Trivia: Tall, strikingly handsome Dutch actor Rutger Hauer, the son of drama teachers, ran away from his Amsterdam home at age 15 and spent a year aboard a freighter. After coming home, he took a variety of odd jobs while attending night classes to study acting. Afterwards he joined an experimental theater troupe, remaining with them for five years. He then landed a role in a Dutch TV series in which he played a swashbuckler. He debuted onscreen as the lead in Paul Verhoeven's erotically graphic film Turkish Delight (1973); his English-speaking debut came two years later in Ralph Nelson's The Wilby Conspiracy (1975), but it failed to establish him in Hollywood and he returned to making European films. He finally broke through in America as the sociopathic cold-blooded terrorist in the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Nighthawks (1981), after which he was frequently cast as steel-cold heavies in American films. However, his range extends beyond bad guys, as shown (for example) in his role oppposite Michelle Pfeiffer in the medieval romance Ladyhawke (1985). Most of his films since 1981 have been made in America.

Trivia: Considered one of Great Britain's most consistently brilliant players, John Hurt was at his best when playing victims forced to suffer mental, physical, or spiritual anguish. A small man with a slightly sinister countenance and a tenor voice that never completed the transition between early adolescence and manhood, Hurt was generally cast in supporting or leading roles as eccentric characters in offbeat films. The son of a clergyman, Hurt was training to be a painter at St. Martin's School of the Arts when he became enamored with acting and enrolled in London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art instead. He made his theatrical and film debuts in 1962 (The Wild and the Willing). Though he frequently appeared on-stage, Hurt, unlike his many colleagues, was primarily a film and television actor. He gave one of his strongest early performances playing Richard Rich in Fred Zinnemann's A Man for All Seasons (1966). His subsequent work remained high quality through the '70s. On television, Hurt made his name in the telemovie The Naked Civil Servant and furthered his growing reputation as the twisted Caligula on the internationally acclaimed BBC miniseries I, Claudius (1976). He received his first Oscar nomination for playing a supporting role in the harrowing Midnight Express and a second nomination for his sensitive portrayal of the horribly deformed John Merrick -- but for his voice, Hurt was unrecognizable beneath pounds of latex and makeup. In 1984, Hurt was the definitive Winston Smith in Michael Radford's version of Orwell's 1984. Other memorable roles include a man who finds himself hosting a terrifying critter in Alien (1979), his parody of that role in Mel Brooks' Spaceballs (1987), an Irish idiot in The Field (1990), and in Rob Roy (1995).In 1997, Hurt played the lead role of Giles De'ath (pronounced day-ath) for the comedy drama Love and Death on Long Island. The film, which follows a widower (Hurt) who forms an unlikely obsession with a teen heartthrob who lives in Long Island and occasionally stars in low-brow films. Love and Death was praised for its unlikely, yet poignant portrait of unrequited love. The same year, Hurt took on the role of a multi-millionaire willing to fund a scientist's (Jodie Foster) efforts to communicate with alien life in Contact. Hurt took a voice role in the animated series Journey to Watership Down and its sequel, Escape to Watership Down in 1999, and again for The Tigger Story in 2000. In 2001, Hurt joined the cast of Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone to play the small but vital role of wand merchant Mr. Ollivander, and narrated Lars von Trier's experimental drama Dogville. Later, Hurt played an American professor in Hellboy (2004), and won praise for his portrayal of a bounty hunter in The Proposition, a gritty Western from director John Hillcoat. Hurt continued to work in small but meaty supporting roles throughout the next several years, most notably in the drama Beyond the Gates (2005), for which he played a missionary who arrived in Rwanda just before genocide erupted, and as the tyrannical Chancellor Sutler in director James McTiegue's adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel V for Vendetta (2006). In 2010, Hurt reprised his role of Mr. Ollivander for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, and for its sequel in 2011. The actor co-starred with Charlotte Rampling in Melancholia (2011), Lars von Trier's meditation on depression, and played the Head of the British Secret Intelligence Service in the multi-Academy Award nominated spy thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy the same year. In 2013, Hurt appeared in the futuristic sci-fi movie Snowpiercer and later played the War Doctor in the 50th anniversary special of Doctor Who. The following year, Hurt played the King of Thrace in Hercules. Hurt died in 2017, just days after his 77th birthday.

