Trivia: American actor Richard Chamberlain was a star in his first appearance--as the Pied Piper in the 3rd grade. While attending Pomona College, Chamberlain decided to study acting in earnest, honing his craft in little theatre productions. His All-American handsomeness gained him entry into film and TV work; Chamberlain starred in the title role of the NBC weekly series Dr. Kildare in 1961. It was one of two major medical programs premiering that year; the other was Ben Casey. Chamberlain's first starring film, Twilight of Honor (1963) did little to shake his male ingenue image--nor did his first job after the cancellation of Kildare, the notoriously disastrous musical play Holly Golightly (most reviewers thought this celebrated fiasco would kill both Chamberlain's and co-star Mary Tyler Moore's careers). In the late 1960s, Chamberlain headed for England to seek work in the classics. He first starred in a 1970 stage production of Hamlet, which became one of the pinnacles of his career. Several prestigious film, stage and TV appearances later, Chamberlain headlined the 1980 television multi-part drama Shogun and the 1983 miniseries The Thorn Birds which led critics and viewers to crown him "King of the Miniseries." Following a lead role in the poorly-received big screen efforts King Solomon's Mines (1985) and its sequel, Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold (1987) (which critics blasted as low-budget Indiana Jones knockoffs) Chamberlain harkened back to the small screen, and continued to make periodic appearances in telemovies throughout the eighties, nineties and early 2000s. Key roles included Jason Bourne in a 1988 adaptation of Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity, and a 1991 reworking of Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter (with Chamberlain assuming the Robert Mitchum part). He also landed guest appearances in such series as Touched by An Angel, Will and Grace, and The Drew Carey Show The actor made headlines in 2003 - not simply because of the debut of his autobiography, Shattered Love: A Memoir, but because the actor - around whom rumors of homosexuality had swirled for years -- finally 'outed' himself officially. (He and his partner, Martin Rabbett, have been together for twenty-five years and live in Hawaii). Young Dr. Kildare no more, Richard Chamberlain is today a highly respected actor whose very presence in the cast list of a film or miniseries is a guarantee of distinction and class.

Trivia: Bitten by the acting bug in high school, statuesque leading lady Sally Kellerman studied with Jeff Corey and at Actors Studio West before making her film debut in Reform School Girl (1959). In the 1960s, she built up her reputation with offbeat guest spots on such TV series as Bob Hope Chrysler Theatre, Slattery's People and It Takes a Thief. She also essayed small but attention-grabbing parts in films like The Boston Strangler (1968, as the only surviving victim) and The April Fools (1969). Her breakthrough role was her Oscar-nominated turn as Major "Hot-Lips" Houlihan in MASH--a role she very nearly talked herself out of. Upon reading the script, she angrily confronted director Robert Altman, raging over the insulting and humiliating aspects of the part. She was then mollified by Altman, who declared that her unbridled outrage was just what he wanted from "Hot Lips." Though MASH opened up better film opportunities for Kellerman, she continued playing more oddball character roles than traditional "star" assignments. From time to time, she has spelled her film activities with nightclub singing appearances. Previously married to director Rick Edelstein, Sally Kellerman is currently wed to Jonathan Kane, who has produced many of her more recent films.

Trivia: During his days of prominence in the '80s, handsome, powerfully built American actor Gregory Harrison became the unofficial poster boy of the Catalina Island chamber of commerce. As a native of that offshore isle, Harrison frequently guested on talk and variety shows, elucidating the natural wonders of both Catalina and the Avalon resort. A graduate of New York's Actors Studio, Harrison briefly supported himself as a nightclub doorman before securing small film and TV roles. Harrison's most memorable credits were for the small screen: He played Logan 5 on Logan's Run (1977), Michael Sharpe on the final 1989-90 season of Falcon Crest, and the title role in the brief 1990 sitcom The Family Man. Harrison's longest TV-series run was seven seasons (1979-86) as "Gonzo" Gates, the Vietnam-vet doctor on Trapper John MD (1979-86).

