Trivia: Famed for her saintly, natural beauty, Ingrid Bergman was the most popular actress of the 1940s; admired equally by audiences and critics, she enjoyed blockbuster after blockbuster -- until an unprecedented scandal threatened to destroy her career. Born August 29, 1915, in Stockholm, Sweden, Bergman was only two years old when her mother died; her father passed on a decade later, and the spinster aunt who had become her guardian perished only a few months after that. Her inheritance allowed her to study at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre, and in 1934 she made her screen debut after signing to Svenskfilmindustri with a small role in Munkbrovregen. Bergman's first lead performance followed a year later in Brunninger, and with the success of the 1936 melodrama Valborgsmassoafen, she rose to become one of Sweden's biggest stars. Later that year, she starred in the romance Intermezzo, which eventually made its way to New York where it came to the attention of producer David O. Selznick. After signing a Hollywood contract, she relocated to America where her first film, 1939's Intermezzo: A Love Story, was an English-language remake of her earlier success. Bergman's fresh-scrubbed Nordic beauty set her squarely apart from the stereotypical movie starlet, and quickly both Hollywood executives and audiences became enchanted with her. After briefly returning to Sweden to appear in 1940's Juninatten, Selznick demanded she return to the U.S., but without any projects immediately available he pointed her to Broadway to star in Liliom. Bergman was next loaned to MGM for 1941's Adam Had Four Sons, followed by Rage in Heaven. She then appeared against type as a coquettish bad girl in the latest screen adaptation Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However, it was 1942's Casablanca which launched her to superstardom; cast opposite Humphrey Bogart after a series of other actresses rejected the picture, she was positively radiant, her chemistry with Bogart the stuff of pure magic. Now a major box-office draw, she won the coveted lead in 1943's For Whom the Bell Tolls with the blessing of the novel's author, Ernest Hemingway; when her performance earned an Academy Award nomination, every studio in town wanted to secure her talents.Bergman next starred in Sam Wood's Saratoga Trunk, but because the studio, Warner Bros., wanted to distribute more timely material during wartime, the picture's release was delayed until 1944. As a result, audiences next saw her in Gaslight, starring opposite Charles Boyer; another rousing success, her performance won Best Actress honors from both the Oscar and Golden Globe voters. The 1945 Spellbound, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, was another massive hit, and a year later they reunited for Notorious. Sandwiched in between was The Bells of St. Mary's, and all told, the three pictures helped push Bergman to the position of Hollywood's top female box-office attraction. Upon fulfilling her contract with Selznick, she began freelancing, starring as a prostitute in 1948's Arch of Triumph; the public, however, reacted negatively to her decision to play against type, and later that year she was even more saintly than usual as the title heroine in Joan of Arc. Expected to become a blockbuster, the film performed to only moderate success, and after a similarly tepid response to the 1949 Hitchcock thriller Under Capricorn, she began to reconsider her options. Like so many viewers around the world, Bergman had been highly moved by director Roberto Rossellini's Italian neorealist masterpiece Roma Citta Aperta; announcing her desire to work with him, she accepted the lead in 1950's Stromboli. During production, Bergman and Rossellini fell in love, and she became pregnant with his child; at the time, she was still married to her first husband, Swedish doctor Peter Lindstrom, and soon she was assailed by criticism the world over. After divorcing Lindstrom, Bergman quickly married Rossellini, but the damage was already done: Stromboli was banned in many markets, boycotted by audiences in others, and despite much curiosity, it was a box-office disaster. Together, over the next six years, the couple made a series of noteworthy films including Europa '51, Siamo Donne, and Viaggio in Italia, but audiences wanted no part of any of them; to make matters worse, their marriage was crumbling, and their financial resources were exhausted. In 1956, Bergman starred in Jean Renoir's lovely Elena et les Hommes, but it too failed to return her to audience favor.Few stars of Bergman's magnitude had ever suffered such a sudden and disastrous fall from grace; even fewer enjoyed as remarkable a comeback as the one she mounted with 1957's Anastasia, a historical tale which not only proved successful with audiences but also with critics, resulting in a second Academy Award. For director Stanley Donen, Bergman next starred in 1958's Indiscreet, followed by The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. Also in 1958, she married for the third time, to Swedish impresario Lars Schmidt, and when a series of planned projects failed to come to fruition she simply went on sabbatical, appearing in a television presentation of The Turn of the Screw in 1959 but otherwise keeping out of the public eye for three years. She resurfaced in 1961 with Aimez-Vous Brahms? Another three-year hiatus followed prior to her next feature project, The Visit. After 1965's The Yellow Rolls Royce, Bergman appeared in the 1967 Swedish anthology Stimulantia and then turned to the stage, touring in a production of Eugene O'Neill's More Stately Mansions.Bergman's theatrical success re-ignited Hollywood's interest, and Columbia signed her to star in 1969's hit Cactus Flower; 1970's Spring Rain followed, before she returned to stage for 1971's Captain Brassbound's Conversion. After winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in 1974's Murder on the Orient Express, Bergman appeared opposite Liza Minnelli in 1976's A Matter of Time before returning to Sweden to star in 1978's superb Herbstsonate, the first and only time she worked with her namesake, the legendary director Ingmar Bergman. After penning a 1980 autobiography, Ingrid Bergman: My Story, in 1982, she starred in the television miniseries A Woman Called Golda, a biography of the Israeli premier Golda Meir; the performance was her last -- on August 29 of that year she lost her long battle with cancer. In subsequent years, her daughter, Isabella Rossellini, emerged as a top actress and fashion model.

