Trivia: American action star Chuck Norris first learned martial arts while serving in the Air Force. From 1968 through 1974, he held the world's middleweight karate championship title. During this period, he made his film debut in The Wrecking Crew (1968) and his TV bow on a 1970 episode of Room 222. Thanks to the celebrity clientèle of his Los Angeles karate school, Norris was able to make the right contacts which enabled him to embark on a starring career in films. Building a box-office following with such fast-paced (and rapidly filmed) actioners as A Force of One (1979) and Lone Wolf McQuade (1982), Norris reached his professional apex as Colonel James Braddock in the three Missing in Action films of the 1980s. Around 1987, Norris' stardom went into eclipse, thanks in part to the heady competition of Schwarzenegger, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Steven Seagal; though he still occasionally appears in films, most of his later efforts don't back their cost until they hit the video shelves. In 1986, Chuck Norris lent his name and his voice to a brief TV cartoon series, Chuck Norris' Karate Kommandos, in which, after his cartoon counterpart decimates every bad guy within 50 miles, the real Norris cautions his young audience that "violence is my last option."In the early nineties he found himself starring in the popular TV series Walker, Texas Ranger which ran for nine seasons. He spoofed his own persona with a cameo in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and in 2012 he joined the cast of The Expendables 2 - teaming with other masters of 80s action films like Stallone, Willis, and Schwarzenegger.

Trivia: Formerly a schoolteacher, Texas-born Noble Willingham has been essaying crusty character roles since 1969. Willingham's resumé includes a brace of location-filmed Peter Bogdanovich films, The Last Picture Show (1971) and Paper Moon (1973), and the role of Clay Stone in both of Billy Crystal's City Slickers comedies. Among his TV-movie credits is the part of President James Knox Polk in 1985's Dream West. A regular on several TV series (The Ann Jillian Show, Texas Wheelers, Cutter to Houston, AfterMASH, When the Whistle Blows), Willingham is best known to 1990s viewers as Mr. Binford (of Binford Tools) in Home Improvement and C. D. Parker in Walker, Texas Ranger. Noble Willingham's most recent film assignments include Ace Ventura, Pet Detective (1994) Up Close and Personal (1996) and Space Jam (1996). In 2000, Willingham left Walker, Texas Ranger to run for Congress in Texas. After losing the election to his Democratic opponent, Max Sandlin, Willingham returned to acting with a supporting role in the Val Kilmer thriller Blind Horizon. Sadly, the part would be the actor's last. In early 2004, at the age of 72, Willingham passed away at home from natural causes.

Trivia: Like many New York actors, Martin Kove was willing to go unbilled to pick up extra paychecks in such East Coast-filmed efforts as Little Murders (1971) and Last House on the Left (1972). By 1984, Kove was pulling down third billing in such films as The Karate Kid, wherein he played Kreese, the "bad" karate expert who trained the film's principal heavy William Zabka for his bout against the simon-pure Ralph Macchio (Kove replaced Chuck Norris, who turned down the role of Kreese because he didn't want karate trainers to be shown in an unsympathetic light). Martin Kove's work on series TV has included the roles of detective Victor Isbecki on Cagney and Lacey and an extraterrestrial named Jesse on Hard Time on Planet Earth.