Trivia: A film and stage actor who got his big break as one of the original cast members of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway production of Rent, Anthony Rapp has appeared as a supporting actor in a number of films. Born in the Chicago suburb of Joliet on October 26, 1971, Rapp had acting aspirations even as a young child, and at the age of ten, he managed to land the title role in a Broadway production of The Little Prince. Unfortunately, the show didn't make it to opening night, but Rapp subsequently found work in a touring company of The King and I, and at the age of 14, he won an Outer Critics Circle Award for his performance in the Broadway production of Precious Sons. Rapp made his film debut at the age of 15 with a lead role in Adventures in Babysitting (1987). After graduating from high school, he moved to New York City and attended NYU until he dropped out to pursue film work in California. He appeared in supporting roles in such features as Dazed and Confused and Six Degrees of Separation (both 1993) and did some directing and scriptwriting, but it was not until he was cast as the narrator of Rent that his career began to take off. The play's success guaranteed Rapp both steady work and new opportunities, and he stayed with the production until 1998, closing it in London's West End. He also continued to appear on the big and small screens, doing guest stints on such shows as The X-Files and popping up in character roles in such films as Road Trip (2000), which cast him as an unctuous college student.

Trivia: New York-born and bred actress Rosario Dawson made her screen debut in Larry Clark's controversial Kids (1995). Literally picked off the street to play Ruby, one of the film's titular teens, Dawson -- who is of Puerto Rican, Cuban, Black, Irish, and Native American heritage -- had never acted before being cast in the film. Following Kids, she next appeared in Spike Lee's He Got Game (1998) and that same year starred in Side Streets, a series of vignettes about life in New York's five boroughs. Faithful to her New York roots through and through, Dawson has continued to star in films set in her hometown, including Light It Up and Down to You.Soon, Dawson branched into mainstream film, appearing in populist projects like Josie and the Pussycats, Men in Black 2, The Rundown, and the big-screen adaptation of Rent. The actress would also appear in harder films, like Sin City and Death Proof, as well as damanding dramatic roles, like that of a rape victim struggling to recover in Descent.

Trivia: Jesse L. Martin is proof that talent and popularity are not mutually exclusive. When the award-winning stage actor joined the cast of NBC's Law and Order in its tenth season, the program's already high ratings increased by 40 percent. Martin's debut episode drew the largest audience in Law and Order's history and positive press attracted more viewers throughout the season. The once starving artist is now both a critic's darling and one of T.V. Guide's "Sexiest People on Television," confirming that he is an actor with genuinely wide appeal. Martin was born Jesse Lamont Watkins on January 18, 1969, in Rocky Mountain, VA. He is the youngest of five sons. Martin's parents, truck driver Jesse Reed Watkins and college counselor Virginia Price, divorced when he was a child. Ms. Price eventually remarried and the boys adopted their stepfather's surname. When Martin was in grade school, the family relocated to Buffalo, NY, and the move was not an immediate success: Martin hated to speak because of his thick Southern accent and was often overcome with shyness. A concerned teacher influenced him to join an after-school drama program and cast him as the pastor in The Golden Goose. Being from Virginia, the young Martin played the character the only way he knew how: as an inspired Southern Baptist preacher. The act was a hit, and Martin emerged from his shell. The actor attended high school at Buffalo School for the Performing Arts, where he was voted "Most Talented" in his senior class. He later enrolled in New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts Theater Program. After graduation, Martin toured the states with John Houseman's Acting Company. He appeared in Shakespeare's Rock-in-Roles at the Actors Theater of Louisville and The Butcher's Daughter at the Cleveland Playhouse, and returned to Manhattan to perform in local theater, soap operas, and commercials. Finding that auditions, regional theater, and bit parts were no way to support oneself, Martin waited tables at several restaurants around the city. He was literally serving a pizza when his appearance on CBS's Guiding Light aired in the same eatery. Martin made his Broadway debut in Timon of Athens, and then performed in The Government Inspector with Lainie Kazan. While employed at the Moondance Diner, he met the late playwright Jonathan Larson, who also worked on the restaurant's staff. In 1996, Larson's musical Rent took the theater world by storm -- with Martin in the part of gay computer geek Tom Collins. The '90s update of Puccini's La Bohème earned six Drama Desk Awards, five Obie Awards, four Tony Awards, and the Pulitzer Prize. Martin soon landed roles on Fox's short-lived 413 Hope Street and Eric Bross' independent film Restaurant (1998). Ally McBeal's creator, David E. Kelly, attended Rent's Broadway premiere and remembered Martin when the show needed a new boyfriend for Calista Flockhart's Ally. The actor's performance as Dr. Greg Butters on Ally McBeal caught David Duchovny's eye, who then cast Martin as a baseball-playing alien in a 1999 episode of The X-Files that he wrote and directed. While still shooting Ally McBeal, Martin heard rumors that actor Benjamin Bratt planned to leave the cast of Law and Order. Martin tried out for the show years before and won the minor role of a car-radio thief named Earl the Hamster, but decided to wait for a bigger part. With the opportunity presenting itself, Martin begged Law and Order producer Dick Wolf for Bratt's role. Wolf hoped to cast him, and upon hearing that CBS and Fox both offered Martin development deals, he gave the actor the part without an audition. During his first year on Law and Order, Martin co-produced the one-man show Fully Committed, about the amusing experiences of a waiter at an upscale restaurant. A skilled vocalist -- he sang in Rent, on Ally McBeal, and The X-Files -- Martin later appeared in the Rocky Horror Picture Show anniversary special and hopes to star in a big-screen biography of his mother's favorite singer, Marvin Gaye. Over the coming decade, Martin would appear in several more pictures, like The Cake Eaters, the big screen adaptation of Rent, and the TV series The Philanthropist.

