Trivia: With his rugged good looks and icon status, Clint Eastwood was long one of the few actors whose name on a movie marquee could guarantee a hit. Less well-known for a long time (at least until he won the Academy Award as Best Director for Unforgiven), was the fact that Eastwood was also a producer/director, with an enviable record of successes. Born May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, Eastwood worked as a logger and gas-station attendant, among other things, before coming to Hollywood in the mid-'50s. After his arrival, he played small roles in several Universal features (he's the pilot of the plane that napalms the giant spider at the end of Tarantula [1955]) before achieving some limited star status on the television series Rawhide. Thanks to the success of three Italian-made Sergio Leone Westerns -- A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) -- Eastwood soon exchanged this limited status for bona fide international stardom.Upon his return to the U.S., Eastwood set up his own production company, Malpaso, which had a hit right out of the box with the revenge Western Hang 'Em High (1968). He expanded his relatively limited acting range in a succession of roles -- most notably with the hit Dirty Harry (1971) -- during the late '60s and early '70s, and directed several of his most popular movies, including 1971's Play Misty for Me (a forerunner to Fatal Attraction), High Plains Drifter (1973, which took as its inspiration the tragic NYC murder of Kitty Genovese), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Though Eastwood became known for his violent roles, the gentler side of his persona came through in pictures such as Bronco Billy (1980), a romantic comedy that he directed and starred in. As a filmmaker, Eastwood learned his lessons from the best of his previous directors, Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, who knew just when to add some stylistic or visual flourish to an otherwise straightforward scene, and also understood the effect of small nuances on the big screen. Their approaches perfectly suited Eastwood's restrained acting style, and he integrated them into his filmmaking technique with startling results, culminating in 1993 with his Best Director Oscar for Unforgiven (1992). Also in 1993, Eastwood had another hit on his hands with In the Line of Fire. In 1995, he scored yet again with his film adaptation of the best-selling novel The Bridges of Madison County, in which he starred opposite Meryl Streep; in addition to serving as one of the film's stars, he also acted as its director and producer.Aside from producing the critical and financial misstep The Stars Fell on Henrietta in 1995, Eastwood has proven to be largely successful in his subsequent efforts. In 1997, he produced and directed the film adaptation of John Berendt's tale of Southern murder and mayhem, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and he followed that as the director, producer, and star of the same year's Absolute Power, 1999's True Crime, and 2000's Space Cowboys. With Eastwood's next movie, Blood Work (2002), many fans pondered whether the longtime actor/director still had what it took to craft a compelling film. Though some saw the mystery thriller as a fair notch in Eastwood's belt, many complained that the film was simply too routine, and the elegiac movie quickly faded at the box office. If any had voiced doubt as to Eastwood's abilities as a filmmaker in the wake of Blood Work, they were in for quite a surprise when his adaptation of the popular novel Mystic River hit screens in late 2003. Featuring a stellar cast that included Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon, Mystic River was a film that many critics and audiences cited as one of the director's finest. A downbeat meditation on violence and the nature of revenge, the film benefited not only from Eastwood's assured eye as a director, but also from a screenplay (by Brian Helgeland) that remained fairly faithful to Dennis Lehane's novel and from severely affecting performances by its three stars -- two of whom (Penn and Robbins) took home Oscars for their efforts. With Eastwood's reputation as a quality director now cemented well in place thanks to Mystic River's success, his remarkable ability to craft a compelling film was nearly beginning to eclipse his legendary status as an actor in the eyes of many. Indeed, few modern directors could exercise the efficiency and restraint that have highlighted Eastwood's career behind the camera, as so beautifully demonstrated in his 2004 follow-up, Million Dollar Baby. It would have been easy to layer the affecting tale of a young female boxer's rise from obscurity with the kind of pseudo-sentimental slop that seems to define such underdog-themed films, but it was precisely his refusal to do so that ultimately found the film taking home four of the six Oscars for which it was nominated at the 77th Annual Academy Awards -- including Best Director and Best Picture. Eastwood subsequently helmed two interrelated 2006 features that told the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from different angles. The English-language Flags of Our Fathers relayed the incident from the American end, while the Japanese-language Letters from Iwo Jima conveyed the event from a Japanese angle. Both films opened to strong reviews and were lauded with numerous critics and industry awards, with Letters capturing the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film before being nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Nowhere near slowing down, Eastwood would direct and star in the critically acclaimed Gran Torino, as well as helming critical favorites like Invictus, the Changeling, Hereafter, and J. Edgar, racking up numerous awards and nominations. In 2014, he helmed the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Jersey Boys, to mixed reviews, and the biographical adaptation American Sniper.A prolific jazz pianist who occasionally shows up to play piano at his Carmel, CA restaurant, The Hog's Breath Inn, Eastwood has also contributed songs and scores to several of his films, including The Bridges of Madison County and Mystic River. Many saw his critically championed 1988 film Bird, starring Forest Whitaker (on the life of Charlie "Bird" Parker), as the direct product of this interest. Eastwood also served as the mayor of Carmel, CA, from 1986 until 1988.

