Trivia: Born December 19, 1972, quick-witted actress Rosa Blasi has gained as much attention for her sharp sense of humor as she has for her prowess as a serious stage performer, and thanks to a high-profile role on the long-running Lifetime medical drama Strong Medicine, she finally found her footing as a television actress after years of supporting roles on the small screen. Cast as single mother and Latino medico Dr. Luisa "Lu" Delgado on Strong Medicine, Chicago native Blasi gradually won over viewers thanks to her winning performance as an inner-city medical specialist who suddenly finds her clinic merging with the prestigious Rittenhouse Hospital.Having made her stage debut at the tender age of eight, Blasi was no stranger to the spotlight when she joined the Piven Performance Company and Second City in an effort to sharpen her skills as a performer, and thanks to roles on such popular sitcoms as Frasier, Becker, and The Drew Carey Show, the emerging actress grew increasingly comfortable on the small screen as well as the boards. In early 2006, Blasi took up her Strong Medicine role, which carried on for many seasons; meanwhile, she found time for movie roles as well. A dramatic part in the Showtime movie Noriega: God's Favorite preceded a fleeting appearance as the wife of Bill Pullman's ill-fated character in the horror hit The Grudge in 2004, with both offering fine examples of Blasi's undeniable onscreen charisma. In addition to her onscreen acting career, Blasi does frequent voice-over work and has become a regular fixture on the talk-show circuit.

Trivia: Patricia Richardson, while best known for her role as Jill Taylor on Home Improvement, has had a long and varied career that encompasses theatre, television and film. A graduate of Southern Methodist University, the Bethesda, Maryland native put her fine arts degree to use in New York where, on her first ever audition, she was hired as understudy in the part of Gypsy Rose Lee in Angela Lansbury's 1974 revival of Gypsy: A Musical Fable. She later moved to Los Angeles to pursue television. Before landing her breakout role, Richardson was a series regular on Double Trouble, FM, and Eisenhower & Lutz (where she played Scott Bakula's love interest). She had numerous guest appearances on many beloved family series including The Equalizer, Love, Sidney, The Cosby Show, Kate and Allie, and Quantum Leap, where she would reunite with Bakula. In 1997 Richardson was nominated for an Independent Spirit award for her first starring role in the film Ulee's Gold with Peter Fonda. After Home Improvement ended, Richardson turned to more dramatic roles; in 2001 she played Marilyn Monro's mother Gladys in the made-for-TV biopic Blonde based on Joyce Carol Oates' novel. She joined the cast of Strong Medicine in 2002 as Dr. Andy Campbell, replacing Janine Turner, and in 2004 she moved to the West Wing for the series' final two seasons, playing Republican candidate Arnold Vinick's campaign manager. Richardson has three sisters and as the child of a naval officer, considers herself to be a "Navy brat". She was divorced from actor Ray Baker, with whom she had three children -- Henry, Roxanne, and Joseph.

Trivia: Best known for playing unapologetically mature, assertive, and intelligent adult women, African-American supporting actress Jenifer Lewis originally launched her career as a vocalist, singing in a church choir in Kinloch, MO. Lewis' passion (and gift) for singing carried her to the Great White Way, where she appeared in a number of sell-out Broadway musicals -- including Ain't Misbehavin' and Dreamgirls. She subsequently migrated to the West Coast for a string of appearances in TV programs such as Roc, A Different World, Murphy Brown, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, Touched by an Angel, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and graduated to features in 1992. The films in which Lewis has appeared run the gamut of quality, from outstanding (What's Love Got to Do With It?, 1993) to satisfactory (Sister Act, 1992; The Preacher's Wife, 1996) to downright abominable (Frozen Assets, 1992); many, however, demonstrated her fine gifts. More recently, Lewis attained some much-deserved recognition (and ascended to higher than usual billing) with her multi-season portrayal of Lana Hawkins in the prime-time medical drama Strong Medicine (2000).

Trivia: Supporting actor Philip Casnoff appeared on screen beginning in the '80s.

Trivia: A show business veteran well before his 10th birthday, Secaucus, NJ, native Christopher Marquette covered virtually all the bases of acting at a tender age, making a name for himself in such diverse venues as feature film, Broadway theater, Barney videos, and print advertisements. Marquette and his mother, Tisha, temporarily moved to Los Angeles to accommodate his burgeoning acting career in the fall of 1995 (thus coinciding with TV pilot season), and indeed, he made his biggest splash with guest spots in television programs during the late '90s and early 2000s, including Law & Order, ER, and Touched By an Angel, before scoring a regular role as Marc Delgado (son of doctor Luisa Delgado) on the Lifetime network medical drama Strong Medicine (2001-2006). Meanwhile, Marquette staked out feature territory in such projects as the guilty pleasure slasher opus Freddy Vs. Jason (2003), the crime drama Alpha Dog (2006), and musician-turned-director Fred Durst's gritty drama The Education of Charlie Banks (2007).

Trivia: Identical twin Tamera Mowry starred as Tamera Campbell, opposite her sibling Tia, on the popular sitcom Sister, Sister -- both in its original ABC Friday-night run and later during its four-year stint on the WB network. This stardom arrived at the tail end of several one-shot prime-time series appearances and commercial appearances that began during the actress' preteen years. During the Sister, Sister period and for years afterward, the Mowrys broke the mold of standard twin and triplet actors by appearing together in films and television programs, in lieu of forking off into different paths. They co-headlined the family-oriented comedy Seventeen Again (2000), the teen movie The Hot Chick (2002), and the 2005 Disney Channel telemovie Twitches (a kind of rehash of the Sister, Sister premise with an occult twist, which spawned a sequel in 2007), but also essayed individual roles from time to time. Circa 2000, Tamera struck out on her own, starring in the Billy Graham-produced Christian telemovie Something to Sing About, alongside Graham, Darius McCrary, Kirk Franklin, and Irma P. Hall. She also joined the cast of the popular Lifetime medical drama Strong Medicine during that show's fifth and sixth seasons, as Kayla Thornton, a young physician from a rural area who arrives as a first-year resident at Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Women's Health Clinic following the traumatizing death of her brother, with the intention of pursuing a medical career. In later years, Mowry branched out more into reality TV, including a show with her sister Tia (cleverly titled Tia & Tamera), but still occasionally returned to acting.

Trivia: Fans of 1990s prime-time sitcoms will invariably remember actress Madeline Zima as the sugar-sweet, angelic Grace, six-year-old daughter of British theatrical producer Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy), on the Fran Drescher series comedy The Nanny. In fact, when Zima landed that part, she had already tackled child roles in features as diverse as The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992) and Mr. Nanny (1993). The Drescher series, of course, represented Zima's breakthrough, and by the late '90s, the young actress (who remained with the sitcom cast for all six seasons, until it wrapped in 1999) had blossomed into a starkly beautiful teenager. She branched out into more adult-oriented material with an uncanny portrayal of the young Lucille Ball in the telemovie Lucy (2003), then returned to series programs with a regular role on the quirky David Duchovny-headlined Showtime comedy drama Californication (2007). She went on to appear in The Collector, The Family Tree, Crazy Eyes, and Lake Effects.