Tom Selleck Biography (1945- )

Actor, producer. Born January 29, 1945 in Detroit, Michigan. A talented collegiate athlete, Selleck supported himself as a model, winning small parts in films and television during the 1970s. He received his big break in 1979, when he was cast in the starring role of CBS’s detective series Magnum, PI, in which he played an easy-going private investigator. The…

John Travolta Biography (1954-)

Actor. Born on February 18, 1954, in Englewood, New Jersey. The youngest of six children born into a family of entertainers, John Travolta dropped out of high school by age 16 to pursue a career in acting. He made his debut in an off-Broadway production of Rain (1972), then joined the Broadway cast of Grease, as well as the…

Jason Priestley Biography (1969- )

Actor, director, producer. Born on August 28, 1969, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He started out making commercials and working as a child actor in his native Canada, before moving to Los Angeles in 1987. After guest appearances on popular shows such as 21 Jump Street, MacGyver, and Quantum Leap, Priestley landed a recurring role as an orphan…

Antonio Banderas Biography (1960-)

Actor. Born on August 10, 1960, in Málaga, Spain. Banderas studied drama, eventually moving to Madrid where he performed in plays including Historia de los Tarantos and La hija del aire. There he met Pedro Almoóvar who gave him a small part in the film Laberinto de pasiones (1982) and from then on he worked exclusively with Almodóvar in…

John Cusack Biography (1966-)

Actor. Born in Evanston, Illinois, on June 28, 1966. The fourth of five children, including actress Joan Cusack, born to a math-teacher mother and a filmmaker-actor father. Cusack joined the Piven Theatre Workshop at the age of 8 and had become one of Chicago’s busiest commercial voiceover actors by the age of 12.

In 1983, Cusack made his first…

Shia LaBeouf Biography (1986-)

Actor. Born June 11, 1986, in Los Angeles, California. In recent years, Shia LaBeouf has emerged as one of the leading young actors working today. Raised in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park, he started performing in a street act with his parents when he was a toddler. His father Jeffrey was a professional clown and a…

Macaulay Culkin Biography (1980-)

Actor. Born Macaulay Carson Culkin on August 26, 1980 in New York City. The third of seven children, Macauley Culkin was drawn to the limelight from a young age. He performed in his first play Off-Broadway at age four. Culkin studied the performing arts extensively as a child, including training at Blanchine’s School of the American Ballet, and…

Jerry Seinfeld Biography (1954-)

Comedian, actor. Born Jerome Seinfeld on April 29, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York City. Seinfeld’s interest in comedy was sparked at an early age through the influence of his father, a sign maker who was also a closet comedian. By age eight, Seinfeld was putting himself through a rigorous comic training, watching television day and night to study the…

Ben Stiller Biography (1965-)

Actor, comedian. Born November 30, 1965, in New York City. Along with peers Janeane Garofalo, Andy Dick, David Cross, Margaret Cho, Bob Odenkirk, and Mary Lyn Rajskub (collectively known as the Posse), Stiller combines the cynicism of David Letterman with the outlandishness of Albert Brooks to make what he sees as comedy for his generation.

Raised on Manhattan’s Upper…

Vanilla Ice Biography (1967-)

Rapper, singer, songwriter, athlete, and actor. Born Robert Van Winkle on October 31, 1967 (some sources say 1968), in Miami, Florida. During his meteoric rise to fame in the early 1990s, Vanilla Ice became the first white rapper to top the pop singles chart with his hit, “Ice Ice Baby.” He quickly fell from favor, however, and has spent…

Jamie Foxx Biography (1967-)

Comedian, actor, singer. Born Eric Morlon Bishop on December 13, 1967 in Terrell, Texas. A talented singer, comedian, and actor, Academy Award-winner Jamie Foxx has proved to be a triple threat in the entertainment industry. After his parents’ marriage dissolved, Foxx was adopted by his maternal grandparents when he was less than a year old. He enjoyed sports…