Trivia: American actress Jill Clayburgh was fortunate enough to find work in her field of endeavor directly after graduation from Sarah Lawrence University. She acted with the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Charles Playhouse in Boston, and, with such future film luminaries as Al Pacino she appeared in several off-Broadway productions A tentative stab at film acting in The Wedding Party, filmed at Sarah Lawrence in 1963 but released in 1969, might have been forgotten save for its roster of celebrities-to-be: Jill Clayburgh, Robert DeNiro and director Brian De Palma. Otherwise, Clayburgh's "official" stepping stones into stardom would include her continuing role on the TV daytime drama Search for Tomorrow and her Broadway appearances in such successes as The Rothschilds and Pippin. The actress' earliest mainstream films-- Portnoy's Complaint (1972) and The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1974)--were not exactly vehicles for her talent. It would take her vivid performance as a battered prostitute on the 1974 TV-movie Hustling to make audiences aware of her extraordinary talents. Unfortunately, her turn as Carole Lombard in the unsuccessful 1976 Gable and Lombard set her back a few steps. It helped to be in the box-office winner Silver Streak (1977), though the actress wasn't served well playing second fiddle to Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor; she was given a better chance to shine opposite Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson in Semi-Tough (1977). In 1978 came the turn-around: An Unmarried Woman, in which Clayburgh's richly textured performance as a thirtyish divorcee trying to make sense of her disoriented life should have won her an Academy Award. It didn't, but Clayburgh was now firmly an "A"-list actress. Bucking the usual trend, she decided not to complacently go the "moneymaking vehicle" route but risked her success to stretch her talent in such films as director Bernardo Bertolucci's Luna (1979) and Costa-Gavras' Hannah K (1983). As expected, these non-blockbuster appearances put her career in the doldrums, compelling her to toil for her paycheck in such indifferent films as the 1986 thriller Where are the Children?. But Clayburgh wass one of those rare American film stars to whom the work itself is more important than the fame.

Trivia: One of the most important British actors to emerge during the 1960s, Alan Bates made his reputation early in his career as one of the original "angry young men" of the post-war English theatre. His rumpled, malleable features lending themselves to his explosive versatility, Bates became a stage star through his portrayals of various disenfranchised working-class young men in such productions as John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, directed in 1956 by Tony Richardson, and Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, staged in 1964. Bates went on to establish himself as a noted screen actor in over 50 films, with particularly memorable turns in Zorba the Greek (1964), Georgy Girl (1966), and The Fixer (1968), for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination.The son of an insurance broker and a housewife, Bates was born the eldest of three brothers in the Midlands suburb of Allestree, Derbyshire, on February 17, 1934. Both of his parents were amateur musicians and encouraged their son to pursue a career as a concert pianist, but at the age of 11, Bates discovered that his true passion was for acting. After taking speech lessons and studying for a time with an acting teacher, he won a scholarship to London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he trained as a classical performer. Bates interrupted his studies to spend two years of service with the Royal Air Force and made his professional stage debut in 1955, at Coventry, with the Midland Theatre Company. Foregoing a traditional apprenticeship with an established theatre company, Bates instead joined the English Stage Company, a new repertory group based at London's Royal Court Theatre. He made his West End debut in 1956 in the company's first production and had his true breakthrough with his starring role in Tony Richardson's premiere staging of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger later that year.Look Back in Anger made Bates a star of the London and Broadway stage, and began a lifelong stage career that saw him perform in the works of such great modern playwrights as Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and Alan Bennett, as well as those of Chekov, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Strindberg. In 1960, the actor made his screen debut as one of Laurence Olivier's sons in Richardson's The Entertainer. Starring roles in Bryan Forbes' Whistle Down the Wind and John Schlesinger's A Kind of Loving followed two years later; both films received acclaim, much of which was directed toward Bates' performances as a murderer on the run in the former and a young working-class dreamer in the latter. The actor spent the remainder of the 1960s more or less in the spotlight, thanks to his starring work in some of the decade's most celebrated films, including Zorba the Greek (1964), Georgy Girl (1966), Le Roi de Coeur (1966), Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), The Fixer (1968), and Women in Love (1969). Each film showcased Bates' astonishing and often underrated versatility, as well as a willingness to do just about anything. This tendency was unforgettably demonstrated with his nude turns in Le Roi de Coeur and Women in Love, the latter of which required him to engage in an earthy wrestling session with Oliver Reed. Bates received his only Oscar nomination for John Frankenheimer's The Fixer, in which he portrayed a Russian Jew unjustly accused of murder. Bates began the subsequent decade on a very positive note, doing acclaimed work in Olivier's The Three Sisters (1970), in which he played Vershinin; A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1971), which cast him as the father of a young invalid whose condition puts a strain on her parents' marriage; and Joseph Losey's The Go-Between (1971), in which he and Julie Christie played illicit lovers. The actor's subsequent projects were incredibly varied, ranging from the exceptional (Lindsay Anderson's made-for-TV In Celebration [1975]) to the execrable (Michael Winner's The Wicked Lady [1983]), and Bates, although a prolific screen performer, tended to do his best work on the stage and television. He publicly acknowledged in at least one interview that it was his tendency to work constantly that allowed him to weather two tragedies that struck him in the early 90s: first, the death of his son Tristan from an asthma attack in 1990; second, the 1992 death of his longtime wife, actress Victoria Ward. Following his son's death, Bates and his other son Benedick, Tristan's twin, established the Tristan Bates Theatre at the Actors Centre in Covent Garden. In addition to his work for the theatre, Bates, who received a CBE from the Queen in 1995, continued to appear on the screen, his talents on particularly fine display in Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990), in which he played the conniving Claudius.

