Trivia: Solidly built American actor Craig T. Nelson started out as a comedy writer and performer, doing radio and nightspot gigs in the Los Angeles area. Success was not immediately forthcoming, and Nelson took a four-year sabbatical from show business, moving with his family to a remote cabin in Northern California. In 1979, he made his first film, ...And Justice For All, written by his onetime partner Barry Levinson. While subsequent roles in Poltergeist and Silkwood followed, Nelson would find true stardom on television. For eight seasons beginning in 1989, he starred as college athletics instuctor Hayden Fox on the top-ranked ABC sitcom Coach. Appearing alongside supporting players Jerry Van Dyke and Shelly Fabares, Nelson received an Emmy for his work on the show in 1992.After Coach, Nelson showed up in a few small roles in feature films and television mini-series before returning to series work in 2000, leading the cast of CBS's D.C.-based cop-drama The District. While enjoying the success of that show, Nelson found time for his first high-profile feature film role in over a decade, providing the voice of the head of a family of superheroes in the 2004 Disney/Pixar animated film The Incredibles. In 2005 he played the patriarch of the dysfunctional clan in The Family Stone, and followed that up two years later as skating coach in the comedy Blades of Glory. He was Ryan Reynolds disapproving dad in the hit comedy The Proposal in 2009. He was cast as the head of the Braverman clan in NBC's relaunch of Parenthood in 2010, and appeared in the inspirational Soul Surfer in 2011.

Trivia: American actress Lynne Thigpen was part of the original cast of the stage musical Godspell in 1971. She reprised her role for the 1973 film and went on to work for three decades on both the stage and screen. Theatrical audiences may remember her for her Tony-nominated lead role in Tintypes, but she is probably best known as the Chief, the host of the PBS educational game shows Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? and Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? On the big screen, Thigpen appeared in the mainstream features Tootsie, Lean on Me, and Bob Roberts. However, she fared much better in powerful roles on television. She was Aunt Grace Keefer on All My Children, DA Ruby Thomas on L.A. Law, and Judge Ida Boucher on Law & Order. Other TV appearances include thirtysomething, Homicide: Life on the Street, and several Hallmark Hall of Fame features. Possessing rich, powerful speech, Thigpen lent her voice to several different projects. Already known on PBS as the Chief, she narrated stories on Reading Rainbow and provided voices for Bear in the Big Blue House. She also read best-selling novels audiobooks, including titles by Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston. After a lengthy career on-stage, two Obie awards, and an L.A. Drama Critics award, Thigpen finally received her first Tony award in 1997 for her portrayal of Dr. Judith Kaufman in Wendy Wasserstein's An American Daughter. She reprised her role for the 2000 made-for-TV adaptation, released on home video with the title Trial by Media. That same year, she was cast as statistics clerk Ella Mae Farmer in the CBS dramatic series The District. On the big screen, she played authority figures like President Marjorie Bota in Bicentennial Man and Judge Brenda Daniels in Anger Management. A shock to her fellow cast members on The District, Thigpen died of a heart attack in her Los Angeles home in 2003. She was 54.

Trivia: A talented actor who began to win due notice in the late '90s, Sean Patrick Thomas broke through to mainstream audiences with winning turns in such films as Cruel Intentions (1999) and Save the Last Dance (2001). The son of immigrants from Guyana, Thomas was born in Wilmington, DE, in 1970. While attending the University of Virginia, where he studied English and planned to become a lawyer, Thomas decided to pursue a career in acting after auditioning for a student production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Thomas broke into film with small roles in productions that included Courage Under Fire (1996), Conspiracy Theory (1997), and Can't Hardly Wait (1998). In 1996, he further added to his acting credentials by earning an M.A. in drama from New York University. Relative fame and even a blush of notoriety greeted the actor in 1999, with a pivotal role in Cruel Intentions, Roger Kumble's free and loose adaptation of Choderlos De Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Co-starring alongside alpha-teens Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon, and Ryan Phillippe in the torrid tale of lust, betrayal, and negligent parenting on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Thomas earned (literal) exposure as the cello teacher/illicit lover of one of the film's principle characters. Even greater exposure followed for Thomas the subsequent year, when he was cast in a substantial role as Detective Temple Page on the critically acclaimed TV series The District. Riding high, he then won his first starring role on the big screen in Save the Last Dance (2001), an interracial love story set in Chicago's South Side that featured him as a black high school student in love with a white classmate (Julia Stiles). Although the film earned mixed reviews, it found an appreciative audience, and with it, a growing fan base for the young actor.

Trivia: Is a practicing Quaker. Her first professional role was as Isabella in Measure for Measure at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. Made her Broadway debut as an understudy in The SeagulI in 1992. Performed as Katherine in the New York Shakespeare Festival stage production of Henry V. Played Brooke Wyeth in the off-Broadway premiere of Other Desert Cities in 2011; when the show transfered to Broadway, she was replaced by Rachel Griffith, but later joined the show as a replacement.

