Trivia: Elizabeth Taylor was the ultimate movie star: violet-eyed, luminously beautiful, and bigger than life; although never the most gifted actress, she was the most magnetic, commanding the spotlight with unparalleled power. Whether good (two Oscars, one of the first million-dollar paychecks, and charity work), bad (health and weight problems, drug battles, and other tragedies), or ugly (eight failed marriages, movie disasters, and countless scandals), no triumph or setback was too personal for media consumption. Born February 27, 1932, in London, Taylor literally grew up in public. At the beginning of World War II, her family relocated to Hollywood, and by the age of ten she was already under contract at Universal. She made her screen debut in 1942's There's One Born Every Minute, followed a year later by a prominent role in Lassie Come Home. For MGM, she co-starred in the 1944 adaptation of Jane Eyre, then appeared in The White Cliffs of Dover. With her first lead role as a teen equestrian in the 1944 family classic National Velvet, Taylor became a star. To their credit, MGM did not exploit her, despite her incredible beauty; she did not even reappear onscreen for two more years, returning with Courage of Lassie. Taylor next starred as Cynthia in 1947, followed by Life With Father. In Julia Misbehaves, she enjoyed her first grown-up role, and then portrayed Amy in the 1947 adaptation of Little Women. Taylor's first romantic lead came opposite Robert Taylor in 1949's Conspirator. Her love life was already blossoming offscreen as well; that same year she began dating millionaire Howard Hughes, but broke off the relationship to marry hotel heir Nicky Hilton when she was just 17 years old. The marriage made international headlines, and in 1950 Taylor scored a major hit as Spencer Tracy's daughter in Vincente Minnelli's Father of the Bride; a sequel, Father's Little Dividend, premiered a year later. Renowned as one of the world's most beautiful women, Taylor was nevertheless largely dismissed as an actress prior to an excellent performance in the George Stevens drama A Place in the Sun.In 1956, however, the actress reunited with Stevens to star in his epic adaptation of the Edna Ferber novel Giant. It was a blockbuster, as was her 1957 follow-up Raintree County, for which she earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Taylor's sexy image was further elevated by an impossibly sensual performance in 1958's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; another Tennessee Williams adaptation, Suddenly Last Summer, followed a year later, and both were highly successful. To complete the terms of her MGM contract, she grudgingly agreed to star in 1960's Butterfield 8; upon completing the film Taylor traveled to Britain to begin work on the much-heralded Cleopatra, for which she received an unprecedented one-million-dollar fee. In London she became dangerously ill, and underwent a life-saving emergency tracheotomy. Hollywood sympathy proved sufficient for her to win a Best Actress Oscar for Butterfield 8, although much of the good will extended toward her again dissipated in the wake of the mounting difficulties facing Cleopatra. With five million dollars already spent, producers pulled the plug and relocated the shoot to Italy, replacing co-star Stephen Boyd with Richard Burton. The final tally placed the film at a cost of 37 million dollars, making it the most costly project in film history; scheduled for a 16-week shoot, the production actually took years, and despite mountains of pre-publicity, it was a huge disaster at the box office upon its 1963 premiere. Still, the notice paid to Cleopatra paled in comparison to the scrutiny which greeted Taylor's latest romance, with Burton, and perhaps no Hollywood relationship was ever the subject of such intense media coverage. Theirs was a passionate, stormy relationship, played out in the press and onscreen in films including 1963's The V.I.P.'s and 1965's The Sandpiper. In 1966, the couple starred in Mike Nichols' controversial directorial debut Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, arguably Taylor's best performance; overweight, verbally cutting, and defiantly unglamorous, she won a second Oscar for her work as the embittered wife of Burton's alcoholic professor. Their real-life marriage managed to survive, however, and after Taylor appeared opposite Marlon Brando in 1967's Reflections in a Golden Eye, she and Burton reunited for The Comedians. She also starred in Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew, but none were successful at the box office; 1968's Doctor Faustus was a disaster, and later that year Boom! failed to gross even one-quarter of its costs. After 1969's Secret Ceremony, Taylor starred in The Only Game in Town, a year later; when they too failed, her days of million-dollar salaries were over, and she began working on percentage.With Burton, Taylor next appeared in a small role in 1971's Under Milk Wood; next was X, Y and Zee, followed by another spousal collaboration, Hammersmith Is Out. In 1972 the Burtons also co-starred in a television feature, Divorce His, Divorce Hers; the title proved prescient, as two years later, the couple did indeed divorce after a decade together. With no film offers forthcoming, Taylor turned to the stage, and in 1981 she starred in a