Trivia: First earning fame as a witty, agile comic actress on TV, smart, leggy beauty Téa Leoni was poised for Hollywood movie stardom by the late '90s. Born Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni and raised in New York City, Leoni graduated from boarding school in Vermont and headed to Sarah Lawrence College to study psychology. After dropping out to travel for several months, Leoni intended to finish college at Harvard. Though she had never planned on acting, Leoni auditioned on a dare for a planned TV remake of Charlie's Angels and was cast. Though the 1988 writer's strike killed the series, Leoni opted to stay in Hollywood. After several years of modeling and TV commercials, Leoni made her film debut as the "Dream Girl" in Blake Edwards' farce Switch (1991). A small part in A League of Their Own (1992) and starring roles in the short-lived Fox sitcom Flying Blind (1992) and the TV movie The Counterfeit Contessa (1994) brought Leoni more attention. While she co-starred as the obligatory female-witness-in-peril in the blockbuster actioner Bad Boys (1995), Leoni's gift for acid wit and goofy physical comedy turned her into a TV star that same year in the sitcom The Naked Truth. Despite a network change, The Naked Truth lasted three seasons; Leoni further bolstered her comic reputation with her performance as a high-strung psychology student in David O. Russell's excellent screwball comedy Flirting With Disaster (1996). While The Naked Truth mined TV laughs out of tabloids, After taking a turn for the serious as a reporter in the first 1998 asteroid blockbuster Deep Impact, Leoni then took a break from acting to focus on her family. She returned to movies in 2000 with a charming performance as Nicolas Cage's beloved in the syrupy dramedy The Family Man, and subsequently kept busy with a string of roles in such big-budget features as Jurassic Park III (2001), Fun with Dick and Jane (2005), and Tower Heist (2011). She returned to television in 2014 with Madam Secretary.

Trivia: A descendent of a long line of talented actors including father James and sister Tyne, boyishly handsome screen regular Tim Daly has endured to overcome a post Wings career slump with a successful series of film and television roles. The New York City native first took to the stage in summer stock while studying at Bennington College; he followed graduation with a few seasons at Providence's Trinity Square Repertory and then made his off-Broadway debut in 1984 with Fables for Friends. Daly's film career got off to a healthy start with his role as a young expectant father in Diner (1982), though in the years that followed, the fresh-faced star was relegated mostly to small-screen roles. A Broadway bow opposite Annette Bening in Coastal Disturbances proved that Daly did indeed have the talent to make it as an actor if casting directors could see past his youthful exterior, and with his upcoming role in Wings, the rising star would prove his worth not only at comedy but drama as well. Cast opposite Steven Weber as one of two brothers who own a small Nantucket airline, Daly stayed with Wings through the series' seven-year run (1990-1997). During that time, he also utilized the predictable production schedule as a means to experiment with dramatic roles in a series of memorable made-for-television features. If audiences had pigeonholed Daly as a small-screen lightweight, a role as cult leader David Koresh in In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco showed that the versatile actor was capable of much more. Some of Daly's other roles from the mid-'90s may have proved less than memorable, but his vocal contributions to the animated television series Superman (for which he voiced the Man of Steel himself) kept him busy before he landed the role of astronaut James Lovell in the acclaimed HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon (1998). As audiences began to realize Daly's talent thanks to memorable parts in Storm of the Century (1999) and an updated version of the television classic The Fugitive, it seemed as if the veteran actor might have finally overcome his youthful outward appearance to command some respect. Though Daly would indeed impress with his role as Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive, the series lasted only one season and it would be two years before he would return to the screen in the made-for-television drama The Outsider. In the years that followed, Daly's film career experienced something of a revival when he was cast in such high-profile releases as Basic (2003) and Against the Ropes (2004). The longtime actor also made his directorial debut in 2004 with the mournful drama Bereft. Daly became well-known for his portrayal of a naturopathic doctor Pete Wilder on NBC's drama series Private Practice. After leaving the show at the end of the 5th season, Daly voiced the character of Superman in Justice League: Doom (2012). This wasn't the first time the actor voiced the legendary superhero; he also worked on the 2010 animated feature Superman/Batman: Apocalypse. Daly maintained his TV roots, with guest arcs on The Mindy Project and Hot in Cleveland, before taking a regular role on Madam Secretary in 2014.

