Trivia: Considered one of the best actors of his generation, Robert De Niro built a durable star career out of his formidable ability to disappear into a character. The son of artists, De Niro was raised in New York's Greenwich Village. The young man made his stage debut at age 10, playing the Cowardly Lion in his school's production of The Wizard of Oz. Along with finding relief from shyness through performing, De Niro was also entranced by the movies, and he quit high school at age 16 to pursue acting. Studying under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, De Niro learned how to immerse himself in a character emotionally and physically. After laboring in off-off-Broadway productions in the early '60s, De Niro was cast alongside fellow novice Jill Clayburgh in film-school graduate Brian De Palma's The Wedding Party (1969). He followed this with small movies like Greetings, Hi, Mom!, Sam's Song, and Bloody Mama.De Niro's professional life took an auspicious turn, however, when he was re-introduced to former Little Italy acquaintance Martin Scorsese at a party in 1972. Sharing a love of movies as well as their neighborhood background, De Niro and Scorsese hit it off. De Niro was immediately interested when Scorsese asked him about appearing in his new film, Mean Streets, conceived as a grittier, more authentic portrait of the Mafia than The Godfather. De Niro's appearance in the film made waves with critics, as did his completely different performance as a dying simple-minded catcher in the quiet baseball drama Bang the Drum Slowly (1973). Francis Ford Coppola was impressed enough by Mean Streets to cast De Niro as the young Vito Corleone in the early 1900s portion of The Godfather Part II. Closely studying Brando's Oscar-winning performance as Don Corleone in The Godfather, and perfecting his accent for speaking his lines in subtitled Sicilian, De Niro was so effective as the lethally ambitious and lovingly paternal Corleone that he took home a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role.De Niro next headed to Europe to star in Bernardo Bertolucci's opus, 1900 (1976) before returning to the U.S. to collaborate with Scorsese on the far leaner (and meaner) production, Taxi Driver. After working for two weeks as a Manhattan cabbie and losing weight, De Niro transformed himself into disturbed "God's lonely man" Travis Bickle. One of the definitive films of the decade, Taxi Driver earned the Cannes Film Festival's top prize and several Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and De Niro's first nod for Best Actor. Controversy erupted about the film's violence, however, when would-be presidential assassin John W. Hinckley cited Taxi Driver as a formative influence in 1981.De Niro and Scorsese would reteam for the lavish musical New York, New York (1977), and though the film was a complete flop, De Niro quickly recovered with another risky and ambitious project, Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978). One of the first wave of Vietnam movies, The Deer Hunter starred De Niro as one of three Pennsylvania steel-town friends thrown into the war's inferno who emerged as profoundly changed men. Though the film provoked an uproar over its portrayal of Viet Cong violence as (literally) Russian roulette, The Deer Hunter won several Oscars.Returning to the realm of more personal violence, De Niro followed The Deer Hunter with his and Scorsese's masterpiece, Raging Bull, a tragic portrait of boxer [%Ray La Motta]. Along with his notorious 60-pound weight gain that rendered him unrecognizable as the middle-aged Jake, De Niro also trained so intensely for the outstanding fight scenes that La Motta himself stated that De Niro could have boxed professionally. Along with his physical dedication, De Niro won over critics with his ability to humanize La Motta without softening him. Raging Bull received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.Though he was well suited to star in Sergio Leone's epic homage to gangster films, Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Leone's tough, transcendent vision couldn't survive the studio's decision to hack 88 minutes out of the American release version. De Niro next took a breather from films to return to the stage, playing a drug dealer in the New York Public Theater production Cuba and His Teddy Bear. During his theater stint, De Palma made De Niro a movie offer he couldn't refuse when he asked him to play a small role in his film version of The Untouchables (1987). As the rotund, charismatic, bat-wielding Al Capone, De Niro was a memorable adversary for Kevin Costner's upstanding Elliot Ness, and The Untouchables became De Niro's first hit in almost a decade. De Niro followed The Untouchables with his first comedy success, Midnight Run (1988), costarring as a bounty hunter opposite Charles Grodin's bail-jumping accountant.Though he earned an Oscar nomination for his touching performance as a patient in Penny Marshall's popular drama Awakenings (1990), movie fans were perhaps more thrilled by De Niro's return to the Scorsese fold, playing cruelly duplicitous Irish mobster Jimmy "The Gent" opposite Ray Liotta's turncoat Henry Hill in the critically lauded Mafia film Goodfellas (1990). De Niro worked with Scorsese again in the thriller remake Cape Fear (1991), sporting a hillbilly accent and pumped-up physique. It was Scorsese and De Niro's biggest hit together and earned another Oscar nod for the star. De Niro subsequently costarred as a geeky cop in the Scorsese-produced Mad Dog and Glory (1993).De Niro also revealed that he had learned a great deal from his work with Scorsese with his own directorial debut, A Bronx Tale (1993). A well-observed story of a boy torn between his father and the local mob, A Bronx Tale earned praise, but De Niro was soon back to working with Scorsese, starring as Vegas kingpin Sam Rothstein in Casino (1995) -- based on the story of real-life handicapper Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal -- staged with Scorsese's customary visual brilliance and pairing De Niro with his Raging Bull brother and Goodfellas associate Joe Pesci.Appearing in as many as three films a year after 1990, De Niro was particularly praised for his polished reserve in Michael Mann's glossy policer Heat (1995), which offered the rare spectacle of De Niro and Pacino sharing the screen, if only in two scenes. After indifferently received turns in The Fan (1996), Sleepers (1996), and Cop Land (1997), De Niro stepped outside his comfort zone to play an amoral political strategist in Barry Levinson's sharp satire Wag the Dog (1997) and a dangerously dimwitted crook in Quentin Tarantino's laid-back crime story Jackie Brown (1997). De Niro was front and center -- and knee deep in self-parody -- in the comedy Analyze This (1999), aided and abetted by a nicely low-key Billy Crystal as his reluctant psychiatrist. De Niro would continue to lampoon his own tough-guy image in the sequel Analyze That, as well as the popular Meet the Parents franchise. As the decade wore on, De Niro took on roles that failed to live up to his acclaimed earlier work, such as with lukewarm thrillers like The Score, Godsend, Righteous Kill, and Hide and Seek. However, De Niro continued to work on his ambitious and long-planned next foray behind the camera, the acclaimed CIA drama The Good Shepherd.He continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including Stardust, What Just Happened, and Everybody's Fine. He became a Kennedy Center honoree in 2009. He reteamed with Ben Stiller for Little Fockers in 2010, and played a corrupt politician in Machete that same year. In 2011 he appeared opposite Bradley Cooper in the thriller Limitless, which seemingly laid the groundwork for their reteaming as father and son in the 2012 comedy Silver Linings Playbook. For his work in that movie, De Niro earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Trivia: Screen siren, opinionated diva, and one of the few actresses in Hollywood who can claim to be both a Paul Verhoeven muse and a MENSA member, Sharon Stone is nothing if not a legend in her own right. Beginning with her notorious disinclination to wear underwear during a police interrogation in Basic Instinct, Stone went on to become one of the most talked about actresses of the '90s, earning both admiration and infamy for her on- and off-screen personae.Almost as famous as Stone's glamorous image are her working-class roots. Born in the Northwest Pennsylvania town of Meadville on March 10, 1958, Stone grew up a bookworm in a large family. Highly intelligent in addition to being a local beauty pageant queen, she won a scholarship to Pennsylvania's Edinboro University when she was 15 years old. After studying creative writing and fine arts, she decided to pursue a modeling career, and after moving to New York, she signed on with the Eileen Ford agency. Stone became a successful model by the late '70s, appearing in print and television ads for Clairol, Revlon, and Diet Coke.In 1980, Stone branched out into acting, making her screen debut as the "pretty girl on train" in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories. Following this role, she spent the '80s appearing in one forgettable film after another, often cast as the stereotypical blonde bimbo. She finally got a break in 1990, when she appeared as Arnold Schwarzenegger's kickboxing secret-agent wife in Verhoeven's Total Recall. Any recognition she gained for that role, however, was more than eclipsed by the notoriety she earned for her starring turn in her second Verhoeven feature, Basic Instinct. The 1992 film, in which Stone portrayed a bisexual author/sexual adventurer who may or may not be a serial killer, did her a huge favor by making her a star but also a sizable disservice by further typecasting her in blonde seductress roles. Stone's subsequent effort, the erotic thriller Sliver (1993), was an example of this: the actress attracted notice less for her acting than for her willingness to simulate masturbation. Her role in the following year's The Specialist was also fairly limiting -- an action flick co-starring Sylvester Stallone, it called for Stone to run around in a tight dress in heels when she wasn't seducing various characters.In 1995, Stone managed to break into the "serious actress" arena with her performance in Martin Scorsese's Casino. Cast as an ex-prostitute, she won an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for her work, as well as the general opinion that she was capable of dramatic acting. Stone branched out further that same year with The Quick and the Dead, a revisionist Western directed by Sam Raimi in which she starred as a tough-talking, hard-drinking broad bent on revenge. Unfortunately, the film was a relative flop, as were her subsequent 1996 films, Diabolique, a remake of the 1954 French film by Clouzot and Last Dance, a drama that featured Stone as a woman on death row. By this point winning more notice for her off-screen role as an arbiter of fashion and old-school Hollywood glamour than for her onscreen acting work, Stone next lent her voice to the animated Antz in 1998. The film proved to be a success, unlike the actress's other projects that year, the lackluster Barry Levinson sci-fi thriller Sphere and The Mighty. The latter film, which Stone produced as well as starred in, was a heartfelt story about two adolescent misfits; although it did win a number of positive reviews, audiences largely kept their distance. The same couldn't be said of Stone's next film, a 1999 remake of Gloria; not only did audiences stay away from it, critics savaged it with vituperative glee. Never one to let a bad review get her down, Stone soon rebounded, receiving a more positive reception for her performance in The Muse and then starring as Jeff Bridges' long-suffering wife in Simpatico. If her roles in the years that followed weren't as high profile, that's certainly not to say that they were any less challenging. After taking a turn towards the small screen in the lesbian-themed made-for-cable drama If These Walls Could Talk 2, Stone broke for comedy with Alfonso Arau's Picking Up the Pieces and essayed the role of an unpredictable bad girl in Beautiful Joe (all 2000). Having veered increasingly towards family-oriented fare in recent years, the trend continued with vocal work for Harold and the Purple Crayon. Of course, all was not child's play in Stone's career, and with the release of Cold Creek Manor the following year, audiences were indeed in for a frightful chill. A series of continual highs and lows marked Stone's career path in successive years. In 2004, the actress appeared as Laurel Hedare opposite Halle Berry in Catwoman. Though eagerly anticipated, the effects-heavy vehicle opened that July to abysmal reviews and devastating box office returns. Despite Stone's confession that she was toning down her oft cited diva-like ways after suffering a brain aneurysm in 2001, rumors of outrageous behavior on the film's set began to circulate. She fared much better on all fronts when she essayed a role as one of Bill Murray's ex-girlfriends in Jim Jarmusch's Golden Palm winner Broken Flowers (2005) - and walked away with the most memorable and endearing role in the picture - a role that showcases her skills as a disciplined thespian. Stone then contributed a cameo (as did many stars) to that same year's disappointing Martin Short vehicle Jiminy Glick in LaLa Wood Early 2006 gave rise to another embarrassment, as Stone appeared (at the age of 48!) in the sequel Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction. Despite a somewhat respectable pedigree (the gifted Michael Caton-Jones helmed the picture) the public and press scoffed. Incredibly, Stonespoke of a possible third entry in the franchise, and even explored the option of assuming the position of director. No such luck: much to the chagrin of viewers who relish Hollywood stars in humi roles, the picture failed to materialize. But soon after, a couple of potential triumphs surfaced, defiantly challenging the tabloids hungry for a 'losing streak' in Stone's career. She joined an exemplary cast in Emilio Estevez's hotly anticipated November 2006 release Bobby, an ensemble piece that intertwines multiple substories in the Ambassador Hotel just prior to RFK's assassination. She also appears in Nick Cassavetes's Alpha Dog (2007), alongside an A-list cast that includes newbie Emile Hirsch and Bruce Willis. The picture dramatizes the true story of a drug dealer in his early twenties who gets in over his head; Stone plays the traumatized mother of the child he kidnaps, a boy who is in hock for a massive drug tab. Universal slated it for release in January 2007. In that same year's drama When a Man Falls in the Forest, directed by Ryan Eslinger, she plays a kleptomaniacal Midwestern housewife. The cast also stars Timothy Hutton, Dylan Baker and Pruitt Taylor Vince. She continued to work steadily in projects such as Streets of Blood, Largo Winch II, and the biopic Lovelace.Wed to MacGyver producer Michael Greenberg from 1984 to 1987, and George Englund, Jr. (Cloris Leachman's son) prior to that, Stone married her third husband, San Francisco Examiner editor Phil Bronstein, in early 1998, with whom she adopted a son. They divorced in early 2004. She runs an LA-based production shingle, Chaos Productions.

