Trivia: Born August 19th, 1965, actress Kyra Sedgwick was seemingly born into fame, as a cousin of '60s mod icon and muse of Andy Warhol Edie Sedgwick. While only 16 when she made her professional acting debut on the TV soap Another World in 1982, Kyra proved much more stable than her ill-fated predecessor, graduating from USC and going on to cultivate a successful acting career on the stage, screen, and television. With high cheekbones, piercing eyes, full lips, and a mane of striking blonde curls, the young actress had no problem landing the film and TV roles to sustain her life as a working actress, but her solid, pensive presence onscreen proved to be an even more useful asset than her looks. Landing at least two substantial parts a year, she built up a resumé over the next decade that included the title role in 1985's Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale and a part in the acclaimed 1987 TV movie Lemon Sky, where she met co-star and future husband Kevin Bacon. The two were married the following year and would have two children.As the '90s approached, Sedgwick gained big-screen attention with a supporting role in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989). In 1992, she notably had the chance to embrace her Jewish side -- as a person who'd openly spoken about her mixed ethnic identity -- with a role in Miss Rose White, starring as a Polish-born woman sent to New York as a child to escape the Holocaust, but who is forced to confront the Jewish heritage she's since denied when she finds that the sister she was separated from is still alive.That same year, Sedgwick scored the "big break" part that she would long be remembered for when Cameron Crowe cast her as the female lead in his film Singles. A sweet and funny generational opus about life and love after college, the dramedy was filmed on location in Seattle in 1991, just as the grunge music movement was beginning to take off. In addition to supporting cast members like Matt Dillon and Bridget Fonda, the film featured artists like Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell in minor roles as musicians. Sedgwick's placement in a movie that would prove to be so iconic for its time and place endeared her greatly to Gen-Xers, though she would lie low throughout the '90s and 2000s, frequently choosing smaller, independent projects.In 2004, Sedgwick and husband Kevin Bacon undertook a joint project, The Woodsman, which Bacon also produced. Still more daunting for the spouses than the notoriously stressful task of working together, the film cast Bacon as a paroled pedophile, examining the character's recovery and the tentative relationship that he forms with a somewhat emotionally hardened fellow lumberyard worker, played by Sedgwick. While hardly blockbuster subject matter, the project was praised by critics, as was Sedgwick's intimate, minimalist performance.It seemed clear that Sedgwick's interests as an actor lay outside the harshest glare of the Hollywood limelight, but in 2006 she managed to stumble into its illumination anyway, starring in the TNT drama The Closer. Playing a Southern-born police detective with an uncanny skill for extracting confessions, Sedgwick brought a multi-dimensional quality to the character of Brenda Johnson that made the series considerably more well-rounded than the other procedural crime shows that flooded prime time. The complex nature of the role earned her immense praise, as in a singe episode, Brenda could share the screen with her arrogant co-workers, her flirtatious beau, her beloved but nagging mother, and several criminal suspects that she might persuade to confess through any number of personal approaches. Audiences were awed at the genuineness with which Sedgwick was able to portray a character who is so frequently choosing her words and actions with careful precision, and the series was picked up for a second season in 2007. That same year, Sedgwick took home a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Drama.When The Closer ended in 2012, Sedgwick returned to movies, including a small role in Man on a Ledge (2012), the lead in the horror film The Possession (2012) and an uncredited cameo in 2013's Kill Your Darlings.

