Trivia: After majoring in history at Columbia University, brawny Brian Dennehy (born July 9, 1938) took a string of odd jobs to pay his way through Yale Drama School, and to afford private acting lessons. His first professional break came with the Broadway production Streamers. In films and TV from 1977, Dennehy is a most versatile actor, at home playing Western baddies (Silverado), ulcerated big-city cops (F/X), serial killers (John Wayne Gacy in the made-for-TV To Catch a Killer), by-the-book military types (General Groves in Day One, another TV movie), and vacillating politicos (Presumed Innocent). One of his most rewarding film assignments was as dying architectural genius Stourley Kracklite in Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect (1987).In addition to his many TV-movie roles (one of which, good-old-boy Chuck Munson in 1993's Foreign Affairs, won him a Cable Ace Award), Dennehy has starred in the weekly series Big Shamus, Little Shamus (1977), Star of the Family (1981), and Birdland (1994), as well as the sporadically produced Jack Reed feature-length mysteries. It was in one of the last-mentioned projects, Jack Reed: A Search for Justice (1994), that Dennehy made his directorial debut. Aside from his work in film and television, Dennehy has also had considerable success on the stage, particularly with his Tony-winning portrayal of Willy Loman in the 1998 Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman.The actor continued to show his range in the 1995 comedy Tommy Boy (starring David Spade and the late comedian Chris Farley), in which he became well known for his role as Big Tom Callahan, and for a voice role in Ratatouille (2007) as Django, the father of rat and aspiring chef Remy.Dennehy joined Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino in Righteous Kill, a 2008 police drama, and worked alongisde Russell Crowe in the 2010 suspense film The Next Three Days. In 2011, Dennehy played the pivotal role of Clarence Darrow in Alleged, a romantic drama set during the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial.

Trivia: A successful character actress most adept at playing matronly types, Beth Grant took her onscreen bow in the late '80s and began tackling innumerable roles in Hollywood features, usually bit parts as housewives, female doctors, or down-home small-town women. Grant received her first feature assignment as a harried mother at a farmhouse in Barry Levinson's Rain Man (1988). She subsequently divided her time between film and television roles, guest-acting on dozens of series and occasionally taking on more extensive small-screen roles, such as on Coach and Jericho. Grant's many big-screen credits include the films Don't Tell Her It's Me (1990), Speed (1994), Donnie Darko (2001), and Little Miss Sunshine (2006). She was particularly memorable in the latter, as one of the snotty and obnoxious pageant judges. Darko represented Grant's first experience working with helmer Richard Kelly; she re-teamed with Kelly for his follow-up, the dystopian black comedy Southland Tales (2005).

Trivia: After building a career as a character actor playing dozens of military men and cops, Ken Jenkins founds steady work and notoriety in 2001 when he was cast as Chief of Medicine Dr. Bob Kelso on NBC's Scrubs. Born in New Boston, OH, Jenkins began acting on the stage in the 1960s and continued to be a presence in the theater world throughout the '70s and into the '80s before transitioning to a screen career. His film roles included such varying and prominent features as Matewan and The Abyss, and his TV work included work on everything from Newhart to Star Trek: The Next Generation. In 1991, Jenkins got his first taste of regular series work when he was cast on the acclaimed family drama Homefront, which lasted two seasons. More supporting work followed before the creators of Scrubs came knocking and offered the role for which he would come to be best known. He would appear on the show until 2010, after which he took on a recurring role on the series Cougar Town.

Trivia: An everyman character actor with a slightly authoritarian bent, Nick Searcy spent his first two decades onscreen specializing in portrayals of such easily recognizable types as policemen, FBI agents, private detectives, and military colonels. Searcy took one of his first bows as a highway patrol officer in the Tom Cruise-headlined Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer outing Days of Thunder (1990), then followed this up with roles in such projects as the telemovies Nightmare in Columbia County and White Lie (both 1991) and the Barbra Streisand feature drama The Prince of Tides (1991). Moviegoers may also associate Searcy with another portrayal from that same year, albeit a far nastier one: that of Frank Bennett, the slug of a husband who ends up as human barbecue at the Whistle Stop Café in Jon Avnet's sleeper hit Fried Green Tomatoes.As the following two decades unfurled, Searcy maintained an almost constant onscreen presence in dozens of films (albeit frequently low-profiled ones). Some of his more memorable projects included Michael Apted's Nell (1994) opposite Jodie Foster, Robert Zemeckis' Cast Away (2000) opposite Tom Hanks, and The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004) opposite Sean Penn. In 2008, Searcy signed on as a regular -- portraying Roy Buffkin -- in the CW network's series drama Easy Money. That series was short-lived, but Searcy kept going with roles in The Ugly Truth and Blood Done Sign My Name. He was part of the cast for Justified, the hit cable series based on the work of Elmore Leonard, and in 2011 he played Matt Keough in the Brad Pitt sports drama Moneyball.