Trivia: A remarkably prolific and versatile talent, Gene Hackman was a successful character actor whose uncommon abilities and smart career choices ultimately made him a most unlikely leading man. In the tradition of Spencer Tracy, he excelled as an Everyman, consistently delivering intelligent, natural performances which established him among the most respected and well-liked stars of his era. Born January 30th, 1930 in San Bernardino, CA, Hackman joined the Marines at the age of 16 and later served in Korea. After studying journalism at the University of Illinois, he pursued a career in television production but later decided to try his hand at acting, attending a Pasadena drama school with fellow student Dustin Hoffman; ironically, they were both voted "least likely to succeed." After briefly appearing in the 1961 film Mad Dog Coll, Hackman made his debut off-Broadway in 1963's Children at Their Games, earning a Clarence Derwent Award for his supporting performance. Poor Richard followed, before he starred in 1964's production of Any Wednesday. Returning to films in 1964, Hackman earned strong notices for his work in Warren Beatty's Lilith and 1966's Hawaii, but the 1967 World War II tale First to Flight proved disastrous for all involved. At Beatty's request, Hackman co-starred in Bonnie and Clyde, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and establishing himself as a leading character player. After making a pair of films with Jim Brown, (1968's The Split and 1969's Riot), Hackman supported Robert Redford in The Downhill Racer, Burt Lancaster in The Gypsy Moths, and Gregory Peck in Marooned. For 1970's I Never Sang for My Father, he garnered another Academy Award nomination. The following year Hackman became a star; as New York narcotics agent Popeye Doyle, a character rejected by at least seven other actors, he headlined William Friedkin's thriller The French Connection, winning a Best Actor Oscar and spurring the film to Best Picture honors. Upon successfully making the leap from supporting player to lead, he next appeared in the disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure, one of the biggest money-makers of 1972. After co-starring with Al Pacino in 1973's Scarecrow, Hackman delivered his strongest performance to date as a haunted surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 classic The Conversation and went on to tap his under-utilized comedic skills in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. Arthur Penn's grim 1975 thriller Night Moves and the Western Bite the Bullet followed before the actor agreed to The French Connection 2. While remaining the subject of great critical acclaim, Hackman's box-office prowess was beginning to slip: 1975's Lucky Lady, 1977's The Domino, and March or Die were all costly flops, and although 1978's Superman -- in which he appeared as the villainous Lex Luthor -- was a smash, his career continued to suffer greatly. Apart from the inevitable Superman 2, Hackman was absent from the screen for several years, and with the exception of a fleeting appearance in Beatty's 1981 epic Reds, most of his early-'80s work -- specifically, the features All Night Long and Eureka -- passed through theaters virtually unnoticed.Finally, a thankless role as an ill-fated war correspondent in Roger Spottiswoode's acclaimed 1983 drama Under Fire brought Hackman's career back to life. The follow-up, the action film Uncommon Valor, was also a hit, and while 1984's Misunderstood stalled, the next year's Twice in a Lifetime was a critical success. By the middle of the decade, Hackman was again as prolific as ever, headlining a pair of 1986 pictures -- the little-seen Power and the sleeper hit Hoosiers -- before returning to the Man of Steel franchise for 1987's Superman 4: The Quest for Peace. No Way Out, in which he co-starred with Kevin Costner, was also a hit. In 1988, Hackman starred in no less than five major releases: Woody Allen's Another Woman, the war drama Bat 21, the comedy Full Moon in Blue Water, the sports tale Split Decisions, and Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning. The last of these, a Civil Rights drama set in 1964, cast him as an FBI agent investigating the disappearance of a group of political activists. Though the film itself was the subject of considerable controversy, Hackman won another Oscar nomination. During the 1990s, Hackman settled comfortably into a rhythm alternating between lead roles (1990's Narrow Margin, 1991's Class Action) and high-profile supporting performances (1990's Postcards From the Edge, 1993's The Firm). In 1992, he joined director and star Clint Eastwood in the cast of the revisionist Western Unforgiven, appearing as a small-town sheriff corrupted by his own desires for justice. The role won Hackman a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. The performance helped land him in another pair of idiosyncratic Western tales, Wyatt Earp and The Quick and the Dead. In 1995, he also co-starred in two of the year's biggest hits, the submarine adventure Crimson Tide and the Hollywood satire Get Shorty. Three more big-budget productions, The Birdcage, The Chamber, and Extreme Measures, followed in 1996, and a year later Hackman portrayed the President of the United States in Eastwood's Absolute Power. In 1998, Hackman lent his talents to three very different films, the conspiracy thriller Enemy of the State, the animated Antz, and Twilight, a noirish mystery co-starring Paul Newman and Susan Sarandon. Moving into the new millennium with his stature as a solid performer and well-respected veteran well in place, Hackman turned up in The Replacements in 2000, and Heist the following year. 2001 also found Hackman in top form with his role as the dysfunctional patriarch in director Wes Anderson's follow-up to Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums. Hackman's lively performance brought the actor his third Golden Globe, this time for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.

