Trivia: Brittany Murphy first came to the attention of film audiences as Tai, one of Alicia Silverstone's airhead friends, in the 1995 comedy Clueless. Though convincing as a dim-bulb character, Murphy cuts dramatically against this grain off-camera, as a ferociously intelligent and ambitious young performer who had acting in her blood from early childhood. As a teenager and young adult, she gave expression to the scope of her talent and versatility with a series of engaging film and television roles.Born in Atlanta on November 10, 1977, Murphy was raised by her single mother in Edison, New Jersey; she later indicated, in interviews, that her mom struggled financially - that they were forced to eat spaghetti night after night, and that on certain occasions, she had to beg her mother to buy clothes at KMart; this would later account for Murphy's marked social investment in homeless causes, as discussed in a February 2003 Glamour article.A precocious child who began putting on shows when she was a toddler, Murphy was acting in regional theatre productions by the age of nine. Work in various commercials followed, and in 1990 she landed her first television appearance at the age of twelve, on the sitcom Blossom. She also secured a supporting role as Brenda Drexell, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Dabney Coleman's fifth grade teacher Otis Drexell, on the (mercifully) short-lived 1991 FOX sitcom Drexell's Class. The following year, Murphy took her first cinematic bow in the dysfunctional family drama Family Prayers. Murphy's talent for portraying, dramatically, all degrees on the spectrum of behavioral dysfunction further came to light in three successive projects through 1999: the blackly comic Reese Witherspoon trailer trash odyssey Freeway (1996) (as a disfigured lesbian who befriends Witherspoon's Vanessa); a mental patient in Lloyd Kramer's made-for-TV David and Lisa (1998), and James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted (1999) (as yet another resident at a mental institution).Meanwhile, on a less ambitious (albeit more whimsical) note, Murphy also became a fixtureon King of the Hill, Mike Judge's long-running contemporary cartoon of suburban life in the southern U.S., as Luanne Platter, the hair stylist niece who comes to live with Hank Hill's family. Murphy kept a full plate as the millennium wrapped. In addition to her work for Mangold in 1999,she also explored the collective insanity of the beauty pageant world in Drop Dead Gorgeous, while on the small screen, she covered much darker thematic ground with the well-received Holocaust drama The Devil's Arithmetic (also 1999). In 2001, Murphy appeared in the Michael Douglas thriller Don't Say a Word, and alongside Drew Barrymore in Riding in Cars With Boys.Cast opposite Eminem in director Curtis Hanson's 2002 drama 8 Mile, Murphy performed compellingly as an aspiring rap star's unapologetic muse; in 2004, Murphy headlined Nick Hurran's thoroughly disappointing rom-com Little Black Book. She also made a splash in Robert Rodriguez's innovative graphic novel adaptation Sin City, as the arrogant waitress who becomes the prize in a heated rivalry between Benicio del Toro and Clive Owen. Murphy made appearances in four features in 2006. In Alex Keshishian's progressive romantic comedy Love and Other Disasters, she played a London-based American expatriate, employed at Vogue, who tries to fix up her gay roommate; in Ed Burns's sixth directorial outing, the Big Chill-like romantic comedy The Groomsmen, she played the expectant girlfriend of Burns's Paulie. She also portrayed a member of the ensemble in Karen Moncrieff's murder mystery The Dead Girl, about a group of seemingly disconnected individuals whose lives intersect as a girl's murderer comes to light, and one of the lead voices in George "Babe" Miller's Happy Feet, an animated penguin tale.Murphy's appearance alongside Ashton Kutcher in Just Married was - to some degree - a case of art imitating life: offscreen, Murphy and Kutcher began to date as well (and became a hot tabloid item), though unlike their onscreen counterparts, they never wed.In the several years that followed, Murphy remained active, both in front of and behind the camera; she lent her voice to the CG-animated George Miller comedy Happy Feet (2006), and starred in and produced a Robert Allan Ackerman directed comedy-drama, The Ramen Girl, that suggested tremendous promise (though it went straight to home video). Murphy also starred in a made-for-television movie on the Lifetime network, Nora Roberts' Tribute (2009). That marked the end of her career, however: the actress's life was tragically cut short when she died in December 2009 at the age of 32.

