Trivia: After rising to fame in a series of hit Woody Allen comedies, Diane Keaton went on to enjoy a successful film career both as an actress and as a director. Born Diane Hall on January 5, 1946, in Los Angeles, she studied acting at Manhattan's Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater and in 1968 understudied in Hair. On Broadway she met actor/director Allen and appeared in his 1969 stage hit Play It Again, Sam. In 1970, Keaton made her film debut in the comedy Lovers and Other Strangers and rose to fame as the paramour of Al Pacino's Michael Corleone in the 1972 blockbuster The Godfather. That same year, she and Allen -- with whom Keaton had become romantically involved offscreen -- reprised Play It Again, Sam for the cameras, and in 1973 he directed her in Sleeper. The Godfather Part II followed, as did Allen's Love and Death. All of these films enjoyed great success, and Keaton stood on the verge of becoming a major star; however, when her next two pictures -- 1976's I Will, I Will for Now and Harry and Walter Go to New York -- both flopped, she returned to the stage to star in The Primary English Class.In 1977, Allen released his fourth film with Keaton, Annie Hall. A clearly autobiographical portrait of the couple's real-life romance, it was a landmark, bittersweet, soul-searching tale which brought a new level of sophistication to comedy in films. Not only did the film itself win an Academy Award for Best Picture, but Keaton garnered Best Actress honors. That same year, she also headlined the controversial drama Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Two more films with Allen, 1978's Bergmanesque Interiors and the 1979 masterpiece Manhattan followed; however, when the couple separated, Keaton began a romance with Warren Beatty, with whom she co-starred in the 1981 epic Reds; she earned a Best Actress nomination for her work in Beatty's film. Continuing to pursue more dramatic projects, she next co-starred in 1982's Shoot the Moon, followed by a pair of box-office disappointments, The Little Drummer Girl and Mrs. Soffel. The 1986 Crimes of the Heart was a minor success, and a year later she made her directorial debut with the documentary Heaven. Keaton's next starring role in the domestic comedy Baby Boom (1987) was a smash, and after close to a decade apart, she and Allen reunited for Radio Days, in which she briefly appeared as a singer. Upon starring in 1988's disappointing The Good Mother, she began splitting her time between acting and directing. In between appearing in films including 1990's The Godfather Part III, 1991's hit Father of the Bride, and 1992's telefilm Running Mates, she helmed music videos, afterschool specials (1990's The Girl with the Crazy Brother), and TV features (1991's Wildflower). She even directed an episode of the David Lynch cult favorite Twin Peaks. After stepping in for Mia Farrow in Allen's 1993 picture Manhattan Murder Mystery, Keaton essayed the title role in the 1994 TV biopic Amelia Earhart: the Final Flight and in 1995 made her feature-length directorial debut with the quirky drama Unstrung Heroes. After co-starring with Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn in the 1996 comedy smash The First Wives Club, she earned another Oscar nomination for her work in Marvin's Room. In 1998, Keaton starred in The Only Thrill and followed that in 1999 with The Other Sister. She subsequently stepped into another familial role in 2000's Hanging Up with Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow. Despite participating amongst a star-studded cast including veterans Goldie Hawn, Garry Shandling, Charlton Heston, and Warren Beatty, 2001's Town & Country was not particularly well-received among audiences or critics. In 2003, Keaton played Jack Nicholson's love interest in director Nancy Meyers's Something's Gotta Give (for which she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination) and executive produced director Gus Van Sant's avant-garde Elephant), which won Best Director and Golden Palm awards at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. Keaton would spend the ensuing years appearing frequently on screen in films like Because I Said So, Mad Money, and Darling Companion.