Trivia: Solidly built American actor Craig T. Nelson started out as a comedy writer and performer, doing radio and nightspot gigs in the Los Angeles area. Success was not immediately forthcoming, and Nelson took a four-year sabbatical from show business, moving with his family to a remote cabin in Northern California. In 1979, he made his first film, ...And Justice For All, written by his onetime partner Barry Levinson. While subsequent roles in Poltergeist and Silkwood followed, Nelson would find true stardom on television. For eight seasons beginning in 1989, he starred as college athletics instuctor Hayden Fox on the top-ranked ABC sitcom Coach. Appearing alongside supporting players Jerry Van Dyke and Shelly Fabares, Nelson received an Emmy for his work on the show in 1992.After Coach, Nelson showed up in a few small roles in feature films and television mini-series before returning to series work in 2000, leading the cast of CBS's D.C.-based cop-drama The District. While enjoying the success of that show, Nelson found time for his first high-profile feature film role in over a decade, providing the voice of the head of a family of superheroes in the 2004 Disney/Pixar animated film The Incredibles. In 2005 he played the patriarch of the dysfunctional clan in The Family Stone, and followed that up two years later as skating coach in the comedy Blades of Glory. He was Ryan Reynolds disapproving dad in the hit comedy The Proposal in 2009. He was cast as the head of the Braverman clan in NBC's relaunch of Parenthood in 2010, and appeared in the inspirational Soul Surfer in 2011.

Trivia: The odyssey of Dennis Hopper was one of Hollywood's longest, strangest trips. A onetime teen performer, he went through a series of career metamorphoses -- studio pariah, rebel filmmaker, drug casualty, and comeback kid -- before finally settling comfortably into the role of character actor par excellence, with a rogues' gallery of killers and freaks unmatched in psychotic intensity and demented glee. Along the way, Hopper defined a generation, documenting the shining hopes and bitter disappointments of the hippie counterculture and bringing their message to movie screens everywhere. By extension, he spearheaded a revolt in the motion picture industry, forcing the studio establishment to acknowledge a youth market they'd long done their best to deny. Born May 17, 1936 in Dodge City, Kansas, Hopper began acting during his teen years, and made his professional debut on the TV series Medic. In 1955 he made a legendary collaboration with the director Nicholas Ray in the classic Rebel Without a Cause, appearing as a young tough opposite James Dean. Hopper and Dean became close friends during filming, and also worked together on 1956's Giant. After Dean's tragic death, it was often remarked that Hopper attempted to fill his friend's shoes by borrowing much of his persona, absorbing the late icon's famously defiant attitude and becoming so temperamental that his once-bright career quickly began to wane. Seeking roles far removed from the stereotypical 'troubled teens' which previously dotted his resume, Hopper began training with the Actors Studio. However, on the set of Henry Hathaway's From Hell to Texas he so incensed cast and crew with his insistence upon multiple takes for his improvisational techniques -- the reshoots sometimes numbering upwards of 100 -- that he found himself a Hollywood exile. He spent much of the next decade mired in "B"-movies, if he was lucky enough to work at all. Producers considered him such a risk that upon completing 1960's Key Witness he did not reappear on-screen for another three years. With a noteworthy role in Hathaway's 1965 John Wayne western The Sons of Katie Elder, Hopper made tentative steps towards a comeback. He then appeared in a number of psychedelic films, including 1967's The Trip and the following year's Monkees feature Head, and earned a new audience among anti-establishment viewers.With friends Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson in front of the camera, Hopper decided to direct his own movie, and secured over $400,000 in financing to begin filming a screenplay written by novelist Terry Southern. The result was 1969's Easy Rider, a sprawling, drug-fueled journey through an America torn apart by the conflict in Vietnam. Initially rejected by producer Roger Corman, the film became a countercultural touchstone, grossing millions at the box office and proving to Hollywood executives that the ever-expanding youth market and their considerable spending capital would indeed react to films targeted to their issues and concerns, spawning a cottage industry of like-minded films. Long a pariah, Hopper was suddenly hailed as a major new filmmaker, and his success became so great that in 1971 he appeared in an autobiographical documentary, American Dreamer, exploring his life and times.The true follow-up to Easy Rider, however, was 1971's The Last Movie, an excessive, self-indulgent mess that, while acclaimed by jurors at the Venice Film Festival, was otherwise savaged by critics and snubbed by audiences. Once again Hopper was left picking up the pieces of his career; he appeared only sporadically in films throughout the 1970s, most of them made well outside of Hollywood. His personal life a shambles -- his marriage to singer/actress Michelle Phillips lasted just eight days -- Hopper spent much of the decade in a haze, earning a notorious reputation as an unhinged wild man. An appearance as a disturbed photojournalist in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now did little to repair most perceptions of his sanity. Then in 1980, Hopper traveled to Canada to appear in a small film titled Out of the Blue. At the outset of the production he was also asked to take over as director, and to the surprise of many, the picture appeared on schedule and to decent reviews. Slowly he began to restake his territory in American films, accepting roles in diverse fare ranging from 1983's teen drama Rumble Fish to the 1985 comedy My Science Project. In 1986 Hopper returned to prominence with a vengeance. His role as the feral, psychopathic Frank Booth in David Lynch's masterpiece Blue Velvet was among the most stunning supporting turns in recent memory, while his touching performance as an alcoholic assistant coach in the basketball drama Hoosiers earned an Academy Award nomination. While acclaimed turns in subsequent films like 1987's The River's Edge threatened to typecast Hopper, there was no doubting his return to Hollywood's hot list, and in 1988 he directed Colors, a charged police drama starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. While subsequent directorial efforts like 1989's Chattahoochee and 1990's film noir The Hot Spot failed to create the same kind of box office returns as Easy Rider over two decades earlier, his improbable comeback continued throughout the 1990s with roles in such acclaimed, quirky films as 1993's True Romance and 1996's Basquiat. Hopper was also the villain-du-jour in a number of Hollywood blockbusters, including 1994's Speed and the following year's Waterworld, and was even a pitchman for Nike athletic wear. He also did a number of largely forgettable films such asRon Howard's EdTV (1999). In addition, he also played writer and Beat extraordinaire William S. Burroughs in a 1999 documentary called The Source with Johnny Depp as Jack Kerouac and John Turturro as Allen Ginsberg. In 1997 Hopper was awarded the distinction of appearing 87th in Empire Magazine's list of "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time."Hopper contracted prostate cancer in the early 2000s, and died of related complications in Venice, CA, in late May 2010. He was 74 years old.

