Trivia: Bearing the kind of golden-skinned, blue-eyed handsomeness that often leads to predictions of superstardom, Sean Patrick Flanery has been acting on screens big and small since the 1980s. Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana on October 11, 1965, Flanery was raised in Houston, Texas. While attending Houston's University of Saint Thomas, he decided to take a drama class in the hopes of pursuing a fellow drama student. Flanery's interest in the girl proved fleeting, but the same could not be said of his interest in the theatre: after getting hooked, he packed up and headed out to Los Angeles, where he had an obligatory stint waiting tables before he found an agent. After eight months of looking for work, Flanery began acting in television commercials, which in turn led to work on various television shows. Although he made his film debut in 1987's A Tiger's Tale, it was his work in the 1992 television series Young Indiana Jones that gave Flanery his first taste of recognition. Although the series was short-lived, it did manage to build up something of a fan base, and Flanery continued to make Young Indy specials until 1996. In 1995, the actor returned to film, appearing in an adaptation of Truman Capote's The Grass Harp and starring in Powder. Unfortunately for Flanery, the latter film was mired in controversy surrounding suspect actions on the part of its director, which obscured the quality of the actor's performance. Flanery continued to appear in a number of films, including 1997's Suicide Kings and the 1998 Drew Barrymore vehicle Best Men. Also in 1998, he could be seen portraying a callous rocker in the independent film Girl. The following year, Flanery starred opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar in the romantic comedy Simply Irresistible. Later that same year, he could be seen giving romance another try in Body Shots, a tale of angst-ridden twenty-somethings in L.A.'s treacherous dating scene.He was in The Boondock Saints and the gentle family drama Kiss the Bride. He was the lead in Tobe Hooper's The Damned Thing, which was part of the Masters of Horror series. He worked on The Dead Zone TV series, and returned as Connor MacManus for The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. He appeared in the horror film Saw: The Final Chapter, the thriller InSight, and the moving drama Lake Effects.

