Trivia: Elizabeth Taylor was the ultimate movie star: violet-eyed, luminously beautiful, and bigger than life; although never the most gifted actress, she was the most magnetic, commanding the spotlight with unparalleled power. Whether good (two Oscars, one of the first million-dollar paychecks, and charity work), bad (health and weight problems, drug battles, and other tragedies), or ugly (eight failed marriages, movie disasters, and countless scandals), no triumph or setback was too personal for media consumption. Born February 27, 1932, in London, Taylor literally grew up in public. At the beginning of World War II, her family relocated to Hollywood, and by the age of ten she was already under contract at Universal. She made her screen debut in 1942's There's One Born Every Minute, followed a year later by a prominent role in Lassie Come Home. For MGM, she co-starred in the 1944 adaptation of Jane Eyre, then appeared in The White Cliffs of Dover. With her first lead role as a teen equestrian in the 1944 family classic National Velvet, Taylor became a star. To their credit, MGM did not exploit her, despite her incredible beauty; she did not even reappear onscreen for two more years, returning with Courage of Lassie. Taylor next starred as Cynthia in 1947, followed by Life With Father. In Julia Misbehaves, she enjoyed her first grown-up role, and then portrayed Amy in the 1947 adaptation of Little Women. Taylor's first romantic lead came opposite Robert Taylor in 1949's Conspirator. Her love life was already blossoming offscreen as well; that same year she began dating millionaire Howard Hughes, but broke off the relationship to marry hotel heir Nicky Hilton when she was just 17 years old. The marriage made international headlines, and in 1950 Taylor scored a major hit as Spencer Tracy's daughter in Vincente Minnelli's Father of the Bride; a sequel, Father's Little Dividend, premiered a year later. Renowned as one of the world's most beautiful women, Taylor was nevertheless largely dismissed as an actress prior to an excellent performance in the George Stevens drama A Place in the Sun.In 1956, however, the actress reunited with Stevens to star in his epic adaptation of the Edna Ferber novel Giant. It was a blockbuster, as was her 1957 follow-up Raintree County, for which she earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Taylor's sexy image was further elevated by an impossibly sensual performance in 1958's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; another Tennessee Williams adaptation, Suddenly Last Summer, followed a year later, and both were highly successful. To complete the terms of her MGM contract, she grudgingly agreed to star in 1960's Butterfield 8; upon completing the film Taylor traveled to Britain to begin work on the much-heralded Cleopatra, for which she received an unprecedented one-million-dollar fee. In London she became dangerously ill, and underwent a life-saving emergency tracheotomy. Hollywood sympathy proved sufficient for her to win a Best Actress Oscar for Butterfield 8, although much of the good will extended toward her again dissipated in the wake of the mounting difficulties facing Cleopatra. With five million dollars already spent, producers pulled the plug and relocated the shoot to Italy, replacing co-star Stephen Boyd with Richard Burton. The final tally placed the film at a cost of 37 million dollars, making it the most costly project in film history; scheduled for a 16-week shoot, the production actually took years, and despite mountains of pre-publicity, it was a huge disaster at the box office upon its 1963 premiere. Still, the notice paid to Cleopatra paled in comparison to the scrutiny which greeted Taylor's latest romance, with Burton, and perhaps no Hollywood relationship was ever the subject of such intense media coverage. Theirs was a passionate, stormy relationship, played out in the press and onscreen in films including 1963's The V.I.P.'s and 1965's The Sandpiper. In 1966, the couple starred in Mike Nichols' controversial directorial debut Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, arguably Taylor's best performance; overweight, verbally cutting, and defiantly unglamorous, she won a second Oscar for her work as the embittered wife of Burton's alcoholic professor. Their real-life marriage managed to survive, however, and after Taylor appeared opposite Marlon Brando in 1967's Reflections in a Golden Eye, she and Burton reunited for The Comedians. She also starred in Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew, but none were successful at the box office; 1968's Doctor Faustus was a disaster, and later that year Boom! failed to gross even one-quarter of its costs. After 1969's Secret Ceremony, Taylor starred in The Only Game in Town, a year later; when they too failed, her days of million-dollar salaries were over, and she began working on percentage.With Burton, Taylor next appeared in a small role in 1971's Under Milk Wood; next was X, Y and Zee, followed by another spousal collaboration, Hammersmith Is Out. In 1972 the Burtons also co-starred in a television feature, Divorce His, Divorce Hers; the title proved prescient, as two years later, the couple did indeed divorce after a decade together. With no film offers forthcoming, Taylor turned to the stage, and in 1981 she starred in a production of The Little Foxes. In 1983, she and Burton also reunited to co-star on Broadway in Private Lives. Television also remained an option, and in 1983 she and Carol Burnett co-starred in Between Friends. However, Taylor's primary focus during the decades to follow was charity work; following the death of her close friend, Rock Hudson, she became a leader in the battle against AIDS, and for her efforts won the 1993 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. In 1997, the actress once again became a featured tabloid topic when she underwent brain surgery to remove a benign tumor. The same year, she received attention of a more favorable variety with Happy Birthday Elizabeth: A Celebration of Life, a TV special in which she was paid tribute by a number of stars including Madonna, Shirley MacLaine, John Travolta, Dennis Hopper, and Cher. Taylor would continue to make her voice heard when it came to issues that she felt strongly about. In 2003, Taylor refused to attend the Academy Awards out of protest against the Iraq War. Taylor also worked tirelessly in the name of AIDS research, advocacy, and awareness, even appearing in a 2007 staging of the A.R. Gurney play Love Letters opposite James Earl Jones to benefit Taylor's own AIDS foundation -- a performance that earned over a million dollars for the cause. Sadly, Taylor was increasingly plagued by health problems, undergoing cardiac surgery in 2009 to replace a leaky heart valve. On March 23, 2011, she passed away from congestive heart failure. She was 79.

