Trivia: Both a member of Hollywood royalty and the Brat Pack, Emilio Estevez had the odds (and the press) against him when it came to forging a long-term career in show business. Yet, though he did become the butt of many jokes, Estevez has had the last laugh: he grew up into a prolific, if not acclaimed, actor/writer/director who managed to sidestep the celebrity pratfalls that befell his family and his Brat Pack colleagues.Born in New York on May 12, 1962, Estevez is the eldest son of actor Martin Sheen (formerly known as Ramon Estevez) and his wife, Janet. He grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side with his two younger brothers, Ramon and Charlie, and his younger sister, Renée. Though Estevez started attending school in the New York public-school system, he transferred to a prestigious private academy once his father's career blossomed. In 1968, after Sheen landed a starring role in Catch-22 (1970), the family moved west to Malibu, CA. There, the young Estevez began writing short stories and poems. By the time he turned eight, he had already submitted a script to Rod Serling's Night Gallery television series (it was, unfortunately, rejected).When Estevez was 11, his father bought the family a portable movie camera. Estevez, his brother Charlie, and their friends, Sean and Chris Penn, and Chad and Rob Lowe, used it to make short films, which Estevez would often write. He then began acting in all the junior-high-school plays, including The Dumb Waiter, Hello Out There, and Bye, Bye, Birdie. While accompanying his father to the Philippine set of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), Estevez got his first professional acting role as a messenger boy in the film. His scene, however, did not make the picture's final cut. After returning home to attend Santa Monica High School, Estevez grew interested in sports and did not become involved with the drama department until his senior year. Uninspired by the usual high-school productions, he wrote an original play and drafted Sean Penn to direct it. Titled Echoes of an Era, the story was based on the life of a Vietnam vet whom Estevez met while staying in the Philippines. Around the same time, he landed his first professional stage role opposite his father in Mr. Roberts at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater in Jupiter, FL.Estevez made his small-screen debut right after graduating from high school. He appeared in the ABC Afterschool Special Seventeen Going on Nowhere (1980) before joining his father in the cast of To Climb a Mountain (1981), an installment of the religious television series Insight. In 1981, after returning from India where he served as his father's stand-in during the taping of Gandhi (1982), Estevez landed his first feature-film role opposite Matt Dillon in Tex (1982). The film marked the first of three adaptations of S.E. Hinton's books in which Estevez would appear. A year later, he starred in Francis Ford Coppola's unforgettable adaptation of Hinton's novel The Outsiders (1983), with Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, C. Thomas Howell, and Ralph Macchio.By 1983, Estevez found himself on the short list of young actors. Oliver Stone asked him to star in his Academy Award-winning Vietnam film Platoon (1986), but the director could not finance the project in time (Estevez's brother, Charlie, took the role five years later). Instead, Estevez decided to play a punk rocker-turned-car repossessor in Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984). Co-executive produced by former Monkee Mike Nesmith, the wacky comedy also starred cult favorite Harry Dean Stanton and was a lasting underground hit. Estevez next gave a successful reading for John Hughes' The Breakfast Club (1985), a film about five very different high-school kids who are forced to spend a Saturday together in detention. Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald, and Ally Sheedy rounded out the cast in what turned out to be the quintessential teen-angst film of the '80s.On the set of The Breakfast Club, Estevez refined a screenplay he had begun writing with Tom Cruise while working on The Outsiders. Based on another S.E. Hinton novel, That Was Then...This Is Now (1985) went into production under the auspices of Paramount and director Christopher Cain, with Estevez as its star. It opened to scathing reviews and little praise for its young writer, but was a moderate box-office success.Estevez's next role featured him as a recent college graduate opposite Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, and Mare Winningham in St. Elmo's Fire (1985). The film debuted at the same time as a New York magazine cover story that labeled its actors (many of whom had worked together before) as the Brat Pack and elected Estevez as the "unofficial president" of the group. The actor immediately tried to shake the moniker with a part in Stephen King's directing debut, Maximum Overdrive (1986), but the film flopped. He then tried his own hand behind the camera. At age 23, he wrote, directed, and starred in Wisdom (1986), making cinematic history as the youngest feature filmmaker to take on all three roles. The picture, a meandering heist-road film, flopped.Estevez revived his career with Stakeout (1987), a hit action comedy that co-starred veteran actor Richard Dreyfuss, and Young Guns (1988), a successful youth-oriented Western helmed by That Was Then...This Is Now director Christopher Cain. The actor reprised his Young Guns role as Billy the Kid for its sequel, Young Guns 2 (1990), before writing, directing, and starring in Men at Work (1990). The buddy film, a comedy about two garbage men who become wrapped up in a murder case, also featured his brother, Charlie Sheen.After an embarrassing turn in the bizarre sci-fi thriller Freejack (1992), Estevez starred as a lawyer who is forced to coach a children's hockey team in Disney's triumphant The Mighty Ducks (1992). He filmed the spoof National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993) and Another Stakeout (1993), before coaching the Mighty Ducks again in D2 (1994). Estevez then agreed to make a cameo appearance in the third installment of the franchise, D3 (1996), if Disney helped finance his own picture, The War at Home (1996). Estevez produced, directed, and starred in the Vietnam-era drama, along with his father and Academy Award winner Kathy Bates. Sadly, after premiering at the Austin Film Festival, The War at Home played in only three cities.In 1998, Estevez made a comeback as the cowboy in the TNT made-for-cable spaghetti Western, Dollar for the Dead. Two years later, he directed Rated X (2000), a Showtime original movie based on brothers Jim and Art Mitchell, the troubled directors of the infamous adult film Behind the Green Door. After casting himself as Jim, Estevez recruited his own brother Charlie to play Art -- a move which gave the heralded film added clout and a moneymaking edge. Its positive press also put both brothers back in the spotlight. Nevertheless, the actor-cum-director maintained a comparatively low profile over the following half-decade, with only a scant few film appearances here and there. 2005 broke the silence, with the release of the live performance film Culture Clash in AmeriCCa -- a documentary record of an infamously acerbic Hispanic-American comedy troupe (Richard Montoya, Ricardo Salinas, Herbert Siguenza). The picture -- which received severely limited distribution (read: only a few theaters across the country) -- went almost straight to video, and the few critics who did see it scourged it as an insult to spectators and to the film's subjects.Despite this and other disappointments on the filmmaker's spotty track record, however, expectations soared for his sixth turn in the director's chair -- which also marked his most ambitious outing to date. The massive period piece/ensemble drama Bobby (2006) darkly recounted -- via a multilayered and multi-plotted script and a massive, Altmanesque ensemble cast to rival even Altman's most impressive assemblages of talent -- the events in Los Angeles' Algonquin Hotel on June 6, 1968, the night Robert F. Kennedy was shot. The cast included William H. Macy, Martin Sheen, Demi Moore, Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone, and Elijah Wood. Four years later, Estevez returned to direct the reflective adventure drama The Way, in which he also appeared as the son of his real life father Sheen. The film told the tale of a father who travels overseas to recover his estranged son's body after learning he perished while walking the El camino de Santiago, and ultimately decides to complete his son's pilgrimage.

