Trivia: British actor Roddy McDowall's father was an officer in the English merchant marine, and his mother was a would-be actress. When it came time to choose a life's calling, McDowall bowed to his mother's influence. After winning an acting prize in a school play, he was able to secure film work in Britain, beginning at age ten with 1938's Scruffy. He appeared in 16 roles of varying sizes and importance before he and his family were evacuated to the U.S. during the 1940 Battle of Britain. McDowall arrival in Hollywood coincided with the wishes of 20th Century-Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck to create a "new Freddie Bartholomew." He tested for the juvenile lead in Fox's How Green Was My Valley (1941), winning both the role and a long contract. McDowall's first adult acting assignment was as Malcolm in Orson Welles' 1948 film version of Macbeth; shortly afterward, he formed a production company with Macbeth co-star Dan O'Herlihy. McDowall left films for the most part in the 1950s, preferring TV and stage work; among his Broadway credits were No Time for Sergeants, Compulsion, (in which he co-starred with fellow former child star Dean Stockwell) and Lerner and Loewe's Camelot (as Mordred). McDowall won a 1960 Tony Award for his appearance in the short-lived production The Fighting Cock. The actor spent the better part of the early 1960s playing Octavius in the mammoth production Cleopatra, co-starring with longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor. An accomplished photographer, McDowall was honored by having his photos of Taylor and other celebrities frequently published in the leading magazines of the era. He was briefly an advising photographic editor of Harper's Bazaar, and in 1966 published the first of several collections of his camerawork, Double Exposure. McDowall's most frequent assignments between 1968 and 1975 found him in elaborate simian makeup as Cornelius in the Planet of the Apes theatrical films and TV series. Still accepting the occasional guest-star film role and theatrical assignment into the 1990s, McDowall towards the end of his life was most active in the administrative end of show business, serving on the executive boards of the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A lifelong movie collector (a hobby which once nearly got him arrested by the FBI), McDowall has also worked diligently with the National Film Preservation Board. In August, 1998, he was elected president of the Academy Foundation. One of Hollywood's last links to its golden age and much-loved by old and new stars alike -- McDowell was famed for his kindness, generosity and loyalty (friends could tell McDowall any secret and be sure of its safety) -- McDowall's announcement that he was suffering from terminal cancer a few weeks before he died rocked the film community, and many visited the ailing actor in his Studio City home. Shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer, McDowall had provided the voiceover for Disney/Pixar's animated feature A Bug's Life. A few days prior to McDowall's passing, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named its photo archive after him.

Trivia: American actress Natalie Trundy was lauded with critical appreciation for her very first film role as a mixed-up teenager in The Careless Years (1957). Her subsequent film roles were acceptable if not as impressive, though she worked often thanks to the influence of her producer-husband Arthur Jacobs. Given plenty of screen time as Jimmy Stewart's daughter Susan in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962), Trundy proved that her performance in Careless Years wasn't a fluke and that she seemed to have a stellar career ahead of her. But in 1962, she suffered a broken back in an auto accident, and was out of commission for several years. She made her comeback in Planet of the Apes (1969), produced by her husband, and appeared (with no undue physical strain imposed upon her) in all four Apes sequels. After the death of Arthur Jacobs in 1973, Natalie Trundy retired again, and later married an executive of the Gucci company.

Trivia: Trained at Northwestern University's drama department, onetime salesman Claude Akins was a Broadway actor when he was selected by a Columbia talent scout for a small role in the Oscar-winning From Here to Eternity (1953). With a craggy face and blunt voice that evoked memories of Lon Chaney Jr., Akins was a "natural" for villainous or roughneck roles, but was versatile enough to play parts requiring compassion and humor. A television actor since the "live" days, Akins achieved stardom relatively late in life via such genial adventure series as Movin' On (1974), B.J. and the Bear (1979), The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo (1979) and Legmen (1984). In his last decade, Claude Akins was a busy-and most genial-commercial spokesperson.

