Trivia: A former band clarinettist and vocalist, Hal Linden studied drama at the American Theatre Wing. His big Broadway break came in 1958, when he was engaged to understudy Sydney Chaplin in the musical comedy Bells are Ringing; Linden played Chaplin's character, Jeffrey Moss, a handful of times on Broadway and on a full-time basis in the touring company (reportedly, he also showed up in the 1960 film version of Bells are Ringing, though the "official" starting point of his film career was 1979's When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?) During the 1960s, Linden's time was occupied by his stage work in musicals like Wildcat, The Apple Tree and Illya Darling; from time to time, he'd pop up on a Manhattan-filmed TV series like Car 54 Where Are You? or The Defenders and was a regular on the CBS daytime drama Search for Tomorrow. In 1974, Linden won a Tony award for his work in the Broadway musical The Rothschilds. The next year, Barney Miller, a sitcom for which Linden had lensed a pilot in 1972, was picked up as a mid-season replacement by ABC. Linden would play harried Greenwich village police captain Barney Miller from 1975 through 1980, collecting five Emmy nominations, but-astonishingly -- no actual awards. Hal Linden's subsequent TV series work has included hosting stints on the ABC informational weeklies Animals, Animals, Animals and FYI, and top-billed starring roles on Blacke's Magic (1988), Jack's Place (1992) and One of the Boys (1994); he co-starred in the latter with another perennial Emmy Awards bridesmaid, Suzanne Pleshette.His less than extensive big-screen resume includes A New Life, Killers in the House, and Time Changer.

Trivia: Multi-talented actor/writer Paul Gross stayed true to his Canadian roots and became famous as the crime-busting Royal Canadian Mountie in the TV series Due South. Born in Calgary, Army brat Gross was inspired by his high school drama teacher to become an actor, and he entered the University of Alberta in Edmonton to study the craft. Leaving school early to forge a dual career as an actor and writer, Gross appeared in several TV productions and wrote the screenplay for Atom Egoyan's TV movie In This Corner (1985). By the late '80s and early '90s, he began to score more prominent roles in Canadian and American films, including the Canadian TV movies Getting Married at Buffalo Jump (1989) and Cold Comfort (1990), the well-received TV adaptation of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (1993), the marital dramedy Married to It (1993), and the skiing drama Aspen Extreme (1993). Gross also worked again with Egoyan as the screenwriter for Egoyan's 1993 TV movie Gross Misconduct. After appearing in the Canadian features Paint Cans (1994) and Whale Music (1994), Gross became a primetime regular when his TV movie Due South (1994), about a Mountie who heads to Chicago to track a killer, became a series. Running from 1994 to 1998, Due South's hunky fish-out-of-water hero earned Gross an avid following on both sides of the Canadian border. After Due South went off the air, Gross continued to stick with Canadian TV, starring in the telefilm Murder Most Likely (1999). In the several years to follow, Gross would find success with a number of TV series, like Slings and Arrows, Eastwick, Men with Brooms, and The Yard.

Trivia: If actors and actresses from down under are famous for eventual migrations to Hollywood, actor Brian Sergent breaks the mold. From the mid-'80s onward, the New Zealand native contributed to a number of the best-known productions from his country's indigenous film industry. He enjoyed a series of ongoing collaborations with gross-out king-turned-Hollywood wunderkind Peter Jackson, on the director's Meet the Feebles (1989), Dead Alive (1992), and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Sergent also portrayed Jonah in Taika Waititi's deadpan romantic comedy Eagle vs. Shark (2007).