Trivia: Hawaiian-born actor Mark Dacascos has been a student of kung-fu and won hop kuen (his parents are both martial arts masters) for most of his life, and at age nine he won an international tournament. His family moved frequently while he was young, and as a result, he became fluent in Mandarin Chinese and German. Due to his expertise in martial arts, it should come as no surprise that martial arts movies make up the so much of his film career. Dacascos would appear in a number of memorable projects over the course of his career, most memorably playing new world warrior Mani in the French film Brotherhood of the Wolf, and starring on TV shows like The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, Hawaii Five-0, and playing the legendary Chairman on Iron Chef America.

Trivia: Actor Robin Smith specialized in roles in rough-shod action films during the 1980s and '90s. His assignments included parts in Death Force (1988), American Ninja 4: The Annihilation (1991), and Dangerous Ground (1997). In 2006, Smith essayed a double role as Luigi and a one-legged actor in Tarsem Singh's hallucinatory fantasy opus The Fall, which toured the festival circuit for a couple years until its official release in 2008.

Trivia: South African filmmaker Gavin Hood is most well known as the director of the award-winning urban drama Tsotsi, however, few know that he learned the ropes and paid his dues by appearing in B-movies like Curse 3: Blood Sacrifice and American Kickboxer. He also studied law at the University of Witwatersrand before opting to follow his true calling by traveling to the U.S. to study film at UCLA. It was there that he experienced his first big break -- or so he thought -- when a script he'd written called A Reasonable Man won the Diane Thomas Screenwriting Award in 1993. The producers who took interest in the story, however, wanted to move the setting from South Africa to America, and soften the script's harsh, culturally divisive content with a happy ending. Hood refused to agree to such changes, agreeing only to make the film on the condition that he direct it himself -- causing interest in the project to vanish as quickly as it had appeared. Hood traveled back to Johannesburg, where he was commissioned to write and direct a series of educational dramas for television by the South African Department of Health. Tackling issues like the AIDS epidemic for the masses of his newly apartheid-free country was a monumental task for Hood's first professional stint behind the camera, and he accomplished the task deftly, earning an Artes Award (The South African Emmy Award) for his work. A short time later, he directed and produced a short script he'd written called The Storekeeper, about an elderly man who takes the law into his own hands in order to protect his store from robbery -- a decision that ends in tragedy. Hood entered the film into competition at a number of international film festivals, where it was very well received. This earned him the credibility he needed to finally produce A Reasonable Man and in 1999 he did exactly that. The story of a young shepherd who kills a baby whom he believes is possessed by a demon was inspired by an actual 1933 court case that Hood had read about in law school. He cast himself in a supporting role in the film, appearing opposite veteran actor Sir Nigel Hawthorne, and entered it into competition on the festival circuit as he had with The Storekeeper. He met with even more success this time, winning the grand prizes at a number of film festivals and serious praise from many critics. In 2001, Hood signed on to adapt and direct a film version of Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel In Desert and Wilderness, an adventure story about two children in Africa. Though the film had to be made entirely in Polish -- which Hood neither spoke nor had time to learn -- he rose to the challenge, working extensively with a translator to create what would prove to be an award-winning film, and the highest-grossing movie in Poland that year. By 2003, Hood had established himself in the filmmaking community as both a talented and conscientious director. It was around this time that he was approached in by producer Peter Fudakowski about adapting legendary playwright Athol Fugard's only novel, Tsotsi, for the screen. Hood had loved the unflinching tale of desperation, hope, and redemption ever since he'd first read it -- but the rights had always been optioned by other parties. He jumped at the chance to write and direct the story, though he updated the setting from the 1950s to the present, replacing the forces of apartheid with classism, AIDS, and disappointment. The central story remained the same, however: a tough, young gang member to whom stealing and killing are a simple means of survival, murders a woman before realizing her baby is with her. Subjected to a spiritual and ethical transformation, the young man cares for the baby over the course of the next week, as his sense of obligation to the child gradually awakens in him a long-repressed sense of humanity. The film was a complete success, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Trivia: After a four-year hitch with the Air Corps, Dean Jones worked the nightclub and cabaret circuit as a blues singer. It was, however, as an actor that Jones was signed to an MGM contract in 1956; he spent the next four years essaying showy supporting roles in films like Tea and Sympathy (1956), Jailhouse Rock (1957) and Torpedo Run (1958). He made his first Broadway appearance in 1960, then went on to star in the TV service sitcom Ensign O'Toole (1962). Jones spent the next several years in light leading-man assignments in such Disney fare as That Darn Cat! (1965), The Ugly Dachshund (1966) The Love Bug (1968) and The Boatniks (1970). He returned to TV in 1970 as host of What's It All About World (1969), then scored a Broadway hit as the central character in the Steven Sondheim musical Company. In 1971, it was back to sitcom-land with the 13-week TVer Chicago Teddy Bears. Throughout the 1970s, Jones became increasingly involved in religious activities; this was reflected to a large degree in his sincere portrayal of Charles Colson in Born Again (1978). He made yet another TV comeback in Disney's Herbie the Love Bug in 1982, the same year that he published his autobiography, Under Running Laughter. Dean Jones remained busy as a film character actor into the 1990s, most delightfully in the atypical role of the vivisection-happy villain in Beethoven (1992). In 1997, he appeared in remakes of both That Darn Cat! and The Love Bug, reprising his role of Jim Douglas in the latter. Jones died in 2015, at age 84.