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: An American film director who told stories about independent and adventurous men struggling for their individuality, John Huston led such a life, himself. His hyper-masculine protagonists seemed to stem from his own youthful pursuits as a boxer, competitive horseman, Calvary officer, and major in the U.S. Army. Married five times and divorced four (fourth wife Ricki Soma died in 1969), his reportedly bitter attitude toward women informed his female characters as either weak-willed prizes or seductive threats to manhood. Nevertheless, Huston's unconventional and rambling lifestyle led to some of the most celebrated American cinema, as well as the hub of three generations of Oscar winners. Born in Missouri to noted actor Walter Huston, his family traveled extensively on the vaudeville circuit. After riding horses in Mexico and magazine reporting in New York, the younger Huston secured a job writing dialogue in Hollywood. He started acting and published his first play, Frankie and Johnny, before wandering around London and Paris working as a street performer and artist. Upon his return, he worked as an editor and writer before convincing his employers at Warner Bros. to let him direct his first movie, The Maltese Falcon, in 1941. The popular source novel by mystery author Dashiell Hammett had been filmed twice before, but only Huston's adaptation would be remembered as a prime example of the classic film noir-detective story. It also made a star out of leading man Humphrey Bogart, whom Huston would cast in his next few films: Across the Pacific, Key Largo, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. An adventure drama shot in Mexico examining the nature of man's greed, Sierra Madre won him his first Oscar for Best Director and earned his father, Walter Huston, his first for Best Supporting Actor. Continuing to write Hollywood screenplays and make military documentaries for the U.S. War Department, Huston's next big directorial success was in 1950 with the gritty caper film The Asphalt Jungle, another cinematic innovation in the crime genre. This was quickly followed by The African Queen, earning leading man Bogart his first and only Academy award for his role as drunken boat captain Charlie Allnut. Huston's next production, an adaptation of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, had a notorious history of production difficulties with MGM. In 1952, his biographical drama of painter Henri de Toulouse-Latrec, Moulin Rogue, won Oscars for art direction and costume design. In 1956, he and co-screenwriter Ray Bradbury conquered a major literary adaptation with Moby Dick, starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab. During this time, Huston had found a home for himself in Ireland with his wife and newborn daughter, Anjelica. After he quit during production of A Farewell to Arms, he then tried the African Queen romantic formula again with Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison. In 1961, he directed The Misfits, the tragic last film of both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, co-starring Montgomery Clift (whom Huston would cast in the psychoanalyst title role of his next feature, Freud). Two more adaptations would follow: The List of Adrian Messenger from the mystery novel by Philip MacDonald and The Night of the Iguana from a play by Tennessee Williams. After winning a Golden Globe for his supporting role in Otto Preminger's The Cardinal, Huston did odd acting projects for the next decade and directed A Walk With Love and Death, marking the film debut of daughter Anjelica. In 1974, he gave one of his most notable performances as the villainous Noah Cross in Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Huston made a brief comeback the following year as writer/director of the witty action-adventure saga The Man Who Would Be King, the black comedy Wise Blood, and the Broadway musical adaptation Annie. But his major comeback would be in 1985 with the crime comedy Prizzi's Honor, which earned Anjelica Huston her first Oscar for the supporting role of Maerose. She also starred in her father's last film, The Dead (1987), which was inspired by the James Joyce short story collection Dubliners. Huston died of pneumonia later that year in Newport, RI.

