Trivia: An alumnus of State University of New York and the University of Massachusetts, American actor Bill Pullman excelled in both wacky comedy and intense drama during his stage years, working with such repertory companies as the Folger Theatre Groupe and the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Before college, he attended a technical institute and studied building construction (years later he used those skills to build his own house in California). In films, Pullman could be relied upon to almost invariably lose the girl, as witness his brace of 1993 films, Sleepless in Seattle and Somersby. He almost lost his screen wife Geena Davis to Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own (1992), but this gratuitous plot point was eliminated from the script. Only since 1994 has Pullman won the heroine's hand with any regularity. The summer of 1995 found Bill Pullman with back-to-back leading roles in two of the season's biggest box-office successes: While You Were Sleeping and Casper: The Movie. Pullman gained even more recognition for his heroic portrayal of the self-sacrificing U.S. president in the special effects blockbuster Independence Day. Up to this point, Pullman was pretty well typecast in "nice guy" roles. In David Lynch's Lost Highway (1996), he broke that mold by appearing as a deeply disturbed husband. In 1995, Pullman began a side career as a producer when he founded his own production company Big Town.

Trivia: Actress Patricia Arquette is the granddaughter of Cliff Arquette, the daughter of character actor Lewis Arquette, and the sister of actors Rosanna Arquette, David Arquette and Alexis Arquette. Inaugurating her own film career in the mid-'80s, the actress came into her own with a gallery of fine portrayals in the '90s. In 1993 alone, she was seen as the hero's cousin/inamorata in Ethan Frome; the strung-out heroine in the stylishly violent road movie True Romance; and the hero's lesbian sister in Inside Monkey Zetterland. Arquette closed out 1994 on a fine note with her sympathetic portrayal of Kathy O'Hara, the second wife of Hollywood's "world's worst director," in Tim Burton's Ed Wood. The following year included a starring role in John Boorman's Beyond Rangoon and a marriage to actor Nicolas Cage. In 1996, Arquette had lead roles in a number of films, most notably David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster, in which she played Ben Stiller's put-upon wife. She then switched gears with starring roles in David Lynch's Lost Highway and the thriller Nightwatch. She tried her hand at a Western in 1998, playing the object of Woody Harrelson's and Billy Crudup's desires in Stephen Frears' The Hi-Lo Country. Despite an interesting premise and excellent cast, the film flopped, but Arquette continued to work steadily the following year, with lead roles in the black comedy Goodbye Lover; Stigmata, in which she starred opposite Gabriel Byrne as the unwitting target of a supernatural phenomenon; and Martin Scorsese's Bringing out the Dead, a film starring Arquette's then-husband Cage as a burnt-out paramedic.Following the weightiness of the creepy Stigmata and the disturbing Bringing Out the Dead, Arquette took things in a decidedly lighter direction with her next two projects. In 2000, she played Adam Sandler's love-interest in the comedy Little Nicky, while the following year found her opposite Tim Robbins in the off-the-wall Human Nature. Written by Being John Malkovich scribe Charlie Kaufman, Human Nature was the feature debut from acclaimed music-video director Michel Gondry and featured Arquette as a woman cursed with a coat of fur covering her body.As the decade progressed, audiences could see Arquette in projects ranging from the star-studded documentary Searching for Debra Winger to the sleeper family film Holes. Then in 2005, Arquette found a truly resonant role, starring the psychic Allison Dubois on the extremely popular supernatural drama Medium. The show would run from 2005 to 2011, and Arquette would follow it up with a role alongside Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman in A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III.In 2014, Arquette enjoyed the biggest critical success of her career playing the mother in Richard Linklater's universally praised Boyhood. Shot over the course of 12 years, the movie scored Arquette numerous year-end accolades, including an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Trivia: Born December 17, 1974, in Los Angeles, Giovanni Ribisi