Trivia: A popular British character actor, Tom Wilkinson specializes in playing men suffering from some sort of emotional repression and/or pretensions of societal grandeur. Active in film and television since the mid-'70s, Wilkinson became familiar to an international audience in 1997 with his role as of one of six unemployed workers who strip for cash in Peter Cattaneo's enormously successful comedy The Full Monty. That same year, he was featured in Gillian Armstrong's Oscar and Lucinda, and as the rabidly unpleasant father of Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's young lover in Wilde. Wilkinson was also shown to memorable effect as a theater financier with acting aspirations in Shakespeare in Love (1998); also in 1998, he acted in one of his few leading roles in The Governess, portraying a 19th century photographer with an eye for the film's title character (Minnie Driver). Though he would appear in such popular mainstream films as Rush Hour (1998) and The Patriot (2000) over the next few years, it was his role in director Todd Field's emotionally intense In the Bedroom that earned Wilkinson (as well as co-star Marisa Tomei) an Oscar nod. After that success, his career began to really take off, and in just the next few years, he would appear in over a dozen films in roles of varying size. In 2003, he starred in HBO movie Normal as a married, middle-aged man who decides to start living his life as a woman and eventually have a sex-change operation. Acting alongside Jessica Lange, Wilkinson earned both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his brave and moving performance. In addition, he would also play a menacing, licentious patron of the arts in Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003) and an experimental doctor erasing his patient's memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), written by Charlie Kaufman and starring Jim Carrey.Now an established star thanks to his impressive body of work, Wilkinson was called upon to appear in a number of high profile Hollywood hits, and could always be counted on to deliver in spades. Still, Wilkinson had the talent and foresight to always offset each blockbuster with at least one low-key, character-driven drama, and for every scenery-chewing Batman Begins villain, a serious-minded Separate Lies lawyer or Ripley Under Ground Scotland Yard detective would be quick to follow. After doing battle with Beelzebub in 2005's frightening, fact-based horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Wilkinson would once again shift gears with impressive grace to portray the patriarch of a Texas family whose attempts to maintain order over his wildly dysfunctional family lead to a wild night on the town that ultimately helps him to restore his perspective in Night of the White Pants. Later that same year Wilkinson would pull back a bit for a supporting role in The Last Kiss - a romantic comedy drama starring Scrubs' Zach Braff and directed by Tony Goldwyn. 2007 brough WIlkinson yet another role that earned him uniformly strong reviews. His mentally unhinged lawyer in Michael Clayton garnered him a slew of year end accolades including Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor. That same year he became part of the Woddy Allen family with a starring role in Cassandra's Dream. In 2008 he appeared as Ben Franklin in the award-winning HBO miniseries John Adams, as well as Valkyrie and RocknRolla. He reteamed with Michael Clayton mastermind Tony Gilroy for 2009's Duplicity, playing the CEO of a multinational corporation, and appeared in The Ghost Writer for director Roman Polanski the next year. In 2012 he was part for the all-star British ensemble put together for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Trivia: Wide-eyed young actor Nick Stahl made his feature debut opposite Mel Gibson and courted the late-'90s teen crowd with a role in the thriller Disturbing Behavior (1998), but a number of his movies have not been the average box-office fluff.Raised in Dallas, Stahl began acting at the age of four in commercials and local theater. After his first TV movie, Stranger at My Door (1991), Stahl soon moved to feature films with a starring role as the boy tutored by Mel Gibson's deformed recluse in the Gibson-directed drama The Man Without a Face (1993). Continuing to work with Hollywood heavyweights, Stahl played one of Susan Sarandon's sons in Safe Passage (1994) and acted with Walter Matthau in the TV film Incident in a Small Town (1994). After the young teen starred in the Disney film Tall Tale (1994), Stahl was back to TV movies with family drama Blue River (1995). Alternating between mainstream fare and more challenging work, Stahl began to aim for a slightly older audience with a role in the independent rural crime drama and Sundance Film Festival entrant Eye of God (1997). Though Stahl joined the late-'90s teen movie brigade co-starring alongside Katie Holmes in the thriller Disturbing Behavior (1998), he also appeared that same year as a Charlie Company soldier who dies too young in Terrence Malick's hypnotic anti-war anti-epic The Thin Red Line (1998). Stahl began 2001 with roles in two Sundance Film Festival critical favorites, Todd Field's family drama In the Bedroom (2001) and iconoclast Christopher Munch's The Sleepy Time Gal (2001). On his way to becoming an indie fixture, Stahl then took on the unappealing role of the doomed titular character in controversial photographer-turned-director Larry Clark's exploration of true-life violent teen anomie, Bully (2001). Stahl, however, finished 2001 on the critical high note with which it began when In the Bedroom, featuring Stahl as Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson's son, earned raves and prizes as one of the best films of the year.Though to this point Stahl's film roles had consisted of mainly low-budget and independent fare, all of this would change with the release of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003. Rumored to have taken over the role of John Conner following original star Edward Furlong's much publicized bout with drug abuse, Stahl eagerly stepped up to the role. The summer of 2003 also found Stahl gearing up for the premier of his the new HBO series Carnivàle.

