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: An actress who is known as much -- if not more -- for her offscreen life as for her onscreen performances, Anne Heche had the distinction of being one of Hollywood's most surprising success stories and also one half of its most famous lesbian couple. Heche's hyper-publicized former relationship with actress and comedienne Ellen DeGeneres was particularly notable -- and refreshing -- for its degree of openness, something that made the two women veritable poster children for gay pride in Hollywood and elsewhere.Born in the small town of Aurora, OH, on May 25, 1969, Heche was raised as part of a fundamentalist Christian family. Her father, an itinerant choir director, was constantly running from both debt and his immediate family; the former was due to his lack of a steady job and the latter to his secret life as a gay man. Both conditions resulted in a tumultuous childhood for Heche, who began performing in dinner theatre at the age of 12 to help pay her family's bills. Her life changed dramatically when she was 13 and her father died of AIDS, something that revealed his other identity and confounded Heche's entire family. Compounding the tragedy was her brother's death in a car accident just months later; following this double blow, Heche lived with her mother in Chicago and kept acting to help pay the rent. When she was 17, she moved to New York and was cast as identical twins on the long-running soap opera Another World; Heche stayed with the show through 1991, earning a Daytime Emmy Award for her work in the process.Following her departure from Another World, Heche struggled in obscurity for a few years, turning up on the occasional TV show. Her fortunes began to shift in 1996, when she had her breakthrough film role in Nicole Holofcener's Walking and Talking, a well-received independent that co-starred Heche and Catherine Keener as best friends experiencing various romantic ups and downs. That same year, she had a supporting role as Demi Moore's best friend in The Juror and although the film wasn't particularly successful, it did give Heche greater exposure. Her exposure increased exponentially when, after appearing in Wag the Dog and as Johnny Depp's wife in Mike Newell's highly acclaimed Donnie Brasco in 1997, she made public her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. Heche's disclosure came directly against the advice of her agents -- whom she subsequently fired -- and the intense amount of hooplah surrounding it severely compromised her casting opposite Harrison Ford in the romantic comedy Six Days Seven Nights. Fortunately, Ford stood firm on his insistence that Heche star with him in the film and the actress managed to weather the ridiculous skepticism voiced by those who doubted a lesbian actress -- one who had made a career thus far out of portraying blatantly heterosexual women -- could convincingly play Ford's love interest. Although Six Days Seven Nights was savaged by most critics and failed to perform as well as had been expected, Heche earned a number of positive reviews for her performance, as well as a choice position on many Hollywood casting lists. She went on to give another strong performance as a lawyer in Return to Paradise and then landed the much-sought-after role of Marion Crane in Gus Van Sant's relentlessly publicized 1998 remake of Psycho. The film, which also starred Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates and Julianne Moore as Lila Crane, turned out to be a sizable disappointment, and after starring alongside Ed Harris in the similarly disappointing religious drama The Third Miracle, Heche decided to try her hand at directing. She made her directorial debut with Reaching Normal in 1999 and the following year, wrote and directed a segment of the HBO drama If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000). Her segment centered on a lesbian couple willing to do anything to have a baby and starred Sharon Stone and DeGeneres. That same year, Heche returned to acting as one of the stars of Auggie Rose, a drama about a man who gets the opportunity to assume a new identity.While Heche and DeGeneres chose to amicably part ways in 2000, their high-profile relationship left an indelible mark on US culture, helping to usher in an era of increased tolerance toward homosexuals within mainstream America. Along with the much publicized break-up, Heche found herself in the news for another reason that year. Upon having an emotional breakdown, the actress was found on a stranger's doorstep claiming to be Celestia, the daughter of God. However, rather than shy from the controversy, Heche chose to tackle it head-on, documenting the experience in the 2001 autobiography Call Me Crazy. Capping off a rollercoaster period of her personal life, Heche married camera-man Coley Lafoon in September of 2001.While she had certainly remained in the public eye, it had been a while since audiences had seen much acting from Heche, so it certainly pleased her fans when she assumed a recurring role on the quirky Fox series Ally McBeal. Next up, she could be seen on the big screen in the Denzel Washington thriller John Q and with Nicole Kidman in 2004's Birth. Heche lent her voice to the 2007 animated fantasy adventure Superman: Doomsday, and took on the lead role of Marin Frist, a relationship expert who finds herself in an isolated Alaskan town following the dissolution of her own marriage in the television series Men in Trees (2007-2008). Though she participated in several moderately successful films in the coming years (The Other Guys, That's What She Said, Rampart), the actress wouldn't find mainstream success until 2011, when she worked with Ed Helms and John C. Reilly in the role of an insurance salesperson in the comedy Cedar Rapids.

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: Best known to many as one half of "Jeff and Annabelle," the witty couple with a culinary flair who dished up "Dinner and a Movie" Friday evenings on TBS from 1995 to 2002, Annabelle Gurwitch is actually a fairly versatile character actress who boasts an extensive film resumé. Per the course traveled by many actresses, she began in television, with guest appearances on such hit programs as Murphy Brown, China Beach, Tales from the Crypt, and Red Shoe Diaries. Gurwitch then segued to feature-film roles in the early '90s. The majority of film projects to which Gurwitch contributed failed to score at the box office, but did place her alongside A-list talent. These films included Life With Mikey (1993), The Cable Guy (1996), and Daddy Day Care (2003). In the mid-2000s, Gurwitch signed on for a stage play under the aegis of Woody Allen. For indeterminate reasons, Allen fired her, prompting Gurwitch to mastermind Fired!, a documentary featuring the personal accounts of show-business personnel and laymen who have been axed. The finished product debuted in early 2007 to devastating reviews -- leading one critic to quip that he wished Allen hadn't fired Gurwitch, thus sparing audiences the plight of suffering through that documentary.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: Brenda Strong's offscreen name might not immediately register with Seinfeld fans, but they will immediately identify the character actress after learning that she played the grating Sue Ellen Mischke, one of Elaine Benes's thorn-in-the-flesh nemeses, on that seminal American sitcom. Actually, Strong's television-heavy resumé reads like a best-of prime-time series list -- including not only Seinfeld, but Ally McBeal, Nip/Tuck, Gilmore Girls, 7th Heaven, and others. Strong remains best known, however, for her pivotal contribution to Desperate Housewives as the ill-fated Mary Alice Young, a social-climbing hausfrau who commits suicide in the opening episode of the program, and then hangs around (in a regular voice-over) to offer acerbic observations from the afterlife about her backstabbing earthbound friends. Once Desperate Housewives ended in 2012, Strong joined the continuation of the series Dallas, playing Ann Ewing, Bobby's wife.In addition to her television work, Strong also landed bit parts in such features as Spaceballs (1987), The Craft (1996), and Starship Troopers 2 (2004). In 2009 she appeared in Melora Hardin movie You. Strong hosted a series of exercise videos in the early 2000s as well, among them Yoga 4 Fertility (2001) and Yoga 4 Partners (2002).

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.