Trivia: A true-to-life case of childhood dreams coming true, one gets the impression that the success of humble comedian turned actor Ray Romano is more of a surprise to him than it is to those who supported him in his years as a struggling futon deliveryman moonlighting in standup. Born in Queens, NY, in 1957 and raised in nearby Forest Hills, Queens, Romano found happiness early in life by tickling the funny bones of family, friends, and of course, girls. The middle child of three sons, the aspiring funnyman refined his comic talents when he formed the bravely titled "No Talent" comedy troupe at age 16 to the delight of the congregation they regularly performed for. Romano later put his spotlight aspirations on hold when he enrolled in Queens College as an accountants major after graduating high school in 1975. Dabbling in odd jobs as he developed his stage skills on the late-night comedy circuit, Romano began an exhausting decade-long struggle to succeed as a standup while holding a more reliable day job. Married to wife Anna in the mid-'80s, Romano decided to pursue comedy full-time in 1987. It was shortly after winning a N.Y.C. radio station-sponsored comedy contest two years later that Romano acquired a manager and his dreams began to become a reality. One of those dreams, to perform in front of legendary late-night television host Johnny Carson, came true in 1991. Finally gaining national exposure and seemingly on the fast track to stardom, more television appearances soon followed, with a 1995 appearance on Late Night With David Letterman prompting Letterman to begin talks with Romano about the idea of developing a sitcom. Premiering in September 13, 1996, Everyboy Loves Raymond found the now-popular comic's offbeat domestic observations striking a chord with both audiences and critics alike. Nominated multiple times for numerous awards (including three Emmy and two Golden Globes), ELR carried on well into the new millennium, which saw the now-established comic branching out into other arenas as well. A June 1999 recording of a Carnegie Hall performance was nominated for a Grammy, and his novel Everything and a Kite turned up on the New York Times bestseller list. Television appearances on Hollywood Squares, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and a somber turn in America: A Tribute to Heroes found American households increasingly willing to welcome the good-humored everyman into their homes. It was only a matter of time before Romano tackled feature films, and with his vocal role in 2002's Ice Age, the likable comic did just that. A lighthearted animated romp which followed the adventures of a group of animals weathering the new frozen landscape in order to return a human child to its father, Ice Age gave Disney a run for their money and further proved that popular computer-animated family fare was no longer exclusive to the Mouse House. Romano lent his voice to the Ice Age franchise again in 2006 for Ice Age: The Meltdown, as well as Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs in 2009. The actor delivered a solid performance in a supporting role for 2007's The Grand, a mockumentary following a television star trying to win a high-stakes poker tournament, and was praised for his lead performance in TNT's comedy-drama Men of a Certain Age.

Trivia: Born and raised in Ohio, actress Patricia Heaton got her start on the stage, performing with the off-Broadway company Stage Three. In 1989, she got her screen-acting big break when she was cast in a recurring role on ABC's thirtysomething. Over the next several years, she could be seen in a number of failed sitcoms, small TV guest roles, and bit film parts. But in 1996, Heaton landed the role that would make her career, that of long-suffering matriarch Debra Barone on the hit CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. Heaton starred on the show through its nine-year run, receiving seven consecutive Emmy nominations and two wins. Following the conclusion of Everybody Loves Raymond in 2005, Heaton appeared in a pair of made-for-TV movies (The Engagement Ring and The Path to 9/11) before making her way back to sitcom territory in 2007, when she began starring as a TV news anchor opposite Kelsey Grammer on Fox's Back to You, and again 2009 for The Middle, in which she plays the lead role of Frankie Heck, a working-class mother devoted to her family despite her struggles at work and as caretaker for her ailing mother.