production of The Little Foxes. In 1983, she and Burton also reunited to co-star on Broadway in Private Lives. Television also remained an option, and in 1983 she and Carol Burnett co-starred in Between Friends. However, Taylor's primary focus during the decades to follow was charity work; following the death of her close friend, Rock Hudson, she became a leader in the battle against AIDS, and for her efforts won the 1993 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. In 1997, the actress once again became a featured tabloid topic when she underwent brain surgery to remove a benign tumor. The same year, she received attention of a more favorable variety with Happy Birthday Elizabeth: A Celebration of Life, a TV special in which she was paid tribute by a number of stars including Madonna, Shirley MacLaine, John Travolta, Dennis Hopper, and Cher. Taylor would continue to make her voice heard when it came to issues that she felt strongly about. In 2003, Taylor refused to attend the Academy Awards out of protest against the Iraq War. Taylor also worked tirelessly in the name of AIDS research, advocacy, and awareness, even appearing in a 2007 staging of the A.R. Gurney play Love Letters opposite James Earl Jones to benefit Taylor's own AIDS foundation -- a performance that earned over a million dollars for the cause. Sadly, Taylor was increasingly plagued by health problems, undergoing cardiac surgery in 2009 to replace a leaky heart valve. On March 23, 2011, she passed away from congestive heart failure. She was 79.

Trivia: The 12th of 13 children of a Welsh miner, actor Richard Burton left his humble environs by winning a scholarship to Oxford. Blessed with a thrillingly theatrical voice, Burton took to the stage, and, by 1949, had been tagged as one of Britain's most promising newcomers. Director Philip Dunne, who later helmed several of Burton's Hollywood films, would recall viewing a 1949 London staging of The Lady's Not for Burning and watching in awe as star John Gielgud was eclipsed by juvenile lead Richard Burton: "He 'took' the stage and kept a firm grip on it during every one of his brief appearances." A few years after his film debut in The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949), the actor was signed by 20th Century Fox, which had hopes of turning him into the new Lawrence Olivier -- although Burton was not quite able to grip films as well as he did the stage. Aside from The Robe (1953), most of Burton's Fox films were disappointments, and the actor was unable to shake his to-the-rafters theatricality for the smaller scope of the camera lens. Still, he was handsome and self-assured, so Burton was permitted a standard-issue 1950s spectacle, Alexander the Great (1956). His own film greatness would not manifest itself until he played the dirt-under-the-nails role of Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger (1959). In this, he spoke the vernacular of regular human beings -- rather than that of high-priced, affected Hollywood screenwriters -- and delivered a jolting performance as a working-class man trapped by the system and his own personal demons. Following a well-received Broadway run in the musical Camelot, Burton was signed in 1961 to replace Stephen Boyd on the benighted film spectacular Cleopatra (1963). It probably isn't necessary to elaborate on what happened next, but the result was that Burton suddenly found himself an international celebrity, not for his acting, but for his tempestuous romance with co-star Elizabeth Taylor. A hot property at last, Burton apparently signed every long-term contract thrust in front of him, while television networks found themselves besieged with requests for screenings of such earlier Burton film "triumphs" as Prince of Players (1955) and The Rains of Ranchipur (1956). In the midst of the initial wave of notoriety, Burton appeared in a Broadway modern-dress version of Hamlet directed by John Gielgud, which played to standing-room-only crowds who were less interested in the melancholy Dane than in possibly catching a glimpse of the Lovely Liz. Amidst choice film work like Becket (1964) and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1966), Burton was also contractually obligated to appear with Taylor in such high-priced kitsch as The V.I.P.s, (1963) The Sandpiper (1965), and Boom! (1968). A few of the Burton/Taylor vehicles were excellent -- notably Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (she won an Oscar; he didn't, but should have) -- but the circus of publicity began to erode the public's ability to take Burton seriously. It became even harder when the couple divorced, remarried, and broke up again. Moreover, Burton was bound by contract to appear in such bland cinematic enterprises as Candy (1968), Villain (1971), The Assassination of Trotsky (1972), The Klansman (1974), and that rancid masterpiece Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). So low had Burton's reputation sunk that when he delivered an Oscar-caliber performance in Equus (1977), it was hailed as a "comeback," even though the actor had never left. (Once again he lost the Oscar, this time to Richard Dreyfuss.) Burton managed to recapture his old performing fire in his last moviemaking years, offering up one of his best performances in his final picture, 1984 (1984). He died later that year.

