Trivia: Launching his career as a standup comic, American performer Richard Belzer entered the 1970s as a member of an odd New York-based comedy troupe called Channel One. Anticipating the home video explosion by over a decade, Channel One staged satirical, scatological routines lampooning the banalities of television -- and staged them in front of TV cameras, which transmitted the routines to little TV monitors, which in turn were watched by the live audience. Some of the best sketches were assembled into an X-rated comedy feature, The Groove Tube (1970), which featured Belzer, Ken Shapiro, and a brash newcomer named Chevy Chase. For the next decade, Belzer played the comedy-club circuit, popped up as a talkshow guest, and appeared in occasional films like Fame (1982). He joined still another comedy troupe in 1983, which appeared nightly on the syndicated interview program Thicke of the Night. The host was Allan Thicke, and Belzer's comic cohorts included such incipient stars as Charles Fleischer, Chloe Webb and Gilbert Gottfried. Thicke of the Night was one of the more notorious bombs of the 1983-84 season, but it enabled Belzer to secure better guest-star bookings, and ultimately a hosting job on his own program, debuting in 1986 over the Lifetime Cable Service. It was on this series that wrestler Hulk Hogan, demonstrating a stranglehold on Belzer caused the host to lose consciousness -- which prompted a highly publicized lawsuit instigated by Belzer against the Hulkster. In the early 1990s, Richard Belzer could be seen as a non-comic regular on the TV series Homicide. His Homicide character, John Munch, would become one of the longest-running fictional creations on TV appearing in more than a half-dozen other television shows, most notably Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Trivia: Daniel Baldwin is the third eldest child of six, four of whom are star actors (all the boys of the family, oddly enough). He attended Ball State University for about a year, planning to study psychology. He left school and began to work as a stand-up comedian before starting acting in 1988, making his debut in the TV movie Too Good To Be True. He landed a series regular role in Homicide: Life on the Street, staying with the show for three seasons. He later appeared in films like Mulholland Falls (1996) and Vampires (1998) and made guest appearances on television shows like The Outer Limits and NYPD Blue. In 2009, he played Julius Krug in the TV movie Grey Gardens and took on a recurring role in the series Cold Case.

Trivia: Portly American character actor Ned Beatty originally planned to enter the clergy, but after appearing in a single high-school play, he changed his mind and decided to become a thespian instead. By his early twenties, Beatty was playing Broadway and it was his work in the play The Great White Hope that attracted the interest of film director John Boorman, who cast him as one of the four main stars in his gripping backwoods thriller Deliverance (1972). Forever immortalized in the notorious "squeal like a pig" rape scene, Beatty subsequently went on to become one of the screen's more prolific supporting actors, frequently appearing in up to four films per year. His more notable film work includes Nashville (1975), All the President's Men (1976), Network (for which he earned an Oscar nomination), The Big Easy (1987), Hear My Song (1991), A Prelude to a Kiss (1992), Radioland Murders (1994), and He Got Game (1998). In 1999, he could be seen as a small-town sheriff in the Robert Altman ensemble film Cookie's Fortune.At the start of the 21st century the always-employed character actor continued to work steadily in projects as diverse as Roughing It, Where the Red Fern Grows, Shooter, and Charlie Wilson's War. He joined the Pixar family when he voiced Lotso, the bad guy in Toy Story 3, and he provided the voice of Mayor in 2011's Oscar winning animated feature Rango.

Trivia: Black supporting actor, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: Gaining notice in the early '90s for his Emmy-winning portrayal of Detective Francis Xavier "Frank" Pembleton on the popular television police drama Homicide: Life on the Street, tireless Chicago native Andre Braugher remained with the show through 1998 while simultaneously building a feature career with roles in such theatrical releases as Primal Fear (1996) and City of Angels (1998). A graduate of Stanford University who also received a M.F.A. from the prestigious Juilliard School, Braugher claims to have originally taken up acting to meet girls. He later changed his major after realizing his true calling during a production of Hamlet, and his first professional role came in a performance at the Berkley Shakespeare Festival. Making the leap from stage to screen with the 1989 civil war drama Glory proved an eye opening experience, and following numerous appearances as Detective Winston Blake in a series of made-for-TV Kojak features, Braugher held onto his badge by joining the cast of Homicide in 1993. Later alternating successfully between film and television, Braugher was voted one of the "50 Most Beautiful" people in a 1997 issue of People magazine; the following year, the handsome actor turned down a prominent role in the sci-fi drama Sphere in order to spend more time with his family. Jumping back into features in 2000, roles in Frequency, Duets and A Better Way to Die proved that Braugher was still in top form, and, in 2002, he turned back to the small screen with the made-for-TV feature Hack (and later reprised his role when the feature was turned into a weekly series). Following a role in the made-for-TV feature A Soldier's Girl (2002), Braugher joined the cast of the television remake of the Stephen King vampire chiller Salem's Lot (2004), then returned to television - and changed camps to tap into the underground element - on the weekly crime drama Thief. As Nick Atwater, one of the most genial and principled of all television criminals (!), Braugher evoked an unusual ethical balance in his character and tapped into the fence's deep-seated devotion to his family, even as he drummed up a fiery intensity from episode to episode. Successive years found the actor moving into supporting roles in Hollywood A-listers with a heightened emphasis on effects-heavy action, adventure and fantasy-themed material; projects included Poseidon (2006), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) and Stephen King's The Mist (2007).Braugher would star in the TV mini-series The Andromeda Strain in 2008, before taking on a role in the cult favorite comedy series Men of a Certain Age from 2009-2011. He would also enjoy a recurring role on House M.D., and play a memorable supporting role in the Angelina Jolie action flick Salt.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the late '80s.

