Trivia: A renowned character actor who never liked that label, Rod Steiger left his mark on 1950s and '60s Hollywood with forceful performances in such critical favorites as On the Waterfront (1954) and The Pawnbroker (1964), culminating in an Oscar for In the Heat of the Night (1967). Despite myriad health problems and less sterling job offers from the 1970s onward, Steiger never stopped acting before he passed away in 2002. Born on Long Island, Steiger was raised in New Jersey by his mother after his parents divorced. Dropping out of high school at 16, Steiger enlisted in the Navy in 1941, serving on a destroyer in the World War II South Pacific. Returning to New Jersey after his 1945 discharge, Steiger worked at the Veterans Administration and joined a civil service theater group where one of the female members urged him to make acting his career. Along with using his G.I. Bill to study at several New York schools, including the Actors Studio, Steiger began landing roles in live TV plays in 1947. Over the next five years, Steiger honed his formidable Method skills in 250-plus live TV productions, as well as on Broadway. Though he appeared in the movie Teresa (1951), Steiger didn't fully make the transition to film until his award-winning performance as the lonely title character in the 1953 TV production of Paddy Chayefsky's Marty, which helped him nab a part in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront. As Charley Malloy, Steiger most memorably shared the backseat of a cab with screen brother Marlon Brando as Brando's ex-boxer Terry laid the blame for his one-way trip to Palookaville on his corrupt older sibling. Though Kazan had guided Steiger to his first Oscar nomination, Steiger later condemned the Academy's controversial decision to award Kazan an honorary Oscar in 1999. After On the Waterfront, Steiger made his presence felt as a movie tycoon in his erstwhile TV director Robert Aldrich's Hollywood tale The Big Knife (1955), a scheming attorney in Otto Preminger's The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955), and the villain in Fred Zinnemann's adaptation of Oklahoma! (1955). Further underlining his effusive talent and his intense (if occasionally overwrought) screen style, Steiger co-starred with Humphrey Bogart in Bogart's final film, The Harder They Fall (1956); survived Samuel Fuller-style Western sadism as an Irish-accented ex-soldier in Run of the Arrow (1957); played a psychopath in Cry Terror! (1958); and raged as Al Capone (1959) (Steiger's Capone was later credited as the inadvertent model for Robert De Niro's performance in The Untouchables). Steiger still occasionally acted on-stage, including Orson Welles' unusual adaptation of Moby Dick in 1962. Nevertheless, Steiger concentrated mostly on movies, with his career taking on an international flavor after he married his second wife and Broadway co-star, Claire Bloom, in 1959. After appearing in the low-key British drama The Mark (1961), Steiger joined the impressive Hollywood all-star cast re-staging of D-Day in the war epic The Longest Day (1962). He returned to films after his 1962 theater hiatus as a dishonest politico in the Italian film Le Mani Sulla Città (1963). Steiger's forays into Italian movies preceded two of the best years of his career. In Sidney Lumet's groundbreaking independent drama The Pawnbroker, Steiger's powerful performance as a Holocaust survivor running a Harlem pawnshop earned the Berlin Film Festival's Best Actor prize in 1964 and garnered raves upon the film's 1965 U.S. release. That same year, Steiger also gleefully played the asexual embalmer Mr. Joyboy in Tony Richardson's outrageous comedy The Loved One (1965) and had a small part in David Lean's blockbuster romance Doctor Zhivago (1965). After his banner year resulted in a much-desired Best Actor Oscar nomination for The Pawnbroker, Steiger lost to Lee Marvin. The outcome was different for his next American film, the acclaimed racially charged police drama In the Heat of the Night. Starring opposite Sidney Poitier, Steiger imbued his bigoted Southern sheriff with enough complexity to make him more than just a cliché redneck, reaching a prickly, believable détente with Poitier's sophisticated Northern detective. Nominated alongside youngsters Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman's iconic "Cool Hand" Luke, and venerable lion Spencer Tracy, Steiger won the Best Actor Oscar and closed his acceptance speech by asserting, "We shall overcome." Though he co-starred with Bloom in two films post-In the Heat of the Night, The Illustrated Man (1969) and Three Into Two Won't Go (1969), they divorced in 1969. Steiger won critics' hearts again with his bravura performance as a schizoid serial killer in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). His antiwar sentiments, however, provoked Steiger to turn down the eponymous World War II general in Patton (1970); Steiger instead played French emperor Napoleon in the European production depicting his defeat at Waterloo (1970). In search of good roles, Steiger mostly worked abroad in the early '70s. Though they clashed over Steiger's Method techniques during production, Steiger was excellent as a peasant caught up in the Mexican Revolution in Sergio Leone's Western Duck, You Sucker! (1972). He also worked with veteran Leone star Gian Maria Volonté in Francesco Rosi's Lucky Luciano (1974), and played Benito Mussolini in the The Last Days of Mussolini (1974). His performance in Claude Chabrol's Dirty Hands (1975), however, fell prey to his tendency to over-emote. Though he was a superb W.C. Fields in American biopic W.C. Fields and Me (1976), Steiger's Hollywood career had undeniably fallen from his 1950s and '60s heights. He shared the screen with new star Sylvester Stallone in one of Stallone's early flops, F.I.S.T. (1978), and chewed the haunted house scenery in schlock horror flick The Amityville Horror (1979). Steiger joined the distinguished cast of the British drama Lion of the Desert (1981) for his second turn as Il Duce, but the film sat on the shelf for two years before its release; appealing Western Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981) was buried by its distributor. Steiger was back in peak form as a Hasidic rabbi in the film version of The Chosen (1981), but that did little to stop Steiger's slide into TV movies and such B-horror pictures as The Kindred (1987) and American Gothic (1987) in the 1980s. Steiger's career problems were exacerbated by health difficulties, as he was forced to undergo open-heart surgery in 1976 and 1980. With producers wary of hiring him, and his third marriage ending in 1979, Steiger suffered debilitating bouts of depression in the late '70s and mid-'80s. Nevertheless, Steiger continued to work into the 1990s. Crediting his fourth wife, Paula Ellis, with keeping him sane, Steiger weathered his disappointment with The Ballad of the Sad Café (1991), and took pleasure in appearing as "himself" in Robert Altman's acclaimed Hollywood evisceration The Player (1992) as well as playing Sam Giancana in the TV biopic Sinatra (1992). While he mostly worked in TV, Steiger turned up in small yet memorable feature roles as a Mafia capo in The Specialist (1994), a loony Army commander in Mars Attacks! (1996), a judge in The Hurricane (1999), and a bombastic priest in End of Days (1999). His final film, the indie drama Poolhall Junkies (2002) with Christopher Walken, was slated for release the same year he was one of the indie-friendly actors dining on Jon Favreau's IFC talk show Dinner for Five. Steiger passed away from pneumonia and kidney failure on July 9, 2002. He was survived by his fifth wife, his daughter with Bloom, and his son with Ellis.

