Sela Ward

Biography: Despite a handful of film roles---most notably her haunting performance as Harrison Ford's murdered wife in The Fugitive---Sela Ward made a name for herself on the small screen, starring in a number of TV movies and the dramas Sisters and Once and Again. Although the former model had romances with actors Richard Dean Anderson and Peter Weller in the 1980s, she settled down and had two kids with real-estate developer Howard Sherman, whom she met on a blind date. Unwilling to commit to a full-time job on series television, Ward passed on the role of Susan for ABC's mega-hit Desperate Housewives but returned to TV in 2005 for a stint on House. Offscreen, the Mississippi native shows lots of love for her hometown, which was the subject of her 2002 memoir Homesick and where she founded Hope Village for Children, a shelter for abused and abandoned kids.