Trivia: Born December 31, 1959, actor Val Kilmer's chameleon-like ability to plunge fully and breathlessly into his characters represents both the gift that catapulted him to fame in the mid eighties, and that which - by its very nature of anonymity - held him back from megastardom for some time. Such an ability - doubtless, the result of exhaustive, heavily-disciplined training and rehearsal - also explains Kilmer's alleged on-set reputation as a perfectionist (which caused a number of major directors to supposedly tag him as 'difficult'), but the results are typically so electric that Kilmer's influx of assignments has never stopped. He is also extraordinarily selective about projects. Trying valiantly to maintain a firm hold on his career, he turned down offers for box office blockbusters including Blue Velvet, Dirty Dancing, and Indecent Proposal for personal and artistic reasons. A Los Angeles native, Kilmer acted in high school with friend Kevin Spacey before attending the Hollywood Professional School and Juilliard. He appeared on the New York stage and in Shakespeare festivals before his cinematic debut as the rock idol Nick Rivers in the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker spy spoof Top Secret! (1984). An absurd role which Kilmer plays with complete sincerity, it reveals genuine musical talent and Kilmer achieves complete credibility as a rock star. Throughout the eighties, Kilmer played as diverse an assortment of roles as could be found: he was the goofy, playfully sarcastic, egghead roommate and mentor to Gabe Jarrett in Martha Coolidge's Real Genius, the cocky Ice Man in Top Gun, and warrior Madmartigan in the Ron Howard/George Lucas fantasy Willow (1988). Kilmer's cinematic breakthrough arrived in 1991, for his portrayal of rock icon Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors; some speculated that Stone hired Kilmer solely on the basis of the musical gifts showcased seven years prior in Top Secret!. As the philosophical, death-obsessed rocker (and druggie) Morrison, Kilmer performed a number of the Doors songs on the soundtrack, sans dubbing. Kilmer played other American icons in his next two films - gunslinger Doc Holliday in Tombstone and the spirit of Elvis in True Romance; both did remarkable business at the box office. Due to his persistent need for an on-set dialogue with his directors, Kilmer clashed with Michael Apted on the set of Thunderheart (1992) and Joel Schumacher on the set of Batman Forever. He openly refused to repeat the Bruce Wayne role for Batman and Robin (1997). Instead, Kilmer headlined Michael Mann's 1995 Heat with two legends, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. This time around, he met with a more accommodating (or at least more tolerant) director, Michael Mann. Working with another acting veteran, he co-starred with Michael Douglas for the hunting adventure The Ghost and the Darkness. Unfortunately, his next few films were disappointments, particularly The Saint and The Island of Dr. Moreau. He switched gears a few times with little success, turning to romantic drama in At First Sight and to science fiction in Red Planet, but neither fit his dramatic intensity. After lending his booming voice to the part of Moses in the Dreamworks animated film The Prince of Egypt (1998), Kilmer appeared in The Salton Sea (1991) as a tormented drug addict. In 2003, he lined up quite a few projects, including the crime thriller Mindhunters and the drama Blind Horizon. In the same year he earned a starring role as another aggressive American icon, John Holmes ("the John Wayne of porn"), for the thriller Wonderland (2003). That same fall, Kilmer re-teamed with Ron Howard for the director's lackluster Searchers retread, The Missing (2003). He also re-collaborated with Oliver Stone (for the first occasion since The Doors) in the director's disappointing historical epic Alexander (2004), opposite Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, and Colin Farrell. He returned to form (and a leading role) in 2005, with the comedy-thriller Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. Kilmer (per his trademark ability) once again cut way against type, this time as a flagrantly (and aptly named) homosexual detective, Gay Perry, who lives and works in Tinseltown. When it opened in October 2005, the picture drew an avid response from critics and lay viewers alike, and brought in solid box office returns. The actor packed in an astonishingly full schedule throughout 2006, with no less than six onscreen appearances through the end of that year, in large and small-scaled productions - all extremely unique. Kilmer returned to his 1998 Dreamworks part with the lead role of Moses in Robert Iscove's stage musical The Ten Commandments, mounted at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. Then, in a most unusual move that recalled Richard Gere's work for Akira Kurosawa and Burt Lancaster's work for Luchino Visconti, Kilmer went cross-cultural, by joining the cast of Polish director Piotr Uklanski's Summer Love (2006), screened at the Venice International Film Festival. It marked the first "Polish spaghetti western" and gracefully spoofed the genre; Kilmer appears as "The Wanted Man." The Disney studios sci-fi-action thriller Deja Vu teamed Kilmer and Denzel Washington (under the aegis of Kilmer's former Top Gun cohorts, Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer) as feds who travel back in time to stop a terrorist's (Jim Caviezel) attempt to blow up a ferry. He also voiced the character of Bogardus in Marc F. Adler and Jason Maurer's family-friendly animated adventure Delgo. In 2008, NBC revived the classic series Knight Rider, and needed a distinct voice to play the super-intelligent car. Kilmer stepped in to play the iconic role, but he also signed on for numerous other simultaneous projects, including Werner Herzog's semi sequel Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009), Shane Dax Taylor's troubled, disappointing melodrama Bloodworth (2010), and Francis Ford Coppola's horror opus Twixt, which co-starred Bruce Dern, Elle Fanning and Ben Chaplin. Kilmer met British actress Joanne Whalley on the set of Willow in 1987; they married the following year and teamed up onscreen in John Dahl's Kill Me Again (1989). The couple had two children before the marriage ended in 1996.

