For nearly 20 years, Law & Order (and its spin-offs, Special Victims Unit and Criminal Intent) has provided regular work for tens of thousands of actors – most of which never appear in the title credits. This fall, the show kicks off its 20th season with more unknowns, and some knowns (SVU, I love ya, but you’re starting to resemble the Love Boat over there, so dial it down). But if you go back to the early 1990s, when the “Mothership” show was just starting out, it was clear: They were making casting decisions with an uncanny accuracy – those first few seasons are just packed with future Oscar and Emmy winners. All they needed were a few good roles.

Here’s a trip down memory lane, as we look at 10 of L&O’s brightest lights over the years – when their bulbs were still in a warm-up phase. Without the ka-chung of Law & Order, who knows where they’d be today?

10. Cynthia Nixon

The Perp: Laura Di Biasi (“Subterranean Homeboy Blues,” 1990)

The Crime: A replay of the Bernard Goetz subway shooting crime of a few years earlier, Nixon’s dancer Di Biasi let some rowdy kids have it on the ride home.

The Scene: Nixon had been wandering the acting corridors for 10 years before this, and would have 8 more years of spotty roles before HBO picked her up for Sex and the City’s Miranda, but even at this stage the pale, frail, very-youthful Nixon was still getting her name known. The L&O franchise has been good to her: She won her second Emmy in a Law & Order: SVU guest role in 2008.

9. William H. Macy

The Lawman: Asst. U.S. Attorney John McCormack (“Everybody’s Favorite Bagman,” 1990)

The Crime: Macy’s lawyer didn’t have much to do other than issue a few orders on a stakeout; he was back two years later in unctuous official mode in 1992′s “Sister of Mercy,” too.

The Scene: Like Nixon, Macy had about 10 years of TV and film acting under his belt before signing on to the series’ pilot (which ended up airing as episode six; don’t ask). But his resume was studded with soap operas and Afterschool Specials (plus an early film pairing with collaborator David Mamet in House of Games), and he was far from his 1997 Oscar nomination for Fargo.

8. Patricia Clarkson

The Perp: Laura Winthrop, “By Hooker, by Crook” (1990)

The Crime: Clarkson’s Winthrop was all high class, family came over on the Mayflower, yada yada – but she’d turned her Calvinist work ethic to an unusual field – running an upscale prostitution ring.

The Scene: Though Clarkson is one of those ethereal faces you feel like you’ve known forever, her talent took a long while to materialize in the public consciousness. Prior to this role she had played Kevin Costner’s wife in The Untouchables, but hadn’t otherwise made much impact; 1999′s The Green Mile, however, put a new spin on her career.

7. Samuel L. Jackson

The Perp: Louis Taggert, “The Violence of Summer” (1991)

The Lawman: Jackson’s Taggert reps a particularly noxious rapist, who nearly goes free for the crime.

The Scene: Yeah, Jackson had gotten plugged in Goodfellas already, but he was still a few years away from ordering that Royale with Cheese in 1994′s Pulp Fiction. How do you like this for an episode, though: It’s got Jackson in it – and he’s not even the lead actor! (See below for more.) Side note: Jackson’s wife, LaTanya Richardson, also stepped into the L&O batting box early in her career, in 1992′s “Sisters of Mercy” (see W.H. Macy above) and 1991′s “Life Choice.”

6. Phillip Seymour Hoffman

The Perp: Steven Hanauer, “The Violence of Summer” (1991)

The Crime: Hoffman’s Hanauer upstaged Jackson’s Taggert here, as a creepy gang rapist who almost manages to elude prosecution.

The Scene: Hoffman! Jackson! Together, at last! Well, together at first: The two worked together just one other time, in 1996′s Hard Eight. These days, Hoffman tends to play squishy or intellectual in a tightly-wound way, but he’s never been scarier, more amoral or more memorable than in “Violence.” And, as we all know, he went on to win an Oscar for playing squishy, intellectual, terrifying Truman Capote in 2006.

