Trivia: Through a cruel twist of fate, American actor Sam Elliott came to films at just the point that the sort of fare in which he should have thrived was dying at the box office. A born cowboy star if ever there was one, the stage-trained Elliot made his debut in a tiny role in the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Within a few years, the western market had disappeared, and Elliot had to settle for standard good-guy roles in such contemporary films as Lifeguard (1976). Never tied down to any one type, Elliot's range has embraced sexy "other men" (Sibling Rivalry [1989]) and vicious rapist/murderers (the TV movie A Death in California [1986]). Still, one yearned to see Elliot playing frontiersmen; fortunately, the western genre had not completely disappeared on television, and Elliot was well-served with such hard-riding projects as The Sacketts (1977), I Will Fight No More Forever (1981), The Shadow Riders (1982), Houston: The Legend of Texas (1986) and Conagher (1991), in which he appeared with his wife, actress Katherine Ross. When westerns began showing up on the big screen again in the 1990s, Elliot was there, prominently cast as Virgil Earp in Tombstone (1993) and the made-for-cable sagebrusher The Desperate Trail (1995). Awarded Bronze Wrangler trophies for his involvement in Conagher, The Hi-Lo Country, and You Know My Name, Elliot also made an impression on Cohen Brothers fans with a memorable performance as the laid back Stranger in the cult hit The Big Lebowski. A featured role in the 2000 made for television remake Fail Safe found Elliot hanging up his duster to revisit rising Cold War tensions, and later that same year he would finally make the leap into the new millennium with his role as a presidential aid in Rod Lurie's Oscar-nominated hit The Contender. Rewarded with a double hernia as a result of his intense training efforts to prepare for a role in the 2002 Vietnam War drama We Were Soldiers, the then fifty-seven-year-old endured the pain through the entire production and put of surgery until shooting had wrapped. Though Elliot would remain in the armed forces to portray a military general hell-bent on destroying the Hulk in 2003, his onscreen authority would weaken somewhat when he was cast as a cancer-riddled Marlboro Man in the 2005 comedy Thank You for Smoking. After traveling to the far corners of the globe to carry out a little vigilante justice in the 2006 made for television thriller Avenger, Elliot would next break a little new ground by venturing into the world of animation by lending his distinctive voice to the character of Ben the Cow in Steve Oedekerk's rural family romp Barnyard. He co-starred with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig in The Golden Compass (2007), a film adaptation of the first installment of the wildly successful book series from author Philip Pullman. In 2009 he took on a role in the award winning comedy drama Up in the Air, and co-starred as an eccentric billionaire in director Tony Krantz's The Big Bang in 2011. He joined Robert Redford and Julie Christie to play a supporting role in 2012's comedy drama The Company You Keep.

