Trivia: Born March 15th, 1935, Bronx-native Judd Hirsch attended CCNY, where he majored in engineering and physics. A blossoming fascination in the theatre convinced Hirsch that his future lay in acting. He studied at the AADA and worked with a Colorado stock company before his 1966 Broadway debut in Barefoot in the Park. He spent many years at New York's Circle Repertory, where he appeared in the first-ever production of Lanford Wilson's The Hot L Baltimore. After an auspicious TV-movie bow in the well-received The Law (1974), Hirsch landed his first weekly-series assignment, playing the title character in the cop drama Delvecchio (1976-77). From 1978 to 1982, he was seen as Alex Reiger in the popular ensemble comedy Taxi, earning two Emmies in the process. While occupied with Taxi, Hirsch found time to act off-Broadway, winning an Obie award for the 1979 production Talley's Folly. In the following decade, he was honored with two Tony Awards for the Broadway efforts I'm Not Rappoport and Conversations with My Father. His post-Taxi TV series roles include Press Wyman in Detective in the House (1985) and his Golden Globe-winning turn as John Lacey in Dear John (1988-92). Judd Hirsch could also be seen playing Jeff Goldblum's father in the movie blockbuster Independence Day (1996). In 2001, Hirsch co-starred with Paul Bettany and Christopher Plummer in the multi-Award winning biopic A Beautiful Mind. The actor once again found success on the television screen in CBS' drama Numb3rs, in which he took on the role of Alan Eppes, father of FBI agent Don Eppes (Rob Morrow) and Professor Charlie Eppes (David Krumholtz). After appearing on all four seaons of Numb3rs, Hirsch took a small role in director Brett Ratner's crime comedy Tower Heist (2011).

Trivia: Fey, flaky comic actress Louise Lasser majored in political science at Brandeis University before studying acting at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. She proved an excellent improvisational comedienne in the Elaine May revue The Third Ear, which led to several TV commercial appearances. In 1966, she married comedian Woody Allen, who later directed her in Take the Money and Run (1968), Bananas (1970), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex... (1972) and Stardust Memories (1980); she also provided a voice for Allen's Japanese spy-film spoof What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966). Though they divorced in 1970, Lasser and Allen remained close friends, turning to one another in moments of severe personal crisis. In 1976, Lasser starred as the zoned-out heroine of Norman Lear's satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman probably her best-known role. Louise Lasser's most recent weekly TV assignment was the early-1980s sitcom It's a Living.

Trivia: A reclusive character actor with an elongated, skull-like face, manic eyes and flexible facial expressions, Christopher Lloyd is best known for portraying neurotic, psychotic, or eccentric characters. He worked in summer stock as a teenager, then moved to New York. After studying with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, he debuted on Broadway in Red, White and Maddox in 1969. Lloyd went on to much success on and off Broadway; for his work in the play Kaspar (1973) he won both the Obie Award and the Drama Desk Award. His screen debut came in the hugely successful One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), in which he played a mental patient. He went on to appear in a number of films, but first achieved national recognition for playing the eccentric, strung out, slightly crazy cab-driver "Reverend" Jim in the TV series Taxi from 1979-83; he won two Emmy Awards for his work. He extended his fame to international proportions by playing the well-meaning, wild-haired, mad scientist Doc Brown in Back to the Future (1985) and its two sequels; this very unusual character continued the trend in Lloyd's career of portraying off-the-wall nuts and misfits, a character type he took on in a number of other films in the '80s, including The Addams Family (1991), in which he played the crazed uncle Fester. His "straight" roles have been infrequent, but include Eight Men Out (1989).

Trivia: A professional actress since age 14, Ohio-born Carol Kane is best known for essaying a staggering variety of characterizations in her career. Most of her early film roles were fleeting but memorable, such as that of the hippie girlfriend of Art Garfunkel in Carnal Knowledge (1971), the "sailor's plaything" in The Last Detail (1973) and the terrified bank teller in Dog Day Afternoon (1973). Kane's first starring appearance was in Hester Street (1975), wherein she was Oscar-nominated for her portrayal of a Jewish newlywed in turn-of-the-century New York. From 1981 through 1983, Kane played Simka, the wife of immigrant mechanic Latka Gavras (Andy Kaufman) on the TV sitcom Taxi. Simka's country of origin was fictitious, but Kane and Kaufman managed between them to "create" a Slavic language peppered with ridiculous, non-sequitur terms of endearment. The actress won an Emmy for her work on Taxi. Other regular TV sitcom assignments for Kane have included 1986's All Is Forgiven and 1990's American Dreamer. Kane has excelled in bizarre character roles, notably the kvetching old peasant wife in The Princess Bride (1986), the abusive "Ghost of Christmas Present" in Scrooged (1988), and the toothless, witchlike Grandmama in the two Addams Family theatrical features. She remained an in-demand character actress appearing in a variety of movies and TV shows including Even Cowgirls Get the blues, Trees Lounge, Office Killer, and appearing as herself in the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon. She slowed down not a whit in the 21st century playing parts in My First Mister, Love in the Time of Money, The Pacifier, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, and the 2012 indie Sleepwalk With Me.

