Trivia: Though he's had a very successful career as a television actor, tall, black-haired, and youthful-looking Scott Baio might be best remembered for dating seemingly every hot, blonde starlet to enter Hollywood. He made his first television appearance as a teen in 1976. He became a regular on the nostalgic sitcom Happy Days in 1977, playing the role of Fonzie's tough little cousin, Chachi, and became a favorite with many preteen girls. Later, he and fellow Happy Days cohort, Erin Moran, starred in the short-lived spin-off series Joanie Loves Chachi (1982-1983). When that failed, the two returned to their original series and remained with it through its demise in 1984. Baio was then cast in the lead of a new sitcom, Charles in Charge, as a conscientious young man who earns money for college by playing nanny to two lively teenage girls and their younger brother. The show ended in 1990, and the following year, Baio headlined another short-lived sitcom as the janitor/love interest on Baby Talk. In 1993, he played his first dramatic role in a series when he was cast opposite Dick Van Dyke in Diagnosis Murder. In the fall of 1997, Baio again returned to sitcom work with the Fox series Rewind in which he plays a marketing executive with a sense of déjà vu that leads him to return to his adolescent years during the '70s. Baio's movie work has been more sporadic. He made his first feature-film appearance as Bugsy in Bugsy Malone (1976). Most of his subsequent film work has been in such low-budget efforts as Skatetown (1979), Zapped (1982), and I Love New York (1988).In 2005, Baio took a recurring role on the cult hit Arrested Development, as lawyer Bob Loblaw. His deadpan delivery was a hit with audiences, as was the subtle in-joke of his appearing with fellow 80's teen star Jason Bateman. In 2007, Baio capitalized on his laundry list of hot and famous ex girlfriends with his own reality show, Scott Baio is 45 And Single. The series followed him as he faced up to his playboy past, working with a life coach to face up to his fear of marriage with the goal of proposing to his long-term girlfriend. The show was popular enough to create a follow-up series, Scott Baio is 46 and Pregnant.

Trivia: Born in Missouri, entertainer Dick Van Dyke was raised in Danville, Illinois, where repeated viewings of Laurel & Hardy comedies at his local movie palace inspired him to go into show business. Active in high school and community plays in his teens, Van Dyke briefly put his theatrical aspirations aside upon reaching college age. He toyed with the idea of becoming a Presbyterian minister; then, after serving in the Air Force during World War II, opened up a Danville advertising agency. When this venture failed, it was back to show biz, first as a radio announcer for local station WDAN, and later as half of a record-pantomime act called The Merry Mutes (the other half was a fellow named Philip Erickson). While hosting a TV morning show in New Orleans, Van Dyke was signed to a contract by the CBS network. He spent most of his time subbing for other CBS personalities and emceeing such forgotten endeavors as Cartoon Theatre. After making his acting debut as a hayseed baseball player on The Phil Silvers Show, Van Dyke left CBS to free-lance. He hosted a few TV game shows before his career breakthrough as co-star of the 1959 Broadway review The Girls Against the Boys. The following year, he starred in the musical comedy Bye Bye Birdie, winning a Tony Award for his portrayal of mother-dominated songwriter Albert Peterson (it would be his last Broadway show until the short-lived 1980 revival of The Music Man). In 1961, he was cast as comedy writer Rob Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, which after a shaky start lasted five seasons and earned its star three Emmies.He made his movie bow in the 1963 filmization of Bye Bye Birdie, then entered into a flexible arrangement with Walt Disney Studios. His best known films from that era include Mary Poppins (1964), Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN and The Comic, in which he played an amalgam of several self-destructive silent movie comedians. His TV specials remained popular in the ratings, and it was this fact that led to the debut of The New Dick Van Dyke Show in 1971. Despite the creative input of the earlier Dick Van Dyke Show's maven Carl Reiner, the later series never caught on, and petered out after three seasons. A chronic "people pleaser," Van Dyke was loath to display anger or frustration around his co-workers or fans, so he began taking solace in liquor; by 1972, he had become a full-fledged alcoholic. Rather than lie to his admirers or himself any longer, he underwent treatment and publicly admitted his alcoholism -- one of the first major TV stars ever to do so. Van Dyke's public confession did little to hurt his "nice guy" public image, and, now fully and permanently sober, he continued to be sought out for guest-star assignments and talk shows. In 1974, he starred in the TV movie The Morning After, playing an ad executive who destroys his reputation, his marriage and his life thanks to booze. After that Van Dyke, further proved his versatility when he began accepting villainous roles, ranging from a cold-blooded wife murderer in a 1975 Columbo episode to the corrupt district attorney in the 1990 film Dick Tracy. He also made several stabs at returning to weekly television, none of which panned out--until 1993, when he starred as Dr. Mark Sloan in the popular mystery series Diagnosis Murder. He made a few more movie appearances after Diagnosis Murder came to an end, most notably as a retired security guard in the hit family film Night at the Museum. As gifted at writing and illustrating as he is at singing, dancing and clowning, Van Dyke has penned two books, Faith, Hope and Hilarity and Those Funny Kids. From 1992 to 1994, he served as chairman of the Nickelodeon cable service, which was then sweeping the ratings by running Dick Van Dyke Show reruns in prime time. Van Dyke is the brother of award-winning TV personality Jerry Van Dyke, and the father of actor Barry Van Dyke.