Trivia: Wilson Jermaine Heredia is a Tony-nominated actor for his performance in the role of Angel in the Broadway smash hit Rent. His film debut occurred with 1999's Flawless.

Trivia: Idina Menzel got her start on the stage, rising to fame in the Broadway productions of the musicals Rent and Wicked, the latter of which she starred in as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. In 2003, Menzel married Rent co-star Taye Diggs, who had already begun a successful crossover to film and television acting (the pair would divorce in 2014). Menzel followed suit, but started out in more low-profile roles, as she remained active on the stage as well. She essayed bit parts in such features as the sleeper hit Kissing Jessica Stein (2001) and Just a Kiss (2002), and appeared in guest roles on such series as Grounded for Life, Rescue Me, and Diggs' short-lived drama Kevin Hill. Menzel graduated to supporting billing as the sister of the lead in The Tollbooth (2004) -- a comedy drama about a young painter struggling desperately to find herself despite the objections of her parents -- as well as reprising her Rent role in the 2005 film adaptation of that musical. In 2007, she was cast in another supporting role, this time in the highly promoted (primarily) live-action Disney fairy tale Enchanted. She had a recurring role on the popular FOX musical series Glee. Menzel voiced Elsa, the Snow Queen, in Disney's animated film Frozen in 2013, which led to worldwide recognition singing the song "Let It Go" from the movie.

Trivia: African-American supporting actress Tracie Thoms first arrived on the Hollywood scene in the early 2000s, and worked steadily thereafter, landing a covetous string of roles in many of Hollywood's most hotly anticipated films. She played Andrea in the riotous Tribeca-produced frat-boy comedy Porn 'n Chicken (2002), then tackled the role of Mahandra, the acerbic best friend of the even more acerbic Jaye Tyler (Caroline Dhavernas), on the short-lived cult fantasy series Wonderfalls (2004). In 2005 and 2006, respectively, Thoms tackled sizeable roles in the Chris Columbus-directed musical Rent and the David Frankel-helmed box-office smash The Devil Wears Prada. Additionally, in 2006, Thoms got promoted from a previously recurring role to a regular character -- Kat Miller -- on the hit detective series Cold Case. She then geared up for Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino's half of the Grindhouse double-bill, as the garrulous Kim, one of three no-nonsense female vigilantes who take on Kurt Russell's psychopath Stuntman Mike.

Trivia: As the dignified and relentlessly photogenic object of Angela Bassett's affections in How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Taye Diggs made an immediate and unforgettable impression on legions of filmgoers. Diggs came to film by way of the theater. Born in 1971 in New Jersey, he was raised as the oldest of five children in Rochester, NY. After earning a B.F.A. in musical theater from Syracuse University, he made his way to Broadway, debuting in the Tony-winning production of Carousel. In 1996, Diggs got his big break, originating the role of the nasty landlord, Benny, in Jonathan Larson's Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Rent. He then moved from stage to television, with a role on Guiding Light, and in 1998 he made his film debut in How Stella Got Her Groove Back. The excitement surrounding Diggs' performance netted him both media exposure and more work, and the following year he could be seen in no less than four films. First up was his turn as a tantric sex god in Doug Liman's Go; audiences could next see him as an AWOL groom in the coming-of-age drama The Wood; Malcolm D. Lee's The Best Man featured Diggs as another member of the wedding, this time as the titular best man suffering from his own pre-wedding jitters; finally, he starred as a guest at Geoffrey Rush's allegedly haunted mansion in the remake of William Castle's The House on Haunted Hill.In 2001, Diggs returned to the small-screen with a recurring role on Fox's Ally McBeal. And when subsequent film roles in such unsuccessful projects as Equilibrium, Basic, and Malibu's Most Wanted did his career no good, he decided to try on a full-time television gig with Kevin Hill. Premiering in 2004 on UPN, the primetime drama starred Diggs in the title role, a fast-living bachelor who finds his life turned upside down with the unexpected introduction of an infant. In 2006, after a stint as the title character's gay boyfriend on the final season of Will & Grace, Diggs gave TV stardom another shot as a cop trapped in a time loop in the high-concept, 24-esque Day Break, but the show was yanked after a handful of episodes. His TV career was finally resuscitated by the Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice, in which he was cast in the role of Sam Bennett, an internist trying to survive the medical and romantic entanglements at the Oceanside Wellness Center. Later, the actor would play the role of Vargas in the live adaptation of the comic Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, and narrate The Fab Five, a documentary following five famous basketball players from the University of Michigan. In 2013, he reprised his role of Harper Stewart in The Best Man sequel, The Best Man Holiday. Diggs returned to television the next year, starring in Steven Bochco's Murder in the First, and booking a recurring role on The Good Wife.