began his career in network television, with recurring and guest roles on a number of shows, including The Wonder Years. As a teenager, he was typecast for several years as a dimwitted slacker in films and on television, with a memorable guest spot in an episode of The X-Files and a recurring role as Lisa Kudrow's brother on Friends. Ribisi was eventually able to break the grunge mold, first with a secondary role in Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do! (1996) and then in Richard Linklater's SubUrbia (1997). It was his role in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) that caused many critics to dub him one of the leading actors of his generation, a status confirmed by his appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair with a number of fellow up-and-comers. Ribisi was given further opportunities to showcase his sleepy-eyed versatility in such films as 1999's The Mod Squad and The Other Sister. If Ribisi's best roles had been unfairly weighed down by an overabundance of commendable but little seen roles in the previous years, all this would change as the young actor began to focus increasingly on roles that were not only high quality, but high profile as well. His role in the high stakes 2000 drama The Boiler Room may have went largely unseen in theaters, but healthy word of mouth combined with an impressive cast of up and comers found the film an enduring shelf life on cable and DVD. After burning rubber in the fast and furious Nicolas Cage action thriller Gone in Sixty Seconds, Ribisi's memorable performance in director Sam Raimi's southern gothic flavored chiller The Gift preceded a touching turn in the affecting made-for-television drama Shot in the Heart. Ribisi's subsequent role as a conflicted police officer in the 2002 drama Heaven may have been a well-intended commentary on the state of crime and terrorism, but audiences largel dismissed the effort as pretentious tripe and the actor took a brief turn into blockbuster territory with Basic before a turn as an aloof, celebrity obsessed photogapher in director Sophia Coppola's art-house hit Lost in Translation. If his turn as a celebrity who turns convention in its head by stalking a fan in I Love Your Work didn't strike home with viewers, an appearance in the same year's Cold Mountain offered him the chance to flex his dramatic skills alongside an impressive cast that included Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. Of course Ribisi never was one to be predictable with his choice of roles, and following the romantic comedy Love's Brother he essayed a supporting role in the 2004 sci-fi thriller Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow. A handful of largely forgettable roles followed, and on the heels of recurring television roles in My Name is Earn and Entourage, Ribisi dove back into sci-fi with a role as villainous Chief Administrator Parker Selfridge in James Cameron's phenominally successful Avatar. And if Ribisi's performace in that film failed to make your skin crawl, his turn as a psychotic, heavily-tattooed drug dealer in the fast paced 2012 action thriller Contraband was sure to do the trick. He continued his villainous run as a stalker in the surprise hit film Ted (2012). Ribisi later re-teamed with his Ted director, Seth MacFarlane, in 2014's A Million Ways to Die in the West. He also appeared in the Oscar-nominated film Selma that same year.

Trivia: The daughter of screenwriter Richard Gregson and legendary actress Natalie Wood, Natasha Wagner (also known as Natasha Gregson Wagner) has become recognized as an actress in her own right. Born on September 29, 1970, in Los Angeles, Wagner was six months old when her parents divorced. Her mother next married actor Robert Wagner, who later adopted Natasha.Wagner began appearing onscreen in the early '90s, taking supporting roles in such films as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) and S.F.W. (1994). In 1997, she earned recognition for her portrayal of one of Robert Downey Jr.'s girlfriends in James Toback's Two Girls and a Guy. That same year, she starred in David Lynch's Lost Highway and First Love, Last Rites, which cast her opposite Giovanni Ribisi. Wagner closed out the century with appearances in a number of obscure films that tended to cast her as troubled young women; she changed gears in 2000 with a supporting role in High Fidelity, Stephen Frears' adaptation of Nick Hornby's comedic novel about a record store owner (John Cusack) trying to confront his own adulthood.

