Trivia: Even those who don't know Kevin Michael Richardson's face will frequently remember his voice. The actor's unique baritone has made him a memorable presence in many projects, including several voices on the animated series Family Guy. A classically trained performer, Richardson was one of eight students selected for the 1982 National Foundation for the Arts program, leading to a full scholarship for Syracuse University. He would go on to become a successful actor and voice actor, wracking up a long list of roles on everything from Pokemon to The New Batman Adventures. Othyer shows featuring Richardson's distinctive voice include Transformers Prime, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Green Lantern: The Animated Series. Real-life voices Richardson has portrayed include Bob Hope (in a 2006 Malcolm in the Middle episode), Bill Cosby (a number of Family Guy episodes) and Plato (PBS's Adventures From the Book of Virtues, 1996-98).

Trivia: When Mark Hamill accepted the role of Luke Skywalker in George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, he had no idea that he was going to become a cultural icon of callow youth, raw courage, and true heroism. Hamill was born the son of a naval captain, one of nine brothers and sisters. Hamill spent much of his youth traveling to different bases in the U.S. and Japan. He was studying drama at Los Angeles City Drama when he landed his first professional acting role as a guest star on the television series The Bill Cosby Show. Between 1972 and 1973, Hamill played Kent Murray on the television soap General Hospital and also did guest appearances on other television shows and in TV movies. In 1974, Hamill co-starred in The Texas Wheelers, a down-home sitcom that only lasted a season. He made his screen debut in Star Wars (1977) and became such a big hit that he had trouble getting other types of roles. Shortly before the release of Star Wars, Hamill was involved in a terrible car crash that resulted in surgeons having to reconstruct his face. Despite the enormity of Hamill's popularity in this film, he was unable to attain a lucrative film career like his co-star, Harrison Ford, perhaps because he too closely identified with Luke in viewers' minds to be seen as anyone else. Instead, Hamill appeared in films such as Corvette Summer (1978), The Big Red One (1980), and The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (1980). Hamill tried his luck on and off-Broadway and won excellent reviews for his work, playing the leads in The Elephant Man and Amadeus. By the 1990s, he had largely been cast in direct-to-video ventures. On television, he provided his voice to at least two animated characters in The Adventures of Batman and Robin. In addition, Hamill starred in several hit CD-ROM games in the Wing Commander series and continues to appear occasionally on television. Finally, Hamill and his cousin, Eric Johnson, co-wrote The Black Pearl comic book series, which Hamill hopes to make into an animated movie.He became famous for voicing The Joker in the animated Batman series, and spoofed his own celebrity with a memorable cameo in Kevin Smith's Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. He continued to find steady work in animated projects like Futurama, Robot Chicken, Danger Ranger, and even Scooby-Doo.

Trivia: Many comics can be permanently tied to a trademark, from Rodney Dangerfield's "I don't get no respect" to Tim Allen's machismo-fueled grunting, but perhaps no stock phrase is more easily identifiable than that of schtickmeister Jeff Foxworthy. Foxworthy's slogan "You might be a redneck if..." endeared him to millions of American blue-collar types during the early to mid-'90s and served as a veritable staple of his approach to humor. Born in Atlanta, Foxworthy attended the Georgia Institute of Technology but dropped out prior to graduation and worked as an IBM technician during the early to mid-'80s, when he impetuously decided to enter an amateur standup contest. The then-nascent comedian won the competition -- an accomplishment that encouraged him to drop out of his IBM gig and step behind the microphone full-time. Foxworthy's debut book, presciently entitled, You Might Be a Redneck If... hit stores in 1989, followed by a CD, which racked up an astonishing 3.5 million copies -- making it the single most lucrative comedy record up through that time. Successive albums followed, in addition to a blizzard of Foxworthy (and "redneck") themed merchandise that grossed several million dollars per year in its prime. Unfortunately, the comedian's transition to filmed entertainment was a somewhat bumpy one; a domestically themed sitcom, The Jeff Foxworthy Show, premiered on ABC in 1995 but folded after only two seasons. Foxworthy encountered far greater success by pooling the resources of several similar comedians into a "Blue Collar" comedy troupe that toured throughout the country. Comprised of Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and Larry the Cable Guy, the ensemble turned out a series of standup films and scored high ratings with their own sketch comedy series, Blue Collar TV (2004), presented as a kind of "redneck variation" on Saturday Night Live. Foxworthy also found considerable success by hosting the game show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? (2007).

Trivia: Best known for his 2005 live-action rendering of the Bill Cosby character Fat Albert on the big screen -- a character he brought to life with the aid of a trusty fat suit and the trademark, "Hey, Hey, Hey!" -- wunderkind comic Kenan Thompson honed his skills as a small fry by entertaining classmates with uproarious comedy routines on the playground in his childhood home of Atlanta. Thompson landed his big break by auditioning at age 15 for All That, a Nickelodeon sketch comedy series that (like The Mickey Mouse Club of years prior) functioned as a kind of unofficial petri dish for burgeoning young talent. Series producer and director Brian Robbins reportedly viewed Thompson's audition, tagged his ability to mimic and his comic timing as "dead-on," and hired the young man on the spot. The young comic wowed Nickelodeon, and network heads not only offered him his own sitcom within a year, co-starring another young schtickmeister, Kel Mitchell, but a network-produced movie, the 1997 Good Burger (also starring Mitchell). Numerous additional film roles ensued, and though Mitchell began with goofy, schtick-heavy comedies (Master of Disguise [2002], My Boss' Daughter [2003]), he periodically revealed an interest in stretching his ability into other genres, such as avant-garde/experimental video (Public Lighting [2004]) and action-saturated horror (Snakes on a Plane [2006]). In 2008, however, Thompson hearkened back to comedy by voicing one of the titular primates in the goofy live-action fantasy Space Chimps. Meanwhile, alongside his film work, Thompson achieved even greater success on the small screen. His debut series, All That, had been conveniently described by more than one critic as "SNL for the small set," and paved the way for Thompson's involvement in the real Saturday Night Live; he joined the SNL cast in 2003.