Trivia: Kicking off an impressive career in front of the camera at the tender age of five, it was a mere three years later that actress Dakota Fanning would become the youngest person ever to be nominated for a Screen Actor's Guild Award for her role in the Sean Penn drama I Am Sam. She subsequently appeared in such efforts as Sweet Home Alabama (2002) and director Steven Spielberg's sci-fi miniseries Taken. A Conyers, GA, native whose acting abilities became apparent when, at the age of three, she acted out the entire process of pregnancy and childbirth (with her younger sister Elle substituting for the newborn baby) to her amused parents. Advised by an agent to take their daughter to Los Angeles, it wasn't long before young Fanning was cast in a commercial for Tide detergent. Television appearances in ER and Ally McBeal were quick to follow, and in 2001 she made her feature debut in the comedy Tomcats. Though the film was only seen by an unlucky few, her role in the same year's I Am Sam was a wide release that found the adorable young starlet a solid fan base. Later alternating between television and film with features such as Trapped and roles on such high-profile series as Spin City and Malcolm in the Middle, her part opposite Brittany Murphy in the 2003 comedy Uptown Girls found the precocious youngster playing well off of her older co-star. In 2003 Fanning could be spotted in The Cat in the Hat, and it wasn't long before she was gearing up to appear alongside Denzel Washington and Christopher Walken in the Tony Scott thriller Man on Fire.As the 2000's continued to unfold, Fanning appeared in a number of films, like Hide and Seek, War of the Worlds, and The Secret Life of Bees. By the time the actress was 16, she was playing legendary girl-band member Cherie Currie in The Runaways, setting the stage for adult roles to comes.

Trivia: An actress whose fresh-faced girl-next-door beauty has adapted easily to both comic and dramatic roles, Marley Shelton was born in southern California on April 12, 1974. Her mother was a schoolteacher who dabbled in acting while her father worked as a director for film, television, and the stage. During her high-school days, Shelton was a member of the cheerleading squad and was named prom queen in her senior year. She began to develop an interest in acting, and in 1991 won her first film role, a slam supporting part in Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon. In the next two years, Shelton made a few appearances on episodic television and appeared in the made-for-TV movie In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco, but it was in 1993's The Sandlot that she made her first real impression on the big screen as Wendy, the lust-inducing teenage lifeguard. That same year, Shelton earned a recurring role on the dramatic television series Angel Falls, alongside fellow cast members Jean Simmons, Shirley Knight, Peggy Lipton, and James Brolin, but the show only lasted one season. More television work followed, including key roles in several made-for-TV movies and appearances on Hercules and the revived Fantasy Island, before Shelton's film career began to take hold. She played Tricia Nixon in Oliver Stone's biopic Nixon and a beautiful but fickle teenager in the little-seen comedy Trojan War, but her first major hit came in 1998 with Pleasantville, in which she played Margaret, the love interest of leading man Tobey Maguire (and one of the first teens to become "colorful"). In 1999, she played Kristin, one of the "popular girls" in Never Been Kissed, and two years later scored her first leading role, in which she got to put her cheerleading skills to use as Diane, the pep-squad girl-turned-teenage mother and criminal in Sugar & Spice. Offscreen, in 2001, Shelton married television and movie producer Beau Flynn, who helped cast her as Chloe, the beautiful girl next door in the comedy Bubble Boy.In the following few years, Shelton's onscreen career seemed to plateau somewhat when a variety of indie projects including Just a Kiss, Dallas 362, Grand Theft Parsons, and Moving Alan -- directed by her father, Christopher, and starring her sister Samantha -- failed to achieve mainstream success. Nevertheless the actress remained busy, and it was shortly after appearing in a failed updating of the once-popular gothic soap opera Dark Shadows that Shelton landed the role which, however small, seems to have been a turning point in her career. Though her role opposite Josh Hartnett in Robert Rodriguez's violent comic-book adaptation Sin City amounted to little more than a glorified cameo, it did provide wide-scale exposure in addition to connecting her with one of the most innovative and tireless filmmakers of his generation. Subsequent roles in Wim Wenders' Don't Come Knocking, Paul Weitz's American Dreamz, and the Paul Haggis-scripted The Last Kiss were quick to follow, and in 2007, Shelton reunited with Sin City director Rodriguez for a substantial role in "Planet Terror" -- Rodriguez' zombie-filled contribution to the ambitious double-feature throwback Grindhouse. Shelton would go on to appear in films like W. and Scream 4, as well as on the TV series Eleventh Hour.

