Trivia: One of the salutary byproducts of the TV series Seinfeld is that it created a market in the '90s for sitcoms built around the comedy routines of young, hip New York comics. One of the best of these programs was Mad About You, created by and starring Manhattan-born Paul Reiser. Reiser and Seinfeld share more than a similarity of sitcoms; together with comedians Larry Miller and Mark Schiff, they comprise what has been unofficially dubbed the Four Funniest Men in the World Club, which has met for lunch each New Year's Day for the past several years. Reiser's credentials include a degree from S.U.N.Y.-Binghamton, a short stint as a health food distributor, and a 1982 film debut in Diner. Most of his film roles have been in comedies, though he was effectively cast as a greedy space traveler (who comes to a well-deserved bad end) in 1986's Aliens. Reiser has noted that his weekly series Mad About You, in which he co-starred with Helen Hunt, was based on his relationship with his wife, Paula. In 1995, Paul Reiser took a brief respite from Mad About You to star in the "single dad" comedy Bye Bye Love.As the new decade began, and Mad About You came to a close, Resier appeared in One Night at McCool's, and four years later realized a personal dream by co-starring with Peter Falk in The Thing About My Folks, a film Resier co-wrote as well. He was interviewed in The Aristocrats, and appeared as himself in Funny People. In 2011 he masterminded the very short-lived NBC sitcom The Paul Reiser Show.

Trivia: A precociously talented youngster, Helen Hunt was drawing paychecks as a television actress from the age of ten. Before she was 17, she had appeared as a regular on two series, Swiss Family Robinson (1975) and The Fitzpatricks (1977). Hunt proved she was more than just a workaday child actor with her starring performance in the fact-based 1981 TV movie The Miracle of Kathy Miller, in which she played a high school athlete who overcame severe mental and physical damage brought on by a highway accident. While she had been appearing in films as early as Rollercoaster in 1977, Hunt was never groomed as a star player, and it is possible that her resemblance to another child actress, Jodie Foster, held her back from more important roles.After taking on her first adult role in the 1982 sitcom It Takes Two, Hunt's film assignments improved, with sizable roles in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Project X (1987), Next of Kin (1989), and The Waterdance (1991). She also gained a small measure of cult status by appearing in a brace of science fiction films, including Trancers II (1991) and Trancers III (1992). That same year, Hunt landed her longest-lasting acting assignment to date, as the co-star of the Paul Reiser-created comedy series Mad About You. During the show's seven-year run, she won both Emmy and Golden Globe awards for her portrayal of Jamie Buchman. In 1996, Hunt had her most successful film role to date in the blockbuster Twister. The following year, she topped that when she received a Best Actress Oscar for playing a caring waitress and single mother who befriends acerbic, obsessive-compulsive author Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson, who also won an Oscar for his performance) in As Good As It Gets. After Mad About You ended in 1999, Hunt appeared in films by several veteran directors, including Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away [2000]), Robert Altman (Dr. T and The Women [2000]), and Woody Allen (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion [2001]). She starred in Life x 3 on Broadway in 2003.In 2005, Hunt joined the star-studded cast of HBO's two-part miniseries Empire Falls in the role of Janine, ex-wife of Miles (Ed Harris), the story's central character. The actress made her feature directorial debut in Then She Found Me (for which Hunt also starred, produced, and wrote the screenplay), an adaptation of Elinore Lipman's best-selling novel of the same name. The story follows a Philadelphia schoolteacher (Hunt) whose long-lost birth mother (Bette Miller) reappears at just as her daughter is careening into a midlife crisis. Hunt played a supportive mother in Soul Surfer (2011), an inspirational drama based on the true tale of a surfer who returned to the sport after tragically losing an arm. In 2012 she played a sex surrogate helping a man in an iron lung lose his virginity for director Ben Lewin in The Sessions, a part that earned her rave reviews and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Trivia: American character actor Dick O'Neill began showing up in films in 1961. Most of O'Neill's movie roles were in the supporting category, e.g. his portrayal of Sol Zuckermann in The Buddy Holly Story. His extensive TV credits include recurring roles on at least four weekly series. Dick O'Neill was seen as Judge Praetor D. Hardcastle in Rosetti and Ryan (1977), street-smart Malloy in Kaz (1978), corporate vice president Arthur Broderick in Empire (1984), and Fred Wilkinson in the 1987 episodes of Falcon Crest. Fans of the detective series Cagney and Lacey will remember O'Neill for playing Charlie Cagney. Before entering film and television, O'Neill was a well established supporting actor on the New York stage where he appeared on and off Broadway. In the early '50s, O'Neill was a charter member of the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. For the last seven years of his life, O'Neill served on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Screening Committee.