Trivia: The 12th of 13 children of a Welsh miner, actor Richard Burton left his humble environs by winning a scholarship to Oxford. Blessed with a thrillingly theatrical voice, Burton took to the stage, and, by 1949, had been tagged as one of Britain's most promising newcomers. Director Philip Dunne, who later helmed several of Burton's Hollywood films, would recall viewing a 1949 London staging of The Lady's Not for Burning and watching in awe as star John Gielgud was eclipsed by juvenile lead Richard Burton: "He 'took' the stage and kept a firm grip on it during every one of his brief appearances." A few years after his film debut in The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949), the actor was signed by 20th Century Fox, which had hopes of turning him into the new Lawrence Olivier -- although Burton was not quite able to grip films as well as he did the stage. Aside from The Robe (1953), most of Burton's Fox films were disappointments, and the actor was unable to shake his to-the-rafters theatricality for the smaller scope of the camera lens. Still, he was handsome and self-assured, so Burton was permitted a standard-issue 1950s spectacle, Alexander the Great (1956). His own film greatness would not manifest itself until he played the dirt-under-the-nails role of Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger (1959). In this, he spoke the vernacular of regular human beings -- rather than that of high-priced, affected Hollywood screenwriters -- and delivered a jolting performance as a working-class man trapped by the system and his own personal demons. Following a well-received Broadway run in the musical Camelot, Burton was signed in 1961 to replace Stephen Boyd on the benighted film spectacular Cleopatra (1963). It probably isn't necessary to elaborate on what happened next, but the result was that Burton suddenly found himself an international celebrity, not for his acting, but for his tempestuous romance with co-star Elizabeth Taylor. A hot property at last, Burton apparently signed every long-term contract thrust in front of him, while television networks found themselves besieged with requests for screenings of such earlier Burton film "triumphs" as Prince of Players (1955) and The Rains of Ranchipur (1956). In the midst of the initial wave of notoriety, Burton appeared in a Broadway modern-dress version of Hamlet directed by John Gielgud, which played to standing-room-only crowds who were less interested in the melancholy Dane than in possibly catching a glimpse of the Lovely Liz. Amidst choice film work like Becket (1964) and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1966), Burton was also contractually obligated to appear with Taylor in such high-priced kitsch as The V.I.P.s, (1963) The Sandpiper (1965), and Boom! (1968). A few of the Burton/Taylor vehicles were excellent -- notably Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (she won an Oscar; he didn't, but should have) -- but the circus of publicity began to erode the public's ability to take Burton seriously. It became even harder when the couple divorced, remarried, and broke up again. Moreover, Burton was bound by contract to appear in such bland cinematic enterprises as Candy (1968), Villain (1971), The Assassination of Trotsky (1972), The Klansman (1974), and that rancid masterpiece Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). So low had Burton's reputation sunk that when he delivered an Oscar-caliber performance in Equus (1977), it was hailed as a "comeback," even though the actor had never left. (Once again he lost the Oscar, this time to Richard Dreyfuss.) Burton managed to recapture his old performing fire in his last moviemaking years, offering up one of his best performances in his final picture, 1984 (1984). He died later that year.

