Trivia: Actor/comedian Martin Lawrence started the 21st century off with a bang, starring and executive producing Big Momma's House, the story of an FBI agent posing as a corpulent Southern matriarch, which went on to gross more than 100 million dollars, despite universally negative reviews. The success of this film pushed Lawrence ever closer to joining the much-coveted 20-million-dollar club, cementing his reputation as one of the biggest comic stars for years to come.Lawrence was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on April 16, 1965, and eventually settled with his family in suburban Maryland around his sixth birthday. Soon after, his father left the family; Lawrence claims he got his start as a comedian by cheering up his mother, who was forced to support her six children by cashiering in various department stores. He attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Landover, MD, dabbling in sports and sticking with comedy, even agreeing to stop acting up in an art class in return for performing his stand-up routine in front of the other students.Soon after graduating, the bug-eyed performer earned a chance to perform on Star Search, which led to a role in 1985's What's Happening Now! Lawrence kept honing his frenetic schtick and by 1989, won two big breaks -- a supporting role in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and MCing HBO's Def Comedy Jam. Lawrence continued to rack up scene-stealing roles throughout the early '90s, including parts in House Party, House Party 2, and Boomerang, eventually landing his own series on Fox in 1992, appropriately named Martin. The show became a huge success, its risqué humor making it a ratings stalwart for more than five years and winning two NAACP Image Awards in the process, although some detractors criticized Lawrence for promoting the image of an oversexed, insensitive black man.Two years after Martin's successful launch, Lawrence released You So Crazy!, a raunchy, vulgarity-laced comedy that originally received the NC-17 rating and was later released unrated. Its crudeness, however, didn't matter much to audiences, as You So Crazy! went on to become one of the highest-grossing concert films of its time.Lawrence appeared to have it all, professionally and privately; in 1995 he married former beauty queen Patricia Southall in a lavish ceremony and the pair had a daughter, Jasmine. Around this time, however, Lawrence's success story began to slip away, his off-camera behavior setting up what should someday be a fascinating E! True Hollywood Story.On the set of his directorial debut, A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, Lawrence erupted in a violent outburst and began taking psychotropic drugs. A few months later, he was arrested for another disturbance, where he reportedly brandished a pistol and screamed at tourists and others on Ventura Boulevard. Over the next two years, his behavior became even more erratic as he racked up a series of gun-related arrests. He landed in drug rehab and filed for divorce from Southall after she got a temporary restraining order against him for yet another vicious eruption.But the most bizarre and unsettling charges were yet to come. Tisha Campbell, Lawrence's co-star on Martin and the House Party films, filed suit against the star and the show's producers, HBO Studios, claiming Lawrence sexually harassed her to the point that she feared for her safety. The studio brokered a settlement that allowed Campbell to finish the show's final season, although she and Lawrence would never be on the soundstage together again.Despite all the trauma, Lawrence seemed as popular as ever. He starred in four hugely commercial successes between 1995 and 1999, including Bad Boys with Will Smith, Nothing to Lose with Tim Robbins, Life with Eddie Murphy, and on his own in Blue Streak. These films made Lawrence extremely bankable -- his salary broke the ten-million-dollar mark for Big Momma's House and it seemed as if his previous troubles were behind him.Then in 1999, while jogging to lose an extra few pounds before filming began on Big Momma's House, Lawrence collapsed into a severe coma due to heat exhaustion, delaying the production's start and firing up the old rumors of drug use and unpredictable behavior. But after recuperating, Lawrence said the coma scare put him back on the straight and narrow.His career trajectory certainly supported this -- after the success of Big Momma's House, he reportedly earned 13 million dollars for What's the Worst That Could Happen? with Danny DeVito. He earned upwards of 16.5 million dollars for Black Knight, which featured Lawrence as a down-on-his-luck employee of a theme restaurant who finds himself transported back to medieval times. Lawrence's next film appearance, Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat, once again found the popular but controversial funnyman taking to the stage, though this time in a far more personal bid to humorize the sometimes startling headlines that had left many fans fearing for both his health and sanity. Seemingly purged of his current demns and eager to settle back into a lucrative film career, Lawrence took to the screen opposite Steve Zahn for the high-speed action comedy National Secuity (2003) before gearing up for the sequel to Bad Boys. After a relatively quiet 2004, Lawrence attempted to broaden his appeal by playing a basketball coach in the family-oriented comedy Rebound. In 2006 Lawrence performed in his first animated film, Open Season, opposite Ashton Kutcher, and released the sequel to one of his biggest comedy hits Big Momma's House 2. That same year he filmed the biker road comedy Wild Hogs alongside Tim Allen and John Travolta.