Trivia: Though he has played a variety of leading roles, tall, dark, and wholesomely handsome Christopher Reeve will always be the definitive Superman to an entire generation of "Man of Steel" fans. That his definitive character was such a model of physical prowess only serves to intensify the tragedy of Reeve's post-Superman years, marked by a 1995 horseback riding accident that left him almost completely paralyzed.A native of New York City, Reeve was born to journalist Barbara Johnson and professor/writer Franklin Reeve on September 25, 1952. When he was four, his parents divorced, and Reeve and his brother went with their mother to Princeton, NJ, after she married her second husband, a stockbroker. Reeve became interested in acting at the age of eight, an interest that complemented his musical studies at the time. The following year, he made his professional acting debut in a production of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta at Princeton's McCarter Theater. He would continue to work with the theater through his early teens and further enhanced his resumé at the age of 15, when he received a summer apprenticeship to study drama in Williamstown. The following year, he secured his first agent.Reeve went on to major in English and music at Cornell University. Following his graduation, he pursued a master's degree in drama at Juilliard and then studied under actor John Houseman's tutelage before heading to Europe to work at London's Old Vic and the Comedie Française of Paris. Upon his 1974 return stateside, Reeve took over the role of Ben Harper on the long-running soap opera Love of Life; he stayed with the show through 1978. During this period, he made his Broadway debut, starring opposite Katharine Hepburn in a production of A Matter of Gravity. Though he had made his feature-film debut with a small role in the undersea adventure Gray Lady Down (1977), Reeve did not become a star until he beat out a number of big name actors, including Robert Redford, Sylvester Stallone, and Clint Eastwood, to don the metallic blue body stocking and red cape in Richard Donner's 1978 blockbuster Superman: The Movie. Though the film abounded with exuberant, sly humor, Reeve played his Superman straight, giving him great charm, a touch of irony, and a clumsy wistfulness, thereby creating a believable alien hero who masquerades as a bungling newsman and pines for the love of unknowing colleague Lois Lane. The film was one of the year's most popular and earned Reeve a British Academy Award for Most Promising Newcomer. He went on to reprise the role in the film's three sequels, none of which matched the quality and verve of the original.In a concerted effort to avoid typecasting, Reeve attempted to prove his versatility by essaying a wide variety of roles. In 1980, while Superman II was in production, he returned to Broadway to appear as a gay amputee in Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July. That same year, he also starred in the romantic fantasy Somewhere in Time, playing a Chicago playwright who travels back in time to capture the attentions of a beautiful woman (Jane Seymour). Though generally cast as a good guy, Reeve occasionally attempted darker characters. In Deathtrap (1981), he played a crazed playwright, while he portrayed a corrupt priest in the dismal Monsignor (1982) and a reporter entangled in the prostitution industry in Street Smart (1987). Reeve returned to television in Sleeping Beauty, an entry in Shelley Duvall's distinguished Faerie Tale Theater. He subsequently had success appearing in television movies such as Anna Karenina (1985) and Death Dreams (1992). In the late '80s, Reeve became involved in various social causes and co-founded the Creative Coalition. He was also active with Amnesty International, even going to Chile in 1987 to show support for imprisoned authors. His interest in improving the world is apparent in the earnest but much-panned Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), for which he wrote the story.By the mid-'90s, Reeve was still busy juggling his film, television, and stage work. It all abruptly came to a halt in June 1995, when he fell from a horse during a steeplechase race. Having broken several key bones in his neck, Reeve was left completely paralyzed and could not even breathe without special assistance. The doctors' prognosis for his recovery remained grim, but Reeve still retained hope that advances in medical science would someday allow him to walk again. In 1996, he helped establish the UCI Reeve-Irvine Research Center, which specializes in spinal cord injuries; Reeve's work with the center was indicative of the strength and fortitude he had consistently displayed since his accident. In addition to his offscreen commitments, Reeve continued to work in film and television, making his directorial debut with the critically acclaimed made-for-cable drama In the Gloaming (1997) and starring in the 1998 TV-movie remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window.Reeve credited much of his post-accident survival to his wife, former cabaret singer Dana Morosini. The two married in 1992, after Reeve separated from Gae Exton. He and Exton -- a modeling executive whom he met while filming the first Superman in England -- never married, but had two children together. He also had a son with Morosini.On October 10, 2004, after years as an outspoken advocate for stem-cell and spinal-cord-injury research, Reeve passed away from heart failure at the age of 52. A year and a half later, his wife Dana died of lung cancer.Prior to their deaths, the Reeves began to develop a pet project, the CG-animated feature Everyone's Hero, with voices by an all-star line-up of performers. The picture told the story of a young boy in the 1930s whose talking bat is stolen by a crooked security guard. It was released in 2007.