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: During the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, Patrick Duffy quickly evolved into one of prime time's old standbys for handsome, sturdy, dependable, and reliable leading men. Two key patterns hallmarked the majority of Duffy's career choices: he culled his broadest appeal and most substantial workload on television in lieu of the big screen, and exceedingly rare were those occasions in which he played a villain. In terms of audience recognition, Duffy maintained his strongest ties with two ongoing series roles -- his famous portrayal of Southfork Ranch stalwart Bobby Ewing on the blockbuster CBS prime-time soap Dallas (1978-1991), and a subsequent tenure as Frank Lambert on the ABC "TGIF" Friday-night sitcom Step by Step (1991-1998). Born born March 17, 1949, in Townsend, MT, as the second child of two saloonkeepers, Duffy grew up in dire poverty. He attended high school in Everett, WA, then attended the actor's training program at the nearby University of Washington, graduating in 1971. The actor relocated to Southern California and began receiving screen credit only a few years after college, initially with roles in telemovies such as the 1976 Last of Mrs. Lincoln and the lead in the short-lived television series Man from Atlantis (as a half-man, half-fish). Dallas, of course, brought Duffy his big break, and as its ratings shot skyward, turning it into not simply the number one program on the air but an international phenomenon, Duffy's character became intertwined with the program's legacy. The series' premise is by now iconic -- it dealt with the Ewing family, a wealthy Texas oil clan with a history rooted in scandal. Its patriarch, John Ross "Jock" Ewing Sr. (Jim Davis), had driven himself into fabulous wealth by cheating his business partner out of a fortune and his one true love, with whom he started a family and launched an entire oil dynasty. Passing on the family torch were three sons: J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), the megalomaniacal evil brother; Bobby Ewing (Duffy), the decent and moral brother, who had married the daughter of his father's partner; and the weak-willed Gary (Ted Shackelford), who grappled continually with emotional problems and quickly snagged his own series.As Bobby, Duffy attained popularity second only to that of co-star Hagman -- popularity that prompted national headlines when Duffy opted to leave the program at the end of the 1984-1985 season. Series producer created and aired a scenario where he was killed by a hit-and-run driver, but the audience demand for Bobby Ewing grew so overwhelming during the following season that -- in an obvious bid to re-boost ratings and extend Dallas' longevity -- Hagman personally summoned Duffy to re-join the series. The writers then reposited the entire 1985-1986 season as the bad dream of Bobby's on-camera wife, Pam (Victoria Principal)! It may have seemed far-fetched to many, but as an attempt to bring the actor back to the program and draw a larger audience, it worked like a charm.Not long after Dallas finally wrapped in May 1991, Duffy turned up on ABC's aforementioned Step by Step, a kind of unofficial update of The Brady Bunch; he played Frank Lambert, a divorced Wisconsin contractor with several kids who impulsively married a widowed beautician (Suzanne Somers) with several tykes of her own. Episodes dealt with the complications wrought when the two clans moved under the same roof together. As produced by William Bickley and Michael Warren, that program also connected with a large audience. It folded in 1998.Duffy acted in several Dallas telemovies during Step by Step's run, and then ushered in guest roles on numerous additional series, including Touched by an Angel, Justice League, and Family Guy. Additional made-for-television feature credits in the late '90s and early to mid-2000s included such outings as Heart of Fire (1997), Don't Look Behind You (1998), Desolation Canyon (2006), and Falling in Love with the Girl Next Door (2006). Duffy landed another series assignment in 2006 with an ongoing role -- that of Stephen Logan Sr. -- on the CBS daytime drama The Bold and the Beautiful.