Trivia: If Harrison Ford had listened to the advice of studio heads early in his career, he would have remained a carpenter and never gone on to star in some of Hollywood's biggest films and become one of the industry's most bankable stars. Born July 13, 1942, in Chicago and raised in a middle-class suburb, he had an average childhood. An introverted loner, he was popular with girls but picked on by school bullies. Ford quietly endured their everyday tortures until he one day lost his cool and beat the tar out of the gang leader responsible for his being repeatedly thrown off an embankment. He had no special affinity for films and usually only went to see them on dates because they were inexpensive and dark. Following high school graduation, Ford studied English and Philosophy at Ripon College in Wisconsin. An admittedly lousy student, he began acting while in college and then worked briefly in summer stock. He was expelled from the school three days before graduation because he did not complete his required thesis. In the mid-'60s, Ford and his first wife, Mary Marquardt (his college sweetheart) moved to Hollywood, where he signed as a contract player with Columbia and, later, Universal. After debuting onscreen in a bit as a bellboy in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966), he played secondary roles, typically a cowboy, in several films of the late '60s and in such TV series as Gunsmoke, The Virginian, and Ironside. Discouraged with both the roles he was getting and his difficulty in providing for his young family, he abandoned acting and taught himself carpentry via books borrowed from the local library. Using his recently purchased run-down Hollywood home for practice, Ford proved himself a talented woodworker, and, after successfully completing his first contract to build an out-building for Sergio Mendez, found himself in demand with other Hollywood residents (it was also during this time that Ford acquired his famous scar, the result of a minor car accident). Meanwhile, Ford's luck as an actor began to change when a casting director friend for whom he was doing some construction helped him get a part in George Lucas' American Graffiti (1973). The film became an unexpected blockbuster and greatly increased Ford's familiarity. Many audience members, particularly women, responded to his turn as the gruffly macho Bob Falfa, the kind of subtly charismatic portrayal that would later become Ford's trademark. However, Ford's career remained stagnant until Lucas cast him as space pilot Han Solo in the megahit Star Wars (1977), after which he became a minor star. He spent the remainder of the 1970s trapped in mostly forgettable films (such as the comedy Western The Frisco Kid with Gene Wilder), although he did manage to land the small role of Colonel G. Lucas in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979). The early '80s elevated Ford to major stardom with the combined impact of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and his portrayal of action-adventure hero Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which proved to be an enormous hit. He went on to play "Indy" twice more, in 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989. Ford moved beyond popular acclaim with his role as a big-city police detective who finds himself masquerading as an Amish farmer to protect a young murder witness in Witness (1984), for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his work, as well as the praise of critics who had previously ignored his acting ability. Having appeared in several of the biggest money-makers of all time, Ford was able to pick and choose his roles in the '80s and '90s. Following the success of Witness, Ford re-teamed with the film's director, Peter Weir, to make a film adaptation of Paul Theroux's novel The Mosquito Coast. The film met with mixed critical results, and audiences largely stayed away, unused to the idea of their hero playing a markedly flawed and somewhat insane character. Undeterred, Ford went on to choose projects that brought him further departure from the action films responsible for his reputation. In 1988 he worked with two of the industry's most celebrated directors, Roman Polanski and Mike Nichols. With Polanski he made Frantic, a dark psychological thriller that fared poorly among critics and audiences alike. He had greater success with Nichols, his director in Working Girl, a saucy comedy in which he co-starred with Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver. The film was a hit, and displayed Ford's largely unexploited comic talent. Ford began the 1990s with Alan J. Pakula's courtroom thriller Presumed Innocent, which he followed with another Mike Nichols outing, Regarding Henry (1991). The film was an unmitigated flop with both critics and audiences, but Ford allayed his disappointment the following year when he signed an unprecedented 50-million-dollar contract to play CIA agent Jack Ryan in a series of five movies based upon the novels of Tom Clancy. The first two films of the series, Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), met with an overwhelming success mirrored by that of Ford's turn as Dr. Richard Kimball in The Fugitive (1993). Ford's next effort, Sydney Pollack's 1995 remake of Sabrina, did not meet similar success, and this bad luck continued with The Devil's Own (which reunited him with Pakula), despite Ford's seemingly fault-proof pairing with Brad Pitt. However, his other 1997 effort, Wolfgang Petersen's Air Force One, more than made up for the critical and commercial shortcomings of his previous two films, proving that Ford, even at 55, was still a bona fide, butt-kicking action hero. Stranded on an island with Anne Hesche for his next feature, the moderately successful romantic adventure Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), Ford subsequently appeared in the less successful romantic drama Random Hearts. Bouncing back a bit with Robert Zemeckis' horror-flavored thriller What Lies Beneath, the tension would remain at a fever pitch as Ford and crew raced to prevent a nuclear catastrophe in the fact based deep sea thriller K-19: The Widowmaker. As the 2000's unfolded, Ford would prove that he had a strong commitment to being active in film, continuing to work in projects like Hollywood Homicide, Firewall, Extraordinary Measures, Morning Glory, and Cowboys & Aliens. Ford would also reprise one of his most famous roles for the disappointing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Trivia: Actor Jeffrey Wright has earned an estimable reputation as one of the most versatile character actors of his generation, both on-stage and onscreen. Jeffrey Wright was born in Washington, D.C., in late 1965. Wright's father died when he was only a year old, and his mother, a lawyer working with the United States Customs Department, raised him with the help of her sister, a nurse. A strong student, Wright attended the prestigious St. Alban's School for Boys in Washington, D.C., and went on to receive a B.A. in Political Science at Amherst College in 1987. While at Amherst, Wright developed an interest in acting, and decided to continue his studies in the Theater department at New York University. While Wright was good enough to win an acting scholarship at N.Y.U., after only two months he opted to strike out on his own as a professional. Roles in off-Broadway plays followed, and Wright scored his first film role in 1990 with a bit part in Presumed Innocent. After a number of television roles and much theater work, in 1994 Wright got his big break when he was cast as Belize, Roy Cohn's nurse, in the acclaimed Broadway drama Angels In America: Perestroika; his performance won him a Tony Award. In 1996, Wright scored a breakthrough film role when he was cast in the lead of Basquiat, delivering a strong performance alongside a veteran cast which included Gary Oldman, Willem Dafoe, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, and Benicio del Toro. A steady flow of character roles followed, including showy supporting work in Celebrity, Ride With the Devil, and Shaft, while Wright gave a compelling performance as Dr. Martin Luther King in the made-for-cable film Boycott. Wright continued to pursue his love of live theater as well, winning an Obie Award in 2002 for his performance (opposite Don Cheadle) in Suzan-Lori Parks' play Topdog/Underdog. Critically-acclaimed screen roles in Lackawanna Blues, Broken Flowers, and Syriana kept Wright on the short list for producers in search of quality supporting players, and by bridging the gap between stage and screen with his multi-tiered role in the acclaimed HBO miniseries Angels in America, the actor would would earn both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. In 2006 Wright could be seen performing opposite Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard in director M. NIght Shyamalan's modern fairytale Lady in the Water.

Trivia: Adolescent actor, onscreen from 1986.

