Career: Fox debuted as a professional actor at the age of 15 in the sitcom Leo and Me. At 18, he moved to Los Angeles and took several bit parts, eventually making his mark in the sitcom Family Ties. Despite the show's heavy schedule, he found time to star in films, including the first of the Back to the Future trilogy, Teen Wolf, The Secret of My Success, and Bright Lights, Big City. In 1989, the series came to an end, giving Michael time to devote to his movie career, but he returned to TV in 1996 for Spin City and has guest starred in Scrubs. Despite ill health caused by Parkinson's disease, he has continued to work, most notably providing the voice for Stuart Little and featuring on TV in Boston Legal, Rescue Me and The Good Wife.

Career: Bad Taste's surprise success was mirrored by that of 1989's Meet The Feebles, enabling Jackson to raise enough money to make zombie comedy Braindead (1992). He then surprised his fans by making the impressive but more mainstream Heavenly Creatures (1994), which received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. TV movie Forgotten Silver and big-screen offering The Frighteners (1996) followed, but it was The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001 to 2003) that made him a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood and won him several Academy Awards. He followed that with a remake of King Kong (2005) and The Lovely Bones (2009). His next big project was a trilogy based on JRR Tolkien's novel The Hobbit. The first of these films, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, was released in 2012.