Trivia: Swaggering, thick-lipped Brit Mick Jagger has been the lead singer and (along with guitarist Keith Richards) main songwriter for the consistently popular and influential rock band The Rolling Stones since 1962. His first feature film appearance, in 1969's Sympathy for the Devil, was in the company of the Stones. One year later, Jagger made his solo acting bow in Ned Kelly, in which he was ideally cast as "Australia's Jesse James." Over the next several years, the musician would continually make appearances on screen, in movies like Freejack, Bent, The Man from Elysian Feilds, and the Bank Job.

Trivia: Born February 17th, 1954, former model Rene Russo's first dramatic role of note was on the 1987 TV series Sable, in which she played Eden Kendall, the literary agent to a children's author-turned-crimefighter. Her breakthrough theatrical feature was Major League (1989), wherein the statuesque blonde actress was saddled with portraying the "misguided" heroine who foolishly prefers marriage with a stable, secure lawyer over a relationship with boozing, philandering ballplayer Tom Berenger.Since then, happily, the message conveyed by Russo's characters has been "Don't mess with me: I can cope." In One Good Cop (1991), she played the strongly supportive wife of police officer Michael Keaton, for whom she successfully tackles the sudden responsibility of caring for the surly children of Keaton's late partner. In Lethal Weapon 3 (1993), Russo could be seen as the karate-chopping cop who wins the confidence (and the love) of "loose cannon" Mel Gibson by proudly showing off her line-of-duty wounds and evincing a fascination with the Three Stooges. In In the Line of Fire (1992), Russo was once more partnered on an equal basis with the leading man, in this case Secret Service agent Clint Eastwood; one of her best scenes featured her wired for sound -- despite a most revealing evening gown -- at a Washington social affair. Apparently there are still reviewers out there who can't quite grasp the concept of a leading lady who can match her leading man blow for blow in a tight situation. In 1995, some observers seemed surprised that Russo, playing a biohazard-suited military research operative in Outbreak, was "as good as" her male counterparts Dustin Hoffman and Morgan Freeman. Despite such ill-founded critical misgivings, Russo has continued to do strong work playing strong women: The acclaimed Get Shorty (1995) featured her as a B-movie actress, while she re-teamed with Gibson for Ron Howard's crime thriller Ransom (1996) and Lethal Weapon 4 (1998). She also played a psychologist who puts the swing back into washed-up golfer Kevin Costner's game in the well-received Tin Cup (1996), and generated considerable heat as a crime investigator who hunts and then beds down with art thief Pierce Brosnan in the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.Russo continued worked sporadically through early to mid-2000s, her most recognizable role being that of Natasha Fatale in the live-action adaptation of Rocky and Bullwinkle. In 2005, following her supporting performances in Two for the Money and Yours, Mine, and Ours, Russell took a long break from acting. It wasn't until 2012 that she appeared on the big screen again for the mythological fantasy adventure Thor in the role of Frigga, Thor's mother.

