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: One of the most vibrant comic personalities of the 1970s and '80s, as well as a noted actor and screenwriter, Dan Aykroyd got his professional start in his native Canada. Before working as a standup comedian in various Canadian nightclubs, Aykroyd studied at a Catholic seminary from which he was later expelled. He then worked as a train brakeman, a surveyor, and studied Sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa, where he began writing and performing comedy sketches. His success as a comic in school led him to work with the Toronto branch of the famed Second City improvisational troupe. During this time -- while he was also managing the hot nightspot Club 505 on the side -- Aykroyd met comedian and writer John Belushi, who had come to Toronto to scout new talent for "The National Lampoon Radio Hour." In 1975, both Aykroyd and Belushi were chosen to appear in the first season of Canadian producer Lorne Michaels' innovative comedy television series Saturday Night Live. It was as part of the show that Aykroyd gained notoriety for his dead-on impersonations of presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. He also won fame for his other characters, such as Beldar, the patriarch of the Conehead clan of suburban aliens, and Elwood, the second half of the Blues Brothers (Jake Blues was played by Belushi). Aykroyd made his feature-film debut in 1977 in the Canadian comedy Love at First Sight, but neither it nor his subsequent film, Mr. Mike's Mondo Video, were successful. His first major Hollywood screen venture was as a co-lead in Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979). But Aykroyd still did not earn much recognition until 1980, when he and Belushi reprised their popular SNL characters in The Blues Brothers, a terrifically successful venture that managed to become both one of the most often-quoted films of the decade and a true cult classic. Aykroyd and Belushi went on to team up one more time for Neighbors (1981) before Belushi's death in 1982. Aykroyd's subsequent films in the '80s ranged from the forgettable to the wildly successful, with all-out comedies such as Ghostbusters (1984) and Dragnet (1987) falling into the latter category. Many of these films allowed him to collaborate with some of Hollywood's foremost comedians, including fellow SNL alumni Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and Eddie Murphy, as well as Tom Hanks and the late John Candy. In such pairings, Aykroyd usually played the straight man -- typically an uptight intellectual or a latent psycho. He tried his hand at drama in 1989 as Jessica Tandy's son in Driving Miss Daisy and received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. During the '90s, Aykroyd's career faltered just a bit as he appeared in one disappointment after another. Despite scattered successes like My Girl (1991), Chaplin (1992), Casper (1995), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), and Antz (1998), the all-out flops -- The Coneheads (1993), Exit to Eden (1994), Sgt. Bilko (1996) -- were plentiful. Likewise, the long-awaited Blues Brothers sequel, Blues Brothers 2000 (1998), proved a great disappointment. Aykroyd, however, continued to maintain a screen profile, starring as Kirk Douglas' son in the family drama Diamonds in 1999. During the next few years, he found greater success in supporting roles, with turns as a shifty businessman in the period drama The House of Mirth (2000), Woody Allen's boss in The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), pop star Britney Spears' father in her screen debut, Crossroads (2002), and (in a particularly amusing turn) as Dr. Keats in the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore comedy 50 First Dates. Aykroyd also appeared in the 2005 Christmas with the Kranks, alongside Tim Allen and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry with Adam Sandler in 2006. He also provided the voice of Yogi Bear in the big screen adaptation of the titular cartoon -- but none of these projects did particularly well with fans. Aykroyd soon planned to revive the smashing success of the Ghostbusters franchise, collaborating with Harold Ramis to create a script and reunite the original four stars. However, ongoing hold-ups, including the public refusal of pivotal member Bill Murray to participate, continued to push the project back. In the meantime, Akroyd played a recurring role on TV shows like According to Jim, The Defenders, and Happily Divorced.Since 1983, Aykroyd has been married to the radiant Donna Dixon, a model who holds the twin titles of Miss Virginia 1976, and Miss District of Columbia 1977; the two co-starred in the 1983 Michael Pressman comedy Doctor Detroit. In Aykroyd's off time, he claims a varied number of interests, including UFOs and supernatural phenomena (his brother Peter works as a psychic researcher), blues music (he co-owns the House of Blues chain of nightclubs/restaurants), and police detective work.