Trivia: Jonathan Kimble Simmons was originally a singer, with a degree in music from the University of Montana. He turned to theater in the late 1970s and appeared in many regional productions in the Pacific Northwest before moving to New York in 1983. He appeared in Broadway and off-Broadway shows and also did some television -- his early roles included the portrayal of a white supremacist responsible for multiple murders in an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. In that same vein, Simmons first gained wide exposure as Vern Schillinger, the leader of an Aryan Brotherhood-type organization in prison in the HBO series Oz. Parlaying his small-screen notoriety into feature film opportunities, Simmons had a small part in the 1997 thriller The Jackal and played a leading role in Frank Todaro's low-budget comedy Above Freezing, a runner-up for the most popular film at the 1998 Seattle Film Festival. Also in 1997, Simmons increased his television prolificacy by taking on the role of Dr. Emil Skoda, the consulting psychiatrist to the Manhattan district attorney's office in the series Law and Order. By 1999, Simmons was showing up in such prominent films as The Cider House Rules and the baseball drama For Love of the Game, directed by Sam Raimi. The director again enlisted Simmons for his next film, 2000's The Gift. After a supporting turn in the disappointing comedy The Mexican, Simmons teamed with Raimi for the third time, bringing cigar-chomping comic-book newspaperman J. Jonah Jameson screaming to life in the 2002 summer blockbuster Spider-Man. In 2004, he would reprise the role in the highly anticipated sequel, Spider-Man 2. That same year, along with appearing alongside Tom Hanks in the Coen Brothers' The Ladykillers, Simmons continued to be a presence on the tube, costarring on ABC's midseason-replacement ensemble drama The D.A.His career subsequently kicking into overdrive, the popular character actor was in increasingly high demand in the next few years, enjoying a productive run as a voice performer in such animated television series' as Justice League, Kim Possible, The Legend of Korra, and Ultimate Spider-Man (the latter of which found him reprising his role as J. Jonah Jameson), as well as turning in memorable performances in Jason Reitman's Juno, Mike Judge's Extract, and as a hard-nosed captain in the 2012 crime thriller Contraband. Meanwhile, in 2005, he joined the cast of TNT's popular crime drama The Closer as Assistant Chief Will Pope -- a role which no doublt played a part in the cast earning five Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Best Ensemble Cast. Simmons continued to work steadily in movies, returning to the Spider-Man franchise in 2007. That same year he co-starred as the father of a pregnant teen in Juno, which led to him being cast regularly by that film's director Jason Reitman in many of his future projects including Up In the Air and Labor Day. It was Reitman who got Simmons the script for Whiplash, Damien Chazelle's directorial debut. The actor took the part of an abusive, but respected music teacher and the ensuing performance garnered Simmons multiple year-end awards including a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the Academy.

Trivia: Legally emancipated from his mother at 16, and subsequently began his acting career in his hometown of Richmond, VA. Never studied singing, dancing or acting outside of public school. Worked as a cruise ship entertainer after high school. Broadway debut in Hairspray earned him nominations for an Outer Circle Critics Award, a Drama Desk Award and a Tony. Made his big-screen debut in Steven Spielberg's The Terminal (2004) after the director saw his performance in Hairspray. First series-regular role came with the part of Sgt. David Gabriel on TNT drama The Closer. Works on scripts in his spare time and has written a comedy-series pitch and a movie about an all-black paratrooper unit in World War II.

Trivia: Was originally a music major at the High School of Performing Arts in New York. First professional acting job was in an off-Broadway production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest after graduating from high school. Is the first cousin of Academy Award winner Louis Gossett Jr. The play for which he won an NAACP Theater Award, Indigo Blues, was written by his wife, Michele. Learned to play drums for the 2009 cable movie Flying By.

Trivia: Though he would return to higher education nearly three decades later, Texas native G.W. Bailey left college and spent the mid-'60s working at local theater companies. Determined to establish an acting career for himself, a young Bailey moved to California in the 1970s and worked in a variety of settings. From appearances on television's Starsky and Hutch and Charlie's Angels to stage productions of Shakespearian classics, Bailey, despite his lack of professional experience, proved a surprisingly versatile actor. He did not, however, attain significant mainstream recognition until 1981, when he was cast as pool-hall con artist Private Rizzo in CBS's long-running series M*A*S*H. The exposure led to five large supporting roles on a variety of feature-length television dramas, and ultimately, a very different type of performance all together: that of the imposing yet incompetent Lieutenant Harris in the lowbrow cop comedy Police Academy (1984). His Police Academy role was reprised as sequels were churned out in rapid succession, and he was cast as a similarly inept authority figure in 1987's Mannequin.Though the 1980s found Bailey immersed in fairly unmemorable film roles (mainly comedies and dark thrillers), he was able to forge a more than respectable resumé in the realm of television movies, including the popular Murder in Texas (NBC, 1981), On Our Way (CBS, 1985), Spy Games (ABC, 1991), and Dead Before Dawn (ABC, 1993). His television roles offered a G.W. Bailey quite unlike Lieutenant Harris, and he was able to develop a following and a steady reputation as a supporting actor. Eventually, he was able to add "college graduate" to his list of accomplishments, as his mid-'90s stint at Southwest Texas State University proved successful as well. In 2004, Bailey lent his vocal chords to Disney's animated musical Western Home on the Range.He was cast as Lt. Provenza on The Closer, a show that would be for a time the highest rated scripted program on basic cable, and he would stay on the show for its entire run.