Trivia: After a couple of years of independent films and TV, Selma Blair began to make her name in late-'90s teen-targeted work. The Michigan-born and educated Blair originally moved to New York to pursue a career as a photographer, but wound up taking acting classes at the Stella Adler Conservatory instead. After being discovered by an agent, Blair played substantial roles in indie films Strong Island Boys (1997), Girl (1998), and Brown's Requiem (1998), and the TV movie No Laughing Matter (1997). She truly arrived, as the proverbial young actress to watch, in 1999 as level-headed New York teen Zoe in the WB sitcom Zoe, Duncan, Jack, and Jane (retitled Zoe in 2000), and more prominently, as the gullible and bumbling Cecile Caldwell in the popular Les Liaisons Dangereuses update Cruel Intentions (1999). Although Cecile played a secondary role in the film's nefarious sexual machinations among rich Manhattan prep schoolers, Blair's attention-getting onscreen kiss with co-star Sarah Michelle Gellar earned the teen seal of approval with an MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss in June 2000. Blair continued her youth movie work as a school drop-out-turned-porn star in the college romantic comedy Down to You (2000). After the cancellation of Zoe, Blair turned her attention again to movies. Though she played the lead in Kill Me Later (2001), Blair had a higher profile supporting role in the hit summer comedy Legally Blonde (2001). As the WASP Harvard law student Vivian Kensington, Blair was the uptight, brunette opposite of Cruel Intentions co-star Reese Witherspoon's pink and blonde Los Angeles princess Elle Woods, initially sneering at her vulgar rival before being won over by Elle's legal smarts and their shared love interest's idiocy. Taking a break from Hollywood froth, Blair also appeared as a co-ed who has a fateful intimate encounter with her writing professor in indie film provocateur Todd Solondz's customarily acidic third feature Storytelling (2001). A role as Elle Woods' (Reese Witherspoon) adversary turned friend in the hit 2001 comedy Legally Blonde found Blair offering an effective ying to star Witherspoon's yang, and subsequent roles in The Sweetest Thing (2002) and A Guy Thing (2003) found her offering a pair of winning supporting performances. Her status as an of-the-moment ingenue was further sealed by her participation, along with such other actresses as Julia Stiles and Mena Suvari, in the newfangled, tasteful 2002 version of the Pirelli Tires Calendar, and in 2004 Blair opted to expand her resume into special-effects laden blockbuster territory with the larger-than-life comic-to-screen adaptation Hellboy. After returning to fight the forces of darkness in the 2008 sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Blair began gravitating toward television with roles ni Kath & Kim, Portlandia, and Charlie Sheen's post-Two and a Half Men sitcom Anger Management.

