James Callis is a British actor. He is best known for playing Dr. Gaius Baltar in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries and television series, and Bridget Jones’ best friend in Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. He joined the cast of the TV Series Eureka, on Syfy, in 2010.

Callis was born and raised in London, where he attended Harrow School in north west London. His parents owned a bed-and-breakfast.[1] Callis is Jewish, the descendant of immigrants from Russia and Poland.

Callis attended the University of York, graduating in 1993 with a BA in English and Related Literature. He was a member of Derwent College, for which he was an enthusiastic rugby player. At university he was also a keen student actor, director and writer, sometimes also appearing in productions put on by friends at Cambridge University, including a production of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party.

Callis went on to attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, from which he graduated in 1996. In the same year, he was awarded the Jack Tinker Award (Theatre Record Critic of the Year) for Most Promising Newcomer for his performance in Old Wicked Songs, a two-hander by Jon Marans, in which he starred alongside Bob Hoskins.

Callis has appeared in various West End productions and television series as well as on radio. He has also been involved in writing and directing. His directorial debut was Beginner’s Luck, a co-production of his and writer/director Nick Cohen’s Late Night Pictures and Angel Eye Film & TV, starring Julie Delpy, Steven Berkoff and Fenella Fielding. Beginner’s Luck was critically panned, but ran for almost three weeks on one print (all the low-budget film could afford) in one cinema in central London, then went on a tour of student cinemas around the U.K. The U.K. distributor was Guerrilla Films. The film is still on the Icon Catalogue.

Callis finished filming his first role in a cinema film, Bridget Jones’s Diary, alongside Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant, in the summer of 2000 and between a few further film and TV roles went back on stage in the Soho Theatre in December 2002.
In 2003, Callis played the role of Dr. Gaius Baltar in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries, and continued the role in the regular series that followed. In 2006, Callis won Best Supporting Actor Saturn Award and an AFI award for his performance as Baltar.

Dirk Benedict (born as Dirk Niewoehner on 1 March 1945) is a American film and television actor.
Benedict is best known for his portrayal of Lieutenant Starbuck, the womanizing, cigar-smoking, card playing and incredibly skilled Colonial Warrior in the Original Battlestar Galactica series. Incidentally, he also went on to portray Templeton “Faceman” Peck, the womanizing, cigar-smoking, card playing and incredibly skilled supply officer in The A-Team.

Benedict’s casting as “Starbuck” in Battlestar Galactica made him nationally famous. He made an appearance on the final episode of Galactica 1980, entitled “The Return of Starbuck”. This episode is considered by fans of the Original Series as the only significant contribution from Galactica 1980, a show otherwise considered noncanonical by many.

After these series, Benedict found popularity again as the character of Templeton “Faceman” Peck on the long-running early-1980s TV series, The A-Team, produced by Galactica’s owner, Universal. The show’s opening credits featured a sequence, taken from an early episode of the series, in which a Cylon Centurion is shown walking by Benedict’s character, who gives a peculiarly humorous look of recognition of the robot as an in-joke to the actor’s past role as Starbuck. (The context of the original episode was that Faceman was visiting the Universal Studios theme park in Hollywood.)

Benedict returned to the stage after Galactica as well, gaining fame in many popular roles there, and played guest and starring roles in a handful of TV movies and series.

As casting for the Singer/DeSanto Continuation Project of a new Battlestar Galactica series in 2001 began, Benedict was slated to play an older Starbuck in the new series. However, the project folded due to Bryan Singer’s movie directing comittments and delays on the TV industry caused by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Benedict (with fellow Original Series actor Richard Hatch) loaned his voice talents as the Original Series Starbuck to the Battlestar Galactica video game that appeared in 2003. The characters of Starbuck and Apollo are available as wingmen pilots for the game player, using a game cheat.

Source: BattlestarWiki