Trivia: Born Janet Cole, American actress Kim Hunter trained at the Actors Studio. At age 17, she debuted onscreen in The Seventh Victim (1943) before appearing in several subpar films. Her popularity was renewed with her appearance in the British fantasy A Matter of Life and Death (1946), and, in 1947, she created the role of Stella Kowalski on Broadway in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, reprising the role in the 1951 film version, for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. But her career was dealt a terrible blow when her name appeared without cause in Red Channels, a Red-scare pamphlet during the McCarthy Era, and she was blacklisted. Several years later, she was called as the star witness in a court case instigated by another Red Channels victim, and her testimony discredited the publication and made it possible for dozens of other performers to reclaim their careers. She returned to films sporadically after this, and also did much work on stage and television; among her roles was appearing as a female ape in three Planet of the Apes films. She also wrote Loose in the Kitchen, a combination autobiography-cookbook. Hunter was married to writer Robert Emmett from 1951 until her death in 2002.

Trivia: Raised outside of Chicago as the sixth of nine children, including older brother James, a founding member of the band Chicago. Left college in his junior year after seeing David Mamet's play, The American Buffalo, which inspired Pankow to enroll in the two-year training program at Chicago's St. Nicholas Theatre. Performed on Broadway (in his first stint) in Serious Money, The Iceman Cometh and as Mozart in Amadeus. Appeared in a numerous films of the late 1980s-early '90s, including To Live and Die in L.A., Talk Radio and Mortal Thoughts. Most recognized for his role as Ira Buchman, cousin of Paul Reiser's character, on the '90s NBC sitcom Mad About You. Returned to Broadway in the 2000s, performing in Twelve Angry Men, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Cymbeline. Took over the role of Merc Lapidus (from Thomas Haden Church) in 2011 on the Showtime/BBC show Episodes.

Trivia: A natural-born actress who received her primary training in the foyer of her parents' home, Leila Kenzle has since moved on to brighten the lights of Broadway and bask in the warm glow of television and film. Born in Patchogue (Long Island), NY, and raised by an electrical supplies salesman and an antique dealer in nearby Rutherford, NJ, Kenzle was the one of three daughters who often entertained houseguests with her energetic antics. After deciding to expand her talents beyond the realm of home dinner theater, Kenzle earned her B.F.A. in theater from the Mason Gross School of the Arts Conservatory at Rutgers. As with many others in her field, the burgeoning talent found the demanding life of an actress too much to bear and promptly withdrew from the stage, finding work as a hotel phone operator. Encouraged by a sympathetic casting director to follow her dreams and go in for an audition, Kenzle landed her first off-Broadway role and has since never looked back. Following a breakthrough role in the off-Broadway hit Tony 'n Tina's Wedding, the newly confident actress soon relocated to Los Angeles and quickly landed roles in no less than five television pilots. Her television career on a role, Kenzle appeared in such popular series as The Golden Girls, thirtysomething, and Mad About You. Her exposure growing, it wasn't long before Kenzle was making the leap to films with roles in Other People's Money (1991) and Dogmatic (1996). The new millennium found Kenzle landing roles in such popular features as White Oleander and the Rob Schneider comedy The Hot Chick (both 2002). Married to acting coach Neil Monaco in April of 1994, Kenzle often dedicated her time off-camera to work with the Children's International Institute and working with multiple sclerosis charities. With the release of the award-winning short film Bigger Fish, the established actress branched out to receive her first producer's credit.