Gilmore Girls: Then And Now

Gilmore Girls was Alexis Bledel's first major role - and her first role, full stop. She went on to appear in The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants along with Blake Lively, America Ferrera and Amber Tamblyn (and judging by the regular stream of Instagram posts, the Sisterhood castmates are still firm friends), and met her husband Vincent Kartheiser while filming a cameo arc in Mad Men (where Kartheiser starred as Pete Campbell). Post Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life, she'll be appearing in streaming service Hulu's much-anticipated adaptation of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale, alongside Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss and OITNB's Samira Wiley.

Lauren Graham's biggest role since Gilmore Girls mines vaguely familiar territory: she plays a single mother in the NBC show Parenthood. She has also branched out into writing, a career move which Rory Gilmore would surely approve of. Her first novel, Someday, Someday, Maybe, was based on her experiences as a young actress in the mid-90s, and released in 2013; it has since been optioned by Warner Bros and Ellen DeGeneres' production company for a TV adaptation. After A Year In The Life aired on Netflix, she released her second book, a memoir titled Talking as Fast as I Can: from Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between).

After playing Rory's best boyfriend Jess (controversial, but we're calling it) until season five, Milo Ventimiglia jumped ships to Heroes, where he played Peter Petrelli, an ordinary guy who discovers he has super powers. Splitting from on-and-off screen girlfriend Alexis Bledel in 2006, he also dated his Heroes co-star Hayden Panetierre. Most recently, he's starred alongside fellow former teen star Mandy Moore in This Is Us, NBC's Golden Globe-nominated family drama that explores interconnected lives across several generations. Milo and Mandy's storyline takes place in the 1970s, which at least partially explains the facial hair he's currently sporting.

Kelly Bishop (who you might also recognise as Baby's mum from Dirty Dancing) had a stellar Broadway career before embodying steely Gilmore matriarch, Emily. After the show finished, she went back to her theatrical roots, appearing in a handful of New York stage shows, and reunited with GG showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino for Bunheads, a short-lived but critically lauded drama about a ballet school. It still has a cult following - here's hoping it arrives on Netflix some time soon...

After departing the show in 2005, when Rory and Dean finally broke up for good, Jared Padalecki has filled his time fighting demons. Sort of. His most notable role has been as one half of a paranormal-hunting pair of brothers on Supernatural: with 12 seasons to date, it's currently the US's longest-running fantasy TV series. He met his wife, Genevieve Cortese, while she filmed a guest spot on the show, and the pair are currently expecting their third child.

Aside from bit parts in shows like Veronica Mars and Friday Night Lights (hits in the US that never really landed with viewers across the pond), Matt has concentrated his acting efforts on his role in hit drama The Good Wife. He starred as an upstart young lawyer in all seven seasons of the show, which ended last summer.

After starring as Lorelai's grumpy but well-meaning love interest on Gilmore Girls, Scott has had a handful of roles in shows like 90210 and Aliens in America, and survived appearing in not one but two Saw films (IV and V). He now plays guitar and is the lead vocalist with his band, SMITHRADIO, who released their debut single HAHA SONG in November 2016 (yes, those capital letters are entirely intentional). It charted at number one on iTunes' Indie Rock chart. What would Luke think?

We loved Sean as Stars Hollow's resident oddball and odd job man Kirk, and it seems that Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino did too - she cast the actor (along with Kelly Bishop) in her next project, the short-lived cult show Bunheads. The brother of Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, Sean did motion capture stand-in for the roles of Rocket Racoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Thanos (Josh Brolin), and had his own role in the film, too. He'll return as Kraglin for the second installment of Guardians, which arrives in cinemas this summer.

Post Gilmore Girls, Melissa McCarthy has gone on to become one of Hollywood's most bankable stars: Jennifer Lawrence was the only actress to earn more than McCarthy in 2016, with Forbes estimating her yearly earnings at around £25 million. Her scene-stealing turn in Bridesmaids earned her a Best Supporting Actress nomination, and Melissa has since starred in The Heat with Sandra Bullock, played a secret agent in Spy with Jude Law and helmed the all-female Ghostbusters reboot with Bridesmaids co-star Kristen Wiig.

We'll always remember her as Rory's mortal enemy turned close pal, the over-achieving Paris Geller, but after Gilmore Girls Liza Weil has taken on some equally intriguing roles. Most notably, she played White House aide Amanda Tanner in the first season of Scandal, and has since joined the cast of another Shonda Rhimes drama, How To Get Away With Murder as Bonnie Winterbottom, the assistant to Viola Davis' Annalise Keating.