Trivia: Though his role on what many considered to be the smartest weekly series on television (Sports Night) may have made him a household name in a perfect world, boyish but handsome actor Peter Krause found himself inexplicably unemployed following the show's unfortunately all-too-short run. Born August 12th, 1965, in Alexandria, MN, in 1965, Krause spent his youth immersed heavily in track and field and gymnastics. Following a career-ending high school pole-vaulting injury, Krause took to the stage during his education at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN, on the age-old pretense of meeting a girl. Though he wasn't thrilled with the role he essayed, Krause soon took a shine to acting and decided to pursue a career in New York University's Master of Fine Arts acting program. Working as a bartender with writer Aaron Sorkin at the Palace Theater while living in the city, Krause moved to Los Angeles following graduation and landed television roles in Carol and Company, Beverly Hills 90210, and Seinfeld thanks in part to friend and fellow N.Y.U. student Camryn Manheim. Following a turn on television's Cybill in 1995, Krause got his big feature break with a role in The Truman Show three years later. With his role as a member of a mortistically inclined family in HBO's Six Feet Under, Krause found himself a key member of yet another talented cast on yet another critically praised series.In 2004, Krause portrayed a struggling poet and professor in the critically acclaimed marriage drama We Don't Love Here Anymore, and continued to work on Six Feet Under until the series' powerful conclusion in 2005. Krause returned to television to star in ABC's prime time drama Dirty Sexy Money. The show, which lasted for two seasons between 2007 an 2009, followed Nick George (Krause), a lawyer and family man determined to investigate the circumstances surrounding his father's mysterious death. The actor also appeared in the NBC comedy drama Parenthood, and joined the casat of 2011's edgy fantasy film Beastly.

Trivia: Though New York City residents savvy to the off-Broadway stages may be familiar with actor Michael C. Hall as a result of his roles in nearly a dozen productions including Macbeth, Timon of Athens, and Cymbeline, television viewers are more likely to recognize the Emmy-nominated talent as the proprietor (along with his brother, Nate [Peter Krause]) of the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home on the popular HBO drama Six Feet Under. Born in Raleight, NC, in 1971, Hall graduated from Earlham College before receiving his training as an actor in the NYU Master of Fine Arts acting program. His prowess on the stage led him to appear in off-Broadway productions for The New York Shakespeare Festival, and it wasn't long before he was offered a role on Six Feet Under. Though the show's producers had originally cast Krause in the part, the subsequent difficulty they had in casting the character of Nate eventually found Krause tackling that role, while Hall took on the part of David. Of course, fate has a way of working things out for the best sometimes, and both actors hit their stride in the quirky series, with Hall's multi-layered performance as the closeted David, in particular, lending the show both some of its most poignant moments and some of its most humorous. In 2003, Hall attempted to make the leap to feature films with the John Woo action movie Paycheck, and in 2004, he began work on director Timothy Daly's low-key relationship drama Bereft.Though, with the releases of Paycheck and Bereft, it appeared as if the actor who had thus far achieved the most fame as a closeted funeral director on HBO's Six Feet Under was moving away from television in order to focus on feature work, a return to the small screen in the Showtime crime drama series Dexter found Hall dealing in death on the small screen once again. Cast in the title role of a forensics investigator who secretly moonlights as a serial killer, Hall earned critical acclaim and substantial ratings as he made the transition from playing one who sees that the dearly departed get a respectable send-off to portraying one who helps to keep funeral homes in business.He was the bad guy in the action film Gamer in 2009, and appeared in the indie films Peep World and The Trouble With Bliss. Once Dexter ended in 2013, Hall took the opporunity to take a break from the screen for a while, choosing to return to the stage in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, playing the title role.He was married to his Dexter co-star Jennifer Carpenter from 2008-2011, during which time he survived a bout with cancer.

