Trivia: Earthy and at times exuberant, Anthony Quinn was one of Hollywood's more colorful personalities. Though he played many important roles over the course of his 60-year career, Quinn's signature character was Zorba, a zesty Greek peasant who teaches a stuffy British writer to find joy in the subtle intricacies of everyday life in Zorba the Greek (1964), which Quinn also produced. The role won him an Oscar nomination and he reprised variations of Zorba in several subsequent roles. Although he made a convincing Greek, Quinn was actually of Irish-Mexican extraction. He was born Antonio Rudolfo Oaxaca Quinn in Chihuahua, Mexico, on April 21, 1915, but raised in the U.S. Before becoming an actor, Quinn had been a prizefighter and a painter. He launched his film career playing character roles in several 1936 films, including Parole (his debut) and The Milky Way, after a brief stint in the theater. In 1937, he married director Cecil B. DeMille's daughter Katherine De Mille, but this did nothing to further his career and Quinn remained relegated to playing "ethnic" villains in Paramount films through the 1940s. By 1947, he was a veteran of over 50 films and had played everything from Indians, Mafia dons, Hawaiian chiefs, Chinese guerrillas, and comical Arab sheiks, but he was still not a major star. So he returned to the theater, where for three years he found success on Broadway in such roles as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Upon his return to the screen in the early '50s, Quinn was cast in a series of B-adventures like Mask of the Avenger (1951). He got one of his big breaks playing opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! (1952). His supporting role as Zapata's brother won Quinn his first Oscar and after that, Quinn was given larger roles in a variety of features. He went to Italy in 1953 and appeared in several films, turning in one of his best performances as a dim-witted, thuggish, and volatile strongman in Federico Fellini's La Strada (1954). Quinn won his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar portraying the painter Gaugin in Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956). The following year, he received another Oscar nomination for George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind. During the '50s, Quinn specialized in tough, macho roles, but as the decade ended, he allowed his age to show. His formerly trim physique filled out, his hair grayed, and his once smooth, swarthy face weathered into an appealing series of crags and crinkles. His careworn demeanor made him an ideal ex-boxer in Requiem for a Heavyweight and a natural for the villainous Bedouin he played in Lawrence of Arabia (both 1962). The success of Zorba the Greek in 1964 was the highwater mark of Quinn's career during the '60s -- it offered him another Oscar nomination -- and as the decade progressed, the quality of his film work noticeably diminished. The 1970s offered little change and Quinn became known as a ham, albeit a well-respected one. In 1971, he starred in the short-lived television drama Man in the City. His subsequent television appearances were sporadic, though in 1994, he became a semi-regular guest (playing Zeus) on the syndicated Hercules series. Though his film career slowed considerably during the 1990s, Quinn continued to work steadily, appearing in films as diverse as Jungle Fever (1991), Last Action Hero (1993), and A Walk in the Clouds (1995). In his personal life, Quinn proved as volatile and passionate as his screen persona. He divorced his wife Katherine, with whom he had three children, in 1956. The following year he embarked on a tempestuous 31-year marriage to costume designer Iolanda Quinn. The union crumbled in 1993 when Quinn had an affair with his secretary that resulted in a baby; the two shared a second child in 1996. In total, Quinn has fathered 13 children and has had three known mistresses. He and Iolanda engaged in a public and very bitter divorce in 1997 in which she and one of Quinn's sons, Danny Quinn, alleged that the actor had severely beaten and abused Iolanda for many years. Quinn denied the allegations, claiming that his ex-wife was lying in order to win a larger settlement and part of Quinn's priceless art collection. When not acting or engaging in well-publicized court battles, Quinn continued to paint and became a well-known artist. He also wrote and co-wrote two memoirs, The Original Sin (1972) and One Man Tango (1997). In the latter, Quinn is candid and apologetic about some of his past's darker moments. Shortly after completing his final film role in Avenging Angelo (2001), Anthony Quinn died of respiratory failure in Boston, MA. He was 86.