Trivia: A full-blooded Tse-lal-Watt Sioux, Canadian-born Chief Dan George was a manual laborer until his late 40s. Sidelined by an injury, George spent a dozen years as chief of his tribe. He stepped down from this post to become an actor at age 61, appearing on the Canadian TV adventure series Caribou Country. His first film was Smith!, produced in 1969. George was Oscar-nominated for his performance as Old Lodge Skins in the 1970 revisionist western Little Big Man. He continued appearing in films throughout the 1970s--sometimes in roles worthy of his talents, sometimes not (1971's Bob Hope vehicle Cancel My Reservation). In this last decade of his life, Chief Dan George actively campaigned for various Native American causes, foremost of which was his effort to guarantee that Indian roles in films would henceforth be played by Indians and not by heavily made-up Caucasians.

Trivia: Filmgoers who have attributed the stardom of actress Sondra Locke to the "sponsorship" of her onetime soulmate Clint Eastwood are suffering from the dreaded SMS, or Short Memory Syndrome. These worthies have forgotten that Locke was Oscar-nominated for her portrayal of a suicidal small-town girl in Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968) while Eastwood was still grinding out spaghetti westerns. It is true that Locke's flagging screen career was regenerated by her appearance in Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales. It is also probable that she would not have been afforded the opportunity to play everything from supercilious heiresses (Broncho Billy) to foul-mouthed Federal witnesses (The Gauntlet) to vengeful murderers (Sudden Impact) without Eastwood's support and encouragement. The acrimonious "palimony" suit that followed the breakup of Locke and Eastwood served only to perpetuate the myth that Locke was a blonde nonentity coasting on the reputation of her live-in lover. That such a notion is idiotic has been proven by Sondra Locke's artistic achievements as director of such low-profile theatrical features as Ratboy (1990) and Impulse (1990) and such TVers as Death in Small Doses (1995).

Trivia: A character actor beloved particularly for playing villains, Bill McKinney was born in Chattanooga, TN, in 1931. After spending some time in Los Angeles while on leave in the Navy, McKinney decided to settle there following his discharge in order to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. He studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and Lee Strausberg's Actors Studio while paying the bills as a high-school teacher before he began landing TV roles on shows like The Monkees and I Dream of Jeannie. In 1972, McKinney was cast as a sadistic mountain man in the thriller Deliverance alongside Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight. His visage was soon synonymous with ominousness and violence, leading to a slew of roles as baddies in a wide variety of films over the coming years, like Cleopatra Jones, The Shootist, First Blood, and The Parallax View. McKinney also began collaborating with Clint Eastwood on a series of films, including The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Every Which Way but Loose, Any Which Way You Can, and Pink Cadillac. By the 2000s, the actor, now in his seventies, was still going strong. He appeared in such films as 2007's Lucky You, 2008's Pride and Glory, and 2010's How Do You Know before passing away in December 2011 at age 80.

Trivia: Respected in North America and the United Kingdom, actor John Vernon has worked steadily on stage, television, and feature films since the 1950s. A native of Montréal, Canada, Vernon's formal studies began after he won a scholarship to London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Prior to attending the school, Vernon gained experience in amateur theater. During his time in London, Vernon worked with several repertory companies. In 1956, he voiced the part of Big Brother in 1984, but he did not make his formal film debut until 1958 in The Long Rifle and the Tomahawk. By the mid-'50s, Vernon had returned to Canada and went on to specialize in Shakespearean television shows and theater presentations. Vernon made his first Broadway bow in Royal Hunt of the Sun. From there he went to Hollywood to start a prolific career as a supporting and occasional lead actor. Vernon was frequently cast as a villain.

