Trivia: After abandoning plans to be either a minister or a doctor, Canadian-born singer/actor Alan Thicke turned to sports writing, then typed out comedy material for the CBC television network. He moved to Hollywood, where he became a writer and sometime performer on the syndicated Norman Lear series Fernwood 2-Night. He returned to Canada in 1980 to replace talk host Alan Hamel on a popular daytime chatfest. He was successful enough in this endeavor to be invited by onetime network executive Fred Silverman to star in Silverman's first non-network effort, a nighttime variety show titled Thicke of the Night (1983). Despite an enormous publicity buildup, the show was a disaster, for which Thicke adopted a "mea culpa" stance. Also during this period, his marriage to singer/actress Gloria Loring broke up; thus Thicke felt himself a failure on all counts. He has credited his comeback to producer Ilene Berg, who cast Thicke in the 1984 TV movie The Calendar Girl Murders, which proved to skeptics that the man had talent as a straight actor. In 1985, Thicke originated the role of psychiatrist Jason Seaver in Growing Pains, a popular ABC sitcom which ran until 1994. The following year, Thicke showed up as a preening, bombastic talk show host (could this have been an act of attrition for Thicke of the Night?) on the NBC comedy series Hope and Gloria. Additionally, Thicke has hosted the children's series Animal Crack-Ups (1987-1990), and has composed the theme songs for several other TV series, notably The Facts of Life. Although he worked steadily in a variety of less than noteworthy projects, he did score a cameo as himself in the satire Teddy Bears' Picnic, and landed supporting roles in the comedies The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, and the 2012 Adam Sandler laugher That's My Boy.Alan Thicke's son is actor Brennan Thicke, best known for providing the voice of the TV cartoon character Dennis the Menace, and his other son, Robin Thicke, followed his father's musical interests and became a pop star. Thicke died in 2016, at age 69.

Trivia: Known to millions as big brother Mike on the sitcom Growing Pains, Kirk Cameron was a famous face and teen heartthrob in the 1980s. Born in California, Cameron began acting as a child, appearing in projects like the TV movie Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land before landing the role of Mike when Growing Pains premiered in 1985. He stayed with the show until 1992, marrying his onscreen love interest, Chelsea Noble, in 1991. Following the completion of the series, Cameron began to focus on Christian-oriented projects, appearing in the video series Left Behind, a set of movies that take place after the Rapture. Cameron has also been an outspoken proponent of Creationism. In 2004 he returned to his signature role as Mike Seaver for a Growing Pains reunion movie. He had his biggest big-screen success with the Christian-themed drama Fireproof in 2008.

Trivia: Inextricably associated with the 1980s for her memorable, seven-season portrayal of bookish teen Carol Seaver on the family-oriented sitcom Growing Pains (1985-1992), actress Tracey Gold grew up in a show-business family. The older sister of Missy Gold (Benson), Brandy Gold (Wildcats), and Jessie Gold (A Crime of Passion), Tracey signed for her first part at the age of seven in the miniseries Captains and the Kings. Major projects during the early '80s included a key supporting role in Alan Parker's critically acclaimed, divorce-themed psychodrama Shoot the Moon (1982, as one of the central couple's daughters) and a stint on the short-lived sitcom Goodnight, Beantown as the daughter of single working mom Mariette Hartley. Growing Pains, of course, represented Gold's major career break. She experienced difficulty around the end of the program by enduring and surviving a well-publicized bout with anorexia nervosa. After the sitcom wrapped, Gold began tackling parts in occasional telemovies that would come to shape and define her career in the years to follow. These included For the Love of Nancy (1994, which dramatized the story of a girl suffering from anorexia), Lady Killer (1995), Dirty Little Secret (1998), and Wildfire 7: The Inferno (2002). Gold made television headlines in 2004 when cast in the fourth season of the reality series The Mole, which featured celebrity participants.

Trivia: Handsome leading man Matthew Perry has managed to translate the fame and popularity he garnered from playing Chandler Bing on the hit NBC sitcom Friends into an increasingly successful film career as a romantic comedy lead. Born in Massachusetts, the son of actor John Bennett Perry, his parents divorced when he was still a baby. His mother got full custody and moved Perry to Ottawa, Canada, where she worked as a political assistant (years later, Perry's mother would work as a press secretary for prime minister Pierre Trudeau). As a youth, Perry was an extremely talented tennis player and was once ranked third in Canada's doubles competition. At the same time, the teenaged Perry was interested in acting and had been appearing in school productions since he was 13. At age 15, he relocated to L.A. to join his father, in hopes of becoming both a tennis pro and a working actor. However, in 1984, Perry suffered a devastating loss during a major tennis event and decided that he would have more success as an actor. Shortly after the fateful sporting match, he debuted on an episode of the sitcom Charles in Charge. Though Perry was still in high school, it rapidly became apparent that his education would take a backseat to acting. While in a restaurant, he was spotted by director William Richert, who offered the 16-year-old a small role opposite River Phoenix in A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988). Though Perry wanted to become a successful professional actor, his father was pressuring him to attend U.C.L.A. As a compromise, Perry agreed that if he could not find an acting job in the first year after high school graduation, he would attend college. Not long after that, he was hired by Fox television to star in the series Boys Will Be Boys. The series bombed, but Perry was then starred opposite Valerie Bertinelli in a new series, Sydney. While this show too was short-lived, it started Perry on a professional guest-star career that would land him roles on such series as Beverly Hills 90210, Growing Pains, and his father's show 240 Roberts. He made his sophomore film appearance in She's Out of Control (1989) opposite Ami Dolenz and Tony Danza. In the early '90s, Perry and his colleague, Andrew Hill, penned the pilot to a situation comedy about a bunch of friends in their twenties who like hanging out. They called their show Maxwell House and sold it to Universal. They pitched the idea to NBC, but the network had a similar vehicle in the works. Instead of taking Perry and Hill's show, they offered to co-star Perry in their program, Friends. The first episode aired in 1994 and became a Top Ten hit. In features, Perry had his first success with the romantic comedy Fools Rush In (1997), though it was The Whole Nine Yards -- released the same year that Friends went off the air -- that really got moviegoers laughing. A return to television in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was shortlived after being eclipsed by the similar-themed 30 Rock, and in 2007 Perry erceived an Emmy nomination for his turn as a devoted high school teacher working with inner-city teens in The Ron Clark Story. In 2011 Perry could be seen as a sports arena manager experiencing a mid-life crisis in the ABC series Mr. Sunshine, though it was promptly cancelled by the network after failing to perform. Nevertheless, subsequent small screen roles in Go On and The Good Wife showed an actor determined to persevere at all costs.