5. Michelle Trachtenberg

The Victim: Dinah Driscoll, “God Bless the Child” (1991)

The Crime: Trachtenberg played a dying child whose parents refused medical care on religious grounds.

The Scene: She was barely into grade school (and actually goes uncredited for the role) when Trachtenberg had to die on camera in her very first role; since then, she’s grown up on camera in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and more recently, Gossip Girls.

4. Sam Rockwell

The Perp: Randy Borland, “Intolerance” (1992)

The Crime: Fishmonger Borland has a brilliant brother – but doesn’t like that he’s being upstaged by a Chinese classmate, so it’s time for a little chop suey, if you know what I mean.

The Scene: Yeah, Rockwell had a few film roles – including being a thug in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – but when he appeared as a surly dockworker on L&O, he was still essentially unknown (he came back the following year to appear in 1993′s “Manhood,” too.) L&O wasn’t a magic bullet for his career, but just like Clarkson, an appearance in The Green Mile helped put the gas into his resume.

3. Claire Danes

The Perp: Tracy Brandt, “Skin Deep” (1992)

The Crime: Never tell an aspiring hormonal model her legs are too heavy. That’s what a fashion photographer learns the hard way.

The Scene: Two years before she, like, became Angela Chase on My So-Called Life, Danes was bringing her quivery dimpled chin and luminescent eyes to bear on L&O – and she’s impressive even in her limited screen time. It’s hard to imagine she’s barely a teenager in the role, and no surprise her career skyrocketed not long after.

2. Amanda Peet

The Perp: Leslie Harlan, “Hot Pursuit” (1995)

The Crime: In a semi-replay of the Patty Hearst kidnap scenario, a young woman is taken by a ruthless robber, who is shot during a subsequent crime … in which she appeared to be a willing accomplice.

The Scene: She’s been one of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People of 2000, landed some solid film roles (including Syriana and the second X-Files film) and even picked up a few regular TV series – but Peet is one of those actresses eternally on the bubble. Her shot on L&O was just the second she’d ever done, and may have been the most memorable appearance she’s had to date.

1. Peter Sarsgaard

The Bystander: Josh Strand, “Paranoia” (1995)

The Crime: Information about a woman’s brutal murder gets posted online, which leads detectives down a few wrong corridors in pursuit of the actual perpetrator.

The Scene: This L&O appearance by Sarsgaard can hardly be said to be career-making – it was his first-ever role, after all – but since it’s virtually the only television appearance he’s ever made, let’s give it some credit for boosting him into the film stratosphere (he’ll star in October’s An Education, a likely Oscar contender). Along with Hoffman, he’s one of a younger generation of actors who bring a realistic sincerity to the screen – even if in this role he’s not terribly memorable.

1. “Fade,” by Robert Cormier
From the man who made chocolate distribution and nursery rhymes resonate with paranoia in “The Chocolate War” and “I Am the Cheese” comes a Stephen King-endorsed book about a family genetic mutation in which certain members can just … vanish. What sounds like an awesome superhero trait actually is a lifelong burden, and wrought with its own dangers and evildoers.

2. “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” by E.L. Konigsburg
All right, not as creepy as vampires and government conspiracies, but it’s got a darkly cool factor: Who wouldn’t want to run away from home and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, scavenging the reflecting pools for spare change and discovering a secret about the statue of David? There was a 1995 movie for ABC with Lauren Bacall, but … TV! This is a book that deserves a Disney big-screen adaptation all the way.

3. “Go Ask Alice,” by Anonymous
So it’s not really based on a young girl’s diary, in which she spirals into drugs and casual sex and kills herself at the end (that’s no spoiler; you can learn that from reading the back of the book). Who cares? She’s just like you and me (or, a dated version of such, since the book came out in 1971), and that’s the creepy part. It’s hard to pin down Where It All Goes Wrong. There was an awesomely-cast film in 1973 (William Shatner and Andy Griffith!), but maybe it’s time to switch out the LSD for meth and the diary to a blog….

