Trivia: The second-oldest child of the Wayans Brothers comic dynasty (brother of Damon, Marlon, Shawn, Kim, and Dwayne Wayans), "renaissance" man Keenen Ivory Wayans retains the highest profile among his siblings as a director and entrepreneur, and claims a brief but spectacular career, which qualifies him as a bona fide role model to young African-Americans interested in carving like paths in comedy or entertainment. A graduate of the Tuskegee Institute, Wayans entered the comic arena in the mid-'80s by stepping up to the mike and honing his stand-up act, but he later branched out into movies, by scripting the low-budget black satire Hollywood Shuffle (1987) and the aptly-titled comedy vehicle Eddie Murphy: Raw (1987), both for director pal Robert Townsend. Wayans broke through to a larger audience with I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), a rollicking parody of 1970s blaxploitation flicks which he directed, produced, and starred in -- as Jack Spade, a black war vet who heads home to the ghetto, only to discover that his brother Junebug died from an "OG" (or overdose of gold chains). For credibility and weight, Wayans intuitively cast blaxploitation vets Isaac Hayes, Bernie Casey, and Jim Brown in leading roles; the film also features Chris Rock's debut. In 1988, Wayans created, produced, and starred in the Fox network's iconoclastic, influential, cutting-edge comedy-variety series In Living Color, which not only made "Wayans" a household name (synonymous with African-American comedy), but also solidified the stardom of comedians Jamie Foxx and the rubber-faced Jim Carrey (who, with his Fire Marshall Bill character, appeared as the ensemble's obligatory white schmuck). A dispute over the show erupted between Wayans and Fox in late 1992, as Wayans felt that the network was overrunning In Living Color in syndication; he argued that it would reduce the program's longevity. Yet Fox refused to back down. Consequently, the whole Wayans family left the program, leaving Jim Carrey center stage. In Living Color lasted two additional seasons, and wrapped in late summer 1994. For several years, Wayans retained a low profile (save limited involvement with straight-faced actioners like The Glimmer Man), but bounced back in 2000 with the multimillion-dollar box-office champion Scary Movie. Initially a parody of Wes Craven's Scream series, the film spawned three sequels, in 2001, 2003, and 2006 respectively; Wayans abandoned the franchise after Scary Movie 2, by which point, the films had expanded their satirical scope to include non-horror pictures and other elements of popular culture. In 2004, Wayans directed the farce White Chicks, about two black FBI agents, Marcus and Kevin (played respectively by the director's brothers, Marlon and Shawn), who disguise themselves as Caucasian sorority girls to foil a kidnapping plot. Despite scattered favorable notices, most critics despised the picture (Roger Ebert remarked, "Here is a film so dreary and conventional that it took an act of will to keep me in the theater"), but it soared at the box and became one of the top grossers for several weekends. The three brothers re-teamed for a follow-up (as co-producers and co-screenwriters, with Keenen directing) for the crass 2006 comedy Little Man, a kind of Clifford remake that revamps the adult-in-the-child's-body concept. Marlon plays a dwarf criminal, Calvin, who -- in an effort to retrieve a diamond he has stolen -- takes advantage of his size by masking himself as a baby and hiding out in the home of a wannabe dad (Shawn Wayans).