Trivia: Worked for three years as a medical doctor in Adelaide, Sydney and London before relocating to the U.S. to pursue a career in acting. Got his first break in 1996, when he joined the cast of the U.S. TV show New York Undercover. After living in the U.S. for 17 years, he had to work with an accent coach to recapture his Australian accent. Is a bit of a "motor-head"; rebuilt a 1973 Dodge Challenger by himself.

Trivia: At 6'2", with a handsomeness best-termed "rugged," the towering and burly Paul Johansson originally developed his ability in sports -- unsurprising, given his physical stature and the fact that he was the child of hockey demigod Ching Johnson, a key player on the 1954 Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings. Born in Spokane, WA, but raised in the Vancouver area, Johansson landed all-Canadian status as a basketball player for the University of British Columbia, where he was, by his own account, ejected from five games against the University of Saskatchewan for overly aggressive behavior (in 1987). Johansson had his eyes on a stint in the Olympics and full-time work in the NBA (and in fact, the Atlanta Hawks offered him a spot on their team) when he suddenly realized that he no longer cared seriously about a sports career. Seeking fulfillment and actualization elsewhere, Johansson planned (with the help of his UBC English degree) to launch himself as a writer, and traveled to Los Angeles with friend Jason Priestley with that goal in mind. Instead, he soon discovered a love of acting, and a recurring role on the soap Santa Barbara (as Greg Hughes) followed. Johansson appeared on the Ferris Bueller-like series Parker Lewis Can't Lose from 1991-1992 (as an impossibly hip counterman) and as Sally Field's husband in the 1991 Soapdish, prior to his portrayal of Austin Peale in the blockbuster Western series Lonesome Dove (1994-1995) and its follow-up, Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years (1995-1996). Alongside on-camera appearances in such projects as Highlander: The Raven (1998), Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (1999), and John Q. (2002), Johansson moved quietly into writing and directing, first with the 1997 short film Conversations in Limbo (based on an Oscar Wilde story), then with the direct-to-video coming-of-age picture The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie, co-starring Gena Rowlands and James Caan. Johansson also starred in the popular teen series drama One Tree Hill, as Dan Scott. He directed and acted in Atlas Shrugged Part 1, a 2011 adaptation of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel of the same name.

Trivia: After attending Trinity University and the University of San Antonio, brunette Jaclyn Smith flourished as a model and cover girl. Making her first film appearance in 1969, Smith endured such negligible movie projects as The Moonshiners (1974) before achieving stardom as Kelly Garrett, showgirl-turned-PI, on the spectacularly successful TV series Charlie's Angels. She was the only member of the original Angels to remain with the series from its debut in 1976 to its final telecast in 1981. Like her Charlie's Angels cohorts Cheryl Ladd and Farrah Fawcett, Smith went on to a busy career in made-for-TV movies, efficiently playing the title roles in Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (1982) and Florence Nightingale (1985). In 1989, she returned to the weekly-TV grind as star of the mystery series Christine Cromwell. That same year, a random sampling of Hollywood insiders (technicians, grips, "gofers", etc.) voted Smith as one of the nicest and most cooperative actresses in the business (parenthetically, her Charlie's Angels co-star Kate Jackson was elected one of the least likeable performers in Tinseltown). Jaclyn Smith was previously married to actors Roger Davis and Dennis Cole, and cinematographer Tony Richmond. Her fourth marriage was to Dr. Bradley Allen in 1998.

Trivia: Alternately termed "smoldering" and "babelicious" by TV Guide, the 5'8" U.S. actress Kelly Rutherford -- who spent her adolescence as something of a sports nut instead of a très féminine prima donna -- ironically broke through to the public with a series of white-hot-sexy small-screen roles: barroom chanteuse Dixie Cousins on The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.; onetime-prostitute Megan Lewis on Melrose Place; and sensuous bartender Judy Owen on the post-WWII drama Homefront. Born in Elizabethtown, KY, in the late '60s (and only two years old at the time of her parents' divorce), Rutherford spent years moving from town to town across the country, under the guardianship of her fashion-model mother, Ann Edwards, until she reached her teenage years. At that point, Rutherford, Edwards, and the family's oldest child, Anthony, settled in Newport Beach, CA. Rutherford made a beeline for New York City after graduating from high school in the late '80s, where she planned to enroll in a formal drama program; instead, she signed to do several commercials and appeared on the daytime soapers Loving (opposite Luke Perry) and Generations. Returning to the West Coast, Rutherford subsequently trained at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, where a drama coach reportedly advised her to "work on [her] sexuality" -- a suggestion that helped her immensely. Though Rutherford's feature debut was a bit part in the undistinguished James Glickenhaus-directed actioner Shakedown (1988) -- starring Sam Elliott and Peter Weller -- the 1994 romantic comedy-mystery I Love Trouble constituted both her first significant assignment and the type of material she most warmed to: contemporary throwbacks to golden-age Hollywood cinema. Following a string of banal telemovies between 1994 and 1997, Rutherford joined the cast of the slasher movie sequel Scream 3 (2000) and the political drama Chaos Factor (2000), directed by Terry Cunningham. She received second billing (her highest, up through that time) in the direct-to-video police detective thriller Angels Don't Sleep Here (2001), opposite Roy Scheider and Robert Patrick.It was on television, though, that Rutherford continued to find greatest success. Beginning in the early 2000s, the actress garnered prominant roles a series of programs, starting with a recurring role as Deputy Mayor Melinda Lockhart on The District. She next played Special Agent Frankie Ellroy Kilmer on the counterterrorism thriller Threat Matrix, followed by a role as Samantha "Sonny" Liston on the similarly themed political drama E-Ring. Despite Rutherford's impressive ability to make it into the casts of highly-touted prime-time series, those programs also tended to be disappointingly short-lived. That all changed in 2007, when she was cast as Lily van der Woodsen, mother of the troubled Serena (Blake Lively), on Gossip Girl, a teen-oriented prime-time soap on the fledgling CW network. Taking a cue from previous rich-kid drama The O.C., Gossip Girl devoted a portion of its storyline to the main characters' parents, and Lily had no shortage of drama and relationship issues.