Trivia: The son of actor Robert Keith (1896-1966), Brian Keith made his first film appearance in 1924's Pied Piper Malone, when he was well-below the age of consent. During the war years, Keith served in the Marines, winning a Navy Air Medal; after cessation of hostilities, he began his acting career in earnest. At first billing himself as Robert Keith Jr., he made his 1946 Broadway debut in Heyday, then enjoyed a longer run as Mannion in Mister Roberts (1948), which featured his father as "Doc." His film career proper began in 1952; for the rest of the decade, Keith played good guys, irascible sidekicks and cold-blooded heavies with equal aplomb. Beginning with Ten Who Dared (1959), Keith became an unofficial "regular" in Disney Films, his performances alternately subtle (The Parent Trap) and bombastic. Of his 1970s film efforts, Keith was seen to best advantage as Teddy Roosevelt in The Wind and the Lion (1975). In television since the medium was born, Keith has starred in several weekly series, including The Crusader (1955-56), The Little People (aka The Brian Keith Show, 1972-74) and Lew Archer (1975). His longest-running and perhaps best-known TV endeavors were Family Affair (1966-71), in which he played the uncharacteristically subdued "Uncle Bill" and the detective series Hardcastle & McCormick (1983-86). His most fascinating TV project was the 13-week The Westerner (1960), created by Sam Peckinpah, in which he played an illiterate cowpoke with an itchy trigger finger. Keith's personal favorite of all his roles is not to be found in his film or TV output; it is the title character in Hugh Leonard's stage play Da. Plagued by emphysema and lung cancer while apparently still reeling emotionally from the suicide of his daughter Daisy, 75-year-old Brian Keith was found dead of a gunshot wound by family members in his Malibu home. Police ruled the death a suicide. Just prior to his death, Keith had completed a supporting role in the TNT miniseries Rough Riders.

