Trivia: With his devil-may-care attitude and potent charisma, Jack Nicholson emerged as the most popular and celebrated actor of his generation. A classic anti-hero, he typified the new breed of Hollywood star -- rebellious, contentious and defiantly non-conformist. A supremely versatile talent, he uniquely defined the zeitgeist of the 1970s, a decade which his screen presence dominated virtually from start to finish, and remained an enduring counterculture icon for the duration of his long and renowned career. Born April 22, 1937 in Neptune, New Jersey, and raised by his mother and grandmother, Nicholson travelled to California at the age of 17, with the intent of returning east to attend college. It never happened -- he became so enamored of the west coast that he stayed, landing a job as an office boy in MGM's animation department. Nicholson studied acting with the area group the Players Ring Theater, eventually appearing on television as well as on stage. While performing theatrically, Nicholson was spotted by "B"-movie mogul Roger Corman, who cast him in the lead role in the 1958 quickie The Cry Baby Killer. He continued playing troubled teens in Corman's 1960 efforts Too Soon to Love and The Wild Ride before appearing in the Irving Lerner adaptation of the novel Studs Lonigan. He did not reappear on-screen prior to the 1962 Fox "B"-western The Broken Land. It was then back to the Corman camp for 1963's The Raven. For the follow-up, The Terror, he worked with a then-unknown Francis Ford Coppola and Monte Hellman. A year later, he enjoyed his second flirtation with mainstream Hollywood in the war comedy Ensign Pulver. Under Hellman, Nicholson next appeared in both Back Door to Hell and Flight to Fury. Together, they also co-produced a pair of 1967 Corman westerns, Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting. A brief appearance in the exploitation tale Hell's Angels on Wheels followed before Nicholson wrote the acid-culture drama The Trip, which co-starred Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda. He also penned 1968's Head, a psychedelic saga, and wrote and co-starred in Psych-Out. After rejecting a role in Bonnie and Clyde, Nicholson was approached to star in the 1969 counterculture epic Easy Rider. As an ill-fated, alcoholic civil-rights lawyer, Nicholson immediately shot to stardom, earning a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination as the film rose to landmark status. Nicholson appeared briefly in the 1970 Barbra Streisand musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, followed by Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces, in which his notorious diner scene remains among the definitive moments in American cinematic history. The film was much acclaimed, earning a "Best Picture" Oscar nomination; Nicholson also received a "Best Actor" bid, and was now firmly established among the Hollywood elite. He next wrote, produced, directed and starred in 1971's Drive, He Said, which met with little notice. However, the follow-up, Mike Nichols's Carnal Knowledge, was a hit. After accepting a supporting role in Henry Jaglom's 1972 effort A Safe Place, Nicholson reunited with Rafelson for The King of Marvin Gardens, followed in 1973 by the Hal Ashby hit The Last Detail, which won him "Best Actor" honors at the Cannes Film Festival as well as another Academy Award nomination. Nicholson earned yet one more Oscar nomination as detective Jake Gittes in Roman Polanski's brilliant 1974 neo-noir Chinatown, universally hailed among the decade's greatest motion pictures. The next year, Nicholson starred in Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger, then delivered a memorable supporting turn in the musical Tommy. The Fortune, co-starring Warren Beatty and Stockard Channing, followed, before the year ended with Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; the winner of five Oscars, including "Best Picture" and, finally, "Best Actor." The film earned over $60 million and firmly established Nicholson as the screen's most popular star -- so popular, in fact, that he was able to turn down roles in projects including The Sting, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now without suffering any ill effects.. Nicholson did agree to co-star in 1977's The Missouri Breaks for the opportunity to work with his hero, Marlon Brando; despite their combined drawing power, however, the film was not a hit. Nor was his next directorial effort, 1978's Goin' South. A maniacal turn in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror tale The Shining proved much more successful, and a year later he starred in Rafelson's remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice. An Oscar-nominated supporting role in Beatty's epic Reds followed. Even when a film fell far short of expectations, Nicholson somehow remained impervious to damage. Audiences loved him regardless, as did critics and even his peers -- in 1983 he won a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar for his work in James L. Brooks's much-acclaimed comedy-drama Terms of Endearment, and two years later netted another "Best Actor" nomination for John Huston's superb black comedy Prizzi's Honor.The following year, Heartburn was less well-received, but in 1987 Nicholson starred as the Devil in the hit The Witches of Eastwick -- a role few denied he was born to play. The by-now-requisite Academy Award nomination followed for his performance in Hector Babenco's Depression-era tale Ironweed, his ninth to date -- a total matched only by Spencer Tracy. Nicholson did not resurface until 1989, starring as the Joker in a wildly over-the-top performance in Tim Burton's blockbuster Batman. The 1990s began with the long-awaited and often-delayed Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes, which Nicholson also directed. Three more films followed in 1992 -- Rafelson's poorly-received Man Trouble, the biopic Hoffa, and A Few Good Men, for which he earned another "Best Supporting Actor" nod. For Mike Nichols, he next starred in 1994's Wolf, followed a year later by Sean Penn's The Crossing Guard. In 1996, Nicholson appeared in Blood and Wine, Burton's Mars Attacks! and The Evening Star, reprising his Terms of Endearment role.In 1997, Nicholson enjoyed a sort of career renaissance with James L. Brooks' As Good As it Gets, an enormously successful film that netted a third Oscar (for "Best Actor) for Nicholson. Subsequently taking a four-year exile from film, Nicholson stepped back in front of the camera under the direction of actor-turned-director Sean Penn for the police drama The Pledge. Though many agreed that Nicholson's overall performance in The Pledge was subtly effective, it was the following year that the legendary actor would find himself back in the critics' good graces, when Nicholson would receive an Oscar nomination for his performance in About Schmidt. The next year he appeared in a pair of box office hits. Anger Management found him playing an unorthodox therapist opposite Adam Sandler, while he played an aging lothario opposite Diane Keaton in {Nancy Myers's Something's Gotta Give. After taking a three year break from any on-screen work, Nicholson returned in 2006 as a fearsome criminal in Martin Scorsese's undercover police drama The Departed, the first collaboration between these two towering figures in American film. A starring role in Rob Reiner's comedy-drama The Bucket List followed, with Nicholson and Morgan Freeman co-starring as terminal cancer patients who decide to live it up during their final days. The film itself received mixed reviews, though many critics singled out Nicholson's fine work in it. 2010 reunited Nicholson with Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets collaborator Jim Brooks for the romantic comedy How Do You Know, co-starring Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd. Nicholson's personal life has been one befitting a man who has made his mark playing so many devilishly charming characters. He has fathered a number of children from his relationships with various women, including a daughter, Lorraine (born in 1990), and a son, Raymond (born 1992) with Rebecca Broussard. It was Broussard's pregnancy with their first child that ended Nicholson's 17-year relationship with a woman who is known for her similarly enduring charisma, the actress Angelica Huston.