Trivia: Debonair and distinguished British star of stage and screen for more than 50 years, Sir Rex Harrison is best remembered for playing charming, slyly mischievous characters. Born Reginald Carey in 1908, he made his theatrical debut at age 16 with the Liverpool Repertory Theater, remaining with that group for three years. Making his British stage and film debut in 1930, Harrison made the first of many appearances on Broadway in Sweet Aloes in 1936. He became a bona fide British star that same year when he appeared in the theatrical production French Without Tears, in which he showed himself to be very skilled in black-tie comedy. He served as a flight lieutenant in the RAF during World War II, although this interruption in his career was quickly followed by several British films. Harrison moved to Hollywood in 1945, where his career continued to prosper. Among his many roles was that of the king in the 1946 production of Anna and the King of Siam. Harrison was perhaps best known for his performance as Professor Henry Higgins in the musical My Fair Lady, a character he played on Broadway from 1956-1958 (winning a Tony award in 1957) and again in its 1981 revival, as well as for a year in London in the late '50s; in 1964, he won an Oscar for his onscreen version of the role. He had previously received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Julius Caesar in Cleopatra (1963). Harrison continued to act on both the stage and screen in the 1970s and into the '80s. He published his autobiography, Rex, in 1975, and, four years later, edited and published an anthology of poetry If Love Be Love. Knighted in 1989, he was starring in the Broadway revival of Somerset Maugham's The Circle (with Stewart Granger and Glynis Johns) until one month before he died of pancreatic cancer in 1990. Three of Harrison's six marriages were to actressesLilli Palmer, Kay Kendall, and Rachel Roberts.

Trivia: Canadian-born actor Hume Cronyn was the son of a well-known Ontario politician. At his father's insistence, young Cronyn studied law at McGill University, but had by then already decided he wanted to be an actor; he made his stage bow with the Montreal Repertory Company at 19, while still a student. After taking classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and working with regional companies in Washington, DC and Virginia, Cronyn made it to Broadway in 1934. His first important role was as the imbibing, jingle-writing hero of Three Men on a Horse, directed and co-written by George Abbott. He remained with Abbott to work in Room Service and Boy Meets Girl - not only establishing himself as a versatile stage actor but also gleaning a lifelong appreciation of strict artistic discipline from the authoritarian Mr. Abbott. Cronyn went from one taskmaster to another when he made his film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. The 32-year-old Cronyn quietly stole several scenes in the film as a fiftyish mystery-novel fanatic. Cronyn would remain beholden to Hitchcock for the rest of his career: He acted in Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) and worked several times thereafter on the director's TV series; he adapted the stage play Rope and the novel Under Capricorn for Hitchcock's filmizations; and he sprang to the late director's defense when a dubious biography of Hitchcock was published in the mid-1980s. Though well-versed in Shakespeare and Moliere on stage, Cronyn was often limited to unpleasant, weasely and sometimes sadistic characters in films; one of his nastiest portrayals was as the Hitleresque prison guard Munsey in Brute Force (1947). A somewhat less hissable Cronyn appeared in The Green Years (1946), wherein he portrayed the father of his real-life wife Jessica Tandy, who was in fact two years older than he. Cronyn had married Tandy in 1942, a union that was to last until the actress' death in 1994. They worked together often on stage (The Fourposter, The Gin Game) and in films (Batteries Not Included), and delighted in giving joint interviews where they'd confound and misdirect the interviewer. Their daughter, Tandy Cronyn, matured into a fine actress in her own right. Seemingly indefatigable despite health problems and the loss of one eye, Cronyn remained gloriously active in films, television and stage into the 1990s, encapsulating many of his experiences in his breezy autobiography A Terrible Liar.

Trivia: Italian actor Cesare Danova came to prominence in such post-war European films as La Figlia del Capitano (1947) and Don Giovanni (1955), playing the title role in the latter film. In the American-made Man Who Understood Women (1959), Danova managed to be both funny and menacing as a murderous cuckolded husband. Few of his American films took full advantage of Danova's talents, tending to cast him as a "typical" hot-blooded Mediterranean, but there have been a few rewarding assignments along the way. As Appolodorus in the budget-busting Cleopatra (1963), Danova was one of the few actors whose part wasn't cut to nothing in order to favor the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton combo. Danova was one of the stars of the TV pilot-cum-theatrical movie Chamber of Horrors (1966), and he enjoyed a season's worth of regular TV work as Actor (that was the character's name, not the designation) on the weekly Dirty Dozen rip-off Garrison's Gorillas (1967). In the '70s and '80s, Danova seemed to take turns with Anthony Quinn in portraying Onassis-like Greek tycoons and Mafia bosses; in the latter capacity Danova was hilarious as Carmine DePasto in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). In the early years of the '80s, Danova could be seen as a regular on the ABC television daytime drama Ryan's Hope. Cesare Danova died suddenly during a 1992 meeting of the Motion Picture Academy's Foreign Film Committee.

Trivia: British stage actress Pamela Brown's film appearances were sporadic but memorable; she was often cast in haughty or eccentric roles. Her notable features include impressive sloe eyes, pointy chin, a come-hither smile, and a deep resonant voice. Brown studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, then made her stage debut as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at Stratford-on-Avon in 1936, when she was 19. She played a large variety of roles for the Old Vic and made her highly successful Broadway debut in 1947 in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Brown debuted onscreen in One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942) and made on-and-off appearances in films until 1973's Lady Caroline Lamb. She won an Emmy for her work in Victoria Regina on American TV.