Trivia: Blonde and buoyant actress Heather Locklear had the distinction of co-starring simultaneously in two weekly series within a year of her 1981 TV debut. Locklear played Steven Carrington's long-suffering wife Sammy Jo on Dynasty, then went down the block to essay the role of ever-imperiled lady cop Stacy Sheridan on T.J. Hooker. Since that time, Locklear has made several efforts to establish herself as a comedienne, ranging from a forgettable sitcom to her wiselipped heroine in Return of the Swamp Thing (1991). Far better at inducing feminine envy than laughs, Locklear was later seen as elegant villainess Amanda Woodward, on the Fox Network series Melrose Place, a show she is credited as saving from cancellation with her sexy but catty performance. Numerous television roles followed -- including appearances in Two and a Half Men, Boston Legal, and Hannah Montana -- and in 2009 Locklear returned to the character of Amanda Woodward in the shortlived Melrose Place revival series. When not participating in series television, Locklear has functioned as spokesperson for the Health and Tennis Corporation of America. Locklear was for several years married to rock star Tommy Lee; after their breakup she wed yet another rocker, Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora. Lee in turn married another blonde TV icon, Baywatch star Pamela Anderson.

Trivia: Comedic actor Donald Faison began his acting career with bit parts in gritty urban dramas like Juice and Sugar Hill before breaking through with a supporting role in the hit 1995 comedy Clueless. A year later, he was one of the few cast members to make the leap to the film's TV spin-off and stuck with the show throughout its three-year run. After Clueless bowed, Faison wasted little time before joining the cast of the popular drama Felicity. But it was in 2001 that he would land his most noteworthy role, that of surgeon Dr. Christopher Turk on the hit NBC medical-sitcom Scrubs. When Scrubs ended in 2010, Faison immediately jumped to another show, the TV Land sitcom The Exes.

Trivia: Australian actor Jesse Spencer launched his career with a long stint (from the mid- to late '90s) on the popular Aussie soap opera Neighbours, playing Billy Kennedy. He followed that up with a number of key supporting roles in acclaimed features, such as that of Marwood de Whichehalse in Mike Barker's R.D. Blackmore adaptation Lorna Doone (2001) before signing on for the lead in Russell Mulcahy's inspirational drama Swimming Upstream (2002). That picture -- about a young man destined to become a champion swimmer despite the setbacks thrown into his path by an abusive father (Geoffrey Rush) became a small-scale hit and earned favorable reviews. After a turn in the Brittany Murphy vehicle Uptown Girls (2003), Spencer landed one of his greatest achievements when he signed on to play Dr. Robert Chase on the Fox medical drama House, and the series quickly became a hit. Offscreen, Spencer made headlines for his romantic involvement with House co-star Jennifer Morrison (Dr. Allison Cameron). The two -- who reportedly met on the set of House -- became engaged during the 2006 holidays.

Trivia: An alumnus of the Yale School of drama, American actor Austin Pendleton was lucky enough to latch onto a starmaking stage role relatively early in life. Pendleton was the first performer to play the part of tailor Motel Kamzoil in the evergreen musical Fiddler on the Roof, in which he had one of the play's best non-Tevye songs, "Miracle of Miracles." Hollywood has been less generous to Pendleton in terms of good roles. He was cast in a supporting role in Skidoo (1968), a smash miss frequently cited as the worst film in the careers of most of its participants (Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx, Carol Channing, Otto Preminger, et al.) He was shown to better advantage in What's Up, Doc? (1972), while in The Front Page (1974) he sparkled as a condemned killer plagued by a bad head cold on the eve of his execution. A first-rate character player, Austin Pendleton has never quite scaled the heights of stardom in films, though his theatre work as both actor and director has always been critically lauded.

Trivia: Youthful character actor Fisher Stevens was first seen on Broadway at age 19 in Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy; he followed this with a plum role in Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs. Stevens' film resumé includes The Flamingo Kid (1984), The Boss' Wife (1986), Reversal of Fortune (1990), and The Marrying Man (1991). During what may turn out to be the most highly publicized period in his life, Stevens was once the Significant Other of actress Michelle Pfeiffer. Stevens is familiar to most filmgoers, however, for his role as malaprop-laden Indian technical whiz Ben Jabituya in the two Short Circuit films of the late '80s. In the 2000s, Stevens found new success on the other side of the camera, as a prolific producer of both independent and mainstream Hollywood films, even winning the Oscar for Best Documentary for his 2009 film about the slaughtering of dolphins, The Cove. Stevens would also remain active on screen, appearing in films like LOL and on the series Lost.

