Trivia: Farce, satire, and parody come together with Vaudeville roots and manic energy to create the Mel Brooks style of comedy. Born Melvin Kaminsky to a Russian Jewish family in Brooklyn, NY, the writer/producer/director/actor was one of very few people to win an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony award. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he worked as a standup comic at resorts in the Catskills and started writing comedy. Along with Woody Allen, Neil Simon, and others, he wrote for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, which later became Caesar's Hour. Teaming up with fellow staff writer Carl Reiner, he developed the award-winning "2000 Year Old Man" comedy skit, which led to several recordings, television appearances, and a 1998 Grammy. He and writer Buck Henry also created the spy-parody TV series Get Smart (1965-1970) starring Don Adams. During this time, he produced theater, married actress Anne Bancroft, and made his first film: an Oscar-winning animated short parody of modern art called The Critic. He then put together a screenplay based upon his experiences working with Broadway executives that led to his feature-length debut The Producers. He cast stage legend Zero Mostel in the lead role and got B-movie producer Joseph Levine to put up the funds, but the movie didn't get distributed until Peter Sellers saw it and encouraged its release. Brooks ended up winning an Oscar for Best Screenplay and, in 2000, adapted the film into a highly successful Broadway musical. By 1970, after the release of his next film The Twelve Chairs, Hollywood thought his work was "too Jewish." In 1974, Brooks made the marketable move toward parodies with the Western spoof Blazing Saddles, winning him a Writer's Guild award and introducing his stock actors Harvey Korman and Madeline Kahn. Finding his niche, he would continue to make parodies throughout his career by spoofing horror (Young Frankenstein), silent movies (Silent Movie), Hitchcock (High Anxiety), historical epics (History of the World -- Part I), and science fiction (Spaceballs). Working simultaneously as writer, director, and lead actor, Brooks started to generate negative press about his excessive style. In 1983, appearing opposite Bancroft, he concentrated on just acting for the remake of the Ernst Lubitch classic To Be or Not to Be. He continued working with his production company Brooksfilms during the '80s as an executive producer on projects as varied as The Fly, The Elephant Man, Solarbabies, and 84 Charing Cross Road (starring Bancroft). His brief stray into non-parody films in 1991 (Life Stinks) was universally dismissed, so he returned to form with Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Other than the occasional cameo or random appearance as voice talent, Brooks spent the late '90s winning awards and playing Uncle Phil on the NBC series Mad About You. In 2001, the Broadway musical version of The Producers (starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick) led to a successful national tour and broke a new record by winning one Grammy and 12 Tony awards. The stage version would lead to a new big screen adaptation in 2005, creating a whole new generation of fans. Over the coming years, Brooks would lend his voice to Spaceballs: The Animated Series and Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks.

Trivia: As the son of comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara Ben Stiller's decision to establish himself as a comic writer and actor surprised almost no one.Born in New York City on November 30, 1965, Stiller began to shoot his own comic films from the age of ten. After high-school graduation, Stiller attended UCLA and landed bit parts in several features, notably the Steven Spielberg-directed, Tom Stoppard and Menno Meyjes-scripted, late 1987 opus Empire of the Sun.Meanwhile, Stiller continued to turn out comedy shorts, including the 30-minute Elvis Stories (1989), a spoof of obsessive Elvis fans featuring an already-established John Cusack. One of Stiller's shorts, a Tom Cruise parody called The Hustler of Money, won him a spot as a writer and player on Saturday Night Live in 1989. His stint on the show was short-lived, but led to his own eponymous series, The Ben Stiller Show, first on MTV (1990) and later on Fox (1992-1993). The program failed to draw a substantial audience, and folded within a couple of months on each network, but Stiller netted an Emmy for comedy writing in 1993.The following year, Stiller debuted as a feature film director with the twentysomething angst romcom Reality Bites (1994), in which he also starred alongside Winona Ryder and a memorably grungy Ethan Hawke. The film was a relative critical and commercial success and scored with Gen-Xers; unfortunately, Stiller's next directorial effort, 1996's The Cable Guy failed to register with critics and audiences. After a small part as nursing-home orderly Hal in the Adam Sandler comedy Happy Gilmore (1996), Stiller rebounded with a starring role in David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster (1996). The relatively positive reception afforded to that comedy helped to balance out the relative failure of Stiller's other film that year, If Lucy Fell. It was not until two years later, however, that Stiller truly stepped into the limelight. Thanks to starring roles in three wildly, wickedly different films, he emerged as an actor of versatility, equally adept at playing sensitive nice guys and malevolent hellraisers. In the smash gross-out comedy There's Something About Mary (1998), Stiller appeared as the former type, making comic history for outrageous sight gags that involved misplaced bodily fluids and mangled genitalia. That same summer, Stiller did time as a gleefully adulterous theatrical instructor in Neil LaBute's jet-black evisceration of contemporary sexual mores, Your Friends and Neighbors. Finally, Stiller starred in the intensely graphic and disturbing addiction drama Permanent Midnight, earning critical acclaim for his portrayal of writer-cum-heroin addict Jerry Stahl -- a personal friend of the Stiller family from Stahl's days scripting the TV series ALF. Now fully capable of holding his own in Hollywood, with the license to prove it, Stiller starred alongside William H. Macy, Paul Reubens, Hank Azaria, and pal Janeane Garofalo in the fantasy comedy Mystery Men (1999) as the leader of a group of unconventional superheroes. Stiller also landed a supporting role in The Suburbans, a comedy about the former members of a defunct new wave band. The following year, Stiller starred as a rabbi smitten with the same woman as his best friend, a Catholic priest (Edward Norton), in the well-received romantic comedy Keeping the Faith (2000), which Norton also co-produced and directed. Stiller found his widest audience up to that point, however, with the Jay Roach-directed madcap comedy Meet the Parents. As the tale of a nutty father-in-law to be (Robert De Niro) who wreaks unchecked havoc on his daughter's intended (Stiller) via covert CIA operations and incessant interrogation, this disastrously humorous tale of electrical interference gone wild scored with ticket-buyers and qualified as the top box-office draw during the holiday season of 2000.In the autumn of 2001, Stiller brought one of his most popular MTV Video Music Awards incarnations to the big screen in the outrageously silly male-model comedy Zoolander, in which he successfully teamed with (real-life friend) Owen Wilson to carry stupidity to new heights.In 2001 Stiller once again teamed with Wes Anderson collaborator Wilson for the widely praised comedy drama The Royal Tenenbaums. Cast as the estranged son of eccentric parents who returns home, Stiller infused his unmistakable comic touch with an affecting sense of drama that found him holding his ground opposite such dramatic heavies as Gene Hackman and Anjelica Huston. Though his work in 2002 offered little more than a few cameo performances and some vocal contributions to various animated children's shows, the busy comedic actor returned to the big screen for the 2003 comedy Duplex, directed by Danny DeVito. Though the film pairs Stiller and Hollywood bombshell Drew Barrymore as a couple willing to go to horrific extremes to land the much-desired eponymous living space, reviews were unkind and the comedy died a quick death at the box office. Stiller's next film -- the romantic comedy Along Came Polly -- fared considerably better on a fiscal level, but suffered from an implausible premise.Spring 2004 promised a rebound when the electrifying duo of Stiller and Owen Wilson returned to the big screen with director Todd Phillips' celluloid recycling job Starsky & Hutch. Though Stiller and Wilson seemed the ideal pair for such a conceptually rich re-imagining of 1970s television, and the film boasted wonderful villainous turns by rapper Snoop Dogg and Vince Vaughn, reviews were once again lackluster and the film struggled to find an audience. Yet Starsky & Hutch did actually reap a profit, which (in a business sense) placed it miles ahead of Stiller's next film. Released a mere two months after Starsky & Hutch, the Barry Levinson comedy Envy sports a wacky premise; it explores the comic rivalry that erupts between two longtime friends and neighbors when one invents a product that makes dog excrement disappear. It also boasts a marvelous cast, replete with Stiller, the maniacal Jack Black, and the brilliant Christopher Walken. But for whatever reason (speculated by some as the film's inability to exploit the invention at the story's center) the film's sense of humor failed to catch fire and Envy died a quick box-office death. Stiller fared better with the ribald, anarchic summer 2004 comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, starring himself, Vince Vaughn, and Rip Torn. For the following two years, Stiller once again contented himself largely with bit parts (2004's Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy, 2006's Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny) until the Christmas 2006 release A Night at the Museum. In this effects-heavy fantasy, adapted from the popular children's book by Milan Trenc, Stiller plays Larry Daley, the new night watchman at New York City's Museum of Natural History, who discovers that the exhibits all spring to life after hours, from a giant skeletal Tyrannosaurus Rex to a waxen Teddy Roosevelt -- and seem content to hold Larry hostage. The effort split critical opinion, but shot up to become one of the top three box-office draws during the holiday season of 2006.Meanwhile, Stiller signed on to team with the Farrelly brothers for The Heartbreak Kid (2007), a remake of the 1972 Elaine May comedy of the same title; he also produced Blades of Glory, a comedy with Will Ferrell and Jon Heder as rival figure-skating champions vying with one another for Olympic gold. He wrote, directed and starred in the hit comedy Tropic Thunder (2008) as a moronic Hollywood actor toplining a war film, voiced Alex in the same year's animated picture Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, and in 2009, reprised his Larry Daley role for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Stiller's emphasis on sequels then continued with 2010's Little Fockers and 2012's Madagascar 3. In 2013, Stiller picked up the role originally made famous by Danny Kaye, as the lead in the remake The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which Stiller also directed and produced. The following year, he appeared in the next film in the Night at the Museum series, Secret of the Tomb.

