Trivia: Seemingly every struggling standup comic dreams of landing their own television series, but few managed to do so with greater success than Jerry Seinfeld, whose career as a nightclub comedian led to him starring as himself on the show Seinfeld -- arguably the most successful situation comedy of the 1990s.Jerome "Jerry" Seinfeld was born in Brooklyn, NY, on April 29, 1954, to Kalman Seinfeld, a signmaker, and his wife, Betty; Jerry was the second of the couple's two children. The Seinfeld family moved to Long Island when Jerry was a child, and he spent most of his youth there. After graduating from high school, Seinfeld went on to college, first attending the State University of New York at Oswego, and then moving on to Queens College of the City University of New York, where he received a Bachelor's Degree in 1976. Seinfeld developed a keen interest in performing while in college (his degree from Queens was in communications and theater), and after graduation he began working New York comedy clubs, often without pay, while holding down a number of odd jobs. Seinfeld's first big break came when his bright but understated observational humor caught the eye of standup legend Rodney Dangerfield, who featured Seinfeld on a special for HBO. The exposure helped establish Seinfeld on the comedy club circuit, and won him a recurring role on the situation comedy Benson. However, Seinfeld and the show's producers clashed over the character's direction, and he was fired after only four episodes.In 1981, Seinfeld appeared for the first time on The Tonight Show, then hosted by Johnny Carson, and made a strong impression on both the audience and the host; he became a frequent guest on the Carson show, as well as David Letterman's late-night talk show. As Seinfeld's fame began to rise, he starred in several cable TV specials, and was approached to star in several TV series. However, remembering his experience on Benson, Seinfeld opted to avoid episodic television unless he was in a position of greater control (though he did do occasional guest spots on sitcoms and played a small role in Danny De Vito's TV movie The Ratings Game). In the meantime, Seinfeld and his good friend Larry David began working up an idea for a situation comedy to be called The Seinfeld Chronicles. In 1989, NBC took the bait, and a year later the show premiered under the streamlined name Seinfeld. Concerning standup comic Jerry Seinfeld and the often odd everyday occurrences of his circle of friends (many of whom were based on people Seinfeld and David knew in real life), Seinfeld got off to a slow start, but began to win a healthy audience in its second season, and in time became one of NBC's biggest hits, until Seinfeld and David opted to end the show at the peak of its popularity in 1998. Unlike most stars of top-rated television shows, Seinfeld displayed no interest in moving into films, and instead returned to standup comedy shortly after his show went off the air with a sold-out concert tour. In the Spring of 2002, however, Seinfeld did sign a deed to appear in a documentary about his return to the comedy circuit with a new act. In 2010 Seinfeld made a high-profile return to television on NBC's The Marriage Ref -- a show that found a rotating panel of celebrities attepting to settle petty disputes between squabbling spouses -- but the show went off the air after two seasons due to poor ratings. In his personal life, during the height of his fame, Seinfeld was romantically linked with several women (including comic and writer Carol Leifer, fashion designer Shoshanna Lonstein, and writer Jennifer Crittenden) before marrying Jessica Sklar, a publicist who met Seinfeld only a few weeks after her marriage to Eric Nederlander in 1998. Seinfeld and Sklar wed in December of 1999, and their first child, daughter Sascha, was born on November 7, 2000.

