Jennifer Aniston is one of America’s most talked about actresses. Born on February 11, 1969 in Sherman Oaks, California, her parents are the actors Nancy Dow and John Aniston (originally Yannis Anastasakis, he is probably best know for his role on the soap opera Days of Our Lives as Victor Kiriakis).

When she was nine, Jennifer’s parents split up and she was raised by her mother. Jennifer spent a bit of her childhood living in her father’s native country of Greece, but she was raised mostly in New York, and then in Los Angeles. Jennifer is of Italian, Greek, Scottish and English descent.

Jennifer first began acting when she was just 11 years old, joining the Rudolf Steiner School’s drama club. She started training professionally at the prestigious High School of the Performing Arts in New York. After she graduated the school in 1987, Jennifer appeared in some off-broadway productions, such as “Dancing on Checker’s Grave” and “For Dear Life”. She landed her first role on TV in 1989 as a regular on the series Molloy. She also had roles in “Leprechaun”, “The Edge”, “Herman’s Head”, “Sunday Funnies”, “Camp Cucamonga” and the “Ferris Bueller” television series.

While she could get some roles, it wasn’t enough to live on, so in between roles she worked as a telemarketer and a waitress (which is ironic, considering that many of her characters are waitresses). It was hard, but she got by. In 1994 she auditioned for a pilot called “Friends like These” and the rest is history. Simplified to Friends, the show was an instant success that launched her career and left her in the public’s psyche forever as the beautiful waitress Rachel Green.

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Natalie Portman is one of those pretty faces that is, well, more than a pretty face. Talented, civic-minded, undeniably intelligent, and sophisticated beyond her years, Portman has been dubbed the “new Audrey Hepburn.”

Portman was born in Jerusalem in 1981 to Avner and Shelley Hershlag. Her father, a fertility doctor, and her mother, an artist, moved from Israel when their daughter was three to Washington D.C., and then later, New York. At the age of 11, she was discovered by an agent at a pizza parlor. Initially, she was pushed into modeling. However, strong-willed and independent-minded even then, Portman decided to pursue acting.

Her debut performance came in the movie Leon in 1994. However, this role, which some felt was too “Lolita”-like in its tone, caused Portman to later refuse roles that were too sexually-oriented or that required nudity.

In 1997, she did in fact turn down a role in the movie Lolita because of her strong feelings against youth playing overtly sexual roles in films. Similarly, she turned down the role of “Juliet” in the famous 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet because of the age difference between herself and Leonardo DiCaprio. In Anywhere But Here, Portman turned down the role of Ann August because of a nude scene with Corbin Allred; Susan Sarandon vouched for the necessity of Portman as her co-star and the scene was rewritten.

A straight-“A” student all through high school, Portman now studies at Harvard. She likes math, due to its clear-cut system of solving problems. She speaks five languages fluently — Hebrew, English, French, German, and Japanese. Other talents include playing the piano and ballet. One of her favorite authors is Dave Eggers. She aspires to follow in her father’s footsteps and go into the medical field.

Interestingly, Portman has had several music-related tributes to her. She has had songs named after her by bands TeamSleep and Ozma. She also has CD recorded for charity bearing her name called Love: A Tribute to Natalie Portman.

Her most famous role was perhaps Queen Amidala in Star Wars Trilogy. While these movies perhaps portray Portman’s sense of fun and her diversity as an actress, movies such as Garden State are better suited to Portman’s arena.

Portman has the elegance of royalty, but her acting talent makes her suited to roles in which she plays characters with likeable flaws. It’s easy to see Portman as a woman without flaws, but more “human” roles bring her closer to earth and to fans’ hearts.

Cameron Diaz celebrates her birthday on August 30. She was born in 1972, in California.

Her nickname is said to be “Cami,” but she’s more frequently referred to as “quirky and crazy.” Diaz is said to be an easy going, fun loving gal.

