Trivia: More coolly charismatic than drop-dead handsome, Richard Gere was one of the most successful sex symbols of the '80s and early '90s. Possessing something of an actual talent in addition to his good looks, Gere has proven himself to be a versatile actor since first starring as the pick-up artist who creeps out Diane Keaton in Looking For Mr. Goodbar. Capable of playing everything from romantic leads and action heroes to medieval knights and ruthless villains, Gere has moved beyond his role as cinematic eye candy to become one of the more enduring actors of his generation. Born in Philadelphia on August 31, 1949, Gere had a strict Methodist upbringing in upstate New York. Following his 1967 high school graduation, he studied philosophy and film at the University of Massachusetts -- only to leave school to pursue an acting career two years later. Gere became a professional actor and sometime musician, performing theatrically in Seattle and New York and attempting unsuccessfully to form a rock band. In 1973 the young actor landed in London, where he gained prominence playing Danny Zuko in Grease, a role he would later reprise on Broadway. While in London, Gere gained the privilege of becoming one of the few Americans ever to work with Britain's Young Vic Theater, with which he appeared in The Taming of the Shrew.Back in the U.S., Gere made his feature film debut in 1974 with a tiny part in Report to the Commissioner. He returned to the stage the following year as part of the cast of an off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's Killer's Head; following Gere's turn in the 1977 Looking for Mr. Goodbar, he and Shepard would again collaborate in Terrence Malick's breathtaking Days of Heaven (1978). In 1979, Gere won considerable theatrical acclaim for his performance in the Broadway production of Martin Sherman's Bent, and the next year enjoyed his first shot at screen stardom with the title role in Paul Schrader's American Gigolo. Though the film was not a major critical or box-office success, it did earn recognition for the actor, who had taken the role after John Travolta turned it down. Gere did not become a real star until he appeared opposite Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman in 1982, but his bona fide celebrity status was jeopardized with roles in several poorly received films including King David (1985). A lead role in Francis Ford Coppola's 1984 The Cotton Club also failed to perk up the actor's career; despite a legendary director and stellar cast, the film received mixed reviews and poor box-office turnout. With no recent major successes behind him by the end of the decade, it looked as if Gere's career was in a tailspin. Fortunately, he abruptly pulled out of the dive in 1990, first as a cop/crime lord in Mike Figgis' Internal Affairs and then as a ruthless businessman who finds true love in the arms of prostitute Julia Roberts in the smash romantic comedy Pretty Woman. Back in the saddle again, Gere continued to star in a number of films, including Sommersby (1993), Intersection (1994), and First Knight (1995). In 1996, he was highly praised for his portrayal of an arrogant hot-shot attorney in Primal Fear, and in 1999 found further financial, if not critical, success starring opposite Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride. The following year the actor enjoyed some of his best reviews to date as a gynecologist at once devoted to and bewildered by all of the women in his life in Robert Altman's aptly titled Dr. T & the Women; many critics noted that Gere seemed to have finally come into his own as an actor, having matured amiably with years and experience. In 2002, Gere played the too-perfect-for-words husband to Diane Lane in Unfaithful. While the film was not a huge critical success, Gere was praised for a game performance, and Lane was nominated for an Oscar. Unfortunately for Gere, a starring role in The Mothman Prophecies didn't do too much for his resume -- while critics once again lauded the actor's intensity, the film itself was widely hailed as too slow-paced to properly showcase his talents. Luckily, the same couldn't be said for his performance in the multiple Oscar winning Chicago, which found Gere in the role of another hotshot lawyer, this time alongside a diverse and talented cast including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger, and Queen Latifah. In 2004, Gere starred opposite Jennifer Lopez and Oscar-winning Hollywood veteran Susan Sarandon in Peter Chelsom's Shall We Dance?.On- and offscreen, Gere uses his acting clout to promote his various political ventures. A devout Buddhist, Gere has been deeply involved with the struggles surrounding the Dalai Lama and the worldwide struggle for human rights -- the documentaries Return to Tibet (2003) and Shadow Over Tibet: Stories in Exile (1994) featured Gere as a prime interviewee, while 1997's Red Corner starred the versatile actor as a victim of a grossly corrupt Chinese court system.In 2005, Gere played a professor of religious studies in director David Siegel's drama Bee Season, and enjoyed success in 2007 with The Hoax, an edgy biographical drama, and The Hunting Party, a political tragi-comedy in which he played a discredited reporter mistaken as a member of a CIA hit squad. The actor joined the casat of Nights in Rodanthe in 2008, and worked with Hilary Swank in Amela, the 2009 Amelia Earhart biopic. Gere took on the role of a burnt out cop in Training Day (2009), director Antoine Fuqua's gritty crime drama Brooklyn's Finest.

