Trivia: A New Yorker by birth, Jack Mulcahy broke into the movie business playing the part of Frank Bell in the first two installments of Bob Clark's teen sex comedies Porky's. He was largely away from movies and television for over a decade after that until Edward Burns cast him as Jack McMullen in his hit independent comedy The Brothers McMullen. He continued to work steadily in independent films such as Infested and The Gravedancers while scoring the occasional TV jobs on series as diverse as Sex and the City, Law & Order: SVU, and the soap opera One Life to Live.

Trivia: One of a number of American independent filmmakers launched to prominence in the '90s by virtue of their success at the Sundance Film Festival, writer/director Edward Burns was born in Woodside, Queens, in 1968 and raised on Long Island. After attending Oneonta College and S.U.N.Y.-Albany, he transferred to Hunter College in New York City to study motion pictures; there he helmed a number of short films, including the 15-minute Hey, Sco! Upon graduating, Burns began working at a local news outlet and made Brandy, a 45-minute effort screened as a work in progress at the 1992 Independent Feature Film Market. During the spring of 1993, while working as a production assistant for the television newsmagazine Entertainment Tonight, Burns began conceiving The Brothers McMullen, a comedy focusing on the romantic troubles facing three Irish-Catholic siblings. Shot primarily in his parents' Long Island home, with a cast of unknowns including Burns himself and his then-girlfriend Maxine Bahns, the feature was filmed over eight months' time with a budget of about 25,000 dollars and with the aid of a technical crew comprised largely of fellow Entertainment Tonight staffers. Rejected by a series of distributors, The Brothers McMullen bowed at Sundance in 1995 and won the festival's Grand Jury Prize, becoming one of the most successful independent efforts of the year.For his follow-up, She's the One, Burns retained much of the McMullen cast and crew, including Bahns and actor Mike McGlone; by virtue of his newfound fame, he was also able to cast up-and-coming stars Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz in pivotal roles, and he even solicited an original soundtrack from rocker Tom Petty. Filmed with a comparatively lavish budget of about three million dollars, the romantic comedy premiered during late August 1996. Burns soon began work on his third feature, No Looking Back, a romantic drama set in a coastal town's working-class community. The film co-starred Lauren Holly and was released in 1998; that same year, Burns co-starred in the Steven Spielberg World War II epic Saving Private Ryan. In 1999, he was back on the screen with an appearance in Oliver Stone's football drama Any Given Sunday. In the years that followed, Burns wrote and directed a series of additional comedy-dramas incluing Sidewalks of New York (2001), Ash Wednesday (2002), Looking for Kitty (2004) and The Fitzgerald Family Christmas.

Trivia: A leading and supporting actress of television and feature films, willowy, green-eyed, red-haired Connie Britton may be best known for playing Nikki opposite Michael J. Fox in the ABC sitcom Spin City. Prior to that, she had a semi-regular role on the network's comedy Ellen. Born in Boston, she has a fraternal twin sister (whom she claims is her exact opposite). They were raised in Lynchburg, VA, after the age of seven. Britton's interest in acting developed at a young age, something her parents avidly supported. While majoring in Asian studies at Dartmouth, she still found time to participate in theatrical productions. For a while she studied Chinese in Beijing, an exercise she states helped her as an actress because it broadened her view of the world. Following graduation, she spent two years studying under Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse and another two years appearing on the New York stage. Movie director Ed Burns was responsible for her film debut playing Molly in his acclaimed The Brothers McMullen (1995). The film was a hit at Sundance and won two major awards. Shortly thereafter, she moved to Hollywood, obtained an agent, and before long found herself joining the cast of Spin City. She would go on to star in series like 24, Friday Night Lights, and American Horror Story.

Trivia: Born in Vermont and a graduate of New York University with a degree in classics, Maxine Bahns only became an actress when her then-boyfriend Edward Burns cast her in his semi-autobiographical, famously low-budget feature debut The Brothers McMullen (1995). As the onscreen love interest of Burns' commitment-phobe McMullen, the untrained Bahns became part of a cast of unknowns who shed that status when the film became the archetypal Sundance Film Festival success story. Bahns costarred again with Burns in his second feature She's the One (1996), as his free-spirited wife. Viewed essentially as a Brothers McMullen reprise with better-known professional actors, She's the One failed to definitively establish Bahns as an actress in her own right.