Trivia: Born into a show business family -- father Michael Hawkins is a stage actor and mother Mary Jo Slater is a casting director -- Christian Slater made his acting debut at age eight after his mother cast him in the television soap opera One Life to Live on a lark. The following year Slater was on Broadway starring opposite Dick Van Dyke in The Music Man. Slater would remain on Broadway for at least two more productions. As a youth, Slater attended Manhattan's Professional Children's School. He made his television debut in the movie Living Proof: The Hank Williams Junior Story (1983) and his film debut two years later when he was only 16 in The Legend of Billy Jean. Slater earned some of his first favorable notice starring opposite Sean Connery in The Name of the Rose (1986). He next appeared in Tucker, a Man and His Dream (1988), and more films followed after that, but Slater did not become a star until he co-starred opposite Winona Ryder in the darkly satirical Heathers in which he played an anarchic sociopath. His maniacal over-the-top performance led to comparisons with Jack Nicholson. After Heathers, it looked as if Slater was destined to be typecast into playing lunatic villains or seriously troubled youths. In the latter regard, life seemed to mirror his art.In 1989, he was arrested in West Hollywood for leading the police on a drunken car chase that ended when Slater crashed his car into a telephone pole. While trying to escape the car, he kicked a cop with his cowboy boot and then attempted to flee over a fence. In 1994, he was arrested for taking a gun aboard a plane. In 1997, Slater was arrested for attacking his lover and biting a police officer in the belly while drinking heavily; he was sentenced to spend 90 days in a suburban jail in early 1998, all this just one day after his newest film, Hard Rain, premiered. Shortly after sentencing, Slater admitted that he had also been taking cocaine and heroin at the time. As part of his sentence, he had to serve post-jail time in a drug/alcohol rehab program and attend a year-long program on preventing domestic violence. Despite his personal struggles, Slater has maintained a film career starring as a high school geek with a cool secret life in Pump Up the Volume (1990) to the romantic Bed of Roses (1996) to high-voltage actioners like Broken Arrow (1996). In his 1997 production Julian Po, he gained weight, grew a mustache, and appeared as a suicidal bookkeeper who embezzles money from his company so he can fulfill one final wish. Though subsequent roles in such critically-panned films as 3000 Miles to Graceland, Windtalkers, and Alone in the Dark did little to advance Slater's career, recurring roles in such popular television series' as Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing and J.J. Abrams' Alias offered not only more exposure, but a chance to reestablish himself on the small screen as well. Meanwhile, a promising debut as a secret agent with a duel personality on NBC's My Own Worst Enemy proved a bit of a false start when the network never offered the show a chance to find its legs. Ever resiliant, Slater quicky bounced back with ABC's The Forgotten in 2009 and Fox's Breaking In in 2011, though neither series failed to catch on, leaving the veteran actor to take up arms as a vengeful gunslinger in the 2012 western Dawn Rider, and get caught up in one of history's most notorious blood feud's in Fred Olen Ray's Bad Blood: The Hatfiends and McCoys.

