evelyn (2002), and Snakes on a Plane (2006), and headlines the CBS drama The Good Wife (2009), for which she has won both an Emmy and a Golden Globe.

John Hawkes is an award-winning actor known for crafting memorable performances across a wide range of styles and genres. He will next be seen in the upcoming fourth season of HBO's "True Detective" with Jodie Foster. Previous projects include the indie film "Roving Woman," "The Peanut Butter Falcon" with Shia LaBouf, which won a number of critics' honors as well as being recognized by the National Board of Review and winning the audience award at SXSW, along with Nicholas Winding Refn's crime drama "Too Old to Die Young" which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and boasted an eclectic ensemble cast. Hawkes also reunited with other original cast members for the highly anticipated "Deadwood" reunion movie, reprising his role of 'Sol Star' from the critically lauded HBO series. Additional film credits include "End of Sentence" with Logan Lerman, "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," which won the Toronto International Film Festival Audience Award along with the SAG Award for Best Ensemble; "Small Town Crime" opposite Octavia Spencer and "Unlovable" with Melissa Leo.

Hawkes delivered tour de force performances in a succession of films. For his outstanding portrayal of real-life poet, 'Mark O'Brien' in "The Sessions," Hawkes won Best Actor from the Independent Spirit Awards and was nominated for a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award. In addition, the film won the Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for the Ensemble Cast at Sundance. He received rave reviews for his portrayal of pianist 'Joe Albany' in the gritty indie drama, "Low Down." His critically acclaimed performance as 'Teardrop' in "Winter's Bone" earned him an Independent Spirit Award win and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, along with nominations from the Screen Actors Guild and several film critics groups.

Further film credits include "Everest," alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin and Jason Clarke, indie ensemble "Driftless Area" and the modern noir "Too Late" plus Elmore Leonard's "Life of Crime," Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln," Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion" and the Sundance hit "Martha Marcy May Marlene," for which Hawkes received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He starred in "Me and You and Everyone We Know" which won a Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival as well as starring in and co-producing the independent film, "Buttleman" for which he received a Breakout Performance Award at the 2004 Sedona Film Festival. Earlier movie credits are "American Gangster," "Miami Vice," "Identity," "The Perfect Storm," "Hardball," "Wristcutters: A Love Story," "The Amateurs," "From Dusk Till Dawn," and "A Slipping-Down Life."

Born and raised in rural Minnesota, Hawkes moved to Austin, Texas where he began his career as an actor and musician. He co-founded the Big State Productions theater company and appeared in the group's original play, "In the West" at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He starred in the national touring company production of the play "Greater Tuna" including extended engagements in Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. Hawkes wrote and performed the solo play "Nimrod Soul" at the Theatre at the Improv and appeared on Broadway in the "24 Hour Plays" alongside Sam Rockwell. He co-starred with Tracie Thoms in the Manhattan Theater Club's off-Broadway play, "Lost Lake." In addition, he's co-written script and songs for workshop performances of a new rock and roll musical entitled "Where's Cherry?"

Hawkes has written and recorded several songs featured in films and television shows. Most recently he wrote an original song which he performs on-screen for "True Detective." Previously, he co-wrote a song with legendary producer T-Bone Burnett for "Peanut Butter Falcon." He also wrote and performed original songs for the film "Unlovable." His song 'Bred and Buttered' appears on the "Winter's Bone" soundtrack and he composed and performed 'Down with Mary' for "Too Late." With his former band, King Straggler, he performed at the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW Music Festival and numerous clubs across the U.S. Hawkes continues to write, record and perform shows in numerous locations, including of late in Reykjavik.

Shohreh Aghdashloo was born Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar on May 11, 1952 in Tehran, Iran. In the 1970s at age 20, she achieved nationwide stardom in her homeland of Iran, starring in some prominent pictures such as The Report (1977) directed by the renowned Abbas Kiarostami, which won critics awards at the Moscow Film Festival. In 1978, she won wider acclaim and established herself as one of Iran's leading ladies with Desiderium (1978) directed by the late Ali Hatami. During the 1978 Islamic revolution, Aghdashloo left Iran for England, to complete her education. Her interest in politics and her concern for social injustice in the world would lead her to receive a Bachelor's degree in International Relations.

She continued to pursue her acting career, which eventually brought her to Los Angeles, California in 1987. She went on to marry actor/playwright Houshang Touzie, performing in a number of his plays, successfully taking them to national and international stages. However, this was not easy getting work in Hollywood as a Middle Eastern actress with an accent; she had roles in some decent, though not great, films, including Twenty Bucks (1993), Surviving Paradise (2000) and Maryam (2002). She received good reviews for her 12 episodes on the fourth season of the Fox television series 24 (2001) as Dina Araz, a terrorist undercover as a well-to-do housewife and mother in Los Angeles. She had to wait quite some time to receive her break in Hollywood.