Trivia: Wide-eyed little Bobby Blake began his acting career as an Our Gang kid and eventually matured into one of Hollywood's finest actors. Born Michael Gubitosi, the boy was two years old when he joined his family vaudeville act, "The Three Little Hillbillies." The act was doomed to failure, as were most of the pipe dreams of the Gubitosi family. Relocating from New Jersey to California, Michael's mom found work for her kids as extras at the MGM studios. The young Gubitosi impressed the producers of the Our Gang series, and as a result the six-year-old was elevated to star status in the short subjects series. Little Mickey Gubitosi whined and whimpered his way through 40 Our Gang shorts, reaching an artistic low point with the execrable All About Hash (1940). During his five-year tenure with the series, the boy anglicized his professional name to Bobby Blake. Freelancing after 1944, Blake's performing skills improved immeasurably, especially when he was cast as Indian sidekick Little Beaver in Republic's Red Ryder series. He also registered well in his appearances in Warner Bros. films, playing such roles as the younger John Garfield in Humoresque (1946) and the Mexican kid who sells Bogart the crucial lottery ticket in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Though sporadically happy in his work (one of his most pleasurable assignments was the otherwise forgettable Laurel and Hardy feature The Big Noise, 1944), Bobby Blake was an unhappy child, weighed down by a miserable home life. At 16, Blake dropped out of sight for a few years, a reportedly difficult period in his life. Upon claiming a 16,000-dollar nest egg at age 21, however, Blake began turning his life around, both personally and professionally. He matriculated into a genuine actor rather than a mere "cute" personality, essaying choice dramatic roles in both films and TV. He starred in the Allied Artists gangster flick The Purple Gang (1960), played featured roles in such films as PT 109 (1963), Ensign Pulver (1964), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and guest starred on dozens of TV shows. In 1963, he was one of 12 character actors amalgamated into the "repertory company" on the weekly anthology series The Richard Boone Show; he spent the next 26 weeks playing everything from agreeable office boys to fevered dope addicts. His true breakthrough role came in 1967, when he was cast as real-life multiple murderer Perry Smith in Richard Brooks' filmization of In Cold Blood. Even after this career boost, Blake often found the going rough in Hollywood, due as much to his own pugnacious behavior as to typecasting. He did, however, star in such worthwhile efforts as Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969) and Electra Glide in Blue (1973). Blake achieved full-fledged stardom at last with his three-year (1975-1978) starring stint on the TV cop series Baretta, adding to his already sizeable fan following via several lively, tell-all guest appearances on The Tonight Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and several other video chat fests. Despite his never-ending battles with the ABC executives during the Baretta run, Blake stuck out the series long enough to win an Emmy, and even got to direct an episode or two.Forming his own production company, Blake made several subsequent tries at TV-series success: Hell Town (1985), in which he starred as a barrio priest, lasted 13 weeks, while the private-eye endeavor Jake Dancer never got past its three pilot films. He has been more successful with such one-shots as the TV miniseries Hoffa (1983), in which he played the title character with chilling accuracy, and the 1993 TV biopic Judgment Day: The John List Story, which earned him another Emmy. His later film appearances were in hard-nosed character parts, such as 1995's The Money Train, and he landed a plum (albeit terminally odd) lead role in David Lynch's postmodern thriller Lost Highway (1997), as a clown-faced psychopath who plays bizarre mind games with a suburban couple. Though he's managed to purge some of his personal demons over the years, Robert Blake remains as feisty, outspoken, and unpredictable as ever, especially when given an open forum by talk show hosts. In 2001, Blake generated headlines once again, though this time off-camera and in an extremely negative vein. The mysterious murder of wife Bonnie Lee Bakely sent the tabloids into a furious frenzy of speculation and accusation. Arrested for the murder of Bakely in April 2002, Blake's future looked increasingly grim as evidence continued to mount against him. Nevertheless, in March 2005 the actor was completely exonerated of all accusations surrounding Bakely's death and narrowly escaped a life sentence in prison. His on-camera activity remained extremely infrequent, however. Late in 2005, the press reported the outcome of a civil trial involving Bakely's homicide, in which Blake was required to pay an estimated $30 million to her children.