Trivia: The grandson of Bernard Lee (better known to the world as M in the James Bond movies), Jonny Lee Miller ironically became famous for his portrayal of the Sean Connery-obsessed Sick Boy in the 1996 film Trainspotting. Contrary to popular belief, the actor is English, not Scottish, and was born outside of London on November 15, 1972. Interested in the theater from an early age, Lee Miller participated in a number of school productions and made his television debut at the age of 11, in the miniseries Mansfield Park. Following appearances in a number of other productions, including 1993's Prime Suspect 3, Lee Miller made his film debut in Iain Softley's Hackers in 1995. His turn as a cyberpunk gave the actor both a wider audience and an introduction to co-star Angelina Jolie, whom he would marry in 1995 (they divorced in 1999). Lee Miller's big break came with his casting as Sick Boy, in director Danny Boyle's film adaptation of the Irvine Welsh novel Trainspotting. The film became an international hit, boosting the careers of Lee Miller and his co-stars, Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle. Lee Miller chose to remain on Scottish soil for his next project, Gillies MacKinnon's Regeneration (1997). Subsequently, Lee Miller headlined an all-star cast in the relationship drama Afterglow, in which he co-starred with Nick Nolte, Lara Flynn Boyle, and the formidable Julie Christie. In 1999, the actor reunited with Trainspotting co-star Robert Carlyle to star in Plunkett & Maclean, which also featured Liv Tyler. Though subsequent roles in lowbrow fare like Dracula 2000, Mindhunters, and Aeon Flux hinted that the talented actor's career was circling the drain, Lee Miller's memorable performances in the shortlived ABC series Eli Stone (in which he played the title character) and Dexter (as a malevolent motivational speaker) helped both to keep in in the public eye, and offer further proof of his versitilty. In 2011 Lee Miller shared an Oliver Award with actor Benedict Cumberbatch for their performances in Boyle's stage production of Frankenstein (the two actors alternated between playing Dr. Frankenstein and the Creature), and the following year he kept up the gothic vibe with his turn as the shady Roger Collins in Tim Burton's feature adaptation of the spooky soap opera Dark Shadows.

Trivia: Tall, dark, and classically handsome in a familiar male-model-turned-actor kind of way (think Billy Zane), stage and screen performer Eion Bailey has come a long way since his role as a teen outcast whose new friendship yields tragic consequences in View Askey historian Vincent Pereira's affecting 1997 teen drama A Better Place. Though a subsequent series of fleeting appearances in such high-profile releases as Fight Club and Almost Famous offered audiences a passing glimpse of the up-and-coming star's true onscreen talent, it wasn't until his Golden Satellite-nominated performance in the made-for-cable drama And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself that Hollywood truly began to sit up and take notice. Born in California and raised by his pilot father in the Santa Ynez Valley, the young drama hopeful spent much of his spare time taking flying lessons from his father and playing baseball with friends. Eventually finding his footing on the high-school stage, Bailey continued to hone his skills at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts following graduation. His undeniably heartfelt role in A Better Place offered Bailey an unusually complex role for such a young actor with little screen experience, and in the years that followed, the emerging actor would move to the small screen with appearances in such popular series as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek. Supporting performances in Fight Club and Almost Famous followed suite shortly thereafter, and after once again stepping into the lead for the little-seen indie Seven and a Match, Bailey joined the talented ensemble cast of HBO's acclaimed miniseries Band of Brothers. Rumors that Bailey was one of the few contenders being considered to answer the call of the "bat signal" in the planned updating of the Batman franchise soon began to circulate, and though that responsibility eventually went to Christian Bale, Bailey earned positive critical acclaim for his portrayal of a filmmaker sent to cover the exploits of the eponymous character in HBO's And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself. With top-billed roles in Mindhunters, Sexual Life, and Glory Days set to follow in 2004, Bailey was poised to become a familiar face to filmgoers.

