Trivia: With his rugged good looks and icon status, Clint Eastwood was long one of the few actors whose name on a movie marquee could guarantee a hit. Less well-known for a long time (at least until he won the Academy Award as Best Director for Unforgiven), was the fact that Eastwood was also a producer/director, with an enviable record of successes. Born May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, Eastwood worked as a logger and gas-station attendant, among other things, before coming to Hollywood in the mid-'50s. After his arrival, he played small roles in several Universal features (he's the pilot of the plane that napalms the giant spider at the end of Tarantula [1955]) before achieving some limited star status on the television series Rawhide. Thanks to the success of three Italian-made Sergio Leone Westerns -- A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) -- Eastwood soon exchanged this limited status for bona fide international stardom.Upon his return to the U.S., Eastwood set up his own production company, Malpaso, which had a hit right out of the box with the revenge Western Hang 'Em High (1968). He expanded his relatively limited acting range in a succession of roles -- most notably with the hit Dirty Harry (1971) -- during the late '60s and early '70s, and directed several of his most popular movies, including 1971's Play Misty for Me (a forerunner to Fatal Attraction), High Plains Drifter (1973, which took as its inspiration the tragic NYC murder of Kitty Genovese), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Though Eastwood became known for his violent roles, the gentler side of his persona came through in pictures such as Bronco Billy (1980), a romantic comedy that he directed and starred in. As a filmmaker, Eastwood learned his lessons from the best of his previous directors, Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, who knew just when to add some stylistic or visual flourish to an otherwise straightforward scene, and also understood the effect of small nuances on the big screen. Their approaches perfectly suited Eastwood's restrained acting style, and he integrated them into his filmmaking technique with startling results, culminating in 1993 with his Best Director Oscar for Unforgiven (1992). Also in 1993, Eastwood had another hit on his hands with In the Line of Fire. In 1995, he scored yet again with his film adaptation of the best-selling novel The Bridges of Madison County, in which he starred opposite Meryl Streep; in addition to serving as one of the film's stars, he also acted as its director and producer.Aside from producing the critical and financial misstep The Stars Fell on Henrietta in 1995, Eastwood has proven to be largely successful in his subsequent efforts. In 1997, he produced and directed the film adaptation of John Berendt's tale of Southern murder and mayhem, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and he followed that as the director, producer, and star of the same year's Absolute Power, 1999's True Crime, and 2000's Space Cowboys. With Eastwood's next movie, Blood Work (2002), many fans pondered whether the longtime actor/director still had what it took to craft a compelling film. Though some saw the mystery thriller as a fair notch in Eastwood's belt, many complained that the film was simply too routine, and the elegiac movie quickly faded at the box office. If any had voiced doubt as to Eastwood's abilities as a filmmaker in the wake of Blood Work, they were in for quite a surprise when his adaptation of the popular novel Mystic River hit screens in late 2003. Featuring a stellar cast that included Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon, Mystic River was a film that many critics and audiences cited as one of the director's finest. A downbeat meditation on violence and the nature of revenge, the film benefited not only from Eastwood's assured eye as a director, but also from a screenplay (by Brian Helgeland) that remained fairly faithful to Dennis Lehane's novel and from severely affecting performances by its three stars -- two of whom (Penn and Robbins) took home Oscars for their efforts. With Eastwood's reputation as a quality director now cemented well in place thanks to Mystic River's success, his remarkable ability to craft a compelling film was nearly beginning to eclipse his legendary status as an actor in the eyes of many. Indeed, few modern directors could exercise the efficiency and restraint that have highlighted Eastwood's career behind the camera, as so beautifully demonstrated in his 2004 follow-up, Million Dollar Baby. It would have been easy to layer the affecting tale of a young female boxer's rise from obscurity with the kind of pseudo-sentimental slop that seems to define such underdog-themed films, but it was precisely his refusal to do so that ultimately found the film taking home four of the six Oscars for which it was nominated at the 77th Annual Academy Awards -- including Best Director and Best Picture. Eastwood subsequently helmed two interrelated 2006 features that told the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from different angles. The English-language Flags of Our Fathers relayed the incident from the American end, while the Japanese-language Letters from Iwo Jima conveyed the event from a Japanese angle. Both films opened to strong reviews and were lauded with numerous critics and industry awards, with Letters capturing the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film before being nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Nowhere near slowing down, Eastwood would direct and star in the critically acclaimed Gran Torino, as well as helming critical favorites like Invictus, the Changeling, Hereafter, and J. Edgar, racking up numerous awards and nominations. In 2014, he helmed the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Jersey Boys, to mixed reviews, and the biographical adaptation American Sniper.A prolific jazz pianist who occasionally shows up to play piano at his Carmel, CA restaurant, The Hog's Breath Inn, Eastwood has also contributed songs and scores to several of his films, including The Bridges of Madison County and Mystic River. Many saw his critically championed 1988 film Bird, starring Forest Whitaker (on the life of Charlie "Bird" Parker), as the direct product of this interest. Eastwood also served as the mayor of Carmel, CA, from 1986 until 1988.