4. “House of Stairs,” by William Sleator
Arguably, 1997′s “Cube” was this movie writ large, but there are significant differences. Rather than being trapped in a maze of trapped, shifting cubes, in “Stairs” five orphaned 16-year olds wake up in a vast chamber of nothing but staircases and small landings. They have to perform in order to get a machine to spit out food, but the rules keep changing – and soon the machine wants them to do horrible things to each other.

5. “The Girl Who Owned a City,” by O.T. Nelson
Nelson only wrote this one book, in order to earn cash to start up a college painting service – but one was enough. Basically, in “City” the world ends when everyone over age 12 dies from a virus. One gal takes on the roving adolescent gangs and sets up her own little clan inside a school. Got me well into apocalyptic fiction at an early age and never let go. Plus, having a female heroine was a big change from many of the books I was reading at the time – Lisa never needed to be saved by some creepy vampire, I tell you what.

6. “The Executioner,” Jay Bennett
Bruce is drunk, but he drives anyway – and the resulting accident kills his friend Ray. He manages to escape legally unblamed, but his conscience isn’t letting him off so easily. Things start going “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (by Lois Duncan, see below) on him, as his fellow surviving passengers get bumped off one by one. There’s a great twist in the ending, and Bennett was a well-seasoned mystery writer (who just passed away in June) who knew how to craft suspense and thrills.

7. “Paul’s Game,” by Mary Towne
There was a time when everyone was a little freaked out over ESP – you know, extra-sensory projection. What could it mean if someone could read your mind! What if you could read someone else’s? Here, not only did you have two girls who had mind-reading abilities – but a control freak guy who decided to use those abilities for nefarious purposes. A big-screen version with excellent special effects could be excellent on a mind-reading level … and on an abusive-boyfriend level. Sadly, that latter one hasn’t gone out of fashion yet.

8. “Daughters of Eve,” by Lois Duncan
Duncan’s books have been made into a number of horror-fest films – from “Killing Mr. Griffith” to “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” “Eve,” however, has been ignored unnecessarily, mixing extreme feminism with cult behavior, misogyny and revenge tactics as nice girls in high school are led down a very dangerous path by their unstable and dogmatic teacher. Duncan in many ways is a modern-day Shirley Jackson, taking the everyday of the suburbs and turning it into something dark and squishy – and she did it long before David Lynch ever conceived of “Twin Peaks.”

9. “The Giver,” by Lois Lowry
The award-winning “Giver” takes the reader to an alternate universe that seems utopist – but that tends to mean “too good to be true.” In the name of safety and stability, peoples’ lives are tightly-regulated, and all emotion has drained out of them. One person is chosen as the repository of all of the memories and emotions of the society’s past – and that makes him realize just how hollow everything is, and look for a way to escape. Bonus: “Harry Potter” director David Yates has this book on his development slate for 2011.

10. “Fun with Your New Head,” by Thomas Disch
The late, great Disch was never a young person’s author. But this collection of short sci-fi and horror stories is an excellent introduction to his work, and likely to leave you with creepy nightmares. There’s the woman who gets a little too personal with the roaches in her apartment, the man trapped as a human exhibit in an alien zoo, and the title story, which starts out as absurd advertising copy – and slides too easily into disturbia. Any one of these stories could work as a short, “Twilight Zone”-esque film.

First panel: Picture Joel Watson, stuck in a dead-end sales job in Dallas, Texas. He’s abandoned his dream of being an illustrator/artist after realizing there was virtually no chance for his cartooning skills to get picked up by a major syndicate. But – cross into the next panel and see the birth of his daughter, and the rebirth of his ambition. In 2007, he launched Hijinks Enuse, a three-times-a-week Internet comic strip. It was an experiment in trying to gain full-time employment off of his art then, and it remains that way today – though slowly, he’s making it work. Panel Three: Watson’s super-topical, goofy look at TV and film happenings (among other firings of his synapses), done up in cells bursting with color and sometimes even a special effect or two, draws fans. What’s in store for the last panel? That’s yet to be written (or drawn) but PopTen pulled Watson away from his pen for a few minutes to get a rough outline.