Trivia: Was enrolled in ballet school at age 8 by her foster mother. Received a full scholarship to the American Ballet School in New York. Danced professionally with numerous ballet companies, including the American Ballet Theater II, Ballet Hispanico of New York, Contemporary Ballet, Twyla Tharp Workshop and the Julliard School of Music Dance Extension Program with Anthony Tudor. Began acting while pursuing a modeling career and landed a recurring role on The Cosby Show. Originated the character Drucilla on The Young and the Restless in 1990 and won several NAACP Image Awards and three Daytime Emmy nominations for her portrayal. Worked simultaneously on The Young and the Restless and Diagnosis Murder. Authored a memoir in 2007 titled The Women Who Raised Me as a tribute to the women who helped her through foster care. Her real-life son, Jasper Armstrong Marsalis, played her child on Diagnosis Murder. Founded the Rowell Foster Children's Positive Plan, an organization dedicated to providing foster children opportunities in the arts and sports.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from 18 Again (1988).

Trivia: British stage and film actor Ian Ogilvy was able to obtain leading-man roles in both mediums despite his relatively short, slight frame. His entree into films was by way of such horrific productions as The Sorcerers (1967) and The Witchfinder General (1968). Casual American TV viewers first became aware of Ogilvy through his appearances in such Masterpiece Theatre serials as "The Spoils of Poynton" and "Upstairs Downstairs;" and in 1978, the actor stepped into the Simon Templar role vacated by Roger Moore in TV's The Return of the Saint. Ian Ogilvy also appeared as Reginald Hewitt in the American-produced daytime drama Generations, which ran from 1989 to 1991.

Trivia: Fans of American actress Melora Hardin who associate her exclusively with her characterization of Jan Levinson-Gould -- Michael Scott's stone-faced manager and sometimes lover, on the smash NBC series The Office -- may be surprised and delighted to discover several exciting facts about the history of her career. First, her work stretches back many decades, into her primary school years, encompassing everything from Disney movies to prime-time series dramas of the '80s, '90s, and 2000s to commercials to acclaimed feature films; she directs and edits films as well. Second, Hardin moonlights as an accomplished and gifted singer/songwriter -- a nightclub chanteuse known for sultry cabaret-style numbers, who has issued a number of acclaimed albums of her own material, including Meloradrama and Purr. And finally, this comedian's wit extends far beyond her crack-comic onscreen timing. A parodist who loves to play with her own image, Hardin runs her own website, with a series of funny-sexy (yet inexplicit) cheesecake photos that serve as throwbacks to the peek-a-boo erotica days of the mid-'50s while subtly parodying and calling attention to those setups.Given both of her parents' long tenures in film and television (her father is character actor Jerry Hardin and her mother is acting coach Diane Hill Hardin), drama came preternaturally for Hardin, and she commenced work as a child star at age six. One of her earliest assignments involved plugging Peak Toothpaste on a television commercial; she later joined the ensemble cast of a live-action children's program on NBC (circa 1977, at age ten) called Cliffwood Avenue Kids, which (as late-Gen X television babies may recall) typically aired during early weekday evenings after The Flintstones. A series of failed pilots ensued for Hardin, beginning with the late-'70s drama Thunder and encompassing over a dozen others over the next two decades.Hardin debuted cinematically at age 11, with a high-profile role in the goofball Disney comedy The North Avenue Irregulars, opposite Susan Clark and Cloris Leachman and directed by Hogan's Heroes vet Bruce Bilson. She followed this up with many additional roles in A- and B-list features throughout the '80s and '90s, but while her work shone, the films themselves often failed to catch fire; her resumé includes such forgettable fare as Iron Eagle (1985) and Soul Man (1986). A number of pictures, however, marked happy exceptions: Hardin contributed a small onscreen singing role to the fine Disney period adventure The Rocketeer (1991), and several of her songs highlighted the film's soundtrack. She also appeared in Clint Eastwood's enormously underrated, oft-humorous 1997 crime thriller Absolute Power (as Christy Sullivan, the homicide victim of Gene Hackman's lecherous president), and made a solid contribution to the satire Thank You for Smoking, opposite Aaron Eckhart.Hardin fared particularly well on television, with single- and dual-episode appearances over the years in such dramas as Little House on the Prairie, Quincy, M.E., and Murder, She Wrote. The Office, of course, represented a watershed moment for Hardin. Adapted skillfully by Greg Daniels from the British series of the same name by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the NBC sitcom follows the colorful employees of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company's Scranton branch -- led by one Michael Scott (Steve Carell), a sweet-natured but desperately lonely and outrageously uncouth manager. Low-key, iconoclastic, and unconventional, the program eschewed a laugh track and underplayed (to the nth degree) every one of its gags, relying on a bevy of character eccentricities to procure laughs. The episodes had Hardin (as Michael's manager) typically playing straight man to Carell's goofball, and saw the unlikeliest of employer-employee romances blossoming between them over the course of the first two seasons. Thanks to an extraordinary cast and crew, The Office instantly shot up to qualify as one of NBC's highest rated new series after its March 2005 debut; many proclaimed it as the funniest American sitcom since Seinfeld.Meanwhile, Hardin continued to hone her craft in other arenas. She first helmed the regional theatrical production of friend Adria Tennor's one-woman show Strip Search. Tagged as "Love and a 12-Foot Pole," and authored by and starring Tennor, this colorful yet surprisingly touching seriocomedy recounts the tale of a woman who undertakes a journey of self-discovery and ultimately finds her dying passion in strip dancing classes. Hardin then directed and edited an independent film entitled You that husband Gildart Jackson scripted. The motion picture stars Jackson and both of Hardin's parents, as well as Joely Fisher and The Office's Kate Flannery.In 2006, Hardin returned to big-screen work, signing with Fox Atomic and Tapestry Films to co-star in the Tom Brady-directed sports comedy The Comebacks. The film relays the story of a football coach (David Koechner) commissioned to whip a down-and-out football team into shape. In 2007, she joined the cast of The Dukes, which follows a group of down-and-out musicians attempting an ill-fated heist.

