Trivia: Personifying the type of teen spirit most commonly found in Noxzema ads and pep squad meets, actress Jennifer Love Hewitt has brought new meaning to the word "effervescent." The 1990s saw Hewitt go from relative obscurity to a bona fide teen queen, to say nothing of one of the most frequently enshrined actresses on the Internet.Hewitt was born on February 21, 1979 in Waco, TX. She made her first appearance on television in 1984 in the show Kids Incorporated (which, coincidentally, once guest-starred Scott Wolf, her Party of Five co-star). She also did a multitude of commercials, even doing a stint as a LA Gear spokesgirl at the age of ten. After spending the majority of the 80s working in television, Hewitt got her first film role in the 1993 film Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, but it wasn't until she got her big break as Sarah Reeves on Party of Five (1994) that she began to gain recognition. More recognition came, first in the form of Trojan War (1997), and then from I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). The film, which capitalized on the growing trend in teen horror flicks catalyzed by Wes Craven's Scream (1996), proved to be immensely popular among audiences, if not critics. It was predictably followed by a sequel, the aptly titled I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998). In addition to her film work, which also included 1998's Can't Hardly Wait, Hewitt maintained her role in Party of Five and continued to star in commercials, most notably as the Neutrogena spokesgirl.

Trivia: The 5' 3," sandy blonde-haired Gen-Y icon Sarah Michelle Gellar's life story reads like a preteen wish fulfillment fantasy. Born in Manhattan in 1977 and discovered by an agent in a Manhattan restaurant at the age of four, Gellar signed for her first role (in the 1983 telemovie An Invasion of Privacy) not one week later. A plethora of bit parts in television series (Spenser: For Hire) and theatrical films (Over the Brooklyn Bridge, 1984; Funny Farm, 1988; High Stakes, 1989) followed, before Gellar landed a recurring role, in the early '90s, on the decades-long daytime soap opera All My Children. Throughout the early years of her career, Gellar was managed and supervised by her mother, a former nursery school teacher who insisted on straight A's as a prerequisite of an acting career. Sarah Michelle delivered, time and again.Despite the apparent fairy tale-like quality of her rise, Gellar reportedly battled several decidedly unhappy experiences as a child, including a parental divorce, decades of estrangement from her father, and social struggles in a New York City high school, experiences parlayed into her first (and most infamous) lead: that of Buffy, a California valley girl high school student-turned-"exterminator of the undead" in the early-'90s syndicated cult fantasy series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Gellar inherited the role from Kristy Swanson, who fleshed it out in the (decidedly more comic) 1992 theatrical release of the same name. Under Gellar's aegis, the show lasted seven years, from 1996 through 2003, and it became a massive international hit, garnering legions of fans. The subject matter of the series required the young actress to engage in rigorous exercise and physical training off-camera throughout Buffy's run.Gellar (a compulsive shopper and brand aficionado off-camera) then signed as a Maybelline spokeswoman and prepared to move into the third phase of her acting career. As Buffy wrapped, it coincided with the resurgence of American teen horror films led by Wes Craven's Scream series, and although Gellar did not join the cast of the first installment, her popularity on Buffy the Vampire Slayer thematically paved the way for involvement in one Scream sequel and one emulator: Scream 2 and I Know What You Did Last Summer (both 1997). In 1999, Gellar teamed up with two other notables of the same generation, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, for the Dangerous Liaisons teen update Cruel Intentions. As Kathryn Merteuil -- the depraved schemer who coaxes her stepbrother (Phillippe) into deflowering the school headmaster's daughter (Witherspoon), and thus inadvertently sets in motion a chain of disasters that will destroy them all -- Gellar played off of her wholesome, "all-American girl" image and helped turn the picture into a minor hit. Meanwhile, Gellar met and fell in love with Hollywood heartthrob Freddie Prinze Jr. (the son of the ill-fated, late-'70s Hispanic comedian Freddie Prinze), and the two married in Mexico in 2002, the same year they co-starred as Fred and Daphne for director Raja Gosnell in the live-action summer blockbuster Scooby-Doo. Two years later, Gellar and Prinze took the wheel of the Mystery Machine to fight a mischievous specter in 2004's Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. Gellar (long a student and admirer of Japanese culture) then traveled to Japan to do battle with some truly frightening entities in the 2004 J-horror remake The Grudge. In that effort, she plays an American student employed at a Japanese health center who uncovers a centuries-old curse that feeds off of anger and guides one victim after another into an unquenchable, violent rage.Subsequent vocal work on the animated cult hit Robot Chicken found the former vampire slayer having a bit of behind-the-scenes fun without the stress of appearing before the camera, and a role as an ambitious porn star teetering on the edge of the apocalypse in director Richard Kelly's eagerly anticipated Donnie Darko follow-up, Southland Tales, preceded a trip back into terror as a successful business woman haunted by a decades-old murder in the 2006 supernatural thriller The Return. In that picture, Gellar plays Joanna Mills, a thick-skinned, courageous Midwestern girl plagued by haunting supernatural visions, who attempts to uncover the origin of these specters. Unfortunately, that film opened to horrendous critical reviews and lackluster box office numbers in November 2006, appearing and disappearing quickly.Gellar would do plenty of voice acting in movies like the family-friendly CG-animated fairy tale Happily N'Ever After and the Weinstein-produced, CG-animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Gellar would ultimately find continued success in TV, however, lending her voice to the animated sketch comedy series Robot Chicken, and her role on the series Ringer.

