An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called "readers"), theatre, music (in which they are called "listeners"), video game (in which they are called "players"), or academics in any medium. Audience members participate in different ways in different kinds of art; some events invite overt audience participation and others allowing only modest clapping and criticism and reception.

Media audiences are studied by academics in media audience studies. Audience theory offers scholarly insight into audiences in general. These insights shape our knowledge of just how audiences affect and are affected by different forms of art. The biggest art form is the mass media. Films along with video games etc. take on a huge impact from the "audience" along with their reviews and recommendations. Jeff Jarvis, former media executive states "“Give the people control of media, they will use it. The corollary: Don’t give the people control of media, and you will lose. Whenever citizens can exercise control, they will.” As the audience we take on a lot of power as separate individuals and as a group. Now it has expanded into not just a movie screen or television but how we react to applications, the device we preview it on, the place we watch the film or even the time.

Dame Helen Mirren, DBE (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; 26 July 1945) is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.

Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Chiswick, West London. Her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov (1913–1980), was of Russian origin, and her mother, Kitty (née Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda Rogers; 1909–1996), was English. Mirren's paternal grandfather, Colonel Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, was in the Tsarist Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. He later became a diplomat, and was negotiating an arms deal in Britain, when he and his family were stranded during the Russian Revolution. The former diplomat became a London cab driver to support his family.

His son, Helen Mirren's father, changed the family name to the Scottish-sounding Mirren in the 1950s and became known as Basil Mirren. He played the viola with the London Philharmonic before World War II, and later drove a cab and was a driving-test examiner, before becoming a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport. Mirren's mother was from West Ham, East London, and was the 13th of 14 children born to a butcher whose father had been the butcher to Queen Victoria. Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very anti-monarchist".

Joshua Winslow "Josh" Groban (born February 27, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, actor, and record producer. His first four solo albums have been certified multi-platinum, and in 2007, he was charted as the number-one best selling artist in the United States with over 21 million records in that country. To date, he has sold over 24 million albums worldwide, and is the top selling classical artist of the 2000s in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Groban originally studied acting, but as his voice changed, it developed into a "significant instrument". Groban attended the Los Angeles High School for the Arts, a free public school where students received a conservatory-style education. His life changed when his vocal coach, Seth Riggs, submitted a tape of Josh singing "All I Ask of You", from The Phantom of the Opera, to Riggs' friend, producer, composer and arranger David Foster. Foster called him to stand in for an ailing Andrea Bocelli to rehearse a duet, "The Prayer," with Celine Dion at the rehearsal for the Grammy Awards in 1998.Rosie O'Donnell immediately invited him to appear on her talk show. Foster asked him to sing at the California Governor's Gray Davis' 1999 inauguration. He was cast on Ally McBeal by the show's creator, David E. Kelley, performing "You're Still You" for the 2001 season finale.

Ryan Thomas Gosling (born November 12, 1980) is a Canadian actor and musician. He began his career as a child star on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club (1993–95) and went on to appear in other family entertainment programs including Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1995), Goosebumps (1996), Breaker High (1997–98) and Young Hercules (1998–99). His first serious role was as a Jewish neo-Nazi in The Believer (2001), and he then built a reputation for playing misfits in independent films such as Murder by Numbers (2002), The Slaughter Rule (2002), The United States of Leland (2003) and Stay (2005).

Gosling came to the attention of a wider audience in 2004 with a leading role in the romantic drama The Notebook, for which he won four Teen Choice Awards and an MTV Movie Award. His performance as a drug-addicted teacher in Half Nelson (2006) was nominated for an Academy Award and his performance as a socially inept loner in Lars and the Real Girl (2007) was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, he starred in the courtroom thriller Fracture.

Matthew Herbert (born 1972), also known as Herbert, Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, and Wishmountain, is a British electronic musician. He has pioneered the use of so-called 'real', 'ordinary' or 'found' sounds in modern electronic music.

Herbert began experimenting with aleatoric processes while studying drama at Exeter University in the early 1990s. He gave his first professional public performance in 1995 as Wishmountain, reportedly using a bag of crisps as an instrument. Two years of performing under this name followed before he retired Wishmountain in favor of Radio Boy. In addition to creating rhythmic musique concrete as Radio Boy, however, Herbert worked on more traditional, yet relatively experimental dance music.

In the mid 90s he traveled to San Francisco, where he met jazz singer Dani Siciliano. In 1998, Herbert issued Around the House, which successfully mixed dance beats, sounds generated by everyday kitchen objects, and Siciliano's wry vocals. By the late Nineties, Herbert was remixing tracks for dance artists like Moloko, Motorbass, Alter Ego, and others. (Many of these were later collected on Secondhand Sounds: Herbert Remixes.) He also recorded singles, EPs, and albums under a variety of aliases (Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, and Transformer) as well as his own name.