Jensen Ackles - Biography

An actor with a penchant for getting hired in as a series regular on one-hour TV shows, Jensen Ackles left his native Texas to pursue an acting career after graduating from high school. His big break came in 1997, when he was cast in the role of Eric Brady on the soap opera Days of Our Lives. He made regular appearances on the show over the next three years, winning a Best Male Newcomer award from Soap Opera Digest and getting nominated for a Daytime Emmy no less than three times. Ackles left Days of Our Lives in 2000 and shortly thereafter appeared in an episode of the James Cameron adventure series Dark Angel, playing a psychotic, murderous X5 (a genetically engineered superhuman) named Ben. Ackles was brought back as a regular the next season, playing the less sinister twin/clone of Ben, Alec, who reluctantly aided Jessica Alba's Max from time to time despite his cocky, selfish nature. In 2002, Ackles moved on to join the cast of the WB series Dawson's Creek for its sixth and final season, and when that show wrapped he took a role on another WB series, Smallville. He'd auditioned for the leading role of Clark Kent when the series first went into production in 2001, and lost the part to Tom Welling, but this time Ackles was cast as Jason Teague, love interest of Lana Lang. Then in 2005, Ackles nabbed a part on yet another TV series, and this time he won the lead. In the role of Dean Winchester on Supernatural, Ackles played a young man who investigates paranormal activity with his brother. The show was a hit, picking up a few Emmy and Saturn Award nominations, and as the show rocketed through its second season, Ackles's star continued to rise. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide

James Van Der Beek - Biography

Tall, blonde, and possessing a choir of perfect teeth that would make any dentist jealous, James Van Der Beek has emerged as one of the ultimate teen pin-ups of the late 1990s. First attaining prominence with the title role of Dawson Leary in the WB Network's Dawson's Creek, Van Der Beek proceeded to branch out with film and stage work, and in the process managed to be anointed in 1998 as one of People Magazine's "50 Most Beautiful." Born March 8, 1977 to a cell phone salesman father and a mother who ran a gymnastics studio, Van Der Beek was raised in his hometown of Cheshire, Connecticut. The oldest of three children, he was an honors student and excelled at football until an injury sidelined his budding career. In its own way the injury proved to be serendipitous, as it led Van Der Beek to take up acting. Following a casting trip to New York with his mother, Van Der Beek made his professional debut at the age of 16 in the Off-Broadway production of Finding the Sun, which was written and directed by Edward Albee. More stage work ensued, as did some television work (most notably in the form of a 1995 stint on As the World Turns). Van Der Beek made his film debut in the 1995 comedy Angus, aptly cast as a golden-boy football quarterback. Another movie, the little-seen Claire Danes/Jude Law vehicle I Love You, I Love You Not, followed in 1997, but it was his starring role in {#Dawson's Creek], premiering in January of 1998, that gave Van Der Beek his big break. The show's success with critics and audiences alike propelled Van Der Beek and his fellow cast members into the limelight, and soon Van Der Beek secured his first major film roles, first in the little-seen Harvest (1998), and then in the football comedy-drama Varsity Blues (1998). The film's modest reviews were overshadowed by its financial success, geared as it was toward a new generation of teenagers eager to see their favorite actors in glorious celluloid. The film's enthusiastic commercial response, coupled with Dawson's continuing success, virtually guaranteed the young actor that no matter what the future held for him, his career had certainly gotten off to a very positive start. Though to this point Van Der Beek's success had been built on the image of the squeaky clean, all-American small town boy, a pair of efforts following the millennial turnover signaled that the actor who had become the very personification of white-bred wholesomeness was determined to create a new, decidedly more edgy image for himself. Though his initial effort ended in mystery as the segment featuring Van Der Beek as a closeted high school homosexual was cut from director Todd Solandz's Storytelling (2002) shortly before the film's release, his efforts would be cemented later that same year with the subsequent release of The Rules of Attraction. Directed by Pulp Fiction collaborator Roger Avery (Killing Zoe) and based on a novel by American Psycho author Brett Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction found the former innocent plunged into a strange world of drugs and sexual deviance that left many Dawson's Creek fans up in arms. As college student/drug dealer Sean Bateman (who also happens to be the brother of American Psycho maniac Patrick Bateman) Van Der Beek essayed what was without question his seediest role to date. With his Dawson's Creek and Rules of Attraction characters existing on the most extreme polar opposite ends of the spectrum imaginable, Van Der Beek made it no secret that his acting coach recieved a hearty workout as the actor attempted to balance hiumself between the two projects. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Ali Larter - Biography

Once she decided to become an actress, Ali Larter swiftly became caught up in the late '90s surge of teen-oriented entertainment. A native of Cherry Hill, NJ, Larter began modeling at age 13. After seven years as a cover girl and a globe-trotting Ford model, she opted to move to Los Angeles to set her sights on acting, and soon landed guest star roles on several TV series, including a two-episode stint on the WB's hit teen drama Dawson's Creek in 1998. Quickly making the jump to movies, Larter co-starred in the high school gridiron hit Varsity Blues (1999) as an alluring, ambitious cheerleader with eyes for Dawson's Creek heartthrob James Van der Beek's quarterback. Though her next two movies, Drive Me Crazy (1999) and The House on Haunted Hill (1999), were not as successful, Larter's status as an up-and-coming young movie actress was enhanced by the sleeper success of teen horror film Final Destination (2000), in which she sported a brunette hair color to suit her artist character's gothic leanings. The following summer, Larter could be seen -- this time playing characters closer to her own age -- in two more high-profile releases for the PG-13 set: first as Reese Witherspoon's possibly-homicidal sorority sister in the comedy Legally Blonde (2001); and later, as the main squeeze of Colin Farrell, one of the titular train robbers in American Outlaws . The next several years brought much more of the same for Larter, as she signed for supporting roles in mostly buttered popcorn pictures and Hollywood programmers - such as the supernatural thriller follow-up Final Destination 2 (2003) and the Ashton Kutcher/Amanda Peet romantic comedy A Lot Like Love (2006) - but her career took an interesting twist in 2006. That year, Larter switched venues, signing for her first major television role: that of Niki Sanders, a single mom suddenly dumbstruck by the discovery of her violent, uber-strong alter ego, on the superhero-themed serial drama Heroes. In 2007, Larter tackled two major roles, very different from one another: that of Marigold Lexton, a young actress who stumbles into the cast of a Bollywood musical, in the quirky comedy-drama Marigold, and that of Alice, a resilient fighter who helps save the world from a zombifying virus, in the effects-heavy video game adaptation Resident Evil: Extinction. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide