Trivia: Strawberry blonde, freckle-faced, and willowy, Sissy Spacek was among the most popular female stars of the late '70s and '80s. The Texas born and bred actress originally aspired to become a singer, and, after heading east to New York, got her start singing at coffee houses in Greenwich Village. Billing herself as "Rainbo," Spacek also cut a single, "Johnny, You Went Too Far This Time." On the side, she earned money by recording backup vocals on television commercials.When the acting bug bit, Spacek enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatrical Institute. While she technically made her film debut as an extra in Andy Warhol's Trash (1971), her official debut is listed as Michael Ritchie's Prime Cut (1972). The actress' first crack at stardom came in 1973, when she played a teenage accomplice to ruthless cross-country killer Martin Sheen in Terrence Malick's disturbing Badlands. The role earned her critical acclaim, as did her portrayal of a sweet teen who becomes a violent radical in the made-for-television movie Katherine (1975).Spacek's true breakthrough came when she played a troubled, shy teenager who discovers that she has telekinetic powers and uses them to get bloody revenge upon her cruel schoolmates and mother in Brian De Palma's chilling adaptation of Stephen King's novel Carrie (1976). Her work in the film earned her a Best Actress nomination, as well as permanent cult status. She once again experimented with emotional instability in Robert Altman's Three Women the following year, and then got to show off her singing abilities playing Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter in 1980. Her portrayal of Lynn became one of Spacek's best-known roles, and it earned her an Oscar for Best Actress.In 1981, Spacek starred in Raggedy Man, which was directed by her husband, Jack Fisk. Her career remained in high gear through the mid-'80s with such memorable turns as her Oscar-nominated work in Missing (1982) and The River (1984), but after 1986, when she was again nominated for an Oscar for her work in Crimes of the Heart, Spacek partially withdrew from acting to concentrate on raising kids. Throughout the 1990s, she occasionally returned to the big screen, lending her talents to such features as JFK (1991), The Grass Harp (1996), and Affliction (1998). In 1999, she turned in memorable performances playing Brendan Fraser's mother in Blast From the Past and Richard Farnsworth's speech-impaired daughter in David Lynch's The Straight Story. In 2001 the quietly intense actress shined once again in director Todd Field's critically praised In the Bedroom. Suffering from severe trauma and depression after her son is viciously murdered, Spacek's brooding and sympathetic performance in Bedroom found the actress taking home a Golden Globe for Best Actress and earning an Oscar nod in the same category.She continued to work steadily in projects such as the drama North Country, the comedy Hot Rod, Four Christmases, and Get Low. In 2010 she joined the cast of the HBO series Big Love, and the next year she had a key role in the Oscar-nominated drama The Help, resulting in one of the biggest commercial hits of her illustrious career.

