Trivia: Specializing in playing shambling, cantankerous cynics, Walter Matthau, with his jowly features, slightly stooped posture, and seedy, rumpled demeanor, looked as if he would be more at home as a laborer or small-time insurance salesman than as a popular movie star equally adept at drama and comedy. An actor who virtually put a trademark on cantankerous behavior, Matthau was a staple of the American cinema for almost four decades.The son of poor Jewish-Russian immigrants, Matthau was born on October 1, 1920, in New York City and raised in a cold-water flat on the Lower East Side. His introduction to acting came during his occasional employment at the Second Avenue Yiddish Theater, where he sold soda pops during intermission for 50 cents per show. Following WWII service as an Air Force radioman and gunner, Matthau studied acting at the New School for Social Research Dramatic Workshop. Experience with summer stock led to his first Broadway appearances in the 1940s, and at the age of 28 he got his first break serving as the understudy to Rex Harrison's character in the Broadway drama Anne of a Thousand Days. After having his first major Broadway success with A Shot in the Dark, Matthau began working on the screen, usually in small supporting roles that cast him as thugs, villains, and louts in such films as The Kentuckian (1955) and King Creole (1958). Only occasionally did he get to play more sympathetic roles in films such as Lonely Are the Brave (1962). In 1959, he tried his hand at directing with Gangster Story. In addition to his stage and feature-film work, Matthau appeared in a number of television shows. Just when it seemed that he was to be permanently relegated to playing supporting and dark character roles on stage and screen, Matthau won the part of irretrievably slavish sportswriter Oscar Madison in the first Broadway production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple (1965). Simon wrote the role especially for Matthau, and the show made both the playwright and the actor major stars. In film, Matthau played his first comic role (for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar) in Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie (1966). The film also marked the first of many times that Matthau would be paired with Jack Lemmon. The unmistakable chemistry at play between the well-mannered, erudite Lemmon and the sharp-tongued, earthy Matthau exploded when they were paired onscreen, and was on particularly brilliant display in the hit film version of The Odd Couple (1967). Good friends with Lemmon both onscreen and off, Matthau starred in his directorial debut, Kotch (1971), and starred alongside him in The Front Page (1974) and Buddy Buddy, both of which did little for Matthau and Lemmon's careers. As a duo, the two again found success when they played two coots who were too busy feuding to realize that they were best friends in Grumpy Old Men (1993). They reprised their roles in a 1995 sequel and also appeared together in The Grass Harp (1995), Out to Sea (1997), and 1998's The Odd Couple II. On his own, Matthau continued developing his comically cynical persona in such worthy ventures as Plaza Suite (1971), California Suite (1978), and especially The Sunshine Boys (1975), in which he was paired with George Burns. He proved ridiculously endearing as a grizzled, broken-down, beer-swilling little league coach with a marshmallow heart in The Bad News Bears (1976), and further expressed his comic persona in such comedies as 1993's Dennis the Menace, in which he played the cantankerous Mr. Wilson, and the romantic comedy I.Q. (1994), which cast him as Albert Einstein.Though many of his roles were of the comic variety, Matthau occasionally returned to his dramatic roots with ventures such as the crime thriller Charley Varrick (1973) and The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 (1974). In addition to his work in feature films, Matthau also continued to make occasional appearances in made-for-television movies, one of which, Mrs. Lambert Remembers Love (1991), was directed by his son Charles Matthau. Matthau, who had been plagued with health problems throughout much of his adult life, died of a heart attack at the age of 79 on July 1, 2000. The last film of his long and prolific career was Diane Keaton's Hanging Up (2000), a family comedy-drama that cast the actor as the ailing father of three bickering daughters (Lisa Kudrow, Meg Ryan, and Keaton). Coincidentally, when Matthau was hospitalized for an undisclosed condition in April of the same year, he shared a hospital room with none other than longtime friend and director Billy Wilder.

Trivia: On stage, screen, and television, powerhouse actress Glenda Jackson displayed a fierce intelligence and a brazen toughness that have bordered on abrasiveness. With her sharp facial features, Jackson is more handsome than glamorous, but this has only helped her career in that it provided her the opportunity to play a wide variety of strong-willed, smart, and sexy women. She specialized in dramas but also dabbled in comedies. The daughter of a Liverpool bricklayer, Jackson left school at age 16 to join an amateur acting troupe, taking odd jobs to support herself. After ten years of scraping by, she was invited to join the Theatre of Cruelty, an offshoot of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and cast as Charlotte Corday in Peter Brook's internationally award-winning The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis De Sade (aka Marat/Sade). In 1966, Jackson reprised her role in the film version, her first starring role; three years before, she had debuted with a bit part in This Sporting Life. Jackson worked closely with director Ken Russell, first appearing in his adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love (1969) as Gudrun. The role earned Jackson the first of two Academy Awards. In 1971, she was nominated for another Oscar for Sunday, Bloody Sunday, and earned her second award for the romantic comedy A Touch of Class (1973). In 1971, Jackson also won an Emmy for playing Queen Elizabeth on the highly acclaimed British miniseries Elizabeth R. Other notable television appearances include the title role in the moving account of Patricia Neal's recovery from a stroke The Patricia Neal Story (1981). Throughout much of her adult life, Jackson has been passionate about politics. In 1990, she unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the British Parliament. She tried again in 1992 and succeed in winning the Hampstead seat. Since the election, Jackson has retired from acting to devote her energies to her party and her constituents.