Trivia: A versatile actress who has displayed a talent for both comedy and drama, Bebe Neuwirth is also a gifted dancer and vocalist who has won acclaim for her work on the musical stage, though she's still best known to television viewers as Lilith Sternin, Frazier Crane's tightly wound girlfriend (and later wife) on the popular comedy Cheers. Born Beatrice Neuwirth on New Year's Eve, 1958, she was raised in Princeton, NJ, where her father, Lee Neuwirth, was a mathematician and her mother, Sydney Anne Neuwirth, was an artist. Bebe began taking dance lessons at the age of five, and, while a student at Princeton High School, she began appearing in local ballet productions and community theater productions. After high school, Neuwirth studied dance at New York's prestigious Juilliard School, and in 1980 she made her professional debut as Shelia, a once-famous dancer looking to make a comeback, in a touring production of the long-running musical A Chorus Line. In 1982, Neuwirth hit Broadway in two different shows, Dancin', directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, and Little Me. In 1986, Neuwirth won the starring role in another Fosse musical, a revival of Sweet Charity, which later earned her a Tony award and cemented her reputation on Broadway. That year also marked Neuwirth's television debut (not counting a brief appearance as a member of the Whitney Dance Theater on the daytime drama The Edge of Night in 1981) with her first appearance as Lilith Sternin on Cheers; Lilith soon became a regular fixture on Cheers and Neuwirth won two Emmy awards for her work until Lilith was written out of the show (at Neuwirth's request) in 1992, to allow Neuwirth to pursue film and stage work. Lilith, however, occasionally made return visits to Cheers, and later on Kelsey Grammer's spin-off series, Frasier. Neuwirth made her feature-film debut in 1989 with a small role as a guidance counselor in Say Anything..., and while a steady stream of supporting roles followed in such films as Bugsy, Green Card, and Jumanji, she had a hard time finding screen roles which suited her edgy charm. She continued to have better luck on-stage, and in 1997 her performance in the Broadway revival of Chicago won her the Tony and Drama Desk awards. After scoring meatier roles in the films Summer of Sam and Liberty Heights, Neuwirth returned to episodic television in the well-reviewed but short-lived drama series Deadline, in which she worked alongside Oliver Platt, Lili Taylor, and Tom Conti. In 2002, Neuwirth finally scored a film role that truly suited her talents as Diane, a sexy fourtysomething woman who seduces her best friend's teenage son in the independent comedy Tadpole. She had a small part in the romantic comedy How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and in 2005 she landed a recurring role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2009 she played one of the teachers at a high school for the performing arts in the remake of Fame.

Trivia: Possessing a near-perfect balance of everyman looks and tremendous talent on both stage and screen, actor Zeljko Ivanek has been a key supporting player in feature films since the early '80s. A native of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia), Ivanek's family moved to the United States in 1960 in order for his father to complete his doctoral research in electronic engineering at Stanford University. Briefly returning to Yugoslavia before settling in Palo Alto, CA, in 1967, it was only a few short years before young Ivanek was pursuing his higher education at Yale. Subsequently accepted at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, he continued to refine his passion for acting and the summers of 1978-1980 found him honing his stage skills in the Williamstown Theater Festival in such efforts as Hay Fever and The Front Page. In 1983, Ivanek was nominated for a Tony award for his role in Brighton Beach Memories and it was around this time that he made his first film and television appearances. An early role as a telepathic killer in the 1982 thriller The Sender found Ivanek making a chilling impression, and strong performances in Mass Appeal (1984) and the AIDS drama Our Sons (1991) kept expectations high for the rising star. As his feature credits continued to build, Ivanek began appearing in such popular television series as L.A. Law, Law & Order, The X-Files, and Murder, She Wrote. Though the adjustment from stage to screen was initially daunting for the classically trained actor, once he got accustomed to the change of pace, he adjusted remarkably well. As the '90s rolled on, Ivanek's film credits included such A-list releases as Courage Under Fire (1996), Donnie Brasco (1997), and the John Travolta thriller A Civil Action (1998). It was also around this time that Ivanek embarked on a six-year stint as Governor James Devlin on HBO's acclaimed series Oz. As the millennium turned, so did Ivanek's onscreen career, and his resume seemed to be exclusively built of nothing but high-profile efforts in both film and television. In addition to appearing in Dancer in the Dark (2000), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), Unfaithful (2002), and Dogville (2003), memorable roles on The Practice and The West Wing kept television audiences glued to their sets. He reteamed with Lars Von Trier for the director's drama Maderlay, and continued his film career in projects such as The Hoax, In Bruges, and Tower Heist, while maintaining a presence on the small-screen with appearances on Damages, Heroes, and Big Love.

