Trivia: An actor whose hulking presence belies his ability to slip quietly into an astonishing variety of roles, Vincent D'Onofrio is one of Hollywood's most unpredictable and compelling performers. Throughout his career, D'Onofrio has played a diverse range of characters, from Full Metal Jacket's fatally unhinged army recruit to a wholly convincing Orson Welles in Ed Wood to a bisexual porn star in The Velocity of Gary.Born in Brooklyn, NY, on June 30, 1959, D'Onofrio was raised in the diverse locales of Hawaii, Colorado, and Miami's Hialeah section. His career as an actor began on the stage, with study under Sonia Moore of New York's American Stanislavsky Theatre and Sharon Chatten at the Actors Studio. D'Onofrio's early years in the theater were filled with an obligatory helping of obscurity and miniscule paychecks (so miniscule that he worked for a time as a bouncer to help pay the bills). His fortunes began to shift in 1984, when he joined the American Stanislavsky Theatre as a performer. There, he appeared in such well-regarded productions as Of Mice and Men and David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and also made his Broadway debut in Open Admissions.D'Onofrio debuted onscreen in the straight-to-oblivion 1983 comedy The First Turn-On!, but it was not until his haunting portrayal of Pvt. Pyle (a role for which the actor gained 70 pounds) four years later in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket that he earned much-deserved notice for his work. Defying easy categorization, D'Onofrio next appeared in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza (1988), slimming down to his normal weight and giving a convincing portrayal as Lili Taylor's lovestruck boyfriend.Having thus given audiences a glimpse of his remarkable versatility, D'Onofrio spent the next few years making his presence felt in such films as JFK (1991), in which he played assassination witness Bill Newman; The Player (1992), which cast him in the pivotal role of ill-fated screenwriter David Kahane; and Nancy Savoca's Household Saints (1993), which, through a particularly odd feat of casting, had him playing the father of Lili Taylor. Although D'Onofrio worked at a prolific pace, it was not until he portrayed Conan the Barbarian author Robert E. Howard in the 1996 The Whole Wide World that he really had his screen breakthrough. A low-key romantic drama about the relationship between Howard and a schoolteacher (Renée Zellweger), the film allowed D'Onofrio to take center stage, rather than lend support to better-known co-stars. Critics roundly applauded his performance, but although the actor kept working steadily, he was by no means a Hollywood fixture. Eschewing the limelight, he turned in particularly memorable performances in Feeling Minnesota (1996) as Cameron Diaz's cuckolded fiancé and in the 1997 blockbuster Men in Black, which cast him as the film's resident bad guy.D'Onofrio had long since become an established actor by the 2000's, and he would remain a solid force on screen in such films as The Cell, Happy Accidents, Steal This Movie, andThumbsucker. D'Onofrio would also find just as much notoriety on the small screen, most notably as Detective Robert Goren on the phenomenally successful Law & Order spin-off Criminal Intent, and even step behind the camera, penning, helming and starring in the drama Mall.

Trivia: Born and raised in the Boston area, Erbe left her hometown to study drama at New York University. After making her TV debut as Lynn Redgrave's daughter on the short-lived TV sitcom Chicken Soup (1989), she returned to New York and was cast in the acclaimed 1990 Broadway production of The Grapes of Wrath. Erbe soon scored her first major film credit as Richard Dreyfuss' daughter in the Bill Murray comedy What About Bob? (1991) and alternated stage work as a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Atlantic Theatre Company with TV and films throughout the 1990s, most notably in Rich in Love (1992), George Wallace (1997), Kiss of Death (1995), The Addiction, (1995), and Stir of Echoes. Erbe also earned major acclaim on the HBO series Oz. As the 2000's unfolded for the actress, she found continued success in TV, playing the role of Detective Alexandra Eames on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Trivia: Character actor Jamey Sheridan has had a prolific acting career in theater, television, and film productions. Born in California to a family of actors, he made it to Broadway and earned a Tony nomination in 1987 for his performance in the revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. After several TV movie appearances, he landed a reoccurring role as lawyer Jack Shannon on Shannon's Deal, which ran for one season in 1990. His later television roles include Dr. John Sutton on Chicago Hope (from 1995-1996) and Captain Deakins on Law & Order: Criminal Intent (since 2001). Sheridan started his film career in the late '80s with small roles, and by the '90s he was playing the token family man, a role he would continue in both film and television. He was also capable of playing villains, as he did in the 1994 miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. Other interesting roles include Marty Stouffer in Wild America and the psychotic neighbor in Video Voyeur: The Susan Wilson Story. After a long history of performing Shakespeare on the stage, Sheridan appeared in Campbell Scott's production of Hamlet in 2000 as well as the Hamlet-inspired modern noir film Let the Devil Wear Black in 1999. He's also given fine supporting performances in The Ice Storm, Cradle Will Rock, Life as a House, and numerous TV movies. In teh early 2000s Sheriden frequently alternated between film and television, though it was his role on the popular detective series Law and Order: Criminal Intent that offered him the most exposure. It was during his five year run on that show that he was diagnosed with Bell's palsy, a nerve disorder that temporarily causes partial facial paralysis, and the writers ultimately incorporated that condition into the show. In 2011 Sheridan joined the cast of the Showtime drama Homeland, which centered on a Marine sergeant and war hero who returns home to the U.S. after eight years missing in Iraq, only to be pursued by a CIA officer who's convinced he's been turned into a terrosit by Al-Qaeda.Sheridan and his wife, actress Colette Kilroy, have two children.

