Trivia: One of the postwar era's most successful actors, Gregory Peck was long the moral conscience of the silver screen; almost without exception, his performances embodied the virtues of strength, conviction, and intelligence so highly valued by American audiences. As the studios' iron grip on Hollywood began to loosen, he also emerged among the very first stars to declare his creative independence, working almost solely in movies of his own choosing. Born April 5, 1916, in La Jolla, CA, Peck worked as a truck driver before attending Berkeley, where he first began acting. He later relocated to New York City and was a barker at the 1939 World's Fair. He soon won a two-year contract with the Neighborhood Playhouse. His first professional work was in association with a 1942 Katherine Cornell/Guthrie McClintic ensemble Broadway production of The Morning Star. There Peck was spotted by David O. Selznick, for whom he screen-tested, only to be turned down. Over the next year, he played a double role in The Willow and I, fielding and rejecting the occasional film offer. Finally, in 1943, he accepted a role in Days of Glory, appearing opposite then-fiancée Tamara Toumanova. While the picture itself was largely dismissed, Peck found himself at the center of a studio bidding war. He finally signed with 20th Century Fox, who cast him in 1944's The Keys of the Kingdom - a turn for which he snagged his first of many Oscar nods. From the outset, he enjoyed unique leverage as a performer; he refused to sign a long-term contract with any one studio, and selected all of his scripts himself. For MGM, he starred in 1945's The Valley of Decision, a major hit. Even more impressive was the follow-up, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, which co-starred Ingrid Bergman. Peck scored a rousing success with 1946's The Yearling (which brought him his second Academy Award nomination) and followed this up with another smash, King Vidor's Duel in the Sun. His third Oscar nomination arrived via Elia Kazan's 1947 social drama Gentleman's Agreement, a meditation on anti-Semitism which won Best Picture honors. For the follow-up, Peck reunited with Hitchcock for The Paradine Case, one of the few flops on either's resumé. He returned in 1948 with a William Wellman Western, Yellow Sky, before signing for a pair of films with director Henry King, Twelve O'Clock High (earning Best Actor laurels from the New York critics and his fourth Oscar nod) and The Gunfighter. After Captain Horatio Hornblower, Peck appeared in the Biblical epic David and Bathsheba, one of 1951's biggest box-office hits. Upon turning down High Noon, he starred in The Snows of Kilimanjaro. To earn a tax exemption, he spent the next 18 months in Europe, there shooting 1953's Roman Holiday for William Wyler. After filming 1954's Night People, Peck traveled to Britain, where he starred in a pair of features for Rank -- The Million Pound Note and The Purple Plain -- neither of which performed well at the box office; however, upon returning stateside he starred in the smash The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. The 1958 Western The Big Country was his next major hit, and he quickly followed it with another, The Bravados. Few enjoyed Peck's portrayal of F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1959's Beloved Infidel, but the other two films he made that year, the Korean War drama Pork Chop Hill and Stanley Kramer's post-apocalyptic nightmare On the Beach, were both much more successful. Still, 1961's World War II adventure The Guns of Navarone topped them all -- indeed, it was among the highest-grossing pictures in film history. A vicious film noir, Cape Fear, followed in 1962, as did Robert Mulligan's classic adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird; as Atticus Finch, an idealistic Southern attorney defending a black man charged with rape, Peck finally won an Academy Award. Also that year he co-starred in the Cinerama epic How the West Was Won, yet another massive success. However, it was to be Peck's last for many years. For Fred Zinneman, he starred in 1964's Behold a Pale Horse, miscast as a Spanish loyalist, followed by Captain Newman, M.D., a comedy with Tony Curtis which performed only moderately well. When 1966's Mirage and Arabesque disappeared from theaters almost unnoticed, Peck spent the next three years absent from the screen. When he returned in 1969, however, it was with no less than four new films -- The Stalking Moon, MacKenna's Gold, The Chairman, and Marooned -- all of them poorly received.The early '70s proved no better: First up was I Walk the Line, with Tuesday Weld, followed the next year by Henry Hathaway's Shootout. After the failure of the 1973 Western Billy Two Hats, he again vanished from cinemas for three years, producing (but not appearing in) The Dove. However, in 1976, Peck starred in the horror film The Omen, an unexpected smash. Studio interest was rekindled, and in 1977 he portrayed MacArthur. The Boys From Brazil followed, with Peck essaying a villainous role for the first time in his screen career. After 1981's The Sea Wolves, he turned for the first time to television, headlining the telefilm The Scarlet and the Black. Remaining on the small screen, he portrayed Abraham Lincoln in the 1985 miniseries The Blue and the Grey, returning to theater for 1987's little-seen anti-nuclear fable Amazing Grace and Chuck. Old Gringo followed two years later, and in 1991 he co-starred in a pair of high-profile projects, the Norman Jewison comedy Other People's Money and Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear. Fairly active through the remainder of the decade, Peck appeared in The Portrait (1993) and the made-for-television Moby Dick (1998) while frequently narrating such documentaries as Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (1995) and American Prophet: The Story of Joseph Smith (2000).On June 12, 2003, just days after the AFI named him as the screen's greatest hero for his role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, Gregory Peck died peacefully in his Los Angeles home with his wife Veronique by his side. He was 87.