Trivia: Following a wartime tour with the Navy, New Jersey-born Lee Van Cleef supported himself as an accountant. Like fellow accountant-turned-actor Jack Elam, Van Cleef was advised by his clients that he had just the right satanic facial features to thrive as a movie villain. With such rare exceptions as The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1954), Van Cleef spent most of his early screen career on the wrong side of the law, menacing everyone from Gary Cooper (High Noon) to the Bowery Boys (Private Eyes) with his cold, shark-eyed stare. Van Cleef left Hollywood in the '60s to appear in European spaghetti Westerns, initially as a secondary actor; he was, for example, the "Bad" in Clint Eastwood's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Within a few years, Van Cleef was starring in blood-spattered action films with such titles as Day of Anger (1967), El Condor (1970), and Mean Frank and Crazy Tony (1975). The actor was, for many years, one of the international film scene's biggest box-office draws. Returning to Hollywood in the late '70s, He starred in a very short-lived martial arts TV series The Master (1984), the pilot episodes of which were pieced together into an ersatz feature film for video rental. Van Cleef died of a heart attack in 1989.

Trivia: Though he invariably looked sickly and tubercular, Polish/German actor Klaus Kinski rose to fame in roles calling for near-manic aggressiveness. His war career consisted primarily of a year and a half in a British POW camp. After this experience, Kinski took to the theater, where he rapidly built a reputation for on-stage brilliance and off-stage emotional instability. He made his first German film, Morituri, in 1948; three years later, he made his English-language movie debut with a fleeting bit in Decision Before Dawn (1951). Villainy was Kinski's film stock in trade during the 1950s and '60s, with several appearances in Germany's Edgar Wallace second-feature series and in such Italian spaghetti Westerns as For a Few Dollars More (1965). International stardom came Kinski's way via his off-the-beam appearances in the films of director Werner Herzog, notably Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1973), Woyzeck (1978), Nosferatu (1979), and Fitzcarraldo (1982). With 1989's Paganini, Kinski proved to be as colorful and chaotic a director as he was an actor. Kinski was the father of actress Nastassja Kinski, though the two seldom saw each other and were never close. He died in 1991.

Trivia: Spanish supporting and occasional leading actor Aldo Sambrell is primarily associated with spaghetti Westerns of the '60s. In those films, he generally played a gunslinger. He was born Alfredo Sanchez Brell but over the course of his career he used the following names: Aldo Brell, Alfred S. Brell, Aldo San Brell, Aldo Sanbrel, and Aldo Sanbrell. He made his directorial debut as Alfred S. Brell with La Ultima Jugada (1974). Sambrell produced his first film, Hammam, in 1997.