Trivia: American actor Michael Murphy pursued a high school teaching career upon graduation from the University of Arizona. Among the subjects he taught was drama; good-looking and personable enough to get paid for reciting lines to an audience older than the age of 18, Murphy chucked the teaching profession to work on stage. In films since 1967, Murphy is best remembered as Jill Clayburgh's cheating -- and uncontrollably sobbing -- husband in An Unmarried Woman (1978). Michael Murphy has also functioned as a stock company player for director Robert Altman (Countdown [1968], McCabe and Mrs. Miller [1971], Nashville [1974], etc.); in 1988 Munrphy portrayed a pre-fab presidential candidate in Altman's satirical HBO miniseries Tanner. He continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including Shocker, Folks!, Batman Returns, and Altman's Kansas City, as well as the Howard Stern biopic Private Parts. As the 21st century began he could be seen in Norma Jean, Jack and Me, Live from Baghdad, and Silver City. He starred in the sequel to Tanner - Tanner on Tanner - in 2004, and when on to appear in Away From Her, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Smokin' Aces. He has been hired regularly to narrate a variety of documentaries for the American Experience series.

Trivia: The world was a different place in 1968, the year that actor Cliff Gorman created a sensation with his all-stops-out portrayal of "screaming queen" Emory in the off-Broadway hit The Boys in the Band. At that time, Gorman's agents found it expedient to assure playgoers that their client was not the sashaying homosexual he played in Band and to that end commissioned newspaper and magazine pieces detailing Gorman's previous manly-man jobs as trucker, ambulance driver and probation officer; there were also photos aplenty of Gorman's wife and children. The same protecting-our-investment publicity blitz occurred when Gorman repeated his Emory characterization for the 1970 film version of Band. By the time Gorman won his Tony award for his virtuoso portrayal of Lenny Bruce in the 1972 Broadway production Lenny, however, no one really cared about his sexual orientation; it was enough to know that Gorman was one of the finest young actors working in America. Cliff Gorman's subsequent big-screen work has included Cops and Robbers (1973), All That Jazz (1979) and Angel (1984); his television credits include the role of Joseph Goebbels in The Bunker (1982) and his periodic appearances as detective Aaron Greenberg in the TV-movie adaptations of the crime novels of William Bayer (Doubletake, Murder Times Seven etc.)

Trivia: An award-winning stage actress, Kelly Bishop occasionally dabbles in television and feature films. Bishop's accolades, a Tony and a Drama Desk award, came from her outstanding work in the original Broadway version of A Chorus Line. Her television work includes two stints on the television soap opera One Life to Live (she played Serena Wyman in 1989, Dr. Robbins in 1996) and guest-starring roles on Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Her film credits include Six Degrees of Separation ([1993] she also appeared in the original stage version), Miami Rhapsody (1995), and Private Parts (1997), in which Bishop played the mother of shock jock Howard Stern. At the beginning of the 21ast century she enjoyed long run as Emily Gilmore on the TV series Gilmore Girls, and five years after that show ended she returned to the big screen with a part in the comedy Friends With Kids.

Trivia: Supporting actress and former ingenue, onscreen from 1977.

Trivia: The daughter of comedian Jackie Gleason, American actress Linda Miller saw little of her restless father during her childhood and even less after he became a major TV star in the '50s. Despite first-hand experience with the rigors and heartaches of showbiz, Miller decided to pursue an acting career, herself. Not wishing to capitalize on Gleason's fame, she adopted her married name, Miller, for her professional moniker (her husband of many years was playwright/actor Jason Miller). Miller's films included King Kong Escapes (1968), One Summer Love (aka Dragonfly, 1976), and An Unmarried Woman (1978), while her television jobs included a regular role on the 1983 series The Mississippi.