Trivia: Laurence Olivier -- Sir Laurence after 1947, Lord Laurence after 1970 -- has been variously lauded as the greatest Shakespearean interpreter of the 20th century, the greatest classical actor of the era, and the greatest actor of his generation. Although his career took a rather desperate turn toward the end when he seemed willing to appear in almost anything, the bulk of Olivier's 60-year career stands as a sterling example of extraordinary craftsmanship. Olivier was the son of an Anglican minister, who, despite his well-documented severity, was an unabashed theater lover, enthusiastically encouraging young Olivier to give acting a try. The boy made his first public appearance at age nine, playing Brutus in an All Saint's production of Julius Caesar. No member of the audience was more impressed than actress Dame Sybil Thorndike, who knew then and there that Olivier had what it took. Much has been made of the fact that the 15-year-old Olivier played Katherine in a St. Edward's School production of The Taming of the Shrew; there was, however, nothing unusual at the time for males to play females in all-boy schools. (For that matter, the original Shakespeare productions in the 16th and 17th centuries were strictly stag.) Besides, Olivier was already well versed in playing female roles, having previously played Maria in Twelfth Night. Two years after The Taming of the Shrew, he enrolled at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, where one of his instructors was Claude Rains. Olivier made his professional London debut the same year in The Suliot Officer, and joined the Birmingham Repertory in 1926; by the time Olivier was 20, he was playing leads. His subsequent West End stage triumphs included Journey's End and Private Lives. In 1929, he made his film debut in the German-produced A Temporary Widow. He married actress Jill Esmond in 1930, and moved with her to America when Private Lives opened on Broadway. Signed to a Hollywood contract by RKO in 1931, Olivier was promoted as "the new Ronald Colman," but he failed to make much of an impression onscreen. By the time Greta Garbo insisted that he be replaced by John Gilbert in her upcoming Queen Christina (1933), Olivier was disenchanted with the movies and vowed to remain on-stage. He graduated to full-fledged stardom in 1935, when he was cast as Romeo in John Gielgud's London production of Romeo and Juliet. (He also played Mercutio on the nights Gielgud assumed the leading role himself.) It was around this time that Olivier reportedly became fascinated with the works of Sigmund Freud, which led to his applying a "psychological" approach to all future stage and screen characters. Whatever the reason, Olivier's already superb performances improved dramatically, and, before long, he was being judged on his own merits by London critics, and not merely compared (often disparagingly) to Gielgud or Ralph Richardson. It was in collaboration with his friend Richardson that Olivier directed his first play in 1936, which was also the year he made his first Shakespearean film, playing Orlando in Paul Czinner's production of As You Like It. Now a popular movie leading man, Olivier starred in such pictures as Fire Over England (1937), 21 Days (1938), The Divorce of Lady X (1938), and Q Planes (1939). He returned to Hollywood in 1939 to star as Heathcliff in Samuel Goldwyn's glossy (and financially successful) production of Wuthering Heights, earning the first of 11 Oscar nominations. He followed this with leading roles in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940),Pride and Prejudice (1940), and Alexander Korda's That Hamilton Woman (1941), co-starring in the latter with his second wife, Vivien