Trivia: A consummate character actor, Joe Pesci rose to success on the strength of a series of Martin Scorsese films which took full advantage of his gift for outlandishly menacing supporting performances. Born February 9, 1943, in Newark, NJ, Pesci was a child actor who began his radio career at the age of four. Broadway beckoned just a year later, and by 1953 he was a regular on the television variety program Star Time Kids. His acting career stalled during his teen years, however, and by the mid-'60s, he mounted a musical career under the name Joe Ritchie, recording an LP titled Little Joe Sure Can Sing and later playing guitar in the pop band Joey Dee & the Starliters. He also formed a vaudeville-style nightclub comedy act with Frank Vincent. Outside of 1961's Hey, Let's Twist!, Pesci did not appear in films prior to the little-seen 1975 feature The Death Collector; the film earned virtually no notice upon its release and he dropped out of acting, dejectedly returning to New York to run an Italian restaurant.While few people saw The Death Collector, one of those who did was actor Robert De Niro, who was so impressed by Pesci's performance that he brought the film to the attention of Scorsese, who cast Pesci in his 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull. The performance earned Pesci an Academy Award nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category, and he became one of the busiest character actors in the business, steadily appearing in films ranging from the 1983 Rodney Dangerfield comedy Easy Money to the 1984 Sergio Leone epic Once Upon a Time in America. After starring in a failed 1985 sitcom, Half Nelson, Pesci's onscreen visibility diminished, and over the next four years he appeared in only one film, 1987's Man on Fire. In 1989, however, he co-starred opposite Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the hit Lethal Weapon 2, a performance which put his talent for comic relief to such fine use that he later reappeared in the third chapter of the franchise, issued in 1992.By that point, Pesci had already become a star; 1990 was his breakthrough year, as he appeared in the family comedy blockbuster Home Alone and Scorsese's brilliant GoodFellas, winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his vivid portrayal of a psychotic mobster. While his first major starring role in 1991's The Super proved disastrous, he won good notices for his supporting turn in Oliver Stone's JFK and in 1992 starred in the hit courtroom comedy My Cousin Vinny. Later, following the disappointment of 1994's Jimmy Hollywood and With Honors, he reunited with Scorsese and De Niro for the 1995 epic Casino, essaying a variation on his GoodFellas character. However, a pair of poorly received 1997 comedies -- Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag and Gone Fishin' -- again called Pesci's capabilities as a lead actor into question. He found more success reprising his supporting role in Lethal Weapon 4, released in 1998. On the heels of his second outing with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, however, the popular character actor disappeared from the big screen for nearly a decade. It took his old friend DeNiro to get him back in front of the camera for the CIA thriller The Good Shepherd (2006), with the four year gap between that film and Pesci's next film Love Ranch hinting that the aging screen veterean was in no hurry to jump back into the fray. But the window between films seemed to start shrinking when it was announced that Pesci would be returning to the world of crime cinema in director Geo Santini's 2012 gangster drama The Irishman.

