Trivia: A renowned theater actress, Julie Harris also augmented her reputation with strong performances in a number of film and TV roles, despite her aversion to the Hollywood "glamour star" trip. Born to a well-to-do Grosse Pointe, Michigan, family, Harris opted to pursue acting at Yale Drama School rather than make her society debut at age 19. She landed her first Broadway part one year later. Harris' career was truly launched at age 25, however, by her star-making performance as troubled pre-teen tomboy Frankie in Carson McCullers' play The Member of the Wedding in 1950. Reprising her role in the film adaptation of The Member of the Wedding (1952), Harris scored an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in her first major film appearance. Though she did not win, she did win the first of five Tony Awards in 1952 for her Broadway turn as Berlin cabaret singer Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera. Along with the well-received film version of I Am a Camera in 1955, Harris starred in perhaps her best-known film that same year: Elia Kazan's East of Eden. As initially-coquettish Abra, Harris became a sensitive yet sensible romantic lead opposite an anguished James Dean in his legendary debut. With this trio of films, Harris became part of the 1950s cinematic turn toward performative "realism" exemplified by Method actor icons Dean and Marlon Brando (despite her own impatience with the Method after an Actors Studio stint).Harris continued to avoid typecasting by playing a number of different roles in TV, theater, and movie productions throughout the subsequent decades. On film, Harris showed her considerable range as a kindly social worker in the film version of Rod Serling's teleplay Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), one of the highly disturbed human guinea pigs in the original (and far superior) version of The Haunting (1963), a frustrated nightclub chanteuse in the Paul Newman p.i. vehicle Harper (1966), and a troubled wife in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). On stage, Harris' specialty became playing famous women throughout history, including Tony-award winning performances as Joan of Ark in The Lark (1956), Mary Todd Lincoln in The Last of Mrs. Lincoln (1973) (adapted for TV in 1976), and Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst (1977).After surviving a bout with cancer in 1981, Harris achieved considerable fame with a new audience by playing Lilimae Clements on the TV nighttime serial Knot's Landing from 1981 to 1988. After she left the show, Harris returned to films, after nearly a decade, as Sigourney Weaver's friend in Gorillas in the Mist (1988). Harris kept busy throughout the 1990s with supporting roles in several films, including Housesitter (1992) and the George A. Romero/Stephen King chiller The Dark Half (1993), as well as starring roles onstage and in TV films, including Ellen Foster (1997). She was awarded the National Medal of the Arts in 1994. Harris would continue to act throughout the decades to come, memorably appearing in TV movies like Little Surprises and Love is Strange. Harris retired from on-screen acting in 2009, and eventually passed away in 2013. She was 87.

Trivia: While taking drama lessons at Badminton, Guildhall School, and the Central School of Speech and Drama, Claire Bloom began appearing on BBC radio, and made her stage debut at 15 with the Oxford Repertory. She made her London bow in 1947, and the following year was effusively praised for her performance as Ophelia in a Stratford-upon-Avon production of Hamlet. Also in 1948, she appeared in her first film, The Blind Goddess (1948). While gainfully employed at the Old Vic in 1952, Bloom was selected by Charlie Chaplin to portray the suicidal ballerina Terry in Chaplin's Limelight. Though the film was inadequately distributed due to Chaplin's "questionable" political beliefs, Limelight made Bloom an overnight star -- after only nine years in the business. Her next major film assignment was Lady Anne in Olivier's Richard III (1955), which led to a steady stream of costume roles in films like Alexander the Great (1956), The Brothers Karamazov (1959), The Buccaneer (1959), and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962). Of her "contemporary" film roles, several are standouts: the sexually unstable housewife in The Chapman Report, the lesbian psychic in The Haunting (1963), the compassionate psychiatrist in Charly (1968), and Martin Landau's Jewish-suburbanite wife in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Her TV work has included Edith Galt Wilson in Backstairs at the White House (1979) and Lady Marchman in Brideshead Revisited (1982). Whenever her schedule has allowed, Bloom has returned to her first love, the theater; her favorite stage role is Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Married three times, Bloom's first husband was actor Rod Steiger, with whom she co-starred in 3 Into 2 Won't Go (1969) and The Illustrated Man (1969); her second was producer Hillard Elkins, who packaged Bloom's 1973 film version of The Doll's House; and her third was novelist Philip Roth. In 1982, Claire Bloom published her autobiography, Limelight and After: The Education of an Actress.Bloom would remain active on screen in the decades to come, appearing most notably in movies like Crimes and Misdemeanors, The Age of Innocence, Mighty Aphrodite, and the King's Speech.

Trivia: Tousle-haired juvenile actor Russ Tamblyn began taking up dancing and acrobatics at the age of six. Needing very little prodding from his parents, the eager Tamblyn embarked on his professional career in the late '40s, performing in radio and Los Angeles musical revues. His first "straight" acting assignment was opposite Lloyd Bridges in the 1947 play Stone Jungle. He entered films in 1948, then was given an "introducing" screen credit for his first starring role in The Kid From Cleveland (1949). Signed by MGM, the young actor changed his billing from Rusty to Russ when cast as an army trainee in 1953's Take the High Ground. Beginning with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Tamblyn became a popular musical star, playing the title role in Tom Thumb (1958) and co-starring as gang leader Riff in the Oscar-winning West Side Story (1961). He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as the teenaged swain of Allison McKenzie (Diane Varsi) in 1958's Peyton Place. By the late '60s, Tamblyn's career had waned, and he was accepting roles in such cheapjack exploitation flicks as Satan's Sadists (1970) and Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). Russ Tamblyn stuck it out long enough to make a healthy comeback in the late '80s, notably in the role of psychiatrist Lawrence Jacoby on the cult-TV favorite Twin Peaks (1990).

Trivia: British actress Fay Compton came from a formidable acting lineage; her father was actor/manager Edward Compton, and her grandfather was 19th-century theatrical luminary Henry Compton. Starting in the Follies staged by first husband H. G. Pelissier, Fay Compton made her mark in the plays of J. M. Barrie (of Peter Pan fame). Fay in fact introduced several of Barrie's plays to London audiences, notably in the title role of Mary Rose in 1920. Active in the classics as well as contemporary material, Compton had the distinction of playing Ophelia opposite two of the most celebrated Hamlets, John Barrymore and John Gielgud. The actress' most significant successes in the 1930s were in two sophisticated comedies by Dodie Smith, Autumn Crocus and Call it a Day; in 1941, she created the role of Ruth in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit. Compton's film work is not as well known or as highly regarded as her stage appearances, but she managed to squeeze in a good many screen roles between her movie debut in She Stoops to Conquer (1914) and her final appearance in Alex and the Gypsy (1970). The Fay Compton film performances most accessible to American audiences are Odd Man Out (1947), Laughter in Paradise (1951) Orson Welles' Othello (1952) and The Haunting (1963)--all made when her ingenue and young-sophisticate roles were behind her and when she was in her "Lady Bracknell" dowager period. Fay Compton was the mother of British director Anthony Pelisser, whose most significant film was The Rocking Horse Winner (1951).

Trivia: On stage since age 17, British actress Rosalie Crutchley established her predilection for gloomy, tragic roles early on. She set a precedent for her film career by being killed off halfway through her first film Take My Life (1948). Slight, dark and sharp-featured, Rosalie found herself typed as mystery women, wronged wives and sinister housekeepers; among her best film assignments were A Tale of Two Cities (1958) (as Madame LeFarge), and The Return (1974). Like many "pigeonholed" film actors and actresses, Rosalie Crutchley enjoyed a wider range of roles on stage and in TV.

Trivia: Her real name just wouldn't do for a marquee in the Bible Belt, so Canadian-born actress Lois Hooker became Lois Maxwell when she arrived in Hollywood. Maxwell appeared in one British picture and a handful of American programmers before she sought out better opportunities in the Italian film industry. She returned to Britain as a second lead and character actress in 1956. In 1970, Maxwell co-starred in the Canadian TV series Adventures in Rainbow County. Lois Maxwell is best remembered for her appearances as the coolly efficient, subtly predatory Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond films produced between 1962 and 1985 -- at least until she was unceremoniously dumped in favor of a younger actress for the two Timothy Dalton Bond epics of the late 1980s. Maxwell died at age 80 in September 2007.

Trivia: British actor Valentine Dyall was a well-known radio performer of the '40s, introducing a weekly "scare" series with "This is your storyteller....the Man in Black." In films, Dyall looked more like a bank president than the voice of doom, and was cast accordingly. On stage since 1930 and films since 1942, Dyall remained busy into the '80s. Some of Dyall's best-known films include The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Henry V (1945) (as the Duke of Burgundy), Caesar and Cleopatra (1946), Brief Encounter (1946), The Haunting (1963), The Wrong Box (1967) and Casino Royale (1967). Valentine Dyall made many of his final appearances where he began, on radio: he was indispensable to many Halloween broadcasts of the '70s and '80s, sometimes nostalgically recreating "The Man in Black."

Trivia: Round-faced, heavily eye-browed British character-player Ronald Adam was the son of actors Blake Adam and Mona Robin. Even while pursuing his own career, Adam had time to participate in two World Wars; he spent much of World War I as a POW, while in World War II he successfully campaigned for an officer's commission despite his age. Often seen playing stern officials, Adam made his first film, The Drum in 1938, and his last, Song of Norway, in 1970. In addition to his many stage and screen appearances, Ronald Adam was also a fairly productive playwright.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '60s.

Trivia: British supporting and sometimes lead actor Richard Johnson studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art as a teen, gained experience in John Gielgud's repertory company, and served in the British Royal Navy during WWII before becoming a professional actor. Dark and handsome, Johnson found steady employment on-stage, in films, and on television in the U.K. and the U.S. He often works with the Royal Shakespeare Company.