2Pac became the unlikely martyr of gangsta rap, and a tragic symbol of the toll its lifestyle exacted on urban black America. At the outset of his career, it didn't appear that he would emerge as one of the definitive rappers of the '90s -- he started out as a second-string rapper and dancer for Digital Underground, joining only after they had already landed their biggest hit. But in 1991, he delivered an a ...

Canadian writer and director Mary Harron first made an impact on the world of American independent cinema with her 1996 feature directorial debut I Shot Andy Warhol. The widely acclaimed film, which detailed the short, strange life of S.C.U.M Manifesto author Valerie Solanas, earned both an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Film and a Special Jury Award for star Lili Taylor at the 1996 Sundance F ...

Majoring in film at UCLA, Penelope Spheeris launched her career by producing short subjects for satirist Albert Brooks, many of which were highlights of "Saturday Night Live's" first season. When Brooks stepped up to feature films with Real Life (1978), Spheeris stayed on as his producer. Her first "auteur" feature project was The Decline of Western Civilization (1981), a punk-rock documentary that she wrot ...

At the end of the 20th century, it looked like Christopher Guest was only starting to get his just rewards. Most famous for his rendition of one Nigel Tufnel ("my amp goes all the way to 11") from This Is Spinal Tap, the faux rockumentary, Guest's brilliance seems to have gone overlooked for much of his career. Only after emerging as a true auteur -- writer, director, actor, and master of the genre of the m ...

Sally Field has twice won Best Actress Oscars: for Norma Rae (1979) and for Places In the Heart (1984, with John Malkovich). Despite these heavyweight credits, she has never quite shaken the spunky-but-naive persona she established in the 1960s TV series Gidget and The Flying Nun (in which she played a young novice whose outfit absurdly gave her the ability to fly). She expanded her range in the 1970s, appe ...

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, where she majored in economics and communications, Gale Ann Hurd learned the ropes of filmmaking from the inimitable Roger Corman. From 1977 to 1982, Hurd was in charge of marketing and publicity for Corman's New World Pictures. In 1982, she set up her own production firm, Pacific Western Productions. Her most successful producing ventures include her collab ...

A comedienne best known for her tenure on NBC's Saturday Night Live, actress-cum-playwright Casey Wilson laid claim to a prestigious educational pedigree that included enrollment at New York University's Tisch School for the Arts and further study at the exclusive Stella Adler School of Acting. She then teamed up with fellow comedy writer June Diane Raphael to co-author a sellout two-woman show, Rode Hard a ...

Carrie Fisher is still remembered as the plucky Princess Leia in the hit film Star Wars (1977). Her parents, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, were a famous Hollywood couple of their day. (Fisher later left Reynolds to marry Elizabeth Taylor.) Carrie Fisher made her feature film debut in 1975's Shampoo (with Warren Beatty), and two years later had her breakthrough with Star Wars. She also joined co-stars Ma ...

Sometimes called "the Woody Allen" of France, Agnes Jaoui is best known for her acting (in Un Air de Famille, Le Rôle de Sa Vie) as well as for her writing and directing (her debut as a director, The Taste of Others, or Le Goût des Autres, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2000). She grew up in Paris wanting to be an actress, attending a prestigious theater school, where she met J ...

Tim Robbins won an Oscar as best supporting actor for his role in the 2003 Clint Eastwood drama Mystic River. Robbins grew up in Greenwich Village in New York, where he got involved with the theater at the age of 12. After high school he moved to Los Angeles and studied drama and acting, co-founding a theater group called The Actors' Gang. He began working in television and movies in the early '80s and had ...