Trivia: Educated at Yale and the Sorbonne, Sam Waterston, born November 15th, 1940, is far more than the "general purpose actor" he was pegged to be by one well-known film historian. A respected player on the stage, screen, and television, Waterston has cultivated a loyal following with his quietly charismatic, unfailingly solid performances. After beginning his career on the New York stage -- where he has continued to perform throughout his long career -- Waterston made his film debut in The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean in 1966. For a long time, his film career was not nearly as remarkable as his work on the stage and television, although non-New York audiences were made acutely aware of the depth and breadth of Waterston's talents when, in 1973, he starred in the television adaptation The Glass Menagerie (appearing alongside Katherine Hepburn) and -- also on TV -- in Tony Richardson's A Delicate Balance. The following year, the actor further impressed television audiences when he starred as Benedick in the CBS TV adaptation of Joseph Papp's staging of Much Ado About Nothing. Also in 1974, Waterston proved to be the best of the screen's Nick Carraways when he was cast in that expository role in the The Great Gatsby; subsequent films ranged from the midnight-movie favorite Rancho Deluxe (1975) to the unmitigated disaster Heaven's Gate (1981). In the late '70s, Waterston was "adopted" by Woody Allen, joining the director's ever-increasing unofficial stock company for such films as Interiors (1978), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), September (1987), and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Waterston was nominated for an Academy award for his powerful portrayal of a conscience-stricken American journalist in The Killing Fields (1984); three years later he appeared in Swimming to Cambodia, Spalding Gray's acclaimed documentary about the making of the film. Subsequent film appearances included a turn as Kathleen Turner's hilariously timid husband in Serial Mom (1994) and a role in Ismail Merchant's The Proprietor in 1996.However, Waterston has continued to make his greatest mark on television, starring in the acclaimed The Nightmare Years in 1989 and in the similarly lauded series I'll Fly Away and Law & Order. In addition, he has gained a certain amount of fame playing Abraham Lincoln multiple times: In 1988, he starred in Gore Vidal's Lincoln on television, while he won a Tony nod playing him in the Lincoln Center production of Abe Lincoln in Illinois and supplied the president's voice for Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War.Though Waterson is most recognizable for his work in Law & Order, he took on a variety of other television roles throughout the 1990s and 2000s, among them including a turn as the District Attorney Forrest Bedford in I'll Fly Away (the role would win him an Golden Globe). In 2012, Waterson joined the cast of HBO's The Newsroom.

Trivia: Born Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru, Herbert Lom enjoyed a successful acting career in his native Czechoslovakia, principally in theater. He made his screen debut in Zena Pod Krizem (1937) and made one more movie in Czechoslovakia before emigrating to England in 1938. He acted at The Old Vic in London, among other companies, before turning to British films, where his good looks, cultured accent and mannerisms, and intense eyes got him cast in such unusual roles as Napoleon Bonaparte (in The Young Mr. Pitt) in between slightly more anonymous parts. Lom's real breakthrough role was in Compton Bennett's 1946 psychological drama The Seventh Veil, as Dr. Larsen, the psychiatrist treating neuroses of the pianist portrayed by Ann Todd. Lom might have become a kind of Eastern (or Middle) European successor to Charles Boyer, but he was too good an actor to limit himself to romantic parts; instead, he was more like a Czech Jean Gabin. Lom often played highly motivated villains in the 1950s and '60s, most notably in Jules Dassin's Night and the City (1950), in which he brought surprising humanity to the role of a brutal, vengeful gangster, and Sidney Gilliat's State Secret (1950). He reprised the role of Napoleon in King Vidor's sprawling 1956 production of War and Peace, and was a memorably humane, well-spoken Captain Nemo in the Ray Harryhausen production of Mysterious Island (1961); he also played the title role in a 1962 production of The Phantom of the Opera, but Lom's best movie during this period -- despite having some of his shortest screen time -- was Anthony Mann's El Cid, in which he played the Muslim leader Ben Yussuf. He counter-balanced this work with a newly revealed flair for comedy, utilized in the Pink Panther movies, starting with A Shot in the Dark, where his long-suffering bureau chief Dreyfus was forever dreading Inspector Clouseau's latest blunder. He was also Simon Legree in the 1965 German musical production of Uncle Tom's Cabin (as Onkel Tom's Hütte). During the late '60s and '70s, he began appearing in horror films of various types, following a path similar to that blazed by his British-born contemporary Michael Gough. He has kept his hand in gentler and more complex roles, however, including that of the sardonically humorous Soviet bureau chief in Ronald Neame's Hopscotch (1980), and a sympathetic physician in David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone (1983). In 2012, Lom passed away in his sleep at the age of 95.