Trivia: Born February 18, 1954, in Englewood, John Travolta was the youngest of six children in a family of entertainers; all but one of his siblings pursued showbusiness careers as well. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. By age 16, he dropped out of high school to take up acting full-time, relocating to Manhattan to make his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in Rain, and a minor role in the touring company of the hit musical Grease followed.In 1975, Travolta was cast in an ABC sitcom entitled Welcome Back, Kotter. As Vinnie Barbarino, a dim-witted high school Lothario, he shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Before the first episode of the series even aired, he also won a small role in Brian De Palma's 1976 horror picture Carrie, and at the early peak of his Kotter success he even recorded a series of pop music LPs -- Can't Let Go, John Travolta, and Travolta Fever -- scoring a major hit with the single "Let Her In." Approached with a role in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, he was forced to reject the project in the face of a busy Kotter schedule, but in 1976 he was able to shoot a TV feature, director Randal Kleiser's The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, which won considerable critical acclaim. Diana Hyland, the actress who played Travolta's mother in the picture, also became his offscreen lover until her death from cancer in 1977.In the wake of Hyland's death, Travolta's first major feature film, John Badham's Saturday Night Fever (1977), emerged in the fall of that year. A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture. In 1978, he starred in Kleiser's film adaptation of Grease, this time essaying the lead role of 1950s greaser Danny Zuko. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's, becoming a perennial fan favorite and, like its predecessor, spawning a massively popular soundtrack LP. In the light of his back-to-back successes, as well as the continued popularity of Welcome Back, Kotter -- on which he still occasionally appeared -- it seemed Travolta could do no wrong - but things wouldn't always be so rosy for the performer.Travolta's first misstep was 1978's Moment By Moment, a laughable May-December romance with Lily Tomlin. He then reprised the role of Tony Manero in the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive. Directed by Sylvester Stallone as a kind of Rocky retread, the film was released in 1983 to embarrassing returns and horrendous reviews. It would prove to be just one in a string of '80s stinkers for the actor, followed by disappointments like Two of a Kind, Perfect, and The Experts. He made a minor comeback with 1989's Look Who's Talking, which fared well at the box office, but the movie did little for Travolta's reputation, and the performer was all but completely washed up by the beginning of the '90s.Then, in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Pulp Fiction, a lavishly acclaimed crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan who wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind; Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it.In the wake of Pulp Fiction, the resurrected Travolta became one of the hardest-working actors in Hollywood, and on Tarantino's advice he accepted the starring role in director Barry Sonnenfeld's 1995 Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty. Acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date, it was another major hit, and he followed it by appearing in the 1996 John Woo action tale Broken Arrow. Phenomenon was another smash that same summer, and by Christmas Travolta was back in theaters as a disreputable angel in Michael. The following year he reunited with Woo in the highly successful thriller Face/Off, which he trailed with a supporting turn in Nick Cassavetes' She's So Lovely. After 1997's Mad City, Travolta began work on Primary Colors, Mike Nichols' political satire, portraying a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President. An adaptation of the acclaimed book A Civil Action followed, as did the 1999 thriller The General's Daughter, in which Travolta co-starred with Madeline Stowe. Travolta did suffer an embarrassment in 2000, when he produced and starred in the sci-fi thriller Battlefield Earth, based on the novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (whose teachings Travolta publicly admired and advocated). The film was universally panned as so bad it was funny, but Travolta bounced back, shedding some pounds to play the baddie in 2001 action thriller Swordfish. A complex tale of mixed loyalties, computer hacking, and espionage, Swordfish teamed Travolta with X-Men star Hugh Jackman in hopes of dominating the summer box office. This put Travolta in good shape to weather another disappointment, when his dramatic Oscar contender A Love Song for Bobby Long, was not well received by audiences or critics. While he received more praise for his performance in Ladder 49, a film about the lives of firefighters, his career took another hit in 2004 when he reprised the role of Chili Palmer in Be Cool, a sequel to Get Shorty that proved to have none of the magic that made its predecessor so successful. Unfazed, Travolta signed on to star in the 2007 Baby Boomer comedy Wild Hogs, alongside a dream cast of Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy, who played four listless suburbanites who decide to "live on the edge" by grabbing their sawed-off choppers and hitting the open road as would-be Hell's Angels. Later that year, Travolta took another comedic turn in Hairspray, Adam Shankman's screen adaptation of the stage musical (which, in turn, is an adaptation of John Waters's 1988 feature), which put Travolta in drag to play the heavy set, bouffant hair-do'd mother once played by drag queen Divine. He would follow this up with some middling action fare, with The Taking of Pelham 13 and From Paris with Love, as well as a sequel to Wild Hogs, 2009's Old Dogs.

Trivia: Signed by Universal in 1950, the perky, redheaded Piper Laurie (born Rosetta Jacobs) was a welcome presence in many a musical, situation comedy and costume drama. In later years, she tended to dismiss her ingenue years, noting that she spent most of her time posing for cheesecake layouts. Thanks in great part to her devastating performance as an alcoholic in the 1958 Playhouse 90 TV drama "The Days of Wine and Roses", Laurie completely altered her cuddly image, reinventing herself as a powerful dramatic actress. She earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Paul Newman's neurotic girlfriend in The Hustler (1961), then suddenly retired from acting upon her marriage to movie critic Joseph Morganstern. She made a brilliant return to films with another Oscar-nominated performance, this time as Sissy Spacek's religious fanatic mother in Carrie (1976). Ten years and several topnotch performances later, she was honored with a third Oscar nomination for Children of a Lesser God (1986). Laurie's television work has included a co-starring assignment opposite a very young Mel Gibson in the superb Australian TV movie Tim (1979) and an Emmy-nominated stint on David Lynch's 1990 "cult" series Twin Peaks. Working only when the spirit moves her in recent years, Piper Laurie has been seen in such prestige productions as Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993) and White Man's Burden (1995).

Trivia: Texas-born actress Betty Buckley decided upon a theatrical career when, at a very early age, she was taken by her mother to a Fort Worth production of The Pajama Game. A trained singer and dancer, Ms. Buckley made her professional bow on the musical stage, reaching Broadway at age 22 as Mrs. Thomas Jefferson in the original production of 1776. Additional Broadway credits include two seasons' worth of Pippin (73-75), three years in Cats (82-85) (for which she won a Tony Award), and a healthy run in 1985's The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Betty's first film was Carrie (76), in which she played the tough girl's gym coach whose punishment of Carrie's tormentors set the plot in motion. One year after Carrie, she replaced the late Diana Hyland on the popular TV "dramedy" Eight is Enough, playing the stepmother of a eight-kid brood (at the time, she was two years younger than the oldest kid!) Always on the lookout for an opportunity to sing, Betty took a fraction of her salary to play a Tammy Wynette-style country western star in 1983's Tender Mercies. In 1995, amidst a flurry of press attention, Betty Buckley successfully took over for Glenn Close as "Norma Desmond" in the Broadway production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Sunset Boulevard (Betty had already scored a hit in the London production).

