Trivia: The daughter of legendary sex symbol Jayne Mansfield and former Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay, Mariska Hargitay appears born to play the type of larger-than-life roles that would make her a Hollywood idol. Instead, from her breakthrough performance as a vulnerable single mother on ER to her starring turn as a somber detective on Law & Order: SVU, the talented actress has built her career by portraying real-life characters and keeping out of the spotlight. Raised in Los Angeles, Hargitay was a child of divorce before she celebrated her first birthday. In 1967, her mother died tragically when her car collided with a truck outside of New Orleans. Hargitay, then only three years old, was asleep in the backseat of the vehicle, but escaped uninjured. Days later, she moved in with her father and stepmother, Ellen Siano, a flight attendant. Hargitay participated in scores of activities throughout grade school, including cheerleading, student government, and athletics. She also developed a passion for performing: at 18, after being crowned 1982's Miss Beverly Hills, she enrolled in the University of California at Los Angeles' prestigious undergraduate theater program. Hartigay began her professional acting career while she was still a student with a bit part in Bob Fosse's Dorothy Stratten biopic Star 80 (1983). In 1985, she appeared in the B-movie Ghoulies and agreed to portray a teenage parolee inCBS' short-lived series Downtown. Roles in the teen comedies Welcome to 18 (1986) and Jocks (1987) quickly followed. In 1988, the actress joined her dad in the biopic of his own career, Mr. Universe. That same year, Hargitay earned the recurring role of Carly Fixx on television's Falcon Crest. The next several years found Hargitay acting in B-movies, such as a martial arts film called The Perfect Weapon (1991), and a handful of television films, such as Blind Side (1993) and Gambler V: Playing for Keeps (1994). She earned a small role in Mike Figgis's Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and replaced Gabrielle Fitzpatrick as Dulcea in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995), but her scenes were eventually re-shot with Fitzpatrick in the role. Throughout the late '80s and early '90s, Hargitay also appeared in numerous popular television shows -- In the Heat of the Night, Baywatch, Wiseguy, thirtysomething, Booker, Seinfeld, Ellen, The Single Guy -- and in quite a few failed series -- Tequila and Bonetti, Key West, Can't Hurry Love, Prince Street, and Cracker. In subsequent years, producer Dick Wolf tapped the actress for his Law & Order spin-off, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999). As NYPD Detective Olivia Benson, Hargitay became a familiar and a celebrated face: She earned several award nominations for her performance on the show, as she stuck with the popular show for over ten years.In addition to working in film and television, Hargitay found time for the theater -- appearing on the Los Angeles stage in Salad Days, Women's Work, and Porno -- and read Rochelle Majer Krich's crime story Regrets Only on a mystery-themed audiobook. She also established her own charity, Spirit of the Dolphin, which gives abused children the chance to swim with dolphins in Hawaii. In 2007, Hargitay served as the National Ambassador for Lee National Denim Day to raise money and awareness for breast cancer. In terms of off-camera activity, Hargitay's successful pregnancy at the age of 42 (with her husband, SVU co-star Peter Hermann) made headlines as well.

Trivia: Began acting in community theater productions at age 6. Played on her high-school softball team. Appeared in the short-lived Broadway-bound play Bobbi Boland opposite Farrah Fawcett after arriving in New York in 2002. Costarred in the Web sitcom The Burg. Made television debut on the ABC soap opera All My Children in 2005. Filmed Past Life in Atlanta, Georgia, located about 45 minutes from her hometown of Cumming. Spent a week with real U.S. Marshals to prepare for her starring role in NBC's Chase.

