Trivia: Born February 18, 1954, in Englewood, John Travolta was the youngest of six children in a family of entertainers; all but one of his siblings pursued showbusiness careers as well. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. By age 16, he dropped out of high school to take up acting full-time, relocating to Manhattan to make his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in Rain, and a minor role in the touring company of the hit musical Grease followed.In 1975, Travolta was cast in an ABC sitcom entitled Welcome Back, Kotter. As Vinnie Barbarino, a dim-witted high school Lothario, he shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Before the first episode of the series even aired, he also won a small role in Brian De Palma's 1976 horror picture Carrie, and at the early peak of his Kotter success he even recorded a series of pop music LPs -- Can't Let Go, John Travolta, and Travolta Fever -- scoring a major hit with the single "Let Her In." Approached with a role in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, he was forced to reject the project in the face of a busy Kotter schedule, but in 1976 he was able to shoot a TV feature, director Randal Kleiser's The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, which won considerable critical acclaim. Diana Hyland, the actress who played Travolta's mother in the picture, also became his offscreen lover until her death from cancer in 1977.In the wake of Hyland's death, Travolta's first major feature film, John Badham's Saturday Night Fever (1977), emerged in the fall of that year. A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture. In 1978, he starred in Kleiser's film adaptation of Grease, this time essaying the lead role of 1950s greaser Danny Zuko. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's, becoming a perennial fan favorite and, like its predecessor, spawning a massively popular soundtrack LP. In the light of his back-to-back successes, as well as the continued popularity of Welcome Back, Kotter -- on which he still occasionally appeared -- it seemed Travolta could do no wrong - but things wouldn't always be so rosy for the performer.Travolta's first misstep was 1978's Moment By Moment, a laughable May-December romance with Lily Tomlin. He then reprised the role of Tony Manero in the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive. Directed by Sylvester Stallone as a kind of Rocky retread, the film was released in 1983 to embarrassing returns and horrendous reviews. It would prove to be just one in a string of '80s stinkers for the actor, followed by disappointments like Two of a Kind, Perfect, and The Experts. He made a minor comeback with 1989's Look Who's Talking, which fared well at the box office, but the movie did little for Travolta's reputation, and the performer was all but completely washed up by the beginning of the '90s.Then, in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Pulp Fiction, a lavishly acclaimed crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan who wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind; Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it.In the wake of Pulp Fiction, the resurrected Travolta became one of the hardest-working actors in Hollywood, and on Tarantino's advice he accepted the starring role in director Barry Sonnenfeld's 1995 Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty. Acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date, it was another major hit, and he followed it by appearing in the 1996 John Woo action tale Broken Arrow. Phenomenon was another smash that same summer, and by Christmas Travolta was back in theaters as a disreputable angel in Michael. The following year he reunited with Woo in the highly successful thriller Face/Off, which he trailed with a supporting turn in Nick Cassavetes' She's So Lovely. After 1997's Mad City, Travolta began work on Primary Colors, Mike Nichols' political satire, portraying a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President. An adaptation of the acclaimed book A Civil Action followed, as did the 1999 thriller The General's Daughter, in which Travolta co-starred with Madeline Stowe. Travolta did suffer an embarrassment in 2000, when he produced and starred in the sci-fi thriller Battlefield Earth, based on the novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (whose teachings Travolta publicly admired and advocated). The film was universally panned as so bad it was funny, but Travolta bounced back, shedding some pounds to play the baddie in 2001 action thriller Swordfish. A complex tale of mixed loyalties, computer hacking, and espionage, Swordfish teamed Travolta with X-Men star Hugh Jackman in hopes of dominating the summer box office. This put Travolta in good shape to weather another disappointment, when his dramatic Oscar contender A Love Song for Bobby Long, was not well received by audiences or critics. While he received more praise for his performance in Ladder 49, a film about the lives of firefighters, his career took another hit in 2004 when he reprised the role of Chili Palmer in Be Cool, a sequel to Get Shorty that proved to have none of the magic that made its predecessor so successful. Unfazed, Travolta signed on to star in the 2007 Baby Boomer comedy Wild Hogs, alongside a dream cast of Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy, who played four listless suburbanites who decide to "live on the edge" by grabbing their sawed-off choppers and hitting the open road as would-be Hell's Angels. Later that year, Travolta took another comedic turn in Hairspray, Adam Shankman's screen adaptation of the stage musical (which, in turn, is an adaptation of John Waters's 1988 feature), which put Travolta in drag to play the heavy set, bouffant hair-do'd mother once played by drag queen Divine. He would follow this up with some middling action fare, with The Taking of Pelham 13 and From Paris with Love, as well as a sequel to Wild Hogs, 2009's Old Dogs.