Trivia: African American actor Yaphet Kotto was one of the most prominent beneficiaries of the upsurge in black-oriented theatrical pieces of the late 1950s; he appeared in many prestigious Broadway and off-Broadway productions, taking regional theatre work rather than accept stereotypical "mainstream" roles in movies and TV. Kotto's first film was Nothing But a Man (1964), an independently produced study of black pride in the face of white indifference. Though he vehemently steered clear of most of the '70s blaxploitation fare, in 1972, Kotto produced, directed and wrote the feature film Speed Limit 65 (aka The Limit and Time Limit), a one-of-a-kind "black biker" film. The biggest production with which Kotto was associated in the early 1970s was the James Bond film Live and Let Die, in which, as the villainous Mr. Big, he was blown up in the final scene (a similarly grisly fate awaited Kotto in 1979's Alien). On television, Yaphet Kotto was a regular on the TV series For Love and Honor (1983) and Homicide: Life on the Streets (1992), and was seen as Ugandan president Idi Amin in the 1977 TV movie Raid on Entebbe.

Trivia: After supporting roles in a handful of small films and a short stint on the soap opera All My Children, New York-born Melissa Leo gained prominence on the critically-acclaimed Barry Levinson-produced television drama Homicide: Life on the Streets. After leaving the show in 1997, Leo continued to appear in a range of features, including 1999's 24 Hour Woman. But it was her role as Benicio Del Toro's wife in 2003's 21 Grams that gave Leo her first exposure to a wide moviegoing audience. The performance also won her recognition from the L.A. Film Critics Association, who named Leo the runner-up for the Best Supporting Actress honor.Leo continued to work steadily in a series of independent films including American Gun, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and Stephanie Daley. In 2008 she landed the lead role in Courtney Hunt's debut feature Frozen River. As a financially strapped woman who turns to human-trafficking in order to earn a living, Leo earned thunderous critical praise as well as Best Actress nominations from both the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy.Frozen River led her to steady work un a variety of projects, but it was as the matriarch of the boxing brothers in The Fighter that Leo had the biggest success of her career capturing numerous year-end critics awards as well as the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. In the years after that she appeared in works as diverse as the remake of Mildred Pierce for HBO, and Kevin Smith's Red State.

Trivia: He may have gotten his start in standup comedy by a fluke, but don't be fooled by his early good fortune -- funnyman Howie Mandel is certainly the real deal. From the stage to the screen, and virtually every medium in between, Mandel has not only proven adept at playing the clown, but with his enduring role on the popular 1980s television drama St. Elsewhere, straight and affecting drama as well. It was during a business trip to Los Angeles in 1979 that the Toronto native, goaded on by friends while watching the comics at The Comedy Store's amateur night, first took the stage to surprising effect. The wild card that evening turned out to be a producer who just happened to be in the crowd, and Mandel was immediately hired for an appearance on the popular comedy game show Make Me Laugh. He subsequently performed on television talk shows and opened for such luminaries as Diana Ross, and it wasn't long before he was approached to appear on the fledgling television drama St. Elsewhere. Cast as dedicated Dr. Wayne Fiscus, Mandel remained with the show that launched his career for the entire duration of its six-season run, gaining legions of fans and even a few Emmy nominations. Though Mandel remained loyal to St. Elsewhere for the entirety of its television run, a series of side jobs provided his career with the momentum to succeed after the series was canceled in 1988. Mandel permanently ingrained himself in the pop-culture lexicon as the voice of Gizmo in the 1984 hit Gremlins and as a multitude of characters on the popular cartoon Muppet Babies. He cracked up audiences with a rollicking appearance on Comic Relief in 1986, and he could frequently be spotted on-stage sporting a blown up rubber glove over the top half of his head and slaying audiences with his hilarious baby voice. Although Mandel would try his hand at features with both Walk Like a Man (1987) and Little Monsters (1989), neither film proved the powerhouse hit needed to launch a feature career, and he returned to television to great success in the early '90s. Mandel's love of children dictated most of his career choices in the 1990s, and in the first year of the decade he utilized his popular series of voices for the enduring children's television series Bobby's World (which ultimately went off of the air in 1998). In 1992, Mandel headlined the short-lived small-screen series Howie, and after a series of appearances in both features and made-for-television movies, he hosted both Howie Mandel's Sunny Skies and The Howie Mandel Show. Though none of his personal shows proved quite as successful or endearing as Bobby's World, Mandel remained in the public eye as both a popular comic and as the creator of a series of children's CD-ROMs that aimed to both educate and entertain. In the year 2000, Mandel once again turned his attention to features, and appearances in Tribulation (2000), Hansel & Gretel (2002), and Pinocchio 3000 (2003) proved that the popular funnyman had lost none of his onscreen talent. Outside of his work in the entertainment industry, the color-blind verminophobic spends much of his time with his wife and three children. Over the coming decade, Mandel would enjoy hosting duties of extremely successful shows like Deal or No Deal and America's Got Talent.