Trivia: The son of a Czech-American golf pro, Jon Voight was active in student theatricals in high school and at Catholic University. In 1960 he began studying privately with Neighborhood Playhouse mentor Sanford Meisner, and made his off-Broadway debut that same year in O Oysters, receiving a daunting review which opined that he could "neither walk nor talk." Fortunately, Voight persevered, and in 1961 took over the role of "singing Nazi" Rolf in the Broadway hit The Sound of Music (his Liesl was Laurie Peters, who became his first wife).Blessed with handsome, Nordic features, Voight kept busy as a supporting player on such TV series as Gunsmoke, Coronet Blue, and NYPD, and in 1966 spent a season with the California National Shakespeare Festival. The following year, he won a Theatre World Award for his stage performance in That Summer, That Fall. Thus, by the time he became an "overnight" star in the role of wide-eyed hustler Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy (1969), he had nearly a decade's worth of experience under his belt. The success of Midnight Cowboy, which earned Voight an Oscar nomination, prompted a fast-buck distributor to ship out a double feature of two never-released mid-'60s films: Fearless Frank, filmed in 1965, starred Voight as a reluctant superhero, while Madigan's Millions was a 1968 turkey featuring Voight's Cowboy co-star (and longtime friend) Dustin Hoffman.Entering the 1970s with dozens of producers clamoring for his services, Voight refused to accept roles that banked merely on his youth and good looks. Instead, he selected such challenging assignments as crack-brained Army officer Milo Minderbinder in Catch 22 (1970), a political activist known only as "A" in The Revolutionary (also 1970), reluctant rugged individualist Ed Gentry in Deliverance (1972), and real-life teacher/novelist Pat Conroy in Conrack (1974). In 1978, he won both the Oscar and the Cannes Film Festival award for his portrayal of paraplegic Vietnam veteran Luke Martin in Hal Ashby's Coming Home. The following year, he earned additional acclaim for his work in the remake of The Champ.Devoting increasing amounts of time to his various sociopolitical causes in the 1980s and 1990s, Voight found it more and more difficult to fit film roles into his busy schedule. A reunion project with Ashby, on the godawful gambling comedy Lookin' to Get Out (produced 1980, released 1982), failed dismally, with many reviewers complaining about Voight's terrible, overmodulated performance, and the paper-thin script, which the actor himself wrote. Voight weathered the storm, however, and enjoyed box-office success as star of the 1983 weeper Table for Five. He also picked up another Oscar nomination for Andrei Konchalovsky's existential thriller Runaway Train (1985), and acted in such socially-conscious TV movies as Chernobyl: The Final Warning (1991) and The Last of His Tribe (1992). He also produced Table for Five and scripted 1990's Eternity. Voight kept busy for the remainder of the decade, appearing in such films as Michael Mann's Heat (1995), Mission: Impossible (1996), and The General, a 1998 collaboration with Deliverance director John Boorman, for which Voight won acclaim in his role as an Irish police inspector. During the same period of time, a bearded Voight also essayed a wild one-episode cameo on Seinfeld - as himself - with a scene that required him to bite the hand of Cosmo Kramer from a parked vehicle. In 1999, Voight gained an introduction to a new generation of fans, thanks to his role as James Van Der Beek's megalomaniacal football coach in the hit Varsity Blues, later appearing in a handful of other films before teaming onscreen with daughter Angelina Jolie for Tomb Raider in 2001. After essaying President Roosevelt later that same year in Pearl Harbor, Voight went for laughs in Ben Stiller's male-model comedy Zoolander, though his most pronounced role of 2001 would come in his Oscar nominated performance as iconic newsman Howard Cosell in director Michael Mann's Mohammad Ali biopic, Ali.Taken collectively, all of Voight's aformentioned roles during the mid-late 1990s demonstrated a massive rebound, from the gifted lead of '70s American classics to a character actor adept at smaller and more idiosyncratic character roles in A-list Hollywood fare ( the very same transition, for instance, that Burt Reynolds was wrongly predicted to be making when he signed to do Breaking In back in 1989). To put it another way: though Voight rarely received first billing by this point, his volume of work per se soared high above that of his most active years during the '70s. The parts grew progressively more interesting as well; Voight was particularly memorable, for instance, in the Disney comedy-fantasy Holes, as Mr. Sir, the cruel, sadistic right-hand-man to camp counselor Sigourney Weaver, who forces packs of young boys to dig enormous desert pits beneath the blazing sun for a mysterious reason. Voight then signed for a series of parts under the aegis of longtime-fan Jerry Bruckheimer, including the first two National Treasure installments (as John Patrick Henry) and - on a higher-profiled note - the audience-rouser Glory Road (2005), about one of the first all-black basketball teams in the U.S.; in that picture, Voight plays Adolph Rupp, the infamous University of Kentucky coach (nicknamed 'Baron of the Bluegrass') with an all-white team vying against the competitors at the center of the story.In 2007, Voight tackled roles in two very different high-profile films: he played one of the key characters in Michael Bay's live-action extravaganza Transformers, and portrayed a Mormon bishop who perishes in a Brigham Young-instigated massacre, in the period drama September Dawn, directed by Christopher Cain (Young Guns. He appeared in 24: Redemption, and became a part of that show's regular cast for its seventh season. Voight is the father of Angelina Jolie, and has often been the subject of tabloid coverage because of their occasionally fraught public bickering.

