Trivia: If childhood dreams are indicators of ones' future career, actor Lenny Von Dohlen might today be riding a horse in a blinding circle of dust and speed. Thankfully for his fans, the once aspiring jockey decided on a career in film and television, instead. After attending the University of Texas at Austin, the Augusta, GA, native explored the stage while majoring in drama at Denver's Loretto Heights College. Though he had some pre-college on-stage experience, it was during his stint at Loretto Heights that Von Dohlen truly began to heed his calling. By the early '80s, the actor's extensive stage work earned him a role in the made-for-TV feature Kent State (1981), and he moved to features with a brief turn in the acclaimed drama Tender Mercies in 1983. Following a brief return to the small screen, Von Dohlen received his biggest role to date in the technophobic feature Electric Dreams (1984). Cast as a hapless architect whose self-aware home computer unexpectedly becomes his rival in romance, the film was a hit with audiences and played in a seemingly endless loop on cable TV for years. It may not have been Shakespeare, but Electric Dreams certainly earned the rising star a healthy collection of dedicated fans. In the following years, Von Dohlen found himself once again primarily relegated to supporting roles, though a turn as Karl Malden's steel-worker son in Billy Galvin in 1986 proved that the young actor was as capable with drama as he had been with comedy. After closing out the decade by fighting the undead in Dracula's Widow (1988) and getting tangled up in a murder plot in Love Kills (1991), Von Dohlen once again got a chance to shine as the agoraphobic Harold Smith in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992). A marked disappointment for both critics and many fans of the series at the time, the actor's eccentric performance gave the film one of its most memorable characters. A series of forgettable thrillers preceded a turn opposite Fairuza Balk in the twisted drama Tollbooth (1994). Two years later, Von Dohlen got a chance to shine in the little-seen drama Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story. A swift thrashing by an eight-year-old in Home Alone 3 (1997) did little to dampen the actor's spirit, and, in 2001, Von Dohlen returned to the small screen with the TVdrama The Ponder Heart.

Trivia: Although she garnered some attention at the outset of her Hollywood career, Virginia Madsen found her star eclipsed in the 1990s by her older brother Michael's jolting, thuggish performances for director Quentin Tarantino. After landing a plum role in the acclaimed 2004 indie Sideways, however, Madsen was showered with the kind of praise she'd been denied for nearly two decades in the business.A native of the Chicago suburbs and the daughter of a PBS documentarian, Madsen learned her trade in city theater productions and summer performance camps. She made her way to Hollywood in the early '80s with her then-fiancé/fellow performer Billy Campbell. Making an inauspicious debut at the age of 19 as Andrew McCarthy's would-be first-time conquest in the teen sex comedy Class, she would go on to more noteworthy roles in director David Lynch's sci-fi epic Dune and the slick but heartfelt romantic comedy Electric Dreams (both 1984). The rest of the decade wouldn't be quite as kind, as Madsen shuffled from part to part, appearing in a supporting capacity in both ambitious arthouse fare (1987's Slamdance) and forgettable Hollywood comedies (1988's Hot to Trot and Mr. North, the latter of which sparked a relationship with -- and three-year marriage to -- director Danny Huston). The beginning of the next decade fared somewhat better for Madsen. After a memorably brassy turn opposite Don Johnson in Dennis Hopper's steamy, seamy The Hot Spot (1990), she raked in some box-office cash in the minor horror hit Candyman (1992). Small performances in the high-profile, prestige pics Ghosts of Mississippi and The Rainmaker notwithstanding, Madsen all but disappeared from the late-'90s feature marketplace, as most of her films were either made for television or delivered directly to video-store rental shelves. Finding a more receptive outlet on weekly TV, Madsen snagged prominent recurring roles on NBC's Frasier and American Dreams around the turn of the century.But it was writer/director Alexander Payne's low-budget character study Sideways that had Madsen clamoring for the ever-elusive "role of a lifetime." Payne was mostly unfamiliar with the actress' work, but her audition for the part of Maya -- a weary, contemplative divorcée with a fine-tuned taste for wine -- convinced him that she was the perfect complement to lead performer Paul Giamatti's high-strung sad sack Miles. Toning down her Hollywood glamour for the film, Madsen turned the small part into something of a revelation, and as reviewers showered praise upon the film in late 2004, the actress hauled in a truckload of awards from critics' groups as well as Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress.Although Madsen lost the Oscar bid to Cate Blanchett, high-profile offers rolled in after her Sideways coup. Early in 2006, she played Beth Stanfield, the wife of Harrison Ford's technology executive Jack Stanfield, in Richard Loncraine's disappointing hostage thriller Firewall; that summer, she also claimed an enigmatic part as a beguiling angel of death in Robert Altman's swan song, A Prairie Home Companion. Madsen began 2007 with two supporting turns in the same February weekend: in Michael Polish's The Astronaut Farmer, a quirky drama about a retired NASA astronaut turned farmer (Billy Bob Thornton) who builds a spacecraft in his barn; and in the higher-profile supernatural thriller The Number 23, playing wife to an unraveling Jim Carrey.

