Trivia: Character actor Richard Kind has done most of his work on television and on stage, but he also occasionally appears in feature films. Fans of the NBC sitcom Mad About You will recognize him for playing Fran's ex-husband Mark. Kind grew up in Bucks County, PA (he was born in Trenton, NJ), and has had a lifelong interest in acting. But despite his interest, he enrolled at Northwestern University as a pre-law major. He had planned on attending law school immediately after graduation, but instead heeded a family friend's advice and decided to pursue drama for a while. Kind moved to New York, but despite occasional work in commercials and showcases, got no breaks. He did much better in Chicago, where he found employment and gained valuable experience working first with the comedic actors at the Practical Theatre Company and then with those at Second City. Eventually, he moved to L.A. to perform with that city's division of the illustrious satirical theater. Since his arrival in Southern California, Kind has been a regular and a guest star on various series. He made his feature film debut in Vice Versa (1988). He would go on to appear in many feature films, from the Station Agent to Argo. He would also star on several TV series, like Spin City and Luck.

Trivia: Forever associated with his ongoing voice work as Homer J. Simpson on Matt Groening and James L. Brooks' long, long-running Fox animated sitcom The Simpsons, Dan Castellaneta is well-reputed for his modest, unassuming presence in real life and his paradoxical ability to spin characters -- seemingly from out of nowhere -- that instantly take on lives of their own. Groening once famously remarked that "Dan can do everything, and he practically does....You might never notice him, but then he opens his mouth and he completely creates one character after another.'' Born in 1957, Castellaneta grew up in the small town of Oak Grove, IL, in the northwestern corner of the state, near the Iowa border. As a self-described introvert who developed and honed a facility for slipping into the guise of characters to entertain and make social situations easier (read: class clown), Castellaneta nevertheless diverged from this path in college and worked toward a career as a high-school art teacher via his studies at Northern Illinois University. Then, one of Castellaneta's professors (perhaps sensing some dissatisfaction) wisely admonished him to only work at a field, and in a job, that he loved. Castellaneta reasoned that acting fit the bill, and auditioned for the infamous sketch comedy troupe Second City shortly after graduation. The troupe hired him, and in time, the skills that the actor projected led to his involvement on the then-fledgling Fox network's sketch comedy series The Tracey Ullman Show, which premiered on Sunday, April 5, 1987. Castellaneta joined Ullman, Julie Kavner, Joe Malone, Sam McMurray, and for a time Anna Levine in live-action skits that parodied all aspects of Western culture.As a most unusual aspect of her program, Ullman opted to feature crudely animated, offbeat segments as Monty Python-style transitions between the individual sketches. The episodes in question were drawn by Gabor Csupo and Groening (at that time, comic-strip artist of growing infamy known for his Life Is Hell series starring a buck-toothed, bug-eyed rabbit named Bucky). Although the subjects of the shorts initially varied, within a few months they began to focus exclusively on a hyper-dysfunctional blue-collar family called the Simpsons; Kavner and Castellaneta voiced parents Homer and Marge Simpson, respectively. Those segments gained such massive popularity that they eventually outshone that of the Ullman show itself (which wrapped in September 1990), and executive producer James L. Brooks, following this cue, decided to spin off the Simpsons into their own weekly animated series. Kavner and Castellaneta, of course, followed Brooks to the new program, joined in time by longtime Brooks acquaintance Harry Shearer, as well as Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, and numerous others.The Simpsons premiered on Fox on December 17, 1989, and became not simply a hit but a phenomenon. It shot up to instantly become one of the highest-rated series on television, and attained iconic status. The program scored as a cause célèbre not simply with children (as expected) but with adult viewers as well, who appreciated the show's ability to skewer all aspects of society and culture. (It generated a billion-dollar marketing boom as well -- an onslaught of Bart Simpson-themed T-shirts, watches, dolls, beach towels, and everything else under the sun.) The program also drew an onslaught of celebrity guests -- everyone from Larry King to Tony Bennett to Beverly D'Angelo and Linda Ronstadt. Castellaneta himself will forever be tied to Homer Simpson -- the lunkheaded, potbellied, beer-swilling, donut-loving nuclear-plant worker with not a whole lot upstairs, and a thoroughly crass lifestyle, but also a big, soft heart (a quality which Castellaneta's co-workers insist that he alone brought to the character). But hardcore Simpsons cultists and even its less attentive devotees will realize that Castellaneta voices not only Homer (as mentioned), but also the gravelly voiced, booze-swilling, womanizing clown Krusty; local drunk Barney Gumble; Scottish elementary-school groundskeeper Willie; the octogenarian family patriarch Grampa Simpson; and innumerable others. Certainly, it would be difficult to imagine a program that took fuller advantage of Castellaneta's versatility with characterizations.Alongside The Simpsons, Castellaneta has also pursued a career as a live-action film and television performer, and spent most of the late '80s, '90s, and 2000s vacillating between the two mediums. His career on the big screen began at least a year prior to his involvement with Ullman and co., when he debuted with a bit part as Brian in the now-forgotten Garry Marshall dramedy Nothing in Common (1986), starring Jackie Gleason, Tom Hanks, Eva Marie Saint, and Sela Ward. In 1989, Castellaneta landed bit parts in two wildly different films: one as a maître d' in the Jim Belushi cop comedy K-9, and another (as one of Danny DeVito's clients) in the James L. Brooks-produced jet-black marital farce The War of the Roses. Castellaneta temporarily withdrew from live-action cinematic work in the early '90s, before returning to audiences as the narrator in Super Mario Bros. (1993) and Phil in Warren Beatty's Love Affair (1994). As the Castellaneta's career continued, he then segued into cinematic animated voice-over work (doubtless encouraged by the ongoing success of The Simpsons), doing voices in such features as 2000's Rugrats in Paris (under the aegis of old colleague Gabor Csupo) and Hey Arnold! The Movie (2002). In 2007, Castellaneta extended his Homer characterization to the big screen with his work on The Simpsons Movie -- the first cinematic appearance of Groening's famous animated family.As for television, Castellaneta appeared as a supporting actor in numerous sitcoms during the 1990s. These included ALF (as Steve Michaels in the 1990 episode "Stayin' Alive"), Married...with Children (as Pete in the 1990 episode "The Dance Show"), Wings (as George Wexler in the 1994 episode "Moonlighting"), and Murphy Brown (as Tony Lucchesi in the 1995 episode "Specific Overtures.") He also voiced Genie (inheriting the role from Robin Williams) on the animated Aladdin TV series. Of the Simpsons cast, Castellaneta is one of the only actors to regularly do on-stage comedic improvisation alongside his series work. He is married to Simpsons writer Deb Lacusta, whom he wed in 1987.He continued to work steadily in animated films such as Rugrats in Paris: The Movie and Hey Arnold! The Movie, and landed traditional acting parts every once in a while in movies as diverse as the indie comedy I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With and the Will Smith drama The Pursuit of Happyness. In 2007 he voiced nearly 20 different parts in The Simpsons Movie. He also landed a part in JJ Abrams 2011 Spielberg-influenced family sci-fi film Super 8.