Trivia: Character actor Jon Tenney has appeared on stage and in feature films, but he may be best known for his television work, notably for playing Patrol Sergeant Francis X. Donovan on Steven Bochco's short-lived police drama Brooklyn South. His film work includes Twilight of the Golds (1997), Fools Rush In (1997), and With Friends Like These... (1998). Tenney's interest in acting stems from early childhood and it developed further while he attended Vassar College, where he majored in drama and philosophy. Afterwards, he was accepted to Juilliard, where he was a standout student. He made his professional debut starring in a touring production of The Real Thing, directed by Mike Nichols. This led to his working steadily on and off Broadway, as well as in regional theater. His television credits include Equal Justice and Crime and Punishment. His made-for-television movie credits include Alone in the Neon Jungle (1987). Since 1994, Tenney has been married to popular television actress Teri Hatcher. He appeared in Kenneth Lonnergan's first film, You Can Count on Me, and Albert Brooks cast him in Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. In 2005 he was cast in the hit cable series The Closer as Agent Fritz Howard, and he would stay with that show for the next few years. He continued to work on the big screen in projects such as The Stepfather, Rabbit Hole, and Green Lantern.

Trivia: Tom Skerritt is probably the best-known actor whose name is never remembered. A rugged "outdoors" type, Skerritt briefly attended Wayne State University and UCLA before making his film bow in War Hunt (1962). His subsequent film and TV roles were sizeable, but so adept was Skerritt at immersing himself in his character that he seemed to have no tangible, recurrent personality of his own. Billed second as "Duke" in the original M*A*S*H* (1970), Skerritt did his usual finely-honed job, but audiences of the time preferred the demonstrative, mannered acting technique of Elliott Gould, Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall; significantly, Skerritt's character was not carried over into the even more unsubtle M*A*S*H TV series. Finally, in 1980, Skerritt began to attain a following with his authoritative performance in Alien. Since that time, there's been no stopping him. He posed in a popular series of "Guess?" Jeans ads, appeared as a 1987-88 regular on "Cheers," starred in 1992's A River Runs Through It (directed by his long-ago War Hunt costar Robert Redford), and won a 1994 Emmy for his work on the TV series "Picket Fences."Skerritt would continue to work at a remarkable pace, usually appearing in several projects a year. From 1999's family drama The Other Sister to 2003's war thriller Tears of the Sun, the actor could be spotted by fans of seemingly every area of film throughout the 90's and 2000's. In 2006, he took a recurring role in the hit primetime drama Brothers and Sisters, and in 2008 he signed on for the redneck comedy Beer for my Horses. He went on to appear in Whiteout, Multiple Sarcasms, and he made a cameo as himself in the R rated talking teddy bear movie Ted.

Trivia: Moved from Uruguay to America with his parents at 10 years old. Joined a touring company of Torch Song Trilogy at 18 years old. Made his Broadway debut as a replacement in Spoils of War in 1988. Served as an Obama Celebrity Surrogate for the 2012 Presidential Campaign. Received a Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award in 2013. Serves as the West Coast development consultant for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Trivia: Character actor Alan Fudge essayed an exhausting variety of roles while a member of New York's APA repertory troupe in the late 1960s. In films, Fudge has largely been limited to playing rule-bound corporate types, lawyers, doctors and urban detectives. He was prominently billed in The Natural (1984) as Ed Hobbs, father of baseball whiz Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford), but his appearance was confined to a non-speaking precredits bit, lensed in long-shot. He was far more visible in his many TV guest appearances on such series as MASH and Knight Rider, and in such made-for-TV movies as The Blue Knight (1973), Children of An Lac (1980), I Know My First Name is Steven (1989) and MANTIS (1994). Alan Fudge's weekly-series stints include the roles of C W Crawford in Man From Atlantis (1977), Det. Commissioner Kimbrough on Escheid (1979), Dr. Van Adams in Paper Dolls (1984) and Chief Frank Leland in Bodies of Evidence (1992).

