Trivia: Best known to television audiences as Ling Woo, the raging force of political incorrectness on Ally McBeal, Lucy Alexis Liu has managed to cross over to the big screen in such features as Payback and Play It to the Bone. Born to Chinese parents in Jackson Heights, NY, on December 2, 1968, Liu grew up speaking both English and Mandarin. After graduating from Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School, she earned a degree in Asian languages and cultures from the University of Michigan, where she also studied acting, dance, and voice. Liu's first professional job was playing a waitress on Beverly Hills 90210, something that led to more substantial work on various TV shows, including a regular part on the TV series Pearl. Liu's biggest breakthrough came in 1998, when she was cast as Ling Woo on Ally McBeal. She had originally auditioned for the role of Nelle Porter, which ultimately went to Australian actress Portia DeRossi. David E. Kelley, the show's producer, was so impressed with Liu's audition, however, that he created the role of Ling Woo specifically for her. The character was initially supposed to be included on only a few episodes but proved so popular with the show's audience that Liu was made into a regular cast member.Unsurprisingly, the actress' increased exposure led to greater opportunities on the screen and after playing supporting roles in such films as Payback and Molly (both 1999), she moved on to more substantial work in Play It to the Bone and the Jackie Chan martial-arts period comedy Shanghai Noon, which cast her as a princess who has been kidnapped from her emperor father. In 2000, she also was cast in perhaps her most high-profile role to date, when she was chosen alongside Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz as one of the titular crime fighters in Charlie's Angels: The Movie.With the exception of a small role as an inmate in the Oscar-winning film Chicago, 2002 brought little recognition for Liu -- Cypher, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, and Party Monster with former Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin went virtually unseen by the general public. 2003's Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle placed Liu firmly back inside the spotlight, though she was somewhat overshadowed by the toothy blonde glint that is Cameron Diaz. Luckily for Liu, she was given the chance to shine quite independently when Quentin Tarantino cast her as the deadly O-Ren Ishii, AKA Cottonmouth, in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003). Unfortunately roles in subsequent action films like Domino and Lucky Number Slevin failed to capitolize on that momentary career momentum, though a voice role as Viper in Kung Fu Panda (as well as the sequel and subsequent television series) found her continuing to kick butt in virtual form. Meanwhile, on the small screen, Liu donned a badge for a recurring role on the TNT cop series Southland.

