Trivia: He may have gotten his start in standup comedy by a fluke, but don't be fooled by his early good fortune -- funnyman Howie Mandel is certainly the real deal. From the stage to the screen, and virtually every medium in between, Mandel has not only proven adept at playing the clown, but with his enduring role on the popular 1980s television drama St. Elsewhere, straight and affecting drama as well. It was during a business trip to Los Angeles in 1979 that the Toronto native, goaded on by friends while watching the comics at The Comedy Store's amateur night, first took the stage to surprising effect. The wild card that evening turned out to be a producer who just happened to be in the crowd, and Mandel was immediately hired for an appearance on the popular comedy game show Make Me Laugh. He subsequently performed on television talk shows and opened for such luminaries as Diana Ross, and it wasn't long before he was approached to appear on the fledgling television drama St. Elsewhere. Cast as dedicated Dr. Wayne Fiscus, Mandel remained with the show that launched his career for the entire duration of its six-season run, gaining legions of fans and even a few Emmy nominations. Though Mandel remained loyal to St. Elsewhere for the entirety of its television run, a series of side jobs provided his career with the momentum to succeed after the series was canceled in 1988. Mandel permanently ingrained himself in the pop-culture lexicon as the voice of Gizmo in the 1984 hit Gremlins and as a multitude of characters on the popular cartoon Muppet Babies. He cracked up audiences with a rollicking appearance on Comic Relief in 1986, and he could frequently be spotted on-stage sporting a blown up rubber glove over the top half of his head and slaying audiences with his hilarious baby voice. Although Mandel would try his hand at features with both Walk Like a Man (1987) and Little Monsters (1989), neither film proved the powerhouse hit needed to launch a feature career, and he returned to television to great success in the early '90s. Mandel's love of children dictated most of his career choices in the 1990s, and in the first year of the decade he utilized his popular series of voices for the enduring children's television series Bobby's World (which ultimately went off of the air in 1998). In 1992, Mandel headlined the short-lived small-screen series Howie, and after a series of appearances in both features and made-for-television movies, he hosted both Howie Mandel's Sunny Skies and The Howie Mandel Show. Though none of his personal shows proved quite as successful or endearing as Bobby's World, Mandel remained in the public eye as both a popular comic and as the creator of a series of children's CD-ROMs that aimed to both educate and entertain. In the year 2000, Mandel once again turned his attention to features, and appearances in Tribulation (2000), Hansel & Gretel (2002), and Pinocchio 3000 (2003) proved that the popular funnyman had lost none of his onscreen talent. Outside of his work in the entertainment industry, the color-blind verminophobic spends much of his time with his wife and three children. Over the coming decade, Mandel would enjoy hosting duties of extremely successful shows like Deal or No Deal and America's Got Talent.

Trivia: Jennifer Rubin began appearing in films in the early 1980s. Rubin was seen as teenagers in such productions as Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Permanent Record (1987). She also had a short but telling role in Oliver Stone's The Doors (1991), and starred in the 1995 TV remake of the old horror yarn The Wasp Woman. The film credits of Jennifer Rubin should not be confused with those of actress Jennifer Rothschild, who in the early stages of her career was likewise billed as Jennifer Rubin.

Trivia: The daughter of Canadian actor Christopher Plummer and American stage actress Tammy Grimes, Amanda Plummer grew up on the East Coast with a love of horseback riding and literature. After studying at Middlebury College and the Neighborhood Playhouse, she settled into an acting company in Massachusetts. Plummer made her film debut in the 1981 Western Cattle Annie and Little Britches opposite Burt Lancaster. Working on Broadway, she won the Tony and the Drama Desk award for her performance as Agnes in the 1982 stage production of Agnes of God. She lost the role in the film version to Meg Tilly and stayed in the theater. Some of her stage credits include The Glass Menagerie, You Never Can Tell, and A Taste of Honey. She earned another Tony nomination for her performance in Pygmalion, opposite Peter O'Toole. On television, she earned an Emmy nomination for her recurring role of mentally challenged Alice on L.A. Law.Plummer's feature film work would consist of playing small, fragile, almost invisible characters who nevertheless leave a big impression. On the big screen, Plummer displayed her silent intensity in the non-speaking role of Ellen James in The World According to Garp (1982). She also created the interesting, if little-seen, character of Dagmar in John Patrick Shanley's Joe Versus the Volcano (1990). Her big film breakthrough came about in 1991 in Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King. She played awkward and plain office worker Lydia Sinclair, who inspires the love of a homeless man played by Robin Williams. The next year, she earned her first Emmy award for her role of concentration camp survivor Lusia Weiss in the post-war drama Miss Rose White (1992), a made-for-TV adaptation of an off-Broadway play. In feature films during the late '90s, Plummer often played slightly off-kilter women just on the verge of violent behavior. She was a disturbed sister in So I Married an Axe Murderer and an semi-balanced Castle Rock resident in Needful Things (both 1993). In 1994, she played a partner-in-crime with Tim Roth in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. As the gun-pointing Honey Bunny, Plummer gained a lot of exposure with a minimum of screen time. The next year, she played a serial killer in Michael Winterbottom's Butterfly Kiss (1995).Returning to television, Plummer earned another Emmy for the role of Professor Theresa Given in a 1996 episode of Showtime's The Outer Limits. For the rest of the '90s, she continued portraying delicately damaged characters in small independent films like Matthew Bright's Freeway (1996) and Peter Cohn's Drunks (1997). She also appeared in the family film A Simple Wish (1997) and lent her voice to the TV series Stories From My Childhood as well as the animated feature Hercules (1997). In 1999, Plummer revisited her earlier days as a horseback rider to play a member of the title harem in Peter Greenaway's bizarre 8 1/2 Women (1999). In 2003, she played Sarah Polley's food-obsessed co-worker in My Life Without Me. Plummer's projects for 2004 included the horror film Satan's Little Helper and Tobe Hooper's Brew. And while the majority of films Plummer appeared in throughout the early 2000s were generally unremarkable, the veteran actress did make headlines when it was announced that she would play the role of Wiress, a key ally of Katniss Everdeen, in the highly anticipated sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

