Trivia: Irish-born Stephen Boyd was performing on stage since his preteen years. Migrating to Canada in the 1940s, Boyd acted in stock and on radio on both sides of the U.S./Canada border. After several lean years, Boyd got his movie break in the 1955 British comedy An Alligator Named Daisy. His powerful portrayal of the treacherous Messala in 1959's Ben-Hur proved to be Boyd's career peak. Few of his subsequent movie assignments came within shouting distance of Messala. Cast as Marc Antony in 1963's Cleopatra, Boyd was forced by prior commitments to defer the role to Richard Burton; and though top-billed in 1966's Fantastic Voyage, Boyd was compelled to play second fiddle to the film's remarkable special effects. In 1977, Stephen Boyd suffered a fatal heart attack while playing golf.

Trivia: Fresh out of Temple University, actor Robert Hooks was billing himself as Bobby Dean Hooks when he made his 1962 Broadway bow in Tiger Tiger Burning Bright. Hooks' first film was the independently produced Sweet Love, Bitter (1966), though many reference books regard Hurry Sundown (1967) as the actor's big-screen debut. In 1967, he was co-starred with Jack Warden in the New York-based TV cop series NYPD, and in 1988 he was top-billed as Captain Jim Coleman in the military weekly Supercarrier (1988). A co-founder of the Negro Ensemble Company, Hooks was also the creator of the DC Black Repertory Company, based in his hometown of Washington. Robert Hooks is the father of actor/director Kevin Hooks.

Trivia: She trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater and began appearing in films in 1957. She also did much work onstage and on TV; she was a regular on the TV series Peyton Place. After 1970 her screen appearances were infrequent; however, she participated in the American Film Institute's workshop program for women and directed short films and episodes of TV series. She was also a skilled aviator; she survived the crash of a Piper Cub in 1966, and in 1970 she won the Powder Puff Derby air race and was named Pilot of the Year. Later she attempted to become the first woman to fly a single-engine plane solo from New York to Moscow; she reached Denmark but then was denied permission to enter Soviet air space. She authored a memoir, Odyssey (1983). She died of cancer in 1990.

Trivia: A singer, one of the NFL's greatest football stars, a heroic body guard, an actor, social activist, and a minister of God, Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier has successfully worn many hats in his life. Born on a Georgia peanut farm, one of 13 children, Grier was 22 when he and his family migrated north to New Jersey. A track scholarship allowed Grier entrance into Penn State University. From there, he was recruited into the NFL where he was first a linebacker for the New York Giants and then a tackle for the Los Angeles Rams, where he became part of the legendary "Fearsome Foursome" that included Lamar Lundy, Merlin Olsen, and Deacon Jones. Retiring from football in 1968, Grier became a bodyguard for Senator Robert F. Kennedy during the 1968 presidential election. It was Grier who wrestled alleged assassin Sirhan Sirhan to the ground after the younger Kennedy was shot. Following the end of his football career, Grier turned to the entertainment industry. It was not his first foray into performing as he had signed a contract with a booking agency in 1959 and briefly toured the nightclub circuit as the "300-pound Perry Como." The 6'6" Grier was a popular guest on talk shows and loved talking about one of his favorite hobbies, needlework. In 1969, he made his first stab at an acting career in the failed television pilot Battle Brigade/Carter's Army. He then became a regular on Daniel Boone for its last season. Grier made his feature-film debut in Lee Frost's memorable low-budget exploitation film The Thing With Two Heads (1972), in which Grier's head was grafted alongside the head of racist scientist Ray Milland. It was a decidedly inauspicious beginning for a film career as a supporting actor that, while never prolific, became even more sporadic after 1980. Grier has done his most notable work in television in such miniseries as Roots: The Next Generation (1978) and telemovies as The Sophisticated Gents (1981). A devout Christian since the late '60s, Grier is also a minister who actively preaches all over the world. Between 1994 and 1995, Grier generated controversy when he became the spiritual counselor of accused murderer and former football star O.J. Simpson. Grier claims that during their many sessions together, Simpson never incriminated himself. Grier's philanthropic work includes a place on the board of directors for the Special Olympics, a position he has held since 1968, and a position as an activist director for the Milken Family Foundation, a large philanthropic organization that funds worthy social causes.