Trivia: The daughter of respected off-Broadway playwright Romulus Linney, Laura Linney was born in New York City on February 5, 1964. Her parents divorced when she was six months old. Thanks to her father's job, Linney grew up working in the theater, both behind the scenes and, in her late teens, on the stage. Following prep school in Massachusetts, she attended both Brown University and Juilliard, and she was soon appearing in a number of Broadway productions. She garnered notice for her roles in plays like The Seagull and Six Degrees of Separation, and won particular acclaim for her performance in Hedda Gabler.Linney made her onscreen debut in 1992 with a small role as a teacher in Lorenzo's Oil. The following year, she had a brief but pivotal role as Kevin Kline's presidential mistress in Dave, appeared in Searching for Bobby Fischer, and landed a lead as one of the protagonists of Armistead Maupin's acclaimed Tales of the City, which aired on PBS. Linney later reprised her role as Mary Ann Singleton for More Tales of the City in 1998. Following leads in two box-office failures, A Simple Twist of Fate (1994) and Congo (1995), Linney had a supporting role as Richard Gere's lawyer/ex in Primal Fear (1996). Based on the strength of her performance, Clint Eastwood chose her to play his daughter -- another lawyer -- in Absolute Power the following year. In 1998, Linney sent up her wholesome, fresh-scrubbed appearance to great effect as Truman Burbank's wife in Peter Weir's highly acclaimed The Truman Show.The actress finally came into her own in 2000, thanks to two very different parts in two highly acclaimed independent features. Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me featured Linney as Sammy, a small-town single mother whose placid life takes some interesting turns when she's visited by her errant brother Terry (Mark Ruffalo). Aided by Lonergan's precise script and her own copious note-taking, Linney turned in her most nuanced, accomplished performance to date. Critics paid attention: after its much-heralded debut at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, the film went on to garner a slew of recognition for its lead actress, including Best Actress of the Year awards from the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle, and an eventual Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Linney further polished her reputation with a supporting turn as the icy Bertha Dorset in director Terence Davies' adaptation of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, released in late 2000.She continued working steadily and garnered great critical respect throughout the next decade. In addition to returning for Further Tales of the City, she was one of the many talented actors who appeared in the controversial The Laramie Project. She had a few big-budget films that missed their mark in The Mothman Prophecies and The Life of David Gale, but those came around the same time as her superb turn as Sean Penn's wife in Mystic River, and as one of the few Americans in the very British romantic comedy Love Actually. She continued to earn strong reviews as the headstrong wife to Liam Neeson's Kinsey, and in 2005 offered a subtle but penetrating portrayal of a selfish mother and divorcee opposite Jeff Daniels in The Squid and the Whale. The next year she acted opposite Robin Williams in Barry Levinson's political and social satire Man of the Year.In 2007 Linney offered a spot-on portrayal of a dissatisfied Manhattan wife and mother in The Nanny Diaries, and earned a wealth of strong reviews for her work in Tamara Jenkins' The Savages. Playing a neurotic woman opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman as her brother, Linney scored her third Academy Award nomination.2008 brought Linney her fourth Golden Globe nomination, and first win, for the portrayl of first lady Abigail Adams in the acclaimed HBO miniseries John Adams. In the following years, Linney would continue to appear in several projects, including movies like Morning and The Details, and the acclaimed Showtime series The C Word.