Trivia: Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and possessing a certain bodacious je ne sais quoi, Heather Graham has had one of the more inspiring career trajectories of the 1990s. After debuting in 1988's License to Drive, which featured the two Coreys (Haim and Feldman) and little else, Graham worked in relative obscurity for years before hitting it big in a string of successful films, including Swingers, Boogie Nights, and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Originally hailing from the Midwest, Graham was born in Milwaukee, WI, on January 29, 1970. The elder of two girls (younger sister Aimee is also an actress), Graham led a fairly itinerant childhood thanks to her father's job with the F.B.I. A quiet, unpopular girl, by her own account, Graham became interested in acting at a young age. She had her first role, as Dorothy, in a school production of The Wizard of Oz and remained active in the theater throughout high school, winning the title of Most Talented from her peers. After high school, Graham packed up and headed to Los Angeles, where she discovered that talented as she may have been, it was no guarantee of employment. She worked a variety of odd jobs, including a stint as an usher at the Hollywood Bowl, before making her 1988 film debut in License to Drive as the object of Corey Haim's desire. The following year, Graham's career began to travel in a more auspicious direction when she was cast as a doomed drug addict in Gus Van Sant's critically acclaimed Drugstore Cowboy. Despite winning raves for her performance, stardom eluded Graham, as her subsequent film roles were largely incidental. However, she did win a recurring role on the TV series Twin Peaks in 1990, and the following year, starred in the widely celebrated made-for-TV movie O Pioneers!. In 1992, Graham had a supporting role in Diggstown, the most notable effect of which was a relationship with co-star James Woods, who was twice her age. After appearing in a few more films of varying quality (Six Degrees of Separation [1993] at one end of the spectrum and 1994's Don't Do It, which paired her with Drugstore boyfriend James LeGros, at the other), the actress finally got a break with the 1996 hit Swingers, appearing in a small but memorable role as the girl of Jon Favreau's dreams. The part marked the beginning of an upswing in Graham's career; in the following year she had a bit part in the movie-within-a-movie in Scream 2, which led to her inclusion on a Rolling Stone cover featuring the movie's assorted Hot Young Things, and also had her breakthrough role in Boogie Nights. As Rollergirl, an underdressed, oversexed, coke-snorting young porn actress, Graham made an indelible impression on audiences everywhere. In 1997 she also starred in Gregg Araki's Nowhere, in which she did little except have copious amounts of sex with the similarly golden-tressed Ryan Phillippe, and Two Girls and a Guy, a critically acclaimed piece that featured her as one of the title's two girls opposite Robert Downey Jr.'s guy.Unfortunately, Graham's first big-budget undertaking, the 1998 sci-fi film Lost in Space, was swallowed in a deep pit of critical and commercial quicksand. The actress more than rebounded the following year, however, earning top billing in two films, the Steve Martin comedy Bowfinger and the eagerly awaited Austin Powers sequel Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. The same year Graham earned the 1999 ShoWest convention's Female Star of Tomorrow title.Though she appeared to be on a track toward superstardom as the a new decade and millennium unfolded, a string of duds (From Hell, The Guru, Killing Me Softly, etc.) derailed Graham's career a bit. As many actors in her position often do, she decided to give television a try. Unfortunately, like much of her film work of the period, the ABC comedy Emily's Reasons Why Not was met with little excitement from critics audiences alike, and the heavily hyped series was cancelled after a single episode. Her recurring role on the comedy Scrubs, however, was well received. She continued to work in little-seen movies, but that changed in 2009 when she played a Vegas girl who falls for Ed Helms nerdy dentist in the smash hit The Hangover. Two years later she would play Aunt Opal in Jus Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer, and score a small part in the horror sequel Scream 4.