Trivia: African-American comedian Richard Pryor grew up bombarded by mixed messages. Pryor's grandmother owned a string of brothels, his mother prostituted herself, and his father was a pimp. Still, they raised Richard to be honest, polite, and religious. Living in one of the worst slums in Peoria, IL, Pryor found that he could best defend himself by getting gang members to laugh at instead of pummeling him. This led to his reputation as a disruptive class clown, although at least one understanding teacher allowed Pryor one minute per week to "cut up" so long as he behaved himself the rest of the time. At age 14, he became involved in amateur dramatics at Peoria's Carver Community Center, which polished his stage presence. In 1963, Pryor headed to New York to seek work as a standup comic; after small gigs in the black nightclub circuit, he was advised to pattern himself after Bill Cosby -- that is, to be what white audiences perceived as "nonthreatening." For the next five years, the young comic flourished in clubs and on TV variety shows, making his film bow in The Busy Body (1967). But the suppression of Pryor's black pride and anger by the white power structure frustrated him. One night, sometime between 1969 and 1971, he "lost it" while performing a gig in Las Vegas; he either walked off-stage without a word or he obscenely proclaimed that he was sick of it. Over the next few years, Pryor found himself banned from many nightclubs, allegedly due to offending the mob-connected powers-that-be, and lost many of his so-called friends who'd been sponging off of him. Broke, Pryor went underground in Berkeley, CA, in the early '70s; when he re-emerged, he was a road-company Cosby no more. His act, replete with colorful epithets, painfully accurate character studies of street types, and hilarious (and, to some, frightening) hostility over black-white inequities, struck just the right note with audiences of the committed '70s. Record company executives, concerned that Pryor's humor would appeal only to blacks, were amazed at how well his first post-Berkeley album, That Nigger's Crazy!, sold with young white consumers. As for Hollywood, Pryor made a key early appearance in the Diana Ross vehicle Lady Sings the Blues. But ultra-reactionary Tinseltown wasn't quite attuned to Pryor's liberal use of obscenities or his racial posturing. Pryor had been commissioned to write and star in a Mel Brooks-directed Western-comedy about a black sheriff, but Brooks replaced Pryor with the less-threatening Cleavon Little; Pryor nonetheless retained a credit as one of five writers on the picture, alongside such luminaries as Andrew Bergman. When Pryor appeared onscreen in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings and Silver Streak (both 1976), it was as a supporting actor. But Pryor's popularity built momentum, and by the end of the '70s he became the highest-paid starring comedian in films, with long-range contracts ensuring him work well into the next decade - when such efforts as Stir Crazy, Bustin' Loose, and The Toy helped to both clean up the foul-mouthed comic's somewhat raunchy public image, and endear him to a whole new generation of fans. His comedy albums -- and later, videocassettes -- sold out as quickly as they were recorded. The only entertainment arena still too timid for Pryor was network television -- his 1977 NBC variety series has become legendary for the staggering amount of network interference and censorship imposed upon it.By the early '80s, Pryor was on top of the entertainment world. Then came a near-fatal catastrophe when he accidentally set himself afire while freebasing cocaine. Upon recovery, he joked liberally (and self-deprecatively) about his brush with death, but, otherwise, he appeared to change; his comedy became more introspective, more rambling, more tiresome, and occasionally (as in the 1983 standup effort Richard Pryor: Here and Now) drew vicious heckling and catcalls from obnoxious audiences. His cinematic decline began with a thinly-disguised film autobiography, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986), which Pryor starred in and directed; it met with critical scorn. Pryor's films declined in popularity, the audiences grew more hostile at the concerts, and Pryor deteriorated physically. Doctors diagnosed him with multiple sclerosis in the late '80s, and, by 1990, it became painfully obvious to everyone that he was a very sick man, although his industry friends and supporters made great effort to celebrate his accomplishments and buoy his spirits. The twin 1989 releases Harlem Nights and See No Evil, Hear No Evil (the latter of which re-teamed Pryor with fellow Silver Streak alums Arthur Hiller and Gene Wilder) failed to reignite Pryor's popularity or draw back his fanbase.Pryor's ill-fated attempt to resuscitate his stand-up act at L.A.'s Comedy Store in 1992 proved disastrous; unable to stand, Pryor was forced to deliver his monologues from an easy chair; he aborted his planned tour soon after. He appeared in television and films only sporadically in his final decade, save a rare cameo in David Lynch's 1997 Lost Highway. These dark omens foretold a sad end to a shimmering career; the world lost Pryor soon after. On December 12, 2005, the comedian - only 65 years old -- died of a heart attack in a Los Angeles hospital. But he left a peerless legacy behind as a stand-up comic and black actor.

