Trivia: Both a former Victoria's Secret model and card-carrying member of MENSA, Geena Davis established herself in Hollywood by playing the quirky protagonist in a wide variety of dramas and romantic comedies, though she has also tested the waters in action films and sci-fi horror. Davis showed an interest in show-business from childhood on, and transferred from New England College to Boston University in order to participate within the university's drama program. After receiving a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts in 1979, she moved to New York City in hopes of being discovered. Once there, Davis took on several odd jobs; the oddest, perhaps, being her stint as a department store mannequin. A then struggling actress turned in a job performance impressive enough to attract the attention of Zoli Agents, a prominent modeling company. No longer mere window dressing, the six-foot Davis worked as a lingerie model until making her acting debut in the television sitcom Buffalo Bill (1982); she would later write an episode for the same program. Her resume grew slowly but surely, and it wasn't long before she won a recurring role on the long-running Family Ties (1982-1989) as budding entrepreneur Alex P. Keaton's (Michael J. Fox) maid. Davis made her first feature-film appearance playing a small role in Tootsie (1982). In 1985, she played the title role in Sara, a short-lived NBC sit-com revolving around a single and fiercely independent lawyer trying to make ends meet in San Francisco. That same year, Davis co-starred with Jeff Goldblum in the vampire spoof Transylvania 6-5000. Goldblum, with whom she would later marry, once again was paired with Davis in director David Cronenberg's cult favorite The Fly (1986). The Fly's success officially put Davis on the map, and she would gain further critical notice for her role as a recently deceased housewife in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice. The following year she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in The Accidental Tourist (1988), in which she played an eccentric dog-walker, and reteamed with Jeff Goldblum in 1989's sci-fi musical Earth Girls Are Easy. Davis received a second Oscar nomination for her part in Ridley Scott's groundbreaking Thelma and Louise (1991), which cast her as an oppressed housewife opposite Hollywood veteran Susan Sarandon. With her film career steadily growing, Davis starred alongside Tom Hanks in the role of a whip-smart baseball ingenue in Penny Marshall's A League of Their Own (1992). She broke away from supporting roles and ensemble films to play the lead role in Martha Coolidge's Angie (1994), which featured Davis in the role of a single mother trying to keep her head above water. She went on to marry director Renny Harlin in 1993, who cast her in 1995's Cutthroat Island as well as the 1996 action-thriller The Long Kiss Good Night. Though playing herself in 2000's The Geena Davis Show proved unfruitful, Davis' role in Rob Minkoff's Stuart Little franchise fared much better. Even still, her most impressive comeback would arrive in the form a role as the President of the United States on the ABC Whitehouse drama Commander in Chief. Davis won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress after the series' first season in 2005 and the show proved to be a major critical success, though it was tragically cancelled the next year, despite vocal protestations by fans. Davis would continue to act in the following years, most notably in projects like the comedy Accidents Happen.

