Trivia: Angela Lansbury received an Oscar nomination for her first film, Gaslight, in 1944, and has been winning acting awards and audience favor ever since. Born in London to a family that included both politicians and performers, Lansbury came to the U.S. during World War II. She made notable early film appearances as the snooty sister in National Velvet (1944); the pathetic singer in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), which garnered her another Academy nomination; and the madam-with-a-heart-of-gold saloon singer in The Harvey Girls (1946). She turned evil as the manipulative publisher in State of the Union (1948), but was just as convincing as the good queen in The Three Musketeers (1948) and the petulant daughter in The Court Jester (1956). She received another Oscar nomination for her chilling performance as Laurence Harvey's scheming mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and appeared as the addled witch in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), among other later films. On Broadway, she won Tony awards for the musicals Mame (1966), Dear World (1969), the revival of Gypsy (1975), Sweeney Todd (1979) and, at age 82, for the play Blithe Spirit (2009). Despite a season in the '50s on the game show Pantomime Quiz, she came to series television late, starring in 1984-1996 as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote; she took over as producer of the show in the '90s. She returned to the Disney studios to record the voice of Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast (1991) and to sing the title song and later reprised the role in the direct-to-video sequel, The Enchanted Christmas (1997). Lansbury is the sister of TV producer Bruce Lansbury.

Trivia: The great-grandson of a famous and influential 19th century Minnesota senator, actor William Windom was born in New York, briefly raised in Virginia, and attended prep school in Connecticut. During World War II, Windom was drafted into the army, which acknowledged his above-the-norm intelligence by bankrolling his adult education at several colleges. It was during his military career that Windom developed a taste for the theater, acting in an all-serviceman production of Richard III directed by Richard Whorf. Windom went on to appear in 18 Broadway plays before making his film debut as the prosecuting attorney in To Kill a Mockingbird. He gained TV fame as the co-star of the popular 1960s sitcom The Farmer's Daughter and as the James Thurber-ish lead of the weekly 1969 series My World and Welcome to It. Though often cast in conservative, mild-mannered roles, Windom's offscreen persona was that of a much-married, Hemingway-esque adventurer. William Windom was seen in the recurring role of crusty Dr. Seth Haslett on the Angela Lansbury TV series Murder She Wrote.

Trivia: A former member of Andy Warhol's Factory and an active member in 1960s New York avant-garde theater, actress Sally Kirkland is best remembered in film for playing a famous Czech actress who is forced to lead a degrading life of anonymity in New York in Anna (1987). The daughter of a fashion editor of Life magazine and a wealthy scrap iron vendor, the tall, slender Kirkland started out as a Vogue model and then studied at the Actor's Studio with Lee Strassberg and Uta Hagen. She launched her acting career off-Broadway, but didn't make much impact until she appeared nude and tied to a chair for 45 minutes in the drama Sweet Eros. By 1964, Kirkland was deeply involved in the Big Apple's avant-garde movement and was also an active drug user until an attempted suicide frightened her into cleaning up her life through yoga and painting. As an actress, she next involved herself with Warhol's clique, appearing in several underground films, notably The Thirteen Most Beautiful Women. Though much of her subsequent film appearances have been in low-budget and exploitation films, Kirkland has had a few shining moments as a supporting actress in such movies as The Sting (1973) and Private Benjamin (1980). For her work in Anna, Kirkland received an Academy Award nomination. In addition to her acting career, Kirkland is a minister of the New Age Church of the Movement of Inner Spiritual Awareness.

Trivia: Tom Mason has been showing up in films and (especially) TV since the late 1970s. He played Archie to Thayer David's Nero Wolfe in a 1979 TV pilot, and starred as Tim "Freebie" Walker in the 1980 TV version of Freebie and the Bean. His subsequent weekly-TV credits include the roles of Jim Daley in Two Marriages, Sergeant McKay in Our Family Honor (1985), Mike Brennan in Jack and Myke (1986), and, most recently, restaurant manager Joe Mangus in the Fox Network's "succes d'estime" Party of Five (1995- ). Either by accident or design, Mason has shown up in quite a few "torn from today's headlines" TV movies: A Murderous Affair: The Carolyn Warmus Story, Calendar Girl, Cop, Killer?: The Bambi Bembenek Story, The Amy Fisher Story, etc. Once in a while, Tom Mason has been able to tear himself away from his busy TV schedule to accept a role in a theatrical film, notably President Douglas in 1994's The Puppet Masters. Tom Mason should not be confused with the "Tom Mason" who served as associate producer for the infamous Edward D. Wood Jr. in the 1950s.

Trivia: Comedy writer-actor, onscreen from the '80s. She was often teamed with Griff Rhys Jones.