Trivia: Seemingly every struggling standup comic dreams of landing their own television series, but few managed to do so with greater success than Jerry Seinfeld, whose career as a nightclub comedian led to him starring as himself on the show Seinfeld -- arguably the most successful situation comedy of the 1990s.Jerome "Jerry" Seinfeld was born in Brooklyn, NY, on April 29, 1954, to Kalman Seinfeld, a signmaker, and his wife, Betty; Jerry was the second of the couple's two children. The Seinfeld family moved to Long Island when Jerry was a child, and he spent most of his youth there. After graduating from high school, Seinfeld went on to college, first attending the State University of New York at Oswego, and then moving on to Queens College of the City University of New York, where he received a Bachelor's Degree in 1976. Seinfeld developed a keen interest in performing while in college (his degree from Queens was in communications and theater), and after graduation he began working New York comedy clubs, often without pay, while holding down a number of odd jobs. Seinfeld's first big break came when his bright but understated observational humor caught the eye of standup legend Rodney Dangerfield, who featured Seinfeld on a special for HBO. The exposure helped establish Seinfeld on the comedy club circuit, and won him a recurring role on the situation comedy Benson. However, Seinfeld and the show's producers clashed over the character's direction, and he was fired after only four episodes.In 1981, Seinfeld appeared for the first time on The Tonight Show, then hosted by Johnny Carson, and made a strong impression on both the audience and the host; he became a frequent guest on the Carson show, as well as David Letterman's late-night talk show. As Seinfeld's fame began to rise, he starred in several cable TV specials, and was approached to star in several TV series. However, remembering his experience on Benson, Seinfeld opted to avoid episodic television unless he was in a position of greater control (though he did do occasional guest spots on sitcoms and played a small role in Danny De Vito's TV movie The Ratings Game). In the meantime, Seinfeld and his good friend Larry David began working up an idea for a situation comedy to be called The Seinfeld Chronicles. In 1989, NBC took the bait, and a year later the show premiered under the streamlined name Seinfeld. Concerning standup comic Jerry Seinfeld and the often odd everyday occurrences of his circle of friends (many of whom were based on people Seinfeld and David knew in real life), Seinfeld got off to a slow start, but began to win a healthy audience in its second season, and in time became one of NBC's biggest hits, until Seinfeld and David opted to end the show at the peak of its popularity in 1998. Unlike most stars of top-rated television shows, Seinfeld displayed no interest in moving into films, and instead returned to standup comedy shortly after his show went off the air with a sold-out concert tour. In the Spring of 2002, however, Seinfeld did sign a deed to appear in a documentary about his return to the comedy circuit with a new act. In 2010 Seinfeld made a high-profile return to television on NBC's The Marriage Ref -- a show that found a rotating panel of celebrities attepting to settle petty disputes between squabbling spouses -- but the show went off the air after two seasons due to poor ratings. In his personal life, during the height of his fame, Seinfeld was romantically linked with several women (including comic and writer Carol Leifer, fashion designer Shoshanna Lonstein, and writer Jennifer Crittenden) before marrying Jessica Sklar, a publicist who met Seinfeld only a few weeks after her marriage to Eric Nederlander in 1998. Seinfeld and Sklar wed in December of 1999, and their first child, daughter Sascha, was born on November 7, 2000.

Trivia: One of the most endearing goofballs to ever grace the stages of Saturday Night Live, affectionately offensive funnyman Adam Sandler has often been cited as the writer/performer who almost single-handedly rescued the long-running late-night television staple when the chips were down and it appeared to have run its course. Though his polarizing antics have divided audiences and critics who often dismiss him as lowbrow and obnoxious, Sandler's films, as well as the films of his Happy Madison production company, have performed consistently well at the box office despite harsh and frequent critical lashings.Born in Brooklyn on September 9th, 1966, it may come as no surprise that Sandler was a shameless class clown who left his classmates in stitches and his teachers with a handful. Never considering to utilize his gift of humor to pursue a career, Sandler eventually realized his potential when at the age of 17 his brother encouraged him to take the stage at an amateur comedy competition. A natural at making the audience laugh, the aspiring comedian nurtured his talents while attending New York University and studying for a Fine Arts Degree. With early appearances on The Cosby Show and the MTV game show Remote Control providing the increasingly busy Sandler with a loyal following, an early feature role coincided with his "discovery" by SNL cast member Dennis Miller at an L.A. comedy club. As the unfortunately named Shecky Moskowitz, his role as a struggling comedian in Going Overboard (1989) served as an interesting parallel to his actual career trajectory but did little to display his true comic talents.It wasn't until SNL producers took Miller's praise to heart and hired the fledgling comic as writer on the program that Sandler's talents were truly set to shine. Frequent appearances as Opera Man and Canteen Boy soon elevated him to player status, and it wasn't long before Sandler was the toast of the SNL cast in the mid-'90s. While appearing in SNL and sharpening his feature skills in such efforts as Shakes the Clown (1991) and Coneheads (1993), Sandler signed a recording contract with Warner Bros., and the release of the Grammy-nominated They're All Gonna Laugh at You proved the most appropriate title imaginable as his career began to soar. Striking an odd balance between tasteless vulgarity and innocent charm, the album found Sandler gaining footing as an artist independent of the SNL universe and fueled his desire -- as numerous cast members had before him -- to strike out on his own. Though those who had attempted a departure for feature fame in the past had met with decidedly mixed results, Sandler's loyal and devoted fan base proved strong supporters of such early solo feature efforts as Billy Madison (1996) and, especially, Happy Gilmore (1996).His mixture of grandma-loving sweetness and pure, unfiltered comedic rage continued with his role as a slow-witted backwoods mama's boy turned football superstar in The Waterboy (1998), and that same year found Sandler expanding his persona to more sensitive territory in The Wedding Singer. Perhaps his most appealing character up to that point, The Wedding Singer's combination of '80s nostalgia and a warmer, more personable persona found increasing support among those who had previously distanced themselves from his polarizing performances. As the decade rolled on, Sandler also appeared in the action-oriented Bulletproof (1996) and the even more affectionate Big Daddy (1999). In 2002, Sandler starred in a re-imagining of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, titled simply Mr. Deeds.Beginning in the late nineties, Sandler's Happy Madison production company launched such efforts as Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), Little Nicky (2000), The Animal and Joe Dirt (both 2001). Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo appeared in (2005), and Grandma's Boy in (2006). Despite critical castigation for scraping the bottom of the barrel with these efforts, Sandler's commercial instinct remained intact; the films all hit big at the box office and drew an ever-loyal base of fans who gravitated to any feature with Sandler's name attached.The early 2000s also saw Sandler attempting to branch out in a number of unusual directions, which included the animated "Hanukkah Musical" 8 Crazy Nights (2002). Sandler also began dipping his toes into the realm of drama with a starring role in the eccentric, critically acclaimed tragicomedy Punch-Drunk Love (2002), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Sandler also starred in the Jim Brooks-helmed comedy/drama Spanglish (2004), an unsually subdued and gentle turn away from the irascible types that Sandler usually played. The critical receptions were, again uneven, as reviewers loathed 8 Crazy Nights, justifiably praised Punch-Drunk across the board, and espoused mixed feelings about Spanglish.Perhaps well aware of the extent of these risks that he was taking with his career, Sandler continued to sustain his popularity with a steady (and reliable) stream of crowd-pleasing star vehicles throughout the early 2000s. 2002's self-produced Sandler vehicle Anger Management (which teamed him up with a maniacal Jack Nicholson); the 2004 effort 50 First Dates, in which he co-starred with fellow Wedding Singer alum Drew Barrymore; and the 2005 remake of Robert Aldrich's The Longest Yard all made box office gold. In 2006, Sandler starred in yet another hit: Click, a surrealistic comedy directed by Frank Coraci, co-starring Sean Astin, Kate Beckinsale and Christopher Walken. The film was a big hit and, having spent the past few years playing it safe, Sandler decided it was a good time to take another chance. He signed on to star with Don Cheadle in the 2007 drama Reign Over Me, playing a man who lost his wife and children in the 9/11 attacks, and is headed for complete self-destruction. The critics weren't as enamored with this dramatic attempt as they were with Punch-Drunk Love, but Sandler was mostly well received even when the film wasn't. Always tempering his risks with more predictable career moves, the actor next signed on to appear alongside King of Queens star Kevin James in the buddy movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, a comedy about two straight firefighters who pretend to be a gay couple to receive domestic partner benefits.On a seemingly never-ending roll with his broadly appealing comedic roles, Sandler next played an Israeli secret agent and skilled beautician in 2008's You Don't Mess with the Zohan. He followed this up with a turn in the kids comedy Bedtime Stories in 2009, before adding a dash of dramatic acting to a humorous role once more, with the 2009 Judd Apatow flick Funny People. For Sandler's next project, he reteamed with Cuck and Larry co-star Kevin James for the 2010 romp Grown Ups, before cozying up to Jennifer Aniston for the romantic comedy Just Go With It in 2011. Despite his beautiful co-star, Just Go With It did poorly at the box office, and so for his next movie, the funnyman chose a more bankable supporting actor: himself, playing both a man and his own annoying twin sister in the 2012 comedy Jack and Jill.