Trivia: A character actress of stage and screen, Paula Trueman first appeared in Broadway revues during the 1920s. Proving herself to be a versatile performer, at home in dramas, comedies, and musicals, Trueman made her first feature film appearance in Crime Without Passion (1934). Her film career lasted until the mid-'80s and was as diverse as her stage work.

Trivia: Bookish, walrus-mustached, character actor Woodrow Parfrey was usually cast as bureaucrats, bankers, distracted scientists, and frontier storekeepers. Evidently a favorite of Clint Eastwood, Parfrey was prominently featured in such Eastwood vehicles as Dirty Harry (1971), Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Broncho Billy (1980). While he seldom needed extensive makeup in his standard characterizations, Parfrey found himself buried under mounds of John Chambers' latex and spirit gum for his role as Maximus in Planet of the Apes (1968). Appearing in well over 100 TV roles, Woodrow Parfrey was seen as FDR's adviser Louis Howe in the 1976 miniseries Backstairs at the White House (1976), and as the otherworldly Ticket Clerk in the 1979 fantasy weekly Time Express.

Trivia: Joyce Jameson was a classic example of the professional "dumb blonde" with a diametrically opposite off-screen personality. Entering films as a chorus member in the 1951 version of Showboat, Jameson honed her musical comedy talents in several satirical revues staged by her onetime husband Billy Barnes. Intelligent, sensitive, and extremely well read, Jameson nonetheless found herself perpetually cast as an airhead or golddigger. In films, she was seen in such roles as a Marilyn Monroe wannabe in The Apartment (1960) and a call-girl who runs screaming from her room when she thinks Jack Lemmon is about to paint her body in Good Neighbor Sam (1963). One of her more unorthodox film assignments was as the vulgar, unfaithful wife of Peter Lorre in Roger Corman's Tales of Terror (1963), in which she and her paramour Vincent Price are walled up in Lorre's wine cellar. One year later, she was reteamed with Lorre and Price in the raucous A Comedy of Terrors (1963), where she was more typically cast as a nitwit. Her later films include The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976) and Hardbodies (1981). Joyce Jameson was a fixture of 1950s and 1960s TV, playing a variety of buxom "straight women" for such comedians as Steve Allen, Red Skelton and Danny Kaye.

Trivia: After some 15 years on the country & western circuit, singer/actor Sheb Wooley finally cracked popular music's Top Ten in 1958. It was Wooley who introduced the world to the "One Eyed, One Horned, Flying Purple People Eater," which remained the number one song for six straight weeks and stayed in the Top Ten for three weeks more. Thereafter, Wooley's recording career fluctuated between blue-ribbon country & western ballads and silly novelty songs. As an actor, Wooley was seen in such films as Little Big Horn (1951), High Noon (1952), Giant (1956), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), and several other films with a sagebrush setting and equestrian supporting cast. From 1961 through 1965, Sheb Wooley played Pete Nolan, frontier scout for the never-ending cattle drive on the weekly TV Western Rawhide.

Trivia: Cadaverous, hollow-eyed Royal Dano made his theatrical entree as a minor player in the Broadway musical hit Finian's Rainbow. Born in New York City in 1922, he manifested a wanderlust that made him leave home at age 12 to travel around the country, and even after he returned home -- and eventually graduated from New York University -- he often journeyed far from the city on his own. He made his acting debut while in the United States Army during World War II, as part of a Special Services unit, and came to Broadway in the immediate postwar era. In films from 1950, he received his first important part, the Tattered Soldier, in John Huston's 1951 adaptation of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. Thereafter, he was often seen as a Western villain, though seldom of the cliched get-outta-town variety; in Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954), for example, he fleshed out an ordinary bad-guy type by playing the character as a compulsive reader with a tubercular cough. He likewise did a lot with a little when cast as Mildred Natwick's deep-brooding offspring in Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry. With his deep, resonant speaking voice and intense eyes, Dano could make a recitation of the telephone book sound impressive and significant, and some of his non-baddie characters include the prophet Elijah, who predicts the destruction of the Pequod and the death of Ahab, in Huston's Moby Dick (1956), Peter in The King of Kings (1961) and Mayor Cermak in Capone (1975); in addition, he played Abraham Lincoln in a multipart installment of the mid-'50s TV anthology Omnibus written by James Agee. On the small screen, the producers of The Rifleman got a huge amount of mileage out of his talent in five episodes in as many seasons, most notably in "Day of Reckoning" as a gunman-turned-preacher. He also appeared in memorable guest roles in the high-rent western series The Virginian, The Big Valley, and Bonanza, and had what was probably his best television role of all as the tragically insensitive father in the two-part Little House On The Prairie episode "Sylvia." Toward the end of his life, Royal Dano had no qualms about accepting questionable projects like 1990's Spaced Invaders, but here as elsewhere, he was always given a chance to shine; one of Dano's best and most bizarre latter-day roles was in Teachers (1982), as the home-room supervisor who dies of a heart attack in his first scene -- and remains in his chair, unnoticed and unmolested, until the fadeout.

