Trivia: It took versatile actor James Belushi several years to slowly come into his own, which wasn't an easy task following in the fiery footsteps of his flamboyant, self-destructive brother, the late comic John Belushi. Despite that obstacle, the easy-going actor with the crooked smile still managed to forge a respectable career playing co-leads in a variety of film genres, including comedy, action, and drama in roles ranging from a sleazeball thief to a cop to a party animal in a gorilla suit. Prior to his first television appearances, the Chicago-born actor earned a degree in Speech and Theater, and worked on-stage in The Pirates of Penzance and True West. Like John, James joined the notorious Second City improvisational comedy group. He also began making regular guest appearances on Saturday Night Live, where his brother became famous in the mid-'70s. Making his feature film debut playing James Caan's calm partner in 1981's Thief, James Belushi began acting under John Landis (who also directed his brother) in Trading Places (1983). He continued playing supporting roles and occasional leads -- most notably in Oliver Stone's Salvador with James Woods in 1986 -- but his big break came when he played a bad cop in 1988's Red Heat with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was equally popular in K-9 the following year. Although his subsequent films were not as successful, Belushi continued to grow as a dramatic actor. In 2001, Belushi began headlining the successful ABC sitcom According to Jim.

Trivia: Blonde, slim, and polished television actress Courtney Thorne-Smith first appeared as Stacy Hamilton on Fast Times, the television series spin-off of the successful teen movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She made her film debut in the sports comedy Lucas, which also starred the rising young stars Winona Ryder, Corey Haim, and Charlie Sheen. When she did work on films, they were mostly lightweight comedies like Welcome to 18, Summer School, and Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise. Back on television, she appeared in the short-lived sitcom Day by Day and some TV movies before joining the cast of L.A. Law as Kimberly Dugan. Staying with TV dramas, she played Alison on the FOX soap opera Melrose Place from 1992-1997, and then she joined the cast of Ally McBeal and its truncated spawn Ally as Georgia Thomas. She also appeared in the Carrot Top movie Chairman of the Board. After a few guest-starring roles on Spin City, she moved over to ABC for the family sitcom According to Jim as Jim Belushi's wife, Cheryl.

Trivia: Though she worked consistently throughout the 1990s, Kimberly Williams made her biggest impression on movie audiences as the sweet ingenue in the remake of Father of the Bride (1991). Raised in New York, Williams began acting in commercials as a teenager. During her second year at Northwestern University, Williams got her feature film break when she was cast as protective father Steve Martin's soon-to-be-married daughter Annie in the (slightly) modernized version of the popular 1950s comedy Father of the Bride. Though the movie became a hit, Williams chose to finish college rather than head immediately to Hollywood, appearing only in the gentle nostalgia piece Indian Summer (1993) before she earned her degree. After school, Williams reunited with screen parents Martin and Diane Keaton to play the now-expectant mother Annie in the genial sequel Father of the Bride II (1995). Moving beyond gentle, crowd-pleasing comedy, Williams co-starred with TV heartthrob Jason Priestley in the hitman black comedy Coldblooded (1995), played Emilio Estevez's sister in the Vietnam drama The War at Home (1996), and appeared in the TV version of the Neil Simon play Jake's Women (1995). Williams' doe-eyed earnestness also won over a cadre of fans when she was cast as the female lead in the Edward Zwick/Marshall Herskovitz series Relativity in 1996, but the critically acclaimed show lasted only one season. Along with acting in Broadway and off-Broadway plays in the late '90s, Williams also played the young Sharon Stone in the film version of Sam Shepard's Simpatico (1999), joined the ensemble cast of the romantic comedy Just a Little Harmless Sex (1999), and starred as a contemporary young woman transported to fairytale land in the splashy NBC miniseries The 10th Kingdom (2000). That assignment seemed prophetic in retrospect, for Williams subsequently gravitated toward television projects and away from the big screen; she played Dana, sister-in-law of the titular suburbanite (Jim Belushi) on the popular ABC sitcom According to Jim (2001), and also began accepting leads in longform features. The majority of these projects constituted sentimental, family-friendly melodramas, such as the 2001 Follow the Stars Home (with Williams as a young woman deserted by her husband after she gives birth to a deformed baby) and the 2002 outing The Christmas Shoes (as a mother dying of congenital heart failure). Also in 2002, Williams turned up in Rodrigo García's drama Ten Tiny Love Stories, as one of several characters who deliver heartfelt monologues on their romantic lives. She married country singer Brad Paisley in 2003 and they have two children. Her film and television career includes Identity Theft, How to Eat Fried Worms, Eden Court, and Amish Grace.

Trivia: Best known as the urbane and cultured host of the Bravo network's piéce-de-resistance, Inside the Actors Studio (where his manner prompted one publication to refer to him as a "polymath linguist"), James Lipton also served as the dean emeritus of the Actor's Studio Drama School at Manhattan's New School University while headlining that iconic television program. The son of a graphic artist-cum-writer father and a teacher mother, Lipton was born in Detroit in 1926 and began a career stint in the early '40s on radio highlighted by an ongoing performance on the drama The Lone Ranger. He spent the postwar years in Paris, and briefly worked as a mec, or an arranger of client services for French prostitutes. In subsequent years, Lipton returned to the United States, married actress Nina Foch (whom he subsequently divorced), and embarked on twin careers as a writer and actor in the soap opera venue. He scripted episodes of programs including Guiding Light and Another World and ushered in a longstanding portrayal of a physician on Light.In the late '60s, Lipton moved into musical theater, authoring the book and lyrics to the 1967 musical Sherry!, with a score by longtime friend and associate Laurence Rosenthal. As adapted from the Kaufman/Hart play The Man Who Came to Dinner, it received mostly negative critical reviews, though a new studio cast recording emerged almost 40 years later to renewed acclaim. Lipton spent subsequent years as a novelist, television producer, and screenwriter (Copacabana, 1985), though as indicated, his broadest acclaim emerged in the 1990s, from two related feats. In 1994, he designed and implemented a three-year, degree-granting actors' training program christened the Actors' Studio Drama School, which actually represented a union of the venerable Actors Studio and Manhattan's New School University; a secondary accomplishment, Inside the Actors Studio television program, constituted an extension of that. It featured Lipton interviewing celebrities about the trajectories and accomplishments of their careers. Over the years, hundreds of guests lined up to participate, including the likes of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack, Steven Spielberg, and Burt Reynolds. In the mid-2000s, Lipton published an autobiography, Inside Inside, in which he nostalgically and lyrically recounted the adventures of his life.Given his role on that program, Lipton frequently found himself subjected to parody; not only did he refuse to decry such acts, but he openly embraced them with a brazenly self-mocking sense of humor. Among other events, Will Ferrell frequently impersonated Lipton on Saturday Night Live -- and turned up on Inside the Actors Studio to do his impersonation, causing Lipton to double over with laughter. Lipton also made frequent guest appearances on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, including a memorably riotous sequence opposite the Incredible Hulk, wherein he jokingly described himself as "not merely an actor, but a phenomenon -- a supernova that cannot be contained."