Trivia: As one of the most impressively talented members of the emerging New Hollywood of the early 21st century, Reese Witherspoon has proven that she can do far more than just pose winsomely for the camera. Born March 22, 1976, in Nashville, TN, Witherspoon was a child model and acted in television commercials from the age of seven. She had a part in the 1991 Lifetime cable movie Wildflower before making her 1991 film debut in the coming-of-age story The Man in the Moon (1991). The 14-year-old Witherspoon made an immediate impact on critics and audiences alike, netting widespread praise for her portrayal of a tomboy experiencing love for the first time.While still in high school, Witherspoon completed two more feature films, Jack the Bear (1993), starring Danny De Vito, and Disney's A Far Off Place (1993), which required the actress to spend several months living in the Kalahari Desert. Following a supporting role in the 1993 CBS miniseries Return to Lonesome Dove and a lead in the critically disembowelled S.F.W., Witherspoon temporarily set aside her career to study English literature at Stanford University. She then returned to film as the abused girlfriend of a psychotic Mark Wahlberg in the thriller Fear (1996). In the same year, she had to deal with yet another crazed male in Freeway, a satirical version of Little Red Riding Hood in which Witherspoon co-starred with Kiefer Sutherland, who took on the role of the aforementioned crazed male.Her career began to take off in 1998, with roles in two high-profile films. The first, Twilight, saw her sharing the screen with Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon, and Paul Newman. The film received mixed reviews and lackluster box office, but Pleasantville, her other project that year, proved to be both a critical and financial hit. The actress won wide recognition for her leading role as Tobey Maguire's oversexed sister, and this recognition -- along with critical respect -- increased the following year with another leading role, in Alexander Payne's acclaimed satire Election. Starring opposite Matthew Broderick, Witherspoon won raves for her hilarious, high-strung portrayal of student-council presidential candidate Tracy Flick. The character stood in stark contrast to the one Witherspoon subsequently portrayed in Cruel Intentions, Roger Kumble's delightfully trashy all-teen update of Dangerous Liaisons. As the virginal Annette, Witherspoon was convincing as the object of Ryan Phillippe's reluctant affection, perhaps due in part to her real-life relationship with the actor, whom she married in June 1999.After turning up in an amusing minor role as serial killer Patrick Bateman's burnt-out yuppie girlfriend in American Psycho (2000), Witherspoon again pleased critics and audiences alike with her decidedly Clueless-esque role in 2001's Legally Blonde. Her star turn as a seemingly dimwitted sorority blonde-turned-Harvard law-school-prodigy unexpectedly shot the featherweight comedy to number one, despite such heavy summer contenders as Steven Spielberg's A.I. and the ominously cast heist thriller The Score. The 18-million-dollar film went on to gross nearly 100 million dollars, proving that Witherspoon had finally arrived as a box-office draw.Though she would test out her chops in the Oscar Wilde adaptation The Importance of Being Earnest, Witherspoon's proper follow-up to Legally Blonde came in the form of 2002's Sweet Home Alabama, a culture-clash romantic comedy as embraced by audiences as it was rejected by critics. As with Drew Barrymore before her, Witherspoon used her newfound standing among the Hollywood elite to start her own production company, Type A Films, as well as to up her asking price to the rarefied 15-million-dollar range for the sequel to Legally Blonde. Though Blonde 2 didn't perform quite as well as the first film, the power player/doting mother of two wasted no time in prepping other projects for the screen, taking the lead in 2004's elaborate costume drama Vanity Fair as Becky Sharp, a woman who strives to transcend class barriers in 19th century England. For all its lavish costumes and sets, Vanity Fair received mixed reviews, but Witherspoon's winning performance still garnered praise.The next year, she appeared in the heaven-can-wait romantic comedy Just Like Heaven with Mark Ruffalo, as well as James Mangold's biopic Walk the Line as June Carter Cash, wife of country music legend Johnny Cash. This role proved to be a pivotal one, earning Witherspoon both a Best Actress Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her performance, and cementing her as an actress whose abilities go far beyond her charm and pretty face.As with others before her, however, the Best Actress statue portended a breakup between her and her husband; in October, 2006, she and Phillippe began their divorce proceedings, shortly after his starring turn in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers. Career-wise, however, she didn't miss a beat, continuing to appear in popular romantic comedies like Four Christmases and Just Like Heaven, before getting more serious for the 1930's period drama Water for Elephants in 2011. By the next year, Witherspoon was crossing genres, playing the femme fatale at the center of a love triangle between two deadly secret agents in the action comedy This Means War.She did strong work in a supporting role in Mud, and in 2014 she returned to the Oscar race, garnering a Best Actress nomination for her work in Wild, playing a recovering addict who takes a grueling hike through California and Oregon in order to purge herself of her problems.