Trivia: Portly American character actor Ned Beatty originally planned to enter the clergy, but after appearing in a single high-school play, he changed his mind and decided to become a thespian instead. By his early twenties, Beatty was playing Broadway and it was his work in the play The Great White Hope that attracted the interest of film director John Boorman, who cast him as one of the four main stars in his gripping backwoods thriller Deliverance (1972). Forever immortalized in the notorious "squeal like a pig" rape scene, Beatty subsequently went on to become one of the screen's more prolific supporting actors, frequently appearing in up to four films per year. His more notable film work includes Nashville (1975), All the President's Men (1976), Network (for which he earned an Oscar nomination), The Big Easy (1987), Hear My Song (1991), A Prelude to a Kiss (1992), Radioland Murders (1994), and He Got Game (1998). In 1999, he could be seen as a small-town sheriff in the Robert Altman ensemble film Cookie's Fortune.At the start of the 21st century the always-employed character actor continued to work steadily in projects as diverse as Roughing It, Where the Red Fern Grows, Shooter, and Charlie Wilson's War. He joined the Pixar family when he voiced Lotso, the bad guy in Toy Story 3, and he provided the voice of Mayor in 2011's Oscar winning animated feature Rango.

Trivia: Born in Bulgaria, George Baker nonetheless achieved prominence as a British actor, making his joint film and stage debuts in 1952. At home in avuncular roles, Baker made an impressive Reverend Charles Dodson in the 1965 British TV movie Alice. He was equally adept at authoritative characterizations, appearing in this capacity in two of the James Bond epics and as Emperor Tiberius in I Claudius (1957). In the late '80s, George Baker starred in a series of elaborate, 60-minute TV murder mysteries as the unflappable Chief Inspector Wexford.

Trivia: The daughter of author William Saroyan and the stepdaughter of actor Walter Matthau, actress Lucy Saroyan has played supporting roles in films of the '60s and '70s.

Trivia: Severn Darden was born in New Orleans, educated at Mexico City College, and given his first professional acting opportunity at Virginia's Barter Theater. A charter member of the Compass Theater, the improvisational group that would later evolve into Second City, Darden distinguished himself as an "intellectual" monologist, effortlessly weaving allusions to Freud and Kant into his hilariously nonsensical ramblings. From 1963's Goldstein onward, Darden worked in films as a character actor and sometimes writer/director. He chalked up quite a few eccentric characterizations in films like Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966) and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). He was at the top of his form in The President's Analyst (1967) as Kropotkin, a gay Soviet counterintelligence agent who turns out (much to his own surprise) to be one of the film's heroes. The peripatetic Severn Darden settled down long enough to appear as a TV-series regular on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1977; as Popesco), Beyond Westworld (1980; as Foley), and Take Five (1987; as psychiatrist Noah Wolf).

Trivia: Versatile Czechoslovakian actor George Pravda played character roles in many British films of the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Fluent in six languages, he got his start working on-stage in France and Australia. He moved to England in 1956.

Trivia: In the fine tradition of such Hollywood players as Douglas Dumbrille and Richard Deacon, Australian actor Allan Cuthbertson was expert in portraying icy, glaring officials at odds with more warmhearted heroes and heroines. Cuthbertson was suitably condescending and sometimes downright nasty in such films as Carrington VC (1954), The Man Who Never Was (1956), Room at the Top (1959), The Running Man (1964), The Railway Children (1974) and The Sea Wolves (1981). The actor was also seen as a foil to several British TV comedians of the '60s and '70s. Allan Cuthbertson always came in handy whenever American movie companies filming abroad needed someone to personify cold-blooded British propriety; the Guns of Navarrone (1961) and The Mirror Crack'd (1982) feature the actor at his supercilious best.

Trivia: Though she got her start in the film industry late in life, actress Anne Haney would go on to become a dependable character actress with a strong reputation and a healthy sense of humor.Born in March of 1934 in Memphis, TN, Haney studied radio, drama, and television at the University of North Carolina before marrying Georgia Public Television executive John Haley. Soon raising a daughter and devoting herself to family life, Haney began to seek work in the local theater in the 1970s, touring with Noel Coward's Fallen Angels and joining the Screen Actors Guild in preparation for her family's post-retirement move to Southern California. Her plans sadly stifled by her husband's death in 1980, with her daughter in college Haney was on her own for her Westward voyage, though soon after arriving she got an agent and a role in the Walter Matthau vehicle Hopscotch (1980). Alternating between stage and screen for the duration of her Hollywood career, Haney gained over 50 credits with her frequent appearances in television and film. With memorable roles in such films as Liar Liar and Mrs. Doubtfire, in addition to her appearances on Matlock, L.A. Law, The Geena Davis Show, and Ally McBeal, Haney's likeable personality proved both enduring and endearing.On May 26, 2001, Anne Haney died of natural causes in her Studio City, CA, home. She was 67.