Trivia: After rising to fame in a series of hit Woody Allen comedies, Diane Keaton went on to enjoy a successful film career both as an actress and as a director. Born Diane Hall on January 5, 1946, in Los Angeles, she studied acting at Manhattan's Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater and in 1968 understudied in Hair. On Broadway she met actor/director Allen and appeared in his 1969 stage hit Play It Again, Sam. In 1970, Keaton made her film debut in the comedy Lovers and Other Strangers and rose to fame as the paramour of Al Pacino's Michael Corleone in the 1972 blockbuster The Godfather. That same year, she and Allen -- with whom Keaton had become romantically involved offscreen -- reprised Play It Again, Sam for the cameras, and in 1973 he directed her in Sleeper. The Godfather Part II followed, as did Allen's Love and Death. All of these films enjoyed great success, and Keaton stood on the verge of becoming a major star; however, when her next two pictures -- 1976's I Will, I Will for Now and Harry and Walter Go to New York -- both flopped, she returned to the stage to star in The Primary English Class.In 1977, Allen released his fourth film with Keaton, Annie Hall. A clearly autobiographical portrait of the couple's real-life romance, it was a landmark, bittersweet, soul-searching tale which brought a new level of sophistication to comedy in films. Not only did the film itself win an Academy Award for Best Picture, but Keaton garnered Best Actress honors. That same year, she also headlined the controversial drama Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Two more films with Allen, 1978's Bergmanesque Interiors and the 1979 masterpiece Manhattan followed; however, when the couple separated, Keaton began a romance with Warren Beatty, with whom she co-starred in the 1981 epic Reds; she earned a Best Actress nomination for her work in Beatty's film. Continuing to pursue more dramatic projects, she next co-starred in 1982's Shoot the Moon, followed by a pair of box-office disappointments, The Little Drummer Girl and Mrs. Soffel. The 1986 Crimes of the Heart was a minor success, and a year later she made her directorial debut with the documentary Heaven. Keaton's next starring role in the domestic comedy Baby Boom (1987) was a smash, and after close to a decade apart, she and Allen reunited for Radio Days, in which she briefly appeared as a singer. Upon starring in 1988's disappointing The Good Mother, she began splitting her time between acting and directing. In between appearing in films including 1990's The Godfather Part III, 1991's hit Father of the Bride, and 1992's telefilm Running Mates, she helmed music videos, afterschool specials (1990's The Girl with the Crazy Brother), and TV features (1991's Wildflower). She even directed an episode of the David Lynch cult favorite Twin Peaks. After stepping in for Mia Farrow in Allen's 1993 picture Manhattan Murder Mystery, Keaton essayed the title role in the 1994 TV biopic Amelia Earhart: the Final Flight and in 1995 made her feature-length directorial debut with the quirky drama Unstrung Heroes. After co-starring with Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn in the 1996 comedy smash The First Wives Club, she earned another Oscar nomination for her work in Marvin's Room. In 1998, Keaton starred in The Only Thrill and followed that in 1999 with The Other Sister. She subsequently stepped into another familial role in 2000's Hanging Up with Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow. Despite participating amongst a star-studded cast including veterans Goldie Hawn, Garry Shandling, Charlton Heston, and Warren Beatty, 2001's Town & Country was not particularly well-received among audiences or critics. In 2003, Keaton played Jack Nicholson's love interest in director Nancy Meyers's Something's Gotta Give (for which she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination) and executive produced director Gus Van Sant's avant-garde Elephant), which won Best Director and Golden Palm awards at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. Keaton would spend the ensuing years appearing frequently on screen in films like Because I Said So, Mad Money, and Darling Companion.