Trivia: Veteran stage actress Frances Conroy studied drama at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Juilliard School in New York. During the '70s, she performed regularly with regional and touring theater companies, including an off-Broadway production of Othello with Richard Dreyfuss and Raul Julia. One of her first film appearances was as a generic Shakespearean actress in Woody Allen's 1979 classic Manhattan. In 1980, she made her Broadway debut in The Lady From Dubuque. Small roles followed in feature films like the sports drama Amazing Grace and Chuck and the family drama Rocket Gibraltar (as one of Burt Lancaster's daughters). She mainly focused on her stage career for the rest of the '80s, appearing with the Broadway cast of Our Town and receiving several Drama Desk nominations.In 1992, Conroy became friends with famed playwright Arthur Miller. This friendship led to much involvement in his productions, on both stage and screen. During this time, she also appeared on some television shows, miniseries, and made-for-TV movies, and met and married fellow actor Jan Munroe. She was nominated for a Tony Award in 1998 for her work on the Broadway hit Ride Down Mt. Morgan. Like many of her theatrically trained colleagues, she received unexpected attention for the award-winning HBO dramatic series Six Feet Under. For her role of family matriarch Ruth Fisher, she's been recognized by the Screen Actor's Guild, the Golden Globes, and the Emmys. Following small roles in the mainstream Maid in Manhattan and the independent Die Mommie Die, Conroy portrayed legendary actress Katharine Hepburn's mother, Kit, in Martin Scorsese's 2004 Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator.In 2005 she had a small part in the drama Broken Flowers, and appeared in the ill-fated remake of The Wicker Man in 2006. In 2008 she lent her vocal talents to the cast of The Tale of Despereaux and in 2010 she acted with Robert De Niro in the drama Stone. 2011 saw her return to the small screen with a part in American Horror Story.

Trivia: An actress who brings wide-eyed introspection and wry humor to her work, Lauren Ambrose first came to the attention of mainstream audiences with her supporting role as Ethan Embry's reclusive, brainy friend in the teen party flick Can't Hardly Wait (1998). Ambrose, a native of New Haven, Connecticut -- where she attended Rosemary Choate Hall and an arts magnet school -- became involved with acting through her training as a singer. After spending many of her summers studying voice at Massachusetts's prestigious Tanglewood, the aspiring performer branched out in front of the camera, landing supporting work on several episodes of NBC's Law and Order, which cast her as a mentally retarded teen gang-raped by her classmates. She made her big-screen debut as one of Kevin Kline's students in In & Out (1997), and a year later won the role in Can't Hardly Wait. In 2000 Ambrose had a busy year, starring in both the independent drama Swimming and in the screen adaptation of Charles Busch's beloved and bawdy off-Broadway musical Psycho Beach Party. The former featured Ambrose as a teenager dealing with faltering friendships and questions surrounding her own sexuality, while the latter saw her inhabit the role of Chicklet, a teenaged tomboy whose seriously split personality compromises her chances for membership in her high school's in-crowd.Ambrose's notoriety increased significantly in 2001, when she took on the character of Claire on HBO's critically-acclaimed drama series Six Feet Under. The youngest child in a family of funeral-parlor owners, the role led to multiple shared Screen Actors Guild awards for Outstanding Ensemble as well as two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Following Six Feet Under's conclusion in 2005, Ambrose landed a starring role alongside Paul Rudd in the coming-of-age drama Diggers. In 2009 she voiced the character of KW for Spike Jonze's critically acclaimed fantasy drama Where the Wild Things Are. The actress continued to appear in film and television throughout the 2010s, and rejoined Rudd for the 2012 comedy Wanderlust.

