Trivia: Of the many performers to leap into films from the springboard of the television sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, Bill Murray has been among the most successful and unpredictable, forging an idiosyncratic career allowing him to stretch from low-brow slapstick farce to intelligent adult drama. Born in Wilmette, IL, on September 21, 1950, Murray was an incorrigible child, kicked out of both the Boy Scouts and Little League. At the age of 20, he was also arrested for attempting to smuggle close to nine pounds of marijuana through nearby O'Hare Airport. In an attempt to find direction in his life, he joined his older brother, Brian Doyle-Murray, in the cast of Chicago's Second City improvisational comedy troupe. He later relocated to New York City, joining radio's National Lampoon Hour. Both Murray siblings were also in a 1975 off-Broadway spin-off, also dubbed The National Lampoon Hour; there Murray was spotted by sportscaster Howard Cosell, who recruited him for the cast of his ABC variety program, titled Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell. On the NBC network, a program also named Saturday Night Live was creating a much bigger sensation; when, after one season, the show's breakout star Chevy Chase exited to pursue a film career, producer Lorne Michaels tapped Murray as his replacement. Murray too became a celebrity, developing a fabulously insincere and sleazy comic persona which was put to good use in his first major film, the 1979 hit Meatballs. He next starred as the famed gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson in the film biography Where the Buffalo Roam, a major disaster. However, 1980's Caddyshack was a masterpiece of slob comedy, with Murray memorable as a maniacal rangeboy hunting the gopher that is slowly destroying his golf course. The film launched him to the ranks of major stardom; the follow-up, the armed services farce Stripes, was an even bigger blockbuster, earning over 40 million dollars at the box office. Murray next appeared, unbilled, in 1982's Tootsie before starring with Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis in 1984's Ghostbusters. The supernatural comedy was one of the decade's biggest hits, earning over 130 million dollars and spawning a cartoon series, action figures, and even a chart-topping theme song (performed by Ray Parker Jr.). Murray now ranked among the world's most popular actors, and he next fulfilled a long-standing dream by starring in and co-writing an adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel The Razor's Edge. Few fans knew what to make of his abrupt turn from broad farce to literary drama, however, and as a result the film flopped. Murray spent the next several years in self-imposed exile, making only a cameo appearance in the 1986 musical comedy Little Shop of Horrors. After much deliberation, he finally selected his comeback vehicle -- 1988's Scrooged, a black comic retelling of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. While it performed moderately well, it was not the smash many predicted. Nor was 1989's Ghostbusters II, which grossed less than half of the first picture. The 1990 crime comedy Quick Change, which Murray co-directed with Howard Franklin, was also a disappointment, but 1991's What About Bob? was an unqualified hit. In 1993, Murray earned his strongest notices to date for Groundhog Day, a sublime comedy directed by longtime conspirator Ramis. Beginning with 1994's acclaimed Ed Wood, in which he appeared as a transsexual, Murray's career choices grew increasingly eccentric; in 1996 alone, he starred in the little-seen Larger Than Life as a motivational speaker, co-starred as a bowling champion in Kingpin, and appeared as himself in the family film Space Jam. In 1998, Murray took on a similarly eccentric role in Wes Anderson's Rushmore. Playing a business tycoon competing with an equally eccentric 15-year-old (Jason Schwartzman) for the affections of a first grade teacher (Olivia Williams), Murray did some of his best work in years and won the Best Supporting Actor award from the New York Film Critics Circle. The film's success helped to put the actor back in the forefront, and he drew further exposure that year from his appearance as a sleazy lawyer in the relentlessly trashy Wild Things. The following year, he could be seen in Cradle Will Rock, Tim Robbins' look at the often contentious relationship between art and politics in 1930s America.Though the mere thought of Murray as Polonius in a film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet may have elicited dumbounded looks and confused laughter early in his career, that was precisely how the versatile thespian ushered in the new millennium in director Micheal Almereyda's modern updating of the classic drama. Subsequently landing laughs as the superspy point person Bosley in the big screen adaptation of the classic 1970's television hit Charlie's Angels, Murray's interpretation of the character would be taken over by popular comic Bernie Mac in the film's 2003 sequel. After taking a brief voyage into gross-out territory with the Farrelly brother's Osmosis Jones in 2001, a re-teaming with Rushmore director Anderson resulted in a small but memorable supporting performance in the same year's The Royal Tenenbaums. In 2003 Murray essayed the role that would offer what was perhaps his most heartfelt combination of personal drama and touching comedy to date in director Sofia Coppola's acclaimed indie film Lost in Translation. Cast as a washed up American actor who strikes up a tentative friendship with the young wife of a superstar photographer while on a stay in Japan to endorse a popular brand of whiskey, Murray's low-key charm proved the perfect balance to co-star Scarlett Johansson's youthful malaise. Virtually across the board, critics were bowled over by the subtle depth of Murray's performance, leading to Best Actor honors from The New York Film Critics Circle, The Boston Society of Film Critics, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association, The San Francisco Film Critics Circle, The National Society of Film Critics, The Golden Globes, and The Independent Spirit Awards. But the one award that remained elusive to Murray was Oscar. Though nominated, the prize ultimately went to Sean Penn for Mystic River.In 2004, along with providing the voice for a CGI version of Garfield the cat, Murray once again teamed up with director Wes Anderson, starring as as a world-renowned oceanographer in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. While The Life Aquatic was met with mixed reviews, Murray's performance in the 2005 Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers netted virtually unanimous acclaim. Over the next several years, Murray would maintain his selective film career, appearing in acclaimed films like Get Low, Passion Play, and Moonrise Kingdom.