Trivia: After spending the 1980s playing a series of drug addict and character parts, Samuel L. Jackson emerged in the 1990s as one of the most prominent and well-respected actors in Hollywood. Work on a number of projects, both high-profile and low-key, has given Jackson ample opportunity to display an ability marked by both remarkable versatility and smooth intelligence.Born December 21, 1948, in Washington, D.C., Jackson was raised by his mother and grandparents in Chattanooga, TN. He attended Atlanta's Morehouse College, where he was co-founder of Atlanta's black-oriented Just Us Theater (the name of the company was taken from a famous Richard Pryor routine). Jackson arrived in New York in 1977, beginning what was to be a prolific career in film, television, and on the stage. After a plethora of character roles of varying sizes, Jackson was discovered by the public in the role of the hero's tempestuous, drug-addict brother in 1991's Jungle Fever, directed by another Morehouse College alumnus, Spike Lee. Jungle Fever won Jackson a special acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival and thereafter his career soared. Confronted with sudden celebrity, Jackson stayed grounded by continuing to live in the Harlem brownstone where he'd resided since his stage days. 1994 was a particularly felicitous year for Jackson; while his appearances in Jurassic Park (1993) and Menace II Society (1993) were still being seen in second-run houses, he co-starred with John Travolta as a mercurial hit man in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. His portrayal of an embittered father in the more low-key Fresh earned him additional acclaim. The following year, Jackson landed third billing in the big-budget Die Hard With a Vengeance and also starred in the adoption drama Losing Isaiah. His versatility was put on further display in 1996 with the release of five very different films: The Long Kiss Goodnight, a thriller in which he co-starred with Geena Davis as a private detective; an adaptation of John Grisham's A Time to Kill, which featured him as an enraged father driven to murder; Steve Buscemi's independent Trees Lounge; The Great White Hype, a boxing satire in which the actor played a flamboyant boxing promoter; and Hard Eight, the directorial debut of Paul Thomas Anderson.After the relative quiet of 1997, which saw Jackson again collaborate with Tarantino in the critically acclaimed Jackie Brown and play a philandering father in the similarly acclaimed Eve's Bayou (which also marked his debut as a producer), the actor lent his talents to a string of big-budget affairs (an exception being the 1998 Canadian film The Red Violin). Aside from an unbilled cameo in Out of Sight (1998), Jackson was featured in leading roles in The Negotiator (1998), Sphere (1998), and Deep Blue Sea (1999). His prominence in these films added confirmation of his complete transition from secondary actor to leading man, something that was further cemented by a coveted role in what was perhaps the most anticipated film of the decade, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), the first prequel to George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy. Jackson followed through on his leading man potential with a popular remake of Gordon Parks' seminal 1971 blaxploitation flick Shaft. Despite highly publicized squabbling between Jackson and director John Singleton, the film was a successful blend of homage, irony, and action; it became one of the rare character-driven hits in the special effects-laden summer of 2000.From hard-case Shaft to fragile as glass, Jackson once again hoodwinked audiences by playing against his usual super-bad persona in director M. Night Shyamalan's eagerly anticipated follow-up to The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable (2000). In his role as Bruce Willis' brittle, frail antithesis, Jackson proved that though he can talk trash and break heads with the best of them, he's always compelling to watch no matter what the role may be. Next taking a rare lead as a formerly successful pianist turned schizophrenic on the trail of a killer in the little-seen The Caveman's Valentine, Jackson turned in yet another compelling and sympathetic performance. Following an instance of road rage opposite Ben Affleck in Changing Lanes (2002), Jackson stirred film geek controversy upon wielding a purple lightsaber in the eagerly anticipated Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Despite rumors that the color of the lightsaber may have had some sort of mythical undertone, Jackson laughingly assured fans that it was a simple matter of his suggesting to Lucas that a purple lightsaber would simply "look cool," though he was admittedly surprised to see that Lucas had obliged him Jackson eventually saw the final print. A few short months later filmgoers would find Jackson recruiting a muscle-bound Vin Diesel for a dangerous secret mission in the spy thriller XXX.Jackson reprised his long-standing role as Mace Windu in the last segment of George Lucas's Star Wars franchise to be produced, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). It (unsurprisingly) grossed almost four hundred million dollars, and became that rare box-office blockbuster to also score favorably (if not unanimously) with critics; no less than Roger Ebert proclaimed it "spectacular." Jackson co-headlined 2005's crime comedy The Man alongside Eugene Levy and 2006's Joe Roth mystery Freedomland with Julianne Moore and Edie Falco, but his most hotly-anticipated release at the time of this writing is August 2006's Snakes on a Plane, a by-the-throat thriller about an assassin who unleashes a crate full of vipers onto a aircraft full of innocent (and understandably terrified) civilians. Produced by New Line Cinema on a somewhat low budget, the film continues to draw widespread buzz that anticipates cult status. Black Snake Moan, directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow) dramatizes the relationship between a small-town girl (Christina Ricci) and a blues player (Jackson). The picture is slated for release in September 2006 with Jackson's Shaft collaborator, John Singleton, producing.Jackson would spend the ensuing years appearing in a number of films, like Home of the Brave, Resurrecting the Champ, Lakeview Terrace, Django Unchained, and the Marvel superhero franchise films like Thor, Iron Man, and The Avengers, playing superhero wrangler Nick Fury.

