An actor, director, screenwriter, Tommy Lee Jones was born September 15, 1946, in San Saba, Texas. An eighth-generation Texan, Jones was the only child of Clyde Jones, a cowboy-turned-oil-field worker, and his wife, Lucille Marie. His parents were married and divorced twice; as he later revealed in interviews, Jones had a difficult adolescence, enduring a good deal of physical abuse at the hands of his fath ...

Nicole Houston "Nikki" Reed turned her troubled adolescence into the screenplay for the 2003 independent film Thirteen. Reed wrote the script with the help of Hollywood production designer Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the film (which starred Reed and Holly Hunter). From there Reed played sexy bad girls in some memorable independent films while making her way through high school. She played Kathy Alva i ...

Known as much for her intelligence as for her talent, Canadian actress Sarah Polley has been wowing television and film audiences since she was barely out of diapers. Born January 8, 1979, in the Toronto area, Polley got her first screen role at the age of six, in Disney's One Magic Christmas. From 1987 to 1988, Polley made her name in the title role of the Canadian television series Ramona. Her work on the ...

Director, screenwriter. Born Gus Green Van Sant on July 24, 1952, in Louisville, Kentucky. The son of an executive, Van Sant moved around a lot during his early years. His family eventually settled down in Darien, Connecticut, when he was 10 years old. As a child, he was interested in art and made films using a home movie camera. He spent his senior year of high school in Portland, Oregon, after his father ...

Actor, director, screenwriter, novelist. Born November 6, 1970, in Austin, Texas. Hawke's mother was only 17 and his father only 18 when he was born; they divorced four years later and Hawke moved around a good deal with his mother, Leslie, before they settled in New Jersey when he was 10. The adolescent Hawke’s appearance in a Princeton University theater production led to an audition for his feature debut ...

Director, producer, screenwriter. Born May 12, 1971, in New York City. The daughter of famed Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia made brief appearances in her father's films throughout her childhood. Acting, however, would not prove to be Sofia's strong suit, as evidenced in her performance in the third installment of The Godfather. Cast at the last minute as Mary Corleone, Coppola was ruthlessly ...

Actor, screenwriter. Born Benjamin Geza Affleck, on August 15, 1972, in Berkeley, California,to Chris and Tim Affleck. His parents separated soon after he was born, and officially divorced when he was 11. After the split, Affleck and his siblings moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Affleck's first acting experience came at the age of seven, when he appeared in The Dark End of the Street(1979), an independent ...

Actor, screenwriter. Born on August 19, 1969, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. A talented performer, Matthew Perry is most famous for his portrayal of Chandler Bing on the long-running television sitcom Friends. His actor father, John Bennett Perry, split up with his mother, Suzanne, while Matthew was still an infant. He went to live with his mother in Ottawa, Canada. Growing up, Perry developed two passions ...

Film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, born in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. He wrote his first screenplay, True Romance (1987, released 1993) while working at Video Archives, Manhattan Beach. Lacking the finance to direct the project himself, he sold his script, and also that of Natural Born Killers (released 1994), thus enabling him to start production of Reservoir Dogs (1992), in which he was dir ...

(born Dec. 1, 1935, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.) American motion-picture director, screenwriter, actor, and author, best known for his bittersweet comic films containing elements of parody, slapstick, and the absurd. He was also known as a sympathetic director for women, writing strong and well-defined characters for them. Among his featured performers were Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow, with both of whom he was rom ...