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: Though she is a classically trained dramatic actress and has played a variety of roles, Sigourney Weaver is still best known for her portrayal of the steel-jawed, alien-butt-kicking space crusader Ellen Ripley from the four Alien movies. The formidably beautiful, 5'11'' actress was born Susan Weaver to NBC president Pat Weaver and actress Elizabeth Inglis. Her father had a passion for Roman history and originally wanted to name her Flavia, but after reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby at the age of 14, Weaver renamed herself Sigourney, after one of the book's minor characters. After being schooled in her native New York City, Weaver attended Stanford University and then obtained her master's at the Yale School of Drama where, along with classmate Meryl Streep, she appeared in classical Greek plays. After earning her degree, Weaver was only able to find work in experimental plays produced well away from Broadway, as more conventional producers found her too tall to perform in mainstream works. After getting her first real break in the soap opera Somerset (1970-1976), she made her film debut with a bit part in Woody Allen's Annie Hall in 1977. Weaver had her first major role in Madman which was released just prior to Alien in 1979. Though the role of Ripley was originally designed for Veronica Cartwright (who ultimately played the doomed Lambert), scouts for director Ridley Scott saw Weaver working off-Broadway and felt she would be perfect for the part. The actress' take on the character was laced with a subtlety that made her a new kind of female action hero: Intelligent, resourceful, and unconsciously sexy, Weaver's Ripley was a woman with the guts to master her fear in order to take on a terrifying unknown enemy. Alien proved to be one of the year's biggest hits and put Weaver on Hollywood's A-list, though she would not reprise her character for another seven years. In between, she worked to prove her versatility, playing solid dramatic roles in Eyewitness (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), while letting a more playful side show as a cellist who channels a fearsome demon in Ghostbusters (1984). In 1986, Aliens burst into the theater, even gorier and more rip-roaring than its predecessor. This time, Weaver focused more on the maternal side of her character, which only served to make her tougher than ever. Her unforgettable performance was honored with a Best Actress Oscar nomination, and was followed up by Weaver's similarly haunting portrayal of doomed naturalist/animal rights activist Diane Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist (1988). The role won Weaver her second Best Actress Oscar nomination, and that same year, she received yet another Oscar nomination -- this time for Best Supporting Actress -- for her deliciously poisonous portrayal of Melanie Griffith's boss in Working Girl. After 1992's Alien 3, Weaver had her next big hit playing President Kevin Kline's lonely wife in the bittersweet romantic comedy Dave (1993). She then gave a gripping performance as a rape/torture victim who faces down the man who may or may not have been her tormentor in Roman Polanski's moody thriller Death and the Maiden (1994). During the latter half of the decade, Weaver appeared in Alien Resurrection -- perhaps the most poorly received installment of the series -- but increasingly surfaced in offbeat roles such as the coolly fragile Janey in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm and the psychotic, wicked Queen in the adult-oriented HBO production The Grimm Brothers' Snow White (both 1997). In 1999, she starred in the sci-fi spoof Galaxy Quest, making fun of her image as a sci-fi goddess while continuing to prove her remarkable versatility.Weaver's first high-profile project of the new millenium saw her swindling Ray Liotta and Gene Hackman as a sexy con-woman teamed up with Jennifer Love Hewitt. Already into her fifties, Weaver proved she still possessed plenty of sex-appeal even alongside a substantially younger starlet like Hewitt. She played up her sultry side some more in the well-received 2002 indie-comedy Tadpole, but changed gears a bit in 2003, playing a villain in the family sleeper hit Holes.In 2004, Weaver could be seen as part of the ensemble cast in M. Night Shyamalan's summer thriller The Village. She played a tough-as-nails network executive in the satire The TV Set, and provided the voice of the ship's computer in WALL-E. In 2008 she appeared in projects as diverse as Baby Mama and Be Kind Rewind. She had a major role in the box-office blockbuster Avatar - teaming up with director James Cameron again. Her very busy 2011 included the role of a government official in the sci-fi comedy Paul, the girlfriend of a sheltered insurance salesman in Cedar Rapids, and a part in Oren Moverman's cop drama Rampart.Weaver has been married to stage director Jim Simpson since 1984. When not appearing in films, she continues to be active in theater.

