Trivia: Marlon Brando was quite simply one of the most celebrated and influential screen and stage actors of the postwar era; he rewrote the rules of performing, and nothing was ever the same again. Brooding, lusty, and intense, his greatest contribution was popularizing Method acting, a highly interpretive performance style which brought unforeseen dimensions of power and depth to the craft; in comparison, most other screen icons appeared shallow, even a little silly. A combative and often contradictory man, Brando refused to play by the rules of the Hollywood game, openly expressing his loathing for the film industry and for the very nature of celebrity, yet often exploiting his fame to bring attention to political causes and later accepting any role offered him as long as the price was right. He is one of the screen's greatest enigmas, and there will never be another quite like him. Born April 3, 1924, in Omaha, NE, Brando's rebellious streak manifested itself early, resulting in his expulsion from military school. His first career was as a ditch digger, but his father ultimately grew so frustrated with his son's seeming lack of ambition that he offered to finance whatever more meaningful path the young man chose to pursue. Brando opted to become an actor -- his mother operated a local theatrical group -- and he soon relocated to New York City to study the Stanislavsky method under Stella Adler. He later worked at the Actors' Studio under the tutelage of Lee Strasberg, and his dedication to the principles of Method acting was to become absolute. After making his professional debut in 1943's Bobino, Brando bowed on Broadway a year later in I Remember Mama; for 1946's Truckline Cafe, the critics voted him Broadway's Most Promising Actor.Brando's groundbreaking star turn in the 1947 production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire delivered on all of that promise and much, much more; as the inarticulate brute Stanley Kowalski, Brando stunned audiences with a performance of remarkable honesty, sexuality, and intensity, and overnight he became the rage of Broadway. Hollywood quickly came calling, but he resisted the studios' overtures with characteristic contempt -- he was a new breed of star, an anti-star, really, and he refused to play ball, dismissing influential critics and making no concessions toward glamour or decorum. It all only served to make Hollywood want him more, of course, and in 1950 Brando agreed to star in the independent Stanley Kramer production The Men as a paraplegic war victim; in typical Method fashion, he spent a month in an actual veteran's hospital in preparation for the role.While The Men was not a commercial hit, critics tripped over themselves in their attempts to praise Brando's performance, and in 1951 it was announced that he and director Elia Kazan were set to reprise their earlier work for a screen adaptation of Streetcar. The results were hugely successful, the picture winning an Academy Award for Best Film; Brando earned his first Best Actor nomination, but lost despite Oscars for his co-stars, Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter. Again with Kazan, he next starred in the title role of 1952's Viva Zapata! After walking out of the French production Le Rouge et le Noir over a dispute with director Claude Autant-Lara, Brando portrayed Mark Antony in the 1953 MGM production of Julius Caesar, sparking considerable controversy over his idiosyncratic approach to the Bard and earning a third consecutive Oscar bid. In 1954, The Wild One was another curve ball, casting Brando as the rebellious leader of a motorcycle gang and forever establishing him as a poster boy for attitude, angst, and anomie. That same year, he delivered perhaps his definitive screen performance as a washed-up boxer in Kazan's visceral On the Waterfront. On his fourth attempt, Brando finally won an Academy Award, and the film itself also garnered Best Picture honors. However, his next picture, Desiree, was his first disappointment. Despite gaining much publicity for his portrayal of Napoleon, the project made a subpar showing both artistically and financially. Brando continued to prove his versatility by co-starring with Frank Sinatra in a film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Guys and Dolls. Another Broadway-to-screen adaptation, The Teahouse of the August Moon, followed in 1956 before he began work on the following year's Sayonara, for which he garnered yet another Oscar nomination.In 1958's The Young Lions, Brando co-starred for the first and only time with Montgomery Clift, another great actor of his generation; it was a hit, but his next project, 1960's The Fugitive Kind, was a financial disaster. He then announced plans to mount his own independent production. After both Stanley Kubrick and Sam Peckinpah both walked off the project, Brando himself grabbed the directorial reins. The result, the idiosyncratic 1961 Western One-Eyed Jacks, performed respectably at the box office, but was such a costly proposition that it could hardly be expected ever to earn a profit. In 1962, Mutiny on the Bounty underwent a similarly troubled birthing process; Brando rejected numerous screenplay revisions, and MGM spent a record 19 million dollars to bring the picture to the screen. When it too failed, his diminishing box-office stature, combined with his increasingly temperamental behavior, made him a target of scorn for the first time in his career. The downward spiral continued: Brando himself remained compulsively watchable, but suddenly the material itself, like 1963's The Ugly American, 1966's The Chase, and 1967's A Countess From Hong Kong, was self-indulgent and far beneath his abilities. His mysterious career choices, as well as his often inscrutable personal and professional behavior -- he was quoted