Trivia: From busking to blockbusters to small-screen crime drama, worldly actress Jill Hennessey has proven herself as an actress with talent to spare. As easy as it may be to see only her dark beauty, don't mistake the multilingual Hennessey as a one trick pony; she's also established herself as a successful restaurateur and a talented musician. Hennessey was born three minutes after her identical twin sister, Jacqueline, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in November of 1969. Her parents divorced when she was only a young girl, and her grandmother played a large part in raising her and her sister. It was during this time that young Hennessey took up cooking in order to help care for her family, and her passion for food would eventually lead her to open Hennessey's Tavern in Northvale, NJ, after establishing herself as an actress. Hennessey moved to New York following her graduation from Ontario's Grand River Collegiate, and for a time, she busked in the N.Y.C. subway, singing and playing the guitar for money. Though her career in entertainment may not have taken off quickly, it was only a matter of time before she found success. In 1988, both Hennessey and her sister got their first breaks with small roles in director David Cronenberg's acclaimed chiller Dead Ringers. In the following few years, she would repeatedly turn up on the small screen in Friday the 13th: The Series and The Hitchhiker. A three-year stint on television's popular Law & Order as ADA Claire Kincaid gained the rising starlet much exposure, and indie credit came with a supporting role in director Mary Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol. After roles in A Smile Like Yours and Most Wanted made 1997 a memorable year for her, Hennessey took the lead opposite pop star-turned-actor Jon Bon Jovi in the 1998 drama Row Your Boat. Subsequent films such as Komodo may have done little to advance Hennessey's career as a serious thespian, but she expanded into writing and directing with her all-star comedy The Acting Class in 2000. With more roles coming her way every day, Hennessey took on the daunting task of portraying none other that Jackie Kennedy in the 2001 miniseries Jackie, Ethel, Joan: The Women of Camelot. Later that year she took the lead role in the small-screen drama Crossing Jordan, and it seemed as if she had finally arrived when the show proved to be a success, running for six years.Hennessy would wpend the next several years appearing in a number or projects, like the horse racing series Luck.

Trivia: It took 18 years of voice lessons for Paul Sorvino to console himself to the fact that an operatic career was beyond his reach. Having done some acting while attending the American Music and Dramatic Academy, Sorvino decided to pursue the theatre full-time, continuing his studies at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his Broadway debut as a constable in the 1964 musical Bajour, and six years later appeared in his first film, Where's Poppa. His stardom was secured when he received an avalanche of critical praise for his performance as Phil Romano in the 1972 Broadway play That Championship Season, a role he repeated in the 1981 film version. A convincing heavy in such films as Goodfellas and Dick Tracy, Sorvino has been even more effective in comedy, notably as the Reverend Willie Williams, a flamboyant Jimmy Swaggart takeoff in Carl Reiner's Oh, God (1978). And in the 1976 Elliott Gould-Diane Keaton vehicle I Will, I Will...For Now, Sorvino served up a near-autobiographical vignette in which he tearfully mimed to a recording of I Pagliacci. Squeezing as many TV appearances into his schedule as possible, Sorvino has starred in the weekly series We'll Get By (1975, as George Platt), Bert D'Angelo/Superstar (1976, in the title role) and The Oldest Rookie (1987, as Detective Ike Porter). In 1991, he took over from George Dzundza on the popular series Law and Order, and in 1993 he subbed for the late Raymond Burr in a Perry Mason TV movie. Additional scattered TV credits have included sporadic appearances as Bruce Willis' dad in Moonlighting, and the "Lamont" counterpart in the never-aired original pilot for Sanford and Son. Possessed of seemingly inexhaustible versatility, Sorvino played Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995). Despite his many on-camera commitments, Sorvino has remained active in the theatre as both an actor and director. Paul Sorvino is the father of Oscar-winning actress Mira Sorvino. In the years to come, Sorvino would remain active on screen, appearing in films like The Cooler and Mr. 3000. In 2014, he guest-starred on the comedy The Goldbergs, playing Jeff Garlin's semi-estranged father.

