Trivia: The son of a Lithuanian coal miner, American actor Charles Bronson claimed to have spoken no English at home during his childhood in Pennsylvania. Though he managed to complete high school, it was expected that Bronson would go into the mines like his father and many brothers. Experiencing the world outside Pennsylvania during World War II service, however, Bronson came back to America determined to pursue an art career. While working as a set designer for a Philadelphia theater troupe, Bronson played a few small roles and almost immediately switched his allegiance from the production end of theater to acting. After a few scattered acting jobs in New York, Bronson enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse in 1949. By 1951, he was in films, playing uncredited bits in such pictures as The People Against O'Hara (1951); You're in the Navy Now (1952), which also featured a young bit actor named Lee Marvin; Diplomatic Courier (1952); Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952), as a waiter(!); and The Clown (1953). When he finally achieved billing, it was under his own name, Charles Buchinsky (sometimes spelled Buchinski). His first role of importance was as Igor, the mute granite-faced henchman of deranged sculptor Vincent Price in House of Wax (1953). The actor was billed as Charles Bronson for the first time in Drum Beat (1954), although he was still consigned to character roles as Slavs, American Indians, hoodlums, and convicts. Most sources claim that Bronson's first starring role was in Machine Gun Kelly (1958), but, in fact, he had the lead in 1958's Gang War, playing an embryonic version of his later Death Wish persona as a mild-mannered man who turned vengeful after the death of his wife. Bronson achieved his first fan following with the TV series Man With a Camera (1959), in which he played adventurous photojournalist Mike Kovac (and did double duty promoting the sponsor's camera products in the commercials). His best film role up until 1960 was as one of The Magnificent Seven (1960), dominating several scenes despite the co-star competition of Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, and others. Most of Bronson's film roles after Seven remained in the "supporting-villainy category," however, so, in 1968, the actor packed himself off to Europe, where American action players like Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef were given bigger and better opportunities. Multiplying his international box-office appeal tenfold with such films as Guns for San Sebastian (1967), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Cold Sweat (1970), and The Valachi Papers (1971), Bronson returned to Hollywood a full-fledged star at last. His most successful films of the 1970s were Death Wish (1974) and its sequels, a series of brutal "vigilante" pictures which suggested not so subliminally that honest people would ultimately have to dole out their own terminal justice to criminals. In many of his '70s films, Bronson co-starred with second wife Jill Ireland, with whom he remained married until she lost her fight against cancer in 1990. Bronson's bankability subsequently fell off, due in part to younger action stars doing what he used to do twice as vigorously, and because of his truculent attitude toward fans. He did little but television work after 1991's The Indian Runner (Sean Penn's directorial debut), with Death Wish 5: The Face of Death (1994) his only feature since. Bronson's onscreen career would soon draw to a close with his role as law enforcing family patriarch Paul Fein in the made-for-cable Family of Cops series.On August 30, 2003 Charles Bronson died of pneumonia in Los Angeles. He was 81.

Trivia: Richard Thomas was seven years old when he made his first Broadway appearance in Sunrise at Campobello (1958). The wide-eyed, mole-cheeked, sensitive-looking Thomas soon found himself very much in demand for television roles. He was seen in the distinguished company of Julie Harris, Christopher Plummer and Hume Cronyn in a 1959 TV presentation of Ibsen's A Doll's House, worked as a regular on the daytime soap operas As the World Turns and Flame in the Wind, and co-starred with Today Show announcer Jack Lescoulie in the captivating 1961 Sunday-afternoon "edutainment" series 1-2-3 Go. While attending Columbia University, Thomas made his theatrical-film debut in Downhill Racer, then settled into a series of unpleasant, psychologically disturbed characters in films like You'll Like My Mother (1971) and such TV series as Bracken's World. In 1971, Thomas was cast as John-Boy Walton in the Earl Hamner-scripted TV movie The Homecoming. Though there would be a number of cast changes before The Homecoming metamorphosed into the weekly series The Waltons in 1972, Thomas was retained as John-Boy, earning a 1973 Emmy for his performance and remaining in the role until only a few months before the series' cancellation in 1981. During the Waltons years, Thomas starred in several well-mounted TV movies, including the 1979 remake of All Quiet on the Western Front. Ever seeking opportunities to expand his range, Thomas has sunk his teeth into such roles as the self-destructive title character in Living Proof: The Hank Williams Jr. Story (1983) and the amusingly sanctimonious Rev. Bobby Joe in the satirical Glory! Glory!. In 1980, Thomas made his first Broadway appearance in over two decades as the paralyzed protagonist of Whose Life is It Anyway. Notable later roles have included a turn as Bill Denbrough in Stephen King's It (1990), an appearance in Curtis Hanson's 2000 drama Wonder Boys, and a bit part as a reverend in Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock (2009). Working through his own Melpomene Productions, Thomas has continued seeking out creative challenges into the 1990s. Richard Thomas has also served as national chairman of the Better Hearing Institute.

Trivia: Raised in the only Jewish family in his neighborhood, American actor Ed Asner grew up having to defend himself both vocally and physically. A born competitor, he played championship football in high school and organized a top-notch basketball team which toured most of liberated Europe. Asner's performing career got its start while he was announcing for his high school radio station; moving to Chicago in the '50s, the actor was briefly a member of the Playwrights Theatre Club until he went to New York to try his luck on Broadway. Asner starred for several years in the off-Broadway production Threepenny Opera, and, toward the end of the '50s, picked up an occasional check as a film actor for industrial short subjects and TV appearances. Between 1960 and 1965, he established himself as one of television's most reliable villains; thanks to his resemblance to certain Soviet politicians, the actor was particularly busy during the spy-show boom of the mid-'60s. He also showed up briefly as a regular on the New York-filmed dramatic series Slattery's People. And though his film roles became larger, it was in a relatively minor part as a cop in Elvis Presley's Change of Habit (1969) that Asner first worked with Mary Tyler Moore. In 1970, over Moore's initial hesitation (she wasn't certain he was funny enough), Asner was cast as Lou Grant, the irascible head of the WJM newsroom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The popular series ran for seven seasons, during which time the actor received three Emmy awards. His new stardom allowed Asner a wider variety of select roles, including a continuing villainous appearance on the miniseries Roots -- which earned him another Emmy. When Moore ceased production in 1977, Asner took his Lou Grant character into an hour-long dramatic weekly about a Los Angeles newspaper. The show's title, of course, was Lou Grant, and its marked liberal stance seemed, to some viewers, to be an extension of Asner's real-life viewpoint. While Lou Grant was in production, Asner was twice elected head of the Screen Actors Guild, a position that he frequently utilized as a forum for his political opinions -- notably his opposition to U.S. involvement in Central America. When Asner suggested that each guild member contribute toward opposing the country's foreign policy, he clashed head to head with Charlton Heston, who wrested Asner's office from him in a highly publicized power play. Although no tangible proof has ever been offered, it was Asner's belief that CBS canceled Lou Grant in 1982 because of his politics and not dwindling ratings. The actor continued to prosper professionally after Lou Grant, however, and, during the remainder of the '80s and into the '90s, starred in several TV movies, had guest and recurring roles in a wide variety of both TV dramas and comedies, and headlining two regular series, Off the Rack and The Bronx Zoo. Slowed but hardly halted by health problems in the '90s, Asner managed to find time to appear in the weekly sitcoms Hearts Afire and Thunder Alley -- atypically cast in the latter show as an ineffective grouch who was easily brow-beaten by his daughter and grandchildren.

Trivia: Not to be confused with the 1940s bit player of the same name, American leading man Peter Breck was the son of a bandleader. Majoring in drama and minoring in psychology at the University of Houston, Breck went the regional-theater route until selected by Robert Mitchum for a role in Mitchum's Thunder Road (1958). He paid a few further dues on network television, showing up now and then as Doc Holiday on the weekly Western Maverick. In 1959, Breck starred in his own sagebrush series, Black Saddle, in which he played gunslinger-turned-lawyer Clay Culhane. When the series was dropped after one season, he accepted a few low-paying theater assignments, making ends meet with whatever odd jobs came along. His tenacity paid off when, in 1969, Breck was cast as firebrand "number two son" Nick Barkeley on The Big Valley, which ran for four years. A decade later, he appeared in still another Western, playing a megalomaniac miner in the serialized Secret Empire. Peter Breck has devoted considerable time to teaching drama in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Trivia: The son of a British musical comedy actress, Charles Jarrott inaugurated his own theatrical career after World War II, first as assistant stage manager with the Council of Great Britain Touring Company, then as actor/director with the Nottingham Repertory. In 1953, Jarrott relocated to Canada, where he was resident actor at the Ottawa Theatre. Within two years, he was directing for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Entering films as a director in 1962, he went on to win a Golden Globe nomination for his work on Anne of a Thousand Days. It is generally assumed that Jarrott's film directorial career came to a halt after the disastrous Lost Horizon (1973). However, while it is true that Jarrott was no longer offered plum film assignments (subsequent output included the cringe-worthy kitsch melodrama The Other Side of Midnight and the 1981 Disney action opus Condorman), he constinued to work steadily in both British and American television. His TV-movie manifest includes 1987's Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story, for which he won an Emmy; 1988's The Woman He Loved, a lavish recounting of the Prince Edward/Wallis Warfield Simpson affair; and the controversial 1991 biopic Lucy and Desi: Before the Laughter. Charles Jarrott was married to actress Katharine Blake; he died of prostate cancer at age 83 in March 2011.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '60s.