Trivia: With his golden curls, sensuous mouth, and sculpted body, Ryan Phillippe looks more like he was peeled off a Botticelli canvas than "discovered" in a Delaware barbershop. Phillippe, who was born September 10, 1974, in New Castle, DE, rose from obscurity to become one of the most talked-about actors of his generation, attracting at first numerous admirers of his good looks, and later fans of risk-taking performers.Phillippe got his first break on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, on which he portrayed daytime's first gay teenager, Billy Douglas. The role, which he played from 1992 to 1993, won him both favorable notices and increasing recognition. After quitting the show to focus on his screen career, Phillippe got a small part in 1995 submarine action thriller Crimson Tide. More work -- and more boat-oriented action -- followed in 1996 with Ridley Scott's White Squall, in which Phillippe was given a prominent role alongside two other up-and-coming actors, Ethan Embry and Scott Wolf. After this mainstream, big-budget venture, Phillippe took a walk down the yellow brick road of independent filmmaking, first with his starring role as an abused trailer-park teen in Little Boy Blue (1997), and then in Gregg Araki's Nowhere (1997), as the latest of Araki's trademark ultra-horny boys.Phillippe's major screen break came with his role in the formulaic 1997 slasher pic I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which he starred alongside fellow Next-Big-Things Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Sarah Michelle Gellar. The film's success, coupled with Phillippe's exposure from previous films, was enough to propel him into two leading roles in 1998, first as a blue-haired club baby in Playing by Heart, and then as a starry-eyed bartender in the critically disembowelled 54, a film which showcased Phillippe's abs over his acting.Following 54, Phillippe opted to play a naïve dope farmer in the obscure Homegrown (1998), in which he co-starred with Billy Bob Thornton and Hank Azaria. This preceded his next big break as the petulantly seductive trust-fund brat Sebastian Valmont in 1999's Cruel Intentions, a film that was essentially a present-day, all-teen adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Co-starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as his scheming stepsister and Phillippe's real-life wife-to-be Reese Witherspoon, the film proved to be one of the year's most guilty pleasures, winning Phillippe further acclaim in the hearts and minds of lust-struck women and men alike.Subsequently teetering on the brink of all-out superstardom, Phillippe faltered a bit with the late summer 2000 action thriller The Way of the Gun, co-starring Benicio Del Toro. Though some saw the film as a smartly penned meditation on violence, others brushed it aside as just another post-Tarantino study in excess, and the film faded quickly from the box-office radar -- with the following year's AntiTrust dissipating almost immediately following its January 2001 release. But the tables turned for Phillippe in the years to come, with involvement in films that consistently found dual favor with critics and audiences -- and thus helped the young actor transition from a widespread reputation as a heartthrob to a reputation as an immensely gifted dramatist graced with a succession of plum roles (and suggested a keen instinct for script selection). This turnaround began with the actor's participation in director Robert Altman's critically worshipped mystery comedy Gosford Park. Phillippe (as Henry Denton) was not among the top-billed members of the ensemble cast, but his work shone brightly alongside such luminaries as Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, and Kristin Scott Thomas -- no small feat for a relative newcomer. The following year, Phillippe drew raves for his work in Burr Steers's sleeper hit Igby Goes Down (2002) -- a commercial and critical indie darling -- as the spoiled, conceited older brother of the title character. Thereafter, Phillippe's screen activity declined just a bit (perhaps because of his off decision to father and raise additional children with wife Witherspoon), but he also became increasingly selective. His star rose higher with 2005's Best Picture winner Crash, directed by Paul Haggis. A Gaghan-esque muckracking drama with a massive ensemble cast that included the gifted Don Cheadle, Matt Dillion, and Brendan Fraser, the picture meditated on modern-day racism through multiple interlocking stories that unfold throughout the City of Angels.2006 marked a fortuitous year for Phillippe. He secured a leading role in director Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, the American half of the director's two-part dramatization of the Battle of Iwo Jima (as Bradley, a man who learns of his father's heroism in that conflict decades later). In that same year's Lionsgate release Five Fingers, helmed by neophyte Laurence Malkin, Phillippe