Trivia: For better or worse, leading actor Kelsey Grammer's name will probably forever be associated with the pompous, garrulous, and self-absorbed but lovable psychiatrist Frasier Crane, a character Grammer has played on television since he first appeared on the NBC sitcom Cheers, in 1984, as a love interest for Shelley Long. Though Frasier was not intended to become a series regular, Grammer's performance of the blowhard neurotic charmed audiences and he remained with Cheers through its 1993 demise. At the beginning of the 1993-1994 television season, Grammer's character was resurrected in his own show and moved from Boston to Seattle, where he became a radio psychologist and faced a whole slew of folks just waiting to poke metaphorical pins in his hot air balloon. Thanks to excellent performances and top-notch writing, Frasier became as big a hit as its predecessor. Grammer won three Emmy awards and was nominated for seven more (twice for Cheers, once for his guest appearance on a 1992 episode of Wings, four times for Frasier) for playing the character. Born on St. Thomas, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Grammer knew extreme tragedy in youth. Following the shooting death of his father when he was a boy, he was raised in New Jersey and then Florida, by his mother and grandfather. His grandfather died before Grammer became a teen. When he was 20, his sister was abducted and violently murdered. Five years later, he lost two half brothers in a diving accident. As a young man, Grammer found comfort in Shakespeare; with his acting debut in a high school production of The Little Foxes came an interest in pursuing drama as a career. He enrolled in Juilliard, but dropped out after two years to work at San Diego's Old Globe Theater, where he gained three years' invaluable experience performing in Shakespearean and classical dramas; afterward, Grammer performed in productions across the country. He eventually made it to Broadway, where he appeared in various productions, including Othello. Prior to playing Frasier, Grammer appeared occasionally on television and had regular roles in three soap operas, including One Life to Live. He continues to occasionally guest star on other series. Fans of the animated satire The Simpsons will recognize his periodic voice characterization as the venomous Sideshow Bob. Miniseries and telemovies in which he has appeared include London Suite and Beyond Suspicion. Grammer made his feature film debut with a small role in Top of the Hill (1989) and had his first starring role in the much-panned comedy Down Periscope (1996). In addition to his Emmy kudos, Grammer has received an American Comedy Award, two Golden Globes, and a People's Choice Award. In 1995, he published his autobiography So Far.Grammer would spend the following years taking on TV roles on shows like Back to You and Boss, but would find even more success as a producer, helping bring shows like The Game, Girlfriends, Hank, Medium, and World Cup Comedy to fruition. In 2014, he returned to acting in a big way, making a cameo appearance in X-Men: Days of Future Past, reprising his role as Beast, playing the bad guy in Transformers: Age of Extinction, and returning to television in the FX series Partners.

Trivia: Although he is best known for his role as anal-retentive psychiatrist extraordinaire Niles Crane on the celebrated sitcom Frasier, David Hyde Pierce has also done considerable work on the stage and screen. Fair, birdlike, and bearing an uncanny resemblance to Frasier co-star Kelsey Grammer, Pierce is one of the entertainment business' finest purveyors of a certain kind of blue-blooded neuroticism, and, in the eyes of some viewers, has even gone so far as to make insecurity perversely sexy.Born in Saratoga Springs, New York, on April 3, 1959, Pierce was raised in what he has described as a "very run-of-the-mill, middle-class" household. When he was eight, he began taking piano lessons, and he decided to pursue a career as a concert pianist. He continued to train until he got to Yale University, where he realized that he was better suited to the acting profession. Following graduation, Pierce moved to New York and did a brief stint as a tie salesman at Bloomingdale's before being cast in a Broadway play. Although the production was a flop, Pierce continued to work on the stage in New York and Chicago for several years and was eventually cast as a suicidal congressman on the short-lived sitcom The Powers That Be in 1992. His work on the show, coupled with his resemblance to Kelsey Grammer, led to his casting on Frasier the following year.Frasier proved to be the turning point in Pierce's career. His portrayal of Niles, aside from winning him a slew of awards, including an Emmy, also provided a number of opportunities for the actor on the big screen. Pierce, who had been acting sporadically in films since the early '80s, could be seen in supporting roles in such '90s films as Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Nixon (1995), in which he played John Dean, and the animated A Bug's Life (1998), for which he provided the voice of a stick insect.As the first decade of the 21st century opened, Pierce began appearing in more and more feature films, selecting an eclectic array of roles that utitlized his strengths without resorting to rehashing the Niles Crane character. Diverse in their genre and theme, the projects also ranged in their levels of success and acclaim. The 2000 comedy Isn't She Great was an abysmal failure, while the indie films Wet Hot American Summer and Full Frontal both left audiences and critics fiercely split. Pierce also continued to flex his voice skills in the animated features Osmosis Jones and Treasure Planet.One of Pierce's best-received roles came in 2003, when he costarred in the tongue-in-cheek comedy Down With Love. While not much of a box-office hit, the film managed to charm many critics with its wall-to-wall homages to 1960s sex-comedies. A year later, Pierce again showed up sans-body, providing the voice of Abe Sapien in the comic-book adaptation Hellboy. He reunited with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola's animated comic adaptation The Amazing Screw-On Head to voice the role of the dreaded Emperor Zombie in 2006, and joined the cast of The Perfect Host in 2010 for a leading role as Warwick Wilson, whose genteel façade hides a deep rage and mental instability.