Trivia: Born Patrick G. Duggan on March 24, 1945, Patrick Malahide grew up in the Thames Valley west of London in the village of Pangbourne, where Kenneth Grahame wrote about Mole, Toad, and Rat in the 1908 children's classic The Wind in the Willows. Malahide's Irish immigrant parents each held down two jobs to send Patrick and their other two children to the best schools. Patrick attended St. Anne's Primary and then the Douai School of the Benedictine Abbey at Upper Woolhampton, Berkshire. At both schools, Patrick received an excellent education and learned to mix with upper-class children and mimic the articulation and cadence of their speech. Thus, he was unwittingly preparing himself for film roles requiring an understanding of class-conscious societies and a mastery of accents. Such roles included his portrayal of Sir John Conroy in the 2001 TV miniseries Victoria and Albert, Captain Claude Howlett in the 1999 TV miniseries All the King's Men, and the Rev. Casaubon in the 1994 TV miniseries Middlemarch. After attending Edinburgh University, where he studied literature and psychology and performed with a dramatic society, he taught English at a boys' school in Wokingham. Soon, however, he abandoned the classroom for the stage, managing and directing at a small theater and acting in the plays of Henrik Ibsen, Noel Coward, Anton Chekhov, and Arthur Miller. After performing in London, he signed on with the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, playing roles in the dramas of Shakespeare and other classic authors, accepted television roles, and earned critical acclaim in 1981 in a tour de force one-man show, Judgement [writer's note: the British spelling of the word "judgment" is correct here], in which he tells the audience why he resorted to cannibalism to survive as a Russian officer in a Nazi prison. Then came worldwide recognition from productions such as The Killing Fields (1984), the TV miniseries The Singing Detective (1985), A Month in the Country (1987), the TV docudrama Investigation: Inside a Terrorist Bombing (1990), A Man of No Importance (1994), U.S. Marshals (1998), and Billy Elliot (2000).

Trivia: Following an early career that mainly included small parts on Empty Nest, Murphy Brown, and other assorted sitcoms, Craig Bierko made a number of unsuccessful stabs at stardom in feature films with leading-man roles in the poorly received comedies Sour Grapes, The Suburbans, and Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. He also starred opposite Gretchen Mol in 1999's sci-fi dud The Thirteenth Floor. In 2005, Bierko's career began to pick up steam when he bulked up to play boxer Max Baer in Ron Howard's Cinderella Man. Playing opposite acting heavyweights Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti, Bierko held his own and received high marks from critics. He parlayed the success of the performance into an extended arc on ABC's Boston Legal, and in 2007 was cast as the lead on Fox's The Rules for Starting Over, a romantic sitcom about a divorced man's reluctant attempts at entering the dating scene. In 2012, he played a supporting role in Peter and Bobby Farrelly's reboot of The Three Stooges.

