Trivia: At first intending to become a minister, actor/monologist Andy Griffith (born June 1st, 1926) became active with the Carolina Playmakers, the prestigious drama-and-music adjunct of the University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill. He spent several seasons portraying Sir Walter Raleigh in the summertime outdoor drama The Lost Colony, spending the rest of the years as a schoolteacher. Griffith continued performing fitfully as an after-dinner speaker on the men's club circuit, developing hilariously bucolic routines on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to football. Under the aegis of agent/producer Richard O. Linke, Griffith returned to acting, attaining stardom in the role of bumptious Air Force rookie Will Stockdale in the TV and Broadway productions of No Time For Sergeants. Before committing Sergeants to film, Griffith made his movie debut in director Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, in which he portrayed an outwardly folksy but inwardly vicious TV personality (patterned, some say, after Arthur Godfrey).After filming Face in the Crowd, No Time for Sergeants and Onionhead for Warner Bros. during the years 1957 and 1958, Griffith starred in a 1959 Broadway musical version of Destry Rides Again; as an added source of income, Griffith ran a North Carolina supermarket. On February 15, 1960 he first appeared as Andy Taylor, the laid-back sheriff of Mayberry, North Carolina, on an episode of The Danny Thomas Show. This one-shot was of course the pilot film for the Emmy-winning The Andy Griffith Show, in which Griffith starred from 1960 through 1968. Eternally easygoing on camera, Griffith, who owned 50% of the series, ruled his sitcom set with an iron hand, though he was never as hard on the other actors as he was on himself; to this day, he remains close to fellow Griffith stars Don Knotts and Ron Howard. An unsuccessful return to films with 1969's Angel in My Pocket was followed by an equally unsuccessful 1970 TV series Headmaster. For the next 15 years, Griffith confined himself to guest-star appearances, often surprising his fans by accepting cold-blooded villainous roles. In 1985, he made a triumphal return to series television in Matlock, playing a folksy but very crafty Southern defense attorney. A life-threatening disease known as Gillian-Barre syndrome curtailed his activities in the late 1980s, but as of 1995 Andy Griffith was still raking in the ratings with his infrequent Matlock two-hour specials. The actor worked on and off throughout the late nineties and early 2000s, and co-starred with Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion in the romantic comedy Waitress in 2007.

Trivia: Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Cleveland, David Birney was the son of an FBI agent, a fact kept from him until he was ten years old. A short, underweight kid, Birney built up his confidence by playing football and participating in school plays. Entering Dartmouth as a literature major, Birney transferred to the U.C.L.A. theater department. Drafted during the Vietnam War, he sang and danced in a special-services troupe. After his tour of duty, Birney made his professional acting debut at Virginia's Barter Theater in 1965. Two years later, he was working with Joe Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, and shortly thereafter starred in the Broadway production Summertree. His first steady TV work was as a regular on the daytime serial Love Is a Many Splendored Thing. In 1972, Birney broke into prime-time as Jewish cabdriver Bernie Steinberg in the popular sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie. While the series was withdrawn due to protests from religious groups who frowned upon its mixed-marriage premise, Bridget Loves Bernie was hardly a total loss so far as Birney was concerned; in 1974, he married his B Loves B co-star, Meredith Baxter, a union that endured for nearly two decades. Though he preferred stage work (his favorite parts included Hamlet and Henry Higgins), Birney continued making TV and film appearances so that he could afford to accept the occasional high-prestige but low-salaried theatrical role. David Birney's series-TV assignments have included The Adams Chronicles (1976, as John Quincy Adams), Serpico (1977, in the title role), Glitter (1984), St. Elsewhere (1982-1983 season, as Dr. Ben Samuels), and Master of the Game (1987).

Trivia: Lead actress Patricia Charbonneau was first seen on screen in Desert Hearts (1986).

Trivia: Probably best known as Jim Walsh, the father of Brandon and Brenda on Beverly Hills 90210, actor James Eckhouse hadn't yet set his sites on acting when he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976. He didn't start appearing onscreen until the early '80s, when he began scoring minor roles in films like Will There Really Be a Morning? and Trading Places. Then, in 1990, Eckhouse was cast in Beverly Hills 90210 when it was a brand new series. It turned out to be a major hit, and Eckhouse stayed with the show for the next eight years. Afterward, he maintained a thriving acting career, making appearances on a wide variety of popular TV shows such as Without a Trace, Dharma & Greg, and CSI.

Trivia: Sturdy, reliable character player Kene Holliday specialized in portrayals of vociferous everymen, with a strong emphasis on television work. Holliday landed one of his first major roles in the small-screen blockbuster Roots: The Next Generations (as Detroit, one of the direct descendants of the iconic Kunta Kinte), and subsequently divided his time between occasional big-screen features (No Small Affair, The Philadelphia Experiment), series work (with many appearances on Matlock), and TV movies, such as the 1988 Dangerous Company. Holliday tackled a rare yet effective lead role in the much-anticipated 2007 drama Great World of Sound, as Clarence, a well-meaning record producer in training who discovers that his parent company isn't exactly all that it professes to be.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from 1985.

Trivia: Having made her feature film debut in Sex and the College Girl (1964), blonde actress Julie Sommars went on to appear in television movies of the '70s and in the occasional feature film through the mid-'80s. Fans of the television drama Matlock (1986-1995) will recognize her for playing Julie March.

Trivia: Educated at the University of Pennsylvania, actor Philip Sterling made his first Broadway appearance in the 1955 musical Silk Stockings. Sterling was later spotlighted in such New York stage productions as Summertree, An Evening with Richard Nixon and Broadway Bound. In films from 1969's Me, Natalie, he has generally been cast as father figures or corporate bigwigs. His more notable film roles include Mr. Lipman in Joan Micklin Silver's Hester Street (1975) and Hollywood mogul Joseph Schenck in the 1980 TV movie Rita Hayworth: The Love Goddess. In addition, Philip Sterling has made numerous appearances in episodic television; in 1975, he co-starred with Wayne Rogers in the summer-replacement series City of Angels.