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: Towson State College graduate Howard E. Rollins Jr. has been a stage leading man since the mid-1970s. The tall, imposing African-American actor earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of fiercely proud Coalhouse Walker Jr. in Ragtime (1981). As impressive as his theatre and film resumés are his TV credits, including such roles as Andrew Young in the 1978 miniseries King and George Haley in the 1979 multiparter Roots: The Next Generation. Howard E. Rollins was seen on a more regular basis on the ABC daytime drama Another World (for which he was Emmy-nominated); as explosives expert Bannister Parks on the 1985 "buddy western" series Wildside; and as Virgil Tibbs on the long-running (1988-92) TV adaptation of In the Heat of the Night. He made his final feature film appearance in Drunks (1995), a slice-of-life drama set at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Six weeks before he died on December 8, 1997, the 42-year-old Rollins had been diagnosed with lymphoid. Complications from the disease caused his demise.

Trivia: Actress Anne-Marie Johnson has divided her career between television and feature films with an emphasis on the former. She made her television debut in the short-lived series Double Trouble and in the telemovie His Mistress (1984). Fans of the series In the Heat of the Night (1988-1994) will remember Johnson for playing Althea Tibbs, the wife of Virgil Tibbs. She left the show in 1993 and was cast in Keenen Ivory Wayans' innovative sketch comedy series In Living Color. She had previously worked with Wayans in I'm Gonna Get You Sucka (1988), her second film.

Trivia: Alan Autry is best known by television audiences for his portrayal of police officer Bubba Skinner on the series In the Heat of the Night. Born Carlos Brown in Shreveport, LA, he was raised in Riverdale, CA, and became a star athlete and football player at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. He was drafted by the Green Bay Packers in 1975 and spent two years as a second string quarterback for the team. In 1978, he joined the British Columbia Lions in the Canadian Football League, and that same year he made his acting debut (as Carlos Brown) in Remember My Name. In 1979, he appeared in a small role in North Dallas Forty, and he portrayed Slug in Popeye (1980). Still working under his given name, he appeared in series such as Best of the West, and he was first noticed in a serious way in movies in 1982, with his portrayal of Bowden, one of the doomed National Guardsmen, in Southern Comfort. By 1983, he was working as Alan Autry, and got guest roles in series such as The A-Team and Cheers. Finally, in 1988, Autry was chosen for the role of Sergeant (later Captain) Bubba Skinner in the series In the Heat of the Night -- his good looks, deep voice, and complex character, as a white Southerner who takes some time to get accustomed to the working methods of a black police detective (portrayed by Howard E. Rollins) from up north, made him stand out in the part, and Autry became one of the key members of the ensemble cast. Autry continued acting regularly after In the Heat of the Night concluded its run in the 1990s, until 2000, when he ran successfully for Mayor of Fresno, CA, and was elected to a four-year term, thus joining Clint Eastwood, Sonny Bono, Fred Thompson and Ronald Reagan in the ranks of actors elected to political office.