Trivia: Growing up in Scotland, the descendent of Irish immigrants, Brian Cox always felt an affinity to American cinema that eventually led him to pursue his career stateside. Born on June 1, 1946, in Dundee, Scotland, Cox knew he wanted to act from an early age, but identified more with the characters portrayed in American films than in "zany British comedies," to use his phrase. While working at the local theater, where he started by mopping the stage, the 15-year-old Cox would watch the actors and study their styles to separate the wheat from the chaff. He attended drama school in London and got caught up in British theater and television during the 1970s. Cox landed on Broadway in the early '80s, but found more closed doors than open ones. It was while performing a play transplanted from the U.K. that a casting agent for Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986) noticed him. The film would become the first cinematic treatment of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter (spelled "Lecktor" at the time) character, which Anthony Hopkins would make his own in Silence of the Lambs (1991). Cox was cast in the role, paving the way for the success that had eluded him until his 40th year.Despite the breakthrough, Cox remained better identified with television than film during the late '80s and early '90s, though his roles significantly increased in number. His initiation to regular film work came through appearances in two 1995 sword epics, Braveheart and Rob Roy. Over the latter half of the 1990s he materialized in character-actor roles -- police officers, doctors, fathers -- in such films as The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), Kiss the Girls (1997), Rushmore (1998), and The Minus Man (1999). Although he appears more often in American than British cinema, Cox has also paid homage to his Scottish and Irish roots, such as playing an IRA heavy in Jim Sheridan's The Boxer (1997).In 2001, Cox secured major acclaim -- and an American Film Institute nomination for best supporting actor -- with the release of L.I.E., the debut film of director Michael Cuesta. Like Todd Solondz' critical darling Happiness (1998), the film presents a child molester (Cox) as one of its major characters without condemning him, if not actually leaving him altogether unjudged. Cox's complicated, intense portrayal enabled such shades of gray, raising the character above the bottom rung of the morality food chain.As the decade continued, so did Cox's visibility in bigger hollywood films. In 2002 alone, he took on substantial roles in The Bourne Identity, The Rookie, The Ring, The 25th Hour, and Adaptation, a film that saw him stealing scenes with an appropriately over-the-top turn as blowhard screenwriting guru Robert McKee. The following year audiences could see him in the blockbuster comic-book sequel X2: X-Men United, and in 2004 he starred alongside Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in the epic retelling of the Iliad, Troy. He returned to the Bourne franchise for The Bourne Supremacy, and appeared in the thriller Red Eye. He was the psychiatrist in the comedy Running With Scissors, and in 2007 portrayed Melvin Belli in David Fincher's Zodiac. He was cast in the geriatric action film Red, and joined up with Wes Anderson a second time to lend his voice to a bit part in Fantastic Mr. Fox. In 2011 Ralph Finnes tapped Cox to play Menenius in his big-screen adaptation of The Bard's Coriolanus.

