Leonardo DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Irmelin (née Indenbirken), a former legal secretary, and George DiCaprio, an underground comic artist and producer/distributor of comic books. His mother moved from Oer-Erkenschwick at the Ruhr, Germany, to the U.S. during the 1950s, while his father is a fourth-generation American of half Italian and half German descent. His maternal grandmother, Helene Indenbirken, who was born Yelena Smirnova, was a Russian immigrant to Germany.

Jennifer Lopez's first big break came in 1997, when she was chosen to play the title role in Selena, a biopic of the Tejano pop singer Selena. Despite having previously worked with Nava on Mi Familia, Jennifer Lopez was subjected to an intense auditioning process before landing the lead role of Selena. Jennifer Lopez earned widespread praise for her performance, including a Golden Globe Award nomination for "Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy". Later that year Jennifer Lopez appeared in two major films. Jennifer Lopez starred in the horror film Anaconda alongside Ice Cube and Jon Voight, playing the role of Terri Flores, a director who is shooting a documentary while traveling through the Amazon River. Despite being a modest box office hit, the film was critically panned. Jennifer Lopez then starred as the leading actress in the neo-noir film U Turn, which is based on the book Stray Dogs, starring alongside Sean Penn and Billy Bob Thornton.

Ryan Reynolds' career began in 1990 when he starred as Billy in the Canadian-produced teen soap Hillside, distributed in the United States by Nickelodeon as Fifteen. As an adult, Ryan Reynolds starred in the National Lampoon movie Van Wilder and the American television series Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place, playing medical student Michael "Berg" Bergen. Ryan Reynolds also cameoed in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle as a nurse, appeared in The In-Laws with Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks, as well as the Canadian production Foolproof.