Trivia: Actor Ernie Hudson received his training at Wayne State, Yale School of Drama and the University of Minnesota. Following a hitch with the Marines, Hudson appeared in such stage productions as The Great White Hope, The Cage and Daddy Goodness. He made his earlier film appearance in 1976's Leadbelly. Most of us know Hudson best as Winston Zeddmore in the two Ghostbusters films, a role he repeated in Ray Parker Jr.'s "Ghostbusters" music video. His best--and most controversial--screen assignment was the The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992); Hudson played retarded handyman Solomon, virtually the only character in the film who doesn't buy into the "perfect" facade of homicidal baby-sitter Rebecca DeMornay. On TV, Ernie Hudson has been seen as Smythe in Highcliffe Manor (1977), undercover officer "Night Train" Lane in The Last Precinct (1986), and kleptomaniac cop Toby Baker in Broken Badges (1990). He had a memorable supporting part in the 1992 thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and appeared in Heart and Souls as well as the comedy Airheads. In 1994 he was cast in a prominent role in the action film The Crow, and followed that up in 1995 with part in Congo. In 1997 he started work on the HBO drama Oz, playing the warden of the meanest, cruelest inmates imaginable for six seasons. He co-starred with Sandra Bullock in the 2000 comedy Miss Congeniality. He continued to work steadily in projects as diverse as Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror, The Ron Clark Story, and 2010's Smokin' Aces 2: Assassin's Ball.

Trivia: While still attending high school in Toronto, Rick Moranis held down a part-time job as a radio engineer. After working as a solo nightclub comic and radio deejay, Moranis joined the Second City comedy troupe, which lead to his television bow in 1980 on the syndicated weekly Second City TV. Like his SCTV colleagues, Moranis' strong suit was his versatility, though his early fame rested on a single characterization. Grudgingly honoring a Canadian regulatory requirement that Second City TV include a sequence of "identifiable Canadian content" in each episode, Moranis and Dave Thomas created the characters of Bob and Doug McKenzie, a pair of beer-guzzling, back-bacon-chewing "hosers" who allegedly represented certain Canadians. The largely improvised McKenzie brothers segments scored an immediate hit, spawning a 1983 feature film Strange Brew, which Moranis and Thomas starred in, co-wrote and co-directed. Since leaving Second City TV, Moranis has pursued a successful film career, usually playing clueless or self-involved nerds. He played reluctant "ghost host" Louis Tully in the two Ghostbusters films, was cast as Seymour Krelboin in the 1986 musical version of Little Shop of Horrors, and was seen as eccentric inventor Wayne Szalinski in Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1989) and its sequel Honey I Blew Up the Kid (1992). Even in his 40s, Moranis convincingly portrayed geekish losers-turned-winners in such films as Little Giants (1994) and Big Bully (1995). He played a convincing live-action version of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones (1994). In 1997, he reprised Wayne Szlalinski in Disney's third installment of their now direct-to-video series Honey We Shrunk Ourselves. Having lost his wife Ann to liver cancer in 1991, the beloved character actor subsequently retreated from the spotlight to raise their two children, emerging only occasionally for vocal work on projects like The Animated Adventures of Bob and Doug McKenzie and Brother Bear (both 2003), or to record his Grammy-nominated country album The Agoraphobic Cowboy.