Trivia: The product of a profoundly unhappy home life, Andie MacDowell was compelled to make her own way from an early age. The Gaffney, SC, native spent her teenage years working a number of minimum-wage jobs before dropping out of Winthrop College when she was a sophomore in order to become an Elite model. Her innocent, well-scrubbed good looks were not only suited to her job as a cosmetics model, but, in 1984, they won her the role of Jane Porter in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Unable to overcome her natural Carolina cadence, MacDowell's lines were dubbed by Glenn Close in the film -- the first and last time that audiences were denied the actress' warm, relaxing vocal shadings. Joining the Brat Pack brigade with St. Elmo's Fire (1985), MacDowell just as quickly broke away from it with her riveting performance in sex, lies and videotape (1989); her role as a dissatisfied housewife earned her a number of accolades, and helped to establish her as a "serious" actress.MacDowell's likability enabled her to weather such disasters as Hudson Hawk (1991) and Bad Girls (1994), and allowed her to shine in a number of other films, including Groundhog Day (1993), Short Cuts (1993), and the hit romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). Although she starred in a series of disappointing films during the late '90s, she remained highly visible, popping up in such movies as Unstrung Heroes (1995), The Muse (1999), and Town and Country (2000). She earned good reviews playing a middle-age woman infatuated with a younger man in Crush, but the film was poorly distributed and little seen. She appeared in a string of direct-to-video efforts including the supernatural thriller The Last Sign opposite Tim Roth. She returned to the multiplexes after landing a major part in the Queen Latifah film Beauty Shop in 2005. The next year she lent her distinct vocal qualities to the 2006 animated film Barnyard, twenty years after having her voice dubbed out of her film debut.In 2010 MacDowell surpised her fans with a villainous turn in the tense low-budget thriller As Good As Dead, which was quickly followed by an appearance as Vi Moore (a role originally played by Diane Wiest) in Craig Brewer's remake of Footloose.