as declaring acting a "neurotic, unimportant job" -- became the topic of much discussion throughout the industry. He continued to push himself in risky projects like 1967's Reflections in a Golden Eye, an adaptation of a Carson McCullers novel in which he portrayed a closeted homosexual, but the end result lacked the old magic. While Brando still commanded respect from the media and his fellow performers, much of Hollywood began to perceive him as a bad and unnecessary risk, a perception which features like 1968's Candy, 1969's Queimada!, and 1971's The Nightcomers did little to alter. The Brando renaissance began with 1972's The Godfather; against the objections of Paramount, director Francis Ford Coppola cast him to play the aging head of a Mafia crime family, and according to most reports, his on-set behavior was impeccable. Onscreen, Brando was brilliant, delivering his best performance in well over a decade. He won his second Academy Award, but became the subject of much controversy when he refused the honor, instead sending one Sacheen Littlefeather -- supposedly a Native American spokeswoman, but later revealed to be a Hispanic actress -- to the Oscar telecast podium to deliver a speech attacking the U.S. government's history of crimes against the native population. Controversy continued to dog Brando upon the release of 1973's Last Tango in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci's masterful examination of a sexual liaison between an American widower and a young Frenchwoman; though critically acclaimed, the picture was denounced as obscene in many quarters.Despite his resurrection, Brando did not reappear onscreen for three years, finally resurfacing in The Missouri Breaks opposite Jack Nicholson. Although he had by now long maintained that he continued to act only for the money, the eccentricity of his career choices allowed many fans to shrug off such assertions; however, never before had Brando appeared in so blatantly commercial a project as 1978's Superman, earning an unprecedented 3.7 million dollars for what essentially amounted to a cameo performance. His next appearance, in Coppola's 1979 Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now, was largely incoherent, while for 1980's The Formula, he appeared in only three scenes. And for a decade, that was it: Brando vanished, living in self-imposed exile on his island in the Pacific, growing obese, and refusing the few overtures producers made for him to come back to Hollywood. Only in 1989 did a project appeal to Brando's deep political convictions, and he co-starred in the anti-Apartheid drama A Dry White Season, earning an Academy Award nomination for his supporting role as an attorney. A year later, he headlined The Freshman, gracefully parodying his Godfather performance. Tragedy struck in 1990 when his son, Christian, killed the lover of Brando's pregnant daughter, Cheyenne; a long legal battle ensued, and Christian was found guilty of murder and imprisoned. Even more tragically, Cheyenne later committed suicide. The trial placed a severe strain on Brando's finances, and he reluctantly returned to performing, appearing in the atrocious Christopher Columbus: The Discovery in 1992. He also wrote an autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me. Don Juan DeMarco, co-starring Johnny Depp, followed in 1995, and after 1996's The Island of Dr. Moreau, Brando starred in Depp's directorial debut The Brave. In 1998, he appeared in Yves Simoneau's Free Money, headlining a cast that included Donald Sutherland, Mira Sorvino, Martin Sheen, and Charlie Sheen.Again absent from the public eye for a spell, Brando made news again in 2001 as health problems forced him out of a cameo role in director Keenan Ivory Wayans' horror spoof sequel Scary Movie 2 (he was replaced on short notice by actor James Woods). Brando made his first film appearance in three years with a considerably more prestigous role in director Frank Oz's one-last-heist thriller The Score (2001). Though the film's production was plagued with the by-then de rigeur rumors of Brando's curious on-set tirades and bizarre behavior, filmgoers remained eager to see the actor re-teamed with former Godfather cohort Robert DeNiro, with Edward Norton and Angela Bassett rounding out the cast. Later that year, director Francis Ford Coppola added to Brando's legend by lengthening his infamously slurred speeches for the director's recut Apocalypse Now Redux.Absent from the screen for the next three years, Brando passed away suddenly in 2004 of pulmonary fibrosis. While The Score was his last onscreen performance, shortly before his death he recorded voice parts for an animated film called Big Bug Man and a Godfather videogame. Marking an increasingly popular trend, the visage of Brando was even resurrected for a "new" performance in director Bryan Singer's big-budget Superman Returns in the summer of 2006. Culled from old outtakes from the first two films, the digitally manipulated clips added to the film's passing-of-the-torch feel.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 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: Her father was a Swiss poet-playwright, her mother, an Austrian actress. At age 16 she debuted onscreen in a Swiss production. She played intense, soulful leads in films of a number of nations. For her work in Helmut Kautner's Die letzte Brucke/The Last Bridge (1954) she won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress award; she won the Venice Festival Best Actress Award for Rene Clement's Gervaise. She tended to play weepy, suffering women, a type that was much less popular with audiences in the '60s; her career went into decline and she retired in 1963. In 1968 she returned to films in occasional character roles. She is the sister of actor Maximilian Schell.

