Trivia: Blaxploitation superstar Richard Roundtree earned screen immortality during the 1970s as the legendary Shaft, "the black private dick that's the sex machine to all the chicks." Born July 9, 1942, in New Rochelle, NY, Roundtree attended college on a football scholarship but later gave up athletics to pursue an acting career. After touring as a model with the Ebony Fashion Fair, he joined the Negro Ensemble Company's acting workshop program in 1967. He made his film debut in 1970's What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?, but was still an unknown when filmmaker Gordon Parks Sr. cast him as Shaft. The role shot Roundtree to instant fame, launching the blaxploitation genre and proving so successful at the box office that it helped save MGM from the brink of bankruptcy. Thanks to the film's popularity -- as well as its two sequels, 1972's Shaft's Big Score! and the following year's Shaft in Africa, and even a short-lived television series -- Roundtree became an icon of '70s-era cool, and his image graced countless magazine covers. Outside of the Shaft franchise, he also appeared in films including the 1974 disaster epic Earthquake, 1975's Man Friday, and the blockbuster 1977 TV miniseries Roots. By the end of the decade, however, the blaxploitation movement was a thing of the past, and Roundtree's stardom waned; apart from the 1981 big-budget flop Inchon, he spent the 1980s appearing almost exclusively in TV roles or low-rent, direct-to-video features. Still, he continued working steadily, and in 1995 appeared in David Fincher's smash thriller Seven. The following year he co-starred in the acclaimed Once Upon a Time...When We Were Colored, and also teamed with fellow blaxploitation vets Pam Grier and Fred "the Hammer" Williamson in Original Gangstas. In 1997, Roundtree returned to series television in 413 Hope St.

Trivia: RADA-trained British stage actor Frank Finlay was 31 when he made his London stage debut. The following year, he scored his first significant theatrical success, playing an elderly Jewish patriarch in Chicken Soup With Barley. In 1962, the RADA-trained Finlay made the first of his infrequent film appearances in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. In 1964, Finlay toured with the National Theatre of Great Britain, playing Iago opposite Laurence Olivier's Othello. When Othello was committed to film in 1965, it was Finlay who received the lion's share of excellent notices; he was also nominated for an Academy Award. Most of Finlay's film characters have had sturdy literary pedigrees: he played Porthos in The Three Musketeers (1973) and its two sequels; Inspector Lestrade in a brace of Sherlock Holmes films, A Study in Terror (1965) and Murder by Decree (1979); Jacob Marley in the 1984 George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol; and Sancho Panza in a 1973 made-for-TV adaptation of Don Quixote. Among the historical figures portrayed by Frank Finlay are John Carter in Cromwell (1969), Sergei Alleluveya in Stalin (1992), the title roles in the British TV productions The Last Days of Hitler and Casanova, and the part of Salieri in the London staging of Amadeus. Finlay continued acting through the 2000s; he died in 2016, at age 89.

Trivia: Gifted African American actress Vonetta McGee made her movie bow in the 1968 Italian comedy Faustina. After playing roles in a few "blaxploitation" flicks, McGee and her significant other Max Julien produced and co-starred in Thomasine and Bushrod (1974), a critically applauded black variation on the Bonnie and Clyde story. She went on to appear with Bernie Casey in another intensely personal effort, Brothers (1977), in which she played activist Angela Davis. In 1975, McGee was selected as Clint Eastwood's leading lady in The Eiger Sanction. On television, McGee co-starred with Robert Blake in the weekly series Hell Town (1985) and with Jimmie Walker in the syndicated sitcom Bustin' Loose (1987). McGee died at age 65 in 2010, when she was taken off life support following cardiac arrest.

Trivia: Anglo-Indian character actor, onscreen from the '50s; he often plays Arabs and Asians.

Trivia: Supporting actor Nadim Sawalha has worked steadily on British television and in feature films since his screen debut playing a small role in A Touch of Class (1973). Born in India, Sawalha has spent his entire career in English-language films and is usually cast as excitable service people in shops, hotels, and museums.

Trivia: French character actor in international films, onscreen from the '50s.

Trivia: Spanish supporting and occasional leading actor Aldo Sambrell is primarily associated with spaghetti Westerns of the '60s. In those films, he generally played a gunslinger. He was born Alfredo Sanchez Brell but over the course of his career he used the following names: Aldo Brell, Alfred S. Brell, Aldo San Brell, Aldo Sanbrel, and Aldo Sanbrell. He made his directorial debut as Alfred S. Brell with La Ultima Jugada (1974). Sambrell produced his first film, Hammam, in 1997.