Trivia: As the co-star of the landmark Bonnie and Clyde, actress Faye Dunaway helped usher in a new golden era in American filmmaking, going on to appear in several of the greatest films of the 1970s. Born January 14, 1941, in Bascom, FL, Dunaway was the daughter of an army officer. She studied theater arts at the University of Boston and later joined the Lincoln Center Repertory Company under the direction of Elia Kazan and Robert Whitehead. Between 1962 and 1967, she appeared in a number of prominent stage productions, including A Man for All Seasons and Arthur Miller's After the Fall, playing a character based on Marilyn Monroe. Dunaway's breakthrough performance came in an off-Broadway production of Hogan's Goat, which resulted in a contract with director Otto Preminger. She made her film debut in his 1967 drama Hurry Sundown, but the two frequently clashed, and she refused to appear in his Skidoo; after a legal battle, Dunaway was allowed to buy out the remainder of her contract, and she then starred in The Happening (1967).Still, Dunaway was virtually unknown when she accepted the role of the notorious gangster Bonnie Parker opposite Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn's 1967 crime saga Bonnie and Clyde. The picture was an unqualified success, one of the most influential films of the era, and she had become a star seemingly overnight, earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her sexy performance. Dunaway's next major role cast her with Steve McQueen in 1968's The Thomas Crown Affair, another major hit. However, her next several projects -- Amanti, a romance with Marcello Mastroianni, and the Kazan-directed The Arrangement -- stumbled, and although 1970's Little Big Man was a hit, Puzzle of a Downfall Child (directed by her fiancé, Jerry Schatzberg) was a disaster. Quickly, Dunaway was reduced to projects like the little-seen 1971 thriller La Maison Sous Les Arbres and the Western Doc. When they too failed, she retreated from films, first appearing on-stage in Harold Pinter's Old Times and then starring in the made-for-television The Woman I Love.After portraying Blanche du Bois in a Los Angeles stage adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire, Dunaway returned to the cinema in Stanley Kramer's 1973 drama Oklahoma Crude. Subsequent to her appearance in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers, she made headlines for her marriage to rocker Peter Wolf and was then cast in Roman Polanski's 1974 noir Chinatown. The performance was her best since Bonnie and Clyde, scoring another Academy Award nomination, and the film itself remains a classic. The success of The Towering Inferno later that same year confirmed that Dunaway's star power had returned in full, and she next co-starred with Robert Redford in the well-received thriller Three Days of the Condor. In 1976, Dunaway starred as an ambitious television executive in Sidney Lumet's scathing black comedy Network, and on her third attempt she finally won an Oscar. A British feature, Voyage of the Damned, and a TV-movie, The Disappearance of Aimee, quickly followed, and in 1978 she starred in the much-maligned thriller The Eyes of Laura Mars.After 1979's The Champ, Dunaway starred with Frank Sinatra in The First Deadly Sin. An over-the-top turn as Joan Crawford in the tell-all biopic Mommie Dearest followed in 1981, as did another biography, the TV feature Evita Peron. Her career was again slumping, a fate which neither the Broadway production of The Curse of an Aching Heart nor another telefilm, 1982's The Country Girl, helped to remedy. After 1984's Supergirl, Dunaway spent much of the decade on the small screen, appearing in a pair of miniseries -- Ellis Island and Christopher Columbus -- and in 1986 appearing as the titular Beverly Hills Madam. The 1987 feature Barfly found a cult audience, but almost without exception, Dunaway's subsequent films went unnoticed; even the 1990 Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes was a failure. In 1993, she starred in a short-lived sitcom, It Had to Be You, and continued to appear in little-seen projects. Dunaway's most prominent roles of the mid-'90s included a supporting turn as the wife of psychiatrist Marlon Brando in 1995's Don Juan DeMarco and as a barmaid/hostage in the directorial debut of actor Kevin Spacey, Albino Alligator (1996). In 1999, Dunaway gave a nod to her screen past with a cameo appearance in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. That same year, she took on the more substantial role of Yolande d'Aragon in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.As the new century began she had parts in The Yards and Festival in Cannes. In 2002 she had a part in the big-screen adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' The Rules of Attraction. She had a brief part in Tim Burton's Big Fish.In 2005 she appeared for one season as the lead judge on the acting reality series The Starlet, where she repeated the painful catchphrase, "don't call us, we'll call you," every time a contestant was dismissed from the program.She continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including Flick, Midnight Bayou, and 2010's A Family Thanksgiving.

