Trivia: Many comics can be permanently tied to a trademark, from Rodney Dangerfield's "I don't get no respect" to Tim Allen's machismo-fueled grunting, but perhaps no stock phrase is more easily identifiable than that of schtickmeister Jeff Foxworthy. Foxworthy's slogan "You might be a redneck if..." endeared him to millions of American blue-collar types during the early to mid-'90s and served as a veritable staple of his approach to humor. Born in Atlanta, Foxworthy attended the Georgia Institute of Technology but dropped out prior to graduation and worked as an IBM technician during the early to mid-'80s, when he impetuously decided to enter an amateur standup contest. The then-nascent comedian won the competition -- an accomplishment that encouraged him to drop out of his IBM gig and step behind the microphone full-time. Foxworthy's debut book, presciently entitled, You Might Be a Redneck If... hit stores in 1989, followed by a CD, which racked up an astonishing 3.5 million copies -- making it the single most lucrative comedy record up through that time. Successive albums followed, in addition to a blizzard of Foxworthy (and "redneck") themed merchandise that grossed several million dollars per year in its prime. Unfortunately, the comedian's transition to filmed entertainment was a somewhat bumpy one; a domestically themed sitcom, The Jeff Foxworthy Show, premiered on ABC in 1995 but folded after only two seasons. Foxworthy encountered far greater success by pooling the resources of several similar comedians into a "Blue Collar" comedy troupe that toured throughout the country. Comprised of Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and Larry the Cable Guy, the ensemble turned out a series of standup films and scored high ratings with their own sketch comedy series, Blue Collar TV (2004), presented as a kind of "redneck variation" on Saturday Night Live. Foxworthy also found considerable success by hosting the game show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? (2007).

Trivia: As the eldest member of the Cusack acting dynasty -- the sister of John, Joan, Susie, and Bill Cusack -- Ann Cusack was raised, like her siblings, in the affluent Chicago suburb of Evanston, but achieved fame and success as a comedic actress somewhat later than the others. Born in 1961, Cusack received her formal education at the Piven Theater Workshop (studying basic improvisation with Joyce and Byrne Piven) and later at New York University's Tisch School for the Arts, where she studied dramatic performance under the aegis of the legendary playwright and theatrical and film director David Mamet. Cusack landed her premier feature-film role at the age of 30, as Shirley Baker, a WWII-era baseball player with a more than slight illiteracy problem, in Penny Marshall's summer 1992 comedy A League of Their Own (alongside Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, and Rosie O'Donnell). In the process, Cusack imparted to the film some of its biggest and most unanticipated laughs -- no mean feat, given that cast.The turn did not go unnoticed, and parts rolled in steadily for the remainder of the 1990s and into the 2000s. The characterizations began small, with low billing -- such as that of a waitress in Harold Becker's poorly received 1993 thriller Malice, and that of a TV woman in Mike Nichols' 1996 La Cage aux Folles redo The Birdcage. Not long after, however, Cusack received her highest television billing (up through that time) when cast as Karen Foxworthy, TV wife and second-string to redneck-obsessed comedian Jeff Foxworthy, in the second season (1996-1997) of the short-lived sitcom The Jeff Foxworthy Show. Unfortunately, the show folded in 1997.The parts continued unabated, however, in films of varying reception. Cusack teamed up with her brothers John and Bill and sister Joan, as well as Dan Aykroyd and Minnie Driver, in the sadly overlooked dark comedy Grosse Pointe Blank (1997, a work that John co-produced and co-scripted). Ann fared worse (as did the entire cast) by signing on for a re-team with director Mike Nichols in that helmer's 2000 turkey What Planet Are You From?, starring Annette Bening and Garry Shandling. Cusack then made intermittent appearances on such series programs as Charmed and Frasier during the late '90s and early 2000s. In 2006, Cusack essayed the supporting role of Deanna in Aaron Wiederspahn's The Sensation of Sight (2006), a moody, evocative drama (and festival cause célèbre) about a dissatisfied middle-class man (David Strathairn) who drops out of his life and takes a job selling encyclopedias.

Trivia: Child actor Haley Joel Osment shot to stardom with his Oscar-nominated portrayal of a young boy who can see the spirits of dead people in The Sixth Sense (1999). A native of Los Angeles, where he was born April 10, 1988, Osment got his start acting in TV commercials. He also acted on a number of TV series, including Murphy Brown, which cast him as Murphy's son Avery. The young actor made his film debut in 1994 as the son of Forrest Gump's titular protagonist, and he subsequently appeared in a number of children's films; without a doubt, his turn in M. Night Shyamalan's psychological thriller The Sixth Sense provided his major breakthrough. Nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in the film, Osment was soon being hailed as one of the hottest child actors this side of Jodie Foster.

Trivia: An avid bowler, he had an average score of 186 when he was in high school and went to the New York state finals. Was feeding lines to actors auditioning for 1991's The Marrying Man when the director decided he should audition himself; landed the role of George. Best-known for his recurring role as Kenny Bania on Seinfeld. Became a Universal Life minister in order to preside over the wedding of his friends Dan Martin and Arden Myrin.

