Trivia: Though actor George Peppard could have succeeded on his looks alone, he underwent extensive training before making his first TV and Broadway appearances. The son of a building contractor and a singer, Peppard studied acting at Carnegie Tech and the Actor's Studio. His early TV credits include the original 1956 production of Bang the Drum Slowly, in which he sang the title song. He made his film debut in 1957, repeating his Broadway role in Calder Willingham's End As a Man, retitled The Strange One for the screen. His star continued to ascend in such films as Home From the Hill (1960) with George Hamilton, and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) as the boyfriend/chronicler of carefree Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn). He was also effective as James Stewart's son in How the West Was Won (1962), a characterization that required him to age 30 years, and as the Howard Hughes counterpart in The Carpetbaggers (1963), in which he co-starred with the second of his five wives, Elizabeth Ashley. In 1978 he made a respectable directorial debut with Five Days From Home, but never followed up on this. A familiar television presence, he starred on the TV series Banacek (1972-1973), Doctors Hospital (1975), and The A-Team (1983-1987), and delivered a powerhouse performance as the title character in the 1974 TV-movie Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Sheppard Case. Forced to retire because of illness, George Peppard died of cancer in the spring of 1994.

Trivia: With muscle-bound arms bulging from his sleeveless tank tops, a mohawk, and enough gold jewelry to enrich a small nation, gruff, tough Mr. T was certainly one of the most recognizable television stars of the early '80s. Though more of a personality than a bona fide actor, he has appeared in several features, but is best known for playing no-nonsense ex-soldier B.A. Baracus on the hit action-drama The A-Team (1983-1987). Prior to that, Mr. T had played character roles in four feature films. Born Lawrence Tureaud in a tough southside Chicago project, he was the second youngest of 12 siblings. His father abandoned the family when Tureaud was five, leaving his mother to raise her huge family alone in a three-bedroom apartment on less than 100 dollars a month from welfare. Tureaud was devoted to his mother, and though he got into a little trouble during early adolescence, straightened himself out so as not to shame her by getting thrown in jail. Following graduation from Dunbar Vocational High School, Tureaud attended college. His football skills landed him a scholarship to Prairie View A & M University in Texas, but he was expelled after one year. Tureaud qualified for other sports scholarships and so continued his education until joining the Army and serving as a military policeman. Following his discharge, he was recruited by the Green Bay Packers, but suffered a serious knee injury and so became a bodyguard for stars such as Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross. He also worked as a bouncer. In 1970, he changed his name to Lawrence Tero and shortly thereafter shortened it to Mr. T. In the mid-'70s, he worked as a gym teacher in Chicago. It was Sylvester Stallone who offered him his first acting job after Stallone saw the beefy black bouncer on the TV show Games People Play. Stallone was so impressed by Mr. T's agile strength that he cast him in Rocky III (1982). Mr. T was at his peak popularity, particularly with young boys, while on The A-Team. At one point a toy company even created a Mr. T action figure. He also had a breakfast cereal named after him. Following his series' demise, Mr. T's acting career has been sporadic. Over the course of the next few decades, small roles in film (Not Another Teen Movie) and television (Martin, Malcolm and Eddie) helped the amiable tough guy remain a recognizable pop culture icon, but in 2011 Mr. T began hosting World's Craziest Fools, an irreverent, clip-based show featuring criminal blunders and side-splitting mishaps captured on amateur video footage and CCTV.

Trivia: Though a fifteen-year show business veteran, Dwight Schultz was largely unknown until 1983. That was the year that the TV Addicts of America were introduced to Captain H. M. "Howling Mad" Murdock, the asylum-escapee airplane pilot for The A-Team. It is to Schultz's credit that he was able to portray a certifiable looney while still remaining personable and even lovable. On both sides of his A-Team obligations, Schultz appeared in films like The Fan (1981, as Broadway actress Lauren Bacall's director) and Fat Man and Little Boy (1989, as J. Robert Oppenheimer). In the late 1980s, Dwight Schultz could be occasionally seen as Lieutenant Barclay in TV's Star Trek: the Next Generation.

