Career: At the age of 10, Christian made his West End debut in The Nerd, opposite Rowan Atkinson. He was hand-picked from 4,000 auditionees to take the lead role in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun in 1987. Unlike many child stars, he has successfully made the transition to serious grown-up actor. Films since include Little Women, The Portrait of a Lady, Velvet Goldmine, American Psycho, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Shaft, Reign of Fire, Equilibrium and The Machinist. His status soared after playing Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins and its sequels. His other recent films have included The Prestige, 3:10 to Yuma, Terminator Salvation, Public Enemies, The Fighter (for which he won an Oscar) and American Hustle.

Career: At the age of 16, Hathaway was cast in short-lived TV series Get Real. Her big-screen debut came in The Other Side of Heaven. In the same year she beat 500 other girls to land a role alongside Julie Andrews in Disney's The Princess Diaries. The film was a huge success and the family films Nicholas Nickleby, Ella Enchanted and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement followed before she started taking on more mature roles. The first of these was gritty drama Havoc. Since then, Hathaway has starred in a number of box-office hits, including Brokeback Mountain, The Devil Wears Prada, Becoming Jane, Rachel Getting Married, Alice in Wonderland, Love & Other Drugs, The Dark Knight Rises and Les Miserables, a role that secured her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

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: At the age of six, he began his acting career and appeared in a number of TV movies during the late 1980s. In 1991, he received his first major role in the short-lived Dark Shadows, before 3rd Rock from the Sun made him a household name five years later. A shining performance in modern-day Shakespeare adaptation 10 Things I Hate About You, revealed that he was a talented actor who could fly outside the confines of a sitcom. In the early noughties, Gordon-Levitt began to explore darker indie territory with Manic (2001), before turning his back on acting to go to university. Three years later he was pulled back from his self-imposed exile, and began to make a name for himself as a credible actor with a number of strange, obscure indie roles - in Mysterious Skin (2004) he played a gay prostitute. Gordon-Levitt wasn't a man out to make a quick buck - he hand-picked his projects on their creative merits - and this paid dividends in 2009 with (500) Days of Summer, which showed he was the quintessential alternative leading male. His recent credits include Inception, 50/50, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, Lincoln and Don Jon.

Career: Following a successful spell on stage he turned to movies, making a massive impact as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy in 1986, and Prick Up Your Ears a year later. Alcoholism threatened his career, but he has now quit booze. His roles include playing Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK, the title role in Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Mason Verger in Hannibal. Other projects include Lost in Space, Leon, and The Fifth Element. His directorial debut, the acclaimed Nil By Mouth, was a heart-breaking, semi-autobiographical movie about his childhood. Oldman suffered a career slump around the Millennium, when he concentrated more on raising his young family than he did on acting. But he came back stronger than ever with roles in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy (for which he was Oscar nominated) and the Batman franchise.

Career: Freeman's first credited big-screen appearance was in 1971's Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow?, before he landed a regular role on children's show The Electric Company. In the mid-1980s, Freeman started getting more prominent roles in movies. Among his biggest hits have been Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption, Se7en, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Glory, Amistad, Deep Impact and Bruce Almighty. He is also an in-demand voice-over artist, lending his dulcet tones to sci-fi blockbuster War of the Worlds and the Oscar-winning documentary March of the Penguins. Freeman received an Academy Award of his own for his supporting role in Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. A prolific actor, he has more recently appeared in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy and always has several films in pre-production.

Career: Caine worked on stage and appeared in small roles on TV, often struggling to make ends meet. He was good friends with Terence Stamp during the early 1960s, before either became famous, and they often shared digs. Caine decided if he wasn't successful by the age of 30 he'd quit acting. Days before this milestone he landed the role in Zulu which made his name. The Harry Palmer spy movies, The Italian Job and Alfie secured his star status. Since then, he's made many films, many forgettable and, by his own admission, done for the money. Highlights include Get Carter, Sleuth (plus a remake), The Man Who Would Be King, Educating Rita, Little Voice, Mona Lisa, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Harry Brown and Interstellar. He won Oscars for Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules. He claims he will retire from showbusiness when he's 90.

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).