Trivia: Injecting both sexy vitality and strong-minded intelligence into every role she plays, Rachel Griffiths is one of the screen's most interesting and unpredictable actresses. Since her breakthrough role as Rhonda in the 1994 Muriel's Wedding, Griffiths -- whose looks recall an off-kilter amalgam of Juliette Lewis and Juliette Binoche -- has earned international appreciation for her work, particularly in the form of the Oscar nomination she received for her performance in Hilary and Jackie (1998). Born in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, on June 4th, 1968, Griffiths grew up in Melbourne with her art consultant mother and two older brothers. A 1990 graduate of Victoria College, where she earned a Bachelor of Education degree in drama and dance, she began her career as a member of Woolly Jumpers, Inc., a community theatre group. She had her first success as the creator and performer of Barbie Gets Hip, which played at the 1991 Melbourne International Film Festival. Griffiths' true breakthrough came courtesy of her film debut in P.J. Hogan's sleeper hit Muriel's Wedding. As the fast-living best friend of the film's titular heroine (Toni Collette), Griffiths gave a scene-stealing performance that earned her both the Australian Film Critics Award and the Australian Film Institute Award for best supporting actress. She followed this triumph in 1996 with a drastically different role, that of the earthy, ill-mannered pig farmer wife of the titular protagonist (Christopher Eccleston) in Michael Winterbottom's Jude. After returning to Australia to star in two back-to-back comedies, Cosi (which had Griffiths sharing the screen with Muriel co-star Collette) and Children of the Revolution (both 1996), Griffiths re-teamed with director Hogan for a supporting role in My Best Friend's Wedding (1997). Her first major Hollywood film, it overshadowed her starring role in that same year's My Son the Fanatic, a romantic comedy that featured the actress in a tough, dynamic portrayal of a London prostitute who becomes involved with a Pakistani taxi driver (Om Puri). Griffiths finally earned overdue recognition with her portrayal of the real life Hilary Du Pre, sister of famed cellist Jaqueline Du Pre, in Hilary and Jackie (1998). Cast opposite Emily Watson as Jackie, she gave a strong, understated performance and more than managed to hold her own against the prodigiously talented Watson, whose own performance was tremendously vibrant and forceful. The two actresses complemented one another so perfectly that they both earned Oscar nominations, Watson for Best Actress and Griffiths for Best Supporting Actress.Griffiths found further success as the first-time director of Tulip, a short film about a man's readjustment to life after his wife's death. The film earned awards at a number of international film festivals and established Griffiths as a promising filmmaker. However, she quickly returned to working on the other side of the camera, starring in such little-seen films as Among Giants (1998), a romantic drama in which she played an Australian hitchhiker who finds adventure in the wilds of Sheffield. Back in Australia, Griffiths won lavish acclaim for her role in Me Myself I (1999), in which she starred as a young woman who gets the opportunity to experience her own life in a parallel universe. Although the film came in for decidedly mixed reviews, critics were almost unanimous in their agreement over the strength of Griffiths' performance. The following year she could be seen in Blow Dry, a British comedy about two competing hair salons that featured her as a salon owner who becomes romantically involved with the ex- wife (Natasha Richardson) of her business rival.Turning up opposite Johnny Depp in Blow the same year, Griffiths' rise to international stardom continued it's ascent as she took home the Best Supporting Actress in a television series award for her role in HBO's Six Feet Under. Although her career has assumed international proportions, Griffiths has remained involved with the arts and politics of her native country. In addition to her continued work in the Australian theatre and television, she has earned a reputation for her stance in Melbourne politics: in 1997, in protest of the development of a casino in one of Melbourne's neighborhoods, she stood outside of the casino wearing only a loincloth and a banner reading "Need Not Greed," before dropping the banner and baring her chest to a crowd of enthusiastic onlookers and disgruntled policemen.Griffiths was praised for her role in the Australian family drama Deluge in 2003, and continued her role in Six Feet Under until the show concluded after five seasons. The actress went a different direction in 2006, when she played a strong, yet compassionate mentor to a street smart dancer in Step Up. Griffiths returned to the television screen during 2006 and 2007 for a lead role in ABC's family drama Brothers & Sisters.