Trivia: Comedian Nick Kroll came up through the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in both New York and LA, before infultrating the world of stand up and sketch comedy, and becommning a writer for Chapelle's Show and Human Giant. The Georgetown allumni would go on to appear on VH1 series like I Love the 80's, as well as in sit-coms like Worst Week, Reno 911, The League, and the Life and Times of Tim, in addition to movies like I Love You, Man.

Trivia: The gifted young comedian Patton Oswalt first carved a name for himself as a bit player in television programs, where he seemingly made the perfect everyman. Even those who fail to recognize the comic's agnomen doubtless encountered him as early as the mid- to late '90s, on such hit programs as NewsRadio, Dr. Katz, Mr. Show, and Seinfeld. (He was particularly memorable in the latter, as the video-store clerk who refuses to proffer a customer's address to a conniving George Costanza.) Oswalt also penned sketches for the long-running series MADtv and frequently lent his voice to Comedy Central's Crank Yankers, as one of the program's below-the-belt prank callers. Beginning in 1996 (and for at least four years thereafter), Oswalt began touring the country with his standup act and hitting comedy clubs; in 1997, he hosted his first standup special on HBO and received a positive response. Unabashedly iconoclastic and atheistic, with many routines devoted to excoriating Christianity and what he perceives as the hypocrisies of middle-American values, Oswalt buries his anti-establishment cynicism beneath a deceptively soft exterior (setting himself apart from, say, the more openly caustic and rave-happy George Carlin). Whatever the subject at hand, Oswalt displays a quick wit, a fearlessness to speak his mind, and an ability to unveil ironies behind practically everything. Regardless of one's personal convictions, Oswalt is also frequently hilarious, with his well-known impersonations of such personalities as Robert Evans and Nick Nolte absolutely unparalleled and definite high points in his routines, as are his riffs on pornography and bizarre sexual proclivities. In 1998, Oswalt landed his second recurring role on a television series, and his highest billing up through that time: that of Spence Olchin, one of the three buddies of Kevin James' Doug Heffernan, on the sitcom The King of Queens; he remained with the series for several seasons. Scattered movie roles followed -- typically bit parts at first, such as that of the scuba diver who experiences a bizarre death in the prologue of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999) and Hedges in Blade: Trinity (2004). Around 2004, Oswalt took a temporary siesta from acting, and re-launched himself into the arena of standup comedy. He and several friends (Brian Posehn, Zach Galifianakis, and Maria Bamford) formed the "Comedians of Comedy" troupe and mounted a coast-to-coast tour; that ensemble headlined an eponymous 2005 concert film. Oswalt issued his first standup album, Feelin' Kinda Patton, in 2004; it drew critical raves and impressive sales. He followed it up with a joint effort alongside Galifianakis, the 2005 recording Patton vs. Alcohol vs. Zach vs. Patton, and the 2006 concert film Patton Oswalt: No Reason to Complain. A sophomore solo recording, Lollipops and Werewolves, appeared in the summer of 2007.That same year, Oswalt voiced the character of Remy -- a French rat with a refined culinary instinct who single-handedly overturns Parisian haute cuisine -- in the Pixar animated film Ratatouille. It marked Oswalt's first reception of premier billing in an A-list feature and his debut work for Pixar.In 2009 he had the lead in the underrated indie drama Big Fan, as a man assaulted by the best player on his favorite football team, appeared in The Informant, and recorded the stand-up special My Weakness Is Strong. In 2011 he had a memorable turn in A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, released the stand-up concert Finest Hour, and earned the best reviews of his career playing opposite Charlize Theron in Young Adult.Oswalt's most consistent work, though, was in television. He amassed a slew of memorable TV roles, with one-offs, recurring gigs and voice-over roles. A seasons-long arc on United States of Tara coincided with other gigs on Bored to Death and Caprica. In 2013, he had a highly-regarded and publicized guest stint on Parks and Recreation, playing a character giving a filibuster on Star Wars. That same year, he started a recurring role on Justified and began doing narration work on The Goldbergs (playing an older version of the main character, Adam Goldberg). The following year, he played identical brothers on Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., allowing Oswalt to return even if his character had been killed. In 2015, he played the VP's Chief of Staff on Veep. Oswalt also voices several characters on shows like BoJack Horseman and We Bare Bears.

Trivia: Like future co-stars Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy, and Norm MacDonald, Dave Chappelle entered the movie business via standup comedy. Born in Ohio and raised in Washington, D.C., Chappelle studied acting at D.C.'s Duke Ellington School of the Arts and honed his skills as a laid-back yet socially attuned comic in the city's clubs. After making his movie debut as one of the merry men in Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), Chappelle concentrated primarily on his comedy career and appeared regularly on late night and cable television. He returned to films with small yet key parts in two summer blockbusters: as a comic who helps spoil a date for Murphy's rotund scientist in The Nutty Professor (1996) and as a manic inmate aboard the hijacked convict plane in Con Air (1997). Hitting his movie stride in 1998, Chappelle co-wrote and starred in the prison/pothead caper Half Baked (1998), played a randy schemer in Woo (1998), and revealed that he could also play it (somewhat) straight as Tom Hanks' best friend in Nora Ephron's popular romantic comedy You've Got Mail (1998). Maintaining his dual professions, Chappelle turned a cameo role as Lawrence's former criminal partner into a full-fledged supporting turn in Blue Streak (1999), co-starred with MacDonald in the ill-received Screwed (2000), and returned to Washington, D.C., and HBO with his special Dave Chappelle: Killin' Them Softly (2000).Chappelle had better luck with his next film, the blaxploitation spoof Undercover Brother (2002). As the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D.'s terminally paranoid agent Conspiracy Brother, Chappelle was a hilariously twitchy comic highlight in the hit-or-miss satire; Undercover Brother became a small hit amid the summer blockbusters. Chappelle's cutting humor could also be heard on TV that same season, with Chappelle lending his voice as a prank caller to Comedy Central's ribald puppet "reality" show Crank Yankers (2002). His characters on that show were a hit with audiences in search of a hearty laugh, and the following year Comedy Central gave the comedian his own series - the aptly titled Chappelle's Show. Perhaps one of the most controversial series - comedy or otherwise - to hit the airwaves in recent memory, Chappelle's Show offered searing social commentary while frequently pushing the boundaries of good taste. With sketch subjects including a blind black man who - not realizing his true race - heads the Ku Klux Klan and collaborators including former Sanford and Son writer Paul Mooney, the series frequently courted controversy much to the delight of its loyal legions of fans. 2005 marked the released of the comedian's brainchild, Dave Chappelle's Block Party, which documented a free, unpublicized, all-star hip-hop concert in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.

