Career: Clooney lived with his aunt Rosemary while attending auditions, working as her chauffeur. His TV debut was 1984's Riptide, following it up with, ironically, a short-lived sitcom called ER. A string of disastrous projects followed before medical drama ER turned him into a major star in 1994. After five years Clooney left to concentrate on films. Projects include O Brother Where Art Thou?, Three Kings, The Perfect Storm, Intolerable Cruelty, Out of Sight, Ocean's Eleven, Up in the Air, The American and Gravity. Clooney's directorial debut was Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and he has backed numerous projects as a producer. Away from showbusiness, he is involved with humanitarian causes.

Career: Damon dropped out of Harvard to concentrate on acting. He struggled to get roles and made his film debut in 1988's Mystic Pizza. Playing a troubled soldier in 1996's Courage Under Fire got him noticed. A year later, Good Will Hunting, based on a story by Damon and Affleck, became a major success and won them Best Screenplay Oscars. Since then, Damon has appeared in several hits, including Saving Private Ryan, Dogma, The Talented Mr Ripley, Stuck On You, The Departed, True Grit, Invictus and the Ocean's Eleven and Bourne franchises. He is now among the world's most bankable stars.

Career: Murray joined Chicago's Second City improvisational comedy team in 1973. He then worked with National Lampoon Radio Hour and joined the cast of Saturday Night Live. He starred in 1979's Meatballs, but his first major film was 1980's Caddyshack - Ghostbusters, Scrooged, Quick Change (which he co-directed) and Groundhog Day followed. In 1998, he worked with director Wes Anderson for the first time on Rushmore, which boosted his career as a dramatic actor. He's subsequently featured in the film-maker's The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Fantastic Mr Fox and Moonrise Kingdom. Other notable parts include Kingpin, Lost in Translation (for which he won a Bafta and received an Oscar nomination), Hyde Park on the Hudson, The Monuments Men, Broken Flowers and St Vincent.

Career: Blanchett started out on the Sydney stage, in both straight dramas and musicals. She made her TV debut in Police Rescue in 1993. Other brief small-screen roles followed, until two miniseries, Heartland and Bordertown, got her noticed. The movies Oscar and Lucinda, and Thank God He Met Lizzie were well-received, but it was 1998's Elizabeth, for which she received an Academy Award nomination, that made her a star. She reprised the role in sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Other notable projects include The Talented Mr Ripley, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Aviator (for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Robin Hood. In 2013, she won an Oscar for Blue Jasmine in the Best Actress category.

Career: Thanks to financial help from his brother, Goodman moved to New York in 1975 and attempted to make ends meet as a barman and waiter while gaining acting experience on stage and in adverts. His first film was 1977's Jailbait Babysitter. Other small film and TV roles followed, as did an acclaimed performance in Broadway musical Big River. His first film with the Coen brothers was 1987's Raising Arizona (he's worked with them a further three times). A year later he made his debut in Roseanne. The sitcom ran for nine years and made him a household name. Other notable projects include The Flintstones, The Artist, Flight and Treme.

Career: Following a spell on stage, Bonneville made his TV debut in teen sitcom Dodgem. He spent the next few years dividing his time between theatre, TV and film work, having small parts in such projects as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Cadfael, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Tomorrow Never Dies, Bugs, and Mosley. He had a regular role in sitcom Holding the Baby, but finally became a recognisable face thanks to the movie Notting Hill in 1999. Since then he's appeared in The Cazalets, Madame Bovary, The Gathering Storm, Tipping the Velvet, Doctor Zhivago, Twenty Twelve, and Love Again. He won rave reviews for his role in the TV comedy Freezing and Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story. However, he's become a TV superstar on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years thanks to his starring role in period drama Downton Abbey. Recent projects have included W1A and The Monuments Men.