Trivia: The British actress, comedienne, singer and dancer Julie Andrews stakes a claim to fame for having one of the single most astonishing voices (four octaves!) of any entertainer alive. Yet the breadth of this raw ability is often hugely obscured by Andrews's milquetoast image and onscreen persona. Thus, in the late '60s, Andrews - who began her film career rooted firmly in family-oriented material - traveled far out of her way to expand her dramatic repertoire, with decidedly mixed results. A music-hall favorite since childhood, Andrews spent the war years dodging Nazi bombs and bowing to the plaudits of her fans. Thanks to her own talents and the persistence of her vaudevillian parents, Andrews maintained her career momentum with appearances in such extravaganzas as 1947's Starlight Roof Revue. It was in the role of a 1920s flapper in Sandy Wilson's satire The Boy Friend (1953) that brought Andrews to Broadway; and few could resist the attractively angular young miss warbling such deliberately sappy lyrics as "I Could Be Happy With You/If You Could Be Happy With Me." Following a live-TV performance of High Tor, Andrews regaled American audiences in the star-making role of cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle in the 1956 Broadway blockbuster My Fair Lady. The oft-told backstage story of this musical classic was enough to dissuade anyone from thinking that Andrews was an overnight success, as producer Moss Hart mercilessly drilled her for 48 hours to help her get her lines, songs and dialect in proper working order. In 1957, Andrews again enchanted TV audiences in the title role of Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical adaptation of Cinderella. Later, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe -- also the composers of My Fair Lady -- developed the role of Guinevere in their 1960 musical Camelot with Andrews in mind, and the result was another Broadway triumph, albeit not as profitable as Fair Lady. Although a proven favorite with American audiences thanks to her frequent TV variety show appearances (notably a memorable 1962 teaming with Carol Burnett), Andrews did not make a motion picture until 1964. As Mary Poppins, Andrews not only headlined one of Walt Disney's all-time biggest moneymakers, but also won an Oscar -- sweet compensation for having lost the Eliza role to Audrey Hepburn for the adaptation of My Fair Lady. Andrews hoped that Mary Poppins would not type her in "goody-goody" parts, and, to that end, accepted a decidedly mature role as James Garner's love interest in The Americanization of Emily (1964). However, Andrews' next film, The Sound of Music (1965) effectively locked her into sweetness and light parts in the minds of moviegoers. On the strength of the success of Music, Andrews was signed to numerous Hollywood projects, but her stardom had peaked.Perhaps recognizing this, Andrews started to branch out fairly aggressively by the late '60s, with such "adult-oriented" pictures as Alfred Hitchcock's espionage thriller Torn Curtain. That film, and others (Hawaii, Star!) all flopped. In the late '60s, Andrews fell in love with and married the then white-hot American director Blake Edwards; her decision to collaborate with Edwards on a professional level, to boot, waxed incredibly strategic. Today, many view Edwards in a negative light for cranking out moronic studio fodder such as A Fine Mess and Sunset). In 1969, however, he sat among Hollywood's creme-de-la-creme, notorious for crafting mature genre pictures for adult audiences (The Days of Wine and Roses, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Experiment in Fear and sophisticated slapstick comedies unafraid to take chances (the Pink Panther series, The Party). By marrying Edwards and aligning herself with him creatively, then, Andrews was also consciously or unconsciously bucking to change her image. Unfortunately, the two began at a low ebb to end all low ebbs. The WWI musical farce Darling Lili (1970) featured Rock Hudson, electric musical numbers, stunning dogfight sequences, and - significantly - a semi-erotic striptease number by Andrews. Apparently audiences didn't buy this sort of behavior coming from Mary Poppins: the film tanked at the box office, as did the spy thriller The Tamarind Seed, also starring Andrews.Aside from a couple of televised musical specials, Andrews stuck with her husband for each successive film - for better or worse, as they say. Their next collaborations arrived in the late '70s and early '80s, first with the smash Dudley Moore sex farce '10' (1979) and then with the Hollywood satire S.O.B. (1981). In the former, Andrews took a backseat to sexy bombshell Bo Derek, who catches the infatuation of Moore but delivered a finely-modulated comic performance nonetheless; the latter - an unapologetically 'R' rated comedy about a nutty director who attempts to turn a family-friendly stinker into a porno musical -- exposed a topless Andrews to the world for the first time. This rank, cynical and angry "satire" represented the couple's creative nadir; one critic rightly pointed out that Andrews could have used it as grounds for divorce. The 1982 transvestite musical Victor/Victoria (with Andrews in the lead) fared better; it was followed by Edwards's 1983 Truffaut remake, The Man Who Loved Women (with Andrews as the lover of sculptor Burt Reynolds). Andrews's attempts at image-extending here are obvious in each case; the individual films have various strengths and weaknesses, but - love 'em or hate 'em -- they broadened the appeal of Andrews only slightly - with many perceiving her as either an onscreen accessory to her husband or as an okay straight man in mediocre romantic comedies. The couple fared a thousand times better with the excellent mid-life crisis comedy-drama That's Life! (1986), starring Andrews and Jack Lemmon. Two esteemed dramatic roles sans Edwards - that of a frustrated multiple sclerosis victim in Duet for One (1986), and that of a grieving mother of an AIDS victim in Our Sons (1991) - did what the prior films were supposed to have done: they secured Andrews's reputation as an actress of astonishing versatility. Yet, as Andrews aged, she ironically began to segue back into the types of roles that originally brought her infamy, with a series of sugar-coated, grandmotherly parts in family-friendly pictures. Notably, she co-starred in the first two installments of The Princess Diaries as Queen Clarisse Rinaldi, a European monarch of a tiny duchy, who tutors her "hip" teen granddaughter (Anne Hathaway) in the ways of regality. Andrews also used her polished and cultured British diction to great advantage by voicing Queen Lillian in the second and third and fourth installments of Dreamworks's popular, CG-animated Shrek series: Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, and Shrek Forever After. She also maintained her status as a family-film icon by narrating Enchanted, voicing Gru's mother in the animated Despicable Me, and playing opposite The Rock in Tooth Fairy.

