Trivia: Bo Hopkins has spent most of his career playing character roles, but he occasionally gets leading roles. Tall, light-haired, and possessing a distinctive drawl, he made his film debut in The Thousand Plane Raid (1969) following studies with drama instructor Uta Hagen in New York and training at the Desilu Playhouse school in Hollywood. He next appeared in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969). Hopkins went on to work with the director in two more films, including The Getaway (1972). Hopkins specializes in action features and Westerns and is often cast as a redneck. Some of his notable leading roles include that of a gunfighter whose best friend of 30 years turns out to be a woman in The Ballad of Little Joe (1993). Hopkins also appears frequently on television in films and as a series guest star.

Trivia: Bruce MacLeish Dern is the scion of a distinguished family of politicians and men of letters that includes his uncle, the distinguished poet/playwright Archibald MacLeish. After a prestigious education at New Trier High and Choate Preparatory, Dern enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, only to drop out abruptly in favor of Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio. With his phlegmatic voice and schoolyard-bully countenance, he was not considered a likely candidate for stardom, and was often treated derisively by his fellow students. In 1958, he made his first Broadway appearance in A Touch of the Poet. Two years later, he was hired by director Elia Kazan to play a bit role in the 20th Century Fox production Wild River. He was a bit more prominent on TV, appearing regularly as E.J. Stocker in the contemporary Western series Stoney Burke. A favorite of Alfred Hitchcock, Dern was prominently cast in a handful of the director's TV-anthology episodes, and as the unfortunate sailor in the flashback sequences of the feature film Marnie (1964). During this period, Dern played as many victims as victimizers; he was just as memorable being hacked to death by Victor Buono in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965) as he was while attempting to rape Linda Evans on TV's The Big Valley. Through the auspices of his close friend Jack Nicholson, Dern showed up in several Roger Corman productions of the mid-'60s, reaching a high point as Peter Fonda's "guide" through LSD-land in The Trip (1967). The actor's ever-increasing fan following amongst disenfranchised younger filmgoers shot up dramatically when he gunned down Establishment icon John Wayne in The Cowboys (1971). After scoring a critical hit with his supporting part in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Dern began attaining leading roles in such films as Silent Running (1971), The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), and Smile (1975). In 1976, he returned to the Hitchcock fold, this time with top billing, in Family Plot. Previously honored with a National Society of Film Critics award for his work in the Jack Nicholson-directed Drive, He Said (1970), Dern received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of an unhinged Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978), in which he co-starred with one-time Actors' Studio colleague (and former classroom tormentor) Jane Fonda. He followed this triumph with a return to Broadway in the 1979 production Strangers. In 1982, Dern won the Berlin Film Festival Best Actor prize for That Championship Season. He then devoted several years to stage and TV work, returning to features in the strenuous role of a middle-aged long distance runner in On the Edge (1986).After a humorous turn in the 1989 Tom Hanks comedy The 'Burbs, Dern dropped beneath the radar for much of the '90s. He would appear in cult favorites like Mulholland Falls and the Walter Hill Yojimbo re-make Last Man Standing (both 1996), as well as The Haunting (1999) and All the Pretty Horses (2000). As the 2000's unfolded, Dern would continue to act, apperaing most notably in film like Monster and Django Unchained.Formerly married to actress Diane Ladd, Bruce Dern is the father of actress Laura Dern.

Trivia: James Stacy had passed the quarter-century mark before deciding upon an acting career. In 1956, Stacy's James Dean-ish handsomeness landed him a part in a Pepsi-Cola commercial. Afterward, Stacy put together a portfolio and started making the casting rounds. Unfortunately, his difficult attitude managed to get him fired from his first film role in South Pacific (1958), and had his lines taken away from him in Sayonara (1957). His recurring appearances as Fred on TV's The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet started the ball rolling again, and by 1965 Stacy was Columbia Pictures' answer to Frankie Avalon, starring in such Beach Party rip-offs as A Swingin' Summer and Winter a Go Go. He also found time to marry actress Connie Stevens, only to lose her to singer Eddie Fisher. Stacy's second wife was Kim Darby. From 1968 through 1971, Stacy starred on the TV western Lancer. Two years after the series' cancellation, he was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident, which cost him his left arm and leg. Courageously refusing to retire, he began appearing in roles specially written to accommodate his handicap. His comeback film was the 1975 Kirk Douglas western Posse, in which he was cast in the nonambulatory role of newspaper editor Hellman. In 1977, he starred in the TV-movie Just a Little Inconvenience, playing a double-amputee Vietnam veteran. And in Disney's 1982 fantasy film Something Wicked This Way Comes, Stacy plays a crippled, embittered bartender, who makes the mistake of his life when he wishes to be "whole" again. His last regular TV role was Rogosheske in the weekly cop series Wiseguy. In 1996, once he was retired from acting, he served a six-year prison sentence after pleading no contest to the molestation of a minor (Stacy's erratic behavior around his arrest negated the hope of only getting probation for the incident). He was released in 2001 and resumed his life as a private citizen. Stacy died in 2016.