PopTen: So how is the “experiment” to make this your full time job going? Are you making any money yet?

Joel Watson: Readers donate on average about $800 monthly, and they get access to premium content information, which I call the Vault. A big chunk of my income comes from T-shirt sales, which I sell through my store and Topatoco.com; two-thirds of the people who make a living from Web comics are selling through them. I sell prints of my own comics, and I’m working on a book right now. The comic itself doesn’t pull it all in, so I supplement my income with freelance and worry.

PT: You say you get about 400,000 page views each month and you have about 12,000 regular readers. What was the turning point for you with this – when you realized you actually had an audience?

Watson: I started the comic almost specifically just for my friends, thinking it was unlikely anyone was going to read it – so most of the early comics were just inside jokes I knew would make five or ten people laugh. I posted a lot on the Penny Arcade forums to get feedback on the art, and the majority of my audience came from there, and really quickly this ad hoc community sprang up around the comic. I spent a lot of time aggressively trying to grow the audience, and then I realized that no amount of my effort was equal to the 2000 people doing it for me – there’s nothing I can say about my own comic that will ring as true as one of your friends telling you about it.

PT: How much time do you spend on each comic?

Watson: The problem with Hijinks Ensue as opposed to almost every other comic I know of is it’s commentary, and topical to almost a daily point. A friend pointed out that it’s not just a comic, it’s an editorial comic. So literally the day before and sometimes the day of I’m drawing a comic that has to go up in a couple of hours. The writing takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 hours; my writing process is four hours of frustration and then it all comes to me in a split second.

PT: And what are your tools?

Watson: I use a Wacom tablet that I draw directly on. I do all my pencils on that and then do ink and colors. I do the comic on Apple computers – I have a MacBook Pro – and I use PhotoShop CS3, and other than your typical FTP that’s the whole thing. I briefly flirted with doing original artwork, because I know a lot of artists are selling their original artwork for a hefty sum and I want a piece of that tasty money pie, but I’m just terrible. I’m so used to the digital process it takes twice as long to do it on paper and pen.

PT: Have you ever been approached about taking the comic wider, or getting it into a print format? What about animating it?

Watson: I’m not actively pursuing those things, but I wouldn’t turn them down if I was approached. A lot of people say “this would make a great cartoon.” Maybe, but cartoons take hundreds of thousands of dollars and months to make – and it would probably lose its soul if I couldn’t make fun of stuff topically. The Simpsons has been the worst show on television for ten years – they’ll make references that are six months to a year old, and that’s terrible. That just speaks to the watered-down comedy the majority of America is happy with after they get home from work. It’s so the opposite of cutting-edge to me that it might as well not be there at all. I’ve no interest in having a mainstream audience – it would detract from what I’m trying to accomplish. That said, if Cartoon Network wants to make it into a comic, give me a call.

PT: One of my favorite strips of yours has Fox executives choosing between saving Dollhouse or Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Which would you have preferred to stay on the air?

Watson: (Thus ensues a 25 minute conversation, happily engaged upon with his interviewer, about the joys of Joss Whedon. Summed up: Sarah Connor should have lived, but Dollhouse has gotten shinier.)

PT: What if the Internet had not come along? Where would you be today?

Watson: Probably still in sales. I gave up drawing for about seven years around 2000. Then I used to sell Web sites to dentists, and I got to the point where I said I don’t care if another dentist has another Web site. I wanted to do something that mattered just a little bit. And making people laugh matters. So what I’ve done is only possible because of the Internet – there’s no way over 10,000 people in the world would be reading my comics if the only avenue to have it published in was in newspapers. The biggest thing that kept me going early on when I had two full-time jobs was I’d get an e-mail from a random stranger telling me how much they liked my comic.

1. Duran Duran

May as well start out on a high note. As a complete and total Durannie from about the ages of 13 to … Anyway, the Duran buttons dominate the collection. I still remember feeling an early version of a hot flash every time I came upon one I didn’t have. I didn’t actually wear any when I met the band a few years ago, but the point is: I could have worn a dress of nothing but Duran Duran buttons.

