Trivia: Sporting a clean-cut, all-American look, Los Angeles-born actor Michael Welch entered the limelight well before his teens and balanced feature and television work with about equal weight. Early small screen projects included guest appearances and recurring roles on series such as Frasier (as a young version of David Hyde Pierce's Niles), Veronica's Closet, and Touched by an Angel, while Welch's feature work invariably emphasized teen-oriented material and often found him cast as a young heartthrob. These big screen endeavors included the teen slasher movie All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006), the gore-soaked shocker Day of the Dead (2007), the family-friendly political comedy Choose Connor (2007), and the gothic vampire outing Twilight (2008). Welch also starred as Luke Girardi on the offbeat fantasy series Joan of Arcadia (2003-5).

Trivia: Starred in her own variety show, Una Chica Llamada Ivonne Coll in Puerto Rico. Was crowned Miss Puerto Rico in the Miss Universe pageant in 1967. Trained in comedy with Lucille Ball. Performed with the USO Tour Puerto Rico Sings for the troops stationed in Vietnam in 1972. Her role in The Godfather Part II was created specifically for her after being discovered by Francis Ford Coppola in Puerto Rico.

Trivia: Aspired to play professional football while growing up. Fought in Desert Storm as a soldier in the U.S. Marine Corps. Became involved in Chicago's theater scene after returning from war. Played the role of Wheeler Parker in a stage production of The Ballad of Emmett Till at the Goodman Theatre in 2008. Won the Best Short Film Award at the 10th annual Hollywood Black Film Festival for The (Mis)Leading Man, which he both wrote and starred in. Made his Broadway debut as an understudy for multiple roles in A Streetcar Named Desire at Broadhurst Theatre in 2012. Was the understudy for various roles in a Broadway production of A Time to Kill in 2013. Provided voice-over work for many brands, including Sony, Toyota, Budweiser, Powerade, CoverGirl and McDonald's.

Trivia: Since actor Jason Ritter hails from a long line of successful entertainers, it seemed only natural that he would eventually try his hand at performing. The son of late Three's Company star John Ritter and the grandson of Hollywood Western star Tex Ritter, young Jason has proven more than capable of carrying on his family's impressive showbiz legacy with roles in such features as Mumford and Freddy vs. Jason. Born in Los Angeles in February of 1980, Ritter made his screen debut opposite father John in the 1990 made-for-television L. Frank Baum biopic The Dreamer of Oz. Though he remained relatively inactive on the screen for much of the 1990s, Ritter continued to train as an actor at both New York University and London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts before founding New York City's Irreputable Theater Company. Subsequent roles in the MTV series Undressed and the fantasy-flavored CBS drama Joan of Arcadia quickly elevated Ritter to teen-icon status. A segue into feature territory followed with parts in Freddy vs. Jason (2003) and Swimfan (2002), with his continuing role on Joan of Arcadia serving well to balance his feature and television careers. Unfortunately, personal tragedy struck in 2003 when his father died suddenly of a previously undetected heart condition. Performances in the made-for-television Who's Your Mama? and the Hilary Duff movie Raise Your Voice were quick to follow, and Ritter could also be seen opposite such screen heavies as Steve Coogan, Tom Arnold, and Maggie Gyllenhaal in director Don Roos' ensemble comedy drama Happy Endings. Meanwhile, the rising star continued to rack up impressive credits on both stage and screen, including tackling a sitcom role in the short-lived CBS series The Class (2006-07) and headlining the NBC action thriller The Event in 2010.

Trivia: Joined the Navy after graduating high school and served in Vietnam. Settled in San Diego after leaving the Navy, writing scripts for PBS and eventually earning a scholarship to study at the University of California. His character Philip Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was ranked #34 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time. Has a scholarship in his name at Thurgood Marshall College at UC San Diego.