Trivia: A favorite actor of director David Lynch, Jack Nance has appeared in all of Lynch's films but Elephant Man (1980). Nance's affiliation with the iconoclastic filmmaker began in 1977 when Lynch cast him as the unpleasant, stressed-out father/husband with the crazy stand-up hair, Henry Spencer, in Eraserhead. The film was wildly popular among certain audiences and earned Lynch and Nance, a cult following. Interestingly Nance, who had much stage experience and had been in feature films since Fools (1970), was not impressed with Lynch after their first meeting and found the young director's script too strange. To help him decide to take the part, Lynch showed Nance his short film, "The Grandmother." Nance was deeply impressed and accepted the role. Afterwards, he specialized in playing weird, often disturbing characters, not only for Lynch but for others too, including Dennis Hopper's Colors (1988) and The Blob (1988). Nance appeared for the final time in a Lynch film, The Lost Highway (1997) On December 30, 1996, Nance was found dead in his home, the result of head injuries. An investigation revealed that the trauma had been incurred a day or so before at a Los Angeles donut shop where the famously temperamental Nance had gotten into a fight with two young men.

Trivia: Although American leading man Gary Busey has made distinguished appearances in many films, he has yet to attain the consistent popularity that would make him a major star. Born in Texas, Busey first few years were spent on an Oklahoma ranch where he learned to be a bull rider. He attended three different colleges before finally graduating in 1963, the year he became a professional drummer with the rock group The Rubber Band. Later, he billed himself as Teddy Jack Eddy and played percussion for Leon Russell, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson. In 1970, Busey made his acting debut in an episode of the TV western High Chaparel. This led to his feature film debut as a biker in Angels Hard as They Come the following year. After that Busey went on to play supporting roles (typically cast as renegades, daredevils, or good ol' boys with dubious morals) until 1978 when he made a major splash playing the lanky lead in The Buddy Holly Story, for which he did all the guitar and vocal work. His impersonation of Holly was remarkable and won him considerable acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Busey then went on to play leads in many films of varying quality during the early to mid-1980s. In the late '80s he returned to supporting roles and co-leads. In 1988, Busey almost died in a motorcycle accident and his near death resulted in enactment of tougher helmet laws in California.

Trivia: Forceful leading actor Robert Loggia left plans for a journalistic career behind when he began his studies at New York's Actors Studio. His first important Broadway assignment was 1955's The Man with the Golden Arm; one year later, he made his first film, Somebody Up There Likes Me. In 1958 he enjoyed a brief flurry of TV popularity as the title character in "The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca," a multipart western originally telecast on Walt Disney Presents. His next weekly TV assignment was as a good-guy burglar in 1967's T.H.E. Cat. A fitfully successful movie leading man, Loggia truly came into his own when he cast off his toupee and became a character actor, often in roles requiring quiet menace. As Richard Gere's bullying father, Loggia dominated the precredits scenes of An Officer and a Gentleman (1981), and was equally effective as the villain in Curse of the Pink Panther (1982) and as mafia functionaries in Scarface (1983) and Prizzi's Honor (1985). He was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of a two-bit detective in The Jagged Edge (1985). The most likeable Robert Loggia screen character thus far is his toy manufacturer in Big (1988), the film in which Loggia and Tom Hanks exuberantly dance to the tune of "Heart and Soul" on a gigantic keyboard. Loggia would remain an active force on screen for decades to come, appearing in movies like Opportunity Knocks, Independence Day, and Return to Me, as well as TV shows like Mancuso, FBI, Wild Palms, and Queens Supreme. Loggia passed away in 2015, at age 85.

