Trivia: One of the salutary byproducts of the TV series Seinfeld is that it created a market in the '90s for sitcoms built around the comedy routines of young, hip New York comics. One of the best of these programs was Mad About You, created by and starring Manhattan-born Paul Reiser. Reiser and Seinfeld share more than a similarity of sitcoms; together with comedians Larry Miller and Mark Schiff, they comprise what has been unofficially dubbed the Four Funniest Men in the World Club, which has met for lunch each New Year's Day for the past several years. Reiser's credentials include a degree from S.U.N.Y.-Binghamton, a short stint as a health food distributor, and a 1982 film debut in Diner. Most of his film roles have been in comedies, though he was effectively cast as a greedy space traveler (who comes to a well-deserved bad end) in 1986's Aliens. Reiser has noted that his weekly series Mad About You, in which he co-starred with Helen Hunt, was based on his relationship with his wife, Paula. In 1995, Paul Reiser took a brief respite from Mad About You to star in the "single dad" comedy Bye Bye Love.As the new decade began, and Mad About You came to a close, Resier appeared in One Night at McCool's, and four years later realized a personal dream by co-starring with Peter Falk in The Thing About My Folks, a film Resier co-wrote as well. He was interviewed in The Aristocrats, and appeared as himself in Funny People. In 2011 he masterminded the very short-lived NBC sitcom The Paul Reiser Show.

Trivia: A precociously talented youngster, Helen Hunt was drawing paychecks as a television actress from the age of ten. Before she was 17, she had appeared as a regular on two series, Swiss Family Robinson (1975) and The Fitzpatricks (1977). Hunt proved she was more than just a workaday child actor with her starring performance in the fact-based 1981 TV movie The Miracle of Kathy Miller, in which she played a high school athlete who overcame severe mental and physical damage brought on by a highway accident. While she had been appearing in films as early as Rollercoaster in 1977, Hunt was never groomed as a star player, and it is possible that her resemblance to another child actress, Jodie Foster, held her back from more important roles.After taking on her first adult role in the 1982 sitcom It Takes Two, Hunt's film assignments improved, with sizable roles in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Project X (1987), Next of Kin (1989), and The Waterdance (1991). She also gained a small measure of cult status by appearing in a brace of science fiction films, including Trancers II (1991) and Trancers III (1992). That same year, Hunt landed her longest-lasting acting assignment to date, as the co-star of the Paul Reiser-created comedy series Mad About You. During the show's seven-year run, she won both Emmy and Golden Globe awards for her portrayal of Jamie Buchman. In 1996, Hunt had her most successful film role to date in the blockbuster Twister. The following year, she topped that when she received a Best Actress Oscar for playing a caring waitress and single mother who befriends acerbic, obsessive-compulsive author Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson, who also won an Oscar for his performance) in As Good As It Gets. After Mad About You ended in 1999, Hunt appeared in films by several veteran directors, including Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away [2000]), Robert Altman (Dr. T and The Women [2000]), and Woody Allen (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion [2001]). She starred in Life x 3 on Broadway in 2003.In 2005, Hunt joined the star-studded cast of HBO's two-part miniseries Empire Falls in the role of Janine, ex-wife of Miles (Ed Harris), the story's central character. The actress made her feature directorial debut in Then She Found Me (for which Hunt also starred, produced, and wrote the screenplay), an adaptation of Elinore Lipman's best-selling novel of the same name. The story follows a Philadelphia schoolteacher (Hunt) whose long-lost birth mother (Bette Miller) reappears at just as her daughter is careening into a midlife crisis. Hunt played a supportive mother in Soul Surfer (2011), an inspirational drama based on the true tale of a surfer who returned to the sport after tragically losing an arm. In 2012 she played a sex surrogate helping a man in an iron lung lose his virginity for director Ben Lewin in The Sessions, a part that earned her rave reviews and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Trivia: Raised outside of Chicago as the sixth of nine children, including older brother James, a founding member of the band Chicago. Left college in his junior year after seeing David Mamet's play, The American Buffalo, which inspired Pankow to enroll in the two-year training program at Chicago's St. Nicholas Theatre. Performed on Broadway (in his first stint) in Serious Money, The Iceman Cometh and as Mozart in Amadeus. Appeared in a numerous films of the late 1980s-early '90s, including To Live and Die in L.A., Talk Radio and Mortal Thoughts. Most recognized for his role as Ira Buchman, cousin of Paul Reiser's character, on the '90s NBC sitcom Mad About You. Returned to Broadway in the 2000s, performing in Twelve Angry Men, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Cymbeline. Took over the role of Merc Lapidus (from Thomas Haden Church) in 2011 on the Showtime/BBC show Episodes.

