Trivia: A graduate of the University of Dubuque, Tony Danza was busy with a profitable if not spectacular career as a boxer when he began tentatively moving into acting. His first important TV role was, appropriately, as erstwhile boxer Tony Banta on the popular sitcom Taxi. During his Taxi years, Danza built up the screen image of the pugnacious, not overly bright lug with a golden heart. In 1984, Danza was cast as Tony Micelli, the widowed housekeeper of divorced career woman Angela Bower (Judith Light), on the weekly domestic comedy Who's the Boss? enjoying a popular eight-season run. Danza's first starring film role in She's Out of Control (1988), as the overprotective father of teenager Ami Dolenz, was more or less an extension of his TV work; the actor demonstrated a wider range in the supporting role of a dying baseball player in the 1994 remake of Angels in the Outfield. He executive produced The Jerky Boys movie, and continued to appear in projects such as the remake of 12 Angry Men, Glam, and The Garbage-Picking, Field Goal-Killing, Philadelphia Phenome. At the start of the next century he made a handful of appearances as himself on animated shows like Family Guy and King of the Hill, and he appeared in the made-for-TV holiday film Stealing Christmas.

Trivia: Though she is normally recognized as Angela Bower, the prissy, executive counterpart to Tony Danza's rough-hewn Italian nanny on the long-running television series Who's the Boss?, Judith Light considers her crowning achievement to be her activism in the fight against AIDS and gender discrimination. Born in Trenton, NJ, Light discovered her passion for the performing arts at a Pennsylvania summer camp at 12 years old. Light's high school drama teacher later encouraged her to attend the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University, and the young actress found herself with a role in a Broadway production of A Doll's House by the mid-'70s. Despite her initial success, however, Light still found herself extraordinarily poor, at one point living on only ten dollars per week. Rather than holding her back, though, poverty not only increased Light's determination to act, but to use it as a tool in the fight against all forms of bigotry.Light's big break came in the form of One Life to Live, the Emmy-winning soap opera, which offered the aspiring actress a role that brought with it a steady paycheck until the inception of Who's the Boss? in 1983. In addition to her sitcom performances, Light starred with great success in The Ryan White Story, a docudrama concerning the real-life fight of a hemophiliac who contracted the AIDS virus through a blood transfusion. In addition to having established herself as one of the first celebrity activists in the battle against HIV and AIDS, Light also became a passionate volunteer for a variety of charitable organizations including Heart Strings and Project Angel Food.In 1998, after a long, successful stint in the television-movie world, Light flexed her comedy muscles again for The Simple Life, a short-lived television series featuring Light as a big-shot businesswoman whose move to the country is far from what she had expected. A year later, Light immersed herself in Wit, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play revolving around a brash, no-nonsense cancer victim's slow acceptance of her own mortality. In 2004, Light starred in The Stones, a CBS television series. She would go on to star on Ugly Betty and Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit as Judge Elizabeth Donnelly.

Trivia: American actress Katherine Helmond spent nearly thirty years becoming an overnight success. Working fitfully in New York and regional theatre throughout the '50s and '60s, Helmond made ends meet by working as a drama teacher. Her first fleeting film appearances were in the Manhattan-based Believe in Me and The Hospital, both shot in 1971. She received a sizeable role in 1975's The Hindenburg, which utilized local repertory actors from throughout the midwest; she also worked with Hitchcock in 1976's Family Plot. In 1977, Katherine was cast as Jessica Tate, the scatterbrained, hedonistic matriarch on the TV sitcom Soap. She remained with the series until its cancellation in 1981; Soap left poor Jessica Tate facing a firing squad, and didn't reveal her fate until Helmond's guest appearance on the Soap spinoff Benson, wherein she played Jessica's ghost. In 1983, Katherine enrolled in the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop; she helmed the short subject Bankrupt and also several episodes of TV's Who's the Boss, in which she played Mona Robinson from 1984 through 1990. Keeping her hand in films, Katherine Helmond became a favorite of ex-Monty Python director Terry Gilliam, who cast the actress as a vain matron undergoing a really radical facelift in 1984's Brazil.

