Career: Other TV work followed with roles in Bleak House, The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, Agatha Christie's Marple, Waking the Dead and a standout performance in an episode of Doctor Who. An Academy Award nomination for her role in An Education (2009) elevated her to the world stage and she has never looked back. Since then she has starred in a number of independent and big-budget films, including Public Enemies (2009), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), Never Let Me Go (2010), Drive (2011), Shame (2011), The Great Gatsby (2013) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).

Career: Helena's professional debut came at 16 in a TV commercial, swiftly followed by small-screen movie Pattern of Roses. The film Lady Jane followed, but it was 1985's A Room with a View which made her a star. Roles in Hamlet, Howards End and Frankenstein followed, and she was Oscar-nominated for 1997's The Wings of the Dove. The actress went on to prove she could do more than just period drama in projects such as Fight Club, Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and lent her voice to animated movies Corpse Bride and Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. She made her musical debut in the big-screen version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. She's since appeared in Dark Shadows, Les Miserables and Burton & Taylor, and played Bellatrix Lestrange in several of the Harry Potter movies.

Career: Streep started out on the New York stage before making her TV and film debuts in 1977 in Secret Service and Julia respectively. She received her first Oscar nomination a year later for The Deer Hunter and has been nominated a further 17 times - a record - with wins for Kramer vs Kramer, Sophie's Choice and The Iron Lady. Other acclaimed projects include Holocaust, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Silkwood, Out of Africa, A Cry in the Dark, Postcards from the Edge, The Bridges of Madison County, The Hours, Adaptation, The Devil Wears Prada, Angels in America and box-office smash Mamma Mia! Other recent hits include Doubt, It's Complicated and Julie and Julia.

Career: Her first major film role came in Nicholas Nickleby (2002) and a year later, she landed the lead in I Capture the Castle (2003). Her film credits also include Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004), Vanity Fair (2004), Scoop (2006), Angel (2007), Atonement (2007) and One Day (2011). She received Golden Globe nominations for both TV miniseries Emma and TV drama The Hour.

Career: Gleeson's classical acting skills gained the attention of Mel Gibson and he was cast in Braveheart (1995). Since then he has been in a huge variety of films, such as Mission: Impossible II (2000), Lake Placid (1999), The General (1998) and Gangs of New York (2002). He proved his was in the A-league when he was cast in the Harry Potter films and has several leading man roles to his name, including the popular crime caper, In Bruges.

Career: Whishaw made his film debut in The Trench (1999). His other film credits include Layer Cake (2004), Stoned (2005), Brideshead Revisited (2008), The Tempest (2010) and Cloud Atlas (2012). He has played Q in the James Bond movies Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015). More recently, he has voiced the title character in Paddington (2014) and appeared in The Lobster (2015), Suffragette (2015), The Danish Girl (2015) and In the Heart of the Sea (2015). On the small screen, he has starred in Nathan Barley, Criminal Justice, The Hollow Crown, The Hour and London Spy.