Trivia: One of Hollywood's most intense supporting and leading actors, James Woods has built a distinguished career on stage, screen, and television. Early in his career, Woods, with his lean body, close-set eyes, and narrow, acne-scarred face, specialized in playing sociopaths, psychopaths, and other crazed villains, but in the 1990s, he added a sizable number of good guys to his resumé.The son of a military man, Woods was born in Vermal, UT, on April 14, 1947. Thanks to his father's job, he had a peripatetic childhood, living in four states and on the island of Guam. As a young man, he earned a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; after obtaining a degree in political science, he set out to become a professional actor in New York. While in school he had appeared in numerous plays at M.I.T., Harvard, and with the Theater Company of Boston, as well as at the Provincetown Playhouse on Rhode Island. After working off-Broadway, Woods debuted on Broadway in 1970, appearing in Borstal Boy. Off-Broadway, he earned an Obie for his work in Saved.In 1971, the actor made his first television appearance in All the Way Home, and the year after that debuted in Elia Kazan's thriller The Visitors (1972). He then played a small part in The Way We Were (1973), but did not become a star until he played a vicious, remorseless cop killer in The Onion Field (1979). Subsequent film appearances quickly established Woods as a scene stealer, and though not among Tinseltown's most handsome actors, he developed a base of devoted female fans who found his rugged, ruthless appearance sexy. This appearance would serve him well throughout his career, notably in one of his first major films, David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983). Cast as the film's morally ambiguous hero, Woods gave a brilliantly intense performance that was further enhanced by his rough-hewn physical attributes. Throughout the 1980s, Woods continued to turn in one solid performance after another, earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of an American journalist in South America in Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986). He gave another remarkable performance as a Jewish gangster in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984), and in 1989 tried his hand at playing nice in the adoption drama Immediate Family. That same year, he won an Emmy for his portrayal of Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson in My Name Is Bill W. After beginning the subsequent decade with an Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated performance in the title role of the made-for-TV Citizen Cohn (1992), Woods appeared in a diverse series of films, playing a boxing promoter in Diggstown (1992), H.R. Haldeman in Nixon (1995), a drug dealer in Another Day in Paradise (1998), and a vampire slayer in John Carpenter's Vampires. In 1996, he won his second Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Medger Evers' suspected assassin in Ghosts of Mississippi. In 1999, the actor continued to demonstrate his versatility in a number of high-profile films. For The General's Daughter, he played a shady colonel, while he appeared as a newspaper editor in Clint Eastwood's True Crime, the head of an emotionally disintegrating Michigan family in The Virgin Suicides, and a football team orthopedist in Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday.As the 21st century began, Woods could be seen as a doctor in the medical/hostage thriller John Q., and he lent his voice to a number of documentaries and animated projects including the sequel Stuart Little 2. He was part of the ensemble in the Polish brothers' Northfork, and appeared in Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty. In 2007 he began work as the lead on the TV series Shark, and in 2011 he appeared in the remake of Straw Dogs and the well-reviewed made-for-HBO docudrama about the collapse of the American economy, Too Big to Fail.