Trivia: For those who grew up in the 1980s, many will remember hating actor William Atherton for his hissable characters in such films as Ghostbusters (1984) and Real Genius (1985). Specializing in heady, clueless bureaucrats who never cease to hinder the protagonist and who often get what's coming to them before the credits roll, Atherton is one of those busy character actors who audiences are not likely to forget, even if they can't remember where they know him from. A Connecticut native who got his start on the stage while still in high school, Atherton would subsequently move on to become the youngest member ever accepted into New Haven's Long Wharf Theater repertory. Studies at the Pasadena Playhouse and Carnegie Tech led Atherton to pursue more theater roles, and a few short years later the seasoned stage actor made his leap to the big screen with The New Centurions (1972). A role in Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express (1974) found Atherton's feature career getting off to a solid start, and the fledgling actor would continue career momentum with featured roles in The Hindenburg (1975) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). In the 1980s Atherton would develop a convincingly weasel-like persona with roles as the popcorn-hating professor of Real Genius and a relentlessly obnoxious EPA agent who unleashes a nightmare upon New York in Ghostbusters. Following up with a memorably sleazy reporter in Die Hard (1988) and its sequel, Atherton would remain busy in the 1990s with roles in The Pelican Brief (1993), Bio-Dome (1996), Hoodlum, and Mad City (both 1997). The millennial turnover found Atherton appearing in such fare as The Crow: Salvation (2000) and Race to Space (2001), and as 2003 approached his feature career seemed to be having a bit of a resurgence with such major releases as Who's Your Daddy? and The Last Samurai.

Trivia: Involved in amateur theatricals since childhood, Annie Potts received her BFA in theatre arts from Missouri's Stephens College. Potts has been seen in comic supporting roles in films since 1978; she is most closely associated with the part of ditzy secretary Janine Melnitz in the two Ghostbusters flicks of the 1980s. On television, Potts has played Edith Bedelmeyer on the one-season sitcom Goodtime Girls (1980), then enjoyed a longer run as Mary Jo Shively on Designing Women (1986-93). Her characterization of outspoken gourmet chef Dana Paladino on the prime time sitcom Love and War won Annie an Emmy nomination in 1994. Annie Potts has also been featured in a popular series of commercials for a well-known corn-chip product, and has served as national spokesperson for the Women for Arthritis Foundation. In 1996 she was cast as a no-nonsense schoolteacher of troubled inner-city high schoolers in the ABC-TV show Dangerous Minds, a series based on the 1995 Michelle Pfeiffer film of the same name. She voiced the part of Bo Peep in the first two Toy Story films, and in 2003 she took part in a Designing Women reunion. That same year she was the lead in Defending Our Kids: The Julie Posey Story. She appeared intermittently on the Showtime series Huff, and in 2007 she joined the cast of the short-lived series Men In Trees. In 2012 she was cast as one of the leads in the new TV series GCB.

Trivia: Fresh out of CCNY, David Margulies made his off-Broadway bow in Golden 6 (1958). Margulies made his first film, A New Leaf, in 1971, and two years later first appeared on Broadway in The Iceman Cometh. Shuttling between plays, movies and TV in the 1980s and 1990s, Margulies was most often cast as doctors, lawyers and rabbis. In Ghostbusters II (1989), David Margulies has several good scenes as the Mayor of New York. He originated the role of Roy Cohn in Angels in America on Broadway; one of his final roles was as Elie Weisel in the miniseries Madoff. Margulies died in 2016, at age 78.

Trivia: American actress Jennifer Runyon familiarized herself to soap opera addicts as Sally Spencer on the long-running daytimer Another World. Prime-time viewers will recognize Runyon as coed Gwendolen Pierce in the 1984-85 episodes of the weekly sitcom Charles in Charge. She went on to play such roles as the grown-up Cindy Brady (briefly replacing Susan Olsen) in the 1988 retro TV special A Very Brady Christmas. Jennifer Runyon's movie manifest includes The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), Ghostwriter (1987) and the 1993 Carnosaur.

