Trivia: A graduate of the University of Dubuque, Tony Danza was busy with a profitable if not spectacular career as a boxer when he began tentatively moving into acting. His first important TV role was, appropriately, as erstwhile boxer Tony Banta on the popular sitcom Taxi. During his Taxi years, Danza built up the screen image of the pugnacious, not overly bright lug with a golden heart. In 1984, Danza was cast as Tony Micelli, the widowed housekeeper of divorced career woman Angela Bower (Judith Light), on the weekly domestic comedy Who's the Boss? enjoying a popular eight-season run. Danza's first starring film role in She's Out of Control (1988), as the overprotective father of teenager Ami Dolenz, was more or less an extension of his TV work; the actor demonstrated a wider range in the supporting role of a dying baseball player in the 1994 remake of Angels in the Outfield. He executive produced The Jerky Boys movie, and continued to appear in projects such as the remake of 12 Angry Men, Glam, and The Garbage-Picking, Field Goal-Killing, Philadelphia Phenome. At the start of the next century he made a handful of appearances as himself on animated shows like Family Guy and King of the Hill, and he appeared in the made-for-TV holiday film Stealing Christmas.

Trivia: Though she is normally recognized as Angela Bower, the prissy, executive counterpart to Tony Danza's rough-hewn Italian nanny on the long-running television series Who's the Boss?, Judith Light considers her crowning achievement to be her activism in the fight against AIDS and gender discrimination. Born in Trenton, NJ, Light discovered her passion for the performing arts at a Pennsylvania summer camp at 12 years old. Light's high school drama teacher later encouraged her to attend the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University, and the young actress found herself with a role in a Broadway production of A Doll's House by the mid-'70s. Despite her initial success, however, Light still found herself extraordinarily poor, at one point living on only ten dollars per week. Rather than holding her back, though, poverty not only increased Light's determination to act, but to use it as a tool in the fight against all forms of bigotry.Light's big break came in the form of One Life to Live, the Emmy-winning soap opera, which offered the aspiring actress a role that brought with it a steady paycheck until the inception of Who's the Boss? in 1983. In addition to her sitcom performances, Light starred with great success in The Ryan White Story, a docudrama concerning the real-life fight of a hemophiliac who contracted the AIDS virus through a blood transfusion. In addition to having established herself as one of the first celebrity activists in the battle against HIV and AIDS, Light also became a passionate volunteer for a variety of charitable organizations including Heart Strings and Project Angel Food.In 1998, after a long, successful stint in the television-movie world, Light flexed her comedy muscles again for The Simple Life, a short-lived television series featuring Light as a big-shot businesswoman whose move to the country is far from what she had expected. A year later, Light immersed herself in Wit, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play revolving around a brash, no-nonsense cancer victim's slow acceptance of her own mortality. In 2004, Light starred in The Stones, a CBS television series. She would go on to star on Ugly Betty and Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit as Judge Elizabeth Donnelly.

Trivia: American actress Katherine Helmond spent nearly thirty years becoming an overnight success. Working fitfully in New York and regional theatre throughout the '50s and '60s, Helmond made ends meet by working as a drama teacher. Her first fleeting film appearances were in the Manhattan-based Believe in Me and The Hospital, both shot in 1971. She received a sizeable role in 1975's The Hindenburg, which utilized local repertory actors from throughout the midwest; she also worked with Hitchcock in 1976's Family Plot. In 1977, Katherine was cast as Jessica Tate, the scatterbrained, hedonistic matriarch on the TV sitcom Soap. She remained with the series until its cancellation in 1981; Soap left poor Jessica Tate facing a firing squad, and didn't reveal her fate until Helmond's guest appearance on the Soap spinoff Benson, wherein she played Jessica's ghost. In 1983, Katherine enrolled in the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop; she helmed the short subject Bankrupt and also several episodes of TV's Who's the Boss, in which she played Mona Robinson from 1984 through 1990. Keeping her hand in films, Katherine Helmond became a favorite of ex-Monty Python director Terry Gilliam, who cast the actress as a vain matron undergoing a really radical facelift in 1984's Brazil.