Trivia: If Richie Cunningham and Phyllis Diller mated, would it equal Conan O'Brien? It's probably not a good enough match to poop on, but definitely one that has brought some laughs to television audiences everywhere. Conan Christopher O'Brien was born April 18, 1963, in Brookline, MA, to Ruth, a lawyer, and Tom, a doctor. He has three brothers, two sisters, and his cousin is comedian Denis Leary. At Brookline High School, he was on the debate team and served as editorial editor on the Sagamore. After high school, he attended Harvard University where he was the editor of the Harvard Lampoon; he graduated magna cum laude in 1985 with a B.A. in American history. After graduation, O'Brien went out to L.A. to put his education and sense of humor to work for him. He was on the writing staff of HBO's Not Necessarily the News for two years and worked with the improv group the Groundlings. In 1988, Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels recognized O'Brien's talent and hired him as a writer for the show. He wrote for the show for three and a half years and in 1989, shared an Emmy with the writing team for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series. In 1991, he left the show and pitched an idea to NBC for a series starring Adam West, but it was not picked up. Good thing, though, because O'Brien's next gig would be yet another high-profile show on its way to television history. As a writer and producer for Fox's The Simpsons, he wrote such hilariously memorable episodes as "Marge Vs. the Monorail" and "Whacking Day." After the much-ballyhooed decision that Jay Leno would replace Johnny Carson on NBC's Tonight Show instead of David Letterman, and when Letterman left for CBS, Letterman's old timeslot was left open. Enter one tall, funny Irish guy with a classically dry sense of humor to keep late-night audiences tuning in. Late Night With Conan O'Brien premiered September 13, 1993, with Michaels serving as executive producer. An aspiring writer/performer, Andy Richter, had hopes of getting on the team behind the new show, but instead wound up in the role of "trusty sidekick" to O'Brien. Rounding out the late-night backdrop was music director Max Weinberg, who had been the drummer with Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, and his backing band. This amalgam of performers, plus an Emmy-winning writing team, led to such comedic bits involving Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Pimpbot 5000, and In the Year 2000. In 1997 and 2000, he and the writing staff won the Writer's Guild Award for Best Writing in a Comedy/Variety Series. Richter left in 2000 to work on his own television career, starring in Fox's Andy Richter Controls the Universe in 2002. O'Brien took over hosting The Tonight Show from Leno on June 1, 2009, but only held down the desk for a mere seven months. Network politics and the ratings game led to Leno returning to the job he left after his own show, which aired at 10 p.m., tanked. Instead of compromising himself and the show by accepting a later timeslot with Leno serving as the warm-up act, O'Brien chose to leave the network. Later in 2010, he signed a deal with TBS for his own show (Conan) for the fall. O'Brien married advertising executive Liza Powell in January 2002 and welcomed daughter Neve in October 2003 and son Beckett in November 2005.

Trivia: After a brief-role in the Christian-themed direct-to-video feature Mary and Joe (2002) -- a kind of contemporary update about the immaculate conception set in modern-day New York City -- actor Josh Gad distinguished himself with a colorful supporting role on the Kelsey Grammer/Patricia Heaton-headlined sitcom Back to You (2007). The Fox series told of the hilarious and often biting rivalry between two newscasters, professionally reunited after more than a decade apart. Gad played 26-year-old Ryan Church, the diminutive, overweight, and wet-behind-the-ears news director with a mile-long geek streak. He was in the gambling drama 21, and the Rainn Wilson comedy The Rocker. He had a major supporting turn in Love and Other Drugs, and lent his voice to the 2012 animated film Ice Age: Continental Drift. Gad has also enjoyed great success acting on the Broadway stage in both The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and The Book Of Mormon.

Trivia: Prolific Daytime Emmy Award-winning comic and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel got his big break in the media as a sports man before hitting his stride as co-host of the popular Comedy Central game show Win Ben Stein's Money. If anyone is a prime example of how persistence can pay off, it's Kimmel -- after being fired from radio stations in Seattle, Phoenix, Tucson, and Tampa, early in his career, the future media superstar finally found a place to call home as "Jimmy the Sports Guy" on KROQ FM Los Angeles' Kevin and Bean show. Kimmel's talent as an emcee also found him becoming a regular fixture at Friar's Club roasts.In 1997, Kimmel scored the co-hosting gig on Win Ben Stein's Money, his first foray into television. It didn't take audiences long to warm up to the wisecracking co-host, and soon the Brooklyn-born, Las Vegas-raised Kimmel was also moonlighting as the co-host of yet another hit Comedy Central series -- The Man Show. Seated opposite Adam Carolla and usually with a cold one in hand, Kimmel proved a perfect fit for the playfully crude series that eschewed the virtues of women on trampolines. He effortlessly (at least to viewers) alternated between the two series until Win Ben Stein's Money went off the air in 2002. Despite the fact that it didn't have as long of a shelf life as Wheel of Fortune and The Price Is Right, Win Ben Stein's Money at the very least served well to propel Kimmel's career forward by earning him a Daytime Emmy. While Kimmel's stint on The Man Show would only last another year, by this point he had established himself as one of television's most promising emerging talents and began appearing on a variety of talk shows and television specials. Kimmel's association with Comedy Central continued amicably when he assumed the role of creator, writer, and producer of the prank-phone-call series Crank Yankers in 2002, and in 2003 Kimmel took center stage as the host of his own late-night ABC talk show: Jimmy Kimmel Live. Very much a family affair, Jimmy Kimmel Live featured his Cousin Sal, Uncle Frank, Aunt Chippy, and even his parents in addition to offering childhood best friend Cleto Escobedo as the bandleader. As successful seasons continued to fly by, it soon became clear that Kimmel had become a major fixture in the world of late night.

Trivia: Is second cousins, once removed with politician Chuck Schumer. Appeared in college productions of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Stop Kiss. Studied at the William Esper Studio, focusing on the Meisner technique, in New York City. Starred as a young woman diagnosed with breast cancer in the off-Broadway play Keeping A-Breast. Was offered a contract by VH1 based on her self-produced comedy video short Chinese New Year. In 2007, placed fourth on the competitive reality show Last Comic Standing. Has written for Cosmopolitan magazine.

Trivia: Born December 1st, 1970, former Saturday Night Live cast member Sarah Silverman made her film debut in the 1997 Who's the Caboose. She then had a supporting role as a friend of Mary in Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly's 1998 comedy smash There's Something About Mary. Following a part in Chris O'Donnell's The Bachelor, which also starred Renee Zelwegger, Brooke Shields, and James Cromwell, Silverman secured a deal with Columbia Tri-Star to create a vehicle for herself based on her one-woman show, Susan Plays Cheese. She received further exposure on various TV talk shows, as well as in the pages of Esquire Magazine's "breasts" issue and a fashion layout in Mirabella. She appeared in the comedies Screwed and Heartbreakers, and had a memorable role as the driven girlfriend in Richard Linklater's School of Rock. 2005 was a stellar year for Silverman on the big screen. In addition to writing and starring in Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic, she was widely considered to have one of the very best appearances in the documentary The Aristocrats. She followed that up the next year with a part in Todd Phillips' School for Scoundrels. From 2007 to 2009, Silverman played herself in The Sarah Silverman Program, and edgy sitcom that earned the comedienne a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award. Despite a devoted fan following, Comedy Central cancelled the show after three seasons. In 2008, Silverman appeared semi-regularly on Jimmy Kimmel Live for a series of raunchy sketches involving Matt Damon, and made several appearances on the USA Network's television series Monk. After making a cameo as herself in The Muppets in 2011, Silverman went a different direction by taking on a dramatic role in Take This Waltz, a film following a married couple whose relationship begins to crumble when one half of the pair forms an emotional bond with a neighbor. She next logged a series of voice roles, including Vanellope, a glitchy video game character in Disney's Wreck-It Ralph (2012) and a recurring role on Bob's Burgers. In 2014, she appeared in A Million Ways to Die in the West and began a guest arc on Masters of Sex.

Trivia: An irrepressible "Jill of All Trades," British actress Tracey Ullman is master of all of them. Winning an arts scholarship at age 12, Ullman worked as a professional dancer with a German ballet company before channelling her energies into musical comedy. For her work in the West End production Four in a Million, Ullman was honored with the London Theatre Critics' award as Most Promising New Actress of 1981. Two years later, she was presented with a British Academy Award for her efforts on BBC Television. While still in her early twenties, she headlined her own British comedy/variety TV series, Three of a Kind, and climbed the pop-music charts with her singles "You Broke My Heart in 17 Places" and "They Don't Know." After an inauspicious film debut in 1984's Give My Regards to Broad Street, Ullman ascended to film stardom in such productions as Plenty (1985), Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986), I Love You to Death (1990), Death Becomes Her (1992), and I'll Do Anything (1994). In 1987, she launched her American TV career with the Fox Network's weekly The Tracey Ullman Show, a superb showcase for her many offbeat characterizations, including mixed-up teen Francesca, selfish yuppie Sara Downey, repressed spinster Kay, and Goodallesque anthropologist Ceci Beckwith. The Tracey Ullman Show not only won the Fox Network its first Emmy nomination, but also spawned the popular cartoon series The Simpsons, which first took shape as a series of between-the-acts animated vignettes. While the show indeed served well to earn the wildly versatile actress a loyal stateside fanbase, it was her 1996 Emmy-winning HBO series Tracey Takes On... that truly allowed Ullman the chance to cut loose in front of the camera. A freewhelling comedy smorgasbord that allowed Ullman the opportunity to tackle a different topic each week, Tracey Takes On... continued to give testament to its star's remarkable knack for character play. Later branching out with roles in such popular television series' as Ally McBeal and Will and Grace, Ullman proved that she was as capable of livening up the material of others as she was of creating her own. Supporting roles in such features as Panic and Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks kept the energetic player busy on the big screen, and in 2004 she would take the lead as an uptight suburban mom transformed into a insatiable sex-addict by a head concussion in director John Waters' raunchy comedy A Dirty Shame. Voice work in The Cat That Looked LIke a King, Corpse Bride, and Kronk's New Groove found Ullman flexing her vocal chords to impressive effect in late-2004 and early-2005, and after taking a trip to the land of fairytales in the made for television production of Once Upon a Mattress, it was time to step into the role of the mischevous Mother Mature in director Amy Heckerling's 2007 romantic comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman. In 2008 she launched yet another comedy series, Tracey Ullman's State of the Union, and lent her vocal talents to the animated movie The Tale of Despereaux.