Trivia: Character actress Alice Drummond built a solid background in theater before regularly playing interesting older ladies in film and television. During the '60s, she played Nurse Jackson on the gothic TV series Dark Shadows. Her early work was mostly confined to the stage, though, and by 1970 she had earned a Tony nomination for her performance in The Chinese & Dr. Fish. During the '80s she appeared in many feature films and television shows, usually in roles like eccentric old ladies on Night Court. One of her most recognizable parts was the librarian who is chased by a ghost through the New York Public Library in the opening scene of Ghostbusters. During the '90s, she got a few more substantial roles, like a patient in Awakenings and Ray Finkle's mother in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. She found meager success with independent comedy dramas in the late '90s, starting with Adrienne Shelly's I'll Take You There. In 2001 she played Aunt Millie in Tom Rice's The Rising Place and in 2003 she was Grandma Dottie in Peter Hedges' Pieces of April. Drummond died in 2016, at age 88.

Trivia: In his way, New York City television anchor man Roger Grimsby was a pioneer of broadcast news. Along with fellow groundbreakers Geraldo Rivera, Howard Cosell and gossip columnist Rona Barret, Grimbsy helped usher in the era of "happy talk" during Eyewitness News broadcasts. The term "happy talk" refers to a friendly chattiness and joshing camaraderie affected by the news team on air and is designed to lighten up the often depressing nature of newscasts. Grimsby, with his sharp, sly wit and deadpan demeanor took such talk to a new level. He was famous for not concealing his contempt for certain colleagues. Over his 40-year career as a television journalist, spending the latter half of it in New York City, he also worked in San Diego and San Francisco. At the peak of his popularity, Grimsby occasionally cameoed in feature films such as Bananas (1971) and Ghostbusters (1984).

Trivia: Born November 29, 1933, CNN mainstay Larry King reshaped the landscape of broadcast journalism when his talk show Larry King Live debuted in June 1985; that program's groundbreaking admixture of cutting-edge political discussion, incisive celebrity-directed Q & A, and viewer phone-in rocked the world and drew an audience of tens of millions. By 2007 -- King's 22nd year on cable and his 50th year in broadcasting -- the CNN website revealed that King had chalked up 40,000 interviews, including one with every United States president since Gerald Ford. Uncoincidentally, that was the same year King achieved an honor claimed by very few: a city block -- the street surrounding the CNN building -- was christened "Larry King Square" in his honor. King lent his voice to several animated features including Bee Movie (2007), Shrek the Third (2007), and Shrek Forever after (2010).

Trivia: Best known as a radio and television personality and host of several popular Weekly Top 40 radio programs, Casey Kasem (born Kemal Kasem, he was of Lebanese descent) occasionally appeared in feature films as a supporting actor. In addition, he was also a well-known voice actor whose most famous cartoon characterization was that of Shaggy from the Scooby Doo series. Kasem died at age 82 in June 2014.

Trivia: African-American actor Reginald VelJohnson is the ideal choice for "urban everyman" roles: his sour-apple facial expression, bald pate, and chubby frame are perfectly suited for the many policemen and blue-collar workers he has played over the years. Beginning in small parts in films like Ghostbusters (1984), VelJohnson gained a following with supporting roles in Crocodile Dundee (1986) and Die Hard (1988). A guest spot as an undercover cop on a 1989 episode of TV's Perfect Strangers led to VelJohnson's longest professional engagement to date. In the company of former Perfect Strangers regular Jo-Marie Payton-France, Reginald VelJohnson, since the fall of 1989, starred as Chicago cop Carl Winslow on the weekly comedy series Family Matters.

Trivia: Impassioned devotees of late-'80s prime-time television will have little difficulty identifying actress Jean Kasem; she achieved her most memorable and enduring role as flighty and buxom platinum blonde Loretta Tortelli, the second wife of sleazy TV repairman Nick Tortelli (Dan Hedaya), first on Cheers and then on its very short-lived spin-off, The Tortellis (January -May 1987). A native of Portsmouth, NH, Kasem began her career with bit roles on series including We Got It Made, Matt Houston, and Alice, and then (after The Tortellis promptly folded) continued to do guest-starring turns on various series, and bit roles in telemovies, through the early 2000s. Off-camera, the actress married DJ Casey Kasem in 1980.