Trivia: Actor Kenneth Haigh received his preliminary training at that cradle of top British talent, the Central School of Speech and Drama. Haigh's first professional job was in a 1952 Irish stage production. He joined the vanguard of Britain's "angry young man" movement when he originated the role of Jimmy Porter in both the London and Broadway productions of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. He remained in the Jimmy Porter mode in most of his film appearances: exceptions included the part of Brutus in the mammoth 1963 version of Cleopatra and his hilarious uncredited cameo as a supercilious TV producer in the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964). Kenneth Haigh's television credits include the British TV series Man at the Top (1971-75), a spin-off of the 1959 film Room at the Top, and the role of Sir Richard Burton in the internationally distributed miniseries Search for the Nile (1972).

Trivia: Trained for a stage career at the Morden Council School, 14-year-old George Cole made his London stage debut in the 1939 production White Horse Inn. Cole ascended to juvenile stardom as a young evacuee in 1940's Cottage to Let, repeating the role in the 1941 film version. As an adult, Cole specialized in light, semicomic characterizations on both stage and screen. His most cherished movie roles include the mother-dominated protagonist in the "Kite" segment of Quartet (1948) and shifty salesman Flash Harry in the first two St. Trinians farces of the 1950s. He entered the household-word category as a klutzy con man in the British TV series Minder, which ran from 1979 to 1984. George Cole's other weekly TV credits include Don't Forget to Write (1977-1979), The Bounder (1982-1988), Heggerty Haggerty (1984-1985), Comrade Dad (1986), and Root Into Europe (1992). Cole continued to act into his advanced years; he died in 2015 at age 90.

Trivia: Sturdy Scots actor Andrew Keir played Prince John on the 1958 British TV series Ivanhoe and was seen in such swordfests as The Pirates of Blood River (1961) and The Viking Queen (1967). Keir's other screen assignments have included the role of Agrippa in the 1963 spectacle Cleopatra and the 1971 Hammer horror Blood From the Mummy's Tomb (1971). Keir is best known to "Fantastic Cinema" fanatics for his portrayal of Professor Quatermass in the 1967 film Quatermass and the Pit, and for his performance as Wyler in the "Doctor Who" feature Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966). Andrew Keir was most recently seen in the boisterous historical epic Rob Roy (1995).

Trivia: Saturnine character actor Martin Landau was a staff cartoonist for the New York Daily News before switching to acting. In 1955, his career got off to a promising beginning, when out of 2,000 applicants, only he and one other actor (Steve McQueen) were accepted by Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. Extremely busy in the days of live, Manhattan-based television, Landau made his cinematic mark with his second film appearance, playing James Mason's henchman in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). In 1966, Landau and his wife Barbara Bain were both cast on the TV adventure/espionage series Mission: Impossible. For three years, Landau portrayed Rollin Hand, a master of disguise with the acute ability to impersonate virtually every villain who came down the pike (banana-republic despots were a specialty). Unhappy with changes in production personnel and budget cuts, Landau and Bain left the series in 1969. Six years later, they costarred in Space: 1999 a popular syndicated sci-fi series; the performances of Landau, Bain, and third lead Barry Morse helped to gloss over the glaring gaps in continuity and logic which characterized the show's two-year run. The couple would subsequently act together several times (The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island (1981) was one of the less distinguished occasions) before their marriage dissolved.Working steadily in various projects throughout the next few decades, Landau enjoyed a career renaissance with two consecutive Oscar nominations, the first for Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), and the second for Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Landau finally won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's 1994 Ed Wood; his refusal to cut his acceptance speech short was one of the high points of the 1995 Oscar ceremony. He would continue to work over the next several years, appearing in movies like City of Ember and Mysteria, as well as on TV shows like Without a Trace and Entourage.

Trivia: British actor Roddy McDowall's father was an officer in the English merchant marine, and his mother was a would-be actress. When it came time to choose a life's calling, McDowall bowed to his mother's influence. After winning an acting prize in a school play, he was able to secure film work in Britain, beginning at age ten with 1938's Scruffy. He appeared in 16 roles of varying sizes and importance before he and his family were evacuated to the U.S. during the 1940 Battle of Britain. McDowall arrival in Hollywood coincided with the wishes of 20th Century-Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck to create a "new Freddie Bartholomew." He tested for the juvenile lead in Fox's How Green Was My Valley (1941), winning both the role and a long contract. McDowall's first adult acting assignment was as Malcolm in Orson Welles' 1948 film version of Macbeth; shortly afterward, he formed a production company with Macbeth co-star Dan O'Herlihy. McDowall left films for the most part in the 1950s, preferring TV and stage work; among his Broadway credits were No Time for Sergeants, Compulsion, (in which he co-starred with fellow former child star Dean Stockwell) and Lerner and Loewe's Camelot (as Mordred). McDowall won a 1960 Tony Award for his appearance in the short-lived production The Fighting Cock. The actor spent the better part of the early 1960s playing Octavius in the mammoth production Cleopatra, co-starring with longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor. An accomplished photographer, McDowall was honored by having his photos of Taylor and other celebrities frequently published in the leading magazines of the era. He was briefly an advising photographic editor of Harper's Bazaar, and in 1966 published the first of several collections of his camerawork, Double Exposure. McDowall's most frequent assignments between 1968 and 1975 found him in elaborate simian makeup as Cornelius in the Planet of the Apes theatrical films and TV series. Still accepting the occasional guest-star film role and theatrical assignment into the 1990s, McDowall towards the end of his life was most active in the administrative end of show business, serving on the executive boards of the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A lifelong movie collector (a hobby which once nearly got him arrested by the FBI), McDowall has also worked diligently with the National Film Preservation Board. In August, 1998, he was elected president of the Academy Foundation. One of Hollywood's last links to its golden age and much-loved by old and new stars alike -- McDowell was famed for his kindness, generosity and loyalty (friends could tell McDowall any secret and be sure of its safety) -- McDowall's announcement that he was suffering from terminal cancer a few weeks before he died rocked the film community, and many visited the ailing actor in his Studio City home. Shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer, McDowall had provided the voiceover for Disney/Pixar's animated feature A Bug's Life. A few days prior to McDowall's passing, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named its photo archive after him.