Trivia: Andy Kaufman's performances were like no other. He not only pushed the boundaries of good taste and audience tolerance, he also created a myriad of strange, wonderful, and sometimes horrific characters, switching effortlessly from one to the other, effectively blurring the lines between Kaufman the man and Kaufman the artist. For many years, his fans argued whether or not obnoxious lounge singer Tony Clifton (whom Kaufman once hired to open for his live shows) was for real or whether he was an elaborate persona. Kaufman himself best summed up his art, stating, " I am not a comic, I have never told a joke....The comedian's promise is that he will go out there and make you laugh with him....My only promise is that I will try to entertain you as best I can. I can manipulate people's reactions. There are different kinds of laughter. Gut laughter is where you don't have a choice, you've got to laugh. Gut laughter doesn't come from the intellect. And it's much harder for me to evoke now, because I'm known. They say, 'Oh wow, Andy Kaufman, he's a really funny guy.' But I'm not trying to be funny. I just want to play with their heads."Born and raised in the upper-class Long Island suburb of Great Neck, NY, Kaufman had a lifelong fascination with performing. At age nine, Kaufman was performing at children's parties and in 1963, he unsuccessfully tried out for a spot at Budd Friedman's improvisational comedy club. He discovered the joy of "being" Elvis Presley in 1964 and later in his career became so good at imitating the moves and physical presence of "The King," that Presley himself deemed Kaufman his favorite impersonator. A year after his high school graduation, Kaufman enrolled in the Television and Radio program at Grahm Junior College in Boston. While there, he started performing at local coffee houses and appearing in the campus-sponsored The Soul Time Review. Kaufman went to Spain in 1971 to study Transcendental Meditation and travel. Later that year, he successfully auditioned for Budd Friedman and landed a standup gig at a Long Island club. More club dates followed and television appearances followed. In 1975, Kaufman appeared in the first broadcast of NBC's sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live. Through the decade up to the early '80s, Kaufman would periodically return to host the show. His comedy was typically extreme and sometimes unfathomable. In November 1982, the producers of SNL responded to a viewer telephone poll and asked Kaufman to never again host the show. In 1978, Kaufman took one of his most popular characters, the Foreign Man, an incomprehensible comic from Central Europe, and translated him into the delightful, sometimes poignant foreign auto mechanic Latka Gravas on the popular sitcom Taxi (1978-1983). Kaufman created his famed world Inter-Gender Wrestling matches in 1979. A longtime aficionado of professional wrestling but too small to beat men, he would wrestle with female audience members, offering a large cash prize if they could pin him. 400 tried, but none succeeded. In 1981, Kaufman hosted Fridays, an experimental comedy show in which his intentional line flubbing caused a fight between himself, the cast, and the crew. The following week, Kaufman aired a tearful taped apology that may or may not have been a put-on. More controversy followed when the performer got into an ugly row with professional wrestler Jerry "The King" Lawler that culminated in his throwing hot coffee on Lawler during a taping of the Late Night With David Letterman show in 1982. The fight was precipitated by an earlier wrestling match between Kaufman and Lawler in which the wrestler inflicted a serious head injury to the comic. This violent feud between the two is further detailed in the 1983 documentary chronicle of Kaufman's wrestling career, I'm From Hollywood. Kaufman made his feature-film debut as an actor in Demon (1977) and afterward, only appeared in three more films. Kaufman developed a cough in late 1983 that was diagnosed as a rare form of lung cancer. Though only in his mid-thirties, a teetotaler, lifelong nonsmoker, and a vegetarian, Kaufman was only given a few months to live. He tried a variety of alternative healing therapies, as well as chemotherapy, but nothing worked and Kaufman died in 1984. Ironically, some fans believe the illness was all an elaborate hoax and maintain that Kaufman is still alive, waiting to come back in a couple decades. Though it is extremely doubtful that even Kaufman would be able to pull off such a hoax, the thought that others would think him capable of doing it would have pleased him.