Trivia: Actor, singer, and voice actor Keith David has spent much of his career on the stage, but also frequently works in feature films and on television. A native of New York City, David first performed as a child, singing in the All Borough Chorus and later attended the prestigious High School of Performing Arts. Shortly after graduating from Juilliard, where he studied voice and theater, David landed a role in a production of Coriolanus at Joseph Papp's Public Theater. He starred opposite Christopher Walken. David made his Broadway debut in Albee's The Lady From Dubuque (1980) and, two years later, had his first film role in John Carpenter's The Thing. He would not appear in another feature film until he played King in Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986). In between, David alternated between stage and television work. He appeared in five films in 1988, including Clint Eastwood's Bird, where he gave a memorable performance as jazz sax player Buster Franklin. In 1992, David showed his considerable skill as a singer and dancer and won a Tony nomination for starring in the musical Jelly's Last Jam, opposite Gregory Hines. David's film career really picked up in the mid-'90s, with roles ranging from a gunslinger in Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead to a New York cop in Spike Lee's Clockers to an amputee who owns a pool parlor in Dead Presidents (all 1995). In 1998, David had a brief but memorable role as Cameron Diaz's boisterous stepfather in the Farrelly brother's zany Something About Mary. In one of the film's funniest scenes, David tries to help Diaz's prom date, Ben Stiller, extricate himself from an embarrassingly sticky situation. He is also well known to animation fans for his voice work in, among other projects, Disney's Gargoyles, HBO's Spawn, and the English-dubbed version of the Japanese-animated film Princess Mononoke. In 2000 he appeared in Requiem for a Dream, Pitch Black, and Where the Heart Is, as well as providing the narration of Ken Burns documentary on the history of jazz. He continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including Barbershop, 29 Palms, Agent Cody Banks, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and the 2005 Oscar winner for Best Picture, Crash. He also found work in Transporter 2, The Oh in Ohio, Meet Monica Velour, Lottery Ticket, and the 2010 remake of Death at a Funeral.

Trivia: New Jersey-born character actor Frank Vincent is best known for playing threatening thugs and gangsters, but he actually started out working with Joe Pesci as a comedy duo during the early '70s. Before that, Pesci and Vincent had worked together in a honky tonk band, the Aristocrats, in which Pesci sang lead and Vincent played the drums. The duo broke up in 1975, but not before landing supporting roles as gangsters in the low-budget crime drama Death Collector. Afterward, Vincent disappeared from the entertainment industry until 1978, when he again encountered Pesci, who helped him land the part of Salvi, the gangster whom Pesci badly beats in Martin Scorsese's epic biography Raging Bull (1980). The former duo subsequently teamed in Dear Mr. Wonderful (1982), Scorsese's GoodFellas (1990), where Pesci gave Vincent a fatal beating, and in Casino, where the worm turned and Vincent got to kill Pesci. Vincent found fairly steady employment playing small supporting roles in films of widely varying quality through the early '90s. After appearing in Alan Rudolph's Mortal Thoughts and Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991), Vincent began getting larger screen roles.

Trivia: Made his professional stage debut as an understudy in the original New York production of Six Degrees of Separation. Made his silver screen debut playing the lead role of Matty Dean in Stonewall (1996), a film about the start of the gay rights movement. Played Brian Wilson in the ABC miniseries The Beach Boys: An American Family in 2000. Was directed by Neil LaBute in London and New York stage productions of The Shape of Things and also in the 2003 film version of the play. In 2005, he portrayed a talking lizard in the Lincoln Center Theater's revival of Edward Albee's Seascape. His first major TV role had him playing a cop in the police drama Missing Persons (1993-94). More than a decade later, his second major TV gig cast him in another crime-solving role as a U.S. Marshall in the USA Network series In Plain Sight. Wrote, directed and starred in Streetcar, a short film about an aspiring television actor that made the rounds at various film festivals in 2010.

Trivia: Began singing in public at the age of 13 when she joined her church's choir. Was a cheerleader in high school. Made her film debut in The Color Purple (1985), in which she performed a solo rendition of "God Is Tryin' to Tell You Something." Entered college intending to become a doctor, majoring in biology and minoring in chemistry. Shortly after graduation, however, she decided to pursue a career in show business. Lived in Okinawa, Japan, from 1995 to 2001 with her then-husband, who was in the Marines. During their stay, she carved out a successful singing career in the area and appeared in two Japanese TV commercials. Performed at Atlanta's Sambuca Jazz Café every week from 2002 until it closed in December 2010. Volunteers with BookPALS, which promotes literacy to young children through storytelling activities.

Trivia: Appeared with his brother John Turturro in several Spike Lee films, including Mo' Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991). Auditioned for the role of NYPD Blue's Det. James Martinez during his lunch break while working as a hotel doorman. Met wife Lissa Espinosa on a plane while she was working as a flight attendant. Was a contestant on Celebrity Fit Club in 2006. Starred on the Web series Dusty Peacock in 2009. Years after making his breakthrough as a rookie detective on NYPD Blue, he took on the role of a veteran NYC beat cop mentoring a rookie on Blue Bloods in 2010. Collects baseball memorabilia from all teams, though is a self-professed lifelong NY Yankees fan. In fact, his passion for the game was celebrated in 2009 when he was featured on an MLB series, I Breathe Baseball. Focusing on his obsession with the Yankees, it featured former NY manager Joe Torre and then-NY outfielder Johnny Damon.