Trivia: Versatile Great Britain-born actor Maxwell Caulfield has worked steadily on stage, television, and occasionally in film. Caufield got his start as a dancer in a London hotspot and moved to New York in the late '70s. He has appeared in productions on and off-Broadway. He made an inauspicious Hollywood debut in 1982 appearing with Michelle Pfeiffer in Grease 2. His subsequent films have been of varying quality.

Trivia: Esteemed British supporting actress and voice artist Miriam Margolyes has worked on radio, television, stage, and in many prestigious feature films. She launched her career in her native England but came to the U.S. after winning the Los Angeles Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Flora Finching in Little Dorrit (1988). After settling in L.A., Margolyes starred in the short-lived CBS television series Frannie's Turn. As a voice artist, Margolyes provided the characterization for Babe's mother in the Oscar-nominated Babe (1996), as well as voicing the role of the glowworm in James and the Giant Peach (1996), in which she also played one of the wicked aunties.

Trivia: Blonde leading 1920s starlet Mary Doran attended college at Columbia University. Originally planning on a teaching career, Doran instead became a professional tap dancer, working for Flo Ziegfeld on Broadway before she was signed to an MGM contract in 1928. During the first years of the talkies, Doran showed up in such major releases as Broadway Melody (1929), The Divorcee (1930), and Our Blushing Brides (1930), usually cast as a flirt or gold digger. After her MGM option lapsed, she freelanced at Universal, Columbia, and Paramount; though no longer appearing in major roles in A-pictures, she was afforded a worthwhile supporting part in Lubitsch's Love Me Tonight (1932) and a funny bit as a screen-test actress in Harold Lloyd's Movie Crazy (1932). Mary Doran left films after co-starring with George O'Brien and Polly Ann Young in the quickie Western Border Patrolman (1936).

Trivia: Typically cast as someone's devoted mother or a charwoman, character-actress Patsy Smart had a steady but rather undistinguished film career that began in The Mailbag Robbery(1957) and culminated with Electric Dreams (1987). She has also appeared much on television in programs that include Secret Agent, The Avenger, and Q.E.D.

