Trivia: Solidly built American actor Craig T. Nelson started out as a comedy writer and performer, doing radio and nightspot gigs in the Los Angeles area. Success was not immediately forthcoming, and Nelson took a four-year sabbatical from show business, moving with his family to a remote cabin in Northern California. In 1979, he made his first film, ...And Justice For All, written by his onetime partner Barry Levinson. While subsequent roles in Poltergeist and Silkwood followed, Nelson would find true stardom on television. For eight seasons beginning in 1989, he starred as college athletics instuctor Hayden Fox on the top-ranked ABC sitcom Coach. Appearing alongside supporting players Jerry Van Dyke and Shelly Fabares, Nelson received an Emmy for his work on the show in 1992.After Coach, Nelson showed up in a few small roles in feature films and television mini-series before returning to series work in 2000, leading the cast of CBS's D.C.-based cop-drama The District. While enjoying the success of that show, Nelson found time for his first high-profile feature film role in over a decade, providing the voice of the head of a family of superheroes in the 2004 Disney/Pixar animated film The Incredibles. In 2005 he played the patriarch of the dysfunctional clan in The Family Stone, and followed that up two years later as skating coach in the comedy Blades of Glory. He was Ryan Reynolds disapproving dad in the hit comedy The Proposal in 2009. He was cast as the head of the Braverman clan in NBC's relaunch of Parenthood in 2010, and appeared in the inspirational Soul Surfer in 2011.

Trivia: Stocky comedic actor Jerry Van Dyke -- the younger brother by several years of actor Dick Van Dyke -- achieved some of the success of his older sibling, albeit with a somewhat lower profile and his own distinct persona. Time and again, Jerry specialized in portrayals of flustered, befuddled, and slightly klutzy goofballs who projected grating angst. (His typical characterizations could be contrasted with the "laid-back everyman" qualities and smoothness required by many of Dick's roles.) Raised in Danville, IL -- a community about 130 miles south of Chicago -- Van Dyke evinced a flair for comedic buffoonery and loved to entertain audiences as early as high school, then spent several years touring the country and performing in every comedy club he could find that agreed to book him. His career only began to take off, however, following his decision to join the Air Force Special Services in 1952 (during the Korean War) -- which, in turn, provided him with the opportunity to travel around the world and entertain the troops. His act soon caught the eye of Ed Sullivan, who booked Jerry for two popular engagements on his iconic variety series, and in the mid-'60s he began appearing alongside his brother on The Dick Van Dyke Show (conveniently playing Rob Petrie's brother, Stacey Petrie). In the years that followed, Jerry Van Dyke began associations with two key television producers -- relationships that would serve him well in the years to come. The first -- a collaboration with Grant Tinker (off-camera husband of Mary Tyler Moore from The Dick Van Dyke Show) led to Van Dyke's starring role in the 1965 fantasy-tinged sitcom My Mother the Car, which cast him as Dave Crabtree, a fellow revisited by his deceased mother -- in the form of an automobile. That program failed within a year, but the actor and producer would team up again nearly a decade later when Tinker and Co. cast Van Dyke in a brief multi-episode stretch of The Mary Tyler Moore Show as Wes Callison, an ex-boyfriend of Mary Richards who is plagued by complications when he happens to take a job in the same newsroom as Mary. During the same decade, Van Dyke also turned up as a guest star on series including That Girl, Love, American Style, and Fantasy Island. Van Dyke then tried out for the role of dim-witted Vermont handyman George Utley on the seminal '80s sitcom Newhart. Producer/creator Barry Kemp felt that the actor would be the wrong choice for the part (and eventually handed it to Tom Poston instead), but also felt so impressed by Van Dyke's talents that he both cast the actor in a guest-starring role on a season-one episode of that series (he played a flustered travel agent named Roy Herzog), and promised Van Dyke a more substantial recurring assignment on a sitcom. Kemp realized that promise five years later, by enlisting Van Dyke to play spaced-out assistant football coach Luther Van Dam on the top-tiered sitcom Coach (1989-1997). For that portrayal, the actor received numerous Emmy nominations. In subsequent years, Van Dyke continued his television work (he enjoyed a lengthy run on the sitcom Yes, Dear as Big Jimmy Hughes), did standup comedy bookings around the country, and emceed advertisements for various brands, products, and companies, including Big Lots.

