Katherine Moennig

Lean, strikingly featured, and appealing to both male and female audiences, actress Katherine Moennig did not shy away from characters with strong sexual identities over the course of her career. Her first notices came while playing a young woman who masquerades as a boy in order to attend an all-male school in the short-lived WB series "Young Americans" (2000); three years later, she found more substantial fame as the self-destructive Shane McCutcheon on "The L Word" (Showtime, 2003-09). Her androgynous looks and choices of roles led many in the press to speculate about Moennig's own sexuality. That she skirted the issue in interviews seemed to indicate that Moennig had something to hide, but in reality, it only added to her appeal with viewers.