And finally, years after having read the acclaimed novel "House of Sand and Fog", DreamWorks were in the process of bringing the story to the silver screen. After having cast Ben Kingsley (as Massoud Amir Behrani) and Jennifer Connelly in the lead roles, they were looking for a relatively unknown Iranian actress to play Kingsley's wife, Nadi. Shohreh Aghdashloo was duly cast. She stole the limelight and earned herself an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actress amongst many other prestigious awards, including the Independent Spirit Award as best supporting actress in a feature film, the New York and Los Angeles film critics award and others.

Max von Sydow was born Carl Adolf von Sydow on April 10, 1929 in Lund, Skåne, Sweden, to a middle-class family. He was the son of Baroness Maria Margareta (Rappe), a teacher, and Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, an ethnologist and folklore professor. His surname traces back to his partial German ancestry.

When he was in high school, he and a few fellow students, including Yvonne Lombard, started a theatre club which encouraged his interest in acting. After conscription, he began to study at the Royal Dramatic Theatre's acting school (1948-1951), together with Lars Ekborg, Margaretha Krook and Ingrid Thulin. His first role was as Nils the crofter in Alf Sjöberg's Only a Mother (1949). After graduation, he worked at the city theatres in Norrköping and Malmö.

His work in the movies by Ingmar Bergman (especially The Seventh Seal (1957), including the iconic scenes in which he plays chess with Death) made him well-known internationally, and he started to get offers from abroad. His career abroad began with him playing Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965); Hawaii (1966) and The Quiller Memorandum (1966). Since then, his career includes very different kind of characters, like Karl Oskar Nilsson in The Emigrants (1971); Father Lankester Merrin in The Exorcist (1973); Joubert the assassin in Three Days of the Condor (1975), Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon (1980); the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Never Say Never Again (1983); Liet-Kynes in Dune (1984) the artist Frederick in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Lassefar in Pelle the Conqueror (1987), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination; Dr. Peter Ingham in Awakenings (1990); Lamar Burgess in Minority Report (2002) and The Renter in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), which earned him his second Academy Award nomination.

He became one of Sweden's most admired and professional actors, and is the only male Swedish actor to receive an Oscar nomination. He was nominated twice: for Pelle the Conqueror (1987) in 1988 and for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) in 2012. He received the Guldbagge Award for Best Director in his directing debut, the drama film Ved vejen (1988). In 2016, he joined the sixth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011) as the Three-eyed Raven, which earned him his Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

Max von Sydow died on March 8, 2020, in Provence, France, and was survived by his wife Catherine Brelet and four children. He was 90.

Elizabeth Banks was born Elizabeth Mitchell in Pittsfield, a small city in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts near the New York border, on February 10, 1974. She is the daughter of Anne Marie (Wallace), who worked in a bank, and Mark Phineas Mitchell, a factory worker. Elizabeth describes herself as having been seen as a "goody two-shoes" in her youth who was nominated for the local Harvest Queen.

Banks left home to attend college at the University of Pennsylvania--from which she graduated Magna cum Laude--and went on to attend the Advanced Training Program at the prestigious American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, graduating in 1996. She then moved to New York and worked in the theater, and began getting small roles in films and on television. Seeking more screen work, she moved to Los Angeles and was soon cast in supporting roles. She also had to change her last name, to Banks, in order to avoid confusion with actress Elizabeth Mitchell.

Her breakthrough role was as Betty Brant, the secretary of the cantankerous newspaper tycoon in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002). She followed up this performance with small roles in other movies: Swept Away (2002), Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002), Seabiscuit (2003) and The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005). In 2003 she won the Exciting New Face Award at the Young Hollywood Awards. The winsome, beautiful Banks projected an exceptionally charming screen presence that drew comparisons to Audrey Hepburn, and Hollywood eventually began to take notice, Banks being cast in the lead in such films as Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) and in Oliver Stone's biopic of George W. Bush, W. (2008), as Laura Bush.

In television, Banks was a recurring guest star on Scrubs (2001) as Dr. Kim Briggs, the love interest of Zach Braff's J.D. In 2010 she was cast as Alec Baldwin's love interest in season four of 30 Rock (2006). Originally scheduled to appear in only four episodes, she was brought back as a recurring character for two more seasons, and earned Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for two consecutive years. Elizabeth has also appeared in such films as Our Idiot Brother (2011), Man on a Ledge (2012), What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012), People Like Us (2012), and Pitch Perfect (2012). She also won the coveted role as Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games (2012) and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013).

After an eleven-year courtship, Banks married Max Handelman, a sports writer and producer, in 2003. They have two sons, Felix, who was born in March 2011, and Magnus, born in Nov. 2012, both by gestational surrogacy.

Hailee Steinfeld was born on December 11, 1996 in Tarzana, California, to Cheri (Domasin), an interior designer, and Peter Steinfeld, a personal fitness trainer. She has a brother, Griffin. Her uncle is Jake Steinfeld, a fitness trainer, and her great-uncle is actor Larry Domasin. Her father is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and her mother's ancestry is Filipino, African-American, British Isles, and German. Hailee was raised in Thousand Oaks, California.

