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Maura Tierney - Dr. Abby Lockhart

Abby had quite a time during her nine-year stint. We met her as the eager young and quite capable nurse, who from nurse manager (echoes of Julianna Margulies' Carol Hathaway) becomes a med student and, finally, an attending physician. Her struggles... more throughout this trajectory, as well as with her love life and resulting parenthood, were portrayed with Tierney's signature restraint and dry humor. Now that Abby has left County and followed her husband, Luka, to New York, Tierney has signed on to play Denis Leary's love interest on six episodes of FX's "Rescue Me." And, speaking of love, Tierney recently became an ordained minister to officiate at the February wedding of her former costar Parminder Nagra.

(Walter McBride/Retna Ltd/Retna Ltd.)