Trivia: Formerly husband to Susan Sarandon, whom he met while attending the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., Chris Sarandon spent nearly a decade performing on-stage before making his first television appearance alongside Gene Wilder and Bob Newhart in Thursday's Game in 1974. While that appearance was well received by its audience, Sarandon wouldn't achieve widespread critical recognition from the film industry until his portrayal of an overwrought transsexual opposite Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Sarandon's performance earned him two prestigious nominations (New Star of the Year - Male from the Golden Globes and Best Actor from the Academy), and by all indications, Sarandon was headed toward a bright future on the silver screen. Rather than jumping into a full-time movie career, however, Sarandon continued his work in theater (he replaced Raul Julia in the Tony-winning Broadway musical The Two Gentlemen of Verona) and appeared in a series of television roles, some of which (such as A Tale of Two Cities in 1980) mirrored his affinity for the classics, while others -- namely The Day Christ Died, in which he played the title role -- offered an opportunity for the actor to get in touch with his religious side. Oddly enough, Sarandon would also appear in a slew of satanic or otherwise horror-themed films, including The Sentinel (1976), Fright Night (1985), and Child's Play (1988). It was his decidedly less grim role as the insidious Prince Humperdinck in Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride, however, that would bring his name back into the hearts of American audiences, albeit his place therein was reserved for fairy tale bad guys. Despite his success, Sarandon was unable to gain mainstream American recognition for a starring role, though his performance as a Holocaust survivor in Forced March (1990) did not go unnoticed by critics. Not long afterward, select U.S. filmgoers were treated to his portrayal of a man obsessed with his deceased ancestor's rumored ability to raise the dead in Alien scriptwriter Dan O'Bannon's The Resurrected (1991). In 1993, Sarandon earned no small amount of approval for giving voice to Jack Skellington, the bony star of Tim Burton's gleefully sinister The Nightmare Before Christmas. After participating in a vampire documentary, an episode of the cult-favorite Tales From the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood, and, of all things, the film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's family classic Little Men, Sarandon landed a recurring role as Dr. Burke on NBC's long-running medical drama ER. He continued to work steadily into the 21st century in a variety of projects including Voices in Wartime, Loggerheads, The Chosen One, the remake of Fright Night, and 2012's Safe.