Trivia: As the son of multi-talented comedic genius Carl Reiner (Your Show of Shows), Rob Reiner instantly outgrew his father's legacy to establish himself as an independent force in multiple facets of the entertainment industry. Born in the Bronx in 1945, Reiner moved to Los Angeles with his folks at the age of 12 (not coincidentally, the very same year that the NYC-based Caesar's Hour, with Carl Reiner as a regular contributor, wrapped) and soon began acting in regional theater and improv ensembles. After appearing on various episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents from the age of 16 and studying drama at UCLA, Reiner co-founded the improvisational comedy troupe The Session, then made his onscreen cinematic debut in his father's Enter Laughing (1967) and contributed scripts (in his dad's vein) to CBS's controversial The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. His first massive break arrived when he landed the role of Mike "Meathead" Stivic, the liberal, Polish son-in-law to Carroll O'Connor's racist working stiff Archie Bunker, on Norman Lear's groundbreaking network hit All in the Family. In 1971, Reiner wed Penny Marshall (the sister of another comic demagogue, Garry Marshall); the marrieds frequently appeared together on ABC's The Odd Couple. Reiner earned two Emmys for All in the Family, but ended his role in 1978 (after seven seasons) as the series transitioned into Archie Bunker's Place. A now-forgotten telemovie followed -- the romantic comedy More Than Friends, written by and starring Reiner and Marshall (and directed by future Cheers progenitor James Burrows) -- but by that point, the Reiners' marriage was in disarray; a divorce ensued in 1979, followed by several years of inactivity on Reiner's end.Reiner bounced back as a director, however (and then some) in 1984, with the hysterical mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, ostensibly a spoof of The Song Remains the Same, The Kids Are Alright, The Last Waltz, and other mid-'70s concert films, about a gleefully moronic glam rock band (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer) whose hits include "Sex Farm," "Smell the Glove," and "Hellhole." The picture became a sensation (a massive cult hit), led to several Reiner-less follow-ups with the principal cast (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind), and -- most importantly -- launched Reiner as a directorial force. He helmed a cute and charming sophomore effort, the teen comedy The Sure Thing (1985), which boasts two superb lead performances by John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga, and demonstrates great taste and sensitivity, but failed to make a splash despite solid reviews (Roger Ebert declared it "a small miracle" and Variety assessed it as "sweetly old fashioned" and "appealing.") The following year, the director struck box-office gold with his third effort, Stand by Me (1986). In this coming-of-age saga, adapted from a Stephen King short story by Ray Gideon and Bruce A. Evans, Reiner successfully blends comedy, drama, and sentiment, and elicits exemplary performances from an ensemble of teenage performers including River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton, in his story of a bunch of adolescent boys who venture out to find a local boy's corpse. For his fourth effort, Reiner helmed the legendary William Goldman's adaptation of his own 1973 fantasy novel, The Princess Bride (which had purportedly floated around Hollywood for 13 years), and scored in the process -- especially with young viewers, who immediately warmed to Cary Elwes' dashing adventurer and Robin Wright's heroine. (The picture's neat comic turns by Billy Crystal, Wallace Shawn, and Andre the Giant stretched its appeal to older viewers, as well.) Reiner followed this up with another four-star blockbuster, and one of the most lucrative (and affable) pictures of 1989, the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally, written by Nora Ephron. It sports exceptional lead performances by Crystal and Meg Ryan, and -- in one of the most infamous movie bits of the past few decades, a cameo by Reiner's own mother, Estelle, who provides the film's funniest line.Reiner began the 1990s with another Stephen King outing: Misery, a claustrophobic horror picture adapted from a 1987 King novel. In directing the picture, Reiner elicited exceptional performances from James Caan and Kathy Bates. The latter won a Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of the psychopathic ex-nurse Annie Wilkes, who confines Caan's author in her home and forces him to write a new manuscript under the duress of torture and threatened homicide. With a trio of A-list actors including Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, and Demi Moore, the director's late 1992 courtroom thriller A Few Good Men (adapted by Aaron Sorkin from his play) earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination and another Golden Globe nomination for Reiner. Unfortunately, this marked the beginning of a decline, of sorts, for Reiner. He then helmed 1994's god-awful family-friendly comedy North (reviled by just about everybody). The following year's The American President charmed audiences, but 1996's Ghosts of Mississippi struck most viewers as uneven. In 1999, Reiner produced, directed, and co-starred in The Story of Us, a romantic comedy starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Bruce Willis, but it opened up to mediocre reviews. (Ebert gave it one star and moaned, "Watching it is like taking a long trip in a small car with the Bickersons"; Janet Maslin observed that it "offers such an arthritic vision of middle-aged marriage that it feels like the first Jack Lemmon comedy made expressly for the baby-boom generation.") Perhaps riled by these disappointments -- and seeking greater immersion in California politics -- Reiner took several years off as a director, until 2003's Alex & Emma, a romantic comedy about writer's block starring Luke Wilson and Kate Hudson. With one or two exceptions, critics universally panned the picture (giving Reiner his most terrible reviews to date). 2005's Rumor Has It..., yet another romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston as a woman who goes off in search of her family's roots, also opened to dismal reviews and lackluster box office, despite the star appeal of Aniston and her male lead, Kevin Costner. In 1987, Reiner co-founded Castle Rock Productions (the company's name refers to a fictional town created by Stephen King). In addition to directing and producing, Reiner has also pursued an acting career on the side, with supporting roles and cameos in such films as Postcards From the Edge (1990), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), The First Wives Club (1996), Primary Colors (1998), EDtv (1999), The Muse (1999), The Story of Us (1999), and The Majestic (2001). Later, he delivered a performance as Wirschafter in his own Alex & Emma (2003) and cameo'd as himself in the 2003 David Spade comedy Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. Between 2004 and 2006, Reiner joined Whoopi Goldberg, Mandy Patinkin, William H. Macy, and others to voice the late Christopher Reeve's CG-animated feature Everybody's Hero, about a boy who attempts to retrieve a talking baseball bat from a crooked security guard. In 2007 he had one of his biggest late-career successes directing Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List. Three years later he made the little-seen comedy Flipped. Reiner married his second wife, Michele Singer Reiner, in 1989.

Trivia: After seriously pursuing a baseball career, African American actor/writer/director Robert Townsend decided upon a life in show business. An alumnus of Illinois State University and Hunter College, Townsend worked as a stand-up comic, and with such organizations as Second City, the Negro Ensemble Theater and the Experimental Black Actor's Guild. In films from 1975, Townsend satirically encapsulated his frustrating experiences as a black performer in a white-dominated Hollywood with his first directorial effort, Hollywood Shuffle (1987), a labor of love which was largely financed with credit cards and chutzpah. He went on to direct the popular concert film Eddie Murphy Raw (1987), then tripled as actor, director and writer on The Five Heartbeats (1991) and Meteor Man (1993). Attempting to transfer his style and personality to the small screen, Townsend came up with the 1993 Fox Network variety weekly Townsend Television, which despite laudatory reviews folded after three months. Robert Townsend had better luck as star and co-executive producer of the WB network's The Parent 'Hood, a distressingly conventional 1995 sitcom which somehow caught on with its target audience.