Trivia: From his 1950 debut onward, Christopher Plummer has been regarded as one of the most brilliant Canadian actors of his generation. His portrayal of Hamlet was a major ratings coup when telecast over the CBC in the early '60s. Following his first Broadway appearance in 1954 (among his New York stage credits are JB, Royal Hunt of the Sun and The Good Doctor), efforts were made to convert Plummer into an American matinee idol, most of these attempts were resisted by Plummer himself. His first two films, Stage Struck (1957) and Wind Across the Everglades (1958), set no new box office records, although the latter, directed by Nicholas Ray, did earn strong critical notices. Plummer was shown to better advantage in such live network-TV presentations as The Prisoner of Zenda and A Doll's House.In 1965, the actor was cast as Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, an assignment he despised, reportedly referring to the musical blockbuster as The Sound of Mucus. Nonetheless, and as Plummer has ruefully noted on many occasions, this one film did more to make the actor bankable in Hollywood than any previous effort. He went on to do steady, if varied, work throughout the rest of the century. Among Plummer's more notable films were The Return of the Pink Panther (1974), the British Empire extravaganza The Man W ho Would Be King (1975), 1979's Murder by Decree (in which he starred as Sherlock Holmes), Somewhere in Time (1980), the legendary 1983 miniseries The Thorn Birds, 1991's Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and 1995's Dolores Claiborne and Twelve Monkeys. In 1999, Plummer received some of the strongest notices of his career for his uncannily accurate portrayal of 60 Minutes anchor Mike Wallace in Michael Mann's The Insider. Throughout his long career, the actor has won many awards, including Tonys for the musical Cyrano and the one-man stage show Barrymore, and an Emmy for his work in the TV miniseries The Moneychangers. Genie nominated for performances in the films Ararat and Blizzard in 2002 and 2003 respectively, Plummer and his daughter Amanda were both nominated for Emmy awards for their television performances in 2005. Though the father would ultimately walk away empty-handed, the award would stay in the family when Amanda was bestowed the honor for her memorable guest appearance in an episode of Law and Order: Special Victim's Unit. With roles in such high profile theatrical releases including The New World, Inside Man, and The Lake House keeping Plummer very much in the spotlight, it was obvious that his talent and passion for acting were still as strong as ever. 2009 turned out to be one of his busiest and most successful years in a very long time. In addition to appearing in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Plummer voiced the bad guy in Pixar's mega hit Up, and portrayed the legendary author Leo Tolstoy in Michael Hoffman's The Last Station. His work in that film, opposite Helen Mirren, earned the Canadian his first Academy Award nomination, as well as nods from the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes, and the Independent Spirit Awards.He followed up and improved on that awards success in 2011 with his role as a senior citizen who comes out of the closet in Beginners. That performance garnered him the Screen Actors Guild award for Best Supporting Actor, as well as an Oscar in that same category. He also scored a box-office success as the head of the feuding Vanger clan in David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.Talent seems to run in Plummer's family: he and first wife, actress Tammy Grimes, are the parents of acclaimed actress Amanda Plummer.