Trivia: Born in the Windy City on January 17, 1975, the prolific Puerto Rican-American thespian Freddy Rodriguez cut his acting chops at Chicago's Lincoln Park High School, where he headlined a number of time-worn stage classics, including The Crucible, Twelve Angry Men, and To Kill a Mockingbird. He married his high school sweetheart, Elsie, and slid effortlessly into a cinematic career soon after graduation, taking his first official onscreen bow at the age of 19, as the younger version of Billy Wirth's prison parolee Terry Griff in the sobering and gritty 1994 drama The Fence. That feature lacked wide distribution and slipped by many, but no matter, for two highly coveted spots in A-list features followed the next year. Rodriguez portrayed Anthony Quinn's son, Pedro Aragon, Jr., in Alfonso Arau's lush 1995 romantic melodrama A Walk in the Clouds, and Vietnam vet Jose in The Hughes Bros.' period piece Dead Presidents, the Menace II Society follow-up about a young African-American man who drifts casually into a crime-infested life in the late '60s.Countless spots in films of equal weight followed, including Can't Hardly Wait (1998), Payback (1999), and Chasing Papi (2001), but Rodriguez made his most enduring mark on the small screen, where he became a familiar face on a number of hit series. He appeared in three 1999 episodes of Party of Five, as Albert, the man who mugs Sarah and later rips her off, despite her vain attempts to befriend him. The spot was short-lived, but productive; the added exposure eventually led to Rodriguez's most prominent role. He entered the mind's eye of cable devotees everywhere by becoming a permanent fixture on the HBO/Alan Ball production Six Feet Under, a jet-black comic series about the Fisher family, proprietors of a Los Angeles mortuary. As Federico Diaz, a gentle, emotionally sensitive mortician-cum-partner, Rodriguez proved popular with audiences and helped to sustain the series throughout its five-year run. He followed this up with yet another minor role, on the Emmy-award winning NBC series Scrubs, as Nurse Carla Espinosa's (Judy Reyes) brother. The part entailed only fleeting, intermittent appearances, but left a memorable impression nonetheless.Rodriguez temporarily reemphasized his silver screen work beginning in 2006, with tertiary roles in several prominent features. These include Valentin in Poseidon (2006), Wolfgang Petersen's disappointing remake of the 1972 Irwin Allen disaster pic The Poseidon Adventure; Reggie, a character restricted to only using half of his body, in M. Night Shyamalan's seventh feature, Lady in the Water; and a fleeting role as Jose in Bobby, Emilio Estevez's docudrama on the assassination of presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan in 1968.In 2007, Rodriguez returned to television in a recurring role as sandwich vendor Giovanni "Gio" Rossi on the enormously popular Ugly Betty. He stayed on with the show into its third season in 2008, while also starring in and executive producing the holiday comedy Nothing Like the Holidays. Regular television work continued with a featured role on the short-lived CBS series Chaos and voice work on the animated sci-fi series Generator Rex.

Trivia: Handsome and genial African-American player Mathew St. Patrick found fame among pay-cable aficionados in the early 2000s, with his portrayal of Keith, the gay lover-turned-husband of mortician David (Michael C. Hall) on the HBO original series Six Feet Under. Following the end of that series, St. Patrick took on a regular role as Detective Kenneth Marjorino on the short-lived mystery drama series Reunion on the Fox network. He achieved his next major dramatic coup by essaying the small part of Special Agent Wick in the crime-tinged actioner War (2007) -- a big-screen feature about an FBI agent (Jet Li) who sets out to gain revenge for the death of his family and ends up caught in a war between a triad and the yakuza.