Trivia: Canadian stage and television actor Nick Mancuso was first seen on American TV screens in 1978's Dr. Scorpion. Mancuso's film career was launched the following year with Nightwing. The actor's raffish handsomeness has served him well in both heroic and less-than-heroic roles. Nick Mancuso has played the title character on two TV action series: in 1986's Stingray, he portrayed what was described by the NBC publicity flacks as "a Lone Ranger in a black sports cast;" and in the USA network's 1993 crime-fantasy series Matrix, he starred as a heartless hit man who is given a second lease on life as a celestial do-gooder.

Trivia: While she has appeared in a handful of feature films, Michelle Forbes is best known for her TV work in the 1990s. Born in Austin, TX, Forbes moved to New York when she joined the cast of daytime serial The Guiding Light in 1987. Moving to prime time after 1989, Forbes endeared herself to legions of Trekkies as Ensign Ro on Star Trek: The New Generation during the 1991-1992 season. Leaving the show to pursue feature films, the actress appeared in the Irish romance The Playboys (1992), co-starred with David Duchovny as the unwitting companions of Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis' homicidal couple in Kalifornia (1992), and helped send up the Hollywood snakepit in Swimming With Sharks (1994). Following a couple of B-films and a supporting turn in John Carpenter's over-the-top sequel Escape From L.A. (1996), Forbes returned to series TV on the highly praised NBC police drama Homicide: Life on the Street in 1996. Though her character was written out after 1998, Forbes returned for the final TV film Homicide: The Movie (2000). She seemed on track to add another well-regarded series to her resumé in 2000 as one of the doctors on duty in Peter Berg's edgy mental hospital drama Wonderland, but ABC showed little patience for the show's slow start and yanked it off the air after a couple of episodes. After Wonderland's quick disappearance, Forbes played photographer Jared Harris's wife in the fashion world feature Perfume (2001). Despite an illustrious ensemble cast, though, Perfume didn't fare much better than Robert Altman's ignominious haute couture flop Ready to Wear (1994). Finding better work in TV, Forbes appeared in the cable western The Johnson County War (2002) and joined the cast of Fox's much lauded real time CIA drama 24 in 2002, playing a tough, loyal aide to Dennis Haysbert's President Palmer. She continued her run of being part of well-respected TV shows with recurring roles in Battlestar Galactica, In Treatment, True Blood, and AMC's The Killing.

Trivia: Brown-eyed, chestnut-haired actress Ally Sheedy has been involved with acting for most of her life. The daughter of a literary agent mother, she began making commercials and appearing on-stage at the age of 15. She was something of a precocious author, as well: When only 12-years-old, she published a children's book, She Was Nice to Mice. (Sheedy has also been published in such periodicals as The New York Times). After high school, the New York-born actress headed west to the University of California where, in addition to her studies, she appeared in TV movies. She began her feature-film career at 21 playing adolescent girls in films such as Bad Boys and WarGames (both 1983), and joined the so-called Brat Pack in 1985 after appearing in John Hughes' The Breakfast Club and Joel Schumacher's St. Elmo's Fire. Despite the huge success of both films, many of her subsequent efforts were relative disappointments, and, by the early '90s, she had slipped into all but complete obscurity. However, her career was revived in 1998 thanks to a starring role as a drug-addicted lesbian photographer in the widely acclaimed High Art. Sheedy won raves for her raw, touching performance, and, in short time, again found herself working steadily. In 1999, she appeared in Allison Anders' Sugar Town and The Autumn Heart, the latter premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. In addition to her film work, Sheedy continued to work in the theater, taking over John Cameron Mitchell's title role in the popular New York production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a story about a German entertainer who is neither a man nor a woman but a fascinating composite of both. As the 21st century began, Sheedy continued to work steadily in varied projects like Happy Here and Now, Noise, Harold, and Life During Wartime -- Todd Solondz's sort-of sequel to his black comedy Happiness.