Trivia: His band, Sugar Ray, formed in 1992, was originally called Shrinky Dinx. Their 1997 hit "Fly" brought fame to the band, and was particularly helpful for McGrath, whose video appearance helped make him a sex symbol. Asked to host Extra after a producer of the show saw his work hosting various MTV and VH1 shows. Has appeared on Celebrity Apprentice, hosted the Fox TV series Don't Forget the Lyrics!, and also hosted the World Music Awards and the Radio Music Awards.

Trivia: Has been a member of the bands Jane's Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Spread and the Panic Channel. Recorded a commercially unreleased five-song EP titled Rhimorse after the breakup of his marriage to second wife Rhian. Published the autobiographical Don't Try This at Home in 2004. Cohosted Rock Star: INXS (2005) with Brooke Burke. Starred in an MTV reality series, 'Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen and Dave, which documented his wedding to Carmen Electra.

Trivia: Began his career performing stand-up comedy in New York City clubs, while also writing and acting in short films. In addition to his comic work, has also appeared in Law & Order: Criminal Intent and indie dramas like Thirteen Conversations About One Thing and The Believer, both released in 2001. Made his big-screen debut in 2001's Wet Hot American Summer. Has written and produced several online series, including Horrible People and Hot Sluts, as well as acted in the online and TV satirical series Children's Hospital. Is the head writer for Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.

Trivia: Acclaimed debut album, Illmatic (1994), spawned several hit singles and established him as a rising hip-hop star. Made his big-screen debut opposite rapper DMX in the 1998 crime drama Belly. Scored his biggest commercial hits with the back-to-back double-platinum albums It Was Written (1996) and I Am... (1999). Collaborated with his jazz musician father, Olu Dara, on "Bridging the Gap," from Nas' 2004 double album, Streets Disciple. Vied with Jay-Z for the East Coast rap crown following the 1997 death of rapper Notorious B.I.G.; the pair finally settled their feud in 2005, and went on to collaborate in the studio. Named No. 5 on MTV's list of the 10 Greatest MCs of All Time in 2006.

Trivia: Perhaps more famous for her physical attributes than for her talent, Carmen Electra managed to parlay a stint as an MTV game show hostess into a career as a TV and movie actress. Born Tara Leigh Patrick and raised in Ohio, Electra left her performing arts high school with plans to become a singer. After a failed album for Prince's Paisley Park label in the early '90s, however, Electra shifted direction. Along with her first Playboy spread, the aspiring entertainer scored her career breakthrough when she replaced Jenny McCarthy as the co-host of MTV's highly-rated dating game Singled Out in 1996. After the show went off the air, Electra successfully stepped in for another buxom TV blonde when she took over lifeguarding duties from Pamela Anderson on the syndicated hit Baywatch from 1997 to 1998. Elektra moved to features with a bit part in the comedy Good Burger (1997) and larger roles in indie movies Starf*cker (1998), The Chosen One: The Legend of the Raven (1998), and Starstruck (1999). It was Electra's infamous several-day marriage to flamboyant basketball star Dennis Rodman in 1998, though, that further augmented her celebrity. Keeping her assets and tabloid fame in humorous perspective, Electra followed her role as what else, The Female, in the mockumentary The Mating Habits of Earthbound Humans (1999) with a self-parodic turn as the bodacious first victim in the hit horror send-up Scary Movie (2000).While Elektra failed to land any big successes in the ensuing handful of years, 2004 saw her emerge again, gaining notice on both the large and small screens. In the wake of such hit shows as The Osbournes, The Anna Nicole Show, and, most notably, Newlyweds, Elektra and husband-to-be Dave Navarro agreed to let an MTV camera crew record their lives for the reality show Til Death Do Us Part. Meanwhile, she also showed up to steal a few scenes in the tongue-in-cheek feature-film version of Starsky and Hutch. She appeared on Scary Movie 4 in 2006, and took on roles for a variety of unremarkable comedies throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s. Elektra has also worked as a fitness instructor in a series of aerobic striptease workout programs.