A tall, soft-spoken and leathery leading man who, since the 1960s, has diversified into directing and producing after achieving iconic status, Clint Eastwood arose from the world of television westerns to become the number-one box-office star in the world, and subsequently earned critical acclaim as a director. His production company, Malpaso, has crafted moderate-budget features that range from mainstream fare to personal and ambitious endeavors. Eastwood is not entirely part of the Hollywood establishment—his business is run out of Carmel, California, on the Monterey Peninsula, where he has also served as mayor and ran a restaurant.

Eastwood grew up in Depression-era California, where his parents were itinerant workers. After high school, he worked as a lumberjack in Oregon, played honky-tonk piano and was a swimming instructor in the US Army. On the GI Bill, he studied at Los Angeles City College, after which he was signed by Universal. One of his first experiences with the indignity actors must suffer was in a "Francis the Talking Mule" movie, "Francis in the Navy" (1955). Also that year, Eastwood made a brief appearance as a Lab Technician in “Revenge of the Creature”, the sequel to “Creature From the Black Lagoon” (1954). The movie was later lampooned on the popular cult television show, “Mystery Science Theater 3000” (1989-2000)—Eastwood did not escape the barbs hurled by Mike and the bots. Many B-movies later, he moved to New York and gained recognition as trail boss Rowdy Yates in the successful television series "Rawhide" (1959-66)—a role he got despite trouble remembering lines in his screen test.

A strong sensibility and understanding of the characters he played helped Eastwood develop the minimalist acting style for which he’s famous. It was first appreciated in Europe where he starred in a trilogy of popular spaghetti westerns directed by Sergio Leone in Spain. As the laconic and lethal Man With No Name, Eastwood embodied archetypal violent American whose philosophy in "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964) was "everybody gets rich or dead." The sequels, "For a Few Dollars More" (1965) and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (1966), became classic revisionist Westerns and made Eastwood an international star. He returned stateside and starred in "Coogan's Bluff" (1968), a smart urban Western that marked the beginning of a long and successful collaboration with director Don Siegel.

Eastwood's second famed screen incarnation was Harry Callahan, the rogue cop of Siegel's "Dirty Harry" (1971) who found it easier to shoot suspects than interrogate them—hence the immortal line in "Sudden Impact" (1983): "Go ahead, make my day.” Despite controversy about Dirty Harry’s penchant for violence over procedure, Eastwood and Siegel were more interested in making an exciting film than a political statement. Eastwood has stated "My characters are usually callused men with a sensitive spot for right and wrong." He has also noted that "My movies add up to a morality, not a politics." Even his friendship with Ronald Reagan has attracted criticism from some, but Eastwood's concern for the environment, he claims, would make him befriend any President.

Ryan Phillippe first gained attention for his groundbreaking role as daytime television’s first openly gay male teen on "One Life to Live" (ABC, 1968- ). By the end of the 1990s, he had become one of the hottest stars on the 20-something radar. Teen-oriented hits like “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (1997) and “Cruel Intentions” (1999) gave the chiseled blond actor instant box office cred, but the actor wisely tempered the multiplex hits with strong performances in smart fare like “Gosford Park” (2001), “The Way of the Gun” (2000), and “Igby Goes Down” (2002), assuring himself a wider range of opportunities and a promising future. It did not hurt his profile that following the shooting of “Cruel Intentions,” Phillippe fell in love with his co-star, Reese Witherspoon, whose star rose during their long-term – for Hollywood, anyway – seemingly happy marriage.

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With his jutting beetle brow, rough complexion and unsettling gaze, Tommy Lee Jones has brought a dangerous yet sympathetic and highly intelligent edge to a wide range of leading and featured roles since the 1970s. After graduating cum laude from Harvard, he worked regularly on the New York stage in the early and mid-70s, most notably in his Broadway debut, "A Patriot for Me", and in Sal Mineo's controversial Off-Broadway production of the prison drama "Fortune and Men's Eyes.”

Maybe because of his alma mater (where he roomed with future Vice President Al Gore), Jones began his film career in 1970 with a small part as Ryan O'Neal's Harvard roommate in "Love Story" (Reportedly author Erich Segal has claimed that both Gore and Jones were the models for the character played by O'Neal). After a stint from 1971-75 on the TV soap opera "One Life to Live", he played an escaped convict hunted down by the police in his first starring role in a US film, "Jackson County Jail" (1976). Whenever a time came that it seemed Jones, an eighth-generation Texan, was about to become typecast in country-boy roles, or his taciturn demeanor shunted him into villainous roles, his sensitivity managed to add depth to the most routine parts. Not that dull parts came along all that often: Subsequent roles included eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes in the TV biopic, "The Amazing Howard Hughes" (CBS, 1977); convicted murderer Gary Gilmore (an especially exciting performance that won him an Emmy) in the TV drama "The Executioner's Song" (NBC, 1982); a psychotic detective who terrorizes Faye Dunaway in the 1978 thriller "The Eyes of Laura Mars"; and country singer Loretta Lynn's husband in "Coal Miner's Daughter" (1981).

