Donnie Wahlberg

A teen idol in the late 1980s and early 1990s as one-fifth of the boy band, New Kids on the Block, Donnie Wahlberg successfully reinvented himself as an actor years later with gritty and demanding turns in "The Sixth Sense" (1999), "Ransom" (1996), "Band of Brothers" (HBO, 1998) and "Saw II" (2005). The pop group topped the charts for an enormously successful but brief run; after their demise in 1994, he followed his brother Mark Wahlberg's lead and moved into acting, where he quickly defined himself as the screen version of his "bad boy" persona from his New Kids tenure. But an astonishing turn as an unhinged mental patient in "Sixth Sense" showed that Wahlberg was more than just another pop star flirting with acting, and he was soon an in-demand character actor in numerous projects in which he frequently played cops and other tough types who suffered in silence. A surprise reunion of the New Kids proved a hit in 2008, but Wahlberg kept his feet firmly planted in acting, predominately in television. In doing so, he joined the short but substantive list of former musicians whose talent carried over to other mediums.