Trivia: A remarkably prolific and versatile talent, Gene Hackman was a successful character actor whose uncommon abilities and smart career choices ultimately made him a most unlikely leading man. In the tradition of Spencer Tracy, he excelled as an Everyman, consistently delivering intelligent, natural performances which established him among the most respected and well-liked stars of his era. Born January 30th, 1930 in San Bernardino, CA, Hackman joined the Marines at the age of 16 and later served in Korea. After studying journalism at the University of Illinois, he pursued a career in television production but later decided to try his hand at acting, attending a Pasadena drama school with fellow student Dustin Hoffman; ironically, they were both voted "least likely to succeed." After briefly appearing in the 1961 film Mad Dog Coll, Hackman made his debut off-Broadway in 1963's Children at Their Games, earning a Clarence Derwent Award for his supporting performance. Poor Richard followed, before he starred in 1964's production of Any Wednesday. Returning to films in 1964, Hackman earned strong notices for his work in Warren Beatty's Lilith and 1966's Hawaii, but the 1967 World War II tale First to Flight proved disastrous for all involved. At Beatty's request, Hackman co-starred in Bonnie and Clyde, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and establishing himself as a leading character player. After making a pair of films with Jim Brown, (1968's The Split and 1969's Riot), Hackman supported Robert Redford in The Downhill Racer, Burt Lancaster in The Gypsy Moths, and Gregory Peck in Marooned. For 1970's I Never Sang for My Father, he garnered another Academy Award nomination. The following year Hackman became a star; as New York narcotics agent Popeye Doyle, a character rejected by at least seven other actors, he headlined William Friedkin's thriller The French Connection, winning a Best Actor Oscar and spurring the film to Best Picture honors. Upon successfully making the leap from supporting player to lead, he next appeared in the disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure, one of the biggest money-makers of 1972. After co-starring with Al Pacino in 1973's Scarecrow, Hackman delivered his strongest performance to date as a haunted surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 classic The Conversation and went on to tap his under-utilized comedic skills in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. Arthur Penn's grim 1975 thriller Night Moves and the Western Bite the Bullet followed before the actor agreed to The French Connection 2. While remaining the subject of great critical acclaim, Hackman's box-office prowess was beginning to slip: 1975's Lucky Lady, 1977's The Domino, and March or Die were all costly flops, and although 1978's Superman -- in which he appeared as the villainous Lex Luthor -- was a smash, his career continued to suffer greatly. Apart from the inevitable Superman 2, Hackman was absent from the screen for several years, and with the exception of a fleeting appearance in Beatty's 1981 epic Reds, most of his early-'80s work -- specifically, the features All Night Long and Eureka -- passed through theaters virtually unnoticed.Finally, a thankless role as an ill-fated war correspondent in Roger Spottiswoode's acclaimed 1983 drama Under Fire brought Hackman's career back to life. The follow-up, the action film Uncommon Valor, was also a hit, and while 1984's Misunderstood stalled, the next year's Twice in a Lifetime was a critical success. By the middle of the decade, Hackman was again as prolific as ever, headlining a pair of 1986 pictures -- the little-seen Power and the sleeper hit Hoosiers -- before returning to the Man of Steel franchise for 1987's Superman 4: The Quest for Peace. No Way Out, in which he co-starred with Kevin Costner, was also a hit. In 1988, Hackman starred in no less than five major releases: Woody Allen's Another Woman, the war drama Bat 21, the comedy Full Moon in Blue Water, the sports tale Split Decisions, and Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning. The last of these, a Civil Rights drama set in 1964, cast him as an FBI agent investigating the disappearance of a group of political activists. Though the film itself was the subject of considerable controversy, Hackman won another Oscar nomination. During the 1990s, Hackman settled comfortably into a rhythm alternating between lead roles (1990's Narrow Margin, 1991's Class Action) and high-profile supporting performances (1990's Postcards From the Edge, 1993's The Firm). In 1992, he joined director and star Clint Eastwood in the cast of the revisionist Western Unforgiven, appearing as a small-town sheriff corrupted by his own desires for justice. The role won Hackman a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. The performance helped land him in another pair of idiosyncratic Western tales, Wyatt Earp and The Quick and the Dead. In 1995, he also co-starred in two of the year's biggest hits, the submarine adventure Crimson Tide and the Hollywood satire Get Shorty. Three more big-budget productions, The Birdcage, The Chamber, and Extreme Measures, followed in 1996, and a year later Hackman portrayed the President of the United States in Eastwood's Absolute Power. In 1998, Hackman lent his talents to three very different films, the conspiracy thriller Enemy of the State, the animated Antz, and Twilight, a noirish mystery co-starring Paul Newman and Susan Sarandon. Moving into the new millennium with his stature as a solid performer and well-respected veteran well in place, Hackman turned up in The Replacements in 2000, and Heist the following year. 2001 also found Hackman in top form with his role as the dysfunctional patriarch in director Wes Anderson's follow-up to Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums. Hackman's lively performance brought the actor his third Golden Globe, this time for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.

