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: One of the most dynamic of the '60s "new wave" of African-American actors, Raymond St. Jacques had originally intended to become a social worker. Thankfully, he did not allow his richly theatrical voice and imposing physique to go to waste, and decided upon an acting career, specializing in Shakespeare. Whenever "at liberty", which was often in the mid '50s, St. Jacques was obliged to take the menial jobs then open to black males; his theatrical career picked up momentum after he underwent training at New York's Actors Studios. His big break was in the ongoing off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Blacks, a play that boosted the careers of virtually all the major African-American actors of the early '60s. While roles were still comparatively scarce for non-white performers, St. Jacques did quite well for himself in feature films (Black Like Me [1964], The Pawnbroker [1965], The Green Berets [1967], Cotton Comes to Harlem [1970]) and as a TV guest star. In 1973, St. Jacques produced, directed and starred in The Book of Numbers, a minor but lively film about a pair of black confidence men in the South of the '30s. One of his last assignments was as Frederick Douglass in the 1989 historical drama Glory; his agent was unable to negotiate proper billing, so St. Jacques willingly played the role sans screen credit. Raymond St. Jacques died at age 60 of cancer of the lymph glands.

Trivia: Rip Torn may qualify as a "character actor" in the broadest sense of the term -- he typically fleshes out variations on the same role again and again, typecast as genially earthy, volatile, and loudmouthed good old boys. But, love him or hate him, Torn's roles over the course of more than half a century are distinct and pronounced enough to have elevated him above many of his contemporaries, into a veritable staple of American cinematic pop culture.Born Elmore Rual Torn, Jr. in Temple, TX, on February 6, 1931, and nicknamed "Rip" by his father, Torn attended Texas A&M as an undergraduate and studied animal husbandry. He intended to establish himself as a rancher after graduation, but first opted to pursue an acting career as a means to buy a ranch, mistakenly believing that he would hit Hollywood and achieve instant stardom. Instead, Torn scrounged around Los Angeles for several years as a dishwasher and short-order cook, but continued to pursue acting in his off time. Torn's persistence paid off, and he eventually landed several bit parts in movies and television series. He moved to Manhattan in the late '50s, where he formally studied acting under Lee Strasberg and danced under the aegis of Martha Graham; a wealth of movie roles followed over the next several decades, beginning with that of Brick in Actors Studio associate Elia Kazan's controversial classic Baby Doll (1956, with a script by Tennessee Williams) and, a few years later, the role of Finley in another Williams drama, the Richard Brooks-directed Sweet Bird of Youth (for which Torn received a great deal of notoriety). Additional supporting roles throughout the late '60s and early '70s included Slade in Norman Jewison's The Cincinnati Kid (1965), I.H. Chanticleer in Francis Ford Coppola's You're a Big Boy Now (1966), and Sgt. Honeywell in Cornel Wilde's Beach Red (1967).In the late '60s, two key (albeit temporary) shifts occurred in Torn's career. First, he went counterculture (and arthouse) with an unofficial trilogy of experimental roles. In the most pronounced -- Joe Glazer in Milton Moses Ginsberg's Coming Apart (1969, opposite Andy Warhol regular Sally Kirkland) -- Torn plays a nutty psychiatrist who specializes in female neuroses and decides to film all of his sessions, then his own mental breakdown. (Ginsberg films all of the action as reflected in a mirror.) The X-rated picture -- which features graphic sequences of Kirkland performing fellatio on Torn -- was (and is still) widely derided as spectacularly bad. Variety hit the proverbial nail on the head in 1969 when it concluded, "The problem with Coming Apart is that while it suggests some interesting ideas, it can't deliver any of them in cogent form....The results are not satisfactory." Neither are the second or third installments in Torn's "experimental" phase: roles in the first and third features directed by literary giant Norman Mailer, Beyond the Law (1967) and Maidstone (1970). Of Law -- an improvisational, comic piece set in a precinct house (with Torn as a character called Popcorn), The Motion Picture Guide sneered, "Barney Miller may have been inspired by this movie," and Roger Ebert declared it unintentionally funny, but those were the kindest reactions. Maidstone -- a fragmented, barely coherent drama -- stars only Mailer, as a politician-cum-film director, and Torn. This partially improvised picture became notorious for an on-camera sequence in which Torn (playing Mailer's half-brother) attacks Mailer with a hammer (allegedly for real), sans forewarning, bloodying up the author's face while the actress playing his wife screams in the background. Some wrote the scene off as a fake, but many others dissented. Variety observed in 1970: "[Torn] states he had to do it to make his character real and for the film. But he claims he pulled the hammer and had never drawn blood before while acting. The Mailer character is furious and vindictive. Mailer would not disclose whether it was real or not, but it did look ferociously authentic...."The second "shift" of Torn's career in the early '70s yielded infinitely greater success: a pair of rare leads in A-list features. He played Henry Miller opposite Ellen Burstyn in Joe Strick's marvelous, picaresque adaptation of that author's novel, Tropic of Cancer, and the abusive, booze and pill-addled country singer Maury Dann in Daryl Duke's harrowing drama Payday (1973). The pictures opened to generally spectacular reviews and raves over Torn's portrayals; Variety, for one, termed his performance in the Duke picture "excellent."While these lead roles showcased limitless dramatic ability, they unfortunately marked exceptions to the rule, and for the remainder of the '70s, '80s, and '90s, Torn contented himself with an endless (albeit impressive) array of colorful supporting turns -- dozens of them. High points include Nathan Bryce in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976); Dr. George in Coma (1978); the boozing, hell-raising, and philandering Senator Kittner in Jerry Schatzberg's The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979); longhaired record producer Walter Fox in Paul Simon's One Trick Pony (1980); the pirate-like Scully in Carl Reiner's Summer Rental (1985); Buford Pope in Robert Benton's sex farce Nadine (1987); the none-too-gifted afterlife attorney Bob Diamond in Albert Brooks' fantasy Defending Your Life (1991); Zed in Men in Black (1997); acid-mouthed coach Patches O'Houlihan in the Ben Stiller comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004); and King Louis XV in Sofia Coppola's much-ballyhooed tertiary directorial outing, Marie Antoinette (2006). His low point undoubtedly arrived in 2001, when he played Tom Green's father, Jim Brody, in the controversial comedian's yuck-fest Freddy Got Fingered (2001). (A very low point; the film's comic highlight has Torn being showered with fake elephant ejaculate.)In addition to his film work, Torn made a series of critically acclaimed contributions to the small screen throughout the '80s and '90s, most vividly as Artie on HBO's Larry Sanders Show, for which he gleaned two Cable Ace awards, three Emmy nominations, and an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Torn did direct one feature, the 1988 Whoopi Goldberg vehicle The Telephone, which opened and immediately closed to devastating critical reviews and dismal box office.Torn was married to actress Ann Wedgeworth from 1956 until their divorce in 1961 and Geraldine Page from 1961 until her death in 1987, and is currently married to actress Amy Wright. He is the cousin of actress Sissy Spacek.