Career: Within five years of his big-screen debut, Cruise was one of the hottest actors of his generation, having starred in the likes of Risky Business and Top Gun. The likes of Rain Man, The Color of Money, Interview with the Vampire and Days of Thunder followed. He has also turned his hand to producing and made the smart move of taking a share of several of his film's profits, making him one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. Recent hits include Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Jack Reacher, Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow. He has been Oscar-nominated three times, for his performances in Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia, but has yet to win. His next major film is Mission: Impossible 5.

Career: Voight's professional career began on stage with a role in a Broadway production of The Sound of Music. He made his TV debut in a 1963 episode of Naked City and four years later appeared in Fearless Frank, his first film. He became a star in 1969 thanks to an Oscar-nominated performance in Midnight Cowboy. A series of well-received movies followed, such as Catch-22, Deliverance and The Odessa File. He won a Best Actor Academy Award for 1978's Coming Home. Major films since include Table for Five, The Champ, Heat, Mission: Impossible, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Ali and The Manchurian Candidate. He played Jonas Hodges, the main antagonist of Jack Bauer, in the seventh season of American drama 24. More recently, he has starred in Ray Donovan.

Career: Rhames first appeared on Broadway in the play The Winter Boys in 1984. Ving continued his rise to fame through his work in soap operas. He found work as a supporting actor, and came to the attention of the general public by playing the role of Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction (1994). Major hits like Con-Air and the three Mission Impossible movies followed. He won a Golden Globe in 1998 for best actor in a TV miniseries for his performance in HBO's Don King: Only in America - and memorably presented it to Jack Lemmon. Other hits include Bringing Out the dead and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. He played the title role in a short-lived remake of Kojak.

Career: Redgrave's first professional job was at Frinton Summer Theatre. She made her West End debut opposite her father in A Touch of the Sun, and starred alongside him in 1958's Behind the Mask, her film debut. She became a face of the 1960s thanks to movies such as Blowup, Isadora and Camelot before winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1977 for Julia. Redgrave has continued to appear on the big screen in productions such as Agatha, Yanks, Wetherby, Howards End, Mission: Impossible, Wilde, Venus, Atonement, Song for Marion and Ralph Fiennes' acclaimed film version of Coriolanus. She's also an activist who works tirelessly for various causes, often creating controversy with her forthright views.

Career: Reno's career began in French cinema, where he appeared in many of Luc Besson's films, including Besson's first short film, L'Avant dernier. All of the films they have done together have achieved critical and commercial success, including Nikita (1990), the English-language films The Big Blue (1988), and Léon (1994) which features a young Natalie Portman. Reno has starred in such high-profile American films as French Kiss (1995) with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline, Mission: Impossible (1996) with Tom Cruise, Ronin (1998) with Robert De Niro, and Godzilla (1998). Reno turned down the role of Agent Smith in the The Matrix. He has not neglected to work in French productions either—e.g., Les Visiteurs (1993) and The Crimson Rivers (2000). He also portrayed Captain Bezu Fache in the Ron Howard film The Da Vinci Code. More recent work includes Margaret, Les Seigneurs, and TV police drama Jo.

Career: Her big break came when she was cast in A Handful of Dust (1988), a role that won her an Evening Standard British Film Award for most promising newcomer. She went on to star in Bitter Moon (1992), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996), The English Patient (1996), The Horse Whisperer (1998), Random Hearts (1999), Gosford Park (2001), The Golden Compass (2007) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). Thomas has also acted in a number of French films, including Ne le dis à personne (2006), Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (2008), Partir (2009) and Elle s'appelait Sarah (2010).