Trivia: Born and raised in Brooklyn to Italian-American parents, actress Alyssa Milano started acting on the stage in a national tour of Annie at the age of eight. She rose to teen stardom as the tomboyish Samantha Micelli on the ABC sitcom Who's the Boss, which ran from 1984-1992. Never really making the transition to feature films, she appeared in sleazy made-for-TV movies, provocative ad campaigns, and nude photographs. In one of her more prominent TV performances, she portrayed Amy Fisher in Casualties of Love: The "Long Island Lolita" Story on CBS in 1993. Her few feature film credits include the quirky romantic comedy Hugo Pool and the thriller Below Utopia, starring Ice-T. She joined the cast of Melrose Place on FOX for the 1997-1998 season before moving over to the WB for Charmed, co-starring Shannen Doherty and Holly Marie Combs. In the late '90s, she released several pop/rock albums, which did quite well in Japan. Since the popularity of Charmed, she's appeared in major television ad campaigns and the comedies Kiss the Bride, Buying the Cow, and Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. She would go on to enjoy TV runs on My Name is Earl and Romantically Challenged, and movies like Hall Pass and New Year's Eve. In 2013, she returned to being a series regular on TV in the primetime soap Mistresses. After winning several legal battles involving her nude images on the Internet, Milano helped to launch the index safesearching.com.

Trivia: Actor Danny Pintauro first made an impression with audiences as the terrified little boy in the 1983 horror film Cujo. The wide-eyed, blond-haired boy next found his niche on the popular sitcom Who's the Boss?, on which he played the role of Jonathan. After the series ended in 1992, Pintauro initially had trouble finding roles as an adult actor, but after taking time off to study English and theater at Middlesex County College in Edison, NJ, and Stanford University, he found a successful career on the stage, starring in productions such as The Velocity of Gary.

Trivia: In terms of public recognition, the unabashedly voluptuous, raven-haired American actress Delta Burke will ere be tied to her role as Suzanne Sugarbaker, one of the two main proprietors of the Sugarbakers interior design firm, on the blockbuster CBS sitcom Designing Women (a role she carried from 1986-1991). But those who have followed Burke's career diligently know that her experience extends to dozens of additional series roles and telemovies, making her a veritable queen of prime time. Burke claims an enduring off-camera impact on the American fashion world as well, and is a best-selling author.Born in Orlando, FL, on July 30, 1956, Burke never met her biological father; she was raised by her single mother, Jean, and an adoptive dad, Frederick Burke -- an Orlando-area realtor. With an irrepressible beauty and the graciousness and charm of a southern debutante, Burke began working her way up through the pageant circuit, ascending from the Orlando Fire Department's "Miss Flame" contest to that of Miss Florida to the 1974 Miss America pageant -- which she promptly lost by failing to even make the top ten (an event that Burke later regarded as an enormous blessing in disguise). While celebrating her 20th birthday alone at a St. Augustine, FL, motel, a stalker assaulted her.The cumulative impact of this turmoil drove Burke to England, where she put herself through the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (via her pageant winnings) and trained as an actress. When she finally returned to the United States, Burke soon secured an agent, and landed parts in now-forgotten telemovies during the late '70s and very early '80s. The turns began inconspicuously, with a bit role in the Suzanne Somers made-for-TV movie Zuma Beach, but in 1979, Burke shot up to instant first billing, heavily typecast as a Scarlett O'Hara-like "Southern belle" in the made-for-television feature Charleston. Unfortunately, the picture aired to devastating reviews and disappointing ratings.Near the end of her three-season run as the star of the long-running HBO sitcom 1st & Ten from 1984-1987 (a Wildcats-like comedy with Burke as Diane Barrow, the owner of an NFL football team), Burke signed with producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason for the Sugarbaker role. Designing Women cast Burke, Dixie Carter, Jean Smart, and Annie Potts as the aforementioned Atlanta-area interior designers with a distinctly Southern flair. After debuting on September 29, 1986, the program bowed to sensational critical reviews and viewer raves. After flirting with ratings doom, the network ultimately gave the show a permanent slot in its Monday-evening schedule -- one that lasted until late May 1993.Burke's weight fluctuation generated an enormous amount of tabloid fodder, and created friction between her and the Thomasons, which ultimately led to Burke's termination at the end of the 1991 season. Not one to be daunted, the actress attempted to rebound with a 1992 ABC sitcom, Delta, that cast her as a country singer striving for elusive stardom. Yet this program (developed and produced through Burke's production company) failed to connect with a sizeable audience, and folded within one year.After a few starring roles in telemovies Burke landed a tremendous amount of off-camera success by manufacturing and marketing a line of plus-size clothes through her own clothing firm, Delta Burke Designs. Burke also authored and published a best-selling autobiography, Delta Style, in 1998. In the new millenium, the TV queen began to appear in her first big-screen features. She appeared in the Mel Gibson romantic comedy-fantasy What Women Want and voiced a pooch in the 2003 family comedy Good Boy!. The comedic melodrama Sordid Lives found her appearing in a long-running indie success. In 2006, she also returned to series television, in a temporary role as Bella Horowitz, on David E. Kelley's comedy drama Boston Legal. In 2008 she had a major role in the made-for-cable romantic comedy Bridal Fever.Off-camera, Burke famously married to Simon & Simon and Major Dad star (and fellow Southerner) Gerald McRaney in 1989.