Trivia: His long and fruitful association with Canada's Second City comedy troupe has led some to assume that Harold Ramis was Canadian; actually he hailed from the original "Second City," Chicago. After college, Ramis worked as editor of the Party Jokes page of Playboy magazine. He later performed with Chicago's Second City aggregation, and was a cast member of the Broadway revue National Lampoon's Lemmings, a major spawning ground of most of Saturday Night Live's cast. Ramis didn't join the SNL folks, but instead headed for Edmonton, where he was a writer/performer on the weekly Second City TV sketch comedy series. Like the rest of his talented co-stars, Ramis played a rich variety of roles on the series, the most prominent of which was TV station manager Moe Green (a character name swiped from the second Godfather movie); his other characters tended to be nerdy or officious types. Ramis' film activities have included screenwriting (National Lampoon's Animal House) and directing (1980s Caddyshack and 1984's Club Paradise). His best remembered screen appearance was as paranormal troubleshooter Egon Spengler in the two Ghostbusters flicks. Retaining close ties with his Second City compadres (on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border), Ramis directed the 1993 Bill Murray vehicle Groundhog Day and the 1995 Al Franken starrer Stuart Saves His Family. Though Groundhog Day was generally lauded as one of the most fresh and original comedies to come down the pipe in quite some time, Stuart Saves His Family didn't prove any where near as successful despite some generally positive critical nods. To be fair, audiences had certainly had their fill of SNL spinoff movies by this point and the movie did have a somewhat hard time balancing its drama with comedy, but with well written characters and a smart script many eventually succumbed to its charm when the film was released on home video shortly thereafter. Where Stuart Saves His Family had scored with critics and bombed with the masses, Ramis' next film, the Michael Keaton comedy Multiplicity, did almost the exact opposite. Generally regarded as only a mediocre effort by the press, audiences seemed to enjoy the idea of multiple Keatons and the film performed fairly well at the box office. It seemed that Ramis was a director in need of balancing critical and mass reception, and with his next film he seemed to do just that. An inventive comedy that paired Robert DeNiro and Billy Crystal as a troubled mob boss and his tentative psychiatrist respectively, Analyze This seemed to get a fair shake from just about everybody. As one of DeNiro's first straight comedies, audiences had a cathartic blast watching him gleefully deconstruct the hardened, fearsome persona he had been perfecting since the early days of his career. Ramis next stepped behind the camera for Bedazzled - a remake of the beloved Dudley Moore/Peter Cooke comedy classic. Unfortunately the film proved to be one of the director's biggest failures to date. Opting next to stick with more familiar, but again not altogether original ground, Ramis headed up the sequel to Analyze This - amusingly titled Analyze That - in 2002. Though it may not have been the most necessary sequel in the history of film, fans were generally pleased and the film proved a moderate success. Sure all of Ramis' work as a director left little time for other endeavors, but the busy filmmaker somehow found time to serve as a producer on many of his own projects (in addition to such non-Ramis directed films as The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest) as well as step in front of the camera for such efforts as As Good As It Gets (1997), Orange County (2002), Knocked Up (2007), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), and Year One (2009), which he also wrote and directed. Ramis died at age 69 in 2014.

Trivia: A Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (for 1979's Buried Child), an Oscar-nominated actor, and a director and screenwriter to boot, multi-talented Sam Shepard has made a career of plumbing the darker depths of middle-American rural sensibilities and Western myths. The son of a military man, he was born Samuel Shepard Rogers on November 3, 1943, in Fort Sheridan, IL. Following a peripatetic childhood, part of which was spent on a farm, Shepard left home in late adolescence to move to New York City, where by the age of 20, he already had two plays produced. As a playwright, Shepard went on to win a number of Obies for such dramas as Curse of the Starving Class (1977), which he made into a film in 1994, and True West (aired on PBS in 1986). As an actor, the lanky and handsome Shepard made his feature film debut with a small role in Bronco Bullfrog (1969) and didn't resurface again until Bob Dylan's disastrous Renaldo and Clara (1978). The film followed Shepard's residence in London during the early '70s, where he worked on-stage as an actor and director when not playing drums for his band, The Holy Modal Rounders, which had performed as part of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. Also in 1978, Shepard made a big impression playing a wealthy landowner in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, but it was not until he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for playing astronaut Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983) that he became a well-known actor. Following this success, he went on to specialize in playing drifters, cowboys, con artists, and eccentric characters with only the occasional leading role. Some of his more notable work included Paris, Texas (1984), which he also wrote; Fool For Love (1985), which was adapted from his play of the same name; Baby Boom (1987), Steel Magnolias (1989), and The Pelican Brief (1993). In addition to acting and writing, Shepard has also directed: in 1988, he made his debut with Far North, a film he wrote especially for his off-screen leading lady, Jessica Lange, with whom he has acted in Frances (1982), Country (1984), and Crimes of the Heart (1986).In 1999, Shepard could be seen on both the big and small screen. He appeared in Snow Falling on Cedars and Dash and Lilly, a made-for-TV movie for which he won an Emmy nomination in the role of the titular Dashiell Hammett. In addition, he also lent his writing skills to Simpatico, a Nick Nolte vehicle about friendship and loss adapted from Shepard's play of the same name.As the new decade began, he could be seen as the ghost in a modern-set Hamlet. He appeared in Black Hawk Down, as well as in Sean Penn's The Pledge. His play True West enjoyed a highly successful revival starring John C. Riley and Philip Seymour Hoffman as feuding brothers, which was notable because the actors traded parts every third performance. In 2004 he appeared in the popular romantic drama The Notebook, and wrote Don't Come Knocking the next year. He was the legendary outlaw Frank James in 2007's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He was cast as Valerie Plame's father in Fair Game, and portrayed a dog-loving sheriff in Lawrnece Kasdan's Darling Companion.