Trivia: Tall, straight-laced American actor Robert Culp parlayed his appearance and demeanor into a series of clean-cut character roles, often (though not always) with a humorous, mildly sarcastic edge. He was perhaps best known for three accomplishments: his turn as a Southern California documentary filmmaker who decides, along with his wife (Natalie Wood) to suddenly go counterculture with an "open marriage" in Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969); his iconic three-season role as an undercover agent in the espionage-themed series I Spy (1965-8); and his three-season run as Bill Maxwell on Stephen Cannell's superhero spoof series The Greatest American Hero (1981-3). Born in Oakland, California in 1930, Culp attended several West Coast colleges while training for a dramatic career. At 21, he made his Broadway debut in He Who Gets Slapped. Within six years, he was starring in his own Friday night CBS Western, Trackdown (1957-9) as Hoby Gilman, an 1870s era Texas Ranger. During the two-year run of this program, Culp began writing scripts, a habit he'd carry over to other series, notably The Rifleman and Gunsmoke. These all represented fine and noble accomplishments for a young actor, but as indicated, I Spy delivered a far greater impact to the young actor's career: it made Culp (along with his co-star, Bill Cosby) a bona fide celebrity. The men co-starred in the NBC adventure yarn as, respectively, Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott, undercover agents involved in globetrotting missions for the U.S. government. Both actors brought to the program a sharp yet subtle sense of humor that (coupled with its exotic locations) made it one of the major discoveries of the 1965-6 prime-time line-up. During the second of I Spy's three seasons, Culp made his directorial debut by helming episodes of Spy; he went on to direct installments of several other TV programs. The success of Bob & Carol at the tail end of the 1960s proved that Culp could hold his own as a movie star, and he later directed and co-starred in 1972 theatrical feature Hickey and Boggs, which reunited him with Cosby, albeit to much lesser acclaim. Unfortunately, as the years rolled on, Culp proved susceptible to the lure of parts in B-pictures, such as Sky Riders (1976), Flood! (1976) and Hot Rod (1979), though he delivered a fine portrayal in television's critically-acclaimed Roots: The Next Generations (1979). Culp rebounded further with the semicomic role of CIA chief Maxwell on American Hero, but many now-infamous behind-the-scenes issues (and external issues, such as the shooting of Ronald Reagan) beleaguered that program and ended its run after only three seasons. In the years that followed, Culp vacillated between exploitation roles, in tripe such as Big Bad Mama 2 and Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, and more respectable, mainstream guest turns in television series including The Cosby Show and Murder, She Wrote. He enjoyed one of his most prestigious assignments with a supporting role in the big screen John Grisham-Alan Pakula thriller The Parallax View (1993), opposite Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts. In the years that followed, Culp's on-camera presence grew less and less frequent, though he did make a cameo in the 1996 Leslie Nielsen laugher Spy Hard. Television continued to provide some of Culp's finest work: he rejoined old friend Cosby for a 1994 I Spy TV-movie reunion and made guest appearances in such series as Lonesome Dove, Law & Order and The Dead Zone. Following a period of semi-retirement, Culp died suddenly and rather arbitrarily, when he sustained a head injury during a fall outside of his Hollywood home in March 2010. He was 79 years old.

Trivia: American actress Katherine Helmond spent nearly thirty years becoming an overnight success. Working fitfully in New York and regional theatre throughout the '50s and '60s, Helmond made ends meet by working as a drama teacher. Her first fleeting film appearances were in the Manhattan-based Believe in Me and The Hospital, both shot in 1971. She received a sizeable role in 1975's The Hindenburg, which utilized local repertory actors from throughout the midwest; she also worked with Hitchcock in 1976's Family Plot. In 1977, Katherine was cast as Jessica Tate, the scatterbrained, hedonistic matriarch on the TV sitcom Soap. She remained with the series until its cancellation in 1981; Soap left poor Jessica Tate facing a firing squad, and didn't reveal her fate until Helmond's guest appearance on the Soap spinoff Benson, wherein she played Jessica's ghost. In 1983, Katherine enrolled in the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop; she helmed the short subject Bankrupt and also several episodes of TV's Who's the Boss, in which she played Mona Robinson from 1984 through 1990. Keeping her hand in films, Katherine Helmond became a favorite of ex-Monty Python director Terry Gilliam, who cast the actress as a vain matron undergoing a really radical facelift in 1984's Brazil.

