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: Standup comics everywhere may rely on angry cynicism as a staple of their material, but if an award were bequeathed to the man most responsible for honing irate sarcasm, refining it, and turning it into an art form, that honor would almost certainly be handed to Lewis Black. Self-dubbed "America's Foremost Commentator on Everything," Black's infuriated, ultra-left wing comedic rants (which eviscerate political figures, pop cultural trends, and societal currents) ultimately garnered such popularity and such a loyal cult following that they landed him a recurrent Tuesday night spot on Comedy Central's The Daily Show, called the "Back in Black" segment. Younger generations will, doubtless, instantly associate Black with these appearances. They may be surprised to discover that, like fellow comedian, pundit, and television personality Ben Stein (who shares a birthplace and hometown with Black but sits on the opposite side of the political fence), Black's emergence as a public figure stretches back several decades. He nonetheless proves the old adage that sometimes the most thrilling acts arrive later in life. Born in the U.S. capital and raised in Silver Spring, MD, Black attended UNC Chapel Hill as an undergrad and earned an MFA from Yale School of Drama in 1977. He recognized his own inherent gift for storytelling as an adolescent, and thus began to pursue work across the country as a playwright and actor after graduate school. A long string of theatrical gigs followed, (many certifiably eccentric, such as a directorial assignment in the Coloradoan wilderness). Black's growing desire for mainstream theatrical involvement eventually carried him to Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, where he took a full-timer as Associate Artistic Director and Resident Playwright at Steve Olsen's West Bank Café Downstairs Theatre Bar from 1981 through 1989. During this eight-year stint (and shortly thereafter), Black and the late Rusty McGee teamed to author hundreds of one-act musicals, including -- most famously -- the high-profile Czar of Rock and Roll, which premiered in Houston in 1990. Black also became a comedic fixture on the university circuit throughout the '80s. In the mid- to late '80s, Black segued into bit parts in movies and television. He made his cinematic debut when fellow New Yorker Woody Allen cast him as Paul in the 1986 Hannah and Her Sisters. When Black left the West Bank in 1989, he focused more heavily on film roles, but for a decade or so, the parts he landed were somewhat scattered; he adorned the cast of a feature or cropped up on a small-screen episode every two or three years, and thus derived the majority of his income from a recurring summer stint, when he taught acting to students at the Williamstown Theater Festival. Key roles during this period included: Jacob Singer's unnamed physician in Jacob's Ladder, Franklin Frome in the 1991 "Aria" episode of Law & Order, Marty Holder in Warren Leight's The Night We Never Met (1993), and Lazlo "Punchy" de Leon in the "Deception" episode of Homicide: Life on the Street (1997), directed by the legendary Peter Medak (The Changeling, The Krays). In 1998, Black's friend and fellow character actor Don Scardino (He Knows You're Alone) directed a 20-minute film adaptation of Black's play The Deal. Black authored the script. After a couple of well-received concert films in 2003 and 2004 (Lewis Black: Unleashed and Lewis Black: Black on Broadway, respectively), the comedian found more consistent work -- and concomitant success -- in front of the camera, with offers pouring in. He contributed a sketch to the infamous 2005 Provenza/Jillette documentary The Aristocrats, voiced fellow Aristocrat Bob Saget's 2006 spoof Farce of the Penguins, and headlined a third standup film for HBO, Lewis Black: Red White & Screwed. 2006 was indeed Black's year: that summer, his new book, the Al Franken-like politically tinged Nothing's Sacred hit stores, and he contributed to two mainstream features: Barry Levinson's "unofficial" Good Morning, Vietnam follow-up Man of the Year (as Eddie Langston), and director Steve Pink's Accepted. The latter concerns a bunch of teenage burnouts -- with no college prospects -- who wish to placate their parents by creating a fake university and announcing their acceptance to it. Black plays Uncle Ben, the guileless adult schemer who assists them by feigning a position as dean of the "College." In addition to Black's performance roles and standup, he is a fervent social activist and spends much of his time working for charity; recent contributions include teaching impoverished Hell's Kitchen children to author and act in plays, as well as donating to -- and spreading awareness of -- the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. In 2006, Black continued his Daily Show appearances but launched a spin-off, produced by Comedy Central and Castle Rock Entertainment and entitled The Red State Diaries. The program features Black traveling around the country and investigating, first-hand, the subjects he rants about on the Jon Stewart program.

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).