Trivia: The fragile, luminous beauty of actress Jessica Lange belies the inner strength and vitality she exhibits in the characters she portrays. Though not among Hollywood's most high-profile stars, she became one of its most respected dramatic actresses. For Lange, however, the road to respect was a long one, due in large part to her disastrous debut in the lavish Dino de Laurentiis stinker King Kong.Lange had a peripatetic childhood. Born a traveling salesman's daughter in Cloquet, MN, in 1949, she moved at least 18 times while growing up. She studied art for two years at the University of Minnesota before running off to Paris, where she studied mime and danced in the chorus of the Opera Comique. She later moved to New York, where she worked as a waitress and model until she was chosen to play the part of a giant gorilla's romantic obsession in the 1976 remake of King Kong. Unfortunately, Lange's acting abilities at the time were not all that remarkable, and she was roundly ridiculed for her performance. It would be three years before she appeared in another film. She made good use of that time, however, studying drama and networking with industry figures. She was romantically involved with choreographer/director Bob Fosse when he cast her as the angel of death in All That Jazz (1979). She next played a supporting role in How to Beat the High Co$t of Living (1980), but did not break through into major stardom until she was cast opposite Jack Nicholson in Bob Rafelson's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). It was in this film that she first displayed the dangerous sexuality and galvanizing charisma that would lead pooh-poohing critics to recant their earlier assessment that Lange was all looks and no talent.The following year marked a turning point in Lange's career. After much lobbying with numerous directors, she finally employed novice Graeme Clifford for Frances, her self-produced adaptation of former actress Frances Farmer's autobiography, Will There Ever Be a Morning? Lange played the title role in the wrenching drama, and became so caught up in the many traumas of Farmer's tragic life (something that was allegedly complicated by Lange's personal tragedies during her own youth), that she nearly suffered a breakdown. Despite the trials of playing the character, Lange later considered it her favorite role. On a more positive note, while shooting the film, she also met actor/playwright Sam Shepard, the man who would father two of her three children and become her long-term lover. (She previously had a daughter by dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov.)Later in 1982, Lange changed gears and appeared as the beautiful object of Dustin Hoffman's obsession in Tootsie. Though she played the only non-comic role in the romantic comedy, she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She also netted a Best Actress nod for Frances, making her the first actress to receive two Academy Award nominations in a single year. Over the next decade, Lange received Best Actress nominations three more times (for Country, Sweet Dreams -- in which Lange, who admits she can't sing, played country music heroine Patsy Cline -- and The Music Box) before finally winning the award for playing a mentally unstable military wife in Blue Sky (1994). If Lange's film appearances sometimes seemed sporadic, it was due to her willingness to take time off to be with her family, as well as a desire to work on the stage. In 1991, she starred as Blanche Dubois opposite Alec Baldwin in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Although her stage debut received mixed reviews, Lange later turned in a more finely rendered Blanche in the 1995 TV version of the play, and reprised her role again for its 1996 London production. Lange also appeared in two films in 1995, notably Rob Roy with Liam Neeson. Two years later, she starred with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Jason Robards Jr. in Jocelyn Moorehouse's moderately well-received adaptation of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. She then appeared in another star-studded affair alongside Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, and Alan Cumming in Titus, Julie Taymor's 1999 rendering of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.Lange disappeared from screens in the early 2000s (partly due to the shelving of Prozac Nation), but came back with three films in 2003. She played Albert Finney's wife in Tim Burton's Big Fish, the wife of a man who undergoes a sex change in Normal, and she was one of the famous people in the enigmatic Bob Dylan movie Masked and Anonymous. She also starred with Sam Shepard in Wim Wenders' 2004 film Don't Come Knockin'. Lange co-starred with Bill Murray and Frances Conroy in 2005's psychological drama Broken Flower in the role of a pet analyst whose outward eccentricity belies a deep inner strength. In 2011, Lange won praise from fans and critics alike for her portrait of Constance, a steely, yet deeply damaged widow in the FX hit American Horror Story. She reprised the role for the show's 2nd season in 2012.