Trivia: Dynamic African-American actor Moses Gunn was one of the founders of the Negro Ensemble Company. Educated at Tennessee State and the University of Kansas, Gunn made his first New York appearance in a 1961 production of Measure for Measure; he remained active on the off-Broadway scene throughout his career, winning several Obie awards. His 1962 Broadway debut came by way of Jean Genet's The Blacks, which served to introduce many of the powerful black acting talents of the era. In films dating from 1964's Nothing But a Man, Gunn is best-remembered for his portrayal of gangster Bumpy Jonas in the first two Shaft films, and for his brief but telling cameo as Booker T. Washington in Ragtime, a performance which won him an NAACP Image award. On series television, Gunn was top-billed as Jebediah Nightlinger in The Cowboys (1972), played boxing trainer George Beifus in The Contender (1980), was featured as miner Moses Gage in Father Murphy (1981-84) and chewed the scenery as the epigrammatical "Old Man" in A Man Called Hawk (1989). He also played Carl Dixon, the man who married Florida Evans (Esther Rolle) after a whirlwind courtship during the 1976-77 season of Good Times. In 1977, Moses Gunn received an Emmy nomination for his appearance as tribal chieftain Kintango in the groundbreaking miniseries Roots.

Trivia: African American character actor Glynn R. Turman was first introduced to the general public as Lew Miles, teen-aged son of Dr. Harry Miles (Percy Rodrigues) and his wife, Alma (Ruby Dee), during the 1968-1969 season of the prime-time TV soap opera Peyton Place. Turman went on to star as Chicago high schooler Leroy "Preach" Jackson in the 1975 film sleeper Cooley High. Settling into character roles in the 1980s, Turman was most often seen as judges, military officers, police detectives, and well-to-do patriarches. A departure from these "establishment" assignments was Turman's star turn in the 1981 TV-movie Thornwell, in which he portrayed real-life soldier James Thornwell, who accused the U.S. Army of subjecting him to illegal mind-controlling drugs. Turman's weekly series roles have included Secretary of State LaRue Hawkes in 1985's Hail to the Chief, and Colonel Bradford Taylor (aka "Dr. War") in the popular Cosby Show spin-off A Different World (1988-1993); he also appeared in the 1983 pilot episode of Manimal as Ty Earl, a role essayed by Michael D. Roberts in the series proper. In the 2000s, Turman played the memorable role of fictional Baltimore mayor Clarence V. Royce on the critically acclaimed HBO series The Wire. Also on HBO, he appeared in a few episodes of the psychotherapy drama In Treatment, winning an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his role as the tough, strict father of Blair Underwood's troubled fighter pilot. In the years to come, Turman would remain active on screen, appearing on shows like The Defenders and House of Lies.

Trivia: The screen's first authentic black romantic leading man, Williams is often referred to as "the black Gable." He first appeared onstage as a child actor in The Firebrand of Florence (1947) with German actress Lotte Lenya; his mother was an elevator operator at New York's Lyceum Theater, and when she heard of an opening for a child in the play she brought him to the producer, who hired him. He went on to study acting at New York's High School of Music and Art and The National Academy of Fine Arts; for a few months he was taught by Sidney Poitier at Harlem's Actors Workshop. He began working onstage in the mid '50s, then landed his breakthrough role in the play A Taste of Honey in 1960. He debuted onscreen as a rebellious ghetto kid in The Last Angry Man (1959). However, he did not appear in another film for over a decade. In the '60s he began landing roles on TV, including a continuing role on the soap opera Another World and guest spots on TV series. He made a big impression as the costar of the TV movie Brian's Song (1970). His breakthrough screen role was as the lover of Billie Holiday (Diana Ross) in the hit Lady Sings the Blues (1972), which brought him to stardom and established him as a romantic lead. He went on to appear in a number of movies, few of which fully used his talents; he portrayed Lando Calrissian in the second and third Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). In the mid '80s he began appearing again frequently on TV, and starred in the short-lived series Double Dare in 1985; he was also a regular for a while on Dynasty.

Trivia: He began acting in plays in his early teens, and was already a veteran by the time he joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theater in 1938; among his Mercury credits was a role in the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Like many Mercury performers, he followed Welles to Hollywood and debuted onscreen in Citizen Kane (1941). In a sporadically busy film career, he went on to play many character roles over the next four decades; he was often cast as insensitive, no-nonsense types, and sometimes played gangsters. He began a second career in the mid '50s as a TV director.