Trivia: Since 1980, muscle-bound and tattoo-laden Henry Rollins has taken his status as one of the most distinctive frontmen in alternative rock and parlayed it into a career as a Gen-X Renaissance man, gaining notice as an actor, author, publisher, performance artist, record company executive, and commercial spokesman. Henry Rollins was born Henry Garfield on February 13, 1961, in Washington, D.C. ("Rollins" was a name he used as a joke in high school; it was taken from a friend's T-shirt ). As a teenager, Garfield developed a passionate interest in rock music at its most intense, and while in high school, he formed his first band, a hardcore punk outfit called S.O.A. (aka State of Alert), who released an EP in 1980. Henry was a passionate fan of the pioneering Los Angeles punk band Black Flag, and when Black Flag's vocalist Dez Cadena decided to step down as singer in 1981, the group's guitarist and leader Greg Ginn invited the newly renamed Henry Rollins to join. Black Flag became one of the hardest-working punk bands in America, constantly touring the United States and releasing eight albums and a handful of singles and EPs before calling it a day in 1986. During his tenure with Black Flag, Rollins developed an interest in writing and began publishing fiction, opinion pieces, and stream-of-consciousness rants in a number of magazines and rock journals, as well as distributing his own chapbooks through Black Flag's record label, SST. Rollins also began performing spoken-word shows of his material, as well as staging confrontational "performance art" events with Lydia Lunch. After Black Flag's breakup, Rollins formed a new group simply known as the Rollins Band and began touring heavily, recording with only slightly less frequency than Black Flag. Rollins continued to write and publish regularly and performed frequently as a spoken-word act, becoming one of the most recognizable figures in alternative rock circles. In 1991, Rollins signed with a major label, Imago Records, and toured as part of the first Lollapalooza Festival; Rollins had now won a wider audience than ever before, and he seemed determined to make the most of his new visibility. Rollins launched a publishing company, 2.13.61, which distributed his own work as well as books by fellow rockers-turned-authors Nick Cave and Jeffrey Lee Pierce and iconoclastic authors such as Hubert Selby Jr. and Bill Shields. Rollins later expanded 2.13.61 into a record label, as well as co-founded the reissue label Infinite Zero with producer Rick Rubin. While Rollins appeared in experimental films as early as 1985, his new level of visibility brought Hollywood calling, and in 1994 Rollins appeared in both the independent vampire story Jugular Wine and the action-comedy The Chase, in which he played a highway patrolman. 1995 found Rollins playing a scientist in the cyberpunk thriller Johnny Mnemonic and a brutal prison guard in David Lynch's Lost Highway, and from that point on Rollins began appearing in a variety of character roles when he wasn't occupied with his musical or literary activities. Rollins usually portrayed physically imposing and emotionally intense gentlemen, ranging from an escaped convict in Morgan's Ferry to a children's hockey coach in Jack Frost. A number of Rollins' spoken-word shows have also been released on home video, including Talking From the Box and You Saw Me Up There, and in 2000 Rollins signed on as the host and narrator of the television anthology series Night Visions, though as of this writing the series has yet to find a network.

Trivia: African-American comedian Richard Pryor grew up bombarded by mixed messages. Pryor's grandmother owned a string of brothels, his mother prostituted herself, and his father was a pimp. Still, they raised Richard to be honest, polite, and religious. Living in one of the worst slums in Peoria, IL, Pryor found that he could best defend himself by getting gang members to laugh at instead of pummeling him. This led to his reputation as a disruptive class clown, although at least one understanding teacher allowed Pryor one minute per week to "cut up" so long as he behaved himself the rest of the time. At age 14, he became involved in amateur dramatics at Peoria's Carver Community Center, which polished his stage presence. In 1963, Pryor headed to New York to seek work as a standup comic; after small gigs in the black nightclub circuit, he was advised to pattern himself after Bill Cosby -- that is, to be what white