Trivia: Most everyone who went to high school in Livingston, NJ, with Newark-born Jason Alexander knew that the lad was destined to become a major actor. Though inclined to stoutness -- and baldness -- from age 16 onward, Alexander had such a commanding stage presence that he was invariably cast as the star in school plays, in roles ranging from romantic leads to elderly character parts. While attending Boston University, the 20-year-old Alexander was cast in the lead of the Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along, which might have made him an overnight star had it not closed almost as soon as it opened. Alexander's first film role was in 1981's The Burning; that same year he made his TV-movie bow in Senior Trip. By 1989, Alexander had two major industry awards to his credit: the Tony and Grammy, both for his participation in Jerome Robbins' Broadway. In 1990, he was cast as clueless loser George Costanza in the popular sitcom Seinfeld (the character was allegedly based on series co-creator Larry David). And in 1994, his voice could be heard each week on the USA cable network as the web-footed, sex-obsessed private eye hero of the animated cartoon series Duckman. Though still best-known for his portrayal of George Costanza, Alexander's feature film career picked up speed during the '90s as both a character actor in major comedies such as Dunston Checks In and a voice-over artist on such animated Disney features as Aladdin and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In 1997, he played a more dramatic role as an AIDS-afflicted drag queen who finds romance in Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997). After a disappointing blink-and-you-miss-it comeback to the small screen as a self-help guru in Bob Patterson, Alexander leapt back to the big screen opposite Jack Black in the Farrelly brothers' Shallow Hal. He directed the sex comedy Just Looking in 1999. He had another small-screen misfire with Listen Up. But he continued to appear regularly in movies including the documentary The Aristocrats, the improvised poker movie The Grand, and Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror. He has lent his voice to a handful of animated projects over the years, and in 2012 he appeared in the family film A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up Timmy Turner.

Trivia: Like other Saturday Night Live alumni, Julia Louis-Dreyfus made the move to feature films, but she achieved true stardom on TV as Seinfeld's inimitable Elaine Benes. Born to an affluent family and raised in Washington, D.C., Louis-Dreyfus studied theater at Northwestern University. Along with working as a member of The Practical Theater Company, Louis-Dreyfus cut her sharp comic teeth as part of Chicago's Second City troupe. She soon followed in the footsteps of prior Second City-ers John Belushi and Bill Murray, joining the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985 (along with Northwestern classmate and eventual husband Brad Hall). Louis-Dreyfus bounced to films with appearances in Soul Man (1986), Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), before returning to TV on the second episode of a low-rated NBC primetime sitcom starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld in 1990.As Jerry's ex-girlfriend-turned-pal Elaine, Louis-Dreyfus proved that she could hold her own as the sole female member of Seinfeld's do-nothing quartet of neurotic New Yorkers. With her "big wall of hair," signature shoes and penchant for over-enthusiastic exclamations, Louis-Dreyfus' Elaine was no mere foil, but rather a full participant in the show's increasingly popular, irony-laden comic shenanigans. Along with winning an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1996, Louis-Dreyfus won the Golden Globe in 1994 and the Screen Actor's Guild award in 1997 and 1998. During Seinfeld's phenomenally successful nine-year run, Louis-Dreyfus also played supporting roles in North (1994), Father's Day (1997), and as a libidinous sister in Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry (1997). After Seinfeld went off the air in 1998, Dreyfus took some time off from appearing in front of the camera to spend time with her husband and two sons, but she did the voice of Princess Atta in the Pixar animated blockbuster A Bug's Life (1998).Louis-Dreyfus subsequently returned to TV as the Blue Fairy in the TV movie musical Gepetto (2000) before attempting another sitcom. After two of her Seinfeld co-stars failed to make their own series fly in 2000 and 2001, Louis-Dreyfus opted for a non-traditional approach, playing a struggling lounge singer in the real time, laugh track free Watching Ellie in 2002. Louis-Dreyfus would continue to remain one of the most beloved comedic actresses in TV, starring on The New Adventures of Old Christine, and the political satire Veep.