Trivia: Like Henry Thomas and a few others of the same generation, Jerry O'Connell proves that second acts are far from impossible for Hollywood actors who began their careers as children. O'Connell first gained recognition among film fans as "that fat kid from Stand By Me," when he starred in the 1986 Rob Reiner film at the age of eleven - then experienced a massive physical transformation. Several years and many lost pounds later, O'Connell emerged as a tall, handsome screen lothario, a development that provoked substantial commentary from both film critics and any number of lay viewers.Born in New York City on February 17, 1974, O'Connell enrolled in acting classes at the age of six. He obtained his first professional assignments acting in commercials when he was ten, and a year later made his film debut in the critically acclaimed Stand By Me. Though somewhat overshadowed by the presence of teen idol co-stars River Phoenix and Corey Feldman, O'Connell still managed to win a place in the coming-of-age pantheon. After Stand By Me, he appeared in the memorable syndicated television series My Secret Identity (as a high schooler with superpowers) and enrolled at Manhattan's Professional Children's School. Following his graduation, he attended New York University, where he attained a B.A. in Film and Television in 1995. While still an NYU student, O'Connell appeared in the eminently forgettable Jason Priestley vehicle Calendar Girl (1993).After his college graduation, O'Connell began to pursue thesping full-time. He soon landed a starring role on the sci-fi series Sliders, which, despite low ratings, had a very loyal viewership. In 1996, the actor's popularity grew beyond the confines of television when he starred in both Joe's Apartment and Jerry Maguire. The latter film was a particular success, and O'Connell began to land steady film assignments once again. Next up was the slasher movie Scream 2 (1997), in which he played Neve Campbell's boyfriend. After an uncredited role in the Jennifer Love Hewitt vehicle Can't Hardly Wait (1998), O'Connell returned to television to star as a young Vietnam War soldier in the miniseries The '60s in 1999. That same year, he starred as a neanderthal-like jock in Body Shots, a film about the search for love and/or a lay amongst a group of Los Angeles twentysomethings.At this point, if O'Connell still carried a full resume, he often seemed to alternate between respectable A-list material - such as the disappointing but ambitious Brian De Palma sci-fi'er Mission to Mars (2000) and the generally pleasant family comedy Yours, Mine and Ours (2005) - and ridiculous studio dreck, such as the misogynistic sex comedy Tomcats (2001) and the awful 2002 "family" picture Kangaroo Jack (where the actor co-starred alongside a wisecracking CG-animated marsupial). In fall 2007, O'Connell trekked back to the small screen for one of the three lead roles in the sitcom Carpoolers - about a cadre of male buddies who share rides to and from work each day. O'Connell would spend the next few years appearing in movies like Obsessed and Piranha, in addition to successful TV runs like Do Not Disturb and The Defenders.O'Connell married supermodel and actress Rebecca Romijn in 2007. The two have two children.

Trivia: An offbeat renaissance man, Ricky Jay had distinguished himself as a magician, a sleight-of-hand artist, an author, and an archivist of unusual information, but he's become increasingly visible to filmgoers thanks to a series of choice supporting roles in notable motion pictures. Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1948, Ricky Jay spent most of his childhood in New Jersey, where his grandfather, a professional magician, first showed him how to do card tricks. Jay made his first appearance on-stage at the age of four, when his grandfather brought him out during a performance for the Society of American Magicians. As he grew older, Jay developed a passionate interest in both magic and cardistry, as well as the stranger tributaries of entertainment history, and after graduating from Cornell University, he worked for a time as a barker and sideshow performer with a traveling circus. In the 1970s, Jay moved his act from the sideshow to night spots and theaters, performing his tricks and stunts (including spearing a watermelon with a playing card which was thrown at over 90 miles an hour) in comedy and magic clubs, and opening shows for the likes of Tina Turner and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Jay also began sharing his historical research with the world in a series of books: Cards As Weapons (a history of card tricks as well as a guide to performing them), Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women (about odd and anomalous figures in the history of entertainment), and Jay's Journal of Anomalies, a compendium of information about "conjurers, cheats, hustlers, hoaxters, pranksters, jokesters, imposters, pretenders, side-show showmen, armless calligraphers, mechanical marvels, and popular entertainments." In the 1980s, Jay made the acquaintance of playwright and director David Mamet, with whom he shared an interest in the workings of confidence games; Jay became a consultant for the original stage production of Mamet's play The Shawl in 1985, and two years later Mamet called on Jay to play an unscrupulous card shark in his film House of Games. Jay soon became a regular in Mamet's screen productions, and appeared in six films he's directed, including The Spanish Prisoner and Heist. Mamet also gave Jay's offscreen career a boost, serving as director for Jay's one-man show Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants, which became a major hit both off-Broadway and on the road. (The show was later videotaped for broadcast on HBO in 1996; a year later, Jay would host another TV special on the history of magic.) Jay's acting work also caught the eye of filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, who cast him in small but showy roles in two of his films, Boogie Nights and Magnolia (the latter featured Jay narrating a sequence on odd and anomalous crimes which could have come from one of his books...one of which was later shown on a library table). And Jay's research in magic has also given him another connection to the film industry: He runs a small company called Deceptive Practices, which specializes in creating trick props and illusions for the movies (their work as been featured in such pictures as Forrest Gump, Leap of Faith, and Congo).

