Trivia: With his golden curls, sensuous mouth, and sculpted body, Ryan Phillippe looks more like he was peeled off a Botticelli canvas than "discovered" in a Delaware barbershop. Phillippe, who was born September 10, 1974, in New Castle, DE, rose from obscurity to become one of the most talked-about actors of his generation, attracting at first numerous admirers of his good looks, and later fans of risk-taking performers.Phillippe got his first break on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, on which he portrayed daytime's first gay teenager, Billy Douglas. The role, which he played from 1992 to 1993, won him both favorable notices and increasing recognition. After quitting the show to focus on his screen career, Phillippe got a small part in 1995 submarine action thriller Crimson Tide. More work -- and more boat-oriented action -- followed in 1996 with Ridley Scott's White Squall, in which Phillippe was given a prominent role alongside two other up-and-coming actors, Ethan Embry and Scott Wolf. After this mainstream, big-budget venture, Phillippe took a walk down the yellow brick road of independent filmmaking, first with his starring role as an abused trailer-park teen in Little Boy Blue (1997), and then in Gregg Araki's Nowhere (1997), as the latest of Araki's trademark ultra-horny boys.Phillippe's major screen break came with his role in the formulaic 1997 slasher pic I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which he starred alongside fellow Next-Big-Things Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Sarah Michelle Gellar. The film's success, coupled with Phillippe's exposure from previous films, was enough to propel him into two leading roles in 1998, first as a blue-haired club baby in Playing by Heart, and then as a starry-eyed bartender in the critically disembowelled 54, a film which showcased Phillippe's abs over his acting.Following 54, Phillippe opted to play a naïve dope farmer in the obscure Homegrown (1998), in which he co-starred with Billy Bob Thornton and Hank Azaria. This preceded his next big break as the petulantly seductive trust-fund brat Sebastian Valmont in 1999's Cruel Intentions, a film that was essentially a present-day, all-teen adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Co-starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as his scheming stepsister and Phillippe's real-life wife-to-be Reese Witherspoon, the film proved to be one of the year's most guilty pleasures, winning Phillippe further acclaim in the hearts and minds of lust-struck women and men alike.Subsequently teetering on the brink of all-out superstardom, Phillippe faltered a bit with the late summer 2000 action thriller The Way of the Gun, co-starring Benicio Del Toro. Though some saw the film as a smartly penned meditation on violence, others brushed it aside as just another post-Tarantino study in excess, and the film faded quickly from the box-office radar -- with the following year's AntiTrust dissipating almost immediately following its January 2001 release. But the tables turned for Phillippe in the years to come, with involvement in films that consistently found dual favor with critics and audiences -- and thus helped the young actor transition from a widespread reputation as a heartthrob to a reputation as an immensely gifted dramatist graced with a succession of plum roles (and suggested a keen instinct for script selection). This turnaround began with the actor's participation in director Robert Altman's critically worshipped mystery comedy Gosford Park. Phillippe (as Henry Denton) was not among the top-billed members of the ensemble cast, but his work shone brightly alongside such luminaries as Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, and Kristin Scott Thomas -- no small feat for a relative newcomer. The following year, Phillippe drew raves for his work in Burr Steers's sleeper hit Igby Goes Down (2002) -- a commercial and critical indie darling -- as the spoiled, conceited older brother of the title character. Thereafter, Phillippe's screen activity declined just a bit (perhaps because of his off decision to father and raise additional children with wife Witherspoon), but he also became increasingly selective. His star rose higher with 2005's Best Picture winner Crash, directed by Paul Haggis. A Gaghan-esque muckracking drama with a massive ensemble cast that included the gifted Don Cheadle, Matt Dillion, and Brendan Fraser, the picture meditated on modern-day racism through multiple interlocking stories that unfold throughout the City of Angels.2006 marked a fortuitous year for Phillippe. He secured a leading role in director Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, the American half of the director's two-part dramatization of the Battle of Iwo Jima (as Bradley, a man who learns of his father's heroism in that conflict decades later). In that same year's Lionsgate release Five Fingers, helmed by neophyte Laurence Malkin, Phillippe plays the difficult role of a brilliant Dutch pianist abducted by terrorists and threatened with having his fingers lopped off one by one. At about the same time, Phillippe signed on (alongside Chris Cooper and Laura Linney) to play Eric O'Neill in director Billy Ray's Breach, which the studio slated for a 2007 release. The picture -- a docudrama -- concerns real-life FBI turncoat Robert Hanssen (Cooper). Phillippe plays the "mole" assigned to catch Hanssen in the act.Also in the fall of 2006, the busy Phillippe had to contend with drama in his personal life in the form of a highly public divorce from Witherspoon, announced that October. Over the course of the next few years Philippe's career seemed to be more hit than miss, though high profile roles in MacGruber and The Lincoln Lawyer served well to keep in the public eye, and in 2012 he essayed an extended guest appearance on the hit FX series Damages. After his solid turn there, he stuck with TV, with a main role on the first season of Secrets and Lies.