Trivia: Jason London and his identical twin Jeremy London both made their splash in Hollywood as handsome and talented young actors. Though they have shared at least one role, the two took off on vastly different career paths. The elder brother by 27 minutes, Jason sought stardom in cinema, while Jeremy found success on television playing the moody Griffin on the drama Party of Five. The London brothers were born in San Diego, CA, but raised in Oklahoma with their little sister Dedra and their mother. When they were young, their mother divorced their father, a construction worker. The London children seldom saw their father, who lived near Oklahoma City. In high school, the London brothers excelled at athletics, drama, and speech; later, along with their sister, they attended drama and modelling school in Dallas. Jason made his acting debut in Robert Mulligan's The Man in the Moon (1981). Originally, it was Jeremy who wanted the part and so asked Jason to drive him to the open casting call. At the last moment, Jason decided to try out, too. Though Jason got the role, Jeremy was hired as his stunt double. In 1993, Jason appeared in the cult favorite Dazed and Confused, an ensemble piece that painted a painfully accurate portrait of adolescence in the mid-'70s, in which London played quarterback Randy "Pink" Floyd. Other notable roles included his funny but touching turn as a small town youth who is too naïve to notice that he has fallen in love with a drag queen (John Leguizamo) in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995). Over the next several years, London would remain active on screen, appearing in movies like Mixed Signals and Killer Movie, as well as TV shows like Wildfire.

Trivia: Educated at Yale and the Sorbonne, Sam Waterston, born November 15th, 1940, is far more than the "general purpose actor" he was pegged to be by one well-known film historian. A respected player on the stage, screen, and television, Waterston has cultivated a loyal following with his quietly charismatic, unfailingly solid performances. After beginning his career on the New York stage -- where he has continued to perform throughout his long career -- Waterston made his film debut in The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean in 1966. For a long time, his film career was not nearly as remarkable as his work on the stage and television, although non-New York audiences were made acutely aware of the depth and breadth of Waterston's talents when, in 1973, he starred in the television adaptation The Glass Menagerie (appearing alongside Katherine Hepburn) and -- also on TV -- in Tony Richardson's A Delicate Balance. The following year, the actor further impressed television audiences when he starred as Benedick in the CBS TV adaptation of Joseph Papp's staging of Much Ado About Nothing. Also in 1974, Waterston proved to be the best of the screen's Nick Carraways when he was cast in that expository role in the The Great Gatsby; subsequent films ranged from the midnight-movie favorite Rancho Deluxe (1975) to the unmitigated disaster Heaven's Gate (1981). In the late '70s, Waterston was "adopted" by Woody Allen, joining the director's ever-increasing unofficial stock company for such films as Interiors (1978), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), September (1987), and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Waterston was nominated for an Academy award for his powerful portrayal of a conscience-stricken American journalist in The Killing Fields (1984); three years later he appeared in Swimming to Cambodia, Spalding Gray's acclaimed documentary about the making of the film. Subsequent film appearances included a turn as Kathleen Turner's hilariously timid husband in Serial Mom (1994) and a role in Ismail Merchant's The Proprietor in 1996.However, Waterston has continued to make his greatest mark on television, starring in the acclaimed The Nightmare Years in 1989 and in the similarly lauded series I'll Fly Away and Law & Order. In addition, he has gained a certain amount of fame playing Abraham Lincoln multiple times: In 1988, he starred in Gore Vidal's Lincoln on television, while he won a Tony nod playing him in the Lincoln Center production of Abe Lincoln in Illinois and supplied the president's voice for Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War.Though Waterson is most recognizable for his work in Law & Order, he took on a variety of other television roles throughout the 1990s and 2000s, among them including a turn as the District Attorney Forrest Bedford in I'll Fly Away (the role would win him an Golden Globe). In 2012, Waterson joined the cast of HBO's The Newsroom.

Trivia: Born in Arkansas and schooled in Missouri, actress Tess Harper worked hard to shed her Southern accent. Nevertheless, some of her best movies have been set in the American South. Her film breakthrough came in 1983 opposite Robert Duvall in Bruce Beresford's Tender Mercies. As compassionate Rosa Lee, she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. After a few TV movies, miniseries, and feature films, she earned an Oscar nomination for her role of cousin Chick in the comedy drama Crimes of the Heart. Also directed by Beresford, the film was based on the play by Beth Henley and starred Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, and Sissy Spacek. In the late '80s, other comedy roles followed in Beresford's Her Alibi and Elaine May's Ishtar. Harper began the next decade with a return to her Southern-style roots. In 1990, she starred in the Southern Gothic black comedy Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got the Will? as a greedy daughter fighting for her family fortune. In the drama My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, she was a sister of a rodeo rider. The actress appeared opposite Sam Waterston in Robert Mulligan's coming-of-age drama The Man in the Moon, also starring fellow Southerner Reese Witherspoon and set in small-town Louisiana. In 1992, Harper played an alcoholic mom in the drama Home Fires Burning, set in Pocohantas, VA. She switched to television for most of the '90s, including based-on-a-true-story dramas like Willing to Kill: The Texas Cheerleader Story. The TV movie Christy led to a regular role on the CBS dramatic series of the same name, starring Kellie Martin as a schoolteacher in rural Tennessee. In 2000, Harper narrated the CBS TV movie Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder, as the older Laura Ingalls Wilder herself.

Trivia: Daytime-drama addicts first became aware of American actress Gail Strickland when she was cast as Dorcas Trilling in the Gothic soaper Dark Shadows (1966-71). Strickland made her movie debut as villain Murray Hamilton's put-upon spouse in The Drowning Pool, sharing the film's soggy "thrill" highlight with star Paul Newman. She later played significant character roles in films like Norma Rae (1979) and Uncommon Valor (1981). On TV, she has been a regular on The Insiders (1985), What a Country (1986) and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman (1992-). In the 1988 weekly series Heartbeat, Strickland played nurse-practitioner Marilyn McGrath, the first lesbian continuing character in Prime Time television. Gail Strickland continued to tote up impressive film credits into the 1990s, notably How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and An American President (1995).