Cameron started out as a model, appearing in magazines like “Seventeen,” but has since appeared in many others. Cameron is better known for her acting career, which features over a dozen films, including her role in “Charlie’s Angels” along with Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu.

If you thought you recognized her voice in “Shrek” and “Shrek 2” you were correct. She did the voice work for the lovable Princess Fiona in both, and “Shrek 2″ was the nominated for a host of awards, including Best Animated Feature Film of the Year.

When is Paris Hilton’s Birthday? She was born in New York City on February 17, 1981.

What is Paris Hilton’s nickname? She has been dubbed “Paris the Heiress” by the tabloids.

Who is Paris’ best friend? Nicole Richie.

What is her claim to fame? Paris has become an actress in her own right, and is also a singer. Her famous last name represents none other than the renowned Hilton hotels.

What appearances is Paris best known for? Ms. Hilton has appeared in several movies; she has co-hosted and been a presenter in award shows on MTV; she starred in the series, “The Simple Life,” with best friend Nicole; and she has made guest appearances on many TV shows, including the Tonight Show and Letterman. Several biographies have also been done on Paris Hilton, including “E! True Hollywood Story.”

George Clooney was born on 6th Mary 1961 in Lexington, Kentucky. His father Nick was a TV broadcaster. His aunt is actress Rosemary Clooney.

In his teens, he suffered from Bell’s palsy, facial drooping on one side of the face. It is the result of the breakdown of the facial nerve which influences the facial muscles.

He dropped out of college to pursue a career in acting. Much of his time was spent traveling from audition to audition on a bicycle.

He got his first acting break in sitcom Roseanne, where he played the boss of the star, Roseanne Barr. He also starred in Combat Academy (1986) and Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988), but it was not until he landed the role of Dr. Doug Ross in the popular television series, ER, that he really shot to prominence. It was that part that helped to catapult him into the realms of celebrity.

Since then, he has appeared in films such as From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), One Fine Day (1996), Batman & Robin (1997), Out of Sight (1998), Three Kings (1999), The Perfect Storm (2000), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and Ocean’s Twelve (2004). Added to that, he has also had guest parts in Roseanne and Friends.

He helped to launch South Park, when in 1995, he was sent a copy of The Spirit of Christmas, which would later become the hit show. He liked it so much that he distributed copies of it in Los Angeles. In return, the show’s producers approached him to provide the voice of Stan Marsh’s gay dog, Sparky in an episode entitled Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride. As well as doing that, he also starred in the film version of South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.

He then turned his hand to directing, and was nominated for Achievement in Directing and Original Screenplay (for Good Night, and Good Luck), as well as receiving a nomination for Best Performance By An Actor In A Supporting Role (for Syriana) at the 2006 Academy Awards. It was the first time that a nominated actor had been nominated for directing a film different to the one he was nominated for. At the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television) Awards, he was nominated for the David Lean Award for Achievement in Directing (for Good Night, and Good Luck).

He walked away with a Golden Globe award for Best Performance By An Actor In A Supporting Role, and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, both for Syriana.

In 2005 he suffered from head injuries on the set of Syriana, when a scene in which his character is tied to the chair and tormented, went wrong. He has since had to have surgery to boost his spine with metal bolts after spinal fluid leaked through his nose.

Along with fellow actors, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt, he is working in association with Rande Gerber, the husband of Cindy Crawford, in designing and building the Las Ramblas resort project, a new casino hotel near the Las Vegas strip.

He has been very vocal about the Iraq war, saying: “You can’t beat your enemy anymore through wars; instead you create an entire generation of people revenge-seeking. Our opponents are going to resort to car bombs and suicide attacks because they have no other way to win. …I believe (Rumsfeld) thinks this is a war that can be won, but there is no such thing anymore. We can’t beat anyone anymore.”

He taught Kirsten Dunst how to drive - at a golf course.

Japan’s greatest film actor was 21 before he set foot in the country that would make him an international star. Toshiro Mifune was born in Manchuria, of Japanese parents, and his first job was helping in the studio of his photographer father.