Trivia: Actor, dancer, and choreographer Wendy Raquel Robinson is best known for her role on The Steve Harvey Show, but her career in fact spans far outside television and onto both the big screen and the stage. She appeared in several plays such as The Vagina Monologues, Black Woman's Blues, Agnes of God, A Midsummer's Night Dream, The Colored Museum, and Vanities, all of them receiving rave reviews, and she was also a co-founder of the Amazing Grace Conservatory in South Central Los Angeles, a theatrical training institute for teens. She appeared in movies such as A Thin Line Between Love and Hate and Rebound, and in 2007, she joined the cast of the series The Game.

Trivia: Bearing an unconventional appeal that may have something to do with the slaphappy grin permanently stretched across his face, Breckin Meyer has made a name for himself playing characters that have an almost criminally laid-back attitude as their common denominator. Although he got his big break as endearing stoner Travis Birkenstock in Amy Heckerling's 1995 comedy Clueless, Meyer had been acting since he was 11 years old. Born in Minneapolis, MN, on May 7, 1974, Meyer was raised in Los Angeles, where he had early encounters with fame in the form of elementary school with Drew Barrymore (in her autobiography, Little Girl Lost, she credited Meyer with giving her her first kiss when she was ten and he was 11) and high school with a host of young actors, including future Clueless co-star Alicia Silverstone. Meyer got his start in commercials and television, appearing on various shows, including The Wonder Years. He had his rather inauspicious film debut in 1991, as one of the disposable teens in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, and had bit parts in various forgettable films and an appearance on Fox's Party of Five before being cast in Clueless.Following the huge success of Clueless, Meyer went on to appear in another teen movie, The Craft (1996). After secondary roles in Touch and Prefontaine (both 1997), the actor had a fairly substantial part in 54, in which he got to play Salma Hayek's husband and wear a very small pair of shorts. The film, which starred Meyer's real-life friend Ryan Phillippe, flopped with remarkable gusto, and Meyer's other film that year, the independent Dancer, Texas Pop. 81, was released without fanfare. However, the actor had success the following year as part of an ensemble cast that read like a Who's Who of Hollywood's Young and Employed in Doug Liman's Go. Playing a white boy who believes he's black at heart, Meyer won laughs for his part in the widely acclaimed film, and his appearance in the company of young notables such as Katie Holmes, Sarah Polley, and Scott Wolf went some way toward further establishing the actor's reputation as a noteworthy young talent.A fine supporting player to this point in his fledgling career, Breckin would finally come into his own as the hapless college student racing cross country to intercept a decidedly questionable videotape in director Todd Phillips's breakout comedy Road Trip. Though a subsequent stab at the small screen as the lead in the sports comedy series Inside Schwartz ultimately did little to advance Meyer's career, later roles in the theatrical comedies Rat Race and Kate and Leopold served well to keep the amiable comic talent in the public eye. After providing the voice for the eponymous wooden puppet in Roberto Benigni's 2002 misfire Pinocchio, Breckin helped to bring everyone's favorite comic-strip cat to the big screen with his role as the lasagne-loving feline's hapless master Jon Arbuckle in the 2004 family comedy Garfield. Vocal work in such animated efforts as King of the Hill and Robot Chicken found the actor earning his keep even when not stepping in front of the cameras, and in 2006 Meyer would return to the silver screen to the delight of children everywhere in the kid-friendly sequel Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties. In the years to come, Meyer would also find success as a voice actor on shows like Titan Maximum, King of the Hill, Robot Chicken, and Franklin & Bash.

Trivia: The man who became the first Latino cast member of the enduring late-night comedy staple Saturday Night Live, Horatio Sanz was also a founding member of The Upright Citizen's Brigade.A native of Chile, Sanz joined the SNL cast in September of 1998, becoming a featured player about a year later. With a range of memorable impressions from Larry Flint to Meatloaf, Sanz was always a reliable player to keep audiences laughing. Bidding for big screen success with such efforts as Road Trip (2000) and Tomcats (2001), the SNL funnyman geared up to take to the movies again in 2001 with Boat Trip. He continued his status as a Saturday Night Live cast member even as he attempted to stake out territory on the big screen. He took a small part in the Eugene Levy/Samuel L. Jackson comedy The Man, and he had a large part opposite Martin Lawrence in the family basketball comedy Rebound. He had a large part in Todd Phillips' School for Scoundrels in 2006, the same year he appeared in Curtis Hanson's Lucky You.