Trivia: The daughter of a California-based civil engineer and a Costa Rican émigré, Madeleine Stowe attended the University of Southern California, but cut classes to watch plays. Her life as a waitress came to an end when she was fired for being "too spacey," but she was anything but spacey when it came to pursuing an acting career on the California theater circuit. Stowe eventually attracted the attention of Richard Dreyfuss' agent -- not for her stage work, but because the agent spotted her watching one of Dreyfuss' performances. This serendipitous turn of events enabled Stowe to get a bit part in the TV series Baretta, which led to more substantial roles on other shows. While working on the mid-'80s miniseries The Gangster Chronicles, the actress met her husband, future Dream On star Brian Benben. Stowe's screen career during the 1980s and '90s was not exactly a string of blockbusters, but she usually garnered excellent reviews and positive audience response, so that when she was in a bona fide hit, such as 1992's The Last of the Mohicans, reviewers were often inclined to credit her for at least some of the film's success. Stowe also starred in Robert Altman's critically-acclaimed Short Cuts in 1993 and Terry Gilliam's sci-fi cult film 12 Monkeys in 1995. She disappeared from screen for the next three years, but reappeared as part of the ensemble in Playing By Heart, and followed that up next year with The General's Daughter. She appeared in the made-for-TV remake of The Magnificent Ambersons, and co-starred opposite Sylvester Stallone in 2002's Avenging Angelo. She tried her hand at TV with 2007's Raines.

Trivia: One of Hollywood's most intense supporting and leading actors, James Woods has built a distinguished career on stage, screen, and television. Early in his career, Woods, with his lean body, close-set eyes, and narrow, acne-scarred face, specialized in playing sociopaths, psychopaths, and other crazed villains, but in the 1990s, he added a sizable number of good guys to his resumé.The son of a military man, Woods was born in Vermal, UT, on April 14, 1947. Thanks to his father's job, he had a peripatetic childhood, living in four states and on the island of Guam. As a young man, he earned a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; after obtaining a degree in political science, he set out to become a professional actor in New York. While in school he had appeared in numerous plays at M.I.T., Harvard, and with the Theater Company of Boston, as well as at the Provincetown Playhouse on Rhode Island. After working off-Broadway, Woods debuted on Broadway in 1970, appearing in Borstal Boy. Off-Broadway, he earned an Obie for his work in Saved.In 1971, the actor made his first television appearance in All the Way Home, and the year after that debuted in Elia Kazan's thriller The Visitors (1972). He then played a small part in The Way We Were (1973), but did not become a star until he played a vicious, remorseless cop killer in The Onion Field (1979). Subsequent film appearances quickly established Woods as a scene stealer, and though not among Tinseltown's most handsome actors, he developed a base of devoted female fans who found his rugged, ruthless appearance sexy. This appearance would serve him well throughout his career, notably in one of his first major films, David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983). Cast as the film's morally ambiguous hero, Woods gave a brilliantly intense performance that was further enhanced by his rough-hewn physical attributes. Throughout the 1980s, Woods continued to turn in one solid performance after another, earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of an American journalist in South America in Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986). He gave another remarkable performance as a Jewish gangster in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984), and in 1989 tried his hand at playing nice in the adoption drama Immediate Family. That same year, he won an Emmy for his portrayal of Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson in My Name Is Bill W. After beginning the subsequent decade with an Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated performance in the title role of the made-for-TV Citizen Cohn (1992), Woods appeared in a diverse series of films, playing a boxing promoter in Diggstown (1992), H.R. Haldeman in Nixon (1995), a drug dealer in Another Day in Paradise (1998), and a vampire slayer in John Carpenter's Vampires. In 1996, he won his second Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Medger Evers' suspected assassin in Ghosts of Mississippi. In 1999, the actor continued to demonstrate his versatility in a number of high-profile films. For The General's Daughter, he played a shady colonel, while he appeared as a newspaper editor in Clint Eastwood's True Crime, the head of an emotionally disintegrating Michigan family in The Virgin Suicides, and a football team orthopedist in Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday.As the 21st century began, Woods could be seen as a doctor in the medical/hostage thriller John Q., and he lent his voice to a number of documentaries and animated projects including the sequel Stuart Little 2. He was part of the ensemble in the Polish brothers' Northfork, and appeared in Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty. In 2007 he began work as the lead on the TV series Shark, and in 2011 he appeared in the remake of Straw Dogs and the well-reviewed made-for-HBO docudrama about the collapse of the American economy, Too Big to Fail.