Trivia: An American film director who told stories about independent and adventurous men struggling for their individuality, John Huston led such a life, himself. His hyper-masculine protagonists seemed to stem from his own youthful pursuits as a boxer, competitive horseman, Calvary officer, and major in the U.S. Army. Married five times and divorced four (fourth wife Ricki Soma died in 1969), his reportedly bitter attitude toward women informed his female characters as either weak-willed prizes or seductive threats to manhood. Nevertheless, Huston's unconventional and rambling lifestyle led to some of the most celebrated American cinema, as well as the hub of three generations of Oscar winners. Born in Missouri to noted actor Walter Huston, his family traveled extensively on the vaudeville circuit. After riding horses in Mexico and magazine reporting in New York, the younger Huston secured a job writing dialogue in Hollywood. He started acting and published his first play, Frankie and Johnny, before wandering around London and Paris working as a street performer and artist. Upon his return, he worked as an editor and writer before convincing his employers at Warner Bros. to let him direct his first movie, The Maltese Falcon, in 1941. The popular source novel by mystery author Dashiell Hammett had been filmed twice before, but only Huston's adaptation would be remembered as a prime example of the classic film noir-detective story. It also made a star out of leading man Humphrey Bogart, whom Huston would cast in his next few films: Across the Pacific, Key Largo, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. An adventure drama shot in Mexico examining the nature of man's greed, Sierra Madre won him his first Oscar for Best Director and earned his father, Walter Huston, his first for Best Supporting Actor. Continuing to write Hollywood screenplays and make military documentaries for the U.S. War Department, Huston's next big directorial success was in 1950 with the gritty caper film The Asphalt Jungle, another cinematic innovation in the crime genre. This was quickly followed by The African Queen, earning leading man Bogart his first and only Academy award for his role as drunken boat captain Charlie Allnut. Huston's next production, an adaptation of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, had a notorious history of production difficulties with MGM. In 1952, his biographical drama of painter Henri de Toulouse-Latrec, Moulin Rogue, won Oscars for art direction and costume design. In 1956, he and co-screenwriter Ray Bradbury conquered a major literary adaptation with Moby Dick, starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab. During this time, Huston had found a home for himself in Ireland with his wife and newborn daughter, Anjelica. After he quit during production of A Farewell to Arms, he then tried the African Queen romantic formula again with Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison. In 1961, he directed The Misfits, the tragic last film of both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, co-starring Montgomery Clift (whom Huston would cast in the psychoanalyst title role of his next feature, Freud). Two more adaptations would follow: The List of Adrian Messenger from the mystery novel by Philip MacDonald and The Night of the Iguana from a play by Tennessee Williams. After winning a Golden Globe for his supporting role in Otto Preminger's The Cardinal, Huston did odd acting projects for the next decade and directed A Walk With Love and Death, marking the film debut of daughter Anjelica. In 1974, he gave one of his most notable performances as the villainous Noah Cross in Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Huston made a brief comeback the following year as writer/director of the witty action-adventure saga The Man Who Would Be King, the black comedy Wise Blood, and the Broadway musical adaptation Annie. But his major comeback would be in 1985 with the crime comedy Prizzi's Honor, which earned Anjelica Huston her first Oscar for the supporting role of Maerose. She also starred in her father's last film, The Dead (1987), which was inspired by the James Joyce short story collection Dubliners. Huston died of pneumonia later that year in Newport, RI.

Trivia: Tough-talking American character actor Perry Lopez played "ethnic" roles from the time of his his stage debut in the early 1950s. Signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1955, Lopez lent support to such studio projects as Mister Roberts (1955), The McConnell Story (1956) and The Violent Road (1958). He is best remembered as police officer Lou Escobar in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974). Perry Lopez reprised this uniformed character (now promoted to captain) in the 1990 Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes. Lopez died of lung cancer in February 2008.

