Career: Thurman made her mark in Dangerous Liaisons, and has been a star ever since. She made the controversial Henry and June in 1990, followed by more mainstream offerings Final Analysis and Mad Dog and Glory. Pulp Fiction proved she was more than just a pretty face in 1994. Over the course of her career, she has taken roles in the disastrous Batman and Robin and The Avengers, but fared better with the likes of Gattaca, Sweet and Lowdown, Paycheck, the Kill Bill movies, Be Cool and The Accidental Husband. In 2007, she was made a knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Away from acting, Thurman is an active supporter of several charitable organisations. She is working on a third Kil Bill film and is one of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Career: After being discharged from service, Carradine became a commercial artist in New York, then found fame on Broadway in a number of productions. He moved back to Hollywood in the mid-1960s. Little-seen projects such as TV series Shane and movie Bus Riley's Back in Town followed. He became a household name thanks to long-running programme Kung Fu, playing a role originally earmarked for Bruce Lee. The same year, 1972, he starred in Martin Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha. Films since include The Long Goodbye, Gray Lady Down, The Long Riders and Bird on a Wire before finding a new generation of fans in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill movies. He continued to act until his death in a Bangkok hotel room in 2009.

Career: Jackson's first film was Together for Days in 1972. He later spent two years as a stand-in on The Cosby Show, before starring in the original Broadway production of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. A series of walk-on parts in films and on TV followed. Spike Lee cast him as the crack-addicted Gator in Jungle Fever, which gained him international acclaim. His most notable films have included Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction (for which he was Oscar-nominated), Star Wars: Episodes One, Two and Three, Shaft, The 51st State, Unbreakable, Changing Lanes, Black Snake Moan, Django Unchained, Thor, The Avengers and many more. He is regarded as one of the most bankable assets in the movie business and always has a number of films in the pipeline.

Career: In 1990, Tarantino sold the script for True Romance for $50,000 and he was going to use most of this money to make a low-budget version of his screenplay for Reservoir Dogs. However, a friend of a friend showed a copy to Harvey Keitel, who raised the extra money needed to increase the budget to $1.5million. The film was released in 1992 to critical acclaim. Tarantino's second film as a director, Pulp Fiction, was a huge commercial success, winning the Palme D'Or at the Cannes film festival and an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Projects since then include From Dusk Till Dawn, Jackie Brown, the Kill Bill movies, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained. He has also directed work for TV, notably earning an Emmy nomination for directing an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.