Trivia: Portly American character actor Ned Beatty originally planned to enter the clergy, but after appearing in a single high-school play, he changed his mind and decided to become a thespian instead. By his early twenties, Beatty was playing Broadway and it was his work in the play The Great White Hope that attracted the interest of film director John Boorman, who cast him as one of the four main stars in his gripping backwoods thriller Deliverance (1972). Forever immortalized in the notorious "squeal like a pig" rape scene, Beatty subsequently went on to become one of the screen's more prolific supporting actors, frequently appearing in up to four films per year. His more notable film work includes Nashville (1975), All the President's Men (1976), Network (for which he earned an Oscar nomination), The Big Easy (1987), Hear My Song (1991), A Prelude to a Kiss (1992), Radioland Murders (1994), and He Got Game (1998). In 1999, he could be seen as a small-town sheriff in the Robert Altman ensemble film Cookie's Fortune.At the start of the 21st century the always-employed character actor continued to work steadily in projects as diverse as Roughing It, Where the Red Fern Grows, Shooter, and Charlie Wilson's War. He joined the Pixar family when he voiced Lotso, the bad guy in Toy Story 3, and he provided the voice of Mayor in 2011's Oscar winning animated feature Rango.

Trivia: American actor Jackie Cooper was in movies at the age of three; his father had abandoned the family when Jackie was two, forcing his mother to rely upon the boy's acting income to keep food on the table. Shortly after earning his first featured part in Fox Movietone Follies of 1929. Cooper was hired for producer Hal Roach's "Our Gang" two-reeler series, appearing in 15 shorts over the next two years. The "leading man" in many of these comedies, he was most effective in those scenes wherein he displayed a crush on his new teacher, the beauteous Miss Crabtree. On the strength of "Our Gang," Paramount Pictures signed Cooper for the title role in the feature film Skippy (1931), which earned the boy an Oscar nomination. A contract with MGM followed, and for the next five years Cooper was frequently co-starred with blustery character player Wallace Beery. Cooper outgrew his preteen cuteness by the late 1930s, and was forced to accept whatever work that came along, enjoying the occasional plum role in such films as The Return of Frank James (1940) and What a Life! (1941). His priorities rearranged by his wartime Naval service, Cooper returned to the states determined to stop being a mere "personality" and to truly learn to be an actor. This he did on Broadway and television, notably as the star of two popular TV sitcoms of the 1950s, The People's Choice and Hennessey. Cooper developed a taste for directing during this period (he would earn an Emmy for his directorial work on M*A*S*H in 1973), and also devoted much of his time in the 1960s to the production end of the business; in 1965 he was appointed vice-president in charge of production at Screen Gems, the TV subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. From the early 1970s onward, Cooper juggled acting, producing and directing with equal aplomb. Modern audiences know Cooper best as the apoplectic Perry White in the Christopher Reeve Superman films. In 1981, Cooper surprised (and sometimes shocked) his fans with a warts-and-all autobiography, Please Don't Shoot My Dog. Cooper died in May 2011 at the age of 88 following a sudden illness.

Trivia: Lead actress Sarah Douglas first appeared onscreen in the '70s.

