Trivia: One of Hollywood's most prominent strong, silent types, Kevin Costner was for several years the celluloid personification of the baseball industry, given his indelible mark with baseball-themed hits like Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and For Love of the Game. His epic Western Dances with Wolves marked the first break from this trend and established Costner as a formidable directing talent to boot. Although several flops in the late '90s diminished his bankability, for many, Costner remained one of the industry's most enduring and endearing icons.A native of California, Costner was born January 18, 1955, in Lynnwood. While a marketing student at California State University in Fullerton, he became involved with community theater. Upon graduation in 1978, Costner took a marketing job that lasted all of 30 days before deciding to take a crack at acting. After an inauspicious 1974 film debut in the ultra-cheapie Sizzle Beach USA, Costner decided to take a more serious approach to acting. Venturing down the usual theater-workshop, multiple-audition route, the actor impressed casting directors who weren't really certain of how to use him. That may be one reason why Costner's big-studio debut in Night Shift (1982) consisted of little more than background decoration, and the same year's Frances featured the hapless young actor as an off-stage voice.Director Lawrence Kasdan liked Costner enough to cast him in the important role of the suicide victim who motivated the plot of The Big Chill (1983). Unfortunately, his flashback scenes were edited out of the movie, leaving all that was visible of the actor -- who had turned down Matthew Broderick's role in WarGames to take the part -- to be his dress suit, along with a fleeting glimpse of his hairline and hands as the undertaker prepared him for burial during the opening credits. Two years later, a guilt-ridden Kasdan chose Costner for a major part as a hell-raising gunfighter in the "retro" Western Silverado (1985), this time putting him in front of the camera for virtually the entire film. He also gained notice for the Diner-ish buddy road movie Fandango. The actor's big break came two years later as he burst onto the screen in two major films, No Way Out and The Untouchables; his growing popularity was further amplified with a brace of baseball films, released within months of one another. In Bull Durham (1988), the actor was taciturn minor-league ballplayer Crash Davis, and in the following year's Field of Dreams he was Ray Kinsella, a farmer who constructs a baseball diamond in his Iowa cornfield at the repeated urging of a voice that intones "if you build it, he will come."Riding high on the combined box-office success of these films, Costner was able to make his directing debut. With a small budget of 18 million dollars, he went off to the Black Hills of South Dakota to film the first Western epic that Hollywood had seen in years, a revisionist look at American Indian-white relationships titled Dances With Wolves (1990). The supposedly doomed project, in addition to being one of '90s biggest moneymakers, also took home a slew of Academy Awards, including statues for Best Picture and Best Director (usurping Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas).Costner's luck continued with the 1991 costume epic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; this, too, made money, though it seriously strained Costner's longtime friendship with the film's director, Kevin Reynolds. The same year, Costner had another hit -- and critical success -- on his hands with Oliver Stone's JFK. The next year's The Bodyguard, a film which teamed Costner with Whitney Houston, did so well at the box office that it seemed the actor could do no wrong. However, his next film, A Perfect World (1993), directed by Clint Eastwood and casting the actor against type as a half-psycho, half-benign prison escapee, was a major disappointment, even though Costner himself garnered some acclaim. Bad luck followed Perfect World in the form of another cast-against-type failure, the 1994 Western Wyatt Earp, which proved that Lawrence Kasdan could have his off days.Adding insult to injury, Costner's 1995 epic sci-fi adventure Waterworld received a whopping amount of negative