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."

“I know how lucky I am. I've no complaints about the work.”
Bloom was born in Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom. Bloom had thought that his father was South African-born Jewish anti-Apartheid novelist Harry Saul Bloom, but when he was thirteen (nine years after Harry's death), Bloom's mother revealed to him that his biological father was actually Colin Stone, his mother's partner and family friend, and the principal of the Concorde International language school.
Bloom was not academic or athletic as a child, and managed to struggle through St Edmund's School in Canterbury despite his dyslexia. He was encouraged by his mother to take art and drama classes. In 1993, he moved to London and joined the National Youth Theatre, spending two seasons there and earning a scholarship to train at the British American Drama Academy. Bloom began acting professionally with television roles in episodes of Casualty and Midsomer Murders, and subsequently made his film debut in Wilde (1997), opposite Stephen Fry, before entering the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he studied acting, sculpture and photography. In 1998, he fell three stories while trying to reach the roof of terrace of a friend's house, and was told he would not regain the ability to walk. However, he made a recovery and was able to walk out of the hospital on crutches within twelve days. Bloom had steel plates inserted into his backbone to support it, which have since been removed, except for a single screw. He regularly practices yoga and Pilates to strengthen his back.
Bloom's first appearance on the screen was a small role as a rent boy in the 1997 film Wilde. Two days after graduating from Guildhall in 1999, he was cast in his first major role, playing Legolas in The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003). He had originally tried out for the part of Faramir, who doesn't appear until the second movie but the director, Peter Jackson, cast him as Legolas instead. While shooting a scene, he broke a rib after falling off a horse, but eventually recovered and continued shooting. The success of the trilogy transformed Bloom from an unknown actor into one of world's best-known celebrities.
In 2002, he was chosen as one of the Teen People "25 Hottest Stars Under 25" and was named People's hottest Hollywood bachelor in the magazine's 2004 list. All members of the cast of the Rings films were nominated for Best Ensemble Acting at the Screen Actors Guild Awards for three years in a row, finally winning in 2003 for the third film, The Return of the King. Bloom has also won other awards, including European Film Awards, Hollywood Festival Award, Empire Awards and Teen Choice Awards, and has been nominated for many others. Most of Bloom's box office successes have been as part of an ensemble cast.
Bloom next starred opposite Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which was a blockbuster hit during the summer of 2003. He subsequently played the lead roles in Kingdom of Heaven and Elizabethtown (both 2005). In 2006, Bloom starred in sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the independently made Haven, and was one of the guest stars in the sitcom Extras, in which he portrayed an arrogant, narcissistic version of himself who had a great loathing for Johnny Depp (his co-star in Pirates of the Caribbean); Bloom pushed for Extras to go further with making his part unlikeable and contributed to the gag about him loathing Depp. Also in 2006, Bloom was the most searched for male on Google News. As of May 2007, Bloom's films had grossed a combined $2.4 billion at the United States box office, and he has appeared in four of the top 15 highest grossing films of all time.
Bloom's most recent film role is in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, released on May 25, 2007. Bloom, who had intended to become a stage actor after graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, has stated that he would like leave films for a time and instead appear in stage roles, and is "avidly looking for the right sort of material that [he] can do something with" and go "back to basics". Bloom is currently appearing in a London revival of In Celebration, a play by David Storey. His character is one of three brothers returning home for their parents' 40th wedding anniversary. On August 24th 2007, he makes his first ever TV commercial appearance, on late-night Japanese TV promoting the Uno brand of cosmetics maker Shiseido.