Trivia: At first intending to become a minister, actor/monologist Andy Griffith (born June 1st, 1926) became active with the Carolina Playmakers, the prestigious drama-and-music adjunct of the University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill. He spent several seasons portraying Sir Walter Raleigh in the summertime outdoor drama The Lost Colony, spending the rest of the years as a schoolteacher. Griffith continued performing fitfully as an after-dinner speaker on the men's club circuit, developing hilariously bucolic routines on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to football. Under the aegis of agent/producer Richard O. Linke, Griffith returned to acting, attaining stardom in the role of bumptious Air Force rookie Will Stockdale in the TV and Broadway productions of No Time For Sergeants. Before committing Sergeants to film, Griffith made his movie debut in director Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, in which he portrayed an outwardly folksy but inwardly vicious TV personality (patterned, some say, after Arthur Godfrey).After filming Face in the Crowd, No Time for Sergeants and Onionhead for Warner Bros. during the years 1957 and 1958, Griffith starred in a 1959 Broadway musical version of Destry Rides Again; as an added source of income, Griffith ran a North Carolina supermarket. On February 15, 1960 he first appeared as Andy Taylor, the laid-back sheriff of Mayberry, North Carolina, on an episode of The Danny Thomas Show. This one-shot was of course the pilot film for the Emmy-winning The Andy Griffith Show, in which Griffith starred from 1960 through 1968. Eternally easygoing on camera, Griffith, who owned 50% of the series, ruled his sitcom set with an iron hand, though he was never as hard on the other actors as he was on himself; to this day, he remains close to fellow Griffith stars Don Knotts and Ron Howard. An unsuccessful return to films with 1969's Angel in My Pocket was followed by an equally unsuccessful 1970 TV series Headmaster. For the next 15 years, Griffith confined himself to guest-star appearances, often surprising his fans by accepting cold-blooded villainous roles. In 1985, he made a triumphal return to series television in Matlock, playing a folksy but very crafty Southern defense attorney. A life-threatening disease known as Gillian-Barre syndrome curtailed his activities in the late 1980s, but as of 1995 Andy Griffith was still raking in the ratings with his infrequent Matlock two-hour specials. The actor worked on and off throughout the late nineties and early 2000s, and co-starred with Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion in the romantic comedy Waitress in 2007.