Trivia: Born on December 31, 1937, as the only son of a baker, Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins was drawn to the theater while attending the YMCA at age 17, and later learned the basics of his craft at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1960, Hopkins made his stage bow in The Quare Fellow, and then spent four years in regional repertory before his first London success in Julius Caesar. Combining the best elements of the British theater's classic heritage and its burgeoning "angry young man" school, Hopkins worked well in both ancient and modern pieces. His film debut was not, as has often been cited, his appearance as Richard the Lionhearted in The Lion in Winter (1968), but in an odd, "pop-art" film, The White Bus (1967).Though already familiar to some sharp-eyed American viewers after his film performance as Lloyd George in Young Winston (1971), Hopkins burst full-flower onto the American scene in 1974 as an ex-Nazi doctor in QB VII, the first television miniseries. Also in 1974, Hopkins made his Broadway debut in Equus, eventually directing the 1977 Los Angeles production. The actor became typed in intense, neurotic roles for the next several years: in films he portrayed the obsessed father of a girl whose soul has been transferred into the body of another child in Audrey Rose (1976), an off-the-wall ventriloquist in Magic (1978), and the much-maligned Captain Bligh (opposite Mel Gibson's Fletcher Christian) in Bounty (1982). On TV, Hopkins played roles as varied (yet somehow intertwined) as Adolph Hitler, accused Lindbergh-baby kidnapper Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.In 1991, Hopkins won an Academy Award for his bloodcurdling portrayal of murderer Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. With the aplomb of a thorough professional, Anthony Hopkins was able to follow-up his chilling Lecter with characters of great kindness, courtesy, and humanity: the conscience-stricken butler of a British fascist in The Remains of the Day (1992) and compassionate author C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands (1993). In 1995, Hopkins earned mixed acclaim and an Oscar nomination for his impressionistic take (done without elaborate makeup) on President Richard M. Nixon in Oliver Stone's Nixon. After his performance as Pablo Picasso in James Ivory's Surviving Picasso (1996), Hopkins garnered another Oscar nomination -- this time for Best Supporting Actor -- the following year for his work in Steven Spielberg's slavery epic Amistad. Following this honor, Hopkins chose roles that cast him as a father figure, first in the ploddingly long Meet Joe Black and then in the have-mask-will-travel swashbuckler Mask of Zorro with Antonio Banderas and fellow countrywoman Catherine Zeta-Jones. In his next film, 1999's Instinct, Hopkins again played a father, albeit one of a decidedly different stripe. As anthropologist Ethan Powell, Hopkins takes his field work with gorillas a little too seriously, reverting back to his animal instincts, killing a couple of people, and alienating his daughter (Maura Tierney) in the process.Hopkins kept a low profile in 2000, providing narration for Ron Howard's live-action adaptation of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas and voicing the commands overheard by Tom Cruise's special agent in John Woo's Mission: Impossible 2. In 2001, Hopkins returned to the screen to reprise his role as the effete, erudite, eponymous cannibal in Ridley Scott's Hannibal, the long-anticipated sequel to Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991). The 160-million-dollar blockbuster did much for Hopkins' bank account but little for his standing with the critics, who by and large found Hannibal to be a stylish, gory exercise in illogical tedium. Worse yet, some wags suggested that the actor would have been better off had he followed his Silence co-star Jodie Foster's lead and opted out of the sequel altogether. Later that year, the moody, cloying Stephen King adaptation Hearts in Atlantis did little to repair his reputation with critics or audiences, who avoided the film like the plague.The long-delayed action comedy Bad Company followed in 2002, wherein audiences -- as well as megaproducer Jerry Bruckheimer -- learned that Chris Rock and Sir Anthony Hopkins do not a laugh-riot make. But the next installment in the cash-cow Hannibal Lecter franchise restored a bit of luster to the thespian's tarnished Hollywood career. Red Dragon, the second filmed version of Thomas Harris' first novel in the Lecter series, revisited the same territory previously adapted by director Michael Mann in 1986's Manhunter, with mixed but generally positive results. Surrounding Hopkins with a game cast, including Edward Norton, Ralph Finnes, Harvey Keitel and Emily Watson, the Brett Ratner film garnered some favorable comparisons to Demme's 1991 award-winner, as well as some decent -- if not Hannibal-caliber -- returns at the box office.Hopkins would face his biggest chameleon job since Nixon with 2003's highly anticipated adaptation of Philip Roth's Clinton-era tragedy The Human Stain, a prestige Miramax project directed by Robert Benton and co-starring Nicole Kidman, fresh off her Oscar win for The Hours. Hopkins plays Stain's flawed protagonist Coleman Silk, an aging, defamed African-American academic who has been "passing" as a Jew for most of his adult life. Unfortunately, most critics couldn't get past the hurtle of accepting the Anglo-Saxon paragon as a light-skinned black man. The film died a quick death at the box office and went unrecognized in year-end awards.2004's epic historical drama Alexander re-united Hopkins and Nixon helmer Oliver Stone in a three-hour trek through the life and times of Alexander the Great. The following year, Hopkins turned up in two projects, the first being John Madden's drama Proof. In this Miramax release, Hopkins plays Robert, a genius mathematician who - amid a long descent into madness - devises a formula of earth-shaking proportions. That same year's comedy-drama The World's Fastest Indian saw limited international release in December 2005; it starred Hopkins - ever the one to challenge himself by expanding his repertoire to include increasingly difficult roles - as New Zealand motorcycle racer Burt Munro, who set a land speed record on his chopper at the Utah Bonneville Flats. The quirky picture did limited business in the States but won the hearts of many viewers and critics.He then joined the ensemble cast of the same year's hotly-anticipated ensemble drama Bobby, helmed by Emilio Estevez, about the events at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles just prior to RFK's assassination. Hopkins plays John Casey, one of the hotel proprietors.Hopkins long held true passions in arenas other than acting - specifically, painting and musical composition. As for the former, Hopkins started moonlighting as a painter in the early 2000s, and when his tableaux first appeared publicly, at San Antonio's Luciane Gallery in early 2006, the canvases sold out within six days. Hopkins is also an accomplished symphonic composer and the author of several orchestral compositions, though unlike some of his contemporaries (such as Clint Eastwood) his works never supplemented movie soundtracks and weren't available on disc. The San Antonio Symphony performed a few of the pieces for its patrons in spring 2006.Hopkins would remain a prolific actor over the next several years, appearing in films like The Wolfman, Thor, and 360.Formerly wed to actress Petronella Barker and to Jennifer Lynton, Hopkins married his third wife, actress and producer Stella Arroyave, in March 2003.