Trivia: Canadian actress Molly Parker has developed a reputation as a gifted and versatile performer, thanks in part to her willingness to take on challenging, offbeat, and sometimes controversial roles. Born in 1972 in Maple Ridge, British Columbia (a town just outside Vancouver), Parker studied dance before developing an interest in acting. She was in her late teens when she began her screen career, appearing in small roles in television projects and low-budget theatrical films being shown in Vancouver, including three episodes of the TV series Neon Rider, the made-for-TV movie My Son, Johnny, and the lowbrow teen comedy Just One of the Girls. While Parker soon began winning bigger and better roles (most notably playing Glenn Close's daughter in the acclaimed TV movie Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story), her breakthrough came in 1996, with the independent feature Kissed, in which she plays a young woman fascinated with death whose job at a funeral home leads her to explore her emotional and erotic attraction to the dead. While the film's controversial theme prevented it from gaining a wide release in the United States, it received enthusiastic reviews around the world, and in Canada, Parker's performance earned her a 1997 Genie Award (the Canadian Academy Award) as Best Actress. The acclaim for Kissed certainly improved Parker's standing in the world of independent film, and while she still appeared in the occasional television project (including the TV movie Titanic and the miniseries Intensity), she won showy roles in Bliss and Under Heaven. In 1999, Parker appeared in three highly acclaimed features: She played a pregnant housewife in the British kitchen-sink drama Wonderland, a despondent mother in The Five Senses, and the Catholic wife of a Hungarian Jew in Sunshine. 2000's Suspicious River reunited Parker with Kissed director Lynne Stopkewich, and in 2001, she once again found herself courting controversy with her role as an exotic dancer spending a weekend in Las Vegas with a computer millionaire (and being very well paid for it) in Wayne Wang's The Center of the World. That same year, Parker won a recurring role as a rabbi on the acclaimed HBO comedy drama series Six Feet Under, and also appeared in a Canadian comedy about that very Northern sport, curling, entitled Men With Brooms. In 2002, she was cast opposite John Cusack and Leelee Sobieski in Max, a bit of historical speculation about the relationship between an art teacher and one of his students -- Adolf Hitler. 2004 saw Parker returning to HBO for a couple of period productions. First, she co-stared with Anjelica Huston, Hilary Swank, Julia Ormond, and Frances O'Connor in the historical drama Iron Jawed Angels about the women's suffrage movement in America. Shortly thereafter, Parker appeared as a rich prospector's wife in in the HBO Western series Deadwood. Later that year, she starred opposite Christian Slater and Stephen Rea in the ecclesiastical thriller The Good Shepard. She appeared in the 2006 drama Hollywoodland as well as the remake of The Wicker Man. She starred in the short-lived TV series Swingtown, and went on to appear in a variety of projects including The Road, Oliver Sherman, Gone, and the made-for-cable movie Hemmingway & Gellhorn.

Trivia: Served three years in the Army, including a stint in Korea during the Vietnam War. Taught at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C. during the 1980s; left teaching to pursue acting. Worked as a stunt double for Dana Elcar on the TV series MacGyver; there he met star Richard Dean Anderson, with whom he would later costar on Stargate SG-1. Best known for his roles as base commander Gen. George Hammond on Stagate SG-1 and Maj. Garland Briggs in the series Twin Peaks. His artistic endeavors included set design, painting and woodcarving; his pieces reflected his love of the Missouri Ozarks, where he grew up.

Trivia: Fluent in Italian. Is a lifetime member of the Actors Studio. Cofounded Gastown Films production company with director-producer David Langlois. Often cast as a detective or lawman. Cowrote and costarred in the award-winning film Break A Leg (2008) with his brother, actor John Cassini.