Trivia: With his golden curls, sensuous mouth, and sculpted body, Ryan Phillippe looks more like he was peeled off a Botticelli canvas than "discovered" in a Delaware barbershop. Phillippe, who was born September 10, 1974, in New Castle, DE, rose from obscurity to become one of the most talked-about actors of his generation, attracting at first numerous admirers of his good looks, and later fans of risk-taking performers.Phillippe got his first break on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, on which he portrayed daytime's first gay teenager, Billy Douglas. The role, which he played from 1992 to 1993, won him both favorable notices and increasing recognition. After quitting the show to focus on his screen career, Phillippe got a small part in 1995 submarine action thriller Crimson Tide. More work -- and more boat-oriented action -- followed in 1996 with Ridley Scott's White Squall, in which Phillippe was given a prominent role alongside two other up-and-coming actors, Ethan Embry and Scott Wolf. After this mainstream, big-budget venture, Phillippe took a walk down the yellow brick road of independent filmmaking, first with his starring role as an abused trailer-park teen in Little Boy Blue (1997), and then in Gregg Araki's Nowhere (1997), as the latest of Araki's trademark ultra-horny boys.Phillippe's major screen break came with his role in the formulaic 1997 slasher pic I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which he starred alongside fellow Next-Big-Things Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Sarah Michelle Gellar. The film's success, coupled with Phillippe's exposure from previous films, was enough to propel him into two leading roles in 1998, first as a blue-haired club baby in Playing by Heart, and then as a starry-eyed bartender in the critically disembowelled 54, a film which showcased Phillippe's abs over his acting.Following 54, Phillippe opted to play a naïve dope farmer in the obscure Homegrown (1998), in which he co-starred with Billy Bob Thornton and Hank Azaria. This preceded his next big break as the petulantly seductive trust-fund brat Sebastian Valmont in 1999's Cruel Intentions, a film that was essentially a present-day, all-teen adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Co-starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as his scheming stepsister and Phillippe's real-life wife-to-be Reese Witherspoon, the film proved to be one of the year's most guilty pleasures, winning Phillippe further acclaim in the hearts and minds of lust-struck women and men alike.Subsequently teetering on the brink of all-out superstardom, Phillippe faltered a bit with the late summer 2000 action thriller The Way of the Gun, co-starring Benicio Del Toro. Though some saw the film as a smartly penned meditation on violence, others brushed it aside as just another post-Tarantino study in excess, and the film faded quickly from the box-office radar -- with the following year's AntiTrust dissipating almost immediately following its January 2001 release. But the tables turned for Phillippe in the years to come, with involvement in films that consistently found dual favor with critics and audiences -- and thus helped the young actor transition from a widespread reputation as a heartthrob to a reputation as an immensely gifted dramatist graced with a succession of plum roles (and suggested a keen instinct for script selection). This turnaround began with the actor's participation in director Robert Altman's critically worshipped mystery comedy Gosford Park. Phillippe (as Henry Denton) was not among the top-billed members of the ensemble cast, but his work shone brightly alongside such luminaries as Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, and Kristin Scott Thomas -- no small feat for a relative newcomer. The following year, Phillippe drew raves for his work in Burr Steers's sleeper hit Igby Goes Down (2002) -- a commercial and critical indie darling -- as the spoiled, conceited older brother of the title character. Thereafter, Phillippe's screen activity declined just a bit (perhaps because of his off decision to father and raise additional children with wife Witherspoon), but he also became increasingly selective. His star rose higher with 2005's Best Picture winner Crash, directed by Paul Haggis. A Gaghan-esque muckracking drama with a massive ensemble cast that included the gifted Don Cheadle, Matt Dillion, and Brendan Fraser, the picture meditated on modern-day racism through multiple interlocking stories that unfold throughout the City of Angels.2006 marked a fortuitous year for Phillippe. He secured a leading role in director Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, the American half of the director's two-part dramatization of the Battle of Iwo Jima (as Bradley, a man who learns of his father's heroism in that conflict decades later). In that same year's Lionsgate release Five Fingers, helmed by neophyte Laurence Malkin, Phillippe plays the difficult role of a brilliant Dutch pianist abducted by terrorists and threatened with having his fingers lopped off one by one. At about the same time, Phillippe signed on (alongside Chris Cooper and Laura Linney) to play Eric O'Neill in director Billy Ray's Breach, which the studio slated for a 2007 release. The picture -- a docudrama -- concerns real-life FBI turncoat Robert Hanssen (Cooper). Phillippe plays the "mole" assigned to catch Hanssen in the act.Also in the fall of 2006, the busy Phillippe had to contend with drama in his personal life in the form of a highly public divorce from Witherspoon, announced that October. Over the course of the next few years Philippe's career seemed to be more hit than miss, though high profile roles in MacGruber and The Lincoln Lawyer served well to keep in the public eye, and in 2012 he essayed an extended guest appearance on the hit FX series Damages. After his solid turn there, he stuck with TV, with a main role on the first season of Secrets and Lies.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from 1985.