Trivia: A published novelist, Peter Farrelly merged his very particular comic sensibilities with younger brother Bobby Farrelly and became one of the premiere auteurs of gross-out comedy. Raised in Cumberland, Rhode Island, Farrelly received a master's degree in creative writing from Columbia University. While he and Bobby attempted to break into Hollywood as screenwriters, Peter also published his first novel, Outside Providence, in 1988. The Farrellys managed to sell two Seinfeld episodes and several screenplays before one, Dumb and Dumber (1994), finally got made.Peter's directorial debut, Dumb and Dumber showcased not only rising star Jim Carrey's manic talents, but also the Farrellys' taste for combining grotesquely-hilarious physical exploits with an affectionate love story -- it became a blockbuster hit. While their Amish bowling comedy Kingpin (1996) failed to match its predecessor's success, the pair's third effort, There's Something About Mary (1998) became a critically-lauded sleeper hit. Described by one critic as "the Wuthering Heights of gross-out comedy," There's Something About Mary's unabashed political incorrectness and outrageous bodily humor neatly punctuated the central romance between Cameron Diaz's bewitching Mary and slightly-obsessive regular guy Ben Stiller. Along with the New York Film Critics' Best Actress prize, There's Something About Mary won several MTV Movie Awards -- and spawned numerous imitators. Taking a step away from their signature tastelessness, Peter published his second novel, The Comedy Writer (1998), and the Farrellys co-scripted and produced Peter's coming-of-age story Outside Providence (1999) for director Michael Corrente. The Farrellys returned to form when they resurrected an old script and retooled it into another Jim Carrey vehicle, Me, Myself & Irene (2000).Coming off Me, Myself & Irene's mixed reviews for Carrey's shenanigans and relatively disappointing box office performance, Farrelly and Bobby kept busy with several projects that all hit the screen in 2001. After serving as producers on the poorly received incest comedy Say It Isn't So (2001), the Farrellys snuck into the summer movie season with the intriguing comedy Osmosis Jones (2001). The first prominent mix of live action and cartoons since Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), Osmosis Jones found the ideal outlet for the brothers' signature corporeal humor in a story involving an intrepid white blood cell's battle to protect his host's filthy body. Even with Bill Murray and the voices of Chris Rock and Laurence Fishburne, however, Osmosis Jones bombed. The more hyped Shallow Hal (2001), featuring Gwyneth Paltrow as the outwardly obese but inwardly willowy object of Jack Black's affection, failed to bowl over critics with its combination of message movie sincerity and fat jokes, but the audience was less put off.

Trivia: Milwaukee-born filmmaker Jerry Zucker attended Shorewood High School with his older brother, David. It was there, in student variety shows, that the Zuckers began displaying the lampoonish Mad Magazine-style humor that would distinguish their later work. While attending the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the Zuckers' longtime family friend Jim Abrahams founded the Kentucky Fried Theater comedy troupe, which by 1978 had gained enough industry prestige to bankroll the zany sketch film Kentucky Fried Movie (1978), directed by John Landis. The film set the future Zucker standard: wild parodies of movie genres played out by an utterly straight-faced cast, looney non-sequitur jokes and running gags filling each frame, hilarious celebrity cameos, and outrageous (and endearingly childish) visual puns. On the strength of Kentucky Fried Movie's 20-million-dollar take, the Zucker/Abrahams team put together their first mainstream feature for Paramount, 1980's Airplane!, a scattershot satire of the 1957 airline meller Zero Hour. The Zucker boys and Abrahams agreed to this project only on the provision that the three men be allowed to co-direct the film themselves, a triumvirate that held strong throughout the rest of the '80s. The Zucker/Abrahams style would always be hit and miss, but adherents preferred to cherish those hits. The success of Airplane! enabled Zucker/Abrahams to produce a limited 1982 summer replacement series, Police Squad, starring Airplane! cast member Leslie Nielsen as diligent but supremely incompetent police lieutenant Frank Dreben (the casting of heretofore "serious" actors like Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges, and Robert Stack as pompous buffoons was another Zucker/Abrahams trademark). Fans of Police Squad consider the series the best ever, but the ABC network was nervous with the project, complaining that it didn't have a laughtrack to let the audience know what was funny and that the joke-a-minute style required the audience to actually have an attention span. Zucker/Abrahams' next project, Top Secret (1984), though a box-office disappointment, hilariously maintained the Airplane/Police Squad trend of "inside" jokes referring to the writer/directors' hometown of Milwaukee. (The East German national anthem was sung to the tune of the anthem for Shorewood High School). The Zucker/Abrahams team was back on target with its Naked Gun and Hot Shots theatrical films, though there was a marked attrition rate in the inevitable sequels. In 1990, Zucker astounded his fans (and non-fans) with his sensitive solo direction of Ghost, a romantic fantasy that became one of the top-grossing films of the year and won an Oscar for supporting actress Whoopi Goldberg. Jerry Zucker has since fluctuated between his satirical films and more serious works; the only "consistent" aspect of these films is the supporting-cast presence of Jerry and David's mom, Charlotte Zucker.

Trivia: The Wisconsin-born and educated David Zucker, with his brother, Jerry, and Jim Abrahams, worked with the improvisational Kentucky Fried Theater in Madison, WI, before coming to movies in 1977 with Kentucky Fried Movie, a dazzlingly funny satire of movies, television, and popular culture. Written, produced, and directed by the trio, Kentucky Fried Movie became an unexpected success. They followed this up three years later with the monster hit Airplane!, a brutally funny take-off of disaster movies that not only brought an end to that genre, but made the trio into one of the hottest teams in screen comedy. Top Secret! (1984) wasn't nearly as successful, although it did make a profit. However, Ruthless People (1986) was a hit. During the early '80s, the Zuckers were responsible for a short-lived cop show parody called Police Squad, starring Leslie Nielsen, a one-time dramatic film actor who had emerged as a comedy star in Airplane! The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988) was borne from the Police Squad parody and proved a monster hit; this was followed by Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991) and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994).

Trivia: One of the more versatile American filmmakers of his generation, Barry Levinson's movies showcased subjects as diverse as the immigrant experience, mob intrigue, and political satire. He earned particular acclaim for his semi-autobiographical portraits of life in 1950s Baltimore, a topic that he explored to great effect in Diner, his 1982 directorial debut.Born in Baltimore on June 2, 1942, Levinson was the son of a warehouse manager. Initially intent on a career in the media, he studied Broadcast Journalism in college but didn't remain there long enough to earn a degree. He instead switched his interests to acting and standup comedy, and, after serving a stint as a staff writer on The Carol Burnett Show, he was hired by producer Mel Brooks. The first film to carry a screenwriter credit for Levinson (in the company of several other writers) was Silent Movie (1976); this was followed by Brooks' High Anxiety (1977), which also featured Levinson as a vengeful bellboy in the film's celebrated Psycho-parody scene.Levinson's first directorial job was the low-budget Diner (1982), the first installment of his "Baltimore trilogy" (the others were Tin Men (1987) and Avalon (1990)); Diner served to showcase several stars-to-be, among them Mickey Rourke, Ellen Barkin, Daniel Stern, Paul Reiser, and Michael Tucker. A poignant, critically acclaimed, coming-of-age story, the film helped to establish Levinson as a bankable director; this status was further solidified with such purely commercial projects as The Natural (1984) and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). In 1988, Levinson tackled one of his most ambitious projects in Rain Man, the remarkable saga of a disaffected yuppie's deepening relationship with his autistic savant brother. An all-around success, the film won numerous Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman).Levinson had little difficulty imposing his own personal stamp on such star-oriented films as Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), starring Robin Williams, and Bugsy (1991), starring Warren Beatty. Although he has made few missteps in his career, Levinson suffered an intensely personal defeat with Toys (1992), a morality tale acted out in a toy manufacturing company. The film had been a pet project of Levinson's for nearly 20 years, and, when finally completed, it proved to be a complete turkey. Similarly disappointing was the director's Jimmy Hollywood (1994); a comedy starring Joe Pesci as a struggling actor, it sank at the box office. He had greater luck with Sleepers (1996), the disturbing tale of four lifelong friends seeking retribution for torture and sexual abuse they suffered as young boys at a reform school. The following year proved to be a banner one, as Levinson had two critically acclaimed hits, one as the producer of Donnie Brasco, starring Johnny Depp as an undercover cop who develops a dangerous friendship with mobster Al Pacino, and the other as the producer/director of the sharp political satire Wag the Dog, starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. Following a semi-disastrous foray into science fiction with Sphere (1998), Levinson literally and figuratively returned to his home turf in 1999 with Liberty Heights. The story of two Jewish boys growing up in Baltimore in the '50s, it featured the familiar Levinson themes of family ties, ethnic tension, Cold War anxiety, and the growing pains of a changing society.The 21st century started off in a less than stellar way for Levinson as his comedy An Everlasting Piece struggled to get a release in the United States. He oversaw the end of his highly respected television series Homicide by executive producing a TV-movie in 2000 that helped bring some major storylines to a close. The next year he made the quirky comedy Bandits featuring a love triangle between Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. That film was a mild success, but the same could not be said of his next feature, Envy. The Ben Stiller/Jack Black comedy, with a script originally conceived by Larry David, failed to find support from the studio that funded it as well as from audiences. To steady himself, Levinson teamed yet again with Robin Williams for the political satire Man of the Year, about a political comic who ends up running for the Presidnecy. He teamed again with Robert de Niro for the 2008 Hollywood satire What Just Happened, and directed Al Pacino to multiple awards in the made-for-HBO biopic of Jack Kervorkian, You Don't Know Jack.

