While some music sensations plunge into movies with fanfare, Courtney Love was as hot as hot could be on the music scene, but decided not to take the spotlighted route of Madonna and Whitney Houston, instead easing her way into the medium with independent pictures. After a handful of small roles, the lead singer of the group Hole found herself in the spotlight when Milos Forman cast her as Althea Leasure in the biopic "The People vs. Larry Flynt" (1996).

While some music sensations plunge into movies with fanfare, Courtney Love was as hot as hot could be on the music scene, but decided not to take the spotlighted route of Madonna and Whitney Houston, instead easing her way into the medium with independent pictures. After a handful of small roles, the lead singer of the group Hole found herself in the spotlight when Milos Forman cast her as Althea Leasure in the biopic "The People vs. Larry Flynt" (1996).

A handsome, dark-haired Irish actor with an intense screen presence, Colin Farrell shot to fame in the USA as a cagey army recruit with a penchant for troublemaking in "Tigerland" (2000). Like so many actors who seem to achieve overnight stardom, the Dublin-born actor had paid his dues with film and TV roles. Raised in the Castleknock section of Dublin, this son of a soccer player admits to a somewhat rebellious youth, attending several schools and indulging in beer drinking. After spending a year in Australia, he returned to Ireland and enrolled at the Gaiety School of Acting but left after a year when his career began to take off. Farrell landed his first film role in "Drinking Crude" (1997) and the following year had a supporting role in the period TV drama "Falling For a Dancer" (aired in the USA on Romance Classics). He then landed the regular role of Danny Byrne on the popular Irish series "Ballykissangel", which he played for two seasons.

Trying to cast the lead role of Mel Coplin, an adoptee searching for his biological parents in the wake of his own son's birth in the comedy "Flirting With Disaster" (1996), writer-director David O. Russell knew what he wanted: "a young Dustin Hoffman type, who was kind of urban, kind of smart and ethnic." Ben Stiller, the only son of the venerable husband-and-wife comedy team of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, convinced Russell that he could fill the bill. Increasingly busy before and behind the camera, the curly-haired, quirkily handsome actor-writer-director seemed well poised to become the poster boy for Generation X era comedy--regardless of his stated discomfort with such a designation. With decisive roles played by nepotism, "Saturday Night Live" and MTV, Ben Stiller's swift career trajectory may be somewhat paradigmatic to those for whom the name "Barrymore" evokes "Drew" before "John" or "Lionel".

Since gaining national attention for his role as a religious army sniper in Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” (1998), actor Barry Pepper proved himself to be a dependable and versatile performer in a variety of lead and supporting roles.

It was unclear which fact was more extraordinary about Anna Paquin – that she won an Academy Award at age 11 for her performance in “The Piano” (1993), or that after the win, she had no plans to continue acting.

BIOGRAPHY

Despite his pretty boy looks and movie star charisma, actor Brad Pitt spent most of his career trying to avoid bloated box office leads, in favor of riskier, lower profile roles.