Trivia: Squared-jawed beefcake Patrick Warburton leapt into pop culture consciousness as David Puddy, Elaine's on-again, off-again boyfriend on the hit sitcom Seinfeld in 1995, and has since then steadily found his deadpan talents in ever-greater demand. With his squinty eyes and hard-boiled detective's voice, Warburton has become a humorous personality who can generate giggles with almost no effort, whether onscreen or in voice-overs.Warburton was born on November 14, 1964, in Paterson, NJ, and raised in Southern California, a son of little-known television actress Barbara Lord. The future Bugle Boy model studied marine biology at Orange Coast College, where he met his wife, Cathi, before dropping out to pursue modeling and acting at age 19. In his first screen appearance, the 17th century slave film Dragonard (1987), Warburton was subject to what is thought to be the longest onscreen flogging on film, a 100-lash scene that consumes nearly four minutes of screen time. He also appeared in the sequel, Master of Dragonard Hill (1989), before turning his attention to television.Warburton had guest spots on such shows as Murphy Brown, Designing Women, and Quantum Leap before scoring a recurring role on the short-lived Dave Barry sitcom Dave's World in 1993. But it was not until he appeared in the 1995 episode of Seinfeld entitled "The Fusilli Jerry" that Warburton really started to attract attention. As Puddy, Jerry's lunkhead mechanic who spits out dialogue in macho spurts, notably the catchphrase affirmation "Yeah that's right," Warburton quickly became a popular semi-regular, involved in a running joke about his frequent breakups and reconciliations with Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). He stayed with the show until it finished in 1998, and provided the voice for Superman in a series of commercials starring Seinfeld.Warburton had another recurring role as unscrupulous businessman Johnny Johnson on News Radio in 1999, then contributed his memorable voice to characters on the animated shows Family Guy, Hercules, and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. By this time the big screen was really beckoning, as Warburton flexed his comic talents as a bodyguard in Scream 3 (2000), then toned them down as an American astronomer in Australia in The Dish (2000). His voice was again called upon, this time by Disney, for the role of a sorceress' thug assistant in The Emperor's New Groove (2000). Going zanier than on Seinfeld, Warburton signed on as the star of the Fox sitcom The Tick, about a muscle-bound but dimwitted superhero in a blue costume, which premiered in the fall of 2001. High-profile projects in 2002 would include a role in the delayed ensemble farce Big Trouble and as Agent T alongside Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith in Men in Black 2.Warburton became an in demand voice actor working on a variety of projects including TV series like The Venture Brothers and Family Guy, as well as movies such as Home on the Range, Chicken Little, The Wild, and Bee Movie. In 2007 he started on a successful run with the sitcom Rules of Engagement, and in 2012 he appeared in Seth McFarland's directorial debut, Ted.

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: Has the words "Mister Baby" tattooed on her back, which is a reference to a character in the 1989 film Mystery Train. Had her first recurring TV role on the ABC series State of Grace, in which she played a young Jewish girl who has an unlikely friendship with a Catholic girl in 1965 North Carolina. Made her movie debut in the George Clooney film Three Kings, in which her father also had a small role. Had her first kiss, with costar Michael Cera, in a scene of the Fox show Arrested Development. Has been vocal about her disappointment with how Fox handled Arrested Development, claiming that there was little acknowledgment for the show's Emmy wins and too many time-slot changes. Was greeted by a rollerblading Drew Barrymore when she went to the audition for Whip It, although she admitted that she "wasn't very aware that [roller derby] was still going on."