Trivia: American actress Meg Foster was trained at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, a rigorous and exacting establishment that lets practically everyone in for one year and practically no one in for their second year. Foster survived the entire program with the steely-eyed grit that characterized her best film and stage roles. With such notable exceptions as The Osterman Weekend (1983) and The Emerald Forest (1986), many of Foster's films have been cheapjack exploitation efforts unworthy of her skills. She has racked up her most impressive credits on TV, including the lead role of Hester Prynne in the 1979 PBS multi-part adaptation of The Scarlet Letter. In 1982, she was cast as Chris Cagney opposite Tyne Daly's Mary Beth Lacey on the TV series Cagney and Lacey. When the series went into its second season, Foster was replaced by Sharon Gless; the official reason was that she played her character "too tough, too hard," but unofficial sources noted that audiences perceived Foster's performance as too "butch." This setback slowed down her TV career though she was always welcome (if not always well-served) on the big screen.

Trivia: Georgia-born leading lady Cassie Yates has kept busy in films and TV since 1976. Yates' TV-series roles have included detective Jennifer Dempsey in Ron Moody's 1980 sitcom Nobody's Perfect and Diane Wyman, wife of would-be private eye Press Wyman (Judd Hirsch) in Detective in the House (1985). Soap opera fans will remember Yates as Sarah Curtis in the 1987 episodes of Dynasty. Cassie Yates' most appealing film role was as the philandering friend of Nastassja Kinski in the 1982 remake of Unfaithfully Yours.

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.

Trivia: Stuntman, stunt coordinator, second unit director, and actor.

Trivia: Tall, deceptively distinguished-looking Tim Thomerson first gained attention as a comedian, and it was in this capacity that he was hired as an ensemble player for the 1976 Bill Cosby TV variety series Cos. That same year, Thomerson made his first film appearance as Ken in Car Wash (1976). He made several additional movies under the watchful eye of producer/director Robert Altman. Latter-day filmgoers will recognize Thomerson as the Bogartlike adventurer Jack Deth in the three Trancers movies, and also as Brick Bardo in the brief Doll Man cinema series. In the final analysis, Thomerson is probably best known for his prolific TV-series work. He played lascivious hairstylist Gianni in Angie (1979), horny mailboy Johnny Danko in The Associates (1979), egotistical Regis Philbin takeoff Reggie Cavanaugh in The Two of Us (1981), bumbling bandit Theodore Ogilvie in Gun Shy (1983), philosophical derelict Jerry in Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1987), and Sgt. James "Buddy" Zunder, confined to a desk job because of his irregular heartbeat, in the first two seasons of Sirens (1993-96). Video cultists are fondest of Tim Thomerson's fascinatingly funny portrayal of transmuted male-female Gene/Jean on the brief sci-fi spoof Quark (1978).

