Gary Ross (born November 3, 1956) is an American writer, director, and actor. He is best known for directing Pleasantville and Seabiscuit, both of which featured Tobey Maguire in the lead role. He is also the director and co-screenwriter of the film, The Hunger Games, which was released on March 23, 2012.

Ross was born in Castro Valley, California, the son of screenwriter Arthur A. Ross. Ross is Jewish.

Ross's first produced screenplay was 1988's Big, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He also received a Best Original Screenplay nomination for 1993's Dave. He wrote early drafts of 1992's Mr. Baseball and 1994's Lassie. He wrote the screenplay for 1998's Pleasantville, which also marked his directorial debut. In 2003, he wrote, directed and produced Seabiscuit based on Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He wrote the screenplay for 2008's The Tale of Despereaux based on the Newbery Medal-winning children's book by Kate DiCamillo. He has also written the screenplay for the forthcoming remake of 1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon on which his father was a screenwriter. He has written scripts titled Dog Years and The Free State of Jones which have not yet been produced as feature films. He also co-wrote the film, The Hunger Games, with Suzanne Collins, who wrote the novel which the film is based on.

Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. (born January 5, 1942) is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993. He has also co-anchored CBS This Morning since January 2012. Rose, along with Lara Logan, has hosted the revived CBS classic Person to Person, a news program during which celebrities are interviewed in their homes, originally hosted from 1953 to 1961 by Edward R. Murrow.

Rose was born in Henderson, North Carolina, the only child of Margaret Frazier and Charles Peete Rose, Sr., tobacco farmers who owned a country store. As a child, Rose lived above his parents' store in Henderson and helped out with the family business from age seven. Rose admitted in a Fresh Dialogues interview that as a child his insatiable curiosity was constantly getting him in trouble. A high school basketball star, Rose entered Duke University intending to pursue a degree with a pre-med track, but an internship in the office of Democratic North Carolina Senator B. Everett Jordan got him interested in politics. Rose graduated in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. At Duke, he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. He earned a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law in 1968. He met his wife, Mary (née King), while attending Duke.

Jennifer Shrader Lawrence (born August 15, 1990) is an American film and television actress. She had lead roles in TBS's The Bill Engvall Show and in the independent films The Burning Plain and Winter's Bone, for which she received nominations for the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Satellite Award, and the Screen Actors Guild Award. At age 20, she was the second youngest actress ever to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She is also known for playing Mystique in X-Men: First Class. In 2012, Lawrence achieved wider recognition starring as the heroine Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, an adaptation of Suzanne Collins' best-selling novel of the same name. Her performance in the film garnered her notable critical praise and marked her as the highest grossing action heroine of all time. Lawrence's performances thus far have prompted Rolling Stone to define her as "the most talented young actress in America."

Lawrence was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, and has two older brothers. Her parents are Karen (née Koch), who runs a children's camp, and Gary Lawrence, who once owned a concrete construction firm, Lawrence & Associates. She acted in local theater and, by the age of 14, had decided to pursue an acting career, persuading her parents to take her to New York City to find a talent agent. Prior to finding success in Hollywood, Lawrence attended Kammerer Middle School. She graduated from high school two years early with a 3.9 average in order to begin a career in acting. While growing up and in between acting, Lawrence served as an assistant nurse at the children's summer day camp that her mother ran.

Katniss Everdeen is a fictional character and the protagonist of Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy. Her name comes from an edible plant called katniss. Jennifer Lawrence portrays Katniss in the movie The Hunger Games, directed by Gary Ross.

Katniss and her family come from District 12, a coal-mining district that is the poorest and least populated district in the dystopian fictional autocratic nation of Panem. In the course of the first book, The Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to replace her sister, Primrose "Prim" Everdeen, after she is called forth during Reaping Day, a day in which, annually, one male and one female tribute in the age bracket of 12 to 18 are called forth from each district to fight to the death in an arena in what are known as the Hunger Games. Katniss, after an alliance with Rue from District 11 (who reminded Katniss of her own sister), a 12 year old who had a very touching death, she joins up with fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark, compete in the Games together. She uses her knowledge of hunting and archery to survive, and the two become the victors after defying the Capitol's attempt to force one to kill the other. Throughout the next two novels, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, Katniss becomes the symbol of a rebellion for the twelve districts against the Capitol's oppression, and ultimately decides the final balance of power in Panem by killing the aspiring president of District 13, the vanguard of the rebellion, for attempting to oppress the defeated Capitol itself and presumably ordering the final bombings that resulted in Prim's death.