Three years ago, Katherine Moennig was struggling just like most of the young actors in Hollywood, despite her show-business pedigree. Not only was her mother a Broadway dancer, but her father's sister, Blythe Danner, has a few connections, and Katherine has a rather famous first cousin named Gwyneth Paltrow.

The native Philadelphian hadn't planned on entering the family business. Sure, she had been acting since she was about 10 in local children's theater productions, but she says she entered Manhattan's American Academy of Dramatic Arts after high school because she couldn't stand the thought of attending a four-year college.

By the time she graduated, she was hooked. She spent two summers with the Williamstown Theatre Festival, on the advice of Aunt Blythe. Working on plays like As You Like It was as good as getting a masters degree, she says. "I worked on full productions with professional actors and directors. I learned how the real world worked."

Then at 24 she hit the big time ‑- she thought ‑- when she landed her first TV show, the WB's Young Americans, a spin-off of Dawson's Creek. She was one of the stars, along with Kate Bosworth and Lost's Ian Somerhalder, playing a girl posing as a boy in order to attend the exclusive Rawling Academy. That kind of gender bending might have worked wonders for Hilary Swank's career with Boys Don't Cry around the same time, but it landed Moennig on the unemployment line when the show was cancelled after airing for just two months in the summer of 2000.