publicity prior to opening due to its ballooning budget and bloated schedule; ultimately, its decent box office total in no way offset its cost. The following year, Costner was able to rebound somewhat with the romantic comedy Tin Cup, which was well-received by the critics and the public alike. Unfortunately, he opted to follow up this success with another large-scaled directorial effort, an epic filmization of author David Brin's The Postman. The 1997 film featured Costner as a Shakespeare-spouting drifter in a post-nuclear holocaust America whose efforts to reunite the country give him messianic qualities. Like Waterworld, The Postman received a critical drubbing and did poorly with audiences. Costner's reputation, now at an all-time low, received some resuscitation with the 1998 romantic drama Message in a Bottle, and later the same year he returned to the genre that loved him best with Sam Raimi's baseball drama For Love of the Game. A thoughtful reflection on the Cuban missile crisis provided the groundwork for the mid-level success Thirteen Days (2000), though Costner's next turn -- as a member of a group of Elvis impersonating casino bandits in 3000 Miles to Graceland -- drew harsh criticism, relegating it to a quick death at the box office. Though Costner's next effort was a more sentimental supernatural drama lamenting lost love, Dragonfly (2002) was dismissed by many as a cheap clone of The Sixth Sense and met an almost equally hasty fate.Costner fared better in 2003, and returned to directing, with Open Range, a Western co-starring himself and the iconic Robert Duvall -- while it was no Dances With Wolves in terms of mainstream popularity, it certainly received more positive feedback than The Postman or Waterworld. In 2004, Costner starred alongside Joan Allen in director Mike Binder's drama The Upside of Anger. That picture cast Allen as an unexpectedly single, upper-middle class woman who unexpectedly strikes up a romance with the boozy ex-baseball star who lives next door (Costner). Even if divided on the picture as a whole, critics unanimously praised the lead performances by Costner and Allen.After the thoroughly dispiriting (and critically drubbed) quasi-sequel to The Graduate, Rumor Has It..., Costner teamed up with Fugitive director Andrew Davis for the moderately successful 2006 Coast Guard thriller The Guardian, co-starring Ashton Kutcher and Hollywood ingenue Melissa Sagemiller.Costner then undertook another change-of-pace with one of his first psychological thrillers: 2007's Mr. Brooks, directed by Bruce A. Evans. Playing a psychotic criminal spurred on to macabre acts by his homicidal alter ego (William Hurt), Costner emerged from the critical- and box-office failure fairly unscathed. He came back swinging the following year with a starring role in the comedy Swing Vote, playing a small town slacker whose single vote is about to determine the outcome of a presidential election. Costner's usual everyman charm carried the movie, but soon he was back to his more somber side, starring in the recession-era drama The Company Men in 2010 alongside Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones. As the 2010's rolled on, Costner's name appeared often in conjunction with the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained prior to filming, but scheduling conflicts would eventually prevent the actor from participating in the project. He instead signed on for the latest Superman reboot, playing Clark Kent's adoptive dad on Planet Earth in Man of Steel.

Trivia: Simply by growing old gracefully, actress Susan Sarandon has defied the rules of Hollywood stardom: Not only has her fame continued to increase as she enters middle age, but the quality of her films and her performances in them has improved as well. Ultimately, she has come to embody an all-too-rare movie type -- the strong and sexy older woman. Born Susan Tomalin on October 4, 1946, in Queens, NY, she was the oldest of nine children. Even while attending the Catholic University of America, she did not study acting, and in fact expressed no interest in performing until after marrying actor Chris Sarandon. While accompanying her husband on an audition, Sarandon landed a pivotal role in the controversial 1970 feature Joe, and suddenly