Trivia: Started out singing in her church's choir. Received a full scholarship to Carnegie Mellon University for musical theater. Auditioned for the role of Effie White for the film Dreamgirls, ultimately losing the role to Jennifer Hudson. Made her Broadway debut in 2011 as Delores Van Cartier, the lead role in the musical Sister Act.

Trivia: Attended the performing arts camp Stagedoor Manor in Loch Sheldrake, N.Y., for several summers as a kid, appearing in musicals with Mandy Moore and Lea Michele. Not one for sitting in a classroom, he dropped out of the New York City public high school he attended three days into his senior year. Interviewed Broadway actors as the host of Green Room Radio, a podcast he started as a teen in college. At age 20, played Four Seasons singer-songwriter Bob Gaudio in the first national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical Jersey Boys, as well as in the Las Vegas and Los Angeles productions. Was fired from the Las Vegas cast of Jersey Boys in 2009, only to bring the role of Gaudio to the silver screen five years later in the Clint Eastwood-directed film. Had the titular role in the musical Hero, about a young comic-book artist living anything but a superhero life. In July 2014, he followed up his first EP The Vegas Sessions with a five-track CD entitled Never Give Up, which he recorded in Nashville.

Trivia: Actor Geoffrey Arend made his initial entrée into show business in the early 2000s with voiceover work on the MTV animated series Daria; over time, he segued into features and came to focus predominantly, if not quite exclusively, on comedies with a high gag-quotient, such as Bubble Boy (2001), Porn 'n Chicken (2002), National Lampoon's Pledge This! (2006), and director David Zucker's Michael Moore send-up An American Carol (2008). Often, though not always (as in the Zucker film, where he played a Middle Easterner), Arend found himself cast in ethnic roles. His efforts in the Fred Schepisi-directed seriocomedy It Runs in the Family (2003) and the 2004 Zach Braff-headlined/directed coming of age saga Garden State (as a friend of Braff's) represented steps up in terms of depth and complexity. He appeared in the hit indie romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, and in 2011 he was cast in the TV show Body of Proof. He had a major role in 2012's Save the Date.

Trivia: Began working professionally as an actor at age 6. Interned for Al Gore in Washington, D.C., for the Climate Reality Project. Works with at-risk teens as a volunteer counselor for the Teen Line program in Los Angeles.

Trivia: Moved to San Diego with his family when he was 4 years old. Started acting in school plays. Discovered by a Hollywood agent at age 12. Working towards becoming an Eagle Scout.

Trivia: Started playing violin at the age of 5 and played with the Starlight Symphony Orchestra for several years. Starred in the stage productions of Twelfth Night and The Cherry Orchard while studying at the Juilliard School. Met her boyfriend, fellow actor Alex Sharp, while attending the Juilliard School. Participates in volunteer work with Books for Belize, an organization aimed at supporting higher education in Belize.

Trivia: The son of actor John Carradine, Keith Carradine began his own theatrical training at Colorado State University, dropping out after one semester because he felt he wasn't getting anywhere. Soon afterward, Carradine made his stage debut in the "tribal love rock musical" Hair; his brief relationship with fellow cast member Shelley Plimpton resulted in a daughter, Martha Plimpton, who grew up to become a prominent actress in her own right. Carradine's first film was 1971's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, directed by Robert Altman. Four years later, Carradine's musical composition "I'm Easy," which he performed in Altman's Nashville (1975), won an Academy Award. Carradine divested himself of his familiar movie mannerisms in the early 1990s to portray the folksy, gum-chewing title character in the Broadway hit The Will Rogers Follies. In 1995, he emulated the past screen villainy of his father and his brother, David, as the smirking antagonist of the movie melodrama The Ties That Bind. He continued to work in film and television throughout the rest of the decade, showing up in movies like A Thousand Acres (1997) and various TV series. Meanwhile, the early 2000s found Carradine as busy as ever, with a recurring role as Wild Bill Hickock (whom he had previously played in the 1995 feature WIld Bill) on HBO's popular wild west series Deadwood, as well as roles on Dexter, Dollhouse, and Damages serving well to keep him in the public eye. Always handy with a six-shooter, Carradine took aim at some particularly nasty extraterrestrials in Iron Man director Jon Favreau's sci-fi/western genre mash-up Cowboys and Aliens in 2011.

