Trivia: With his rugged good looks and icon status, Clint Eastwood was long one of the few actors whose name on a movie marquee could guarantee a hit. Less well-known for a long time (at least until he won the Academy Award as Best Director for Unforgiven), was the fact that Eastwood was also a producer/director, with an enviable record of successes. Born May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, Eastwood worked as a logger and gas-station attendant, among other things, before coming to Hollywood in the mid-'50s. After his arrival, he played small roles in several Universal features (he's the pilot of the plane that napalms the giant spider at the end of Tarantula [1955]) before achieving some limited star status on the television series Rawhide. Thanks to the success of three Italian-made Sergio Leone Westerns -- A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) -- Eastwood soon exchanged this limited status for bona fide international stardom.Upon his return to the U.S., Eastwood set up his own production company, Malpaso, which had a hit right out of the box with the revenge Western Hang 'Em High (1968). He expanded his relatively limited acting range in a succession of roles -- most notably with the hit Dirty Harry (1971) -- during the late '60s and early '70s, and directed several of his most popular movies, including 1971's Play Misty for Me (a forerunner to Fatal Attraction), High Plains Drifter (1973, which took as its inspiration the tragic NYC murder of Kitty Genovese), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Though Eastwood became known for his violent roles, the gentler side of his persona came through in pictures such as Bronco Billy (1980), a romantic comedy that he directed and starred in. As a filmmaker, Eastwood learned his lessons from the best of his previous directors, Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, who knew just when to add some stylistic or visual flourish to an otherwise straightforward scene, and also understood the effect of small nuances on the big screen. Their approaches perfectly suited Eastwood's restrained acting style, and he integrated them into his filmmaking technique with startling results, culminating in 1993 with his Best Director Oscar for Unforgiven (1992). Also in 1993, Eastwood had another hit on his hands with In the Line of Fire. In 1995, he scored yet again with his film adaptation of the best-selling novel The Bridges of Madison County, in which he starred opposite Meryl Streep; in addition to serving as one of the film's stars, he also acted as its director and producer.Aside from producing the critical and financial misstep The Stars Fell on Henrietta in 1995, Eastwood has proven to be largely successful in his subsequent efforts. In 1997, he produced and directed the film adaptation of John Berendt's tale of Southern murder and mayhem, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and he followed that as the director, producer, and star of the same year's Absolute Power, 1999's True Crime, and 2000's Space Cowboys. With Eastwood's next movie, Blood Work (2002), many fans pondered whether the longtime actor/director still had what it took to craft a compelling film. Though some saw the mystery thriller as a fair notch in Eastwood's belt, many complained that the film was simply too routine, and the elegiac movie quickly faded at the box office. If any had voiced doubt as to Eastwood's abilities as a filmmaker in the wake of Blood Work, they were in for quite a surprise when his adaptation of the popular novel Mystic River hit screens in late 2003. Featuring a stellar cast that included Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon, Mystic River was a film that many critics and audiences cited as one of the director's finest. A downbeat meditation on violence and the nature of revenge, the film benefited not only from Eastwood's assured eye as a director, but also from a screenplay (by Brian Helgeland) that remained fairly faithful to Dennis Lehane's novel and from severely affecting performances by its three stars -- two of whom (Penn and Robbins) took home Oscars for their efforts. With Eastwood's reputation as a quality director now cemented well in place thanks to Mystic River's success, his remarkable ability to craft a compelling film was nearly beginning to eclipse his legendary status as an actor in the eyes of many. Indeed, few modern directors could exercise the efficiency and restraint that have highlighted Eastwood's career behind the camera, as so beautifully demonstrated in his 2004 follow-up, Million Dollar Baby. It would have been easy to layer the affecting tale of a young female boxer's rise from obscurity with the kind of pseudo-sentimental slop that seems to define such underdog-themed films, but it was precisely his refusal to do so that ultimately found the film taking home four of the six Oscars for which it was nominated at the 77th Annual Academy Awards -- including Best Director and Best Picture. Eastwood subsequently helmed two interrelated 2006 features that told the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from different angles. The English-language Flags of Our Fathers relayed the incident from the American end, while the Japanese-language Letters from Iwo Jima conveyed the event from a Japanese angle. Both films opened to strong reviews and were lauded with numerous critics and industry awards, with Letters capturing the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film before being nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Nowhere near slowing down, Eastwood would direct and star in the critically acclaimed Gran Torino, as well as helming critical favorites like Invictus, the Changeling, Hereafter, and J. Edgar, racking up numerous awards and nominations. In 2014, he helmed the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Jersey Boys, to mixed reviews, and the biographical adaptation American Sniper.A prolific jazz pianist who occasionally shows up to play piano at his Carmel, CA restaurant, The Hog's Breath Inn, Eastwood has also contributed songs and scores to several of his films, including The Bridges of Madison County and Mystic River. Many saw his critically championed 1988 film Bird, starring Forest Whitaker (on the life of Charlie "Bird" Parker), as the direct product of this interest. Eastwood also served as the mayor of Carmel, CA, from 1986 until 1988.