Trivia: The daughter of a Supreme Court judge, Phyllis Thaxter followed the example of her mother, a former actress. Thaxter made her first stage appearance, at the Ogunquit (Maine) Playhouse. In her teens, she received on-the-job training with the Montreal Repertory. On Broadway from 1938, she appeared in such popular plays as What a Life!, There Shall Be No Night, and Claudia. Signed to an MGM contract in 1944, Phyllis was often wasted in traditional faithful-wife roles, but on occasion was permitted a wider acting range in such parts as the schizophrenic heroine of Arch Oboler's Bewitched (1944). While at MGM, Phyllis married James Aubrey, who later ascended to the presidency of CBS-TV (and still later, took over MGM); the union lasted until 1962, producing a daughter, actress Skye Aubrey. Sidelined by an attack of infantile paralysis in 1952, Thaxter made a slow, steady stage, screen and TV comeback in character parts, frequently accepting roles that would challenge her physical limitations. In 1978, after a long absence from the screen, Phyllis Thaxter was cast as Martha Kent, mother of Clark Kent, in Superman: The Movie. She made her last on-camera appearance in a 1992 episode of Murder, She Wrote.

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

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: British character Harry Andrews, who has appeared in a wide assortment of British, American, and international films, is best remembered for his portrayals of stern fellows or military men in films such as The Red Beret (1952), and Sands of the Kalahari (1965). Though almost always a supporting player, his performances often overshadow those of the stars. Before making his cinematic debut in the early '50s, Andrews graduated from Wrekin College. During the 1930s he began his career as a distinguished stage actor noted for his portrayals of Shakespearean roles. Though he was often typecast as the tough guy in films, Andrews broke the mold in his brilliant portrayal of a flamboyant homosexual in the 1970 black comedy Entertaining Mr. Sloane. Andrews' son David was a well-known child actor who eventually became a television director.