Trivia: George Segal kicked off his performing career as a boy magician in his Long Island neighborhood. An accomplished banjoist, Segal played with Bruno Lynch and His Imperial Jazz before enrolling at Columbia University. After three years' military service, Segal resettled in New York in 1959, and that same year was cast in his first off-Broadway play. Entering films with 1961's The Young Doctors, Segal quickly established himself as one of Hollywood's most accomplished young character actors; in 1967, he received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Nick in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. When one compiles a list of favorite films from the late 1960s-early 1970s, one usually spends a great deal of time exclaiming "Hey! Segal was in that, too." He played a hustling POW in King Rat (1965), a Cagneyesque hood in Saint Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), ulcerated homicide detective Mo Brummel in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), a neurotic New York Jewish intellectual in Bye Bye Braverman (1968), a straight-laced bachelor in love with a foul-mouthed hooker in The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), and a repressed lawyer saddled with an outrageously senile mother in Where's Poppa? (1970). During this same period, Segal had an arrangement with the ABC TV network, permitting him to star in television adaptations of classic Broadway plays: he was cast as George opposite Nicol Williamson's Lenny in Of Mice and Men, then switched gears as vicious escaped criminal Glenn Griffin in The Desperate Hours. Throughout this busy period in his life, Segal fronted the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band, cutting several records and making a number of memorable Tonight Show appearances. In 1973, Segal's successful screen teaming with Glenda Jackson in A Touch of Class enabled him to demand a much higher price for his film services; unfortunately, many of the films that followed--The Black Bird (1975) and The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976) in particular--failed to justify Segal's seven-figure price tag. In the 1980s, Segal starred in two well-written but low-rated TV weeklies, Take Five (1987) and Murphy's Law (1989). His film career was lifted from the doldrums in the late 1980s with such plum roles as the pond-scum father of Kirstie Alley's baby in Look Who's Talking (1989) and the "pinko" comedy writer in For the Boys (1991). Segal's projects of the 1990s have included the syndicated TV adventure series High Tide (1994) and such film roles as the bemused husband of abrasive Jewish mama Mary Tyler Moore in the 1996 Ben Stiller vehicle Flirting with Disaster. In 1996, Segal found renewed success on television playing a well-meaning but rather duplicitous publisher whose estranged daughter comes to work for him in the razor-sharp NBC sitcom Just Shoot Me. Though he worked less frequently during the 21st century, he appeared in a variety of projects including The Linda McCartney Story as the main character's father, Fielder's Choice, 2012, and Love and Other Drugs.

Trivia: Sandy Dennis was a distinctive actress with a flighty demeanor who enjoyed popularity during the '60s and early '70s. The Nebraska-born Dennis began her career in local stock companies, then studied at New York's Actors' Studio, where she embraced method acting. She debuted onscreen in Splendor in the Grass (1961) with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty. On Broadway, she won two Tony Awards in successive years, for A Thousand Clowns (1963) and Any Wednesday (1964). For her second screen performance, as George Segal's academic wife in the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Dennis won the "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar. She went on to get leads and co-starring roles in a number of films, but remained primarily a stage actress; after 1971 her film work was sporadic. She died of cancer in 1992.