José Padilha (born August 1, 1967) is a Brazilian film director and producer.

Padilha emerged onto the Brazilian movie scene with his first feature film Bus 174 (2002). In 2007, Padilha directed The Elite Squad, his first fictional film. The film was a commercial and critical success, seen by more than 11 million people in Brazil, coming in at Number 1 in 2007. In 2008, Padilha won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Elite Squad, bringing him international attention. Due to the success of Elite Squad, a 2010 sequel was released: The Elite Squad 2 - The Enemy Within. This film was selected as Brazil's official Oscars entry in 2012 for Best Foreign Film, but it did not make the final shortlist.

The films form part of a planned trilogy, examining the influence of media, police and politicians on society.

The documentary film Secrets of the Tribe premièred at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. This film explores certain allegations first brought to light in Patrick Tierney's book Darkness in El Dorado (2000), that anthropologists studying the Yanomami Indians in the 1960s and '70s engaged in bizarre and inappropriate interactions with the tribe, including sexual and medical violations.

José Eugênio Soares, best known as Jô Soares (born January 16, 1938 in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian comedian, talk show host, author, theatrical producer, director, actor, painter and musician. Soares was born in Rio de Janeiro. After being educated in Switzerland and the United States, Soares returned to Rio and worked at TV Rio in 1958, writing and performing in comedy shows for the station. He acted as an American in Carlos Manga's O homem do Sputnik. In 1970, Soares started working at Rede Globo.

In 1988, Soares moved to SBT, where he hosted a talk-show, Jô Soares Onze e Meia ("Jô Soares Eleven Thirty"), until 1999. In 2000, Soares took his show's format (very similar to David Letterman's) back to Rede Globo, where it was then called Programa do Jô, and presents the program until the present day.

He is known for his knowledge of culture and literature, and for speaking English, Spanish, Italian and French besides his native Portuguese.

His first novel O Xangô de Baker Street was written in 1995 and has already been published in several other countries; it was made into a film in 2000. He has put out various jazz CDs. He has also produced many plays including a recent version of Richard III.

Gary Leonard Oldman (born 21 March 1958) is an English screen and stage actor, filmmaker and musician, who is the highest-grossing actor in the history of film. A successful theatre actor and former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Oldman gained mainstream recognition from the early 1980s to early 1990s for his portrayals of morally ambiguous characters in films including Meantime, Sid and Nancy, Prick Up Your Ears, The Firm, State of Grace, JFK and Dracula. He became a popular portrayer of villains by the mid 1990s, playing the antagonist of True Romance, Léon, The Fifth Element, Air Force One and The Contender. Since the millenium Oldman has starred in such films as the Harry Potter series, Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, Kung Fu Panda 2 and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Aside from film acting, he has starred in television shows like Knots Landing and Friends, voiced various characters in the Call of Duty video game series, and wrote and directed Nil By Mouth, a film partially based on his own childhood.

Michael John Douglas (born September 5, 1951), better known by the stage name Michael Keaton, is an American actor known for his early comedic roles, most notably his performance as the title character of Tim Burton's Beetlejuice (1988). Keaton is also famous for his dramatic portrayal of Bruce Wayne/Batman in Tim Burton's Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992). He has since appeared in various other films, including Pixar's Cars (2006) and Toy Story 3 (2010).

Keaton, the youngest of seven children, was born in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, and lived in Robinson Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. His father, George A. Douglas, worked as a civil engineer and surveyor, and his mother, Leona Elizabeth (née Loftus), a homemaker, came from a Scots-Irish community in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. Keaton was raised in a large Catholic family and attended Montour High School in Pennsylvania. He studied speech for two years at Kent State before dropping out and moving to Pittsburgh.

An unsuccessful attempt at comedy led Keaton to working as a TV cameraman at public television station WQED (TV) in Pittsburgh. Keaton first appeared on TV in the Pittsburgh-based public television programs, including "Where the Heart Is" and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (1975), as one of the "Flying Zucchini Brothers." He also served as a full-time production assistant on the show. (In 2004, following Fred Rogers' death, Keaton hosted the PBS memorial tribute program, Fred Rogers: Everybody's Favorite Neighbor.) Keaton also worked as an actor in Pittsburgh theatre; he played the role of Rick in the Pittsburgh premiere of David Rabe's Sticks and Bones with the Pittsburgh Poor Players.

Joel Kinnaman (born Charles Joel Nordström; 25 November 1979) is a Swedish-American actor from Stockholm. He is best known for playing the lead role in the Swedish film Easy Money and for his role as Frank Wagner in the Johan Falk film series – a role that earned him a Guldbagge Award nomination in the "Best Supporting Actor" category. As of 2011^[update] he stars in AMC's The Killing.

Kinnaman was born in Stockholm, Sweden. His mother, Bitte, is Swedish, and his father, Steve Kinnaman (originally David Kinnaman), is American, and had left the U.S. during the Vietnam War. He has both Swedish and American citizenship due to his father's United States birth. Kinnaman is Jewish on his mother's side. He has five sisters, one of whom is actress Melinda Kinnaman (his half-sister).

Kinnaman started his acting career in 2002. He made his breakthrough in the 2009 film I skuggan av värmen and his success continued with a role in six films of the Johan Falk film series. He was then cast in the film Easy Money (released January 2010), which brought him attention in Sweden and the rest of the world. Looking to expand his acting career, Kinnaman hired an agent in the United States, the same agent that represents Johnny Depp. It was announced in the spring of 2010 that he would be making his international film debut in the thriller The Darkest Hour, which began filming in Moscow in June 2010 and was released in December 2011. Beginning in April 2011, Kinnaman has a starring role as Detective Stephen Holder in the AMC television series The Killing.