Trivia: The son of a court reporter, actor Lew Ayres began his performing career upon high school graduation when he attempted to make a living as a banjo player. Ayres' college-boy good looks led to extra work in the movies, and before he was 21 the young actor was starring opposite Greta Garbo in The Kiss (1929).Director Lewis Milestone, recognizing Ayres' natural talent and precocious self-confidence, cast him in the demanding role of disillusioned German soldier Paul Baumer in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), an intensely powerful antiwar film which went on to win an Academy Award. Ayres was superb, but his gentle demeanor and callow handsomeness resulted in his being stereotyped in film roles as a spoiled rich boy (though one of these roles, as Katharine Hepburn's perennially drunken younger brother in Holiday (1938), was among the actor's best work).Ayres' star status was boosted in 1938 when he was hired to play Dr. Kildare in MGM's long-running series of Kildare B-pictures. After appearing in nine Kildare films, he declared himself a conscientious objector and refused to bear weapons when called upon to serve in World War II; the actor was publicly perceived to be a coward, and MGM dropped his contract. After the war, the public learned of Ayres' bravery under fire as a non-combatant medical corpsman, and he was permitted to resume his career. He continued to work in character roles throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s; he even portrayed one of Mary Richards' dates on a 1976 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. As active socially as he was professionally, Ayres was married three times; his second wife was Ginger Rogers. Two days after celebrating his 88th birthday, Ayres died in his sleep in his Los Angeles home.

Trivia: Diminutive musical prodigy Paul Williams worked as an apprentice jockey, professional skydiver and insurance salesman before turning to acting. Williams' size and puckish countenance enabled him to play adolescents well into his twenties; one of the best of his early film roles was the surly teenaged genius in The Loved One (1965). Though he kept a hand in acting throughout the 1970s, he was better known for his songwriter accomplishments. Working with such collaborators as Biff Rose, Roger Nichols and Charles Fox, he turned out such enduring song hits as The Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun," Helen Reddy's "You and Me Against the World," Three Dog Night's "Old Fashioned Love Song" and Dionne Warwick's "That's What Friends Are For." In films, Williams was Oscar nominated for his musical contributions to 1974's Phantom of the Paradise (in which he also starred), 1975's Bugsy Malone and 1979's The Muppet Movie. In 1976, Williams and collaborator Barbra Streisand won an Academy Award for the hit tune "Evergreen," the highlight of the Streisand remake of A Star is Born. As mentioned, Williams was never too busy to accept an occasional acting role. He played Little Enos in the first two Smokey and the Bandit movies, camped it up as Dr. Miguelito Loveless Jr. in the 1979 TV movie The Wild Wild West Returns, and could be heard as the voice of the Penguin in TV's Batman: The Animated Series (1992). Paul Williams was also a popular guest on talk shows, quiz programs and variety series.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Character actor Richard Eastham, born Dickinson Swift Eastham, first appeared onscreen in 1954.

Trivia: Born in France to Eurasian parents, actress France Nuyen made her screen bow as Liat in the 1958 film version of South Pacific. Her gamine image didn't last long, however; later in 1958 she starred as the been-around heroine of the Broadway play The World of Suzie Wong. In 1960, she appeared in a recurring role on the American TV series Hong Kong, and some 25 years later could be seen on the weekly hospital drama St. Elsewhere. In the late '60s, France Nuyen was briefly the wife of actor Robert Culp.

Trivia: A New York-based stage and TV actor, Paul Stevens made few film appearances, but was still a familiar face thanks to his soap opera work in the '60s, '70s and '80s. Stevens played Brian Bancroft on NBC's Another World, then went on to other projects and was replaced by Luke Reilly. Over at CBS, Stevens showed up on The Young and the Restless. Replacing B-picture stalwart Robert Clarke, Paul Stevens played Dr. Bruce Henderson, one-time beau of Young and Restless perennial Jennifer Brooks (Dorothy Green).

