ew.com has a before they were heroes article...
Yesterday's 'Heroes'
Before investigating superpowers as
Horn-Rimmed Glasses/Mr. Bennet on
Heroes, Jack Coleman's Steven Carrington (pictured at left, with John Forsythe) investigated his sexuality on
Dynasty. The Carrington character was one of the first gay men portrayed on television — though he had to go through two wives to figure it out! Coleman has transferred that knack for ambiguity to the infamous Horn-Rimmed Glasses character, whose motives and allegiances are a constant source of uncertainty for fans of the show.
Even before
Hayden Panattiere became indestructible cheerleader
Claire Bennet, she was no stranger to fighting off ailments (or bad guys). Lizzie Spaulding, Panattiere's character on the popular soap opera
Guiding Light, battled a dragon in a dream state while in the hospital, waking up to announce that she had been cured of leukemia. Another part of Lizzie's shocking back story? When she was 6, she shot and killed a man after seeing him threaten her mother with a gun.
Playing
Hiro Nakamura on
Heroes has been a breakout role for
Masi Oka, who previously had a few small appearances in comedies like
Scrubs (pictured) and
The Sarah Silverman Show. But before he became the comic-book-obsessed Nakamura, Oka helped make behind-the-scenes magic happen as a visual effects specialist on blockbusters like
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the
Star Wars trilogy, and, perhaps most fittingly, the Marvel-inspired
Hulk. Whether he ''does his own special effects'' for
Heroes in the same way that Jet Li ''does his own stunts'' is unclear. Probably not, but his
Heroes character is a computer whiz with a knack for manipulating the space-time continuum. Art imitates life...unless that ''art'' is
Terminator 3, another of Oka's special effects credits.
You've seen
Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) high in the sky on
Heroes, but Pasdar has had an acting career full of pretty minor roles, including small parts in
Carlito's Way and
Desperate Housewives. (Sadly, Pasdar's terrific 1996 Fox drama,
Profit, was cancelled after eight shows.) The problem seems obvious: He peaked way too early by taking his first movie role as Chipper in
Top Gun (pictured here) where, like his
Heroes character, he had the ability to fly — just not by his own power.
As
Peter Petrelli on
Heroes,
Milo Ventimiglia has the ability to mimic the extraordinary strengths of his counterparts, unlike his
Gilmore Girls character Jess Mariano who, by all accounts, lacked superpowers. Unless, of course, we're counting mind games. Or the ability to make millions of teen girls swoon. When bad-boy Jess got to Stars Hollow, he didn't just steal Rory's heart — he later dated co-star Alexis Bledel in real life. Though he's infamous in some circles, he remains a favorite Rory ex — living on in fan sites dedicated to the memories of Rory and Jess' heated relationship.
Micah Sanders (Noah Gray-Cabey) is
Heroes' resident child prodigy, who infuriated his grandfather when he took apart the laptop his grandfather gave him as a gift and began rebuilding it. The 11-year-old actor didn't need to do much research for the role — he portrayed the adorably precocious Franklin Aloyisious Mumford (pictured) on sitcom
My Wife and Kids. Perhaps even more impressive, Gray-Cabey was a classically trained pianist by the age of three and was once featured as a real-life whiz kid on
Ripley's Believe it or Not.
Much like her character
Niki/Jessica Sanders, who splits her time between webcam-stripping and assassin work,
Ali Larter has had a slightly schizophrenic onscreen career. Before
Heroes, she had a job as a hot co-ed in movies like
Legally Blonde and
Varsity Blues. She began flirting with danger in
Final Destination, when her character Clear Rivers (pictured here) escaped death on Flight 180, only to watch her friends perish in various unlikely circumstances. What Rivers lacked in superhuman strength she made up for with an uncanny understanding of her destiny, though even that couldn't save her when she blew up in a hospital in
Final Destination 2. Clear Rivers fans need not despair, however. With a role in
Resident Evil: Extinction (slated for release in September), it appears that Larter's back to her old ways of eluding the afterlife while flaunting her assets.
Ex-con
D.L. Hawkins (Leonard Roberts), who has the ability to phase through solid objects on
Heroes, has rubbed shoulders with superheroes in
Smallville and vampires in
Buffy during his television career. But for all the Nick Cannon fans out there (you know who you are!), Roberts will always be remembered as the no-nonsense percussion leader who butted heads with the young jack-of-all-trades in 2002's
Drumline (pictured here). You can't ''phase'' your way out of that one, Leonard!
Gabriel Gray (Zachary Quinto) is
Heroes' suspected serial killer, Sylar, but as Adam Kaufman on
24, Quinto spent his days fighting to
stop death at the hands of terrorists. After Adam's sister died from a virus he and the rest of the Counter Terrorism Unit had been trying to track, Quinto was absent from the show in a disappearance almost as mysterious as Sylar's identity.
Greg Grunberg was always willing to lend an ear to his friends as the innovative Sean Blumberg on
Felicity (pictured). Or dole out advice to his coworkers/friends as witty agent Eric Weiss on
Alias. So it's only fitting that Grunberg's
Heroes character
Matt Parkman is a good listener. No, a
really good listener: He can hear the thoughts of people around him. Too bad, Sean Blumberg can't help him invent something to stop the feedback. And those pesky headaches....
Matthew John Armstrong?s
Heroes character
Ted Sprague may be a radiation machine, but can Armstrong save you 15 percent or more on car insurance? Apparently not. ''For the record, I am not the GEICO caveman,''
he told EW in January. But he did have a recurring role on
American Dreams, and more recently he made a guest appearance on
House (pictured here) as an HIV patient. At one point in the episode, he accidentally coughs HIV-positive blood onto Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), causing her to flip out, get high off his drugs, and seduce Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer)! With a few more cameos, Armstrong might have a shot at becoming one of TV's most contagious characters.
ew.com