Trivia: Instantly recognizable for her cute overbite, raucous voice, and broad Bronx accent, Penny Marshall successfully made the transition from popular comic actress to a respected director and producer of popular mainstream feature films. A New York native (born Carole Penny Marsciarelli), Marshall is the daughter of an industrial filmmaker and a dance instructor. She started dancing herself as a toddler and as a teen competed on The Ted Mack Amateur Hour with a dance troupe comprised of several friends. The group also appeared on The Jackie Gleason Show. By the time she was a young adult and had graduated with degrees in math and psychology from the University of New Mexico, her older brother, Garry Marshall, had established himself as a successful television writer. It was Garry who provided Marshall with her first film role in his feature film debut effort as a screenwriter and producer in How Sweet It Is (1968).When her brother began creating and producing situation comedies, he made sure Marshall had parts in his shows, the first of which was My Friend Tony and the second was The Odd Couple, where she had a recurring role. Marshall also guest starred on other comedies, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but her big break didn't come until her brother cast her and her friend Cindy Williams as Laverne and Shirley in an episode of his popular series Happy Days. Her portrayal of a wiseacre working-class broad and Williams' take on the more innocent Shirley gained an instant fan base and so Garry Marshall was inspired to build a sitcom around the characters. Laverne and Shirley debuted in 1978 and ran through 1983. During this period, Marshall was married to actor-turned-director Rob Reiner. She divorced him in the early '80s. At that time, it was apparent that her acting career was on a dead-end street and Marshall decided to try out directing. Beginning with television movies and series such as The Tracey Ullman Show, Marshall learned to direct. She made her feature film directorial debut with the Whoopi Goldberg vehicle Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986) which had originally been slated for director Howard Zieff. Returning her brother's favors, she gave him a part in the film and also created a part for her daughter, Tracy Reiner (the offspring from Marshall's first marriage to Michael Henry). The film was a critical and box-office dud, but this did not deter Marshall from trying again. Her second attempt at directing, Big (1988), the story of a boy whose wish is granted and so finds himself stranded in a man's body, made actor Tom Hanks a movie star and established Marshall as a respectable big-league filmmaker. Still, she took two years to finish her next film, Awakenings (1990). This was due in part to 20th Century Fox's reluctance to have the story filmed until Marshall had engaged her friends Robin Williams, in a rare subdued dramatic role, and Robert De Niro. A well-made and poignant drama, Awakenings received three Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. For her next film, Marshall offered up a sentimental, funny, and ebullient look at the women who kept professional baseball alive when all the young men were off fighting during WWII in A League of Their Own (1992). It was a well-crafted effort that has grown in popularity on video and netted star Geena Davis a Golden Globe nomination. Since then, Marshall's directorial output yielded uneven results and her films, while still loaded with mainstream appeal, had yet to reach the degree of popularity of her earlier work. In the late '90s, she and her much-younger pal, comedian Rosie O'Donnell, became popular for a series of television commercials for K-Mart. In addition to directing and producing, Marshall occasionally continued to work as an actress on television and in films, and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (alongside her Laverne and Shirley co-star Cindy Williams) in 2004. Though at the time it appeared that Marshall had taken a hiatus from the director's chair, she would later resurface to direct episiodes of According to Jim and United States of Tara before lending her voice to the animated comedy series The Life and Times of Jim, and making an appearance in Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein's hipster-skewing sketch series Portlandia.