Trivia: Trained at the Northern Theatre School in Bradford, Bristol-born Robert Stephens made his professional bow with the Caryl Jenner Mobile Theatre. Stephens first appeared on the London stage in a 1956 production of The Crucible. He graduated to stardom in the title role of the 1958 production Epitaph for George Dillon, a little-known but entertaining work that remains one of his favorites. In 1963, Stephens joined the newly formed National Theatre Company, appearing as Horatio in the organization's inaugural production of Hamlet; four years later, Stephens was appointed the National Theatre's associate director. In films from 1960, Stephens' better-known movie roles include the title character in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1969) and Teddy Lloyd in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), which starred the actor's then-wife Maggie Smith. Robert Stephens was honored with knighthood in 1994.

Trivia: A glamorous actress whose beauty and sophistication has only increased as the years pass, London-born screen star Francesca Annis is well known to cinema lovers for her roles in such films as Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971) and David Lynch's Dune (1984). Though she would later become better known to gossip column readers for her May-September romance with actor Ralph Fiennes following an appearance opposite the intense actor in the Broadway version of Hamlet, Annis has continued to impress both on stage and screen thanks to numerous challenging roles.Though a convent education initially steered her toward life as a nun, studies in acting and dance gradually led her into the entertainment industry until she was cast in the lead of the 1958 film The Cat Gang at age 14. The featured child actor in the tale of a group of children who stumble across a smuggling ring while spending long days on the local harbor, Annis made a distinct impression on audiences and was soon advancing in such films as No Kidding (1960) and His and Hers (1961). A role in the 1963 film Cleopatra gained the young starlet international attention, and shortly after the family film Flipper's New Adventure, Annis was cast as Estella in the 1967 U.K. television series Great Expectations. If audiences had not previously recognized her talent by this point, her remarkably powerful performance in Roman Polanski's 1971 feature film Macbeth would be hard to deny. After continuing to gain credit on stage and screen throughout the 1970s, roles in the following decade's Dune, Krull (1983), and Under the Cherry Moon (1986) culminated with an impressive performance as Jacqueline Kennedy in the 1988 made-for-television feature Onassis: The Richest Man in the World.Perhaps her most well-known performance to date due to the romantic scandal that resulted from it, her part in the 1995 Broadway production of Hamlet found both her and co-star Ralph Fiennes abandoning their longtime partners to embark on a heated romance (after playing mother and son Gertrude and Hamlet in the play). Though the scandal caused quite a stir, her memorable (and BAFTA-nominated) performance in 1998's Reckless steered gossip hounds back toward recognizing her remarkable skills as an actress. In 1999 Annis would once again remind the public of her affairs, though, when she appeared opposite Fiennes in the film Onegin, a cinematic adaptation of a 19th century Russian novel. In addition to appearing in such efforts as Deceit (2000) and Copenhagen (2002) in the new millennium, Annis continued her many impressive on-stage performances with an appearance in the West End production of Noël Coward's The Vortex.

Trivia: Armenian actor Gregoire Aslan was born in either Switzerland or Istanbul, depending upon which source one believes. He made his professional debut at 18 as a vocalist and drummer with a Paris dance band, then launched an acting career under the name of Koko Aslan. Shifting from comic to villainous parts with ease, Aslan was one of British filmdom's favorite nondescript foreigners, playing Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, and Middle Easterners with equal finesse. Gregoire Aslan's more prominent screen roles included gangster boss Ducas in Joe MacBeth (1956), Herod in King of Kings (1961), and Porthinos in Cleopatra (1963).

