Trivia: Began acting in commercials at age 5. Said he was inspired by his big brother, Fred Savage, to get into acting. Made his film debut at age 9 in Little Monsters (1989), which also starred Fred. Best known for playing Cory Matthews, the main character in ABC's hit series Boy Meets World, from 1993 to 2000. Interned for Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) in 2003. Is an avid Bruce Springsteen fan, and took a break from acting to follow Springsteen's tour around the country with his father. In November 2012, announced via Twitter that he and fellow Boy Meets World veteran Danielle Fishel were planning to be a part of a spin-off series. Volunteers for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

Trivia: Best known to Gen-Y'ers as Shawn Hunter, the resident high-school heartthrob and best friend of teen Cory Matthews (Ben Savage) on the ABC Friday-night sitcom Boy Meets World (1993-2000), Rider Strong was born in San Francisco and entered show business with a portrayal of Gavroche in a local stage production of Les Miserables. He first moved into television work at age 12 as the son of Julie Andrews on the star's eponymous sitcom, Julie (1992), then landed guest-star bits on such programs as Evening Shade, Empty Nest, Davis Rules, and Going Places. World, of course, represented Strong's career breakthrough and secured a major fan base for him (particularly among teenage girls). As the series neared closure in the late '90s, Strong branched out into film roles -- first with a small part in the sentimental Billy Crystal comedy My Giant (1998), then as a horror star in such opuses as Cabin Fever (2002), Borderland (2007), and Cabin Fever 2 (2009). Strong later switched his focus to writing, directing and starring in short films. In 2014, Strong returned to his roots, reprising his role of Shawn Hunter on the Boy Meets World spin-off Girl Meets World.

Trivia: Actress Danielle Fishel grew up in Yorba Linda, CA, as the daughter of a medical equipment salesman, and entered the limelight at age ten with an appearance in a doll commercial. Continued involvement in show business beckoned, and under the aegis of her mother's management, she landed a string of guest spots on network sitcoms during the very early '90s, then signed on as one of the regular cast members on the situation comedy Boy Meets World (1993-2000). On that program, Fishel played Topanga Lawrence, teenage girlfriend and then wife of the lead character (Ben Savage). She remained with the series for all of its seven seasons, and netted viewer loyalty for helping to evolve the character from a head-in-the-clouds preteen hippie to a thoughtful and mature young woman.Fishel took her feature bow as a cheerleader in the 2000 crime picture Longshot (aka Jack of All Trades), then joined the casts of such outings as National Lampoon Presents: Dorm Daze (2003), Gamebox 1.0 (2004), and National Lampoon's Dorm Daze 2 (2006). Following a memorable appearance on The Tyra Banks Show in 2006, she became a special correspondent for the show. Her career on talk shows continued when she began hosting The Dish in 2008, a weekly show on the Style Network. Fishel returned to acting when Disney Channel announced, in 2012, plans for a spin-off to Boy Meets World called Girl Meets World.

Trivia: Originally billed as Gil Stratton Jr., this slight, apple-cheeked "juvenile" performer was barely out of his teens when he created the role of Bud Hooper in the 1941 Broadway musical Best Foot Forward. Stratton continued toting up stage and radio credits in New York until his 1943 film debut in Girl Crazy. His subsequent screen roles included Cookie, the stuttering narrator of Stalag 17 (1953), and pint-sized cyclist Mousie in The Wild One (1953). On television, he played the anemic collegiate Junior Jackson in the 1954 sitcom That's My Boy. That same year, he launched what would turn out to be a 20-year run as a top sportscaster at L.A.'s CBS TV affiliate KNXT. In his last few films, notably Mae West's Sextette (1977), he was cast as "himself." Gil Stratton retired to Hawaii in 1984, where for many years, he owned and maintained a radio station. He died of congestive heart failure in 2008.

Trivia: After starting out in TV commercials, his first job was as the co-host of Nickelodeon's 1988 show Don't Just Sit There at age 7. Was nominated for a 1995 Young Artist Award for his work on Boy Meets World. Has played Batman on four separate TV series: Batman of the Future (1999), Static Shock (2000), The Zeta Project (2001) and Justice League (2001). Was best man at Boy Meets World co-star Jason Marsden's 2004 wedding. Vocal acting extends to video game characters, voicing characters like Seifer Almasy in Kingdom Hearts II, Gideon Wyeth in Advent Rising and Jaster Rogue in Rogue Galaxy.

Trivia: Along with his sisters, performed in their family's song-and-dance troupe, the Daniels Family, in New York. In his teens, he debuted on Broadway in Life With Father. Portrayed John Adams in the Broadway version of 1776 and reprised the role in the 1972 film. Worked hard to lose his Brooklyn accent, adopting an accent closer to that of his Boston-based character from the NBC medical drama St. Elsewhere. Won an Emmy in 1986 along with wife Bonnie Bartlett for St. Elsewhere, on which they portrayed Dr. and Mrs. Mark Craig. The couple also played husband and wife on the ABC sitcom Boy Meets World and the CBS drama Touched by an Angel. Elected president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1999, upsetting incumbent Richard Masur. Northwestern created the Willies—an annual awards ceremony for excellence in theater at his alma mater—in his name. The original voice of the talking car in NBC's Knight Rider, he reprised the voice of KITT for recordings on a Knight Rider GPS system created by Mio Technology.

Trivia: A self-described "navy brat," William Russ travelled all over the country in his formative years. Russ settled down in one place long enough to attend the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; here he studied drama with such classmates as Christine Lahti. After graduation, he toured Europe as a member of the Ann Arbor mime troupe. Back in the states, he attended New York's Neighborhood Playhouse on a scholarship. His subsequent New York stage credits include MacBeth, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (in which he appeared with Al Pacino) and Buried Child. In films since 1989's Disorganized Crime, Russ' largest and most rewarding movie role (thus far) was over-the-hill ballplayer Roy Dean Bream in 1991's Pastime. Russ is best known to the public at large for his TV work: he has played Burt McCowan in Another World, Roger Lococco in Wiseguy, Redmond Dunne in Capitol News and Terry Hannon in The Middle Ages. At present, William Russ -- billed under his nickname "Rusty" -- appears on a weekly basis as Ben Savage's father on Boy Meets World, taking occasional time-outs to co-star in such made-for-TV movies as Big Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story (1995).

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: Detroit native Elisabeth Harnois relocated to California at a young age and was raised in Los Angeles. Living in such close proximity to the home of the film industry, she began appearing in film and TV at the age of six, with a role in the movie One Magic Christmas. She would go on to study at Wesleyan University, and graduated in 2001 with a degree in film studies. Getting back into the business after graduation, Harnois began appearing in films like the critically acclaimed Pretty Persuasion in 2005, Chaos Theory in 2007, and A Single Man in 2009. Branching into lighthearted fare in 2011, the actress would sign on to provide the voice of Ki in the animated film Mars Needs Moms. Later that same year, Harnois joined the cast of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as Morgan Brody.