Trivia: From the outset of his career, towering, grim-visaged actor Jack O'Halloran excelled in brutish roles. O'Halloran was impressively menacing as the nonverbal space criminal Non in the first two Superman movies. He was equally adept with dialogue as the hulking Moose Malloy in 1978's Farewell My Lovely. Jack O'Halloran continued to grunt and glower his way through the 1990s, essaying such fearsome roles as Yeti in The Flintstones (1993).

Trivia: The daughter of a mining engineer, Canadian actress Margot Kidder spent her first two-and-a-half years living in a caboose. While attending the University of British Columbia, Kidder was talked into appearing in a college stage production of Take Me Along; she was hooked, though she later learned there was more to acting than crying on cue and partying. In her first professional years with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation headquarters in Vancouver, Kidder played everything from simpering ingenues to an unhinged murderess. She made her first film in 1969, an American production titled Gaily Gaily, then worked with Gene Wilder in the British-made Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970). Kidder disliked the seamier side of the movie business and retreated to Canada in hopes of learning how to become a film editor, but was brought back to the U.S. in 1971 for a continuing role in the James Garner TV series Nichols. She liked Garner but not the hassles of making a weekly series, and for the next decade concentrated on film work, plunging headfirst into a kinky Brian DePalma chiller titled Sisters (1972). Kidder's best-known work in the '70s and '80s was as Lois Lane in the Superman films starring Christopher Reeve. Other movie roles and a stint on 1987 TV series Shell Game followed. She continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including 1988's Body of Evidence, White Room, and Hanry & Verlin, however she earned the most press she had in quite some time after a bizarre incident in 1996 where she went missing for a few days and was found dazed and confused outside a stranger's home in Glendale, California. She recovered and went back to work in numerous films and TV series including Touched By an Angel and Tribulation. She was a major figure in Peter Biskind's book about '70s cinema, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and figured prominently in the documentary made from that book. In 2007 she appeared on the reality program Who Do You Think You Are, and went on to act in Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween II.Kidder married and divorced writer Tom McGuane and actor John Heard (their union lasted six days!) and remains a vocal activist for political and ecological causes.

Trivia: The daughter of a military officer, Valerie Perrine spent her childhood hopscotching from one country to another. Her early plans to become a psychologist were abandoned when she parlayed her svelte figure and sparkling personality into a brief career as a Las Vegas showgirl. Perrine then settled into a lucrative, active career upon being cast as habitually naked movie queen Montana Wildhack in Slaughterhouse Five (1971). While her talk show persona was that of a typically airheaded starlet, Perrine was in fact a serious, dedicated actress; she won an Oscar nomination for her performance as Honey Bruce in 1974's Lenny, and was no less impressive as Carlotta Monti in 1976's W.C. Fields and Me. Despite her acting accomplishments, Perrine was most often cast on the basis of her top-heavy physical attributes; it is said that she was cast as the leading lady in Can't Stop the Music (1980) in order to attract those "straight" filmgoers that might have otherwise avoided a film starring the Village People. More recently, Valerie Perrine has excelled in eccentric character roles on such TV series as Northern Exposure and ER.

Trivia: British actress Susannah York studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she won the Arthene Seyler and Ronson Awards. Several theatrical appearances and TV plays later, York was cast in her first film, 1960's Tunes of Glory. Her best early film roles included Sophie Western in Tom Jones (1963) and a profoundly disturbed patient in John Huston's Freud (1962). She created a mild tabloid sensation in 1968 when she gamely participated in scenes involving masturbation and lesbian lovemaking in The Killing of Sister George. Her performance as a bleach-blonde 1930's loser in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? won her the BFA award and an Oscar nomination; she would go on to collect a Cannes award for her work in Robert Altman's Images (1972). The biggest box-office successes with which she was associated were the first two Superman films, cast as the Man of Steel's Kryptonian mother. Adding writing to her long list of accomplishments, Susannah York co-authored the script for her 1980 film Falling in Love Again, and published several popular children's books. She died at age 72 in early 2011.