Trivia: A performer whose onscreen activity peaked in the 2000s, Puerto Rican-American actress Justina Machado specialized in portrayals of mature and professional Latina types, often with a pronounced maternal quality and a sexy edge. Early assignments consisted of bit roles in the Nick Cassavetes-directed drama She's So Lovely and the Steven Spielberg epic fantasy A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, as well as guest spots on such series as ER, Angel, and Touched by an Angel, though Machado only rose to fame courtesy of her portrayal of Vanessa Diaz, the wife of mortician Rico (Freddy Rodriguez), on the HBO drama Six Feet Under. In 2007, Machado appeared in a supporting role as Sophia, under the aegis of director Griffin Dunne, in the romantic comedy The Accidental Husband.

Trivia: Long-time character actor James Cromwell has spent much of his career on stage and television, only occasionally appearing in feature films until the early '90s, when his film work began to flourish. The tall, spare actor first became known to an international audience with his role as the taciturn but kindly Farmer Hoggett, the owner of a piglet that wants to be a sheepdog, in the smash hit Babe (1995). His work in the film earned Cromwell an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, as well as numerous opportunities for steady work in Hollywood.The son of noted director John Cromwell and actress Kay Johnson, he originally aspired to become a mechanical engineer, attending both Vermont's Middlebury College and the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). But after a summer spent on a movie set with his father, the acting bug bit, and Cromwell decided to become an actor. He started out in regional theater, acting and directing in a variety productions for ten years, and he was a regular performer at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Cromwell made his television debut in the recurring role of "Stretch" Cunningham on All in the Family in 1974, and he subsequently spent the rest of the decade and much of the 1980s on television, as a regular on such shows as Hot L Baltimore and The Last Precinct. Cromwell also appeared in such miniseries as NBC's Once an Eagle and in such made-for-television movies as A Christmas Without Snow (1980). Cromwell made his feature film debut in the comedy Murder By Death (1976). His film work was largely undistinguished until Babe; following the film's success, he began appearing in more substantial roles in a number of popular films, including The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996), in which he played Charles Keating; Star Trek: First Contact (1996), which cast him as the reluctant scientist responsible for Earth's first contact with alien life forms; and L.A. Confidential (1997), in which he gave a marvelously loathsome performance as a crooked police captain. Adept at playing nice guys and bottom-dwelling scum alike, Cromwell next earned strong notices for his portrayal of a penitentiary warden in The Green Mile (1999).The respected character actor continued strongly into the next decade with appearances in Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys as well as the live-on-TV production of Fail Safe in 2000. He enjoyed a recurring role on E.R. in 2001. He played the president in the 2002 Jack Ryan movie The Sum of All Fears. In 2003 he took on a recurring role in the respected HBO drama Six Feet Under, and also appeared in the award-winning HBO adaptation of Angels in America. In 2006 he acted opposite Helen Mirren playing Prince Philip in The Queen, and played another head of state for Oliver Stone when he portrayed George Herbert Walker Bush in the biopic W. In 2011 he was the loyal butler to the main character in the Best Picture Oscar winner for that year, The Artist.

Trivia: With film roles ranging from his portrayal of a psychotic satanic killer (Hideaway [1995]) to Jesus (1999), one would not be hard-pressed to give actor Jeremy Sisto the credit of having a fairly impressive range of dramatic abilities. Born in Northern California, Sisto spent his early years living in the rock-built home his parents had made in the lower Sierra Nevada Mountains. Sisto would gain his earliest experiences as an actor after moving to Chicago with his mother and sister (Reedy Gibbs and Meadow Sisto, also actors) at the age of six. Jeremy and Meadow's turn as specters in the Goodman Theater's adaptation of Tennessee William's House Not Meant to Stand earned the young thespians positive notice, and led to theater work with such other Windy City institutions as the Absolute Theater Company and the Cherry Street Theater. After constant auditioning and small roles in commercials and industrial films, Sisto's breakthrough came with his being cast in Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon (1991) after a deceptively discouraging audition. Returning to Chicago to finish school after wrapping up Grand Canyon in Los Angeles, Sisto constantly auditioned and played small roles in theater and independent films before moving to L.A. and finding roles in Clueless (1995) and White Squall (1996). A busy actor in the later '90s, Sisto appeared in the infamous Don's Plum (1998) before his role in the television mini-series The 60s and Jesus (both 1999). The next year Sisto would follow-up as a troubled young filmmaker coming to grips with the death of his wife in This Space Between Us, and with Angel Eyes, a mysterious tale of fate and urban isolation starring Jennifer Lopez.Subsequent roles in Lucky McKee's well-received feature debut May, the popular backwoods slasher flick Wrong Turn, and the 2004 horror-comedy Dead and Breakfast served well to increase Sisto's street credibility among genre buffs, but when he wasn't running from inbred killers in the forest or falling under the spell of mentally disturbed waifs, Sisto was gaining positive notice for his role as a delusional man who believes his life is the subject of a film in Movie Hero, and returning to the small screen in shows like the hit crime drama Law & Order or the ABC comedy Suburgatory.

