Trivia: Lee Remick began her career as a dancer, then after acting onstage and TV she debuted onscreen in A Face in the Crowd (1957). Remick went on to a series of strong screen performances which established her as a major leading lady; for her work in Days of Wine and Roses (1962) she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. She sustained a fairly busy screen career into the late '70s, meanwhile also working often on the stage and TV. From 1957-68 Remick was married to TV director-producer William Colleran. In 1970 she married director William Rory "Kip" Gowens, with whom she moved to England. In the '80s she rarely appeared onscreen but increased her work in TV movies and mini-series. In 1988 she formed a production company in partnership with James Garner and Peter Duchow. Remick died from cancer at age 55.

Trivia: Angela Lansbury received an Oscar nomination for her first film, Gaslight, in 1944, and has been winning acting awards and audience favor ever since. Born in London to a family that included both politicians and performers, Lansbury came to the U.S. during World War II. She made notable early film appearances as the snooty sister in National Velvet (1944); the pathetic singer in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), which garnered her another Academy nomination; and the madam-with-a-heart-of-gold saloon singer in The Harvey Girls (1946). She turned evil as the manipulative publisher in State of the Union (1948), but was just as convincing as the good queen in The Three Musketeers (1948) and the petulant daughter in The Court Jester (1956). She received another Oscar nomination for her chilling performance as Laurence Harvey's scheming mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and appeared as the addled witch in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), among other later films. On Broadway, she won Tony awards for the musicals Mame (1966), Dear World (1969), the revival of Gypsy (1975), Sweeney Todd (1979) and, at age 82, for the play Blithe Spirit (2009). Despite a season in the '50s on the game show Pantomime Quiz, she came to series television late, starring in 1984-1996 as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote; she took over as producer of the show in the '90s. She returned to the Disney studios to record the voice of Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast (1991) and to sing the title song and later reprised the role in the direct-to-video sequel, The Enchanted Christmas (1997). Lansbury is the sister of TV producer Bruce Lansbury.

Trivia: After eking out a modest living as a piano teacher in Alabama and Florida, Polly Holliday switched to acting, spending ten seasons with the Asolo State Theater in Sarasota. In 1973, Holliday headed for New York, where she was cast in Murray Schisgal's Broadway play All Over Town; her director was Dustin Hoffman. All Over Town led to the tiny but pivotal role as a testy secretary in the Dustin Hoffman-Robert Redford feature All the President's Men (1976)--which, in turn, led to Holliday's being cast as wise-cracking waitress Florence Jean "Flo" Castleberry in the TV sitcom Alice (1976-80). Rising to nationwide fame by virtue of her oft-repeated catchphrase "Kiss mah grits!", Holliday earned four Emmy nominations and one Golden Globe Award. In 1980, she was spun off into her own weekly series Flo, which lacked Alice's staying power and was cancelled after a single season. She went on to briefly replace Eileen Brennan on TV's Private Benjamin (1983), and to play Captain Betty in the pilot episode of Stir Crazy (1985). Her film roles of the 1980s included Gremlins (1984), in which she was eminently hissable as Margaret Hamilton clone Mrs. Deagle. Polly Holliday's more recent work has largely been confined to the Broadway stage; in 1989, she received a Tony nomination for her portrayal of Sister Woman in a revival of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Trivia: American actor Joseph Warren spent the bulk of his career playing character roles on Broadway, but he also staffed a few feature films. Warren helped found the Pearl Theater Company and has appeared in the New York Shakespeare Festival.

Trivia: Primarily a New York-based actor since the '40s, Michael Higgins' film appearances were relatively limited until the late '70s -- but that didn't stop him from doing some exceptional and memorable work on the big and small screens. Born in Brooklyn, he attended St. Michael's High School in the middle and late '30s, which was where he was first bitten by the acting bug -- while in his teens, he ended up joining the Shakespeare Fellowship of America, a semi-professional performing group that performed the Bard's plays in high schools. His theatrical aspirations were interrupted by the Second World War, during which Higgins served with the 337th Infantry in Italy, where he was wounded in combat and achieved the rank of lieutenant, and earned a Bronze Star as well as the Purple Heart. After the war, he resumed his career and made his Broadway debut with Katharine Cornell in Candida in 1946. His subsequent Broadway credits included Antigone, The Lark, and Romeo and Juliet, and he also became a familiar figure on the off-Broadway stage, in productions of Doctor Faustus, White Devil, The First Year, and The Crucible, the latter in the role of John Proctor opposite Barbara Barrie as Elizabeth Proctor. His other theatrical credits included J.B., which he did on tour with Basil Rathbone in 1959 and 1960. Apart from a few isolated instances -- an early appearance in Joseph Henaberry's 1948 documentary Shades of Gray, and a lead performance in Irving Lerner's independently produced crime drama Edge of Fury (1958) -- Higgins didn't start working in movies until he had 25 years under his belt in theater. He did do lots of television, however, including some exceptional performances on anthology shows such as Omnibus, Playhouse 90, Studio One, One Step Beyond, and The Outer Limits ("The Mice," playing the too-trusting lead scientist), and even managed one major sitcom appearance, on The Andy Griffith Show (in "Barney Hosts a Summit Meeting," a much-watched episode that featured a return appearance by co-star Don Knotts). Generally, however, he was associated with more serious vehicles -- John Crosby of the New York Herald Tribune, writing of his portrayal of Hector in The Iliad, in the 1955 season opener of Omnibus, called Higgins "easily the best actor on the premises." He racked up exceptional reviews on the stage throughout the '50s and '60s, including a memorable turn as Macbeth at the 1962 New York Shakespeare Festival. From 1969 onward, starting with Elia Kazan's The Arrangement, Higgins began appearing regularly on the big screen, in important supporting roles and the occasional lead, such as in Barbara Loden's Wanda (1970), working with such diverse talents as Francis Ford Coppola in The Conversation (1974), Bryan Forbes in The Stepford Wives (1975), and Woody Allen in New York Stories (1989), and in cult favorites such as King of the Gypsies (1978) as well as mega-hits like The Black Stallion (1979). All of this was interspersed with occasional returns to television in vehicles such as James Goldstone's Kent State (1981). Indeed, television audiences of the 21st century may know Higgins best for his award-caliber guest performances in two episodes of the series Law & Order, in "In Memory Of," in which he played a man hiding an unspeakably brutal, decades-old crime that he committed against a 10-year-old boy, who is willing to sacrifice even his own daughter's mental health to protect himself; and "Ramparts," playing a retired campus security guard implicated in a 35-year-old shooting who discovers that he was himself an unintended victim of a subterfuge by the very forces of law-and-order that he thought he was protecting. Michael Higgins made both episodes memorable by his presence and performances, in roles evoking widely divergent levels of sympathy.