Trivia: Believe it or don't: comedian Don Rickles--the "Merchant of Venom," "The Caliph of Calumny," "Mister Warmth"--was once a dedicated student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. As a movie-struck kid, Rickles aspired to share the Big Screen with such idols as Clark Gable and James Cagney. He got his wish in his first film, 1958's Run Silent Run Deep, wherein Gable topped the cast. Rickles went on to receive critical plaudits for his villainous performance in 1960's The Rat Race, and also popped up with regularity on such TV series as The Thin Man and The Twilight Zone. But truly good roles for a short, baldpated young character actor were relatively few and far between. During a long period between acting assignments, Rickles decided to work up a nightclub act. He began as a traditional stand-up comic, but when annoyed by hecklers, he instinctively insulted the insulters back as a defense mechanism. Audiences laughed harder at his impromptu insults than his prepared material, and thus the dye was cast for Rickle's show-business future. The story goes that, upon spotting Frank Sinatra in one of his audiences, Rickles impulsively cried out "Come right in, Frank. Make yourself at home. Hit somebody." The normally combative Sinatra exploded with laughter, and from that point on Rickles was "in." While the bulk of his fame and fortune rested upon his nightclub work, Rickles still kept a hand in acting, playing guest spots on TV programs like F Troop, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy and Run for Your Life (he was particularly good in the last-named series as a washed-up comedian facing a statutory rape charge). As his own vitriolic "self" (though rumors persist that Rickles is a pussycat off-camera), he convulsed the stars of such variety series as The Dean Martin Show and The Andy Williams Show. When Dean Martin altered his series to a "roast" format in the early 1970s, Rickles could always be counted upon for a steady stream of hilarious invectives; conversely, he took it as well as he dished it out when the Friar's Club elected him Entertainer of the Year in 1974. The one sore spot in Rickles' latter-day career was his failure to sustain a weekly TV series. The 1968 variety outing The Don Rickles Show was axed after thirteen weeks, while a 1972 sitcom of the same name barely survived the season. He had better luck as star of the 1976 comedy series C.P.O. Sharkey, which lasted two years; but in 1993, Daddy Dearest, which co-starred Rickles with "neurotic" comedian Richard Lewis, was on and off in only two months. In comparison, Rickles has done quite well in films, with choice secondary roles in such productions as Where It's At?, Kelly's Heroes (1970) and several of the "Beach Party" frivolities. In 1995, after several years away from films, Don Rickles resurfaced with a solid supporting part in Martin Scorsese's Casino, and as the voice of a singularly abrasive Mr. Potato Head in the animated Toy Story. He had a brief but memorable cameo in the comedy Dirty Work, and was the subject of his own documentary, Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project. He returned to voice Mr. Potato Head in two Toy Story sequels as well as a number of Pixar shorts, and he gave voice to one of the animals in the Kevin James vehicle Zookeeper. Rickles died in 2017, at age 90.