Trivia: The son of Broadway actress Mary Martin, Larry Hagman was born September 21st, 1931 in Fort Worth, Texas. After his parents divorced, he lived with his grandmother in California until the time of her death. Hagman, 12 years old at the time, then returned to his mother who was working on the Broadway stage. After attending Bard College in Anandale-on-the-Hudson for one year, his own early efforts at breaking into showbiz began at the Margo Jones Theatre-in-the-Round in Dallas, and soon after in The Taming of the Shrew at the New York City Center. While working as a cast member on his mother's hit show South Pacific, Hagman took up residence in England and ended up staying there for five years. During that time he joined the U.S. Air Force where he found time to produce and direct several theater productions. It was also during that time that he met and fell in love with Maj Axelsson, a young Swedish designer. They were married in December of 1954. Back in the U.S., Hagman began to make progress in his career, tallying up several TV guest-star appearances (including, presciently, a smiling villain on an episode of Sea Hunt), a regular role as lawyer Ed Gibson on the daytime soap opera The Edge of Night, and a beautifully played supporting role as a Russian/ English interpreter in the nuclear nailbiter Fail Safe. In 1965, Hagman received his most prominent acting assignment to date as eternally flustered astronaut Tony Nelson on the TV sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. After five years of Jeannie, Hagman took a few film and TV-movie parts, co-starred with Donna Mills on the 1971 sitcom The Good Life, co-starred with Lauren Bacall in the TV rendition of the Broadway musical Applesauce, acted and directed in the low-grade horror spoof Beware! The Blob. Hagman's best-ever TV stint was as the charming but conniving J. R. Ewing on the nighttime TV serial Dallas, a role he played from 1978 through 1990. At first reluctant to accept the role, Hagman acknowledges that it was his wife Maj's encouragement that convinced him to do the series. Proof of Hagman's drawing power as J.R. came when, at the end of the 1979-80 season, the character was shot down by a mysterious assailant--setting the stage for the "Who Shot J.R.?" episode, one of the highest-rated telecasts of all time. After the cancellation of Dallas in 1991, Hagman was forced to slow down his busy schedule due to an ongoing battle with liver cancer, and in August of 1995 he was the recipient of a liver transplant, a procedure that saved his life. Hagman's public life has always included a variety of civic and philanthropic undertakings. A staunch non-smoker, Hagman acted as the chairperson of the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout for nine years, and following his 1995 surgery, he became the National Spokesperson for the 1996 U.S. Transplant Games sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation and was recognized by the foundation for his role in increasing public awareness in regards to organ donation. In 1997, Hagman made a television comeback as the Honorable Judge Luther Charbonnet in the critically acclaimed CBS series Orleans, and in 1998 he appeared in the popular political satire Primary Colors. Hagman resumed his portrayal of J.R. Ewing opposite Patrick Duffy and Linda Gray for the well-received TNT revival of Dallas that began in the summer of 2012, but that turn was short lived; in November of that year, the actor succumbed to complications from cancer. He was 81.

Trivia: In films from the early 1940s, American actor Phil Brown held down supporting roles in most of his Hollywood films. Brown was eighth-billed as Jimmy Brown in his earliest screen credit, the Paramount aviation epic I Wanted Wings (1941). He was disturbingly convincing as a homicidal maniac in Calling Dr. Gillespie (1942), snapping from normality to viciousness within seconds in several scenes. In The Killers (1946), Brown played Nick Adams, who in the Hemingway story on which the film was based was the narrator but who wound up with little more than a bystander part in the film's opening scene. Moving to Europe in 1950, Brown was put to good use as the victim of a jealous husband in the British-filmed Obsession (1949), released in America as The Hidden Room. Phil Brown remained in England and the Continent for the balance of his career.

Trivia: Fresh out of Columbia University, handsome Kirk Alyn auditioned for a Broadway show as a gag , and much to his amazement, landed the role. He went on to appear as a chorus boy in such major musicals of the 1930s as Girl Crazy, Of Thee I Sing, and Hellzapoppin, and took small acting jobs in the Vitaphone two-reelers produced at Warner Bros.' Brooklyn studios. Moving to Hollywood in 1942, he was briefly seen in Columbia's My Sister Eileen (1942) and You Were Never Lovelier (1943), and played leads at PRC and Monogram. From 1946 to 1952, Alyn starred in six Columbia and Republic serials, never more memorably than as the Man of Steel in The Adventures of Superman (1948) and Atom Man Vs. Superman. Though it has been argued that he was more effective as Clark Kent than as Superman, Alyn still enjoys a loyal fan following for his two Superman appearances, reflecting this fact in the title of his 1974 autobiography A Job for Superman. From 1943 to 1949, Alyn was married to MGM contract vocalist Virginia O'Brien. Until his retirement in the 1960s, Kirk Alyn continued making TV appearances and also toured the straw-hat theater circuit with such Hollywood favorites as June Havoc and Veronica Lake.