audiences perceived as "nonthreatening." For the next five years, the young comic flourished in clubs and on TV variety shows, making his film bow in The Busy Body (1967). But the suppression of Pryor's black pride and anger by the white power structure frustrated him. One night, sometime between 1969 and 1971, he "lost it" while performing a gig in Las Vegas; he either walked off-stage without a word or he obscenely proclaimed that he was sick of it. Over the next few years, Pryor found himself banned from many nightclubs, allegedly due to offending the mob-connected powers-that-be, and lost many of his so-called friends who'd been sponging off of him. Broke, Pryor went underground in Berkeley, CA, in the early '70s; when he re-emerged, he was a road-company Cosby no more. His act, replete with colorful epithets, painfully accurate character studies of street types, and hilarious (and, to some, frightening) hostility over black-white inequities, struck just the right note with audiences of the committed '70s. Record company executives, concerned that Pryor's humor would appeal only to blacks, were amazed at how well his first post-Berkeley album, That Nigger's Crazy!, sold with young white consumers. As for Hollywood, Pryor made a key early appearance in the Diana Ross vehicle Lady Sings the Blues. But ultra-reactionary Tinseltown wasn't quite attuned to Pryor's liberal use of obscenities or his racial posturing. Pryor had been commissioned to write and star in a Mel Brooks-directed Western-comedy about a black sheriff, but Brooks replaced Pryor with the less-threatening Cleavon Little; Pryor nonetheless retained a credit as one of five writers on the picture, alongside such luminaries as Andrew Bergman. When Pryor appeared onscreen in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings and Silver Streak (both 1976), it was as a supporting actor. But Pryor's popularity built momentum, and by the end of the '70s he became the highest-paid starring comedian in films, with long-range contracts ensuring him work well into the next decade - when such efforts as Stir Crazy, Bustin' Loose, and The Toy helped to both clean up the foul-mouthed comic's somewhat raunchy public image, and endear him to a whole new generation of fans. His comedy albums -- and later, videocassettes -- sold out as quickly as they were recorded. The only entertainment arena still too timid for Pryor was network television -- his 1977 NBC variety series has become legendary for the staggering amount of network interference and censorship imposed upon it.By the early '80s, Pryor was on top of the entertainment world. Then came a near-fatal catastrophe when he accidentally set himself afire while freebasing cocaine. Upon recovery, he joked liberally (and self-deprecatively) about his brush with death, but, otherwise, he appeared to change; his comedy became more introspective, more rambling, more tiresome, and occasionally (as in the 1983 standup effort Richard Pryor: Here and Now) drew vicious heckling and catcalls from obnoxious audiences. His cinematic decline began with a thinly-disguised film autobiography, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986), which Pryor starred in and directed; it met with critical scorn. Pryor's films declined in popularity, the audiences grew more hostile at the concerts, and Pryor deteriorated physically. Doctors diagnosed him with multiple sclerosis in the late '80s, and, by 1990, it became painfully obvious to everyone that he was a very sick man, although his industry friends and supporters made great effort to celebrate his accomplishments and buoy his spirits. The twin 1989 releases Harlem Nights and See No Evil, Hear No Evil (the latter of which re-teamed Pryor with fellow Silver Streak alums Arthur Hiller and Gene Wilder) failed to reignite Pryor's popularity or draw back his fanbase.Pryor's ill-fated attempt to resuscitate his stand-up act at L.A.'s Comedy Store in 1992 proved disastrous; unable to stand, Pryor was forced to deliver his monologues from an easy chair; he aborted his planned tour soon after. He appeared in television and films only sporadically in his final decade, save a rare cameo in David Lynch's 1997 Lost Highway. These dark omens foretold a sad end to a shimmering career; the world lost Pryor soon after. On December 12, 2005, the comedian - only 65 years old -- died of a heart attack in a Los Angeles hospital. But he left a peerless legacy behind as a stand-up comic and black actor.

