A member of the high-school drama club, Bentley also appeared in various theater productions in nearby Little Rock, including Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and La Cage aux Folles. His mother literally had to drag him into a Juilliard audition to get Wes to apply to the prestigious school. He briefly attended Juilliard School in New York. Despite being raised a Methodist, Bentley considers himself a Taoist.

Bentley stormed onto the Hollywood scene with his incredible performance as a videographer/dealer of government-engineered pot in the Academy Award winning American Beauty (1999).

Since his breakthrough role in American Beauty, Bentley's career has ignited. He'll appear in Michael Winterbottom's upcoming The Claim and is set to appear in a host of films on the horizon, including the lead in a Montgomery Clift biopic.

Regarding his celebrity: "It's surreal how nonchalant my family is about it, because no one else in my hometown is. People seem to find my number, and most of them are guys who used to threaten to beat me up." —Wes Bentley to Vanity Fair

Credit: ifilm.com