Trivia: Trained for an acting career from childhood, Judy Geeson was a busy juvenile player on television before making her screen debut at 18 in To Sir, With Love. She spent the early stages of her film career playing "jail bait" teenagers, then moved on to more conservative leading-lady assignments. In 1979, Geeson was a regular on the BBC serial Danger UXB, which aired in America on PBS' Masterpiece Theatre. More recently, she has specialized in elegant, landed-gentry roles. Once married to actor Kristoffer Tabori, Judy Geeson is also the sister of actress Sally Geeson, best known for her work on the TV series Star Maidens and Bless This House.

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: Heavyset comedian Jeff Garlin started doing standup comedy at his Florida college before he returned to his hometown of Chicago, IL, and joined the cast of Second City. In 1992, he made his film debut in the Dolly Parton comedy Straight Talk, followed by small roles in other features and made-for-TV movies. In 1997, he starred in his own HBO half-hour comedy special and guest starred on Everybody Loves Raymond a couple times before playing the reoccurring role of Marvin on NBC's Mad About You. After bit parts in the comedies Senseless and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Garlin made the successful switch back to television. This time he tried directing and producing in addition to playing Larry David's manager, Jeff Greene, on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, which would become his most recognizable role. He then hosted the short-lived variety show Late Friday and joined the cast of What About Joan for its second and final season. He made a brief return to film for Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal and then gained co-star status with Eddie Murphy for Daddy Day Care in 2003. In 2006 he wrote, directed, and starred in the sweet indie comedy I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, and two years later joined the Pixar family providing the voice of the ship captain in the highly-successful Wall-E. As he continued working on Curb, he found working on animated films to his liking and lent his voice to Cars 2, Toy Story 3 and ParaNorman.

Trivia: Raised outside of Chicago as the sixth of nine children, including older brother James, a founding member of the band Chicago. Left college in his junior year after seeing David Mamet's play, The American Buffalo, which inspired Pankow to enroll in the two-year training program at Chicago's St. Nicholas Theatre. Performed on Broadway (in his first stint) in Serious Money, The Iceman Cometh and as Mozart in Amadeus. Appeared in a numerous films of the late 1980s-early '90s, including To Live and Die in L.A., Talk Radio and Mortal Thoughts. Most recognized for his role as Ira Buchman, cousin of Paul Reiser's character, on the '90s NBC sitcom Mad About You. Returned to Broadway in the 2000s, performing in Twelve Angry Men, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Cymbeline. Took over the role of Merc Lapidus (from Thomas Haden Church) in 2011 on the Showtime/BBC show Episodes.