Trivia: Often playing characters with a sensitive demeanor lurking beneath a brooding surface, Balthazar Getty is an actor whose offscreen life has boasted as much drama as his onscreen work. Born in Los Angeles, CA, on January 22, 1975, Balthazar Getty's father was John Paul Getty III, the grandson of famous oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, and a notorious figure in his own right after his ear was cut off by kidnappers in 1973. John Paul Getty III suffered a debilitating drug overdose in 1980 which left him in a wheelchair, and in time he and his wife Gisela Zacher split up; Gisela remarried in 1988, to wedding translator and musician Olaf Kraemar. In 1989, a casting agent spotted young Balthazar Getty in his art class at school, and invited him to audition for a film role. Getty was then cast in the 1990 film adaptation of Lord of the Flies as Ralph, the child who struggles against the baser impulses which have overtaken his peers. Due to extensive post-production work on Lord of the Flies, Getty's second film -- a made-for-cable adaptation of The Turn of the Screw -- actually appeared first, but his work in Flies was well received and it wasn't long before more and bigger roles came his way. Getty won key roles in smaller independent projects such as Dead Beat and Where the Day Takes You as well as bigger-budget films, including Natural Born Killers, White Squall, and Lost Highway. However, the lure of the Hollywood high life took its toll as Getty's star rose; his family had a history of drug abuse, and Getty himself became addicted to heroin, only narrowly avoiding arrest in the fall of 1998, according to published reports. After this incident, Getty made a new commitment to health, and after kicking his habit began working steadily again in 2000 and 2001, appearing in the acclaimed independent films The Center of the World, MacArthur Park, and Four Dogs Playing Poker; Getty also tried his hand at working behind the scenes, serving as both star and executive producer of Shadow Hours. Getty took on the role of male witch Rich Montana in a guest-starring role on the television series Charmed (2003), and found more television success playing Agent Thomas Grace on ABC's popular prime time drama Alias (2005). He also worked in the ABC prime time drama Brothers & Sisters (2006) playing Thomas "Tommy" Walker, the second child of five.

Trivia: Lead actor Scott Coffey was first seen in film in the late '80s.

Trivia: From the beginning of his career, David Lynch quickly established himself as the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking, an acclaimed and widely recognized writer-director as well as television producer, photographer, cartoonist, composer, and graphic artist. Walking the tightrope between the mainstream and the avant-garde with remarkable balance and skill, Lynch brought to the screen a singularly dark and disturbing view of reality, a nightmare world punctuated by defining moments of extreme violence, bizarre comedy, and strange beauty. More than any other arthouse filmmaker of his era, he enjoyed considerable mass acceptance and helped to redefine commercial tastes, honing a surrealistic aesthetic so visionary and deeply personal that the phrase "Lynchian" was coined simply to describe it. Born January 20, 1946, in Missoula, Montana, David Keith Lynch grew up the archetypal all-American boy. The son of a U.S. Department of Agriculture research scientist, he was raised throughout the Pacific Northwest, eventually becoming an Eagle Scout and even serving as an usher at John F. Kennedy's presidential inauguration. Originally intending to become a graphic artist, Lynch enrolled in the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1963, falling under the sway of expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka and briefly studying in Europe. By the early weeks of 1966, he had relocated to Philadelphia, where he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and began his first experimentation with film.The violence and decay which greeted Lynch in Philadelphia proved to have a profound and long-lasting effect, as his work became increasingly obsessed with exploring the dark corners of the human experience. From his first experimental student film (1967's "moving painting" Six Men Getting Sick, onward, his vision grew more and more fascinated with the seedy underbelly of everyday life. He received an American Film Institute Grant and made The Alphabet, a partially animated 16 mm color film, soon after, but then turned away from the cinema to renew his focus on fine art. His next short film, The Grandmother, did not appear until 1970.In 1972, Lynch began work on his first feature effort, Eraserhead. A surreal nightmare borne of the director's own fears and anxieties of fatherhood, the film took over five years to complete, finally premiering in March 1977. An instant cult classic, it was also a tremendous critical success, launching Lynch to the forefront of avant-garde filmmaking. Eraserhead not only established Lynch's singular world view but also cemented the team of actors and technicians who would continue to define the texture of his work for years to come, including cinematographer Frederick Elmes, sound designer Alan Splet, and actor Jack Nance.The success of Eraserhead brought Lynch to the attention of Mel Brooks, who was