Trivia: Richard Greene was a charming, tall, handsome, dimpled, black-haired British leading man. The son of an actor and actress, in his teens he joined a repertory company. When he was 20 he was brought to Hollywood by 20th Century-Fox as a potential rival to MGM's Robert Taylor. Greene debuted onscreen in 1938 and over the next several years he was a busy leading man, becoming a very popular matinee idol in pretty-boy romantic and swashbuckling leads. His career was interrupted by service in World War II, and when he returned he was unable to regain his momentum, but he continued playing leads in international films for the next decade, and then more sporadically after 1955. He became very famous as the title-role star of the long-running British TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, which was syndicated world-wide. From 1941-52 Richard Greene was married to actress Patricia Medina.

Trivia: Born into a theatrical family, Anouk Aimee was trained in acting and dancing at the Bauer-Therond school. In films from the age of 14, Ms. Aimee (usually billed merely as Anouk) was elevated to international stardom in 1949's Lovers of Verona, specifically written for her by Jacques Prevert. Possessed of an aloof, haunting beauty, Anouk has given her best performances under the knowing direction of such European masters as Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2) and Jacques Demy (Lola, The Model Shop). She has also worked extensively in English language films; she did her bit for the Resistance in Anatole Litvak's The Journey (1959), essayed the title role in George Cukor's Justine (1969), and portrayed the worldly-wise Simone Lowenthal in Robert Altman's Ready to Wear (1994). Her most famous screen assignment, and the one that earned her an Academy Award nomination, was the role of Anne Gauthier in Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman (1966). Looking every bit as alluring as she had in '66, Anouk Aimee reprised this role in 1986's A Man and a Woman: Twenty Years Later.

Trivia: Michael Denison only made 21 movies in the course of a 60-year acting career, but included among them are such classics as Anthony Asquith's The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) and Richard Attenborough's acclaimed Shadowlands (1993). Across those 41 years, he aged from a rakishly handsome leading man into the quintessential grand old man. His personal life wasn't as smooth, at least early on -- almost from birth, Denison's life was characterized by misfortune and tragedy, beginning with the death of his mother when he was three weeks old; he was raised by an aunt and uncle, and experienced an estrangement from his father that lasted well into his adult years. Denison attended Harrow and did some amateur acting while at school, but he never considered a career as an actor until he attended Oxford University and crossed paths with John Gielgud, who was directing plays there. His love of acting as a profession dated from a production of Richard III in which he was cast with a young Vivien Leigh. He attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and there received not only training but began one of the most enduring love stories of the English stage -- he met a fellow student, Dulcie Gray, and the two were married in 1939. They juggled their marriage and their careers for the next six decades, including 28 plays together on London's West End and countless tours of England. The pairing of Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray was so well known across the decades, that their mention even figured as one of the jokes in the "Albatross Sketch" by the Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy troupe. Their intertwined romantic and professional lives reached their public pinnacle in 1996 with their first appearance together on Broadway, in a production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. Denison was one of a very rarefied group of English actors who appeared on television before World War II, as part of the BBC's experimental broadcasts in the new medium. In 1939, he was one of the players in a television production of Eugene O'Neill's 1928 play Marco Millions, part of a cast that also included such future film actors as Robert Emhardt, Stephen Murray, and Robert Harris. He made his first big-screen appearance that same year with a small, uncredited role in the film Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday, but he didn't take movies seriously as a medium worth pursuing until after the war. Strangely enough, he was offered a screen contract in spite of that disdain for the movies; in fact, completely by accident -- as a favor to his wife while home on leave from the military in 1942, he appeared with her in one of her screen tests and was offered a contract himself, which he was unable to avail himself of because he was serving as an intelligence officer. After the war, however, Denison did start appearing in the occasional film, as his schedule between theatrical productions permitted, and as interesting roles came along. The first of his movies to receive reasonably wide distribution was the Rank Organization's production of Hungry Hill, a saga of the multi-generational conflict between two families in 19th century Ireland. His portrayal of Algernon Moncrief in Asquith's The Importance of Being Earnest is usually regarded as the best of Denison's screen performances. However, he infinitely preferred theatrical work over any other medium. Denison toured internationally well into his seventies, and only ever appeared in a handful of television shows very late in his career.

Trivia: For nearly four decades, Spanish actor Jose Nieto was a major star in his native country. Though film titles like El Lazzarillo de Torres and La Senora de Fatimas are unfamiliar to American audiences, rest assured that these were favorites among Nieto's Spanish fans. The actor's English-speaking appearances were limited to supporting and character roles in American and British films shot in Spain. Among Jose Nieto's films in this latter category were Alexander the Great (1956), A Farewell to Arms (1957), Solomon and Sheba (1959) (as Ahab) and Dr. Zhivago (1965) (as a Russian priest!)

Trivia: In the realm of television, there are likely few directors as prolific as Philip Saville. A one-time actor who stepped behind the camera as his onscreen career waned in the mid-'50s, Saville appeared in such features as The Straw Man (1953) and On the Run (1956) before making his directorial debut with the small-screen feature Curtains for Harry (1955). Quickly following with such efforts as Hamlet (1964), Oedipus the King (1968), and The Rainbirds (1971), it didn't take long for Saville to hit his stride. In 1986, Saville directed the BAFTA-winning miniseries The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (remade stateside with Roseanne in the lead three years later). In addition to features, he helmed episodes for such popular U.K. series as First Born (1988) and The Buccaneers (1995). Saville later gained possibly his most international exposure to date as the director of the urban comedy drama Metroland (1997), a touching marriage drama featuring Christian Bale and Emily Watson, which told the story of one man's conflict between his current life and how it might have been different had he taken another path. Though Saville subsequently returned to television for most of his work, he ventured into feature territory once again with the 2003 biblical dramaThe Gospel of John, and the 2004 Holocaust drama Love Is a Survivor.