Trivia: Tall, grim-faced British actor Martin Benson worked concurrently on stage and in films throughout the late 1940s. Benson's piercing eyes and steely voice were essential equipment in costume dramas and adventure films well into the 1980s. He is most familiar to American audiences for his portrayal of the dour Kralahome in The King and I (1956) and his interpretation of Mr. Solo, the ill-tempered American gangster with a "pressing engagement," in Goldfinger (1964). For 39 weeks in 1957, Martin Benson appeared as the Duke de Medici on the weekly Renaissance-based TV adventure series Sword of Freedom.

Trivia: Whenever actor Ed Platt blew one of his lines in his role of "The Chief" in the TV comedy series Get Smart, star Don Adams would cry out "Is John Doucette available?" Adams was kidding, of course, but he was not alone in his high regard for the skill and versatility of the deep-voiced, granite-featured Doucette. In films on a regular basis since 1947 (he'd made his official movie debut in 1943's Two Tickets to London), Doucette was usually cast in roles calling for bad-tempered menace, but was also adept at dispensing dignity and authority. He was equally at home with the archaic dialogue of Julius Caesar (1953) and Cleopatra (1963) as he was with the 20th-century military patois of 1970's Patton, in which he played General Truscott. John Doucette's many TV credits include a season on the syndicated MacDonald Carey vehicle Lock-Up (1959), and the role of Captain Andrews on The Partners (1971), starring Doucette's old friend and admirer Don Adams.

Trivia: A graduate of Britain's Brighton College, Michael Hordern entered the workaday world as a schoolteacher. Engaging in amateur theatricals in his off-hours, Hordern turned pro in 1937, making his film debut two years later. After serving in the Royal Navy from 1940 to 1945, Hordern returned to show business, matriculating into one of England's most delightful and prolific character actors. His extensive stage work included two Shakespearean roles that may as well have been for him: King Lear and The Tempest's Prospero. In films, Hordern appeared as Marley's Ghost in the 1951 Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol (1951), Demosthenes in Alexander the Great (1956), Cicero in Cleopatra (1963), Baptista in Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew (1967), Thomas Boleyn in Anne of a Thousand Days (1968), and Brownlow in the 1982 TV adaptation of Oliver Twist. Other significant movie credits include the lascivious Senex (he's the one who introduces the song "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid") in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), a pathetic Kim Philby type in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1967), theatre critic George Maxwell (who has his heart cut out by looney actor Vincent Price) in Theatre of Blood (1973), and what many consider his finest film assignment, the dissipated, disillusioned journalist in England Made Me (1983). He also served as offscreen narrator for Barry Lyndon (1976) and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). Michael Hordern was knighted in 1983, and a decade later published his autobiography, A World Elsewhere.