Trivia: A musical theater veteran, Jane Krakowski is best known for her Emmy-nominated portrayal of scheming law secretary Elaine on the Fox TV hit Ally McBeal. Raised in Parsippany, NJ, Krakowski began taking dance lessons at age three. After making her movie debut as an orally skilled teenager in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), she garnered two Emmy nominations during her 1984-1986 stint on the serial Search for Tomorrow. Though she acted in several TV productions, including Men and Women II (1991) and Queen (1993), and had small feature film parts in Fatal Attraction (1987) and Stepping Out (1991), Krakowski found more success on Broadway in the first half of the 1990s. After she earned a Tony nomination for her work in the 1990 musical Grand Hotel, the actress was featured in several shows, including the revival of Once Upon a Mattress starring Sarah Jessica Parker. Krakowski became a TV star, however, when she was cast in Ally McBeal in 1997. As ambitious busybody Elaine, Krakowski became a bombshell comic foil to Calista Flockhart's neurotic Ally, asserting her power over the series' law office with her well-honed observational skills. The actress also displayed her versatile talents in the show's whimsical song-and-dance interludes. Bolstered by her TV success, Krakowski played a supporting role in the dance romance Dance With Me (1998), appeared as the seemingly lascivious wife of William Fichtner's bizarre narc in Go (1999), and starred as Betty in the sequel The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000). After Ally McBeal went off the air in 2002, Krakowski continued to divide her time between TV, features and the stage. Along with voicing one of the female sloths in the hit animated movie Ice Age (2002), Krakowski starred in the made for TV romantic comedy Just a Walk in the Park (2002) and played a supporting role in the Lisa Kudrow comic vehicle Marci X (2003). As in the early 1990s, though, Krakowski wound up attracting more attention on Broadway. Drawing positive notice for her acrobatic entrance via a bed sheet as well as her musical gifts, Krakowski earned another Tony nomination for her sexy supporting performance as Antonio Banderas's mistress in the acclaimed revival of Nine, the musical version of Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963).She was one of the female conquests for Jude Law in the remake of Alfie in 2004, and had a great success starting in 2006 when she was cast as Jenna Maroney, the oversexed, undereducated, deeply vain, and paranoid actress at the center of the fictional show within the show on the highly-respected sitcom 30 Rock. She provided a voice for the animated flim Open Season, and its sequel.

Trivia: Matty, the Moron and the Madonna was the intriguing title of the first off-Broadway play to feature American actor Lou Criscuolo. After this 1964 debut, Criscuolo seldom missed a theatrical season, appearing in productions as celebrated as Man of La Mancha and as obscure as Hurry Harry. The actor's film roles were generally of the "colorful ethnic character bit" variety in such films as King Kong Lives (1975), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1983), Weeds (1987), From the Hip (1987), Once Around (1991), 29th Street (1991) and Weekend at Bernie's (1991). Operating from both coasts, Criscuolo could be seen in such TV series as The Edge of Night, as Danny Micelli; Popi (1976), as Mr. Maggio; and Just Friends (1979), as health spa owner Milt D'Angelo. Lou Criscuolo almost had an actual starring part on a 1977 TV series titled Instant Family, an Odd Couple rip-off co-starring William Daniels, but the show never got past the pilot stage.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1970.

Trivia: Plagued by several severe childhood illnesses, Larry Parks was inspired by the example of his doctors to study medicine at the University of Illinois. But before graduating, Parks had decided to become an actor. He headed for New York, where he ushered at various theaters and movie houses before joining the Group Theater. He signed a movie contract with Columbia Pictures in 1941, appearing in "B"s and bits until selected to play the title role in the big-budget The Jolson Story. Parks was coached in the role by Al Jolson himself, whose singing voice was heard throughout the film (reportedly, this association was a pleasant one until Jolson, incensed that Columbia had not asked him to star in his own biopic, viciously turned on Parks and treated him atrociously). With the exceptions of Jolson Story and its 1949 follow-up, Jolson Sings Again, most of Parks' starring vehicles were easily forgettable. As a result of his brief association with the Communist Party, Parks was ordered by the HUAC to testify in its loyalty hearing in 1951. Though he publicly begged not to be forced to turn stool pigeon by identifying his fellow "Reds" in the movie industry, Parks ended up being strongarmed into doing just that. If he had harbored any hopes that his testimony would save his own career, those hopes were dashed when Parks was dropped by Columbia and unofficially blacklisted from films for ten years. He supported himself during these dark days by appearing in musical stage productions with his wife, actress Betty Garrett. In 1962, the ban was lifted on Larry Parks, and he made his movie comeback in John Huston's Freud; it proved to be his last film.