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: Anointed as one of New Hollywood's golden boys with his neo-classical homages to John Ford and Howard Hawks, Peter Bogdanovich's personal and professional lives crashed and burned in the late '70s. Though he was redeemed somewhat with Mask (1985), his directorial career never fully recovered. By the late '90s, however, Bogdanovich returned to his original training as an actor and found success as a supporting player in films and on HBO's acclaimed series The Sopranos.Raised in Manhattan, the precocious Bogdanovich began studying acting with Stella Adler at age 15 and spent his teens at the movies, developing a devotion to Hollywood. Though he acted in and directed several off-Broadway plays, Bogdanovich decided movies were his calling. While working as a film programmer in his early twenties, Bogdanovich began writing about cinema, publishing articles in Esquire and monographs on Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, and Alfred Hitchcock; he married aspiring production designer Polly Platt in 1962. Inspired by the French critics-turned-New Wave directors, Bogdanovich headed to Hollywood in 1964, where he and Platt met both their graying heroes and a generation of unruly newcomers. Like fellow gatecrashers Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, Bogdanovich's directorial career was jump-started by B-movie giant Roger Corman. Familiar with his Esquire writing, Corman hired Bogdanovich to work on his Peter Fonda motorcycle flick The Wild Angels (1966). Bogdanovich's experience encompassed rewrites, second unit direction, editing, and dubbing; Corman also cast Bogdanovich alongside Fonda and Dennis Hopper in The Trip (1967). Corman subsequently gave Bogdanovich a cheapie feature to write and direct, with the stipulation that he use Boris Karloff. With an assist from Platt, Bogdanovich came up with Targets (1968), a skillful thriller about an aging star and a nihilistic assassin. Cross-cutting between the two stories on the way to a suspenseful drive-in climax, Targets proved that Bogdanovich could make a movie as well as worship them, even if the assassination-weary 1968 audience stayed away. While he got his movie-making career off the ground, Bogdanovich continued to write, publishing books on John Ford and Fritz Lang. After Targets, Bogdanovich spent several weeks locking horns with producer Sergio Leone on pre-production for Duck, You Sucker! (1971) in Rome before pulling out and returning to the states. Back in Hollywood, Bogdanovich put together the lauded AFI documentary Directed by John Ford (1971) and wrote a book on Allen Dwan. Bogdanovich's second fiction feature came together when BBS Films (home of Fonda and Hopper's Easy Rider [1969]) enlisted Bogdanovich to write and direct a project of his choice. On Platt's advice, Bogdanovich adapted Larry McMurtrey's coming-of-age novel The Last Picture Show. Working closely with Platt, Bogdanovich crafted The Last Picture Show (1971) as a nostalgic look back to 1950s small town America and Hollywood tradition combined with a more clear-eyed, "European" view of the period's sexual mores and personal weaknesses. Starring Ford stalwart Ben Johnson as the town patriarch alongside newcomers Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, and Cybill Shepherd as the troubled youth, and shot in crisp Ford-ian deep focus black-and-white, The Last Picture Show was hailed as one of the best films by a neophyte since Citizen Kane (1941) and earned eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Director. A popular success as well, The Last Picture Show was still playing when Bogdanovich's next film, What's Up, Doc?, opened in 1972. An update of Howard Hawks' screwball classic Bringing Up Baby (1938), starring Barbra Streisand as the dizzy dame and Ryan O'Neal as the uptight, bespectacled object of her affection, What's Up Doc? was a funny enough facsimile of Hawks to become one of the year's top hits. An A-list phenom, Bogdanovich signed on to form the creatively autonomous (and potentially lucrative) Directors Company with fellow wunderkind Coppola and William Friedkin. His first film for the company, Paper Moon (1973), lived up to the hype. A Depression-era story about a grifter and his foul-mouthed daughter shot once again in Ford-esque monochrome, Paper Moon earned an Oscar for child actress Tatum O'Neal's