Leigh. Returning to England during World War II, Olivier served as a parachute officer in the Royal Navy. Since he was stationed at home, so to speak, he was also able to serve as co-director (with Ralph Richardson) of the Old Vic. His most conspicuous contribution to the war effort was his joyously jingoistic film production of Henry V (1944), for which he served as producer, director, and star. Like all his future film directorial efforts, Henry V pulled off the difficult trick of retaining its theatricality without ever sacrificing its cinematic values. Henry V won Olivier an honorary Oscar, not to mention major prizes from several other corners of the world. Knighthood was bestowed upon him in 1947, and he served up another celluloid Shakespeare the same year, producing, directing and starring in Hamlet. This time he won two Oscars: one for his performance, the other for the film itself. The '50s was a transitional decade for Olivier: While he had his share of successes -- his movie singing debut in The Beggar's Opera (1953), his 1955 adaptation of Richard III -- he also suffered a great many setbacks, both personal (his disintegrating relationship with Vivien Leigh) and professional (1957's The Prince and the Showgirl, which failed despite the seemingly unbeatable combination of Olivier's directing and Marilyn Monroe's star performance). In 1956, Olivier boldly reinvented himself as the seedy, pathetically out-of-step music hall comic Archie Rice in the original stage production of John Osborne's The Entertainer. It was a resounding success, both on-stage and on film, and Olivier reprised his role in a 1960 film version directed by Tony Richardson. Thereafter, Olivier deliberately sought out such challenging, image-busting roles as the ruthless, bisexual Crassus in Spartacus (1960) and the fanatical Mahdi in Khartoum (1965). He also achieved a measure of stability in his private life in 1961 when he married actress Joan Plowright. In 1962, he was named the artistic director of Britain's National Theatre, a post he held for ten years. To periodically replenish the National's threadbare bank account, Olivier began accepting roles that were beneath him artistically, but which paid handsomely; in the early '70s, he even hawked Polaroid cameras on television. During this period, he was far more comfortable before the cameras than in the theater, suffering as he was from a mysterious bout of stage fright. He also committed two more directorial efforts to film, Othello (1965) and Dance of Death (1968), both of which were disappointingly stage-bound. In 1970, he became Lord Olivier and assumed a seat in the House of Lords the following year. Four years later, suffering from a life-threatening illness, he made his last stage appearance. From 1974 until his death in 1989, he seemingly took whatever film job was offered him, ostensibly to provide an income for his family, should the worst happen. Some colleagues, like director John Schlesinger, were disillusioned by Olivier's mercenary approach to his work. Others, like Entertainer director Tony Richardson, felt that Olivier was not really a sellout as much as he was what the French call a cabotin -- not exactly a ham: a performer, a vulgarian, someone who lives and dies for acting. Amidst such foredoomed projects as The Jazz Singer (1980) and Inchon (1981), Olivier was still capable of great things, as shown by his work in such TV productions as 1983's Mister Halpern and Mister Johnson and, in 1984, King Lear and Voyage Round My Father. In 1979, he was once more honored at Academy Awards time, receiving an honorary Oscar "for the full body of his work." His last appearance was in the 1988 film War Requiem.

