Cerina Vincent

Cerina Vincent got her break in a children's franchise and her reputation from an outbreak. She played Maya in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, a job that teaches an actor to hit marks and sell nonsense with a straight face, and neither that series nor the role is among the credits listed here.

Then came two parts pulling in opposite directions. In Not Another Teen Movie she is Areola, a parody of the foreign exchange student who spends teen comedies inexplicably unclothed, and the joke only works because Vincent plays her with total unembarrassed sincerity rather than winking at the camera. In Cabin Fever she is Marcy, and Eli Roth's infection picture handed her the scream-queen label she has worked with ever since: horror conventions, a long run of genre parts, a steady living.

The horror that followed is uneven and she is rarely the problem. Return to House on Haunted Hill, It Waits, 7 Mummies, the anthology Tales of Halloween, the monster comedy Freaks of Nature. Comedy has treated her better, from Workaholics to Suzy Diaz, the mother on Disney Channel's Stuck in the Middle, where she gets to play warm and harried rather than terrified.

Away from acting she has written three books with Jodi Lipper, written a regular column for The Huffington Post, and co-hosts a parenting podcast, which is a more durable second act than most actors of her genre manage.