Trivia: Discovered by famed African-American comedian Bert Williams, actor Jay C. Flippen attained his first Broadway stage role in 1920's Broadway Brevities. Entertainers of the period were expected to sing, dance, act and clown with equal expertise, and the young Flippen was no slouch in any of these categories. He not only shared billing with such stage luminaries as Jack Benny and Texas Guinan, but he boned up on his ad-lib skills as a radio announcer for the New York Yankees games. At one time president of the American Guild of Variety Artists, Flippen did as many benefits for worthy causes as he did paid performances and worked tirelessly in all showbiz branches: movies, stage (including the touring version of Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin), radio (he was one of the first game show emcees) and even early experimental television broadcasts. After several years of alternating between raspy-voiced villains and lovable "Pop"- type characters in films, Flippen increased his fan following with a supporting role as C.P.O. Nelson on the 1962 sitcom Ensign O'Toole, which, though it lasted only one network season, was a particular favorite in syndicated reruns. In 1964, Flippen suffered a setback when a gangrenous leg had to be amputated. Choosing not to be what he described as "a turnip," Jay C. Flippen continued his acting career from a wheelchair, performing with vim and vinegar in films and on television until his death.

Trivia: The son of a Lithuanian coal miner, American actor Charles Bronson claimed to have spoken no English at home during his childhood in Pennsylvania. Though he managed to complete high school, it was expected that Bronson would go into the mines like his father and many brothers. Experiencing the world outside Pennsylvania during World War II service, however, Bronson came back to America determined to pursue an art career. While working as a set designer for a Philadelphia theater troupe, Bronson played a few small roles and almost immediately switched his allegiance from the production end of theater to acting. After a few scattered acting jobs in New York, Bronson enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse in 1949. By 1951, he was in films, playing uncredited bits in such pictures as The People Against O'Hara (1951); You're in the Navy Now (1952), which also featured a young bit actor named Lee Marvin; Diplomatic Courier (1952); Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952), as a waiter(!); and The Clown (1953). When he finally achieved billing, it was under his own name, Charles Buchinsky (sometimes spelled Buchinski). His first role of importance was as Igor, the mute granite-faced henchman of deranged sculptor Vincent Price in House of Wax (1953). The actor was billed as Charles Bronson for the first time in Drum Beat (1954), although he was still consigned to character roles as Slavs, American Indians, hoodlums, and convicts. Most sources claim that Bronson's first starring role was in Machine Gun Kelly (1958), but, in fact, he had the lead in 1958's Gang War, playing an embryonic version of his later Death Wish persona as a mild-mannered man who turned vengeful after the death of his wife. Bronson achieved his first fan following with the TV series Man With a Camera (1959), in which he played adventurous photojournalist Mike Kovac (and did double duty promoting the sponsor's camera products in the commercials). His best film role up until 1960 was as one of The Magnificent Seven (1960), dominating several scenes despite the co-star competition of Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, and others. Most of Bronson's film roles after Seven remained in the "supporting-villainy category," however, so, in 1968, the actor packed himself off to Europe, where American action players like Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef were given bigger and better opportunities. Multiplying his international box-office appeal tenfold with such films as Guns for San Sebastian (1967), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Cold Sweat (1970), and The Valachi Papers (1971), Bronson returned to Hollywood a full-fledged star at last. His most successful films of the 1970s were Death Wish (1974) and its sequels, a series of brutal "vigilante" pictures which suggested not so subliminally that honest people would ultimately have to dole out their own terminal justice to criminals. In many of his '70s films, Bronson co-starred with second wife Jill Ireland, with whom he remained married until she lost her fight against cancer in 1990. Bronson's bankability subsequently fell off, due in part to younger action stars doing what he used to do twice as vigorously, and because of his truculent attitude toward fans. He did little but television work after 1991's The Indian Runner (Sean Penn's directorial debut), with Death Wish 5: The Face of Death (1994) his only feature since. Bronson's onscreen career would soon draw to a close with his role as law enforcing family patriarch Paul Fein in the made-for-cable Family of Cops series.On August 30, 2003 Charles Bronson died of pneumonia in Los Angeles. He was 81.