Trivia: Erik Palladino was supposed to join the family's heat contracting business. Raised in Yonkers by his schoolteacher mother and contractor father, the 12-year-old Palladino caught the acting bug from Robert De Niro's famed performance as Jake La Motta in Raging Bull. He quickly joined a local children's repertory company and soon began hosting a heavy metal television show in New York. But like many actors, the adult Palladino took the long road to success. He built an arrest record, struggled through New York's Marymount Manhattan College, sang in a mediocre indie rock band, and survived several canceled television shows. By the late '90s, Palladino had a familiar face -- as a regular on Comedy Central, a voluble MTV video jockey, an indolent stepson on Murphy Brown, and Jennifer Love Hewitt's unctuous cousin in Can't Hardly Wait (1998) -- but not a well-known name. However, perseverance and ubiquity will lead to stardom and, in 1999, Palladino scored two plum roles: the part of an American sailor opposite Matthew McConaughey in U-571 and a coveted slot as Dr. Dave Malucci on NBC's top-rated ER. Both characters are Italian-American; both characters pigeonhole Palladino as the insolent, self-important bastard. Yet, his performances project the strength of an actor who has been around the bend and can create brazen men that are not simply ogres, but refreshingly forthright, occasionally tender, and always heroic. Despite a public outcry and an Internet petition to keep him on the show, Palladino left ER in 2001. He then added to his movie credits -- which already included This Space Between Us (2000) with fellow ER star Alex Kingston and Finder's Fee (2000) with James Earl Jones -- by starring in the "Disco Inferno" segment of the VH1' Strange Frequency (2001). He also began racing cars in the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race of the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. Though his career forced him to relocate to California, Palladino remains a die-hard New Yorker and a loyal Yankees fan.

Trivia: Was cast in his first play, a production of Philadelphia Here I Come, four days before the opening, replacing the original actor. Received the New York Emerging Talent Award at the 2011 Big Apple Film Festival for his work in the film The Pill. Is a founding member of Stage 13, a theater company in New York City.

Trivia: As a respected American supporting player in film, television, and theater who occasionally moonlights as a screenwriter, Patrick Breen first culled recognition in the American press in 1991. That spring, the then-30-year-old delivered a bravura performance as an emotionally damaged son in Jon Robin Baitz's disappointing play The Substance of Fire. Breen hit his zenith as a film actor during the mid-'90s, with turns in several memorable (if uneven) Hollywood movies. These included For Love or Money (1993), Barry Sonnenfeld's Get Shorty (1995) and Men in Black (1997), and Carl Franklin's One True Thing (1998). Breen's generally nondescript, albeit pleasant, appearance enabled him to fill practically any role, from a doctor (in the Sonnenfeld picture) to Mr. Tweedy (in the Franklin film).Breen first branched off into screenwriting just after the turn of the new millennium, with back-to-back indie features which he both acted in and scripted. The 2000 picture East of A constitutes a slice-of-life drama about a trio of New York City roommates over the course of ten years. Unfortunately, East of A received extremely limited distribution and was reviewed by very few mainstream critics. Its follow-up, the 2002 ensemble comedy Just a Kiss (directed by the character actor and comic Fisher Stevens and starring Ron Eldard, Kyra Sedgwick, and Marisa Tomei) provides a surrealistic exploration of the romantic vicissitudes among a group of swinging singles. That film fared better in terms of pedigree, but demonstrated an extremely unstable overtone, meandering between lighthearted romantic comedy and darker, more cynical black comedy; perhaps as a result, it premiered in 2002 to almost unanimously devastating reviews, opening and closing practically overnight, and effectively turning Breen away from produced screenwriting work for quite some time. In 2004, he returned to A-list acting as a character player in the holiday comedy Christmas with the Kranks, starring Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis. He was away from movie screens for five years, returning next in 2009's Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant and had the leading role two years later in the horror film The Bleeding House.

Trivia: The quiet yet dynamic screen presence of actor Joe Mantegna has made him one of the most powerful supporting actors in Hollywood. Born in Chicago, Mantegna made his acting debut in the 1969 production of Hair. He then joined Chicago's Organic Theatre Company. In 1978, he debuted on Broadway in Working; he also helped write Bleacher Bums, an award-winning play. Still, he did not become well-known until he played a recurring role on the TV show Soap. By 1983 he'd returned to Chicago, where he began working with playwright David Mamet. While playing the lead in Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross (1983), Mantegna won a Tony. When Mamet began making films, Mantegna became his actor of choice in works such as House of Games (1987) and Homicide (1991). Prior to that, the actor had played small roles in a number of other films. He also continues to play in a variety of movie genres, working with some of Hollywood's top directors. Mantegna turned producer in 1998 with the crime comedy Jerry and Tom. That trend continued on the small screen as Montenga produced such shows as Midway USA's Gun Stories, Shooting Gallery, and QuickBites, but it was his role as a regular on the CBS series Joan of Arcadia that really kept him in the public eye. Continually returning to his recurring role as Fat Tony on The Simpsons over the next decade, Montegna joined the cast of the hit television series Criminal Minds in 2007, and recieved an Emmy nomination for his performance in the successful mini-series The Starter Wife that same year.