It was as a photographer, and a Japanese citizen, that he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Air Force during World War II, serving under the Imperial flag until 1946.

Suddenly Mifune was cast adrift in a country he barely knew. Fluent in both Mandarin and Japanese, he opted to stay in Japan because his parents were dead and he had nowhere else to go. Once again, it was photography that proved the key to the future.

Mifune started work as an assistant cameraman for Toho Productions in 1947, but the striking looking man wouldn’t go unnoticed for long. At an audition for new talent, Toho Productions discovered that its assistant cameraman was even more effective through the lens - and it brought together for the first time Mifune and the man with whom he would have one of the most productive partnerships in the history of film.

Present at that audition was film maker Akira Kurosawa, who watched Mifune act the part of a drunk with growing excitement. “The speed of his movements was such that he said in a single action what took ordinary actors three separate movements to express,” Kurosawa said later.

Even so, Mifune’s first film was not directed by Kurosawa, although the script was written by him. Ginrei No Hate (known in English as Snow Trail) was directed by Senkichi Taniguchi, who saw in the fiery young actor exactly the qualities needed for role of the paranoid bank robber Eijima.

A year later he began his collaboration with Kurosawa with the film Yoidore Tenshi (Drunken Angel), playing the gangster Matsunaga.

Once Mifune’s stunning presence was established on screen, Japanese film goers couldn’t get enough of him. But it was their fifth film together that awoke international attention. Rashomon took the basic story of a woman raped by a bandit and told it from four different points of view, including the woman’s dead husband. It was one of the most honored foreign films of 1950, winning awards in Britain, Venice and the US. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences created a special category of Best Foreign Film to award it an Oscar.

With Kurosawa’s premier story telling abilities, and Mifune’s ability to create complex, mesmerising screen roles, the pair continued to create stunning cinema until 1965, when they fell out over the filming of Red Beard. The rift kept them apart for 30 years and ended a legendary collaboration.

But Mifune was well established as one of the world’s great actors by this time. He had played a Mexican Indian in Ismael Rodriguez’ Animas Trujano, studying the part phonetically so he could speak his lines in perfect Spanish.

In 1966 he took on his first English speaking film, Grand Prix, playing a Japanese business man, and the owner of a Formula 1 racing team.

Two years later he appeared in Hell in the Pacific, playing a marooned Japanese officer to Lee Marvin’s shot down US pilot.

Between these films he starred in five movies and a TV mini series in Japan.

His next international role was as the Japanese Ambassador to Britain with English actor David Niven. Paper Tiger was something of a pot boiler, and Mifune quickly got back into warrior mode with the TV series Ken to Kaze to Komoriuta (The Sword, the Wind, and the Lullaby).

He followed that with the role of Admiral Yamamoto in Midway, a US WWII epic bristling with stars, including Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda. Heston later wrote that if English were Mifune’s first language, he would put them all out of work.

But even while acknowledging his powerful screen presence, Hollywood never really came to grips with Mifune - he continued working in Japan, making occasional forays into Hollywood, such as the 1980 mini series Shogun in which he played Lord Yoshi Toranaga opposite Richard Chamberlain’s Major John Blackthorne. The series was hugely successful in the west, but a walk in the park for Mifune, who had already played this role many times over.

His best English film role was in Red Sun with Charles Bronson, when western film goers finally got to see the many layered performance skills of the Japanese star. In his scene with a young Mexican bar girl, Mifune’s humanity shone through. It remains a well deserved favorite with his fans.

Mifune made his last film, Fukai Kawa (Deep River), in 1995. But he was already in poor health, under the care of his wife Sachiko. He had married her in 1950, overcoming the opposition of her parents. The couple had two sons, Shiro and Takeshi. Mifune’s affair with another woman produced a daughter Miko, but Sachiko returned to care for him after he suffered a stroke in 1992.