Trivia: Movie and TV leading man Dirk Benedict was young, handsome, muscular and enthusiastic. These qualities were far more important than versatility in establishing Benedict as a dependable screen presence in the 1970s. His theatrical films include Scavenger Hunt (1979), Body Slam (1987), and Shadow Force (1992), their subject matter implicit in their titles. Far more successful on series television than in films, Dirk Benedict played Officer Gil Foley on Chopper One (1974), Starbuck on Battlestar Gallactica (1978), and master impressionist Templeton "Face" Peck on The A-Team (1983-87).

Trivia: French-Cajun actor Lance LeGault broke into films as a stand-in for several male stars, foremost among them Elvis Presley. LeGault also worked as a stunt double, occasionally playing speaking roles in films like 1968's The Young Runaway. He has also been steadily employed as a nightclub and lounge singer. In the 1980s, he was busy on television in a variety of rough-hewn characterizations. Lance LeGault's regular TV-series roles include antagonistic Col. Roderick Decker in The A-Team (1983-86) and gonzo bounty hunter Alamo Joe in Werewolf (1987-88).

Trivia: A professional actor since his teens, Gene Evans made his first film appearance in 1947's Under Colorado Skies. Evans' gritty, no-nonsense approach to his craft attracted the attention of like-minded director Sam Fuller, who cast the actor in several of his 1950s film projects. Many consider Evans' portrayal as the grim, born-survivor sergeant in Fuller's The Steel Helmet (1951) to be not only the actor's best performance, but also one of the best-ever characterizations in any war film. Active in films until 1984, Gene Evans also co-starred in the TV series My Friend Flicka (1956), Matt Helm (1975) and Spencer's Pilots (1976).

Trivia: A character actor beloved particularly for playing villains, Bill McKinney was born in Chattanooga, TN, in 1931. After spending some time in Los Angeles while on leave in the Navy, McKinney decided to settle there following his discharge in order to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. He studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and Lee Strausberg's Actors Studio while paying the bills as a high-school teacher before he began landing TV roles on shows like The Monkees and I Dream of Jeannie. In 1972, McKinney was cast as a sadistic mountain man in the thriller Deliverance alongside Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight. His visage was soon synonymous with ominousness and violence, leading to a slew of roles as baddies in a wide variety of films over the coming years, like Cleopatra Jones, The Shootist, First Blood, and The Parallax View. McKinney also began collaborating with Clint Eastwood on a series of films, including The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Every Which Way but Loose, Any Which Way You Can, and Pink Cadillac. By the 2000s, the actor, now in his seventies, was still going strong. He appeared in such films as 2007's Lucky You, 2008's Pride and Glory, and 2010's How Do You Know before passing away in December 2011 at age 80.