Trivia: In the '70s, American actor Clifton James became the foremost film impersonator of Southern redneck sheriffs -- but he had to go to England to do it. A graduate of the Actors Studio, James secured small roles in such Manhattan-filmed productions as On the Waterfront (1954) and in well over 100 TV programs. But his parts were tiny and frequently unbilled, relegating James to the ranks of "Who is that?" character actors. All this changed when James was cast as Sheriff Pepper in the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973), which led to a reprise of the character in the next Bond epic The Man With the Golden Gun (1973). Since that time, the stocky, ruddy-cheeked James has been prominent in such films as Silver Streak (1976), The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977) and Superman II (1980). In 1981, James was a regular on the brief TV sitcom Lewis and Clark. James kicked off the '90s as one of the willing but floundering cast members of that disaster of disasters, Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). He continued working in small roles through the rest of his life. James died in 2017, at age 96.

Trivia: Actor E. G. Marshall started out on radio in his native Minnesota, then headed for New York and Broadway. After several years' solid stage service, Marshall began accepting small roles in such films as 13 Rue Madeline (1945) and Call Northside 777 (1947). A mainstay of television's so-called Golden Age, Marshall excelled in incisive, authoritative roles. Long before winning two Emmy awards for his portrayal of lawyer Lawrence Preston on TV's The Defenders (1961-65), Marshall was associated with fictional jurisprudence as the military prosecutor in The Caine Mutiny (1954) and as Juror #4 in Twelve Angry Men (1957). In contrast to his businesslike demeanor, Marshall is one of Hollywood's most notorious pranksters; he was never more impish than when he ad-libbed profanities and nonsequiturs while his lips were hidden by a surgical mask in the 1969-73 TV series The Bold Ones. The best of E.G. Marshall's work of the 1970s and 1980s includes the role of the straying husband in Woody Allen's Interiors (1977), the U.S. President in Superman II (1978) and General Eisenhower in the 1985 TV miniseries War and Remembrance. Continuing to flourish into the 1990s, Marshall was seen in the 1993 TV adaptation of Stephen King's The Tommyknockers, and was cast as Arthur Thurmond on the 1994 medical series Chicago Hope. Radio fans will remember E.G. Marshall as the unctuous host ("Pleasant dreeeaaammms") of the 1970s anthology The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre.

Trivia: Best remembered for playing plucky cub reporter Jimmy Olson in all four of the Superman films that starred Christopher Reeve, Marc McClure made his film debut in the Disney film Freaky Friday and in the television movie James at 15 (both 1977). He went on to play supporting roles and occasional leads in both venues. In 1979, McClure starred in the short-lived TV series California Fever.

Trivia: Rough-hewn and soulful, Terence Stamp was one of the most recognizable faces of 1960s British cinema. During that decade, he became immortalized on the screen and off, his working-class charisma and battered good looks making him both a natural for leading man roles and a poster boy for the swinging Sixties lifestyle.Born in Stepney, London on July 22, 1939, Stamp made his film debut in 1962 as the martyred hero in Peter Ustinov's adaptation of Herman Melville's Billy Budd. He turned in a star-making performance that earned him an Oscar nomination and established him as part of a new wave of talent in British cinema. Stamp next made his mark in William Wyler's The Collector (1965), winning a Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his portrayal of a warped recluse who kidnaps an art student he has lusted after from afar. Stamp spent the rest of the decade earning recognition for both his work and real-life exploits. On the screen, he worked with the likes of John Schlesinger (Far From the Maddening Crowd), Joseph Losey (Modesty Blaise), Ken Loach (Poor Cow), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Teorema), and, for Tre Passi nel Delirio, Federico Fellini, Roger Vadim, and Louis Malle. Off the screen, Stamp was known for his friendships with the likes of Michael Caine and his relationships with such preeminent beauties as Julie Christie and model Jean Shrimpton. He and Christie were immortalized in Ray Davies's song "Waterloo Sunset" in the lines, "Terry and Julie cross over the river, where they feel safe and sound."Despite the promise of his early career, Stamp spent much of the next couple of decades in relative obscurity. He popped up in a number of fairly forgettable films and was cast as a villain in the first two Superman movies. He also appeared in such disparate projects as Legal Eagles (1986), Wall Street (1987), and Young Guns (1988). In 1994, Stamp truly re-entered the filmgoing consciousness, going delightfully against type to play a world-weary transsexual in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The film was a surprise success, and Stamp's portrayal was singled out for particular notice. Once one of the cinema's most reliable hard men, Stamp revived his career with a poignent portrayal of a character who wore more make-up than most of the screen's actresses put together.Stamp followed this success with a turn as a mysterious tantric sex therapist in Bliss (1996). In 1999, he could be seen doing supporting work in Bowfinger, in which he had a hilarious turn as a L. Ron Hubbard-esque "guru;" and Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace. That same year, he starred in Steven Soderbergh's The Limey, back in top form as a grizzled ex-con bent on avenging his daughter's death. One of the film's highlights was the inclusion of footage from the 1968 Poor Cow, which allowed Stamp to appear as a younger version of himself. Building off the best buzz he'd had in quite some time, Stamp began the 21st century in Red Planet, and voiced Jor-El on the television series Smallville, before appearing in Get Smart, Valkyrie, Yes Man, The Adjustment Bureau, and Song for Marion.

