Trivia: Actor/comedian Martin Lawrence started the 21st century off with a bang, starring and executive producing Big Momma's House, the story of an FBI agent posing as a corpulent Southern matriarch, which went on to gross more than 100 million dollars, despite universally negative reviews. The success of this film pushed Lawrence ever closer to joining the much-coveted 20-million-dollar club, cementing his reputation as one of the biggest comic stars for years to come.Lawrence was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on April 16, 1965, and eventually settled with his family in suburban Maryland around his sixth birthday. Soon after, his father left the family; Lawrence claims he got his start as a comedian by cheering up his mother, who was forced to support her six children by cashiering in various department stores. He attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Landover, MD, dabbling in sports and sticking with comedy, even agreeing to stop acting up in an art class in return for performing his stand-up routine in front of the other students.Soon after graduating, the bug-eyed performer earned a chance to perform on Star Search, which led to a role in 1985's What's Happening Now! Lawrence kept honing his frenetic schtick and by 1989, won two big breaks -- a supporting role in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and MCing HBO's Def Comedy Jam. Lawrence continued to rack up scene-stealing roles throughout the early '90s, including parts in House Party, House Party 2, and Boomerang, eventually landing his own series on Fox in 1992, appropriately named Martin. The show became a huge success, its risqué humor making it a ratings stalwart for more than five years and winning two NAACP Image Awards in the process, although some detractors criticized Lawrence for promoting the image of an oversexed, insensitive black man.Two years after Martin's successful launch, Lawrence released You So Crazy!, a raunchy, vulgarity-laced comedy that originally received the NC-17 rating and was later released unrated. Its crudeness, however, didn't matter much to audiences, as You So Crazy! went on to become one of the highest-grossing concert films of its time.Lawrence appeared to have it all, professionally and privately; in 1995 he married former beauty queen Patricia Southall in a lavish ceremony and the pair had a daughter, Jasmine. Around this time, however, Lawrence's success story began to slip away, his off-camera behavior setting up what should someday be a fascinating E! True Hollywood Story.On the set of his directorial debut, A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, Lawrence erupted in a violent outburst and began taking psychotropic drugs. A few months later, he was arrested for another disturbance, where he reportedly brandished a pistol and screamed at tourists and others on Ventura Boulevard. Over the next two years, his behavior became even more erratic as he racked up a series of gun-related arrests. He landed in drug rehab and filed for divorce from Southall after she got a temporary restraining order against him for yet another vicious eruption.But the most bizarre and unsettling charges were yet to come. Tisha Campbell, Lawrence's co-star on Martin and the House Party films, filed suit against the star and the show's producers, HBO Studios, claiming Lawrence sexually harassed her to the point that she feared for her safety. The studio brokered a settlement that allowed Campbell to finish the show's final season, although she and Lawrence would never be on the soundstage together again.Despite all the trauma, Lawrence seemed as popular as ever. He starred in four hugely commercial successes between 1995 and 1999, including Bad Boys with Will Smith, Nothing to Lose with Tim Robbins, Life with Eddie Murphy, and on his own in Blue Streak. These films made Lawrence extremely bankable -- his salary broke the ten-million-dollar mark for Big Momma's House and it seemed as if his previous troubles were behind him.Then in 1999, while jogging to lose an extra few pounds before filming began on Big Momma's House, Lawrence collapsed into a severe coma due to heat exhaustion, delaying the production's start and firing up the old rumors of drug use and unpredictable behavior. But after recuperating, Lawrence said the coma scare put him back on the straight and narrow.His career trajectory certainly supported this -- after the success of Big Momma's House, he reportedly earned 13 million dollars for What's the Worst That Could Happen? with Danny DeVito. He earned upwards of 16.5 million dollars for Black Knight, which featured Lawrence as a down-on-his-luck employee of a theme restaurant who finds himself transported back to medieval times. Lawrence's next film appearance, Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat, once again found the popular but controversial funnyman taking to the stage, though this time in a far more personal bid to humorize the sometimes startling headlines that had left many fans fearing for both his health and sanity. Seemingly purged of his current demns and eager to settle back into a lucrative film career, Lawrence took to the screen opposite Steve Zahn for the high-speed action comedy National Secuity (2003) before gearing up for the sequel to Bad Boys. After a relatively quiet 2004, Lawrence attempted to broaden his appeal by playing a basketball coach in the family-oriented comedy Rebound. In 2006 Lawrence performed in his first animated film, Open Season, opposite Ashton Kutcher, and released the sequel to one of his biggest comedy hits Big Momma's House 2. That same year he filmed the biker road comedy Wild Hogs alongside Tim Allen and John Travolta.