Trivia: The daughter of actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Stephanie Zimbalist was raised on the family's Encino, CA, ranch and educated at some of America's finest private schools. Zimbalist attended Stanford University as a science major, then took acting and singing lessons at Juilliard. After appearing on-stage with Anthony Hopkins in The Tempest, she launched her TV career with an unsold NBC pilot in 1976. Gaining stardom in a variety of TV-movie roles, she turned down several series offers, finally acquiescing to the producers of the weekly adventure series Remington Steele. From 1982 to 1987, Zimbalist starred as glamorous private investigator Laura Holt, the largely reluctant teammate of handsome adventurer Remington Steele, played by Pierce Brosnan. Periodically resuming her stage career over the last two decades, Stephanie Zimbalist co-starred with Tommy Tune in the 1982 touring company of My One and Only, and has starred in several California-based theatrical productions.

Trivia: British actor Timothy Dalton has excelled in roles calling for both panache and psychological complexity. His stage training has included stints at the National Youth Theatre, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and the star-making Birmingham Repertory. Dalton's extensive work in the classics with the Royal Shakespeare Company led to his being cast as King Philip of France in the film The Lion in Winter (1968). In 1971, Dalton appeared in Mary, Queen of Scots, simultaneously launching a lengthy romantic involvement with that film's star, Vanessa Redgrave. When Roger Moore quit the James Bond film series in 1986, it looked for a while as though his successor would be television star Pierce Brosnan; instead, the Bond producers made the eleventh-hour decision to cast Dalton as secret agent 007 in The Living Daylights. Though dashing in a tuxedo and more than willing to perform his own stunts, Dalton was more effectively felt in the role of the dastardly movie swashbuckler-cum-Nazi spy in the breezy sci-fi film The Rocketeer (1991).Dalton would find his niche in the 90's and 2000's appearing in several made-for-TV productions, like 1992's Framed, and 1994's Scarlett, a mini-series based on Gone with the Wind in which Dalton played Rhett Butler. He would go on to appear in several more TV movies, like Hercules and Marple: The Sittaford Mystery. Dalton's also taken on numerous stage roles, notably playing Lord Asriel in the theater production of His Dark Materials in 2004.In 2007 he spoofed his own persona ever so lovingly in the action comedy Hot Fuzz. He became part of the Pixar family by voicing one of the dramatically inclined plaything in Toy Story 3. That same year he had a major part in the infamous bomb The Tourist.

Trivia: Born in Indiana, Chad Everett attended high school in Dearborn, Michigan, where he played quarterback on the school football team. During his junior year at Wayne State University, Everett landed an acting role with a Michigan repertory company, accompanying the troupe on a State Department-sponsored tour of India. He headed to Hollywood in 1960, got nowhere fast, relocated to New York, did some modelling and TV commercials, then was signed to a $250-per week contract with Warner Bros. He made his film debut in Warners' Claudelle Inglish (1961), and co-starred in the studio's 1963 TV western series The Dakotas. Everett then signed with MGM, where he was featured in such films as Made in Paris (1964) and The Singing Nun (1965). In 1969, MGM's TV division cast Everett in his signature role as Dr. Joe Gannon in Medical Center, a popular weekly which ran until 1976. After Medical Center, Everett continued appearing in theatrical and made-for-TV movies, and also starred in three weekly series: Hagen (1980, as Paul Hagen), The Rousters (1983, as Wyatt Earp III) and McKenna (1994, as Jack McKenna). Chad Everett also wrote, directed and performed in several TV commercials and industrial films, and was the author of a self-published book of romantic poetry, written for and dedicated to his wife, actress Shelby Grant. He died of lung cancer in July 2012.