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

Trivia: Educated at Roosevelt University, bearded, booming-voiced Louis Zorich has been a working actor for nearly 50 years. Zorich made his off-Broadway debut in a revival of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, and has appeared on Broadway in Becket, Moby Dick, Hadrian VII, and Moonchildren. He also appeared as Ben in Dustin Hoffman's 1984 staging of Death of a Salesman, repeating this role in the 1985 film version. On television, Zorich has been seen as Jules Berger in Brooklyn Bridge (1991) and as Paul Reiser's father in Mad About You (which ran from 1992 to 1999), and heard in innumerable commercial voice-overs. Louis Zorich is the husband of Oscar-winning actress Olympia Dukakis.

Trivia: One of the salutary byproducts of the TV series Seinfeld is that it created a market in the '90s for sitcoms built around the comedy routines of young, hip New York comics. One of the best of these programs was Mad About You, created by and starring Manhattan-born Paul Reiser. Reiser and Seinfeld share more than a similarity of sitcoms; together with comedians Larry Miller and Mark Schiff, they comprise what has been unofficially dubbed the Four Funniest Men in the World Club, which has met for lunch each New Year's Day for the past several years. Reiser's credentials include a degree from S.U.N.Y.-Binghamton, a short stint as a health food distributor, and a 1982 film debut in Diner. Most of his film roles have been in comedies, though he was effectively cast as a greedy space traveler (who comes to a well-deserved bad end) in 1986's Aliens. Reiser has noted that his weekly series Mad About You, in which he co-starred with Helen Hunt, was based on his relationship with his wife, Paula. In 1995, Paul Reiser took a brief respite from Mad About You to star in the "single dad" comedy Bye Bye Love.As the new decade began, and Mad About You came to a close, Resier appeared in One Night at McCool's, and four years later realized a personal dream by co-starring with Peter Falk in The Thing About My Folks, a film Resier co-wrote as well. He was interviewed in The Aristocrats, and appeared as himself in Funny People. In 2011 he masterminded the very short-lived NBC sitcom The Paul Reiser Show.

Trivia: A precociously talented youngster, Helen Hunt was drawing paychecks as a television actress from the age of ten. Before she was 17, she had appeared as a regular on two series, Swiss Family Robinson (1975) and The Fitzpatricks (1977). Hunt proved she was more than just a workaday child actor with her starring performance in the fact-based 1981 TV movie The Miracle of Kathy Miller, in which she played a high school athlete who overcame severe mental and physical damage brought on by a highway accident. While she had been appearing in films as early as Rollercoaster in 1977, Hunt was never groomed as a star player, and it is possible that her resemblance to another child actress, Jodie Foster, held her back from more important roles.After taking on her first adult role in the 1982 sitcom It Takes Two, Hunt's film assignments improved, with sizable roles in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Project X (1987), Next of Kin (1989), and The Waterdance (1991). She also gained a small measure of cult status by appearing in a brace of science fiction films, including Trancers II (1991) and Trancers III (1992). That same year, Hunt landed her longest-lasting acting assignment to date, as the co-star of the Paul Reiser-created comedy series Mad About You. During the show's seven-year run, she won both Emmy and Golden Globe awards for her portrayal of Jamie Buchman. In 1996, Hunt had her most successful film role to date in the blockbuster Twister. The following year, she topped that when she received a Best Actress Oscar for playing a caring waitress and single mother who befriends acerbic, obsessive-compulsive author Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson, who also won an Oscar for his performance) in As Good As It Gets. After Mad About You ended in 1999, Hunt appeared in films by several veteran directors, including Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away [2000]), Robert Altman (Dr. T and The Women [2000]), and Woody Allen (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion [2001]). She starred in Life x 3 on Broadway in 2003.In 2005, Hunt joined the star-studded cast of HBO's two-part miniseries Empire Falls in the role of Janine, ex-wife of Miles (Ed Harris), the story's central character. The actress made her feature directorial debut in Then She Found Me (for which Hunt also starred, produced, and wrote the screenplay), an adaptation of Elinore Lipman's best-selling novel of the same name. The story follows a Philadelphia schoolteacher (Hunt) whose long-lost birth mother (Bette Miller) reappears at just as her daughter is careening into a midlife crisis. Hunt played a supportive mother in Soul Surfer (2011), an inspirational drama based on the true tale of a surfer who returned to the sport after tragically losing an arm. In 2012 she played a sex surrogate helping a man in an iron lung lose his virginity for director Ben Lewin in The Sessions, a part that earned her rave reviews and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.