Trivia: Both a member of Hollywood royalty and the Brat Pack, Emilio Estevez had the odds (and the press) against him when it came to forging a long-term career in show business. Yet, though he did become the butt of many jokes, Estevez has had the last laugh: he grew up into a prolific, if not acclaimed, actor/writer/director who managed to sidestep the celebrity pratfalls that befell his family and his Brat Pack colleagues.Born in New York on May 12, 1962, Estevez is the eldest son of actor Martin Sheen (formerly known as Ramon Estevez) and his wife, Janet. He grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side with his two younger brothers, Ramon and Charlie, and his younger sister, Renée. Though Estevez started attending school in the New York public-school system, he transferred to a prestigious private academy once his father's career blossomed. In 1968, after Sheen landed a starring role in Catch-22 (1970), the family moved west to Malibu, CA. There, the young Estevez began writing short stories and poems. By the time he turned eight, he had already submitted a script to Rod Serling's Night Gallery television series (it was, unfortunately, rejected).When Estevez was 11, his father bought the family a portable movie camera. Estevez, his brother Charlie, and their friends, Sean and Chris Penn, and Chad and Rob Lowe, used it to make short films, which Estevez would often write. He then began acting in all the junior-high-school plays, including The Dumb Waiter, Hello Out There, and Bye, Bye, Birdie. While accompanying his father to the Philippine set of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), Estevez got his first professional acting role as a messenger boy in the film. His scene, however, did not make the picture's final cut. After returning home to attend Santa Monica High School, Estevez grew interested in sports and did not become involved with the drama department until his senior year. Uninspired by the usual high-school productions, he wrote an original play and drafted Sean Penn to direct it. Titled Echoes of an Era, the story was based on the life of a Vietnam vet whom Estevez met while staying in the Philippines. Around the same time, he landed his first professional stage role opposite his father in Mr. Roberts at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater in Jupiter, FL.Estevez made his small-screen debut right after graduating from high school. He appeared in the ABC Afterschool Special Seventeen Going on Nowhere (1980) before joining his father in the cast of To Climb a Mountain (1981), an installment of the religious television series Insight. In 1981, after returning from India where he served as his father's stand-in during the taping of Gandhi (1982), Estevez landed his first feature-film role opposite Matt Dillon in Tex (1982). The film marked the first of three adaptations of S.E. Hinton's books in which Estevez would appear. A year later, he starred in Francis Ford Coppola's unforgettable adaptation of Hinton's novel The Outsiders (1983), with Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, C. Thomas Howell, and Ralph Macchio.By 1983, Estevez found himself on the short list of young actors. Oliver Stone asked him to star in his Academy Award-winning Vietnam film Platoon (1986), but the director could not finance the project in time (Estevez's brother, Charlie, took the role five years later). Instead, Estevez decided to play a punk rocker-turned-car repossessor in Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984). Co-executive produced by former Monkee Mike Nesmith, the wacky comedy also starred cult favorite Harry Dean Stanton and was a lasting underground hit. Estevez next gave a successful reading for John Hughes' The Breakfast Club (1985), a film about five very different high-school kids who are forced to spend a Saturday together in detention. Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald, and Ally Sheedy rounded out the cast in what turned out to be the quintessential teen-angst film of the '80s.On the set of The Breakfast Club, Estevez refined a screenplay he had begun writing with Tom Cruise while working on The Outsiders. Based on another S.E. Hinton novel, That Was Then...This Is Now (1985) went into production under the auspices of Paramount and director Christopher Cain, with Estevez as its star. It opened to scathing reviews and little praise for its young writer, but was a moderate box-office success.Estevez's next role featured him as a recent college graduate opposite Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, and Mare Winningham in St. Elmo's Fire (1985). The film debuted at the same time as a New York magazine cover story that labeled its actors (many of whom had worked together before) as the Brat Pack and elected Estevez as the "unofficial president" of the group. The actor immediately tried to shake the moniker with a part in Stephen King's directing debut, Maximum Overdrive (1986), but the film flopped. He then tried his own hand behind the camera. At age 23, he wrote, directed, and starred in Wisdom (1986), making cinematic history as the youngest feature filmmaker to take on all three roles. The picture, a meandering heist-road film, flopped.Estevez revived his career with Stakeout (1987), a hit action comedy that co-starred veteran actor Richard Dreyfuss, and Young Guns (1988), a successful youth-oriented Western helmed by That Was Then...This Is Now director Christopher Cain. The actor reprised his Young Guns role as Billy the Kid for its sequel, Young Guns 2 (1990), before writing, directing, and starring in Men at Work (1990). The buddy film, a comedy about two garbage men who become wrapped up in a murder case, also featured his brother, Charlie Sheen.After an embarrassing turn in the bizarre sci-fi thriller Freejack (1992), Estevez starred as a lawyer who is forced to coach a children's hockey team in Disney's triumphant The Mighty Ducks (1992). He filmed the spoof National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993) and Another Stakeout (1993), before coaching the Mighty Ducks again in D2 (1994). Estevez then agreed to make a cameo appearance in the third installment of the franchise, D3 (1996), if Disney helped finance his own picture, The War at Home (1996). Estevez produced, directed, and starred in the Vietnam-era drama, along with his father and Academy Award winner Kathy Bates. Sadly, after premiering at the Austin Film Festival, The War at Home played in only three cities.In 1998, Estevez made a comeback as the cowboy in the TNT made-for-cable spaghetti Western, Dollar for the Dead. Two years later, he directed Rated X (2000), a Showtime original movie based on brothers Jim and Art Mitchell, the troubled directors of the infamous adult film Behind the Green Door. After casting himself as Jim, Estevez recruited his own brother Charlie to play Art -- a move which gave the heralded film added clout and a moneymaking edge. Its positive press also put both brothers back in the spotlight. Nevertheless, the actor-cum-director maintained a comparatively low profile over the following half-decade, with only a scant few film appearances here and there. 2005 broke the silence, with the release of the live performance film Culture Clash in AmeriCCa -- a documentary record of an infamously acerbic Hispanic-American comedy troupe (Richard Montoya, Ricardo Salinas, Herbert Siguenza). The picture -- which received severely limited distribution (read: only a few theaters across the country) -- went almost straight to video, and the few critics who did see it scourged it as an insult to spectators and to the film's subjects.Despite this and other disappointments on the filmmaker's spotty track record, however, expectations soared for his sixth turn in the director's chair -- which also marked his most ambitious outing to date. The massive period piece/ensemble drama Bobby (2006) darkly recounted -- via a multilayered and multi-plotted script and a massive, Altmanesque ensemble cast to rival even Altman's most impressive assemblages of talent -- the events in Los Angeles' Algonquin Hotel on June 6, 1968, the night Robert F. Kennedy was shot. The cast included William H. Macy, Martin Sheen, Demi Moore, Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone, and Elijah Wood. Four years later, Estevez returned to direct the reflective adventure drama The Way, in which he also appeared as the son of his real life father Sheen. The film told the tale of a father who travels overseas to recover his estranged son's body after learning he perished while walking the El camino de Santiago, and ultimately decides to complete his son's pilgrimage.

