Actors...

Actors are a group of the most disappointing people I have ever encountered, Lord of the Rings actors especially. In movies like that, people play great heroes who put honor and the right thing ahead of their lives. A while ago I Wikipediaed (the past tense of the verb Wikipedia - when did search engines become verbs?) the actors on Lord of the Rings, and many of them could not have been more different than the heroes they played. One of my favorite characters was played by a man who was married four times and then arrested for stalking his fourth ex-wife.

To anyone who lives and breathes Lord of the Rings as I used to, I do not recommend researching the actors.

My two new favorite characters on LOTR are now Saruman and Eowyn. Both those actors have only been in one marriage - one, in their entire lives! Which is more than ninety, NINETY years for Sir Christopher Lee (Saruman.) Miranda Otto, who played Eowyn, quit doing full time work, (or as much work, or something like that) so she could raise her daughter. (Seems quite different from the character she played.)

Anyway, I evidently didn't learn enough from the experience of researching those actors, because tonight I researched the actors on NCIS. And guess what?

I was most pleasantly surprised. My top three favorite actors:

Cote de Pablo, who plays Ziva - nothing remarkable, except that she's never been divorced, which is cool for Hollywood. She studied music at Carnegie Mellon University, and is both a singer and an actress.

Sean Murray, who plays McGeek - again, nothing that goes up in the sky in lights, but still cool. He married Carrie James in 2005, and apparently they're still married.

Mark Harmon, who plays Gibbs - he's been married to the same woman since 1987, and they have two sons, one of whom was a guest star on NCIS. From what I can tell, Hollywood hasn't leeched his brain enough for him to think he's so much better than everyone else. In 1996, he pulled two teenage boys out of a burning car wreck, saving their lives. You rock, Mr. Harmon!

If any of my stories ever get made into movies,  I want my heroes to be played by heroes.