Trivia: Family moved to Grand Prairie, Texas when he was young and that's where he was raised.Moved to Los Angeles after graduating college and his first acting break came after he signed with the Wilhelmina modeling agency and landed commercials for JC Penney, Pizza Hut and The Sims videogame.Perhaps best known for playing Billy Abbott on CBS' The Young and the Restless from 2008 to 2014, and Jason Morgan and Drew Cain on ABC's General Hospital since 2015.Won 3 Daytime Emmy Awards for his performance on The Young and the Restless - 2 for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and 1 for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.Is a supporter of the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas, after being a patient there for 5 years as a child.

Trivia: An authentic cowboy from the age of 15, Timothy McCoy moved to a large Wyoming ranch next to a Sioux Indian reservation after some college studies; he became an authority on Indian languages, customs, and folk history, and mastered Indian sign language. He served in World War I, and was then appointed Indian Agent for his territory. In 1922, he was employed as a technical advisor and co-ordinator of Indian extras for the film The Covered Wagon (1923); McCoy may also have done some trick riding for the film. He later he resigned his government post, having been offered a key supporting role in the western The Thundering Herd (1925). MGM signed him to a film contract in 1925; he was to star in westerns and action movies based on historical anecdotes of the American frontier. By the early '30s he was among the most popular western stars; he always appeared dresed in black, with an oversized white Stetson hat and a pearl-handled gun. McCoy interrupted his screen career in 1935 to travel with the Ringling Brothers circus. In 1938 he started his own Wild West show, but it was unsuccessful. He returned to the screen in 1940, and for two years he co-starred in the low-budget Rough Rider western series; the series ended when Buck Jones, another of its stars, died in a fire. He served in World War II (in which he was awarded the Bronze Star), then retired to his ranch; from 1949, however, he worked on TV and in occasional film cameo roles. He won an Emmy for his TV program The Tim McCoy Show. Until 1976 McCoy continued working 300 days a year as the headliner of Tommy Scott's Country Music Circus. In 1974 he was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. He authored an autobiography (assisted by his son Ronald), Tim McCoy Remembers the West (1977).

Trivia: Olive Carey began her long career acting in silent films under the name Olive Golden. She made her film debut in 1913 with The Sorrowful Shore. She later became one of D.W. Griffith's original stock players. Golden married cowboy star Harry Carey in 1916 and went on to play the female lead in many of his silent westerns. She is said to have had a role in helping illustrious director John Ford get his start; she even worked as his manager. From the '30s through 1947, she was semi-retired, but following her husband's death in 1947, she staged a comeback using her married name. She is best remembered for appearing opposite John Wayne in The Searchers and The Alamo.

Trivia: There was always something slightly sinister about American actor Carleton G. Young that prevented him from traditional leading man roles. Young always seemed to be hiding something, to be looking over his shoulder, or to be poised to head for the border; as such, he was perfectly cast in such roles as the youthful dope peddler in the 1936 camp classic Reefer Madness. Even when playing a relatively sympathetic role, Young appeared capable of going off the deep end at any minute, vide his performance in the 1937 serial Dick Tracy as Tracy's brainwashed younger brother. During the 1940s and 1950s, Young was quite active in radio, where he was allowed to play such heroic leading roles as Ellery Queen and the Count of Monte Cristo without his furtive facial expressions working against him. As he matured into a greying character actor, Young became a special favorite of director John Ford, appearing in several of Ford's films of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1962's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it is Young, in the small role of a reporter, who utters the unforgettable valediction "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact...print the legend." Carleton G. Young was the father of actor Tony Young, who starred in the short-lived 1961 TV Western Gunslinger.