Trivia: Jonathan Banks began his film career in the sort of roles described by character actor Frank Faylen as "sneezers." For example: if you sneezed, you'd miss Banks' microscopic part in 1980's Stir Crazy. He was more visible in such roles as the hitchhiker in the 1982 biopic Frances and Algren in the 1983 seriocomedy 48 Hours. On television, Jonathan Banks was cast as the scurrilous extraterrestrial Commander Kroll in Otherworld (1985) and as Frank McPike, Ken Wahl's choleric boss, in Wiseguy (1987). Banks would continue to appear in several more films over the coming years, like Dark Blue and Reign Over Me, as well as TV shows like Breaking Bad.

Trivia: Occasionally billing himself Buster Poindexter, David Johansen is a supporting actor and former lead singer for the glam rock band the New York Dolls. He was also a vocalist for the live band on NBC's Saturday Night Live during the 1986-1987 season. Johansen made his film debut starring in Candy Mountain (1987). In 1997, he voiced a character in the animated musical feature Cats Don't Dance.

Trivia: The daughter of Canadian actor Christopher Plummer and American stage actress Tammy Grimes, Amanda Plummer grew up on the East Coast with a love of horseback riding and literature. After studying at Middlebury College and the Neighborhood Playhouse, she settled into an acting company in Massachusetts. Plummer made her film debut in the 1981 Western Cattle Annie and Little Britches opposite Burt Lancaster. Working on Broadway, she won the Tony and the Drama Desk award for her performance as Agnes in the 1982 stage production of Agnes of God. She lost the role in the film version to Meg Tilly and stayed in the theater. Some of her stage credits include The Glass Menagerie, You Never Can Tell, and A Taste of Honey. She earned another Tony nomination for her performance in Pygmalion, opposite Peter O'Toole. On television, she earned an Emmy nomination for her recurring role of mentally challenged Alice on L.A. Law.Plummer's feature film work would consist of playing small, fragile, almost invisible characters who nevertheless leave a big impression. On the big screen, Plummer displayed her silent intensity in the non-speaking role of Ellen James in The World According to Garp (1982). She also created the interesting, if little-seen, character of Dagmar in John Patrick Shanley's Joe Versus the Volcano (1990). Her big film breakthrough came about in 1991 in Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King. She played awkward and plain office worker Lydia Sinclair, who inspires the love of a homeless man played by Robin Williams. The next year, she earned her first Emmy award for her role of concentration camp survivor Lusia Weiss in the post-war drama Miss Rose White (1992), a made-for-TV adaptation of an off-Broadway play. In feature films during the late '90s, Plummer often played slightly off-kilter women just on the verge of violent behavior. She was a disturbed sister in So I Married an Axe Murderer and an semi-balanced Castle Rock resident in Needful Things (both 1993). In 1994, she played a partner-in-crime with Tim Roth in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. As the gun-pointing Honey Bunny, Plummer gained a lot of exposure with a minimum of screen time. The next year, she played a serial killer in Michael Winterbottom's Butterfly Kiss (1995).Returning to television, Plummer earned another Emmy for the role of Professor Theresa Given in a 1996 episode of Showtime's The Outer Limits. For the rest of the '90s, she continued portraying delicately damaged characters in small independent films like Matthew Bright's Freeway (1996) and Peter Cohn's Drunks (1997). She also appeared in the family film A Simple Wish (1997) and lent her voice to the TV series Stories From My Childhood as well as the animated feature Hercules (1997). In 1999, Plummer revisited her earlier days as a horseback rider to play a member of the title harem in Peter Greenaway's bizarre 8 1/2 Women (1999). In 2003, she played Sarah Polley's food-obsessed co-worker in My Life Without Me. Plummer's projects for 2004 included the horror film Satan's Little Helper and Tobe Hooper's Brew. And while the majority of films Plummer appeared in throughout the early 2000s were generally unremarkable, the veteran actress did make headlines when it was announced that she would play the role of Wiress, a key ally of Katniss Everdeen, in the highly anticipated sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

