Trivia: Canadian comic actor John Candy was geared toward a performing career even while studying for a journalism degree in college. Candy's bulky frame and built-in likability enabled him to secure small roles in Canadian film and TV productions. In the early '70s, Candy joined Canada's Second City Troupe, sharing the spotlight with such potent talent (and subsequent close friends) as Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, and Catherine O'Hara. Second City TV, popularly known as SCTV, entered the Canadian TV airwaves in 1975 and was syndicated to the United States two years later. Candy scored an instant hit with such characters as porcine poseur Johnny LaRue, overly unctuous talk show sidekick William B., and ever-grinning "Lutonian" musician Yosh Shmenge. So popular did Candy become that suddenly many of his obscurer pre-starring Canadian films (It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, The Clown Murders) became hot properties on the video rental circuit. Candy stayed with the various SCTV syndicated and network programs until 1983, earning two Emmys in the process. One of the few genuine nice guys in the realm of comedy, Candy was beloved by both co-workers and fans -- even when this lovability was stretched to the breaking point in substandard films. He scored in supporting roles (Splash [1984], Brewster's Millions [1985]), but such thinnish starring features as Summer Rental (1985) and Who's Harry Crumb (1989) seemed to suggest that Candy couldn't carry a film by himself. Then he starred in Uncle Buck (1989), a disarming comedy about a ne'er-do-well with hidden nobility. Receiving relatively little promotion, Uncle Buck was a surprise hit, and stands today as perhaps Candy's best-ever vehicle after Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Unfortunately, most of his follow-up films were on a par with the disastrous Nothing but Trouble (1990) and Delirious (1992). At the same time, Candy's leading role in Only the Lonely (1991) and his supporting performance in JFK (1992) proved that a major talent was being squandered by the film industry. Candy was as frustrated as his fans, manifesting this frustration in excessive eating, drinking, and smoking. The actor's superlative seriocomic turn as a disgraced Olympic star in Cool Runnings (1993), which Candy also co-produced, seemed to point toward a career upswing. But while filming Wagons East in Mexico, 43-year-old John Candy suffered a heart attack and died in his sleep. Wagons East was released in the summer of 1994, utilizing Candy's existing footage as well as possible; it proved, sadly, an inadequate epitaph for one of film comedy's funniest and most ingratiating stars.

Trivia: Actress Amy Madigan is the daughter of Chicago political commentor John Madigan, well known in the Windy City for his WBBM radio signoff, "John Madigan...News Radio Ssssseventy-eight." After studying piano at the Chicago Conservatory and philosophy at Milwaukee's Marquette University, Madigan spent the next decade as a touring rock musician. In the late 1970s, she began preparing for an acting career at L.A.'s Lee Strasberg Institute, making her TV bow on an episode of Hart to Hart. While she may have looked like a standard blonde ingenue, Madigan's endearingly raspy voice and '60s-style ebullience secured her a series of offbeat leading roles, culminating with her performance as Kevin Costner's ex-activist wife in Field of Dreams (1989). In 1985, Amy Madigan was Oscar-nominated for her performance as Gene Hackman's embittered daughter in Twice in a Lifetime. She is married to actor Ed Harris, with whom she has co-starred in Places in the Heart (1984) and Alamo Bay (1985). Madigan would continue to act in the decades to come, memorably starring on Carnivale and Grey's Anatomy.

Trivia: Multi-talented Jean Louisa Kelly began her career in musical theater before moving to TV and film. Born in March 9, 1972 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Kelly began performing as a child. Though she made her Broadway debut at age 14 in the Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical Into the Woods and her film debut in the John Candy hit Uncle Buck (1989), Kelly opted to go to college rather than diving headfirst into an acting career. After she graduated from Columbia University in 1994 with a degree in English, Kelly returned to acting full-time. Along with acting in a number of TV movies, including Breathing Lessons (1994) with Joanne Woodward, Harvest of Fire (1996), The Day Lincoln Was Shot (1998), and The Cyberstalking (1999), Kelly displayed her singing talents onscreen in Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) and starred in several little-seen independent films, including Origin of the Species (1998). Though Kelly also starred in the feature-film adaptation of the long-running musical The Fantasticks in 1995, the release was delayed until fall 2000. Along with the long-awaited appearance of The Fantasticks, Kelly also tried her luck with series TV again (after the short-lived Cold Feet in 1999) with the fall 2000 debut of the CBS sitcom Yes, Dear.