Trivia: A full-blooded Muscogee-Creek Indian, Will Sampson spent most of his adult life as a successful artist. The towering Sampson was spotted at an art show by an assistant to actor/producer Michael Douglas; Douglas then cast Sampson in the important role of enigmatic sanitarium inmate Chief Bromden in the 1976 Oscar-winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It was the beginning of a ten-year acting career that would embrace both films (Buffalo Bill and the Indians, The Outlaw Josey Wales) and television. In the latter medium, Will Sampson had a recurring role on the Robert Urich private eye series Vegas (1978-1981), and starred as a taciturn Native American police officer in the 1977 TV pilot film Relentless.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Character actor Len Lesser worked steadily in film and television since his film debut in Shackout on 101 (1955). Lean, dark, and bushy-browed, he was typically cast as a crook or hitman. Fans of the television sitcom Seinfeld will recognize Lesser as Uncle Leo.

Trivia: Two things American actor John Russell was not: he was not cinematographer John L. Russell, nor was he the Johnny Russell who appears as Shirley Temple's brother in 20th Century-Fox's The Blue Bird (1940). He was however, a contract juvenile at Fox from 1937 through 1941. Interrupting his career for war service, Russell emerged from his tour of duty as a highly decorated marine. Busy in postwar films and TV as a secondary lead and utility villain, Russell was given costar billing with Chick Chandler in the 1955 syndicated TV adventure series Soldiers of Fortune. Four years later, Russell (now sporting a mustache) was cast as Marshal Dan Troop on the Warner Bros. weekly western series Lawman. This assignment lasted three years, after which Russell became a journeyman actor again. John Russell was well served with character parts in 1984's Honkytonk Man and 1985's Pale Rider, both directed by and starring another ex-TV-cowboy, Clint Eastwood.

Trivia: In 1959, American actor Charles Tyner appeared on Broadway with film star Paul Newman in Sweet Bird of Youth. Duly impressed by Tyner's work, Newman brought his theatrical coworker to Hollywood eight years later to play Boss Higgins, the sadistic prison camp guard in Cool Hand Luke (1967). It was the first of many such roles for Tyner, who spent the next several years playing a variety of tight-lipped, vicious rural authority figures. One of his better roles in this vein was as Unger, the vengeful football playing "screw" in the Burt Reynolds prison comedy The Longest Yard (1974). Less brutal but no less inimitable was Tyner's interpretation of Uncle Victor in the 1971 cult classic Harold and Maude. Charles Tyner went back to the stage in 1977, occasionally stepping before the cameras for such TV movies as The Incredible Journey of Dr. Meg Laurel (1979), theatrical features like Hamburger: The Motion Picture (1985) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1991), and his recurring role as Howard Rodman on the weekly television drama Father Murphy (1981).

Trivia: The younger brother of film star Robert Mitchum, American actor John Mitchum shared his family's Depression-era travails before striking out on his own. As brother Robert's star ascended in the mid '40s, John remained his elder sibling's boon companion, severest critic and drinking buddy. In later years, John was a convivial anecdotal source for books and articles about Bob, each reminiscense becoming more colorful as it was repeated for the next interview. After holding down a variety of jobs, John decided to give acting a try as a result of hearing Bob's tales of Hollywood revelry; too heavyset to be a leading man, John became a reliable character actor, usually in military or western roles. He frequently had small parts in his brother's starring films, notably One Minute to Zero (1951) and The Way West (1967). Most of John's movie work was done outside Robert's orbit, however, in such films as Cattle King (1963) and Paint Your Wagon (1970). Perhaps John Mitchum's best screen role was as Goering in the 1962 biopic Hitler; he may have been utterly opposed ideologically to the late German field marshal, but John certainly filled the costume.

