Trivia: The son of a Dallas wholesale coal dealer, American actor James Noble spent much of his youth attending pool halls and movie houses. Noble retained his expertise with a pool cue throughout his life, while his stronger interest in acting (fueled by movies) manifested itself in local stage productions and drama studies at Southern Methodist University. Following Navy service in World War II, Noble went to New York to study at the Actors Studio, then went on to a stage revival of Pygmalion wherein he met his future wife, actress Carolyn Coates. The actor appeared on such TV soap operas as As the World Turns, The Doctors, A World Apart and such Broadway productions as 1776, spending much of his spare time in psychotherapy to handle his ongoing feelings of self-doubt. In films from the mid '70s, Noble principally played small roles as authority figures and politicians (Being There, The Nude Bomb), with occasional larger roles such as Bo Derek's father in 10 (1978). In 1981 Noble was cast as the genially absent-minded Governor Gene Gatling on the Robert Guillaume sitcom Benson, a role in which he remained until the series' 1986 cancellation. Two years later, James Noble resurfaced on TV in the role of a Nebraska-based recording engineer on the very short-lived situation comedy First Impressions. Noble continued to act, sticking to mostly guest roles on shows like Perfect Strangers and Law & Order, through the 1990s, and then appeared only sporadically onscreen in the next decade, though he kept up his stage work during that time. Noble died in 2016, at age 94.

Trivia: Supporting actress, onscreen from 1961. She played the housekeeper in the TV sitcom Benson.

Trivia: Seemingly every struggling standup comic dreams of landing their own television series, but few managed to do so with greater success than Jerry Seinfeld, whose career as a nightclub comedian led to him starring as himself on the show Seinfeld -- arguably the most successful situation comedy of the 1990s.Jerome "Jerry" Seinfeld was born in Brooklyn, NY, on April 29, 1954, to Kalman Seinfeld, a signmaker, and his wife, Betty; Jerry was the second of the couple's two children. The Seinfeld family moved to Long Island when Jerry was a child, and he spent most of his youth there. After graduating from high school, Seinfeld went on to college, first attending the State University of New York at Oswego, and then moving on to Queens College of the City University of New York, where he received a Bachelor's Degree in 1976. Seinfeld developed a keen interest in performing while in college (his degree from Queens was in communications and theater), and after graduation he began working New York comedy clubs, often without pay, while holding down a number of odd jobs. Seinfeld's first big break came when his bright but understated observational humor caught the eye of standup legend Rodney Dangerfield, who featured Seinfeld on a special for HBO. The exposure helped establish Seinfeld on the comedy club circuit, and won him a recurring role on the situation comedy Benson. However, Seinfeld and the show's producers clashed over the character's direction, and he was fired after only four episodes.In 1981, Seinfeld appeared for the first time on The Tonight Show, then hosted by Johnny Carson, and made a strong impression on both the audience and the host; he became a frequent guest on the Carson show, as well as David Letterman's late-night talk show. As Seinfeld's fame began to rise, he starred in several cable TV specials, and was approached to star in several TV series. However, remembering his experience on Benson, Seinfeld opted to avoid episodic television unless he was in a position of greater control (though he did do occasional guest spots on sitcoms and played a small role in Danny De Vito's TV movie The Ratings Game). In the meantime, Seinfeld and his good friend Larry David began working up an idea for a situation comedy to be called The Seinfeld Chronicles. In 1989, NBC took the bait, and a year later the show premiered under the streamlined name Seinfeld. Concerning standup comic Jerry Seinfeld and the often odd everyday occurrences of his circle of friends (many of whom were based on people Seinfeld and David knew in real life), Seinfeld got off to a slow start, but began to win a healthy audience in its second season, and in time became one of NBC's biggest hits, until Seinfeld and David opted to end the show at the peak of its popularity in 1998. Unlike most stars of top-rated television shows, Seinfeld displayed no interest in moving into films, and instead returned to standup comedy shortly after his show went off the air with a sold-out concert tour. In the Spring of 2002, however, Seinfeld did sign a deed to appear in a documentary about his return to the comedy circuit with a new act. In 2010 Seinfeld made a high-profile return to television on NBC's The Marriage Ref -- a show that found a rotating panel of celebrities attepting to settle petty disputes between squabbling spouses -- but the show went off the air after two seasons due to poor ratings. In his personal life, during the height of his fame, Seinfeld was romantically linked with several women (including comic and writer Carol Leifer, fashion designer Shoshanna Lonstein, and writer Jennifer Crittenden) before marrying Jessica Sklar, a publicist who met Seinfeld only a few weeks after her marriage to Eric Nederlander in 1998. Seinfeld and Sklar wed in December of 1999, and their first child, daughter Sascha, was born on November 7, 2000.

Trivia: While his name might suggest a birthplace somewhere in France -- or at the very least Quebec -- actor Rene Auberjonois was born in New York City. However, his well-to-do parents were of noble European blood, thus French was the language of choice in his household. Despite his first-born-American status, Auberjonois was shunned by many of his schoolmates as a foreigner, and teased for having a "girl's" name. As a defense mechanism, Auberjonois became the class clown, which somehow led naturally to amateur theatricals. The influence of such neighborhood family friends as Burgess Meredith and Lotte Lenya solidified Auberjonois' determination to make performing his life's work. He was cast in a production at Stratford (Ontario)'s Shakespeare company by John Houseman -- another neighbor of his parents' -- and after moving with his family to England, Auberjonois returned to complete his acting training at Carnegie-Mellon University. There he decided to specialize in character parts rather than leads -- a wise decision, in that he's still at it while some of his handsomer and more charismatic Carnegie-Mellon classmates have fallen by the wayside. Three years with the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. led Auberjonois to San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre, of which he was a founding member. Movie and TV work was not as easy to come by, so the actor returned to New York, where he won a Tony for his Broadway role in the musical Coco. An introduction to director Robert Altman led Auberjonois to his first film, M*A*S*H (1970), in which he introduced the character that would later be fleshed out on TV as Father Mulcahy (with William Christopher in the role). He worked in two more Altman films before he and the director began to grow in opposite directions. More stage work and films followed, then TV assignments; Auberjonois' characters ranged from arrogant dress designers to snooty aristocrats to schizophrenic killers on film, while the stage afforded him more richly textured roles in such plays as King Lear and The Good Doctor. In 1981, Auberjonois was cast as Clayton Endicott III, the terminally fussy chief of staff to Governor Gatling on Benson. Like so many other professional twits in so many other films, Auberjonois' job was to make life miserable for the more down-to-earth hero, in this case Robert "Benson" Guillaume. Blessed with one of the most flexible voiceboxes in show business, Auberjonois has spent much of his career providing voice-overs for cartoon characters in animated projects like the Disney's The Little Mermaid, The Legend of Tarzan, Justice League, and Pound Puppies. In 1993, Rene Auberjonois assured himself a permanent place in the hearts of "Trekkies" everywhere when he was cast as Odo (complete with understated but distinctive "alien" makeup) on the weekly syndicated TV show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which he appeared on until 1999.Auberjonois would remain extremely active on screen in the years to come, appearing in movies like The Patriot, and on shows like Boston Legal.