Trivia: A stunning, New York-born actress who shot to stardom with her role as the latter half of television's Will and Grace, Debra Messing's playful creativity beginning in her youth left her family with little doubt that the talented youngster would seek a career in some aspect of the entertainment industry.Raised in a small community outside Providence, RI, Messing's song and dance routines were the source of endless entertainment for her family throughout her youth, and the precocious youngster frequently attended performing arts camps in order to focus her skills as an actress. Later touring Canada, the U.S., and Mexico before planning her initial bid for stardom, Messing followed her mother's advice and enrolled in Massachusetts' Brandeis University, where she majored in theater arts. Traveling to London late in her schooling to study at the prestigious B.E.S.G.L. program, she was later accepted into New York University's Graduate Acting Program. Early roles such as a stint as sexpot Dana Abandando on television's NYPD Blue garnered much attention for the stunning starlet, and it wasn't long before Messing made her feature debut with A Walk in the Clouds (1995). Jumping back to the small screen for the short-lived Ned and Stacey the following year, she next turned up in the feature Prey (1997) and a subsequent television series based on the film. Launching her career into overdrive in 1998 with her role as Grace Elizabeth Adler in television's Will and Grace brought Messing critical and public praise, and her role as the interior designer living with a homosexual lawyer charmed audiences with its snappy writing and talented cast. With personal interests lending to involvement with such organizations as the Best Friend's Pet Sanctuary, Gay Men's Health Crisis, and AmFAR, the actress uses much of her personal time to encourage social awareness of HIV and AIDS-related issues and encourage people to adopt pets.The massive success of Will & Grace helped Messing gain a foothold in a film career. She tested the waters gingerly at first, taking small but key roles in films as diverse as the thriller The Mothman Prophecies and the Woody Allen comedy Hollywood Ending. She played Ben Stiller's newlywed wife in the hit comedy Along Came Polly in 2004. Although audiences ignored her romantic comedy The Wedding Date, Messing scored her most prestigious post-Will & Grace work yet landing a major role in Curtis Hanson's Lucky You in 2006, the same year as she lent her vocal talents to the animated film Open Season.Over the next several years, Messing would enjoy a number of projects, starring in movies like The Women, and series like The Starter Wife, Smash and The Mysteries of Laura.

Trivia: Actor Will Patton successfully divides his time between mainstream and independent features, television films, and a stage career on and off-Broadway. Born and raised in North Carolina, the son of a Lutheran minister, Patton learned his craft at the North Carolina School of the Arts and at New York's Actor's Studio where he studied under Lee Strasberg. In addition, Patton studied at the Open Theater under Joseph Chaikin before making it to the New York stage. Patton has won two Obie Awards for Tourists and Refugees No. 2 and for Sam Shepard's Fool for Love. Patton also has had experience working at London's Royal Court Theatre. Upon his return to New York, Patton joined the experimental Winter Project troupe. During the 1970s, Patton performed in two soap operas, Search for Tomorrow and Ryan's Hope. Patton first appeared on film in the short underground film Minus Zero(1979). During the early '80s, Patton appeared in such New York-based independent films as Michael Oblowitz's King Blank and Variety (both 1983). After playing a small but important villainous role in Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Patton was cast in his first big-budget film, Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985), where he played a brutish boyfriend with a thing for leather and chains. His best portrayal of a villain can be found in the Gene Hackman-starring thriller No Way Out (1987). In the '90s he could be seen in The Rapture, In the Soup, Romeo Is Bleeding, Copycat, the infamous Kevin Costner project The Postman, and the Michael Bay blockbuster Armageddon. At the beginning of the 21st century Patton continued to remain busy with major roles in Remember the Titans, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Mothman Prophecies, and The Punisher, as well as smaller roles in diverse films like Into the West, Wendy and Lucy, Meek's Cutoff, and Brooklyn's Finest.