Trivia: Whether playing a wiseacre waitress, an insane bioengineer, or a vengeful, darkly comic widow, Diane Ladd brings energy and accomplishment to her roles. Born Rose Diane Ladner in Meridian, MS, she moved to New York City as a teen. Before making her stage debut in Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending, Ladd worked as a model and a dancer at the Copacabana nightclub. In 1961, Ladd debuted in her first feature film, Something Wild. Though she subsequently appeared in a few more films during the '60s, including The Reivers (1969), Ladd focused on her stage career. In film, 1974 proved to be a great year for Ladd. Her portrayal of Flo, the tough waitress who helps out a recently widowed Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More, garnered her nominations for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a British Academy Award. She then appeared opposite Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Beginning in 1976, Ladd became a familiar face in television movies like The Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980) and miniseries such as Black Beauty (1978). Though she continued to sporadically appear in feature films through the '80s, her movie career didn't perk up again until the early '90s. Formerly married to character actor Bruce Dern, Ladd is the mother of willowy leading lady Laura Dern. Mother and daughter have appeared in several films together, notably 1991's Rambling Rose and David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990) -- the former film earned mother and daughter a place in Oscar history when they became the first such duo to be nominated for the same film (Ladd for Best Supporting Actress and Dern for Best Actress).

Trivia: Natty, mellifluous character actor John Hillerman may have spoken on screen with a pure Mayfair accent, but he hailed from Denison, Texas. Hillerman first gained notice for his fleeting appearances in the films of Peter Bogdanovich: The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up Doc (1973), At Long Last Love (1975). He was also a semi-regular for director Mel Brooks, prominently cast in Blazing Saddles (1975) and History of the World, Part I (1981). A veteran of dozens of television series, John Hillerman was cast as the insufferable criminologist Simon Brimmer on Ellery Queen (1975), the star's director (and ex-husband) in The Betty White Show (1975), and most memorably as the ultra-correct Jonathan Quayle Higgins II, major domo to never-seen mystery writer Robin Masters, on Magnum PI (1980-88).