Trivia: Long-time character actor James Cromwell has spent much of his career on stage and television, only occasionally appearing in feature films until the early '90s, when his film work began to flourish. The tall, spare actor first became known to an international audience with his role as the taciturn but kindly Farmer Hoggett, the owner of a piglet that wants to be a sheepdog, in the smash hit Babe (1995). His work in the film earned Cromwell an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, as well as numerous opportunities for steady work in Hollywood.The son of noted director John Cromwell and actress Kay Johnson, he originally aspired to become a mechanical engineer, attending both Vermont's Middlebury College and the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). But after a summer spent on a movie set with his father, the acting bug bit, and Cromwell decided to become an actor. He started out in regional theater, acting and directing in a variety productions for ten years, and he was a regular performer at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Cromwell made his television debut in the recurring role of "Stretch" Cunningham on All in the Family in 1974, and he subsequently spent the rest of the decade and much of the 1980s on television, as a regular on such shows as Hot L Baltimore and The Last Precinct. Cromwell also appeared in such miniseries as NBC's Once an Eagle and in such made-for-television movies as A Christmas Without Snow (1980). Cromwell made his feature film debut in the comedy Murder By Death (1976). His film work was largely undistinguished until Babe; following the film's success, he began appearing in more substantial roles in a number of popular films, including The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996), in which he played Charles Keating; Star Trek: First Contact (1996), which cast him as the reluctant scientist responsible for Earth's first contact with alien life forms; and L.A. Confidential (1997), in which he gave a marvelously loathsome performance as a crooked police captain. Adept at playing nice guys and bottom-dwelling scum alike, Cromwell next earned strong notices for his portrayal of a penitentiary warden in The Green Mile (1999).The respected character actor continued strongly into the next decade with appearances in Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys as well as the live-on-TV production of Fail Safe in 2000. He enjoyed a recurring role on E.R. in 2001. He played the president in the 2002 Jack Ryan movie The Sum of All Fears. In 2003 he took on a recurring role in the respected HBO drama Six Feet Under, and also appeared in the award-winning HBO adaptation of Angels in America. In 2006 he acted opposite Helen Mirren playing Prince Philip in The Queen, and played another head of state for Oliver Stone when he portrayed George Herbert Walker Bush in the biopic W. In 2011 he was the loyal butler to the main character in the Best Picture Oscar winner for that year, The Artist.

Trivia: A talented stage actor who made a name for himself in Broadway and off-Broadway productions, John Benjamin Hickey has also appeared on such popular television shows as Sex and the City and Homicide: Life in the Streets. Simultaneously making a bid for the big screen with roles in The Ice Storm (1997) and Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997), Hickey began gaining momentum in such big budget efforts as The Bone Collector and The General's Daughter (both 1999). After leaning back toward his stage roots with television's Hamlet in 2000, Hickey appeared in Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh's searing showbiz satire The Wedding Party in 2001. He worked steadily in small parts in movies such as Changing Lanes, Flightplan, and Infamous, and landed a major role for Clint Eastwood in the 2006 World War II drama Flags of Our Fathers. He appeared in Freedom Writers, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 before landing a major role in the Showtime series The Big C opposite Laura Linney.

Trivia: While still in high school, American actor Timothy Hutton, son of actor Jim Hutton, toured with his father in a stage production of Harvey. After high school he moved to southern California and managed to land roles in several TV films, notably Friendly Fire and Young Love, First Love (both 1979). He debuted onscreen as a troubled teenager in Robert Redford's first directorial effort, Ordinary People (1980). For his work in that film he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, at the time the youngest actor to earn such an honor. Hutton soon became typecast as sensitive, somewhat wimpy youths in a string of major films, a mold he didn't break out of until the late '80s. Despite his auspicious beginning, most of Hutton's films have been financially unsuccessful. In 1984 he made his New York stage debut in Orpheus Descending, and in 1990 starred on Broadway in the hit romance Prelude to a Kiss. He has also done some directing, including an episode of the TV show Amazing Stories and a rock video made by the band The Cars. He married and divorced actress Debra Winger.