Trivia: After one year in college as an art major Cassidy dropped out and got married, but the marriage didn't last. She moved to San Francisco and worked successfully as a model; she also appeared briefly in two films shot there, Bullitt (1968) and Fools (1970), then went four years without another screen role, meanwhile finding some work in TV commercials. Her first significant screen appearance was in a small role in the San Francisco police drama The Laughing Policeman (1974), which led to work in two more films that year; in the second of these, Bank Shot (1974), she got her first prominent billing. Cassidy had many unmemorable roles over the next few years, finally making an impression in a successful film with Blade Runner (1982); after that she got better roles in better films, but has yet to become a widely known screen actress.

Trivia: First rising to fame for her deadpan performance as receptionist Pam Beesly on NBC's The Office, Jenna Fischer was born in Indiana and spent the first several years of her career primarily appearing in bit parts in small indie films and guest spots on TV shows.In 2000, while auditioning for what would be one of her first onscreen jobs, Fischer met filmmaker James Gunn. Not only did she land a small role in the film, she and Gunn were subsuquently married for eight years. In 2004, they collaborated on the satirical mockumentary LolliLove, which saw Fischer directing and the couple co-writing and starring together. But it was in 2005 when Fischer's career truly took off. Cast as Pam on the U.S. adaptation of the acclaimed Britcom The Office, Fischer soon found herself perhaps the most beloved cast member of one of the country's most popular television shows. She was even named to People's 50 Most Beautiful People. Fischer would parlay her TV fame into a movie career as well, appearing in a number of comedies, like Blades of Glory, The Brothers Solomon, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, A Little Help, Hall Pass, and more.

Trivia: After earning a degree from the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, actor Rhys Coiro began cultivating a successful stage career, appearing in the Second Stage Theatre production of Boys' Life in New York. Soon, Coiro caught his first big break in on-screen acting, snagging the role of Billy Walsh on the HBO series Entourage, and later playing the role of Sean Hillinger on 24.

Trivia: After a series of supporting roles in productions including The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), Just My Luck (2006), and Smokin' Aces (2007), actor Chris Pine shot up to lead billing when he signed for the coveted lead part of Captain Kirk in J.J. Abrams' much-anticipated reboot of the Star Trek franchise, released in 2009. He followed up that smash hit playing opposite Denzel Washington and a runaway train in Unstoppable. In 2011 he participated in the Star Trek documentary The Captains, and the next year he was in the romantic comedy This Means War, and the drama People Like Us.