Trivia: Bitten by the performing bug at an early age, youngster Alan King sang for nickels and dimes in the Brooklyn subways. Born Irwin Alan Kniberg, King's first stage name was Earl Knight, of the itinerant musical aggregation Earl Knight and His Musical Knights. Abandoning music for stand-up comedy, he worked his way up the Catskills circuit and the burlesque wheels. His first big break came in 1949, when he headlined at New York's Paramount Theatre. Seven years later he opened for Judy Garland at the Palace, and subsequently accompanied Garland when she performed in London. Making his first film appearance in 1955, King provided side-of-the-mouth comedy relief in such films as Miracle in the Rain (1956) and The Helen Morgan Story (1957). Introduced to TV audiences by Ed Sullivan, King made innumerable appearances on the variety weeklies hosted by Sullivan, Garry Moore and Perry Como. A 1961 stand at his own weekly sitcom proved futile, though it resulted in a very funny pilot episode. By the early 1960s, King's act was a well-oiled mechanism: he could always be counted on to expound hilariously upon his childhood, his show business experiences, his misadventures in suburbia, and especially the trials and tribulations of married life ("Last year I took my wife on a trip around the world. This year she says 'Let's go someplace else.' "). While much of his earlier material might not pass muster in these more politically correct times, it always brought down the house--even in houses dominated by female spectators. Much of his stand-up material was incorporated in a brace of best-selling books, Anyone Who Owns His Own Home Deserves It and Help! I'm a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery. Returning to films in the late 1960s, King was shown to particularly good advantage in three of director Sidney Lumet's projects: Bye Bye Braverman (1968) The Anderson Tapes (1971) and Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), in which he received top billing. He also shone in Memories of Me (1988) as "the king of the Hollywood extras," and Enemies: A Love Story (1989) as Rabbi Lembeck. In the mid-1960s, he launched another aspect of his career when he co-produced the hit Broadway comedy Impossible Years (1965). He has since served as executive or associate producer of such films as Lipstick (1976), Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), Wolfen (1981) and Cat's Eye (1983). Alan King has also functioned in a production capacity on the TV series The Corner Bar (1972-73) and Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell (1975, as "executive in charge of comedy"), and was co-producer of the made-for-TV feature films Return to Earth (1974), How to Pick Up Girls (1978) and Reunion at Fairborough (1985).

Trivia: It sounds apocryphal, but it's true: 13-year-old Kevin Pollak did begin his Bar Mitzvah speech with "A funny thing happened on the way to the temple..." In fact, Pollak's rabbi had encouraged him to do so: even at this early stage, the boy evinced a gift for comic timing. By 17, he was doing stand-up in his native San Francisco. He went on to play the West Coast comedy-club and improv circuit, and was briefly teamed with Dana Carvey, a professional collaboration that ended amicably when Carvey was hired by Saturday Night Live. Though Pollak himself didn't make it to SNL, he flourished as an impressionist, writer and film and TV supporting actor. He was given several opportunities to shine in such films as Barry Levenson's Avalon (1990), Mick Jackson's LA Story (1991) and Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men (1992). Reiner went on to team Pollak with Bob Amaral in the weekly TVer Morton and Hayes (1991) a hit-and-miss homage to the 2-reel comedies of the 1930s and 1940s (Pollak had previously played a featured role in the short-lived 1988 sitcom Coming of Age). Kevin Pollak's film career went into warp-drive in the 1990s, with such choice roles as Jacob in the two Grumpy Old Men flicks, Todd Hockney in The Usual Suspects (1995), Phillip Green in Casino (1995), and Boss Vic Koss in That Thing You Do (1996).His film and television career still going strong into the 2000s, Pollak found a way to work his passion for poker into his schedule as host of Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown in 2003, and in 2009 he launched a weekly internet series entitled Kevin Pollak's Chat Show.