Trivia: His irises tremble violently as the camera fixes on his glassy gaze, and before you know it, you've once again been entranced by the character with whom you're unsure if you should fear or sympathize. With the rare ability to convey the delicate blend of conflicting emotions that only the most effective character actors can convincingly portray, actor Pruitt Taylor Vince has crafted a successful film and television career playing introspective, often disturbed, loners teetering on the fringes of society. Though the portly Baton Rouge native's first onscreen role was to have been in director Jim Jarmusch's 1986 comedy drama Down by Law, his scenes were cut before the film hit theaters, and audiences would not get their first look at Vince until the release of Alan Parker's Angel Heart the following year. Vince owes something of a debt to the prolific director, since it was Parker's racially charged drama Mississippi Burning that first found audiences taking notice of the burgeoning, sometimes fearsome, actor. In 1990, Vince turned up in yet another of Parker's films, Come See the Paradise, though it was that same year's horrific thriller Jacob's Ladder that truly found Vince setting himself apart from the pack. If the 1990s had proven kind to Vince early on, it was his emotionally compelling role opposite Paul Newman in Nobody's Fool that truly began to give audiences an idea of what Vince was capable of as an actor. Cast as the village idiot who finds a sympathetic ear in Newman's character, Vince lent an uncanny depth to a character that may have otherwise been an instantly forgettable, two-dimensional role. Though Vince's early roles were indeed noteworthy thanks to his uncommon ability to exude repression and deeply rooted malaise as few other actors could, it wasn't until director James Mangold's cast him in the lead for his 1995 drama Heavy that Vince was truly given the opportunity to shine. Mangold did something that few mainstream Hollywood efforts would allow when he dared to offer the overweight and balding actor the dramatic lead -- the role of Victor Modina, a shy cook in a small-town restaurant who secretly longs for the love of an attractive young waitress (portrayed by Liv Tyler). With his expressive eyes (their sometimes discomforting vibration the result of a condition known as nystagmus) effectively conveying the desperation of a trapped animal longing to escape his suffocating existence, Vince's heartbreaking performance eloquently conveyed the internal distress and helplessness felt by his long-suffering character. Though the following years may not have offered Vince more roles the size or caliber of his part in Heavy, a series of small-screen performances in the late '90s showed that his talent was, without question, as potent as ever. Following an unforgettable performance as a mentally unbalanced photographer who kidnaps Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) in a 1996 episode of The X-Files ("Unruhe"), Vince's turn as a suspicious kidnapping suspect in the miniseries Night Sins and a disturbed serial killer in several episodes of Murder One proved that he could be chillingly effective in menacing roles. The latter role even proved so effective as to earn Vince an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. It was at this point that directors were truly beginning to discover the dramatic possibilities of casting Vince in their films, and his turn as a gifted musician and compelling storyteller proved a highlight of the wistful 1998 drama The Legend of 1900. Supporting performances in Mumford (1999), Nurse Betty (2000), The Cell (2000), and S1m0ne (2002) found Vince steadily becoming a recognizable face to mainstream audiences, and in 2002, he sent chills down the spines of suspense fanatics as the childlike accomplice in a harrowing kidnapping scheme in Trapped. Vince's skittishly ominous performance left viewers on the edge of their seats as he held a young girl (played by Dakota Fanning) hostage with instructions to kill her on a moment's notice, and the film utilized Vince's alternately innocent and threatening character to chilling effect. He again teamed with director Mangold for the 2003 thriller Identity, cast in a key role that proved elemental to the film's startling denouement. Vince also continued to take on guest-starring roles in such TV series as Alias and The Handler. After appearing in the 2003 Aileen Wuornos biopic Monster, Vince would play a priest in the 2004 comic-to-film adaptation of Hellblazer, entitled Constantine.

Trivia: Supporting actor Hugh O'Connor was best-known for playing the role of Corporal Lonnie Jamison opposite his father Carroll O'Connor on the television series In the Heat of the Night; he also appeared in a few feature films, but though O'Connor wanted to be an actor like his father, his difficulties with drug and alcohol addiction made it impossible for him to advance his career. Born in Rome, Italy, he was adopted by Carroll and Nancy O'Connor when he was six days old. Naming him Hugh Edward Ralph O'Connor, they raised him in Southern California where his father struggled to establish an acting career. The senior O'Connor succeeded when he was cast as Archie Bunker on Norman Lear's controversial, innovative sitcom All in the Family. The show was a hit and the family fortunes greatly improved, thereby providing Hugh O'Connor with a pleasant and privileged childhood. His problems with drugs began at age 16 after he was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma, a sometimes fatal form of cancer. Following two operations and daily chemotherapy, O'Connor dulled his pain with prescription drugs and marijuana, which he used to control nausea. The use of harder drugs followed and despite the efforts of his loving family, numerous arrests, and many weeks in various drug rehab centers, O'Connor could only manage to kick his habits for a few months at a time. During those sober times, he proved himself a gifted actor with great potential. After joining the cast of In the Heat of the Night, he remained sober and drug-free until the show's cancellation in 1994. His renewed drinking and drugging led his wife and newborn son to leave. On March 28, 1995, the deeply depressed Hugh O'Connor disregarded his father's pleas and the attempts of police surrounding his home to talk with him and shot himself.