Trivia: A distinctive-looking, grey-haired British character actor, John Mahoney worked onstage in his teens, and moved to the U.S. at 19. In his mid-30s, while employed as an editor in Chicago, he decided to renew his interest in acting, and he enrolled in classes at a local theater co-founded by playwright David Mamet; he landed a role in a Mamet play and left his job for the part. At the urging of actor John Malkovich, he went on to join Chicago's celebrated Steppenwolf Theater; eventually he appeared in more than 30 plays. For his work in the Broadway play House of Blue Leaves he won a Tony and a Clarence Derwent Award. For his work in the lead role of Orphans (on Broadway and in Chicago) he won a Theater World Award. He still lives in Chicago, and maintains his connection with Steppenwolf. Mahoney debuted onscreen in Mission HIll (1982), but his screen breakthrough came in his fifth film, Barry Levinson's popular comedy Tin Men (1987); afterwards he went on to better parts in more noteworthy movies, and has avoided typecasting in a busy screen career. Mahoney's TV credits include Favorite Son and House of Blue Leaves, in which he reprised his stage role; he has since achieved wide popularity as Martin Crane, Frasier Crane's crochety father, on the NBC sitcom Frasier.

Trivia: Began studying ballet at a very early age, but hurt her ankle when she was 18 and was forced to give it up. Appeared in David Lee Roth's video for "California Girls." Lived for a time with her best friend Faith Ford, whom she met in acting class. Cofounded the production company Bristol Cities with Frasier costar Peri Gilpin in 1998. Since her first pregnancy wasn't written into Frasier, her character, Daphne, was sent off to a fat camp and was said to have lost 9 pounds, 12 ounces---the weight of Jane's daughter when she was born. Made her Broadway debut in Cabaret as Sally Bowles in 2002. Reunited with Fraiser alum Wendy Malick to costar in the TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland.

Trivia: With a father who was a famous local radio and television celebrity, a model mother who appeared in television, and a working relationship with Wings producer Roz Doyle in her past, it may all seem like an obscure cosmic joke that pretty Peri Gilpin would rise to fame as radio producer Roz Doyle on the smash television sitcom Frasier, though the longtime actress would likely credit her success to hard work rather than astrological coincidence.Born in Waco, TX, and raised in Dallas, Gilpin began acting on stage with the Dallas Theater Company at the age of eight, a fact that helped her shake stage fright and gain the confidence that would accompany her through numerous future auditions. A Skyline High School graduate, Gilpin later studied acting at both the University of Texas at Austin and London's British-American Academy. Upon returning to the U.S., Gilpin worked as a makeup artist in the Dallas area before taking an apprenticeship with the Williamstown Theater Festival. A chance meeting with actress Blythe Danner resulted in Gilpin gaining some support within the industry, and it wasn't long before Gilpin's dreams were coming true with roles on television's Flesh 'n' Blood and 21 Jump Street. A role on Cheers followed shortly after, and when a spin-off series entitled Frasier became an unexpected hit, Gilpin found the role that would bring her into households across the country on a weekly basis. Appearing frequently on such made-for-television films as The Secret She Carried (1996) and Laughter on the 23rd Floor (2000) while simultaneously essaying her role on Frasier, Gilpin (who was named after the animated Disney character Peri the squirrel) has also loaned her voice to such animated projects as television's Hercules and the computer-animated feature Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001). Throughout the 2000's and 2010's, Gilpin remained active, starring most notably on the dance series Make It or Break It.