Some less than successful features ("The Betsy" 1978, "Back Roads" 1981) slowed down his feature film career in the early 80s, and for a time he appeared primarily in such little-seen features as the total misfire, "Black Moon Rising" (1986). TV helped pick up some of the slack, with Jones returning to his theatrical roots with the small screen remakes of "The Rainmaker" (HBO, 1982), opposite Tuesday Weld, and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (Showtime, 1984), with Jessica Lange. One of his most important TV portrayals was as Woodrow Call, the repressed Texas Ranger who dragged the corpse of his partner (Robert Duvall) back to Texas in the acclaimed miniseries "Lonesome Dove" (CBS, 1988).

Since his unnerving portrayal of Cosmo, the unflinching mobster in Mike Figgis' noir, "Stormy Monday" (1988), Jones reasserted himself as one of Hollywood's leading heavies, bringing to his roles a sense of tormented moral ambiguity. He teamed with director Andrew Davis on the uneven thriller "The Package" (1989) then left audiences chilled with his eerie portrayal of suspected Kennedy assassination conspirator Clay Shaw in Oliver Stone's "JFK" (1991), a role that garnered him a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination. Jones reunited with Davis for the thrillers "Under Siege" (1992), as a rockin-'n'-rollin' psychopath who takes over a naval carrier, and "The Fugitive" (1993), a film remake of the hit 60s TV series wherein he played a hardened lawman unwilling to relinquish his hunt for Harrison Ford's Dr. Richard Kimble. More than a few reviewers felt that Jones caught—and surpassed—his leading man.

The Best Supporting Actor Oscar Jones received for "The Fugitive" extended the renewed prominence in Hollywood, reflected in such standardized but high-profile genre fare as "Blown Away" and "The Client" (both 1994). He also kept extremely busy in the occasional prominent character lead ("Natural Born Killers" 1994) and slammed his way through an uncompromising portrait of the profoundly ambiguous baseball great Ty "Cobb" (1994) in the poorly received biopic. Jones rebounded as part of the high-powered entertainment package, "Batman Forever" (1995), chewing scenery as 'Two-Face', a crusading district attorney turned dualistic bad guy.

Although the disaster picture "Volcano" blew up in his face, Jones was back on top with the blockbuster hit "Men in Black" (both 1997), a sort of "The X-Files" meets "Ghostbusters". Based on the comic book creations of Lowell Cunningham, "Men in Black" chronicles two alien busters (Jones and Will Smith) of the pan-galactic version of Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) who track down and subdue extraterrestrial invaders, "neuralizing" any witnesses (with the enormous ray guns atop their 1962 Ford LTDs) into believing the saucer that just flew by was a weather balloon, or St. Elmo's fire, or swamp gas. All very tongue-in-cheek, Jones' Agent Kay, with his dead pan comic sense, was the perfect foil for Smith's smart-alecky freshness, and they reprised their mega-hit roles for the successful 2002 sequel "Men in Black II."

He doffed his ebony duds and stepped back into his award-winning role Sam Gerard for the lesser-quality sequel "U.S. Marshals" (1998), this time on the trail of a different quarry (Wesley Snipes), then lent his voice to the hard-nosed action figure-come-to-life Maj. Chip Hazard in Joe Dante's "Small Soldiers" (1998). Jones then appeared in the simple but popular thriller "Double Jeopardy" (1999) opposite Ashley Judd, setting the template for a series of similar, affordably made films that typically teamed a woman in jeopardy (frequently Judd) with an older, father-figure-like A-list male star. He also carried the weight of director William Friedkin's slightly-better-than-routine military legal drama "Rules of Engagement" (2000) opposite Samuel L. Jackson, before lending his considerable charisma to his role as a daredevil pilot in director Clint Eastwood's amusing comedy adventure "Space Cowboys" (2001), joining Eastwood, Donald Sutherland and James Garner as a quartet of over-the-hill astronauts who must suit up to solve a world-threatening crisis in space.

Jones re-teamed with Friedkin for "The Hunted" (2003), an efficient, stripped down chase film that pit Jones' grizzled FBI deep-woods tracker captures the assassin he trained who has turned on society (Benecio del Toro). Then he portrayed a world weary part Native American shaman who reunites with his distant daughter (Cate Blanchett) when one of her children is kidnapped in director Ron Howard's disappointing Western thriller "The Missing" (2003). Radically shifting gears, Jones tried his hand at a lightweight comedy with thriller elements in "Man of the House" (2005), playing a no-nonsense Texas Ranger forced to oversee a quintet of ditzy college cheerleaders who witness a murder. Jones gamely tried his hand at comedy and light romance, but seemed far too accomplished intelligent to have much tolerance for the lowbrow material. He next had a cameo as a hitman-turned-door keep in “A Prairie Home Companion” (2006), Robert Altman’s fictional take on Garrison Keillor’s long-running radio show that featured an unusual cast of local talent and the host’s rambling monologues about the ideal town, Lake Wobegon.