Trivia: A man with a gift for wringing laughter from commonplace situations, Cedric the Entertainer has parlayed a career as one of the top standup comics in America into a steadily growing resumé as an actor in film and television. Born Cedric Kyles in 1964, Cedric the Entertainer adopted his stage name early on in his career; having also worked as a singer and dancer, Cedric wanted audiences to know he was more than just another comedian, though after being named "most humorous" in his high school graduating class, he seemed destined early on to be best known for his wit. Cedric's career as a standup comic got its first major boost when he won the "Johnny Walker National Comedy Contest" in Chicago. This led to regular gigs at nightclubs in his hometown of St. Louis, and a victory in another Chicago comedy competition. With plenty of experience in the Midwest under his belt, Cedric began touring comedy clubs around the United States, and in 1993, he scored his first regular spot on television, as the host of the BET series Comicview. While touring the Southwest, Cedric dropped by a club in Dallas, TX, where the headlining act was not going over with the audience. Cedric persuaded the management to let him do a set, and his five-minute routine brought down the house. Cedric soon discovered fellow comic Steve Harvey was in the audience. The two rising stars struck up a friendship, and when Harvey scored his own sitcom, The Steve Harvey Show, in 1996, he brought Cedric along to play his friend, Cedric Jackie Robinson. Cedric was a hit on the show, and his work on the series earned him the NAACP Image Award as Best Supporting Actor on a Comedy Series three years in a row. In 1997, Cedric and Harvey joined forces with funnymen Bernie Mac and D.L. Hughley for a concert tour. Billed as The Kings of Comedy, the tour was a major success, selling out large venues across the country and grossing 37 million dollars over a two-year run. After his success on The Steve Harvey Show and with the Kings of Comedy tour, it was inevitable that Hollywood would come calling, and Cedric scored his first screen role in 1998 in the comedy Ride. The Original Kings of Comedy, a concert film shot by Spike Lee during a tour stop in North Carolina, hit theaters in 2000, and Cedric was also seen that year in the Martin Lawrence vehicle Big Momma's House. In 2001, Cedric scored a supporting role in the comedy-drama Kingdom Come, and did voice work for Dr. Dolittle 2 as well as the animated television series The Proud Family.As one of the stars of 2002's Barbershop, Cedric showed Hollywood that he could deliver a major box-office hit, and larger film roles soon followed. After a scene-stealing turn in the Coen Brothers' 2003 Intolerable Cruelty, Cedric geared up for what looked to be his biggest year to date. 2004 saw the comedian with starring roles in the sequel to Barbershop, Johnson Family Vacation, and the big-screen adaptation of the classic sitcom The Honeymooners, as well as prominent supporting parts in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, with Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep, and Be Cool, the long-awaited sequel to Get Shorty.He lent his distinctive voice to a number of animated projects including the Madagascar films and the live-action Charlotte's Web. He also acted in projects as diverse as Talk to Me, Code Name: The Cleaner, Cadillac Records, and Tom Hanks' sophomore directorial effort Larry Crowne.When not making people laugh in person or onscreen, Cedric has an interest in charitable work, and in St. Louis he's established the Cedric the Entertainer Charitable Foundation, which helps to fund youth scholarships and family outreach programs in his hometown.

Trivia: As Knots Landing's scheming, manipulative vixen Paige Matheson, actress Nicollette Sheridan proved a devilish highlight of 1980s television. Though she had essayed a few small supporting roles in film and television before landing that fateful role, it was Sheridan's icy perfection on Knots Landing that defined her early career. Just as her career seemed to be on the wane with appearances in such B-grade fare as 1999's Raw Nerve and director Jim Wynorski's Lost Treasure, Sheridan surprised television viewers by rising from the ashes to reclaim her former glory by landing the role of fast and loose divorcée Edie Britt on the hit ABC series Desperate Housewives in 2004. Her reborn celebrity status was cemented when the aging actress courted controversy by baring it all (or at least her back) in a steamy Monday Night Football promo. The granddaughter of revered English actress Dinah Sheridan, Nicollette was born November 21, 1963, in England and raised in London before later relocating to Los Angeles. In 1984, she made her small-screen debut in the short-lived television series Paper Dolls. The next year, Sheridan gained feature credibility as the object of John Cusack's character's affection in the lightweight romantic comedy The Sure Thing before returning to the tube for a pair of made-for-television features. In 1986, she began an enduring seven-year run on the evening drama Knots Landing, her performance providing the series with some of its most memorable moments. Sheridan's post-Knots Landing career was highlighted by roles in Spy Hard, Beverly Hills Ninja, and a series of made-for-television movies including A Time to Heal and The People Next Door. If it appeared at the dawn of the new millennium that Sheridan would be forever relegated to obscure independent films and little-seen small-screen features, the tireless actress received a healthy career boost when chosen to portray saucy Edie Britt in the surprise ABC hit Desperate Housewives. If this wasn't enough to put Sheridan back in the spotlight, her controversial appearance on a teaser spot for Monday Night Football raised eyebrows when the actress appeared to seduce Philadelphia receiver Terrell Owens by entering the locker room and dropping her bath towel. Just as Janet Jackson had shocked viewers with the Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" commonly known as "Nipplegate," Sheridan's revealing moment was instantly dubbed "Towelgate" by a salivating press eager to capitalize on the latest controversy. Once her run on Housewives ended, Sheridan mostly laid low, occasionally appearing in a TV movie, like Honeymoon for One (2011) and The Christmas Spirit (2013).

