"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.

Russell Ira Crowe (born 7 April 1964) is a New Zealand born Australian actor, film producer and musician. He came to international attention for his role as Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the 2000 historical epic film Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor, a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, an Empire Award for Best Actor and a London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and ten further nominations for Best Actor. Crowe appeared as the tobacco firm whistle blower Jeffrey Wigand in the 1999 film The Insider, for which he received five awards as Best Actor and seven nominations in the same category. In 2001, Crowe's portrayal of mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John F. Nash in the biopic A Beautiful Mind brought him numerous awards, including an BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor category Motion Picture Drama and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.

Jamie Jilynn Chung (born April 10, 1983) is an American actress known to reality television audiences as a cast member on the MTV reality television series, The Real World: San Diego and its spin-off show, Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Inferno II, and for her appearances in TV and films, such as I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Sorority Row, The Hangover Part II, and Sucker Punch. She is regarded by the Bleacher Report as the most successful Real World alum.

Jamie Chung was born and raised in San Francisco, California. According to MTV's 2004 biography page for her, she is a second-generation Korean-American raised by "traditional" parents, and was known to "tell it like it is." Chung attended the University of California, Riverside, where she was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority.

Chung was a cast member on The Real World: San Diego, the fourteenth season of MTV's long-running reality TV show, The Real World, which first aired in 2004. At the time she was selected to be on The Real World: San Diego, she was described by MTV as a hard-working student who worked two jobs to pay her tuition, but who also enjoyed partying. She was also described by her friends as not having the best taste in men.

Chris O'Dowd (born 9 October 1979) is an Irish comedian and actor best known for playing Roy Trenneman in British sitcom The IT Crowd. He has also appeared in several Hollywood films, including Gulliver's Travels and Bridesmaids, the latter of which, according to IFTN, "has thrown him into the position as one of Hollywood's leading men almost overnight with the film making over $100 million dollars at the US box office."

O'Dowd was born in Sligo and raised in Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland. His mother, Denise, is a counsellor and psychotherapist, and his father, Sean O'Dowd, is a graphic designer. He studied politics and sociology in University College, Dublin, and subsequently attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. O'Dowd did not obtain a degree from UCD, telling the UCD student newspaper the Tribune in 2011, "I didn't finish my degree. The politics part of it was fine, but I was doing sociology as-well and I could never bring myself to find an interest in it." He contributed to The University Observer and was active in UCD Dramsoc and the Literary and Historical Society.

Haifaa al-Mansour (Arabic: هيفاء المنصور‎, born 1974) is a film director from Saudi Arabia. She is one of the country's best-known and most controversial directors, and the first female Saudi filmmaker.

She is the daughter of the poet Abdul Rahman Mansour, who introduced her to films by video, there being no movie theaters in Saudi Arabia. With his encouragement, she studied comparative literature at the American University in Cairo.

She began her filmmaking career with three shorts, Who?, The Bitter Journey, and The Only Way Out. The Only Way Out won prizes in the United Arab Emirates and in Holland. She followed these with the documentary Women Without Shadows, which deals with the hidden lives of women of the Persian Gulf. It was shown in 17 international festivals, and received the Golden Dagger for Best Documentary in the Muscat Film Festival and a special jury mention in the fourth Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam. She was a guest at the 28th Three Continents Festival in Nantes, France.