Trivia: A stage-trained actress whose brief foray in daytime drama eventually led her into a feature-film career, Lucinda Jenney's star has been on the rise since the early 1980s. Alternating effortlessly between television and film throughout the course of her career, the talented and attractive blonde actress always had a slant toward the dramatic. A Long Island-native whose impressive run in the Broadway production of Gemini (1977-1981) proved the catalyst for her subsequent onscreen career, Jenney's first feature roles came with the made-for-TV efforts First Steps and Out of the Darkness (both 1985). Roles in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and Rain Man (1988) were quick to follow, and, in 1989, the actress rounded out her impressive first decade as John Belushi's onscreen wife in the biopic Wired. Though the film was widely panned, it proved Jenney's most substantial role thus far and she escaped relatively unscathed. As the 1990s rolled in, she was nominated for a Best Actress Independent Spirit Award for her performance in 1993's American Heart and a recurring role on the television series High Incident found her gaining something of a following on the small screen. With her performance as one of Demi Moore's sole allies in G.I. Jane (1997), Jenney continued to balance bit roles in such efforts as Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and Thinner (1996) with meatier, more dramatically substantial parts. Supporting roles in high-profile Hollywood releases became increasingly common for Jenney, and following key roles in Thirteen Days (2000) and The Mothman Prophecies (2002), she joined the cast of the acclaimed police drama The Shield. The following year, Jenney appeared in the action thriller S.W.A.T.

Trivia: One of the most important British actors to emerge during the 1960s, Alan Bates made his reputation early in his career as one of the original "angry young men" of the post-war English theatre. His rumpled, malleable features lending themselves to his explosive versatility, Bates became a stage star through his portrayals of various disenfranchised working-class young men in such productions as John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, directed in 1956 by Tony Richardson, and Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, staged in 1964. Bates went on to establish himself as a noted screen actor in over 50 films, with particularly memorable turns in Zorba the Greek (1964), Georgy Girl (1966), and The Fixer (1968), for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination.The son of an insurance broker and a housewife, Bates was born the eldest of three brothers in the Midlands suburb of Allestree, Derbyshire, on February 17, 1934. Both of his parents were amateur musicians and encouraged their son to pursue a career as a concert pianist, but at the age of 11, Bates discovered that his true passion was for acting. After taking speech lessons and studying for a time with an acting teacher, he won a scholarship to London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he trained as a classical performer. Bates interrupted his studies to spend two years of service with the Royal Air Force and made his professional stage debut in 1955, at Coventry, with the Midland Theatre Company. Foregoing a traditional apprenticeship with an established theatre company, Bates instead joined the English Stage Company, a new repertory group based at London's Royal Court Theatre. He made his West End debut in 1956 in the company's first production and had his true breakthrough with his starring role in Tony Richardson's premiere staging of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger later that year.Look Back in Anger made Bates a star of the London and Broadway stage, and began a lifelong stage career that saw him perform in the works of such great modern playwrights as Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and Alan Bennett, as well as those of Chekov, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Strindberg. In 1960, the actor made his screen debut as one of Laurence Olivier's sons in Richardson's The Entertainer. Starring roles in Bryan Forbes' Whistle Down the Wind and John Schlesinger's A Kind of Loving followed two years later; both films received acclaim, much of which was directed toward Bates' performances as a murderer on the run in the former and a young working-class dreamer in the latter. The actor spent the remainder of the 1960s more or less in the spotlight, thanks to his starring work in some of the decade's most celebrated films, including Zorba the Greek (1964), Georgy Girl (1966), Le Roi de Coeur (1966), Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), The Fixer (1968), and Women in Love (1969). Each film showcased Bates' astonishing and often underrated versatility, as well as a willingness to do just about anything. This tendency was unforgettably demonstrated with his nude turns in Le Roi de Coeur and Women in Love, the latter of which required him to engage in an earthy wrestling session with Oliver Reed. Bates received his only Oscar nomination for John Frankenheimer's The Fixer, in which he portrayed a Russian Jew unjustly accused of murder. Bates began the subsequent decade on a very positive note, doing acclaimed work in Olivier's The Three Sisters (1970), in which he played Vershinin; A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1971), which cast him as the father of a young invalid whose condition puts a strain on her parents' marriage; and Joseph Losey's The Go-Between (1971), in which he and Julie Christie played illicit lovers. The actor's subsequent projects were incredibly varied, ranging from the exceptional (Lindsay Anderson's made-for-TV In Celebration [1975]) to the execrable (Michael Winner's The Wicked Lady [1983]), and Bates, although a prolific screen performer, tended to do his best work on the stage and television. He publicly acknowledged in at least one interview that it was his tendency to work constantly that allowed him to weather two tragedies that struck him in the early 90s: first, the death of his son Tristan from an asthma attack in 1990; second, the 1992 death of his longtime wife, actress Victoria Ward. Following his son's death, Bates and his other son Benedick, Tristan's twin, established the Tristan Bates Theatre at the Actors Centre in Covent Garden. In addition to his work for the theatre, Bates, who received a CBE from the Queen in 1995, continued to appear on the screen, his talents on particularly fine display in Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990), in which he played the conniving Claudius.