Trivia: Though she has an Ivy League degree, Leslie Stefanson decided to parlay her all-American beauty into a modeling and acting career in the 1990s. Raised in Moorhead, MN, Stefanson left behind her small-town roots to attend Columbia University's Barnard College in New York City. First stepping in front of the cameras as a model, Stefanson added acting to her resume a couple of years after graduation with a bit part in the comedy The Cowboy Way (1994). Stefanson bolstered her new career with small roles in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) and Flubber (1997), as well as playing Helen Hunt's fellow waitress in the Oscar-winning hit As Good As It Gets (1997). Stefanson landed her first starring role in the comic thriller Delivered (1998), but it was the flashy John Travolta vehicle The General's Daughter (1999) that finally earned her more than passing notice. As the mysteriously murdered title character, Stefanson's wholesome blondeness became an innocent, fragile surface for the military woman's seamy after-hours exploits and dark past. Though the critics deemed the onscreen treatment of the general's daughter grossly exploitative, complete with an overly stylized gang rape, The General's Daughter became a summer hit. Stefanson further raised her profile the following year by playing Joan Kennedy in the TV miniseries Jackie, Ethel, Joan: the Women of Camelot (2000) and by taking a small role in Hollywood wunderkind M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable (2000). But her lead performance in Sally Field's critically lambasted beauty pageant satire Beautiful (2000), was little-seen.

Trivia: Burly and heavyset character actor Mark Boone Jr. specialized in portrayals of thuggish rednecks and imposing blue-collar types, occasionally those with a slightly shady undercurrent. Boone first stepped in front of the camera in the early '80s, and grew more prolific over time; he was memorable in films such as the 1990 Die Hard 2 (as a terrorist), the 1995 Seven (as a greasy FBI agent), and the 2003 2 Fast 2 Furious (as a detective). His onscreen activity crescendoed circa 2005, with performances in four of that year's features, including Batman Begins. The following year, Boone signed for one of the key supporting roles in David Slade's supernatural horror opus 30 Days of Night (2007).

Trivia: Boyishly handsome in a Rob Lowe sort of way, Boyd Kestner's career in front of the camera gained increasing momentum in the early to mid-'90s with roles in such television series as The Outsiders and Knot's Landing, eventually resulting in a feature career that pointed to great things ahead in the early years of the new millennium. A Manassas, VA, native who fell into acting after relocating to New York City, Kestner didn't find his true calling until laboring as a bartender among legions of aspiring actors. Prompted by his peers to take acting classes, and soon thereafter embarking on a seemingly endless series of auditions, Kestner finally got his break when he landed a role in the short-lived television series The Outsiders. Later toiling in made-for-television movies and minor film roles, fate once again smiled on Kestner when he landed his first major film role in director Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane (1997). The first in a series of minor roles in such major Hollywood films as The General's Daughter (1999) and Hannibal (2001, again with director Scott), Kestner's role as a houseguest who wears out his welcome in the psychosexual thriller Cleopatra's Second Husband (1998) earned him critical kudos and found him climbing the credit rungs. Taking his menacing act on the road for Snakeskin (2001) found Kestner establishing himself as an actor with the ability to maintain a curiously enigmatic screen presence, with roles in Scott's Black Hawk Down (also 2001) and the affectionate 2002 comedy-drama Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood coinciding with a relocation to the West Coast and pointing to a promising future.

Trivia: Was a self-proclaimed jock during high school, having lettered in three sports - basketball, football and track. His first experience in acting was a theater class at the University of Minnesota. Studied at the William Esper Studio in New York City. Made first TV appearance in an episode of NBC's Law and Order in 1996. In 1998, performed in an off-Broadway production of Chili Queen.