2. To the Max

Seriously, for about 30 seconds I considered wearing this, and by then the whole Valley Girl fad was over. For those who missed the phenom, it began with a song by Frank Zappa’s daughter Moon Unit (I kid you not) which encapsulated many of the phrases gals in Southern California (the “Valley”) were apparently spouting. This particular one, “to the max,” simply meant, “with emphasis.” As in: “The Valley Girl phase you went through made me physically ill, to the max.”

3. General Public

Knowing and admitting to liking General Public in my crowd also meant you needed to have a working knowledge of The English Beat, the pop-ska band they were birthed out of. In fact, if you were very cool you’d actually just call them The Beat. But when I got this button I don’t think I knew any of that – I got it because I’d never seen a ‘Fro with tiger stripes before, and the hair’s owner, Rankin’ Roger, was instantly the coolest person in my book. Years later, it’s hard to look back and not think, “What a dork.” Me, that is.

4. a-haThey were Norwegian, they were cute, and they had The Most Awesome Video Ever (“Take on Me,” duh). They also wore layers of thin leather straps as bracelets, and I copied devotedly. They were never as beloved as Duran Duran, but there was so much potential in those cheekbones. I ended up seeing them live at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. – mere days before graduating from high school on the same stage. I may have taken off my leather bracelets for the event.

5. Frankie Goes to Hollywood Yes, these are three buttons, but like a Pringles potato chip, you can’t have just one with Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Even 20-odd years later, the band is still a marvel of style over substance, marketing over actual ideas. But who doesn’t love their big hit “Relax,” in which the song’s climax is an aural rendition of an actual sexual release – and features lyrics like “relax, don’t do it, when you want to cum”? Racy stuff for an impressionable 14 year old. As for the buttons? Oddly timely today, when you think about it.

6. Feed the World/Live AidOn the morning of July 13, 1985, I woke up in the middle of a dew-drenched field at my summer camp. There’d been a campwide sleepover for counselors and counselors in training, and let’s just say not much sleep was had. I spent the rest of the day in a stupor squinting at “Live Aid,” broadcast on public television and viewed through our crappy analog rabbit-ears, because we were too cheap to have this new invention called “cable.”

7. Dukakis/Regan/BBOh, Lordy, she’s a socialist! These are more late-80s than the other buttons, obtained in college. The first year I could vote I was attending school in Massachusetts, so I joined Gov. Dukakis’ campaign, in which he promised national health care and was booed pretty much nationwide. Also, considered a socialist by some. (Gee, how times change. Slowly.) Around that time I went to a Billy Bragg concert – a British folk/rock singer with proudly-socialist lyrics; any rightie thinking President Obama is a socialist needs to listen to some Bragg to get the real deal – and not only signed up with Billy, but against then-President Reagan. I felt quite radical doing it, too.

8. Clash

This one came along long before I knew what “Sandinista” was or meant, and long before any socialist buttons crossed my path. It’s my complete poseur button, because while I did in later years come to appreciate the joys of The Clash beyond “Rock the Casbah,” frankly when I got this button is was for the cool factor only. But shh, only you and I have to know that.

9. Air Supply

Shut up. I was 12. It happened. Can we move on now? All right, fine: Here’s your trivia of the day. The same guy that wrote “Making Love Out of Nothing At All,” which was Air Supply’s biggest hit ever, also wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for Bonnie Tyler – and Meatloaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” albums. Versatility, thy name is Jim Steinman.

10. Things Can Only Get BetterAnd philosophy, thy name is Howard Jones. Whether or not you actually liked the spiky-haired keyboard-playing HoJo (as we fans called him), he actually had some thoughtful, Buddhist-inspired lyrics. When a former friend came at me with Bible verses to “prove” why I was going to hell if I didn’t accept Jesus, I fired back – with Howard Jones lyrics. Hey, I knew my religion – music. And today – could any button be more appropriate than this?

Randee Dawn is the author (with Susan Green) of the forthcoming The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Unofficial Companion (BenBella Books), available in September 2009.