Trivia: Distinguished by his versatility and uncanny ability to immerse himself in the characters he portrays, filmgoers may recall Clifton Collins Jr. from his role as the intimidating thug Cesar in 187 (1997) or from his numerous other roles in such films as the Hughes brothers' Dead Presidents (1995) and Steven Soderbergh's acclaimed Traffic (2000). A native Angeleno, Collins Jr. is the grandson of actor Pedro Gonzalez. One of the first Mexicans to find Hollywood success, Gonzalez appeared alongside John Wayne in various Westerns and war films. Sometimes credited as Clifton Gonzalez Gonzalez in honor of his grandfather's name, Collins Jr.'s range has found him work in a rich variety of films throughout the 1990s both in television and film. Other roles in The Replacement Killers and Disney's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (both 1998) showed great promise for a young actor on the verge of stardom heading into the new millennium. Supporting roles in such wide-release features as The Last Castle, and The Rules of Attraction found the young up-and-comer slowly gaining the momentum to set an enduring career in motion, and in 2004 Collins appeared opposite hot-property Eion Bailey in the thriller Mindhunters and the alcoholism-themed comedy drama Glory Days. That same year also found Collins taking a role in director Troy Duffy's Boondock II: All Saints Day - the eagerly anticipated follow-up to his 1999 cult hit The Boondock Saints.

Trivia: A British-born performer who trained formally as a ballet dancer, Will Kemp gained widespread acclaim for such accomplishments as his lead contribution to Matthew Bourne's production of Swan Lake -- with a cast that consisted almost exclusively of men. Kemp launched into print modeling as well, appearing in a widely seen campaign for The Gap, then segued into acting with parts in Stephen Sommers' Victorian-era supernatural thriller Van Helsing (2004) and Renny Harlin's lurid psychological thriller Mindhunters (2005), opposite Val Kilmer and LL Cool J. Kemp deftly merged his ballroom finesse and his dramatic evocations with prominent billing in Jon M. Chu's dance-themed urban drama Step Up 2 the Streets (2008); he played Blake Collins, the proprietor of a dance school who finds his chief proclivity -- an utter contempt for street dancing -- upstaged by the arrival of a brash and talented young newcomer at his school.

Trivia: Held in warm regard by Xena-philes for her role as the vulnerable villain Najara in the popular fantasy adventure series Xena: Warrior Princess, actress Kathy Morris sports an impressively eclectic resumé, appearing in everything from television's creepy Poltergeist: The Legacy to such dramatic roles as The Contender (2000).Morris was born in Cincinnati, but grew up traveling constantly and living a Partridge Family-esque existence with her close-knit family/bandmates from the age of five. Though she would spend time in such geographically diverse climates as Brooklyn, TX, and the cold of Connecticut, it was with her early experiences in the spotlight that Morris found the most fulfillment. Seguing into theater after her youthful experiences on the stage, she began to refine her acting skills and soon made the decision to pursue a professional career as an actress. Laboring through countless hours of free work and waitressing in the years she spent launching her career, Morris finally got her break when cast alongside Mark Harmon in the made-for-television film The Long Road Home in 1991. Making her feature debut opposite 15-minute rap sensation Vanilla Ice in Cool as Ice the same year, Morris appeared in more made-for-TV movies (Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All [1994]) and low-budget thrillers (Sleepstalker [1995] and The Prophecy II [1998]) in the following years, Morris began to truly gain momentum in 1997 when she was cast in television's Pensacola: Wings of Gold and the aforementioned Xena: Warrior Princess. Never having been the athletic type, Morris left most of the fantastic swashbuckling of her sympathetic villainess in the physically demanding Xena to stunt doubles. After appearances in The Contender and the nuclear war thriller Deterrence (2000), Morris leapt into her biggest film yet with her role in Steven Spielberg's A.I. (2001). Spielberg also cast her in his next film, 2002's Minority Report, playing Tom Cruise's estranged wife.In 2003, Morris returned to television in the CBS series Cold Case. Playing Philadelphia Detective Lilly Rush, Morris was the lead in the show, which ran for seven seasons. After Cold Case wrapped in 2010, she played the small role of Billy Beane's (Brad Pitt) wife in the Oscar-nominated film Moneyball (2011), but her scenes were ultimately cut from the movie. In 2013, Morris appeared in the Hallmark Channel's TV Movie The Sweeter Side of Life.