Trivia: Born in the Bronx, NY, to an upper-middle-class Irish family, Carroll O'Connor's father was a well-connected attorney and his mother was a school teacher. The family lived well, in the Forest Hills section of Queens, until O'Connor's father ran afoul of the law and was convicted of fraud. Despite this setback in the family's well-being, O'Connor managed to attend college and considered a career as a sportswriter, but those aspirations were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. Rejected by the United States Navy, he enrolled instead in the Merchant Marine Academy, but he later abandoned that pursuit, instead becoming a merchant seaman. After the war, O'Connor considered journalism as a career, but a trip to Dublin in 1950 changed the course of his life, as he discovered the acting profession. While attending college in Dublin, he began appearing in productions of the Gate Theater and also at the Edinburgh Festival, where he played Shakespearean roles. Returning to New York in 1954, he and his wife worked as substitute schoolteachers while he looked for acting work, which he found, after a long dry spell in which he despaired of ever getting a break, in Burgess Meredith's production of James Joyce's Ulysses. O'Connor got a role in which he received favorable notice from the critics, and that, in turn, led to his breakthrough part, as a bullying, greedy studio boss in an off-Broadway production of The Big Knife. O'Connor jumped next to television, at the very tail-end of the era of live TV drama in New York. Beginning in 1960 with his portrayal of the prosecutor in the Armstrong Circle Theater production of The Sacco-Vanzetti Story, he established himself on the small screen as a good, reliable character actor, who was able to melt into any role with which he was presented. Over the next decade, O'Connor worked in everything from Westerns to science fiction. He played taciturn landowners, likable aliens, enemy agents (on The Man From U.N.C.L.E., in "The Green Opal Affair"), and other character roles with equal aplomb. He also appeared in several unsold television pilots during the 1960s, including The Insider with David Janssen, and Luxury Liner starring Rory Calhoun, playing character roles; and he did a pilot of his own, Walk in the Night -- directed and co-written by Robert Altman -- in which he co-starred with Andrew Duggan. O'Connor's movie career followed quickly from his television debut, starting with appearances in three dramatic films (most notably Lonely Are the Brave) in 1961. He was one of many actors who managed to get "lost" in the sprawling 20th Century Fox production of Cleopatra, but he fared better two years later in Otto Preminger's epic-length World War II drama In Harm's Way. O'Connor, playing Commander Burke, was very visible in his handful of scenes with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, and Preminger thought enough of the actor to mention him by name along with the other stars in the film's trailer. He had major supporting roles, serious and comedic, respectively, in such high-profile movies as Hawaii and What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?, of which the latter proved critical to his subsequent career. O'Connor had been in demand for television roles since the early '60s. In an episode of The Outer Limits, he revealed his flexibility by playing a somewhat befuddled alien investigator from Mars, masquerading as a pawnshop owner in a seedy section of New York, and jumping from a slightly affected, carefully pronounced diction in one line to a working-class dialect and manner in the same shot (for benefit of a human onlooker in the scene). He had also given a very warm, memorable, and touching performance in "Long Live the King," an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and producer Irwin Allen had wanted O'Connor for the role of Dr. Smith on Lost in Space early in the character's conception, when the Smith figure was thoroughly villainous. Although he didn't get the part of Dr. Smith, O'Connor later appeared in "The Lost Patrol" episode of Allen's science fiction series The Time Tunnel. He had also been up for the role of the Skipper in Sherwood Schwartz's series Gilligan's Island, a role that was finally won by Alan Hale Jr. At the end of the 1960s, while O'Connor was busying himself in movies ranging from Westerns to crime films and mysteries, including Warning Shot, Waterhole No. 3, Marlowe, and For Love of Ivy, and distinguishing himself in all of them, CBS began preparing a television series called Those Were the Days. Adapted from a British series, it dealt life from the point-of-view of Archie Bunker, a fed-up, bigoted working-class resident of New York's outer borough of Queens. The network had tried for a big name, approaching Mickey Rooney to play the part, but he turned it down, and then co-producer Bud Yorkin remembered O'Connor's blustery comic performance as General Bolt in What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? O'Connor was offered the role and accepted. He was as busy as ever with movie work, including his portrayal of a memorably boisterous and comical general in Kelly's Heroes, which was shot in Europe in 1970, and the series -- now called All in the Family -- didn't seem a likely or essential prospect for success. Within weeks of All in the Family's premiere in January of 1971, however, O'Connor had become one of the most recognizable and popular leading men on television. O'Connor had never played more than major supporting roles in movies, so there were no feature films to license starring the new pop culture hero; but CBS did pull Walk in the Night, the unsold pilot from three years earlier, starring O'Connor as a detective in a race against time to save a man's life, and aired it with the kind of fanfare normally reserved for major feature films. From 1971 on, O'Connor never looked back: He got star billing the next year in the network television production Of Thee I Sing (1972), and got his first chance to star in a feature film in Law and Disorder, in 1974. O'Connor would play nothing but leads from then on, and command a leading man's salary, a matter that led to a contractual dispute in 1974 that resulted in the actor absenting himself from All in the Family for a series of shows before it was resolved. From then on, entire productions, such as the TV-movie adaptation of The Last Hurrah (1977), would be built around him. He also returned to the theater periodically with far less success, starring in and directing a handful of theatrical productions that seldom got good notices or lingered long on-stage. O'Connor earned four Emmy awards as Archie Bunker, a recognition of the convincing mixture of warmth and anger that he brought to the character, and such was his popularity in the role, that he was able to parlay it into a spin-off series for four seasons called Archie Bunker's Place. It seemed for a time in the 1980s that O'Connor would be forever locked into the role, until 1987 when he got the part of laconic small-town Southern police chief Bill Gillespie in the television series In the Heat of the Night. Taking over a part originated on screen by Rod Steiger, O'Connor rebuilt the character from the ground up, making Gillespie a strong-willed, yet soft-spoken, flawed, sometimes crude, even occasionally bigoted man who was learning to be better. His work in the series earned O'Connor an additional Emmy, and he eventually took over control of the production, transforming In the Heat of the Night from a routine cop show into one of the better dramatic series of its era, with police work only incidental to its content (and hardly a car chase in sight), in a run lasting through 1994.

Trivia: British character actor Michael Gwynn first appeared onscreen in the '50s.

Trivia: Yale grad John Hoyt had been a history instructor, acting teacher and nightclub comedian before linking up with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre in 1937. He remained with Welles until he joined the Army in 1945. After the war, the grey-haired, deadly-eyed Hoyt built up a screen reputation as one of most hissable "heavies" around, notably as the notorious political weathervane Talleyrand in Desiree (1954). He was a bit kinder onscreen as the Prophet Elijah in Sins of Jezebel. Nearly always associated with mainstream films, Hoyt surprised many of his professional friends when he agreed to co-star in the softcore porn spoof Flesh Gordon; those closest to him, however, knew that Hoyt had been a bit of a Bohemian all his life, especially during his frequent nudist colony vacations. TV fans of the '80s generation will remember John Hoyt as Grandpa Stanley Kanisky on the TV sitcom Gimme a Break; those with longer memories might recall that Hoyt played the doctor who told Ben Gazzara that he had only two years to live on the pilot for the 1960s TV series Run For Your Life. Hoyt also holds a footnote in Star Trek history playing the doctor in the first pilot episode, "The Cage."