Trivia: A natural-born actress who received her primary training in the foyer of her parents' home, Leila Kenzle has since moved on to brighten the lights of Broadway and bask in the warm glow of television and film. Born in Patchogue (Long Island), NY, and raised by an electrical supplies salesman and an antique dealer in nearby Rutherford, NJ, Kenzle was the one of three daughters who often entertained houseguests with her energetic antics. After deciding to expand her talents beyond the realm of home dinner theater, Kenzle earned her B.F.A. in theater from the Mason Gross School of the Arts Conservatory at Rutgers. As with many others in her field, the burgeoning talent found the demanding life of an actress too much to bear and promptly withdrew from the stage, finding work as a hotel phone operator. Encouraged by a sympathetic casting director to follow her dreams and go in for an audition, Kenzle landed her first off-Broadway role and has since never looked back. Following a breakthrough role in the off-Broadway hit Tony 'n Tina's Wedding, the newly confident actress soon relocated to Los Angeles and quickly landed roles in no less than five television pilots. Her television career on a role, Kenzle appeared in such popular series as The Golden Girls, thirtysomething, and Mad About You. Her exposure growing, it wasn't long before Kenzle was making the leap to films with roles in Other People's Money (1991) and Dogmatic (1996). The new millennium found Kenzle landing roles in such popular features as White Oleander and the Rob Schneider comedy The Hot Chick (both 2002). Married to acting coach Neil Monaco in April of 1994, Kenzle often dedicated her time off-camera to work with the Children's International Institute and working with multiple sclerosis charities. With the release of the award-winning short film Bigger Fish, the established actress branched out to receive her first producer's credit.

Trivia: American entertainer Carol Burnett and her sister were both raised by their loving grandmother. It has long been a matter of public record that Burnett credits her grandmother for encouraging her to utilize her comic and musical talents to the fullest. Working her way through UCLA, she majored in English and Theater arts, gradually developing the poise and self-confidence to tackle an entertainment career. After nightclub work, Burnett was spotlighted on the variety programs of Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan, and Jack Paar, bringing down the house on Paar's program with the specialty ballad "I Made a Fool of Myself over John Foster Dulles." In 1956, Burnett co-starred with Buddy Hackett in the live TV sitcom Stanley, which unfortunately was scheduled opposite the indestructible Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. A near-star several times over, Burnett finally grabbed the brass ring with her bravura performance in the 1959 off-Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress, which led to a three-season stint as a regular on The Garry Moore Show. An Emmy award resulted from her contribution to Moore, and another Emmy followed for a 1962 joint appearance with Julie Andrews at Carnegie Hall. Some of her comedy of the era was the self-deprecating sort allotted to women who weren't raving beauties, but she transcended the cruelty of the jokes with an inner beauty that one would have to be blind to miss. As a slapstick comedienne Burnett was unrivalled, even by the sainted Lucille Ball, and on occasion she was allowed to drop the comic mask and deliver a heart-rending ballad. In 1962, CBS signed Burnett to a long term contract under the supervision of her then-husband, producer Joe Hamilton. After an uncomfortable few months in 1964 in which the producers of the Broadway production Fade Out Fade In sued Burnett for abandoning the play to appear in a weekly variety series The Entertainers, her post-Garry Moore career moved along unevenly. She was advised to sign for another series but avoided the option of situation comedy (she once insisted that she didn't want to be trapped playing someone named Agnes every week). In 1967, virtually out of desperation for a workable idea, The Carol Burnett Show premiered on CBS. Burnett patterned the program after Garry Moore's opening monologue, brief sketches with continuing characters, parodies, musical bits, and a closing all-star musical comedy production number. With such first-rate supporting talent as Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner and Tim Conway, The Carol Burnett Show was a ratings-grabber until its final telecast in 1978. Carol Burnett's life and career since then has been distinguished by as many valleys as peaks. Her film career never truly got off the ground, despite excellent performances in such pictures as Pete 'N' Tillie (1972) and A Wedding (1978). Nevertheless, Carol Burnett has more than earned her place in the pantheon of television giants.Burnett would remain active in the coming decades, starring in everything from the classic musical Annie to the sitcom Mama's Family, not to mention making inumerable appearances on shows like Touched By an Angel, Mad About You, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and Glee.