Trivia: An architecture student, Fernando Rey interrupted his studies to fight in the Spanish Civil War against the Frangiste. He entered films as an extra in 1940. Resembling a Goya painting come to life, the cadaverous Rey is best remembered internationally for his appearances in such Luis Bunuel projects as Viridiana (1961), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), and for his work in such costume epics as The Last Days of Pompeii (1960), The Castillians (1961), and the made-for-TV Jesus of Nazareth. In 1977, he won a Cannes Film Festival award for his work in Elisa Vida Mia. Often cast as a world-weary, cosmopolitan villain, Fernando Rey's most celebrated performance within this character range was as drug lord Alain Charnier in the two French Connection pictures of the 1970s.

Trivia: One of the most unique and distinguished of all Hollywood actors, Roy Scheider first hit his career peak in the 1970s, and will forever be associated with the "American film renaissance" of that decade thanks to his prominent billing in four vital motion pictures from the period: The French Connection (1971), Klute (1971), Jaws (1975), and All That Jazz (1979). As this list demonstrates, Scheider exhibited versatility in choice of material. He also, however, established a trademark persona that carried him from project to project: that of a slightly sardonic, wizened everyman who nonetheless evinced an unmistakable degree of sensitivity and emotional fragility beneath a tough exterior. Born November 10, 1932, in Rutgers, New Jersey, Scheider attended Rutgers University, as well as Franklin and Marshall College, where he studied history; meanwhile, an early boxing injury (in the New Jersey Diamond Gloves Competition) left Scheider with a broken nose that would soon become one of his trademarks. He subsequently joined the United States Air Force and served three years, ascending to the rank of first lieutenant, then returned to Franklin and Marshall for drama work, beginning with a much-acclaimed performance in Shakespeare's Richard III. Scheider inaugurated his professional career as a thespian by cutting his chops on the New York stage, as Mercutio in the New York Shakespeare Festival's 1961 production of Romeo and Juliet, and appeared in a couple of shoestring-budget cheapies (such as the 1963 Curse of the Living Corpse). Additional movie roles followed, but the actor really only made his breakthrough in 1971, with two of the said parts -- in Klute (as the pimp of hooker Bree Daniels) and in William Friedkin's groundbreaking cop thriller The French Connection (as Buddy Russo, the somewhat low-key and subdued partner of Gene Hackman's manic Popeye Doyle). An additional cop role, in The Seven-Ups (1973), followed, but by this point, Scheider had reportedly grown concerned that he would be pegged and typecast as a policeman and decided to branch out with an offbeat turn in the romantic comedy Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York (1975). When that picture unequivocally flopped, Steven Spielberg helped rescue Scheider (and in many ways put the actor on the proverbial map) by casting him as the lead, Police Chief Martin Brody, in the blockbuster shocker Jaws (1975). After this, roles proliferated; Scheider evoked a death-wish-laden Bob Fosse in the gonzo musical drama All That Jazz (1979, a part he inherited from Jaws co-star Richard Dreyfuss), and also chalked up a series of leads in Hitchcockian thrillers including Jonathan Demme's The Last Embrace (1979) and Robert Benton's Still of the Night (1982). Scheider remained equally active through the 1980s and '90s, though his choice of projects waxed slightly more uneven, ranging from the inspired (1986's 52 Pick-Up, 1990's The Russia House) to the abysmal (1986's The Men's Club). The actor retained a firm hold on his craft, however, and delivered some of the finest work of his career late in the game, with prominent roles in David Cronenberg's 1991 Naked Lunch (as a wiseacre physician) and Bart Freundlich's family-themed psychodrama The Myth of Fingerprints (1997, as a seriously deranged father with a seedy and twisted past). The 1990s also found Scheider embarking on a television career for the first time, with a regular role as Captain Nathan Hale Bridger in Steven Spielberg's sci-fi adventure series seaQuest DSV (1993-1996). Scheider would return to television a decade later, with a recurring portrayal of Fyodor Chevchenko on the prime-time drama Third Watch; in the mean time, the actor continued to tackle roles in additional features and even direct-to-video movies, including Time Lapse (2001), Red Serpent (2002), Wes Craven Presents Dracula II: Ascension (2003), and The Poet (2007). By the mid-2000s, Scheider contracted multiple myeloma and began to suffer from related health problems; he died in February 2008 of complications from a staph infection. The actor was 75.

Trivia: Marcel Bozzuffi, a French actor of neurotic mien and receding hairline, was a familiar presence in numerous international films. Some of Bozzuffi's more distinguished credits include Costa-Gavras' Z (1969), The Lady in the Car with the Glasses and Gun (1970), and La Grande Bourgeoisie (1977). He gained American prominence thanks to his brief association with an Oscar-winning film. Marcel Bozzuffi played Pierre Nicoli, one of the scuzzier associates of drug kingpin Fernando Rey in The French Connection (1971).

Trivia: Supporting and occasional lead actor Tony Lo Bianco is perhaps best known as a television actor, but he has also found success on-stage and in films. The New York native specializes in playing streetwise Italians. He started out in theater and made his feature film debut in The Honeymoon Killers (1969) as a murderous gigolo involved with an overweight nurse. He subsequently went on to appear, primarily as a character actor, in low-budget and major features. On television, he guest starred on numerous series and has appeared in such miniseries as Bella Mafia (1997) and made-for-television outings like Jesus of Nazareth (1977). Lo Bianco has also directed episodes of television series such as Police Story and Cliffhangers. In 1985 he directed Too Scared to Scream.

Trivia: In 1961, former New York policeman Eddie Egan and his partner Sonny Grosso were involved in a complex international drug bust which was later immortalized in Robin Moore's fact-based novel The French Connection The best-selling book became the basis of the 1971 Academy Award-winning crime thriller starring Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, and Fernando Ray. Egan and Grosso even landed small parts in the film playing Lt. Walt Simonson and Officer Klein respectively. Afterwards, Egan continued appearing in crime dramas both onscreen and on television.

Trivia: Bill Hickman is best known for his stunt work and expert driving in films of the '60s and '70s. Hickman specialized in chase scenes and prime examples of his work can be seen in such films as Bullitt, The Love Bug, The French Connection and What's up, Doc? He started out as a child appearing in the "Our Gang" series. Later in his career he also did some directing.

Trivia: Sonny Grosso was a New York City police officer when his experiences with his partner Eddie Egan during the early '60s became the basis of the film The French Connection (1971). Grosso had a bit part in the film while Egan had a more substantial role. Grosso later appeared in two more feature films, Report to the Commissioner (1974) and Cruising (1980).

Trivia: Black supporting actor Al Fann began his career onstage and first appeared onscreen in the '70s.