Trivia: Patricia Velasquez, a model-turned-actress, was born on January 31, 1971, in Guajira, Venezuela, where she grew up. After graduating from San Vincente de Paul High School in 1987, she completed a year of college before being discovered and flying off to Milan, Italy, to begin her modeling career. Her exotic beauty bestowed her with enormous success in runway and print modeling for top designers, and in 1994, she appeared in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Video.Velasquez made her acting debut in 1996 in Le Jaguar, but it wasn't until 1999 that she was really noticed with her role in The Mummy. She kept busy with three other films that same year: Beowulf, No Vacancy, and Façade. The Mummy had earned her spotlight enough to compete for screen attention with Heather Graham in Committed (2000). In addition to roles in other films like Turn It Up and Saint Bernard (both 2000), Velasquez had appeared on television in the miniseries Fidel and the series Ed in 2001. Also, in 2001, she acted in the sequel to the film that had brought her acting breakthrough, The Mummy Returns. Velasquez had recurring roles on Arrested Development and The L Word, and she appeared on Celebrity Apprentice in 2012.

Trivia: Finnish director Renny Harlin did not come from an artistically inclined family (his parents were in the medical profession), but Harlin himself had determined his future before he was 12, via extensive use of a home movie camera. Harlin was a twenty-ish film school graduate when he set up his own production company; while he was fairly successful marketing documentaries and commercial shorts, young Harlin could not get anyone in Finland to bankroll him for a feature. He moved to the presumably greener pastures of Hollywood, where he finally realized his goal with the 1986 feature Born American. Harlan's direction of 1990's Die Hard 2 seemed to bode well for steady work in action films; unfortunately, his next effort (released the same month as Die Hard 2) was the ill-fated Andrew Dice Clay vehicle The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990). The collapse of this enterprise resulted in reams of magazine copy about the "once-promising" and "washed-up" Harlin. But in 1993, he responded with the successful Cliffhanger, which managed the remarkable feat of being an actor's picture (the star was Sylvester Stallone) and a director's picture all in one. Renny Harlin was married to actress Geena Davis, whom he directed in the 1995 swashbuckler Cutthroat Island. Though the couple would re-team the following year for Harlin's The Long Kiss Goodnight, they separated in 1997 and divorce soon followed. In 1999 Harlin took the action to the ocean with Long Kiss co-star Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea, following in 2001 with the Sylvester Stallone adreno-racer Driven.Next up, Harlin was called in to rescue the production of the prequel Exorcist: The Beginning after countless problems including a completed film from director Paul Schrader that was virtually scrapped by an unsatisfied studio. Harlin followed this up with the thriller Mindhunters. While neither of those efforts were particularly successful upon release at the box office, in 2006 Harlin had returned to his position behind the camera once again to terrify moviegoers with a tale of four teens forced to do battle with a malevolent supernatural force in The Covenant.

Trivia: Innovative rap music superstar LL Cool J made the successful transition to actor/musician in the 1990s, with several major films and a TV series to his credit. Born James Todd Smith in Queens, LL Cool J established himself as one of the major figures in rap music in the 1980s and '90s; he made his movie debut as himself in the 1985 rap movie Krush Groove. Although LL Cool J also appeared as himself in B.A.P.S. (1998), his 1990s movie career revealed that he had the acting chops to go with his musical talent. Following roles in the light-hearted cop movie The Hard Way (1991) and the ill-fated fantasy Toys (1992), LL Cool J spent four seasons as one of the stars of the primetime TV sitcom In the House (1995-1999). During his years on TV, LL Cool J also showed his dramatic versatility in the romantic comedy Woo (1998), crime dramas Caught Up (1998) and In Too Deep (1999), and horror sequel Halloween: H20 (1998). After starring as potential shark bait in the mutant mako actioner Deep Blue Sea (1999), he finished the decade by winning critical kudos as an immodest football player in Oliver Stone's sports drama Any Given Sunday (1999). Hit former career in music all but forgotten, LL Cool J would give action films a shot with Charlie's Angels (2000) and Rollerball (2002) before living up to his real life reputation as a ladies man in the comedy Deliver Us from Eva. Starring as the stud wrangled into taming Gabrielle Union's shrew Eva, LL Cool J notched his first romantic comedy lead and took another step away from his musical past by billing himself under his real name. Following the less than stellar Eva, LL Cool J added his voice to the animated Rugrats Go Wild (2003). Further bolstering his action movie credits (and returning to his street moniker), LL Cool J then joined the multicultural cast of Samuel L. Jackson's elite police squad in the summer popcorn movie S.W.A.T. (2003). Later, the rapper-turned-actor's role as Sam Hanna in a two-part 2009 episode of NCIS led to regular work on the spin-off series NCIS: Los Angeles, as well as a crossover appearance as the same character in the 2010 Hawaii Five-O revival.