Trivia: His mother is Italian and Russian and his father is Uruguayan. His great grandparents were royals; Prince Ioann Konstantinovich of Russia and Princess Helen of Serbia. Made his Broadway debut in Rent in 1996. Met his wife Stephanie J. Block while performing together on Broadway in Wicked in 2006.

Trivia: First acting gig was in his senior year of high school in a production of Fiddler on the Roof, in which he was cast as the lead, Tevye. Studied sports medicine before changing his focus to acting. Won the Natalie Wood Acting Award at UCLA. Nearly left the acting profession when he was offered a lucrative job in financial services. Served as Georgia's representative on the National Board of the Screen Actors Guild from January 2002 to September 2004. Advocated for the merger of SAG (Screen Actors Guild) and AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) prior to their 2012 merger as SAG-AFTRA. Has also served as the Atlanta Local First Vice-President of SAG-AFTRA. Has used acting principles and experience to launch a successful business as a career coach.

Trivia: From busking to blockbusters to small-screen crime drama, worldly actress Jill Hennessey has proven herself as an actress with talent to spare. As easy as it may be to see only her dark beauty, don't mistake the multilingual Hennessey as a one trick pony; she's also established herself as a successful restaurateur and a talented musician. Hennessey was born three minutes after her identical twin sister, Jacqueline, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in November of 1969. Her parents divorced when she was only a young girl, and her grandmother played a large part in raising her and her sister. It was during this time that young Hennessey took up cooking in order to help care for her family, and her passion for food would eventually lead her to open Hennessey's Tavern in Northvale, NJ, after establishing herself as an actress. Hennessey moved to New York following her graduation from Ontario's Grand River Collegiate, and for a time, she busked in the N.Y.C. subway, singing and playing the guitar for money. Though her career in entertainment may not have taken off quickly, it was only a matter of time before she found success. In 1988, both Hennessey and her sister got their first breaks with small roles in director David Cronenberg's acclaimed chiller Dead Ringers. In the following few years, she would repeatedly turn up on the small screen in Friday the 13th: The Series and The Hitchhiker. A three-year stint on television's popular Law & Order as ADA Claire Kincaid gained the rising starlet much exposure, and indie credit came with a supporting role in director Mary Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol. After roles in A Smile Like Yours and Most Wanted made 1997 a memorable year for her, Hennessey took the lead opposite pop star-turned-actor Jon Bon Jovi in the 1998 drama Row Your Boat. Subsequent films such as Komodo may have done little to advance Hennessey's career as a serious thespian, but she expanded into writing and directing with her all-star comedy The Acting Class in 2000. With more roles coming her way every day, Hennessey took on the daunting task of portraying none other that Jackie Kennedy in the 2001 miniseries Jackie, Ethel, Joan: The Women of Camelot. Later that year she took the lead role in the small-screen drama Crossing Jordan, and it seemed as if she had finally arrived when the show proved to be a success, running for six years.Hennessy would wpend the next several years appearing in a number or projects, like the horse racing series Luck.

Trivia: Clifton Davis, a black lead actor and singer/songwriter, first appeared onscreen in 1973.

Trivia: Supporting actor Carlos Gomez has found success on television and in feature films. As his career has progressed, he has become increasingly active as a writer and producer. A first-generation American of Cuban heritage, Gomez made his feature film debut in 1989, appearing in two movies, Dance to Win and Hard to Kill. He would go on to become well known for his roles on ER and The Glades.

Trivia: Started dance classes at 6 but later was encouraged by a teacher to pursue an acting career.Was the first Middle East-born woman to be accepted to both NYU Graduate Acting and the Juilliard programs.Portrayed Hanin Suleiman in the 2019 political thriller web television Jack Ryan.Will be one the main characters in season 2 of series Altered Carbon, which will be released in early 2020. Has Saudi, Palestinian, Norwegian, German and Haitian descent.