Cinema Experts

“Success is a beast. And it actually puts the emphasis on the wrong thing. You get away with more instead of looking within.”
Pitt was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, the son of Jane Etta, a high school counselor, and William Alvin Pitt, a truck company owner. Along with his brother Doug and sister Julie Neal, he grew up in Springfield, Missouri, where the family moved soon after his birth. He attended Kickapoo High School, where he was involved in sports, debating, student government, and acting. He attended the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri - Columbia where he was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity.
In 1987, Pitt arrived in Beverly Hills, California. He studied under coach Roy London for six years. He first appeared in the sitcom Head Of The Class, for a while dating the show's star Robin Givens. He also guest starred in two episodes of Growing Pains. Pitt appeared as Chris in the long-running soap Another World. While auditioning for the show Our House, he was asked to read for another part, and found himself playing Shalane McCall's boyfriend Charles on the daytime soap Dallas. He also had a number of roles in prime-time series, such as thirtysomething, 21 Jump Street, and Freddy's Nightmares.
In 1988, Pitt had his first starring role, in Dark Side Of The Sun, where he played a young American taken by his family to the Adriatic to find a remedy for a skin condition. The movie was shot in Yugoslavia in the summer of '88 with Pitt being paid $1,523 a week for seven weeks. However, with editing nearly complete, war broke out and much of the film was lost. The film was released years later. Pitt won a part in the TV movie Too Young to Die?, about an abused teenager given the death penalty for murder. Pitt played the part of a drug addict, Silly Canton, who took advantage of runaway Juliette Lewis, who Pitt began dating in real life. The pair would be together for three years.
In 1991, Pitt starred as Joe Maloney in Across the Tracks in which he portrayed a high school runner with a difficult criminal brother played by Ricky Schroder. Pitt attracted broader public attention from a supporting role in Thelma & Louise where he played a small time criminal drifter in a love scene with Geena Davis.
After Thelma and Louise, Pitt starred in the low budget 1991 film Johnny Suede as an awkward dreamer who aspired to be a big-haired rock star alongside Catherine Keener and Nick Cave, directed by Tom DiCillo. Pitt had agreed to play the part before Thelma & Louise was released. After appearing in Cool World, Pitt starred in Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It in 1992, for which Pitt learned fly fishing by casting off of Hollywood buildings. Then came Kalifornia in 1993, a road movie in which he played a scruffy serial killer alongside his then girlfriend Juliette Lewis and X-Files actor David Duchovny.
In 1994, Pitt played vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac in the movie adaptation of Anne Rice's novel Interview With The Vampire. Pitt played the eighteenth century vampire which required several hours work in make-up on set to achieve the white skin of the character and he had to wear a pair of luminous green eyes, vampire fangs and a shoulder-length hairpiece to complete the appearance. Pitt worked with the eleven-year-old Kirsten Dunst, as well as Tom Cruise, Christian Slater and Antonio Banderas. He then starred in Legends of the Fall and Se7en.
Pitt was then nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Jeffrey Goines in the 1995 film Twelve Monkeys in which he acted alongside Bruce Willis. In 1997 Pitt played the IRA terrorist Rory Devany in The Devil's Own alongside Harrison Ford, the first of several films where he has acted using an Irish accent.
That same year he played the main role of Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer in the Jean Jacques Annaud film Seven Years in Tibet. Pitt trained for months for the role which demanded a great deal of trekking and mountain climbing. Due to the themes of Tibetan nationalism in the film, the Chinese government banned Pitt and Thewlis from China for life. In 1998, Pitt starred as the main character in the film Meet Joe Black. Pitt starred as a personification of Death inhabiting the body of a young man in order to learn what it is like to be human while informing a billionaire tycoon that his life on Earth is nearly over. The film gave Pitt another chance to work alongside Welsh actor Sir Anthony Hopkins whom he had previously worked with in Legends of the Fall.
In 1999, Pitt starred in Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Working with his previous director whom he had worked with on Se7en Pitt portrayed the character of Tyler Durden, a highly colorful and complex character.
In 2000 Pitt played the role of Mickey, a gypsy Irish boxer in the gangster movie Snatch alongside Vinnie Jones and Benicio del Toro. The film was a wild caper involving a diamond heist, Russian and American mafia and the shady underground world , that saw Pitt brought in as a ringer by two failing promoters. The movie saw him moving on from his attempt at the conventional Devil's Own Northern Irish accent, and perhaps inspired by his co-star Benicio del Toro's recent performance in The Usual Suspects, Pitt created a just-barely-intelligible accent suggesting the Irish Gypsies, referred to as Pikeys in the movie. Pitt continued to train for the role, and honed his boxing skills at Ricky English's gym in Watford.