Her death in 1995 saw Mifune’s physical and mental health fall into a deep decline. he died on December 24, 1997 at the age of 77. He was briefly reconciled with Kurosawa before his death but the two men never regained their old camaraderie.

But his legend lives on, and his children Shiro and Miko continue the acting tradition in Japan.

“Am I a sex symbol?” young Irish actor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers asked in the March edition of Australian OK! Magazine.  “You don’t live with me so you don’t know!”

The dark-haired, blue-eyed actor with the pointed chin and trademark pout has certainly set women’s hearts aflame everywhere, whatever he says! But he is not just relying on his good looks to get ahead. His performances, especially in his two latest movies, “Match Point” and “Elvis” have impressed critics and audiences alike.

28 years old, Meyers was born on July 27, 1977, in Dublin with a heart condition and baptized quickly because his family thought that he might not survive.  After months in hospital, he struggled through only to face a tough childhood.

His mother left when he was only 3, leaving his father to raise Jonathan and his three younger brothers, Jamie, Alan and Paul.  He didn’t do well at school and was expelled at the age of 16.  From then on he hung around pool halls where, surprisingly, he was discovered by Hubbard Casting.  Meyers began his career with a Knorr soup commercial but soon obtained roles in films, including “Michael Collins” in which he played a tough young assassin, “The Killer Tongue“, “Finbar” and “Samson and Delilah”.

His big break came at the age of 19 when he played the fictional glam rocker, Brian Slade in “The Velvet Goldmine.” In Washington D.C. Sidewalk’s review, Meyers was described as “… radiating intensity and attitude more than emotion,” and “perfect as an ultimately vacant icon.” A talented musician as well as actor, Meyers also sang some of the songs in the film.

Recently he took on the huge role of playing American pop idol, Elvis, for which he won a Golden Globe and excellent reviews.

In Woody Allen’s film, “Match Point” Jonathan plays a young Irishman impressed by his wealthy girlfriend’s life in London’s Belgravia.  His bete noire arrives when he falls for the beautiful American girl, Nola (Scarlett Johansson) who is going out with his girlfriend’s brother.  His attraction to her could ruin everything for this character, Chris Wilton, who doesn’t want to give up his expensive lifestyle. He is described by Meyers in an interview by Graham Fuller as Machiavellian. (The Hotsy Totsy Jonathan Meyers)

In the same interview, Meyers also admits to being Machiavellian and being able to turn on his charm ‘like tap water’.  However, although he once said that he only took up acting because ‘it kept him off the streets and out of jail’ now he approaches his career with passion.

Surprisingly the Byronic-looking young actor has said that he doesn’t understand women, and he was caught in a fight with his girlfriend, Reena Hammer, last December.  However, when his co-star, Scarlett Johansson, was ‘left battered and bruised after a love scene shot in freezing cold rainwater with co-star Jonathan Rhys-Meyers for Woody Allen’s new movie “Match Point”, in which the pair play passionate lovers Rhys-Meyers sent Johansson flowers after the outdoor scene got a little out of hand.

Clearly this charming Irish actor has a big future ahead of him, both in acting and in romance!

Noel Coward called the beautiful actress Vivien Leigh Shakespeare’s ‘lass unparalleled’.  She shone as the gutsy Scarlett in “Gone with the Wind“; wrenched hearts in “Waterloo Bridge” and was the perfect choice for the tormented Blanche in Tennessee William’s “A Streetcar named Desire“.  Magnetic and talented, Vivien Leigh had a brilliant career and a great love affair with the handsome young English actor Laurence Olivier.  Unfortunately, her life was afflicted with severe manic depression for which there was no cure.  If Vivien had not had to endure this, her career may have been even more illustrious and her marriage to Laurence Olivier may have lasted.

Born in India on November 5, 1913, exotic looking young Vivien came from an Irish, French and Roman Catholic heritage.  Like Scarlett in “Gone with the Wind”, the most famous character she played, Vivien was convent educated.  She went to school in England after her parents returned from India in 1920.

