Kristin Scott Thomas

Proud, fine-boned and just a bit remote, Kristin Scott Thomas jumped to international stardom as the gorgeous-but-doomed lover in 1996 Oscar champ The English Patient ... more

Stephenie Meyer

Stephenie Meyer is the author of the popular Twilight series of books for teens. The stories feature Bella, a high school girl in rural Washington ... more

Amanda Peet

Amanda Peet is a brilliantly blue-eyed actress who gradually rose to public consciousness with a five-year string of small and large television and movie roles from 1996 to 2001. These included TV ... more

John Banville

John Banville is an Irish Writer whose best known novel is probably The Sea, the 2005 winner of the Man Booker Prize. He also writes as Benjamin Black, the author of the noir crime ... more

Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison won the National Book Award for his first novel Invisible Man (1952), the story of an alienated and isolated black man living in racially repressive urban America. Ellison grew ... more

Natalie Wood

Natalie Wood became a child movie star when she played Susan Walker, the little girl who doubts Santa Claus in 1947's ... more

Bill Haley

Bill Haley was the leader of Bill Haley & The Comets, the performers of one of the first hits of rock 'n' roll, 1954's "Rock Around the Clock." ... more

Radiohead

Radiohead is made up of five schoolmates from Oxford, England: Thom Yorke (b. 7 October 1968), Ed O'Brien (b. 15 April 1968), Johnny Greenwood (b. 7 November 1972), Colin Greenwood (b. 26 June 1967) ... more

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs came from an upper-class background in the midwestern United States, studied at Harvard University and then turned to drugs, crime and writing. In the 1940s he became ... more

George M. Cohan

George Michael Cohan was known as "Mr. Broadway" for his preeminent role in American musical theater in the first quarter of the 20th century. A vaudevillian since childhood, he grew up as one of ... more

Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie was one of the most famous and influential American folk singers of the 20th century and the composer of standards such as "This Land is ... more

Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck left the vaudeville stage for the movies in the late 1920s, but her career didn't take off until the '30s, thanks in part to director ... more

Robert Wagner

Robert Wagner was a dashing young leading man in the 1950s, when he starred in movies like What Price Glory (1952, with James Cagney) and Prince Valiant ... more

Susan Lucci

Susan Lucci began starring as Erica Kane on the soap opera All My Children in 1970, and the sneaky temptress was soon one of the serial's most popular characters. As the years went by and ... more

Henry Paulson, Jr.

Henry Merritt Paulson, Jr. has been the United States Secretary of the Treasury since July of 2006. A graduate of Dartmouth University (1968) and Harvard Business School (1970), Paulson spent most ... more

John Cusack

After several appearances in teen-oriented movies in the 1980s, John Cusack proved himself to be a reliable, if unconventional, leading man in the '90s in such films as The Grifters (1990), ... more

Jeremy Piven

Jeremy Piven won his third Emmy in 2008 for his supporting role as Hollywood agent Ari Gold in the HBO series Entourage. Piven grew up in Evanston, Illinois in a theater family: his parents, ... more

David Blaine

Showman David Blaine's original specialty was "street magic" -- close-up magic done for small groups on New York City streets. His talent was showcased in a series of national TV specials in the late ... more

Tzipi Livni

Tzipi Livni was elected to be leader of Israel's centrist Kadima party in September of 2008, making her the potential successor to ... more

Menachem Begin

Menachem Begin was prime minister of Israel from 1977-1983. Begin was born in Russia (like another future prime minister, Golda Meir), and he studied in Poland, where he ... more