Trivia: An action specialist whose impossibly chiseled jaw makes him the ideal candidate to portray heroes who favor plenty of action over useless small talk, Casper Van Dien first made an impression on viewers with a recurring role on the teen soap Beverly Hills 90210 before taking a turn as James Dean (James Dean: Race with Destiny) and battling giant killer bugs on faraway planets (Starship Troopers). Raised in Ridgewood, NJ, on a street that was named after his great-great-grandfather, Van Dien enrolled in Admiral Farragut Academy when his family relocated to Florida, eventually graduating third in command. After finishing his education at Florida State University, it was off to Los Angeles to purse success on screens both big and small. While success doesn't always come fast in L.A., Van Dien's photogenic visage gave him something of an edge at auditions, and it wasn't long before the occasional television role blossomed into a full-on feature career. After taking the lead as the heroic Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers and as the Lord of the Jungle himself in Tarzan and the Lost City, Van Dien expanded his resumé to include the role of producer with the release of Richard Elfman's Modern Vampires in 1998. While subsequent years found Van Dien largely relegated to made-for-television features and straight-to-video B-movie fare, occasional roles in such wide releases as Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow showed that there was indeed a sense of humor behind the stone-faced veneer. Following Van Dien's wedding to second wife Catherine Oxenberg in 1999, the pair worked together on numerous projects in addition to co-founding a production company dedicated entirely to socially responsible, family-friendly entertainment. In 2005, Van Dien and Oxenberg made the production of the PC shooter Starship Troopers something of a family affair by enlisting aid of three of their five children in recording voice-overs for the video game. Subsequent roles in Slayer, The Curse of King Tut's Tomb, and Starship Troopers: Marauder proved without question that Van Dien wasn't looking to hang up his guns anytime in the near future.

Trivia: First full-time role was playing Chad Rollo on Another World. Best known for portraying Teri Hatcher's ex-husband Karl on Desperate Housewives. Supports a number of environmental charities, including the Orange County Bird of Prey Center, the Surfrider Foundation and the Pacific Marine Mammal Center. Enjoys surfing in his spare time.

Trivia: The son of actors Bill Williams and Barbara Hale, curly-haired leading man William Katt is fond of noting that he made his movie "debut" while residing in his mother's womb during filming of Lorna Doone (1951). After attending Orange Coast College, Katt pursued a career as a musician. He then made his formal acting bow in summer stock and small TV roles. Among Katt's film credits are the role of the high-school jock date of telekinetic wallflower Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1977), and one-half of the title role in Butch and Sundance, The Early Days (1979). From 1981 through 1983, Katt played the reluctant-superhero protagonist (originally named Ralph Hinkley, redubbed Ralph Hanley after the '81 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan) on TV's Greatest American Hero. Beginning in 1987, Katt played the recurring role of detective Paul Drake Jr. in the periodic Perry Mason TV movies, co-starring with his mother Barbara Hale, who resumed her "Della Street" characterization from the original 1961-66 Mason run. Katt also worked on the scripts of several of these latter-day Masons. More recently, William Katt was a regular on the 1991 Farrah Fawcett-Ryan O'Neal TV sitcom Good Sports.

Trivia: Samaire Armstrong's unique first name is Gaelic for "dawning sun," but despite choosing their daughter's name for its beautiful meaning, Armstrong's parents didn't actually know how to pronounce the name for the first three months of her life. They pronounced it "Sam-Air" until they happened to meet a Gaelic man, who explained that it was in fact pronounced "Sam-eer-ah." The girl with the curious name was born in Japan, and her family lived there, and then in Hawaii, before finally settling in Arizona, where young Armstrong did most of her growing up. She excelled in the theater arts in high school, and she briefly attended the University of Arizona before leaving, frustrated by the fact that freshmen weren't allowed to participate in theatrical productions. Armstrong decided to get started with her career and by 2000, at age 20, she'd done so, appearing in two episodes of the cult favorite Freaks and Geeks. Roles followed in films like Not Another Teen Movie before she scored a career-making gig with a recurring role on the hit show The O.C. While she wasn't made a member of the regular cast, Armstrong became a fan favorite, playing the crucial third member of a love triangle between her character, Anna, her good friend Seth, and Seth's long-time crush, Summer. The O.C. eventually came to an end in 2006, but by 2004, Armstrong had a second series in which she regularly appeared, showing up on the hit HBO program Entourage as agent Ari's assistant, Emily, whom Eric dates briefly. The actress also began stretching her acting muscles on the big screen with roles in Just My Luck, It's a Boy Girl Thing, The Staircase Murders, and Rise: Blood Hunter.Armstrong would faind continued success over the coming years, appearing most notably on shows like Dirty Sexy Money and The Mentalist.

Trivia: Actor William McNamara's film breakthrough came in 1988 when he starred as Billy Kane in Peter and Paul Mones' urban drama The Beat. McNamara led a fairly peripatetic childhood; his interior designer mother was granted custody of McNamara after divorcing his real estate magnate father. She took him to Dallas for a time, and then Los Angeles, where McNamara met many movie stars who inspired him to become an actor. He and his mother eventually moved to New York, but McNamara continued working as a production assistant during the summers in Los Angeles. Despite some problems in his late teens, he finally ended up at Columbia University, where he studied acting and started working in a few television commercials. A summer stint with the Williamstown Theater resulted in his appearing in The Beat. Prior to that, McNamara acted in two foreign efforts, Dario Argento's Opera and the European miniseries The Secret of the Sahara (both 1987). After appearing in Peter Bogdanovich's Texasville (1990), McNamara turned to television movies, notably Wildflower (1991), which starred Patricia Arquette, and Doing Time on Maple Drive (1992), with Jim Carrey in a rare dramatic role. McNamara returned to feature films in 1992 with Aspen Extreme, and since then he has been getting larger roles in better quality films. His role in Copycat (1995) is particularly notable.