Trivia: Strawberry blonde, freckle-faced, and willowy, Sissy Spacek was among the most popular female stars of the late '70s and '80s. The Texas born and bred actress originally aspired to become a singer, and, after heading east to New York, got her start singing at coffee houses in Greenwich Village. Billing herself as "Rainbo," Spacek also cut a single, "Johnny, You Went Too Far This Time." On the side, she earned money by recording backup vocals on television commercials.When the acting bug bit, Spacek enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatrical Institute. While she technically made her film debut as an extra in Andy Warhol's Trash (1971), her official debut is listed as Michael Ritchie's Prime Cut (1972). The actress' first crack at stardom came in 1973, when she played a teenage accomplice to ruthless cross-country killer Martin Sheen in Terrence Malick's disturbing Badlands. The role earned her critical acclaim, as did her portrayal of a sweet teen who becomes a violent radical in the made-for-television movie Katherine (1975).Spacek's true breakthrough came when she played a troubled, shy teenager who discovers that she has telekinetic powers and uses them to get bloody revenge upon her cruel schoolmates and mother in Brian De Palma's chilling adaptation of Stephen King's novel Carrie (1976). Her work in the film earned her a Best Actress nomination, as well as permanent cult status. She once again experimented with emotional instability in Robert Altman's Three Women the following year, and then got to show off her singing abilities playing Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter in 1980. Her portrayal of Lynn became one of Spacek's best-known roles, and it earned her an Oscar for Best Actress.In 1981, Spacek starred in Raggedy Man, which was directed by her husband, Jack Fisk. Her career remained in high gear through the mid-'80s with such memorable turns as her Oscar-nominated work in Missing (1982) and The River (1984), but after 1986, when she was again nominated for an Oscar for her work in Crimes of the Heart, Spacek partially withdrew from acting to concentrate on raising kids. Throughout the 1990s, she occasionally returned to the big screen, lending her talents to such features as JFK (1991), The Grass Harp (1996), and Affliction (1998). In 1999, she turned in memorable performances playing Brendan Fraser's mother in Blast From the Past and Richard Farnsworth's speech-impaired daughter in David Lynch's The Straight Story. In 2001 the quietly intense actress shined once again in director Todd Field's critically praised In the Bedroom. Suffering from severe trauma and depression after her son is viciously murdered, Spacek's brooding and sympathetic performance in Bedroom found the actress taking home a Golden Globe for Best Actress and earning an Oscar nod in the same category.She continued to work steadily in projects such as the drama North Country, the comedy Hot Rod, Four Christmases, and Get Low. In 2010 she joined the cast of the HBO series Big Love, and the next year she had a key role in the Oscar-nominated drama The Help, resulting in one of the biggest commercial hits of her illustrious career.

Trivia: Born in Arkansas and schooled in Missouri, actress Tess Harper worked hard to shed her Southern accent. Nevertheless, some of her best movies have been set in the American South. Her film breakthrough came in 1983 opposite Robert Duvall in Bruce Beresford's Tender Mercies. As compassionate Rosa Lee, she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. After a few TV movies, miniseries, and feature films, she earned an Oscar nomination for her role of cousin Chick in the comedy drama Crimes of the Heart. Also directed by Beresford, the film was based on the play by Beth Henley and starred Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, and Sissy Spacek. In the late '80s, other comedy roles followed in Beresford's Her Alibi and Elaine May's Ishtar. Harper began the next decade with a return to her Southern-style roots. In 1990, she starred in the Southern Gothic black comedy Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got the Will? as a greedy daughter fighting for her family fortune. In the drama My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, she was a sister of a rodeo rider. The actress appeared opposite Sam Waterston in Robert Mulligan's coming-of-age drama The Man in the Moon, also starring fellow Southerner Reese Witherspoon and set in small-town Louisiana. In 1992, Harper played an alcoholic mom in the drama Home Fires Burning, set in Pocohantas, VA. She switched to television for most of the '90s, including based-on-a-true-story dramas like Willing to Kill: The Texas Cheerleader Story. The TV movie Christy led to a regular role on the CBS dramatic series of the same name, starring Kellie Martin as a schoolteacher in rural Tennessee. In 2000, Harper narrated the CBS TV movie Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder, as the older Laura Ingalls Wilder herself.