Trivia: What do actors Gig Young, Anne Shirley, and L.Q. Jones have in common? All of them lifted their show-biz names from characters they'd portrayed on screen. In 1955, University of Texas alumnus Justice McQueen made his film debut in Battle Cry, playing a laconic lieutenant named L.Q. Jones. McQueen liked his character so much that he remained L.Q. Jones offscreen ever after (though he never made it legal, still listing himself as Justice Ellis McQueen in the 1995 edition of Who's Who). A natural for westerns both vocally and physically, Jones played supporting roles in several big-screen oaters, and was seen on TV as Smitty on Cheyenne (1955-58) and as Belden on The Virginian (1964-67). Jones gained a measure of prominence in the films of Sam Peckinpah, notably Ride the High Country (1961) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Turning to the production side of the business in the early 1970s, L. Q. Jones produced and co-starred in the 1971 film Brotherhood of Satan; he also co-produced, directed, adapted and played a cameo (as a porn-movie actor!) in the fascinating 1975 cinemazation of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, a tour de force that won Jones a Hugo Award from America's science fiction writers.

Trivia: Is deaf in one ear as a result of an injury sustained after falling out of a car as a young child. Began performing with his brother Tom Smothers while they attended San Jose State University. Planned on becoming an elementary-school teacher before making it big in the entertainment industry. Made his first national-television appearance on The Jack Paar Show in 1961. In 1967, began costarring in the CBS variety show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which ran for three seasons; the cancellation of the show is the subject of the 2002 documentary film Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Took up amateur automobile racing in 1967 after enrolling in the Jim Russell Driving School in California. Purchased land in 1977 to create the Remick Ridge Vineyards, a California-based winery that is now owned and operated by Tom Smothers; the vineyards appeared in an episode of Seinfeld. In 2003, received a honorary doctorate from San Jose State University.

Trivia: New Jersey-born character actor Frank Vincent is best known for playing threatening thugs and gangsters, but he actually started out working with Joe Pesci as a comedy duo during the early '70s. Before that, Pesci and Vincent had worked together in a honky tonk band, the Aristocrats, in which Pesci sang lead and Vincent played the drums. The duo broke up in 1975, but not before landing supporting roles as gangsters in the low-budget crime drama Death Collector. Afterward, Vincent disappeared from the entertainment industry until 1978, when he again encountered Pesci, who helped him land the part of Salvi, the gangster whom Pesci badly beats in Martin Scorsese's epic biography Raging Bull (1980). The former duo subsequently teamed in Dear Mr. Wonderful (1982), Scorsese's GoodFellas (1990), where Pesci gave Vincent a fatal beating, and in Casino, where the worm turned and Vincent got to kill Pesci. Vincent found fairly steady employment playing small supporting roles in films of widely varying quality through the early '90s. After appearing in Alan Rudolph's Mortal Thoughts and Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991), Vincent began getting larger screen roles.

Trivia: Known primarily for his B-movie-lovin' cowboy alter ego Joe Bob Briggs, actor/writer/comic/social satirist John Bloom is a man of many talents. In addition to keeping faux newshounds in stitches with his role as the host of "God Stuff" during the first two seasons of Comedy Central's wildly irreverent news parody The Daily Show, Bloom has penned numerous books on the subject of B-movies, acted in film and television, and kept tally of more onscreen movie deaths than Jack Valenti. A native of Dallas, TX, Bloom was raised in Little Rock, AR, before attending Vanderbilt University on a sports-writing scholarship. A subsequent move back to his native state found the emerging writer landing a job at the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald at the age of 19, with the first "Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" column appearing in January of 1982. Offering a unique, carefree, and refreshingly unscholarly approach to film, the entertaining column would eventually be syndicated in over 100 newspapers nationwide. Though controversy soon followed when Briggs was fired as a result of comments made in an April 1985 article entitled "We Are the Weird," the media attention that resulted sparked a heated debate on political correctness and censorship that served only to raise his public profile. Picked up by new syndicator Universal Press a mere three days later, Briggs was soon back in print, to the delight of cinema-trash lovers across the country. In the months that followed, Bloom expanded the Joe Bob persona by developing a one-man show entitled "An Evening With Joe Bob Briggs" (later re-titled "Joe Bob Dead in Concert"), and after debuting in Cleveland in 1985, the show played in some of the nation's best comic venues over the course of the next two years. His show drawing national attention, Bloom was soon approached by executives from Showtime sister-station The Movie Channel and asked to serve as guest host for the popular late-night B-movie show Drive-in Theater. Soon renamed Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater, the twice Cable ACE award-nominated show offered the most laughably bad genre films imaginable -- surviving a healthy ten-year run until a 1996 format change forced cancellation. Never one to go down without a fight, Joe Bob was back on the air a mere four months later as the host of TNT's MonsterVision, essentially the same show on basic cable. The schlock cowboy continued to entertain audiences weekly with a healthy dose of cinematic junk food until that show, too, fell victim to an eventual format change four short years later. Making a move to Comedy Central, Briggs' turn as a religious commentator on The Daily Show offered the best (or worst depending on your vantage point) clips that religious television had to offer. Also gaining an impressive amount of film and television credits with numerous minor roles, Briggs can be spotted in such features as Great Balls of Fire!, Casino, and Face/Off. He also co-authored the true-crime novel Evidence of Love, which was later adapted as the Emmy-winning made-for-television feature A Killing in a Small Town (1990). Though Briggs would place his two syndicated columns, "Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" and "Joe Bob's America," on hiatus as of 1998, his drive-in column returned a mere two years later, and fans suffered no shortage of reading material thanks to the release of such books as Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In, Iron Joe Bob, and Profoundly Disturbing: The Shocking Movies that Changed History. A new column entitled "The Vegas Guy" found Joe Bob exploring the casinos of the nation, and though his presence on television was sorely missed, this void would soon be filled thanks to the increasing popularity of the DVD format. Realizing that commentary tracks could offer as good a vehicle for his hilariously lowbrow wit and insight as his previous television endeavors, Briggs soon began recording commentaries as Joe Bob for such DVD releases as I Spit on Your Grave, Samurai Cop, and The Double-D Avenger (for such distributors as Elite and Media Blasters) beginning in 2003.