Trivia: Mention the name of actor Michael Richards and it immediately conjures up images of Cosmo Kramer, the wild-haired, well-meaning neighbor-from-hell on the long-running NBC sitcom Seinfeld. But though Kramer is the role for which Richards is best known, it would be unfair to categorize him as a one-note actor, for he had already established a solid career as a comic character actor before landing the role in 1989. A native of Van Nuys, CA, Richards was raised by his mother Phyllis Richards, a medical records librarian. His father, William Richards, an electrical engineer, died when Richards was a toddler. His mother raised him in Culver City, one of L.A.'s centers for movie and television production. When Richards was in the eighth grade, he developed a passion for acting that blinded him to almost all other career options. After high school, he aspired to become a dramatic actor and enrolled in the theater program at Valley College in California. There, however, it quickly became apparent that Richards' genius lay not in drama, but in comedy (he credits his mother for his sense of humor). He did not graduate and was drafted by the Army. After serving two years in Germany, he returned to attend the California Institute of the Arts. He did not earn a degree, however, until he attended Washington State's alternative school, Evergreen State College. After graduating, he returned to Los Angeles and began performing in comedy clubs. In those days, he specialized in a blend of surrealist and zany comedy. He had worked the standup circuit for less than a year when he was tapped by the ABC network to appear in their new sketch series Fridays. Though derided as a direct rip-off of NBC's more successful Saturday Night Live, the show ran from 1980 to 1982. The year the show was cancelled is the year Richards made his feature film debut, in Garry Marshall's comedy Young Doctors in Love (1982). Though Richards subsequently never lacked for work in features and television, he remained relatively obscure until fellow Fridays castmate Larry David called to offer him a part in The Seinfeld Chronicles, a show he had recently developed with comedian Jerry Seinfeld. After a rocky start, the show was renamed Seinfeld and given a regular timeslot. Richard's character Kramer was based on one of David's friends. It took the actor a few episodes to develop his kooky alter ego, but once he did the results were dazzling, garnering Richards a trio of Emmys for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Playing Kramer was not always easy for him. In many ways a classic slapstick character, the role's physical demands often exhausted Richards, who also suffered the underlying stress of becoming typecast. Fortunately, the fame accorded him for his television work provided him the opportunity to stretch out on the big screen, as he did in Diane Keaton's Unstrung Heroes (1995). In 1997, Richards received top billing for the first time in Trial and Error, which co-starred Jeff Daniels. In November of 2006, a high profile, on stage meltdown at The Laugh Factory in Los Angeles found Richards labeled a racist for repeatedly screaming "the 'N' word" at a pair of hecklers, and despite a quick apology on Late Night With David Letterman and discussions with leaders in the black community, it appeared Richards had irreparably damaged his reputation. In 2007 Richards retired from stand-up comedy, though his old friend David gave him a shot at a small screen comeback with a brief recurring role on his hit HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Trivia: It took the television series Seinfeld and his portrayal of Morty Seinfeld to turn Barney Martin into a pop-culture star, complete with talk-show engagements and personal appearances -- but Martin was a working actor for 40 years before that, in films and television, on Broadway, and in regional theater. Born in New York City in the early '20s, he was the son of the police official in charge of the jail facility known as the Tombs. He served in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, with 42 missions to his credit as a navigator; he joined the police force after the war and won commendations for bravery. Martin had always shown a flair for comedy, and while a member of the police force, he was often asked to add jokes to the speeches of various deputy commissioners. In the early '50s, he began moving into professional entertainment circles, selling his jokes and also writing for Name That Tune, and then was hired as a writer on The Steve Allen Show -- it was while working on that end of the business, and with some encouragement from a new friend, Mel Brooks, that Martin became convinced that he could be as funny as most of the professional comics he was seeing in front of the cameras and on-stage. By the end of the 1950s, he was working as a stand-in for Jackie Gleason. With his hefty frame tipping the scales at well over 200 pounds even in those days, and his slightly befuddled look, he was nearly a dead-ringer for Gleason in one profile, and he ended up working on camera in various sketches. Martin's other early television performances included regular work as a "ringer" on Candid Camera, and work on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Perry Como Show, as well as straight acting performances on such dramatic shows as The Naked City, where his New York accent and mannerisms made Martin a natural. He also turned in an excruciatingly funny performance as Fats Borderman, a hapless professional hood, in the Car 54, Where Are You? episode "Toody Undercover." Martin made his first big-screen appearance in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock thriller The Wrong Man, as a member of the jury -- he also showed up in uncredited appearances in such movies as Butterfield 8, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and Love With the Proper Stranger. In 1968, he got his first two credited screen appearances, in Mel Brooks' The Producers, portraying Goring in "Springtime for Hitler," and playing Hank in Ralph Nelson's Charly. Most of Martin's acting, however, was on-stage, including Broadway productions of South Pacific, All American, Street Scene, How Now, Dow Jones, and Chicago; in the latter's '70s production, he originated the role of Amos Hart. He also appeared in regional theater productions of Last of the Red Hot Lovers and The Fantasticks. Martin also made occasional appearances on television, most notably on The Odd Couple, starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, in such episodes as "The Jury Story" and "The Subway Story." His friendship with Randall also carried over to his being cast as a regular when the latter got his own series, The Tony Randall Show, in 1976. Martin might have gone on for the rest of his career as a character actor well known to those in his profession, doing occasional big-screen performances in features such as Stanley Donen's Movie, Movie and Steve Gordon's Arthur, but for the Seinfeld television series. After inheriting the role of Morty Seinfeld from another actor, Martin became a regular on the series, usually working in tandem with Liz Sheridan playing Morty's wife, also playing opposite Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Michael Richards, and Jerry Stiller, and always holding his own in eliciting laughs. Perhaps Martin's best single episode was the one in which his character is defeated in the election as chairman of the condominium board -- the script was filled with little digs aimed at Oliver Stone's movie Nixon, and Martin was able to bring just enough Nixon-like gravitas to his portrayal to make the whole show work.

