Trivia: Noah Hathaway flourished as a child actor, but he turned away from the spotlight after the early '90s. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Hathaway cut his teeth acting in TV commercials before he was cast in the science fiction TV series Battlestar Galactica (1978) at age seven. Though the show did not last, Hathaway continued to appear on TV as a guest star on many TV series, including Mork and Mindy and Eight Is Enough. Adding film to his TV work, Hathaway played Charles Grodin's son in the romantic comedy It's My Turn (1980) and had a small part in the Goldie Hawn/Burt Reynolds vehicle Best Friends (1982). While Hathaway played a central role in the fantasy tale The Neverending Story (1984) as the warrior Atreju and starred in the horror-fantasy Troll (1986), he did not act in features again until the early '90s. After the poorly received To Die, to Sleep (1992), Hathaway stopped acting and moved into production work.

Trivia: Juvenile performer, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: Gerald McRaney was 14 when he was possessed with the notion to become an actor. Five years later, McRaney landed a job with a New Orleans rep company, laboring away as an oil-field worker during the off-season. In 1969, he made his film bow in the Southern-fried cheapie The Night of Bloody Horror. Moving to LA in 1971, he took acting lessons with Jeff Corey, struggling to lose his Mississippi accent, and drove a cab between TV jobs. For nearly a decade, McRaney paid the rent by playing murderers, psychos and rapists. The actor was finally "humanized" as down-home, college-educated private eye Rick Simon on the breezy detective series Simon and Simon, which ran from 1981 to 1988. After this, he was briefly considered for the starring role in Coach; instead, he was cast as Marine major J. D. "Mac" McGillis in the long-running (1989-93) family sitcom Major Dad. He made his directorial debut with the 1991 TV movie Love and Curses...And All That Jazz, in which he also starred. In 1995, he was brought in to hypo the flagging CBS drama series Central Park West; when this series tanked, he resurfaced as the star of the "family values" weekly drama Promised Land (1996), a spin-off of his guest appearance on TV's Touched by an Angel. McRaney's second wife was Designing Woman co-star Delta Burke.

Trivia: Dynamic African-American actor Moses Gunn was one of the founders of the Negro Ensemble Company. Educated at Tennessee State and the University of Kansas, Gunn made his first New York appearance in a 1961 production of Measure for Measure; he remained active on the off-Broadway scene throughout his career, winning several Obie awards. His 1962 Broadway debut came by way of Jean Genet's The Blacks, which served to introduce many of the powerful black acting talents of the era. In films dating from 1964's Nothing But a Man, Gunn is best-remembered for his portrayal of gangster Bumpy Jonas in the first two Shaft films, and for his brief but telling cameo as Booker T. Washington in Ragtime, a performance which won him an NAACP Image award. On series television, Gunn was top-billed as Jebediah Nightlinger in The Cowboys (1972), played boxing trainer George Beifus in The Contender (1980), was featured as miner Moses Gage in Father Murphy (1981-84) and chewed the scenery as the epigrammatical "Old Man" in A Man Called Hawk (1989). He also played Carl Dixon, the man who married Florida Evans (Esther Rolle) after a whirlwind courtship during the 1976-77 season of Good Times. In 1977, Moses Gunn received an Emmy nomination for his appearance as tribal chieftain Kintango in the groundbreaking miniseries Roots.

Trivia: Comic British character actress Patricia Hayes specialized in playing shrill Cockney women and though her career spanned 70 years, she primarily appeared on television, where she earned the most acclaim from playing Edna the Inebriate Woman, for which she won an Academy Award from the British Academy of Film & Television Arts in 1972. Hayes made her feature-film debut in 1942, appearing in two films, 48 Hours and When We Are Married.

Trivia: British character actor Sydney Bromley was especially known for his theatrical appearances and was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He also appeared on television and in a few films where he usually portrayed small character roles as old men and toothless vagabonds.

Trivia: Alan Oppenheimer is one of the busiest of that breed of character actors who so expertly blend into the roles they're playing that they don't seem to be acting at all. Generally cast in "management" roles in films (the chief supervisor in 1973's Westworld, for example), Oppenheimer has also been a regular or semi-regular on several TV series. He was Dr. Rudy Wells during the first season of The Six Million Dollar Man (1974-75) ex-gangster Sheldon Leonard's brother Jessie on Big Eddie (1975), Captain Finnerty on Eischeid (1979-83) and Ben Brookstone on Home Free (1993), and was seen on an occasional basis as Dr. Raymond Auerbach on Murder She Wrote and network president Eugene Kinsella on Murphy Brown. Alan Oppenheimer's most lasting legacy rests in his innumerable cartoon voiceovers for Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, Disney and other studios: He was heard as Ming the Merciless on New Adventures of Flash Gordon (1979), Sidney Merciless in the "Shake Rattle and Roll" component of CB Bears (1977), Mighty Mouse in The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle (1979 Filmation version), Big D on The Drak Pack (1980), Tawky Tawney and Uncle Dudley in Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam (1981), Vanity on The Smurfs (1981-90), Sheriff Pudge on The Trollkins (1981), Skeletor in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983), the King of Gummadon in Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears (1985), Colonel Trautman in Rambo (1986), Pa Kent on Superman (1988 Ruby-Spears version), Merlin in The Legend of Prince Valiant (1991), and so many others.

Trivia: Cinematographer Jost Vacano has worked closely with distinguished Dutch director Paul Verhoeven on such films as Soldier of Orange (1979) and Robocop (1987). He is noted for his bright and distinctive colors, and his lyrical camera work.

Trivia: Breaking into the entertainment business in 1960 as assistant director for Hamburg's Ernest Deutsch Theatre, German filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen went on to Berlin's German Film and Television Academy. He kicked off his film directorial career in television, winning several awards in the process; his 1976 TV movie For Your Love Only served as the debut for actress Nastassja Kinski. Petersen's 1977 theatrical feature The Consequence, a discreetly handled study of male homosexuality which he both wrote and directed, won him praise on the international scene. In 1981, Petersen helmed Das Boot, a vastly popular wartime drama set on a German submarine; the film earned Petersen two Oscar nominations, one for directing, the other for best screenplay. Petersen made his English-language debut with the 1984 children's fantasy The Neverending Story and had his big stateside breakthrough with the blockbuster Clint Eastwood assassination thriller In the Line of Fire (1993). With his status as an A-list Hollywood director well established, Petersen next directed Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo in 1995's Outbreak, a film that successfully played on the public's fear of the unseen threat inherent in communicable diseases like ebola. While Outbreak was only a modest hit, Petersen scored very big just two years later when he helmed the Die Hard-on-the-President's-plane actioner Air Force One. Starring Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman, the film would go on to gross more than 300 million dollars worldwide. Anyone who thought Air Force One may have been a fluke for the filmmaker need look no further than Petersen's next film, the true high-seas adventure The Perfect Storm (2000). After back-to-back films that each passed the 300-million-dollar mark worldwide, Petersen had no problem securing a 185-million-dollar budget for 2004's Troy, a historical epic starring Brad Pitt. Based on Homer's The Illiad, the film opened stateside with an impressive 46-million-dollar weekend.