Trivia: A versatile character actor whose intense demeanor and slightly off-kilter delivery served him well in both comedies and dramas, Christopher Walken was at once one of the busiest and most respected actors of his generation, appearing in as many as five films in a year while still finding time for stage and occasional television work.Walken was born Ronald Walken in Queens, NY, on March 31, 1943, the youngest of three sons of Paul and Rosalie Walken; Paul ran a bakery, while Rosalie was convinced her sons had talent and was determined they take advantage of it. Ronald landed his first job in front of a camera at the age of 14 months when he posed for a calendar photo with a pair of kittens. Like his siblings, he received dance lessons as a youngster, and, by the age of ten, was making frequent appearances on television and radio shows, and was a regular on a short-lived sitcom, The Wonderful John Acton. Ronald and his brothers also enrolled at New York's Professional Children's School, and he spent a summer as a junior lion tamer with a circus, later recalling that the lion was quite old and docile.In 1961, Walken enrolled at Hofstra University. But, little more than a year later, he landed a role in the Broadway-bound musical Best Foot Forward (which starred one of his former classmates, Liza Minelli), and decided to leave college. Spending the next several years working in a variety of musicals -- both in New York and on the road -- the young actor appeared in a 1964 touring production of West Side Story, and there met actress and dancer Georgianne Thon. The two began dating, and eventually married in 1969. While appearing in a revue starring model-turned-singer Monique Van Vooren in 1965, Walken was told by the headliner he looked more like a Christopher than a Ronald; he decided to take her advice, and adopted Christopher Walken as his stage name. In 1966, he made his first appearance in a non-singing role as Phillip, the King of France, in a Broadway production of The Lion in Winter. By the end of the decade, Walken was devoting his energies to stage dramas, although he continued to keep up with his dance training.Walken made his movie debut with 1968's Me and My Brother -- a film directed by acclaimed photographer and experimental filmmaker Robert Frank -- and, in 1972, scored his first starring role in the low-budget sci-fi thriller The Mind Snatchers. Walken first caught the attention of critics with his performance as a bohemian ladies' man in Paul Mazursky's Next Stop, Greenwich Village, and landed a small but memorable role in Woody Allen's Annie Hall as suicidal preppie Duane. But Walken's real breakthrough came in 1978, with his role as Nick in The Deer Hunter. Playing a small-town boy who is irreversibly scarred by his experiences in Vietnam, the role won Walken an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and made him a bankable and recognizable name. He soon committed to director Michael Cimino's follow-up, which proved to be the infamous box-office and critically-panned flop Heaven's Gate, and later showed off both his acting and dancing skills as a villainous pimp in the musical drama Pennies From Heaven. While Walken remained a critical favorite, he fell short of becoming a major box-office draw due to the disappointing returns of many of his post-Deer Hunter films. But, by his own admission, Walken was always an actor who liked to work, and he maintained a busy schedule of both stage and screen roles. His willingness to take on edgy film characters with questionable commercial appeal (such as At Close Range, King of New York, and Communion) helped earn the actor a loyal cult following, and small but showy roles in True Romance and Pulp Fiction gave Walken's screen career a serious boost in the early '90s. By the time Walken turned 60, he had written, directed, and starred in an off-Broadway comedy called Him; received another Oscar nomination for his performance in Catch Me if You Can; appeared in films as varied as Sleepy Hollow, The Affair of the Necklace, and The Country Bears; and got to prove he was still a great dancer with his much-talked-about appearance in the music video "Weapon of Choice" by Fatboy Slim.Walken became one of the most popular recurring guest-hosts on Saturday Night Live creating recurring characters such as The Continental, and appeared in a host of classic skits including getting to deliver the catch phrase, "I need more cowbell!"As the 2000s progressed, Walken continued to take work in a variety of films from The Rundown, and Man on Fire, to Gigli, The Wedding Crashers, and the Adam Sandler comedy Click, all the while maintaining his status as one of the quirkiest and most gifted supporting actors of his time. In 2006 he took on a supporting role opposite Robin Williams in the Barry Levinson directed satire Man of the Year as a political consultant. He was in the musical remake of Hairspray, playing the husband of the character played by John Travolta in drag, and the comedy Balls of Fury in 2007. In 2010 he earned rave reviews for his work in the Martin McDonagh's play A Behanding in Spokane on Broadway, and the next year he worked with Todd Solondz, playing the father in Dark Horse.