her own career as an actress was well underway. She soon became a regular on the daytime soap opera A World Apart and in 1972 appeared in the feature Mortadella. Lovin' Molly and The Front Page followed in 1974 before Sarandon earned cult immortality as Janet Weiss in 1975's camp classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the quintessential midnight movie of its era. After starring with Robert Redford in 1975's The Great Waldo Pepper, Sarandon struggled during the mid-'70s in a number of little-seen projects, including 1976's The Great Smokey Roadblock and 1978's Checkered Flag or Crash. Upon beginning a relationship with the famed filmmaker Louis Malle, however, her career took a turn for the better as she starred in the provocative Pretty Baby, portraying the prostitute mother of a 12-year-old Brooke Shields. Sarandon and Malle next teamed for 1980's superb Atlantic City, for which she earned her first Oscar nomination. After appearing in Paul Mazursky's Tempest, she then starred in Tony Scott's controversial 1983 horror film The Hunger, playing a scientist seduced by a vampire portrayed by Catherine Deneuve. The black comedy Compromising Positions followed in 1985, as did the TV miniseries Mussolini and I. Women of Valor, another mini, premiered a year later. While Sarandon had enjoyed a prolific career virtually from the outset, stardom remained just beyond her grasp prior to the mid-'80s. First, a prominent appearance with Jack Nicholson, Cher, and Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1986 hit The Witches of Eastwick brought her considerable attention, and then in 1988 she delivered a breakthrough performance in Ron Shelton's hit baseball comedy Bull Durham, which finally made her a star, at the age of 40. More important, the film teamed her with co-star Tim Robbins, with whom she soon began a long-term offscreen relationship. After a starring role in the 1989 apartheid drama A Dry White Season, Sarandon teamed with Geena Davis for Thelma and Louise, a much-discussed distaff road movie which became among the year's biggest hits and won both actresses Oscar nominations. Sarandon was again nominated for 1992's Lorenzo's Oil and 1994's The Client before finally winning her first Academy Award for 1995's Dead Man Walking, a gut-wrenching examination of the death penalty, adapted and directed by Robbins. Now a fully established star, Sarandon had her choice of projects; she decided to lend her voice to Tim Burton's animated James and the Giant Peach (1996). Two years later, she was more visible with starring roles in the thriller Twilight (starring opposite Paul Newman and Gene Hackman) and Stepmom, a weepie co-starring Julia Roberts. The same year, she had a supporting role in the John Turturro film Illuminata. Sarandon continued to stay busy in 1999, starring in Anywhere But Here, which featured her as Natalie Portman's mother, and Cradle Will Rock, Robbins' first directorial effort since Dead Man Walking. On television, Sarandon starred with Stephen Dorff in an adaptation of Anne Tyler's Earthly Possessions, and showed a keen sense of humor in her various appearances on SNL, Chappelle's Show, and Malcolm in the Middle. After starring alongside Goldie Hawn in The Banger Sisters, Sarandon could be seen in a variety of projects including Alfie (2004), Romance and Cigarettes (2005), and Elizabethtown (2006). In 2007, Sarandon joined Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg in The Lovely Bones, director Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel of the same name. She continued her heavy work schedule into the 2010s- in 2012 alone, the actress took on the role of a long-suffering mother to two grown sons in various states of distress for Jeff, Who Lives at Home, appeared as an older version of a character played by her daughter, Eva Amurri Martino, in That's My Boy and played a variety of supporting roles in the Wachowskis' Cloud Atlas. The following year found her in the crime drama Snitch, the ensemble rom-com The Big Wedding and in the Errol Flynn biopic The Last of Robin Hood. In 2014, she played Melissa McCarthy's grandmother (despite the fact that the actresses are only 24 years apart in age) in Tammy. She made a cameo appearance, as herself, in Zoolander 2 (2016).