Trivia: As the eldest member of the Cusack acting dynasty -- the sister of John, Joan, Susie, and Bill Cusack -- Ann Cusack was raised, like her siblings, in the affluent Chicago suburb of Evanston, but achieved fame and success as a comedic actress somewhat later than the others. Born in 1961, Cusack received her formal education at the Piven Theater Workshop (studying basic improvisation with Joyce and Byrne Piven) and later at New York University's Tisch School for the Arts, where she studied dramatic performance under the aegis of the legendary playwright and theatrical and film director David Mamet. Cusack landed her premier feature-film role at the age of 30, as Shirley Baker, a WWII-era baseball player with a more than slight illiteracy problem, in Penny Marshall's summer 1992 comedy A League of Their Own (alongside Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, and Rosie O'Donnell). In the process, Cusack imparted to the film some of its biggest and most unanticipated laughs -- no mean feat, given that cast.The turn did not go unnoticed, and parts rolled in steadily for the remainder of the 1990s and into the 2000s. The characterizations began small, with low billing -- such as that of a waitress in Harold Becker's poorly received 1993 thriller Malice, and that of a TV woman in Mike Nichols' 1996 La Cage aux Folles redo The Birdcage. Not long after, however, Cusack received her highest television billing (up through that time) when cast as Karen Foxworthy, TV wife and second-string to redneck-obsessed comedian Jeff Foxworthy, in the second season (1996-1997) of the short-lived sitcom The Jeff Foxworthy Show. Unfortunately, the show folded in 1997.The parts continued unabated, however, in films of varying reception. Cusack teamed up with her brothers John and Bill and sister Joan, as well as Dan Aykroyd and Minnie Driver, in the sadly overlooked dark comedy Grosse Pointe Blank (1997, a work that John co-produced and co-scripted). Ann fared worse (as did the entire cast) by signing on for a re-team with director Mike Nichols in that helmer's 2000 turkey What Planet Are You From?, starring Annette Bening and Garry Shandling. Cusack then made intermittent appearances on such series programs as Charmed and Frasier during the late '90s and early 2000s. In 2006, Cusack essayed the supporting role of Deanna in Aaron Wiederspahn's The Sensation of Sight (2006), a moody, evocative drama (and festival cause célèbre) about a dissatisfied middle-class man (David Strathairn) who drops out of his life and takes a job selling encyclopedias.

Trivia: Fresh out of Temple University, actor Robert Hooks was billing himself as Bobby Dean Hooks when he made his 1962 Broadway bow in Tiger Tiger Burning Bright. Hooks' first film was the independently produced Sweet Love, Bitter (1966), though many reference books regard Hurry Sundown (1967) as the actor's big-screen debut. In 1967, he was co-starred with Jack Warden in the New York-based TV cop series NYPD, and in 1988 he was top-billed as Captain Jim Coleman in the military weekly Supercarrier (1988). A co-founder of the Negro Ensemble Company, Hooks was also the creator of the DC Black Repertory Company, based in his hometown of Washington. Robert Hooks is the father of actor/director Kevin Hooks.

Trivia: While growing up in Chicago, Tom Bosley dreamed of becoming the star left-fielder for the Cubs. As it turned out, the closest Bosley got to organized athletics was a sportscasting class at DePauw University. After additional training at the Radio Institute of Chicago and two years' practical experience in various dramatic radio programs and stock companies, he left for New York in 1950. Five years of odd jobs and summer-theater stints later, he landed his first off-Broadway role, playing Dupont-Dufort in Jean Anouilh's Thieves' Carnival. Steadier work followed at the Arena Theatre in Washington, D.C.; then in 1959, Bosley landed the starring role in the Broadway musical Fiorello!, picking up a Tony Award, an ANTA Award, and the New York Drama Critics Award in the bargain. In 1963, he made his film bow as Natalie Wood's "safe and secure" suitor Anthony Colombo in Love With the Proper Stranger. Occasionally cast as two-bit criminals or pathetic losers (he sold his eyes to blind millionairess Joan Crawford in the Spielberg-directed Night Gallery TV movie), Bosley was most often seen as a harried suburban father. After recurring roles on such TV series as That Was the Week That Was, The Debbie Reynolds Show, and The Sandy Duncan Show, Bosley was hired by Hanna-Barbera to provide the voice of flustered patriarch Howard Boyle on the animated sitcom Wait Til Your Father Gets Home (1972-1973). This served as a dry run of sorts for his most famous series-TV assignment: Howard Cunningham, aka "Mr. C," on the immensely popular Happy Days (1974-1983). The warm, familial ambience of the Happy Days set enabled Bosley to weather the tragic death of his first wife, former dancer Jean Elliot, in 1978. In addition to his Happy Days duties, Bosley was narrator of the syndicated documentary That's Hollywood (1977-1981). From 1989 to 1991, he starred on the weekly series The Father Dowling Mysteries, and thereafter was seen on an occasional basis as down-to-earth Cabot Cove sheriff Amos Tupper on Murder, She Wrote. Reportedly as kind, generous, and giving as his Happy Days character, Tom Bosley has over the last 20 years received numerous honors for his many civic and charitable activities.