Trivia: Upon graduating from LA City College, petite brunette actress Cindy Williams sought out and found stage and film work, supporting herself as a waitress between engagements. In films from 1970, Williams earned critical and popular plaudits for her work as Ron Howard's girlfriend in American Graffiti (1973) and as a highly unlikely murderess in The Conversation (1974). Her musical comedy prowess was shown off to excellent advantage in the better-than-it-sounds The First Nudie Musical (1975). In 1976, Williams signed to star as eternally optimistic brewery worker Shirley Feeney in the blue-collar sitcom Laverne and Shirley (1976-83). The series proved to be a smash, winning its Tuesday night timeslot for several seasons. Married to comedian Bill Hudson, Williams became pregnant in 1982, a circumstance that was hastily written into the program. Feeling that the L & S producers were using her pregnancy as an excuse to ease her off the series, she stormed off the set permanently, filing a $20,000,000 lawsuit against Paramount Pictures. Williams' later TV-series credits have included Normal Life and Just Getting By. Increasingly active on the business end of show business, Cindy Williams served as co-producer of the two Father of the Bride films of the 1990s.

Trivia: Tall, gangly, and oddly handsome, stage, screen, and television actor Jeff Goldblum is an unlikely sex symbol. But for many women, especially those fond of eccentric intellectual types, he fits the role perfectly. Known for the range of quirky, often otherworldly characters he has portrayed, Goldblum is adept at playing lead and supporting roles in dramas and comedies alike. A native of Pittsburgh, PA, where he was born October 22, 1952, Goldblum moved to New York at the age of 17 to pursue an acting career. He got his start at Sanford Meisner's distinguished Neighborhood Playhouse, and in the '70s began performing in a wide variety of on and off-Broadway productions. When he was 22, Goldblum made his film debut with a small role as a rapist in Michael Winner's brutal revenge drama Death Wish (1974). He was performing on-stage in the El Grande de Coca Cola review when Robert Altman gave him a small part in California Split (1974) and a slightly larger role in Nashville (1975). Afterwards, Goldblum was steadily employed as a bit player in both major and minor features, turning in one of his most notable performances as a nervous houseguest struggling to remember his mantra in the Los Angeles-set segment of Annie Hall (1977). In 1980, Goldblum branched out into television, starring opposite Ben Vereen in the short-lived television detective comedy Tenspeed and Brown Shoe. As Brown Shoe, Goldblum played an uptight stockbroker trying to make it as a hardboiled private detective. Although the role may have given him greater recognition, the actor gained his first really favorable reviews playing a tabloid magazine reporter in The Big Chill (1983). This led to leading roles in such films as Into the Night (1985), where Goldblum played an aerospace engineer opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, and Silverado (also 1985), which cast him as a villainous gambler. In 1986, he had his first hit movie with David Cronenberg's terrifying sci-fi-horror film The Fly (1986), playing a driven scientist whose research turns him into a gruesome mutant. His co-star was his then-wife, Geena Davis, whom he met while they were on the set of the comedy-thriller Transylvania 6-5000 (1985). The couple divorced in the early '90s and Goldblum then embarked on a highly publicized relationship with actress Laura Dern that broke up in the mid-'90s.In 1989, Goldblum made a favorable transatlantic impression in the British romantic comedy The Tall Guy, playing a perpetually unemployed actor who is cast as the lead of a musical about the Elephant Man. He continued to work steadily throughout the subsequent decade, appearing in films of markedly varying quality. He found great success in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, playing a mathematician in one of the decade's biggest blockbusters. In 1996, Goldblum again explored blockbuster territory with a leading role as a computer genius in Independence Day. He reprised his role from Jurassic Park in that film's sequel 1997 sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park. He starred opposite Eddie Murphy in the notorious bomb Holy Man.At the beginning of the next decade Goldblum worked primarily in independent films such as Burr Steers' debut Igby Goes Down, and playing the romantic and professional rival to Bill Murray in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. In 2006 he scored a role in his most mainstream film in quite sometime as part of the impressive ensemble in Barry Levinson's satire Man of the Year. In 2009, Goldblum joined the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent in the show's eighth season to play the role of Detective Zach Nichols. 2010 found the actor co-starring with Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton for the showbiz comedy Morning Glory. In 2014, he re-teamed with Anderson in The Grand Budapest Hotel. The following year, he appeared opposite Johnny Depp in Mortdecai and began filming his role in the long-awaited Indepdendence Day sequel, due in 2016.