Trivia: Actress and comedienne Geri Jewell marked a first: the first performer with a life-altering physical disability to hold a regular part on a primetime network sitcom. Despite a permanent condition of cerebral palsy that impacted her speech and physical coordination, Jewell clung steadfastly to a dream of establishing herself as a stand-up comic, a dream realized with a successful series of engagements at L.A.'s hallowed Comedy Store in 1978, then the Media Access Awards in 1980. Witnessing great talent and tenacity, producer Fern Field sensed Jewell's potential and introduced her to television mogul Norman Lear, whose work creating such programs as All in the Family, Good Times, Maude, and The Jeffersons had put him at the top of his game during the 1970s. Deeply impressed by Jewell, Lear tapped her to play Geri Warner, the 23-year-old cousin of Blair Warner (Lisa Whelchel), on the all-girls prep school sitcom The Facts of Life. Though not a regular, Jewell appeared intermittently on the program from 1981 to 1984, and via her disability helped the series explore issues theretofore unaddressed in primetime programming. Following the end of Jewell's run on Facts in 1984, she turned up on an episode of 21 Jump Street and in the Gail Singer all-female stand-up documentary Wisecracks (1991), but found her most substantial audience as cleaning woman Jewel on HBO's 19th century western drama Deadwood (2004-2006). Meanwhile, Jewell continued to tour as a comedienne, a motivational speaker, and a disability trainer for such organizations as the U.S. Army and the CIA. She also opened for musical acts including Robert Goulet and Judy Collins and landed a major role as Aunt Lolly in the 2006 comedy The Night of the White Pants, co-starring Tom Wilkinson and Nick Stahl.

Trivia: Dyed his hair blue for the role of Judas in a high school production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Made his film debut in 2001 cult favorite Donnie Darko. The film's lead, Jake Gyllenhaal, was a high-school classmate of Kranz's. Landed his first regular TV role with CBS sitcom Welcome to the Captain. Frequently works with Joss Whedon, acting in Whedon's Dollhouse, The Cabin in the Woods and Much Ado About Nothing. Played Bernard in Mike Nichols' 2012 Broadway production of Death of a Salesman.

Trivia: One of the actresses most indelibly associated with the descriptor "fiery redhead," Frances Fisher has enjoyed a long career as a respected stage, screen, and television performer. In addition to her professional work, she also earned recognition for her long relationship with Clint Eastwood, by whom she had a daughter.Born in Milford on Sea, England, Fisher spent much of her childhood traveling all over the world, thanks to her father's job as an international oil refinery construction supervisor. After time spent in England, Colombia, France, Canada, Brazil, Turkey, and Italy, the family settled in Orange, Texas, where Fisher completed her schooling. Deciding to follow her interest in theatre, she eventually moved to New York, where she subsequently enjoyed a 14-year stage career in regional and off-Broadway productions. During this time, she also became involved with the Actors Studio, where she studied with the legendary Lee Strasberg. Fisher segued into screen work via television, getting her start with regular roles on a number of soap operas. She began her film career with some help from Henry Jaglom, for whom she made her 1980 screen debut in Sitting Ducks, and went on to star in his Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983) and Babyfever (1994). Fisher spent the 1980s and 1990s appearing in a wide variety of film and TV productions, including the made-for-TV Lucy and Desi: Before the Laughter (1991), which cast her as Lucille Ball; Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992); the Texas Dust Bowl drama The Stars Fell on Henrietta (1995); James Cameron's Titanic (1997), in which she starred as Kate Winslet's mother; and The Big Tease (1999), a Scottish hairdressing mockumentary that featured her as a publicist in need of a new 'do.

Trivia: Actress Janine Turner was trained at New York's Professional Children's School. (She can still do a mean tap-dance if called upon.) Though she endured the usual audition rounds while seeking out acting and modelling work, Turner's break came by way of fortuitous happenstance--at 17, she was spotted while standing in a supermarket checkout line by TV producer Leonard Katzman, who asked her to read for a small part on "Dallas." Two years later she was cast as kleptomaniac espionage agent Laura Templeton on TV's "General Hospital," a role that required her to dye her coffee-brown hair blonde. Turners's film debut was in Young Doctors in Love (1982), a spoof of daytime dramas that costarred several other soap regulars. In 1990, Turner was cast as fiesty Alaskan mail pilot Maggie O'Connell on the quirky prime-time series "Northern Exposure," a role that made her a major star. She continued to essay the part until the series' demise in 1995. Turner's more recent assignments have included a standard damsel-in-distress turn in the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Cliffhanger (1993), and a series of automobile advertisements, each as graceful and classy as Turner herself. In the years to come, Smith would remain active on screen, starring on the series Strong Medicine, and appearing on Friday Night Lights.

Trivia: Actress Laura Jordan began her screen career by essaying supporting roles, typically cast as an attractive girlfriend or love interest in such films as Final Draft (2003) and Berkeley (2005). Jordan graduated to lead status with the psychological thriller Thr3e (aka Three, 2007), as an FBI agent-cum-profiler assigned to protect her longtime friend against the doings of a crazed serial killer.