Trivia: The son of actor Robert Alda, Alan Alda grew up around vaudeville and burlesque comedians, soaking up as many jokes and routines as was humanly possible. Robert Alda hoped that his son would become a doctor, but the boy's urge to perform won out. After graduating from Fordham University, Alda first acted at the Cleveland Playhouse, and then put his computer-like retention of comedy bits to good use as an improvisational performer with Chicago's Second City and an ensemble player on the satirical TV weekly That Was the Week That Was. Alda's first film was Gone Are the Days in 1963, adapted from the Ossie Davis play in which Alda had appeared on Broadway. (Among the actor's many subsequent stage credits were the original productions of The Apple Tree and The Owl and the Pussycat.) Most of Alda's films were critical successes but financial disappointments. He portrayed George Plimpton in the 1968 adaptation of the writer's bestseller Paper Lion and was a crazed Vietnam vet in the 1972 movie To Kill a Clown. Alda's signature role was the wisecracking Army surgeon Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H, which ran from 1972 through 1983. Intensely pacifistic, the series adhered to Alda's own attitudes towards warfare. (He'd once been an ROTC member in college, but became physically ill at the notion of learning how to kill.) During his M*A*S*H years, Alda also began auxiliary careers as a director and scriptwriter, winning numerous Emmy awards in the process. He also developed a separate sitcom, 1974's We'll Get By. In 1978, Alda took advantage of an unusually lengthy production break in M*A*S*H to star in three films: California Suite, Same Time, Next Year, and The Seduction of Joe Tynan. He made his theatrical-movie directorial debut in 1981 with The Four Seasons, a semiserious exploration of modern romantic gamesmanship; it would prove to be his most successful film as a director, with subsequent efforts like Sweet Liberty (1986) and Betsy's Wedding (1989) no where close. Long associated with major political and social causes and well-known both offscreen and on as a man of heightened sensitivity, Alda has occasionally delighted in going against the grain of his carefully cultivated image with nasty, spiteful characterizations, most notably in Woody Allen'sCrimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and as death row inmate Caryl Chessman in the 1977 TV movie Kill Me if You Can. Alda later continued to make his mark on audiences with his more accustomed nice-guy portrayals in films such as Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Flirting With Disaster (1996), and The Object of My Affection (1998).The next several years saw Alda show up in a handful of supporting roles, but in 2004, he had his biggest year in more than a decade. First, he appeared opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorcese's critically-acclaimed Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator. Playing Senator Ralph Owen Brewster, Alda would go on to receive a Best Supporting Actor Oscar-nomination, the first nod from the Academy in his long and impressive career. Meanwhile, on the small-screen, Alda played presidential-hopeful Arnold Vinick on NBC's political drama The West Wing, another Senator and his first regular series role since M*A*S*H. He would also enjoy recurring roles on 30 Rock and The Big C, and would continue to flex his comedy muscles in movies like Tower Heist and Wanderlust.

Trivia: He debuted onscreen in The Blackbord Jungle (1955) as a sadistic high school student, and after several years he moved up to starring roles. He often played vicious bad guys. He starred in the '60s TV series Combat. In the mid '60s he directed several off-Broadway plays and a couple of short films, then directed, co-produced, and co-wrote the film Deathwatch (1966), adapted from a Jean Genet play; after directing another feature he returned to acting, having gone eight years between screen roles. In 1982 he was killed by the blades of a helicopter while filming an action sequence in the film Twilight Zone: The Movie. He was the father of actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Trivia: The screen's first authentic black romantic leading man, Williams is often referred to as "the black Gable." He first appeared onstage as a child actor in The Firebrand of Florence (1947) with German actress Lotte Lenya; his mother was an elevator operator at New York's Lyceum Theater, and when she heard of an opening for a child in the play she brought him to the producer, who hired him. He went on to study acting at New York's High School of Music and Art and The National Academy of Fine Arts; for a few months he was taught by Sidney Poitier at Harlem's Actors Workshop. He began working onstage in the mid '50s, then landed his breakthrough role in the play A Taste of Honey in 1960. He debuted onscreen as a rebellious ghetto kid in The Last Angry Man (1959). However, he did not appear in another film for over a decade. In the '60s he began landing roles on TV, including a continuing role on the soap opera Another World and guest spots on TV series. He made a big impression as the costar of the TV movie Brian's Song (1970). His breakthrough screen role was as the lover of Billie Holiday (Diana Ross) in the hit Lady Sings the Blues (1972), which brought him to stardom and established him as a romantic lead. He went on to appear in a number of movies, few of which fully used his talents; he portrayed Lando Calrissian in the second and third Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). In the mid '80s he began appearing again frequently on TV, and starred in the short-lived series Double Dare in 1985; he was also a regular for a while on Dynasty.

Trivia: The son of actress Viveca Lindfors and director Don Siegel, Tabori made his film debut as a child in Lindfors' 1958 drama Weddings and Babies. He began acting in theater in the '60s, and by the end of the decade was playing bit parts in films such as Siegel's Coogan's Bluff, Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity; and Peter Yates' John and Mary. In the '70s, Tabori starred in John Erman's Making It and Tom Gries' Journey Through Rosebud; his other notable films include John Dexter's Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker and Claudia Weill's Girlfriends. A regular stage actor, Tabori has also worked frequently in television, including productions of Arthur Miller's A Memory Of Two Mondays and Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning, as well as numerous television films, such as the Aldous Huxley adaptation Brave New World and Gries' The Glass House and QBVII.

Trivia: Askew is a supporting actor onscreen beginning with Cool Hand Luke (1967).

Trivia: Actor Clu Gulager started out as the latest in a long line of Brando/Dean "method" types in the late 1950s. Gulager's searing interpretation of Mad Dog Coll on a 1959 episode of The Untouchables, coupled with his multi-faceted portrayal of Billy the Kid on the TV western series The Tall Man (1960-62) gained him a brief fan following. He was also quite impressive as Lee Marvin's fellow hit man in The Killers (1964), which would have been the very first made-for-TV movie had not its excessive violence necessitated a theatrical release. Turning prematurely gray in the late 1960s, Gulager went on to play flinty authority figures on such weekly series as The Survivors (1969), San Francisco International Airport (1971) and The MacKenzies of Paradise Cove (1979). He was also seen in numerous miniseries, most prominently as Lt. Merrick in Once an Eagle (1976) and General Sheridan in North and South II (1986). One of his better big-screen roles was Abilene in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971). Briefly entertaining notions of becoming a film director, Clu Gulager helmed the obscure 1969 short subject A Day with the Boys.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the late '60s.

Trivia: An Ohio farm boy, Dean Jagger dropped out of school several times before attending Wabash College. He was a schoolteacher for several years before opting to study acting at Chicago's Lyceum Art Conservatory. By the time he made his first film in 1929, Jagger had worked in stock, vaudeville and radio. At first, Hollywood attempted to turn Jagger into a standard leading man, fitting the prematurely balding actor with a lavish wig and changing his name to Jeffrey Dean. It wasn't long before the studios realized that Jagger's true calling was as a character actor. One of his few starring roles after 1940 was as the title character in Brigham Young, Frontiersman--though top billing went to Tyrone Power, cast as a fictional Mormon follower. Jagger won an Academy Award for his sensitive performance in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) as one of General Gregory Peck's officers (and the film's narrator). Physically and vocally, Jagger would have been ideal for the role of Dwight D. Eisenhower, but he spent his career studiously avoiding that assignment. Having commenced his professional life as a teacher, Dean Jagger came full circle in 1964 when cast as Principal Albert Vane on the TV series Mr. Novak.