Tom Everett Scott

A winning young player of films and TV, tall, curly haired actor Tom Everett Scott grew up being told of his resemblance to Tom Hanks whom he adored watching on the sitcom "Bosom Buddies." Sharing the same laid back affability and easy smile as well as similar physical attributes, the two would come together, with Scott fittingly making his big screen debut co-starring with his childhood idol in Hanks' feature directorial bow "That Thing You Do!" (1996). The newcomer proved well cast as Guy Patterson, the charismatic drummer whose band climbs the 1964 pop charts in the amiable period comedy.

A Massachusetts native who started out acting in high school productions and worked at a Rhode Island Renaissance fair, Scott began his college career with practicality in mind, and started out as a communications major before switching to drama studies during his second year. The die cast, he moved to NYC and started a theater company (aTheaterCo) with three college chums. Scott supported himself waiting tables before finding work in TV commercials. Episodic guest shots followed, with NBC's popular legal series "Law & Order" hosting his small screen debut. A 1995 recurring role on "Grace Under Fire" featured him as the son that Brett Butler's title character gave up for adoption and made him a familiar face to viewers of the highly rated sitcom.

"That Thing You Do!" proved an auspicious debut for the young actor, who received positive reviews for his performance and more than the average amount of press due to inevitable comparisons to Tom Hanks. His uncommon onscreen earnestness and amiability made him a stand out in the led to other screen work, including the lead role in the long-awaited sequel, "An American Werewolf in Paris." Unfortunately, this outing proved less memorable, and despite the romantic locale and presence of beautiful Julie Delpy, the film failed to rouse much of an audience.

A role in the small independent "River Red" (1997) featured Scott as the emotionally tormented and ultimately patricidal young man who kills his father to stop his unrelenting abuse of younger brother Tom (David Moscow, who played the young incarnation of Tom Hanks in "Big"). He returned to more mainstream fare as co-star of the college-set comedy "Dead Man on Campus," a black comedy set around the urban legend that links an automatic 4.0 GPA with a suicidal roommate. Scott and Mark-Paul Gosselaar played slacking students who seek out a suicide-prone coed to share their suite and save their academically troubled hides in this inane feature.

Later that year he brought a boyish sensitivity to the supporting role of a young man whose mother (Meryl Streep) is terminally ill in the tear-jerking drama "One True Thing." He co-starred in the quirky independent "Top of the Food Chain" in 1999 and additionally played a college student romancing a much older woman (Kate Capshaw) in the light comedy "The Love Letter." That same year he acted Off-Broadway in Douglas Carter Beane's satire "The Country Club," and returned to television, playing Bertram Cates, a schoolmaster on trial for teaching the theory of evolution in Showtime's remake of "Inherit the Wind."

Scott joined the ranks of TV series regulars in the fall of 2000 when he was featured in the ensemble of the Darren Star primetime serial "The $treet" (Fox), cast as hotshot trader Jack Kenderson, whose uncanny instincts make him the de facto leader of a band of up and comers. Unfortunately, the highly touted series fell victim to anemic ratings and was cancelled.