Saucer-eyed actress Illeana Douglas has been regularly appearing in major films since 1987, when she debuted in the Shelley Long comedy Hello Again. The granddaughter of actor Melvyn Douglas and actress-turned-Congresswoman Helen Gahagan, Douglas was born July 25, 1965, in Massachusetts. After her film debut, the actress worked for years in relative obscurity, at one point dubbing a chilling scream for The ...

From stage to screen to recording studios, Lonette McKee has worked as both an actress and vocalist. Although actors who also sing have been a dime a dozen since the earliest days of stage and cinema, McKee's groundbreaking performance as the first African-American actress to portray the character of Julie in a major American production of Show Boat would have earned her a place in entertainment history eve ...

Jon Favreau's career as an actor and movie maker took off when his indie comedy Swingers (1996) became a hit in art houses and on video. The semi-autobiographical tale of two single and struggling actors made a movie star out of his friend and co-star Vince Vaughn. It also set Favreau on his path as a successful character actor who also directs Hollywood blockbusters like Iron Man (2008, starring Robert Dow ...

Actor, director, writer, producer. Born Mark Vincent on July 18, 1967, in New York City. Diesel managed to parley several self-produced, low-budget films into big-budget leading man status. Born to a theater director and a psychologist (and sometimes astrologer), in interviews, Diesel has been guarded about his ethnic background. He started acting at the age of 7 at the Theater for the New City and continue ...

Actor, writer, director, and producer. Born Patrick Hewes Stewart on July 13, 1940, in Mirfield, England. Widely known for his work on the popular science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Patrick Stewart is a versatile performer, equally at home playing comic book characters and legendary Shakespearean parts. He comes from a modest beginning. "I grew up...in a house that had one roo ...

Actor, director, producer. Born on March 1, 1954 in Duncan, Oklahoma. Ronald William Howard is part of a theatrical family; his mother, Jean, was an actress and father Rance was an actor and director. Howard appeared in his first movie, Frontier Woman (1956), when he was just 18 months old, and made his stage debut at the age of two in a production of The Seven Year Itch. The child star began making frequen ...

Thin-lipped and statuesque Irish actress Fiona Shaw frequently takes the lead on the theatrical stage but steers her talents toward supporting roles in feature films. Born in County Cork, she studied philosophy before moving on to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. During the '80s she worked mainly on-stage as part of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Some of her stage credi ...

With short blonde hair and a lean frame, Mary Stuart Masterson has played many tomboys throughout her acting career. Born to director Peter Masterson and actress Carlin Glynn, she made her film debut in The Stepford Wives at the age of nine. As a teenager, she appeared on Broadway in Alice in Wonderland and played tough girl Dani in Heaven Help Us. She studied anthropology at N.Y.U. and returned to acting i ...

Actress. Born Kathleen Doyle on June 28, 1948, in Memphis, Tennessee. Bates graduated from Southern Methodist University with a degree in theater, and after stints as a cashier at New York's Museum of Modern Art and a singing waitress in a Catskill resort, she distinguished herself in 1983's 'Night Mother, for which she earned a Tony nomination; as Lenny McGrath in Beth Henley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play ...

An actress known for her petite stature and fiery, thoughtful performances, Adrienne Shelly first earned plaudits for her work with director Hal Hartley in The Unbelievable Truth (1990) and Trust (1991). Although her subsequent acting career during the '90s went largely undistinguished, Shelly began to make a name for herself as a writer and director, making her feature screenwriting and directorial debut w ...