Trivia: Born Carlos Ray Norris, Chuck Norris served in Korea in the Army. While there, he studied karate and later became the World Middleweight Karate Champion. He was encouraged by one of his karate students, actor Steve McQueen, to go into acting. He debuted onscreen in the enormously popular Bruce Lee vehicle Enter the Dragon (1973); since the death of Lee he has been the screen's premier martial arts star. He has appeared primarily in militaristic movies in which he single-handedly kills many enemies. His breakthrough film was Missing in Action (1984), in which he played an ex-POW in search of American prisoners still held in Vietnam.

Trivia: After several years in secondary film roles, the skeletal, menacing Christopher Lee achieved horror-flick stardom as the Monster in 1958's The Curse of Frankenstein, the second of his 21 Hammer Studios films. Contrary to popular belief, Lee and Peter Cushing did not first appear together in The Curse of Frankenstein. In Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), in which Cushing plays the minor role of Osric, Lee appears as the cadaverous candle-bearer in the "frighted with false fires" scene, one of his first film roles. In 1958, Lee made his inaugural appearance as "the Count" in The Horror of Dracula, with Cushing as Van Helsing. It would remain the favorite of Lee's Dracula films; the actor later noted that he was grateful to be allowed to convey "the sadness of the character. The terrible sentence, the doom of immortality...."Three years after Curse, Lee added another legendary figure to his gallery of characters: Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist of Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes. With the release eight years later of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Lee became the first actor ever to portray both Holmes and Holmes' brother, Mycroft, onscreen. Other Lee roles of note include the title characters in 1959's The Mummy and the Fu Manchu series of the '60s, and the villainous Scaramanga in the 1974 James Bond effort The Man With the Golden Gun. In one brilliant casting coup, the actor was co-starred with fellow movie bogeymen Cushing, Vincent Price, and John Carradine in the otherwise unmemorable House of Long Shadows (1982). Established as a legend in his own right, Lee continued working steadily throughout the '80s and '90s, appearing in films ranging from Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) to Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999).In 2001, after appearing in nearly 300 film and television productions and being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the international star with the most screen credits to his name, the 79-year-old actor undertook the role of Saruman, chief of all wizards, in director Peter Jackson's eagerly anticipated screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Thought by many to be the millennial predecessor to George Lucas' Star Wars franchise, audiences thrilled to the wondrous battle between Saruman and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) atop the wizard's ominous tower, though Lee didn't play favorites between the franchises when Lucas shot back with the continuing saga of Anakin Skywalker's journey to the dark side in mid-2002. Wielding a lightsaber against one of the most powerful adversaries in the Star Wars canon, Lee proved that even at 80 he still had what it takes to be a compelling and demanding screen presence. He lent his vocal talents to Tim Burton's Corpse Bride in 2005, and appeared as the father of Willy Wonka in the same director's adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic. He appeared as Count Dooku in Revenge of the Sith, and voiced the part for the animated Clone Wars. He appeared in the quirky British film Burke & Hare in 2010, and the next year he could be seen Martin Scorsese's Hugo. In 2012 he teamed with Tim Burton yet again when he appeared in the big-screen adaptation of Dark Shadows.Now nearly into 90s, Lee returned to Middle Earth in 2012 with Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, appearing in the first (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) and third (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies) films. He also reprised the role in a number of video games based on the two series. Lee was still actively working when he died in 2015, at age 93.

Trivia: Blaxploitation superstar Richard Roundtree earned screen immortality during the 1970s as the legendary Shaft, "the black private dick that's the sex machine to all the chicks." Born July 9, 1942, in New Rochelle, NY, Roundtree attended college on a football scholarship but later gave up athletics to pursue an acting career. After touring as a model with the Ebony Fashion Fair, he joined the Negro Ensemble Company's acting workshop program in 1967. He made his film debut in 1970's What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?, but was still an unknown when filmmaker Gordon Parks Sr. cast him as Shaft. The role shot Roundtree to instant fame, launching the blaxploitation genre and proving so successful at the box office that it helped save MGM from the brink of bankruptcy. Thanks to the film's popularity -- as well as its two sequels, 1972's Shaft's Big Score! and the following year's Shaft in Africa, and even a short-lived television series -- Roundtree became an icon of '70s-era cool, and his image graced countless magazine covers. Outside of the Shaft franchise, he also appeared in films including the 1974 disaster epic Earthquake, 1975's Man Friday, and the blockbuster 1977 TV miniseries Roots. By the end of the decade, however, the blaxploitation movement was a thing of the past, and Roundtree's stardom waned; apart from the 1981 big-budget flop Inchon, he spent the 1980s appearing almost exclusively in TV roles or low-rent, direct-to-video features. Still, he continued working steadily, and in 1995 appeared in David Fincher's smash thriller Seven. The following year he co-starred in the acclaimed Once Upon a Time...When We Were Colored, and also teamed with fellow blaxploitation vets Pam Grier and Fred "the Hammer" Williamson in Original Gangstas. In 1997, Roundtree returned to series television in 413 Hope St.

