Jonathan Rhys-Meyers

Born: July 27 1977
Where: Dublin, Ireland

The actor shot to stardom with villainous roles in larger scale independent films following his inauspicious discovery by casting agents in a Cork pool hall.

The product of a broken home he was thrown out of school at 15 and worked the streets as a young grifter before settling on a film career.

Previously ambivalent about acting, a failed audition for a lead role in the 1994 feature The War of the Buttons spurred him on.

His first job was in a Knorr soup commercial and soon after he made his first big screen appearance with a bit part in 1994's A Man of No Importance.

Rhys Meyers followed up with the title character in the little-seen The Disappearance of Finbar before landing the role as the assassin of Irish revolutionary Michael Collins.

The young actor kept busy with the fantasy-comedy feature The Killer Tongue and made his US television debut that same year as a young Samson in Samson and Delilah.

Next up was a featured turn in Todd Haynes' highly stylized Velvet Goldmine, an engagingly indulgent look at the early 1970s glam rock.

That film, along with an off screen liaison with co-star Toni Collette, raised the young actor's profile considerably.

Generating less buzz was his featured role in Mike Figgis' The Loss of Sexual Innocence and the criminal partner of Rupert Everett's Paul in Michael Radford's B. Monkey.

Higher profile projects followed in 1999, including a memorable supporting role as a sadistic Bushwacker in Ang Lee's Civil War-era Western Ride With the Devil.

His career continued its upswing, with a co-starring turn alongside Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange in the gory Shakespeare adaptation Titus.

Next up was the drama Prozac Nation, the routine thriller Tangled and the British box office triumph Bend It Like Beckham.

In 2003, he appeared in the run-of-the-mill chiller Octane with Madeleine Stowe and the Alex Garland adaptation The Tesseract.

The following year he starred in the big screen adaptation of Vanity Fair and played Cassander in Oliver Stone's sumptuous biopic of Alexander.

Recent work includes the role of a tennis playing cad in Woody Allen's London-shot thriller Match Point.