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Chris O’Donnell (NCIS: Los Angeles) has joined the cast of ABC’s 9-1-1: Nashville in a series regular role.

O’Donnell is the first cast member to join the 20th Television and Ryan Murphy Television drama which received a straight-to-series order from the network last month. He will star as ‘Captain Don Sharpe,’ a rugged fire captain and rodeo rider who runs Nashville’s busiest firehouse with his beloved son. Don’s a devoted husband and family man but he has his secrets.

The new offshoot joins the mothership series 9-1-1 on ABC where it moved to in 2023 following its cancellation at Fox. The second series from the franchise, 9-1-1: Lone Star, was cancelled after five seasons in 2023 and completed its run in February.

9-1-1: Nashville is written and executive produced by the franchise’s co-creators Ryan Murphy & Tim Minear and 9-1-1: Lone...

by Eric Blume

One of our great screen icons, Jessica Lange, celebrates a big birthday this weekend: 75 years, and thankfully still going strong. Lange is one of only 24 actors to win the Triple Crown of Acting.

Lange is a personal favorite actor of mine, and I’ve written about her on the site numerous times, so I thought for her three-quarter-century mark, I’d hold a moment for one of her less-heralded, lesser-known performances, a bit of a departure from her usual delivery: her soft, lightly comic, and sweetly sad performance in Paul Brickman’s 1990 film Men Don’t Leave...

Chris O’Donnell has signed with Gersh for representation.

The Hollywood film and TV actor currently stars as G. Callen in the CBS police procedural NCIS: Los Angeles, now in its 14th and final season.

Last year, O’Donnell and NCIS: LA cast member LL Cool J teamed to executive produce the reality dance competition series Come Dance With Me at CBS. The show features talented young dancers from across the country who invite one inspirational, and untrained, family member or other adult who has supported their dance dreams, to become their dance partner for a chance to strut their stuff for a grand prize.

In 2015, O’Donnell earned a star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame for his entertainment career. His TV credits include The Company and Grey’s Anatomy, and O’Donnell made his Broadway stage debut in Arthur Miller’s play The Man Who Had All the Luck, opposite Samantha Mathis.

"American Horror Story" has had no shortage of casting coups in its brief history but landing Oscar winner Kathy Bates to square off with fellow Oscar winner Jessica Lange may be the biggest get yet.

TVLine reports that Bates will play Lange's friend turned enemy in the third season -- or installment -- of the ongoing miniseries. Details of the new season remain vague, but Lange is expected to play a far more glamorous role than "Asylum's" Sister Jude and the storyline will involve young love, multiple cities and multiple timelines.

Previous "Horror Story" cast members Sarah Paulson, Lily Rabe, Evan Peters, Taissa Farmiga and Frances Conroy are also confirmed to return.

Bates and Lange have shared the screen twice before: in 1990's "Men Don't Leave," before Bates won her Oscar for "Misery," and again in 2006's little seen indie "Bonneville" (which also starred Joan Allen -- another great actress...

Super-stardom always looks so inevitable in retrospect: of course Ryan Gosling would make a name for himself in well-received indie movies like Lars and the Real Girl and Blue Valentine, while also finding popular success in movies like The Notebook and Crazy, Stupid, Love.

And with looks like Chris Evans', it was surely only a matter of time until he'd find a vehicle like Captain America that would give him the lead in a movie that's a big fat hit.

But is that true? Once you each a certain level and generate the "right" kind of buzz, is super-stardom inevitable?

As near as I can tell, Hollywood is still basically playing by the "three-flops-and-you're-out" rule: after a leading actor's breakthrough success, he gets about three more roles to prove himself.

If these movies flop, and if their name recognition is still high enough because of that initial break-through, they...

Joan Cusack joins Showtime's new series Shameless Academy Award-nominated actress Joan Cusack has joined the cast of Showtime's new one-hour drama series Shameless. Cusack, who will appear in all 12 episodes of the series, will play the role of Sheila, an agoraphobic Chicago housewife with a sexually active teenage daughter who strikes up a special friendship with William H. Macy's character, Frank Gallagher. Production on the first season begins in mid-September, with the series premiering on Showtime, Sunday, January 9th at 9:00 Pm Et/Pt.