Trivia: Anglo-Indian character actor, onscreen from the '50s; he often plays Arabs and Asians.

Trivia: British supporting and occasional leading actress Gwen Watford made her feature film debut as Lady Usher in The Fall of the House of Usher (1952) and went on to have a sporadic film career as her main focus was stage and television work. She was named the Woman of the Year on British television.

Trivia: After studying at RADA, London-born Douglas Wilmer made his 1945 stage debut in repertory at Rugby. One year later, Wilmer made his first London theatrical appearance. Though most closely associated with classical roles, he scored one of his biggest stage successes in a contemporary work, One Way Pendulum (1959). Wilmer's film work includes the role of Nayland Smith in two of Christopher Lee's Fu Manchu films. He also repeated his British-TV characterization of Sherlock Holmes in Gene Wilder's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1977). In addition, Douglas Wilmer was seen in the Ray Harryhausen epics Jason and the Argonauts (1963, as Pelius) and Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1979, as the Vizier); his last film to date was the 1983 Bond flick Octopussy.

Trivia: A graduate of the University of Vienna and the Vienna State Academy of Dramatic Art, Austrian-born Herbert Berghof spent the greater portion of his theatrical career in the United States. He was seen in such stage productions as The Andersonville Trial and In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer; his rare film appearances include Five Fingers (1952) and Cleopatra (1963). Berghof is better known for his accomplishments as a director and acting teacher. His many directorial credits include the first New York staging of Beckett's Waiting for Godot, starring Bert Lahr and E.G. Marshall, in 1956. Among Herbert Berghof's acting students were such illustrious alumni as Geraldine Page, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Anne Bancroft and Matthew Broderick.

Trivia: Scottish actor Finlay Currie's pre-theatrical occupations included choirmaster and organist. He entered show business at the turn of the century as a musical performer, billed as "Harry Calvo, the double-voiced vocalist." For ten years, Currie toured Australia as principal comedian in Sir Benjamin Fuller's acting troupe. He returned to the London stage in 1930, where over the next three decades he would appear in such hits as The Last Mile and Death of a Salesman. In films from 1932, Currie's most memorable screen role was as the surly convict Magwitch in Great Expectations (1946). He spent much of the early 1950s in Hollywood, playing such forceful character roles as St. Peter in Quo Vadis (1951) and the mysterious Mr. Shunderson in People Will Talk (1951). Still in harness into the mid-1960s, Finlay Currie was at one juncture the oldest working actor in Great Britain.

Trivia: Dancer/model Jean Marsh appeared in her first film, Tales of Hoffman, at the age of 17. For those out there who associate Marsh with prim, severe roles, it will probably come as a mild surprise to discover that she made her first American TV appearance as a sexy, sloe-eyed native girl in a Hallmark Hall of Fame production of The Moon and Sixpence. Laboring in comparative obscurity throughout the 1960s (she was uncredited for her appearance as Marc Antony's wife Octavia in 1963's Cleopatra), Marsh began attracting attention in the 1970s in roles calling for tight-lipped outrage (Hitchcock's 1972 Frenzy) or glazed-eyed lunacy (Mrs. Rochester in the 1971 TV movie version of Jane Eyre). After nearly 20 years in the business, Marsh was voted "Most Outstanding New Actress of 1972" by a British film organization. She achieved international stardom (and won an Emmy) as Rose the maid in Upstairs Downstairs, a multipart British television series co-created by Marsh and actress Eileen Atkins. Subsequent TV-series work included the part of Roz Keith on the American sitcom 9 to 5 and the 1990s British TVer The House of Eliott, which like Upstairs Downstairs sprang largely from Marsh's personal creative input. Jean Marsh was at one time married to Dr. Who star Jon Pertwee.

Trivia: Prior to his stage work with the Old Vic and other such venerable British theatrical institutions, Jeremy Kemp was trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Attaining nationwide popularity on the long-running BBC crime series Z Cars, Kemp quit the series cold in 1965 to concentrate on films. Those film historians who've summed up Kemp's post-Z Cars TV appearances as "sporadic" evidently haven't seen his small-screen work in such miniseries as Winds of War and its sequel War and Remembrance (he played German general Armin Von Roon in both); he also played Cornwall in Sir Laurence Olivier's 1983 television adaptation of King Lear, and was featured in the internationally produced historical multiparters George Washington (1985) and Peter the Great (1986). Exuding class and professionalism from every pore, Kemp was afforded ample screen time as Sir John Delaney in the 1994 box-office hit Four Weddings and a Funeral. Evidently, Jeremy Kemp expends all his energy on his acting: when asked in 1981 to list his favorite off-stage hobbies, he wrote "Bad sports and pure idleness."