Trivia: Born in Georgia and raised in a black Long Island ghetto, Jim Brown distinguished himself in high school athletics. Recruited from Syracuse University, Brown was signed with the Cleveland Browns in 1957, remaining with that organization as star fullback for ten years. Breaking any number of NFL records, Brown was named Rookie of the Year in 1958 and Player of the Year in 1960; he played in every Pro Bowl game from 1958 through 1965, and in 1971 was elected to the Football Hall of Fame. While still with Cleveland, Brown made his film debut in the 1963 Western Rio Conchos, an event deemed worthy of a four-page color spread in Life magazine. He became a full-time actor upon his retirement from the NFL in 1967, co-starring that year in The Dirty Dozen. Though he had trepidation about the climactic scene in which he blew dozens of helpless Nazi officers and their sweethearts to bits with hand grenades, it was this uncompromising sequence that truly "socked" Brown over with the audience. He rapidly rose to leading roles in such actioners as Ice Station Zebra (1968) and 100 Rifles (1969); in the latter film, he stirred up controversy by sharing several steamy scenes with white actress Raquel Welch. Brown also headlined the above-average crime capers Kenner (1969) and Black Gunn (1972) as well as the ultraviolent Slaughter series. He cut down on his film appearances in the late '70s, devoting most of his time to his many civic activities and business concerns; during this period, he also founded the Black Economic Union. After several years' absence from the screen, Jim Brown co-starred with fellow blaxploitation icons Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, and Richard Roundtree in the delightfully "retro" action-fest Original Gangstas (1996).

Trivia: More a sex goddess than an actress, the statuesque Raquel Welch was one of the most popular celebrities of the 1960s and 1970s. While she appeared in dozens of films, they earned little notice, her success depending almost exclusively on her stature as a buxom pin-up. Born Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940, in Chicago, she began taking dancing lessons as a child and by her teens was already winning beauty contests. At the age of 18, she married high school sweetheart James Welch; the couple had two children before divorcing in 1961. After working in Dallas, TX, as a waitress and model, Welch relocated to Hollywood in 1963; within three days, she had already landed a manager, Patrick Curtis, and soon they formed a promotions company, Curtwell Enterprises. After appearing in Life magazine in a revealing bikini, she began working on the ABC series Hollywood Palace, and in 1964 made her feature debut with an unbilled appearance in the Elvis Presley vehicle Roustabout. Welch next appeared as a prostitute in 1964's A House Is Not a Home, followed by another uncredited appearance a year later in Do Not Disturb. In 1965, she scored her first lead role in the pop musical A Swingin' Summer, resulting in a contract with 20th Century Fox, which cast her in the sci-fi hit Fantastic Voyage before loaning her to the British horror studio Hammer. There she starred in a 1967 remake of One Million Years B.C.; clad in little more than strategically placed strips of fur, Welch's publicity stills appeared everywhere, and she became a major sex symbol -- still, few went to actually see the movie itself. Despite the publicity, Fox was clearly wary of her talents, and did not ask her to return to Hollywood; instead she remained in Europe, starring with Edward G. Robinson and Vittorio de Sica in 1968's The Biggest Bundle of Them All and with Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale in Le Fate. While in Paris, Welch and manager Curtis married, issuing a series of provocative wedding night publicity photos.After appearing as Lust incarnate in Stanley Donen's seven-deadly-sins comedy Bedazzled, Welch finally returned to the U.S. Fox used her judiciously in pictures like the 1968 James Stewart Western Bandolero! and the Frank Sinatra mystery Lady in Cement. Following in 1969 was 100 Rifles, a controversial Western which paired Welch with Jim Brown, and a year later she earned her first real starring role in the disastrous Myra Breckenridge. Her situation was unusual; she was certainly a star and a household name, yet few people ever went to see her movies -- neither 1971's Hannie Caulder nor the following year's Fuzz did anything to alter the dilemma, and when the 1973 roller-derby melodrama Kansas City Bomber also tanked at the box office, Welch divorced Curtis and returned to Europe to appear in Bluebeard. While both 1973's The Three Musketeers and its sequel The Four Musketeers were well received, she earned little credit for their success, and when the 1976 black comedy Mother, Jugs and Speed failed, Hollywood largely washed their hands of her.Welch instead turned to nightclubs, concert stages, and television; she also continued making films in Europe, including 1977's The Prince and the Pauper and L' Animal, co-starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. In 1980, she was tapped to star in Cannery Row, but was fired a month into production; she filed suit against MGM for damages, and was awarded 11 million dollars. Welch spent the entirety of the 1980s away from theaters, focusing primarily on television productions like 1982's The Legend of Walks Far Woman and 1987's Right to Die, in which she delivered one of her strongest performances as a woman suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. After an absence of over a decade, in 1994 Welch returned to cinema in the comedy The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult. Throughout the decade, she also made a number of infomercials and exercise videos, and in 1995 also starred in the short-lived nighttime soap opera CPW. In 1997, she took over for Julie Andrews in the troubled Broadway musical Victor/Victoria, which closed less than a month after Welch's debut performance. In the years to come, Welch would remain active on screen, playing Aunt Dora on the massively popular sitcom American Family.