Trivia: Chris Elliott may have been born with a funny spoon in his mouth -- he's the son of Bob Elliott, the more deadpan half of the famous comedy duo Bob and Ray -- but he's developed his own offbeat brand of humor and gained his own substantial cult following. Elliott began his show business career as a standup comic, but he first gained public attention as a writer and performer on Late Night With David Letterman, helping that show define a new age of ironic comedy, and winning two Emmys as part of Letterman's writing team. Elliott played the sarcastic firebrand to Letterman's perturbable Midwestern reserve. He starred in sketches as the Panicky Guy, the Fugitive Guy, and the Guy Under the Seats, a character who lived in a cramped passageway underneath the audience, and would occasionally interrupt the show to chat with Letterman. As a result of Elliott's growing popularity on Late Night, his acting career took off. Or, to be more precise, he got bit parts in Michael Mann's Manhunter, James Cameron's The Abyss, and the Francis Ford Coppola segment of New York Stories. Elliott also went on to star in two hilarious, but little-seen half-hour comedy shows for Cinemax. FDR -- A One Man Show featured Elliott playing Chris Elliott, a pompous egomaniacal actor portraying FDR in a one-man show of tremendous historical inaccuracy, while Action Family economically combined satire of TV police dramas with a satire of a typical living room family sitcom. Around this time, Elliott published a Mommy Dearest-style mock exposé about his childhood, Daddy's Boy: A Son's Shocking Account of Life With a Famous Father, which featured chapter-by-chapter rebuttals from his father, Bob, and a foreword by David Letterman.In 1990, Elliott, with help from talented collaborators like David Mirkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Adam Resnick, starred in a bizarrely funny sitcom, Get a Life. The character Elliott played, Chris Peterson, a 30-year-old paperboy, was not a far cry from his previous television personae. Peterson was a dimwitted, balding, doughy, sarcastic, celebrity-worshipping dolt, with a hilariously high degree of self-regard. He was an utter failure who somehow convinced himself he was doing great. Bob Elliott played Chris Peterson's father on the show. The mucky mucks at the fledgling Fox network didn't understand the show, and were hoping Peterson would be cuddlier. Elliott would later remember a network exec optimistically comparing the character to "Tom Hanks in Big." The show had disastrous ratings. Despite support from savvier TV critics, Fox gave up on the show quickly, and canceled Get a Life after two seasons. The show had gained a passionate cult following and some episodes were eventually released on DVD and syndicated briefly on the USA Network. Get a Life was later recognized for its influence on other, more successful programs, including The Simpsons and South Park.Elliott also had key supporting roles in the smash hit Groundhog Day, opposite Bill Murray, and in the unsuccessful rap mockumentary CB4 with Chris Rock. In 1994, he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live. Despite the addition of other talented comic actors (Randy Quaid, Michael McKean, and Janeane Garofalo), it was a dismal season, and Elliott was put off by the lack of collaborative spirit among some of the long-term cast members. He moved on after one season.This was also the period of Elliott's greatest professional disappointment -- the failure of the feature film he co-wrote and starred in, Cabin Boy. His frequent collaborator Adam Resnick co-wrote the film, and, at the urging of producer Tim Burton, also directed it. Letterman makes a brief, but very funny cameo appearance. The film has developed a small cult following, particularly among devotees of Get a Life, but it was a box-office flop. While the filmmakers themselves have acknowledged that Cabin Boy fell short of their expectations, Elliott was stung by the viciousness of the reviews. Elliott went through a creative dry spell after this, appearing in a recurring role in the Tea Leoni sitcom Flying Blind, and gaining more national visibility as a spokesman for Tostitos snack chips. He also continued making guest appearances on a variety of sitcoms. Since then, Elliott has appeared in supporting roles in a number of silly comedies (Snow Day, sequels to The Nutty Professor, and Scary Movie) and has developed a fruitful relationship with the Farrelly brothers, appearing in Kingpin, Osmosis Jones, and, most notably, in their smash hit, There's Something About Mary. He was also heard as the voice of Dogbert on the short-lived animated series, Dilbert, and he was a regular on the appropriately named, ill-fated Steven Weber series, Cursed.

Trivia: Perhaps one of the most instantly recognizable -- yet seemingly unidentifiable -- character actors to have succeeded in Hollywood, Stephen Tobolowsky's non-movie star looks have enabled the native Texan to portray a wider variety of characters more conventional movie stars simply could not. Born and raised in Dallas, Tobolowsky attended Southern Methodist University for his undergraduate degree and went on to earn a Master's degree in acting from the University of Illinois. While at S.M.U., the young Tobolowsky won his first film role in a low-budget horror film entitled Keep My Grave Open. Soon after finishing his studies, he went west to Los Angeles and started working somewhat consistently in both television and film in the early '80s -- while gaining some notice for his work in the films Swing Shift and Mississippi Burning. After toiling on the West Coast for a few years, Tobolowsky became a bi-coastal star with a role in a 1981 Broadway production of Beth Henley's play The Wake of Jamey Foster. In 1986, he collaborated with Henley -- who also happened to be a fellow student of Tobolowsky's during his undergraduate studies at S.M.U. -- and David Byrne to co-write the script for Byrne's 1986 film True Stories. The multi-talented thespian then went on to write and direct his own play, Two Idiots in Hollywood, which he also turned into a film in 1988. The early '90s brought Tobolowsky his greatest exposure to the movie-going public, with a number of diverse and interesting roles that highlighted the actor's great range and skill -- nearly to the extent of upstaging these films' higher-profile stars. Perhaps the most prototypical Tobolowsky characterization can be found in the 1993 Harold Ramis comedy Groundhog Day, in which Tobolowsky portrayed the hapless insurance salesman Ned Ryerson. Other memorable performances from this decade include Thelma & Louise, Basic Instinct, Sneakers, and The Radioland Murders. Tobolowsky continued creating endearing characters into the 2000s, starting with Christopher Nolan's indy hit Memento. As amnesiac Sammy Jankis, Tobolowsky created one of the most powerful dramatic performances of his career. His next significant film role came via the 2002 Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman film Adaptation, which further displayed the nearly chameleon-like actor's range and talent that make him one of the best character actors in the industry. In the years to come, Tobolowsky would remain active on screen, appearing on shows like Glee and Californication.