Trivia: Played football on scholarship at the University of Idaho before quitting after two years; after landing a part in a production of Godspell, he changed his major to Theater Arts. While studying for his MFA at Southern Methodist University, he roomed with actor/writer Nick Bakay, who wrote Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Appeared in a 1986 Off-Broadway production of The Nice and the Nasty, opposite Jane Adams and William H. Macy. Is one of the tallest actors in Hollywood at 6'6". Named a co-chair of a multi-phase renovation project to the main theatre at his alma mater in 2012.

Trivia: After making his acting debut onstage, bald, heavily mustached Canadian character actor Graham Jarvis began showing up in bits in such films as In the Heat of the Night (1967), Alice's Restaurant (1970, as the music teacher) and What's Up Doc. He is best known to TV addicts as Charlie Haggers, the unctuous husband/manager of would-be country singer Loretta Haggers (Mary Kay Place) in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976-77), and as officious-vice principal Dyrenforth in the syndicated version of Fame (1985-87). Of his many TV-movie credits, Graham Jarvis' convincing turn as John Ehrlichmann in Blind Ambition (1982) features prominently.

Trivia: With his unusual gaunt features and intense expression, William Lanteau made a career out of playing eccentrics and character roles. His role as town leader Chester Wanamaker on the Newhart show was the most visible part in a career of more than 30 years on stage, screen, and television. Lanteau's theatrical credits included productions of The Matchmaker, What Every Woman Knows, Mrs. McThing, The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker, Detective Story, and Catch My Soul -- he was also in the original stage production of On Golden Pond, playing Charlie Martin, a part he re-created in the film version with Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Jane Fonda. His film credits date from 1959 and his portrayal of Available Jones in the screen version of the musical Li'l Abner. He began working in television around the same time, and one of his most memorable and poignant early appearances was in the Andy Griffith Show episode "Stranger in Town," portraying a mysterious new arrival in Mayberry who seems to know all there is to know about everyone in the town, gradually eliciting suspicion and panic on the part of all concerned -- in the end, the explanation for his character's behavior is not only harmless but very touching, and Lanteau pulled it off perfectly, moving from quirkily mysterious to vulnerable in the course of less than 20 minutes of screen time without any seams showing. Lanteau also played small parts in The Honeymoon Machine and That Touch of Mink, and slightly larger roles in Sex and the Single Girl and Hotel, but it was mostly on television that Lanteau kept busy when he wasn't working on the stage. On television, his work included one-shot roles on Naked City, Dr. Kildare, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Green Acres, The Mothers-In-Law, All in the Family, Here's Lucy, Perry Mason, Sanford and Son, Diff'rent Strokes, Coach, and Murder She Wrote during the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, before the role on Newhart opened up. He became part of one of the most successful "double acts" on television, working alongside rotund actor Thomas Hill, who portrayed Chester, the other political leader of the town. Lanteau passed away in 1993, three years after the cancellation of the series, from complications arising out of heart surgery.

Trivia: A beloved comedic actress whose breakthrough performance in the Mary Tyler Moore Show helped convince a disgruntled Ted Knight to stick with the series despite disappointment with his character, Georgia Engel's golden comic talents are only matched by her unmistakable blonde locks and remarkable zeal for her craft. A native of Washington, D.C., who studied her craft at The University of Hawaii, Engel appeared in Milos Forman's Taking Off and Jacques Deray's The Outside Man before joining the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in a one-time role that was quickly expanded when producers made note of her comic abilities. Engel remained with the series until the end of its run in 1977, during which time she was nominated for two Emmy awards for her winning performances. If subsequent appearances on such short-lived sitcoms as The Betty White Show and Goodtime Girls found Engel's career floundering somewhat in the late-'70s/early-'80s, post-Mary Tyler Moore era, a six-year stint in the popular television series Coach in the early '90s found her back in top form. Of course that was only the beginning to Engel's comeback period, and following the cancellation of Coach in 1997, her success carried over into the new millennium with a recurring role on Everybody Loves Raymond. Minor voice work in Dr. Dolittle 2 preceded a return to the big screen in the 2002 comedy The Sweetest Thing, after which she made an appearance in theater opposite I Dream of Jeannie's Barbara Eden in The Odd Couple: The Female Version.