Trivia: American character actress Priscilla Pointer was the wife of famed theatrical director Jules Irving, and the mother of actress Amy Irving and writer/director David Irving. After extensive theatrical experience, Pointer attained her first major TV job in the daytime drama Where the Heart Is (1969-73). She went on to play Mrs. Austin in From Here to Eternity (1980). Rebecca Barnes Wentworth in Dallas (1981-83) and Lillie in Call to Glory (1984-85). One of her more memorable film assignments was the 1976 chiller Carrie, in which she played the mother of the character played by her daughter Amy. Perhaps as a by-product of Carrie, Priscilla Pointer was engaged to play important roles in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and the made-for-TVTwilight Zone: The Lost Classics (1994).

Trivia: American actress P.J. Soles (her initials stand for Pamela Jayne) has specialized in playing sexy, sometimes villainous young women. She debuted as one of the nasty girls who makes life a living hell for an awkward young woman with psychokinetic powers in Carrie (1976). In 1978, she played Jamie Lee Curtis' best friend in Halloween and had her first starring role the following year as a rabid Ramones fan in Rock 'n' Roll High School. Though she is most frequently cast in supporting parts, she occasionally wins leads in films such as Stripes (1981) and the low-budget thriller Innocent Prey. In addition to her American filmwork, Soles has worked in several international films.

Trivia: Stefan Gierasch made his earliest Broadway appearances in comic juvenile roles in such popular fare as Kiss and Tell and A Hatful of Rain. As he matured, Gierasch was afforded meatier assignments in plays like a Hatful of Rain, Compulsion and The Iceman Cometh. He made his first film appearance as a preacher in The Hustler (1961); subsequent film roles have included murder victim Professor Schreiner in Silver Streak (1974), Principal Norton in Carrie (1976) and the House Majority Leader in Dave (1993). Stefan Gierasch has been seen on TV as hospital bureaucrat J. Powell Karbo in AES Hudson Street (1978) and in the dual role of Professor Woodard and Joshua in the 1991 prime time revival of Dark Shadows. Gierasch continued acting through the late 2000s, appearing in TV shows and movies, including a guest spot on ER. He died in 2014, at age 88.

Trivia: Amy Irving was the daughter of influential theatrical producer/director Jules Irving and actress Priscilla Pointer. Trained at the American Conservatory Theater and Britain's LAMDA, Irving made her off-Broadway debut in 1970. She remained loyal to the theater even after establishing herself in films, co-starring on Broadway as Mozart's wife in Amadeus (1982), and receiving a 1988 Obie Award for Road to Mecca; other notable stage credits are Heartbreak House and The Heidi Chronicles. She made an unforgettable film debut as a scheming high-schooler in the Brian DePalma shocker Carrie (1976). In 1983, she earned an Oscar nomination for making us believe that she was in love with male-drag-wearing Barbra Streisand in Yentl. Her TV resumé includes the lavish miniseries The Far Pavillions (1985) and the title character in Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986). In 1987, she launched a children's-film series with Rumpelstiltskin (1987), directed by her brother David Irving. Irving was married to director Steven Spielberg from 1985 to 1989. Since 1990, Amy Irving has referred to herself as the wife of Brazilian filmmaker Bruno Barreto, though the couple hasn't yet made it official.

Trivia: The son of actors Bill Williams and Barbara Hale, curly-haired leading man William Katt is fond of noting that he made his movie "debut" while residing in his mother's womb during filming of Lorna Doone (1951). After attending Orange Coast College, Katt pursued a career as a musician. He then made his formal acting bow in summer stock and small TV roles. Among Katt's film credits are the role of the high-school jock date of telekinetic wallflower Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1977), and one-half of the title role in Butch and Sundance, The Early Days (1979). From 1981 through 1983, Katt played the reluctant-superhero protagonist (originally named Ralph Hinkley, redubbed Ralph Hanley after the '81 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan) on TV's Greatest American Hero. Beginning in 1987, Katt played the recurring role of detective Paul Drake Jr. in the periodic Perry Mason TV movies, co-starring with his mother Barbara Hale, who resumed her "Della Street" characterization from the original 1961-66 Mason run. Katt also worked on the scripts of several of these latter-day Masons. More recently, William Katt was a regular on the 1991 Farrah Fawcett-Ryan O'Neal TV sitcom Good Sports.