Trivia: Though most commonly associated with her multi-season portrayal of marketing executive Gina Waters-Payne, significant other of Martin Payne (Martin Lawrence) on the Fox sitcom Martin (1992-97), Tisha Campbell began her lengthy Hollywood career with a role that film buffs will have little difficulty remembering. Campbell made her feature debut as Chiffon, a member of the black female doo-wop group that acts as a Greek chorus, in the 1986 Frank Oz musical comedy Little Shop of Horrors (1986). An Oklahoma City native, born to a coat factory employee father and a gospel singer mother, Campbell moved with her family to Newark, New Jersey at the age of three, where the entire clan suffered from abject poverty. At age 6, Campbell won a talent contest, and the following year landed a turn in an ABC Afterschool Special entitled Unicorn Tales, as well as a supporting role in the off-Broadway musical Really Rosie. Campbell attended and graduated from Newark's Arts High School, then made the ambitious trek out to Los Angeles (with her family's encouragement) and spent several years surviving numerous television pilots that failed to take off. Shop, however, rocketed Campbell to national attention and jump-started her film career. She landed additional roles in Spike Lee's School Daze (1988), House Party (1988) (which she also choreographed), and Boomerang (1992). Campbell met future co-star Lawrence on the set of House Party; according to Campbell's later recollections, Lawrence immediately invited her to play his girlfriend should he ever land a sitcom. In 1992, that plan materialized. The program scored sensational ratings and immediately connected with a young, black, urban market; the arc of the series witnessed Gina and Martin transitioning from lovers to intendeds to husband-and-wife. Campbell originally planned to remain with the series through its final season, but actually left Martin several months prematurely, in November of 1996, asserting that Lawrence verbally, physically and sexually abused her on the set of the program - allegations that Lawrence and his representatives aggressively denied, claiming that Campbell was using the actor as a pawn in a contractual dispute with the network despite the fact that the actress left in mid-season.After her stint on Martin, Campbell signed for supporting roles in a number of low-profile features including Linc's (1998), The Sweetest Gift (1998) and Snitch (1999), then returned to network television briefly as one of the stars of the domestically-themed situation comedy My Wife and Kids (2001).Campbell is also occasionally credited by her married name of Tisha Campbell-Martin. She enjoyed a brief tenure as a recording artist with a 1993 r&b release entitled Tisha.

Trivia: Dedicated film buffs will remember Tichina Arnold as Crystal, one of the three black girls who perform R&B numbers as a Greek chorus, in Frank Oz's imaginative movie musical Little Shop of Horrors (1986). Arnold was only 15 at the time; her career continued steadily after that, with a role or two almost every year. Though the actress' cinematic efforts -- such as How I Got Into College (1989) and the Paul Mazursky/Woody Allen collaboration Scenes from a Mall (1990) -- were typically disappointing, she delighted fans with her neat comic turn as Pam James (opposite Little Shop collaborator Tisha Campbell) in the Martin Lawrence sitcom Martin (1992-1997), and -- on a similar note -- waxed hilarious as housewife and mother Rochelle on the nostalgic Chris Rock sitcom Everybody Hates Chris (premiering in 2005). In 2007, Arnold reunited with Lawrence (as his "straight man" wife) in the big screen road comedy/buddy film Wild Hogs. She next took a decidedly serious turn, playing the lead in the period drama The Lena Baker Story, about the first woman to be executed via the electric chair in Georgia. Arnold continued to make guest appearances on shows like Raising Hope and Hit the Floor, and took a main role on Happily Divorced, beginning in 2011. In 2014, she had a small role in Top Five.

Trivia: Vivacious actress Vivica A. Fox has been attracting attention for performances that mix equal parts sass and class since making her 1989 screen debut in Born on the Fourth of July. A native of Indianapolis, where she was born July 30, 1964, Fox got her start on television with a stint on the daytime soap Days of Our Lives. After making her debut as a hooker in Oliver Stone's aforementioned Born on the Fourth of July, the actress continued to do much of her work on television while appearing in the occasional film. She first attracted notice as Will Smith's girlfriend in the blockbuster Independence Day (1996); her dynamic turn earned her -- together with Smith -- the MTV Award for Best Kiss that year. Fox subsequently appeared in a diverse array of films, ranging from the acclaimed black ensemble romantic drama Soul Food (1997), which cast her as one of three sisters (the other two were played by Vanessa L. Williams and Nia Long), to Batman & Robin (1997), in which she played femme fatale Ms. B. Haven, to Why Do Fools Fall in Love (1998), which featured her in a critically lauded portrayal of one of the three wives of singer Frankie Lymon.Fox's profile declined somewhat in the new millenium, although an appearance in the battle-of-the-sexes comedy Two Can Play That Game caught the attention of Quentin Tarantino, who was casting his long-gestating fourth feature, Kill Bill. As the first victim of hired killer Uma Thurman, Fox brought a little blaxploitation-era sass to the role, making for a memorable, suburban-kitchen battle scene.In addition to her flourishing film work, Fox continued to work on the small screen, most notably as Dr. Lillian Price on Steven Bochco's predominately African American hospital drama City of Angels. 2005's one-season-only reality show The Starlet offered Fox the opportunity to pass on her actorly wisdom -- alongside head judge Faye Dunaway -- to a group of young hopefuls. The following year, she could be seen hoofing it up as a contestant on the astronomically popular ABC competition Dancing With the Stars. Though she worked steadily throughout the 2000s and continues to be active in the film industry, Fox has yet so far been unable to achieve the success she enjoyed in earlier years.