Cole Hauser

Born: 22nd March 1975
Where: Santa Barbara, California, USA

The longtime support actor landed his first lead role as a film star stalked by tabloid photographers in the action thriller Paparazzi.

The great-grandson of Warner Bros founder Harry M Warner and grandson of a police commissioner, Hauser dropped out of high school.

He made his film debut in 1992's School Ties, co-starring alongside a host of soon-to-be big name players, including Brendan Fraser, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

He worked with Affleck again the following year in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, playing Benny, a likable straight-talking football player.

In 1995, Hauser starred in the similarly themed Skins, directed by his father, actor-director Wings Hauser.

Also that year, he re-teamed with Affleck and Matt Damon in a supporting role as Billy, in the Oscar-winning feature Good Will Hunting.

2000 saw Hauser as a futuristic bounty hunter who survives a spacecraft crash in David Twohy's sci-fi thriller Pitch Black, co-starring Vin Diesel and Rhada Mitchell.

A semi-professional football player before his film career, Hauser put his athletic experience to good use with a role in Michael Corrente's Scottish football drama A Shot at Glory.

He followed this up with a brace of war movies - Joel Schumacher's Tigerland and Hart's War alongside Bruce Willis.

Next up was the social drama White Oleander with Michelle Pfeiffer before he reteamed with Willis for the African action thriller Tears of the Sun.

He also played Carter Verone in the nippy street cars caper Too Fast Too Furious.

In 2004, debut director Paul Abascal cast him as Bo Laramie in the thriller Paparazzi opposite Tom Sizemore.