Trivia: Scion of movie actress Francesca Bertini and pioneering Italian director Vincenzo Leone (aka Roberto Roberti), Sergio Leone merged his movie-made dreams of America with his own brand of epic myth-making to create a quartet of 1960s Westerns so exceptional that they earned their own generic moniker. Though initially derided as nihilistically violent spaghetti Westerns, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) galvanized the floundering genre, turning Leone into an international directorial star. Following his spectacular iron horse opera Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), however, Leone directed only two more movies before his death in 1989. Though he helmed a mere seven films, Leone's enormous influence was apparent from the late '60s onward, from Sam Peckinpah, John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, and of course Clint Eastwood, who dedicated his Unforgiven (1992) "To Sergio and Don." Born and raised in Rome, Leone adored Hollywood movies as a child. Despite his father's insistence that he study law, Leone began a parallel education in filmmaking at age 18 through family connections. After working on several films, including Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1947), Leone quit school to pursue a movie career full time. Leone worked as an assistant director on the Hollywood spectacles Quo Vadis? (1951), Ben-Hur (1959), and Sodom and Gomorrah (1961). Leone got his first shot at directing when he took over The Last Days of Pompeii (1959) from ailing mentor Mario Bonnard, and earned his first "directed by" credit with The Colossus of Rhodes (1960). Leone found his next project after seeing Akira Kurosawa's samurai film Yojimbo. Leone adapted Yojimbo as a low-budget Western to be shot in Spain. Low on the list of possible Americans to play Leone's Magnificent Stranger was a TV actor whom Leone cast more out of financial necessity than desire; and his composer, one-time schoolmate Ennio Morricone, made do with limited orchestra access. The result, re-titled A Fistful of Dollars (1964), turned out to be a wildly popular re-imagining of the hallowed Western myths, centering on a bloody conflict involving rival families and a sly gunslinger. Peppered with widescreen close-ups transforming faces into craggy "landscapes," and accompanied by a bizarre soundtrack of surf guitar, sound effects, and folk instruments, Fistful did away with the hoary sentiment, pastoral settings, and recent neurosis of Hollywood oaters. Though they would feud later over credit for their singularly accessorized gunfighter, Leone and Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name became an indelible portrait of taciturn skill, humor, and pragmatic brutality. A hit in Italy, Fistful inspired scores of spaghetti Westerns but few had the personal obsessions with prior movie myth-making that gave Leone's genre pictures artistic heft. Though the U.S. release of Fistful was delayed by rights problems over Yojimbo, its European run was so successful that Leone was pushed to quickly make a sequel. Puckishly titled For a Few Dollars More (1965), Leone and co-writer Luciano Vincenzoni expanded the ironic view of the West in a story involving two bounty hunters and a psychotic stoner bandit. For a Few Dollars More paired Eastwood's bounty-hunting Man with Lee Van Cleef, whose personal motivation for his mercenary violence is revealed aurally through Morricone's textured score and visually in flashbacks that lead up to the climactic "corrida" showdown with Gian Maria Volonté's bandit. For a Few Dollars More broke box-office records in Italy, paving the way for the even more expansive sequel The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). A Civil War epic starring Eastwood, Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the respective title roles, The Good's quest for gold included numerous dark jokes, venal ruses, and an elaborate bridge explosion on the way to the famously dramatic, three-way graveyard showdown. Yet another hit, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly sealed Leone's status as the premiere Italian Western director. Released in the U.S. in 1967 and 1968, the Dollars trilogy repeated its European success, turning Eastwood into a major star and Leone into a critical pariah for his alleged desecration of the Western. Nevertheless, the trilogy revived Hollywood's interest in the ailing genre and opened the door for a new cycle of critical Westerns, including Peckinpah's violent masterwork The Wild Bunch (1969). Given carte blanche to make another Western by Paramount, Leone embarked on a film meant to be his farewell to the genre. Working from a treatment by fellow cinéastes Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, and a script co-written with Sergio Donati entitled the ultra-legendary Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Leone created an epic canvas encompassing archetypal characters and the railroad to augment the personal conflict between Charles Bronson's nameless "hero" and Henry Fonda's killer. Replete with references to Hollywood Westerns, including John Ford's signature Monument Valley, West transformed the path of Progress into a trail of death, beginning with the mini-epic credit sequence that Leone envisioned as the demise of his Good, Bad and Ugly stars. When Eastwood declined, Leone enlisted Woody Strode and Jack Elam. Shot to the majestic rhythms of Morricone's score, punctuated by elusive flashbacks and extreme close-ups, and drawn out to operatic length, Once Upon a Time in the West performed decently in Europe -- and became one of France's biggest all-time hits -- but was deemed fatally slow by American viewers. Though Paramount pulled the film and chopped 25 minutes, West flopped. While he had decided to stop directing Westerns, Leone was intrigued enough by the spaghettis' increasing politicization in the late '60s to co-write a screenplay with Vincenzoni and Donati about a Mexican peasant who meets an ex-IRA bomber during the Mexican Revolution. After failing to find a director -- Peter Bogdanovich made a rough early exit -- Leone agreed to do it. Released under such fan-friendly titles as Once Upon a Time, the Revolution and A Fistful of Dynamite, Duck, You Sucker! (1972) benefited from Rod Steiger and James Coburn's presence, and Leone's facility with action, but it too failed. Leone didn't direct another film for over a decade, turning down such projects as The Godfather (1972). After spending the 1970s producing films, Leone finally managed to mount his long-gestating gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984). A sprawling meditation on Hollywood gangster mythology, America was intended to do for the gangster film what West did for the Western. Starring Robert De Niro and James Woods as two 1920s Jewish hoods, Leone told the story of their rise and fall through an atmospheric tapestry of flashbacks, scored by Morricone, that becomes as much an homage to the possibilities of cinema as an opium-addled criminal's potential fantasy. Or that's what America was in the full-length, three-hour-and-49-minute version that debuted to great acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival. The nervous American producers, however, hacked over an hour and 20 minutes out of the film before releasing it stateside. Reduced to an incomprehensible mess, Once Upon a Time in America flopped in America. Despite this artistic blow and a heart disease diagnosis, Leone began to plan an ambitious film about the WWII siege of Leningrad, even securing the Soviets' cooperation. This project, and a Western intended as a vehicle for Mickey Rourke and Richard Gere, however, were ended by Leone's death in February 1989.

Trivia: Milan-born actor/political activist Gian Maria Volonté was trained at the Academia Nazionale de Arti Drammatica. Volonté's first film appearance was in the internationally produced Under Ten Flags (1960). He gained worldwide prominence with his apolitical performances in such spaghetti westerns as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965), then increasingly wore his left-leaning heart on his sleeve in the films of such like-minded directors as Elio Petri and Francesco Rosi. He played the police inspector in Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970), and was seen in the Rosi-directed Lucky Luciano (1973) in the title role, and in Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) as famed antifascist author Carlo Levi. Shortly before his death at the age of 61, Volonté appeared in Banderas the Tyrant (1994).