Trivia: Eric Roberts is an acquired taste: those watching his movies fall into two distinct camps -- they either love him and consider him one of Hollywood's most intense and underrated actors, or they loathe him and consider him a pretentious, shameless ham. Both viewpoints are not without merit for Roberts has seen many ups and downs in his career. Tall and dark-haired, with a chiseled face, swarthy complexion, and arresting eyes, the young Roberts had the look of a classic movie rebel and off-screen displayed an arrogance and self-possession coupled with a tendency toward womanizing, drug abuse, and behavior that created a bad boy image on and off the screen. A serious car accident roughened his facial features and led to the second phase of his career during the '80s in which he primarily played villains; he spent the third phase during the late '90s trying to establish himself as a character actor. Growing up in Atlanta, GA, Roberts was no stranger to actors and the theater as his parents ran a successful acting and writing school from their home. A terrible stutterer as a child, Roberts and his father discovered that he could speak normally if he memorized his speeches ahead of time. Thus Roberts participated in his father's classes as a form of therapy. It was while watching English character actor Robert Donat during a late-night showing of Goodbye Mr. Chips that Roberts became inspired to become a movie actor. He made his acting debut at age five playing a cripple in a locally produced Saturday morning TV show, The Little Pioneers. He also performed for poor kids on his father's "showmobile." Roberts was quite close to his father, who taught him the spiritual side of acting, but after his parents divorced, became estranged from his mother, who married a man Roberts detested. He was however, a loving brother to his younger sisters, Julia and Lisa, both of whom became actresses. Roberts began experimenting with drugs at age 11 and by 13 was an avowed pot smoker. Later, he admitted that smoking dope was a way of coping with his broken family and that the drug in many ways arrested his emotional development. During his late teens, Roberts' father sacrificed much to send him to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. By the time he finished training, Roberts was a hardcore Method actor, something that somewhat hindered his personal life as he was unable to easily disassociate from his characters after appearing in a film. In 1976, Roberts' first break was portraying Ted Bancroft in the daily soap Another World. He disliked the job and left to work off-Broadway until agent Bill Treusch discovered him and helped Roberts land the role of a young man who is crowned a gypsy leader by his dying grandfather in King of the Gypsies. The film flopped at the box office, but like his two subsequent films, it has become a cult favorite among video fans. Roberts then appeared in a television movie before starring his next feature as a handsome sailor who falls for Texas divorcée Sissy Spacek in The Raggedy Man (1981). In June that year, Roberts was involved in a serious car crash while driving home from visiting his much older lover Sandy Dennis. He was comatose for three days afterwards with a bruised brain and much facial trauma, a broken collarbone, and an injured hand. No longer suitable for the same roles as before, Roberts bounced back with what became his most famous role, that of the sleazy Paul Snider, the man who killed actress Dorothy Stratten, in Bob Fosse's disturbing Star 80 (1983). The actor made a chilling villain and after playing another bad guy in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), found himself typecast. Roberts proved well suited to those roles and received an Oscar nomination for playing an escaped convict in Runaway Train (1985). After that, Roberts chose quick money over artistic integrity and played in a long series of B-movies and direct-to-video fare; while he disappeared from mainstream view, he still maintained a loyal following. Meanwhile the career of his sister Julia Roberts, who made her debut co-starring opposite Roberts in Blood Red (1988), became the most popular female star of the late '80s. Though both were in Hollywood, the formerly close siblings argued and have remained bitter and estranged. In 1987, a drugged Roberts was arrested for harassing a woman and for striking a police officer. He spent 36 hours in jail, pleaded guilty for harassment, and had all other charges dropped. In 1991, he made Hollywood news for a bitter breakup with his live-in girlfriend, Kelly Cunningham. He lost the battle for custody of their daughter, Emma. The next year he married again. Careerwise, Roberts' tempestuous personality and lifestyle did little to make him bankable to studios. In 1995, Roberts gave up drugs and has worked on becoming a more ingratiating, congenial person. That year he made a comeback with his first romantic lead in It's My Party, playing an AIDS-afflicted homosexual who hosts one last bash for family and friends before committing suicide. His hope was that the film would allow him to return to his original dream of becoming a great character actor. In 1996, he played the Master in a new installment of the long-running Dr. Who saga.