Trivia: Of Latin extraction, actor Frank DeKova possessed the indeterminate but sharply chiselled facial features that allowed him to play a wide range of ethnic types, from East Indian to American Indian. His first film appearance was as a gravel-voiced gangster in 1951's The Mob. He was busiest in westerns, closing out his film career with 1975's Johnny Firecloud. Frank DeKova has endeared himself to two generations of TV fans with his performance as peace-loving Hekawi Indian chief Wild Eagle on the 1960s TV sitcom F Troop.

Trivia: Onscreen from 1912, Australian-born Frank Baker was the brother of that country's foremost silent-screen action hero, Snowy Baker. Like Snowy, Frank settled in Hollywood in the 1920s and embarked on a long career as a stuntman and bit player. Rarely onscreen for more than minutes, Baker later portrayed Major Martling in the 1935 serial The New Adventures of Tarzan, George Davis in Clark Gable's Parnell (1937), Lord Dunstable in That Forsyte Woman (1949), and even General Robert E. Lee in Run of the Arrow (1957). Retiring in the mid-'60s, Frank Baker spent his final years at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital. He died in 1980 at the age of 88.

Trivia: Chuck Roberson was a rancher before serving in World War II. Upon his discharge, he sought out film work as a stunt man. While under contract to Republic Pictures, Roberson doubled for John Wayne in Wake of the Red Witch (1948). Thereafter, he worked in virtually all of Wayne's films as stunt double, action coordinator, second-unit director and bit actor. His best speaking part was Sheriff Lordin in the Duke's McClintock (1963). Chuck Roberson's career served as the inspiration for the Lee Majors TV series The Fall Guy (1981-86).

Trivia: Mississippi-born Roscoe Ates spent a good portion of his childhood overcoming a severe stammer. Entering show business as a concert violinist, the shriveled, pop-eyed Ates found the money was better as a vaudeville comedian, reviving his long-gone stutter for humorous effect. In films from 1929, Ates appeared in sizeable roles in such films as The Champ (1931), Freaks (1932) and Alice in Wonderland (1933), and also starred in his own short subject series with RKO and Vitaphone. Though his trademarked stammer is something of an endurance test when seen today, it paid off in big laughs in the 1930s, when speech impediments were considered the ne plus ultra of hilarity. By the late 1930s Ates's popularity waned, and he was reduced to unbilled bits in such films as Gone with the Wind (1939) and Dixie (1942). His best showing during the 1940s was as comic sidekick to singing cowboy Eddie Dean in a series of 15 low-budget westerns. Remaining busy in films and on TV into the 1960s, Roscoe Ates made his last appearance in the 1961 Jerry Lewis comedy The Errand Boy.

Trivia: The brother of western star Ken Maynard, Kermit Maynard was a star halfback on the Indiana University college team. He began his career as a circus performer, billed as "The World's Champion Trick and Fancy Rider." He entered films in 1926 as a stunt man (using the stage name Tex Maynard), often doubling for his brother Ken. In 1927, Kermit starred in a series for Rayart Films, the ancestor of Monogram Pictures, then descended into minor roles upon the advent of talking pictures, taking rodeo jobs when things were slow in Hollywood. Independent producer Maurice Conn tried to build Kermit into a talkie western star between 1931 and 1933, and in 1934 launched a B-series based on the works of James Oliver Curwood, in which the six-foot Maynard played a Canadian mountie. The series was popular with fans and exhibitors alike, but Conn decided to switch back to straight westerns in 1935, robbing Maynard of his attention-getting gimmick. Kermit drifted back into supporting roles and bits, though unlike his bibulous, self-indulgent brother Ken, Kermit retained his muscular physique and square-jawed good looks throughout his career. After his retirement from acting in 1962, Kermit Maynard remained an active representative of the Screen Actors Guild, lobbying for better treatment and safer working conditions for stuntpersons and extras.