Trivia: As the eldest member of the Cusack acting dynasty -- the sister of John, Joan, Susie, and Bill Cusack -- Ann Cusack was raised, like her siblings, in the affluent Chicago suburb of Evanston, but achieved fame and success as a comedic actress somewhat later than the others. Born in 1961, Cusack received her formal education at the Piven Theater Workshop (studying basic improvisation with Joyce and Byrne Piven) and later at New York University's Tisch School for the Arts, where she studied dramatic performance under the aegis of the legendary playwright and theatrical and film director David Mamet. Cusack landed her premier feature-film role at the age of 30, as Shirley Baker, a WWII-era baseball player with a more than slight illiteracy problem, in Penny Marshall's summer 1992 comedy A League of Their Own (alongside Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, and Rosie O'Donnell). In the process, Cusack imparted to the film some of its biggest and most unanticipated laughs -- no mean feat, given that cast.The turn did not go unnoticed, and parts rolled in steadily for the remainder of the 1990s and into the 2000s. The characterizations began small, with low billing -- such as that of a waitress in Harold Becker's poorly received 1993 thriller Malice, and that of a TV woman in Mike Nichols' 1996 La Cage aux Folles redo The Birdcage. Not long after, however, Cusack received her highest television billing (up through that time) when cast as Karen Foxworthy, TV wife and second-string to redneck-obsessed comedian Jeff Foxworthy, in the second season (1996-1997) of the short-lived sitcom The Jeff Foxworthy Show. Unfortunately, the show folded in 1997.The parts continued unabated, however, in films of varying reception. Cusack teamed up with her brothers John and Bill and sister Joan, as well as Dan Aykroyd and Minnie Driver, in the sadly overlooked dark comedy Grosse Pointe Blank (1997, a work that John co-produced and co-scripted). Ann fared worse (as did the entire cast) by signing on for a re-team with director Mike Nichols in that helmer's 2000 turkey What Planet Are You From?, starring Annette Bening and Garry Shandling. Cusack then made intermittent appearances on such series programs as Charmed and Frasier during the late '90s and early 2000s. In 2006, Cusack essayed the supporting role of Deanna in Aaron Wiederspahn's The Sensation of Sight (2006), a moody, evocative drama (and festival cause célèbre) about a dissatisfied middle-class man (David Strathairn) who drops out of his life and takes a job selling encyclopedias.

Trivia: One of the most versatile actresses working in film today, Lili Taylor is known for taking on complex, thorny roles that many of her more glamorous colleagues avoid. In the 1990s, she became a staple of the independent film circuit, turning in one engaging performance after another in films like The Addiction (1995), Girls Town (1996), and Pecker (1998). A native of Glencoe, IL, where she was born on February 20, 1967, Taylor was raised in a comfortable middle-class household as the second youngest of six children. She started acting in grade school and briefly attended DePaul University's Goodman Theater School before launching her professional career in local and regional theater. She acted for a time with Evanston's Piven Theater, performing in the company of such future notables as John Cusack, Aidan Quinn, and Jeremy Piven. In 1987, she spent a season on-stage in Czechoslovakia, returning stateside the following year to make her New York City stage debut in a production of What Did He See? That same year, Taylor ventured into feature films with a bit part in the John Hughes comedy She's Having a Baby. Though the role brought Taylor little recognition, she scored big with her sophomore effort, a starring role in Mystic Pizza (1988) as one of three amorous pizzeria girls (the other two were Julia Roberts and Annabeth Gish) working in a small Connecticut coastal town. More recognition followed for Say Anything... (1989), in which Taylor played John Cusack's hilariously obsessive best friend; she continued to shine in films like Bright Angel (1991), in which she was cast as the drifter sister of a jailbird, and in Dogfight (1991), in which she was the obligatory "ugly duckling" who both transformed and was transformed by her reluctant date, River Phoenix. From the late '80s through the 1990s, Taylor proved to be a willing and able ensemble player in the works of several respected directors: Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Nancy Savoca's Household Saints (1993), Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), and Alan Rudolph's Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994). She also did notable work in independent films, starring in Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995); Girls Town (1996), a drama about four high school girls trying to cope with everyday hardship, for which she also co-wrote the screenplay; and I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), which cast her in one of her most memorable roles as the mad, murderous Valerie Solanas. In 1998, Taylor played the uncharacteristically glamorous role of an art dealer who tries to seduce the young hero of John Waters' Pecker, and also tried her hand at screwball comedy with Stanley Tucci's The Imposters. Having demonstrated her range in a number of genres, Taylor then took on big-budget horror in 1999 with her starring role in Jan de Bont's The Haunting. However, staying true to her indie loyalties, she could also be seen playing an ordinary woman who begins to lead an extraordinary life in Toni Kalem's adaptation of Anne Tyler's A Slipping Down Life, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of that year.As the new century began Taylor could be seen alongside her old co-star John Cusack in High Fidelity, and in 2001 she tackled the historical role of Miep Gies in a retelling of Anne Frank. She had a memorable role on the HBO series Six Feet Under. She continued to work steadily in diverse projects such as The Secret, Starting Out in the Evening, Brooklyn's Finest, Public Enemies, and Being Flynn.

Trivia: A balding supporting actor with a grin that suggests he knows something you don't, Richard Jenkins has become one of the most in-demand character actors in Hollywood. Though he has worked steadily since the early '80s, Jenkins may have made his most memorable impression, at least to HBO subscribers, as the patriarch of the family of undertakers on the hit 2001 drama Six Feet Under. His character was killed off in the first episode, but Jenkins continued to appear as a spirit lingering in the family's memory -- a good metaphor for the actor's lingering impact on viewers, even when he appears in small roles.Jenkins, who shares the birth name of Richard Burton and sometimes appears as Richard E. Jenkins, was born and raised in Dekalb, IL, before studying theater at Illinois Wesleyan University. The actor developed a long and distinguished regional theater career, most notably a 15-year stint at Rhode Island's Trinity Repertory Theater, where he served as artistic director for four years. He snagged his first role as early as 1975, in the TV movie Brother to Dragons, but did not begin working regularly until a small role in the Lawrence Kasdan film Silverado (1985). Supporting work in such films as Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), and Sea of Love (1989) followed, and Jenkins spent the early '90s specializing in made-for-TV movies, including the adaptation of Randy Shilts' AIDS opus And the Band Played On (1993).It was not until the late '90s that Jenkins started gaining wider appreciation, especially as he indulged in his talent for comedy. His appearance as an uptight gay FBI agent who gets accidentally drugged was one of the highlights of David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster (1996), allowing him to convincingly (and riotously) act out an acid trip. Working again with Ben Stiller, Jenkins appeared as a psychiatrist in There's Something About Mary (1998), which launched a relationship with directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly, who hail from the state (Rhode Island) where Jenkins did much of his stage work. Jenkins appeared in the Farrelly-produced Outside Providence (1999) and Say It Isn't So (2001), as well as in the Farrelly-directed Me, Myself & Irene (2000). The actor then shifted over to another set of brother directors to portray the father of Scarlet Johansson's character in Joel and Ethan Coen's noir The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). In 2001, Jenkins also appeared in the first season of HBO's Six Feet Under as Nathaniel Fisher Sr., the sardonic funeral home director whom the characters remember as an impenetrable mystery, frugal with his praise and emotions.Jenkins continued working steadily, carrying on his role on Six Feet Under, while turning in supporting work in varied projects like Changing Lanes, Shall We Dance, and Fun With Dick & Jane. With 2005's North Country he earned strong reviews as the father of a sexually harassed woman. After decades in the business, he won his first starring role in Tom McCarthy's The Visitor. For his work as the repressed professor who learns to engage in life again thanks to an unexpected friendship with a Syrian immigrant, Jenkins earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, as well as a SAG nomination. That film was the highlight of his 2008, a very busy year for the actor that also saw him reunite for a third time with the Coen Brothers in Burn After Reading, and play opposite Will Ferrell and John C. Riley in Step Brothers. The coming years would continue to earn the actor both a wider audience and more accolades, in projects like Burn After Reading, Let Me In, The Rum Diary, and The Cabin in the Woods.