Trivia: Often noted for his comment that he enjoys working in all of his films -- as long as he doesn't have to see any of them -- actor James Spader (born February 2nd, 1960) may have missed out on seeing a few good performances in some pretty memorable films.Though descended from a long line of scholars and professors, Spader, in ironic contrast to his theatrical image as the definitive terminal yuppie, dropped out of Phillips Andover prep school to pursue a career as an actor. Forsaking his formal education, Spader instead decided to focus his attention on acting by studying at the Michael Chekhov school in New York, while also working a variety of odd jobs to support himself until he found success as a thespian. Making his debut in the 1978 comedy Team Mates, Spader began the slow process of gaining more frequent work with roles of increasing substance. Spader's first role came in Franco Zeffirelli's soft-core teen melodrama Endless Love (1981) (also notable as the debut of another young unknown actor named Tom Cruise. After a brief, mid-'80s stint in teen exploitation including Tuff Turf and The New Kids (both 1985), Spader gained mainstream recognition with his first fore in yuppiedom as Molly Ringwald's insincere suitor in Pretty in Pink (1986). Over the course of the next few years, Spader would refine his slimy persona to perfection in Wall Street (1987) and Less Than Zero (1987), and take an interesting turn as a possible serial killer in the Jack the Ripper thriller Jack's Back (1988), but it was the end of the decade that brought the defining role in Spader's career.Though his role in independent filmmaker Steven Soderbergh's voyeurism-obsessed sex, lies and videotape did little to propel his persona into more likeable territories, it showed an actor with considerable talent who wasn't afraid to take risks, winning him the Best Actor award at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. Spader's dark portrayal of the ominously seductive videophile struck a chord in audiences and critics alike and turned him into a household name. The '90s found Spader expanding his yuppie image into more sympathetic territory with roles in White Palace and Bad Influence (both 1990), and he continued his likeable trend in the first of the mega-budget Dean Devlin/Roland Emmerich collaborations, Stargate (1994), before reverting back as Jack Nicholson's manipulative lycanthropic rival in Mike Nichols' imaginative satire Wolf (1994). Controversy soon followed with David Cronenberg's widely panned study of fetishistic alienation Crash (1996), and Spader has worked steadily since, with roles in Supernova (2000) and Speaking of Sex (2001). With the release of Secretary (2002), Spader once again found himself in the favor of art house audiences for his portrayal of a demanding lawyer who hires a recently released mental patient for the eponimous duty.Spader found success on the small screen once again for his work on Boston Legal from 2004 to 2008 as the character of Alan Moore, a vehemently moral attorney who resorts to unethical methods during his pursuit of justice (a role that would win the actor two Emmys). Spader made a guest appearance on an episode of The Office, and returned to the sitcom in 2011 as part of the main cast.

Trivia: Actor/director Sam Wanamaker was one of those whose career was nearly derailed by the machinations of Senator McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee. A native of Chicago, born Samuel Watenmaker, he began his career in theater at age 17 following training at Chicago's Goodman Theater. Wanamaker honed his acting skills in stock, traveling shows, and on Broadway. He also attended Drake University. Between 1943 and 1946, Wanamaker was in the U.S. Army. Early in his career, he also worked in radio. He made his feature film debut in My Girl Tisa (1948). The following year, Wanamaker, whose leftist political views were no secret in Hollywood, went to England to appear in blacklisted director Edward Dymtryk's Give Us This Day (1949). After making another film in Britain, Wanamaker learned that he too was about to be investigated and had been blacklisted; therefore, Wanamaker elected to remain in England. Over the next ten years, Wanamaker worked on-stage as a director, producer, and actor. In the 1960s, Wanamaker resumed his acting career in internationally produced films such as The Concrete Jungle (1962) and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965). He made his directorial bow in 1969 with The File of the Golden Goose (1969) and went on to make several more films, including The Executioner (1970). He also made television movies such as the well-regarded true story, The Killing of Randy Webster (1981). In 1985, Wanamaker appeared on the short-lived television series The Berrengers. When not busy acting or directing, Wanamaker had been an active supporter of the plan to restore Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Unfortunately, Wanamaker died of cancer just before the project was completed. His daughter Zoe Wanamaker is also an actor.