Trivia: The most successful child performer since Shirley Temple (Mickey Rooney wasn't a star until his teen years), Macaulay Culkin first stepped onto a New York stage at the age of four. Extensively trained for his craft, including a stint with Balanchine's School of the American Ballet, young Culkin became a familiar TV-commercial face and was spotlighted in several film supporting roles, the best of which was as John Candy's inquisitive nephew in Uncle Buck (1989). After an unbilled cameo in Jacob's Ladder (1990) and prior to an appearance in a Michael Jackson video, Culkin was cast as the preteen protagonist of Home Alone, a Three Stooges-like combination of violent slapstick and sappy sentiment that was the highest-grossing film of 1990. Culkin thereby became the highest paid child actor of all time, and one of the few under-13 performers who could be counted on to "open" a picture. Two more blockbusters followed: My Girl (1991) and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). At the time, the boy's career was under the tight control of his father Christopher "Kit" Culkin, an erstwhile actor who also managed the careers of Culkin's younger, equally photogenic siblings, and stories began to emerge from Hollywood concerning the elder Culkin's on-set behavior. Meanwhile, Macaulay's box-office appeal began waning, partly due to indifferent response to his next few films -- The Good Son (1993), Getting Even With Dad (1994), and Richie Rich (1994) -- but chiefly because he was outgrowing his cuteness and spontaneity. In June 1995, Culkin's mother went to court to remove the boy from Kit's custody, insisting that the father's contentiousness was ruining Macaulay's chances of revitalizing his career. At a few months shy of age 18, Culkin married actress Rachel Miner in 1998, but the couple separated in 2000. The former child star re-emerged in 2002 in documentarians Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's feature debut, Party Monster, the true-life story of the rise and fall of a young club promoter. He enjoyed a lengthy relationship throughout the 2000s with Mila Kunis.

Trivia: The daughter of Viva Hoffmann, better known simply as Viva, the model and Warhol protege, Gaby Hoffmann had an upbringing that was in many ways suited for the unconventional lifestyle that accompanies an acting career. Born January 8, 1982, Hoffmann spent much of her childhood living with her mother and sister in New York's notorious Chelsea Hotel. When she and her friends weren't spying on the drug dealers across the hall, Hoffmann began her acting career, making her first commercials at the age of four to help pay the bills. However, she quickly tired of the work and quit; her early retirement ended when, at the age of seven, she was cast alongside Macaulay Culkin in John Hughes' Uncle Buck and as Kevin Costner's daughter in Field of Dreams. Both films proved to be huge hits, and Hoffmann decided to give acting a second try.Many of the films Hoffmann made throughout her early teens proved to be fairly forgettable, although she did have strong supporting roles in Nora Ephron's This Is My Life (1992) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), as well as The Man Without a Face (1993), Now and Then (1995), which cast her as the teenage version of Demi Moore's character, and Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You (1996). Toward the end of the decade, Hoffmann began being identified as one of the up-and-coming actors of Generation Y, a fact that was demonstrated with her being cast in the ensemble film 200 Cigarettes, the controversial girls-on-top sex comedy Coming Soon, and James Toback's Black and White, which featured Hoffmann as part of an eclectic cast that included Robert Downey Jr., Jared Leto, and Brooke Shields.In the early 2000s, she took a break from acting, enrolling in Bard Collage. She resumed her acting career in 2011 with roles in indie films (like The Surrogate Nanny), but the public noticed her more for several high-profile TV guest spots, including an episode each on Private Practice, The Good Wife and Homeland. She had a higher-profile guest spot on FX's Louie, playing a soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend of Louie, and then had a four-episode arc on HBO's Girls, playing Adam's sister, Caroline. Hoffmann took a series regular role on the hit Netflix series, Transparent, in 2014.

