Harold Perrineau

Perrineau nearly passed up the audition to play Michael, whose effort to rescue kidnapped son Walt has driven much of Lost's plot this season. He didn't want to drop out of a stage production of Topdog/Underdog but reconsidered when he heard he was Lost creator J.J. Abrams' first and only choice to play Michael. The versatile actor had enjoyed memorable roles in the The Edge, where he was eaten by a bear; Oz, where his paraplegic prisoner served as the narrator; and the Matrix trilogy, where he played a rebel who managed to survive to the last reel. But he may have been best known (at least among young girls) as Mercutio in Baz Luhrmann's gangland version of Romeo + Juliet, where his ill-fated Mercutio fought alongside Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio, right). Like Michael, he was a guy who probably shouldn't have been allowed to handle a gun.