Trivia: Often cited as the founding father of gangsta rap, Ice-T has also crafted a successful film career from his hardened street persona. Despite the fact that his early roles stuck closely to his public image as a thuggish West Coast pimp, T has since proved both his versatility and his sense of humor by appearing as everything from a mutant kangaroo (Tank Girl [1995]) to, in a surprisingly effective about-face, a police officer (New Jack City [1991]). Born Tracy Marrow in Newark, NJ, in 1958 and later adapting his better-known persona as a tribute to pimp-turned-author Iceberg Slim, T was sent at age 12 to live in Califorina with an aunt after his father died of a heart attack (his mother had died four year earlier, also of a heart attack). Ice-T soon began to develop an obsession with rap music, and after serving a two-year stint in the Army, he began recording and appeared in the films Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (both 1984). Following a near death auto accident in 1986, T devoted his life to music and released his debut album, Rhyme Pays, the following year. T gained positive accolades for his first major film role in 1991's New Jack City, in which he played a dedicated police officer, and the irony was not lost on fans the following year when he caused a stir with a song entitled "Cop Killer." After sticking close to the streets in Ricochet (1991), Trespass (1992), and Surviving the Game (1994), T took a sci-fi detour with Tank Girl and Johnny Mnemonic (both 1995). Generally appearing in straight-to-video schlock from the mid-'90s on, Ice-T could be seen as a naval pilot in Stealth Fighter (1999) and stealing a magic flute from a vengeful green meanie in Leprechaun in the Hood (2000). Though his appearances in such films grew nearly too frequent to count, T occasionally appeared in such theatrical releases as 3000 Miles to Graceland and Abel Ferrara's 'R Xmas (both 2001). After offering curious insight into the life of a pimp in the documentary Pimps Up, Ho's Down, T continued to expound on the life of a hustler in Pimpin' 101 (2003). He also took on a recurring role on the Law & Order spin-off Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and later joined the cast as a regular in the show's second season, soon becoming a popular fixture on prime time TV. T would also enjoy success on the reality circuit, starring in the candid reality show Ice Loves Coco with his wife, Nicole "Coco" Austin.

Trivia: Never acted in a play as a child; he read The Fervent Years, about the founding of the Group Theatre, his freshman year of college and dropped out to pursue acting. Attended a summer program at the Lee Strasburg Institute. Made his Broadway debut in 2006 in Shining City, opposite Brian F. O'Byrne. Worked with the Second Stage Theatre in shows like subUrbia and Boy's Life. Attended culinary school and had an internship at the Michelin starred restaurant.

Trivia: Is of Lebanese descent.Started her acting career in theaters at a young age.Moved to Los Angeles after finishing college to pursue a career in the entertainment industry.Is a trained singer.Has provided support for the veterans and armed forces in organizations as Call of Duty Endowment and National Alliance for Mental Illness.Is an advocate to end the prohibition on Cannabis through education.

Trivia: Tall, chiseled-face character actor Robert John Burke has been acting since the 1970s, but he is best known to art house audiences as a regular member of New York-based director Hal Hartley's stock company of decidedly non-Hollywood actors. Born on Long Island, Burke studied acting at S.U.N.Y. Purchase in the early '70s. After he graduated from college, Burke began acting in TV, appearing on such shows as As the World Turns and Happy Days. Though he made his feature film debut in The Chosen (1981), Burke devoted his energies in the early '80s to an experimental teaching program designed to involve students directly in the arts. Burke returned to movies and TV in the latter half of the 1980s with roles in actioner Wanted Dead or Alive (1986), TV movie comedy Pass the Ammo (1989), and late-'80s dance trend vehicle Lambada (1989). Burke's fortunes began to change when he was cast in the lead role of an enigmatic ex-con who returns to his Long Island hometown in the then-unknown Hartley's first feature, The Unbelievable Truth (1990). Shot on a shoestring budget in 11 days, The Unbelievable Truth garnered positive notice for Hartley's distinctly offbeat, dark comic sensibility and his stars' deadpan, wry performances. Burke followed The Unbelievable Truth with a supporting part in the Oscar-nominated 1930s coming of age film Rambling Rose (1991) and a high-profile starring role replacing Peter Weller as the imposing eponymous cyborg law enforcer in Robocop 3 (1992). Burke stayed busy from then on, alternating between independent movies and Hollywood projects. Working with Hartley again, Burke starred as one of a pair of brothers searching for their ballplayer-turned-anarchist father in the quirky yet appealing Simple Men (1992); he played a smaller role in Hartley's troubled romance triad Flirt (1995). Burke also acted more than once with the far less celebrated independent filmmaker Eric Schaeffer, appearing in Schaeffer's industry insider comedy My Life's in Turnaround (1993) and self-indulgent romantic comedy If Lucy Fell (1996). Outside of the New York independent scene, Burke played Reese Witherspoon's African gamekeeper father in the children's adventure A Far Off Place (1993), joined the distinguished cast populating Tombstone (1993) (the Kurt Russell version of the Wyatt Earp Western legend), appeared in Oliver Stone's third Vietnam movie, Heaven and Earth (1993), and starred as the cursed obese lawyer in Stephen King's horror yarn Thinner (1996). Continuing to show his versatility in both comedy and drama, Burke joined the supporting cast of the light-hearted buddy chase movie Fled (1996) and starred as Natasha Gregson Wagner's father in the bayou love story First Love, Last Rites (1997). Burke returned to TV in the late '90s in two acclaimed HBO productions, the ambitious miniseries From the Earth to the Moon (1998) and the wrenching Vietnam War docudrama A Bright Shining Lie (1998). At the start of the 2000s, Burke reunited with Hal Hartley for the Cannes Film Festival entry No Such Thing (2001). Drawing upon his varied experience, not to mention his formidable mien, Burke played the mammal/lizard Beast to Sarah Polley's Beauty in Hartley's singular reworking of the fairy tale romance.