Trivia: Born to a well-to-do Southern family, Joseph Cotten studied at the Hickman School of Expression in Washington D.C., and later sought out theater jobs in New York. He made his Broadway debut in 1930, and seven years later joined Orson Welles' progressive Mercury Theatre company, playing leads in such productions as Julius Caesar and Shoemaker's Holiday. He briefly left Welles in 1939 to co-star in Katharine Hepburn's Broadway comeback vehicle The Philadelphia Story. Cotten rejoinedWelles in Hollywood in 1940, making his feature-film debut as Jed Leland in Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). As a sort of private joke, Jed Leland was a dramatic critic, a profession which Cotten himself had briefly pursued on the Miami Herald in the late '20s. Cotten went on to play the kindly auto mogul Eugene Morgan in Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942, and both acted in and co-wrote Journey Into Fear, the film that Welles was working on when he was summarily fired by RKO. Cotten remained a close friend of Welles until the director's death in 1985; he co-starred with Welles in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) and played an unbilled cameo for old times' sake in the Welles-directed Touch of Evil (1958). A firmly established romantic lead by the early '40s, Cotten occasionally stepped outside his established screen image to play murderers (Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt [1943]) and surly drunkards (Under Capricorn [1949]). A longtime contractee of David O. Selznick, Cotten won a Venice Film Festival award for his performance in Selznick's Portrait of Jennie (1948). Cotten's screen career flagged during the 1950s and '60s, though he flourished on television as a guest performer on such anthologies as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Fireside Theatre, The Great Adventure, and as host of The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955), The Joseph Cotten Show (1956), On Trial (1959), and Hollywood and the Stars (1963). He also appeared in several stage productions, often in the company of his second wife, actress Patricia Medina. In 1987, Cotten published his engagingly candid autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere. He died of pneumonia in 1994 at the age of 88.

Trivia: A tall, rail-thin, charming British actress, she began training for the stage at age 15, and made her professional debut at 16. After joining the Old Vic Company under the direction of Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson, she rose to prominence in the late '40s; over the next decade she became a highly respected actress for her work in both London and Broadway, typically portraying fragile, neurotic women. For her performances in the Broadway plays Separate Tables (1956) and The Night of the Iguana (1962) she won Tony Awards. Onscreen from the late '40s, she appeared in numerous films over nearly three decades. For her work in The Go-Between (1971) she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. She was married to publisher Max Reinhardt, actor Laurence Harvey, and actor Michael Wilding. She died of multiple sclerosis at 53.