An award-winning Chicago-based actress, Joan Cusack has twice been nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in Working Girl and In & Out. She is a three-time winner of the American Comedy Award as Funniest Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture and has appeared in numerous films, including Sixteen Candles, Say Anything, Class, High Fidelity, Cradle Will Rock and Grosse Pointe Blank.

Start with Pt 1 of this 90s Flashback... if you're confused about what's going on. To make a long story short, I'm excerpting items from an old zine I wrote in Spring 2000, during the first year of the website. Yes, I was originally juggling too many things. Why that's not like me At All.

We previously covered my dated lists for Actors, Supporting Actresses and Supporting Actors -- lists I don't agree with in full anymore (though the supporting actresses list I quite like still). So now we move on to Picture and Actress.

Best Actress

Top ten chronological order. What follows is original text from the magazine, with the winner in bold text. I had purposefully excluded 1999 which is why you don't see Kate Winslet for Holy Smoke or Hilary Swank for Boy's Don't Cry though here's what I wrote about Swank in that same zine...

I'm rooting for Swank on Oscar night.

Today, in conjunction with Entertainment Weekly's 20th anniversary, I'm kicking off a semi-regular series of columns in which I look back, every few weeks, at some of the movies I reviewed for EW two decades ago. (I'll peg each column to the week, 20 years before, that the review appeared.) I'm intensely eager to see how those movies play now -- whether they hold up, feel dated, look as fresh as they did the day they came out, or maybe, in some cases, even fresher. And I want to do the same thing with the reviews I wrote. I want to...

Streep at 60: We've been looking at each Meryl Streep Oscar nod and its competition. Previously 78, 79, 81, 82 and 83, 85, 87 and 88

I believe that Meryl Streep's film career can be divided into five chapters or acts (thus far).

Act I (Liberated Lady) 1977-1981Act II (Chamaeleonidae Erotica) 1981-1988Act III (Funny Lady) 1989-1992Act IV (???) 1993-2001Act V (The Great Entertainer) 2002-presentAfter the High Drama years it came as a shock to many when Meryl was suddenly making comedies. Some felt it was a career crisis and there was some backlash going on. This is possibly hard to comprehend for her new young fans but great success always leads to it and many people were sick of Streep's total dominance as the Eighties wound down. It was somewhat common wisdom at the time that her run at the top was ending, having turned 40 in 1989. Several younger stars were coming into their own...

Although it doesn't happen on every project, Debra Zane savors those "Oh my God" moments when it is clear that a role fits an actor like a glove. "The Casting Society of America has their own awards once a year called the Artios, and artios is the Greek word for 'perfectly fitted,' " says Zane, who has been honored with 10 Artios nominations and three wins, most recently for Dreamgirls. "That, I think, is the true definition of what casting needs to be, because when it truly fits, then you get the best version of the story."Consider the audition of Oscar nominee Michael Shannon for the role of John Givings in Revolutionary Road. The New York - based Ellen Lewis, who cast the film with Zane, came up with the idea of Shannon for the part, but Zane's feedback and extra care sealed the deal. At Shannon's audition, casting...

Joel Goodson (Tom Cruise) has the usual fantasies. With the house to himself, he might even get the chance to try and live a couple of them out, but when sexy escort Lana (Rebecca De Mornay) arrives at his doorstep things don't exactly go as planned. That's okay, as the nights grow longer and the daylight vanishes these two quickly start coming up with a plan, and if Joel plays his cards right everything he's always dreamed of might only be a kiss on the cheek away from materializing. If Top Gun was the movie that made Tom Cruise an international superstar, Risky Business was the film that got him that opportunity. Seldom has there been a star-making roll offered a young up-and-coming actor like Joel Goodson, and no matter what you want to say about the man's couch-jumping antics or pharmaceutical lunacies the one thing you cannot dispute is just how engaging,...