Trivia: Charming, handsome, and easy-going, lead actor and megastar Burt Reynolds entered the world on February 11, 1936. He attended Florida State University on a football scholarship, and became an all-star Southern Conference halfback, but - faced with a knee injury and a debilitating car accident - switched gears from athletics to college drama. In 1955, he dropped out of college and traveled to New York, in search of stage work, but only turned up occasional bit parts on television, and for two years he had to support himself as a dishwasher and bouncer.In 1957, Reynolds's ship came in when he appeared in a New York City Center revival of Mister Roberts; shortly thereafter, he signed a television contract. He sustained regular roles in the series Riverboat, Gunsmoke, Hawk, and Dan August. Although he appeared in numerous films in the 1960s, he failed to make a significant impression. In the early '70s, his popularity began to increase, in part due to his witty appearances on daytime TV talk shows. His breakthrough film, Deliverance (1972), established him as both a screen icon and formidable actor. That same year, Reynolds became a major sex symbol when he posed as the first nude male centerfold in the April edition of Cosmopolitan. He went on to become the biggest box-office attraction in America for several years - the centerpiece of films such as Hustle (1975), Smokey and the Bandit (1977) (as well as its two sequels), The End (1978), Starting Over (1979), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), and The Man Who Loved Women (1983). However, by the mid-'80s, his heyday ended, largely thanks to his propensity for making dumb-dumb bumper-smashing road comedies with guy pals such as Hal Needham (Stroker Ace, The Cannonball Run 2). Reynolds's later cinematic efforts (such as the dismal Malone (1987)) failed to generate any box office sizzle, aside from a sweet and low-key turn as an aging career criminal in Bill Forsyth's Breaking In (1989). Taking this as a cue, Reynolds transitioned to the small screen, and starred in the popular sitcom Evening Shade, for which he won an Emmy. He also directed several films, created the hit Win, Lose or Draw game show with friend Bert Convy, and established the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater in Florida. In the mid-'90s, Reynolds ignited a comeback that began with his role as a drunken, right-wing congressman in Andrew Bergman's Striptease (1996). Although the film itself suffered from critical pans and bombed out at the box office, the actor won raves for his performance, with many critics citing his comic interpretation of the role as one of the film's key strengths. His luck continued the following year, when Paul Thomas Anderson cast him as porn director Jack Horner in his acclaimed Boogie Nights. Reynolds would go on to earn a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, and between the twin triumphs of Striptease and Nights, critics read the resurgence as the beginning of a second wind in the Deliverance star's career, ala John Travolta's turnaround in 1994's Pulp Fiction. But all was not completely well chez Burt. A nasty conflict marred his interaction with Paul Thomas Anderson just prior to the release of Boogie Nights. It began with Reynolds's disastrous private screening of Nights; he purportedly loathed the picture so much that he phoned his agent after the screening and fired him. When the Anderson film hit cinemas and became a success d'estime, Reynolds rewrote his opinion of the film and agreed to follow Anderson on a tour endorsing the effort, but Reynolds understandably grew peeved when Anderson refused to let him speak publicly. Reynolds grew so infuriated, in fact, that he refused to play a role in Anderson's tertiary cinematic effort, 1999's Magnolia. Reynolds's went on to appear in a big screen adatpation of The Dukes of Hazzard as Boss Hogg, and later returned to drama with a supporting performance in the musical drama Broken Bridges; a low-key tale of a fading country music star that served as a feature debut for real-life country music singer Toby Kieth. Over the coming years, Reynolds would also enjoy occasional appearances on shows like My Name is Earl and Burn Notice.

Trivia: Billy Crystal notwithstanding, Argentine actor Fernando Lamas did not spend his entire career saying "You...look...MAHHHHvelous". A well-established film star in his native Buenos Aires, Lamas was brought to Hollywood in 1950 with an MGM contract. He went on to play several variations on the standard "Latin Lover" type, with occasional opportunities to display his well-trained singing voice. Beginning with the 1961 Spanish film The Magic Fountain, Lamas entered a whole new phase of his career as a director. In this respect, he was busiest on television, directing episodes of such series as Mannix, Alias Smith and Jones, Gavilan, and Falcon Crest. This last-named series starred Lorenzo Lamas, the son of Fernando and his third wife Arlene Dahl. At the time of his death, Fernando Lamas was married to wife number four, aquatic film star Esther Williams.

Trivia: Dan O'Herlihy studied architecture at the National University of Ireland, but his heart was in the acting highlands. After racking up stage credits with the Gate Theater and the Abbey Players, O'Herlihy turned to films in 1946, impressing critics and filmgoers alike with his breakthrough role in Odd Man Out. He made his American movie bow in Orson Welles' MacBeth (1948), playing the not inconsiderable role of MacDuff; shortly thereafter, he appeared with his MacBeth co-star Roddy MacDowall in an economically budgeted adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped. In 1952, he earned an Academy Award nomination for his near-solo starring turn in Luis Bunuel's The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Maturing into a versatile character player, he could also be seen as FDR in MacArthur (1977), the frothing-at-the-mouth villain in Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1983), a benign lizardlike alien in The Last Starfighter (1984), and the dark-purposed cyborg-firm exec in the RoboCop films. His TV credits include blarney-spouting Doc McPheeters in The Travels of Jamie McPheeters (1963), town boss Will Varner in The Long Hot Summer (1965), "The Director" in A Man Called Sloane (1979), intelligence agent Carson Marsh in Whiz Kids (1984), and Andrew Packard in Twin Peaks (1990). Dan O'Herlihy was the brother of director Michael O'Herlihy.

Trivia: German-born Hans Gudegast was still in his teens when he made his first film appearance in The Colossus of Rhodes (1957). Spending virtually his entire career in Hollywood, Gudegast achieved TV fame as the eternally outflanked Afrika Korps officer Hauptman on the weekly TV series The Rat Patrol (1967-1969). Sensing that he'd forever be typecast as a Nazi under his given name, Gudegast changed his professional cognomen to Eric Braeden in 1970 (he reportedly borrowed the name of his home town in Germany, though some sources indicate that he was actually born in Kiel). The actor's instincts were correct: under his new professional name, Braeden was afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his versatility as both leading man -- he was Charles Forbin in Colossus: The Forbin Project -- and villain. He was often called upon to convey insufferable arrogance, vide his memorable appearance as a media critic on an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (that's the one where Braeden received a pie in the face, courtesy of Ted Knight). Eric Braeden's best-known characterization was as the smoothly sinister Victor Newman in the CBS daytime drama The Young and the Restless. Braeden played a small role as the wealthy John Jacob Astor in 1997's mega-hit Titanic, and co-starred in the comedy Meet the Deedles the following year. Following a long run on The Young and the Restless, Braeden co-starred with fellow Titanic alumni Billy Zane in The Man Who Came Back (2008), and took on the role of Robin Scherbatsky, Sr. for the television series How I Met Your Mother.

Trivia: American actor Michael Forest starred in the title role in Roger Corman's sword-and-sandal opus Atlas (1961), after which he made the Hollywood adventure movie rounds of the mid to late '60s. He was among the handsome Hollywood hunks prevalent in such films as The Glory Guys (1966), The Sweet Ride (1967) and 100 Rifles (1969). Two decades later, Forest was still essaying beefcake supporting roles, notably in 1988's Deep Space. Soap-opera addicts are most familiar with Michael Forest for his interpretation of Nick Andropoulos on TV's As the World Turns. Devotees of Star Trek will remember Forest as the messianic Apollo in the 1967 episode "Who Mourns for Adonis?." And sitcom fans will recall Forest as Laura Petrie's former beau Joe Coogan, who shows up unexpectedly in clerical collar as Father Coogan on a 1963 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. In 2013, Forest turned in a very touching and powerful performance reprising his 1960s-era Star Trek role of the Greek god Apollo, in the fan-produced "Star Trek Continues" episode "Pilgrim Of Eternity," in which he was introduced working opposite his real-life wife Diana Hale (playing Athena).

Trivia: Spanish supporting and occasional leading actor Aldo Sambrell is primarily associated with spaghetti Westerns of the '60s. In those films, he generally played a gunslinger. He was born Alfredo Sanchez Brell but over the course of his career he used the following names: Aldo Brell, Alfred S. Brell, Aldo San Brell, Aldo Sanbrel, and Aldo Sanbrell. He made his directorial debut as Alfred S. Brell with La Ultima Jugada (1974). Sambrell produced his first film, Hammam, in 1997.