Trivia: Thanks to his darkly unique perspective and grim, often nihilistic approach to storytelling, director Roman Polanski has left an indelible mark on world cinema. Although his films have been compared to those of Alfred Hitchcock, with their use of gallows humor, tension, and occasional surrealism to tell amoral stories of ordinary men struggling to cope in a hostile, ironic world, Polanski, unlike Hitchcock, has chosen to experiment with a variety of genres. In this regard, the director has considered himself a "cinematic playboy" intent on exploring the possibilities of all film categories. A uniformly pessimistic viewpoint provides the clearest link to entries in Polanski's body of work, something that is widely traced back to years of childhood trauma.The son of a Polish Jew and a Russian immigrant, Polanski was born in Paris on August 18, 1933. When he was three, his family moved to the Polish town of Krakow, an unfortunate decision given that the Germans invaded the city in 1940. Things went from bad to worse with the formation of Krakow's Jewish ghetto, and Polanski's family was the target of further persecution when his parents were deported to a concentration camp. Just before he was to be taken away, however, Polanski's father helped his son escape, and the boy managed to survive with help from kindly Catholic families, although he was at times forced to fend for himself. (At one point, the Germans decided to use Polanski for idle target practice.) It was during this period that Polanski became a devoted cinephile, seeking refuge in movie houses whenever possible. The cinemas provided him a type of protection that was brutally absent in the outside world. Shortly after sustaining serious injuries in an explosion, Polanski learned of his mother's death at Auschwitz. His father survived the camps, and moved back to Krakow with his son. Following his father's remarriage, the adolescent Polanski left home. Although still coping with great personal turmoil, he managed to nurture his love of the cinema; two films that particularly influenced him at the time were Laurence Olivier's Hamlet and Carol Reed's Odd Man Out. Following a near-fatal incident at the age of 16 -- which involved Polanski nearly becoming the next victim of a man who had just killed three people -- his father enrolled him in a technical school. He left in 1950 to attend film school, concurrently becoming an actor with the Krakow Theater and made his onscreen acting debut in Andrzej Wajda's 1954 Pokolenie/A Generation.That same year, Polanski was one of six applicants accepted into the rigorous director's course at Lodz's prestigious State Film School. In 1957, he made his first student film Rozbijemy Zabawe/Break up the Dance, an account of paid thugs destroying a school party (a stunt that almost got him expelled). Polanski's next film, Dwaj Ludzie z Szafa/Two Men and a Wardrobe, proved to be one of his most famous, winning him five international awards. This and subsequent shorts such as Le Gros et le Maigre/The Fat and the Lean (made in 1961 after his graduation) all featured the black humor that would characterize his later features. Polanski made his feature film debut in 1962 with Noz w Wodzie/Knife in the Water; as with most of his subsequent features, he also worked on the screenplay, in this case collaborating with Jerzy Skolimowski and Jakub Goldberg. A suspenseful, symbolic psychological drama set aboard a sailboat, the film told the story of a husband's misbegotten attempts to impress his wife and a potential rival, a young hitchhiker they bring aboard on a whim. It is considered the first Polish film not to deal with World War II, and was applauded for its visual precision (another characteristic of Polanski's work). It was also the only full-length feature the director made in Poland.Polanski moved to England to make his next two films, the first of which, Repulsion, became a cornerstone of contemporary psychological thrillers and, despite poor box-office returns, is said to be the director's favorite film. Polanski made his Hollywood debut in 1968 with the horror classic Rosemary's Baby. As with his earlier works, the film was more concerned with psychological terror than cheap shocks, creating a sense of foreboding terror that many directors have since tried to emulate with limited success. Polanski's next film, Macbeth, was a faithful but controversial adaptation of Shakespeare. Made shortly after his wife Sharon Tate was brutally murdered by the Manson Family, its graphic violence was said to reflect the director's grief and outrage.Polanski then shifted gears, making a sex comedy (What?)in Italy before returning to Hollywood to direct one of his finest efforts, Chinatown (1974), a film that revitalized the nearly dead film noir movement and earned Polanski an Oscar nomination and a British Academy Award. He followed up this success in 1976 with the suspenseful and surrealistic Le Locataire/The Tenant. A sinister, paranoid tale of madness, manipulation, and vengeance, it was reportedly filmed in the neighborhood where Polanski lived when he first came to Paris. The next year, the director made the news for a different and altogether disastrous reason: While in Hollywood working on a project, he was charged of having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Barred from working in Hollywood, Polanski fled the country and resettled in Paris (he had acquired French citizenship in 1976) and did not make another film until 1979. An adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel, the three-hour long Tess, starring 17-year-old Nastassja Kinski (with whom Polanski was also involved), was the most expensive film made in France at the time. But despite its cost, it proved to be a success, netting Polanski an Oscar nomination and a César award for Best Direction.While Tess was marked by a kind of lyrical romanticism, Polanski's next film, Pirates (1986), was an all-out spoof. As with his other comedies, it was not a success. In fact, after the much-lauded Tess, Polanski's work became intermittent and of spotty quality. Frantic, his 1988 thriller with Harrison Ford, failed to garner either critical or commercial favor, and his next effort, the perversely erotic thriller Bitter Moon (1992) received notice mainly because it starred a then-unknown Hugh Grant. Polanski found greater critical success in 1994 with Death and the Maiden, his adaptation of Ariel Dorfman's play, starring Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver. Two years later, he branched out with the experimental Gli Angeli, and, in 1999, returned to mystery-thriller territory with The Ninth Gate, starring his third wife Emmanuelle Seigner. (Barbara Lass was his first wife; Tate, his second.)Though The Ninth Gate would barely register a blip on the box-office radar, it was Polanski's next film that would show that the director was still very much at the top of his game. Based upon the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman and admittedly inspired by his own shattering childhood experiences, Polanski's The Pianist told the heart-wrenching tale of a brilliant pianist who eludes his Nazi captors by hiding out in the ruins of Warzaw. The film began collecting accolades from its premiere at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, where it received the top prize, the Palme d'Or, to the Academy Awards, where it snagged seven nominations including Best Picture. In what would be a night of many surprises, The Pianist upset such favored competition as the popular musical Chicago and Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York to win three Oscars, including Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director, although the latter prize went unclaimed, as Polanski was still a fugitive from Los Angeles County and therefore unable to enter the country.Over the years, Polanski also continued to nurture an interest in the theater, directing Berg's Lulu, Verdi's Rigoletto, and Tales of Hoffman at various theaters around Europe. In 1981, he directed and starred in the Warsaw production of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, which he re-staged successfully in Paris in 1982. In 1988, he played the leading role in Stephen Berkoff's adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis (again on the Paris stage). He's also contributed some occasional film acting, playing opposite Gerard Depardieu in Giuseppe Tornatore's Una Pura Formalità/A Pure Formality in 1994, as well as appearing in his own films.In September of 2009, on route to attend a career retrospective at the Zurich Film Festival, Polanski was taken into custody by Swiss officials becuase of a warrant issued by the United States in regard to his flight from justice at the time of his 1977 arrest for child molestation. The arrest interrupted the production of Polanski's 2010 film The Ghost Writer -- a political thriller starring Ewan McGregor and based on writer/former BBC reporter Robert Harris' novel The Ghost -- though it hardly had any impact on the controversial director's career momentun; the following year he adapted Yasmina Reza stage play The God of Carnage to the big screen in Carnage -- a scathing comedy starring Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, and Christoph Waltz as four parents attempting to resolve a bullying issue between their young sons, but ultimately proving themselves to be just as childish as their feuding offspring.