Trivia: Sandpaper-voiced British character actor Cecil Parker was able to channel his stuffy, aristocratic demeanor into characters of both authority and menace. Kicking off his stage career after World War I, Parker made his stage bow in 1922 and his first film appearance seven years later. In his film roles, he was frequently addressed as "Colonel," "Your Majesty," or "Your Lordship," though these titles were not always an indication of his character's basic integrity. American filmgoers of the 1930s were most familiar with Parker's portrayal of the philandering, cowardly businessman in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). He played leads in such post-World War II films as Captain Boycott (1947), The Weaker Sex (1948), The Amazing Mr. Beecham (1949), Tony Draws a Horse (1950), and I Believe in You (1952). He also played such prominent supporting roles as Britannus in Caesar and Cleopatra (1946), the usurping king in Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1956), Lord Loam in The Admirable Crichton (1957), and Jarvis Lorry in A Tale of Two Cities (1958). Cecil Parker's last film appearance was a comedy cameo in Oh, What a Lovely War (1969).

Trivia: One of the mainstays of Dublin's Abbey Players, Irish actor Denis O'Dea made his screen debut in the company of several other Abbey performers in John Ford's The Informer. O'Dea's later movie roles included Dr. Livesey in the 1950 Disney-produced version of Treasure Island. He was usually cast as dour Irish police officers (Odd Man Out, 1947) or outspoken priests (Darby O'Gill and the Little People, 1959). Denis O'Dea was married to Irish stage and screen actress Siobhan McKenna.

Trivia: Baby-faced British character actor Jack Watling was trained at the Italia Conti school. On stage from age 12, Watling made his earliest appearances in such Christmas pantomimes as Where the Rainbow Ends. In 1938, he was cast in his first film, Sixty Glorious Years. Entering his teen years, Watling worked in Donald Wolfit's repertory company, then was cast in his favorite stage role, that of Flight Lieutenant Graham in the 1942 West End production Flare Path. Following three years' service in the RAF, he played his most celebrated role, cashiered naval cadet Dickie Winslow in The Winslow Boy, which he would repeat for the 1950 screen version. Among his choicer screen assignments of the 1950s was the wastrely Marquis of Rutleigh in Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin. In the 1970s, Jack Watling was a semi-regular in the British TV series Father, Dear Father.

Trivia: Round-faced, heavily eye-browed British character-player Ronald Adam was the son of actors Blake Adam and Mona Robin. Even while pursuing his own career, Adam had time to participate in two World Wars; he spent much of World War I as a POW, while in World War II he successfully campaigned for an officer's commission despite his age. Often seen playing stern officials, Adam made his first film, The Drum in 1938, and his last, Song of Norway, in 1970. In addition to his many stage and screen appearances, Ronald Adam was also a fairly productive playwright.

Trivia: British character actor Francis de Wolff first appeared onscreen in the '30s.

Trivia: The son of British stage actor Willard Shine, Bill Shine first trod the boards at age six, playing the Stork in the pantomime Princess Posey. At fifteen, Shine made his first London stage appearance, and at eighteen was seen in the first of many films, Under the Greenwood Tree. Most often cast as an upper-class twit, Shine has also shown up in many a one-scene movie assignment as various reporters, commissioners, ticket sellers and executives. While seldom rising above the featured cast in films, Bill Shine achieved star status in the role of Conn in the 1950 production The Shaugran.

Trivia: Tall, grim-faced British actor Martin Benson worked concurrently on stage and in films throughout the late 1940s. Benson's piercing eyes and steely voice were essential equipment in costume dramas and adventure films well into the 1980s. He is most familiar to American audiences for his portrayal of the dour Kralahome in The King and I (1956) and his interpretation of Mr. Solo, the ill-tempered American gangster with a "pressing engagement," in Goldfinger (1964). For 39 weeks in 1957, Martin Benson appeared as the Duke de Medici on the weekly Renaissance-based TV adventure series Sword of Freedom.

Trivia: Urbane British leading man Michael Wilding was making a living as a commercial artist when, in 1933, he joined the art department of a London film studio. His good looks and dashing personality did not go unnoticed and soon Wilding embarked upon an acting career. He made his film bow in the Australian Pastorale (1933), then toted up an impressive list of British stage and screen credits. His most memorable screen appearances can be found in Sailors Three (1940), In Which We Serve (1942), Piccadilly Incident (1946), Spring in Park Lane (1947), and Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950). From 1952 through 1957, Wilding was the husband of Elizabeth Taylor. Illness forced Michael Wilding to cut down his film appearances in the late '60s; his last assignment was an uncredited, non-speaking cameo in Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), which co-starred his fourth wife, Margaret Leighton.

Trivia: New Zealand-born lead actress, onscreen from the '70s.