Trivia: The son of Hollywood cinematographer Robert Surtees, Bruce Surtees himself began setting up angles and focus in the late 1960s. Surtees first gained widespread attention for his camerawork on the Clint Eastwood-Don Siegel collaborations The Beguiled (1971) and Dirty Harry (1971). When Eastwood launched his own directorial career, he took Surtees with him, and the results included such visual feasts as Play Misty For Me (1971), High Plains Drifter (1973), The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976) and Pale Rider (1985). Surtees' moody, noirish stylings, best exemplified by his Oscar-nominated black-and-white photography for Bob Fosse's Lenny, earned him the nickname "The Prince of Darkness." Not that Surtees was confined to any one genre; the same Surtees responsible for such shadow-drenched exercises as Escape from Alcatraz and Tightrope also contributed the vibrant colorations of such lighter fare as Movie Movie (1979), Risky Business (1982) and Back to the Death (1987). Surtees died at age 74 in February 2012.

Trivia: Musically inclined from childhood (he was proficient at piano, sax and clarinet), Jerry Fielding became a pro at 17, as arranger for the Alvino Ray orchestra. While arranging for such Big Band leaders as Tommy Dorsey, Charlie Barnett and Kay Kyser, Fielding found time to take classes at CarnegieTech. After organizing his own jazz orchestra in 1954, he worked steadily in television, providing live music for Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life and the 1962 summer-replacement series The Lively Ones. He also composed main-title and incidental music for the filmed TV series The Life of Riley, The Man From UNCLE, Hogan's Heroes, Columbo, McMillan and Wife and The Andros Targets. Equally busy in theatrical features, Fielding earned Oscar nominations for his work on Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971), and Clint Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales (1971). Jerry Fielding's movie-score manifest ran the gamut from The Crazy World of Laurel & Hardy (1967) to the 1978 remake of The Big Sleep.

Trivia: Born in Chicago, IL, writer/director Philip Kaufman makes accessible American art films and stays out of the Los Angeles area, preferring the home base of San Francisco, working with his wife, Rose, and his son Peter. After studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School, he taught English in Europe and began work on a novel. He got into filmmaking in the '60s after traveling to California to meet his literary mentor, Henry Miller. His first two films were satirical comedies: Goldstein, co-directed by Benjamin Manaster, and Fearless Frank, starring a young Jon Voight. During the '70s he reworked several great American genres with the Western The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid, the whaling adventure The White Dawn, the sci-fi thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the coming-of-age drama The Wanderers. During this time, he also received writing credits for the highly successful films The Outlaw Josey Wales and Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the '80s, he turned to literary adaptations and began to craft his signature style of so-called American European films. The Right Stuff, adapted from Tom Wolfe's novel about the astronauts of the U.S. Mercury 7, didn't do that well at the box office but won four Academy Awards and remains a fan favorite. He made his masterpiece in 1988 with The Unbearable Lightness of Being, adapted from the novel by Milan Kundera and nominated by the Academy for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography. As an intellectual art film embraced by American audiences, it also offers fine performances from leads Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, and Lena Olin. After a lifelong passion for the work of Henry Miller, Kaufman adapted autobiographical writings of Anaïs Nin into the film Henry & June, set in 1930s Paris. Despite fine production values and performances, the erotic drama had the unfortunate first-ever NC-17 rating. Kaufman briefly returned to mainstream commercial appeal with the Michael Crichton adaptation Rising Sun before heading out to Asia to help his son Peter Kaufman with the documentary China: The Wild East. In 2000, he directed the costume drama Quills, based on the play by Doug Wright depicting the incarceration of the Marquis de Sade. It was nominated for three Oscars and won Best Picture from the National Board of Review. In 2003, he completed The Blackout Murders, starring Ashley Judd as a police detective who finds herself a suspect.

Trivia: Madeleine Taylor Holmes was the daughter of silent film star Taylor Holmes. She generally played small character roles in films such as Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid (1972). Her last role was playing the witch in Pumpkinhead (1988).

Trivia: The youngest of the acting Bottoms brothers, Samuel Bottoms made his first film appearance as the retarded Billy in The Last Picture Show, appearing in several scenes with older brother Timothy. Samuel later showed up in two Vietnam-themed Francis Ford Coppola films: he was hotshot PFC Lance in Apocalypse Now (1979) and the more sober-sided Lt. Webber in Gardens of Stone (1987). In 1981, he starred in the TV-miniseries remake of East of Eden as Cal Trask, while his brother Timothy played his father, Adam Trask. Samuel Bottoms went on to co-star with Tim and Joseph Bottoms in 1987's Island Sons, a busted TV pilot.