Trivia: Sherman Hemsley is best remembered for playing George Jefferson, the lovably pompous, diminutive loud-mouth who made a fortune from his dry cleaning business and moved from Queens to a posh Manhattan high rise in The Jeffersons, a popular sitcom that ran for ten years on the CBS network. Before becoming an actor in the late '60s, Hemsley worked for the U.S. Post Office. He started out on the New York stage where his first break came from playing Gitlow in the Broadway musical Purlie (1970). Television producer Norman Lear was impressed by Hemsley's performance and so created George Jefferson for him. Originally designed as an African-American alter ego/foil to his blustery, bigoted Archie Bunker character on the smash hit All in the Family, Hemsley's George became so popular that he and his family were given their own series in 1975. Following the series' demise, Hemsley played an egotistical, loud-mouthed deacon/lawyer at the First Community Church of Philadelphia who tried to keep the new minister, Reverend Gregory, from taking over what he viewed as his personal domain, on Amen. The series broke ground by being the first hit sitcom centered on religion and ran from 1986 to 1991. In between his series work, Hemsley occasionally played supporting roles in feature films after making his debut playing Rev. Mike in the comedy Love at First Bite (1979). Most of his subsequent films were low-budget affairs such as Stewardess School and Club Fed; he also continued to appear frequently on television as a guest star and starred in such failed series as Townsend Television (1993) and Goode Behavior (1996-1997), but never quite recaptured the success he had during the '70s and '80s. His final small-screen appearance came in 2006 when he was a cast member on the sixth season of the reality TV show The Surreal Life. Hemsley died at age 74 in late July, 2012.

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

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

Trivia: Taught acting classes for more than a decade on her own and at Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, FL. Appeared on the CBS drama Playhouse 90. Movie debut was in the 1969 drama The Learning Tree. First regular TV series role was as Mother Jefferson on the CBS comedy show The Jeffersons; made first appearance in 1975. Used to take public transportation to auditions because she never learned how to drive.

Trivia: Though best known for her intense, sensitive dramatic portrayals, Melinda Dillon first attracted attention as an improvisational comedienne. Her Broadway break came about when she played the hypertense Honey in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962). Making her film debut playing a small role in The April Fools (1969). Since then Dillon has been Oscar-nominated for her portrayal of a mother whose young child is abducted by aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and her performance as a suicidal grade-school teacher in Absence of Malice (1981). After seeing Melinda Dillon so often afflicted with trembling lip and moistened eyes, it was somewhat a relief to watch her return to comedy full-force on the 1971 TV revue series Story Theatre and as Peter Billingsley's overbearing mother ("You'll put your eye out!") in A Christmas Story (1983). Dillon continues working in a wide variety of feature films like How to Make an American Quilt (1995); she also occasionally appears in television movies such as Shattered Innocence (1984).

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

Trivia: While his name might suggest a birthplace somewhere in France -- or at the very least Quebec -- actor Rene Auberjonois was born in New York City. However, his well-to-do parents were of noble European blood, thus French was the language of choice in his household. Despite his first-born-American status, Auberjonois was shunned by many of his schoolmates as a foreigner, and teased for having a "girl's" name. As a defense mechanism, Auberjonois became the class clown, which somehow led naturally to amateur theatricals. The influence of such neighborhood family friends as Burgess Meredith and Lotte Lenya solidified Auberjonois' determination to make performing his life's work. He was cast in a production at Stratford (Ontario)'s Shakespeare company by John Houseman -- another neighbor of his parents' -- and after moving with his family to England, Auberjonois returned to complete his acting training at Carnegie-Mellon University. There he decided to specialize in character parts rather than leads -- a wise decision, in that he's still at it while some of his handsomer and more charismatic Carnegie-Mellon classmates have fallen by the wayside. Three years with the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. led Auberjonois to San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre, of which he was a founding member. Movie and TV work was not as easy to come by, so the actor returned to New York, where he won a Tony for his Broadway role in the musical Coco. An introduction to director Robert Altman led Auberjonois to his first film, M*A*S*H (1970), in which he introduced the character that would later be fleshed out on TV as Father Mulcahy (with William Christopher in the role). He worked in two more Altman films before he and the director began to grow in opposite directions. More stage work and films followed, then TV assignments; Auberjonois' characters ranged from arrogant dress designers to snooty aristocrats to schizophrenic killers on film, while the stage afforded him more richly textured roles in such plays as King Lear and The Good Doctor. In 1981, Auberjonois was cast as Clayton Endicott III, the terminally fussy chief of staff to Governor Gatling on Benson. Like so many other professional twits in so many other films, Auberjonois' job was to make life miserable for the more down-to-earth hero, in this case Robert "Benson" Guillaume. Blessed with one of the most flexible voiceboxes in show business, Auberjonois has spent much of his career providing voice-overs for cartoon characters in animated projects like the Disney's The Little Mermaid, The Legend of Tarzan, Justice League, and Pound Puppies. In 1993, Rene Auberjonois assured himself a permanent place in the hearts of "Trekkies" everywhere when he was cast as Odo (complete with understated but distinctive "alien" makeup) on the weekly syndicated TV show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which he appeared on until 1999.Auberjonois would remain extremely active on screen in the years to come, appearing in movies like The Patriot, and on shows like Boston Legal.