Trivia: Actor Eric McCormack was born in Toronto, Canada, on April 18, 1963. As a teenager, McCormack had developed an interest in acting (inspired in part by his father, who had once pursued a career as a thespian), and after graduating from high school, he enrolled in Toronto's Ryerson Theater School. McCormack left Ryerson in 1985, several months before graduation, in order to accept a position with the well-respected Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario. Over the course of five seasons with the Stratford company, McCormack rose from bit parts to major roles in productions such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Henry V, and he developed a reputation as one of Canada's most promising stage actors. In 1991, McCormack scored his first screen role in a remake of the classic dinosaur saga The Lost World, and in 1992, he was cast on a syndicated TV series, Street Justice, as Detective Carl Weathers. Moving to Vancouver that same year, McCormack stayed busy over the next several years with a variety of television projects shot in Canada (including recurring roles in two series, Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years and Townies) and occasional feature films (most notably Holy Man and Free Enterprise). In 1998, McCormack got his big break when he was cast as Will Truman, a gay lawyer, on the situation comedy series Will and Grace. Well received by critics, Will and Grace slowly grew into a ratings winner, eventually garnering a multitude of industry awards. McCormack's work on the show earned him Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor in a Comedy Series every year from 2000-2003; he also received several Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series and brought the award home in 2001.Over the coming decade, McCormack would appear in a number of acclaimed TV series, including The New Adventures of Old Christine and Perception.

Trivia: A stunning, New York-born actress who shot to stardom with her role as the latter half of television's Will and Grace, Debra Messing's playful creativity beginning in her youth left her family with little doubt that the talented youngster would seek a career in some aspect of the entertainment industry.Raised in a small community outside Providence, RI, Messing's song and dance routines were the source of endless entertainment for her family throughout her youth, and the precocious youngster frequently attended performing arts camps in order to focus her skills as an actress. Later touring Canada, the U.S., and Mexico before planning her initial bid for stardom, Messing followed her mother's advice and enrolled in Massachusetts' Brandeis University, where she majored in theater arts. Traveling to London late in her schooling to study at the prestigious B.E.S.G.L. program, she was later accepted into New York University's Graduate Acting Program. Early roles such as a stint as sexpot Dana Abandando on television's NYPD Blue garnered much attention for the stunning starlet, and it wasn't long before Messing made her feature debut with A Walk in the Clouds (1995). Jumping back to the small screen for the short-lived Ned and Stacey the following year, she next turned up in the feature Prey (1997) and a subsequent television series based on the film. Launching her career into overdrive in 1998 with her role as Grace Elizabeth Adler in television's Will and Grace brought Messing critical and public praise, and her role as the interior designer living with a homosexual lawyer charmed audiences with its snappy writing and talented cast. With personal interests lending to involvement with such organizations as the Best Friend's Pet Sanctuary, Gay Men's Health Crisis, and AmFAR, the actress uses much of her personal time to encourage social awareness of HIV and AIDS-related issues and encourage people to adopt pets.The massive success of Will & Grace helped Messing gain a foothold in a film career. She tested the waters gingerly at first, taking small but key roles in films as diverse as the thriller The Mothman Prophecies and the Woody Allen comedy Hollywood Ending. She played Ben Stiller's newlywed wife in the hit comedy Along Came Polly in 2004. Although audiences ignored her romantic comedy The Wedding Date, Messing scored her most prestigious post-Will & Grace work yet landing a major role in Curtis Hanson's Lucky You in 2006, the same year as she lent her vocal talents to the animated film Open Season.Over the next several years, Messing would enjoy a number of projects, starring in movies like The Women, and series like The Starter Wife, Smash and The Mysteries of Laura.

Trivia: Actress Megan Mullally was born in Los Angeles in 1958, to a family with show business roots -- her father, Carter Mullally Jr., was an actor who became a contract player with Paramount Pictures during the 1950s. In 1965, with Carter's career on the wane, Mullally's parents pulled up roots and moved to Oklahoma City, OK, where her family had become quite wealthy raising livestock. Megan picked up the performing bug from her father, and developed a passionate interest in music and especially dance. By the time Megan was a high school student, she'd performed as a featured soloist with the Ballet Oklahoma troupe in Oklahoma City, and during summer vacations she studied with George Balanchine's School of American Ballet in New York City. Her interest in classical dance eventually grew into a desire to act, and while attending Northwestern University, she began appearing in student theater productions. After graduating, Mullally moved to Chicago, where she immersed herself in the city's rich and varied local theater scene. In 1983, she won her first film role, playing a hooker in Risky Business, and in 1986 she relocated to Los Angeles after being cast on a television series, The Ellen Burstyn Show. However, the series proved short-lived, and Mullally was soon busying herself with guest spots on a number of different shows. Mullally continued to work in the theater, and in 1994 fulfilled a longtime dream when she scored a role in the Broadway revival of Grease. The next year, she earned a high-profile role in another noted Broadway musical, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (playing opposite Matthew Broderick), while continuing to work in television projects. Mullally's dedication and focus finally paid off in 1998, when she was cast as Karen Walker, a self-centered former socialite-turned-office assistant on the popular situation comedy series Will and Grace. A major ratings success, Will and Grace catapulted Mullally into the spotlight, and she won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe, and an American Comedy Award for her work on the show. When not busy with Will and Grace, Mullally continues to pursue other projects, playing featured roles in the films Everything Put Together and Monkeybone and starring in a one-woman musical, Sweetheart, in which she shows off her talents as a singer. (Mullally has also released an album of songs from the show, which she produced herself.)Mullally would continue her successful career on Broadway while enjoying the long running success of Will and Grace, and would go on to appear in other successful TV series as well, like In the Motherhood, Party Down, Childrens' Hospital, and Parks and Recreation.