Trivia: Askew is a supporting actor onscreen beginning with Cool Hand Luke (1967).

Trivia: Square-jawed, mellow-voiced character actor David Canary achieved his greatest prominence on television, in roles that typecast him as a "man's man" with an unmistakably tough edge but a smooth demeanor and approach. Born in Elwood, IN, Canary grew up in Ohio as the son of a JC Penney manager. He took to musical performance (as a baritone vocalist) during adolescence, then after high school attended the University of Cincinnati on a football scholarship and concurrently took classes at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, qualifying as the first person to combine studies at both institutions, graduating as a music major in voice from the university. During that period, the university theater director, Paul Rutledge, observed Canary's innate dramatic gifts and strongly encouraged the student to try out for roles in numerous productions, many of which he landed with great ease, thereby opening himself up to a talent all but unrecognized and untapped, and paving the way for a prestigious foray into acting that commenced with several years of summer stock. Canary began his professional acting career on-stage, in musicals, but he made his Broadway debut in the play Great Day in the Morning, opposite Colleen Dewhurst. His career was put on hold for a time when he was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed at a base in Texas, but he made the most of it, entertaining the troops and winning the All Army Entertainment Contest for best popular singer. When his service time was completed, Canary returned to the theater, but it wasn't long before he moved into filmed work.As a professional actor, Canary divided his time between big- and small-screen outings, but placed his strongest emphasis on television. He is best known for two ongoing, multi-season series roles: Candy, a wanderer hired onto the Cartwright property as a ranch hand, on the immensely popular Western saga Bonanza (a part held from 1967 through 1970 and again during the final season of 1972-1973), and -- on a much different note -- long-running portrayals of twins Adam and Stuart Chandler on the ABC daytime drama All My Children. Canary retired from acting in 2013; he died in 2015, at age 77.

Trivia: American character actor Dick O'Neill began showing up in films in 1961. Most of O'Neill's movie roles were in the supporting category, e.g. his portrayal of Sol Zuckermann in The Buddy Holly Story. His extensive TV credits include recurring roles on at least four weekly series. Dick O'Neill was seen as Judge Praetor D. Hardcastle in Rosetti and Ryan (1977), street-smart Malloy in Kaz (1978), corporate vice president Arthur Broderick in Empire (1984), and Fred Wilkinson in the 1987 episodes of Falcon Crest. Fans of the detective series Cagney and Lacey will remember O'Neill for playing Charlie Cagney. Before entering film and television, O'Neill was a well established supporting actor on the New York stage where he appeared on and off Broadway. In the early '50s, O'Neill was a charter member of the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. For the last seven years of his life, O'Neill served on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Screening Committee.

Trivia: Mexican actor and director Alfonso Arau's first American film role was as bloodthirsty bandit Herrera in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), a role he would later parody (albeit with a straight face) in the 1986 comedy Three Amigos! U.S. filmgoers were by and large unaware that Arau had long been a popular vaudeville, theater, and TV performer, and had built his Mexican film reputation as an independent producer/director, beginning with 1969's The Barefoot Eagle. Arau reached the plateau of art-house idolatry when he decided to adapt a novel about the mystical aspects of gourmet cooking, written by his wife Laura Esquivel. The subsequent film, Like Water for Chocolate (1993), ended up as one of the most profitable foreign movies ever exhibited in America and won a number of international awards as well as multiple Silver Ariels, Mexico's equivalent of the Oscar. Arau followed Like Water for Chocolate with A Walk in the Clouds two years later. Arau's first American film as a director, it starred Keanu Reeves as a WWII veteran who poses as the husband of a pregnant young woman in order to help her preserve her standing within her family. Despite great anticipation surrounding its release, the film proved to be a critical and commercial disappointment.