Trivia: New York-based stage actor Joe Mantell made his 1949 film debut as a newsboy in Undercover Man. Four years later, Mantell rose to prominence by way of a catchphrase: as Angie in the original 1953 TV production of Paddy Chayefsky's Marty, the actor immortalized the Bronx-bachelor mantra "So waddya wanna do tonight, Marty?" That question was still on his lips when he repeated the role in the 1955 film version of Marty, earning an Academy Award nomination in the process. He went on to more conventional film and TV assignments, playing a surrogate Dean Martin to Jerry Lewis in The Sad Sack (1957) and a traditional next door neighbor on the weekly sitcom Pete and Gladys (1961). He showed up in several filmed TV anthologies of the 1950s and 1960s, most memorably as the literally two-faced protagonist in the 1960 Twilight Zone episode Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room. Hitchcock addicts will remember Mantell as the Travelling Salesman in the 1963 feature film The Birds. The best of Joe Mantell's latter-day film roles was Lawrence Walsh, partner and confidante to private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) in Chinatown; it was Walsh who uttered the film's cryptic closing line "C'mon, Jake. It's....Chinatown." Joe Mantell repeated his Lawrence Walsh characterization in the 1990 Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes.

Trivia: Actor Bruce Glover first familiarized himself with TV viewers as assistant district attorney Murray Slaken on the 1966 Burt Reynolds series Hawk. In films, Glover has frequently been cast as a redneck, a villain or both. His more notable screen roles include homosexual hit man Wint in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Duffy in Chinatown (1974) and Grady Coker in Walking Tall (1977). Between film assignments, Glover has taught acting classes. Bruce Glover is the father of leading man Crispin Glover.

Trivia: Actor James Hong was working as a nightclub comic in San Francisco and Hawaii when he was tapped for his first regular TV role: "Number One Son" Barry Chan in the Anglo-American co-production The New Adventures of Charlie Chan (1957). Hong would later appear as Frank Chen in Jigsaw John (1976) and Wang in Switch (1977-78). In theatrical features, he played characters bearing such flavorful monikers as Chew, Lo Pan and Bing Wong. He was seen as Faye Dunaway's butler in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), repeating the role (minus Faye) in the 1990 sequel The Two Jakes. One of his most sizeable screen roles was Lamont Cranston's brainy assistant Li Peng in The Shadow (1994). James Hong has also directed a brace of feature films, including 1979's The Girls Next Door and 1989's The Vineyard.

Trivia: Beulah Quo is the founder of one of America's first Asian-American repertory groups, the East West Players. The Emmy-nominated actress embarked on a lucrative film and television career following her film debut in 1955's Love Is a Many Splendored Thing. Born Beulah Kwoh in Stockton, CA, the future dialog coach-cum-actress earned a bachelor's degree in social welfare at the University of California, later obtaining a master's in sociology from the University of Chicago. Subsequently, Quo and her family relocated to China so she could find work as a teacher, but she and her family fled the country on a U.S. destroyer, just as the Communists took over shortly after World War II. It was while working as a sociology teacher at a small community college that Quo received news that director Henry King was searching for an Asian dialect coach for his film Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, and after meeting with the director, King cast Quo in a small role in the film. Her career took off shortly thereafter. Quo appeared in such films as Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962) and Chinatown (1974) before receiving an Emmy nomination for her role as a dowager empress in 1978's Meeting of Minds. Joining the cast of television's General Hospital in 1985, Quo would remain on the soap opera for six years. She also appeared in such films as Bad Girls (1994) and Brokedown Palace (1999). In her later years, Quo's final feature role was in the 2001 film Forbidden City. In late October of 2002, Beulah Quo died of heart failure in La Mesa, CA. She was 79.

Trivia: Tall, silver-maned character actor Roy Roberts began his film career as a 20th Century-Fox contractee in 1943. Nearly always cast in roles of well-tailored authority, Roberts was most effective when conveying smug villainy. As a hotel desk clerk in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), he suavely but smarmily refused to allow Jews to check into his establishment; nineteen years later, Roberts was back behind the desk and up to his old tricks, patronizingly barring a black couple from signing the register in Hotel (1966). As the forties drew to a close, Roberts figured into two of the key film noirs of the era; he was the carnival owner who opined that down-at-heels Tyrone Power had sunk so low because "he reached too high" at the end of Nightmare Alley (1947), while in 1948's He Walked By Night, Roberts enjoyed one of his few sympathetic roles as a psycho-hunting plainclothesman. And in the 3-D classic House of Wax, Roberts played the crooked business partner of Vincent Price, whose impulsive decision to burn down Price's wax museum has horrible consequences. With the role of bombastic Captain Huxley on the popular Gale Storm TV series Oh, Susanna (1956-1960), Gordon inaugurated his dignified-foil period. He later played long-suffering executive types on The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and The Lucy Show. Roy Roberts last appeared on screen as the mayor in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974).

Trivia: Formerly a schoolteacher, Texas-born Noble Willingham has been essaying crusty character roles since 1969. Willingham's resumé includes a brace of location-filmed Peter Bogdanovich films, The Last Picture Show (1971) and Paper Moon (1973), and the role of Clay Stone in both of Billy Crystal's City Slickers comedies. Among his TV-movie credits is the part of President James Knox Polk in 1985's Dream West. A regular on several TV series (The Ann Jillian Show, Texas Wheelers, Cutter to Houston, AfterMASH, When the Whistle Blows), Willingham is best known to 1990s viewers as Mr. Binford (of Binford Tools) in Home Improvement and C. D. Parker in Walker, Texas Ranger. Noble Willingham's most recent film assignments include Ace Ventura, Pet Detective (1994) Up Close and Personal (1996) and Space Jam (1996). In 2000, Willingham left Walker, Texas Ranger to run for Congress in Texas. After losing the election to his Democratic opponent, Max Sandlin, Willingham returned to acting with a supporting role in the Val Kilmer thriller Blind Horizon. Sadly, the part would be the actor's last. In early 2004, at the age of 72, Willingham passed away at home from natural causes.