Trivia: Born June 26, 1970, as the youngest of five children, Hayes has since compared his suburban Chicago upbringing to "being raised by a family of wild dingoes." After high school in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, he attended Illinois State University, where he supported himself as a classical pianist and performed in a pop band. Following his graduation, where he was awarded a degree in performance and conducting, he went to work in the Chicago theater. For several years, he served as the musical director of the Pheasant Run Theater, often acting in productions in addition to writing music for them. He was also a member of the famed Second City improvisational group and performed standup comedy in clubs in Chicago and Los Angeles. While still living in Chicago, Hayes began finding TV work, notably in the series Silk Stalkings. In 1998, he made his film debut in Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, in which he played the title character, a gay photographer in search of love. The film received both a favorable reception at Sundance and a wide art house release. It was while he was at Sundance promoting the movie that Hayes was asked to audition for the part of the straightlaced lawyer Will in the upcoming Will & Grace. Preferring the role of Will's friend Jack, Hayes auditioned for that part instead, and subsuquently became a full fledged star for his portrayal of the beloved character. Following the show's eight year run, Hayes would enjoy a variety of projects, appearing in films like The Bucket List, Soul Men, and The Three Stooges.After logging several high-profile guest runs on TV shows like Up All Night and Smash, Hayes tried to mount his television comeback with his own show, Sean Saves the World, in 2013. The show only lasted on season, but Hayes quickly rebounded by joining the cast of The Millers in season 2. He also launched a successful production company, executive producing shows like Grimm, Hot in Cleveland and The Soul Man, and created the game show Hollywood Game Night.