Trivia: Tall, straight-laced American actor Robert Culp parlayed his appearance and demeanor into a series of clean-cut character roles, often (though not always) with a humorous, mildly sarcastic edge. He was perhaps best known for three accomplishments: his turn as a Southern California documentary filmmaker who decides, along with his wife (Natalie Wood) to suddenly go counterculture with an "open marriage" in Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969); his iconic three-season role as an undercover agent in the espionage-themed series I Spy (1965-8); and his three-season run as Bill Maxwell on Stephen Cannell's superhero spoof series The Greatest American Hero (1981-3). Born in Oakland, California in 1930, Culp attended several West Coast colleges while training for a dramatic career. At 21, he made his Broadway debut in He Who Gets Slapped. Within six years, he was starring in his own Friday night CBS Western, Trackdown (1957-9) as Hoby Gilman, an 1870s era Texas Ranger. During the two-year run of this program, Culp began writing scripts, a habit he'd carry over to other series, notably The Rifleman and Gunsmoke. These all represented fine and noble accomplishments for a young actor, but as indicated, I Spy delivered a far greater impact to the young actor's career: it made Culp (along with his co-star, Bill Cosby) a bona fide celebrity. The men co-starred in the NBC adventure yarn as, respectively, Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott, undercover agents involved in globetrotting missions for the U.S. government. Both actors brought to the program a sharp yet subtle sense of humor that (coupled with its exotic locations) made it one of the major discoveries of the 1965-6 prime-time line-up. During the second of I Spy's three seasons, Culp made his directorial debut by helming episodes of Spy; he went on to direct installments of several other TV programs. The success of Bob & Carol at the tail end of the 1960s proved that Culp could hold his own as a movie star, and he later directed and co-starred in 1972 theatrical feature Hickey and Boggs, which reunited him with Cosby, albeit to much lesser acclaim. Unfortunately, as the years rolled on, Culp proved susceptible to the lure of parts in B-pictures, such as Sky Riders (1976), Flood! (1976) and Hot Rod (1979), though he delivered a fine portrayal in television's critically-acclaimed Roots: The Next Generations (1979). Culp rebounded further with the semicomic role of CIA chief Maxwell on American Hero, but many now-infamous behind-the-scenes issues (and external issues, such as the shooting of Ronald Reagan) beleaguered that program and ended its run after only three seasons. In the years that followed, Culp vacillated between exploitation roles, in tripe such as Big Bad Mama 2 and Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, and more respectable, mainstream guest turns in television series including The Cosby Show and Murder, She Wrote. He enjoyed one of his most prestigious assignments with a supporting role in the big screen John Grisham-Alan Pakula thriller The Parallax View (1993), opposite Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts. In the years that followed, Culp's on-camera presence grew less and less frequent, though he did make a cameo in the 1996 Leslie Nielsen laugher Spy Hard. Television continued to provide some of Culp's finest work: he rejoined old friend Cosby for a 1994 I Spy TV-movie reunion and made guest appearances in such series as Lonesome Dove, Law & Order and The Dead Zone. Following a period of semi-retirement, Culp died suddenly and rather arbitrarily, when he sustained a head injury during a fall outside of his Hollywood home in March 2010. He was 79 years old.