Trivia: A fixture of 1980s TV series and movies, prolific character actor David Morse became a reliable and much lauded supporting presence in feature films from the 1990s onward.Raised in Hamilton, MA, Morse began his professional career after high school, joining the Boston Repertory Theater in 1971. Over the next six years, Morse acted in over 30 productions, amply preparing him for a move to New York theater in 1977. Morse subsequently got his first big movie break when he was cast in the drama Inside Moves (1980). Though Morse proved that he could handle lighter films with Neil Simon's comedy Max Dugan Returns (1983), his detour into television in 1982 was initially more fruitful. As Dr. Jack "Boomer" Morrison, Morse spent six seasons on the esteemed hospital drama St. Elsewhere, co-starring with, among others, Denzel Washington. During his stint on St. Elsewhere, Morse also starred in a diverse collection of TV movies. He was a priest in love with Valerie Bertinelli's nun in Shattered Vows (1984), a prisoner attempting a breakout from Alcatraz in Six Against the Rock (1987), a detective in Down Payment on Murder (1987), and a mental hospital escapee in Winnie (1988). Continuing his presence on the small screen after St. Elsewhere, Morse appeared in several more TV movies, including starring as a deranged kidnapper in Cry in the Wild: The Taking of Peggy Ann (1991).Though he co-starred as a drifter in the indie film Personal Foul (1987) and appeared in Michael Cimino's noir remake The Desperate Hours (1990), Morse did not concentrate most of his energies on feature films until the 1990s. After starring as Viggo Mortensen's brother in Sean Penn's directorial debut, The Indian Runner (1991), Morse moved to more mainstream work with supporting roles in The Good Son (1993), the Alec Baldwin-Kim Basinger version of The Getaway (1994), and medical thriller Extreme Measures (1996). While he appeared in Terry Gilliam's thoughtful La Jetée (1962) remake 12 Monkeys (1995), faced off with Jack Nicholson in Penn's The Crossing Guard (1996), and starred as a janitor-turned-rich man in George B. (1997), Morse really captured audience attention in a concurrent string of high-profile projects. Returning to Alcatraz, Morse projected quiet menace as one of Ed Harris renegade Marines in the blockbuster hit The Rock (1996). Morse tapped his bad self again in the action romp The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), then cemented his versatility with a small yet vital role as Jodie Foster's gentle father in Contact (1997). Notching his third major summer release in a row, Morse played a SWAT team commander up against Samuel L. Jackson's wrongly accused cop in The Negotiator (1998). Returning to serious blockbuster fare, Morse then co-starred with Tom Hanks as prison guards who witness miracles in The Green Mile (1999). After a foray into comedy with Bait (2000), Morse stole hostage drama Proof of Life (2000) from his glamorous tabloid-ready co-stars Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe with his intense performance as Ryan's kidnapped husband. Even as he became a popular Hollywood second lead, however, Morse wasn't afraid to veer away from the multiplex, winning an Obie Award for Paula Vogel's acclaimed play How I Learned to Drive and putting a believably human face on an utterly hateful character in Lars von Trier's bleak, award-winning musical Dancer in the Dark (2000). Continuing his protean career, Morse appeared in another gentle Stephen King adaptation Hearts of Atlantis (2001) and starred in Diary of a City Priest (2001) for PBS. Morse followed the ill fated Hearts of Atlantis with a lead role in the indie drama The Slaughter Rule (2002), which was well received on the film festival circuit. Morse subsequently returned to series television, and received top billing, in the CBS drama Hack (2002). Starring Morse as an ex-cop-turned-cab driver, Hack was pummeled by critics, but audiences took to Morse's well intentioned, marginalized law enforcer and Hack became a modest ratings success. He had a recurring part on the medical drama House as a police detective driven to put the title character behind bars. In 2007 he played the bad guy in the teen thriller Disturbia. He appeared in a pair of award-winning projects in 2008 - he was a military man in The Hurt Locker, and tackled the role of George Washington in the Emmy-winning miniseries John Adams for HBO. In 2011 he had a major part in Drive Angry, and the next year he was in the family-oriented fantasy film The Odd Life of Timothy Green.

Trivia: Of Polish, Italian, German and Irish descent.Her name means winter in Polish.Drowning in L.A., a short story she wrote at age 15, was published in AIM Magazine.Wrote a novel at the age of 16.

Trivia: Richmond, IL, native Tom Amandes received his formal dramatic training at DePaul University's Goodman School of Drama, where he aggressively cut his chops on the stage. After his 1981 graduation, Amandes remained in the Chicago area and broke into its theatrical community, with apprenticeships at such venues as the Body Politic Theater and the Court Theatre. The actor achieved his on-camera breakthrough almost a decade later, as the lead, Eliot Ness, in the 1992-1994 syndicated television revival of the 1960s police drama The Untouchables, then went on to essay guest appearances on series programs including Murphy Brown, The Larry Sanders Show, and NYPD Blue, and landed small roles (usually bit parts as professional types) in films including Straight Talk (1992), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), and Brokedown Palace (1999). Beginning in 2002, Amandes commenced a multi-season supporting turn as a physician, Dr. Harold Abbott, on the family-themed small-town drama Everwood (2002-2007). In 2006, he co-starred opposite Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, and Christine Baranski in the gentle seriocomedy Bonneville.

