Trivia: Best known as the rumpled television detective Columbo, character actor Peter Falk also enjoyed a successful film career, often in association with the groundbreaking independent filmmaker John Cassavetes. Born September 16, 1927, in New York City, Falk lost an eye at the age of three, resulting in the odd, squinting gaze which later became his trademark. He initially pursued a career in public administration, serving as an efficiency expert with the Connecticut Budget Bureau, but in the early '50s, boredom with his work sparked an interest in acting. By 1955, Falk had turned professional, and an appearance in a New York production of The Iceman Cometh earned him much attention. He soon graduated to Broadway and in 1958 made his feature debut in the Nicholas Ray/Budd Schulberg drama Wind Across the Everglades.A diminutive, stocky, and unkempt presence, Falk's early screen roles often portrayed him as a blue-collar type or as a thug; it was as the latter in 1960's Murder Inc. that he earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, a major career boost. He was nominated in the same category the following year as well, this time as a sarcastic bodyguard in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles. In 1962, Falk won an Emmy for his work in the television film The Price of Tomatoes, a presentation of the Dick Powell Theater series. The steady stream of accolades made him a hot property, and he next starred in the 1962 feature Pressure Point. A cameo in Stanley Kramer's 1963 smash It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World preceded Falk's appearance in the Rat Pack outing Robin and the Seven Hoods, but the film stardom many predicted for him always seemed just out of reach, despite lead roles in 1965's The Great Race and 1967's Luv.In 1968, Falk first assumed the role of Columbo, the disheveled police lieutenant whose seemingly slow and inept investigative manner masked a steel-trap mind; debuting in the TV movie Prescription: Murder, the character was an immediate hit, and after a second telefilm, Ransom for a Dead Man, a regular Columbo series premiered as part of the revolving NBC Mystery Movie anthology in the fall of 1971, running for seven years and earning Falk a second Emmy in the process. In the meantime, he also continued his film career, most notably with Cassavetes; in 1970, Falk starred in the director's Husbands, and in 1974 they reunited for the brilliant A Woman Under the Influence. In between the two pictures, Falk also returned to Broadway, where he won a Tony award for his performance in the 1972 Neil Simon comedy The Prisoner of Second Avenue. In 1976, Cassavetes joined him in front of the camera to co-star in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky, and directed him again in 1977's Opening Night.After Columbo ceased production in 1978, Falk starred in the Simon-penned mystery spoof The Cheap Detective, followed by the William Friedkin caper comedy The Brink's Job (1978). After 1979's The In-Laws, he starred two years later in ...All the Marbles, but was then virtually absent from the screen for the next half decade. Cassavetes' 1986 effort Big Trouble brought Falk back to the screen (albeit on a poor note; Cassavetes later practically disowned the embarrassing film) and and in 1987 he starred in Happy New Year along with the Rob Reiner cult favorite The Princess Bride. An appearance as himself in Wim Wenders' masterful Wings of Desire in 1988 preceded his 1989 resumption of the Columbo character for another regular series; the program was to remain Falk's focus well into the next decade, with only a handful of film appearances in pictures including 1990's Tune in Tomorrow and a cameo in Robert Altman's The Player. After the cancellation of Columbo, he next turned up in Wenders' Desire sequel Far Away, So Close before starring in the 1995 comedy Roommates. Falk continued to work in both film and television for the next decade and a half, starring in various Columbo specials through 2003, appearing with Woody Allen in the made-for-TV The Sunshine Boys in 1997, and playing a bar owner caught up in mafia dealings in 1999's The Money Kings. Other projects included the Adam Sandler-produced gangster comedy Corky Romano (2001), the Dreamworks animated family film A Shark Tale (as the voice of Ira Feinberg), and the Paul Reiser-scripted, Raymond de Felitta-directed comedy-drama The Thing About My Folks (2005). In 2007, Falk starred opposite Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore in Lee Tamahori's sci-fi thriller Next. That same year, Falk announced to the public that he had Alzheimer's disease. He died in June 2011 at age 83.

Trivia: Swarthy, striking, and Welsh, actor Matthew Rhys is earning a reputation as one of his country's hottest exports. A graduate of London's prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he enrolled in 1993, Rhys got his first professional role in 1997's House of America, a psychological drama that cast him as one of three siblings in a ragingly dysfunctional family. The first years of his career were spent largely in the theatre and on television; while still an RADA student, Rhys won a place in the cast of the BBC TV series Back Up and then spent a year doing theatre in London's West End.The actor gained familiarity with an international audience when he was cast in the role of Demetrius, one of Tamora's loathsome offspring, in Titus, Julie Taymor's 1999 screen adaptation of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Although the film was eviscerated by critics and careened into box office oblivion, Rhys, with his peroxided hair and enthusiastically vile behavior, made a distinct impression on viewers. That same year, audiences were treated to two more helpings of the actor, when he starred as Tom Courtenay's son in Peter Hewitt's Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? (interestingly, the film also starred Laura Fraser as Rhys' love interest; Fraser also starred in Titus as Lavinia, the object of Demetrius' abuse), and as an aspiring teenage boxer in the black comedy Heart.2000 brought with it a host of projects for Rhys, the most notable of which was the London West End production of The Graduate, in which Rhys starred as Benjamin Braddock opposite Kathleen Turner as Mrs. Robinson. The production, which earned a huge amount of publicity thanks to Turner's decision to disrobe entirely for the crucial seduction scene, proved to be extremely popular, and Rhys garnered wide praise for his portrayal of Braddock. Thanks to this, and to his friendship with two other rising Welsh actors, Ioan Gruffudd and Rhys Ifans, Rhys was soon being hailed in the British press as one of the key players in a new generation of Welsh talent. Over the next several years, he would appear in films like Love and Other Disasters and The Edge of Love, as well as on the TV series Brothers & Sisters. Once Brothers & Sisters ended, he took the lead (opposite Keri Russell) on the FX Cold War drama The Americans.