After his wedding to Friends actress Jennifer Aniston on July 29, 2000, he immediately began filming for Spy Game, a Cold War thriller in which he starred alongside veteran actor and look-alike Robert Redford playing the role of his mentor. In 2001 Pitt worked with long-term friend and actress Julia Roberts in the comical road movie The Mexican. At the end of the year, Pitt finished filming Ocean's Eleven with George Clooney and Matt Damon, a remake of the 1960s version which starred Frank Sinatra.
Since then, he has starred in numerous films, including Ocean's Twelve and the epic Troy, based on the Iliad, in which he portrayed the legendary hero Achilles. Ironically, during the production of Troy, Pitt tore his Achilles tendon, delaying production for several weeks.
In 2005, Pitt starred in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in which he and Angelina Jolie played husband and wife assassins.
In March 2006, it was announced that Paramount had purchased the rights to The Sparrow for Pitt's production company, Plan B, and that Pitt would be playing the lead role of Sandoz. In June 2006 it was announced that Paramount and Plan B will be working on a new zombie film called World War Z, based on the book of the same name by Max Brooks.
Pitt made his return to Hollywood in late 2006, with Alejandro González Iñárritu's critically acclaimed Babel, starring alongside Cate Blanchett. The movie garnered a total of seven Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, one of which was a Golden Globe nomination for Pitt as Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture. The movie has since become Pitt's highest grossing drama. That same year, he also produced the eventual Best Picture winner, The Departed.In 2007, Pitt was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World. He was listed among artists and entertainers, and was credited with using "his star power to get people to look at places and stories that cameras don't usually catch."

“The work gets more difficult as you get older. You learn more and you gather more experiences, there is deeper pain and higher highs.”
Paltrow was born in Los Angeles, California to the late film and television director, writer, and producer Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner. Raised in Santa Monica, she attended Crossroads School before moving and attending Spence School, a private girls' school in New York City. Later she briefly studied art history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before discontinuing her degree and committing herself to acting. She is an "adopted daughter" of Talavera de la Reina (Spain), where she lived as an exchange student and learned Spanish.
Paltrow made her professional stage debut in 1990. Her most recent stage appearance was in Proof at London's Donmar Warehouse. Her debut film was Shout (1991). Later that year, she had a small role as the young Wendy in family friend Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991). She also appeared in Malice and Flesh and Bone.
Paltrow starred in Se7en (1995), opposite Brad Pitt, and Morgan Freeman. The film was hugely successful commercially and critically. Then in 1996 she starred in Emma, where she received strong positive critical acclaim, particularly in Europe, and Asia.
Two years later, Paltrow starred in Shakespeare in Love, an imagining of how William Shakespeare might have written Romeo and Juliet. The film received critical acclaim, earned more than $100 million in domestic box office receipts, and received numerous awards. Shakespeare in Love won the Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy and Best Screenplay, as well as the Academy Award for Best Picture. Paltrow also won the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role from the Screen Actors Guild. Later that year, Paltrow won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. After her Oscar win Paltrow starred in other movie roles such as A Perfect Murder. In 2000 Paltrow starred in The Talented Mr. Ripley which earned over $80 million domestically, and received positive reviews. She then starred in Bounce with Shakespeare in Love costar Ben Affleck, which was moderately successful, both critically and commercially.
Since then, she has had a relatively low-profile, yet steady, film career with a few critically acclaimed film roles, including Proof (2005) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). Audiences got their first taste of Paltrow's singing ability with the 2000 release of Duets, in which she co-starred with singer Huey Lewis, who played her karaoke-hustling estranged father. Towards the end of the film, their characters resolve their differences and perform a cover version of Smokey Robinson's Cruisin'. The song, which surprised many of Paltrow's fans, was well-received and was eventually released as a single, getting heavy airplay from Top 40 and adult contemporary-formatted radio stations.
In an interview with The Guardian on 27 January 2006, Paltrow admitted that she divided her career into those movies she did for love and those films she did for money.
The Royal Tenenbaums, Proof, and Sylvia fell into the former category, whilst View From the Top and Shallow Hal were in the latter. In interviews for Shallow Hal, she reported did some research for the role by wearing the fat suit she used during filming, and going to a local bar to gauge the public perception of obese people. She said that people refused to make eye contact with her, and she was treated quite rudely on multiple occasions, and the experience saddened her greatly, with regards to how people treat those who are overweight.Since winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for Shakespeare in Love, Paltrow's box-office profile has declined considerably, with her most recent smash being 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley.