Trivia: An actor whose hulking presence belies his ability to slip quietly into an astonishing variety of roles, Vincent D'Onofrio is one of Hollywood's most unpredictable and compelling performers. Throughout his career, D'Onofrio has played a diverse range of characters, from Full Metal Jacket's fatally unhinged army recruit to a wholly convincing Orson Welles in Ed Wood to a bisexual porn star in The Velocity of Gary.Born in Brooklyn, NY, on June 30, 1959, D'Onofrio was raised in the diverse locales of Hawaii, Colorado, and Miami's Hialeah section. His career as an actor began on the stage, with study under Sonia Moore of New York's American Stanislavsky Theatre and Sharon Chatten at the Actors Studio. D'Onofrio's early years in the theater were filled with an obligatory helping of obscurity and miniscule paychecks (so miniscule that he worked for a time as a bouncer to help pay the bills). His fortunes began to shift in 1984, when he joined the American Stanislavsky Theatre as a performer. There, he appeared in such well-regarded productions as Of Mice and Men and David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and also made his Broadway debut in Open Admissions.D'Onofrio debuted onscreen in the straight-to-oblivion 1983 comedy The First Turn-On!, but it was not until his haunting portrayal of Pvt. Pyle (a role for which the actor gained 70 pounds) four years later in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket that he earned much-deserved notice for his work. Defying easy categorization, D'Onofrio next appeared in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza (1988), slimming down to his normal weight and giving a convincing portrayal as Lili Taylor's lovestruck boyfriend.Having thus given audiences a glimpse of his remarkable versatility, D'Onofrio spent the next few years making his presence felt in such films as JFK (1991), in which he played assassination witness Bill Newman; The Player (1992), which cast him in the pivotal role of ill-fated screenwriter David Kahane; and Nancy Savoca's Household Saints (1993), which, through a particularly odd feat of casting, had him playing the father of Lili Taylor. Although D'Onofrio worked at a prolific pace, it was not until he portrayed Conan the Barbarian author Robert E. Howard in the 1996 The Whole Wide World that he really had his screen breakthrough. A low-key romantic drama about the relationship between Howard and a schoolteacher (Renée Zellweger), the film allowed D'Onofrio to take center stage, rather than lend support to better-known co-stars. Critics roundly applauded his performance, but although the actor kept working steadily, he was by no means a Hollywood fixture. Eschewing the limelight, he turned in particularly memorable performances in Feeling Minnesota (1996) as Cameron Diaz's cuckolded fiancé and in the 1997 blockbuster Men in Black, which cast him as the film's resident bad guy.D'Onofrio had long since become an established actor by the 2000's, and he would remain a solid force on screen in such films as The Cell, Happy Accidents, Steal This Movie, andThumbsucker. D'Onofrio would also find just as much notoriety on the small screen, most notably as Detective Robert Goren on the phenomenally successful Law & Order spin-off Criminal Intent, and even step behind the camera, penning, helming and starring in the drama Mall.

Trivia: Born and raised in the Boston area, Erbe left her hometown to study drama at New York University. After making her TV debut as Lynn Redgrave's daughter on the short-lived TV sitcom Chicken Soup (1989), she returned to New York and was cast in the acclaimed 1990 Broadway production of The Grapes of Wrath. Erbe soon scored her first major film credit as Richard Dreyfuss' daughter in the Bill Murray comedy What About Bob? (1991) and alternated stage work as a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Atlantic Theatre Company with TV and films throughout the 1990s, most notably in Rich in Love (1992), George Wallace (1997), Kiss of Death (1995), The Addiction, (1995), and Stir of Echoes. Erbe also earned major acclaim on the HBO series Oz. As the 2000's unfolded for the actress, she found continued success in TV, playing the role of Detective Alexandra Eames on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Trivia: Character actor Jamey Sheridan has had a prolific acting career in theater, television, and film productions. Born in California to a family of actors, he made it to Broadway and earned a Tony nomination in 1987 for his performance in the revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. After several TV movie appearances, he landed a reoccurring role as lawyer Jack Shannon on Shannon's Deal, which ran for one season in 1990. His later television roles include Dr. John Sutton on Chicago Hope (from 1995-1996) and Captain Deakins on Law & Order: Criminal Intent (since 2001). Sheridan started his film career in the late '80s with small roles, and by the '90s he was playing the token family man, a role he would continue in both film and television. He was also capable of playing villains, as he did in the 1994 miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. Other interesting roles include Marty Stouffer in Wild America and the psychotic neighbor in Video Voyeur: The Susan Wilson Story. After a long history of performing Shakespeare on the stage, Sheridan appeared in Campbell Scott's production of Hamlet in 2000 as well as the Hamlet-inspired modern noir film Let the Devil Wear Black in 1999. He's also given fine supporting performances in The Ice Storm, Cradle Will Rock, Life as a House, and numerous TV movies. In teh early 2000s Sheriden frequently alternated between film and television, though it was his role on the popular detective series Law and Order: Criminal Intent that offered him the most exposure. It was during his five year run on that show that he was diagnosed with Bell's palsy, a nerve disorder that temporarily causes partial facial paralysis, and the writers ultimately incorporated that condition into the show. In 2011 Sheridan joined the cast of the Showtime drama Homeland, which centered on a Marine sergeant and war hero who returns home to the U.S. after eight years missing in Iraq, only to be pursued by a CIA officer who's convinced he's been turned into a terrosit by Al-Qaeda.Sheridan and his wife, actress Colette Kilroy, have two children.

Trivia: Although he had been appearing in both film and television productions since the mid-'80s, it took nearly two decades for actor Courtney B. Vance to finally receive recognition. The Detroit native was bitten by the acting bug while a student at Harvard, and though he had originally intended to study history, he felt the lure of the stage and was soon appearing in productions at Harvard before eventually joining the Boston Shakespeare Company. After graduation, Vance continued his acting career at the Yale School of Drama, and it was there that he first gained notice for his role opposite James Earl Jones in the August Wilson drama Fences. In 1987, Vance made his film debut in the war drama Hamburger Hill, and though he remained true to his stage roots in the ensuing years, screen roles kept rolling in. The actor climbed the credits throughout the 1990s with a series of supporting roles in The Hunt for Red October (1990), Beyond the Law (1992), and The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993). 1995 proved something of a breakthrough year for the rising star, with roles in Panther, Dangerous Minds, and The Last Supper offering him more screen time than ever. In 1996, Vance held his own as a minister opposite Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston in The Preacher's Wife. Drawing from his own faith -- which had recently been reawakened by the suicide of his father -- for the role, Vance also had memorable performances in Cookie's Fortune in 1999 and Space Cowboys the following year. He portrayed Martin Luther King Jr. in the dramatic miniseries Parting the Waters (2000) and made another solid impression on television viewers the next year with a role in the popular series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.Vance would stick with the series for five years, concurrently appearing on the long-running medical drama ER. By the time he had finished his run on both programs, he was on to the science fictions series Flash Forward from 2009-2010, before signing on to appear alongside Michael Biehn in the post-apocalyptic horror flick The Divide in 2011.

Trivia: In films from 1970, George DiCenzo is best known for his portrayals of scowling urban authority types. DiCenzo's TV and movie characterizations have included Vincent Bugliosi in Helter Skelter (1976), Major Benchley in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978), Arnold Rothstein in The Gangster Chronicles (1981), and Sam Baines in Back to the Future (1984). Numbering among his series-TV assignments are McClain's Law (1981; as Lt. Edward DeNisco), Dynasty (1984-1985 season; as Charles), Equal Justice (1990, top-billed as Pittsburgh D.A. Arnold Bach), and Joe's Life (1993; as Stan Gennaro). George DiCenzo has also kept busy behind the scenes as an associate producer.

Trivia: American actor Michael Murphy pursued a high school teaching career upon graduation from the University of Arizona. Among the subjects he taught was drama; good-looking and personable enough to get paid for reciting lines to an audience older than the age of 18, Murphy chucked the teaching profession to work on stage. In films since 1967, Murphy is best remembered as Jill Clayburgh's cheating -- and uncontrollably sobbing -- husband in An Unmarried Woman (1978). Michael Murphy has also functioned as a stock company player for director Robert Altman (Countdown [1968], McCabe and Mrs. Miller [1971], Nashville [1974], etc.); in 1988 Munrphy portrayed a pre-fab presidential candidate in Altman's satirical HBO miniseries Tanner. He continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including Shocker, Folks!, Batman Returns, and Altman's Kansas City, as well as the Howard Stern biopic Private Parts. As the 21st century began he could be seen in Norma Jean, Jack and Me, Live from Baghdad, and Silver City. He starred in the sequel to Tanner - Tanner on Tanner - in 2004, and when on to appear in Away From Her, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Smokin' Aces. He has been hired regularly to narrate a variety of documentaries for the American Experience series.