Trivia: A founding member of New York's Roundabout Theater in 1967, actor Winston May spent most of his career starring in off-Broadway productions. He also played small supporting roles in a few television soap operas. His few film credits include Ghostbusters (1984). In addition to dramatic roles, May also appeared in scores of commercials and industrial films.

Trivia: The actor who originated the role of Booker T. Washington in Terence McNally's Tony-award winning Ragtime and appeared as Malcolm X's father in Spike Lee's film of the same name, seasoned stage actor Tommy Hollis also made frequent appearances in film and television, where he was a familiar face to viewers of I'll Fly Away. A noted concert performer and traditional gospel singer as well as a talented actor, Hollis' most popular stage roles included I Just Stopped By to See the Man at London's Royal Court Theatre, George C. Wolfe's Colored Museum, and August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, for which he won the Theater World Award for outstanding Broadway debut in 1991. Frequently reprising his stage roles for small screen adaptations, Hollis also made appearances on television's Law and Order and New York Undercover.On September 9, 2001, Tommy Hollis died of a heart attack in New York City. He was 47.

Trivia: Ruth Oliver was best known in Hollywood as an astrologer and had a number of famous patrons. She was also an actress who began appearing on-stage during the 1920s. Contemporary audiences may remember her as the ghostly librarian who walked the quiet, dusty stacks of the New York Public Library in the 1984 film Ghostbusters.

Trivia: Despite his less than masculine moniker, Carol Henry was a tough-looking hombre who appeared in countless B-Westerns and quite a few serials of the 1940s. Often cast as a henchman, Henry could also play stage drivers, townsmen, or even, as in Three Desperate Men (1951), a lawman. When B-Westerns bit the dust in the early '50s, Henry went into television, where he appeared on such popular shows as The Cisco Kid, Wild Bill Hickock, Wagon Train, and Cimarron Strip. He retired in the late 1960s.

Trivia: Able to boast a 64-year-career on stage, screen, and television, actor Tom McDermott was most proud of the work he did toward improving opportunities and working conditions for minorities in the theater. His love of acting began in high school and though he received no formal training in the craft, was talented enough to break into the Chicago theater scene in a production of George Bernard Shaw's Candida. From there he went on to become a regular performer on and off-Broadway. He started appearing on television in the 1950s and went on to perform on a wide assortment of programs ranging from Captain Video to One Life to Live. McDermott did not make his feature film debut until Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1983). From there he went on to sporadically play character roles in such films as Ghostbusters (1984) and Liebstraum (1991). He made his final screen appearance in Nicholas Hytner's version of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible (1996).

Trivia: The son of directors Ivan Reitman (Stripes, Ghostbusters) and Geneviève Robert (Casual Sex?), Jason Reitman initially essayed bit and supporting on-camera roles, typically in his father's projects -- such films as Ghostbusters (1984), Twins (1988), Kindergarten Cop (1990), and Dave (1993). Reitman took his directorial bow in 2005 with the acerbic satire Thank You for Smoking (2005), starring Aaron Eckhart -- a freewheeling adaptation of Christopher Buckley's tome about a crafty spin doctor for the tobacco lobby. That outing netted rave reviews from critics across the country. Reitman followed it up with Juno (2007), a comedy drama about an teenage girl (Ellen Page) forced to grow up very quickly when she must contend with an unplanned pregnancy after a tryst with a classmate (Michael Cera). The film opened to glowing reviews, and garnered a number of year-end accolades including a Best Director nomination by the Academy for Reitman's work on the project. Reitman's third feature, the comedy/drama Up in the Air starrring George Clooney, again earned glowing reviews, garnering Best Director and Best Screenplay nominations from both the Hollywood Foreign Press (where he won the Screenplay award) and the Academy, with nods from the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild as well. Reviews for Reitman's fourth film Young Adult (which found the director re-teaming with Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody), were a bit more mixed, and though the film wasn't bestowed any major awards, viewers capable of embracing its off-kilter tone were treated to a surprisingly mature drama about a disturbingly immature woman.