Trivia: An outrageous comedian who clearly pulls from such influences as Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor -- but somehow ups the irreverence quotient many times over -- standup comic-turned-actor Katt Williams built a career vulgarly riffing on such subjects as Michael Jackson, middle-American evangelism, the incarceration of Martha Stewart, and the ironies of race in America (a favorite topic that found him making fervent use of incendiary epithets), to name only a few touchstones -- all of which gave him a widespread and loyal following, particularly among young African-American males. Born in Cincinnati, OH, but raised in nearby Dayton, Williams grew up as the child of politically and socially active parents and received outstanding grades and a slew of academic honors in school. In his late teens, he moved to San Francisco and temporarily joined the Nation of Islam, meanwhile honing a standup act at local nightclubs. Favorite venues that hosted Williams in the late '90s included the Hollywood Park Casino, The Icehouse and The Improv; he also became a staple on BET's standup programs. In 2002, Williams accepted one of his first screen assignments with a small role (as Money Mike) in Marcus Raboy's Friday After Next. Five years later, Williams finally had the opportunity to team up onscreen with longtime idol Eddie Murphy, who cast him as Lord Have Mercy in the farce Norbit (2007). That same year, Williams appeared in a minor capacity in the gag-laden Epic Movie and displayed a more sober side in the family-oriented Christmas drama The Perfect Holiday. Meanwhile, the comic continually headlined standup performance films via such cable outlets as Comedy Central and HBO.

Trivia: Grew up in Meriden, Connecticut, United States.Played baseball, basketball and football in high school.Rejected an offer to play baseball with the Kansas City Athletics.Was co-captain of the football team during his senior year at University of Connecticut.Was a captain in the U.S. Army JAG Corps.

Trivia: A teenage heartthrob extraordinaire on movie screens during the mid- to late 2000s, fair-haired Cody Linley actually undertook one of his first forays into cinema as a preadolescent. He played the aptly named Spit McGee, a bully who harasses the protagonist, in Jay W. Russell's nostalgic coming-of-age drama My Dog Skip (2000). A lead followed in John Schultz's offbeat comedy When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (2003), as did prominent billing in Hoot (2006), a family-oriented adventure about a group of teens who attempt to save some rare owls. Linley achieved broadest recognition, however, for his portrayal of Jake Ryan, opposite Miley Cyrus, in the second season of the blockbuster sitcom Hannah Montana. He competed in the 7th season of Dancing With the Stars in 2008 and followed that up with the horror film Forget Me Not and the drama The Playroom.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from Weird Science (1985).

Trivia: Though she's occassionally appeared in bit film parts, former-model Kimora Lee Simmons is best known for her eight-year marriage to music mogul Russell Simmons. Despite the couple's 2006 separation and 2008 divorce, they remained partners in their fashion venture, Baby Phat. In 2007, Simmons began starring in her own reality show, Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane, on the Style Network, which ran until 2011. In 2013, her second reality show, Kimora: House of Fab, premiered.

Trivia: Published a novel titled Quick Shots of False Hope (1995). Has been featured in comedy specials on networks including Comedy Central and HBO. Said in a Boston Herald interview that she dislikes the term "ladies' night" at comedy clubs because it implies that women are "working with a handicap." Has created/appeared in several popular videos for Web-comedy site Atom, including 2011's "American Heroine."

Trivia: Born on May 20, 1958, in Austin, TX, Matt McCoy would ultimately perform in over 40 different film and television roles from 1985 and throughout the 2000s. Though McCoy took on a few small roles with relative success in Fraternity Vacation (1985) and Weekend Warriors (1986), his most recognizable performance wouldn't come until 1988, when he starred as an intrepid yet bumbling police officer in Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988), a role which he would reprise in Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989). After the demise of the Police Academy franchise, McCoy went on to star in several television productions, including the acclaimed Miracle Landing (1990), an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a feature-length television "reunion" of the characters from the Archie comic book series. In the following years, the actor put in solid performances in several moderately well-received movies, perhaps the most notable of which being his role as the unwitting husband in Curtis Hanson's psychological thriller The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. In 1993, McCoy starred alongside Pamela Anderson in her film debut, the erotic drama Snapdragon. Though McCoy went on to play several lead roles, the films in which he appeared were generally too unremarkable to merit any significant critical or mainstream recognition. This would change somewhat after a tiny role in another one of Curtis Hanson's films -- the Oscar-winning police detective film L.A. Confidential (1997). While his L.A. Confidential performance did not help him land true movie-star status, it certainly helped his small-screen endeavors. In 1999, McCoy starred in an episode of the long-running cop drama NYPD Blue, and later that year took on the leading role in Imminent Danger, a made-for-television feature co-starring Connie Sellecca. Shortly afterward, McCoy donated his talents for a supporting role in Citizen Baines, a CBS political drama featuring James Cromwell. In 2003, McCoy could be seen in the ill-conceived crime comedy National Security along with Martin Lawrence.