Trivia: With as much monkeying-around as his movies frequently display, it should come as no surprise to John Landis fans that one of his earliest inspirations as a filmmaker was the original 1933 version of King Kong. The man behind such carefree comedies as Animal House, Landis has also helped to blur the lines between comedy and horror with such efforts as An American Werewolf in London and Innocent Blood, in addition to crafting such fine-tined social satire as Trading Places. Born in Chicago in August of 1950, Landis originally worked in the mailroom at Fox and later as a stuntman before making a name for himself as a director. Landis was in his early twenties when he decided it was time to make a feature, and after a brief flirtation with the idea of crafting an underground porn film, the aspiring director raised the funding needed for his directorial debut from family and friends. The result of his tireless efforts was the relentlessly juvenile but infectiously silly Schlock (aka The Banana Monster [1973]). Featuring the director himself dressed in a cheap monkey costume (designed by frequent collaborator Rick Baker) and terrorizing a California town, the film opened a door for Landis when David Zucker spotted him discussing the film on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Mentioning to friend Robert Weiss that he was impressed with the young filmmaker's energy, Weiss remarked that he was friends with Landis, and the result was The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977). A dream collaboration in anarchic humor, the wildly irreverent, non sequitur humor of The Kentucky Fried Movie struck a chord with audiences fueled on Saturday Night Live, and natural progression lead to the breakthrough comedy Animal House the following year. Based on the writer's college exploits and shot in a mere 28 days, Animal House proved an unmitigated smash hit at the box office despite nearly unanimous critical denouncement. Though critical evisceration would become a trademark of Landis films, the following decade found the now-established director in his prime. Given free reign over his next film by Universal, rumors still persist that The Blues Brothers was the first film in cinematic history to begin production without a finalized budget. A loud and spectacular collage of driving blues music and eye-popping car crashes, the film not only made the world record for the number of cars crashed in a movie, but proved an even bigger hit than Animal House. For his next film, Landis utilized a script he had penned while in Yugoslavia working as a gofer on Kelly's Heroes in 1969. Though An American Werewolf in London may not have been the first horror film to utilize comedy, its truly terrifying scenes contrasted by an ample dose of dark humor proved the spark that would ignite the horror comedy genre later expanded on by the likes of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. Yet another runaway hit at the box office, An American Werewolf in London's shockingly frightful visuals earned makeup artist Baker the first ever Academy Award to be bestowed upon a special effects artist. As successful as Landis' career had been to date, trouble was on the way when filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie was ground to a halt following the accidental on-set death of star Vic Morrow and two juvenile actors. When special effects caused a helicopter to crash, killing all three passengers instantly, the director, as well as three other technicians who were working on the film, were charged with involuntary manslaughter. Though all would eventually be found not guilty in the case, the trial would drag on for a decade. Despite the tragedy that beset the production of Twilight Zone, Landis would score a massive hit that same year by wolfing it up with pop-superstar Michael Jackson as the director of Thriller. The remainder of the 1980s found Landis scoring mild box-office hits with such efforts as Spies Like Us (1985) and Three Amigios! (1986), though it wasn't until Coming to America (1988) that he would score another direct hit. An ideal vehicle for Eddie Murphy, the film brought the gifted comic actor back into the realm of straight laughs following the one-two action punch of The Golden Child and Beverly Hills Cop II. Though Landis would once again team with Murphy for the third installment of the Beverly Hills Cop franchise, audiences had tired of the comic's wisecracking cop by the mid-'90s, and following on the lackluster performance of Oscar (1991) and Innocent Blood (1992), the director's career went into a bit of a slump. Landis did, however, find moderate success at this point in his career as the catalyst and sometimes director of the popular HBO series Dream On. When it was announced in the late '90s that Landis was set to helm a sequel to The Blues Brothers, fans were left scratching their heads in wonder as to how the film could recapture the chemistry between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd that had played such an integral part in the success of the original. A rare instance in Landis' career in which critics and audiences agreed, Blues Brothers 2000 immediately tanked at the box office as mournful fans of the original struggled to comprehend how and why this could have happened. Released straight to video that same year, Susan's Plan offered an equally abysmal attempt at comedy that went largely unseen. As willing to jump in front of the camera as behind, Landis has frequently displayed his healthy sense of humor by appearing in such films as The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), Darkman (1990), Vampirella (1996), and 2001 Maniacs (2003). In addition to the frequent use of the phrase "See you next Tuesday" in his films, in-jokes abound and fans can always count on the director to break out the old monkey suit for a laugh if all else fails.