Sam Briger

Jessica Jones is not your typical superhero: She's a low-rent private eye with superhuman strength and PTSD from two big traumas in her past. Krysten Ritter stars as Jessica in the Netflix series based on the Marvel Comics character — and says she loves the complex role.

In more than three decades of work, Doug Jones has carved out a niche in the acting world by playing strange and otherworldly creatures. He was a demonic superhero in Hellboy and a monster with an appetite for children in Pan's Labyrinth.

"I don't use my life as inspiration," says the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. Her new book, Manhattan Beach, imagines the lives of the women who worked on the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II.