Trivia: The daughter of Austrian actress Gusti Huber, Bibi Besch has been a Hollywood fixture since 1977, and a TV regular since long before that. A versatile character actress with nary a trace of a European accent, Besch's film roles have ranged from Carol in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Kahn (1979) to Belle in Steel Magnolias. Her television career has encompassed the daytime soaps The Edge of Night, The Secret Storm, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, and Somerset, and the nighttime serials The Secrets of Midland Heights (1980) and The Hamptons (1983). Devotees of the late Northern Exposure will have vivid memories of Bibi for her Emmy-nominated portrayal of the mother of Maggie O'Connell (Janine Turner), who reacts to a mid-life crisis by accidentally burning her daughter's home to the ground. In real life, Bibi Besch is the far less inflammatory mother of actress Samantha Mathis. Besch died of cancer on September 7, 1996, in the home of her sister-in-law, Jenny Besch. The actress was 56.

Trivia: By the time six-year-old Jonathan Lipnicki charmed audiences as the son of Tom Cruise's love interest in the acclaimed comedy-drama Jerry Maguire (1996), he was a veteran of several television series and numerous commercials. Lipnicki was a regular on the sitcom The Jeff Foxworthy Show.

Trivia: Though he would return to higher education nearly three decades later, Texas native G.W. Bailey left college and spent the mid-'60s working at local theater companies. Determined to establish an acting career for himself, a young Bailey moved to California in the 1970s and worked in a variety of settings. From appearances on television's Starsky and Hutch and Charlie's Angels to stage productions of Shakespearian classics, Bailey, despite his lack of professional experience, proved a surprisingly versatile actor. He did not, however, attain significant mainstream recognition until 1981, when he was cast as pool-hall con artist Private Rizzo in CBS's long-running series M*A*S*H. The exposure led to five large supporting roles on a variety of feature-length television dramas, and ultimately, a very different type of performance all together: that of the imposing yet incompetent Lieutenant Harris in the lowbrow cop comedy Police Academy (1984). His Police Academy role was reprised as sequels were churned out in rapid succession, and he was cast as a similarly inept authority figure in 1987's Mannequin.Though the 1980s found Bailey immersed in fairly unmemorable film roles (mainly comedies and dark thrillers), he was able to forge a more than respectable resumé in the realm of television movies, including the popular Murder in Texas (NBC, 1981), On Our Way (CBS, 1985), Spy Games (ABC, 1991), and Dead Before Dawn (ABC, 1993). His television roles offered a G.W. Bailey quite unlike Lieutenant Harris, and he was able to develop a following and a steady reputation as a supporting actor. Eventually, he was able to add "college graduate" to his list of accomplishments, as his mid-'90s stint at Southwest Texas State University proved successful as well. In 2004, Bailey lent his vocal chords to Disney's animated musical Western Home on the Range.He was cast as Lt. Provenza on The Closer, a show that would be for a time the highest rated scripted program on basic cable, and he would stay on the show for its entire run.

Trivia: If ever there were a comic geared to one particular demographic, Bill Engvall is he. Hailed by many fans as one of the true protégés of Jeff Foxworthy (with whom he has often performed), Engvall caters to fans of "redneck comedy" -- one-liners and anecdotes about pickup trucks, beer guzzling, tailgating, deer hunting, and assorted acts of blue-collar mayhem. Oddly, Engvall (unlike, say, Larry the Cable Guy) often sports a far more polished look than many of his contemporaries with the same brand of material. Through it all, Engvall remained imminently successful and racked up a massive and loyal fan base of American everymen.Born William Ray Engvall Jr. on July 27, 1957, in Galveston, TX, the future comedian/actor reportedly moved around a great deal with his family as a tyke. Engvall acted in local productions as a child and adolescent, then launched a series of successful routines at the Dallas Comedy Corner. He moved to Los Angeles with his wife in 1984, and first gained public recognition some time later with an appearance on the popular CBS sitcom Designing Women in the very early '90s and a guest-star spot on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (the mecca for standup comedians) just prior to Carson's departure. In 1992, Engvall landed a recurring role on the short-lived sitcom Delta (with Delta Burke as a struggling country singer); he played Buck Overton, the husband of Delta's cousin and number one fan, Lavonne (Gigi Rice). Unfortunately, ABC canceled that program after less than one year.Engvall's standup albums began appearing in 1997. He benefited hugely from his association with Foxworthy, who featured the comic in an occasional supporting role on his sitcom The Jeff Foxworthy Show; the two then teamed up with Larry the Cable Guy and Ron White for the mega-successful Blue Collar Comedy Tour, which spawned its own concert film in 2003. Doubtless banking off the success of these efforts, the WB network launched an SNL-style sketch comedy program, Blue Collar TV, in 2004 -- to which Engvall often contributed material. Following several solo performance films (including Bill Engvall: Here's Your Sign Live in 2004 and Bill Engvall: 15° Off Cool in 2007), Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy co-starred in the feature comedy Delta Farce (2007), as a couple of blue-collar Joes mistaken for Army personnel. In mid-2007, Engvall finally scored his own sitcom, appropriately titled The Bill Engvall Show. Co-starring Nancy Travis and Tim Meadows, the TBS show followed the work and family life of family counselor Bill Pearson (Engvall). In 2009, the comedian released Aged and Confused, a comedy set detailing the pitfalls of middle age, and took on a hosting gig in 2011 for a re-launch of the gameshow Lingo.