Entertainment

Sheen has made a name for himself playing real historical figures, including Mozart, Caligula, Prime Minister Tony Blair and British TV host David Frost. Now, in the Showtime drama Masters of Sex, he plays the part of groundbreaking sex researcher William Masters.

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele each have a white mother and black father, and a lot of the jokes on their Comedy Central show are about race. Peele tells Fresh Air that their backgrounds allow them to do characters others would feel uncomfortable doing.

The actor's new memoir, A Story Lately Told, ends just as her Hollywood career is taking off. It covers her early life growing up in Ireland, the daughter of Maltese Falcon director John Huston. The two first collaborated on 1969's Walk With Love And Death, a project that proved disastrous for their relationship.

Dern's new film follows a man named Woody who is starting to show signs of dementia. When Woody falls for one of those junk-mail sweepstakes come-ons, he becomes convinced that he's won $1 million and sets out on foot to collect the cash. Dern tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "[Nebraska] is the most personal movie I've ever done in my career."

On her Hyperbole and a Half blog, Allie Brosh writes stories about her life illustrated with a "very precise crudeness." Most are lighthearted — about her dog or her favorite grammatical mistake ("a lot" vs. "alot) — but her most popular posts have also been the most upsetting, about her crippling depression.

Hollywood stuntman Hal Needham — one of the most famous practitioners of his dangerous craft — died of cancer on Oct. 25 at age 82. We'll listen back to a conversation with Needham from Feb. 7, 2011, when he had just published a memoir, called Stuntman!: My Car-Crashing, Plane-Jumping, Bone-Breaking, Death-Defying Hollywood Life.

In Dallas Buyers Club, Leto plays Rayon, a transgender woman who is living with HIV and a drug habit. Rayon becomes an unlikely friend to Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a rodeo cowboy who starts smuggling HIV drugs from Mexico in the 1980s after he's diagnosed as HIV-positive and given just a few weeks to live.

Crystal isn't happy about turning 65, but at least he's finding a way to laugh about it. The actor and comedian's new memoir — Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys? — is on the best-seller list and he'll be back on Broadway in November.

Since wrapping up the last Harry Potter film, Daniel Radcliffe has taken on roles you may not have expected from the former boy wizard. He tells Fresh Air that starting his acting career so young gave him a sense of purpose he wasn't finding in the British school system, and he hasn't looked back since.

TV critic David Bianculli points to Brooklyn Nine-Nine, starring Andy Samberg, and The Blacklist, starring James Spader, as shows to watch this season. Other debuts, like The Michael J. Fox Show and The Crazy Ones, show plenty of potential.

In the new FX series, Bichir plays a Mexican detective who teams up with an El Paso cop to solve a series of murders. He tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies that The Bridge aims to give equal treatment to both sides of the border.

Lake Bell's comedy In a World ... tracks a vocal coach's efforts to break into the male-dominated world of voice-overs. She and actor/voice-over artist Fred Melamed tell Terry Gross about what drew them to voice-over work, and the origins of the "sexy baby vocal virus" trend.

In addition to playing a cable news producer on Aaron Sorkin's HBO drama, Gallagher is a Tony Award-winning Broadway performer. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about starring in a punk rock musical and rehearsing Sorkin's Newsroom scripts.

Blue Jasmine finds the filmmaker stuck in old ruts; though his technique is as sound as ever, his worldview seems to have congealed decades ago. Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins and Alec Baldwin star in a story inspired by Bernie Madoff and Blanche DuBois.

For years, there were rumors that filmmaker Henry Jaglom had taped hours of his conversations with Orson Welles but that the tapes had been lost. They weren't. Now the transcripts have been released in a new book, edited and introduced by Peter Biskind.

In the Showtime series, Schreiber plays a Hollywood fixer with some personal problems of his own. While TV is newish territory for Schreiber, playing a man plagued by inner demons is not. He talks with Dave Davies about acting the heavy — and how his face has shaped his career.

As Peggy Olson on AMC's drama series, the actress has learned about her character's personality and development episode by episode, script by script, just like those of us who watch the show on TV. And she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that she prefers it that way.

The actor who brought mob boss Tony Soprano to life on the HBO drama The Sopranos died Wednesday at age 51. Fresh Air listens back to interviews with this co-stars Edie Falco and Jeff Daniels and Sopranos director David Chase to hear their thoughts on Gandolfini's prodigious.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg met as adolescents on the Vancouver bar mitzvah circuit -- and soon after began writing the script for what would become the movie Superbad. Their project This Is the End, is a disaster-movie spoof in which the Rapture hits home in Hollywood.

In What Maisie Knew, Moore plays a troubled rock star who might initially seem like a rotten person, but Moore's performance humanizes the character, highlighting her human frailties — something Moore has done in many parts.