Sam Briger

In more than three decades of work, Doug Jones has carved out a niche in the acting world by playing strange and otherworldly creatures. He was a demonic superhero in Hellboy and a monster with an appetite for children in Pan's Labyrinth.

"I don't use my life as inspiration," says the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. Her new book, Manhattan Beach, imagines the lives of the women who worked on the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II.

"I wanted to make a completely honest, heart-on-sleeve, non-ironic melodrama," del Toro says. Set in 1962, his new film features a fairy tale romance between a creature and a mute woman.