Trivia: Although he had been appearing in both film and television productions since the mid-'80s, it took nearly two decades for actor Courtney B. Vance to finally receive recognition. The Detroit native was bitten by the acting bug while a student at Harvard, and though he had originally intended to study history, he felt the lure of the stage and was soon appearing in productions at Harvard before eventually joining the Boston Shakespeare Company. After graduation, Vance continued his acting career at the Yale School of Drama, and it was there that he first gained notice for his role opposite James Earl Jones in the August Wilson drama Fences. In 1987, Vance made his film debut in the war drama Hamburger Hill, and though he remained true to his stage roots in the ensuing years, screen roles kept rolling in. The actor climbed the credits throughout the 1990s with a series of supporting roles in The Hunt for Red October (1990), Beyond the Law (1992), and The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993). 1995 proved something of a breakthrough year for the rising star, with roles in Panther, Dangerous Minds, and The Last Supper offering him more screen time than ever. In 1996, Vance held his own as a minister opposite Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston in The Preacher's Wife. Drawing from his own faith -- which had recently been reawakened by the suicide of his father -- for the role, Vance also had memorable performances in Cookie's Fortune in 1999 and Space Cowboys the following year. He portrayed Martin Luther King Jr. in the dramatic miniseries Parting the Waters (2000) and made another solid impression on television viewers the next year with a role in the popular series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.Vance would stick with the series for five years, concurrently appearing on the long-running medical drama ER. By the time he had finished his run on both programs, he was on to the science fictions series Flash Forward from 2009-2010, before signing on to appear alongside Michael Biehn in the post-apocalyptic horror flick The Divide in 2011.

Trivia: A veteran of film and television, Chris Noth is probably best known for his work on Law and Order and HBO's Sex and the City, the latter of which featured him as the charming but terminally untrustworthy Mr. Big, erstwhile boyfriend/bad habit of the series' heroine, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). Hailing from Madison, WI, where he was born November 13, 1954, Noth moved around a lot throughout his childhood, living in England, Yugoslavia, and Spain. Returning to the States, he studied with the storied acting coach Stanford Meisner before being accepted into the prestigious Yale School of Drama.Noth got his start on the stage and in television performing at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, CT, and appearing in productions with theater companies across the country, including the Manhattan Theater Club and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. Working in television beginning in 1982, he did a number of shows before breaking into film with small parts in Off Beat (1986) and the Diane Keaton comedy Baby Boom (1987). Noth's big break came in 1989, when he was chosen to play Det. Mike Logan on Law and Order. Noth portrayed the young policeman for five seasons, winning both critical nods and fans, many of whom were saddened when his Law and Order contract was not renewed in 1995. Noth continued to work on television and did minor work in films such as Naked in New York (1994) before getting his next big break in the form of Sex and the City (1998). As Big, he was one of the few male characters who could hold his own in the presence of the series' strong female protagonists, played by Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall, and Kristin Davis. The show proved to be an enormous critical and commercial hit, in the process winning Noth more fans. He would reprise the role for subsuquent big screen adaptations of the show, in addition to other films like My One and Only and Lovelace. Noth would also enoy successful turns on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, The Good Wife, and Titanic: Blood and Steel.

Trivia: Studied psychology and political science in college. Worked at a horse ranch in California after college and then as a paralegal before deciding to pursue acting. Studied privately with teachers from New York's Actors Studio. Spent two summers working at Massachusetts' Williamstown Theater Festival. Made her film debut in 1994 in a short called Celestial Navigation. Made her Broadway debut in 1997 in the Tony-winning The Last Night of Ballyhoo.

Trivia: A graduate of Yale Drama School, character actor Maulik Pancholy became a familiar face on sitcoms and prime-time dramas during the mid- to late 2000s -- nearly always in a recurring or guest acting capacity -- and ushered in occasional bit parts in features. He netted particularly substantial recognition for his ongoing turn as Jack Donaghy's (Alec Baldwin) loyal and slightly high-strung personal assistant, Jonathan, on the Tina Fey/Lorne Michaels-produced NBC sitcom 30 Rock, and for his portrayal of pot dealer Sanjay on Weeds. Cinemagoers might also associate Pancholy with his appearance as Will Smith's overeager doorman in the romantic comedy Hitch. In 2008, Pancholy appeared as Trent opposite Katherine Heigl and James Marsden in the Anne Fletcher-directed romantic comedy 27 Dresses, and he picked up still more fans through his role on the sticom Whitney.