Trivia: Richard Herd was a busy character actor for 20 years, mostly playing tough cops, ruthless corporate executives, and murderous villains in everything from topical dramas to science fiction thrillers before he became a comedy star in the 1990s, thanks to the series Seinfeld. A stage actor of long experience, he has received awards for his theatrical work, most notably The Couch With Six Insides, which he co-produced and which garnered an Obie. Herd began appearing on television in the early '60s, in commercials, for Newport cigarettes and other products, which frequently had a comic side to them, but it was in harder and heavier roles in movies and television that he was best known in the 1970s and 1980s: Captain Sheridan in the police show T.J. Hooker; villains in Scarecrow and Mrs. King and numerous other hour-long dramas; tough executives and military officers on M*A*S*H and other series; and as the alien leader John in the NBC miniseries V. His portrayal of ruthless power company executive Evan McCormack in the feature film The China Syndrome left Herd typed as a heavy for years, which didn't prevent him from giving memorable performances in series such as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and feature films like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. In the 1990s, however, his flair for comedy also came to the fore with his portrayal of Mr. Wilhelm, George Costanza's high-pressure boss at the New York Yankees, which earned him an award from the Screen Actors Guild. He has also appeared in series such as E.R. and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and has a growing legion of fans in the field of science fiction from his work on Star Trek: Voyager.

Trivia: As a University of Virginia grad sans a degree in drama (he balanced a dual major in foreign affairs and economics), the neophyte Hollywood thesp Benjamin McKenzie first cut his teeth on-stage, at the Williamstown Theater Festival. McKenzie went professional with a move to the City of Angels only a few short months after graduation (late 2001), where he traveled the road of most aspiring actors. He began small, with bit parts in various television series (including JAG and The District), but landed his big break with one of the main roles on Fox's teen drama The O.C. (2003), starring Peter Gallagher (sex, lies, and videotape), which quickly became a popular hit. As Ryan Atwood, the boy from "the wrong side of town" who shakes up the lives of the Cohen, Cooper, and Nichol clans, McKenzie made an indelible impression with audiences and became a series fixture.McKenzie made his big-screen debut in 2005's indie comedy drama Junebug, appearing alongside Amy Adams, Embeth Davidtz, and Alessandro Nivola. The Sony Classics picture, about a worldy big-city art dealer (Davidtz) who grapples with culture clash when she first meets the family of her new husband, stole critics' hearts, and -- in time -- went down as one of the best-received sleepers of the year. McKenzie's performance as the irritable, repressed Johnny, Amy Adams' husband and the less intellectual of the family's two brothers, impressed viewers. McKenzie would next appear in the thriller 88 Minutes, starring Al Pacino, in 2006. He would go on to appear on the series Southland; when that show ended after five seasons, he quickly got another TV job, playing a young James Gordon on Gotham.

Trivia: Typically cast as an American everyman -- in many ways, the most challenging of roles to play -- the slightly stocky Hollywood character actor Brian Howe began his career during the mid-'90s, as an occasional guest player on episodes of such series as Law & Order (as a variety of different characters) and the short-lived sitcom The Bonnie Hunt Show (as Sammy Sinatra). Howe re-teamed with the venerable Hunt for a small role in his first feature, which the actress directed: the romantic comedy Return to Me, starring Minnie Driver and David Duchovny. Supporting turns in an uneven series of films ensued, ranging from Iain Softley's ill-advised sci-fier K-PAX (2001) to Steven Spielberg's buoyant comedy drama Catch Me If You Can (2002). Howe received fourth billing on series creator Barry Kemp's short-lived sitcom A Minute With Stan Hooper (2003), then landed a trio of supporting roles in A-listers during 2006: one in the Robin Williams farce RV, another in the Will Smith sudser The Pursuit of Happyness, and a third in Tony Scott's sci-fi actioner Déjà Vu. Clint Eastwood cast him in the 2008 drama Gran Torino. He appeared in the 2011 action film I Am Number Four, and in 2012 Howe appeared as Randy Scheunemann in the made-for-HBO docudrama Game Change.