seeking projects to produce besides his own comedies. He recruited Lynch to helm 1980's The Elephant Man, the tale of John Merrick. Complete with a cast including such celebrated talent as John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins, Anne Bancroft, and John Gielgud, the film marked Lynch's acceptance into the Hollywood mainstream, even netting an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture as well as a nod for Best Director. For a time, Lynch opted to advance his script Ronnie Rocket at Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Studios, but when this failed to materialize, he went to work for Dino De Laurentiis, adapting the Frank Herbert science fiction novel Dune. The first of Lynch's films to star actor Kyle MacLachlan, the 1984 big-budget effort was a commercial and critical disaster -- Lynch himself even disowned the project after it was re-edited for release without his consent.Lynch had agreed to make Dune for de Laurentiis in order to film 1986's Blue Velvet, a long-simmering tale exploring the dark underbelly of small-town life. Insisting upon complete artistic control, he made the picture for under seven million dollars, casting actors ranging from MacLachlan to model Isabella Rossellini to Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell, former stars whose popularity had suffered in recent years. The completed film was an unqualified masterpiece, a hypnotically violent creep show which earned Lynch his second Oscar nomination as well as boosting the careers of all involved. In 1990, Lynch mounted his most commercially successful work, the ABC television series Twin Peaks. A surrealist soap opera created in conjunction with former Hill Street Blues producer Mark Frost, Twin Peaks became a cultural phenomenon, spurred by the mystery of "Who killed Laura Palmer?," the series' central plot thread. Suddenly, Lynch was a cultural figure of considerable renown, a filmmaker perhaps more famous than any of his actors. His fame was bolstered when his fifth feature, 1990s hallucinatory road movie Wild at Heart, grabbed the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. As quickly as the media had built Lynch up, however, they tore him down. Wild at Heart received mixed reviews from American critics, while Twin Peaks was scuttled off to a poorly suited Saturday-night slot, leading to its demise in early 1991. Two other Lynch-created series, the documentary anthology American Chronicles and the situation comedy On the Air, also met with premature deaths. In 1992, he released Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, a feature-film prequel to the television series. An ambitious, fractured work featuring Sheryl Lee as the ill-fated Laura Palmer, the picture was savaged by critics, leaving a wounded Lynch to plot his next move. He spent the next few years away from the limelight. Finally, in 1997, Lynch resurfaced with the enigmatic Lost Highway, another experimental, dream-like effort that polarized viewers' responses. He enjoyed more renown in 1999 when The Straight Story was released at the Cannes Film Festival. The film, based on a true story, marked a departure from Lynch's previous subject matter; the simple tale of a man (Richard Farnsworth) who gets on his tractor and drives 350 miles to see his brother, it offered few of the dark undertones and twisted subtext that had come to be known as the director's trademarks. That notion would continue with 2001's Hollywood-set thriller-melodrama, Mulholland Drive. Like Twin Peaks, the project was originally developed with ABC as a series pilot; unlike Lynch's first foray into television, however, Mulholland was scrapped before it could make a prime-time premiere. Although Lynch tinkered with the two-hour pilot several times in an attempt to satisfy the network brass, they remained unsatisfied. The frustrated director then turned to European financing in order to sculpt a feature film out of his material. Premiering at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, Mulholland garnered much acclaim, snagging Lynch the fest's Best Director award, and cementing his career resurgence.Lynch spent the next few years immersed in the world of digital video, first on his exclusive website -- members of which were allowed access to never-before-seen short films -- and then on the highly experimental feature Inland Empire. Crafted over a series of years using a light, mobile video camera and very few crew members, the film was Lynch's declaration of true artistic independence; the director himself heralded it as a breakthrough. The meandering, non-narrative, 3-hour opus, however, left critics and fans sharply divided as they tried to make sense of such disparate elements as a tortured, ghostly ingenue (played by Laura Dern), a Polish film crew, and Justin Theroux wearing a rabbit's-head mask. Dissatisfied with the response from possible buyers at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, Lynch chose to distribute the film himself, even mounting his own Oscar campaign -- stationing himself on various L.A. streetcorners, no less -- for Dern. In the years that followed, the director continued to immerse himself in experimental video, with short subjects including Boat, More Things That Happened and Lady Blue Shanghai - each of which alternately beguiled and delighted longtime Lynch adherents.