Trivia: Lending his mellifluous voice and regal mien to more than 100 films, British actor James Mason built a long career playing assorted villains, military men, and rather dubious romantic leads. Born the son of a wool merchant in the British mill town of Huddersfield, Mason excelled in school and earned a degree in architecture from Cambridge in 1931. Having acted in several school plays, however, he thought he had a better shot at earning a living as an actor rather than an architect during the Great Depression. Mason won his first professional role in The Rascal and made his debut in London's West End theater world in 1933 with Gallows Glorious. A year after he joined London's Old Vic theater, he made his screen debut in Late Extra in 1935. Mason became a regular British screen presence in late '30s "quota quickies," including The High Command (1937). The actor made a career and personal breakthrough, however, with I Met a Murderer (1939). Along with co-writing, co-producing, and starring in the film, he also wound up marrying his leading lady, Pamela Kellino, in 1940. Mason became Britain's biggest screen star a few years later with his performance as the sadistic title character in the Gainsborough Studios melodrama The Man in Grey (1943). He cemented his fame as the cruel romantic leads women loved in the critically weak, but highly popular, Gainsborough costume dramas Fanny by Gaslight (1944) and The Wicked Lady (1945), finally achieving international stardom for his charismatic performance as Ann Todd's cane-wielding mentor in the well-received The Seventh Veil (1946). Rather than immediately going to Hollywood, however, Mason remained in England. Revealing that he could be more than just brutal leading men in weepy potboilers, he added an artistic as well as popular triumph to his credits with Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947). Starring Mason as a doomed IRA leader hunted by the police, Odd Man Out garnered international raves, and he often cited it as his favorite among his many films.After co-starring in the British drama The Upturned Glass (1947), the Masons headed to Hollywood in 1947. Spurning a long-term studio contract, Mason became one of Hollywood's busiest free agents. Anxious not to be typecast, he bucked his image as the irresistible sadist by playing trapped wife Barbara Bel Geddes' kind boss in Max Ophüls' Caught and appearing as Gustave Flaubert in Vincente Minnelli's version of Madame Bovary (both 1949). Mason returned to roguish form (albeit tempered by sympathy) with his second Ophüls film, The Reckless Moment. Along with two superb turns as wily, disillusioned German Field Marshal Rommel in The Desert Fox (1951) and The Desert Rats (1953), Mason also engaged in a glorious Technicolor romance with Ava Gardner in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) and played the villain in the swashbuckler The Prisoner of Zenda (1952). Calling on his suave intelligence, Mason starred as cool butler-turned-spy Cicero in what he considered his best Hollywood film, the espionage thriller 5 Fingers (1952). The actor played the treasonous Brutus in the director's excellent Shakespeare-adaptation Julius Caesar in 1953.Mason stepped behind the camera as director for the first and only time with the subsequent short film The Child (1954), featuring his wife and daughter Portland Mason. Returning to Hollywood acting, Mason garnered numerous accolades for George Cukor's lavish 1954 remake of A Star Is Born. 1954 proved to be a banner year for the actor, as his artistic triumph in A Star Is Born was accompanied by the popular screen version of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), featuring Mason as megalomaniac submarine skipper Captain Nemo. Bolstered by these successes, he used his clout to produce and star in Nicholas Ray's groundbreaking family drama Bigger Than Life (1956). Bigger Than Life was one of the first Hollywood movies to examine prescription drug abuse, but proved box-office poison. Soured on producing, Mason focused solely on acting for the latter half of the decade, working in Island in the Sun (1957), Cry Terror! (1958), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), and, most notably, North by Northwest (1959).Edging away from Hollywood, Mason took a supporting role in the British drama The Trials of Oscar Wilde in 1960. Having retained his British citizenship during his years in America, he left Hollywood permanently two years later, relocating to Switzerland with his family. After the move, Mason took on the challenge of playing agonized pedophile Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. Whether duping clueless mother Shelley Winters into marriage, lusting after her teenage daughter Sue Lyon, or helplessly pursuing rival pervert Peter Sellers, Mason's Humbert was as much broken victim as scheming predator, injecting uneasy emotion into the difficult role. Despite appearing in such dubious fare as Genghis Khan (1965) and The Yin and Yang of Dr. Go (1971), Mason continued to resist typecasting with his strong turn as a lecherous friend in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), and distinguished himself in such films as Anthony Mann's sword-and-sandal epic The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and the adaptation of Lord Jim in 1965. Showing his facility with lighter films, Mason earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance as ugly duckling Lynn Redgrave's older sugar daddy in the romantic comedy Georgy Girl (1966). Beginning a collaboration that would last until the end of his career, Mason followed that film with his first for director Sidney Lumet, playing a George Smiley-esque British spy in the exemplary John Le Carré adaptation The Deadly Affair (1967). Amid all this work, Mason met his second wife Clarissa Kaye on the set of Michael Powell's Australian romp Age of Consent (1969) and married her in 1971. With Kaye putting Mason ahead of her career, the actor maintained his prolific pace, starring in the skillful murder mystery The Last of Sheila (1973), playing Magwitch in a TV version of Great Expectations in 1974, appearing as an estate patriarch in the humid potboiler Mandingo (1975), a Cuban minister in the pre-Holocaust drama Voyage of the Damned (1976), and a weathered German colonel in Sam Peckinpah's only war film, Cross of Iron (1976). Mason's inimitable air of gravitas suited the role of Joseph of Arimathea in the made-for-TV film Jesus of Nazareth (1977), and enhanced the humor of his appearance as the God-like Mr. Jordan in Warren Beatty's highly popular romantic fantasy Heaven Can Wait (1978). Rarely turning down jobs even as he approached age 70, Mason joined fellow éminence grises Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck in the Nazi cloning thriller The Boys From Brazil (1978), was Dr. Watson to Christopher Plummer's Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979), and played a sinister antiquarian in the TV vampire yarn Salem's Lot the same year. Mason managed to find the time to write and publish his autobiography Before I Forget in 1981. The following year, he earned some of the best reviews of his career -- and his final Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor -- for his subtle, nuanced performance as Paul Newman's harsh courtroom adversary in Lumet's sterling legal drama The Verdict. Mason suffered a fatal heart attack at his Swiss home in July 1984 at the age of 75.

Trivia: Born Lillie Peiser, she was a graceful, sophisticated Prussian-born star. The daughter of an actress, she made her stage debut in Berlin in 1932, but soon moved to Paris in the wake of the Nazi takeover (she was Jewish); after appearing there in a Moulin Rouge operetta, she went to London and began appearing in British films in 1935. In 1943 she married actor Rex Harrison (they divorced in 1957), and two years later the two of them moved to the U.S.; for several years she appeared in Hollywood movies and Broadway plays. After returning to Europe she began appearing in international films. In 1957 she married actor Carlos Thompson. She authored an autobiography, Change Lobsters and Dance (1975), and novels including The Red Raven (1978).

Trivia: German character lead Uta Hagen first appeared onscreen in 1972. She is a Broadway star and noted drama coach.

Trivia: Known for her stage work and solid supporting performances in film and television, Rosemary Harris has earned particular praise for her ability to skillfully portray formidable characters, despite a petite frame and delicate features that would normally belie such a strong aura of authority. Harris grew up in India and did not plan on pursuing a career in acting -- in fact, her original career choice was nursing. She would, however, change course and begin acting studies at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. By 1951, Harris made her U.S. stage debut with great success in a Broadway production of Moss Hart's Climate of Eden, and returned to England to participate in the British premiere of The Seven Year Itch.Harris continued to act -- both on-stage, on the small screen, and in the film world -- throughout the '50s and '60s, starring opposite some of the industry's most prominent figures, including Richard Burton, Jason Robards, Rex Harrison, Laurence Olivier, and Peter O'Toole. After winning a British Tony award in 1966, Harris impressed critics and audiences with her portrayal of a Jewish doctor's wife in the multi-Emmy award-winning television production of Holocaust in 1978, and again in 1979, when she played the matriarch of an 1844 Virginian pioneer family in The Chisholms. Holocaust wasn't Harris' introduction to the Emmys -- one of the actress' most celebrated performances was for her role in the 1975 Masterpiece Theatre production of The Notorious Woman, a portrait of flamboyant novelist George Sand.Harris' 1954 film debut as the unrequited love interest of Stewart Granger in Beau Brummell was met exceedingly well; in fact, the actress was offered a variety of long-term roles from Hollywood, but she turned them down to pursue theater. Ten years later, however, Harris would return to the big screen for her supporting role in the thriller The Boys From Brazil (1978), and later co-starred in TV's The Ploughman's Lunch, a 1983 political drama. After performing at her typical standard in film and television, as well as traveling across continents for her theater career, Harris gave a volatile performance as renowned author T.S. Eliot's mother-in-law in Tom & Viv (1994) -- earning her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. This, however, was only after earning critical praise for a series of mid-'90s theater roles, including those of a diabetic's mother in the 1991 tearjerker Steel Magnolias, an imposing grandmother in Lost in Yonkers (1992), and a troubled wife in An Inspector Calls (1994). After Harris' Oscar recognition, Kenneth Branagh felt it only appropriate to cast her as the Player Queen opposite Charlton Heston's Player King in Hamlet (1996). In 2002, Harris portrayed Peter Parker's aunt in Spider-Man, and reprised the role in Spider-Man 2 (2004).

Trivia: Starting out as an assistant animator at the Walt Disney studios, John Dehner went on to work as a professional pianist, Army publicist, and radio journalist. From 1944 until the end of big-time radio in the early '60s, Dehner was one of the busiest and best performers on the airwaves. He guested on such series as Gunsmoke, Suspense, Escape, and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, and starred as British news correspondent J.B. Kendall on Frontier Gentleman (1958) and as Paladin in the radio version of Have Gun Will Travel (1958-1960). On Broadway, he appeared in Bridal Crown and served as director of Alien Summer. In films from 1944, Dehner played character roles ranging from a mad scientist in The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1954) to Sheriff Pat Garrett in The Left-Handed Gun (1958) to publisher Henry Luce in The Right Stuff (1983). Though he played the occasional lead, Dehner's cocked-eyebrow imperiousness generally precluded any romantic entanglements; he once commented with pride that, in all his years as an actor, he never won nor kissed the heroine. As busy on TV as elsewhere, Dehner was seen regularly on such series as The Betty White Show (1954), The Westerner (1960), The Roaring '20s (1961), The Baileys of Balboa (1964), The Doris Day Show (1968), The Don Knotts Show (1969), Temperatures Rising (1973-1974), Big Hawaii (1977), Young Maverick (1979-1980), and Enos (1980-1981). He also essayed such TV-movie roles as Dean Acheson in The Missiles of October (1974). Working almost up to the end, John Dehner died of emphysema and diabetes at the age of 76.

Trivia: John Rubinstein was born in Los Angeles in 1946, the same year that his celebrated father, 59-year-old concert pianist Arthur B. Rubinstein, became an American citizen. A fine musician in his own right, John has worked on the scores of such films as The Candidate (1972) and Jeremiah Johnson (1972). The younger Rubinstein is, however, far better known as an actor. He made a well-received Broadway debut in the popular musical Pippin and later co-starred in Children of a Lesser God and A Soldier's Tale. A familiar TV and movie face since 1970, Rubinstein starred in the 1972 theatrical feature Pippin, was featured as Meredith Baxter's ex-husband in the Mike Nichols-produced TV series Family (1976-1980), and was cast as MGM mogul Irving Thalberg in the 1980 TV movie The Silent Lovers. He was most familiar for his three-season (1984-1986) portrayal of uptight attorney Harrison K. Fox on the tongue-in-cheek private eye weekly Crazy Like a Fox. John Rubinstein is married to actress Judy West.

Trivia: Anne Meara started out and ended up a distinguished dramatic actress--and in between, scored high marks as a comedienne, playwright and screenwriter. Launching her career in summer stock in 1950, Meara won an Obie Award for her intensely dramatic performance in the 1955 off-Broadway production Maedchen in Uniform; during this period, she was also a semi-regular on the NBC TV daytime soaper The Greatest Gift. Auditioning for an opera in 1954, she met another struggling actor, Jerry Stiller; they were married the following year. Forming the comedy team of Stiller & Meara, The team skyrocketed to stardom via their many appearances on such 1960s variety series as The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show. One of their richest sources of material was the difference in their ethnic backgrounds, especially in their famous "Hershey Horowitz/Mary Elizabeth Doyle" routines (an Irish Catholic, Meara converted to Judaism upon her marriage to Stiller). They also appeared together on Broadway, in the supporting cast of the 1971 sitcom The Paul Lynde Show, and in an obscure 1975 syndicated TV comedy "filler" series Take Five With Stiller and Meara. On her own, Meara has provided comic and noncomic support to several films, including Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), The Out-of-Towners (1970) and Fame (1980). She starred in the 1975 TV lawyer series Kate McShane, and co-starred as tavern owner Mae on The Corner Bar (1973), divorced airline stewardess Sally Gallagher on the 1976-77 season of Rhoda, acid-tongued cook Veronica Rooney on Archie Bunker's Place (1979-83), and mother-in-law Dorothy Halligan on Alf (1987). In 1983, Meara won the Writers Guild "outstanding achievement" award for her script for the made-for-TV feature Another Woman, and ten years later was nominated for a Tony Award for her portrayal of Marthy in the Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie. Anne Meara is the mother of comic actor Ben Stiller and worked with her son in his directorial feature debut, Reality Bites (1994), Zoolander (2001) and Night at the Museum (2006). She recurred on Sex and the City, playing Miranda's mother-in-law, Mary, and later reprised the role in the feature film. Meara died in 2015, at age 85.

Trivia: Actor Steve Guttenberg, trained at New York's High School of the Performing Arts, Julliard and the Actors Studio, was already a professional as a teenager, making his off-Broadway debut in a revival of The Lion in Winter. In 1976 he was first seen before the cameras in the made-for-TV Something for Joey. The following year, he made his big-screen bow in The Chicken Chronicles, and within three years was starring in his own weekly TV series, Billy (he was subsequently top-billed in the bizarre 1982 summer-replacement weekly No Soap, Radio. After a flurry of excellent film roles--the foredoomed Barry Kohler in Boys from Brazil (1978), football-obsessed groom-to-be Eddie in Diner (1982), etc.--Guttenberg settled into workaday parts. He seemed to have a propensity for getting involved in film series: he was seen as Michael Kellan in both 3 Men and a Baby and 3 Men and a Little Lady, Jack Bonner in the two Cocoon films, and Mahoney in the first four Police Academy entries. In 1991, Steve Guttenberg made his belated Broadway debut in Prelude to a Kiss. In the decades to follow, Guttenberg would appear in films like Home Team, Domino One, Fatal Rescue, and A Novel Romance, as well as a memorable arc on the cult hit series Veronica Mars. He would also appear on Dancing with the Stars.

Trivia: A much-loved character actor, British native Denholm Elliott performed in over 100 films during the course of his long career. Elliott, who was educated at Malvern College, went on stage just after World War II, and made his first film, Dear Mr. Prohack, in 1949. Often coming across as a sort of British Ralph Bellamy, Elliot specialized in playing pleasant but ineffectual types during the 1950s, switching to dignified and slightly stuffy characters as he grew grayer. In 1964, he made a major impression on international audiences by playing the tattered gentleman who teaches Alan Bates the tricks of social and financial climbing in Nothing but the Best -- only to be strangled by Bates with his old school tie. With tight lips and taciturn glances, Elliott was the official who closed down Elliott Gould's burlesque house in The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968). A gentler but no less authoritative role came in 1981 as Harrison Ford's immediate superior Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark (reprising the part in 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), while in 1984 Elliott was unforgettably waspish as the dying social lion who dictates his own death notice in The Razor's Edge (the role played by Clifton Webb in the 1946 version). In 1986, he played one of his most endearing roles, that of the free-thinking Mr. Emerson in A Room with a View. In between these engagements, Elliott portrayed Dan Aykroyd's -- and then Eddie Murphy's -- refined butler in Trading Places (1983). His portrayal won him his first British Academy Award; he also earned BAFTAs for his work in A Private Function (1984) and Defence of the Realm (1985). Sadly, Elliott's still-thriving career was cut off in 1992 -- shortly after he completed the comedy Noises Off -- when he died from complications brought about by AIDS.

Trivia: Swiss-born actor Bruno Ganz established himself in Germany, first as co-founder of the Schaubuhne Theatre company, then as a romantic lead in films. International renown came Ganz' way when he was starred in Eric Rohmer's The Marquise of O (1976). Subsequent film roles range from Jonathan Harker in Werner Herzog's 1979 remake of Nosferatu, to misplaced angel Damiel in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (1987). Another of his many collaborations with director Wenders was The American Friend (1977), which Ganz regards as one of his favorite films, even though he and co-star Dennis Hopper came to blows during a spirited argument about acting technique.

Trivia: British character actor Walter Gotell spent most of his screen time as the "enemy." He was especially adept at portraying hissable Nazis in WWII dramas and equally odious KGB agents in Cold War films. His best-known role was Russian General Gogol in three of the James Bond epics: Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, and View to a Kill. Walter Gotell remained active in films and TV throughout the 1990s, as sinister as ever in such works as Puppet Master IV (1991).

Trivia: Usually cast as nymphets or seductresses in low-budget horror films, blonde, baby-faced actress Linda Hayden launched her career at age 17 playing an over-sexed 15-year-old in the lurid melodrama Baby Love (1969). Hayden was a regular in the British-made Confessions series of sex comedies, of which only the first, Confessions of a Window Cleaner, ever made it to the U.S. Few of her subsequent films have had U.S. release. Hayden also periodically appears on stage and television.

Trivia: Born in Malaya (now Malaysia) to British parents, Michael Gough attended Wye Agricultural College before realigning his career goals by taking classes at the Old Vic. Gough made his first theatrical appearance in 1936 and his first film in 1948. He listed King Lear as his favorite stage role, though one suspects that he was equally fond of the character he portrayed in the 1979 Broadway hit Bedroom Farce, for which he won the Tony Award. Movie historian Bill Warren has noted that Gough, by accident or design, adopted two distinct film-acting styles. In such "straight" roles as Montrose in Rob Roy (1954), Norfolk in Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972), Van der Luyden in The Age of Innocence (1993) and Bertrand Russell in Wittgenstein (1993), he was subtle and restrained; but when starring in such scarefests as Horrors of the Black Museum (1959) and Black Zoo (1962), his eye-bulging hamminess knew no bounds. Most contemporary filmgoers are familiar with Gough through his appearances as Alfred the Butler in the Batman theatrical features. Gough died at age 94 in the spring of 2011.

Trivia: German actor Wolfgang Preiss first stepped before the cameras in 1942, then disappeared from the view of moviegoers for nearly a dozen years. Preiss gained belated celebrity in the 1960s as the demonic title character in the "Dr. Mabuse" film series, beginning with 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960). In American films, he tended to be typecast as high-ranking Nazis. Wolfgang Preiss' most prominent assignments in this vein were the roles of Erwin Rommel in Raid on Rommel (1971) and General Von Runstedt in A Bridge Too Far (1977).

Trivia: Versatile German character actor Gunter Meisner launched his busy film career in 1959 with Babette s'en va-t-en Guerre (Babette Goes to War). Fluent in four languages, he went on to appear in numerous German and European film and television productions. He is noted for his impersonation of Adolf Hitler in films such as L'As de As (The Ace of Aces) (1982). Fans of Willie Wonka and the Chcolate Factory (1971) will recognize Meisner for playing Willie Wonka's deliciously wicked-seeming rival, Mr. Slugworth. Originally, Meisner aspired to become a sculptor and a painter, but he switched to drama and began studying under prominent German actor Gustaf Grundgens at Dusseldorf's State Conservatory. Meisner's television work include appearances in The Winds of War (ABC), Blood and Honor (CBS), and The Wilderness Years (BBC). He also played recurring roles on the soap operas One Life to Live and The Edge of Night. He directed two films: Don't Look for Me in Places Where I Can't Be Found, an exploration of racism in Africa, and Bega Dwa Bega (One for All), a Swahili-language film for the Tanzanian Film Unit. As a theater actor and director, Meisner specialized in the "theater of the absurd," comedies, and classical dramas. He has appeared on-stage the world over, and in 1959, founded the Gallery Diogenes in Berlin. In 1961, he founded the International Association for Arts & Sciences and the year after that launched the Diogenes Studio Theater. In 1994, while working on a television movie, Tatort - Die Kampagne (1995), Meisner suffered a fatal heart attack.

Trivia: On stage from 1951 and in films from 1952, British actress Prunella Scales blossomed as a character actress in the mid-1960s. As was the case with many English performers, Scales' tastes veered towards the Classics on stage (the character of Cherry in The Beaux' Stratagem was a particular favorite), while she tended to take whatever came along in films and on television. Her movie credits encompass such efforts as Hobson's Choice (1954), The Boys From Brazil (1978), Howard's End (1992), and, more recently, An Awfully Big Adventure (1995). TV fans the world over know Prunella as Sybil Fawlty, sharp-tongued wife of hotelier John Cleese, in the brief but memorable British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Prunella Scales is the wife of stage and film actor Timothy West, and the mother of actors Sam and Joseph West.