Trivia: Howland Chamberlain was the quintessential character actor who turned his expertise at playing nervous, fidgety roles into an array of memorable portrayals in some of the most important movies of the late '40s and early '50s. At that time, just as he'd appeared in one of the most acclaimed movies of the decade, High Noon, his screen career came to a halt after he was called as a witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he took the Fifth Amendment rather than testify. Chamberlain, whose name was sometimes spelled Chamberlin in film credits (and in his Variety obituary), was born in New York City and moved to California in the 1930s, where he went to work with the WPA's Federal Theater Project in Los Angeles and met his future wife Leona. According to a 1976 SoHo Weekly News article by Jennifer Merlin, they delayed their wedding as a matter of economic survival, as a married couple couldn't both have jobs with the WPA. In the late '30s, Chamberlain became a member of the Pasadena Playhouse, which was something of a minor league "farm team" for aspiring Hollywood actors. In the mid-'40s, Chamberlain began appearing onscreen in character roles, starting with The Best Years of Our Lives as Mr. Thorpe. His career over the next six years carried him into the casts of a surprising number of crime dramas and film noirs, among them Michael Gordon's The Web, Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil, Fritz Lang's House by the River, and Hugo Haas' Pickup; these were broken up by work in the occasional comedy, such as A Song Is Born (in which he played a nervous lawyer). Chamberlain also did television work. One example which has endured as his best work was as a pair of identical twins involved in a radium smuggling scheme in the episode "Double Trouble" from The Adventures of Superman. His two most notable screen appearances were in Force of Evil and High Noon, as the vengeful hotel clerk who wishes harm to Marshal Kane. In 1956, after the House Un-American Activities Committee incident, Chamberlain and his family moved to New York, where he resumed his acting career on the stage. Chamberlain appeared in dozens of plays on tour (including A Raisin in the Sun), on Broadway and off-Broadway (in Children of Darkness and The Courageous One), and the Festival in the Park (including Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra). The Chamberlains later acted together in off-Broadway theater as well, including a production of Morton Lichter's Old Timer's Sexual Symphony (and other notes). He had appeared in small roles again on television as early as 1960, on programs like Bonanza, and by the mid-'70s he was acting regularly in Los Angeles, including productions at the Mark Taper Forum. It wasn't until the end of the 1970s, with Kramer vs. Kramer (in which he played Judge Atkins), 27 years after his last film appearance, that Chamberlain did any more movie work. He kept working in movies such as Fred Schepisi's Barbarosa and Steve Barron's Electric Dreams, until his death from heart and related problems in the late summer of 1984.

Trivia: A member of the BBC's repertory company in the 1940s, British character actor Preston Lockwood spent the bulk of his career on stage and only sporadically ventured into feature films. He made his film debut in David Lean's version of Great Expectations (1946) but did not appear in another film until 1970 when he portrayed Trebonius in Julius Caesar. Other film credits include Time Bandits (1981) and At Bertram's Hotel (1986). On television, he was a semi-regular on the mid-'80s series Tenko: he also appeared on Miss Marple and The Vicar of Dibley. Lockwood passed away in the actors' benevolent home, Denville Hall in Middlesex, England on April 24, 1996.

Trivia: One of the principal architects of the disco sound, producer and composer Giorgio Moroder was born in Ortisei, Italy, on April 26, 1940. Upon relocating to Munich, Germany, he established his own studio, Musicland, and recorded his debut single "Looky, Looky" in 1969; his first LP, Son of My Father, was released in early 1972. Around that time, Moroder was introduced to fellow aspiring musician Pete Bellotte, with whom he formed a production partnership; in collaboration with singer Donna Summer, the duo was to become one of the most powerful forces in 1970s-era dance music, their success beginning with the release of 1974's Lady of the Night. Summer's Love to Love You Baby followed in 1975; the title track, clocking in at close to 17 minutes in length, was an international smash, its shimmering sound and sensual attitude much copied in the years to follow. At their mid-'70s peak, Moroder, Bellotte, and Summer were extraordinarily prolific, releasing new albums about once every six months. Concept records like 1976's A Love Trilogy and Four Seasons of Love culminated with the release of 1977's I Remember Yesterday, a trip through time which climaxed with the smash "I Feel Love." With its galloping bass line and futuristic, computerized sheen, the single was among the watershed hits of the disco era, and helped propel Summer to new prominence as the reigning diva of the dancefloor. In 1978, Moroder made his initial foray into film music, winning an Academy Award for his score to Alan Parker's Midnight Express. In the early '80s, Moroder continued to focus primarily on films; after producing the soundtracks for such features as American Gigolo (1980) and Cat People (1982), he turned to Flashdance (1983), earning his second Oscar for the hit title song, performed by Irene Cara. In 1984, Moroder courted controversy from film purists for his contemporary new wave/pop score to the restored release of Fritz Lang's silent-era masterpiece Metropolis. After contributing to the soundtrack of the 1986 hit Top Gun, he turned increasingly away from dance music to focus on rock, even as he continued to write soundtracks for such forgettable films as Over the Top (1986), Mamba (1988), and Let It Ride (1989).