Trivia: Balding, deceptively bland-looking British actor Donald Pleasence was first seen on the London stage in a 1939 production of Wuthering Heights. He then served in the RAF, spending the last years of World War II in a German POW camp. Resuming his career after the war, Pleasence eventually came to New York in the company of Laurence Olivier in 1950, appearing in Caesar and Cleopatra. And although he began appearing in films in 1954, Pleasence's British fame during the '50s was the result of his television work, notably a recurring role as Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood from 1955-1958. He also co-starred in TV productions of The Millionairess, Man in a Moon, and Call Me Daddy. Voted British television actor of the year in 1958, Pleasence produced and hosted the 1960 series Armchair Mystery Theatre, before creating the stage role for which he was best remembered: Davies, the menacing tramp in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker. The actor revived the character throughout his career, appearing as Davies for the last time in 1991. Pleasence was fortunate enough to be associated with the success of The Great Escape in 1963, which led to a wealth of American film offers. Four years later, the actor portrayed arch criminal Ernst Blofeld in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice -- the first time that the scarred face of the secretive character was seen onscreen in the Bond series. Firmly established as a villain, Pleasence gradually eased into horror films such as Halloween (1978), The Devonsville Terror (1979), and Buried Alive (1990); commenting on this phase of his career, Pleasence once mused "I only appear in odd films." One of his few "mainstream" appearances during this period was virtually invisible. Pleasence is seen and prominently billed as a rabbi in Carl Reiner's Oh, God! (1977), but the role was deemed dispensable and all the actor's lines were cut. Pleasence continued to work steadily in the 1980s and early '90s -- making 17 pictures alone in 1987-1989 -- before undergoing heart surgery in 1994; he died from complications two months later. Married four times, the actor was the father of six daughters, among them actress Angela Pleasence.

Trivia: Born R. Hanley Jaeckel (the "R" stood for nothing), young Richard Jaeckel arrived in Hollywood with his family in the early 1940s. Columnist Louella Parsons, a friend of Jaeckel's mother, got the boy a job as a mailman at the 20th Century-Fox studios. When the producers of Fox's Guadalcanal Diary found themselves in need of a baby-faced youth to play a callow marine private, Jaeckel was given a screen test. Despite his initial reluctance to play-act, Jaeckel accepted the Guadalcanal Diary assignment and remained in films for the next five decades, appearing in almost 50 movies and playing everything from wavy-haired romantic leads to crag-faced villains. Between 1944 and 1948, Jaeckel served in the U.S. Navy. Upon his discharge, he co-starred in Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne and Forrest Tucker. In 1971, Jaeckel was nominated for a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar on the strength of his performance in Sometimes a Great Notion. Richard Jaeckel has also been a regular in several TV series, usually appearing in dependable, authoritative roles: he was cowboy scout Tony Gentry in Frontier Circus (1962), Lt. Pete McNeil in Banyon (1972), firefighter Hank Myers in Firehouse (1974), federal agent Hank Klinger in Salvage 1 (1979), Major Hawkins in At Ease (1983) (a rare -- and expertly played -- comedy role), and Master Chief Sam Rivers in Supercarrier (1988). From 1991-92, Jaeckel played Lieutenant Ben Edwards on the internationally popular series Baywatch. Jaeckel passed away at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital of an undisclosed illness at the age of 70.

Trivia: Educated at Arcadia University and prepped for an acting career at AADA, Canadian-born Stephen McHattie billed himself as Stephen Smith during his earliest New York years. McHattie made his Broadway debut in 1968's The American Dream; two years later, he was seen in his first television production, The People Next Door. Though he has shown up in quite a few theatrical features (Belizaire the Cajun, Beverly Hills Cop), McHattie has most often been seen on TV, usually in such oddball roles as the grown-up protagonist in Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976). He was a regular on the weekly series Highcliffe Manor (1979, as Reverend Glenville), Beauty and the Beast (1989, as the unspeakable Gabriel) and the "repertory company" Canadian anthology Scene of the Crime (1991); he also played two significant guest roles on the Fox Network's X Files. Stephen McHattie was married to actress Meg Foster.