Trivia: Hawaiian-born actor Mark Dacascos has been a student of kung-fu and won hop kuen (his parents are both martial arts masters) for most of his life, and at age nine he won an international tournament. His family moved frequently while he was young, and as a result, he became fluent in Mandarin Chinese and German. Due to his expertise in martial arts, it should come as no surprise that martial arts movies make up the so much of his film career. Dacascos would appear in a number of memorable projects over the course of his career, most memorably playing new world warrior Mani in the French film Brotherhood of the Wolf, and starring on TV shows like The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, Hawaii Five-0, and playing the legendary Chairman on Iron Chef America.

Trivia: One of Canada's fastest-rising actors, Callum Rennie (also known as Callum Keith Rennie) came into the business at an age when most actors are considered to be heading steadily over the hill. Rennie had his breakthrough when he was 34, starring alongside Sandra Oh in Mina Shum's acclaimed Double Happiness (1994). Nominated for a Genie (Canada's equivalent of the Oscar) for his portrayal of Mark, the endearingly geeky guy who falls in love with Oh's character, Rennie was effectively introduced to audiences across Canada, many of whom wondered where he had been for so long.Born in Sunderland, Tyne-and-Wear, England, on September 14, 1960, Rennie moved to Edmonton, Alberta, with his family when he was barely out of diapers. Raised as the second of three sons in a middle-class family, he first thought about becoming an actor at the age of 18 and began appearing in local theatre productions. Unfortunately, any career aspirations he had took a back seat to an addiction to alcohol, one that would control his life until he was 33. Drinking heavily, Rennie continued his involvement with the theatre, appearing in a number of stage productions, but his work -- which often met with substantial acclaim -- was largely overshadowed by his addiction. Things finally began to change for Rennie in 1993, when he got into a bar fight that resulted in glass in his left eye and a vow to quit drinking. His ensuing sobriety was accompanied by a change in his career, marked by an increasing number of supporting roles on various TV programs, including a recurring spot on the CBC's My Life as a Dog, for which he won a Genie. Rennie's 1994 screen breakthrough in Double Happiness opened the door for more screen work, including Bruce McDonald's wickedly good but woefully little-seen Hard Core Logo (1997), a pseudo rock documentary that cast Rennie as an aging punk rocker. He also landed a starring role on Due South, an popular Canadian TV series that cast him as a hard-bitten Chicago cop.In 1998, Rennie won one of the most important roles of his career to date in Don McKellar's Last Night. An acclaimed film about the end of the world, it cast the actor as a man intent on trying every possible sexual variation imaginable in the time he has left. Rennie won a Genie for his performance, which imbued the character with more charm than smarm and captured both his efficacious self-assurance and surprising awkwardness. The film also allowed the actor to collaborate again with Sandra Oh, as well as director David Cronenberg; the following year, Cronenberg cast him in a substantial role in eXistenZ.As the 21st century began, Rennie could be seen in The Last Stop as well as Christopher Nolan's breakthrough hit Memento. He jumped back and forth between small and big-screen projects such as Bliss, Dark Angel, The Butterfly Effect, Blade: Trinity, The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, and 24, finding one of his biggest successes when he was cast in the AMC mystery series The Killing as Rick Felder.

Trivia: A Renaissance performer who is perfectly at home (and who has proven herself adept) in a broad array of genres and formats, Niecy Nash dreamed of an acting career from early girlhood. She trained as a theater major at California State University, Dominguez Hills, then obtained her first paid acting assignment by virtue of an L.A.-area casting director who enlisted her in Herbert Ross' 1995 comedy drama Boys on the Side. That assignment resulted in a memorable scene opposite Whoopi Goldberg, and Nash followed it up four years later with a small role in Robert Altman's comedy Cookie's Fortune (1999). The actress made her most enduring impact on television, however, with guest spots on NYPD Blue and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, vocal work as Tollie Mae on the offbeat animated sitcom Kid Notorious, and -- perhaps most endearingly -- a regular assignment as Deputy Raineesha Williams on the raunchy, rollicking police-themed sitcom Reno 911! In 2007, Nash starred as the character of Jacuzzi opposite Cedric the Entertainer and Lucy Liu in the comic thriller Code Name: The Cleaner. Nash also hosted the Style Network's home-makeover series Clean House, and emceed both Emmy and Oscar pre-shows.