Trivia: With her genuine smile, earthy beauty, and striking green eyes, Melina Kanakaredes staked her claim on daytime television in The Guiding Light before expanding her talents to numerous other popular series and, eventually, the silver screen.Born and raised in Akron, OH, the second-generation Greek-American was the third daughter of an insurance salesman and homemaker who began her career as an actress in a community theater production of Tom Sawyer at the age of eight. Later enrolling in Ohio State University to study music, dance, and theater but disheartened at poor inter-departmental relations, Kanakaredes opted for a conservatory education at Point Park College in Pittsburgh. Soon performing with the Pittsburgh Playhouse and appearing in commercials and industrial videos, Kanakaredes moved to New York after graduating magna cum laude and began working in dinner boat theater and off-Broadway productions. Taking her role as Greek immigrant Eleni Andros Cooper in The Guiding Light after being spotted by the William Morris Agency in 1991, Kanakaredes was nominated for two Emmys and soon began to expand to roles on NYPD Blue and OZ. Soon turning up in such features as The Long Kiss Goodnight and Rounders, the natural beauty began to gain even more footing in her feature aspirations with her turn in the Robert DeNiro heist-thriller The Score in 2001. Kanakaredes would spend the ensuing 2000's appearing frequently on TV, joining the cast of the police proceedural CSI: NY.

Trivia: Finnish director Renny Harlin did not come from an artistically inclined family (his parents were in the medical profession), but Harlin himself had determined his future before he was 12, via extensive use of a home movie camera. Harlin was a twenty-ish film school graduate when he set up his own production company; while he was fairly successful marketing documentaries and commercial shorts, young Harlin could not get anyone in Finland to bankroll him for a feature. He moved to the presumably greener pastures of Hollywood, where he finally realized his goal with the 1986 feature Born American. Harlan's direction of 1990's Die Hard 2 seemed to bode well for steady work in action films; unfortunately, his next effort (released the same month as Die Hard 2) was the ill-fated Andrew Dice Clay vehicle The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990). The collapse of this enterprise resulted in reams of magazine copy about the "once-promising" and "washed-up" Harlin. But in 1993, he responded with the successful Cliffhanger, which managed the remarkable feat of being an actor's picture (the star was Sylvester Stallone) and a director's picture all in one. Renny Harlin was married to actress Geena Davis, whom he directed in the 1995 swashbuckler Cutthroat Island. Though the couple would re-team the following year for Harlin's The Long Kiss Goodnight, they separated in 1997 and divorce soon followed. In 1999 Harlin took the action to the ocean with Long Kiss co-star Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea, following in 2001 with the Sylvester Stallone adreno-racer Driven.Next up, Harlin was called in to rescue the production of the prequel Exorcist: The Beginning after countless problems including a completed film from director Paul Schrader that was virtually scrapped by an unsatisfied studio. Harlin followed this up with the thriller Mindhunters. While neither of those efforts were particularly successful upon release at the box office, in 2006 Harlin had returned to his position behind the camera once again to terrify moviegoers with a tale of four teens forced to do battle with a malevolent supernatural force in The Covenant.

Trivia: With his bald head and beefy exterior, Hollywood character player Rex Linn quickly built up an acting resumé replete with many portrayals of toughs, feds, cops, thugs, and -- occasionally -- unremarkable, beleaguered everymen. Born in the panhandle of the Lone Star State, Linn came of age in the small Texas town of Spearman. He discovered a lingering interest in drama during his teenage years, but buckled under the weight of discouragement from an acting coach, and put acting on the shelf to focus on career pursuits in banking and the oil industry. Dissatisfied with these fields, Linn convinced an Oklahoma talent agent to sign him, and made the leap from commercials to feature roles with his portrayal of serial murderer Fred Epps in the Peter Masterson-directed thriller Night Game (1989), opposite Roy Scheider. The pleasure of this experience prompted Linn to head to the West Coast, where he worked construction, landed intermittent acting assignments, and studied the craft under the tutelage of Silvana Gallardo in Studio City, CA. Linn was memorable as the rogue treasury agent who assists terrorist John Lithgow in the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Cliffhanger (1993), which brought the actor the recognition he so persistently sought and led to a series of supporting roles in dozens of feature films. Linn's portrayal of Frank McLaury in Wyatt Earp (1994) marked the first in a series of several onscreen collaborations with Kevin Costner that also included the romantic comedy Tin Cup (1996) and the laborious sci-fi epic The Postman (1997). Linn also landed guest appearances on such series as JAG and 3rd Rock From the Sun. He is best known, however, for his fine portrayal of Miami-Dade Police Department detective Frank Tripp on the hit crime series CSI: Miami.