Trivia: Falstaffian British character actor Richard Griffiths has been popping up in films since 1980. Griffiths played Sir Tom in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Captain Billings in Greystoke (1982) and Phipps in King Ralph (1981). An accomplished dialectician, Griffiths has essayed a wide variety of ethnic types: in Naked Gun 2 1/2 (1992), he outdid himself in his dual role as the German-accented Dr. Mannheimer and the Georgia-cracker Earl Hacker. British TV fans know Richard Griffiths best as Henry Crabbe in the weekly sitcom Pie and the Sky (1993-95), not to mention his appearances on such earlier series as Bird of Prey (1984), Nobody's Perfect (1980-82), Ffizz (1987-89) and A Kind of Living (1988-90).In 2001, Griffiths took on the recurring role of the imposing Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter film series, playing the role in five of the series' eight films. Griffiths spent the majority of his career alternating between the screen and stage, and in 2004, he took on one of his higher profile stage roles - the eccentric teacher Hector in Alan Bennett's award-winning play The History Boys. Griffiths originated the role in the 2004 West End production and the 2006 Broadway production and later reprised the role in the 2006 film, winning an Olivier Award, a Tony Award, and scoring a BAFTA Film nomination for his work.After completing his work in the Harry Potter series, Griffiths appeared in The Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) as King George II and played a limited engagement in the West End revival of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys, opposite Danny DeVito. Sadly, his career was cut short, dying at age 65 in 2013 from complications following heart surgery.

Trivia: Born in Connecticut, John Ratzenberger spent most of his early adulthood in England and Europe. After a brief stint as assistant to a London tree surgeon, Ratzenberger helped organize the English improvisational troupe "Sal's Meat Market" in 1971. He made his first screen appearances in such British-based productions as The Ritz (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Superman (1978), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Gandhi (1982). In 1982, Ratzenberger read for the part of post-office employee Norm on the upcoming American TV sitcom Cheers. Sensing that he hadn't won the role (which was true), Ratzenberger asked if the cast of Cheers included the character of "a bar know-it-all." Suddenly he launched into an impromptu ten-minute monologue, posing as an endlessly chattering repository of useless information. Then and there, the character of Cliff Clavin was born--a character Ratzenberger played for the next ten years. A man of many talents, Ratzenberger directed several Cheers episodes, and also co-wrote two British television plays Friends in Space (1978) and Scalped (1979). Tirelessly active in the pro-ecology movement, John Ratzenberger was owner and operator of Eco-Pak, a conservation-conscious packaging firm. Since the demise of Cheers, the actor has resurrected Cliff Clavin in the form of an advertising pitchman and has appeared in many commercials. He has also found success doing voice overs for advertising and voicework in films such as Toy Story (1995) and Dog's Best Friend (1997). Ratzenberger continued to make occasional guest appearances on television series such as Caroline in the City.He maintained a relationship with Pixar after Toy Story and went on to lend his distinctive voice to each of their films through Cars 2 in 2011. He returned to TV to appear in the fourth season of the reality competition series Dancing With the Stars.

Trivia: To call British character actor Gordon Rollings a clown would have been to compliment him, for that is what he originally trained to be. Though best remembered for his work on television and in commercials, Rollings also appeared in a few feature films and on-stage.

Trivia: Canada-born actor Peter Whitman was best known in his adopted country of Great Britain for his work in stage musicals. He moved to England and started out on BBC radio in 1968. Whitman made his screen debut in the mid-'70s and went on to play supporting roles in several films, including Superman II (1980), Superman III (1983), and Scandalous (1984).