performance opposite her father Ryan O'Neal, as well as big box office. Bogdanovich's personal life, however, began to intrude on his professional fortunes after Paper Moon. Though he left her for Shepherd in 1970, Platt had continued to work with Bogdanovich on What's Up Doc? and Paper Moon; after Platt severed their professional relationship, Bogdanovich's work floundered.That relationship with Shepherd dealt a more visible blow to Bogdanovich's career when he decided to showcase her in his next two films. While she had been ideally cast as Picture Show's thoughtless beauty, the meticulous period design and strong supporting cast couldn't disguise Shepherd's failings in the title role of Bogdanovich's adaptation of Henry James' Daisy Miller (1974). Bogdanovich's homage to lavish 1930s musicals, At Long Last Love (1975), was a disaster; Shepherd's companion record, unfortunately titled Cybill Does It to Cole Porter, didn't help. The Directors Company (and his relationship with Shepherd) dissolved shortly thereafter. Bogdanovich's stylish silent movie tribute, Nickelodeon (1976), became his third consecutive flop.Though Saint Jack (1979) was a succès d'estime, the troubled history of They All Laughed (1981) sent Bogdanovich into a tailspin. Reeling after one of the movie's stars and his new girlfriend, Dorothy Stratten, were murdered by her estranged husband, Bogdanovich then went bankrupt when he had to distribute the movie himself and it flopped. Retreating from Hollywood, Bogdanovich spent the early '80s revising his early books and writing a biography of Stratten; he raised eyebrows when he married Stratten's younger sister, Louise, in 1988. They split in 2001.Working as a director for hire, Bogdanovich returned to favor with Mask (1985). A compelling study of a disfigured teen and his forceful mother, Mask won Cher Cannes' Best Actress prize and sterling reviews. The wretched comedy Illegally Yours (1988) and the poorly received Picture Show sequel Texasville (1990) squandered the professional goodwill; the barely released The Thing Called Love (1993) was better known as one of River Phoenix's last movies. Relegated to directing TV-movies, straight-to-videos, and contributing to documentaries, Bogdanovich declared bankruptcy again in the 1990s. He remained visible, though, as an actor in such films as Mr. Jealousy (1997). By 2000, Bogdanovich landed a part on the award-winning series The Sopranos as Lorraine Bracco's quizzical psychiatrist and returned to subjects close to his heart with the independent feature The Cat's Meow (2001), about the mystery surrounding Hollywood pioneer Thomas Ince's death.

Trivia: Actress Rosanna Arquette, the granddaughter of actor Cliff Arquette (aka "Charley Weaver"), was born into a theatrical family; her father was a founding member of the Committee, an improvisational theater troupe. As a youth she moved often with her family. At age 17 she appeared on the Los Angeles stage in Metamorphosis. Her family settled in Virginia, where she worked in local theater where she was spotted by a casting director. She soon had much work in TV movies in the late '70s. She debuted onscreen in More American Graffitti (1979). Her breakthrough came with her portrayal of condemned murderer Gary Gilmore's girlfriend in the TV movie The Executioner's Song (1982), which earned her much praise. That success led to a lead role in John Sayles's Baby, It's You (1983). She gained her greatest fame in the hit film Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), co-starring Madonna. From there she has maintained a steady screen career, usually playing kooky, off-beat, spacey, slightly eccentric women. She is the sister of actress Patricia Arquette.

Trivia: Sang in his school choir and performed in high school musicals.In high school, was on the student council, ran track and played varsity football.Was a member of his high school's forensics club.Was accepted into the Goodman School of Drama, the drama school of DePaul University, but decided to attend Wayne State University because he won a theater scholarship. While attending Wayne State University, spent a semester at the British American Drama Academy.Appeared in commercials for brands like Flonase, Nyquil, Nissan Pathfinder, Campbell's Soup and Dairy Queen.Has worked in film, television and theater.Best known for playing Special Agent Dwight Harris on The Sopranos.