Trivia: Stocky, frequently bespectacled, eventually balding, and prematurely gray, Richard Dreyfuss is an unlikely candidate for a movie star. Even so, he has been one of Hollywood's most versatile, charismatic, and energetic leading men since the mid-'70s. Born in Brooklyn, NY, on October 29, 1947, Dreyfuss moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was nine. There he became friends with Rob Reiner and began acting in school productions and at the Beverly Hills Jewish Community Center. He attended San Fernando Valley State College, but was expelled after getting into a heated argument with a professor over Marlon Brando's performance in Julius Caesar (1953). Not wanting to be drafted for Vietnam, he registered as a conscientious objector and spent two years as a clerk at a Los Angeles hospital instead of enlisting. During this time, Dreyfuss started getting a few acting jobs on network television series such as Bewitched and Big Valley; he had his first film role in 1967's The Graduate, speaking the lines "Shall I call the cops? I'll call the cops" to Dustin Hoffman. He continued playing bit parts in a couple more films, but did not get his first big break until he played Baby Face Nelson in the bloody biopic Dillinger (1973). A memorable leading role as an intelligent, contemplative teen in George Lucas' American Graffiti (1973) earned Dreyfuss critical acclaim, as did his portrayal of an entrepreneurial Jewish youth in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974). In 1975, the actor's career exploded when he starred as an arrogant shark expert in Steven Spielberg's Jaws. He worked for Spielberg again two years later, playing an average Midwestern working stiff who learns that we are not alone in the universe in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Further success followed that same year when Dreyfuss portrayed a failed actor in Neil Simon's romantic comedy The Goodbye Girl. His performance won him an Oscar, making him, at the age of 29, the youngest performer ever to receive the Best Actor honor. After that, Dreyfuss was in demand and, until 1981, he continued to find steady work in a number of films. However, none of these proved particularly popular, and the actor's career began to nosedive. Matters were worsened by his reported drug use and Hollywood party antics; in 1982, he was involved in a car accident and arrested for possession of cocaine. Fortunately, Dreyfuss managed to turn his life around, and after appearing in the rarely seen Buddy System (1984), made a big comeback in Paul Mazursky's hit comedy Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), starring opposite Bette Midler and Nick Nolte. With his reputation restored, Dreyfuss went on to appear in lead and supporting roles in numerous films of varying quality. Highlights included Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), Postcards From the Edge (1990), What About Bob? (1991), and Quiz Show (1994). In 1996, Dreyfuss played one of his finest roles as a high school music teacher who sacrifices his dream of becoming a famous composer to help his students in Mr. Holland's Opus (1996). The role earned Dreyfuss an Oscar nomination. That same year, he won acclaim of a different sort, lending his voice to a sarcastic centipede in Tim Burton's animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. He went on to appear in Sidney Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan (1997) and to star in Krippendorf's Tribe in 1998. The following year, he could be seen as titular Jewish gangster Lansky, a made-for-TV biopic scripted by David Mamet.In 2001, with his film career struggling a bit, Dreyfuss took his first stab at series television since 1964's short-lived sitcom Karen. The hour-long CBS drama The Education of Max Bickford starred the actor as a college history professor opposite Marcia Gay Harden and received largely positive reviews from critics. However, despite the accolades, the show failed to garner a substantial audience and was cancelled after one season.The following years would see Dreyfuss continuing to appear on screen, appearing most notably in movies like W., Leaves of Grass, and Red, and on TV shows like Weeds and Parenthood.

Trivia: Born November 6, 1946, in Pasadena, CA, actress Sally Field was the daughter of another actress, Margaret Field, who is perhaps best known to film buffs as the leading lady of the sci-fi The Man From Planet X (1951). Field's stepfather was actor/stunt man Jock Mahoney, who, despite a certain degree of alienation between himself and his stepdaughter, was the principal influence in her pursuit of an acting career. Active in high-school dramatics, Field bypassed college to enroll in a summer acting workshop at Columbia studios. Her energy and determination enabled her to win, over hundreds of other aspiring actresses, the coveted starring role on the 1965 TV series Gidget. Gidget lasted only one season, but Field had become popular with teen fans and in 1967 was given a second crack at a sitcom with The Flying Nun; this one lasted three seasons and is still flying around in reruns.Somewhere along the way Field made her film debut in The Way West (1967) but was more or less ignored by moviegoers over the age of 21. Juggling sporadic work on stage and TV with a well-publicized first marriage (she was pregnant during Flying Nun's last season), Field set about shedding her "perky" image in order to get more substantial parts. Good as she was as a reformed junkie in the 1970 TV movie Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring, by 1972 Field was mired again in sitcom hell with the short-lived weekly The Girl With Something Extra. Freshly divorced and with a new agent, she tried to radically alter her persona with a nude scene in the 1975 film Stay Hungry, resulting in little more than embarrassment for all concerned. Finally, in 1976, Field proved her mettle as an actress in the TV movie Sybil, winning an Emmy for her virtuoso performance as a woman suffering from multiple personalities stemming from childhood abuse. Following this triumph, Field entered into a long romance with Burt Reynolds, working with the actor in numerous films that were short on prestige but long on box-office appeal.By 1979, Field found herself in another career crisis: now she had to jettison the "Burt Reynolds' girlfriend" image. She did so with her powerful portrayal of a small-town union organizer in Norma Rae (1979), for which she earned her first Academy Award. At last taken completely seriously by fans and industry figures, Field spent the next four years in films of fluctuating merit (she also ended her relationship with Reynolds and married again), rounding out 1984 with her second Oscar for Places in the Heart. It was at the 1985 Academy Awards ceremony that Field earned a permanent place in the lexicon of comedy writers, talk show hosts, and impressionists everywhere by reacting to her Oscar with a tearful "You LIKE me! You REALLY LIKE me!" Few liked her in such subsequent missteps as Surrender (1987) and Soapdish (1991), but Field was able to intersperse them with winners such as the 1989 weepie Steel Magnolias and the Robin Williams drag extravaganza Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). Field found further triumph as the doggedly determined mother of Tom Hanks in the 1994 box-office bonanza Forrest Gump, which, in addition to mining box-office gold, also managed to pull in a host of Oscars and various other awards.Following Gump, Field turned her energies to ultimately less successful projects, such as 1995's Eye for an Eye with Kiefer Sutherland and Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco (1996). She also did some TV work, most notably in Tom Hanks' acclaimed From the Earth to the Moon miniseries (1998) and the American Film Institute's 100 Years....100 Movies series. The turn of the century found Field contributing her talents to a pair of down-home comedy-dramas, first with a cameo matriarch role in 2000's Where the Heart Is and later that year as director of the Minnie Driver vehicle Beautiful. Both films met with near-universal derision from critics; only the Steel Magnolias-esque Heart found a modest box-office following.In 2003, Field took a role alongside Reese Witherspoon in the legal comedy Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, & Bllonde, and in 2006 joined the cast of ABC's Brothers & Sisters in the role of matriach Nora Walker. The role earned her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2007. The actress was cast in the role of Aunt May for The Amazing Spiderman (2012), and was so revered as Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln that she earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Trivia: Ed Griffith has extensively played supporting roles on television and on the Buffalo, New York stage. He has also worked on television commercials and appeared occasionally in films.