Trivia: Born December 1st, 1970, former Saturday Night Live cast member Sarah Silverman made her film debut in the 1997 Who's the Caboose. She then had a supporting role as a friend of Mary in Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly's 1998 comedy smash There's Something About Mary. Following a part in Chris O'Donnell's The Bachelor, which also starred Renee Zelwegger, Brooke Shields, and James Cromwell, Silverman secured a deal with Columbia Tri-Star to create a vehicle for herself based on her one-woman show, Susan Plays Cheese. She received further exposure on various TV talk shows, as well as in the pages of Esquire Magazine's "breasts" issue and a fashion layout in Mirabella. She appeared in the comedies Screwed and Heartbreakers, and had a memorable role as the driven girlfriend in Richard Linklater's School of Rock. 2005 was a stellar year for Silverman on the big screen. In addition to writing and starring in Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic, she was widely considered to have one of the very best appearances in the documentary The Aristocrats. She followed that up the next year with a part in Todd Phillips' School for Scoundrels. From 2007 to 2009, Silverman played herself in The Sarah Silverman Program, and edgy sitcom that earned the comedienne a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award. Despite a devoted fan following, Comedy Central cancelled the show after three seasons. In 2008, Silverman appeared semi-regularly on Jimmy Kimmel Live for a series of raunchy sketches involving Matt Damon, and made several appearances on the USA Network's television series Monk. After making a cameo as herself in The Muppets in 2011, Silverman went a different direction by taking on a dramatic role in Take This Waltz, a film following a married couple whose relationship begins to crumble when one half of the pair forms an emotional bond with a neighbor. She next logged a series of voice roles, including Vanellope, a glitchy video game character in Disney's Wreck-It Ralph (2012) and a recurring role on Bob's Burgers. In 2014, she appeared in A Million Ways to Die in the West and began a guest arc on Masters of Sex.

Trivia: In 1991, while still in high school, wrote the play The Martha War for which he won the Very Special Arts Young Playwrights Award and had his play performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington D.C. Appeared in Impossible Marriage, a Beth Henley play, on Broadway in 1998 which eventually led him to be cast in Minority Report after Steven Spielberg saw him perform. First major role was as Robin Williams's sidekick, Truman Schiff, in the 1998 film, Patch Adams. Appeared in a second Beth Henley play on Broadway in 2006 called Ridiculous Fraud. Reprised his Minority Report role in the 2015 TV show of the same name; he's the only series regular to do so.

Trivia: Worked for an airline to support herself when she first moved to New York City. Interviewed more than 50 people from Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood about their experiences to create her 1992 one-woman show Fires in the Mirror. Portrays cyclist Lance Armstrong as one of the characters in her stage show Let Me Down Easy. Has taught at academic institutions including New York University, Yale University, the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, and as a tenured professor at Stanford University. Has been an Artist in Residence for the Ford Foundation, MTV Networks, the Aspen Institute, the Center for American Progress, and Grace Cathedral. Has received honorary degrees from academic institutions including the Juilliard School; the School of Visual Arts, University of Pennsylvania; Wesleyan College; and Bryn Mawr College.

Trivia: First performed on stage at the age of 5 in a Christmas pageant at his elementary school. Moved to New York City shortly after 9/11 and worked 60 hours a week as a bell hop and door man at W Hotel in Times Square for two years. His first role on Law and Order: SVU involved being in rough water in a kayak for five hours. He didn't tell the director he couldn't swim. Appeared opposite Denzel Washington on Broadway in a 2010 production of August Wilson's Fences. Joined Gotham in season 2, playing Batman's right-hand man Lucius Fox.