Trivia: Character actor John Finnegan first appeared onscreen in the '70s.

Trivia: First on-screen role was as an extra in Martin Scorsese's Casino. Was working as the entertainment director at Las Vegas's Riviera Hotel and Casino when he was hired for The Sopranos in 2000. Original audition for The Sopranos was for the part of the FBI agent who worked with "Big Pussy" Bompensiero in the second season. He was turned down, but landed the role of Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri (for which he wore a fat suit in his first two seasons). Authored several tongue-in-cheek books that celebrate Italian-American culture: A Goomba's Guide to Life and The Goomba's Book of Love, written with Charles Fleming; and The Goomba Diet: Living Large and Loving It. Has appeared multiple times on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno as a special correspondent. Is a Yankees and Knicks fan, and studies true-crime stories in his spare time.

Trivia: Big- and small-screen supporting player Julius J. Carry III specialized in tough, aggressive, street-smart characterizations, typically with a comic edge, and often though not always in urban-oriented material. A Windy City native, Carry debuted with a small turn in the Rudy Ray Moore blaxploitation vehicle Disco Godfather (1979) and also played a ferocious gang leader, The Shogun, in Berry Gordy's ambitious but empty youth picture The Last Dragon (1985). Meanwhile, Carry found his bread and butter by signing for over 100 guest roles on television series including Alice, The A-Team, and The Jeffersons, as well as recurring parts on series including It's a Living (as amiable physician Reggie St. Thomas), Murphy Brown, and Boy Meets World. He also turned up in additional features; big-screen assignments included the role of a CIA agent in the Tom Hanks comedy The Man With One Red Shoe (1985) and a nutty coach in the Richard Pryor vehicle Moving (1988). Carry died of pancreatic cancer at age 56 in the late summer of 2008.

Trivia: A true case of fate intervening in the most unexpected of ways, the career of aspiring baseball star Carmine Giovinazzo, born August 24th, 1973,seemed decidedly grim when a major back injury dashed any hopes of achieving his childhood dreams of running the bases as millions of fans screamed in excitement. If those dreams weren't meant to come true, however, the fallen athlete would turn the negative into a positive by using his injury as a means of pushing himself to find his talent as an actor and realizing his true calling before the camera. A native of Staten Island, NY, Giovinazzo spent much of his childhood making short films as a hobby. The athlete-turned-actor was pounding the pavement soon after recovering from his career-altering injury. With the support of his family and an impressive resume that included many short films from NYU and SUNY Purchase, Giovinazzo was soon setting his sights on Los Angeles. The up-and-comer achieved an impressive feat by landing his very first audition for a small role in the pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a feature debut in the 1996 drama No Way Home, proving without a doubt that he could captivate on the big screen as well. If many of his subsequent screen roles weren't exactly memorable, he did prove promising as the lead in the 1998 thriller Fallen Arches before returning to the diamond for Spider-Man director Sam Raimi's 1999 baseball drama For Love of the Game. A stab at television with the short-lived and regrettably titled Shasta McNasty didn't further his career nearly as much as bit roles in such high-profile features as Black Hawk Down, though he did carry the 2001 crime drama The Learning Curve with suitable charm. In 2004 Giovinazzo's career was finally on the verge of breaking through with his role as forensic scientist Danny Messer on the CBS CSI spin-off CSI: NY.

Trivia: Jorge Garcia's large stature and larger personality made him a star long before he was cast on the hit TV series Lost. Even while he was growing up in Southern California, the charismatic young man was well liked by both his peers and his elders, even taking home the "Triton of the Year" award at his high-school graduation, an honor bestowed by the faculty to the class' most outstanding senior. He then enrolled at UCLA, majoring in Communications, but a guest lecture by Dustin Hoffman changed his direction. Hoffman told a story about Sir Laurence Olivier describing the acting bug as a feeling of "Look at me, look at me, look at me!" Garcia couldn't help but relate to the idea, so he began to pursue a career in acting and standup comedy.Success didn't come easily, though, and Garcia spent six years working at a bookstore, scoring occasional parts in commercials. Slowly but surely, however, the more substantial roles started coming. Along with appearances on shows like Spin City and Columbo, Garcia nabbed a recurring role on the sitcom Becker, making several appearances over the next six years. Then in 2004, he played a drug dealer in an episode of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm and caught the attention of ABC producers, who were in the initial stages of casting a new show called Lost. They brought Garcia in to read for the part of Sawyer, which would later go to Josh Holloway, but eventually decided to create the role of Hurley specifically for Garcia. The innovative show was a mystery thriller with a sci-fi twist, and the honest, funny, and totally unpretentious character of Hurley would become wildly popular with fans, making the 31-year-old actor an instant star.Garcia moved to Hawaii, where Lost was filmed, and stuck with the landmark show until it ended its run in 2010. The actor would go on to remain active on screen, appearing on such series as Mr. Sunshine and Alcatraz.