Trivia: Originally went to college to become a teacher and tutored elementary students throughout high school and college. Married with two children. Crossed paths with Tony Soprano as a compulsive gambler in the pilot episode of The Sopranos. Made his Broadway debut in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, opposite Eddie Izzard, in 2003. Originally read for the role of Johnston Green for Jericho.

Trivia: Holly Robinson Peete began her career in show business in 1969 when she was five years old with an appearance on the children's series Sesame Street, on which her father played non-Muppet cast member Gordon. In adulthood, she would go on to appear on shows like 21 Jump Street and Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, and later on Love, Inc. She became one of the co-hosts of The View knockoff The Talk, and in 2012 she spoofed her breakthrough part by appearing in the big-screen comedy 21 Jump Street. She is married to former NFL quraterback Rodney Peete.

Trivia: Stage actor Joe Grifasi was 33 when he made his inaugural movie appearance during the lengthy opening wedding sequence in 1978's The Deer Hunter as the bandleader. The actor has since been seen in such films as Still of the Night (1982) and Presumed Innocent (1990), appearing in the latter as Tommy Molto. In 1990, Joe Grifasi was cast in the regular role of TV-station public relations man Tony Pro on the brief TV series WIOU. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Grifasi first gained professional experience on the New York stage. In addition to his acting credits, Grifasi frequently appears in television commercials.

Trivia: Bill Irwin certainly qualifies as one of the most unique figures in show business; attempts to compare him to other talent invariably conclude with the observation that there is no one else like Irwin, a testament to his overarching individuality. A native of Santa Monica, Irwin spent periods of his youth in Southern California and Oklahoma, then attended Oberlin College (as a theater arts major) and Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey's Clown College in Florida, where lessons learned in slapstick, pantomime, comedic improvisation, and graceful balletic would continue to inform his art and style throughout his life. Following said education, he spent various periods of time in dramatic ensembles (such as the prestigious Kraken ensemble) and circuses (such as the Frisco-based Pickle Family Circus) and racked up a litany of theatrical accomplishments that included Broadway performances in Waiting for Godot (opposite Steve Martin and Robin Williams) and Accidental Death of an Anarchist (opposite Jonathan Pryce), a critically acclaimed turn in Fool Moon (with the Red City Ramblers), and many other highlights. Meanwhile, on television, Irwin built up a substantial audience of young people with his wordless portrayal of Mr. Noodle (opposite the late Michael Jeter) on the "Elmo's World" segments of Sesame Street. Irwin's feature appearances include A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999), Igby Goes Down (2002), Lady in the Water (2007), and Rachel Getting Married (2008), and Higher Ground (2011).