Trivia: Best known as one-half of the British sketch comedy team French and Saunders and as the star of the long-running sitcom The Vicar of Dibley, the unabashedly full-figured, rubber-faced Welsh comedienne Dawn French began life in the harbor town of Holyhead, Anglesey, Wales, on October 11, 1957. As a young woman, French trained at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, where she famously met fellow student Jennifer Saunders, then another aspiring comic. The two not only forged a lifelong friendship, but teamed up at the tail end of the 1970s as a comedy act. French suggested that they audition in response to a Stage magazine ad for up-and-coming comedians; this led instantly to a niche at the infamous Comic Strip Club, performing alongside Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson, and others on a weekly basis. A regular gig with this troupe on its BBC "movie spoof" sketch comedy series The Comic Strip Presents -- which ran from 1982 to 1988, with a four-year revival in 1990 and a three-year revival in 1998 -- so furthered public awareness of French and Saunders and dramatically heightened their popularity that a spin-off series was naturally inevitable. French & Saunders debuted in 1987 to off-the-chart ratings and sensational critical reviews. The pair scripted and starred in episodes; French's most famous and beloved bits included caricatures of Catherine Zeta-Jones, Madonna, and Cher. French debuted in feature films circa 1987, alongside Saunders and many of her Comic Strip cohorts, in the jet-black comedy Eat the Rich -- a spoof of cannibalism with guest spots by Paul McCartney, Koo Stark, Robbie Coltrane, and others. The film, however, was understandably reviled by critics on both sides of the Atlantic and disappeared quickly, which may explain why French gravitated back to television. Alongside her ongoing involvement in French & Saunders as a writer and performer (which continued through the first several years of the new millennium), French launched a second series in 1994, The Vicar of Dibley. The program cast her as the supremely unconventional and irreverent (female) vicar of the title -- a new arrival in a village of eccentric people -- with a flair for devouring mounds of chocolate and tossing out potshots and double-entendres left and right. Vicar, like French & Saunders, scored with the public and press and lasted 13 years, finally wrapping in January 2007. In 2004, French -- perhaps having fully rebounded from the Eat the Rich debacle -- returned in full glory to feature films, this time more respectably and to improved critical reception. She lent a supporting role as The Fat Lady (in the painting) in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) and voiced Mrs. Beaver in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005). French also essayed the role of a therapist in Alek Keshishian's Love and Other Disasters, starring Brittany Murphy and Matthew Rhys. She voiced Miss Forcible in the 2007 animated fantasy Coraline. The characterization of The Fat Lady in Harry Potter is not a unique one for French. Early on, the comic actress used her weight (which has visibly increased over the years) as a key source of her schtick, not only in her BBC series but also in television advertisements. In late 2001, she did spots in the U.K. for Terry's Chocolate Orange segment candies which had her notoriously refusing to share, and an ad for Terry's Chocolate Orange Snowballs which had French rolling down a giant ski slope until she resembled a massive snowball. Off-camera, French is a vociferous proponent of "full-figured" women and markets the oversized female clothing line Sixteen 47 throughout Great Britain.

Trivia: British actor Roger Lloyd-Pack is adventuresome. One day, he might be acting in a Shakespeare production (A Midsummer Night's Dream, for example) and the next day in a Tony Dow (of Leave It to Beaver fame) production (U.F.O., for example). In between, Lloyd-Pack might do a little Dickens (Oliver Twist), Fielding (Tom Jones), and Kafka (The Trial), with enough time left over for a quick trip to Transylvania (Interview With the Vampire). Although trained in the classical tradition at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Royal Shakespeare Company, Lloyd-Pack is as likely to perform works from the new guard as well as the old guard. On occasion, he even acts in experimental adaptations of traditional works. For example, he starred as Prospero in a Shakespeare production of The Tempest -- renamed The Caribbean Tempest -- featuring bongo drums, acrobats, stilt-walkers, and fire-eaters. Lloyd-Pack, who was born in London on February 8, 1944, also performs under two unhyphenated versions of his name: Roger Lloyd Pack and Owen Lloyd Pack. He has been acting in film and television roles since the 1960s, including such well-known productions as Hamlet, Fiddler on the Roof, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Longitude, and the award-winning Yasmina Reza play Art. He is probably best known to British audiences for his role as Trigger in the TV series Only Fools and Horses. His daughter, Emily Lloyd, also acts professionally. His wife is the poet and dramatist Jehane Markham.

Trivia: Esteemed British character actor Trevor Peacock has found success on stage, screen, and television in the U.K. and the U.S. He has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and on television is known for his regular roles on such BBC shows as Growing Pains and Wish Me Luck III. Peacock made his film debut as an actor in The Barber of Stamford Hill (1963). Two years prior he had provided music for Beat Girl. Peacock tried his hand at screenwriting with He Who Rides a Tiger (1966) and also provided the film with music. Peacock's career continued through the '90s with appearances in feature films such as For Roseanna (1997) and television miniseries like NeverWhere (1996).