plays the difficult role of a brilliant Dutch pianist abducted by terrorists and threatened with having his fingers lopped off one by one. At about the same time, Phillippe signed on (alongside Chris Cooper and Laura Linney) to play Eric O'Neill in director Billy Ray's Breach, which the studio slated for a 2007 release. The picture -- a docudrama -- concerns real-life FBI turncoat Robert Hanssen (Cooper). Phillippe plays the "mole" assigned to catch Hanssen in the act.Also in the fall of 2006, the busy Phillippe had to contend with drama in his personal life in the form of a highly public divorce from Witherspoon, announced that October. Over the course of the next few years Philippe's career seemed to be more hit than miss, though high profile roles in MacGruber and The Lincoln Lawyer served well to keep in the public eye, and in 2012 he essayed an extended guest appearance on the hit FX series Damages. After his solid turn there, he stuck with TV, with a main role on the first season of Secrets and Lies.

Trivia: With his doe eyes and April-fresh skin, Freddie Prinze Jr. seemed a natural leader of the late-'90s Hollywood teen invasion. Noted as much for his looks as for his acting, Prinze has proven to have a natural appeal that has endured him to legions of fans.The beginning of Prinze's life was a turbulent one, as his father, the actor Freddie Prinze (best known for his starring role on NBC's Chico and the Man) committed suicide when the younger Prinze was only ten months old. Born in Los Angeles on March 8, 1976, Prinze moved with his mother to Albuquerque, NM, shortly after his father's death. Growing up in New Mexico, Prinze was a poor student who decided to follow in his father's celluloid footsteps. After his high-school graduation in 1994, Prinze took off for Los Angeles with little money and few prospects. However, he soon found work in Hollywood, first appearing in various television shows, including an episode of Family Matters and a few afterschool specials.The actor first broke into film as Claire Danes' boyfriend in To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday (1996). The part was a small one, but helped Prinze to secure his next and more sizeable role in The House of Yes (1997), a wicked little black comedy that starred Parker Posey as Prinze's deliciously unstable sister. The film's release was mainly limited to art houses, unlike Prinze's next film, I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). The film was a huge commercial, if not critical, success that propelled Prinze into, if not the limelight, then the hearts of many girls and more than a few boys everywhere. Following this triumph, Prinze went on to do a couple of forgettable films before the 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. The combined impact of that film and the success of Prinze's next major project, She's All That, gave the actor even greater fame and caused least one writer to dub him the next Leonardo Di Caprio. Unfortunately, Prinze's following endeavor, Wing Commander (1999), proved to be an unmitigated disappointment, serving to illustrate the extreme fluctuations of success in Hollywood. Prinze's growing popularity, however, seemed to survive relatively unscathed, judging by the slew of websites erected in his name.If there was any question that the actor's popularity was waning in the wake of Wing Commander's lackluster performance, that doubt would soon be confirmed with hard numbers, as a triple threat of romantic comedies unceremoniously removed the teen-crowd superstar crown from Prinze's head. The cookie-cutter offerings Down to You and Boys and Girls (the latter of which reteamed him with She's All That director Robert Iscove) attempted to posit Prinze as a collegiate heartthrob, but both films' mix of moony romance with gross-out gags did little to attract moviegoers of any age. Anticipation for his next starring role, alongside Jessica Biel and Matthew Lillard in 2001's Summer Catch, was understandably low; the film was even saddled with a late-August release, traditionally reserved by studios as a "dumping ground" for unpromising product. As it turned out, Summer Catch's mixed reviews proved more forgiving than its paltry $19 million take.Prinze's next project brought him out of the romantic comedy trend and into the doghouse, or at least the Mystery Machine. Re-teaming with his usual foil Lillard and starring -- yet again -- opposite his longtime love interest Sarah Michelle Gellar, Prinze took on the role of Fred in the live-action adaptation of Scooby-Doo in 2002. Though almost universally panned by critics, the film reversed Prinze's dwindling status as a box-office draw by appealing to a demographic he'd yet to conquer: preteens. Not one to look a gift franchise in the mouth, Prinze signed on for another installment, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, and took nearly two years off between the blockbusters as he tied the knot with Gellar.