Trivia: Burly character actor Pat Hingle held down a variety of bread-and-butter jobs--mostly in the construction field--while studying at the University of Texas, the Hagen-Bergdorf studio, the Theatre Wing and the Actors Studio. Earning his Equity card in 1950, Hingle made his Broadway debut in 1953 as Harold Koble in End as a Man (he would repeat this role in the 1957 film adaptation, retitled The Strange One). One year later, he was cast as Gooper-aka "Brother Man"-in Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer-winning play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Also in 1954, he made his inaugural film appearance in On the Waterfront as a bartender. Though a familiar Broadway presence and a prolific TV actor, Hingle remained a relatively unknown film quantity, so much so that he was ballyhooed as one of the "eight new stars" in the 1957 release No Down Payment. As busy as he was before the cameras in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Hingle's first love was the theatre, where he starred in such productions as William Inge's Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Archibald MacLeish's JB, and later appeared in the one-man show Thomas Edison: Reflections of a Genius. His made-for-TV assignments include such historical personages as Colonel Tom Parker in Elvis (1979), Sam Rayburn in LBJ: The Early Years (1988), J. Edgar Hoover in Citizen Cohn (1992) and Earl Warren in Simple Justice (1993). Among his more recent big-screen assignments has been Commissioner Gordon in the Batman films. Amidst his hundreds of TV guest shots, Pat Hingle has played the regular roles of Chief Paulton in Stone (1980) and Henry Cobb in Blue Skies (1988), was briefly a replacement for Doc (Milburn Stone) on the vintage western Gunsmoke, and has shown up sporadically as the globe-trotting father of Tim Daly and Steven Weber on the evergreen sitcom Wings.

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

Trivia: Well-trained in the exacting school of improvisational comedy, Mary Gross was a regular on Saturday Night Live from 1981 to 1985. Her later series-TV credits include the roles of Abigail McIntyre Kellogg in The People Next Door (1989-90) and Phoebe in the 1992 Billy Connolly vehicle Billy. Mary Gross has made many a welcome comic visit to such big-screen fare as Troop Beverly Hills (1988) and The Santa Clause (1994). Actress Mary Gross is the sister of actor Michael Gross, with whom she appeared in the 1988 film Big Business.

Trivia: Squeaky-voiced comedienne Victoria Jackson is perhaps best known for being a cast member of the NBC television sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1986 to 1992, but she also makes sporadic film appearances. Jackson made her film debut in Stoogemania (1985). Born in Miami, FL, Jackson was raised in a strict Christian home. Her father was a gymnastics coach and Jackson was trained in the sport from age five through 18. Following studies at Florida Bible College, Jackson attended Furman University on a gymnastics scholarship. She next went to Auburn University before getting involved with summerstock theater in California. With the troupe, she ended up in Alabama where she met actor Johnny Crawford (best known as the star of the TV Western The Rifleman). He hired her for his nightclub act. From there, Jackson went to Hollywood working odd jobs while launching her career as a standup comic. Jackson's big break came from an appearance with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in which she recited poetry while doing a handstand. The funny lady went on to appear a total of 22 times on the enduring nighttime talk show. Following her long stint on SNL, Jackson married her old high school flame and returned to Florida to raise a family. Since then her film and television appearances, on shows such as The Naked Truth, have been sporadic, though Jackson did find time to record a children's album, Ukulele Lady, on Choo Choo Records. Herself a devout Christian, Jackson also occasionally appears on The 700 Club to share her faith.

Trivia: Character actress Shera Danese specialized in bit parts, initially ones of a slightly sultry nature. She landed one of her earliest big-screen roles as one of saxophone player Jimmy Doyle's (Robert De Niro) girlfriends in Martin Scorsese's revisionist musical New York, New York (1977), then drew attention away from Rebecca De Mornay as one of two prostitutes who accompany a high-school senior (Tom Cruise) out for a wild evening on the town, in Paul Brickman's satire on teen angst, Risky Business (1983). Subsequent projects included the 1987 Baby Boom (as a cloak room attendant), the 2002 John Q., and the 2006 Alpha Dog. Danese also appeared in numerous Columbo telemovies opposite longtime off-camera husband Peter Falk.

