Brad Pitt

Before doing research for this piece, we just assumed Brad Pitt was the product of a genetic experiment in which scientists attempted to create the perfect human specimen for reasons that remain unknown. It turns out that Brad was conceived naturally and actually does have parents -- Jane Etta, a high school counselor, and William Alvin Pitt, a truck company owner -- go figure. A classic go-getter while attending Springfield, Missouri's Kickapoo High School, Brad first caught the acting bug while starring in various high school musicals. After graduating, he attended the University of Missouri where he majored in journalism and continued acting as a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. But two weeks prior to graduation, something compelled Brad to leave university and move to Los Angeles to pursue acting. Let's let the man himself explain why: "I had this sinking feeling as graduation approached. I saw my friends getting jobs. I wasn't ready to settle down. I loved films. They were a portal into different worlds for me, and Missouri wasn't where movies were made. Then it hit me: If they didn't come to me, I'd go to them." Something tells us he made the right decision.

brad pitt's humble beginnings

If you think superstardom just fell into Brad Pitt's lap, you're sorely mistaken. Unlike today's generation of young stars, Brad Pitt's rise to the top was littered with meandering appearances on television shows like Growing Pains, Dallas and 21 Jump Street and films like No Way Out, No Man's Land and Less Than Zero. These small roles in mostly inconsequential projects would continue until 1991, when Pitt played Geena Davis' outlaw lover in Ridley Scott's smash hit Thelma and Louise. The breakout role earned Pitt widespread attention and acclaim, and would prove to be the catalyst for many fo his early successes including the films Johnny Suede, Cool World, A River Runs Through It, and Kalifornia.

brad pitt becomes a movie star

Already armed with unbelievable physical attributes, Pitt used his turns in Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It, and Kalifornia to prove to the world that he could act too. For Brad Pitt, taking over Hollywood seemed inevitable. With roles in films like Interview With The Vampire, and Legends of The Fall (for which he received his first Golden Globe nod for best actor), Pitt managed to achieve widespread popularity but failed to find the perfect marriage of script and his talent. That is until David Fincher unleashed the grim thriller Se7en on the world, with Pitt's portrayal of the brash young detective David Mills going down as one of his best performances even to this day. Pitt followed that up with a role in the twisted sci-fi film Twelve Monkeys, for which he earned his first Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. However, Pitt's cinematic comfort zone continued to elude him, as his roles in Sleepers, The Devil's Own, Seven Years in Tibet, and Meet Joe Black were largely ignored by critics and audiences alike.

brad pitt's love life overshadows his acting career

Even with roles in films like Meet Joe Black, Fight Club, Snatch, The Mexican opposite Julia Roberts and Spy Games opposite Robert Redford, all anybody could talk about was what Brad was doing offscreen. Having already been involved in a highly publicized and ultimately failed engagement to Gwyneth Paltrow, Brad Pitt's love life came under even more scrutiny when he courted and eventually married Jennifer Aniston in 2000. With a seemingly successful marriage and a soaring film career--thanks to massive hits like Troy, Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve -- Brad Pitt could do no wrong. Then, in a move that still reverberates through the fabric of pop culture today, Brad Pitt signed on to appear in a film called Mr. and Mrs. Smith; his costar was a woman named Angelina Jolie. The rest, as they say, is history.

brad pitt gets together with angelina jolie to form "brangelina"

If someone were to tell us a decade ago that in due time, the world's two biggest stars would fall in love and then travel the world acquiring babies from some of the planet's most desperate countries, while giving birth to three of their own, we would laugh, and continue drinking our key lime milkshake. But alas, it came true! After inciting one of Hollywood's biggest scandals of all time by leaving Aniston for Jolie, Brad Pitt shamelessly began seeing Angelina, and claimed to have fallen in love with her while working on Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Since then, "Brangelina" as they are more commonly known, have gone on to become one of the world's most powerful couples--jet-setting celebrities who somehow seem more concerned with the world's struggles than they do their own careers. Most importantly, their desire to help others actually seems genuine, as opposed to simply an attempt at good publicity. Since meeting Angelina, Brad has been involved with various humanitarian initiatives including the ONE Campaign, aimed to fight AIDS and poverty in developing countries, and Not On Our Watch, an organization aimed at focusing global attention on the atrocities occurring in Darfur. Brad's love of architecture has also led to the creation of the Make It Right Foundation which will help in constructing 150 new houses in New Orleans' Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Ninth Ward, with an emphasis on sustainability and affordability. When Brad and Angelina aren't busy fixing the world's ills, they spend their time devoted to their children Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh and twins Knox and Vivienne. The Obama's may be The United States' first family, but the Jolie-Pitt's are the world's first family, no doubt.

what's up next for brad pitt?

After many personal and professional struggles, Brad Pitt finally seems to be in a groove. His last slew of films, including Babel (for which he received a Golden Globe nomination), Ocean's Thirteen, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Burn After Reading, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for which he received his first Oscar nomination for best actor in a leading role, seem to be his most assured, and everyone is talking about his latest role as Lt. Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino's WWII romp Inglourious Basterds. Also look for Brad to make waves starring in Terrence Malick's highly anticipated The Tree of Life, which also stars Sean Penn and is expected to be released by year's end.

Pitt's production company, Plan B Entertainment--who had a hand in films like The Departed and A Mighty Heart--also has a slew of films on the way including Kick-Ass, Eat, Pray, Love, and The Sparrow.

