Darrell Hammond
With a barrage of spot-on celebrity impressions to keep audiences
laughing, Saturday Night Live cast member Darrell Hammond has memorably
harassed Alex Trebek (or at least Will Ferrell doing an easily angered
caricature of Trebek) and skewered former president Bill Clinton on the
late-night television staple with equal aplomb. Finely tuning his
impressions from the time of his childhood in Melbourne, FL, Hammond
decided to pursue his niche after graduating from the University of
Florida at Gainesville. Following his schooling Hammond relocated to New
York to appear in off-Broadway plays, though he would soon return to
Florida to sharpen his comedy skills in radio. After joining the SNL
cast in September of 1995, Hammond also turned up on television in 3rd
Rock From the Sun and performed stand-up for Comedy Central's Premium
Blend. The versatile comic also followed the lead of numerous SNL cast
members before him in shooting for the big screen in such efforts as
Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) and with voice work in The King and I (1999).
Steve Burns
Steve Burns produced and starred in the children's television series
Blue's Clues from 1996 until 2002. As "Steve," Burns and his co-star, a
computer-generated dog named Blue, entertained and educated children in
an artificial world created on Macintosh computers. Steve's job was to
find three clues left behind by Blue (in the form of pawprints), record
them in his "handy dandy notebook" and then sit in his "thinking chair"
to deduce what it was Blue wanted to do that day. The affable Burns also
appealed to adult fans as something of a heartthrob version of Mister
Rogers. Burns stepped down from the show in 2002 and was replaced by
actor Donovan Patton in the role of Steve's younger brother Joe.
Dave Foley
Baby-faced and Canadian, writer/actor Dave Foley dropped out of school
in favor of joining the Second City Comedy Troupe in Toronto. He made
his film debut in the 1986 comedy High Stakes, followed by several TV
movies. He and old friend Kevin McDonald helped to form the sketch
comedy group and TV series The Kids in the Hall, so named after a Jack
Benny joke. Running from 1989 to 1994, the show earned a devoted
following and several Emmy nominations. A contributing writer to the
show, Foley also appeared in the cast. Some of his best characters
include Manservant Hecubus, Bruno Puntz Jones, and the insane Jerry
Sizzler. After the show's cancellation, the group stayed in contact for
the 1996 feature Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy and the 2001 live tour
Kids in the Hall: Same Guys New Dresses. Relocating to Los Angeles,
Foley appeared in the unfortunate movie It's Pat and went to work on a
new television show, starring as station manager Dave Nelson in the
aptly named sitcom NewsRadio from 1995 to 1999. During this time, he
also wrote, produced, and starred in the comedy The Wrong Guy, which won
Best Screenplay at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. Working in Hollywood,
he had supporting parts in the comedies Hacks, Blast From the Past, and
Dick. Meanwhile, he provided the voice of Flik the Ant in A Bug's Life,
Toy Story 2, and It's Tough to Be a Bug, as well as various voices in
the South Park movie, the IMAX movie CyberWorld, and the miniseries From
the Earth to the Moon. Mixing animation with his sketch comedy
background, he then starred in Monkeybone, based in part on the graphic
novel Dark Town. On-stage, he appeared in the musical comedy White Trash
Wins Lotto, which ran at The Roxy in Hollywood. He also had supporting
parts in the comedy features On the Line, Run Ronnie Run!, and Stark
Raving Mad. In 2003, Foley returned to his native Canada to appear in
the comedy Whitecoats, directed by Dave Thomas.
Amy Davidson
Amy Davidson (born September 15, 1979 in Phoenix, Arizona) is an
American actress, best known for her role as Kerry Hennessy in 8 Simple
Rules. Although her character on 8 Simple Rules is younger than her on
screen sister (played by Kaley Cuoco), Davidson is in reality, six years
older than Cuoco. A native of Phoenix, Arizona, Amy began doing
commercial work and her acting coach Gene Fowler encouraged her to move
to Los Angeles, California at a young age. Upon arriving in Los Angeles,
Amy was cast in the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen series, So Little Time.
She has also guest-starred on the drama series Judging Amy, the American
sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, and appeared in the movie The Truth About
Jane. Most recently, Amy wrapped production on the Hallmark Channel
original movie Annie's Point, opposite Betty White and Richard Thomas.
Jason Mewes
This actor from New Jersey is best known as the vocal half of the
onscreen comedy duo of Jay and Silent Bob, immortalized by Kevin Smith's
independent classic Clerks (1994). Jay (Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith),
an idiosyncratic pair of suburban drug dealers, provide brief comic
moments throughout Clerks, and Jay's ramblings are interrupted only by a
rare moment of wisdom from Silent Bob. Although Smith's films do not
share an ongoing story, they all occur in the same continuity, with Jay
and Silent Bob as the one constant fixture. The criminal background of
Jay and Silent Bob was toned down for the studio-produced Mallrats
(1995), and the pair was played more for slapstick laughs. Mewes made a
rare appearance as a character other than Jay in the film Drawing Flies
(1996), an independent backed by Kevin Smith's View Askew Productions;
he would reprise the role of Jay in the indie hit Chasing Amy. Jay and
Silent Bob also appear in a series of comedic short films, directed by
Smith, that were aired on MTV in 1998 and are featured extensively in
Smith's action-oriented religious satire, Dogma (1999). In 2001 the
dynamic duo of humor re-teamed, this time for their very own feature
film, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
Robert Wagner
Wagner was a dashing young leading man in the 1950s, when he starred in
movies like What Price Glory (1952, with James Cagney) and Prince
Valiant (1954, with Janet Leigh). By the late 1960s he had become a
regular on TV, where he starred in three lighthearted action series: It
Takes a Thief (1968-70), Switch (1975-78) and Hart to Hart (1979-84). In
the 1990s Wagner made a comeback as a dapper supporting man, sometimes
the heavy but more often playing for laughs; he was Dr. Evil's Number
Two in the Austin Powers movie series. Wagner had a long and famous love
affair with actress Natalie Wood: they married in 1957, divorced in
1962, and remarried in 1972. Wood drowned in 1981 while yachting with
Wagner and actor Christopher Walken. Wagner played outlaw Jesse James in
the 1957 film The True Story of Jesse James... He married actress Jill
St. John in 1991... He is the father of actress Katie Wagner (his
daughter with his second wife, Marion Marshall) and the stepfather of
actress Natasha Gregson Wagner (Wood's daughter with her second husband,
Richard Gregson).
Judd Nelson
Even by the unexacting standard of Hollywood's 1980s "brat pack," actor
Judd Nelson seemed wildly undisciplined and self-indulgent on screen.
One tends to conclude that Nelson (a former philosophy student and the
son of a Maine politician) has played his screen characters as written:
he was, after all, very well trained by famed drama coach Stella Adler,
and came up from the exacting ranks of summer stock. Among his earliest
screen assignments -- all in his watershed year of 1985 -- including the
dope-smoking detentionee in The Breakfast Club, Kevin Costner's
parachute-jumping fraternity pal in Fandango, and Ally Sheedy's
philandering live-in boyfriend in St. Elmo's Fire. Always seeming to be
on the verge of punching someone out, Nelson was well cast as a
mercurial killer in 1989's Relentless.
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