Career: After graduating from Rada, he made his West End debut in Another Country and enjoyed success in Northern Ireland with his appearances in three Belfast-set Play for Today productions. He then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. Despite some big hits, he disliked the organisation's structure and so set up his own theatre company. TV series Fortunes of War made him a star in the UK, but it was his film version of Henry V that catapulted him to global fame. Other films include Peter's Friends, Dead Again, Love's Labours Lost, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. More recently, he's appeared in TV dramas Conspiracy, Shackleton, 10 Days to War and Wallander, and the movies Rabbit-Proof Fence, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and My Week with Marilyn. He also directed the revamp of Sleuth, The Magic Flute and had a huge hit with blockbuster Thor.

Career: Hardy made his film debut in Black Hawk Down in 2001. A year later he starred in Star Trek: Nemesis and in 2003 he won the London Evening Standard Theatre Award for his performances in Blood and In Arabia We'd All Be Kings. He continued to make a name for himself on the small screen in The Virgin Queen, Meadowlands, Oliver Twist and The Take, and on the big screen in RocknRolla, Bronson, Inception, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, This Means War and Lawless. He delivered a standout performance as the villain Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, before scoring a critical hit with Locke in 2013. More recently he's taken the lead role in Mad Max: Fury Road, and played both Kray twins in Legend.

Career: Known predominately for his stage career, Rylance has starred in a number of Shakespearean productions, including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, As You Like It and Macbeth. He became the first Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in 1995 and continued this role until 2005. While he was there, he directed and starred in a number of productions. He has won Olivier Awards for Much Ado About Nothing, and Jerusalem, and Tony Awards for Boeing Boeing, Jerusalem, and Twelfth Night. His film credits include Prospero's Books (1991), Angels and Insects (1995), Intimacy (2001), The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), Blitz (2011) and Anonymous (2011). More recently, he starred in the BBC drama Wolf Hall.

Career: In 1996, Murphy made his professional stage debut in Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs. The runaway success of the play prompted him to leave university and quit his band, and led to him landing an agent. Between 1997 and 2003, he busied himself in an array of indie productions, but it was his powerful performance in the 2002 thriller 28 Days Later that really got him noticed. Since then, he has notched up impressive performances in a number of diverse films, including The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Sunshine, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Cold Mountain, Red Eye, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Inception and Tron: Legacy. He's also the star of the BBC's Peaky Blinders.

Career: The success of Following, made for £3,000, led to Nolan directing Memento (2000), which he co-wrote with his brother Jonathan. The film was a box-office success and was nominated for two Academy Awards. He followed this up with box-office success Insomnia (2002). In 2005, he rebooted the Batman franchise with Batman Begins. It was a critical and commercial success. The sequel, The Dark Knight (2008), cemented Nolan's position as a leading director when it took more than $1billion at the worldwide box office. His trilogy of Batman movies ended with The Dark Knight Rises (2012), which also generated more than $1billion at the box office. Nolan has also had success with The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014).