Trivia: The oldest of three sons of a high school art teacher, Timothy Bottoms was 17 when he toured Europe as a member of the Santa Monica Madrigal Society. Enjoying the "rush" of appearing before live audiences, Bottoms pursued a theatrical career. While playing the lead in a stage production of Romeo and Juliet, he was selected by writer/director Dalton Trumbo to play the blind, deaf, armless, and legless protagonist in the 1971 film version of Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun. That same year, Bottoms was tapped by Peter Bogdanovich to star as Texas teenager Sonny Crawford in the award-winning The Last Picture Show (1971), which featured Tim's younger brother Samuel. Bottoms followed these triumphs by creating the role of harried first-year law student Hart in the 1973 sleeper The Paper Chase. Thereafter, his film roles seemed haphazardly selected. On TV, Bottoms was given an opportunity to age nearly 30 years as Adam Trask in the 1981 miniseries version of East of Eden; he also co-starred with brothers Joseph and Sam in the feature-length TV pilot Favorite Son (1987). Again appearing opposite younger sibling Joseph, Tim made his Broadway bow in The 5th of July (1951). Bottoms surprised no one when he balked at the opportunity of re-creating his Sonny Crawford characterization in Texasville, the 1991 sequel to Last Picture Show. Eventually he not only agreed to co-star in Texasville, but also served as executive producer of a documentary on the making of that film, Picture This (1990).

Trivia: Born in a tough Los Angeles suburb, actress Lindsay Wagner quickly became accustomed to having to work hard and fight harder for the things she wanted out of life. The blonde, 5'11" Wagner supplemented her modelling and singing income by teaching theater arts to schoolchildren. In 1971, she was signed to a $162-per-week contract at Universal Pictures, under whose auspices she played supporting roles in such TV series as The Bold Ones and Owen Marshall, M.D. and co-starred in the theatrical features Two People (1972) and The Paper Chase (1973). Though she received good reviews for her work in the last-named film (in which she was cast as the daughter of imperious law professor John Houseman), Lindsay was summarily dropped by her studio in 1975. At the same time, Universal executives were looking for a tall, athletic actress to play a "bionic woman" opposite Lee Majors in a special two-part installment of the weekly TV series The Six Million Dollar Man. Lindsay's contract was extended an extra few days to permit her to play the role of Jaime Sommers -- and when the two-parter was spun off into the Bionic Woman TV series in 1976, Lindsay, still bitter over her firing, demanded a then-staggering sum of $17,500 per program, and a percentage of the merchandising profits. After the cancellation of Bionic Woman in 1978, Lindsay kept her star shining brightly such made-for-TV movies as The Incredible Journey of Dr. Meg Laurel (1979), Callie and Son (1981), I Want to Live (1983), Convicted (1986), The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Dedrickson Story (1989), and I Want to Keep My Daughter (1995). She has also appeared in several TV-movie sequels to The Bionic Woman, including 1993's Bionic Ever After. In addition to maintaining her successful acting career, Lindsay Wagner has entered the booming instructional-video market with Lindsay Wagner's New Beauty: The Accupressure Facelift.

Trivia: Before entering the entertainment industry, actor, producer, scriptwriter, playwright and stage director John Houseman, born Jacques Haussmann, first worked for his father's grain business after graduating from college, then began writing magazine pieces and translating plays from German and French. Living in New York, he was writing, directing, and producing plays by his early 30s; soon he had a stellar reputation on Broadway. In 1937, he and Orson Welles founded the Mercury Theater, at which he produced and directed radio specials and stage presentations; at the same time he was a teacher at Vassar. He produced Welles's never-completed first film, Too Much Johnson (1938). Houseman then went on to play a crucial role in the packaging of Welles's first completed film, the masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941): he developed the original story with Herman Mankiewicz, motivated Mankiewicz to complete the script, and worked as a script editor and general advisor for the film. Shortly afterwards, he and Welles had a falling out and Houseman became a vice president of David O. Selznick Productions, a post he quit in late 1941 (after Pearl Harbor) to become chief of the overseas radio division of the OWI. After returning to Hollywood he produced many fine films and commuted to New York to produce and direct Broadway plays and TV specials; in all, the films he produced were nominated for 20 Oscars and won seven. Later he became the artistic director of the touring repertory group the Acting Company, with which he toured successfully in the early '70s. He debuted onscreen at the age of 62 in Seven Days in May (1964), and then in the '70s and '80s played character roles in a number of films. As an actor he was best known as Kingsfield, the stern Harvard law professor, in the film The Paper Chase (1973), his second screen appearance, for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar; he reprised the role in the TV series of the same name. He authored two autobiographies, Run-Through (1972) and Front and Center (1979).

Trivia: Born July 21st, 1943, Tony-winning American stage and film actor Edward Herrmann used his Fulbright scholarship to study at London's Academy of Music and Dramatic Art; several years of regional theatre led to movie and TV work. In 1977 Herrmann offered the first of his many interpretations of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the TV movie Eleanor and Franklin (He'd later be a singing FDR in the theatrical feature Annie [1982]). The actor was frequently dissatisfied with his own performances, feeling that with a little more time he could do much better. Such was the case of his portrayal of baseball great Lou Gehrig in the TV drama A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story (1979), though Herrmann was proud of the fact that he learned to pitch and bat southpaw, something that a previous movie Gehrig, Gary Cooper, never quite mastered. His occasional villainous movie appearances notwithstanding, Edward Herrmann is to most viewers the very embodiment of intelligence and integrity; he was decidedly well cast as the erudite host of several historical documentaries on the A&E Network. In 2000, Herrmann joined the cast of Gilmore Girls as patriarch Richard Gilmore, and continued appearing in supporting roles in movies, including the headmaster in The Emperor's Club (2002), film censor Joseph Breen in The Aviator (2004) and an accountant in Factory Girl (2006). Once Gilmore Girls ended in 2007, Herrmann returned to episodic TV, with runs on Grey's Anatomy and a recurring gig on The Good Wife. In 2014, he returned to his familiar role of FDR one last time, voicing the president in the Ken Burns documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. Herrmann died in 2014, at age 71.

Trivia: Beckel is a supporting actor onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the '70s. He is the brother of actor David Naughton.

Trivia: Supporting actor David Clennon was first seen on screen in the '70s.

Trivia: Trained at the National Theatre School of Canada, Blair Brown distinguished herself as one of the most versatile young actresses at the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival. Shortly after her off-Broadway debut in A Comedy of Errors, Brown made her first, fleeting film appearance as Miss Farranti in The Paper Chase (1973); her "official" starring bow in films came four years later with The Choirboys. Never one to accept roles merely for their box-office potential, Brown has agreed to co-star in chancy film projects with such offbeat screen personalities as Paul Simon (One Trick Pony), John Belushi (Continental Divide), Mark Harmon (Stealing Home), and Richard Jordan (A Flash of Green), who was also her first husband. A frequent visitor to television, Brown has starred in several TV-movies, most notably as Jackie in 1983's Kennedy. She also essayed the title character in the "succès d'estime" seriocomedy series The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd (1987-1991) which after its network cancellation was kept alive on cable by a small but fervent coterie of fans. While Molly Dodd was on hiatus in 1989, Blair Brown made her first Broadway appearance in Secret Rapture. Though she never became an A-list star, she worked steadily on both the big and small screen. Highlights include her Gertrude opposite Campbell Scott in a 2000 version of Hamlet, Lars Von Trier's 2003 drama Dogville, and a key role in the 2008 sci-fi series Fringe.