Trivia: Encouraged by better-than-average success as a stage performer in such plays as Mister Roberts and The Seven Year Itch, American actor Rance Howard decided to try his luck in Hollywood. Talent, however, meant less than star appeal in Tinseltown, thus Howard was confined to small roles which took only minimal advantage of his abilities. Howard's wife Jean was also an actress, but retired to raise their son Ron (both mother and child appeared in the 1956 Western Frontier Woman). Ron was photogenic enough to attain supporting parts on various TV shows and films, leading to a regular role as Opie on The Andy Griffith Show (1960). Those cynics who believe that Rance Howard forced his son into acting in order to create a meal ticket are referred to a well-known anecdote concerning the earliest years of the Griffith program. Little Ron decided to test his value by throwing a temper tantrum -- whereupon Rance took the boy aside, gave him a spanking, and told his son that if he didn't want to act like a professional he'd have to go home and forget about acting. While Rance certainly did not rely on Ron's fame alone to get work (he remained a busy stage actor), it is true that Ron recommended his dad for supporting roles in such films as The Music Man (1962) and The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963), both of which featured the younger Howard. When child star Ronny Howard became A-list film director Ron Howard in the '80s he continued casting both dad Rance and younger brother Clint Howard in Splash (1984) and other films. Rance Howard remained a reliable general purpose actor well into the 2000s.

Trivia: A multi-talented actress/singer/comedienne, Philadelphia native Fritzi Burr's work spanned Broadway, film, and television. Maintaining a successful stint as an East Coast comedienne, the early '60s found the aspiring actress appearing frequently in vaudeville legends Smith & Dale's stage act before taking to the bright lights of Broadway in I Can Get it for You Wholesale and Funny Girl. Burr would land numerous film roles after relocating to Hollywood in the early '60s, appearing in such films as They Shoot Horses Don't They (1969), Chinatown (1974), and The Star Chamber (1983). In addition to her film work, Burr would also appear in such popular television shows as Seinfeld and Friends and frequently served as a hospital volunteer. On January 17, 2002, Fritzi Burr died of natural causes in Fort Myers, FL. She was 78.

Trivia: A popular nightclub performer, Charles Knapp occasionally accepted character roles in feature films. He became a New York stage actor shortly after WWII's end. In 1948, he moved West to launch a film career and made his debut in J.W. Coop (1971). Subsequent film appearances include Chinatown (1974), Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), The Frisco Kid (1979), and Blade Runner (1982). The portly actor frequently played officious types.

Trivia: A former prizefighter, Burt Young opted for a less injurious profession when he began taking acting lessons from Lee Strasberg. In films from 1971, Young reached a career pinnacle as Rocky Balboa's (Sylvester Stallone) contentious brother Paulie in the 1975 megahit Rocky. He earned one of the film's ten Oscar nominations, and went on to reprise the role in all four Rocky sequels. Young's subsequent film and TV work has been largely confined to pug-like supporting roles, though he did star in the 1978 TV movie Uncle Joe Shannon, which he also scripted. Additional Burt Young credits include the Broadway play Cuba and His Teddy Bear and the role of ex-marine collegiate Nick Chase in the TV sitcom Roomies (1987).

Trivia: A character actor, Lee DeBroux first appeared onscreen in the late '60s; he often plays rustics.

Trivia: Like his brothers Bill Vint and Alan Vint, American actor Jesse Vint got his start in "regional" films lensed in the Southwest for the drive-in crowd. Jesse has played mainstream roles in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) and in the 1980 TV movie Belle Starr (as outlaw Bob Dalton). Occasionally wandering to the other side of the cameras, Vint has functioned as writer, producer and director, often under the auspices of another "good ole boy" actor-turned-producer, Max Baer. Jesse Vint wrote and directed Another Chance, and produced and wrote Hometown USA, both of which graced small-town cinemas by the end of the 1970s.

