Trivia: Muscular leading man Ed Nelson started out as a member of quickie-filmmaker Roger Corman's stock company, appearing in such drive-in fodder as Hot Rod Girl (1956), Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) and Cry Baby Killer. In these and other low-budgeters of the late 1950s, Nelson not only starred, but doubled on the technical crew: he was one of several production assistants portraying the title crustacean in The Attack of the Crab Monsters (1956), and designed and operated the parasite props in 1958's The Brain Eaters, which he also produced. Eventually outgrowing such things, Nelson rose to TV stardom as Dr. Michael Rossi on the prime time soap opera Peyton Place, which ran from 1964 through 1969. He later starred as Ward Fuller on The Silent Force (1970) and as Dr. Michael Wise in Doctor's Private Lives (1979). In 1969, Nelson hosted a daily, syndicated talk show, which he was ultimately forced to give up when he decided to enter politics ("conflict of interests" and "equal time" were still considerations back then). He played President Truman several times, including the 1980 TV movie Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb, in the 1992 Brooke Shields flick Brenda Starr and onstage in Give 'Em Hell, Harry. Nelson died in 2014 at age 85.

Trivia: Hawaii-born leading man James Shigeta made his first film appearance in 1959. Generally cast as everything but Hawaiian--Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan--Shigeta alternated between heroes and villains, depending on the requirements of the script (e.g. whether or not the plot is set during World War II). He briefly became a fan-magazine heartthrob when he played the romantic lead in the 1961 filmization of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song and had a memorable supporting role as a Nakatomi executive in Die Hard (1988). Though he was never a television series regular, he frequently popped up as a TV guest star. His final film role was 2009's The People I've Slept With. Shigeta died in 2014 at age 81.

Trivia: Dour, lantern-jawed character actor John Anderson attended the University of Iowa before inaugurating his performing career on a Mississippi showboat. After serving in the Coast Guard during World War II, Anderson made his Broadway bow, then first appeared on screen in 1952's The Crimson Pirate. The actor proved indispensable to screenwriters trafficking in such stock characters as The Vengeful Gunslinger, The Inbred Hillbilly Patriarch, The Scripture-Spouting Zealot and The Rigid Authority Figure. Anderson's many screen assignments included used-car huckster California Charlie in Psycho (1960), the implicitly incestuous Elder Hammond in Ride the High Country (1962), the title character in The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977) and Caiaphas in In Search of Historic Jesus (1980). A dead ringer for 1920s baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Anderson portrayed that uncompromising gentleman twice, in 1988's Eight Men Out and the 1991 TV biopic Babe Ruth. A veteran of 500 TV appearances (including four guest stints on The Twilight Zone), John Anderson was seen as FDR in the 1978 miniseries Backstairs in the White House, and on a regular basis as Michael Spencer Hudson in the daytime drama Another World, Virgil Earp in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955-61) and the leading man's flinty father in MacGiver (1985-92).

Trivia: For about 20 years from the mid-'50s until the mid-'70s, David Frankham was one of the most visible villains and second male leads on television -- and one of the more interesting British actors working in American horror and science fiction movies. Born in Kent, England, in 1926, Frankham studied architecture and served in the Far East as an army draftee for three years in the late '40s. It was while posted in Malaya that he won a contest in which the prize included a brief stint on radio as an announcer; he proved a natural at the microphone and, after an apprenticeship on Radio Malaya, landed a job with the BBC after returning to civilian life. By age 25, he was back in England making a comfortable living as an announcer, news reader, and radio talk-show host; but he also wanted to try his hand at acting and moved to the U.S. in 1955. Frankham landed a role on an NBC drama a few weeks after his arrival, and spent the next few years doing lots of television work, including live dramatic anthology shows and appearances on filmed syndicated series such as Ziv TV's Men Into Space. Frankham landed his first movie role when he was selected to play the principal villain in Edward Bernds' Return of the Fly (1959). This launched him on a career in which he mostly portrayed morally compromised leading characters in movies such as Disney's Ten Who Dared and American International Pictures' Master of the World (in which his character turns upon Charles Bronson -- the hero of the piece -- in betrayal). In addition to his film work, Frankham did some voice acting during this period: In the original 101 Dalmatians (1961), he voiced Sgt. Tibs, and he dubbed many of the voices in William Wyler's Ben-Hur (1959). Although he was born and raised in England, Frankham was able to do a credible American accent, which greatly expanded the roles he could play. He made the rounds of the studios, working in everything from low-budget horror (Tales of Terror [1962]) to big studio productions such as Columbia's King Rat (1965), and remained very active on television in such series as The Gallant Men, Thriller, Twelve O'Clock High, The Beverly Hillbillies, Dr. Kildare, The F.B.I., and The Outer Limits. In the latter -- in one of the creepiest shows ever done on the program -- he had an unusually upright and heroic role as the stubbornly uncorruptable Harvey Kry Jr. in "Don't Open Till Doomsday" (the show with the "box creature"), in which his would-be bride, separated by time and space, ages into the scary Miriam Hopkins. His other memorable appearance was in the third season Star Trek episode "Is There in Truth No Beauty?," playing Lawrence Marvick, a man who is destroyed by his jealousy of an alien visitor (oddly enough, another "box creature," and one so hideous that the mere sight of it drives humans insane). From the early '60s into the '70s, the actor did numerous commercials, though his most lasting public impression came from the work he did on science fiction, horror films and television shows. Frankham quit acting on a regular basis in 1976, though there were periodic roles in the decade that followed, including a stint on a CBS soap opera and appearances in the movies The Great Santini and Wrong Is Right.