Trivia: Curly haired, sandy-voiced actress Mary Steenburgen is a natural when it comes to playing Southerners, probably because she hails from the region herself. Born in Arkansas on February 8, 1953, Steenburgen was the daughter of a railroad employee. Pursuing drama in college, she headed to New York in 1972, where she worked with an improvisational troupe. She was spotted by Jack Nicholson, who cast her as his feisty "in name only" frontier wife in 1978's Goin' South. Two years later, she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Melvin Dummar's inamorata in Melvin and Howard (1980).Able to convey a wide age and character range, Steenburgen was effectively cast as a free-spirited Frisco girl in Time After Time (1979), the corseted matriarch of a turn-of-the-century household in Ragtime (1981), prim authoress Marjorie Rawlins in Cross Creek (1983), a long-suffering suburban housewife in Parenthood (1989), and a Marcia Clark-like attorney in Philadelphia (1993). She also portrayed the Jules Verne-loving Western schoolmarm Clara in Back to the Future 3 (1990), a role she perpetuated (via voice-over) on the Back to the Future TV cartoon series. In 1988, she was executive producer of End of the Line, in which she also appeared. Steenburgen's film appearances throughout the 1990s were erratic: some highlights, in addition to Philadelphia, include What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Nixon (1995), and The Grass Harp (1995). In 1999, she starred as Noah's wife in the biblical epic Noah's Ark, sharing the screen with the likes of Jon Voight, F. Murray Abraham, James Coburn, and Carol Kane. As the 21st century began, Steenburgen continued to work steadily in projects such as Life as a House, I Am Sam, Sunshine State, and Elf. She was cast in the CBS drama Joan of Arcadia in 2003. In 2006 she appeared in David Lynch's Inland Empire, and the next year she starred opposite Jodie Foster in the vigilante drama The Brave One. She was cast in the comedies Step Brothers and Four Christmases in 2008, and in 2011 she was the editor who inspires the main character to write the book in The Help.Formerly married for several years to actor Malcolm McDowell, Steenburgen married former Cheers star Ted Danson in 1995. The two have collaborated on a number of projects, including 1994's Pontiac Moon and the made-for-TV Gulliver's Travels in 1996.

Trivia: As the daughter of American child star-turned-cult favorite Russ Tamblyn (Peyton Place, Twin Peaks), Hollywood heartthrob and ingenue Amber Tamblyn inherited the stunning red hair, fair complexion, and acting chops of her famous dad. Born in the early '80s to Russ and wife Bonnie Murray, Tamblyn was discovered by an agent at her school during her preteen years, and soon landed a prominent role as the maniacal tot Emily Quartermaine on General Hospital -- a turn she sustained from 1995 to 2001.Tamblyn guested on such series as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Boston Public in the early 2000s, and tackled a small role in Gore Verbinski's 2002 shocker The Ring (as one of Samara's unfortunate victims), but the actress failed to generate a sizeable fan base prior to the advent of the fantasy-tinged drama series Joan of Arcadia in 2003. Tamblyn received first billing in that program as Joan Girardi, a seemingly average high school teenager who is tapped by the Almighty to perform various assignments. Joan drew a substantial cult following and outstanding critical assessments (USA Today pegged it as the most promising dramatic series of 2003), but unfortunately, its popularity failed to spread beyond a small enthusiastic band of adherents and it folded within two years.Tamblyn then segued back into film work, with first billing in Ken Kwapis' coming-of-age comedy drama The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants in 2005, as one of four teenage girlfriends (alongside America Ferrera, Blake Lively, and Alexis Bledel) who make a good-luck pact; the picture received outstanding reviews and ensured continued stardom for Tamblyn. In 2006, the young actress essayed the title role in Hilary Brougher's fine psychological drama Stephanie Daley, about a troubled teenager accused of killing her newborn child. Tamblyn also traveled the programmer route that year with a turn in the horror sequel The Grudge 2. The following year, the actress starred in Beth Schacter's teen comedy Normal Adolescent Behavior and Rigoberto Castaneda's indie thriller Blackout. In the latter -- a high-wire suspense picture about a bunch of people trapped in a hospital elevator -- Tamblyn played a young woman desperate to reach her grandmother before the elderly woman dies. In 2008, she reprised her Traveling Pants role in the sequel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.Amber Tamblyn is also a prolific poet and runs her own website, The Rebel Asylum, with postings of her work. Her volume of poetry Free Stallion was published by Simon & Schuster in 2005.