Bridgette Wilson-Sampras

It may surprise you to know that Bridgette Wilson-Sampras has been toiling away in Hollywood for a decade, in everything from comedy (she was the teacher Adam Sandler fell for in 1995's Billy Madison) to action movies (countless boys developed crushes on her when she fought evil that same year in Mortal Kombat).

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Some might recall her from even earlier work: "My very first job was playing this flighty little girl named Ginger on 'Saved by the Bell,'" she laughs. "Kids sometimes recognize me from that, and my friends--hung over on a Saturday morning--still call me up and say, I'm watching you right now on 'Saved by the Bell'!" But it wasn't until 1999 that her career really started gaining momentum. She starred with Geoffrey Rush in House on Haunted Hill and played the crazed bride in Love Stinks, a film which stunk a bit itself but was seen by tennis great Pete Sampras, who fell for its leading lady. The athlete and the actress wed a year later. With her personal life thriving, Wilson-Sampras went back to what she'd been doing all along: working. Having starred as Matthew McConaughey's bride-to-be in last January's hit The Wedding Planner, and in John Hughes's time-travel comedy Just Visiting, she'll soon be on screens again as the girlfriend who turns the screws on Jerry O'Connell for an engagement ring in the romantic comedy Buying the Cow. Finally, though, she has the time to play house with her new husband. "We didn't live together before we got married," she explains. "After the wedding, I flew back to New York...to work."

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Jeffrey Lantos