Trivia: Supporting and character actor Marcus D'Amico is primarily associated with the stage in Europe and the U.S., but he has also made the occasional, memorable foray into film. Born in Germany to an American father and a British mother, D'Amico was raised in the U.K. He first performed on stage, making a name for himself, in a 1977 revival of Oliver! in London. From there on, D'Amico specialized in musicals. In 1980, D'Amico made his film debut with a small supporting role in Superman II. He later moved to Los Angeles, took a break from acting, and spent a while as a clothing retailer. He returned to the British stage in the mid-'80s, but still continued to have a sporadic film career that included small roles in Jon Amiel's The Silent Twins (1985) and Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987). Fans of the PBS miniseries Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (1994) will remember D'Amico for his vivid portrayal of the perennially lonely, would-be lover Mouse Tolliver.

Trivia: French comic actor Jean-Pierre Cassel made his movie debut at the invitation of Gene Kelly, who cast Cassel in the 1956 Paris-filmed seriocomedy The Happy Road (1956). At least, that's what the press releases claimed; actually, the tall, elastic-faced Cassel had been plugging away in films on a minor basis since 1950. Shortly after getting his big break in Happy Road, Cassel was perfectly cast in the naif title role in the 1958 film version of Voltaire's Candide. He has since been a stalwart in the comedies of director Phillipe de Broca, nearly always playing latter-day variations of the ingenuous Candide. In 1974, Jean-Pierre Cassel added thousands of American filmgoers to his fan following with his appearances as the bumbling King Louis XIII in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. Cassel died of cancer, at age 74, on April 19, 2007.

Trivia: Working briefly as an actor in the late 1950s, American director Richard Donner first wielded the megaphone for a group of TV commercials, then graduated to the weekly western Wanted: Dead or Alive. Some of Donner's best early work was concentrated on the fantasy anthology Twilight Zone, including the imperishable 1963 episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." Donner also worked for Hanna-Barbera, directing several episodes of "Danger Island", a component of the 1968 kid's series The Banana Splits; there was, however, very little that was "kiddie" about "Mystery Island," a hallucinatory symphony of hand-held camerawork. A film director since 1961 Donner turned to movie work full time with 1968's Salt and Pepper. The Omen (1976), a demonic-possession opus, was Donner's first major moneymaker, leading to his directing assignment on the first Superman film in 1978. Superman was popular enough to inspire three sequels, the first of which contained so much uncredited Donner-directed footage that the director was compelled to sue. Donner has struck gold at the box office several times since 1978, notably with the three action-packed Lethal Weapon films starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, and more recently with another Gibson vehicle, Maverick (1994).

Trivia: American juvenile actor Jeff East started strong as Huckleberry Finn in the 1973 movie-musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Five years passed before East would again be seen in a film role of substance: the Young Clark Kent in Superman: The Movie (1978). He then began the TV-movie phase of his career as Joseph in the Biblical drama Mary and Joseph: A Story of Faith (1979). Jeff East was subsequently featured in such TV productions as The Day After (1983) and Dream West (1986), and every once in a while made a big-screen appearance in films like Pumpkinhead (1988).