Trivia: Educated at Roosevelt University, bearded, booming-voiced Louis Zorich has been a working actor for nearly 50 years. Zorich made his off-Broadway debut in a revival of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, and has appeared on Broadway in Becket, Moby Dick, Hadrian VII, and Moonchildren. He also appeared as Ben in Dustin Hoffman's 1984 staging of Death of a Salesman, repeating this role in the 1985 film version. On television, Zorich has been seen as Jules Berger in Brooklyn Bridge (1991) and as Paul Reiser's father in Mad About You (which ran from 1992 to 1999), and heard in innumerable commercial voice-overs. Louis Zorich is the husband of Oscar-winning actress Olympia Dukakis.

Trivia: Heavyset comedian Jeff Garlin started doing standup comedy at his Florida college before he returned to his hometown of Chicago, IL, and joined the cast of Second City. In 1992, he made his film debut in the Dolly Parton comedy Straight Talk, followed by small roles in other features and made-for-TV movies. In 1997, he starred in his own HBO half-hour comedy special and guest starred on Everybody Loves Raymond a couple times before playing the reoccurring role of Marvin on NBC's Mad About You. After bit parts in the comedies Senseless and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Garlin made the successful switch back to television. This time he tried directing and producing in addition to playing Larry David's manager, Jeff Greene, on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, which would become his most recognizable role. He then hosted the short-lived variety show Late Friday and joined the cast of What About Joan for its second and final season. He made a brief return to film for Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal and then gained co-star status with Eddie Murphy for Daddy Day Care in 2003. In 2006 he wrote, directed, and starred in the sweet indie comedy I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, and two years later joined the Pixar family providing the voice of the ship captain in the highly-successful Wall-E. As he continued working on Curb, he found working on animated films to his liking and lent his voice to Cars 2, Toy Story 3 and ParaNorman.

Trivia: Supporting actress, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Born February 12, 1963, John Michael Higgins is a character player who evinced a flair for comedic portrayals of middle-aged types, actor John Michael Higgins jump-started his career with a dead-on evocation of David Letterman in the made-for-cable comedy The Late Shift -- a picture about the cutthroat war between Letterman and Jay Leno to be crowned "King of Late Night Talk." Higgins followed this auspicious and covetable assignment with small roles in Barry Levinson's scathing political satire Wag the Dog (1997) and a guest appearance as one of Elaine's issue-ridden boyfriends on Seinfeld, but made his most substantial impression as an occasional character on Ally McBeal -- that of Steven Milter, an attorney who doubled as a psychoanalyst of Ally's. Beginning with Best in Show (2000), Higgins enjoyed a multi-film run on the big screen with Christopher Guest and his regular mockumentary collaborators that also included the farces A Mighty Wind (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006). He also had a recurring role as an attorney Wayne Jarvis on the critically acclaimed sitcom Arrested Development and supplied the voice of Mentok the Mindtaker for the animated comedy series Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. Back on the big screen, Higgins essayed two A-list supporting roles in 2007, in the Steve Carell-headlined farce Evan Almighty and the holiday-themedFred Claus starring Vince Vaughn. Higgins joined Vaughn again in Couples Retreat (2009), a romantic comedy following a group of couples who arrive on a tropical island only to find out they are required to participate in couples therapy in order to stay. He appeared on the FX television series Wilford in 2011, and joined the cast of the sitcom Happily Divorced, in which he co-stars with Fran Drescher (his real life ex-wife) as a man who amicably ended his marriage after coming to terms with his homosexuality. After working with Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz in the moderately successful comedy Bad Teacher in 2011, the actor played a small role in the 2012 adventure drama Big Miracle, which follows the plight of a journalist and volunteer who go to extreme lengths to save a beached whale.

Trivia: Started her professional acting career in 1974.At the start of her career, learned to type to work in offices while also auditioning in New York.In 2008, was awarded the School of Theatre Distinguished Alumni Award by the Boston University College of Fine Arts.Has played a teacher in multiple projects, including Lean on Me (1989), If Looks Could Kill (1991), Curb Your Enthusiasm and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.In 2016, was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female for her work in the film H. (2014).