The Underrated of 2007

Paul Adelstein
"Private Practice," ABC

You know him as: Online-hookup addict/pediatrician Cooper Freedman

Why we like him: "Private Practice" has been, at best, a hit-and-miss proposition this season. One consistently bright spot, though, has been the funny, sometimes touching performance Adelstein (pictured here with another of the show's consistently good elements, Amy Brenneman) gives as Cooper. He plays the wounded and wistful Cooper as something of an overgrown kid, but he also manages to seem a lot less childish than his fellow doctors often do. That's no mean feat. And, since he plays a pediatrician, he's also called on to work with real kids, and those scenes never feel forced.

Where else you've seen him: As the oily Kellerman on "Prison Break" and in films like "Intolerable Cruelty" and "Collateral."