Trivia: The product of a profoundly unhappy home life, Eric Fleming ran away at age 11 to live the life of a Depression-era hobo. Making his way from California to New York, he worked at a series of dead-end jobs, at one point sweeping the floors of a whorehouse. After a stint with the Merchant Marine, he joined the Seabees at the outbreak of WWII. While lifting a 200-pound iron block, he miscalculated and the block fell directly on his face. Forced to undergo extensive plastic surgery, Fleming left the hospital with the craggy, weathered facial features that would ensure him steady if not always lucrative employment as an actor. Making his debut in a 1944 training film, he did stage work in Chicago and New York, and in 1951 starred on a DuMont TV network kiddie series Major Dell Conway of the Flying Tigers. While his Hollywood film roles were largely confined to standard he-man heroics in such sci-fiers as Conquest of Space (1955) and Queen of Outer Space (1956), he was afforded a wider acting range on stage, exhibiting his singing and dancing skills in the 1955 Broadway musical Plain and Fancy. In 1959 he was cast as trail boss Gil Favor on Rawhide, one of the most popular TV Western series of the era. Feeling that he was being upstaged by younger co-star Clint Eastwood, Fleming left Rawhide in 1966 to seek out film work. After playing a secondary role in the Doris Day comedy The Glass Bottom Beat, he headed to Peru to film the pilot episode of a TV adventure series, High Jungle. While filming a canoeing scene in the turbulent Hullaga River, Eric Fleming fell into the surging rapids and drowned; his mutilated body was not recovered until four days later.

Trivia: As a Hollywood starlet, American actress Brooke Bundy started off well with a good supporting role in the James Stewart-Henry Fonda western Firecreek (1968). She then joined a sizable cast of twentysomething actors (including Patty McCormick, Richard Dreyfuss and Kevin Coughlin) in the Sam Katzman-produced exploitation flick The Young Runaways (1968). This tawdry little item seemed to set the tone for Brooke's subsequent film achievements, which included Nightmare on Elm Street sequels #3 and #4, (1987 and 1988 respectively), Night Visitor (1990), and that shoe-in for the Oscars titled Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers (1991). Brooke Bundy's TV credits included stints on Days of Our Lives, as Rebecca North, and General Hospital, as Diana Maynard; she also guested on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Naked Now."

Trivia: Until his death at 74 from a heart attack, Liam Sullivan was a very busy actor on television and in theater, and in the former medium, he made a career specializing almost exclusively in erudite villains (or, at least, luckless ambitious men). A native of Jacksonville, IL, Sullivan was descended from W.E. Sullivan, the founder of the renowned Eli Bridge Company; the latter conpany became famous for popularizing the Ferris wheel, and a century later remains a mainstay of the amusement ride industry. Liam Sullivan, however, decided to go into a different end of the entertainment field, acting in local theater while attending Illinois College and later studying drama at Harvard University. His patrician good looks and dashing persona, coupled with a good range, enabled him to take a large variety of parts: playboys, rogues, heroes. In his younger days, he'd have made a perfect Rupert of Hentzau in The Prisoner of Zenda. Sullivan's Broadway credits included The Constant Wife with Katherine Cornell, and Love's Labours Lost, both in the early 1950s; and, in the 1960s, Mike Nichols' production of The Little Foxes. Though he also did theatrical work in Los Angeles, Sullivan didn't make too many movie appearances: Disney's That Darn Cat (as Agent Sullivan, no less) and Bert I. Gordon's The Magic Sword were probably his two most widely seen films.His television career, however, which began at the start of the 1950s on live shows such as Lights Out, afforded Sullivan a busy career across four decades. He was on the soap opera General Hospital, but was also a familiar figure in prime-time series, including westerns such as Have Gun Will Travel, The Virginian, Bonanza, and The Monroes (a series in which he had a regular role as a villain); but also in science fiction (Lost In Space), crime dramas (The Fugitive, Dragnet), and comedies (Gomer Pyle, USMC). On Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, in the episode "Leviathan," he plays an ambitious scientist whose undersea discovery results in his undergoing a hideous transformation and a horrible fate; in the Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren," he made a memorable impression as a humanoid alien (working opposite Barbara Babcock in a sadistic role), glib-tongued, erudite, and perfectly at ease manipulating and attempting to kill people with his telekinetic power. He also starred in one of the more widely remembered Twilight Zone shows, "The Silence," playing a man who accepts a bet from a social rival that he can go for a year without uttering a single word. Sullivan's best performance, however, was in the 1968 Dragnet episode "The Big Prophet," as William Bentley, an academic-turned-guru (obviously inspired by Timothy Leary) whose public espousal of drug use results in a confrontation with the police. Sullivan was at his most waspish (in a manner reminiscent of Clifton Webb's Waldo Lydecker from Laura) in the three-man drama, made up entirely of his verbal sparring with series stars Jack Webb and Harry Morgan. He was still working regularly in the 1990s, right up to the time of his death, a month before his 75th birthday.