Trivia: Another illustrious graduate of London's Central School of Speech and Drama, Joss Ackland made his first professional stage appearance at 17 in the 1945 production The Hasty Heart. For the next decade, Ackland learned his craft in a variety of regional theatre troupes, taking time out for an unheralded film debut in 1949's Seven Days to Noon. He quit acting in 1955 to manage a Central African tea plantation, finding creative outlets as a playwright and radio disc jockey. Upon his return to the British theatre in 1957, Ackland joined the Old Vic. From 1962 through 1964, he was associate director of the Mermaid Theatre. He subsequently established himself on the West End musical stage, playing such showcase roles as Captain Hook in Peter Pan and Juan Peron in Evita. Launching his film career proper in 1965, Ackland has flourished in characterizations calling for outsized gestures and orotund vocal calisthenics. Among his better-known screen roles are Greta Scacchi's decadent, untrustworthy aristocrat husband in White Mischief (1988), and homicidal South African diplomat Arjen Rudd in Lethal Weapon 2 (1990). On TV, Ackland was seen as C.S. Lewis in the 1985 BBC production of Shadowlands, and as Isaac in the 1994 made-for-cable Biblical drama Jacob. He has also provided voiceovers for the animated features A Midsummer's Night's Dream (1961) and Watership Down (1978). Over the coming decades, Ackland would appear in several projects over the coming decades, including K-19: The Widowmaker, Asylum, and Flawless.

Trivia: An alumnus of Eastern New Mexico University, American actor Ronny Cox received one the best early film showcases an actor could ask for. In 1972, he was cast as one of the four unfortunate rafters in Deliverance; it was Cox who engaged in the celebrated "dueling banjos" sequence with enigmatic albino boy Hoyt J. Pollard. Two years later, Cox found himself in Apple's Way, a homey TV dramatic weekly described as a "modern Waltons". Most of his subsequent roles were in this benign, All-American vein--and then Cox shocked his followers by portraying Jerry Rubin in the 1975 PBS TV drama The Trial of the Chicago Seven. During this telecast, Cox became one of the first (if not the first) actors to mouth a now-familiar expletive of disgust on American television. As his physique thickened and his hairline thinned in the 1980s, Cox was much in demand in films as a corporate villain, notably in Paul Verhoeven's Robocop (1984) and Total Recall (1990). The flip side of this hard-nosed screen image was his portrayal of the apoplectic but scrupulously honest police chief in Eddie Murphy's Beverly Hills Cop films.

Trivia: Actor Tom Aldredge is one of the few actors who are perhaps equally well remembered for careers on the screen and the stage. Aldredge made his Broadway debut in the musical The Nervous Set in 1959 when he was 31, and began making appearances on TV soon afterward, appearing in TV movies like The Mouse on the Moon and The Troublemaker in the early '60s. As the decades rolled on, Aldredge would continue to nurture his stage career, earning particular accolades for his performance in the Stephen Sondheim production Into the Woods. All the while, he racked up role after role in movies and on TV, playing memorable characters like Ozzie in 1973's Sticks and Bones and William Shakespeare on the CBS Festival of the Lively Arts for Young People in 1977 - for which he won a Daytime Emmy Award. He would also find no trouble picking up regular parts on television, co-starring in the series Ryan's Hope in the early 80s, and The Sopranos, Damages, and Boardwalk Empire in the 2000's. Aldredge passed away in July of 2011 at the age of 83.