Trivia: From the beginning of his career, David Lynch quickly established himself as the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking, an acclaimed and widely recognized writer-director as well as television producer, photographer, cartoonist, composer, and graphic artist. Walking the tightrope between the mainstream and the avant-garde with remarkable balance and skill, Lynch brought to the screen a singularly dark and disturbing view of reality, a nightmare world punctuated by defining moments of extreme violence, bizarre comedy, and strange beauty. More than any other arthouse filmmaker of his era, he enjoyed considerable mass acceptance and helped to redefine commercial tastes, honing a surrealistic aesthetic so visionary and deeply personal that the phrase "Lynchian" was coined simply to describe it. Born January 20, 1946, in Missoula, Montana, David Keith Lynch grew up the archetypal all-American boy. The son of a U.S. Department of Agriculture research scientist, he was raised throughout the Pacific Northwest, eventually becoming an Eagle Scout and even serving as an usher at John F. Kennedy's presidential inauguration. Originally intending to become a graphic artist, Lynch enrolled in the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1963, falling under the sway of expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka and briefly studying in Europe. By the early weeks of 1966, he had relocated to Philadelphia, where he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and began his first experimentation with film.The violence and decay which greeted Lynch in Philadelphia proved to have a profound and long-lasting effect, as his work became increasingly obsessed with exploring the dark corners of the human experience. From his first experimental student film (1967's "moving painting" Six Men Getting Sick, onward, his vision grew more and more fascinated with the seedy underbelly of everyday life. He received an American Film Institute Grant and made The Alphabet, a partially animated 16 mm color film, soon after, but then turned away from the cinema to renew his focus on fine art. His next short film, The Grandmother, did not appear until 1970.In 1972, Lynch began work on his first feature effort, Eraserhead. A surreal nightmare borne of the director's own fears and anxieties of fatherhood, the film took over five years to complete, finally premiering in March 1977. An instant cult classic, it was also a tremendous critical success, launching Lynch to the forefront of avant-garde filmmaking. Eraserhead not only established Lynch's singular world view but also cemented the team of actors and technicians who would continue to define the texture of his work for years to come, including cinematographer Frederick Elmes, sound designer Alan Splet, and actor Jack Nance.The success of Eraserhead brought Lynch to the attention of Mel Brooks, who was seeking projects to produce besides his own comedies. He recruited Lynch to helm 1980's The Elephant Man, the tale of John Merrick. Complete with a cast including such celebrated talent as John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins, Anne Bancroft, and John Gielgud, the film marked Lynch's acceptance into the Hollywood mainstream, even netting an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture as well as a nod for Best Director. For a time, Lynch opted to advance his script Ronnie Rocket at Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Studios, but when this failed to materialize, he went to work for Dino De Laurentiis, adapting the Frank Herbert science fiction novel Dune. The first of Lynch's films to star actor Kyle MacLachlan, the 1984 big-budget effort was a commercial and critical disaster -- Lynch himself even disowned the project after it was re-edited for release without his consent.Lynch had agreed to make Dune for de Laurentiis in order to film 1986's Blue Velvet, a long-simmering tale exploring the dark underbelly of small-town life. Insisting upon complete artistic control, he made the picture for under seven million dollars, casting actors ranging from MacLachlan to model Isabella Rossellini to Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell, former stars whose popularity had suffered in recent years. The completed film was an unqualified masterpiece, a hypnotically violent creep show which earned Lynch his second Oscar nomination as well as boosting the careers of all involved. In 1990, Lynch mounted his most commercially successful work, the ABC television series Twin Peaks. A surrealist soap opera created in conjunction with former Hill Street Blues producer Mark Frost, Twin Peaks became a cultural phenomenon, spurred by the mystery of "Who killed Laura Palmer?," the series' central plot thread. Suddenly, Lynch was a cultural figure of considerable renown, a filmmaker perhaps more famous than any of his actors. His fame was bolstered when his fifth feature, 1990s hallucinatory road movie Wild at Heart, grabbed the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. As quickly as the media had built Lynch up, however, they tore him down. Wild at Heart received mixed reviews from American critics, while Twin Peaks was scuttled off to a poorly suited Saturday-night slot, leading to its demise in early 1991. Two other Lynch-created series, the documentary anthology American Chronicles and the situation comedy On the Air, also met with premature deaths. In 1992, he released Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, a feature-film prequel to the television series. An ambitious, fractured work featuring Sheryl Lee as the ill-fated Laura Palmer, the picture was savaged by critics, leaving a wounded Lynch to plot his next move. He spent the next few years away from the limelight. Finally, in 1997, Lynch resurfaced with the enigmatic Lost Highway, another experimental, dream-like effort that polarized viewers' responses. He enjoyed more renown in 1999 when The Straight Story was released at the Cannes Film Festival. The film, based on a true story, marked a departure from Lynch's previous subject matter; the simple tale of a man (Richard Farnsworth) who gets on his tractor and drives 350 miles to see his brother, it offered few of the dark undertones and twisted subtext that had come to be known as the director's trademarks. That notion would continue with 2001's Hollywood-set thriller-melodrama, Mulholland Drive. Like Twin Peaks, the project was originally developed with ABC as a series pilot; unlike Lynch's first foray into television, however, Mulholland was scrapped before it could make a prime-time premiere. Although Lynch tinkered with the two-hour pilot several times in an attempt to satisfy the network brass, they remained unsatisfied. The frustrated director then turned to European financing in order to sculpt a feature film out of his material. Premiering at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, Mulholland garnered much acclaim, snagging Lynch the fest's Best Director award, and cementing his career resurgence.Lynch spent the next few years immersed in the world of digital video, first on his exclusive website -- members of which were allowed access to never-before-seen short films -- and then on the highly experimental feature Inland Empire. Crafted over a series of years using a light, mobile video camera and very few crew members, the film was Lynch's declaration of true artistic independence; the director himself heralded it as a breakthrough. The meandering, non-narrative, 3-hour opus, however, left critics and fans sharply divided as they tried to make sense of such disparate elements as a tortured, ghostly ingenue (played by Laura Dern), a Polish film crew, and Justin Theroux wearing a rabbit's-head mask. Dissatisfied with the response from possible buyers at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, Lynch chose to distribute the film himself, even mounting his own Oscar campaign -- stationing himself on various L.A. streetcorners, no less -- for Dern. In the years that followed, the director continued to immerse himself in experimental video, with short subjects including Boat, More Things That Happened and Lady Blue Shanghai - each of which alternately beguiled and delighted longtime Lynch adherents.

Trivia: An alumnus of State University of New York and the University of Massachusetts, American actor Bill Pullman excelled in both wacky comedy and intense drama during his stage years, working with such repertory companies as the Folger Theatre Groupe and the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Before college, he attended a technical institute and studied building construction (years later he used those skills to build his own house in California). In films, Pullman could be relied upon to almost invariably lose the girl, as witness his brace of 1993 films, Sleepless in Seattle and Somersby. He almost lost his screen wife Geena Davis to Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own (1992), but this gratuitous plot point was eliminated from the script. Only since 1994 has Pullman won the heroine's hand with any regularity. The summer of 1995 found Bill Pullman with back-to-back leading roles in two of the season's biggest box-office successes: While You Were Sleeping and Casper: The Movie. Pullman gained even more recognition for his heroic portrayal of the self-sacrificing U.S. president in the special effects blockbuster Independence Day. Up to this point, Pullman was pretty well typecast in "nice guy" roles. In David Lynch's Lost Highway (1996), he broke that mold by appearing as a deeply disturbed husband. In 1995, Pullman began a side career as a producer when he founded his own production company Big Town.

Trivia: Actress Daphne Zuniga achieved nationwide fame through her weekly appearances on Fox's Melrose Place in 1994; despite her comparative unfamiliarity, she was certainly no overnight success. The daughter of a Guatemalan-born philosophy professor, Zuniga attended U.C.L.A. while her dad was teaching at California State. Stardom beckoned when she was cast as John Cusack's recalcitrant traveling companion in The Sure Thing (1985). For reasons that defy explanation, this engaging performance did not immediately elevate her to the top ranks, and Zuniga would have to mark time in unmemorable films like Last Rites (1988) and Prey of the Chameleon (1991) before Melrose Place secured her popularity. After that show ended she continued to work regularly on both the small and big screen in projects such as Pandora's Clark, Enemies of Laughter, Christmas Do-Over, and the short-lived Spaceballs animated series. In 2007 she co-directed the documentary The Future We Will Create: Inside the World of TED.