Trivia: A veteran character actor whose work has shown he's as comfortable with comedy as drama, Frankie Faison was born in Newport News, VA, in 1949. Faison developed the acting bug while in grade school after appearing in a school play, and after high school he was a theater student at both Illinois Wesleyan University and New York University. Faison began pursuing a career in the theater, and appeared in a number of acclaimed off-Broadway productions, including Athol Fugard's Playland, the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of Before It Hits Home, and an adaptation of King Lear at the NYSF Delacorte Theater. Faison made his film debut in 1981 with a small role in Ragtime, and Faison soon began supplementing his stage work with small parts in motion pictures and guest shots on television. An inkling of what was to come for Faison appeared in 1986, when he was cast in a small role as a cop in Manhunter, an adaptation of Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon, in which Brian Cox played the murderous Hannibal Lector. In 1987, Faison appeared on Broadway in August Wilson's drama Fences, opposite James Earl Jones; Faison's performance earned him a Tony award nomination. In 1988, Faison scored a showy comic role in the Eddie Murphy vehicle Coming to America, and a year later he was one of the "corner men" in Spike Lee's acclaimed and controversial Do the Right Thing. In 1990, Faison scored the male lead in a short-lived sitcom, True Colors, and in 1991 he appeared in another adaptation of a Thomas Harris novel when he was cast as Barney Matthews, the big but gentle male nurse in The Silence of the Lambs. Faison continued to win supporting roles in a variety of notable films, including City of Hope, Sommersby, Mother Night, I Love Trouble, Albino Alligator, Where the Money Is, and The Thomas Crown Affair, and he had a leading role in the well-regarded police drama Prey; sadly, the show fared poorly in the ratings and didn't survive its first season. Faison revived his role as Barney Matthews in 2001's box-office blockbuster Hannibal, making him the only actor to appear in all three films about the famous cannibal. ~ Mark Deming

Trivia: Actor John Shea launched his career on-stage in 1975 and made his feature-film debut in Hussy (1980). He began his long involvement with television in The Nativity (1978) and later won an Emmy for his work in the miniseries Baby M (1988). Between 1993 and 1997, Shea appeared on the television series Lois and Clark as villain Lex Luthor.

Trivia: A New York-born actor of Puerto Rican descent whose performances in such efforts as La Bamba and Rapa Nui offered a lingering, devastating sense of depth, Esai Morales found success on screens both large and small. Frequently challenging stereotypes and always imbuing his characters with individuality, he was first inspired at the age of 12 by Al Pacino's searing performance in Dog Day Afternoon in 1975. Speaking only Spanish until the age of five, Morales showed talent in a series of stage roles in and around New York City. He graduated from New York's prestigious High School of the Performing Arts before appearing in productions at the Ensemble Theater Studio (El Hermano) and New York's Shakespeare Festival in the Park (The Tempest). In 1982, the actor made his screen debut in the Paul Morrissey film Forty Deuce. His role as Sean Penn's imposing nemesis in the following year's Bad Boys offered a horrific glimpse of the violence of juvenile detention facilities, and, in 1987, Morales cemented his reputation as a talent to watch when he played ill-fated rock & roll singer Ritchie Valens' brother in La Bamba. Equally adept at playing menacing tough guys or more sensitive characters, Morales eschewed stereotypes with roles as an Irish bootlegger in Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989) and an Argentine gangster in Naked Tango (1991). A memorable role as an Easter Island native involved in a painful civil war in 1994's Rapa Nui earned him rave reviews, despite going largely unseen, and the handsome actor was again impressive as a Mexican-American youth in My Family the following year. Morales also drew praise in 1997 for his top-billed role in The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca, and after portraying the father of Cuban refugee Elian Gonzales in the made-for-TV feature A Family in Crisis: The Elian Gonzales Story, Morales stood out with an ALMA-nominated role as Lt. Tony Rodriguez in the enduring police drama NYPD Blue. He also appeared in such features as Paid in Full (2002) and Isla Bella (2004), and had a recurring role in PBS's eagerly anticipated Mexican-American-themed series American Family. In addition to his TV and film work, the self-described activist volunteers time to such organizations as the Earth Communications Office, the Wildlife Preservation Fund in Costa Rica, and the Health Education AIDS Liaison.