Trivia: One of the most important British actors to emerge during the 1960s, Alan Bates made his reputation early in his career as one of the original "angry young men" of the post-war English theatre. His rumpled, malleable features lending themselves to his explosive versatility, Bates became a stage star through his portrayals of various disenfranchised working-class young men in such productions as John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, directed in 1956 by Tony Richardson, and Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, staged in 1964. Bates went on to establish himself as a noted screen actor in over 50 films, with particularly memorable turns in Zorba the Greek (1964), Georgy Girl (1966), and The Fixer (1968), for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination.The son of an insurance broker and a housewife, Bates was born the eldest of three brothers in the Midlands suburb of Allestree, Derbyshire, on February 17, 1934. Both of his parents were amateur musicians and encouraged their son to pursue a career as a concert pianist, but at the age of 11, Bates discovered that his true passion was for acting. After taking speech lessons and studying for a time with an acting teacher, he won a scholarship to London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he trained as a classical performer. Bates interrupted his studies to spend two years of service with the Royal Air Force and made his professional stage debut in 1955, at Coventry, with the Midland Theatre Company. Foregoing a traditional apprenticeship with an established theatre company, Bates instead joined the English Stage Company, a new repertory group based at London's Royal Court Theatre. He made his West End debut in 1956 in the company's first production and had his true breakthrough with his starring role in Tony Richardson's premiere staging of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger later that year.Look Back in Anger made Bates a star of the London and Broadway stage, and began a lifelong stage career that saw him perform in the works of such great modern playwrights as Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and Alan Bennett, as well as those of Chekov, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Strindberg. In 1960, the actor made his screen debut as one of Laurence Olivier's sons in Richardson's The Entertainer. Starring roles in Bryan Forbes' Whistle Down the Wind and John Schlesinger's A Kind of Loving followed two years later; both films received acclaim, much of which was directed toward Bates' performances as a murderer on the run in the former and a young working-class dreamer in the latter. The actor spent the remainder of the 1960s more or less in the spotlight, thanks to his starring work in some of the decade's most celebrated films, including Zorba the Greek (1964), Georgy Girl (1966), Le Roi de Coeur (1966), Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), The Fixer (1968), and Women in Love (1969). Each film showcased Bates' astonishing and often underrated versatility, as well as a willingness to do just about anything. This tendency was unforgettably demonstrated with his nude turns in Le Roi de Coeur and Women in Love, the latter of which required him to engage in an earthy wrestling session with Oliver Reed. Bates received his only Oscar nomination for John Frankenheimer's The Fixer, in which he portrayed a Russian Jew unjustly accused of murder. Bates began the subsequent decade on a very positive note, doing acclaimed work in Olivier's The Three Sisters (1970), in which he played Vershinin; A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1971), which cast him as the father of a young invalid whose condition puts a strain on her parents' marriage; and Joseph Losey's The Go-Between (1971), in which he and Julie Christie played illicit lovers. The actor's subsequent projects were incredibly varied, ranging from the exceptional (Lindsay Anderson's made-for-TV In Celebration [1975]) to the execrable (Michael Winner's The Wicked Lady [1983]), and Bates, although a prolific screen performer, tended to do his best work on the stage and television. He publicly acknowledged in at least one interview that it was his tendency to work constantly that allowed him to weather two tragedies that struck him in the early 90s: first, the death of his son Tristan from an asthma attack in 1990; second, the 1992 death of his longtime wife, actress Victoria Ward. Following his son's death, Bates and his other son Benedick, Tristan's twin, established the Tristan Bates Theatre at the Actors Centre in Covent Garden. In addition to his work for the theatre, Bates, who received a CBE from the Queen in 1995, continued to appear on the screen, his talents on particularly fine display in Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990), in which he played the conniving Claudius.

Trivia: Enrolled in dramatic school age 12, Greek actress Irene Papas spent her first professional years as a singer-dancer in stage reviews and as a radio vocalist. Trained in Athens in the classics of Greece's Golden Age, Irene has played all the major tragic roles, including Medea and Electra; in addition, she was active in the contemporary productions put on by the Greek Popular Theatre in the late 1950s. In films from 1950, Irene is best known to international audiences for her portrayals of gutsy resistance fighter Maria Pappadimos in Guns of Navarone (1961); The Widow in Zorba the Greek (1964); the wife of political martyr Yves Montand in Z (1968); and Catherine of Aragon (with nary a trace of her native accent) in Anne of a Thousand Days. In between these projects, Ms. Papas made her Broadway debut in 1967's That Summer, That Fall. She has also delivered award-winning performances in the ambitious Euripides adaptations directed by Michael Cacoyannis, playing Helen in The Trojan Women (1972) and Clytemnestra in Iphigenia. On American television, Irene Papas has excelled in Biblical assignments: she was Zipporah in the 1976 miniseries Moses the Lawgiver, and Rebekah in the 1994 made-for-cable epic Jacob.

Trivia: Born in Russia during the second year of the communist regime, actress Lila Kedrova has spent most of her life in France. After spending a decade establishing herself in European films and theatrical productions, Kedrova won an Academy Award for her first English-speaking role: fading courtesan Madame Hortense in 1964's Zorba the Greek (she replaced Simone Signoret, who withdrew shortly after shooting started). She would go on to win a Tony nomination when she reprised Hortense for the Broadway musical Zorba, again co-starring with Anthony Quinn. Appearing in fewer and fewer films as the 1970s became the 1980s (sometimes there were four-year gaps between her pictures), Lila Kedrova won the Golden Mask award at the Taorima Film Festival for her portrayal of a terminally ill woman in the American Tell Me a Riddle (1980).

Trivia: Best known internationally for appearing in Stella (1955), Zorba the Greek (1964), and Never on Sunday (1960), Greek actor Georges Foundas is one of his native country's most popular leading men. Before becoming an actor, Foundas worked in a bakery. A dark and handsome sort, Foundas was spotted by a local director, and after a little training, began playing supporting roles. He made his film debut in Stella.

Trivia: Greek lead actor in international films, onscreen from the late '60s.