Trivia: Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, comedian-turned-actor DeRay Davis developed and honed a hip, sardonic, streetwise mentality at an early age and parlayed it smoothly and efficiently into the comedy-club circuit. Davis achieved his career breakthrough at the Laffapalooza Festival in Atlanta, GA, then scored a triple whammy by winning the Comedy Central Laugh Riots Competition and landing covetable spots in the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival and the Cedric the Entertainer Festival. Throughout, the comic wove vulgar and droll, yet also telling and deeply personal, routines around the subjects of race, poverty, and his challenging experiences growing up in the Windy City projects with a dysfunctional African-American family. The transition from behind-the-mike spots to movie roles represented a relatively short jump, for most of Davis' early film assignments emphasized the same subject matter as his routines; for example, he played the "Hustle Guy" in Barbershop (2002) and its sequel, Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004), rapper Mario "Fa Real" Greene in the Martin Short comedy Jiminy Glick in La La Wood (2004), and a Jamaican stoner in Johnson Family Vacation (2004). Davis expanded his genre focus with roles in Rupert Wainwright's supernatural horror outing The Fog (2005), and Todd Phillips' comedy remake School for Scoundrels (2006). Subsequent feature assignments include License to Wed (2007), Semi-Pro (2008, as basketball player Bee Bee Ellis), and Nowhereland (2009). Meanwhile, Davis also appeared on television series including Entourage and Reno 911!, and televised comedy revues such as Comedy Central's Premium Blend.

Trivia: Actor Will Patton successfully divides his time between mainstream and independent features, television films, and a stage career on and off-Broadway. Born and raised in North Carolina, the son of a Lutheran minister, Patton learned his craft at the North Carolina School of the Arts and at New York's Actor's Studio where he studied under Lee Strasberg. In addition, Patton studied at the Open Theater under Joseph Chaikin before making it to the New York stage. Patton has won two Obie Awards for Tourists and Refugees No. 2 and for Sam Shepard's Fool for Love. Patton also has had experience working at London's Royal Court Theatre. Upon his return to New York, Patton joined the experimental Winter Project troupe. During the 1970s, Patton performed in two soap operas, Search for Tomorrow and Ryan's Hope. Patton first appeared on film in the short underground film Minus Zero(1979). During the early '80s, Patton appeared in such New York-based independent films as Michael Oblowitz's King Blank and Variety (both 1983). After playing a small but important villainous role in Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Patton was cast in his first big-budget film, Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985), where he played a brutish boyfriend with a thing for leather and chains. His best portrayal of a villain can be found in the Gene Hackman-starring thriller No Way Out (1987). In the '90s he could be seen in The Rapture, In the Soup, Romeo Is Bleeding, Copycat, the infamous Kevin Costner project The Postman, and the Michael Bay blockbuster Armageddon. At the beginning of the 21st century Patton continued to remain busy with major roles in Remember the Titans, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Mothman Prophecies, and The Punisher, as well as smaller roles in diverse films like Into the West, Wendy and Lucy, Meek's Cutoff, and Brooklyn's Finest.

Trivia: Blue-eyed, raven-haired Canadian actress Gina Holden first appeared onscreen in the early 2000s with minor supporting roles, typically in fantasy and horror vehicles. These included Fantastic Four (2005) and Final Destination 3 (2006). Holden carried this genre identification over to her first major television role, when, in 2007, she signed to play Coreen Fennel on the vampire-themed fantasy series Blood Ties, opposite fellow Canadian Christina Cox. Around the same time, she also appeared in a regular role as Dale Arden in the sci-fi series Flash Gorden.