Trivia: American actor/writer Brian Doyle-Murray began his professional performing career at Chicago's Second City comedy troupe. Once established, Brian was instrumental in bringing his younger brother Bill into Second City. While Bill Murray's star ascended, Brian stayed busy as a writer and comic character actor. He co-wrote the 1980 comedy hit Caddyshack and had choice supporting roles in such films as Modern Problems (1981), Club Paradise (1986) and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989). Brian has also appeared to excellent effect in several of his brother Bill's starring features, most recently in the hilarious role of the lugubrious mayor of Punxsutawney in Groundhog Day (1993). One of the staff writers of the earliest years of Saturday Night Live, Brian Doyle-Murray has remained active on television as a guest actor, as a regular on the 1991 sitcom Good Sports, and in such made for TV movies as Babe Ruth (1991).

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

Trivia: A bald and frequently bespectacled screen presence whose "average Joe" appearance and keen talent allow him the unique ability to truly transform into the character at hand, Willie Garson may have won over Sex and the City viewers as protagonist Carrie's (Sarah Jessica Parker) endlessly loyal friend, but with over a decade of film and television appearances to his credit by that time, his success should certainly be labeled more "long-time coming" than "overnight sensation." Garson began training as an actor at New York's Actor's Institute in his early teens, and in the years following high school graduation he studied theater and psychology at Wesleyan University. It didn't take long for the talented stage and screen presence to find roles following his higher education, with guest appearances in such popular television shows as Family Ties, Mr. Belvedere, and Quantum Leap eventually leading to a supporting role in the well-received made-for-television feature The Deliberate Stranger. If his film roles throughout the majority of the '90s were generally of the thankless variety, Garson nevertheless grew increasingly active thanks to roles in such high-profile features as Groundhog Day, Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, The Rock, and There's Something About Mary. A three-year stint in a supporting role in NYPD Blue showed Garson lending the series a decidedly human presence as Detective Simone's (Jimmy Smits) landlord. The stage-minded actor never forgot his roots, remaining constantly active with such New York-based theater companies as The Manhattan Theatre Club and The Roundabout Table. A long-time friend of actress Parker, Garson's friendship with the actress no doubt contributed to the easy rapport shared by the duo in the hit HBO series Sex and the City. With subsequent roles in Steven Spielberg's acclaimed sci-fi miniseries Taken, and in addition to such features as Freaky Friday proving that he was as much an "actor's actor" as a crowd-pleaser, Garson's post-Sex and the City career seemed as healthy as ever. He worked steadily in projects such as House of D, Fever Pitch, and in appeared in Jackass: Number Two. He returned to the small-screen as the lead in the series White Collar in 2009. In his increasingly non-existent spare time, Garson can be found reading to school children on a weekly basis as part of the Screen Actors Guild popular "Bookpals" program.