Trivia: The son of a Canadian railroad executive, Glenn Ford first toddled on-stage at age four in a community production of Tom Thumb's Wedding. In 1924, Ford's family moved to California, where he was active in high-school theatricals. He landed his first professional theater job as a stage manager in 1934, and, within a year, he was acting in the West Coast company of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour. Although he made his film debut in 20th Century Fox's Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence (1939), Ford was signed by Columbia, which remained his home base for the next 14 years. After an apprenticeship in such B-movies as Blondie Plays Cupid (1940), Ford was promoted to Columbia's A-list. Outwardly a most ordinary and unprepossessing personality, Ford possessed that intangible "something" that connected with audiences. The first phase of his stardom was interrupted by World War II service in the Marines (he retained his officer's commission long after the war, enabling him to make goodwill visits to Korea and Vietnam). Upon his return, Ford had some difficulty jump-starting his career, but, in 1946, he was back on top as Rita Hayworth's co-star in Gilda. While he insisted that he "never played anyone but [himself] onscreen," Ford's range was quite extensive. He was equally effective as a tormented film noir hero (The Big Heat [1953], Human Desire [1954]) as he was in light comedy (Teahouse of the August Moon [1956], The Gazebo[1959]). Nearly half of his films were Westerns, many of which -- The Desperadoes (1943), The Fastest Gun Alive (1956), 3:10 to Yuma (1957), Cowboy (1958) -- were among the best and most successful examples of that highly specialized genre. He was also quite effective at conveying courage under pressure: While it was clear that his characters in such films as The Blackboard Jungle (1955) and Ransom (1956) were terrified by the circumstances surrounding them, it was also obvious that they weren't about to let that terror get the better of them. In 1958, Ford was voted the number one male box-office attraction. Through sagacious career choices, the actor was able to extend his popularity long after the studio system that "created" him had collapsed. In 1971, he joined such film stars as Shirley MacLaine, Anthony Quinn, and Jimmy Stewart in the weekly television grind. While his series Cade's County ended after a single season, in the long run it was more successful than the vintage-like programs of MacLaine, Quinn, et al., and enjoyed a healthy life in syndication. Ford went on to star in another series, The Family Holvak (1975), and hosted a weekly documentary, When Havoc Struck (1978). He also headlined such miniseries as Once an Eagle (1976) and Evening in Byzantium (1978), and delivered a particularly strong performance as an Irish-American patriarch in the made-for-TV feature The Gift (1979). He continued showing up in choice movie supporting roles into the early '90s; one of the best of these was as Clark Kent's foster father in Superman: The Movie (1978).Although illness sharply curtailed his performing activities after that, Ford was still seemingly on call during the 1980s and '90s whenever a cable TV documentary on Hollywood's Golden Era required an eyewitness interview subject. In 1970, Ford published an autobiography, Glenn Ford, RFD Beverly Hills. His first wife was actress Eleanor Powell; He was also married to Kathryn Hays and Cynthia Hayward. His last film appearance was a cameo in 1993's Tombstone; after a series of strokes later that decade, he died in 2006 at the age of 90.

Trivia: British actor Trevor Howard trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and while there he made his London stage debut in 1934; however, his subsequent work onstage gained little attention until the mid-'40s. While fighting World War II with the Royal Artillery, he was injured and discharged. Howard made his feature film debut in 1944; soon he attained star status as the result of playing the romantic lead in David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945). Thus began a long and consistently successful film career. At first, Howard was cast in romantic leads, but then began playing more heroic leads before eventually moving into character roles. Regardless of his role, he was known as a consistent, polished actor with an understated, true-to-life style. At first appearing exclusively in British films, he began appearing occasionally in Hollywood productions in the mid-'50s. For his performance as the father in Sons and Lovers (1960) he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. He was married to actress Helen Cherry, with whom he appeared in A Soldier for Christmas (1944).

Trivia: Served for two years in the Army after his graduation.Met his wife Vickery Turner in 1973 while working on The Day After The Fair.In 1981, actor Kevin Bacon starred in the first play he wrote, Deros On the Funny Farm.The figure of the American president is a recurring feature in his career, including potraying John F. Kennedy in Red Dwarf and writing and starring in JFK on JFK.Skilled at American football, ice skating, golf and swimming.Best known for his work in Future Cop and We'll Meet Again.

Trivia: Rotund comedian-actor Jackie Gleason (born Herbert John Gleason) broke into show business at age 15 by winning an amateur-night contest and went on to perform in vaudeville, carnivals, nightclubs, and roadhouses. In 1940 he was signed to a film contract by Warner Bros., and he debuted onscreen in Navy Blues (1941). His career was interrupted by World War II, but at the war's end, Gleason returned to Hollywood, this time playing character roles in a number of films. His film work, however, lent little strength to his career, and he performed in several Broadway shows before achieving major success as the star of such TV comedy series as The Life of Riley, The Honeymooners, and The Jackie Gleason Show. It was during his reign on television that Gleason created such enduring characters as Ralph Kramden (the loud-mouth busdriver from The Honeymooners), Reggie Van Gleason, and Joe the Bartender. As a result of the comedic talents he displayed on TV, he became known as "The Great One." Gleason returned to films in the early '60s in lead roles, both comic and dramatic (he earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance in The Hustler [1961]), but he never had as much success in movies as he did on TV. He did have some success in the late '70s and early '80s playing a good-ole'-boy Southern sheriff in the Smokey and the Bandit series of action-comedies. His long career also included a period when he composed, arranged, and conducted recordings of mood music. Gleason died in 1987 of cancer. His grandson is actor Jason Patric.