Trivia: Each and every week from 1971 to 1980, the popular TV sitcom All in the Family was heralded by the glass-shattering offkey singing of Edith Bunker, aka "Dingbat." This tended to obscure the fact that Jean Stapleton, the woman who so brilliantly portrayed Edith not only possessed a lilting, well-modulated singing voice, but also was as far removed as possible from a "dingbat" in real life. While attending Hunter College, Stapleton began her performing career as a member of the Robert Shaw Chorale. She made her professional stage debut in 1941, then went on to fruitful work-study associations with the American Apprentice Theater, the American Actors Company, the American Theater Wing, and director-acting coach Harold Clurman. Her first Broadway appearance was in the 1953 production In the Summer House; the following year, she made her TV bow as a semi-regular on the daytime drama Woman With a Past. She endeared herself to Broadwayites with her wistfully funny characterizations in the SRO musicals Damn Yankees, Bells Are Ringing, and Funny Girl, roles that she would carry over into the film versions of these hits. In 1958, she made her first appearance at the Totem Pole Playhouse in Fayetteville, PA, a summer-stock operation managed by her husband, Bill Putch. Most of Stapleton's onscreen work in the 1960s and 1970s could be found in New York-based movies (Something Wild, Up the Down Staircase, Klute) and TV series (Car 54, Where Are You, The Defenders, The Patty Duke Show). Her earliest association with producer-director Norman Lear occurred in the 1969 theatrical feature Cold Turkey, in which she played a neurotic housewife named Edith. When Lear began assembling the cast for his upcoming TV sitcom All in the Family, he immediately thought of Stapleton for the role of slow-witted, strident, essentially kindhearted Bronx housewife Edith Bunker. Before leaving the series in 1980, Stapleton earned three Emmy Awards for her portrayal of Edith -- not to mention the undying affection of millions. Once free of All in the Family, she sought out roles that she hoped would demonstrate her versatility: She played the distraught mother of a drug-addicted teenager (enacted by her real-life son, John Putch) in the made-for-TV Angel Dusted (1981), and effectively portrayed Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1982 TV biopic Eleanor: First Lady of the World. Stapleton kept her comic skills sharpened by appearing in the made-for-cable productions of Shelley Duvall: She was terrific as a no-nonsense Fairy Godmother ("Trust me. This is important.") in Duvall's Faerie Tale Theater adaptation of Cinderella, and even better as the title characters in Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. In 1990, she briefly returned to weekly television as co-star (with Whoopi Goldberg) of the offbeat sitcom Bagdad Café. Jean Stapleton was then an infrequent but always welcome TV guest-star presence; in 1995, she startled (and delighted) her Edith Bunker fans with her con brio portrayal of Lea Thompson's sex-starved aunt in an episode of Caroline in the City. In 1998 she had a major part in the romantic comedy You've Got Mail, and that same year she voiced a character in Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World. Stapleton retired from acting on screen in 2001. She passed away in 2013 at the age of 90.

Trivia: Best known for her role as the fearsome Xena: Warrior Princess in the long-running series of the same name, athletic worldly beauty Lucy Lawless didn't achieve the fame in her native New Zealand that flooded her in the U.S. until much later in her career, due to the fact that the wildly popular adventure series didn't air there until long after it was a staple of American television.Born into water at her home in Mount Albert, Aukland, New Zealand, in 1968 to the mayor of that city, Lawless began acting early and frequently appeared in school plays in her youth. A active child of diverse interests and with many siblings, Lawless went on to study German, French, and Italian at Aukland University for a year before traveling through Europe with boyfriend and eventual first husband Garth. They worked odd jobs to finance their trip and eventually ending up in Australia. Working in a gold-mining camp in Kalgoorlie to finance the final leg of their journey, the couple was married in Australia in 1988 and soon returned home to bear a daughter.Crowned Mrs. New Zealand the following year, the busy new mother got her first acting experience in Funny Business, a popular TV comedy troupe. Studying acting in Vancouver, Canada, at the William Davis Center for Actors Study, Lawless soon landed small roles in films (The End of Golden Weather [1991]) and television (For the Love of Mike [1991]), with her next regular job as of co-host on television's Air New Zealand Holiday. After appearing in The Rainbow Warrior in 1992, Lawless landed the role that would propel her to stardom and become her calling card into the new millennium. Initially appearing in the role of Lysia in Hercules and the Amazon Women, Lawless went on to appear as Xena in three episodes of Hercules before spinning off into her own series in 1995. It was a physically demanding adventure series in which the sporty actress performed many of her own stunts; Lawless ironically broke her pelvis after falling off of a horse while preparing to make a grand entrance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in 1996. After a quick recovery, Lawless made her Broadway debut as Rizzo in Grease the following year. Her first marriage dissolved, Lawless was remarried to Xena producer Rob Tapert in October 1999, two years before the final episode of Xena. Lawless woudl continue to act on the small screen over the next several years, appearing on Tarzan, Battlestar Galactica, Spartacus, and No Ordinary Family.