Trivia: While still recognizable for his recurring role as Captain Crane on The A-Team, former character actor Carl Franklin is now one of Hollywood's most versatile writer/directors. After a string of mind-numbing television roles forced him to go behind the camera in 1986, he has worked in every genre from war film to family drama and has been the force behind such different works as One False Move (1991), Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), and One True Thing (1998).Franklin grew up in Richmond, CA, a working-class suburb of San Francisco. His father died before he was born, and he was raised by his mother, a homemaker, and his stepfather, a carpenter. As a teenager, Franklin excelled in school and dreamed of becoming a lawyer or teacher. He earned a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied history and began hanging around the theater department in an effort to meet girls. He soon caught the acting bug and moved to New York City immediately after graduation.Franklin began his acting career on-stage at the New York Shakespeare Festival, performing in Cymbeline, Timon of Athens, and Twelfth Night. He went on to appear at New York's Lincoln Center and Joseph Papp Public Theater, and Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage. Franklin made his film debut in the comedy Five on the Black Hand Side (1973), before finding steady work on television. From 1974 to 1973, he guest-starred on The Streets of San Francisco, Good Times, The Incredible Hulk, The Rockford Files, and Trapper John, M.D. He also starred opposite Stacy Keach on the short-lived detective show Caribe and with Roddy McDowall on the doomed sci-fi series Fantastic Journey. After a two season stint on The A-Team from 1983 to 1985, Franklin grew increasingly unsatisfied with acting. While continuing to appear on shows like MacGyver and Riptide, he attempted to write and produce a film independently, mortgaging and losing his house in the process. Then, in 1986, at age 37, he enrolled in the American Film Institute's directing program.At AFI, Franklin discovered his own style while studying the films of celebrated European and Japanese directors. His master's thesis, Punk (1989), an intense 30-minute short about a downtrodden African-American boy dealing with his budding sexuality, impressed filmmaker Roger Coreman, who hired Franklin as an apprentice at his production company, Concorde Films. Like Coreman's previous protégé's, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Peter Bogdanovich, Franklin learned ways of fast-paced low-budget filmmaking, writing screenplays in under two weeks and shooting them only days later. Often working on location in the Philippines or Peru, he wrote, directed, and produced (and sometimes even acted in) a series of limited releases and straight-to-video flicks, including Nowhere to Run (1989), Eye of the Eagle 2: Inside the Enemy (1989), and Full Fathom Five (1990).After completing his tenure at Concorde, Franklin wrote and directed One False Move (1991), an independent crime thriller about three Los Angeles drug dealers who seek refuge in Arkansas after a murderous drug deal. The film starred Billy Bob Thornton, Cynda Williams, and Michael Beach as the outlaws and Bill Paxton as the Arkansas sheriff awaiting their arrival, but had little commercial value at the time. As a result, its distributor, IRS Media, gave the film a minor and ineffective advertising campaign. Yet, rave reviews and positive word-of-mouth quickly made One False Move a surprise hit. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert voted it the Best Film of the Year, and Franklin's work earned him a New Generation Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, and an MTV Movie Award for Best New Filmmaker.The success of One False Move put Franklin on the short list of Hollywood directors. Producers brought every type of script to his attention -- Disney even asked him to remake That Darn Cat (1965). For his next project, he settled on the HBO miniseries Laurel Avenue (1993), a drama about a working-class African-American family in St. Paul, MN. The well-received series starred John Beasley and Mary Alice, and featured cameos by Franklin's daughter, Caira, and son, Marcus. He went on to write and direct Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), his heralded adaptation of African-American crime novelist Walter Mosley's novel. The film featured Oscar-winner Denzel Washington as a private detective in 1940s Los Angeles, with Tom Sizemore, Don Cheadle, and Jennifer Beals in supporting roles. Devil in a Blue Dress was a critical favorite, but failed at the box office.Looking to do something completely different, Franklin then signed onto direct One True Thing (1998), an adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anna Quindlan's autobiographical story of a New York journalist (Renee Zellweger) who is forced to return home when her mother (Meryl Streep) becomes fatally ill. He followed up this adventurous move with another, directing the high-profile courtroom drama High Crimes (2002), starring Ashley Judd, Jim Caviezel, and Morgan Freeman, before reuniting with Denzel Washington for the thriller Out of Time (2003).

Trivia: John Ashley should be a familiar name and face to anyone who attended a drive-in double feature in the 1950s. Ashley starred or co-starred in such passion-pit fodder as Hot Rod Gang (1958), How to Make a Monster (1958), Frankenstein's Daughter (1959) and High School Caesar (1960). In 1961, Ashley co-starred with future Flipper leading man Brian Kelly in the short-lived TV action series Straightaway. Ashley switched his base of operations to the Philippines in the 1960s and 1970s, frequently wearing several hats as actor, producer, director and scriptwriter. Films like Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969) may not have been cited at the annual Oscar ceremonies, but they paid the bills many times over for the peripatetic Ashley. In the 1980s, Ashley hooked up with television producer Stephen J. Cannell to work on such series as The A-Team. He later teamed with Frank Lupo to executive or co-executive produce such series as Walker, Texas Ranger (1983), Werewolf (1987) and Something is Out There (1988). In the mid-'90s, Ashley began working as an in-house producer for Tri-Star Television. On October 4, 1997, John Ashley was working on the film Scarred City in New York, when he suffered a fatal heart attack.