Trivia: Ohioan Eleanor Parker chose a career in acting when she was still in her teens and began appearing in professional stage productions in Cleveland and at California's Pasadena Playhouse. Signed at Warner Bros. in 1941, the red-haired actress was given the slow buildup in such B's as The Mysterious Doctor before graduating to leads in prestige pictures like Pride of the Marines (1945). As the sluttish Mildred in the 1946 remake Of Human Bondage, Parker was not nearly as effective as Bette Davis in the 1934 version, but she learned from this comparative failure and matured into a versatile actress, equally adept at comedy and heavy dramatics. She was Oscar nominated for Caged (1950), in which she plays an utterly deglamorized prison inmate; Detective Story (1951), wherein, as Kirk Douglas' wife, she agonizingly harbors the secret of a past abortion; and Interrupted Melody (1955), in which she portrays polio-stricken opera diva Marjorie Lawrence. Though she tended toward down-to-earth portrayals, Eleanor could be flamboyantly sexy if required, like her performance as a tempestuous lover in Scaramouche. Still regally beautiful into the 1960s and 1970s, Eleanor Parker was always worth watching no matter if the role was thankless (the Countess in Sound of Music [1965]) or "Baby Jane"-style horrific (the terrorized, elderly cripple in Eye of the Cat [1969]). Parker spent the majority of her career in the 1970s and '80s in TV movies and the occasional guest appearance on television series like Hawaii Five-O and The Love Boat before retiring from acting in 1991. She died in 2013 at age 91.

Trivia: Tweedy, eccentric character actor Richard Haydn failed at several professions -- including music hall entertainer and overseer of a Jamaican banana plantation -- before latching onto a touring British theatre troupe. While performing on radio, Haydn created the character of nerdish, nasal "fish expert" Edwin Carp, a role which earned him a spot in the American variety revue Set to Music and later resulted in several satirical books written by the actor (he would reprise the Edwin Carp character on a memorable 1964 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show). Signed to a 20th Century-Fox film contract in 1940, Haydn's first film assignment was the comparatively straight role of Charley Wyckham in Charley's Aunt (1941). Versatile to a fault, Haydn's film roles ranged from normal, sobersided types like the schoolteacher in the Green Years (1946), to the despicable British nobleman in Forever Amber (1946). His most enjoyable performances were as fey, prissy, often mother-dominated types: Cluny Brown (1946) and Sitting Pretty (1947) were his best assignments in this vein. Haydn directed three films for Paramount, playing small roles in each (under such pseudonyms as Richard Rancyd): Miss Tatlock's Millions (1947), Dear Wife (1948) and Mr, Music (1950), The biggest hit with which Haydn was associated was 1965's The Sound of Music (1965), in which he played the vacillating theatrical entrepreneur Max Detweiller. He also sparkled in TV roles on such series as Lassie, The Man From UNCLE and Bonanza. His last film role (heavily cut before release) was a tiny expository part at the beginning of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974). Almost as mercurial offscreen as on, Richard Haydn was averse to granting interviews, usually making comments like "There is no Richard Haydn. It is probably something you ate".

Trivia: Born in Brooklyn, NY, Peggy Wood was the daughter of a popular Manhattan columnist. Gifted with a lilting soprano voice, she began her stage career in musicals and operettas. Her chief Broadway fame rested in multilayered dramatic roles, though she was also an expert comedienne when the occasion arose. In her heyday, Wood was a member of the New York "intellectual" circuit, making occasional lunchtime stopovers at the Algonquin Round Table. A star on stage, Wood seldom appeared in anything larger than supporting roles in films; for example, she had only one scene as the sympathetic central-casting secretary in David O. Selznick's A Star Is Born (1937). From 1949 through 1957, Wood starred on the popular TV series Mama, reportedly exerting a great deal of script and casting control. Peggy Wood's last screen appearance was as the Mother Abbess in the Oscar-winning musical The Sound of Music (1965); sadly, her once beautiful singing voice was a thing of the past, and she had to be dubbed.

Trivia: Heather Menzies made her film debut at 15, as Louisa von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965). Menzies followed this assignment with several well-scrubbed ingenue roles; she was prominently featured in one of the deathless anti-drug Dragnet episodes of the late 1960s. She underwent a startling image change in the 1970s, playing sexy roles with a minimum of clothing. In the 1977 TV-series version of Logan's Run, she was cast as Jessica 6, accruing a great deal of press attention for her extremely revealing costumes. She apparently retired after 1982's Endangered Species. Heather Menzies was married to actor Robert Urich.

Trivia: Born Joanna Winnifrith, Anna Lee was a petite, charming, blond British actress. At age 14 she ran away from home to join a circus. After brief stage experience she began appearing in British films in 1932, playing leads and supporting roles; in 1940 she moved to Hollywood and began making films there. She is best remembered as Bronwyn Morgan, Roddy McDowall's sister-in-law, in How Green was My Valley (1941). Rarely onscreen after the late '60s, she had a regular role as Lila Quartermaine on the TV soap opera General Hospital. She married and divorced director Robert Stevenson. She was the widow of novelist/playwright/poet Robert Nathan and the mother of actors Jeffrey Byron and Venetia Stevenson.