Trivia: Played clarinet in his high school band and sang in the choir. Theater debut was in a 1970 college production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Taught an acting class at the Georgia State Penitentiary in the early 1970s. Made his big-screen debut in the 1989 thriller Black Rainbow. Has had recurring roles as an inmate on Prison Break and a former Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent on NCIS.

Trivia: An actress who is known as much -- if not more -- for her offscreen life as for her onscreen performances, Anne Heche had the distinction of being one of Hollywood's most surprising success stories and also one half of its most famous lesbian couple. Heche's hyper-publicized former relationship with actress and comedienne Ellen DeGeneres was particularly notable -- and refreshing -- for its degree of openness, something that made the two women veritable poster children for gay pride in Hollywood and elsewhere.Born in the small town of Aurora, OH, on May 25, 1969, Heche was raised as part of a fundamentalist Christian family. Her father, an itinerant choir director, was constantly running from both debt and his immediate family; the former was due to his lack of a steady job and the latter to his secret life as a gay man. Both conditions resulted in a tumultuous childhood for Heche, who began performing in dinner theatre at the age of 12 to help pay her family's bills. Her life changed dramatically when she was 13 and her father died of AIDS, something that revealed his other identity and confounded Heche's entire family. Compounding the tragedy was her brother's death in a car accident just months later; following this double blow, Heche lived with her mother in Chicago and kept acting to help pay the rent. When she was 17, she moved to New York and was cast as identical twins on the long-running soap opera Another World; Heche stayed with the show through 1991, earning a Daytime Emmy Award for her work in the process.Following her departure from Another World, Heche struggled in obscurity for a few years, turning up on the occasional TV show. Her fortunes began to shift in 1996, when she had her breakthrough film role in Nicole Holofcener's Walking and Talking, a well-received independent that co-starred Heche and Catherine Keener as best friends experiencing various romantic ups and downs. That same year, she had a supporting role as Demi Moore's best friend in The Juror and although the film wasn't particularly successful, it did give Heche greater exposure. Her exposure increased exponentially when, after appearing in Wag the Dog and as Johnny Depp's wife in Mike Newell's highly acclaimed Donnie Brasco in 1997, she made public her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. Heche's disclosure came directly against the advice of her agents -- whom she subsequently fired -- and the intense amount of hooplah surrounding it severely compromised her casting opposite Harrison Ford in the romantic comedy Six Days Seven Nights. Fortunately, Ford stood firm on his insistence that Heche star with him in the film and the actress managed to weather the ridiculous skepticism voiced by those who doubted a lesbian actress -- one who had made a career thus far out of portraying blatantly heterosexual women -- could convincingly play Ford's love interest. Although Six Days Seven Nights was savaged by most critics and failed to perform as well as had been expected, Heche earned a number of positive reviews for her performance, as well as a choice position on many Hollywood casting lists. She went on to give another strong performance as a lawyer in Return to Paradise and then landed the much-sought-after role of Marion Crane in Gus Van Sant's relentlessly publicized 1998 remake of Psycho. The film, which also starred Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates and Julianne Moore as Lila Crane, turned out to be a sizable disappointment, and after starring alongside Ed Harris in the similarly disappointing religious drama The Third Miracle, Heche decided to try her hand at directing. She made her directorial debut with Reaching Normal in 1999 and the following year, wrote and directed a segment of the HBO drama If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000). Her segment centered on a lesbian couple willing to do anything to have a baby and starred Sharon Stone and DeGeneres. That same year, Heche returned to acting as one of the stars of Auggie Rose, a drama about a man who gets the opportunity to assume a new identity.While Heche and DeGeneres chose to amicably part ways in 2000, their high-profile relationship left an indelible mark on US culture, helping to usher in an era of increased tolerance toward homosexuals within mainstream America. Along with the much publicized break-up, Heche found herself in the news for another reason that year. Upon having an emotional breakdown, the actress was found on a stranger's doorstep claiming to be Celestia, the daughter of God. However, rather than shy from the controversy, Heche chose to tackle it head-on, documenting the experience in the 2001 autobiography Call Me Crazy. Capping off a rollercoaster period of her personal life, Heche married camera-man Coley Lafoon in September of 2001.While she had certainly remained in the public eye, it had been a while since audiences had seen much acting from Heche, so it certainly pleased her fans when she assumed a recurring role on the quirky Fox series Ally McBeal. Next up, she could be seen on the big screen in the Denzel Washington thriller John Q and with Nicole Kidman in 2004's Birth. Heche lent her voice to the 2007 animated fantasy adventure Superman: Doomsday, and took on the lead role of Marin Frist, a relationship expert who finds herself in an isolated Alaskan town following the dissolution of her own marriage in the television series Men in Trees (2007-2008). Though she participated in several moderately successful films in the coming years (The Other Guys, That's What She Said, Rampart), the actress wouldn't find mainstream success until 2011, when she worked with Ed Helms and John C. Reilly in the role of an insurance salesperson in the comedy Cedar Rapids.