Skilled at drama, Vivien was accepted into the prestigious Academy of Dramatic Art, but her studies were cut short when she married Herbert Leigh Holman, a barrister, at the tender age of eighteen.  Herbert was much older at thirty-one.  They had a daughter, Suzanne, but Vivien was ambitious and showed more interest in acting than motherhood.

Her film career began with a minor role in “Things are Looking Up”.  After Vivien decided to adopt Leigh as her professional surname she made three more minor films, but remained relatively unnoticed, to her chagrin.  Pretty and vivacious, Vivien was determined to get ahead. 

Her luck changed when Alexander Korda, the great producer, spotted her, casting her as a lady-in-waiting in “Fire Over England“, about the English queen, Elizabeth 1.  This was not only the turning-point in her film career:  Vivien played next to the dashing and charismatic Laurence Olivier.  Passionate and good-looking, the young couple, both married to others, could not hide their attraction to each other.  It was love at first sight for Vivien, at least, as soon as she saw the tall and darkly handsome Olivier.                     

Gone with the Wind became a bestseller in 1939. As soon as it became known that David O’Selznick would direct the film, famous actresses, such as Norma Shearer and Bette Davis clamored for the part of Scarlett.  Scarlett, a beautiful young Southern belle, lost everything in the Civil War but managed to begin again.  The book had everything: unrequited love, war, suffering and an unforgettable heroine in Scarlett, and hero in Rhett Butler.  When Vivien Leigh first read this great drama she was determined to play Scarlett.

David O’Selznick began filming “Gone With The Wind” without his Scarlett.  Although actress after actress tested for the part all were deemed unsuitable.  Vivien was in Hollywood at the time with Laurence, who was acting in “Wuthering Heights” with William Wyler.  Wyler, impressed with Vivien’s talent, introduced her to his agent, the brother of David O’Selznick.  Myron knew that Vivien could be the Scarlett his brother needed.

He took her to the set as the first scene ‘The Burning of Atlanta’ was being filmed.  Scarlett and Rhett have to guide an old wagon through an Atlanta cruelly set on fire by Sherman’s army in this scene.  The problem was that there was no Scarlett.  The back lot really was set alight, and the scene was set, except for Scarlett.  As green-eyed, raven-haired Vivien stepped onto the set lit up by the brilliant glow of the flames, Myron told his brother:  “David, I want you to meet Scarlett O’Hara.”

Myron was right.  No other actress could have played Scarlett better than Vivien, who made this selfish but courageous and lively character come to life.  Deservedly, she won the Oscar for best actress.

This is her best-known and undoubtedly best-loved role but Vivien also made other memorable films. These included “Waterloo Bridge”, in which she played a young girl forced to turn to prostitution to make a living during The Second World War, and “That Hamilton Woman“, in which she played Emma to Laurence Olivier’s Nelson.

Vivien unfortunately started to suffer severely because her manic episodes increased.  During the filming of “Elephant Walk”, set in Sri Lanka, she drank and began an affair with the Australian Peter Finch.  Eventually she had to be taken back to England and another actress, Elizabeth Taylor, took over.  Manic depression was not understood in those days and Vivien was sent to a psychiatric hospital where she had to endure hydrotherapy and terrifying electric shock treatment.  Her miscarriage at the age of forty-two only made her more depressed.

Laurence Olivier continued to achieve brilliant success on the stage and in films.  He was knighted in 1947, but Vivien’s career continued to head downhill.  This upset her greatly.

When Vivien discovered that Laurence had begun to see another actress, Joan Plowright, Vivien became even more unhappy and bought a place in Sussex where she could spend some time alone.  Laurence married Joan Plowright three months after their divorce in 1960.

Vivien married again - to Jack Merivale, a fellow actor whom she had met long before in the stage production of “Romeo and Juliet”.  In spite of her sadness about Larry, the love of her life, and her continuing manic depression she managed to achieve some success in the sixties, winning a Tony and a second Oscar.   Vivien Leigh died in 1967 of TB.