Trivia: After spending the 1990s as a TV teen star, Melissa Joan Hart set her sights on feature films. Born and raised on Long Island, Hart began acting in TV commercials as a child. She further honed her skills in New York theater in the late '80s as the youngest member of the Circle Repertory Lab Company. Hart then broke through as a cable TV favorite (and a CableACE Award nominee) in the role of the precocious titular preteen on the Nickelodeon series Clarissa Explains It All (1991-1994). After the series ended, Hart moved to network TV stardom in 1996 as the supernaturally gifted title teen on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Maintaining her pert primetime persona while revealing her range, Hart also starred in several TV movies, including Family Reunion: A Relative Nightmare (1995), Twisted Desire (1996), The Right Connections (1997), and the college date rape drama Silencing Mary (1998). Though Hart continued to produce and star in Sabrina, she also attempted to parlay her TV fame into movie stardom with the romantic comedy Drive Me Crazy (1999). The film, however, failed to perform as well as the Britney Spears tune that gave it its title. Hart raised eyebrows that same year when she tried to shed her squeaky-clean adolescent image with a racy photo spread and interview in men's magazine Maxim. Neither gambit affected Sabrina, although Hart and the series moved from the family-oriented ABC lineup to the youth-savvy WB in 2000. She lent her vocal talents to the Batman Beyond series, and continued to work steadily in made-for-TV fare like Rent Control, Holiday in Handcuffs, and My Fake Fiance. In 2010 she teamed up with fellow former child star Joey Lawrence for TV series Melissa & Joey that ran on the ABC Family channel.

Trivia: Known to millions as the adorable Punky Brewster, actress Soleil Moon Frye began acting when she was only two years old. The daughter of actor Virgil Frye, Soleil cut her teeth on projects like the TV movie Who Will Love My Children? before scoring the role of Punky at the age of eight. Audiences fell in love with the precocious child, and she stayed with the show until 1988. After it wrapped, Frye continued to remain creative and active, appearing in three seasons of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, doing voiceover work for shows like The Proud Family and Planet Sheen, working in films such as Summertime Switch and even directing the 2004 film Sonny Boy.

Trivia: Made acting debut at age 7 as the evil character Ralph Rotten in a school play called Westward Ho Ho Ho. Participated in gymnastics and dance while in high school. Struggled with anorexia in the '90s. Based her role of Amber from Clueless on girls that she didn't like in high school. Joined the cast of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch during the show's fifth season as Morgan.

Trivia: Though Canadian actor Dylan Neal lists a number of earlier credits on his resumé, he didn't truly gain substantial recognition among American audiences prior to winning a brief role on the prime-time soap opera Dawson's Creak, opposite James Van Der Beek, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, and Michelle Williams. As Doug Witter, the older brother of Pacey (Jackson), Neal brought a level of finesse and complexity to his role that paved the way for additional work in other television series and films. Neal received second billing as the protégé of martial arts hero Chuck Norris in the direct-to-video action thriller The President's Man (2000), then acted under the aegis of horror legend Sean S. Cunningham (Friday the 13th) in the 2001 XCU: Extreme Close Up. Following a small supporting role in the Josh Hartnett sex comedy 40 Days and 40 Nights, Neal scored his broadest exposure to date on the sci-fi horror series Blood Ties, which premiered in early 2007. On that program, he played Mike Celluci, the ex-boyfriend of private eye Vicki Nelson (Christina Cox), who grows immediately jealous when the latter strikes up a romance with a centuries-old vampire (Kyle Schmid).

Trivia: Born in Montreal, Quebec, Caroline Rhea launched herself on the path to stardom in 1986, when the then-22-year-old moved to Manhattan and enrolled in the New School for Social Research's standup comedy program. On the side, Rhea cut her chops by practicing at the standup club Catch a Rising Star, and the success of those engagements yielded additional bookings, not simply at Big Apple venues, but on such national television programs as Comic Strip Live and Caroline's Comedy Hour. Rhea segued into scripted television programs and features around 1996, with roles on such sitcoms as Sabrina the Teenage Witch and The Drew Carey Show, before hitting a watershed moment in her career: the launch of her own eponymous series, the talk program The Caroline Rhea Show (which followed her guest-hosting of The Rosie O'Donnell Show). Unfortunately, Rhea's talk show folded less than a year after its 2002 premiere, but Rhea continued to build her own reputation, with popular standup bookings across the U.S. and Canada, appearances on talk programs such as Live with Regis and Kelly, and small roles in movies. She played Candi in the disastrous Tim Allen holiday comedy Christmas With the Kranks (2004) and Gloria in the Mark Rosman-directed teen movie The Perfect Man (2005), and hosted the popular series The Biggest Loser, a reality series in which contestants compete to determine who can lose the most weight. In 2006, Rhea also hosted the made-for-cable standup special Caroline Rhea: Rhea's Anatomy, which found her offering witty divertissements on such subjects as post-40 pregnancy and age-disparity romances.

Trivia: Yale alumnus Robert Picardo made his off-Broadway debut in David Mamet's one-act play Sexual Perversity in Chicago. That was in 1975; two years later, Picardo was first seen on Broadway in Gemini. He launched his TV career in the 1980 miniseries The Dream Merchants, and in 1981 made his first film, The Howling--one of several assignments for director Joe Dante. During his early TV years, he was all too often cast in "first husband" or "wrong boyfriend" supporting roles. Things improved in 1986, when he was hired to play the much-feared high school gym teacher Coach Cutlip in the weekly dramedy The Wonder Years. He went on to co-star as Dr. Dick Richard in the highly acclaimed Vietnam-era series China Beach (1989-91). A busy voiceover artist, Picardo has supplied a variety of vocal characterizations for such series as Dinosaurs and Batman. Undoubtedly you'll be reading even more about Robert Picardo in the future, by virtue of his being cast as the holographic Doc Zimmerman on TV's Star Trek: Voyager(1995- ). In the post Star Trek years, Picardo would find ongoing success on shows like The Lyon's Den, Stargate SG-1, and Stargate Atlantis.

Trivia: Widely regarded as one of the most extreme -- and yet triumphant -- casting coups on the seminal period comedy drama The Wonder Years (1988-1993), actress Alley Mills was reportedly regarded for years as a complete counterculture figure (a self-described "hippie") and yet secured a role on Years as Kevin Arnold's (Fred Savage) bleached-blonde, prim-and-proper mother, Norma. Mills not only managed to convince and persuade in the part, but did much to help recall the vicissitudes of an unforgettable time in American history -- a dowdy suburban matriarch amid the flower-power era.Born in Chicago in 1951, Mills launched her career in television, appearing in such long-form features as A Matter of Life and Death (1981) and The Atlanta Child Murders (1985). She took her feature bow in 1983 as the romantic lead of John Candy in David Steinberg's second-rate comedy Going Berserk. The Wonder Years represented Mills's breakthrough; after it wrapped, she landed occasional guest parts on such series as NYPD Blue and Roseanne, and appeared infrequently in telemovies, such as Joyce Chopra's 1995 Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan.Off-camera, Mills made headlines when the never-before-married actress wed legendary Hollywood actor Orson Bean, 23 years her senior, not long after Years concluded.