Trivia: Wide-eyed little Bobby Blake began his acting career as an Our Gang kid and eventually matured into one of Hollywood's finest actors. Born Michael Gubitosi, the boy was two years old when he joined his family vaudeville act, "The Three Little Hillbillies." The act was doomed to failure, as were most of the pipe dreams of the Gubitosi family. Relocating from New Jersey to California, Michael's mom found work for her kids as extras at the MGM studios. The young Gubitosi impressed the producers of the Our Gang series, and as a result the six-year-old was elevated to star status in the short subjects series. Little Mickey Gubitosi whined and whimpered his way through 40 Our Gang shorts, reaching an artistic low point with the execrable All About Hash (1940). During his five-year tenure with the series, the boy anglicized his professional name to Bobby Blake. Freelancing after 1944, Blake's performing skills improved immeasurably, especially when he was cast as Indian sidekick Little Beaver in Republic's Red Ryder series. He also registered well in his appearances in Warner Bros. films, playing such roles as the younger John Garfield in Humoresque (1946) and the Mexican kid who sells Bogart the crucial lottery ticket in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Though sporadically happy in his work (one of his most pleasurable assignments was the otherwise forgettable Laurel and Hardy feature The Big Noise, 1944), Bobby Blake was an unhappy child, weighed down by a miserable home life. At 16, Blake dropped out of sight for a few years, a reportedly difficult period in his life. Upon claiming a 16,000-dollar nest egg at age 21, however, Blake began turning his life around, both personally and professionally. He matriculated into a genuine actor rather than a mere "cute" personality, essaying choice dramatic roles in both films and TV. He starred in the Allied Artists gangster flick The Purple Gang (1960), played featured roles in such films as PT 109 (1963), Ensign Pulver (1964), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and guest starred on dozens of TV shows. In 1963, he was one of 12 character actors amalgamated into the "repertory company" on the weekly anthology series The Richard Boone Show; he spent the next 26 weeks playing everything from agreeable office boys to fevered dope addicts. His true breakthrough role came in 1967, when he was cast as real-life multiple murderer Perry Smith in Richard Brooks' filmization of In Cold Blood. Even after this career boost, Blake often found the going rough in Hollywood, due as much to his own pugnacious behavior as to typecasting. He did, however, star in such worthwhile efforts as Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969) and Electra Glide in Blue (1973). Blake achieved full-fledged stardom at last with his three-year (1975-1978) starring stint on the TV cop series Baretta, adding to his already sizeable fan following via several lively, tell-all guest appearances on The Tonight Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and several other video chat fests. Despite his never-ending battles with the ABC executives during the Baretta run, Blake stuck out the series long enough to win an Emmy, and even got to direct an episode or two.Forming his own production company, Blake made several subsequent tries at TV-series success: Hell Town (1985), in which he starred as a barrio priest, lasted 13 weeks, while the private-eye endeavor Jake Dancer never got past its three pilot films. He has been more successful with such one-shots as the TV miniseries Hoffa (1983), in which he played the title character with chilling accuracy, and the 1993 TV biopic Judgment Day: The John List Story, which earned him another Emmy. His later film appearances were in hard-nosed character parts, such as 1995's The Money Train, and he landed a plum (albeit terminally odd) lead role in David Lynch's postmodern thriller Lost Highway (1997), as a clown-faced psychopath who plays bizarre mind games with a suburban couple. Though he's managed to purge some of his personal demons over the years, Robert Blake remains as feisty, outspoken, and unpredictable as ever, especially when given an open forum by talk show hosts. In 2001, Blake generated headlines once again, though this time off-camera and in an extremely negative vein. The mysterious murder of wife Bonnie Lee Bakely sent the tabloids into a furious frenzy of speculation and accusation. Arrested for the murder of Bakely in April 2002, Blake's future looked increasingly grim as evidence continued to mount against him. Nevertheless, in March 2005 the actor was completely exonerated of all accusations surrounding Bakely's death and narrowly escaped a life sentence in prison. His on-camera activity remained extremely infrequent, however. Late in 2005, the press reported the outcome of a civil trial involving Bakely's homicide, in which Blake was required to pay an estimated $30 million to her children.