Trivia: Best known as a fashion model and the former wife of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall has also appeared sporadically in feature films. The tall, cool blonde made her acting debut with a small role in Willie and Phil in 1980. Her largest role was that of Alicia, the moll to crime boss Carl Grissom in Tim Burton's Batman (1989).

Trivia: A supporting actor, Danny DeLa Paz has appeared onscreen since the '80s.

Trivia: African-American actor Johnny Popwell appeared in numerous low-budget, Southern-produced crime dramas and melodramas. He primarily played bit or supporting roles until 1975 when he was sent to prison for ten years after having been involved in a fatal shooting in Atlanta.

Trivia: Stunt man and actor Tony Epper first appeared onscreen in the '70s.

Trivia: A character actor whose beefy, imposing build (a magazine once listed him as 6'3" and 245 pounds) typecast him as thugs, hoods, and underworld heavies, performer Mike Starr was raised in the Manhattan area, as the son of a meatpacker and a five-and-dime clerk. He attended Long Island's Hofstra University on a drama scholarship, and -- after graduation -- toiled at menial jobs as a bartender and club bouncer before landing his first film role in William Friedkin's gay-themed cop thriller Cruising (1980). Many projects ensued over the following decades, including The Natural (1984), Uncle Buck (1989, in a memorable bit as a drunken clown), Ed Wood (1994), and Jersey Girl (2004). Fans of the gangster-themed comedy Mad Dog and Glory (1993), in particular, might remember Starr -- he played Harold, the wife-beater husband who gets on David Caruso's bad side, and physically suffers for it. In 2007, Starr essayed a rare lead in the character comedy Osso Bucco; he played a gangster unknowingly targeted for death and due for extermination by his cousin.

Trivia: Had he been in Hollywood in the 1930s or 1940s, Vincent Schiavelli's Halloween-mask countenance, shock of unkempt hair and baleful voice might have permanently consigned him to minor roles in horror or gangster pictures. As it happened, Schiavelli became an actor during the 1960s, a period when, thanks to unpretty stars like Elliott Gould and Dustin Hoffman, homeliness opened more career doors than it closed. After several seasons' worth of stage experience, Schiavelli made his first film appearance in Milos Forman's Taking Off (1971) playing a pot-smoking support group leader by the name of...Schiavelli. He would work with Forman again on several occasions, most memorably as Salieri's(F. Murray Abraham) phlegmatic valet in the opening scenes of Amadeus (1984). In 1972, Schiavelli played his first regular TV-series role, gay set designer Peter Panama in The Corner Bar. Fourteen years later, he could be seen as oddball science teacher Hector Vargas in the weekly sitcom Fast Times, repeating his role from the 1982 theatrical feature Fast Times at Ridgemont High. One of his best-known screen roles was the ill-tempered Subway Ghost, who teaches newly dead Patrick Swayze how to move solid objects with sheer "hate power" in the 1990 blockbuster Ghost. Tim Conway fans are most familiar with Schiavelli through his appearances as Conway's dull-witted assistant in the popular Dorf videocassettes. Previously married to actress Allyce Beasley, the couple would part ways in 1988 and Schiavelli would subsequently wed Carol Mukhalian.

Trivia: American supporting actor Mark Gordon did sporadic stage, television, commercial, and screen work since the late '60s. He appeared in such films as Don't Drink the Water (1969) and Freejack (1992).