Trivia: Diminutive, baby-faced actress Noel Neill entered films as a Paramount starlet in 1942. Though she was showcased in one of the musical numbers in The Fleet's In (1944) and was starred in the Oscar-nominated Technicolor short College Queen (1945), most of her Paramount assignments were thankless bit parts. She fared better as one of the leads in Monogram's Teen Agers series of the mid- to late '40s. In 1948 she was cast as intrepid girl reporter Lois Lane in the Columbia serial The Adventures of Superman, repeating the role in the 1950 chapter play Atom Man vs. Superman. At the time, she regarded it as just another freelance job, perhaps a little better than her cameos in such features as An American in Paris (in 1951 as the American art student) and DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1953). But someone was impressed by Neill's appealingly vulnerable interpretation of Lois Lane, and in 1953 she was hired to replace Phyllis Coates as Lois in the TV version of Superman. She remained with the series for 78 episodes, gaining an enormous fan following (consisting primarily of ten-year-old boys) if not a commensurately enormous bank account. Retiring to private life after the cancellation of Superman in 1958, she was brought back into the limelight during the nostalgia craze of the 1970s. She made countless lecture appearances on the college and film convention circuit, and in 1978 returned to films as Lois Lane's mother in the big-budget Superman: The Movie: alas, most of her part ended up on the cutting-room floor, and neither she nor fellow Adventures of Superman alumnus Kirk Alyn received billing. Noel Neill's last TV appearance to date was a guest spot in a 1991 episode of the syndicated The Adventures of Superboy; she made a cameo appearance in 2006's Superman Returns. Neill died in 2016, at age 95.

Trivia: Seemingly born in a tuxedo, British actor John Stuart began his stage and screen career directly after World War I service in The Black Watch. Stuart was a very popular leading man in British silent films, though it's hard to gauge that popularity since many of his best films of the '20s -- A Sporting Double (1923), Constant Hot Water (1924), Tower of London (1926) -- are either inaccessible or nonexistent. Remaining popular after his talkie debut in Kitty (1929), Stuart matured into character parts, spending much of World War II playing government officials and police inspectors. After showing up in the company of virtually the entire British film industry in 1951's The Magic Box, Stuart settled into bits and cameo roles in such films of the '50s and '60s as Your Past is Showing (1958), Blood of the Vampire (1958) and Sink the Bismarck (1960). One of his last appearances was a tiny role in Superman: The Movie (1978). An accomplished writer, John Stuart penned his autobiography, Caught in the Act, in 1971.

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

Trivia: American lyricist Ray Evans is best known for his collaboration with composer Jay Livingston. Together, they penned many catchy tunes for stage, screen and television. Some of these songs, such as "Tammy," and "Silver Bells" have become American standards. They won Oscars in 1948 for "Buttons and Bows" (from Paleface), "Mona Lisa" (from Captain Carey USA, 1950) and "Que Sera Sera" (from The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956). Evans met Livingston while studying at the University of Pennsylvania. Before becoming a lyricist, Evans worked as a musician on cruise ships.

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

Trivia: Worked as a student technician in a hospital pathology library for three years. Joined Folk Blues Incorporated in 1963, at the age of 19. Performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including The Tempest, Othello and The Winters Tale. In 2007, starred as Saruman the White in the West End run of The Lord of the Rings.

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: British character actor Alan Tilvern began his long career in small film roles with the appropriately titled The Small Voice (1948) (it's a hostage drama, but you wouldn't know it from the title). In placid anonymity, Tilvern appeared in such internationally financed films as The Black Rose (1950), Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and Bhowani Junction (1956). Sometimes he received screen credit (as "A Sergeant" in Woody Allen's Love and Death [1975]); often he did not (as goodness knows what role in Superman: The Movie [1978]). Alan Tilvern's contribution to 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit was far from obscure; as cartoon producer R. K. Maroon, it was Tilvern who put the entire plot into motion--and wound up murdered as a result.