Trivia: Matriculating from Illinois State University, actress Laurie Metcalf was one of the charter members of Chicago's groundbreaking Steppenwolf Theatre troupe. She moved on to New York in the early '80s, winning a 1984 Theatre World Award and an Obie for her performance in Balm in Gilead. In films since 1985, the flexible Metcalf has been seen in director Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) and Making Mr. Right (1987), and also in several other highly regarded productions, notably Uncle Buck (1989), JFK (1991), and Mistress (1992). Metcalf is best known to the TV-watching public for her Emmy-winning portrayal of Roseanne Conner's police-officer sister, Jackie Harris, on the long-running sitcom Roseanne. In 1997, following the demise of her television series, Metcalf turned in a deliciously over-the-top performance as the tightly wound aspiring reporter Debbie Salt in Scream 2. In the decades to come, Metcalfe would find success on shows like Norm and The Big Bang Theory, as well as movies like Stop-Loss Georgia Rule. Despite her hectic schedule, Laurie Metcalf still finds time for an occasional return-to-the-womb appearance at the Steppenwolf Theatre, usually in the company of fellow Steppenwolfians John Malkovich, Gary Sinise, and/or Glenne Headly.

Trivia: Adolescent actor, onscreen from 1986.

Trivia: Appeared on the big screen first in 1984 in The Cotton Club.Played in the 1990s in the soap opera One Life to Live.Is best known for his role as Geno in the 1995 comedy-crime film The Jerky Boys.Portrayed Jackie since 2017 in the comedy-drama web television series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.Is of Irish and Italian descent.

Trivia: A character actor whose beefy, imposing build (a magazine once listed him as 6'3" and 245 pounds) typecast him as thugs, hoods, and underworld heavies, performer Mike Starr was raised in the Manhattan area, as the son of a meatpacker and a five-and-dime clerk. He attended Long Island's Hofstra University on a drama scholarship, and -- after graduation -- toiled at menial jobs as a bartender and club bouncer before landing his first film role in William Friedkin's gay-themed cop thriller Cruising (1980). Many projects ensued over the following decades, including The Natural (1984), Uncle Buck (1989, in a memorable bit as a drunken clown), Ed Wood (1994), and Jersey Girl (2004). Fans of the gangster-themed comedy Mad Dog and Glory (1993), in particular, might remember Starr -- he played Harold, the wife-beater husband who gets on David Caruso's bad side, and physically suffers for it. In 2007, Starr essayed a rare lead in the character comedy Osso Bucco; he played a gangster unknowingly targeted for death and due for extermination by his cousin.

Trivia: Like many of his Canadian contemporaries, actor Matt Craven broke into films by way of such adolescent sex comedies as Meatballs (1979) and Hog Wild (1980). Craven honed his acting skills on the off-Broadway stage, beginning with the 1984 production Blue Willows. He has since contributed supporting performances to films like Blue Steel (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), and Crimson Tide (1995). Matt Craven's TV-series roles include bartender Ritchie Massina in the Robby Benson starrer Tough Cookies (1986) and Bobby Kratz in the Alan Arkin vehicle Harry (1987). In 1998, Craven was part of an ensemble cast for the medical drama L.A. Doctors. In the 21st century he enjoyed a brief recurring role on the hit medical dram ER and appeared in moves such as Dragonfly and Timeline. He continued to work steadily on a wide variety of projects including The Life of David Gale, the TV series The Lyon's Den, the remake of Assault on Precinct 13, Disturbia, Public Enemies, and the superhero prequel X-Men: First Class.

Trivia: Though fourth-billed in her first film, My Girl (1991), 9-year-old advertising model Anna Chlumsky was clearly the star. Playing a mortician's daughter learning about life and love in the early 1970s, Anna made one of the more auspicious movie debuts in recent memory; she also administered the first screen kiss to juvenile superstar Macauley Culkin. Chlumsky would go on to appear as a child actor in films like My Girl 2 (1993), Trading Mom (1994) and Golddiggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain (1995), but eventually transitioned successfully into adult roles with 2007's Blood Car, and acclaimed series like In the Loop, White Collar and Veep.