Trivia: Liz Sheridan is an actress mostly associated with comedic roles, and best known for her portrayal of Helen Seinfeld, the mother of Jerry Seinfeld, on the series Seinfeld. Born in Westchester County and raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, she graduated from Mamaroneck High School. Sheridan started out in entertainment as a dancer, and was also a pianist and singer. During the early '50s, she crossed personal paths with James Dean; the two became very close, and this period in her life was recounted in Sheridan's book Dizzy and Jimmy: My Life With James Dean (2000). She lived in the Caribbean from 1953 until the mid-'60s, when she returned to New York to embark on an acting career, principally on-stage. Sheridan made a small number of television appearances, on programs such as Kojak, but her real TV career didn't begin until the 1980s, when she started getting guest roles shows such as Gimme a Break, St. Elsewhere, The A-Team, Hill Street Blues, and Scarecrow & Mrs. King, as well as in various made-for-television movies and miniseries, interspersed with the occasional feature film such as Star 80 (1983) and Legal Eagles (1986). She was probably most visible during this period in the role of Selma the housekeeper in the pilot episode of Moonlighting (1985). In 1986, Sheridan became a regular on the series Alf, which ran for four seasons, portraying Mrs. Ochmonek. At the end of that run, she auditioned for and won the role of Helen Seinfeld on Seinfeld. As Jerry Seinfeld's well-meaning but slightly high-strung mother, always trying to mediate between the generations in her family, she revealed a delightful range of comedic skills, working alongside such diverse talents as Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Richards, Barney Martin, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Jason Alexander, et al. In the years since the cancellation of the series, she has continued to work regularly in television and feature films, primarily portraying matronly and grandmother-type roles.