Trivia: Dan Frazer has spent so many years playing police officers and detectives that it's been suggested he should qualify for a departmental pension from the New York Police Department. Most familiar to television audiences for his portrayal of Captain Frank McNeil, the superior to Telly Savalas' Lt. Theo Kojak on the series Kojak, Frazer has also played police officers in dozens of other television shows and movies, although the full range of his work is far more vast, in a career dating back to the late '30s. Born in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York (west and north of Times Square) during the early '20s, Dan Frazer was one of ten children. He was drawn to acting at a relatively early age, and made his professional debut at 14 with the WPA's Federal Theatre Project. Following his appearance in the play Three Steps Down, he was offered a screen test at MGM, but the outbreak of World War II intervened. Frazer served in the army and was fortunate enough to be placed in Special Services, where he got some exposure to theatrical writing and directing. Frazer (whose name was sometimes misspelled in credits as "Don Frazier") resumed his career after the war and made his Broadway debut in the play Christopher Blake; he subsequently appeared in Who Was That Lady I Saw You With, Once More With Feeling, Goodbye Charlie, The Grass Is Always Greener, and A Stone for Danny Fisher. Frazer's television career dates from the end of the 1940s, when he portrayed Louie, the wheelchair-bound chess-playing G.I. in an installment of the 1949 ABC documentary series Crusade in Europe. He appeared on Lux Video Theatre and other anthology shows during the 1950s, and could be seen in episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, The Untouchables, and McHale's Navy. His defining television performance, however, was probably in the Car 54, Where Are You? episode "Change Your Partner" as Chief Bradley, the well-meaning NYPD departmental chief who is flabbergasted by the duration of the successful partnership of patrolmen Toody and Muldoon. During the 1960s, in between appearances on programs such as Route 66, The F.B.I., and My Favorite Martian, and on the few remaining anthology series such as Kraft Suspense Theater, Frazer also moved into motion picture work. He was among the favorite actors of filmmaker Ralph Nelson, playing prominent roles in two of the director's best films, Father Murphy in Lilies of the Field (1963) and Ira Jackson in Tick...tick...tick (1970), as well as his lesser known Counterpoint (1968). Lilies of the Field remains one of the films of which Frazer is proudest, although he has recalled, with some amusement, that United Artists balked at putting up the budget requested by Nelson; almost everyone involved with the film seems to have kicked in something to get it made, but UA's management said that if the film could be re-written as a vehicle for Steve McQueen instead of Sidney Poitier, the distributor would double the proposed budget. Frazer also had prominent roles in George Axelrod's satire Lord Love a Duck (1966), Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run (1969) and Bananas (1971), and a little-known 1972 feature starring Jackie Mason entitled The Stoolie. It was his performance as Lt. Byrnes in the 1972 crime thriller Fuzz, however, that brought Frazer his most visible part -- the producers of the upcoming series Kojak were examining a clip from the movie, looking at the idea of casting another actor as one of the squad room detectives; they rejected the actor they were thinking of but spotted Frazer as the harried squad commander and suddenly realized they had found their Captain Frank McNeil. For the next five years, he was seen weekly in the role of Kojak's superior officer and friend, and became something of a celebrity in his native New York (though the show itself was filmed almost entirely in Hollywood), mentioned in the television gossip pages and interviewed by journalists. His film appearances became relatively infrequent, though they included performances in Cleopatra Jones (1973) and Breakout (1975). Frazer later appeared in the Kojak made-for-television film The Belarus File (1985), and was on As the World Turns from 1989 until 1996 in the recurring role of Dan McClosky. In later years, producer Dick Wolf has used Frazer as a guest star, and the actor, in the seventh decade of his career, completed the trifecta of essaying major guest roles on Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.