Trivia: A small, delicate-looking, perky actress, Thompson studied dance as a child, and was dancing professionally by age 14; she won scholarships to the Pennsylvania Ballet, American Ballet, and the San Francisco Ballet. However, she felt she was too short to become a prima ballerina and gave up dance in favor of acting. After moving to New York she appeared in some 20 Burger King TV commercials, then debuted onscreen in Jaws 3-D (1983). Shortly thereafter she got her first important role, opposite Tom Cruise in the hit All the Right Moves (1983). She is best known for her multiple roles in the three Back to the Future movies; aside from those highly successful movies, she has not gone on to appear in any hit productions. She also appeared in the TV movies Nightbreaker (1989), Montana (1990), and the PBS playhouse co-production The Wizard of Loneliness (1988).

Trivia: Hailing from Milwaukee, WI, actress Amy Pietz earned several one-off appearances on series such as Star Trek: The Next Generation and Conrad Bloom while also appearing in big-screen fare like Rudy and Jingle All the Way. She earned a steady paycheck during many of those years playing the part of Annie Viola Spadaro on Caroline in the City. She continued with guest roles on ER, The Drew Carey Show, and Law & Order: SVU, while making time for appearances in the films The Whole Ten Yards and DysEnchanted. After a two-year run on Rodney ended in 2006, she was cast as overprotective Wisconsin mom Franny Tolchuck the next year on the CW culture-clash sitcom Aliens in America. Though that series ended quickly, she went on to appear in Reunion, and the teen film Prom.

Trivia: Though her family would ultimately settle in Italy, Sofia Milos was born to a Greek father and Italian mother in Zurich, Switzerland. By the time she reached adolescence, Milos had demonstrated a clear knack for the liberal arts, and, in addition to proving herself a skilled painter, had become fluent in Italian, French, German, Greek, Suisse, Spanish, and English. Though she wouldn't begin acting until later in life, Milos nonetheless got used to public scrutiny when she won a beauty contest at the age of 14, beginning a successful modeling career a year later -- so successful, in fact, that the money she earned modeling throughout France, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States paid for her education at the School of Business and Economics in Switzerland.In 1990, Milos decided to take up residence in the United States, where she spent time living in New York before settling down in Los Angeles. Shortly after her arrival, Milos began attending acting classes at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, which is led by renowned acting coach and director Milton Katselas. Milos worked primarily in theater circles until 1993, when she was cast in Café Americain, NBC's short-lived sitcom co-starring Valerie Bertinelli and Maurice Godin. Though the show wasn't a hit, the right people noticed her potential, and Milos began racking up an impressive television resumé. She appeared on Friends in 1995, made a guest appearance on Mad About You in 1996, and landed a reoccurring role on Caroline in the City from 1997-1998. Though she made her feature film debut in 1999 -- she played one of Tim Meadows' voluptuous love interests in The Ladies Man -- it wasn't until her performance as mob boss Annalisa Zucca on HBO's The Sopranos that she would achieve mainstream recognition.HBO continued to showcase Milos' talents in Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, for which she played an entirely improvised role as the girlfriend of Richard Lewis. After several more unsuccessful television pilots and a guest spot on ER, Milos starred as a long-suffering widow opposite Jason Isaacs and Lupe Ontiveros in Passionada (2003). Following the film, Milos landed a regular role as detective Yelina Salas in the hit television drama CSI: Miami.

Trivia: An imposing figure of both TV and the stage, 4'11" actor Leslie Jordan's physical stature belies his talent. Garnering massive acclaim for his portrayal of Brother Boy in the Broadway production of Sordid Lives, Jordan would go on to reprise the role for a film adaptation of the play. This led to a successful onscreen career as a character actor, making numerous guest appearances over the years on shows like Boston Legal, Ugly Betty, and Will & Grace. In 2008, he took on the role of Brother Boy once again, as Sordid Lives was adapted into a TV series for the Logo network.

Trivia: Like two of his business partners in the Southern California-based, LGBT-centered film production company Mythgarden -- Chad Allen and Craig Dougherty -- actor/producer Robert Gant made headlines for his efforts to expand the scope of homosexual roles in Hollywood projects beyond conventional, overwrought, two-dimensional stereotypes. A graduate of Georgetown University law school, Gant originally intended to practice law in Southern California, but instead headed into acting and scored a major success with his portrayal of HIV-infected college professor Ben Bruckner on the groundbreaking Showtime television series Queer as Folk. Subsequent projects included the Steven Monroe-directed suspense thriller The Contract (2001) and one of the leads in the Mythgarden-produced drama Save Me. Co-starring Allen, the film told of a young man drawn into a homosexual "recovery center" by some bigoted evangelical Christians; Gant plays the young veteran of the couple's treatment who finds himself increasingly drawn into a gay relationship with Allen's character.

Trivia: Comedian Garry Shandling was best known for his top-rated, award-winning parody of television talk shows The Larry Sanders Show, which aired on the HBO cable network from 1993 to 1998. He started out as a comedy writer for other sitcoms and as a standup comedian. He landed his first television show, the It's Garry Shandling's Show, on Fox in 1985. The show was heavily autobiographical, to the point of replicating his apartment on a soundstage. Shandling, however, made his biggest impression with Larry Sanders, a show about the trials, tribulations, and double-dealing that goes on behind the scenes of a latenight talk show. Much of the show's material was drawn from experiences Shandling endured or witnessed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where he was a popular guest star.In addition to performing live and on television, Shandling has also played character roles in feature films, beginning with The Night We Never Met in 1993 and continuing with such varied projects as Hurly Burly and Dr. Doolittle, both in 1998. The actor tried his hand at starring with the 2000 extra-terrestrial comedy What Planet Are You From, a box-office dud Shandling also produced and wrote.As the decade wore on, Shandling's significant big screen roles were limited to the 2001 Warren Beatty picture Town & Country, before emerging in 2006 by lending his voice to the animated adventure Over the Hedge and appearing in a supporting part in Trust the Man. Meanwhile, on the small screen, he kept television viewers laughing as host of the 52nd and 55th Annual Prime Time Ammy Awards in 2000 and 2003 respectively. Though brief cameos in Iron Man 2 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator followed, the one-time comedy superstar largely continued to maintain a low-profile in his later years. He died suddenly in 2016, at age 66.