Trivia: Tim Robbins ranks among contemporary cinema's most acclaimed and provocative voices; a multifaceted talent, he has proved so adept at wearing the various hats of actor, writer, and director that no less a figure than the legendary filmmaker Robert Altman declared him the second coming of Orson Welles. Born October 16, 1958, in West Covina, CA, he was the son of folk singer Gil Robbins; raised in Greenwich Village, he made his performing debut alongside his father on a duet of the protest song "Ink Is Black, Page Is White." At the age of 12, Robbins joined the Theater for the New City, remaining a member for the next seven years; he also joined his high-school drama club, an experience which afforded him his first opportunities to direct for the stage. After briefly attending the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, he relocated to Los Angeles to study at UCLA; there he also joined the Male Death Cult, an intramural softball team comprised of his fellow drama students. After graduating, the teammates reunited to form the Actors' Gang, an avant-garde theater troupe noted for productions of works by the likes of Bertolt Brecht and Alfred Jarry. After guest starring on television series including Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere, in 1984 Robbins made his film debut with a bit part in the feature Toy Soldiers. His first starring role came in 1985's teen sex romp Fraternity Vacation. Small roles in hits including Top Gun and The Sure Thing followed before a breakout performance as a doltish fastballer in Ron Shelton's hit 1988 baseball comedy Bull Durham. An onscreen romance with co-star Susan Sarandon soon expanded into their offscreen lives as well, and the twosome became one of Hollywood's most prominent couples. A series of starring roles in films including 1989's misbegotten Erik the Viking and 1990s Jacob's Ladder followed, before Altman's 1992 showbiz satire The Player won Robbins Best Actor honors at the Cannes Film Festival. That same year, he wrote, directed, starred, and performed the music in Bob Roberts, a mock-documentary brutally parodying right-wing politics.Upon appearing in Altman's 1993 ensemble piece Short Cuts, Robbins enjoyed starring roles in four major 1994 releases: The Hudsucker Proxy, I.Q., Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter), and the Oscar-nominated The Shawshank Redemption. However, his most acclaimed project to date was 1995's Dead Man Walking, a gut-wrenching examination of the death penalty, which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Director; Sean Penn, portraying a death-row inmate, garnered a Best Actor nomination while Sarandon won Best Actress honors. After a three-year hiatus from acting, Robbins returned to the screen in 1997 with the comedy Nothing to Lose; he soon announced plans to mount a film adaptation of Cradle Will Rock, the Marc Blitzstein play first staged by Orson Welles six decades earlier. The film, which examined the relationship between art and politics in 1930s America, premiered at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. That same year, audiences could view Robbins as a clean-cut suburban terrorist opposite Jeff Bridges in Arlington Road, as well as see the fruits of his directorial work in Cradle Will Rock. Robbins opened the year 2000 with a brief but nonetheless fun role as the maddeningly calm Ian in High Fidelity. The early 2000s presented a series of misfires for Robbins -- AntiTrust (2001), Mission to Mars (2000), and Human Nature (2001), writer Charlie Kaufman's eagerly awaited follow-up to Being John Malkovich, fared rather badly in theaters -- though his versatility and respect within the industry remained solid. The polarizing presidential elections of 2002 certainly thrust Robbins into the political spotlight, if not major big-screen successes. After multiple appearances on Politically Incorrect and various awards shows gave Robbins a platform for some of his views concerning the right-wing agenda, the legitimacy of the Bush administration, and the controversial pre-emptive action in Iraq, the planned screening of Bull Durham (and a subsequent appearance from Robbins and Susan Sarandon) for the 15th anniversary of the film at the Baseball Hall of Fame was surprisingly cancelled in what Robbins claimed was a retaliatory measure.By the end of 2003, the controversy was a distant memory with Robbins hitting it big with audiences and critics alike in the film adaptation of Mystic River. The performance, which saw Robbins as a tragic adult who couldn't overcome a devastating childhood, eventually won the actor his second Golden Globe along with his first ever Oscar.Robbins followed up his Oscar win by switching gears substantially. In 2004, audiences could find him as a caricature of a cutthroat PBS newsman in an extended cameo in Anchorman and starring opposite Samantha Morton in the futuristic sci-fi thriller Code 46. In 2004 Robbins wrote and staged a satire about the Iraq war titled Embedded. He returned to the big-screen as the father in the science-fiction family fantasy Zathura. In the same year he turned in a memorable supporting performance as a deranged survivor of an alien attack in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. One year later he played a white police officer in Philip Noyce's anti-Apartheid drama Catch a Fire. And though Robbins' politics seemed to overshadow his celebrity in the first years of the new millennium, film roles in City of Ember and Green Lantern, as well as an appearance on SNL alum Fred Armisen's satirical television series Portlandia kept the longtime actor in the public eye as he continued to hone his directoral skills with the made-for-television movie Possible Side Effects, and episodes of the popular HBO series Treme. Meanwhile, in 2010, Tim Robbins & the Rogue's Gallery Band released their self-titled debut album.

