Trivia: Hemsley is a short, aggressive black comic actor. He came to acting late; after working for the Post Office he moved to New York in the late '60s, hoping to find theater work. Soon he won the choice role of Gitlow in the Broadway musical Purlie (1970), and his performance made a strong, lasting impression on TV producer Norman Lear. When Lear's TV sitcom All in the Family became a hit, Lear created the character of George Jefferson, Archie Bunker's black neighbor; after deciding that his first choice for the role was all wrong, in 1973 Lear tracked Hemsley down in San Francisco, where the latter was appearing in the play Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope. Hemsley was signed for the role, and played it from 1973-85; from 1975-85 he was the costar of the spinoff sitcom The Jeffersons, a top-rated show for many years, for which Hemsley at one point earned $60,000 per episode. He later starred in Amen (1986-91). In 1981 he reprised his Broadway role in the cable-TV production of Purlie. He debuted onscreen in Love at First Bite (1979), appearing with Isabel Sanford, his TV wife. His screen appearances have been few.

Trivia: Defying her mother's wishes, African-American actress Isabel Sanford secretly worked as a nightclub performer in her teens. Upon winning 3rd prize in an Apollo Theatre amateur contest, Sanford could keep her new career a secret no longer. Married to a house painter who worked only on a seasonal basis, she held down a full-time job as a keypunch operator at the New York City department of Welfare, spending her evenings acting with such groups as Harlem Y and the American Negro Theatre. Seeking out better opportunities, Sanford packed her family into a bus and headed to Hollywood in the early 1960s. Her breakthrough film role was in Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner; she played Tillie the cook, who heartily disapproved of the upcoming interracial marriage between Katharine Houghton and Sidney Poitier (the hardest part of this assignment was not mouthing the "controversial" dialogue but preparing dinner in a key scene; Sanford had never learned to cook!) On the strength of this film, Isabel Sanford was hired for several guest spots on The Carol Burnett Show, which led to her most famous characterization: Louise Jefferson, the acerbic but loving wife of "movin' on up" Sherman Hemsley, on the immensely popular sitcom The Jeffersons (1975-82).

Trivia: Though Mike Evans was roundly known to 1970s prime-time devotees as Lionel Jefferson, the scion of dry-cleaning entrepreneur George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley) and his wife, Louise (Isabel Sanford), on producer Norman Lear's The Jeffersons (1975-1985), the bulk of his career actually spanned three hit '70s sitcoms, all created by Lear: All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Good Times. Evans then parlayed his efforts into prime-time miniseries before fading from the limelight in the '80s and '90s.Born Michael Jonas Evans on November 3, 1949, in Salisbury, NC, Evans moved to southern California with his family during childhood, and studied acting at Los Angeles City College after high school. Not long after Evans graduated from LACC (in 1971), the socially conscious mega-producer Lear cast the young man as Lionel Jefferson, the son of bigoted Archie Bunker's next-door neighbors George and Louise Jefferson, in his groundbreaking CBS series All in the Family. The program, of course, became a massive runaway hit during the summer of 1971, and carried its success until the fall of 1983. By 1975, however, Lear decided to "spin off" George and Louise into a series of their own, by having up-and-coming entrepreneur George strike it rich in the dry-cleaning business. The Jeffersons premiered on January 18, 1975, but Lear used Evans as an element to help viewers transition between the two series -- by keeping Lionel on All in the Family for several months (the character moved temporarily into his parents' old house in Queens, and thus stayed next door to Archie Bunker). Evans remained with the series until the fall of 1975, and departed amicably to pursue other interests -- specifically, an assignment co-creating (with Eric Monte) and scripting one of Lear's other sitcoms, Good Times (1974-1979), itself a spin-off of Lear's Maude, which the producer had spun off of Lear's All in the Family. During his absence from The Jeffersons, Evans also appeared as Arnold Simms in the ten-hour ABC miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). In the interim, Mike Evans was temporarily replaced by another young black actor, Damon Evans (no relation), on the Jeffersons set. Mike Evans returned to The Jeffersons to play Lionel in the autumn of 1979. Over the remainder of the series run, the character of Lionel married Jenny (Berlinda Tolbert), the daughter of a neighboring biracial couple, and a year after Mike Evans returned to the series in 1979, the onscreen couple had a baby daughter. Over time, Lionel and Jenny separated, then divorced, with Evans permanently departing from the series in 1981.The Jeffersons marked Evans' last major television effort, though he appeared briefly in a 2000 episode of Walker, Texas Ranger. During his later years, Evans invested heavily in southern California real estate. He died of throat cancer, at age 57, on December 14, 2006.