Trivia: In 1999, Doris Roberts achieved "overnight" stardom in the role of Marie Barone in the series Everybody Loves Raymond, going from working actress -- which she'd been for more than 40 years -- to being an instantly recognized performer. It was an improbable climb to the top rank of popular culture stardom. Roberts was born in St. Louis, MO, in 1925, to a family that was soon shattered when the father abandoned them. She had a difficult but loving childhood as her mother sought to provide for both of them by herself, and eventually Roberts gravitated toward the idea of an acting career. To do this, she had to work at any jobs that she could find, including clerk typist, to afford the lessons that she needed from teachers that included Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner. She made her first television appearance in the early '50s, in a Studio One production of Jane Eyre, and made the usual rounds between theater and television. Her theatrical debut came on the a stage at New York's City Center in 1955, and she was Shirley Booth's understudy in the theatrical version of the comedy Desk Set. She distinguished herself in the role of Mommy in the original production of Edward Albee's The American Dream, and since the early '60s, had carved a niche for herself in maternal and neighborly roles, on both stage and screen. Following her screen debut in Jack Garfein's New York-filmed drama Something Wild (1961), she tended more toward comedy (albeit often black comedy), with performances in Jack Smight's No Way to Treat a Lady, where she played the skeptical onlooker whose questions and low-key intervention save the life of a would-be victim; Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers (1970), in which she played the roommate of the nurse-turned-murderer played by Shirley Stoler; and Alan Arkin's Little Murders (1971), where she played Elliott Gould's mother. Female comics seemed to perceive Roberts' gifts as an actress especially well, as she got two of her better roles, in A New Leaf (1971) and Rabbit Test (1978), from Elaine May and Joan Rivers, respectively. Although she began appearing in television in the 1950s, with appearances on Ben Casey, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Baretta, All in the Family, The Streets of San Francisco, Rhoda, Soap, and Barney Miller, Roberts didn't start to make a lasting impression in the medium -- which would become her vehicle for stardom -- until the 1970s. She was supposed to have a role in a proposed new series starring Mary Tyler Moore, but when that series failed to sell, she was cast in the role of Donna Pescow's mother in the series Angie (1979), which got Roberts her first real notice by the public or the press. After that, the television appearances grew more frequent, and finally in 1983, she joined the cast of Remington Steele midway through the series' run, as Mildred Krebs, an IRS investigator-turned-secretary-turned-detective, working alongside Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist, and often stealing the show with her low-key comedic work. Roberts' first marriage ended in divorce, and her second, to novelist William Goyen, ended when he died in 1983 -- her son from her first marriage, Michael Cannata, has been her manager since the 1970s. It was a dozen years after Remington Steele, and some notable guest star appearances on shows like St. Elsewhere, that she landed the role of Marie on Everybody Loves Raymond. Since then, she has been a guest on talk shows and an acting celebrity, with a brace of Emmy nominations to her credit.In 2003 Roberts published the book Are You Hungry, Dear?: Life, Laughs and Lasagna, and the following year she was appointed a cultural ambassador by the U.S. Department of State. But back on the small screen Roberts was more recognizable than ever before, with appearances in Grey's Anatomy, Hot in Cleveland, and Desperate Housewives keeping her as active as ever. Roberts continued to work steadily until her death in 2016, at age 90.

Trivia: Moved with his family to Riverside, California when he was 6 months old and was cast in Everybody Loves Raymond less than one year later.Perhaps best known for his role Geoffrey Barone on the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.Starred, as on-screen siblings, with his sister Madilyn and identical twin brother Sullivan on Everybody Loves Raymond.Made his feature film debut playing Young Frank in the 2002 comedy Frank McKlusky, C.I.Name "Sawyer" originates from Middle English and means "sawer of wood."