Trivia: A blonde stock company ingenue, Dorothy Hall was awarded a screen contract by independent producer Samuel Zierler, who cast her opposite virile George Walsh in three low-budget melodramas: The Broadway Drifter, Back to Liberty, and The Winning Oar (all 1927). Unfortunately, Walsh's career was waning after losing the lead in Ben Hur (1925) and the films were not successful. After appearing in the hit 1929 Broadway production of The Greeks Had a Word for It, Hall was given a contract with Paramount, but her roles in such films as Laughing Lady (1930) and Working Girls (1931) were not memorable.

Trivia: Chicago-born actress Beverly Todd began her acting career on-stage, appearing in plays such as Deep Are the Roots and No Strings in New York and London. She embarked upon her film career in the '70s, immediately making a major impact with a string of memorable roles in films like The Lost Man, They Call Me Mister Tibbs!, and Brother John, as well as in the legendary miniseries Roots. As the '80s began, Todd's roles became more varied, as she exploring her comedic side in movies like Baby Boom and Moving. This trend continued throughout the '90s and 2000s, as Todd enjoyed working on projects that fell all over the spectrum, from the high-school docudrama Lean on Me to a guest role on the sitcom A Different World and a recurring part on the hit HBO series Six Feet Under to the Oscar-winning Crash. In 2007, she had a supporting role in the Morgan Freeman/Jack Nicholson vehicle The Bucket List.

Trivia: Lead actor Nicholas Cascone appeared on screen beginning in the late '80s.

Trivia: A veteran character actor of stage and screen, George O. Petrie will be recognized by fans of the NBC sitcom Mad About You as Paul Reiser's film editor. A native of New Haven, CT, and a 1934 graduate from U.S.C., Petrie's interest in acting led him to New York where he landed a role in the Broadway production of Cafe Crown. While serving in the military during WWII, Petrie appeared in the Broadway production of The Army Play by Play, a five-part anthology comprised of vignettes penned by soldiers from as many camps. The show ran for six months and played a command performance before President Roosevelt. Upon transferring to the Air Corps, Petrie was cast in Moss Hart's inspirational Winged Victory. Following its four-month run, Petrie went on to appear in George Cukor's film version. Petrie became a radio performer after his discharge and starred in several dramas, including The Amazing Mr. Malone. He turned to television acting in the '50s and began starring in live soap operas such as As the World Turns and Edge of Night as well as playing a semi-regular part on Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners. Petrie would remain associated with Gleason on various projects through 1969. Petrie's filmography includes Hud (1963), Something in Common (1986), and Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987). Petrie died of lymphoma in his Brentwood, CA, home at the age 85.

Trivia: It was a short round-trip commute for American actress Dori Brenner from her Long Island home to her Manhattan stage work. At least one of Dori's films, Next Stop Greenwich Village (1977), was also produced in New York. Brenner's other film assignments ranged from the popular (Altered States [1980]) to the very obscure (Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers [1972]). As a television performer, Dori Brenner has been seen on the 1977 NBC miniseries Seventh Avenue, on the brief Angie Dickinson crime weekly Cassie and Co (1982) (as a reformed shoplifter), and the inconsequential fantasy sitcom The Charmings (1987) (as the suburbanite neighbor to Snow White and Prince Charming!)

Trivia: Trained at London's Webber-Douglas academy, Paxton Whitehead made his professional debut in 1956, and within two years was signed by the RSC. Crossing the Atlantic to appear in Canadian stage and TV productions, Whitehead made his Broadway bow in 1962's The Affair. He went on to appear with the American Shakespeare Company, to direct in regional repertory, and to function as artistic director of the Shaw Festival, a job he held down for ten years. His later Broadway credits include Crucifer of Blood (as Sherlock Holmes) and the 1980 revival of Camelot (as Pellinore). Whitehead's first film appearance was in the 1986 Whoopi Goldberg comedy Jumpin' Jack Flash. The following year, he starred as Dudley the Butler in the syndicated sitcom Marblehead Manor; one of his co-stars was Linda Thorson, with whom he'd appeared on Broadway in Noises Off. In 1995, Paxton Whitehead was starred as cable-TV exec Duke Stone in the WB Network situation comedy Simon, one of that fledgling network's few bonafide successes.

Trivia: Actress Constance Forslund gained her first Broadway attention in the mid '70s revival of Clare Booth Luce's The Women. Though born in California, Constance spent her teen years in Wisconsin. In the '70s, '80s and '90s, she appeared regularly in TV movies and guest-star spots on various weekly series. Forslund could also be seen in such theatrical films as The Way We Were (1973), Hail to the Chief (1973) and The River's Edge (1985). The production that really, truly should have made Constance Forslund a star was This Year's Blonde, a 1980 TV-movie wherein the actress pulled out all the stops in the role of the young Marilyn Monroe.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: A lead actress, Borowitz appeared onscreen since the late '80s.

