Trivia: The son of a prominent archaeologist/museum director, American actor Ted Danson grew up near the Navajo reservation in Arizona. He played basketball while at Kent School Connecticut, and then moved on to Stanford University. It was in the process of getting acquainted with an aspiring actress at Stanford that Danson found himself attending his first audition-- and by years' end had transferred to the drama department at Carnegie Tech. Marking time in non-speaking roles, Danson left the stage for the more lucrative world of TV commercials, some of which have been well-circulated on videotape since Danson has become famous. Danson's first steady TV work was as a slimy villain on the NBC soap opera Somerset. Shortly afterward, the actor attained his first film role, as a murdered cop, in The Onion Field (1978). After seeing Danson in the movie Body Heat (1981) and in an episode of the TV series Taxi, producer Glen Charles cast the actor as Sam Malone, ex-sports star and full-time barkeeper and womanizer, on the long-running, well-loved sitcom Cheers He won Emmys for the 1989-90 and 1992-93 seasons. Frequently making attempts at film stardom during the 11-season run of Cheers, Danson finally struck gold in Three Men and a Baby (1987) and its sequel Three Men and a Little Lady (1990). Danson's most recent work includes the 1996 starring role in the TV miniseries Gulliver's Travels and a co-starring role, opposite his new wife Mary Steenburgen, in the television sit-com Ink (also 1996). In 1998 Danson began a six-year run on another successful sitcom portraying the lead character on Becker, playing a caustic grump who couldn't have been further from Sam Malone's effortless charm. He continued to work steadily on the big screen as well scoring appearances in Saving Private Ryan and Mumford. He made sporadic appearances on Larry David's award-winning Curb Your Enthusiasm, and earned strong reviews for his dramatic work on the first season of the TV show Damages. He followed that up with a co-starring role on the HBO series Bored to Death, which lasted three seasons. In 2012 he could be seen in the inspirational animal movie Big Miracle.

Trivia: The ever-fascinating Nancy Travis excelled in edgy, neurotic characterizations during the 1990s; she sounds like a chain-smoker or Valium-popper even when not playing one. Graduating with a BA degree from New York University, Travis apprenticed at Circle in the Square, acted in the touring company of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, and starred on Broadway with Judd Hirsch in I'm Not Rappaport. As a means of continually recharging her creative batteries, she helped found the Naked Angels, an off-Broadway acting troupe. After laboring in virtual anonymity in such TV movies as Malice in Wonderland (1985), Travis was afforded top billing in the 1986 two-parter Harem, lending a little artistry and dignity to an otherwise trivial affair. Her movie breakthrough was in the role of the errant, unmarried British mother Sylvia in Three Men and a Baby (1987) and its 1990 sequel Three Men and a Little Lady. More complex roles came her way in Internal Affairs (1992), The Vanishing (1993) and Chaplin (1993); in the latter film, she appeared as the real-life Joan Barry, whose spiteful and unfounded paternity suit against Charlie Chaplin (Robert Downey Jr.) was the beginning of the end of The Little Tramp's Hollywood career. Even when playing comedy in So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), Travis retained her ticking-bomb, "don't turn your back on me" aura. Nancy Travis' television credits of the 1990s include her gravelly voiceover work as Aunt Bernice on the animated weekly Duckman (1993- ) and her starring stint on the so-so 1995 sitcom Almost Perfect.

Trivia: Thesp Shawnee Smith's name might not be a household word, but her face will register with thousands of sci-fi and horror aficionados thanks to her supporting turns in the big-screen remakes of The Blob (1988) and Carnival of Souls (1998). Smith's recurring role as Amanda, a young woman tormented by the clown-like serial killer Jigsaw, in the popular Saw series, broadened her exposure, even as it threatened to further typecast her as a woman in peril and fix her reputation as a horror queen. Yet the actress's resume demonstrates far greater versatility than this, and it may surprise fans to discover that she claims several decades of credits in multiple genres.Born on July 3, 1970, in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Smith debuted on the big screen at 11, as a dancer, in mogul Ray Stark's multimillion-dollar production of Annie (1982). A bit part in Michael Tuchner's acclaimed telemovie Not My Kid (1985) followed, at the age of fourteen; the picture drew solid Nielsen ratings and favorable critical responses, but Smith's only amounted to a bit part. She maintained greater visibility in the late eighties, with two significant roles: Rhonda Altobello in Carl Reiner's 1987 Mark Harmon-starrer Summer School. While most critics dismissed the film, it charmed a handful of others (such as Kevin Thomas and Rita Kempley) and did outstanding box office for a programmer, grossing several times its original budget. The very same could be said of Chuck Russell's 1988 remake The Blob, and then some: in addition to delighting nostalgia-hungry moviegoers (and some critics), it purportedly acquired a loyal following, becoming - in time - something of a cult film. Over the nineties and into the 2000s, Smith evinced a predilection for slightly deeper and more intelligent fare, but kept a somewhat low onscreen profile for several years, usually (though not always) with bit parts in lower budget indie dramas. Smith also appears in director Paul Quinn's Never Get Outta the Boat, which dramatizes the lives of several recovering addicts. She landed a regular role as Linda, a not-so-bright nurse's aide, on the 1998 CBS sitcom Becker, starring Ted Danson, and stuck with the series until it wrapped in 2004.When Smith's horror film quotient skyrocketed in the early 2000s (with the Saw role) it temporarily eclipsed her involvement in more substantial fare, even as her screen activity per se crescendoed. In the vein of earlier slasher film franchises, the initial Saw entry and its sequels did exemplary box office and obtained a rabid following; surprisingly, the pictures drew a favorable response in some critical quarters, as well.

Trivia: While most rising stars would be reluctant to tarnish their all-American image by appearing in films that demand they morph into another gender or in television roles that call for them to be as prickly as possible, handsome theater veteran Taylor Handley is always willing to throw the viewing audience the kind of curveballs that set him well apart from the pack. Born and raised in Santa Barbara, CA, Handley took to acting at the tender age of eight and cut his teeth in summer stock. While few of the aspiring actor's early television appearances -- including bit roles in Frasier, Touched By an Angel, and CSI -- would call for anything out of the ordinary, more substantial roles in Dawson's Creek and The O.C. began to reveal an actor of unusual complexity and ambition. It was his role as bad-boy Oliver Trask on The O.C., in particular, that first brought Handley to the attention of many television viewers, yet even with that edgy performance on his resumé, few could have foreseen something as strange as his role in the decidedly off-kilter romantic comedy Zerophilia a couple years later. Cast as an insecure teen boy who realizes he is gradually morphing into a female in writer/director Martin Curland's gender-bending film, Handley went places that few rising stars would be bold enough to venture. Handley next appeared in the period drama September Dawn, which detailed the historic confrontation between a traveling band of peaceful settlers and a renegade Mormon group. He could also be seen in the rip-roaring horror sequel Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, which pitted him against one of the most notorious madmen in screen history. Back on the small screen, following an appearance on CSI: Miami, Handley scored the lead role of Johnny Miller on the weekly guilty pleasure Hidden Palms. Scripted by Dawson's Creek mastermind Kevin Williamson, Hidden Palms told the tale of a troubled teen (Handley) doing his best to recover from his father's recent suicide and a stint in rehab by connecting with the angst-ridden kids who inhabit his new Palm Springs neighborhood.