Trivia: One of the most astute observers of the social and political scene of the early '60s, director John Frankenheimer built his early reputation on his unique ability to bridge the gap between television and Hollywood drama, old and new visual technologies, and the more personal Hollywood films of yesteryear and the cinema of faceless corporate modernity. Frankenheimer's virtuosity was on great display in his films of the early '60s, particularly The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, when he dazzled critics and audiences with his use of monochrome photography and Panavision technology. Unfortunately, the promise Frankenheimer exhibited in these films failed to pan out over the course of his later career and many of his subsequent films have been deemed unworthy successors to his early efforts.Born in Malba, NY, on February 19, 1930, Frankenheimer was raised in Queens as the son of a German Jewish stockbroker father and an Irish mother. Originally aspiring to be a professional tennis player, Frankenheimer developed an interest in a filmmaking career while serving in the Air Force's Motion Picture Squadron. During the course of his service he learned fundamental filmmaking techniques and made his television directorial debut with a local Los Angeles show that was sponsored by a cattle ranch and featured, appropriately enough, live cows as its stars. Following his military discharge, Frankenheimer began working with actors of the two-legged persuasion as an assistant director with CBS TV in New York. He embarked on a very fruitful and respected career as a TV director, directing over 125 TV plays, including numerous episodes of the acclaimed Playhouse 90 series. It was with the 1957 film version of one of these television plays, The Young Stranger, that Frankenheimer made his debut as a feature film director. Although the film earned critical acclaim, the director found the experience of making it to be an unsatisfying one and subsequently returned to directing for television.Frankenheimer returned to the screen in 1961 with The Young Savages. A crime drama that featured Burt Lancaster as its lead, it was a reasonable critical success, and Frankenheimer decided to give feature film another go. He followed the film with the black and white Warren Beatty/Eva Marie Saint melodrama All Fall Down in 1962 and that same year made what many consider to be one of his greatest masterpieces, Birdman of Alcatraz. A stirring prison drama starring Lancaster as its titular hero, the film garnered a number of international honors, including four Oscar nominations. 1962 was truly one of the best years of Frankenheimer's career, as in addition to the triumph of Birdman, the director made another of his most celebrated works, The Manchurian Candidate. However, the film did not enjoy an exceedingly warm reception upon its original 1962 release; a taut, thoroughly chilling psychological thriller that featured an incomparable performance from Angela Lansbury as the world's worst mother, The Manchurian Candidate would have to wait until its 1987 re-release to earn its deserved recognition as one of the Cold War's most enduring and damning cinematic mementos. Frankenheimer struck back with two successive Lancaster vehicles, the political thriller Seven Days in May (1964) and the WWII action adventure The Train (1965). Both films showcased Frankenheimer's enviable technological prowess -- made especially evident in the black-and-white photography of Seven Days in May -- and further established him as one of his profession's most promising young talents, particularly in the arena of the political/psychological thriller. Following Seconds, a 1966 ode to corporate paranoia and the loss of identity, and 1968's The Fixer, a historical drama centering on anti-Semitism in Czarist Russia, Frankenheimer's career took a new and largely disappointing direction. Accused by many a critic of sacrificing substance for style, the director relocated to Europe and endured a creative dry spell that produced few, if any memorable films. He had something of a comeback with his moderately well-received 1973 production of The Iceman Cometh and scored both critical and commercial success with 1975's The French Connection II, one of the few sequels to actually prove a worthy successor to its original source. Unfortunately, with just a handful of exceptions, such as the 1977 thriller Black Sunday, Frankenheimer's career remained stuck in a creative rut throughout the 1980s and 1990s, arguably hitting its darkest nadir with the fiasco of 1996's The Island of Dr. Moreau. Frankenheimer rebounded somewhat with a return to television in 1997, turning out the critically praised biopic George Wallace. He enjoyed further critical success with the following year's Ronin, a political thriller starring Robert De Niro.Following a rare appearance onscreen in the disappointing thriller The General's Daughter (1999), Frankenheimer helmed Reindeer Games. A crime drama starring Ben Affleck as an ex-con trying to make good, it was released to mixed reviews in 2000. Subsequently directing a rousing short film for BMW, the film recalled the breathtaking car chases of Ronin and left fans hungering for more. Returning to television for what would ultimately become his final effort, Frankenheimer once again took on the politics that had defined his early career with the Vietnam era drama Path to War. Nominated for both best lead and supporting actor Emmys, the HBO aired film proved that the veteran director still had a both a dramatic touch and a way with actors. Shortly after announcing plans to helm the fourth chapter in the Exorcist film series, Frankenheimer was admitted to a Los Angeles hospital to undergo spinal surgery. Though he expected to recover in time to begin production on the film, a stroke brought on by complications resulting from the surgery proved fatal, sadly marking the end of the road for one of Hollywood's most loved and prolific filmmakers.

Trivia: Rustic character actor Cooper Huckabee has been active in films since the early 1970s. Huckabee's first major film role was high-school jock Hardin Tough in the enjoyably sleazy Pom Pom Girls (1976). He went on to portray any number of sheriffs, security guards and small-town political hacks. Cooper Huckabee's film credits include Foul Play (1978), Cohen and Tate (1989), Gettysburg (1993, as Henry T. Harrison) and Bad Girls (1994).

Trivia: The son of a musician, African American actor Clarence Williams III was raised by his grandmother. While attending his local YMCA branch as a teenager, Williams became interested in dramatics. After a two-year hitch with the Air Force, he began his acting career, making his New York debut in 1960's The Long Dream. Williams amassed an impressive list of Broadway credits, and in 1966 was artist in residence at Brandeis University. Still, he remained an unknown commodity in Hollywood until 1968, when he was cast as "hip" undercover cop Linc Hayes on the popular TV weekly The Mod Squad. After the series' cancellation in 1973, Williams divided his time between stage and film work, occasionally functioning as a director. Among his better-known assignments of recent years was the role of Prince's father in Purple Rain (1984) and the recurring part of Roger Hardy in the cult TV series Twin Peaks (1990). Clarence Williams III is married to actress Gloria Foster.