Trivia: Fair-haired Australian actor Simon Baker (occasionally billed as Simon Baker-Denny, and not to be confused with the Native American performer of the same name) specialized in playing suave, cultured, and sophisticated types, with many assignments as a romantic lead. He debuted as a performer in his native country, with roles on such popular Oceanian series as E Street (1989), Heartbreak High (1994), and Naked (1995), but made the Hollywood leap opposite fellow Aussie import Russell Crowe with a small supporting role in the Curtis Hanson-directed post-noir blockbuster L.A. Confidential (1997). Taking the success of this as a cue, Baker then accepted a lead in the similar, albeit less-favorably received, outing Judas Kiss (1998). He starred opposite Val Kilmer and Carrie-Anne Moss in Red Planet (2000), and opposite Hilary Swank in The Affair of the Necklace (2001), but achieved far greater recognition and acclaim in the lead role on the CBS drama series The Guardian (2001-2004). He played Nick Fallin, a coke-addled attorney who finds redemption via child advocacy, until the series was canceled after three seasons. Successive projects included a turn in the big-budget horror sequel The Ring Two (2005); a role as Anne Hathaway's prospective suitor (whom she rejects in favor of her career) in David Frankel's The Devil Wears Prada (2006); and a part as one half of an interracial couple in Something New, opposite Sanaa Lathan. Meanwhile, at about the same time, Baker played Jeff Breen, a professional thief, on the short-lived CBS crime series Smith, starring Ray Liotta. In fall 2008, Baker headlined the new detective series The Mentalist, playing an investigator with razor-sharp obervational skills. He also took on the lead role -- as a parent who opens up a nasty Pandora's box when he searches for his missing daughter -- in director Dror Soref's supernatural horror outing Not Forgotten (2008). He earned an Emmy nomination in 2009 for his work on The Mentalist, and he appeared in the 2011financial drama Margin Call.

Trivia: The son of an architect, David Groh entered Brown University as an engineering major, but gradually gravitated to the Fine Arts department. Following a few summers with the American Shakespeare Festival, Groh received a Fulbright scholarship to study acting in England. Returning to New York, he was at first limited to "classical" roles, beginning with his off-Broadway bow in The Importance of Being Earnest. He enrolled at the Actors Studio to get some "modern" grounding: evidently he succeeded, inasmuch as his subsequent Broadway credits included such contemporary efforts as The Hot L Baltimore and Chapter Two. During the 1960s and 1970s, he worked steadily in the soap-opera mills, appearing in a dual role on Dark Shadows and as D L Brock in General Hospital. Told by his friends that he might have a future in Hollywood-based cop shows, Groh moved to LA in 1974--where, within a matter of months, he was cast as Rhoda Morgenstern's fiancé Joe Gerard on the popular sitcom Rhoda. The Joe-Rhoda wedding, telecast October 28, 1974, earned the series its highest-ever ratings; but the chemistry was never really there, and in 1977 the Gerards were divorced (many viewers, assuming that Groh and Harper were really married, sent letters of condolence to the two actors). In April of 1978, Groh was back on the small screen in his own sitcom, Another Day (1978), which lasted but a month. David Groh thereafter concentrated on stage work, with occasional forays into films and such TV miniseries as The Dream Merchants and Tourist.. Groh died at age 68 in February 2008.

Trivia: On the New York theatrical scene, American actor John Diehl is best known for his work in a variety of avant-garde and experimental productions. Diehl's film characterizations are among the more traditional lines of petty thieves and psycho killers (vide 1984's Angel). After seeing Diehl portray an assortment of punks, wackos, and malcontents, it came as a surprise (and a bit of a relief) to see him cast as a normal suburban dad -- albeit an obnoxious one -- in Falling Down (1993). John Diehl may be most familiar to television viewers for his multi-season stint as laid-back Detective Larry Zito on TV's Miami Vice.

Trivia: Michael Marich's promising screen-acting career ended suddenly when he died of unreported causes at age 27 on October 20, 1996. Up to that point, he had guest-starred on a few major television series, including NYPD Blue and in a couple of made-for-television films, beginning with A Pair of Aces (1990).

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '80s.

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