Trivia: The daughter of a contractor father and an artist mother, Kate Mulgrew was the second oldest of eight children. At 18, Mulgrew headed to New York to study acting with Stella Adler. She spent a grueling year or so pounding on casting-agency doors and making ends meet as a waitress and model. Then, on the same day in 1975, she landed two plum roles: Emily Webb in a stage revival of Our Town, and Mary Ryan on the new ABC TV soap opera Ryan's Hope. Four years later, she was tapped to play Kate Columbo, the previously never-seen wife of dishevelled TV detective Columbo (Peter Falk), on the prime-time series Mrs. Columbo, later retitled Kate Loves a Mystery. Columbo himself would never be seen on Mrs. Columbo; for that matter, few viewers saw Kate Mulgrew, since the rather ill-conceived series never built up much of an audience. Despite this setback, the actress persevered, starring in the 1981 miniseries The Manions of America and appearing in such theatrical features as A Stranger is Watching (1982), Remo Williams (1985) and Throw Mama from the Train (1987). She went on to co-star with James Garner in the short-lived weekly Man of the People (1991), and in 1995 joined the ever-growing "Star Trek" family as Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek Voyager (she replaced Genevieve Bujold, who dropped out of the role in the middle of filming the first episode). Her significant TV guest appearances include a Boston councilwoman who carries on a torrid romance with Sam Malone (Ted Danson) in a 1986 episode of Cheers, and an alcoholic broadcast journalist on a 1992 installment of Murphy Brown; this last-named performance earned her a Tracey Humanitarian Award. Throughout her film and TV career, she has periodically returned to the stage, most recently in an all-star Broadway revival of Peter Schaffer's Black Comedy. In recognition of twenty years' worth of "artistic contributions," Kate Mulgrew was made an Honorary Doctor of Letters by Seton Hall University.Her career changed forever when she was cast as Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, becoming the first woman to lead one of the ships in the durable sci-fi franchise. The program ran for seven years. She was in 1998's Riddler's Moon, 2002's big-screen effort Star Trek: Nemesis. In 2011 she was part of the Star Trek documentary The Captains.

Trivia: Beltran is a supporting actor onscreen from the '80s.

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: Actress Lindsey Haun accumulated a fairly substantial litany of screen roles well before her 10th birthday and made numerous appearances on Star Trek: Voyager prior to her big break with the role of a young vocalist-cum-rock singer, modeled on pop diva Britney Spears, in the family-oriented telemovie Brave New Girl (2004). (Spears actually co-scripted that picture with her mom and reportedly hand-picked Haun for the part). Haun subsequently played the long-estranged daughter of a has-been country and western star (Toby Keith) in the family-oriented drama Broken Bridges (2006) and landed lead billing in director Paddy Breathnach's mind-bending shocker Shrooms (2007), as a young backpacker in Ireland who falls prey to the mad doings of a psychopath after consuming some hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Trivia: Thomas Dekker first appeared as a child actor in the mid-'90s, with a couple of television guest appearances, and then a small role in Star Trek Generations, playing Thomas Picard, the son of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in an alternate timeline. At the age of seven, he toke on a more elaborate part, playing one of the homicidal, otherworldly tykes in John Carpenter's sci-fi horror remake Village of the Damned (1995). After a couple of appearances that same year as Henry on Star Trek: Voyager, and assignments voicing anthropomorphic mouse Fievel in two direct-to-video American Tail sequels, Dekker played Nick, one of the Szalinski kids, on the TV series version of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which ran for three seasons. He also portrayed the young pop star Donny Osmond in the 2001 telemovie Inside the Osmonds. In the ensuing years, Dekker continued to primarily work in television, in guest roles on such popular series as Boston Public and House. He also took on a recurring part in 2005 as Vincent on the long-running family drama 7th Heaven, but he didn't truly break through to major success until he was cast on the soon-to-be major hit show Heroes in 2006. Though Dekker only played the unlikely friend of indestructable cheerleader Claire Bennet, the exposure helped earn him one of his biggest roles yet, that of young hero-to-be John Connor on the heavily promoted sci-fi film-to-TV adaptation Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (premiering in 2008).Over the following years, Dekker would continue to act in movies like My Sister's Keeper and on shows like The Secret Circle.