Trivia: To the public at large, Jerry Stiller is best known as the husband and comedy partner of actress/director Anne Meara, and as the father of comedian Ben Stiller. For those addicted to the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, Stiller will never be anyone else than Frank Costanza, the eternally kvetching father of born-loser George Costanza (Jason Alexander). While Stiller would be the first to welcome recognition on these terms, to acknowledge him for the above-mentioned reasons alone would be grossly unfair. A stage performer from the age of 10, Stiller majored in drama at the University of Syracuse, then took to the road in a touring company of Peter Pan. Honing his comic timing to perfection under the tutelage of revue director Billy Barnes, Stiller chose to concentrate his laughmaking skills in the Classics, specifically Shakespeare. He made his off-Broadway debut in a 1953 production of Coriolanus, and subsequently paid homage to the Bard of Avon as a member of such prestigious troupes as the Stratford (Connecticut) Shakespeare Festival and Joseph Papp's Shakespeare in the Park. Stiller made his Broadway bow in 1975 as ill-tempered gangster Carmine Vespucci in Terence McNally's The Ritz, a part he recreated in the 1976 film version. Among his many other film credits are Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), Hairspray (1988) and the made-for-television Seize the Day (1987). The actor's series-TV resumé includes the roles of Barney Dickerson in The Paul Lynde Show (1972), Gus Duzik in Joe and Sons (1975) and Sid Wilbur in Tattinger's (1988). He also co-starred with wife Anne Meara in the syndicated Take Five with Stiller and Meara (1977), and provided voiceovers for the animated Linus the Lionhearted (1964) and the multipart Ken Burns TV special Baseball (1994). Jerry Stiller has been honored with the Radio Advertising Bureau's Voice of Imagery Award for his persuasive radio and TV spots on behalf of the Public Broadcasting System.Notable later roles included an extended run on the hit TV series The King of Queens starting in 1998, as well as appearances in son Ben's 2001 male model comedy Zoolander, and the 2007 musical Hairspray. In 2000 Stiller received a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Album for the audio version of his autobiographical book "Married to Laughter: A Love Story Featuring Anne Meara." Stiller and Meara received a joint star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007, and three years later, Stiller and his wife launched the YahooWeb series Stiller & Meara, in which the pair discuss current events from their living room, which ran until Meara's death in 2015. Their son, Ben, produced the segments.

Trivia: Versatile American character actor Wayne Knight has been frequently on stage, screen and television since the late 1970s. In the early '80s, he temporarily left acting (after appearing over 1,000 times in the play Gemini) to become a private detective. In 1986, Knight returned to film in The Sex O'Clock News. He has worked with a number of distinguished directors including Oliver Stone, Kenneth Branagh and Steven Spielberg playing roles ranging from comics to villains. On television, he is best known for playing the oily, self-serving postman Newman on the long-running sitcom Seinfeld, and Officer Don on the outworldly comedy Third Rock From the Sun.

Trivia: Rotund and often sloppy-looking comic Sandy Baron (born Sanford Beresofsky) is perhaps best remembered for his wrap-around appearance as himself in Woody Allen's paean to borsch-belt comedy, Broadway Danny Rose (1982), and more recently, as Jack Klompus, Seinfeld Sr.'s nemesis on the hit television series Seinfeld. A veteran Catskill performer, Baron was a nightclub regular before making a national impact on the experimental television comedy series That Was the Week That Was. A regular panelist on Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin in the 1970s, Baron also enjoyed a long run in the one-man show Lenny at Hollywood's Aquarius Theater in 1972. Broadway Danny Rose was just one of 20 films Baron would grace, the majority of them of little consequence except for his always critically acclaimed appearance. The veteran comedian died of emphysema at a Van Nuys, CA, nursing home.

Trivia: Following his training at the North Carolina School of the Arts, actor Judge Reinhold worked in regional repertory, dinner theaters, and "outdoor" dramas. He gained prominence in TV roles as gawky teenagers, notably the lead in the syndicated Capital Cities Special A Step Too Slow. In films from 1979, Reinhold's first major role was high schooler Brad in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He hit his stride in 1984, playing the nice-guy detective sent to trail Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop (1984). Though he has proven a convincing villain when the need has arisen, Judge Reinhold has thrived in parts calling for decency and dependency. Reinhold's career slowed down a bit during the '90s and in the early part of the decade he seemed destined to be relegated to B-movies and television films such as Four Eyes and Six Guns (1993), but in 1994, he appeared in two major features, Beverly Hills Cop III and The Santa Clause.

Trivia: Comedy writer-actor, onscreen from the '80s. She was often teamed with Griff Rhys Jones.