Trivia: One of Hollywood's old standbys for playing imposing, street-smart Italian-American hoods, Vinny Vella grew up in New York's Little Italy and dreamed of movie stardom from a young age; he entered show business via a back door, by founding and running the company Star Truckers, designed to provide transportation to Hollywood A-listers. Vella's related presence on movie sets, in turn, encouraged directors to begin summoning him for walk-ons and bit parts, including a small role as a driver in Spike Lee's comedy drama Girl 6 (1996); also in the mid-'90s, Martin Scorsese recruited Vella as one of the main characters, ill-fated stoolie Artie Piscano, in his epic crime drama Casino. On the side, Vella also made guest appearances on MTV's House of Style, which also expanded his résumé and gave him added audience recognition. Additional movie projects included Jane Campion's In the Cut (2003), Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), and lead billing opposite Ty Jones and Connie in the action thriller Holla at Me. Meanwhile, Vella also teamed up with ESPN to do over 30 commercial spots for Monday Night Baseball.

Trivia: One of the more talented members of the "Philadelphia school" of rock-n-rollers, Frankie Avalon was the reigning teen singing idol from 1958 through 1960. Devotees of American Bandstand will hold affectionate memories of such Avalon top-tenners as "Gingerbread" and "Venus." Avalon made a gradual transition from singer to actor beginning in 1957. He successfully essayed supporting roles in such films as Guns of the Timberland (1960) and The Alamo (1960) before starring in a string of inexpensive but moneymaking "Beach Party" flicks for American-International. As his film stardom eclipsed in the early 1970s, Avalon returned to singing, briefly starring in the 1976 nostalgia-oriented TV variety series Easy Does It. In 1987, Frankie Avalon was reteamed with his "Beach Party" leading lady Annette Funicello in the retro film musical Back to the Beach (1987), which he also co-produced. Over the next few years he could be seen in cameo performances portraying himself in a diverse string of projects including Troop Beverly Hills, the kid-friendly ABC sitcom Full House, and Martin Scorsese's violent Vegas gangster film Casino. In 1995 he reteamed with many of his old co-horts, including Annette and Dick Clark, for the feel-good made-for-TV showbiz film A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: The Annette Funicello Story.

Trivia: The son of American vaudeville entertainers, bespectacled American comedian Steve Allen led a peripatetic childhood, shunted off from one relative or boarding school to another. As a balm to his loneliness, Allen became a voracious reader, providing himself with a wide and varied intellectual base. Breaking into showbiz as a radio disc jockey, Allen soon learned that inserting humor here and there would draw a lot more attention than merely announcing the records and reading the stockyard reports. In order to supply himself with an endless stream of material, Allen memorized every joke book and "college humor" magazine that he could get his hands on; the result was his uncanny ability to conjure up precisely the right wisecrack at the right time. Developing a strong following while hosting a radio program on Los Angeles' KNX in 1948, Allen received his first network exposure in 1949, and was also featured in several films, including Down Memory Lane (1949) and I'll Get By (1950). In 1953, Allen was hired to host a local late-night program on New York's WNBC-TV, which later developed into the NBC network's Tonight Show. Extraordinarily busy during the years 1956 and 1957, Allen hosted Tonight, headlined his own hour-long weekend variety TV series, starred as the title character in The Benny Goodman Story (1956), composed several popular songs (his piano skills were shown to excellent advantage on his TV programs), and filled up his spare time by writing books, plays, and magazine articles. He left Tonight in 1957 and closed out his NBC weekender in 1960. One year later, he was back with a Wednesday-night hour on ABC, which had the misfortune of being scheduled opposite Wagon Train. In 1962, Allen launched a syndicated 90-minute "madness and music" nightly series, a fondly remembered effort which lasted until 1964; a second syndicated nightly followed in 1968.During his heyday, Allen helped develop and nurture such talents as Tom Poston, Louis Nye, Don Knotts, Bill Dana, Gabe Dell, Tim Conway, Steve Lawrence, and Eydie Gorme. He kept busy in television throughout the 1970s and 1980s with such highly praised projects as PBS' Meeting of Minds, wherein Allen would host round-table discussions with actors posing as the great leaders and intellects of history. Long married to actress Jayne Meadows, Steve Allen showed no signs of slowing down in his early seventies (despite a well-publicized bout with cancer), as he continued to write books on a multitude of subjects, accept TV and movie guest-star appearances, make SRO personal appearances, and even occasionally return to his roots by hosting TV and radio talkfests.