Trivia: Martin Sheen has appeared in a wide variety of films ranging from the embarrassing to the sublime. In addition to appearing in numerous productions on stage, screen, and television, Sheen is the father of a modern dynasty of actors and a tireless activist for social and environmental causes, particularly homelessness. Born Ramon Estevez on August 3, 1940, he was the seventh of ten children of a Spanish immigrant father and an Irish mother. Growing up in Dayton, OH, Sheen wanted to be an actor so badly that he purposely flunked an entrance exam to the University of Dayton so he could start his career instead. With his father's disapproval, he borrowed cash from a local priest and moved to New York in 1959. While continually auditioning for shows, Sheen worked at various odd jobs and changed his name to avoid being typecast in ethnic roles. "Martin" was the name of an agent/friend, while he chose "Sheen" to honor Bishop Fulton J. Sheen; until his early twenties, the actor had been a devoted Catholic. He joined the Actor's Co-op, shared a loft, and with his roommates prepared showcase productions in hopes of attracting agents. For a while he worked backstage at the Living Theater alongside aspiring actor Al Pacino, and it was there that he got his first acting jobs. Around that time, Sheen married, and in 1963 broke into television on East Side West Side; more television would follow in the form of As the World Turns, on which he played the character Roy Sanders for a few years. In 1964, Sheen debuted on Broadway in Never Live Over a Pretzel Factory, and that same year won considerable acclaim for his role in The Subject Was Roses, which in 1968 became a film in which he also starred. After making his feature film debut as a subway punk in The Incident (1967), Sheen moved to Southern California in 1970 with his wife and three children. During the beginning of that decade, he worked most frequently in television, but occasionally appeared in films as a supporting actor or co-lead. His movie career aroused little notice, though, until he played an amoral young killer (based on real life murderer Charles Starkweather) in Terrence Malick's highly regarded directorial debut, Badlands (1973). Further notice came in the mid-'70s, when the actor was cast by Francis Ford Coppola to star in a Vietnam War drama filmed in the Philippines. Two years and innumerable disasters later -- including a near-fatal heart attack for Sheen -- the actor's most famous film, Apocalypse Now (1979), was complete, and it looked as if he would finally become a major star. Although the film won a number of honors, including a Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, and Sheen duly gained Hollywood's respect, he never reached the heights of some of his colleagues. This was possibly due to the fact that during the 1970s and 1980s, he appeared in so many mediocre films. However, Sheen turned in memorable performances in such films as Ghandi (1982) -- from which the actor donated his wages to charity -- and Da (1988), in which he took production and starring credits. He also did notable work in a number of other films, including Wall Street (1987), The American President (1995), and Monument Ave. (1998). In 1999, he could be seen in a number of projects, including Ninth Street and Texas Funeral, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival that year; O, a modern-day adaptation of Othello; and The West Wing, a television series that cast him as the President of the United States (a role for which he would win the Best TV Series Actor in a Drama Award at the 2000 Golden Globe Awards).Sheen took a supporting role in legendary director Martin Scorsese's crime drama The Departed, and joined the cast of Talk to Me, a 2007 comedy drama directed by Don Cheadle. In 2009, Sheen starred in The Kid: Chamaco, a boxing drama following a father (Sheen) and son's attempt to reconcile their differences to turn a fierce streetfighter into a boxing champion. The following year he would join son Emilio for The Way, an adventure drama featuring Sheen as a grieving father determined to make the pilgrimage to the Pyrenees in honor of his late son. The actor took on yet another lead role in Stella Days (2011), a drama that takes place in the 1950s and stars Sheen as a progressive Irish priest who causes a stir by opening a local movie theater.In 1986, Sheen made his directorial debut with the Emmy-winning made-for-TV movie Babies Having Babies. All three of his sons, Emilio Estevez, Ramon Estevez, and Charlie Sheen (whom he directed in 1991's Cadence), as well as his daughter, Renee Estevez, are movie and television actors. His brother, Joe Estevez, also dabbles in acting.

Trivia: Whit Bissell was a familiar face to younger baby boomers as an actor mostly associated with fussy official roles -- but those parts merely scratched the surface of a much larger and longer career. Born Whitner Nutting Bissell in New York City in 1909, he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was an alumnus of that institution's Carolina Playmakers company. He made his movie debut with an uncredited role in the 1940 Errol Flynn swashbuckler The Sea Hawk and then wasn't seen on screen again for three years. Starting in 1943, Bissell appeared in small roles in a short string of mostly war-related Warner Bros. productions, including Destination Tokyo. It wasn't until after the war, however, that he began getting more visible in slightly bigger parts. He had a tiny role in the opening third of Ernst Lubitsch's comedy Cluny Brown (1946), but starting in 1947, Bissell became much more closely associated with film noir and related dark, psychologically-focused crime films. Directors picked up on his ability to portray neurotic instability and weaselly dishonesty -- anticipating the kinds of roles in which Ray Walston would specialize for a time -- and used him in pictures such as Brute Force, He Walked by Night, and The Killer That Stalked New York. His oddest and most visible portrayal during this period was in The Crime Doctor's Diary (1949), in which he had a scene-stealing turn as a mentally unhinged would-be composer at the center of a murder case. By the early 1950s, however, in addition to playing fidgety clerks, nervous henchmen, and neurotic suspects (and friends and relatives of suspects), he added significantly to his range of portrayals with his deeply resonant voice, which could convincingly convey authority. Bissell began turning up as doctors, scientists, and other figures whose outward demeanor commanded respect -- mainstream adult audiences probably remember him best for his portrayal of the navy psychiatrist in The Caine Mutiny, while teenagers in the mid-1950s may have known him best for the scientists and psychiatrists that he played in Target Earth and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But it was in two low-budget films that all of Bissell's attributes were drawn together in a pair of decidedly villainous roles, as the mad scientists at the center of I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. The latter, in particular, gave him a chance to read some very "ripe" lines with a straight face, most memorably, "Answer me! I know you have a civil tongue in your mouth -- I sewed it there myself!" But Bissell was never a one-note actor. During this same period, he was showing off far more range in as many as a dozen movies and television shows each year. Among the more notable were Shack Out on 101, in which he gave a sensitive portrayal of a shell-shocked veteran trying to deal with his problems in the midst of a nest of Soviet spies; "The Man With Many Faces" on the series Code 3, in which he was superb as a meek accountant who is pushed into the life of a felon by an ongoing family tragedy; and, finally, in "The Great Guy" on Father Knows Best, where he successfully played a gruff, taciturn employer who never broke his tough demeanor for a moment, yet still convincingly delivered a final line that could bring tears to the eyes of an audience. By the end of the 1950s, Bissell was working far more in television than in movies. During the early 1960s, he was kept busy in every genre, most notably Westerns -- he showed up on The Rifleman and other oaters with amazing frequency. During the mid-1960s, however, he was snatched up by producer Irwin Allen, who cast Bissell in his one costarring role: as General Kirk, the head of the government time-travel program Project Tic-Toc on the science-fiction/adventure series Time Tunnel. He also showed up on Star Trek and in other science-fiction series of the period and continued working in dozens of small roles well into the mid-1980s. Bissell died in 1996.