Denis Leary made his first big impression as a hilariously angry stand-up comic in the early '90s with his one-man show No Cure for Cancer. Screen parts followed, and he quickly proved that he could be funny and threatening simultaneously (see The Ref). In 2001 he turned to the small screen in the critically acclaimed but short-lived cop dramedy The Job. He finally tapped into his Irish luck in 2004 with Rescue Me, an edgy hit drama set in a firehouse.