British actor Colin Firth achieved international renown in 1995 with his arguably definitive screen portrayal of Fitzwilliam Darcy in the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." He began his career in West End dramas and on the big screen in period, often literary adaptations, before a number of successful romantic comedies including “Bridget Jones’ Diary” (2001) and broader historic dramas like “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” (2003) turned him into “the thinking woman’s heartthrob.” The moniker stuck throughout his career, but Firth continued to showcase untapped facets of his talent in independent films, family-friendly hits, and gutsy cable movies just the same.

A tall, soft-spoken and leathery leading man who, since the 1960s, has diversified into directing and producing after achieving iconic status, Clint Eastwood arose from the world of television westerns to become the number-one box-office star in the world, and subsequently earned critical acclaim as a director. His production company, Malpaso, has crafted moderate-budget features that range from mainstream fare to personal and ambitious endeavors. Eastwood is not entirely part of the Hollywood establishment—his business is run out of Carmel, California, on the Monterey Peninsula, where he has also served as mayor and ran a restaurant.

The former blue-collar worker from Ohio with the prominently jutting ears became the 'King of Hollywood', a title based on his being the leading male box office attraction throughout the 1930s. The dashing, mustachioed image of Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind" (1939) remains indelibly associated with the name Clark Gable, but before his "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" made screen history, Gable (with the aid of his MGM publicist Howard Strickland) had already established a distinctive screen persona as the virile, lovable rogue whose gruff facade only thinly masked a natural charm and goodness.

Handsome, with chiseled, smooth looks and deep olive skin, Benjamin Bratt became known to TV viewers in 1995 when he joined the hit NBC series "Law & Order" in its sixth season, creating the role of Reyaldo 'Rey' Curtis, whose mestizo ancestry--mixed Latino-Indian and German background--matched Bratt's own. His character on the series, a family-oriented younger cop with conservative values, provided a marked contrast to the older, more liberal and cynical Det. Lenny Briscoe (Jerry Orbach).

Representing the third generation of Hustons to win an Academy Award, Anjelica Huston finally emerged from the shadows of father John and long-time beau Jack Nicholson to parlay her striking, off-beat beauty and "deep class" (as termed by Nicholson) into a career as an actress of great strength and emotional range. Though she managed to survive a disastrous starring debut in her father's "A Walk with Love and Death" (1969), the howls of nepotism that nearly ended her career before it began did cause her to withdraw temporarily from the profession.

BIOGRAPHY

A pouty and pretty strawberry blonde New Yorker who commenced her career a child actor with instincts, skills and a streetwise grace that far outpaced her age, Scarlett Johansson first came to attention playing the daughter of Sean Connery and Kate Capshaw terrorized by Blair Underwood in "Just Cause" (1995). Having made her stage debut at age eight in 1993's "Sophistry" at Playwrights Horizons Theatre, the young player also studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute.