Trivia: Born Carlos Ray Norris, Chuck Norris served in Korea in the Army. While there, he studied karate and later became the World Middleweight Karate Champion. He was encouraged by one of his karate students, actor Steve McQueen, to go into acting. He debuted onscreen in the enormously popular Bruce Lee vehicle Enter the Dragon (1973); since the death of Lee he has been the screen's premier martial arts star. He has appeared primarily in militaristic movies in which he single-handedly kills many enemies. His breakthrough film was Missing in Action (1984), in which he played an ex-POW in search of American prisoners still held in Vietnam.

Trivia: Formerly a schoolteacher, Texas-born Noble Willingham has been essaying crusty character roles since 1969. Willingham's resumé includes a brace of location-filmed Peter Bogdanovich films, The Last Picture Show (1971) and Paper Moon (1973), and the role of Clay Stone in both of Billy Crystal's City Slickers comedies. Among his TV-movie credits is the part of President James Knox Polk in 1985's Dream West. A regular on several TV series (The Ann Jillian Show, Texas Wheelers, Cutter to Houston, AfterMASH, When the Whistle Blows), Willingham is best known to 1990s viewers as Mr. Binford (of Binford Tools) in Home Improvement and C. D. Parker in Walker, Texas Ranger. Noble Willingham's most recent film assignments include Ace Ventura, Pet Detective (1994) Up Close and Personal (1996) and Space Jam (1996). In 2000, Willingham left Walker, Texas Ranger to run for Congress in Texas. After losing the election to his Democratic opponent, Max Sandlin, Willingham returned to acting with a supporting role in the Val Kilmer thriller Blind Horizon. Sadly, the part would be the actor's last. In early 2004, at the age of 72, Willingham passed away at home from natural causes.

Trivia: Brando-esque leading man Michael Parks was one of five children of an itinerant laborer. Like the rest of his family, Parks drifted from job to job in his early teens, briefly marrying at 15. When he wasn't nickel-and-diming it as a migrant worker, Parks acted with amateur theater groups up and down the California coast. Discovered by an agent in 1960, Parks was signed to a Universal contract, spending most of his time on suspension due to his ornery outspokenness. He settled down long enough to play an au naturel Adam in John Huston's The Bible (1966) and to star as a young motorcyclist in search of the Real America on the 1969 TV series Then Came Bronson. Parks astonished his anti-establishment fans in 1968 when he supported George Wallace for the presidency. Parks' film appearances since then have been confined to second-string productions, though he managed to attract attention in 1977 by portraying Bobby Kennedy in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover. In 1990, Parks co-produced as well as starred in Caged Fury, though it was his turn as Canadian mobster Jean Renault in David Lynch's Twin Peaks that offered him the most exposure that year. Numerous film and television roles followed, and in 1996 director Quentin Tarantino gave Parks a career-boost by casting him in the violent horror/crime hybrid From Dusk Till Dawn (a role that the actor would reprise in Kill Bill, Vol. 1, Death Proof, and Planet Terror). A turn as the volatile leader of a religious cult in Kevin Smith's Red State capitalized on Parks' intense onscreen charisma, and in 2012 he could be spotted in director Ben Affleck's Argo. And though the documentary Kevin Smith: Burn in Hell found the outspoken Clerks director jokingly chiding "View Askewniverse" veteran Affleck for "cherry-picking" Parks on the strength of his Red State performance, few would deny that the talented Parks would have likely won the role on his own merit. Parks died in 2017, at age 77.