Trivia: Forceful character actor Edward Judd was born to English parents in the port city of Shanghai. Beginning his career in the Orient, Judd rose to modest fame on the British stage. He made his first starring film appearance in the 1948 culture-clash drama The Guinea Pig (aka The Small Voice). Judd's subsequent film roles found him playing against his somewhat brutish fame and brooding personality with wit and perspicacity. He worked frequently in science fiction films, notably X the Unknown (1957), The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) and First Men in the Moon (1964). To date, Judd's last film was 1987's The Kitchen Toto, still another culture-clash effort, this one filmed in Kenya. On television, Edward Judd was a regular on the British sci-fi series 1990.

Trivia: Imperious, intellectual-looking British actor Peter Cushing studied for a theatrical career under the guidance of Cairns James at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Cushing supported himself as a clerk in a surveyor's office before making his first professional stage appearance in 1935. Four years later, he came to America, where he was featured in a handful of Broadway plays and Hollywood feature films. He had a small part in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) and also doubled for Louis Hayward in the "twin" scenes; he was among the rather overaged students in Laurel and Hardy's A Chump at Oxford (1940); and he was second male lead in the Carole Lombard vehicle Vigil in the Night (1940). After closing out his Hollywood tenure with They Dare Not Love (1941), he returned to stage work in England. His next film appearance was as Osric in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), which also featured his future co-star Christopher Lee in a nonspeaking bit (Cushing and Lee's paths would cross again cinematically in Moulin Rouge [1952], though, as in Hamlet, they shared no scenes).In the early '50s, Cushing became a TV star by virtue of his performance in the BBC production of George Orwell's 1984. Still, film stardom would elude him until 1957, when he was cast as Baron Frankenstein in Hammer Films' The Curse of Frankenstein. It was the first of 19 appearances under the Hammer banner; Cushing went on to play Van Helsing in Horror of Dracula (1958) and Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), roles which, like Baron Frankenstein, he would repeat time and again. Though his horror film appearances brought him fame and fortune, Cushing ruefully commented that he'd prefer not to be so tightly typecast: It is significant that his entry in the British publication Who's Who in the Theatre lists all of his theatrical credits, but only one title -- Hamlet -- in his film manifest. In 1975, after a decade's absence, Cushing made a return to the theater in Washington Square, ironically playing the role originated on Broadway by fellow Sherlock Holmes interpreter Basil Rathbone. Many of Cushing's later film assignments were in the tongue-in-cheek category, notably his sneeringly evil Governor Tarkin in Star Wars (1977) and his backwards-talking librarian in Top Secret! (1984). Retiring from the screen in 1986, Peter Cushing penned two volumes of memoirs: An Autobiography (1986) and Past Forgetting (1988).

Trivia: Angular Irish-born character comedian Sam Kydd was a fixture in British film from his first role, The Captive Heart (1945), onward. Born in Belfast, Kydd emigrated to London with his parents and was educated at Dunstable Grammar. He fought in World War II, was captured in Calais and remained a POW in Poland until 1946. (He later wrote a book about his war experiences entitled For You the War is Over. By his own reckoning he went on to appear in some 150 films, and one is hard pressed to argue with that. Some of his roles were small to microscopic, but it was hard to miss Kydd's skinny frame and dagger-sharp facial features. Among Sam Kydd's film credits were Treasure Island (1950) (as Cady, the pirate), The Quatermass Experiment (1955) and I'm All Right Jack (1959).

Trivia: A mainstay of Dublin's Abbey Theatre, Irish actor Eddie Byrne made his film bow in Odd Man Out (1946), a drama which took place during the Irish rebellion. Good-looking enough for leading roles, Byrne managed to star in Time Gentlemen Please (1952) and one or two other British films of the 1950s, but for the most part was utilized in supporting parts. He was particularly busy in the years 1954 through 1958, a time in which, as historian David Quinlan put it, Byrne "seemed to be turning up in every third British film." American moviegoers could see Byrne in such internationally released pictures as Abandon Ship (1957), The Mummy (1959) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Eddie Byrne returned to live and work in Ireland in the mid 1960s, though he'd occasionally surface in British-filmed productions like Star Wars (1977), in which he played General Willard. The actor should not be confused with American TV star Ed "Kookie" Byrnes - if indeed such confusion is possible.

Trivia: Burly, ruddy-faced Irish actor Niall MacGinnis looked as though he'd be well suited for an alley fight, but most of his film and stage roles were of an intellectual bent. Active on stage with the Old Vic, MacGinnis made his first film in 1935. For many film buffs, MacGinnis' fame rests on two dymamic leading roles. He portrayed the crafty black-arts practitioner (based on Alisteir Crowley) who falls victim to his own deviltry in the 1958 chiller Night of the Demon. And, as every Lutheran who ever attended a church-basement "movie night" well knows, Niall MacGinnis essayed the title role in the 1953 film Martin Luther.

Trivia: Born in London and educated in Sussex, Terence Fisher served an apprenticeship in the merchant marine and as a junior officer for the P & O Lines. He worked briefly as a department-store window dresser, then joined Shepherd's Bush Studios as a clapper boy in 1930. Within six years, he graduated to film editor; 12 years later, he directed his first feature for the Rank Organisation, A Song for Tomorrow (1948). Fisher concentrated on romantic dramas until he joined Hammer Films in 1952, where he forged his reputation as a prime purveyor of low-budget, high-grossing horror pictures. Not all of Fisher's scare flicks were masterpieces, to be sure, but even non-fans of the genre have raised their hats to such stylish efforts as Horror of Dracula (1958), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Mummy (1959), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) and The Devil Rides Out (1960). Before he began keeping regular company with the likes of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Terence Fisher was a prolific TV director, turning out several episodes of the internationally successful Robin Hood series of the 1950s.

Trivia: British character actress Margaret Lacey was typically cast as a plain, bespectacled women on stage, screen and television. At one time she was also an assistant for noted magician Jasper Maskelyn.