Trivia: At first intending to become a minister, actor/monologist Andy Griffith (born June 1st, 1926) became active with the Carolina Playmakers, the prestigious drama-and-music adjunct of the University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill. He spent several seasons portraying Sir Walter Raleigh in the summertime outdoor drama The Lost Colony, spending the rest of the years as a schoolteacher. Griffith continued performing fitfully as an after-dinner speaker on the men's club circuit, developing hilariously bucolic routines on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to football. Under the aegis of agent/producer Richard O. Linke, Griffith returned to acting, attaining stardom in the role of bumptious Air Force rookie Will Stockdale in the TV and Broadway productions of No Time For Sergeants. Before committing Sergeants to film, Griffith made his movie debut in director Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, in which he portrayed an outwardly folksy but inwardly vicious TV personality (patterned, some say, after Arthur Godfrey).After filming Face in the Crowd, No Time for Sergeants and Onionhead for Warner Bros. during the years 1957 and 1958, Griffith starred in a 1959 Broadway musical version of Destry Rides Again; as an added source of income, Griffith ran a North Carolina supermarket. On February 15, 1960 he first appeared as Andy Taylor, the laid-back sheriff of Mayberry, North Carolina, on an episode of The Danny Thomas Show. This one-shot was of course the pilot film for the Emmy-winning The Andy Griffith Show, in which Griffith starred from 1960 through 1968. Eternally easygoing on camera, Griffith, who owned 50% of the series, ruled his sitcom set with an iron hand, though he was never as hard on the other actors as he was on himself; to this day, he remains close to fellow Griffith stars Don Knotts and Ron Howard. An unsuccessful return to films with 1969's Angel in My Pocket was followed by an equally unsuccessful 1970 TV series Headmaster. For the next 15 years, Griffith confined himself to guest-star appearances, often surprising his fans by accepting cold-blooded villainous roles. In 1985, he made a triumphal return to series television in Matlock, playing a folksy but very crafty Southern defense attorney. A life-threatening disease known as Gillian-Barre syndrome curtailed his activities in the late 1980s, but as of 1995 Andy Griffith was still raking in the ratings with his infrequent Matlock two-hour specials. The actor worked on and off throughout the late nineties and early 2000s, and co-starred with Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion in the romantic comedy Waitress in 2007.

Trivia: George Dzundza's face slowly sank into the collective subconscious of American culture after nearly 30 years before the cameras. Audiences may be hard-pressed to name him, though his familiar face is like that of a distant cousin one has never met but keeps stumbling across while thumbing through old family photo albums. From his turn as an enraged, cheated-on spouse in the horror classic Salem's Lot (1979) to a recent turn as Robert De Niro's partner in 2002's City by the Sea, you can't get away from Dzundza once you've put a name to the face. Aggressively pursued by the president of the Stagers Society (who threatened to have him expelled lest he audition for an upcoming production) at college orientation, a nervous Dzundza hastily agreed and quickly landed the part. A quick rise through the theater circuit soon landed Dzundza some prime supporting roles on the small screen, and it wasn't long until he was gaining exposure on such diverse shows as Starsky and Hutch and The Waltons. In 1975, Dzundza made his film debut with a role in The Happy Hooker, and through the remainder of that decade and well into the '80s he frequently alternated between television and film. Following appearances in The Deer Hunter and Salem's Lot, Dzundza was cast as the lead in the short-lived sitcom Open All Night, and through the remainder of the decade he landed roles in such high-profile theatrical releases as Best Defense (1984), No Mercy (1986), and No Way Out (1987). It wasn't until 1990 that Dzundza would make a return to weekly television, though his role as Sgt. Max Greevey on Law & Order certainly made up for lost time. Even if he did leave the series after only one season, the decision ultimately served him well and his feature career subsequently flourished. As Dzundza's career advanced into the '90s, it also evolved and found him branching out by lending his voice to such animated television efforts as Superman and Batman: Gotham Knights. A short-lived stint opposite Christina Applegate followed with Jesse in 1998, and after moving back to features with roles in Instinct (1999) and City by the Sea, Dzundza settled nicely into the role of Father Tom "Grizz" Grzelak in the popular television series Hack in 2002.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from 1985.

Trivia: Connecticut native Linda Purl grew up in Japan, where her father, a Union Carbide executive, had been transferred. Under the watchful eye of her mother, a former ballerina, Purl began acting professionally in Japanese stage and TV productions at the age of seven. Ten years later, she made her American film debut in Jory (1972). Never a conventional ingenue, she has played everything from mentally retarded teens to rape victims to psychotic killers, as well as a few real-life personalities like Alice Roosevelt Longworth and globetrotting journalist Nellie Bly. Purl has the distinction of playing two different recurring characters on the same television series. During the 1974-75 season of Happy Days, she was seen as Richie Cunningham's (Ron Howard) high-school girlfriend Gloria; she returned to the series in 1982 as Ashler Pfister, a divorced mother with whom Fonzie (Henry Winkler) was briefly involved romantically. Linda has also appeared regularly on such series as The Secret Storm and Beacon Hill; more recently, she played an assistant DA put in charge of a group of young ex-convicts on the syndicated weekly adventure series Robin's Hoods (1994). Linda Purl was at one time married to Desi Arnaz Jr..

Trivia: Sturdy, reliable character player Kene Holliday specialized in portrayals of vociferous everymen, with a strong emphasis on television work. Holliday landed one of his first major roles in the small-screen blockbuster Roots: The Next Generations (as Detroit, one of the direct descendants of the iconic Kunta Kinte), and subsequently divided his time between occasional big-screen features (No Small Affair, The Philadelphia Experiment), series work (with many appearances on Matlock), and TV movies, such as the 1988 Dangerous Company. Holliday tackled a rare yet effective lead role in the much-anticipated 2007 drama Great World of Sound, as Clarence, a well-meaning record producer in training who discovers that his parent company isn't exactly all that it professes to be.

Trivia: Having made her feature film debut in Sex and the College Girl (1964), blonde actress Julie Sommars went on to appear in television movies of the '70s and in the occasional feature film through the mid-'80s. Fans of the television drama Matlock (1986-1995) will recognize her for playing Julie March.