Trivia: Japanese actor Mako, born Makoto Iwamatsu, has spent most of his professional career in the United States. His first important film appearance was as Po-Han, Steve McQueen's assistant machinist, in The Sand Pebbles (1966), a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. He remained in films into the 1990s, playing choice character parts in such films as Hawaiians (1967), Conan the Destroyer (1984), and Rising Sun (1993). Mako's TV credits include the role of Major Oshira on the weekly Hawaiian Heat (1984) and the 1990 TV movie Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes.

Trivia: Burly comic actor Stuart Pankin attended Dickinson College and Columbia University. At 22, Pankin made his off-Broadway debut in 1968's War of the Roses. His film supporting roles are generally along the lines of the ineffectual sheriff in Arachnophobia (1990) and the blowhard giant in Beanstalk (1994). He is frequently spotlighted in buffoonish roles in such cinematic lampoons as That's Adequate, Love at Stake and Silence of the Hams. On TV, Stuart Pankin was seen as Stuf (so named because of his gargantuan eating habits) in The San Pedro Beach Bums (1977), Tuttle on the wacked-out No Soap, Radio (1982), and Jace Sampson on the 1989-90 (and last) season of Falcon Crest; he was also a reporter on the satirical Not Necessarily the News (1983), and the voice of audio-animatronic dino Earl Sinclair on Dinosaurs (1991-94).

Trivia: Chicagoan Terry Kiser has been a member of the movie character-actor pool since 1968. Kiser hasn't exactly scaled the heights of fame with such films as Friday the 13th Part VII, but he has paid his bills on time. His TV work has included a stint as Dr. John Rice on NBC's The Doctors, a recurring role as reporter Al Craven on the popular sitcom Night Court, and a sojourn as a member of Carol Burnett's repertory players on 1990's Carol & Company. Terry Kiser's most memorably recent film assignment has been as the scene-stealing corpse (!) in the two Weekend at Bernie's comedies of the 1990s.

Trivia: American actor Mel Novak played leads in a number of low-budget actioners during the '70s and '80s. He was once a professional athlete.

Trivia: Character lead J.E. Freeman first appeared onscreen in the '80s.

Trivia: Supporting actress Nancy Fish first appeared onscreen in the '60s.

Trivia: A directing and writing fellow at the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Studies in 1970, Carver assisted Dalton Trumbo on Johnny Got His Gun. He began making low-budget exploitationers in the mid '70s, such as the slavery sagas The Arena and Drum and the crime films Big Bad Mama and Capone. Actioners have become Carver's claim to fame, including An Eye for an Eye, Lone Wolf McQuade with Chuck Norris, and River Of Death with Michael Dudikoff.

Trivia: A character player even in youth, British actor Nigel Davenport spent nearly fifty years in briskly businesslike stage, screen and TV roles. He made his film debut as the police sergeant in Michael Powell's notorious Peeping Tom (1959). Among his many colorful screen characterizations were the Duke of Norfolk in A Man For All Seasons (1966), Bothwell in Mary Queen of Scots (1971), Van Helsing in the 1973 Frank Langella version of Dracula and Lord Birkenbed in the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire. Nigel Davenport's TV credits include the miniseries Prince Regent (1979, as King George III), and Masada (1981). Towards the end of his career, he made appearances in popular British TV series such as Keeping Up Appearances and Midsomer Murders, and played Dan Peggotty in a TV movie version of David Copperfield (2000). Davenport died in 2013 at age 85.