Trivia: Despite spending the first 25 years of his life in Adelaide, Australia, Anthony LaPaglia is best known for playing street-savvy Italian New Yorkers. This was not, however, LaPaglia's original plan. Rather than testing the waters of show business, LaPaglia traveled to the United States intending to pursue a full-time teaching career. As luck would have it, however, one of LaPaglia's odd jobs was a small role in Cold Steel (1987), a low-budget detective drama. LaPaglia began pursuing theater and television in his spare time -- one of his more notable early performances was in 1988's Frank Nitti: The Enforcer -- and considered himself a full-time actor by 1989, when he made his feature-film debut in Slaves of New York. It was 1990, however, when the young actor earned critical recognition for his role as an exceedingly polite mobster in Betsy's Wedding.LaPaglia continued to build his résuméthroughout the early '90s, most of which he spent playing either kindly policemen or good-hearted mobsters, and was delighted to work alongside a variety of noted actors so early in his career. Among those actors were Alan Alda in Betsy's Wedding, Michael Keaton in One Good Cop (1991), and Nathan Lane, Sharon Stone, and Kevin Bacon in He Said, She Said (1992). Later in 1992, LaPaglia could be found playing his first leading role in George Gallo's gangster farce 29th Street. Though the film did not fare particularly well, audiences were nonetheless impressed with LaPaglia's intensity, and he played a more serious gangster with great success opposite Susan Sarandon in The Client (1994). The actor switched gears for his next handful of films; in Mixed Nuts (1994) he played a disillusioned Santa Claus, while Empire Records (1995) found him as a down-on-his-luck store manager, and the Australian-helmed Brilliant Lies (1996) featured him as the defendant in a sketchy sexual-harassment case.Despite a smattering of mediocre films between 1995 and the early 2000s, LaPaglia continued to earn critical acclaim for many of his endeavors, such as Steve Buscemi's directorial debut, Trees Lounge (1996), for which LaPaglia joined a star-studded supporting cast, as well as for his role as a detective in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam (1999). Luckily for him, 2000 and 2001 proved excellent for his career, as it was during this period that he played a wealthy businessman in The House of Mirth and an adulterous police detective in Lantana. In addition to receiving international success, Lantana earned LaPaglia the prestigious Best Actor award from the Australian Film Institute, as well as a nomination from the Film Critics Circle. In the meantime, he was adding several major television credits to his résumé, including a starring role as the head of the FBI's Missing Persons Squad on CBS's Without a Trace, and a recurring role on the long-running sitcom Frasier, a performance for which he would receive an Emmy in 2002. Far removed from his fledgling days as a teacher, 2002 also found LaPaglia working with Val Kilmer for The Salton Sea; Sigourney Weaver for The Guys; Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal in Analyze That; and Eric Stoltz in Happy Hour. In 2003, after filming Manhood with Janeane Garofalo and the late John Ritter, LaPaglia agreed to star in director Josh Sternfeld's Winter Solstice (2004).Over the next several years, LaPaglia would appear in a number of big screen projects, like Balibo (2009), Overnight (2012) and A Good Marriage (2014).

Trivia: While savvy television viewers will no doubt recognize prolific small-screen actress Wendie Malick from such popular series as Baywatch, Just Shoot Me, and HBO's smart and sexy comedy Dream On, the late '90s found her feature career warming up in such independent efforts as Manna From Heaven (2001) and Bathroom Boy (2003). A native of Buffalo, NY, who first found work in front of the cameras as a Wilhelmina model in the 1970s, the Ohio Wesleyan University alum would later work for New York congressman Jack Kemp following her graduation. Subsequently gracing the catwalks of New York, Paris, and Madrid, it was a small role in the 1978 comedy How to Pick up Girls that provided the aspiring actress with her first screen break. Though she would appear in a few theatrical releases such as Scrooged (1988) during the 1980s, most of her work came with made-for-television features and such series as Kate and Allie and Anything But Love. Increasingly visible on the small screen during the 1990s, Malick's role as series protagonist Martin Tupper's (Brian Benben) ex-wife on Dream On utilized her comic abilities to maximum effect and netted the actress four Cable ACE awards. Following the final episode of Dream On in 1996, it was only one short year before Malick began a stint on another popular series that would gain her accolades among sitcom junkies, Just Shoot Me. Her background in the modeling industry provided the ideal foundation for her role as former model Nina Van Horn, and Malick (Emmy-nominated for the role) remained with the show until its final episode in 2003, simultaneously taking occasional parts in both made-for-TV and theatrical features. In 1997 Malick took the lead in the little-seen romantic comedy Just Add Love, and following voice work as the egotistical principal in the Disney series Fillmore!, she appeared alongside Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves, and Betty White the Emmy-winning comedy series Hot in Cleveland. In addition to her screen work, Wendie Malick met husband Richard Erickson while building homes for poor families in Mexico, and she also helps the homeless with her work for the Adopt-A-Family organization.