Trivia: An alluringly enigmatic actress of fragile and otherworldly beauty, Soledad Miranda's tragic death at the age of 27 cut short the promising career of a remarkable screen presence poised for international stardom. Born Soledad Redon Bueno (literally "good solitude") to Portuguese parents in Seville, Spain on July 9, 1943, Miranda was also the niece of Spanish singer, actress, and flamenco dancer Paquita Rico. Following in her famous aunt's footsteps as a flamenco dancer when she was merely eight years old, the aspiring youngster found early success at the San Fernando Talent Competition, before making her film debut at the age of 16 in La Bella Mimi (1960). Making the acquaintance of director Jesus Franco shortly thereafter while living with singer/dancer Mikaela Wood, Miranda would next appear in Franco's La Reina del Tabarin (1961). Though she subsequently appeared in roughly 30 films from 1960 to 1970, the majority of her roles were in low-budget Spanish and Italian B-movies and Miranda had yet to find her true niche as an actress. Throughout this period of her career, Miranda's only crowning moments would come by means of exiled American producer Sidney Pink, for whom she would appear in The Castilian and Pyro (both 1963). Following a brief retirement in which she married a Portuguese racecar driver and mothered a child, Miranda made a return to cinema with an alluring role in the Franco's atmospheric but failed Count Dracula (1970). That same year Miranda would also appear in Franco's Vampyros Lesbos, the film that despite her untimely death would transcend her mortality. With her nearly hypnotic beauty filling every frame of the sensually surreal and sumptuously shot Euro-horror classic, Miranda was soon approached by a German producer for CCC and offered a contract that promised two starring roles per year in prolific big-budget releases. Elated as her road to international fame had finally been paved, the actress sped to her death on a Lisbon highway mere weeks after Vampyros Lesbos had opened in West Berlin to substantial success.

Trivia: Earthy Russian character actor Akim Tamiroff was relatively aimless, not settling upon a theatrical career until he was nearly 19. Selected from 500 applicants, Tamiroff was trained by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater School. While touring the U.S. with a Russian acting troupe in 1923, Tamiroff decided to remain in New York and give Broadway a try. He was quite active with the Theatre Guild during the 1920s and early '30s, then set out for Hollywood, hoping to scare up movie work. After several years' worth of bit roles, Tamiroff's film career began gaining momentum when he was signed by Paramount in 1936. He became one of the studio's top players, appearing in juicy featured roles in A-pictures and starring in such B's as The Great Gambini (1937), King of Chinatown (1938), and The Magnificent Fraud (1939). Essaying a wide variety of nationalities, Tamiroff was most frequently cast as a villain or reprobate with a deep down sentimental and/or honorable streak. He was a favorite of many directors, including Cecil B. DeMille, starring in Union Pacific (1939), Northwest Mounted Police (1940), and Preston Sturges' The Great McGinty (1940). He was twice nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for his work in The General Died at Dawn (1936) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). During the 1950s, Tamiroff was a close associate of actor/director Orson Welles, who cast Tamiroff in underhanded supporting roles in Mr. Arkadin (1955), Touch of Evil (1958), and The Trial (1963), and retained his services for nearly two decades in the role of Sancho Panza in Welles' never-finished Don Quixote. Akim Tamiroff continued to flourish with meaty assignments in films like Topkapi (1964) and After the Fox (1966), rounding out his long and fruitful career with a starring assignment in the French/Italian political melodrama, Death of a Jew (1970).

Trivia: The son of actors Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl, Lorenzo Lamas' first screen appearance was a bit in 1969's 100 Rifles, in which his father co-starred. Originally planning to become a professional race-car driver (he still enters track competitions from time to time), Lamas inaugurated his career as a "heartthrob hunk" in 1979, when he was cast in the short-lived TV weekly California Fever. A brief stint on the prime-time TV serial Secrets of Midland Heights (1980) followed before Lamas graduated to full stardom as Lance Cumston on the nighttime soaper Falcon Crest (1981-1990). Anxious to demonstrate his musical prowess, Lamas signed on as host of the syndicated variety series Dancin' to the Hits in 1986. Perhaps significantly, Lamas has neither danced nor sung in his current project, the weekly adventure series Renegade. Lorenzo Lamas has starred in a plethora of direct-to-video films, and in 1994 both directed and starred in CIA II: Target Alexa. In the years to come, Lamas would remain an active force on screen, appearing in films like Back to Even and Ash Global, as well as on series like The Bold and the Beautiful.