Trivia: The handsome blonde actor Cary Elwes (pronounced El-Ways) was born in London to a portrait painter and an interior designer. He moved to the U.S. to study at Sarah Lawrence College, but made his film debut in the U.K. with the coming-of-age drama Another Country (1984), co-starring alongside fellow handsome young actors Rupert Everett and Colin Firth. He soon started a pattern of appearing in historical dramas and other period pieces, first with Lady Jane (1985), opposite Helena Bonham Carter, and then as the lead role in Maschenka (1986), based on the book by Vladimir Nabokov. However, he didn't make his international film breakthrough until 1987 with Rob Reiner's classic adventure fairy tale The Princess Bride. He seemed to possess a timeless quality essential for the role of Westley, the sensitive-yet-daring farm boy who becomes the swashbuckling Dred Pirate Roberts and gallantly fights for his love. Continuing with historical films, he capably handled a Southern accent for the Civil War drama Glory and then tried a one-time stint as associate producer for the little-seen drama Leather Jackets. Next, he made a successful jump to broad comedy with lead roles in Hot Shots! (1991) and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). Switching to darker themes, he played Lord Arthur Holmwood in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and Alicia Silverstone's object of obsession in The Crush (1993). The following year, he briefly returned to adventures for The Jungle Book before moving on to playing authority figures in the thrillers Twister and Kiss the Girls. In the late '90s, he voiced cartoons and appeared in a few made-for-TV movies and miniseries until 1999, when he transformed his usually slender frame for the role of portly producer John Houseman (Orson Welles' colleague) in Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock. He continued portraying cinematic legends in his next few films, including the German cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner in Shadow of the Vampire and pioneering producer Thomas H. Ince in The Cat's Meow. In 2001,he played a reoccurring role on The X-Files as FBI Assistant Brad Follmer and returned to romantic comedy adventures as Prince Regent Edgar in Ella Enchanted (2003).He was the lead in the infamous 2004 slasher movie Saw, and had a lead part in the 2006 National Lampoon comedy Pucked. In 2007 he appeared in the ill-fated Lindsay Lohan movie Georgia Rule. He came back for Saw: The Final Chapter in 2010. 2011 turned out to be a busy year for Elwes with parts in the comedy No Strings Attached, the Spielberg-directed The Adventures of Tintin, and the ensemble romantic comedy New Year's Eve.

Trivia: Although Matthew Broderick has built a solid reputation as one of the stage and screen's more talented and steadily working individuals, he will forever be associated with the role that gave him permanent celluloid infamy, the blissfully irresponsible title hero of John Hughes's 1986 Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Thanks to his association with the character, as well as his own boyish looks, Broderick for a long time had trouble obtaining roles that allowed him to play characters of his own age. However, with the success of films like Election (1999) and a 1994 Tony Award for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, audiences finally seemed ready to accept the fact that Broderick had indeed graduated from high school.The son of late actor James Broderick and playwright/screenwriter Patricia Broderick, Broderick was born in New York City on March 21, 1962. With the theatre a constant backdrop to his childhood, Broderick's entrance into the entertainment world seemed a natural outcome of his upbringing. He began appearing in theatre workshops with his father when he was seventeen, and was soon acting on Broadway in plays like Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues and Brighton Beach Memoirs and Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy. Broderick played Fierstein's adopted son in Torch Song; in the Simon plays, he portrayed the playwright's alter ego, winning a Tony Award for his 1983 performance in Brighton Beach Memoirs. The same year, Broderick made his film debut in WarGames, playing a young man who unwittingly plants the seeds of a nuclear war; the film was a success and launched the actor's onscreen career. Films like Max Dugan Returns and Ladyhawke followed, as did an acclaimed television adaptation of Athol Fugard's Master Harold and the Boys, but it was the 1986 Ferris Bueller's Day Off that made Broderick a star. As a then-23-year-old playing a 17-year-old, Broderick became a champion of smart-asses everywhere, and in so doing earned a certain kind of screen immortality. The success of the film allowed him to work steadily in films like Project X and the screen adaptations of Biloxi Blues and Torch Song Trilogy (in which Broderick now played Fierstein's lover, instead of his adopted son). Widely publicized tragedy struck for Broderick in 1988 when he and Jennifer Grey were vacationing in Ireland: after losing control of the car he was driving, Broderick crashed into an oncoming car, killing the mother and daughter in it. The actor was hospitalized, and his ensuing legal problems were the subject of much media scrutiny. However, he continued to work, winning critical acclaim for his portrayal of a Civil War colonel in the 1989 Glory. He then kicked off the 1990s with the title role of a naive film student in The Freshman; following that film's relative success, he starred in the poorly received comedy The Night We Never Met, and in 1994, he was cast against type as one of Dorothy Parker's unsympathetic lovers in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. That same year, he ventured back to Broadway, where he found acclaim as the lead in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, winning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. Over the next few years, Broderick had his hits (The Lion King) and misses (The Road to Wellville, The Cable Guy, Addicted to Love). In 1996, he made his directorial debut with Infinity, which also featured a screenplay by his mother. A love story based on the life of famed physicist Richard Feynman, the film made a brief blip on the box-office radar, although it did garner some positive reviews. In 1997 he wed actress Sarah Jessica Parker who gave birth to their son, James Wilke Broderick, in October of 2002. The same couldn't be said for Broderick's massively budgeted, hyper-marketed 1998 feature, Godzilla. The subject of critical abuse and audience evasion, the film was a disappointment. Fortunately for Broderick, his role as the film's hero was largely ignored by critics who preferred to level their attacks at the film's content. The actor managed to rebound successfully the following year, first playing against type as a high-school teacher caught up in an ethical conundrum in Alexander Payne's hilarious satire Election. The film received positive reviews, with many critics praising Broderick's performance as the morally ambiguous Mr. McAllister. The actor then could be seen as the title character in the giddy action flick Inspector Gadget. It was a role that would have made Ferris Bueller proud: not only did Broderick get to shoot flames from his limbs and sprout helicopter blades from his skull, he also got to defeat the bad guys and, in the end, get the girl. In 2000, Broderick played a supporting role in Kenneth Lonergan's critically acclaimed You Can Count On Me with Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo, and appeared in a well received television adaptation of The Music Man later that year. Broderick lent his vocal chords for both 2003's The Good Boy and 2004's The Lion King 1/2, and signed on to appear in three hotly anticipated 2004 films; namely, The Last Shot with William H. Macy, Tom Cairns' black comedy Marie and Bruce, and The Stepford Wives with Nicole Kidman, Christopher Walken, and Bette Midler. Of course, Broderick's biggest achievement of the 2000's was not on the silver screen, but on stage with Nathan Lane in Mel Brooks' hugely successful comedy The Producers, which won a record 12 Tony awards in 2001. He reprised the role for a film adaptation in 2005, with Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman joining the cast. 2006 found the actor appearing in the big screen adaptation of Strangers with Candy, as well as the drama Margaret, tough post-production problems kept that film from being released until 2011, and the holiday comedy Deck the Halls. Broderick worked in animated films such as Bee Movie and The Tale of Despereaux, and was also part of the ragtag crew planning the perfect crime in the comedy Tower Heist.

Trivia: Known for his outrageous, divinely comedic performances on stage and screen, Nathan Lane has led a career encompassing Broadway, television, and film. Born Joe Lane in Jersey City, New Jersey on February 3, 1956, Lane took his stage name from Nathan Detroit, the character he played to great acclaim in the 1992 Broadway version of Guys and Dolls.Lane made his film debut in 1987's Ironweed, and he spent the rest of the 1980s and early 1990s playing secondary roles in films like Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), Frankie and Johnny (1991), and Addams Family Values (1993). During this time, his stage career was thriving; in addition to his celebrated turn in Guys and Dolls (for which he won a Tony nomination, as well as Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards), he frequently collaborated with playwright Terrence McNally, who cast him in a number of his plays, including The Lisbon Traviata, in which Lane played an opera queen, and Love! Valour! Compassion!, in which he starred as Buzz, an HIV-positive musical aficionado who provides much of the play's comic relief and genuine anger. The actor won particular acclaim for his portrayal of the latter character, taking home Obie and Drama Desk Awards, as well as other honors, for his work.In 1994, the same year that he starred in the stage version of Love! Valour! Compassion! (his role was played in the film version by Jason Alexander), Lane gained fame of a different sort, lending his voice to Timon, a hyperactive meerkat in Disney's animated The Lion King. He reprised the role for the extremely successful movie's 1998 sequel. Two years after playing a meerkat, Lane finally became widely visible to screen audiences as Robin Williams' flamboyantly limp-wristed lover in The Birdcage, Mike Nichols' remake of La Cage aux Folles. The film helped to establish Lane--who was at the time starring on Broadway in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum--as a comic actor worthy of big-screen exposure, and in 1997 he was given his own vehicle to display his talents, Mouse Hunt. Unfortunately, the film was a relative disappointment, as was Encore! Encore!, a 1998 sitcom that cast the actor as a Pavorotti-like opera singer alongside Glenne Headly and Joan Plowright. However, Lane continued to work steadily, appearing both on stage and in film. In 1999, he could be seen in At First Sight and Get Bruce, a documentary about comic writer Bruce Vilanch. The same year, he could also be heard in Stuart Little, a live action/animated adaptation of E.B White's celebrated children's book.Over the coming years, Lane would appear in several films, including a new big screen adaptation of The Producers and the fairy tale Mirror Mirror.