Trivia: Best known as Steve, the boyishly charming nice-guy bartender (and the perfect complement to his onscreen romantic partner, snappish Miranda Hobbes) in HBO's blockbuster original series Sex and the City, the slightly diminutive, raven-haired American character actor David Eigenberg was born in Manhasset, NY, on May 17, 1964. As the only boy in a family of six children, Eigenberg moved with his parents and sisters at age four to Naperville, IL, a farming community just outside of the Windy City -- where he remained through the end of adolescence. Eigenberg reportedly struggled as a student, barely scraping by; a handful of run-ins with the law and minor recreational drug abuse allegedly ensued. Eigenberg did graduate from Naperville High School in 1982, however, and was promptly accepted to the University of Iowa, where he planned to study social work. For better or worse, this was not to be, for the Chicagoan ripped his dormitory apart during the first semester and was promptly booted out of the university after five weeks.A stint in the Marines and various construction jobs followed, instilling in Eigenberg healthy amounts of much-needed self-discipline and a sharply honed work ethic. These skills paved the way for Eigenberg's true calling: acting. A love of the dramatic arts had already taken root for the thespian when -- at age 12 -- he had signed on to play a key role in a local production of Kurt Vonnegut's Happy Birthday, Wanda June, and received an outstanding review from a local critic. These fond memories doubtless came flooding back when an adult Eigenberg auditioned -- and was selected for -- a large part in the Dennis Rosa-directed Chicago stage musical One Shining Moment, opposite Megan Mullally and Alan Ruck. Dissatisfied with a mere taste of the theatrical arts and eager to extend acting into a full-time passion, Eigenberg subsequently moved to New York and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, working odd jobs on the side (construction et al.) to put himself through school.Scattered roles followed, including a guest appearance on The Cosby Show and a bit part in the awful 1989 generation-gap comedy Rude Awakening (co-starring Cheech Marin and Eric Roberts), but Sex and the City (which Eigenberg auditioned for out of innumerable hopefuls) represented the actor's first huge break. He reportedly auditioned for a small part, and though the show's producers did not deem him right for the characterization, they felt so impressed by Eigenberg's presence that they created the character of Steve Brady especially for him, as an extension of his own personality; the plan, again, was to create a sincere, committed, down-to-earth male paramour to offset Miranda's (Cynthia Nixon) cynicism.Though initially intended as a temporary part, the popularity of the character among viewers (and Eigenberg's onscreen chemistry with Nixon) led to Eigenberg's permanent inclusion on the show, as well as subsuquent movies.Circa 2002, Eigenberg expanded into film roles by playing the business partner of Richard Gere in Mark Pellington's underrated supernatural thriller The Mothman Prophecies. When Eigenberg's Sex and the City run ended with the wrap-up of that series (at the end of the 2003-2004 season), he continued his cinematic work, first voicing Nermal the Cat in the FX-extravaganza Garfield: The Movie, then playing Reggie, the lover of Alicia Goranson's Myra, in Adrienne Weiss' quirky indie romantic comedy Love, Ludlow. Eigenberg returned to the same genre amid a cast of unknowns with the 2007 film The Trouble with Romance, directed by Gene Rhee. He reprised his role in the Sex and the City movie in 2008 and the sequel in 2010. In 2012, he joined the cast of NBC's Chicago Fire, playing a firefighter in the Windy City.