Trivia: The story of how Georgina Cates broke into film reads like a footnote to Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon or a weird hybrid of Sybil and A Star Is Born. In the early '90s, Cates, then known by her birth name of Clare Woodgate, was an aspiring actress who had trained at London's Guildhall School of Drama and done some television work. One day, she learned that director Mike Newell was adapting Beryl Bainbridge's novel An Awfully Big Adventure for the screen and decided she was meant to play the role of Stella Bradshaw, the novel's young protagonist. After petitioning the film's casting director Susie Figgis for months and sending in an 8 x 10 photo and resumé, Woodgate was told that the film's producers were looking for a young unknown who, like Stella, hailed from Liverpool. Against the advice of her colleagues and friends, she duly changed her identity to that of Georgina Cates, adopted a Liverpudlian accent, and donned a wig. Her transformation was convincing enough to fool Figgis, director Newell, and everyone else involved in the production, and as Georgina Cates, she won the role. She continued the ruse for the duration of the film's shoot, telling everybody that she was born in Liverpool and traveled to London on the weekends to attend acting classes. Cates even got her mother in on the act, having her pose as an aunt from Essex (where Cates actually grew up).The actress' gamble ultimately paid off; when An Awfully Big Adventure, which also starred Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman, was released to generally positive reviews in Britain, Cates' performance was singled out for praise by a number of critics. After she eventually revealed her true identity, some observers noted that her deception was an appropriate one, given that the character of Stella, who joins a dysfunctional post-war rep company with dreams of becoming an actress, is in part built on a foundation of willful ambition. Unfortunately, Cates' subsequent efforts have failed to measure up to the flamboyant first act of her career. After legally changing her name, she went on to supporting roles in such films as Frankie Starlight (1995), Illuminata (1998), and Clay Pigeons (1998), and starring turns in such little-seen features as Stiff Upper Lips (1997) and A Soldier's Sweetheart (1998). The last of these, a drama set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, featured Cates opposite Skeet Ulrich, whom she married in 1997.

Trivia: Grew up in East Los Angeles. Was inspired to take up acting after a school trip to see the classic film To Kill a Mockingbird. Made TV debut in 1987 and has appeared in guest or recurring roles in some 30 series, including Cagney & Lacey, Knots Landing, China Beach, The X-Files, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, NYPD Blue, 24, My Name Is Earl, Nip/Tuck and CSI: Miami. Was a regular on The Eddie Files, a Peabody Award-winning math-education program that aired on PBS stations in the late 1990s. Received a 2010 Saturn Award nomination for his role as psychotic drug dealer Tuco on Breaking Bad. Likes to build and ride motorcycles; a bike he owns appeared in a 2008 episode of The Closer.

Trivia: Supporting actor Anthony Denison has appeared onscreen since the '80s.

Trivia: Her mother is African-American and her father is Puerto Rican. Is a classically trained dancer. Was originally planning to be a lawyer. Was nominated for an ALMA Award in 1999 for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Made-for-Television Movie or Mini-Series in a Crossover Role, for The Temptations. In 2007, founded Project Reina, an organization that educates young women about HIV/AIDS prevention.

Trivia: Raised in Richmond, CA. Decided to pursue acting while in college. Stage debut came in 1977's The Year of the Dragon with the San Francisco-based Asian American Theatre Company. Appeared in the 1981 off-Broadway production of Family Devotions. Played Data's father in the 1985 film The Goonies. His first TV series was the 1994 syndicated drama Valley of the Dolls. Provided the voice for Jimmy Ho on Fox's animated comedy The PJs. Likes to ride, build and restore single-speed bikes.

Trivia: Fluent in German and Spanish. Worked as a Pan Am flight attendant and collects airplane memorabilia. Has a pilot's license. Enjoys renovating homes. Made his feature-film debut in the 2004 drama Role of a Lifetime. Best known for playing a surveillance expert on the hit police drama The Closer, starting in 2007.