Trivia: In films since the late '60s, American actor Andrew Duncan has been seen as a character player in quite a few critical and box-office favorites. As examples, Duncan played Rev. Blauvelt in Love Story (1969), and he was Jim Carr in Slap Shot (1977). He was also prominently featured in Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969), Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman (1978) and Robert Zemeckis' Used Cars (1980). For Love Story director Arthur Hiller, Andrew Duncan played minor roles in two less commercial, more personal films: The Hospital (1971) (as William Mead) and The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder (1974) (as the Chaplain).

Trivia: Jill Eikenberry had been a stage actress for over a decade when she made her film bow in Joan Micklin Silver's Between the Lines (1977). That same year, she was seen in her first television project, the TV movie The Deadliest Season. Gravitating to comedy roles in films, Eikenberry was at her strident best as Dudley Moore's wealthy bride-to-be in Arthur (1981). On the weekly-TV scene, Eikenberry had a regular role on the short-lived series Nurse, and a longer engagement as attorney Ann Kelsey on LA Law (1986-1994). Co-starring on that series with Jill Eikenberry was her husband Michael Tucker, who has also teamed with Eikenberry in the made-for-TV feature films Assault and Matrimony (1987) and The Secret Life of Archie's Wife (1990).

Trivia: The product of a large, loud Baltimore family, Michael Tucker was fourteen when he first concentrated his excess energy into acting, appearing as a "Lost Boy" in a community theatre production of Peter Pan. On the advice of a high school teacher, Tucker enrolled in the drama department at Carnegie Tech., were he rapidly became one of the prize students. From 1966 through 1976, Tucker played an exhausting variety of roles with such regional companies as the Long Wharf Theater, the Milwaukee Rep and Washington's Arena Stage, supplementing his income as a college acting coach (During his days in Milwaukee, Tucker claimed that he'd previously been the youngest stand-up comedian on the Catskills circuit; then again, he also claimed to be three years younger than he actually was). He made his Broadway bow in a 1976 revival of Trelawny of the Wells. Two years later he began his film career, which gained momentum after his portrayal of restaurateur Bagel in Barry Levinson's Diner (1982) and peaked with solid roles in such Woody Allen films as The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Radio Days (1986). In 1986, Tucker began an eight-season run as Stuart Markowitz on the prime-time TV hit LA Law. The series was produced by Tucker's onetime Carnegie classmate Stephen Bochco, and co-starred Mrs. Tucker, aka actress Jill Eikenberry, who reteamed with her husband in the made-for-TV films Assault and Matrimony (1987) and The Secret Life of Archie's Wife (1990). Outside of LA Law, Michael Tucker's most prestigious TV assignment thus far has been the role of refugee scientist Leo Szilard in Day One, a 1989 docudrama about the Manhattan Project.