Trivia: Fans of American actress Melora Hardin who associate her exclusively with her characterization of Jan Levinson-Gould -- Michael Scott's stone-faced manager and sometimes lover, on the smash NBC series The Office -- may be surprised and delighted to discover several exciting facts about the history of her career. First, her work stretches back many decades, into her primary school years, encompassing everything from Disney movies to prime-time series dramas of the '80s, '90s, and 2000s to commercials to acclaimed feature films; she directs and edits films as well. Second, Hardin moonlights as an accomplished and gifted singer/songwriter -- a nightclub chanteuse known for sultry cabaret-style numbers, who has issued a number of acclaimed albums of her own material, including Meloradrama and Purr. And finally, this comedian's wit extends far beyond her crack-comic onscreen timing. A parodist who loves to play with her own image, Hardin runs her own website, with a series of funny-sexy (yet inexplicit) cheesecake photos that serve as throwbacks to the peek-a-boo erotica days of the mid-'50s while subtly parodying and calling attention to those setups.Given both of her parents' long tenures in film and television (her father is character actor Jerry Hardin and her mother is acting coach Diane Hill Hardin), drama came preternaturally for Hardin, and she commenced work as a child star at age six. One of her earliest assignments involved plugging Peak Toothpaste on a television commercial; she later joined the ensemble cast of a live-action children's program on NBC (circa 1977, at age ten) called Cliffwood Avenue Kids, which (as late-Gen X television babies may recall) typically aired during early weekday evenings after The Flintstones. A series of failed pilots ensued for Hardin, beginning with the late-'70s drama Thunder and encompassing over a dozen others over the next two decades.Hardin debuted cinematically at age 11, with a high-profile role in the goofball Disney comedy The North Avenue Irregulars, opposite Susan Clark and Cloris Leachman and directed by Hogan's Heroes vet Bruce Bilson. She followed this up with many additional roles in A- and B-list features throughout the '80s and '90s, but while her work shone, the films themselves often failed to catch fire; her resumé includes such forgettable fare as Iron Eagle (1985) and Soul Man (1986). A number of pictures, however, marked happy exceptions: Hardin contributed a small onscreen singing role to the fine Disney period adventure The Rocketeer (1991), and several of her songs highlighted the film's soundtrack. She also appeared in Clint Eastwood's enormously underrated, oft-humorous 1997 crime thriller Absolute Power (as Christy Sullivan, the homicide victim of Gene Hackman's lecherous president), and made a solid contribution to the satire Thank You for Smoking, opposite Aaron Eckhart.Hardin fared particularly well on television, with single- and dual-episode appearances over the years in such dramas as Little House on the Prairie, Quincy, M.E., and Murder, She Wrote. The Office, of course, represented a watershed moment for Hardin. Adapted skillfully by Greg Daniels from the British series of the same name by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the NBC sitcom follows the colorful employees of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company's Scranton branch -- led by one Michael Scott (Steve Carell), a sweet-natured but desperately lonely and outrageously uncouth manager. Low-key, iconoclastic, and unconventional, the program eschewed a laugh track and underplayed (to the nth degree) every one of its gags, relying on a bevy of character eccentricities to procure laughs. The episodes had Hardin (as Michael's manager) typically playing straight man to Carell's goofball, and saw the unlikeliest of employer-employee romances blossoming between them over the course of the first two seasons. Thanks to an extraordinary cast and crew, The Office instantly shot up to qualify as one of NBC's highest rated new series after its March 2005 debut; many proclaimed it as the funniest American sitcom since Seinfeld.Meanwhile, Hardin continued to hone her craft in other arenas. She first helmed the regional theatrical production of friend Adria Tennor's one-woman show Strip Search. Tagged as "Love and a 12-Foot Pole," and authored by and starring Tennor, this colorful yet surprisingly touching seriocomedy recounts the tale of a woman who undertakes a journey of self-discovery and ultimately finds her dying passion in strip dancing classes. Hardin then directed and edited an independent film entitled You that husband Gildart Jackson scripted. The motion picture stars Jackson and both of Hardin's parents, as well as Joely Fisher and The Office's Kate Flannery.In 2006, Hardin returned to big-screen work, signing with Fox Atomic and Tapestry Films to co-star in the Tom Brady-directed sports comedy The Comebacks. The film relays the story of a football coach (David Koechner) commissioned to whip a down-and-out football team into shape. In 2007, she joined the cast of The Dukes, which follows a group of down-and-out musicians attempting an ill-fated heist.

Trivia: Connecticut native Linda Purl grew up in Japan, where her father, a Union Carbide executive, had been transferred. Under the watchful eye of her mother, a former ballerina, Purl began acting professionally in Japanese stage and TV productions at the age of seven. Ten years later, she made her American film debut in Jory (1972). Never a conventional ingenue, she has played everything from mentally retarded teens to rape victims to psychotic killers, as well as a few real-life personalities like Alice Roosevelt Longworth and globetrotting journalist Nellie Bly. Purl has the distinction of playing two different recurring characters on the same television series. During the 1974-75 season of Happy Days, she was seen as Richie Cunningham's (Ron Howard) high-school girlfriend Gloria; she returned to the series in 1982 as Ashler Pfister, a divorced mother with whom Fonzie (Henry Winkler) was briefly involved romantically. Linda has also appeared regularly on such series as The Secret Storm and Beacon Hill; more recently, she played an assistant DA put in charge of a group of young ex-convicts on the syndicated weekly adventure series Robin's Hoods (1994). Linda Purl was at one time married to Desi Arnaz Jr..

Trivia: Sturdy, reliable character player Kene Holliday specialized in portrayals of vociferous everymen, with a strong emphasis on television work. Holliday landed one of his first major roles in the small-screen blockbuster Roots: The Next Generations (as Detroit, one of the direct descendants of the iconic Kunta Kinte), and subsequently divided his time between occasional big-screen features (No Small Affair, The Philadelphia Experiment), series work (with many appearances on Matlock), and TV movies, such as the 1988 Dangerous Company. Holliday tackled a rare yet effective lead role in the much-anticipated 2007 drama Great World of Sound, as Clarence, a well-meaning record producer in training who discovers that his parent company isn't exactly all that it professes to be.

Trivia: Having made her feature film debut in Sex and the College Girl (1964), blonde actress Julie Sommars went on to appear in television movies of the '70s and in the occasional feature film through the mid-'80s. Fans of the television drama Matlock (1986-1995) will recognize her for playing Julie March.