Patricia Heaton, star of 'The Middle' and 'Everybody Loves Raymond,' is known in left-leaning Hollywood for her conservative stance on weighty issues like abortion and stem cell research.

Although Heaton is happy to explain how important her Christian faith is to her, and how it shapes her views and career choices, she feels that her views have caused her to lose potential roles in the past.

"My feeling is all these things come from God and as long as I know I'm staying in line with Him, I don't have to worry if there is backlash," she told me during a visit to AOL's New York offices. "God will open any doors he wants to open and if he closes doors that's fine to."

Telling me that she has many gay friends and doesn't oppose gay marriage, Patricia gets frustrated being automatically lumped together with other conservatives, a characterization she says has cost her possible work.

"We know for a fact there are some people who have said they wouldn't want to work with us because of our politics," she said, with her husband David Hunt adding, "We get lumped in with lunatics."

Look, I know that his years on NYPD Blue redeemed him from a crash course with the child star curse of reality shows and cultural irrelevance, but he'll always be Ricky Schroeder to me. Ricky Schroeder - Silver Spoons star, friend to "Tap Dance Kid" Alfonso Riberio and owner of the racing car bed. Fortunately for Ricky, he overcame the 80s with the aforementioned three seasons on NYPD Blue, a comedic turn as Nurse Paul Flowers on Scrubs and his latest outing as Dr. Dylan West on Lifetime's Strong Medicine.

Ricky has made another great career move - further distancing himself from that plucky young lad in The Champ. He'll be joining the cast of 24 as CTU operative Mike Doyle. Expect to see Schroder team up with Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer in executing "key field ops." 24 is really pulling out all the stops with its latest casting decisions. Schroder is just one of a list of fancy new cast members including Chad Lowe, Regina King, Powers Boothe, Peter MacNicol, James Cromwell, Kal Penn and David Hunt. That's right - Deadwood's Cy Tolliver meets Babe's Father Hoggett meets The Boondocks' Huey Freeman meets Kumar. Who doesn't want to see that?