Trivia: Although actor/director Paul Mazursky enjoyed a lengthy and successful career spanning several decades, he rose to his greatest prominence during the 1970s, an era during which his films probed with uncommon insight and depth. Born Irwin Mazursky on April 25, 1930, in Brooklyn, NY, he studied literature at the nearby Brooklyn College. There he began acting, winning acclaim for a leading role in a 1950 campus revival of Leonid Andreyev's He Who Gets Slapped. His performance caught the eye of scenarist Howard Sackler, who introduced the young actor to an aspiring filmmaker named Stanley Kubrick. Mazursky then took a leave of absence from his studies to travel to California to appear in Kubrick's little-seen debut feature, Fear and Desire, for which he changed his first name to Paul. Upon graduating in 1951, he migrated to Greenwich Village, where he studied method acting under Lee Strasberg. He also appeared in a number of stock productions, ranging from Death of a Salesman to The Seagull. In 1955, Mazursky returned to the screen, appearing as a juvenile delinquent in Richard Brooks' The Blackboard Jungle. Major success continued to elude him, however, and he spent the next several years regularly appearing in small roles on television and both on and off-Broadway. He also appeared as a standup comic, first performing with fellow comedian Herb Hartig in an act billed as "Igor and H" and later touring the nation as a solo act. In 1959, Mazursky relocated to Los Angeles, forging a collaboration with fellow struggling performer Larry Tucker while working with the U.C.L.A. repertory company. In 1963, he and Tucker were both signed as writers for television's Danny Kaye Show, and two years later they penned the pilot for The Monkees. In 1966, Mazursky also appeared in Vic Morrow's low-budget Deathwatch, making his first return to film in over a decade. With the short subject Last Year at Malibu -- a parody of the Alain Resnais masterpiece Last Year at Marienbad -- Mazursky made his directorial debut, and in 1968 he and Tucker wrote the screenplay for the feature I Love You, Alice B. Toklas. Strong reviews allowed Mazursky the leverage to direct the duo's next script, 1969's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice; a frank comedy about the "new morality" of the sexual revolution, the film was a massive hit, earning close to 20 million dollars. Its success offered Mazursky the freedom to make movies according to the wishes and demands of no one but himself, and he responded with 1970's Alex in Wonderland, the clearly autobiographical tale of a young filmmaker pondering his future. The picture was an unmitigated critical and financial disaster, however, and injured by its reception, he traveled to Europe to take stock of his career. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Mazursky ended his partnership with Larry Tucker and began work on his first solo screenplay, Harry and Tonto. Finding no takers for the project, he instead turned to 1973's Blume in Love, a return to reviewers' good graces. After securing the backing of 20th Century Fox, he finally made Harry and Tonto in 1974, directing star Art Carney to an Academy Award. Next, he again turned reflective, going back to his youth for the inspiration behind 1976's Next Stop, Greenwich Village, followed by an appearance in the 1976 Barbra Steisand remake of A Star Is Born. Mazursky's next directorial effort, 1978's An Unmarried Woman, remains the most highly regarded of his pictures, scoring an Oscar nomination for Best Picture as well as a Best Actress nod for star Jill Clayburgh. The 1980 Willie and Phil -- an homage to Francois Truffaut's masterpiece Jules et Jim -- met with a mixed reception, as did its follow-up, 1982's Tempest, an update of the Shakespeare drama. He then helmed the 1984 culture-clash comedy Moscow on the Hudson, a vehicle for Robin Williams which restored some of his critical and box-office lustre, and in 1986 Mazursky scored his biggest success in years with the satire Down and Out in Beverly Hills, a remake of the 1932 Jean Renoir classic Boudu Saved From Drowning. After serving as the art director on 1987's Intervista, a film from one of his idols, Federico Fellini, Mazursky helmed 1988's Moon Over Parador, followed by a pair of onscreen performances in Punchline and Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills. With 1989's adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Enemies, a Love Story, Mazursky achieved new levels of acclaim, scoring Best Director honors from the New York Critics' Circle and leading stars Anjelica Huston and Lena Olin to Academy Award nominations. However, his next picture, the strained 1990 comedy Scenes From a Mall -- a satiric update of Ingmar Bergman's far superior Scenes From a Marriage -- was a disaster. Mazursky then spent several years away from filmmaking, only producing 1990's Taking Care of Business as well as appearing in Bob Rafelson's 1992 flop Man Trouble. When The Pickle, his 1993 comeback effort, fared poorly, Mazursky again retreated, appearing in films ranging from the 1993 Brian DePalma crime drama Carlito's Way to the 1995 romantic comedy Miami Rhapsody. Faithful, his 1996 return to directing, was also a disappointment, the victim of legal hassles and distribution problems. In Mazursky's later career, he mostly focused on acting and writing- he had recurring roles in Once and Again and Curb Your Enthusiasm and regularly wrote as a film critic for Vanity Fair. In 2014, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild of America. He passed away later that year, at age 84.

Trivia: Had he been in Hollywood in the 1930s or 1940s, Vincent Schiavelli's Halloween-mask countenance, shock of unkempt hair and baleful voice might have permanently consigned him to minor roles in horror or gangster pictures. As it happened, Schiavelli became an actor during the 1960s, a period when, thanks to unpretty stars like Elliott Gould and Dustin Hoffman, homeliness opened more career doors than it closed. After several seasons' worth of stage experience, Schiavelli made his first film appearance in Milos Forman's Taking Off (1971) playing a pot-smoking support group leader by the name of...Schiavelli. He would work with Forman again on several occasions, most memorably as Salieri's(F. Murray Abraham) phlegmatic valet in the opening scenes of Amadeus (1984). In 1972, Schiavelli played his first regular TV-series role, gay set designer Peter Panama in The Corner Bar. Fourteen years later, he could be seen as oddball science teacher Hector Vargas in the weekly sitcom Fast Times, repeating his role from the 1982 theatrical feature Fast Times at Ridgemont High. One of his best-known screen roles was the ill-tempered Subway Ghost, who teaches newly dead Patrick Swayze how to move solid objects with sheer "hate power" in the 1990 blockbuster Ghost. Tim Conway fans are most familiar with Schiavelli through his appearances as Conway's dull-witted assistant in the popular Dorf videocassettes. Previously married to actress Allyce Beasley, the couple would part ways in 1988 and Schiavelli would subsequently wed Carol Mukhalian.