Trivia: Robert Towne would prefer his appearance as the stick-like leading actor Edward Wain in the prententious Roger Corman post-apocalyptic effort The Last Woman on Earth (1960) be forgotten -- in addition to the film's screenplay, which was Towne's first. Despite this inauspicious beginning (and his follow-up starring appearance in Creature From the Haunted Sea [1961]), Towne appreciated the early opportunity afforded him by Corman, and remained with the producer/director to pen the screenplay for Tomb of Ligeia (1965) (two more scripts for Corman, A Time for Killing and Captain Nemo and the Underwater City, were heavily revised by others). From there, Towne could only go up, and this he did as script consultant for Warren Beatty's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and as full screenwriter for Villa Rides (1967). After one more acting turn in Drive, He Said (1971), Towne made a good living as a screenwriter and troubleshooting script doctor. Towne's output ranged from the salty profanities of The Last Detail (1967) to the insightful glances at Nixon-era mores in Shampoo (1968) to the misty mysticism of The Natural (1984) to the dewy-eyed romanticism of Warren Beatty's 1994 remake of Love Affair. In 1974, Towne won a Best Screenplay Academy Award for director Roman Polanski's Chinatown. This film contained one of the few totally unhappy endings in the Towne canon -- for the most part, he prefers upbeat denouements, to the extent of overhauling the endings for the screen versions of Bernard Malamud's The Natural and John Grisham's The Firm. In 1981, Robert Towne made his directorial debut with Personal Best; more successful was the second Towne-directed effort, 1988's Tequila Sunrise.

Trivia: A graduate of the Roger Corman school of fast-n-furious filmmaking, American cinematographer John A. Alonzo has been fortunate enough to be associated with some of the most significant films of the 1970s. He oversaw the photography of such classics as Harold and Maude (1971), Sounder (1972), Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and Norma Rae, and was co-photographer for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978). The ever-inventive Alonzo was the man whose 1974 Chinatown set the industry standard for the use of soft focus and saturated color to convey the "look" of the 1930s. He remained in demand into the 1980s and 1990s, shooting films as varied as the airborne actioner Blue Thunder (1981) and the cartoon/live action hybrid Cool World (1992). Thus far, Alonzo's only foray into film directing has been the engaging rock-n-roll comedy FM (1978).

Trivia: An extraordinarily prolific composer whose productivity and versatility rank him with the likes of Ennio Morricone, Jerry Goldsmith scored well over 200 films and television programs over a career spanning nearly half a century. Goldsmith's music, which has been used for just about every imaginable film and television genre, is known in part for the composer's use of bass drums and deliberately discordant "stings" during action or suspense sequences. These stylistic trademarks were put to use with great success in 1997, with Goldsmith's score for L.A. Confidential, for which he garnered Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, as well as a new generation of fans.A native of Los Angeles, where he was born on February 10, 1929, Goldsmith received classical training in piano and composition before studying film composition with Hollywood veteran Miklos Rozsa at the University of California. Much of Rozsa's stylistic influence was to stay with Goldsmith during his subsequent TV and radio work. After college, the young composer got a job with CBS Television's music department. He started out in the bottom ranks, working as a clerk typist, but soon was given the opportunity to put his talents to work. After writing music for various CBS radio shows, Goldsmith started scoring for television, providing music for shows like Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, Have Gun Will Travel, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and perhaps most memorably, The Twilight Zone.It was also during the 1950s that Goldsmith began composing for film: he made his uncredited debut with Don't Bother to Knock, a 1952 psychological drama starring Marilyn Monroe. The 1957 Western Black Patch was another early effort, done during Goldsmith's last years with CBS. In 1960, he was hired by legendary film composer Alfred Newman to work at Revue Studios and it was there that Goldsmith began one of the most productive stages of his career. Scoring his first major feature in 1962, Lonely Are the Brave, Goldsmith spent the rest of the decade working at an amazingly rapid pace: at the height of his productivity, he was estimated to write about six scores a week. Some highlights of this period include his music for Freud (a 1962 film that garnered Goldsmith his first Best Score Oscar nomination), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Stagecoach (1966), and Planet of the Apes (1968), the last of which he composed while wearing a monkey mask (and secured his third Best Score Oscar nomination for his efforts).In addition to endless employment opportunities, the following decade brought further critical acclaim and recognition for the composer. Supplying scores for no less than 50 films, Goldsmith received Best Score Academy Award nominations for six, including Patton (1970), the 1973 Steve McQueen/Dustin Hoffman action drama Papillon, Roman Polanski's classic film noir potboiler Chinatown (1974), and The Omen, a 1976 horror classic that netted Goldsmith an Academy Award. He also further endeared himself to sci-fi enthusiasts everywhere by composing music for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and Alien (also 1979).During the 1980s and 1990s, Goldsmith continued to work steadily, scoring at least two major films a year. Some of his better-known work included Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), the Rambo series, Total Recall (1990), Basic Instinct (1992), and L.A. Confidential. His work on the last film earned him particular acclaim: in addition to netting him his 17th Oscar nomination, the score placed Goldsmith on many music critics' "Year's Ten Best" lists and gave him recognition among a new generation of fans. The following year, he earned another Oscar nomination, for his score for Disney's animated Mulan, and continued to work prolifically. After scoring three other films that same year, Goldsmith provided the music for The Mummy in 1999, ably demonstrating that age had not slowed him down in the least. After ushering in the new millenium with scores for such features as Hollow Man, Along Came a Spider, The Sum of All Fears, and Looney Tunes: Back in Action, the aging composer's difficult struggle with cancer made it difficult to keep up the near feverish work pace that had seemingly defined his career. On July 21, 2004, mere months after celebrating all things Hollywood by providing the score for the 76th Annual Academy Awards, Goldsmith finally succumbed to the devastating effects of cancer. He was 75.