Trivia: Born in Canada and trained for an acting career in New York, Michael Sarrazin made his earliest movie appearances through the auspices of the National Board of Canada. Arriving in Hollywood in 1967, Sarrazin was almost immediately lionized critically for his supporting work opposite George C. Scott in The Flim-Flam Man (1967). He went on to co-star with Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969); with Paul Newman and Henry Fonda in Sometimes a Great Notion (1971); and with Barbra Streisand in For Pete's Sake (1974). Though his Hollywood commitments kept him hopping, Sarrazin never abandoned his Canadian roots, appearing in such above-the-border productions as The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972), Double Negative (1979), and Joshua Then and Now (1985). On television, Sarrazin played the creature in Frankenstein: The True Story (1973), adhering to Mary Shelley's original intention that the monster be as intelligent and well-spoken as it was uncontrollably violent.

Trivia: If you're a fan of movies, you've no doubt seen William Sadler's face countless times. With a versatile career that has spanned from long-haired, small-town rock star to banjo-plucking entertainer to Shakespearean actor to his role as Death in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (1991), William Sadler attacks all roles with equal gusto with his characters never ceasing to leave an impression on viewers, even if they can't recall the name of "that guy in that movie."Born in April of 1950 in Buffalo, NY, Sadler's imagination was fueled from a young age on his family's sprawling farm where he would pass the time with friends reenacting scenes from their favorite television and radio programs. Around the age of eight, Sadler's father's interest in music sparked a passion in the young boy as well with his father's gift of a ukulele. The two frequently performed at family functions together: Sadler Sr. on the guitar and Jr. on the uke. Later taking interest in a number of stringed instruments, after following in his father's footsteps and taking up the guitar, Sadler quickly learned that the mystique of the musician's life was difficult to resist. Forming a cover band with his Orchard Park High schoolmates, he began to gain popularity and a surprising amount of attention from the opposite sex. Armed with a banjo and a fistful of jokes, Sadler soon took on the persona of "Banjo Bill Sadler" for the school's annual variety show, and the result was an instant success. The students and teachers loved the performance, and English teacher Dan Larkin soon persuaded Sadler to audition for a role in Harvey, the senior play. Winning the lead and igniting a fire within the young performer, Sadler would soon follow his dreams and enroll in the drama program at State University College in Geneseo, NY. After spending two intense years in Cornell University's Fine Arts following his tenure at State University College, Sadler was finally prepared to be humbled in the grueling trials of the aspiring actor.Sadler took his first post-school role in Florida and soon relocated to Boston, moving in with his sister while scrubbing the floors of a lobster boat by day and cutting his acting chops at night. Slowly working up the nerve to take a shot at the big time in New York, a chance meeting with an old schoolmate on a trip into the city resulted in Sadler's casting in an off-off-Broadway production of Chekhov's Ivanov. After a brief turn at the Trinity Square Repertory Company in Providence, RI, Sadler moved back to New York and rented an apartment in the East Village, beginning a grueling 12 years in which he appeared in over 75 productions. It was here that Sadler would meet Marni Bakst, the woman who would soon become his wife, and a young actor named Matthew Broderick, in a Broadway production of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues, who would kick-start Sadler's film career with a role in Project X (1987).After memorable turns in such films as Die Hard 2 (1990), Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, and The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Sadler found himself becoming one of the most sought-after character actors working in Hollywood. His friendly demeanor and warm sense of humor standing in stark contrast to his usually villainous onscreen antics, Sadler has gained a reputation among actors as a helpful and good-natured craftsman, always willing to offer advise and assistance without being pushy or overbearing. Increasingly busy in both television and films in the latter '90s, Sadler gained widespread recognition with his film roles in Disturbing Behavior (1998) and The Green Mile (1999) and on television with his role as Sheriff Jim Valenti on Roswell.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: The daughter of a New York City policeman, Nancy Allen trained for a dancing career at the High School of Performing Arts, then attended Jose Quintano's School for Young Professionals. In dozens of TV commercials from the age of 15, Nancy made her first film appearance (as "Nancy"-what a stretch!) in 1973's The Last Detail. Three years later, she set the standard for all future "bitch-goddess teenagers" as the beautiful but despicable high schooler Chris in Brian De Palma's Carrie. While Chris and her greaser boyfriend (John Travolta) met with a violent but well-deserved end on-screen, Nancy herself ultimately won out by claiming director De Palma as her husband. She next displayed a keen comic sense in the role of the only teenager on Earth who doesn't love the Beatles in Robert Zemeckis' I Want to Hold Your Hand (1976); thereafter, for the next seven years she appeared only in DePalma's films. She carried on a heated argument with her own hand in Home Movies (1979), was threatened by a knife-wielding psycho in Dressed to Kill (1980), and literally died for John Travolta's art in Blow-Out (1981). After her divorce from DePalma in 1984, Nancy's film opportunities narrowed, though she was memorable as take-no-guff police officer Anne Lewis in the three Robocop flicks. In 1993, Nancy Allen joined several other veteran stars in Acting on Impulse, a made-for-cable send-up of the horror films that first brought her fame.