Trivia: From the mid- to late '80s, slender, carrot-topped, and luscious-lipped Molly Ringwald was the reigning teen queen of mainstream films. At the peak of her popularity, Ringwald was on the cover of Time magazine and even had groups of adolescent girl fans, called "Ringlets," who would emulate her every move.The daughter of jazzman Bob Ringwald, the leader of the Great Pacific Jazz Band, Ringwald was raised in Sacramento, CA, where she was born February 14, 1968. She started performing as a toddler, although not as an actress. She embarked on a very early and brief career as a singer after her parents discovered that she had a remarkable ability to perfectly match the tune and phrasing of almost any song she heard. Ringwald began singing jazz with her father at state fairs, and by the age of six, she already had a jazz album, I Wanna Be Loved By You--Molly Sings. In the meantime, Ringwald began to develop an interest in acting: she was four when she started hanging around the local community theater and five when she started getting small parts, including the role of a preacher's child in Truman Capote's The Grass Harp. At the age of eight, Ringwald appeared on The New Mickey Mouse Club. Encouraged by her talent and driven by her father's desire to get better bookings for his band, Ringwald's family moved to L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. In 1979, the actress won a part on Norman Lear's sitcom The Facts of Life. Ringwald only lasted a season before she was let go, but her television work paved the way for subsequent screen roles.In 1982, Ringwald made an auspicious film debut in Paul Mazursky's acclaimed Tempest, earning a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of John Cassavetes' daughter. In order to prepare for the role, Mazursky had Ringwald and her family move to a flat in New York's Greenwich Village to help her develop the necessary New York accent and attitude. Her performance in the film attracted the attention of screenwriter/aspiring director John Hughes who cast her as the protagonist of Sixteen Candles (1984), his wistful chronicle of suburban teenaged angst. The film was a hit, and so was Ringwald. Hughes would cast her in two more teen films, The Breakfast Club (1985) and Pretty in Pink (1986), both of which were hugely popular with teen audiences. In addition to a solid film career, Ringwald -- who had become a household name -- also occasionally appeared in television movies. Despite her continued success through the early '90s, Ringwald felt her life had reached a crossroads; by 1992, she decided to sell her house, put her personal effects in storage, pack up seven suitcases, and exchange life in the L.A. fast lane for a more romantic existence in Paris, where she was busy shooting Seven Sundays (released in 1994). Ringwald, who had learned French while attending a French high school in Los Angeles, remained there, dividing her time between reading (she has been a voracious reader since childhood when she and her siblings would read stories to her blind father), writing short stories and screenplays, cooking, and hanging out with her French husband. She occasionally continued to act in American and internationally produced films and television projects that include George Hickenlooper's Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade (1993), Stephen King's The Stand (1994), and Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999). Ringwald also continued to do stage work, appearing in an acclaimed 1998 off-Broadway production of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive. She spoofed her own iconic persona by appearing in the 2001 comedy Not Another Teen Movie, and in 2008 she was cast as the mother in the Fox Family series The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

