Trivia: Began modeling at age 14; career took off after winning a Mossimo clothing model-search contest in 1999. Sang in Europe with the Kentucky Ambassadors of Music, a 200-member band and chorus composed of high-school students. Signed with Eileen Ford modeling agency in 2001. Was a series regular on Quintuplets (2004-5), 7th Heaven (2006-7) and The Loop (2007). Starred in the 2006 made-for-MTV volleyball comedy All You've Got.

Trivia: Actor Caleb Landry Jones made his film debut as a boy on a bicycle in the 2007 Cohen Brothers thriller No Country for Old Men. He soon moved on to more prominent roles, however, with appearances in 2010's The Last Exorcism and Friday Night Lights. Growing into steadily more mature characters throughout the coming years, Jones soon found himself acting alongside cinematic heavyweights, such as Mark Wahlberg in 2012's Contraband.

Trivia: Hispanic-American character player Benito Martinez evinced laudable diversity, both in his choice of acting mediums and in his choice of genres. A New Mexico native, Martinez moved to Southern California as a youth and enrolled in the famous Hollywood High's Performing Arts Magnet, then opted to pursue theatrical work in lieu of film and moved to England after graduation. In that locale, Martinez studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and received classical training, professionally exercised in such venues as Joseph Papp's Public Theater, the World Shakespeare Theater Festival, and the Arizona Theater Company.Martinez returned to America and commenced film work in the early 2000s, with guest-starring roles on series programs including American Family, Monk, Numb3rs, and NYPD Blue. He developed his most enduring reputation, however, with an ongoing, multiseason portrayal of the scheming and manipulative Councilman Aceveda on FX network's smash cop drama The Shield. The actor remained with the program from the beginning of its run (ca. 2002) through its final season (2008-2009). His résumé also includes supporting roles in such feature outings as the slasher opus Saw (2004) and the inspirational sports drama Million Dollar Baby (2004).

Trivia: Took a theater class at Mercer University because he needed to take an elective class.Worked as a prosecutor in Washington, D.C.A car accident made him decide to change his career path from politics to acting.Is an skilled motorcyclist.Founder and executive producer of Fort Argyle Films.Founder and teacher at Savannah Actors Studio.

Trivia: Danced for the Joffrey Ballet during her childhood. Studied Chinese at Vassar College and intended to be a translator before opting to become an actress. Starred in the Funny or Die online sitcom Halal in the Family alongside Aasif Mandvi. Was a passenger on the Amtrak train that crashed in Philadelphia on May 12, 2015.

Trivia: Kal Penn qualifies as one of the very few Indian-American actors of Gujarati heritage working in Hollywood. He was born Kalpen Suresh Modi on April 23, 1977, in Montclair, NJ, to an engineer father and a mother employed as a fragrance sampler for a perfume manufacturer. Modi bravely and intelligently cut against the grain of social expectations as a child, rejecting the prompting of his peers to join the soccer team, and instead joining the school drama team. Though allegedly mocked by classmates for his decision, Penn changed everyone's mind with his performance in a school production of The Wiz, and received a standing ovation for his work in that production -- no mean accomplishment for a beginner. During elementary school and junior high, Modi felt struck, again and again, by the crass Indian stereotypes perpetuated in Hollywood films, specifically in movies such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and 1986's Short Circuit, in which Caucasian actor Fisher Stevens plays the Indian-American Ben Jabituya for comic relief. Quietly vowing to work against this trend, Modi actually spent years attaining the box-office clout to make it happen. After his secondary school education (first at New Jersey's Howell High, then at Freehold Township High), Modi trained intensely as a dramatist on the Manhattan theatrical circuit, then attended UCLA as a drama major in the mid-'90s, and simultaneously started to land television parts right and left, in such series as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, and Spin City. At about that time, he took the advice of friends and family, and -- though initially reluctant to do so -- anglicized his name, changing it to Kal Penn. As a result, he later reported, job offers escalated by 50 percent.Penn made his feature debut coming in the 1999 culture-clash drama Freshmen. A supporting role in the independent romantic comedy American Desi (2001) quickly followed -- ironically, an exploration of race and identity, about an Indian-American boy, Krishna (Deep Katdare), who moves away from home and changes his name to Kris to disguise his ethnicity, but finds himself saddled with several roommates of like heritage. Penn plays Ajay, an Indian student who has immersed himself in black ("Afrocentric") behavior. The film received extremely limited U.S. theatrical bookings in the spring of 2001 and fair reviews from the critics who saw it. Penn then jointed the cast of the Animal House-cloned gross-out farce National Lampoon's Van Wilder (2002), about a seventh-year senior (Ryan Reynolds) threatened by his father's (Tim Matheson) decision to cut off his seemingly unlimited allowance. Widely drubbed as unfunny, the picture did embarrassing box office and opened and closed in one month, but its A-list issue nonetheless gave Penn (who plays Van's Indian friend, Taj Mahal Badalandabad) with his highest-profile exposure to date. Penn's onscreen activity escalated meteorically from 2003 through 2006, with the young actor averaging around seven or eight first-run features per year, and ascending to higher and higher credit billings. Most notably, he co-starred as Kumar (alongside fellow Gen-Xer John Cho) in 2004's stoner comedy Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, a surprise sleeper hit (and recipient of many enthusiastic notices) about two buddies, an Asian-American banker and an Indian-American medical student, whose unstoppable quest to find some White Castle hamburgers gives way to an epic road trip. Penn also delivered a brief supporting turn as Stanford, a henchman of Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) in 2006's Superman Returns. Meanwhile, Penn made an indelible impression on the small screen as well, as Harrison in the 2004 NBC 9/11 NBC drama Homeland Security. Penn was less effective in the ill-advised 2006 sequel National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, an installment that -- per its title -- finds Penn's Taj Mahal Badalandabad carrying Van's off-the-wall hijinks to Camden University in England. Penn subsequently signed on for an additional sequel, 2007's Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, which finds the boys of the title mistaken for terrorists when they attempt to slip a bong aboard a flight to Amsterdam. That same year, Penn would headline Epic Movie, a massively scaled attempt to "send up" the Hollywood fantasy epic, Airplane! style,and join the cast of Fox's hit series thriller 24, during its sixth season. A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas followed in 2011, with concurrent roles in television's How I Met Your Mother and House guaranteeing continued small screen exposure between big screen outings.