For character creation (separate from profiles), I like the way Brandon Sanderson works. He'll throw the character an age, gender, and setting... then brainstorm two interests or concerns for the character (unrelated to each other... like "puzzles" and "taking care of pet monkey") then come up with secrets and/or yearnings that are related to the interests. For instance - that character might have the ambition of trying to teach her monkey how to solve puzzles. Or have a secret that she's trained her monkey to steal puzzles. Etc.
What I've done recently is used this method to come up with a backstory and interests that seem real for characters. I usually come up with a main plot separately and have already placed the blank characters at points of conflict. This way, the characters have interests that are relevant to the story, without seeming to be exclusively about the story. (The secrets and/or yearnings form subplots - like... someone discovers that her monkey has been stealing puzzles and kidnaps the monkey or blackmails her... but this is all happening WHILE she confronts the main plot that also has to do with her life.)
By the time I get to this point, I usually know quite a bit about the character's personality and history. Things just spring to mind while doing this.
At this point, I will create a basic profile, which includes:
Name
Physical (includes age, race, gender if you think you'd forget it, any physical quirks like allergies, body/hair/eyes/face, and clothing)
Psychological (personality, intellect, speech patterns, habits, quirks, skills, interests, flaws/issues, and secrets/yearnings)
Life (history, current situation, relationships, and any belongings important to the story)
Viewpoint (in general what types of things the character will notice in POV, what the character's perspective is)
Character Arc (how I plan for the character to change during the book)
Writing Notes (I leave this one blank so I can jot down anything I learn about the character while writing that I might need to remember - usually these are details... like, I won't decide a character's handedness before writing unless I can tell it will be important to the story... but if I have a character do something that suggests handedness sometime in the natural course of the story, then I'll quickly put it here)
The name is the main heading and all the other things are sub-headings... I often do bullet points for the actual info because it's quicker for me to reference.
I only do a profile this complete for the POV characters - anything more would take FOREVER and I advise against it. My current project has two profiles this detailed. They get leaner and leaner as I go down the list. However, I do keep note of any character I come up with while writing (bit parts like a bus driver who has a few lines, for instance) - I'll put them in my character file with their name and anything I wrote about them, and leave it at that. I do that because it's handy during revisions or if I have the character appear again - I just look for the name heading in my file instead of searching through previous chapters to know what I've already said about this person (cuts down on changing hair colors and names).
I use these personality profiles for fantasy, btw - the magic stuff goes under psychological (skills), but I guess you could put it in different places. I usually break the psychological section into multiple sub-headings, because it's by far the most complex.