Trivia: The son of actress Eileen Bennett, Nicholas Hammond was 13 when he made his first movie appearance in Lord of the Flies (1963). Hammond's most visible screen role was as Friedrich von Trapp in the 1965 megahit The Sound of Music. After making the transition from juvenile to young leading man, he spent several seasons in daytime soaps. In 1978, a pumped-up Nicholas Hammond starred in the brief weekly TV adaptation of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Trivia: Though she was best known as a young TV star, Angela Cartwright also appeared in perennial movie musical favorite The Sound of Music (1965). Born in England, Cartwright's family moved to Los Angeles when she was three. Cartwright soon made her film debut, at the ripe old age of three and a half, in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). Cast in 1957 as stepdaughter Linda on Danny Thomas' TV hit Make Room for Daddy, retitled The Danny Thomas Show, Cartwright stayed with the series until it ended in 1964. It was Cartwright's two mid-'60s credits, though, that captured the most devoted fans. As The Sound of Music's pretty Brigitta Von Trapp, Cartwright became one of the seven children taught to sing and love life by buoyant nun/stepmother Julie Andrews. With its Rodgers & Hammerstein songs and unbridled sentiment, The Sound of Music broke box office records, becoming a beloved classic. Cartwright then joined the cast of Irwin Allen's low-tech TV series Lost in Space as young teen daughter Penny Robinson. Though the show only ran from 1965 to 1968, Lost in Space attracted a durable cult following; Cartwright had a cameo in the 1998 film version. After Lost in Space ended, Cartwright made sporadic appearances in films and TV in the subsequent decades, including Irwin Allen's disaster flick sequel Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979). Married since 1976, Cartwright has two children and made a career outside of acting as a photographer, writer, and boutique owner. Her older sister is actress Veronica Cartwright.

Trivia: More familiar for his radio work than his film appearances, American actor Ben Wright was active professionally from the early '40s. Dialects were a specialty with Wright, as witness his two-year hitch as Chinese bellhop Hey Boy on the radio version of Have Gun Will Travel. Most of Wright's film roles were supporting or bit appearances in such productions as A Man Called Peter (1955), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), and The Fortune Cookie (1964). On TV, Wright was one of Jack Webb's stock company (including fellow radio veterans Virginia Gregg, Stacy Harris, and Vic Perrin) on the '60s version of Dragnet. Ben Wright's most frequently seen film appearance was as the humorless Nazi functionary Herr Zeller in the 1965 megahit The Sound of Music.

Trivia: The daughter of a retired sea captain, British actress Norma Varden was a piano prodigy. After study in Paris, she played concerts into her teens, but at last decided that this was be an uncertain method of making a living--so she went to the "security" of acting. In her first stage appearance in Peter Pan, Varden, not yet twenty, portrayed the adult role of Mrs. Darling, setting the standard for her subsequent stage and film work; too tall and mature-looking for ingenues, she would enjoy a long career in character roles. Bored with dramatic assignments, Varden gave comedy a try at the famous Aldwych Theatre, where from 1929 through 1933 she was resident character comedienne in the theatre's well-received marital farces. After her talkie debut in the Aldwych comedy A Night Like This (1930), she remained busy on the British film scene for over a decade. Moving to Hollywood in 1941, she found that the typecasting system frequently precluded large roles: Though she was well served as Robert Benchley's wife in The Major and the Minor (1942), for example, her next assignment was the unbilled role of a pickpocket victim's wife in Casablanca (1942). Her work encompassed radio as well as films for the rest of the decade; in nearly all her assignments Norma played a haughty British or New York aristocrat who looked down with disdain at the "commoners." By the '50s, she was enjoying such sizeable parts as the society lady who is nearly strangled by Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train (1951), the bejeweled wife of "sugar daddy" Charles Coburn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and George Sanders' dragonlike mother in Jupiter's Darling (1955). Norma Varden's greatest film role might have been as the mother superior in The Sound of Music (1965), but the producers decided to go with Peggy Wood, consigning Varden to the small but showy part of Frau Schmidt, the Von Trapps' housekeeper. After countless television and film assignments, Norma Varden retired in 1972, spending most of her time thereafter as a spokesperson for the Screen Actors Guild, battling for better medical benefits for older actors.

Trivia: Formidable stage leading lady Doris Lloyd transferred her activities from British repertory to Hollywood in 1925. She was prominently cast as an alluring spy in George Arliss' first talkie Disraeli (1929); one year later, at the tender age of 30, she was seen as the matronly Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez in Charley's Aunt. Swinging back to younger roles in 1933, Lloyd was cast as the tragic Nancy Sykes in the Dickie Moore version of Oliver Twist. By the late 1930s, Lloyd had settled into middle-aged character roles, most often as a domestic or dowager. Doris Lloyd remained active until 1967, with substantial roles in such films as The Time Machine (1960) and The Sound of Music (1965).