At an early age, she appeared in several short films to gain experience. She played the role of Talia Alden in She's a Fox (2009), which received several awards. Her debut in a feature film for theater was True Grit (2010). She played a major role, Mattie Ross, with Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, and Matt Damon. She got big attention for her performance in this movie, and she was nominated for the 'Best Supporting Actress' Academy Award. After a short break, she appeared in several films which were released in 2013. She played the role of Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (2013), which also starred Douglas Booth, and was released in 2013. Also, she appeared in Ender's Game (2013) as Petra Arkanian, based on the book written by Orson Scott Card, and this movie was directed by Gavin Hood. She starred with Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford, and this movie received positive reviews. She appeared in the short film The Magic Bracelet (2013), with Bailee Madison, as Angela.

In 2014, She appeared in 3 Days to Kill (2014), which was released on February 21, 2014. she played the major role of Zoey Renner, daughter of Kevin Costner. In Hateship Loveship (2013), she played Sabitha with Kristen Wiig. This movie was released on April 11, 2014 in USA. Steinfeld performed the role of Emily Junk in Pitch Perfect 2 (2015). She also starred in Barely Lethal (2015) with Jessica Alba. She filmed the movie, Ten Thousand Saints (2015), as the role of Eliza, again opposite Asa Butterfield.

In 2016, she starred in the teen dramedy The Edge of Seventeen (2016), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical.

She has been home-schooled since 2008. Hailee says she is very interested to be on the other side of camera and would like to eventually produce and direct.

Kat Dennings was born Katherine Victoria Litwack in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, to Ellen (Schatz), a speech therapist and poet, and Gerald Litwack, a molecular pharmacologist. She is the youngest of five children. Her family is of Russian Jewish descent. Kat was predominantly home-schooled, graduating at the age of fourteen. Her family subsequently moved to Los Angeles, California to support Kat acting full-time.

After work doing commercials, she began work in television, starting with a role on HBO's Sex and the City (1998), following up with roles on Raising Dad (2001), The Scream Team (2002), Without a Trace (2002) and ER (1994), among others.

Kat made the move to the big screen with supporting roles in Raise Your Voice (2004), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and Big Momma's House 2 (2006). She later achieved a level of fame with roles in The House Bunny (2008) and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008).

Kat continues to act in feature films and is an avid video blogger. Since 2011, she has starred with Beth Behrs in the CBS television series 2 Broke Girls (2011).

Colm Meaney was born on 30 May 1953 in Dublin, Ireland. He is an actor and producer, known for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), Under Siege (1992) and Layer Cake (2004). He has been married to Ines Glorian since 15 March 2007. They have one child. He was previously married to Bairbre Dowling.

Malcolm John Taylor was born on June 13, 1943 in Leeds, England, to working-class parents Edna (McDowell), a hotelier, and Charles Taylor, a publican. His father was an alcoholic. Malcolm hated his parents' ways. His father was keen to send his son to private school to give him a good start in life, so Malcolm was packed off to boarding school at age 11. He attended the Tonbridge School and the Cannock House School in Eltham, Kent. At school, he was beaten with the slipper or cane every Monday for his wayward behavior. Whilst at school, he decided that he wanted to become an actor; it was also around this time that his love for race cars began. He attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA) to study acting. Meanwhile, he worked at his parents' pub but lost his job when the pub went bankrupt, his father drinking all the profits. He then had a variety of jobs, from coffee salesman to messenger.

His first big-screen role was in Poor Cow (1967), although his two-minute scene was ultimately cut from the completed film. Soon after, he caught the attention of director Lindsay Anderson who cast him in the role of a rebellious student in his film If.... (1968). The film catapulted Malcolm to stardom in Britain but failed everywhere else. He was so enthusiastic about the film's success that he wanted to do another right away. He began writing what would become the semi-autobiographical O Lucky Man! (1973). Then he starred as Alex DeLarge in Stanley Kubrick's controversial A Clockwork Orange (1971), a role that gave him world fame, and legendary status (although typecasting him as a in villainous roles). In early 1976, he spent nearly a year working on what would later be one of the most infamous films of all time, the semi-pornographic Caligula (1979), financed by Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione. Around that time, the British film industry collapsed, forcing him to flee to America to continue working. His first American film was Time After Time (1979). He then did Britannia Hospital (1982), the last part of Lindsay Anderson's working-class trilogy that started with If.... (1968).

In the mid-1980s, the years of alcohol and drug abuse, including $1000 a week on cocaine, caught up with him. Years of abuse took its toll on him; his black hairs were now gray. Looking older than he really was, nobody wanted to cast him for playing younger roles. The big roles having dried up, he did many B-rated movies. The 1990s were kinder to him, though. In 1994, he was cast as Dr. Tolian Soran, the man who killed Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek: Generations (1994). He was back on the track, playing villains again. He played another in the classic BBC miniseries Our Friends in the North (1996). Today, with more than 100 films under his belt, he is one of the greatest actors in America. In 2021 McDowell got his American citizenship. Prior to getting his citizenship, McDowell has stated that he likes the no-nonsense American ways. He resides in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles, California.