Trivia: His long and fruitful association with Canada's Second City comedy troupe has led some to assume that Harold Ramis was Canadian; actually he hailed from the original "Second City," Chicago. After college, Ramis worked as editor of the Party Jokes page of Playboy magazine. He later performed with Chicago's Second City aggregation, and was a cast member of the Broadway revue National Lampoon's Lemmings, a major spawning ground of most of Saturday Night Live's cast. Ramis didn't join the SNL folks, but instead headed for Edmonton, where he was a writer/performer on the weekly Second City TV sketch comedy series. Like the rest of his talented co-stars, Ramis played a rich variety of roles on the series, the most prominent of which was TV station manager Moe Green (a character name swiped from the second Godfather movie); his other characters tended to be nerdy or officious types. Ramis' film activities have included screenwriting (National Lampoon's Animal House) and directing (1980s Caddyshack and 1984's Club Paradise). His best remembered screen appearance was as paranormal troubleshooter Egon Spengler in the two Ghostbusters flicks. Retaining close ties with his Second City compadres (on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border), Ramis directed the 1993 Bill Murray vehicle Groundhog Day and the 1995 Al Franken starrer Stuart Saves His Family. Though Groundhog Day was generally lauded as one of the most fresh and original comedies to come down the pipe in quite some time, Stuart Saves His Family didn't prove any where near as successful despite some generally positive critical nods. To be fair, audiences had certainly had their fill of SNL spinoff movies by this point and the movie did have a somewhat hard time balancing its drama with comedy, but with well written characters and a smart script many eventually succumbed to its charm when the film was released on home video shortly thereafter. Where Stuart Saves His Family had scored with critics and bombed with the masses, Ramis' next film, the Michael Keaton comedy Multiplicity, did almost the exact opposite. Generally regarded as only a mediocre effort by the press, audiences seemed to enjoy the idea of multiple Keatons and the film performed fairly well at the box office. It seemed that Ramis was a director in need of balancing critical and mass reception, and with his next film he seemed to do just that. An inventive comedy that paired Robert DeNiro and Billy Crystal as a troubled mob boss and his tentative psychiatrist respectively, Analyze This seemed to get a fair shake from just about everybody. As one of DeNiro's first straight comedies, audiences had a cathartic blast watching him gleefully deconstruct the hardened, fearsome persona he had been perfecting since the early days of his career. Ramis next stepped behind the camera for Bedazzled - a remake of the beloved Dudley Moore/Peter Cooke comedy classic. Unfortunately the film proved to be one of the director's biggest failures to date. Opting next to stick with more familiar, but again not altogether original ground, Ramis headed up the sequel to Analyze This - amusingly titled Analyze That - in 2002. Though it may not have been the most necessary sequel in the history of film, fans were generally pleased and the film proved a moderate success. Sure all of Ramis' work as a director left little time for other endeavors, but the busy filmmaker somehow found time to serve as a producer on many of his own projects (in addition to such non-Ramis directed films as The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest) as well as step in front of the camera for such efforts as As Good As It Gets (1997), Orange County (2002), Knocked Up (2007), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), and Year One (2009), which he also wrote and directed. Ramis died at age 69 in 2014.

Trivia: Started her professional acting career on stage when she was 11.Received the Presidential Scholarship in 1989 when she was a high school senior.Received the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Debut Performance in 1994 for her work in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice.Notably voiced Starfire on Teen Titans Go!, Teen Titans, New Teen Titans and DC Super Hero Girls; and Princess Bubblegum on Adventure Time.Founded the Hillside Produce Cooperative, a free exchange of local, organically grown food.

Trivia: Distinguished character actor Michael Shannon essayed a diverse series of characterizations onscreen, beginning just after the start of the new millennium. A veteran member of Chicago's experimental Red Orchid theatrical troupe, Shannon specialized in small, multidimensional portrayals that added to the overall effectiveness of each project -- per his contributions to Vanilla Sky (2001), 8 Mile (2002), and Bad Boys II (2003). Whenever necessary, Shannon imperceptibly blended into the material at hand. He played a therapist in Nicole Kassell's psychodrama The Woodsman (2004), yet by virtue of his emotional intensity and eccentric look, Shannon evinced an ability to dominate with his onscreen presence, as well. Nowhere was this tendency more evident than in William Friedkin's psychological thriller Bug (2006). As adapted by Tracy Letts from his own stage play, the film concerns a shabby and skanky drifter (Shannon, reprising his role from the play) with a serious complex of delusional schizophrenia, who believes that bugs are crawling beneath his skin and enters a terrifying pas de deux with a young waitress (Ashley Judd). Shannon followed it up with a memorable contribution to Oliver Stone's World Trade Center -- as a military man desperate to help in any way possible during the 9/11 tragedy -- and Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), a crime thriller about two brothers who team up to rob a jewelry store. Shannon grabbed his first taste of stardom with his breakout role as a mentally disturbed man in Sam Mendes' adaptation of Revolutionary Road. His truthful, menacing character cut through the main characters' self-deception, and Shannon's off-kilter delivery won him glowing notices from critics, as well as a nomination for Best Supporting Actor from the Academy. He worked steadily after that success appearing in The Greatest, Jonah Hex, and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. In 2010 he had a pair of critical successes that included his work as a repressed federal agent on the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, and his portrayal of the eccentric rock entrepreneur Kim Fowler in The Runaways. In 2011 he again earned raves for his work a schizophrenic in Take Shelter. His intensity got him cast relatively often as bad guys, something he put to great effect in the 2012 action film Premium Rush and in the criminal biopic The Iceman.