Trivia: Started her professional acting career in 1974.At the start of her career, learned to type to work in offices while also auditioning in New York.In 2008, was awarded the School of Theatre Distinguished Alumni Award by the Boston University College of Fine Arts.Has played a teacher in multiple projects, including Lean on Me (1989), If Looks Could Kill (1991), Curb Your Enthusiasm and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.In 2016, was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female for her work in the film H. (2014).

Trivia: A veteran of film and television, Chris Noth is probably best known for his work on Law and Order and HBO's Sex and the City, the latter of which featured him as the charming but terminally untrustworthy Mr. Big, erstwhile boyfriend/bad habit of the series' heroine, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). Hailing from Madison, WI, where he was born November 13, 1954, Noth moved around a lot throughout his childhood, living in England, Yugoslavia, and Spain. Returning to the States, he studied with the storied acting coach Stanford Meisner before being accepted into the prestigious Yale School of Drama.Noth got his start on the stage and in television performing at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, CT, and appearing in productions with theater companies across the country, including the Manhattan Theater Club and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. Working in television beginning in 1982, he did a number of shows before breaking into film with small parts in Off Beat (1986) and the Diane Keaton comedy Baby Boom (1987). Noth's big break came in 1989, when he was chosen to play Det. Mike Logan on Law and Order. Noth portrayed the young policeman for five seasons, winning both critical nods and fans, many of whom were saddened when his Law and Order contract was not renewed in 1995. Noth continued to work on television and did minor work in films such as Naked in New York (1994) before getting his next big break in the form of Sex and the City (1998). As Big, he was one of the few male characters who could hold his own in the presence of the series' strong female protagonists, played by Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall, and Kristin Davis. The show proved to be an enormous critical and commercial hit, in the process winning Noth more fans. He would reprise the role for subsuquent big screen adaptations of the show, in addition to other films like My One and Only and Lovelace. Noth would also enoy successful turns on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, The Good Wife, and Titanic: Blood and Steel.

Trivia: As Madame Hooch in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Zoe Wanamaker teaches Harry how to fly on a broomstick. But the magic she works in that popular film is paltry compared with the magic she works on the stage performing in the works of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, and other playwrights. Her starring role in the Sophocles play Electra won her the 1998 Olivier Award as Best Actress. It was her second Olivier in that category, the first coming in 1979 for her role as May Daniels in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of the Moss Hart/George Kaufman play Once in a Lifetime. Wanamaker also earned a 1984 Critics' Circle Theatre Award for her performance in Mother Courage, a 1986 Drama Desk Award for her performance in Loot, a 1992 Broadcasting Press Guild Award for her performance in Countess Alice, and a 2002 Olivier nomination for her performance in Boston Marriage. In addition, she has earned a Golden Globe nomination, two Tony nominations, three British Academy Award nominations, and a Royal Television Society Award for a TV series.Wanamaker was born in New York City on May 13, 1949. She became a Londoner at age three after her father, American actor Sam Wanamaker, moved to England to avoid testifying before the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee during Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunt. Because her father was a passionate Shakespeare fan, Zoe Wanamaker grew up with Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and Cleopatra as playmates while attending the King Alfred School in London. After Sam Wanamaker, a method actor, tutored little Zoe in the subtleties of the performing arts, he sent her to London's Central School of Speech and Drama to perfect her talents, where she studied until 1970. Meanwhile, Sam Wanamaker spearheaded the project to rebuild the Globe Theatre on the South Bank of the River Thames. Although he died before the new Globe was finished, his daughter stood in for him when the playhouse opened in June 1997. In a performance before Queen Elizabeth II, she recited the famous prologue to Shakespeare's Henry V. Most of her acting has been for the stage or television playing a truly diverse collection of characters, including a dog, a leprechaun, Miss Murdstone in David Copperfield, Emilia in Othello, and Lady Anne in Richard III. When she was 45, Wanamaker married actor Gawn Grainger, a native of Ireland, inheriting two stepchildren. Living and acting off and on in England and the U.S. and holding citizenship in both countries, Wanamaker has posed a writing problem for critics: whether to refer to her as an English-American or an American Englishwoman. Probably the best solution is to refer to her as one of the world's finest actresses, and let it go at that.