Trivia: The daughter of Episcopal missionaries, Jayne Meadows was born in China; she spoke nothing but Chinese until her parents returned to America in the early 1930s. The sister of Honeymooners co-star Audrey Meadows, Jayne Meadows began her film career in the mid-1940s as a contract player at MGM. Her velvety voice and self-confident bearing ruled out her being cast as simpering ingénues: Meadows excelled as cold-blooded "other women," vitriolic divorcees, and neurotic murderesses. Her best screen role was the double- and triple-crossing Mildred Haveland in Lady in the Lake (1946). For nearly five decades, Jayne was harmoniously married to her second husband, TV personality Steve Allen, with whom she has co-starred on dozens of variety programs and game shows, as well as Steve Allen's memorable PBS miniseries Meeting of Minds. Both she and her husband were nominated for Emmy Awards for their joint guest appearance on the TV series LA Law. Her more regular TV work included the third-billed role of Nurse Chambers on Medical Center (1969-73) and the part of Ken Howard's mother on the 1983 "dramedy" It's Not Easy. Meadows made an indelible impression through the power of her voice alone as Billy Crystal's gushing, unseen mom in the two City Slickers film comedies of the 1990s. She continued acting and appearing on-screen until the late 2000s; she died in 2015, at age 95.

Trivia: Has appeared in 3 films nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture (Goodfellas, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle) Has appeared in 6 films directed by Martin Scorsese and 5 by Woody Allen Has appeared in 16 films that star Robert DeNiro Had recurring roles on two popular HBO series, The Sopranos and Entourage Received a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture for American Hustle in 2014

Trivia: Occasional actress, legendary cook, and the mother of distinguished filmmaker Martin Scorsese, Catherine Scorsese was a first generation Italian-American and grew up in New York's Little Italy. After marrying and having two boys, Catherine went to work in the garment district. Scorsese gave his mother tiny roles in his films such as Mean Streets, Goodfellas, and Casino. When not appearing before the camera, Scorsese was cooking enormous meals for the cast and crew. Later, her son used her and her husband, Charles, as the subjects of his documentary Italianamerican. Catherine Scorsese has also appeared in a couple of other films, including Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Pt. 3. Shortly before her death, she published The Scorsese Family Cookbook. Mrs. Scorsese died of complications from Alzheimer's disease at the age of 81.

Trivia: Audrey Meadows will be forever immortalized as Alice Kramden ("Alice, you're the greatest!"), wife of bus-driver Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners (irregularly from 1951-1971). Despite its later popularity, The Honeymooners actually began as a series of sketches, just one part of The Jackie Gleason Show (1952-1970). The show had only one real season of 39 shows, in 1955, and it wasn't a success. Later, the original sketches were re-edited into episodes in the '80s, which is when the show finally became a success. Born in China, the red-haired actress is the older sister of Steve Allen's wife Jayne Meadows. She also appeared on Bob and Ray (1951-53), Club Embassy (1952-53), Too Close for Comfort (1980-83), and several game shows. She won an Emmy Award for The Jackie Gleason Show in 1955. Her film appearances include Lady in the Lake (1946). Meadow's feature film credits include character roles in That Touch of Mink (1962) and Rosie! (1967). In 1995, Meadows was diagnosed with cancer, but she told no one, not even her sister, until she was admitted to the hospital on January 24, 1996. Meadows passed away on February 3, 1996.

Trivia: A Windy City native, distinguished character actor Richard Riehle earned his undergraduate degree from Notre Dame and his master's from the University of Minnesota, then took his first cinematic bow with a bit part in 1975's Western Rooster Cogburn -- opposite John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn. After Rooster, Riehle abandoned screen work for over a decade to hit the East Coast and focus almost exclusively on Broadway and regional theater. Ed Zwick's acclaimed Civil War opus Glory (1989) marked Riehle's Hollywood comeback; he subsequently increased his screen time dramatically, and chalked up a resumé playing everymen -- usually heavyset and unpolished working stiffs such as policemen, detectives, judges, and bartenders -- in literally dozens of films. Riehle's credits include Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), Mercury Rising (1998), Office Space (1999), Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), and National Lampoon's Dorm Daze 2 (2006). The actor is also known for his regular presence on two television series: the 1990 Ferris Bueller (as Principal Ed Rooney) and the 2001-2005 Grounded for Life (as Walt Finnerty). Riehle subsequently returned to National Lampoon work with the 2007 frat-boy comedy National Lampoon Presents The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell.