Trivia: After spending the 1990s as a TV teen star, Melissa Joan Hart set her sights on feature films. Born and raised on Long Island, Hart began acting in TV commercials as a child. She further honed her skills in New York theater in the late '80s as the youngest member of the Circle Repertory Lab Company. Hart then broke through as a cable TV favorite (and a CableACE Award nominee) in the role of the precocious titular preteen on the Nickelodeon series Clarissa Explains It All (1991-1994). After the series ended, Hart moved to network TV stardom in 1996 as the supernaturally gifted title teen on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Maintaining her pert primetime persona while revealing her range, Hart also starred in several TV movies, including Family Reunion: A Relative Nightmare (1995), Twisted Desire (1996), The Right Connections (1997), and the college date rape drama Silencing Mary (1998). Though Hart continued to produce and star in Sabrina, she also attempted to parlay her TV fame into movie stardom with the romantic comedy Drive Me Crazy (1999). The film, however, failed to perform as well as the Britney Spears tune that gave it its title. Hart raised eyebrows that same year when she tried to shed her squeaky-clean adolescent image with a racy photo spread and interview in men's magazine Maxim. Neither gambit affected Sabrina, although Hart and the series moved from the family-oriented ABC lineup to the youth-savvy WB in 2000. She lent her vocal talents to the Batman Beyond series, and continued to work steadily in made-for-TV fare like Rent Control, Holiday in Handcuffs, and My Fake Fiance. In 2010 she teamed up with fellow former child star Joey Lawrence for TV series Melissa & Joey that ran on the ABC Family channel.

Trivia: Handsome and elegant African-American actor Alimi Ballard recalls such contemporaries as the St. Elsewhere-era Denzel Washington and Blair Underwood, but has only gradually begun to draw like stature and acclaim. After cutting his acting chops as a frequent guest star on various U.S. television series for decades, including Loving, NYPD Blue, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Ballard worked his way up to recurring roles in several U.S. television programs around the turn of the millennium. Ballard is perhaps best known for his portrayal of urban philosopher Herbal Thought, who offered wise counsel to bioengineered superhero Max Guevara (Jessica Alba), on the James Cameron-produced apocalyptic actioner Dark Angel (2000), starring Jessica Alba. Ballard procured another regular TV role a few years later, playing Special Agent David Sinclair opposite Rob Morrow and Judd Hirsch in the weekly procedural Numb3rs (2005), a detective program about a brilliant mathematician (David Krumholtz) who helps the feds solve baffling crimes. Ballard also appeared in bit roles in the big-screen films Deep Impact (1998) and Men of Honor (2000).