Trivia: One of the most important character actors of the 1990s, Steve Buscemi is unmatched in his ability to combine lowlife posturing with weasely charisma. Although active in the cinema since the mid-'80s, it was not until Quentin Tarantino cast Buscemi as Mr. Pink in the 1992 Reservoir Dogs that the actor became known to most audience members. He would subsequently appear to great effect in other Tarantino films, as well as those of the Coen Brothers, where his attributes blended perfectly into the off-kilter landscape.Born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 13, 1957, Buscemi was raised on Long Island. He gained an interest in acting while a senior in high school, but he had no idea of how to pursue a professional career in the field. Working as a fireman for four years, he began to perform stand-up comedy, but he eventually realized that he wanted to do more dramatic theatrical work. After moving to Manhattan's East Village, he studied drama at the Lee Strasberg Institute, and he also began writing and performing skits in various parts of the city. His talents were eventually noticed by filmmaker Bill Sherwood, who was casting his film Parting Glances. The 1986 drama was one of the first feature films to be made about AIDS (Sherwood himself died from AIDS in 1990), and it starred Buscemi as Nick, a sardonic rock singer suffering from the disease. The film, which was a critical success on the independent circuit, essentially began Buscemi's career as a respected independent actor.Buscemi's resume was given a further boost that same year by his recurring role as a serial killer on the popular TV drama L.A. Law; he subsequently began finding steady work in such films as New York Stories and Mystery Train (both 1989). In 1990, he had another career breakthrough with his role in Miller's Crossing, which began his longtime collaboration with the Coen brothers. The Coens went on to cast Buscemi in nearly all of their films, featuring him to particularly memorable effect in Barton Fink (1991), in which he played a bell boy; Fargo (1996), which featured him as an ill-fated kidnapper; and The Big Lebowski (1998), which saw him portray a laid-back ex-surfer. Although Buscemi has done his best work outside of the mainstream, turning in other sterling performances in Alexandre Rockwell's In the Soup (1992) and Tom Di Cillo's Living in Oblivion (1995), he has occasionally appeared in such Hollywood megaplex fare as Con Air (1997), Armageddon (1998), Big Daddy (1999), and 28 Days (2000), the last of which cast him against type as Sandra Bullock's rehab counselor. Back in indieville, Buscemi would next utilize his homely persona in a more sympathetic manner as a soulful loner with a penchant for collecting old records in director Terry Zwigoff's (Crumb) Ghost World. Despite all indicators pointing to mainstream prolifieration in the new millennium, Buscemi continued to display his dedication to independent film projects with roles in such efforts as Alaxandre Rockwell's 13 Moons and Peter Mattei's Love in the Time of Money (both 2002). Of course there are exceptions to every rule, and Buscemi's memorable appearances in such big budget efforts as Mr Deeds and both Spy Kids 2 and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over served to remind audiences that Buscemi was still indeed at the top of his game, perhaps now more than ever. In 1996, Buscemi made his screenwriting and directorial debut with Trees Lounge, a well-received comedy drama in which he played a down-on-his-luck auto mechanic shuffling through life on Long Island. He followed up his directorial debut in 2000 with Animal Factory, a subdued prison drama starring Edward Furlong as a young inmate who finds protection from his fellow prisoners in the form of an older convict (Willem Dafoe). Moving to the small screen, Buscemi would next helm an episode of the acclaimed HBO mob drama The Sopranos. Called Pine Barrens, the episode instantly became a fan-favorite.In 2004, Buscemi stepped in front of the camera once again to join the cast of The Sopranos, costarring as Tony Blundetto, a recently paroled mafioso struggling to stay straight in the face of temptation to revert back to his old ways. In 2005 Buscemi reteamed with Michael Bay for The Island in the same year that he directed another low-budget film, Lonesome Jim, with a stellar cast that included Seymour Cassel, Mary Kay Place, Liv Tyler, Casey Affleck, and Kevin Corrigan. He also played one of the leads in John Turturro's musical Romance & Cigarettes. His very busy 2006 included an amusing cameo in Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential, and continued work in animated films, with vocal appearances in Monster House and Charlotte's Web (2006). His contributions to those projects earned critical acclaim; Buscemi achieved an even greater feat, however, that same year, when he mounted his fifth project as director, Interview (2007). Like Trees Lounge (1996), Lonesome Jim (2005) and other Buscemi-helmed outings, this searing, acerbic comedy-drama spoke volumes about Buscemi's talent and intuition, and arguably even suggested that his ability as a filmmaker outstripped his ability as a thespian. With great precision and insight, the narrative observed a roving paparazzi journalist (Buscemi) during his unwanted yet surprisingly pretension-stripping pas-de-deux with a manipulative, coke-addled prima donna actress (Sienna Miller).At about the same time, the quirky player geared up for a host of substantial acting roles including parts in We're the Millers (2008), Igor (2008) and Keep Coming Back (2008). He appeared as the father of a deceased soldier in The Messenger in 2009, and the next year he landed the lead role of Nucky Thompson, an Irish gangster, in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire. His work on that show would earn him Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe awards.