Trivia: Possessing one of the most distinctive voices in pop music and one of the most distressing résumés on the big screen, Madonna has proven that whatever the role -- screwball seductress, martyred Argentinian first lady, embittered single mom-cum-yoga instructrix -- her abilities as a performer will manage to undermine any production whose credits bear her name. Like Elvis before her, Madonna has proven that no matter how sterling a pop reputation an artist may have, success on the Billboard Top 100 does not translate into similar plaudits at the box office.Born Madonna Ciccone in Bay City, MI, in 1958, Madonna was raised in a strict Roman Catholic household. She attended the University of Michigan as a dance student for a brief period before dropping out to move to New York City in 1977. There, she quickly became a habitué of various downtown gay discos; spurred on by her dance teacher and her deejay pals, she embarked on a singing career. Before releasing her debut album, however, she made a debut of another kind in an all-but-forgotten, micro-budgeted date-rape melodrama entitled A Certain Sacrifice (1979). In an omen of things to come, Madonna later tried to halt the theatrical release of the film after her musical career took off.The artist's proper screen debut came courtesy of Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan. The 1985 release featured Madonna in a supporting role as a funky girl/object of desire around which the film's screwball plot revolved. Her rising star helped to make Susan a minor hit; aided by Seidelman, she was able to capitalize on her effervescent comic charm and her kooky, uber-Soho, Material Girl persona.Unfortunately, Madonna's relationship with volatile young actor Sean Penn led her to accept a role opposite him, both in real life as well as onscreen in Shanghai Surprise (1986). The retro-styled, George Harrison-produced debacle endured a brief and mercilessly lambasted life at the box office; Madonna's marriage to Penn didn't last much longer. Next up for the indefatigable entertainer was Who's That Girl? (1987), a stillborn, flimsy imitation of the Melanie Griffith/Jeff Daniels vehicle Something Wild, released just one year prior. Notable only for its hit title track, the ostensible homage to Howard Hawks starred a pained Griffin Dunne opposite a bubbly, impetuous Madonna, apparently performing in the style of her semi-controversial "Open Your Heart" video. Needless to say, their chemistry did little to ignite box-office fireworks.Madonna's next vehicle was undoubtedly her most high profile to date; cast opposite Warren Beatty in Dick Tracy (1990), she received lavish amounts of pre-film hype, particularly as she was involved at the time with long-in-the-tooth, alpha-stud Beatty. However, the much-anticipated feature failed to make good on the promise that surrounded its production, and Madonna herself came away with only a few choice Steven Sondheim production numbers to her credit. However, the "inspired by the motion picture" soundtrack album did help spark one of the singer's most enduring cause celebres -- "voguing."It took director Alex Keshishian to (literally) strip some of the veneer from the Madonna mystique with his tell-all documentary Truth or Dare the following year. The feature's risqué subject matter -- including the songstress' unabashed fellating of an Evian bottle -- created a ratings stink with the MPAA and revealed some previously unexposed dimensions of Madonna's relationship with Beatty, such as his incessant ridicule of her.Madonna next courted the best reviews of her film career to date playing a feisty baseball player in the 1992 A League of Their Own, in which she starred amongst a talented ensemble cast that included Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, and offscreen gal-pal Rosie O'Donnell. Those favorable reviews were soon overshadowed, however, by the maelstrom of negative publicity just a few months later, when she formed a troika of artistic shame with her starring role in the pseudo-S&M thriller Body of Evidence (1993), her show-and-tell photo book Sex, and her subpar dance album Erotica.Madonna kept a relatively low profile during the next three years, popping up occasionally for cameos in Blue in the Face and Four Rooms as well as a leading part in Abel Ferrera's barely-released Dangerous Game, co-starring Harvey Keitel. Instead, she spent much of her free time hounding director Alan Parker to cast her in the title role of the long-gestating film version of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Evita. Madonna's efforts eventually paid off when she won the part in the Christmas 1996 release; although critics responded with mixed opinions, the singer/actress managed to garner a Golden Globe for her performance.Just when it seemed the actress had written off Hollywood for good, fate came calling in the form of boy-toy gal pal Rupert Everett and his script idea titled The Next Best Thing. Billed as a romantic comedy, the John Schlesinger-helmed vehicle was in actuality an uneasy melange of The Object of My Affection, My Best Friend's Wedding, and, improbably, Kramer vs. Kramer. Critics responded to the film with primal screams of derision, many of which were aimed at Madonna's balsa wood-inspired and deeply schizophrenic performance. Around this time, insult was indeed added to injury when, in early 2000, the erstwhile thespian was dubbed the Worst Actress of the Century at the Razzie Awards, beating out such notables as Bo Derek, Pia Zadora, and Elizabeth Berkley.The stage was set for another of the actress' many career reinventions, and it seemed as though she might do just that with her marriage to film director Guy Ritchie, the father of her second child, Rocco. Though she had not yet appeared in one of the Brit's testosterone-laden heist films (including 1998's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and 2000's Snatch) she did play a starring role in their lavish Scottish Highlands' nuptials in December of 2000.It wouldn't be long before Madonna collaborated artistically with her new beau. Subscribing to the age-old Hollywood dictum that a couple can't truly be in love without an accompanying vanity project, the Material Girl and Ritchie dusted off Italian director Lina Wertmuller's 1974 post-feminist chestnut Swept Away... By an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August for a lavish remake, albeit one without the original film's rape scene and communist subtext. Though many reviewers pointed out Madonna's natural adeptness at portraying a spoiled, shrewish heiress who engages in dominant/submissive sex games with a lusty Italian seaman, they were less convinced of the positive emotional "transformation" her character underwent over the course of the film. True to form, audiences avoided Swept Away like the plague, as it struggled to crack seven digits at the box office, making it one of the least-profitable films of 2002. In March of 2003, the Razzie Awards responded in kind, showering Swept Away and its star with 5 wins including Worst Picture of the year. Unfortunately, Madonna had to share her award for Worst Actress with her acolyte, another pop star trying to segue into film, Britney Spears.Madonna would continue to work in film, making her directorial debut 2008 with the indie film Filth and Wisdom and following this up with the period biopic W.E. in 2012.

Trivia: Appeared in feature films such as Blast from the Past (1999) and Repli-Kate (2002). Appeared on TV shows including You're The Worst, Hawaii Five-O and Angie Tribeca. Has been in more than 60 national commercials. Has a web series called Jokey Bits. Complains about movies on his Film Pigs podcast.

Trivia: An imposing figure of both TV and the stage, 4'11" actor Leslie Jordan's physical stature belies his talent. Garnering massive acclaim for his portrayal of Brother Boy in the Broadway production of Sordid Lives, Jordan would go on to reprise the role for a film adaptation of the play. This led to a successful onscreen career as a character actor, making numerous guest appearances over the years on shows like Boston Legal, Ugly Betty, and Will & Grace. In 2008, he took on the role of Brother Boy once again, as Sordid Lives was adapted into a TV series for the Logo network.

Trivia: Actor Michael Angarano achieved two of his most noteworthy roles back to back, as a violin player in the Wes Craven-directed inspirational drama Music of the Heart (1999) and as the young version of rock journalist-to-be William Miller in Cameron Crowe's semi-autographical seriocomedy Almost Famous (2000). Angarano's subsequent resumé includes supporting parts in such pictures as Seabiscuit (2003), Lords of Dogtown (2005), and One Last Thing... (2005). On the small screen, Angarano played the recurring role of Elliott, Jack's (Sean Hayes) son on Will & Grace (from from 2001-2006), as well as a guest role in the sixth season of 24 (2007). With Man in the Chair (2007) -- a gentle, humorous coming-of-age dramedy about an aspiring teenage film director who finds the fulfillment of his dreams from an unexpected source -- Angarano tackled an associate producer assignment and the lead role concurrently. That same year, Angarano also signed for one of the supporting parts in the David Mickey Evans-helmed baseball drama The Final Season.