Trivia: Born and raised in Brooklyn to Italian-American parents, actress Alyssa Milano started acting on the stage in a national tour of Annie at the age of eight. She rose to teen stardom as the tomboyish Samantha Micelli on the ABC sitcom Who's the Boss, which ran from 1984-1992. Never really making the transition to feature films, she appeared in sleazy made-for-TV movies, provocative ad campaigns, and nude photographs. In one of her more prominent TV performances, she portrayed Amy Fisher in Casualties of Love: The "Long Island Lolita" Story on CBS in 1993. Her few feature film credits include the quirky romantic comedy Hugo Pool and the thriller Below Utopia, starring Ice-T. She joined the cast of Melrose Place on FOX for the 1997-1998 season before moving over to the WB for Charmed, co-starring Shannen Doherty and Holly Marie Combs. In the late '90s, she released several pop/rock albums, which did quite well in Japan. Since the popularity of Charmed, she's appeared in major television ad campaigns and the comedies Kiss the Bride, Buying the Cow, and Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. She would go on to enjoy TV runs on My Name is Earl and Romantically Challenged, and movies like Hall Pass and New Year's Eve. In 2013, she returned to being a series regular on TV in the primetime soap Mistresses. After winning several legal battles involving her nude images on the Internet, Milano helped to launch the index safesearching.com.

Trivia: Actor Danny Pintauro first made an impression with audiences as the terrified little boy in the 1983 horror film Cujo. The wide-eyed, blond-haired boy next found his niche on the popular sitcom Who's the Boss?, on which he played the role of Jonathan. After the series ended in 1992, Pintauro initially had trouble finding roles as an adult actor, but after taking time off to study English and theater at Middlesex County College in Edison, NJ, and Stanford University, he found a successful career on the stage, starring in productions such as The Velocity of Gary.

Trivia: Made her acting debut off Broadway in the original production of Godspell in the early 1970s; also appeared on Broadway in Grease before moving to Los Angeles in 1978. Played one of TV's first openly gay women on the ABC soap-opera parody Soap in 1979. Made her film debut in the 1979 comedy Fast Break, but her best-known movie role is Lucille LaRusso (the mother of Ralph Macchio's character) in The Karate Kid (1984) and The Karate Kid Part III (1989). Has had guest roles on more than 50 TV series. Longtime companion Bob Griffard is a TV veteran whose behind-the-camera credits include the ABC sitcoms Two of a Kind, Going Places, Step by Step and Perfect Strangers.

Trivia: Wendie Jo Sperber was born in Hollywood in 1962 and aimed for a performing-arts career from high school onward. She attended the Summer Drama Workshop at California State University, Northridge, during the '70s, and began her screen career at age 15 when she was cast in the small role of Kuchinsky in Matthew Robbins' teen comedy Corvette Summer (1978), starring Mark Hamill. Her talent for comedy was showcased far better in Robert Zemeckis' period comedy I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), as the irrepressible Beatles fan Rosie Petrofsky, stealing a big chunk of the movie with her performance. Sperber was a large woman (over 200 pounds), yet she was also very pretty and as physically dexterous as any gymnast -- and as funny as any comic actress this side of Lucille Ball. She played the title role in the made-for-television feature Dinky Hocker (1979) and got to show off her physical comedy in Steven Spielberg's gargantuan 1941 (1979). Zemeckis (who also worked on 1941) brought Sperber back to the big screen in 1980 with a role in his offbeat comedy Used Cars, but it was on television that year when Sperber finally began getting some serious acknowledgement. She was cast in the role of Amy Cassidy -- a character that was funny, romantic, and exuberant -- in the series Bosom Buddies, starring Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari. It was a fair bet that she'd steal almost any scene in which she was featured. Following its cancellation in 1982, Sperber appeared in the offbeat comedy The First Time (1983) and did a year on the series Private Benjamin before resuming her feature work in the Hanks theatrical vehicle Bachelor Party, directed by Neal Israel, who used her again in Moving Violations (1985). That same year, she finally got to appear in a successful movie with her portrayal of Linda McFly in Zemeckis' Back to the Future. Sperber's roles grew larger in the wake of the goofy sci-fi adventure film, and over the next decade she starred in the series Babes (a comedy about three zoftig women) and had a major supporting part in the series Hearts Afire, as well as numerous big-screen comedies, interspersed with the occasional drama. By her own account, however, she prefers comedy if given the choice. As she told TV Guide in 1990, "I'm an actress who likes to say something funny -- everybody laughs and your job is done." In 1998, Sperber was diagnosed with breast cancer, which seemed to go into remission following treatment. She revealed in April of 2002, though, that the cancer had reappeared and spread throughout her body. She continued to work in television and movies during this period, including episodes of Unhappily Ever After, Home Improvement, Will & Grace, and the movies Desperate but Not Serious (1999) and Sorority Boys (2002).