Trivia: A Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (for 1979's Buried Child), an Oscar-nominated actor, and a director and screenwriter to boot, multi-talented Sam Shepard has made a career of plumbing the darker depths of middle-American rural sensibilities and Western myths. The son of a military man, he was born Samuel Shepard Rogers on November 3, 1943, in Fort Sheridan, IL. Following a peripatetic childhood, part of which was spent on a farm, Shepard left home in late adolescence to move to New York City, where by the age of 20, he already had two plays produced. As a playwright, Shepard went on to win a number of Obies for such dramas as Curse of the Starving Class (1977), which he made into a film in 1994, and True West (aired on PBS in 1986). As an actor, the lanky and handsome Shepard made his feature film debut with a small role in Bronco Bullfrog (1969) and didn't resurface again until Bob Dylan's disastrous Renaldo and Clara (1978). The film followed Shepard's residence in London during the early '70s, where he worked on-stage as an actor and director when not playing drums for his band, The Holy Modal Rounders, which had performed as part of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. Also in 1978, Shepard made a big impression playing a wealthy landowner in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, but it was not until he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for playing astronaut Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983) that he became a well-known actor. Following this success, he went on to specialize in playing drifters, cowboys, con artists, and eccentric characters with only the occasional leading role. Some of his more notable work included Paris, Texas (1984), which he also wrote; Fool For Love (1985), which was adapted from his play of the same name; Baby Boom (1987), Steel Magnolias (1989), and The Pelican Brief (1993). In addition to acting and writing, Shepard has also directed: in 1988, he made his debut with Far North, a film he wrote especially for his off-screen leading lady, Jessica Lange, with whom he has acted in Frances (1982), Country (1984), and Crimes of the Heart (1986).In 1999, Shepard could be seen on both the big and small screen. He appeared in Snow Falling on Cedars and Dash and Lilly, a made-for-TV movie for which he won an Emmy nomination in the role of the titular Dashiell Hammett. In addition, he also lent his writing skills to Simpatico, a Nick Nolte vehicle about friendship and loss adapted from Shepard's play of the same name.As the new decade began, he could be seen as the ghost in a modern-set Hamlet. He appeared in Black Hawk Down, as well as in Sean Penn's The Pledge. His play True West enjoyed a highly successful revival starring John C. Riley and Philip Seymour Hoffman as feuding brothers, which was notable because the actors traded parts every third performance. In 2004 he appeared in the popular romantic drama The Notebook, and wrote Don't Come Knocking the next year. He was the legendary outlaw Frank James in 2007's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He was cast as Valerie Plame's father in Fair Game, and portrayed a dog-loving sheriff in Lawrnece Kasdan's Darling Companion.

Trivia: Though hardly the easiest actor in the world to properly cast, Hurd Hatfield can claim at least two unforgettable film portrayals. Born in New York and educated at Columbia University, Hatfield was trained at England's Chekhov Drama School (Michael Chekhov, not Anton) and made his stage debut in London. He was personally selected by eccentric filmmaker Albert Lewin to play the title role in the 1945 movie version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. It was an astonishing performance, one that proved virtually untoppable for Hatfield; nothing he would do in his sporadic film appearances of the 1940s and 1950s came close to this personal triumph. After several years on stage, Hatfield was cast as Pontius Pilate in Nicholas Ray's filmization of The King of Kings (1961) -- another brilliant, matchless characterization. Perceived as a "cold fish" in his leading-man days, Hatfield was able to use his sang-froid to his advantage in such roles as Paul Bern in Harlow (the 1965 Carol Lynley version) and the middle-aged sex deviate in The Boston Strangler (1968). The best of Hurd Hatfield's most recent screen appearances was his portrayal of an inconvenient and troublesome grandparent in Crimes of the Heart (1986).

Trivia: Supporting actor Carroll has worked on stage and in television and has been on screen from the '80s.

Trivia: Tom Mason has been showing up in films and (especially) TV since the late 1970s. He played Archie to Thayer David's Nero Wolfe in a 1979 TV pilot, and starred as Tim "Freebie" Walker in the 1980 TV version of Freebie and the Bean. His subsequent weekly-TV credits include the roles of Jim Daley in Two Marriages, Sergeant McKay in Our Family Honor (1985), Mike Brennan in Jack and Myke (1986), and, most recently, restaurant manager Joe Mangus in the Fox Network's "succes d'estime" Party of Five (1995- ). Either by accident or design, Mason has shown up in quite a few "torn from today's headlines" TV movies: A Murderous Affair: The Carolyn Warmus Story, Calendar Girl, Cop, Killer?: The Bambi Bembenek Story, The Amy Fisher Story, etc. Once in a while, Tom Mason has been able to tear himself away from his busy TV schedule to accept a role in a theatrical film, notably President Douglas in 1994's The Puppet Masters. Tom Mason should not be confused with the "Tom Mason" who served as associate producer for the infamous Edward D. Wood Jr. in the 1950s.