Trivia: Wiry character actor Paul Gleason attended Florida State University before making his first off-Broadway appearance in a 1973 revival of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Gleason's inaugural movie role was Long Tom in Doc Savage (1975), after which he worked extensively in Roger Corman productions. He is best known for his scowling, obstreperous portrayals of minor authority figures: the principal in The Breakfast Club (1985), the police chief in Die Hard (1988), and so on. He was at his most abrasive--and his funniest--as FBI agent Clarence Beeks in Trading Places (1982). A familiar TV presence since his days as David Thornton on the ABC serial All My Children, Paul Gleason has had recurring roles on such nighttimers as Spooner, Supercarrier and One West Waikiki. Throughout the '90s Gleason continued to work steadily as a character actor appearing in films as diverse as National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1, Running Cool, Maniac Cop 3, and Nothing to Lose. Like his Breakfast Club co-star Molly Ringwald, Gleason willingly spoofed his most iconic performance in the 2001 comedy Not Another Teen Movie. In May of 2006, at the age of 67, Gleason perished from mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer often suffered by people exposed to asbestos.

Trivia: Anthony Michael Hall was 14 when he essayed his first screen role in the Kenny Rogers vehicle Six Pack. With his cracked voice, skinny frame, and unkempt hair, Hall went on to play nerds and dweebs in such films as Sixteen Candles (1984) and The Breakfast Club (1985), working so well under the direction of John Hughes that there were those who assumed that Hughes was treating the young actor as an alter ego, reliving his own "misfit" high school years. Hall's film career temporary eclipsed in 1985, partly as the result of a disastrous personal-appearance tour during which the actor behaved in a fashion that could charitably be described as bizarre. He showed up as a regular on TV's Saturday Night Live later that year, and as he grew older, became too athletic and self-assured to continue in his previous "clueless" vein. Hall's professional second life as a character actor began with his villainous performance in Edward Scissorhands (1990). He turned to directing with the 1994 theatrical feature Hail Caesar, in which he cast himself as a relentlessly obnoxious rock star. In 2001, he starred as Whitey Ford in Billy Crystal's made-for-TV movie 61*, but his big comeback role would come in 2002, with the starring role on the seires Stephen King's Dead Zone.

Trivia: Brown-eyed, chestnut-haired actress Ally Sheedy has been involved with acting for most of her life. The daughter of a literary agent mother, she began making commercials and appearing on-stage at the age of 15. She was something of a precocious author, as well: When only 12-years-old, she published a children's book, She Was Nice to Mice. (Sheedy has also been published in such periodicals as The New York Times). After high school, the New York-born actress headed west to the University of California where, in addition to her studies, she appeared in TV movies. She began her feature-film career at 21 playing adolescent girls in films such as Bad Boys and WarGames (both 1983), and joined the so-called Brat Pack in 1985 after appearing in John Hughes' The Breakfast Club and Joel Schumacher's St. Elmo's Fire. Despite the huge success of both films, many of her subsequent efforts were relative disappointments, and, by the early '90s, she had slipped into all but complete obscurity. However, her career was revived in 1998 thanks to a starring role as a drug-addicted lesbian photographer in the widely acclaimed High Art. Sheedy won raves for her raw, touching performance, and, in short time, again found herself working steadily. In 1999, she appeared in Allison Anders' Sugar Town and The Autumn Heart, the latter premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. In addition to her film work, Sheedy continued to work in the theater, taking over John Cameron Mitchell's title role in the popular New York production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a story about a German entertainer who is neither a man nor a woman but a fascinating composite of both. As the 21st century began, Sheedy continued to work steadily in varied projects like Happy Here and Now, Noise, Harold, and Life During Wartime -- Todd Solondz's sort-of sequel to his black comedy Happiness.

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

Trivia: Even by the unexacting standard of Hollywood's 1980s "brat pack," actor Judd Nelson seemed wildly undisciplined and self-indulgent on screen. One tends to conclude that Nelson (a former philosophy student and the son of a Maine politician) has played his screen characters as written: he was, after all, very well trained by famed drama coach Stella Adler, and came up from the exacting ranks of summer stock. Among his earliest screen assignments -- all in his watershed year of 1985 -- including the dope-smoking detentionee in The Breakfast Club, Kevin Costner's parachute-jumping fraternity pal in Fandango, and Ally Sheedy's philandering live-in boyfriend in St. Elmo's Fire. Always seeming to be on the verge of punching someone out, Nelson was well cast as a mercurial killer in 1989's Relentless. Like many brat-packers, Judd Nelson spent the 1990s transitioning into his career as an adult, but he hit his stride by 1996, when he joined the cast of the hit sitcom Suddenly Susan. In the years to come, Nelson would remain a consistent force on screen, appearing in movies like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Grizzley Flats.