Trivia: The daughter of respected off-Broadway playwright Romulus Linney, Laura Linney was born in New York City on February 5, 1964. Her parents divorced when she was six months old. Thanks to her father's job, Linney grew up working in the theater, both behind the scenes and, in her late teens, on the stage. Following prep school in Massachusetts, she attended both Brown University and Juilliard, and she was soon appearing in a number of Broadway productions. She garnered notice for her roles in plays like The Seagull and Six Degrees of Separation, and won particular acclaim for her performance in Hedda Gabler.Linney made her onscreen debut in 1992 with a small role as a teacher in Lorenzo's Oil. The following year, she had a brief but pivotal role as Kevin Kline's presidential mistress in Dave, appeared in Searching for Bobby Fischer, and landed a lead as one of the protagonists of Armistead Maupin's acclaimed Tales of the City, which aired on PBS. Linney later reprised her role as Mary Ann Singleton for More Tales of the City in 1998. Following leads in two box-office failures, A Simple Twist of Fate (1994) and Congo (1995), Linney had a supporting role as Richard Gere's lawyer/ex in Primal Fear (1996). Based on the strength of her performance, Clint Eastwood chose her to play his daughter -- another lawyer -- in Absolute Power the following year. In 1998, Linney sent up her wholesome, fresh-scrubbed appearance to great effect as Truman Burbank's wife in Peter Weir's highly acclaimed The Truman Show.The actress finally came into her own in 2000, thanks to two very different parts in two highly acclaimed independent features. Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me featured Linney as Sammy, a small-town single mother whose placid life takes some interesting turns when she's visited by her errant brother Terry (Mark Ruffalo). Aided by Lonergan's precise script and her own copious note-taking, Linney turned in her most nuanced, accomplished performance to date. Critics paid attention: after its much-heralded debut at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, the film went on to garner a slew of recognition for its lead actress, including Best Actress of the Year awards from the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle, and an eventual Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Linney further polished her reputation with a supporting turn as the icy Bertha Dorset in director Terence Davies' adaptation of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, released in late 2000.She continued working steadily and garnered great critical respect throughout the next decade. In addition to returning for Further Tales of the City, she was one of the many talented actors who appeared in the controversial The Laramie Project. She had a few big-budget films that missed their mark in The Mothman Prophecies and The Life of David Gale, but those came around the same time as her superb turn as Sean Penn's wife in Mystic River, and as one of the few Americans in the very British romantic comedy Love Actually. She continued to earn strong reviews as the headstrong wife to Liam Neeson's Kinsey, and in 2005 offered a subtle but penetrating portrayal of a selfish mother and divorcee opposite Jeff Daniels in The Squid and the Whale. The next year she acted opposite Robin Williams in Barry Levinson's political and social satire Man of the Year.In 2007 Linney offered a spot-on portrayal of a dissatisfied Manhattan wife and mother in The Nanny Diaries, and earned a wealth of strong reviews for her work in Tamara Jenkins' The Savages. Playing a neurotic woman opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman as her brother, Linney scored her third Academy Award nomination.2008 brought Linney her fourth Golden Globe nomination, and first win, for the portrayl of first lady Abigail Adams in the acclaimed HBO miniseries John Adams. In the following years, Linney would continue to appear in several projects, including movies like Morning and The Details, and the acclaimed Showtime series The C Word.

Trivia: Descendant of 20th-century rancher and civic leader Marion Sansom's brother.Her mother's maiden surname is Sansom.Was accepted into Juilliard School at the age of 17.Joined The Acting Company after graduating from Julliard School.Started her professional acting career in theater.In 2002, won a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for playing Mrs. Meers in the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Trivia: Stocky Scottish comic actor Robbie Coltrane was trained as an artist in Glasgow. During the 1970s, he rose to prominence as an improvisational nightclub comedian, usually working in ensemble groups (one of his partners was actress Emma Thompson). During the '80s, he was in a number of British features and made-for-TV movies. A regular at London's Comic Strip comedy club, he had a habit of appearing as himself in comedy specials like Secret Policeman's Third Ball. He also showed up in small comedic cameos in National Lampoon's European Vacation and Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. Though he was popular in the U.K. on TV shows like Alfresco, Tutti Fruitti, Black Adder, and The Young Ones, he wasn't widely known in the U.S. until his antic performance in Nuns on the Run with Eric Idle. He then starred as the title character in the satiric comedy The Pope Must Die (released in the U.S. as The Pope Must Diet). In 1993, he starred in the British TV detective series Cracker as Fitz, a nervous forensic psychologist who helps crack cases. He won a BAFTA TV award for the role, and he won a Cable ACE award when it was rebroadcast in the U.S. on A&E. When the show ended, he briefly joined up with the James Bond film series as Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky in GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough. In the late '90s, he starred in a few independent films (Montana, Frogs for Snakes) and played Sgt. Peter Goldy in the Hughes brothers' thriller From Hell. However, he's been most successful in the area of family entertainment. He was delightful as the con man in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with Elijah Wood; he was Tweedledum to George Wendt's Tweedledee in Alice in Wonderland; and he found a fine place for himself as Hagrid the Giant in the Harry Potter film series. In 2002, he earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the British Academy for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. In 2003, he returned to British TV to play lawyer Jack Lennox in The Planman. Coltrane continued to work as Hagrid throughout the Harry Potter film series (2001-2011), and lent his voice to films including The Tales of Despereaux (2008) and Brave (2012).

Trivia: Tall, gangly, and possessed of a frenetic intensity that lends itself to the highly eccentric and often borderline insane characters he plays, British actor Richard E. Grant is nothing if not one of the more distinctive performers to have gained celluloid immortality. His wild eyes and high-strung demeanor occasionally giving him an uncanny resemblance to a meerkat on speed, Grant has been delighting and shocking observers with both his on- and off-screen persona since his 1987 breakthrough in Withnail & I. Born Richard Grant Esterhuysen on May 5, 1957, in Mbabane, Swaziland, Grant had a somewhat distinctive upbringing, thanks in part to his father's job as the Swazi Minister of Education. His parents' divorce when the actor was 11, for example, was the source of a fair amount of scandal in South Africa. For his part, Grant knew early on that he wanted to be an actor, something that was fueled by an infatuation with Barbra Streisand and a steady diet of movies. He followed the career of Donald Sutherland with particularly rapt attention, as, like Grant, Sutherland was tall, thin, long-faced, and hailed from the middle of nowhere.After studying English and Drama at Cape Town University, where he co-founded the multi-racial, avant garde Troupe Theatre Company, Grant headed for London in 1982. He was greeted by a period of unemployment and frustration that lasted for almost five years. The actor eventually began finding work on the stage, and in 1984 was dubbed by Plays and Players magazine as "most promising newcomer" for his performance in Tramway Road at Hammersmith's Lyric Theatre. Ironically enough, given his years of struggle, it was Grant's portrayal of a bitter, pill-popping, unemployed actor in Bruce Robinson's black comedy Withnail & I that finally put him on the map. The film was a genuine cult classic, and Hollywood soon came sniffing around, if only to cast Grant in the 1988 demons-on-the-loose flop Warlock. The following year, the actor again tapped into his reserves of unpleasantness for Robinson, starring as a toxic advertising executive who develops a talking boil in the satirical How to Get Ahead in Advertising. Grant's hilariously vile characterization was considered by many to be the highlight of the film, and further paved the way for greater industry appreciation.Grant subsequently earned recognition on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to a number of diverse and often peculiar roles in films of widely varying quality. Particularly memorable during the early to mid-'90s were portrayals Anais Nin's well-intentioned but dull husband in Henry & June (1990), the evil billionaire Darwin Mayflower in the spectacularly disappointing Hudson Hawk (1991), an overly insistent screenwriter in Robert Altman's The Player (1992), high society lounge lizard Larry Lefferts in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (1993), and an outrageous fashion designer that Grant described as a "male Vivienne Westwood" in Altman's disastrous Pret-A-Porter (1994).Despite his eccentric persona, Grant has time and again proven himself more than capable of essaying straight man roles, as he demonstrated in such films as Jack and Sarah (1995), in which he played a grieving widower; The Portrait of a Lady (1996), in which he had a small but memorable role as one of Isabel Archer's most ardent suitors; and the made-for-TV The Scarlet Pimpernel (1999), which cast him as its titular hero. He has also continued to shine in films that impress upon his comedic abilities, as evidenced by his role as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996) and his portrayal of a disgruntled advertising man in A Merry War (1997) (otherwise known as Keep the Aspidistra Flying), a satirical comedy based upon a novel by George Orwell.Enlisted again by Altman, Grant showed up alongside a star-studded ensemble cast in 2001's critically-acclaimed Gosford Park. Supporting roles continued to suit him well as he would later take on parts in Steven Fry's Bright Young Things and the 2004 John Malkovich-starrer Colour Me Kubrick.

Trivia: A thin, naturally attractive brunette with a personable smile and the brains to match her beauty, actress Jennifer Beals was virtually propelled to overnight stardom and fashion icon status with her energetic performance in director Adrian Lyne's 1983 dance drama Flashdance. Though her career would suffer a slight setback when it was revealed that Beals didn't perform all of her own dance moves in the sleeper hit, the talented actress would endure to make something of a comeback in the late '90s. A Chicago native who was traveling in Europe when her publicist called her for a New York audition that the filmmakers were pitching as a "female Saturday Night Fever," Beals booked the first flight back to the states and, despite the presence of thousands of other eager young actresses, somehow managed to stand out from the crowd to impress producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. Beals' only other film work to that point was as an extra in 1980's My Bodyguard, so it was quite a gamble to cast a virtual unknown in the lead. This was especially true, given that, days before the film's premiere, Paramount Pictures sold off 25 percent of the film; however, the gamble paid off and Flashdance became nothing less than a cultural phenomenon. With ripped, oversized sweaters adorning teenage girls nationwide, it seemed as if Beals had the cinematic world at her fingertips -- and then the bottom dropped out. When it was later revealed that Beals impressive moves weren't entirely her own, audiences felt betrayed (as if action stars really do all of their own stunts) and subsequently protested the burgeoning actress without taking into consideration that she was the dramatic core of the film.Opting to continue her education at Yale immediately following Flashdance's production, roles in such efforts as The Bride (1985) and Split Decisions (1988) were squeezed in during Beals' summer breaks. Though neither effort did much to forward Beals' career, the actress would continue to appear in such quirky, low-budget efforts as Vampire's Kiss (1989) and Blood and Concrete (1991) moving into the 1990s. Beals was married to director Alexandre Rockwell in 1986, and in 1992 she would appear opposite Steve Buscemi and Seymour Cassel in Rockwell's comedy drama In the Soup. If the majority of the 1990s found Beals relegated to mostly unseen independents, high-profile roles in such acclaimed efforts as Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), and The Last Days of Disco (1998) proved without a doubt that the now-established actress certainly had the skills and endurance to maintain a successful screen career. Though the early years of the millennial turnover may have found Beals on shaky cinematic ground with such efforts as Jim Wynorski's Militia and the tiresomely derivative sequel Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying (both 1990), her reputation as something of an independent darling would solidify with roles in such critically acclaimed indies as The Anniversary Party (2001) and Roger Dodger (2002). Despite her divorce from Rockwell and remarriage to another man unassociated with the film business, Beals would later turn up in the Rockwell-directed comedy 13 Moons (again opposite Buscemi), while preparing for roles in such upcoming features as Runaway Jury and Break a Leg (both 2003). In 2004 Beals took a turn as a lesbian in the made-for-cable series The L Word, with subsequent roles in the 2005 indies Break a Leg and Desolatoin Squad preceding a return to big-budget Hollywood blockbusters in The Grudge 2 (2006) and The Book of Eli (2010). Beals would enjoy a juicy arc on the TV crime drama Lie to Me, before signing on to star in her own detective series, The Chicago Code in 2011. Additionally, the actress appeared on a few episodes of yet another popular proceedural, Castle, in 2012.

Trivia: Grew up with his adoptive family, the Schwotzers, in Pittsburgh and located his biological mother when he was in his 20s. Dropped Schwotzer for stage-name purposes. Switched from studying journalism to English in college; later dropped out of an English-literature graduate program upon deciding to pursue acting as a profession. Is certified as a fight coordinator with the Society of American Fight Directors, specializing in European weaponry and American thuggery. Is known for being the environmentally conscious Subaru salesperson in commercials.