Trivia: Manila-born leading lady Cristina Raines began showing up in American movies and TV programs in the early 1970s. Raines was seen in the small part of Maria in Robert Altman's Nashville (1975), and was confined to flashbacks as the "late" Kate Hayden in the 1973 TV movie Sunshine. Her most memorable movie role was Alison Parker, unwilling gatekeeper of Hades, in the 1977 horrorama The Sentinel. From 1980 through 1981, Cristina Raines played casino singer Lane Ballou on the prime time TV soaper Flamingo Road.

Trivia: American actor Richard Crenna started out as a radio performer at age 11, demonstrating an astonishing range for one so young. The momentum of his career was unaffected by an army hitch and time spent earning an English degree at the University of Southern California. But even though he was by then in his twenties, Crenna found himself still playing adolescents, notably squeaky-voiced high schooler Walter Denton on the radio comedy Our Miss Brooks. That he was able to play characters of virtually any age was overlooked by movie and TV casting directors, who could see Crenna only in callow-juvenile roles. After making an excellent impression as ballplayer Daffy Dean in the 1953 film Pride of St. Louis, for example, Crenna wasn't cast in another film until the 1955 movie version of Our Miss Brooks--in which, at 29, he was Walter Denton once more. The following year, Crenna decided "to sorta let Walter Denton die," and took a decidedly mature role in the sleazy exploitation film Over-Exposed (1956). It was a fully grown Crenna who took on the role of Luke McCoy on the Walter Brennan TV series The Real McCoys, which ran from 1957 through 1963 and which gave Crenna his first opportunities as a director. After McCoys, Crenna found himself facing potential career standstill again, since it seemed that now he was typed as the rubeish Luke McCoy. This time, however, the actor had impressed enough producers with his dogged work ethic and the range displayed in guest-star appearances. In 1964, Crenna was cast in a prestigious TV drama For the People as assistant DA David Koster, and though the program lasted only one season, Crenna was firmly established as a compelling dramatic actor. Still, and despite solid Richard Crenna film performances in The Sand Pebbles (1966), Body Heat (1981) and The Flamingo Kid (1985), the actor has never completely escaped the spectre of Walter Denton. Crenna was able to conjure up the old adenoidal Denton voice on talk shows of the 1980s and 1990s, and in the action-film spoof Hot Shots: Part Deux, the actor, with an absolute straight face, portrayed Colonel Denton Walters!

Trivia: The son of actor Robert Keith (1896-1966), Brian Keith made his first film appearance in 1924's Pied Piper Malone, when he was well-below the age of consent. During the war years, Keith served in the Marines, winning a Navy Air Medal; after cessation of hostilities, he began his acting career in earnest. At first billing himself as Robert Keith Jr., he made his 1946 Broadway debut in Heyday, then enjoyed a longer run as Mannion in Mister Roberts (1948), which featured his father as "Doc." His film career proper began in 1952; for the rest of the decade, Keith played good guys, irascible sidekicks and cold-blooded heavies with equal aplomb. Beginning with Ten Who Dared (1959), Keith became an unofficial "regular" in Disney Films, his performances alternately subtle (The Parent Trap) and bombastic. Of his 1970s film efforts, Keith was seen to best advantage as Teddy Roosevelt in The Wind and the Lion (1975). In television since the medium was born, Keith has starred in several weekly series, including The Crusader (1955-56), The Little People (aka The Brian Keith Show, 1972-74) and Lew Archer (1975). His longest-running and perhaps best-known TV endeavors were Family Affair (1966-71), in which he played the uncharacteristically subdued "Uncle Bill" and the detective series Hardcastle & McCormick (1983-86). His most fascinating TV project was the 13-week The Westerner (1960), created by Sam Peckinpah, in which he played an illiterate cowpoke with an itchy trigger finger. Keith's personal favorite of all his roles is not to be found in his film or TV output; it is the title character in Hugh Leonard's stage play Da. Plagued by emphysema and lung cancer while apparently still reeling emotionally from the suicide of his daughter Daisy, 75-year-old Brian Keith was found dead of a gunshot wound by family members in his Malibu home. Police ruled the death a suicide. Just prior to his death, Keith had completed a supporting role in the TNT miniseries Rough Riders.