Trivia: New York native Alan North began his film career in 1971 with his role in Plaza Suite, which co-starred Walter Matthau and Maureen Stapleton. Henceforth, he would portray many secondary characters in an impressive string of high profile films. North was also frequently seen on stage as well as television. His most noticeable role on the small screen was for the early-'80s police spoof Police Squad, as Captain Ed Hocken. North died in early 2000, at the age of 79.

Trivia: Actor Edwin Hodge resisted being typecast and pigeonholed, and felt equally at home in projects representing a myriad of genres, from frat-boy comedies (National Lampoon Presents: Dorm Daze) to period epics (The Alamo) to teen-oriented thrillers (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane). Hodge (the brother of actor Aldis Hodge) debuted in the early 2000s, signing for one of his first jobs with a supporting role in Victor Nuñez's fine, overlooked ensemble drama Coastlines (2002), and at around the same time made guest appearances on such series as Angel and Touched By an Angel. In 2004, he appeared on the critically praised but short-lived series drama Jack & Bobby; he then tackled roles in the telemovie Fighting the Odds: The Marilyn Gambrell Story (2005) and the teen drama Debating Robert Lee (2006).

Trivia: Before making his career switch to acting, G.D. Spradlin had been a prosperous Texas business tycoon and a highly respected history teacher. In films from 1968's Will Penny, the actor is perhaps best remembered for his work as on-the-take Senator Pat Geary in The Godfather, Part 2 (1974). His regal, assured bearing made him a natural for such forceful characterizations as LBJ in the 1990 TV movie Robert Kennedy and His Times. Spradlin has also played his share of high-ranking military officers, most memorably in Apocalypse Now (1979). A somewhat more avuncular G. D. Spradlin was seen in the role of Baptist minister (and erstwhile movie producer) Reverend Lemon in Ed Wood (1994).

Trivia: Played bass in a band called DAEVE. Performed at Toronto's Factory Theatre and the Markham Theatre. Known for his role of Tod Waggner in the movie Final Destination (2000). Starred in commercials for Taco Bell (2003) and Samsung Galaxy S7 Active: "Longest Fumble" (2016). Often portrayed teenagers and young men undergoing a crisis.

Trivia: First gained attention in his native Canada with a role in the acclaimed series The Eleventh Hour. After moving to Los Angeles, he landed guest appearances on such series as 24, Desperate Housewives and Lost. Best known for playing the role of Joey Henrickson on HBO's Big Love. Won a 2006 Dora (the Canadian equivalent of the Tonys) for his performance in the play A Number.

Trivia: Born November 29, 1933, CNN mainstay Larry King reshaped the landscape of broadcast journalism when his talk show Larry King Live debuted in June 1985; that program's groundbreaking admixture of cutting-edge political discussion, incisive celebrity-directed Q & A, and viewer phone-in rocked the world and drew an audience of tens of millions. By 2007 -- King's 22nd year on cable and his 50th year in broadcasting -- the CNN website revealed that King had chalked up 40,000 interviews, including one with every United States president since Gerald Ford. Uncoincidentally, that was the same year King achieved an honor claimed by very few: a city block -- the street surrounding the CNN building -- was christened "Larry King Square" in his honor. King lent his voice to several animated features including Bee Movie (2007), Shrek the Third (2007), and Shrek Forever after (2010).

Trivia: Best known for playing mean Uncle Frank in the Home Alone series, Kansas-born Gerry Bamman began his acting career in the '80s with roles in a number of films including Cocktail and The Secret of My Success. He continued to work consistently throughout the '90s and 2000s, and became a familiar face to a new generation of fans with a recurring role on Law & Order as lawyer Stan Gillum.