Trivia: After starting as an athlete herself, playing volleyball as a teenager, Bridgette Wilson began a show business career after winning the Miss Teen USA pageant in 1990, and would end up coming full circle to her athletic beginnings by marrying tennis player Pete Sampras in 2000. Wilson's athletic-yet-curvy frame and gorgeous face have often placed her as the beauty in films, which seems quite appropriate in consideration of her beginnings as a beauty queen. Born September 25, 1973, in Oregon, Wilson relocated to Los Angeles in 1990 after winning the crown as a teen, and took on her first role -- on the soap Santa Barbara -- the following year. Her debut on the big screen came alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1993's Last Action Hero, in which she portrayed Schwarzenegger's daughter. Two years later, she appeared in Higher Learning starring Michelle Pfeiffer, and would expand upon her beauty queen profile to include a disciplinarian leadership role in Mortal Kombat. Her image as the beauty, however, was maintained and furthered in her role as Adam Sandler's character's love interest in Billy Madison (also 1995), a role which also permitted her an exploration of her comedic talent. Through the 1990s, Wilson played numerous roles of varying status in films for television and theater, with a notable appearance as the cold Elsa Shivers in the teen horror movie I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997).In addition to her role on Santa Barbara, Wilson has made guest appearances on several television programs including Saved by the Bell, Frasier, and Murder, She Wrote. In 2000, she played Bridget Deshiell on the series The Street, and also revisited pageantry in her role as Miss Texas in the film Beautiful. Additionally, 2000 was the year she wed Pete Sampras.Wilson supported Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Lopez by graciously stepping aside to allow for their romance to blossom in The Wedding Planner in 2001. She played small roles in The Extremists and Buying the Cow the following year. She and Sampras had a son, Christian, in November 2002.

Trivia: Born on a Belgian army base, curly brown-haired Johnny Galecki grew up in Chicago and started acting professionally at the age of 12. He made his feature film debut in 1988 as River Phoenix's little brother in A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. He then assumed the role of Rusty Griswold in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and gained his first regular role on a TV series as Robert Ulrich's son in American Dreamer. In 1991, he starred in the made-for-TV movie Backfield in Motion, co-starring the production team of Roseanne and Tom Arnold. The next year, Galecki joined the cast of Roseanne as Darlene's sensitive and put-upon boyfriend David Healy. He stayed on the show until its final season in 1997, although he wasn't on very much during its last few years. His other television credits include several guest appearances, leading roles in made-for-TV movies, and a part on the short-lived Head of the Class spin-off Billy. After Roseanne ended, he got back into features with small parts in I Know What You Did Last Summer, Bean, and Suicide Kings. He continued playing slightly effeminate sensitive males in The Opposite of Sex and Morgan's Ferry. After bit parts in Bounce, Playing Mona Lisa, and Vanilla Sky, Galecki played a leading role in the comedy thriller Bookies, which premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. In 2007 he landed the leading role in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory and it grew to be one of the most popular shows on TV, earning Galecki Emmy, Golden Globe, and Sag nominations in 2011 for his work on the show. He maintained his movie career in projects such as Hancock and In Time.

Trivia: American actress Patti D'Arbanville was 13 when she was discovered by "underground" filmmaker Andy Warhol. Wary of Warhol's reputation, D'Arbanville's mother wouldn't permit her daughter to work for the director until the girl was 17 -- at which point she enacted a lesbian love scene in Warhol's Flesh (1968). Unlike many Warhol protegees, D'Arbanville was able to matriculate to mainstream movies, though many of these, particularly the 1977 Bilitis, were obsessed with sex and procreation. The actress endeared herself to middle-America movie fans in the Barbra Streisand/Ryan O'Neal vehicle The Main Event (1979), stealing the show as a girl with a hacking (and hilarious) cough. Other D'Arbanville performances of note include the role of Ken Wahl's lady love on the TV series Wiseguy, and the redoubtable Cathy Smith in the 1989 John Belushi biopic Wired.