Tom Cruise

In true rags-to-riches fashion, Tom Cruise's stunning climb to the top of the Hollywood food chain began in the most humbling of circumstances. Moving often and facing a double whammy of dyslexia and a difficult relationship with his strict father, Tom Cruise (then known as Thomas Cruise Mapother) came to find outlets for his struggles in athletics and drama. During a stint at Henry Munro Middle School in Ottawa, Ontario, he became a seasoned floor hockey player and performed in stage plays like IT, which was picked up for filming by a local TV network. In the wake of his parents' separation, Cruise returned to the U.S. where he was enrolled in three high schools -- and briefly considered a future as a Catholic priest -- before finding a second home in the drama department of a New Jersey high school and realizing that acting was his calling.

Fueled by a stronger desire to act than to finish high school, Tom Cruise bailed out of class in his senior year, and hightailed it to the Big Apple in search of stardom. Early on, he had the typical working actor experience of dreaming big while waiting tables, but thanks to Creative Arts Agency agent Paula Wagner, he found his way into the business. It came via 1981's Endless Love with Brooke Shields, which is now widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made.

With nowhere else to go but up, Tom Cruise had better luck in Taps, where his bit part was upgraded to a supporting role, and The Outsiders, where he perfected his art under the watchful eye of Francis Ford Coppola and shared the screen with future stars Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, and Diane Lane. If these films represented a warm-up for Tom Cruise, his first true break would be his Golden Globe-nominated performance in 1983's Risky Business, where his high-watt charisma kicked into full gear as Joel Goodson, the young Chicago man who learns a few lessons in life from the savvy and sexy Rebecca De Mornay.

tom cruise stars in top gun and mission: impossible

Now at a stage in his career where he could headline his own movie, Tom Cruise went from bright new talent to top-shelf movie star with a little 1986 effort called Top Gun. Besides recharging the flyboy genre and imprinting the likes of Val Kilmer and the movie's signature anthem into pop culture immortality, Top Gun was the perfect vehicle to brand Tom Cruise as the cocky, sure-minded movie star for his generation. Even if he could have coasted along strictly on the foundation of his new career swagger, Cruise chose not to. Instead, he surrounded himself with great talent in front of and behind the camera. Films like Rain Man, The Color of Money, Born on the Fourth of July, A Few Good Men, and The Firm put the actor alongside greats like Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman, and with directors such as Martin Scorsese, Rob Reiner and Oliver Stone keeping watch.

The success of all of these films -- and the Oscar nomination that accompanied his portrayal of real-life Vietnam vet Ron Kovic in July -- made Tom Cruise the most bankable star in Hollywood. Even projected disasters like Interview with the Vampire with Brad Pitt became profitable hits, ultimately giving him the power to create his own lucrative production company with Paula Wagner. Their first effort was a 1996 cinematic update of the classic TV series, Mission: Impossible. In ringleader Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise found a confident modern update of Top Gun's Maverick and an ultra-successful franchise that continued with the $400-million-grossing sequel in 2000. In between, he earned his second and third Oscar nominations as a sports agent facing a new reality in Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire and a hotheaded motivational speaker in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. Along with his wife at the time, Nicole Kidman, he starred as a doctor coping badly with his wife's thoughts of infidelity in the sexual odyssey Eyes Wide Shut, the final film in the oeuvre of the legendary Stanley Kubrick.

tom cruise stars in tropic thunder and knight and day

With more hits on the way like Vanilla Sky, Steven Spielberg's Minority Report and 2004's Collateral, it seemed like Tom Cruise would maintain his impossible hold over Hollywood until retirement. Things changed in a hurry in 2005 during his promotional tour for his second collaboration with Steven Spielberg, War of the Worlds. The new relationship between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, as well as the actor's outspoken pro-Scientology stance against anti-depressants and conventional psychiatry, began to rub many of his fans the wrong way. This culminated in a manic couch-jumping appearance on Oprah that made Tom Cruise into an ideal target for South Park and general pop culture ridicule instead of encouraging people to see his movie. While War of the Worlds still finished as the biggest worldwide box office earner in the actor's career, more media appearances -- like an ill-fated interview with Matt Lauer -- didn't help him any and Paramount Pictures dissolved its 14-year partnership with him after the release of Mission: Impossible III in 2006.

With a celebrity approval rating to match that of outgoing President George W. Bush, Tom Cruise tried to rehabilitate his image, with disappointing results early on. He and Paula Wagner jumped studios to United Artists, where they made the 2007 political dud, Lions for Lambs, a film ignored at the box office despite the presence of Tom Cruise, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. The following year, Tom Cruise buried himself under heavy makeup to play the supporting role of foul-mouthed studio big shot Les Grossman in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder. The role represented a little-seen comedic side of Tom Cruise and won back some of his disillusioned fans. His next film for United Artists, the historical thriller Valkyrie, earned over $200 million worldwide and did more to add some luster to his fading reputation. After bringing back Les Grossman as a recurring character at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, Cruise made amends with Paramount and both have signed on to develop Mission: Impossible IV.

For now, what happens next with the career of Tom Cruise will be a direct result of the success or failure of Knight and Day, his pricey reunion with his Vanilla Sky costar, Cameron Diaz. It could give him a much-needed professional resuscitation or give his detractors more reasons to dismiss him.

Early box office numbers were disappointing, however; Knight and Day didn't break $30 million domestically during its first weekend.