Trivia: Believing real-life turmoil bred peerless creativity, Sam Peckinpah left an indelible mark on post-1960s cinema with a relatively small body of work that was not for the faint of heart, either in the audience or his collaborators. Peckinpah's unruly, incendiary vision turned such films as Ride the High Country (1962), The Wild Bunch (1969), and the non-Western Straw Dogs (1971) into forceful, complex ruminations on violence, morality, and manhood.Born in Fresno, CA, and raised on a ranch on nearby Peckinpah Mountain by his sober mother and judge father, descendants of pioneer settlers, Peckinpah learned to ride and shoot as a child and idolized his hardy Superior Court jurist grandfather. A boozing, violence-prone troublemaker by his teens, Peckinpah spent his senior year at military school, joining the Marines in 1943 after graduation. Enrolling at Fresno State College in 1947, Peckinpah discovered his calling when his schoolmate and first wife-to-be turned him on to drama. Relocating to Los Angeles to get his master's degree at U.S.C., Peckinpah began directing theater and took a job at KLAC-TV as a stagehand. He was subsequently fired from his menial job on Liberace's TV show for not wearing a suit. Peckinpah's luck changed when he was hired as Don Siegel's assistant at Allied Artists. Well matched in cinematic temperament, Siegel became Peckinpah's mentor as he learned the craft on five Siegel films. Peckinpah also began writing scripts for TV Westerns in 1955, contributing episodes to several shows, including Gunsmoke and Have Gun, Will Travel. Getting a shot at directing with an episode of Broken Arrow in 1958, Peckinpah further honed his skills with episodes of The Rifleman and The Westerner. Peckinpah got his first feature to direct when The Westerner star Brian Keith suggested him for The Deadly Companions (1961). Though more a vehicle for star Maureen O'Hara than the director, The Deadly Companions nevertheless helped Peckinpah land his second film, Ride the High Country (1962). A spectacular meditation on the passing of the West starring wizened screen cowboys Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott as two gunfighters confronting their mortality, Ride the High Country proved that Peckinpah could already enter his house justified as a filmmaker. The studio thought otherwise, dumping it on its first release; critical accolades and foreign film prizes, however, gave Ride the High Country another shot stateside. With a considerable budget and an unfinished script, Peckinpah embarked on his third Western, Major Dundee (1965), starring Charlton Heston and Richard Harris as two former comrades who clash during an Apache roundup. Shot in Mexico, the production of Major Dundee fell into chaos as Peckinpah fired crew members, fought with producers, and was threatened with grievous bodily harm by a (literally) saber-rattling Heston. When the studio decided to fire Peckinpah, however, Heston gave back his salary to let Peckinpah finish. After Peckinpah's cut came in at over two hours, though, he was ousted and the studio eviscerated the movie, removing scenes that reportedly gave Major Dundee even more thematic heft than Ride the High Country. The resulting mess left critics and audiences cold; Peckinpah's deteriorating reputation (and his obstreperousness) got him fired from The Cincinnati Kid (1965).Blackballed for several years, Peckinpah survived by writing scripts. By the time he got to direct again in the late '60s, the parameters of movie violence had changed. Reuniting with High Country cinematographer Lucien Ballard, stock company regulars Warren Oates and L.Q. Jones, and adding stars William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, and Robert Ryan to the mix, Peckinpah explosively probed the nature of mythic Western violence and moral relativity in The Wild Bunch (1969). Greeted by reactions ranging from "brilliant" to "sick," The Wild Bunch was only a modest hit, even after Warner Bros. cut ten minutes of exposition, but its impact on Hollywood cinema reverberated for years to come. Peckinpah followed The Wild Bunch with a distinctly different Western elegy, The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970). Starring Jason Robards as another Westerner who can't handle the end of the West, Cable Hogue was gentle and funny; its botched release, however, did it no justice. After this respite, Peckinpah returned to plumbing the depths of man's bestiality in his most controversial film, Straw Dogs (1971). Starring Dustin Hoffman as a nerdy American math teacher and Susan George as his wanton British wife, Straw Dogs chillingly surmised that even the most pacifist soul harbors an abyss of lethal, instinctual violence. Provoking heated objections to its rape scene in particular and visceral cruelty and nihilism in general, Straw Dogs nevertheless drew an audience and confirmed the potency of Peckinpah's methods. As if to prove his assertions that he himself abhorred the kind of violence portrayed in Straw Dogs, Peckinpah eschewed guns and bloodletting in his next film, Junior Bonner (1972). Another mild, wistful take on Western masculine values and their modern demise, Junior Bonner starred Steve McQueen as a rodeo rider past his prime who has a comic and sad return to his hometown. Though Junior Bonner was a poorly distributed financial failure, Peckinpah got along well enough with his former Cincinnati Kid star to re-team with McQueen for the more conventional action vehicle The Getaway (1972). The Getaway's success didn't prevent Peckinpah's next film, and last western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), from turning into, as he put it, his "worst experience since Major Dundee." Locking horns with the studio during the Mexico shoot, the on-set battles escalated until the unit manager's threat during an argument to have Peckinpah killed resulted in a Peckinpah crony hiring local gunmen to off the unit manager. The hit was canceled and the manager exited; Pat Garrett was sloppily recut by the studio, and the incoherent release version failed. After the scenes were restored in 1988, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was revealed to be a fitting exit from the genre for Peckinpah. Peckinpah went on to throw himself into Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). A strange, bloody revenge story starring Warren Oates as a hapless American in Mexico determined to fulfill the title edict his way, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was dumped in the U.S. and lavishly praised abroad. Always a hardcore alcoholic, Peckinpah discovered cocaine while shooting his next film, espionage actioner The Killer Elite (1975). Though The Killer Elite was a reasonably successful endeavor, one Peckinpah biographer later surmised that the cocaine addiction crippled Peckinpah's creative powers. Still, Peckinpah's sole war movie, Cross of Iron (1977), delivered a powerful antiwar message in depicting two philosophically opposed German officers on the Russian front in World War II. His final two films, comic trucker adventure Convoy (1978) and Robert Ludlum adaptation The Osterman Weekend (1983), however, were strictly mediocre. Though Peckinpah suffered a heart attack in 1979, he never retired. Along with branching out into music video with two clips for Julian Lennon, Peckinpah was preparing a Stephen King adaptation when he suffered a fatal heart attack in 1984. Peckinpah's five marriages (three to the same woman) all ended in divorce.