Trivia: American stage and film actor Trey Wilson first gained a measure of public exposure on a very short-lived satirical TV series, The News Is the News, in 1983. Though only in his mid-thirties, Wilson's gravelly voice and bulky frame enabled him to play a variety of middle-aged toughs. He was seen in this capacity as Jimmy Hoffa in the 1985 TV miniseries Robert F. Kennedy and His Times. Wilson's least menacing screen role was as Skip, the laconic minor league baseball manager, in 1988's Bull Durham. Trey Wilson died the following year of a cerebral hemmorhage; he was barely 40 years old.

Trivia: Although he has a laid back Huck Finn demeanor, actor/writer/director Robert Wuhl is one of the hardest-working denizens of Tinseltown. He began as a comedy writer, functioning as story editor on the cult TV series Police Squad and winning Emmys for his work (in collaboration with Billy Crystal) on the annual Academy Awards telecast. A film actor since 1980's Hollywood Knights, Wuhl is best remembered for his portrayal of the feckless reporter Alexander Knox in Batman: The Movie (1988), and for his starring stint in Mistress (1992). One of the more noteworthy aspects of Robert Wuhl's career is his ongoing association with baseball -- he played the bullpen-chattering minor league coach in Bull Durham (1988), and the beleaguered biographer of contentious ballplayer Ty Cobb in Cobb (1993); and, taking a brief breather from film work, Wuhl wrote the chapter on Roger Maris in author/editor Danny Peary's 1989 compendium Cult Baseball Players.

Trivia: Chicago native William O'Leary was born in 1957 to an FBI operative and began acting at age seven. He embarked on an acting career in the 1980s, appearing on stage in Seattle productions of Da, The Adventures of Huck Finn, and Cloud 9 before making his Broadway debut in Precious Sons in 1986 opposite Ed Harris. He moved on to film and TV work with credits in Nice Girls Don't Explode (his movie debut), Bull Durham, Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh, and Hot Shots! He's best remembered as Tim Allen's youngest brother, Marty Taylor, on Home Improvement. When the series concluded in 1999, O'Leary continued to act and landed parts in major films such as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, as well as guest spots on various TV shows (NYPD Blue, CSI: Miami, Karen Sisco, 24). In 2009 he became the voice of the evil Gen. Xaviax on the animated series Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight. He owns and operates the Los Angeles acting school The Actors Path.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the late '80s.

Trivia: A veteran Las Vegas performer, Danny Gans was often known as the "Man of Many Voices" for his ability to imitate other singers like Tony Bennett and Sarah Vaughan. He would utilize this chameleon-like skill to cultivate a career in show business, appearing on the series Silk Stalkings, and in the 1992 TV movie Sinatra, in which he played Dean Martin. In the '90s, Gans developed a Vegas stage act that included music, comedy, and impressions, and his notoriety steadily increased over the years as he appeared at numerous hotels and casinos. By the 2000s, Gans was a star of the strip and a heavily sought-after performer. Sadly, he died at his home in 2009 at the age of 52.

Trivia: Served three years in the Army, including a stint in Korea during the Vietnam War. Taught at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C. during the 1980s; left teaching to pursue acting. Worked as a stunt double for Dana Elcar on the TV series MacGyver; there he met star Richard Dean Anderson, with whom he would later costar on Stargate SG-1. Best known for his roles as base commander Gen. George Hammond on Stagate SG-1 and Maj. Garland Briggs in the series Twin Peaks. His artistic endeavors included set design, painting and woodcarving; his pieces reflected his love of the Missouri Ozarks, where he grew up.

Trivia: Carolina-based actor/writer/producer George "Buck" Flower started out in "regionals"--non-Hollywood productions aimed at Southern neighborhood moviehouses and drive-ins. Flower also showed up in "four-wallers" for the family-matinee trade: he was seen as Boomer in all three Wilderness Family flicks of the late 1970s-early 1980s. Additional appearances include the Cook in John Carpenter's Starman (1984), the title character's father in Alan Parker's Birdy (1984), and "Nuke" LaLoosh's dad in Ron Shelton's Bull Durham (1988). The bulk of George "Buck" Flowers' work can be found in such low-budget esoterica as Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama (1987).