Trivia: Was employed by a major airline when she was cast on The Jeffersons; continued working for the airline during her first few seasons on the show. Is also a singer; released an album, It's Never Too Late, in 2006. Reunited with actress Regina King, who played her daughter on the 1980s sitcom 227, in a 2012 episode of Southland.

Trivia: Made TV debut in 1974 on the ABC crime-drama The Streets of San Francisco. Landed first regular TV series role in 1975 on the CBS comedy The Jeffersons, playing Jenny Willis Jefferson. Starred in Maya Angelou's play On A Southern Journey in 1983.

Trivia: On television, supporting actress Roxie Roker may best be remembered for playing outspoken Helen Willis for ten years on the popular television sitcom The Jeffersons. She and TV husband Franklin Cover comprised the first interracial married couple on network television. But in addition to television, Roker had also found success on stage and in the occasional feature film. Miami-born and Brooklyn-raised, Roker graduated from Howard University with a drama degree and then flew to England to study at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-on-Avon. During the 1960s, Roker supported herself with a secretarial job at NBC's New York office while trying to find acting jobs. Roker launched her drama career off-Broadway in productions such as Jean Genet's The Blacks. Between 1967 and '68, Roker hosted a local community television show, but that wasn't close enough to acting, so she quit to practice her craft full time. With the Negro Ensemble Company she appeared in Ododo and Rosalie Pritchet. In 1974, she earned an Obie and a Tony nomination for The River Niger. In 1975, shortly after moving to Los Angeles, Norman Lear cast Roker in The Jeffersons. In addition to this role, Roker occasionally guest-starred on other series and appeared in television movies. Her feature-film appearances were rare. Roker made her debut in Claudine (1974). In the '90s, Roker resumed her stage career, appearing in a theatrical version of The Jeffersons and then touring opposite Mary Martin and Carol Channing in Legends. Roker's son, Lenny Kravitz is a noted rock musician and record producer.

Trivia: Acting career began on stage in Hamlet and Henry IV. Appeared in numerous Broadway productions, including Applause and Born Yesterday. Made history playing the husband in the first interracial married couple featured on a network primetime show (Tom Willis on The Jeffersons). Son, Bradford Cover, is also an actor.

Trivia: Though his melodiously accented speech pattern has led many to assume that actor Paul Benedict is British, the actor was actually born in New Mexico. Benedict's oversized jaw and angular features won him several character roles once he decided upon a theatrical career. One evening, a doctor who had seen Benedict on stage warned the actor that his elongated facial structure was due to a rare bone disease called acromegaly, which ultimately distorts the face into grotesqueness and can result in early death (filmdom's most famous victim of acromegaly was horror star Rondo Hatton). Undergoing medical treatment to prevent the spread of the disease, Benedict continued acting, utilizing his odd facial features for comic rather than tragic effect. While appearing in featured roles in such films as The Goodbye Girl (1977), Paul Benedict was cast as next-door neighbor Harley Bentley, an eccentric UN translator, on the long running TV series The Jeffersons. He played Harley steadily from 1975 to 1981, left for two years to pursue other projects (including the Steve Martin comedy The Man With Two Brains [1983]), but returned in 1983 to remain with The Jeffersons until its final episode two years later. He died in 2008 at age 70.