Trivia: Though actor George Peppard could have succeeded on his looks alone, he underwent extensive training before making his first TV and Broadway appearances. The son of a building contractor and a singer, Peppard studied acting at Carnegie Tech and the Actor's Studio. His early TV credits include the original 1956 production of Bang the Drum Slowly, in which he sang the title song. He made his film debut in 1957, repeating his Broadway role in Calder Willingham's End As a Man, retitled The Strange One for the screen. His star continued to ascend in such films as Home From the Hill (1960) with George Hamilton, and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) as the boyfriend/chronicler of carefree Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn). He was also effective as James Stewart's son in How the West Was Won (1962), a characterization that required him to age 30 years, and as the Howard Hughes counterpart in The Carpetbaggers (1963), in which he co-starred with the second of his five wives, Elizabeth Ashley. In 1978 he made a respectable directorial debut with Five Days From Home, but never followed up on this. A familiar television presence, he starred on the TV series Banacek (1972-1973), Doctors Hospital (1975), and The A-Team (1983-1987), and delivered a powerhouse performance as the title character in the 1974 TV-movie Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Sheppard Case. Forced to retire because of illness, George Peppard died of cancer in the spring of 1994.

Trivia: Towering American character actor Charles Napier has the distinction of being one of the few actors to transcend a career start in "nudies" and sustain a successful mainstream career. Napier, clothed and otherwise, was first seen in such Russ Meyer gropey-feeley epics as Cherry, Harry and Raquel (1969) and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). Graduating from this exuberant tawdriness, Napier became a dependable film and TV villain, playing nasty characters in films like Handle With Care (1977) and Rambo (1984). Napier would continue to become an ever more familiar face throughout the 80's and 90's, with roles in movies like The Blues Brothers (1980), Married to the Mob (1990), Ernest Goes to Jail (1991) and the-Oscar winning Silence of the Lambs (1991), Philadelphia (1994), The Cable Guy (1996), and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) - just to name a few. He would also remain active in the realm of TV, appearing on shows like Walker, Texas Ranger and Roswell. The new millennium would find Napier playing roles on shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, as well as lending his voice to animated shows like The Simpsons, Squidbillies, and Archer. Napier passed away in October of 2011 at the age of 75.

Trivia: Wiry character actor Paul Gleason attended Florida State University before making his first off-Broadway appearance in a 1973 revival of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Gleason's inaugural movie role was Long Tom in Doc Savage (1975), after which he worked extensively in Roger Corman productions. He is best known for his scowling, obstreperous portrayals of minor authority figures: the principal in The Breakfast Club (1985), the police chief in Die Hard (1988), and so on. He was at his most abrasive--and his funniest--as FBI agent Clarence Beeks in Trading Places (1982). A familiar TV presence since his days as David Thornton on the ABC serial All My Children, Paul Gleason has had recurring roles on such nighttimers as Spooner, Supercarrier and One West Waikiki. Throughout the '90s Gleason continued to work steadily as a character actor appearing in films as diverse as National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1, Running Cool, Maniac Cop 3, and Nothing to Lose. Like his Breakfast Club co-star Molly Ringwald, Gleason willingly spoofed his most iconic performance in the 2001 comedy Not Another Teen Movie. In May of 2006, at the age of 67, Gleason perished from mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer often suffered by people exposed to asbestos.

Trivia: With muscle-bound arms bulging from his sleeveless tank tops, a mohawk, and enough gold jewelry to enrich a small nation, gruff, tough Mr. T was certainly one of the most recognizable television stars of the early '80s. Though more of a personality than a bona fide actor, he has appeared in several features, but is best known for playing no-nonsense ex-soldier B.A. Baracus on the hit action-drama The A-Team (1983-1987). Prior to that, Mr. T had played character roles in four feature films. Born Lawrence Tureaud in a tough southside Chicago project, he was the second youngest of 12 siblings. His father abandoned the family when Tureaud was five, leaving his mother to raise her huge family alone in a three-bedroom apartment on less than 100 dollars a month from welfare. Tureaud was devoted to his mother, and though he got into a little trouble during early adolescence, straightened himself out so as not to shame her by getting thrown in jail. Following graduation from Dunbar Vocational High School, Tureaud attended college. His football skills landed him a scholarship to Prairie View A & M University in Texas, but he was expelled after one year. Tureaud qualified for other sports scholarships and so continued his education until joining the Army and serving as a military policeman. Following his discharge, he was recruited by the Green Bay Packers, but suffered a serious knee injury and so became a bodyguard for stars such as Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross. He also worked as a bouncer. In 1970, he changed his name to Lawrence Tero and shortly thereafter shortened it to Mr. T. In the mid-'70s, he worked as a gym teacher in Chicago. It was Sylvester Stallone who offered him his first acting job after Stallone saw the beefy black bouncer on the TV show Games People Play. Stallone was so impressed by Mr. T's agile strength that he cast him in Rocky III (1982). Mr. T was at his peak popularity, particularly with young boys, while on The A-Team. At one point a toy company even created a Mr. T action figure. He also had a breakfast cereal named after him. Following his series' demise, Mr. T's acting career has been sporadic. Over the course of the next few decades, small roles in film (Not Another Teen Movie) and television (Martin, Malcolm and Eddie) helped the amiable tough guy remain a recognizable pop culture icon, but in 2011 Mr. T began hosting World's Craziest Fools, an irreverent, clip-based show featuring criminal blunders and side-splitting mishaps captured on amateur video footage and CCTV.

Trivia: Character actor Alan Fudge essayed an exhausting variety of roles while a member of New York's APA repertory troupe in the late 1960s. In films, Fudge has largely been limited to playing rule-bound corporate types, lawyers, doctors and urban detectives. He was prominently billed in The Natural (1984) as Ed Hobbs, father of baseball whiz Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford), but his appearance was confined to a non-speaking precredits bit, lensed in long-shot. He was far more visible in his many TV guest appearances on such series as MASH and Knight Rider, and in such made-for-TV movies as The Blue Knight (1973), Children of An Lac (1980), I Know My First Name is Steven (1989) and MANTIS (1994). Alan Fudge's weekly-series stints include the roles of C W Crawford in Man From Atlantis (1977), Det. Commissioner Kimbrough on Escheid (1979), Dr. Van Adams in Paper Dolls (1984) and Chief Frank Leland in Bodies of Evidence (1992).

Trivia: Movie and TV leading man Dirk Benedict was young, handsome, muscular and enthusiastic. These qualities were far more important than versatility in establishing Benedict as a dependable screen presence in the 1970s. His theatrical films include Scavenger Hunt (1979), Body Slam (1987), and Shadow Force (1992), their subject matter implicit in their titles. Far more successful on series television than in films, Dirk Benedict played Officer Gil Foley on Chopper One (1974), Starbuck on Battlestar Gallactica (1978), and master impressionist Templeton "Face" Peck on The A-Team (1983-87).

Trivia: Though a fifteen-year show business veteran, Dwight Schultz was largely unknown until 1983. That was the year that the TV Addicts of America were introduced to Captain H. M. "Howling Mad" Murdock, the asylum-escapee airplane pilot for The A-Team. It is to Schultz's credit that he was able to portray a certifiable looney while still remaining personable and even lovable. On both sides of his A-Team obligations, Schultz appeared in films like The Fan (1981, as Broadway actress Lauren Bacall's director) and Fat Man and Little Boy (1989, as J. Robert Oppenheimer). In the late 1980s, Dwight Schultz could be occasionally seen as Lieutenant Barclay in TV's Star Trek: the Next Generation.