Trivia: Lead actress Denise Crosby has been on screen since the '80s. She is the granddaughter of singer-actor Bing Crosby.

Trivia: An actor whose tall, rangy build and boyish good looks have made him a natural for comic roles, Diedrich Bader was born in Alexandria, VA, on Christmas Eve 1966; his father, William Bader, was Chief of Staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Carter administration, and his mother, Gretta Bader, was a sculptor of note. When Bader was two, he and his family moved to Paris, France, where the boy was exposed to a steady diet of classic American comedies; young Bader was especially fond of Charlie Chaplin, and appeared on-stage for the first time at the age of four, imitating the Little Tramp at a revival theater during an unexpected intermission after a rare Chaplin film jammed in the projector. Bader and his family returned to the United States in time for him to enter high school, and he later attended the North Carolina School for the Arts. While vacationing in Santa Fe, NM, during spring break, Bader met a casting agent who lined up an audition for a small role in a television pilot. Bader ended up winning the leading role instead, and while the pilot never sold, it did prompt Bader to relocate to Los Angeles and begin pursuing an acting career full-time. He began landing guest spots on episodic television shows, including Cheers, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. In 1993, Bader was cast as the Searcher on the television series Danger Theater, a short-lived spoof of action-adventure programs. Penelope Spheeris, who directed the Danger Theater episodes, remembered Bader when casting for her film The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), based on the popular sitcom of the '60s and '70s. Bader won the role of cheerful but slow-witted Jethro Bodine, and his performance was one of the comic highlights of the film. The movie significantly raised Bader's visibility, and in 1995 he was cast as the logically challenged Oswald on The Drew Carey Show. Bader's success on The Drew Carey Show led to notable supporting roles in motion pictures, such as Office Space and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back; he also began doing voice work for a number of animated television projects, including Pepper Ann, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, and Kim Possible. In his private life, Bader married actress Dulcy Rogers in 1998. As his run on The Drew Carey Show continued, he also appeared regularly in feature film such as The Country Bears, Napoleon Dynamite, Eurotrip, and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, as well as animated films like Ice Age and Bolt. In 2010 he landed a recurring role on the short-lived NBC sitcom Outsourced.