Trivia: Angela Lansbury received an Oscar nomination for her first film, Gaslight, in 1944, and has been winning acting awards and audience favor ever since. Born in London to a family that included both politicians and performers, Lansbury came to the U.S. during World War II. She made notable early film appearances as the snooty sister in National Velvet (1944); the pathetic singer in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), which garnered her another Academy nomination; and the madam-with-a-heart-of-gold saloon singer in The Harvey Girls (1946). She turned evil as the manipulative publisher in State of the Union (1948), but was just as convincing as the good queen in The Three Musketeers (1948) and the petulant daughter in The Court Jester (1956). She received another Oscar nomination for her chilling performance as Laurence Harvey's scheming mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and appeared as the addled witch in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), among other later films. On Broadway, she won Tony awards for the musicals Mame (1966), Dear World (1969), the revival of Gypsy (1975), Sweeney Todd (1979) and, at age 82, for the play Blithe Spirit (2009). Despite a season in the '50s on the game show Pantomime Quiz, she came to series television late, starring in 1984-1996 as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote; she took over as producer of the show in the '90s. She returned to the Disney studios to record the voice of Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast (1991) and to sing the title song and later reprised the role in the direct-to-video sequel, The Enchanted Christmas (1997). Lansbury is the sister of TV producer Bruce Lansbury.

Trivia: David McCallum's parents were both members of the London Philharmonic; his mother was a cellist and his father was first violinist. The young Scots-born McCallum himself planned to pursue a musical career after serving with the Royal West African Frontier Force, but decided instead upon acting. Following his studies at the RADA, McCallum entered films in 1957, where he was usually cast as a troublemaking street punk or callow junior officer. His first American film (albeit lensed principally in England) was Freud (1962), in which he played a profoundly mother-obsessed mental patient. McCallum became the rage of the teeny-bopper set when he was cast as cool-headed Russian secret agent Ilya Kuryakin on TV's The Man From UNCLE (1964-68). At one point, McCallum was receiving far more fan mail than the series' ostensible star, Robert Vaughn; he took advantage of his celebrity to launch a brief singing career, duetting with Nancy Sinatra on the 1966 UNCLE episode "The Take Me to Your Leader Affair." He also wrote the music and lyrics and sang the title song of his 1967 movie vehicle Three Bites of the Apple. Following UNCLE, McCallum had a handful of solid dramatic film roles before returning to the small screen in the short-lived 1975 series The Invisible Man. He continued to appear primarily in episodic television, although he occasionally could be glimpsed on the big-screen as well. Highlights include The Watcher in the Woods, Matlock, The Wind, Murder She Wrote, and The A-Team. The nineties began with a major part in the sleeper Hear My Song, before continuing in Healer, Law and Order, and Cherry. McCallum became a fixture on television yet again at the beginning of the 21st century when he was cast as Donald "Ducky" Mallard on CBS' drama NCIS, which was for a time the top-rated scripted drama on network television.A man of sundry outside interests, McCallum's range of expertise includes computers and small-arms weaponry. Once wed to actress Jill Ireland, David McCallum has since 1967 been married to Katherine Carpenter.

Trivia: Best known for playing Donovan on the mid-'70s television series Lou Grant, supporting actor Jack Bannon has only occasionally ventured into feature films. The son of actor Jim Bannon and actress Bea Benaderet, he got his start in the '60s, guest starring on such television series as Rat Patrol.

Trivia: Prior to his stage work with the Old Vic and other such venerable British theatrical institutions, Jeremy Kemp was trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Attaining nationwide popularity on the long-running BBC crime series Z Cars, Kemp quit the series cold in 1965 to concentrate on films. Those film historians who've summed up Kemp's post-Z Cars TV appearances as "sporadic" evidently haven't seen his small-screen work in such miniseries as Winds of War and its sequel War and Remembrance (he played German general Armin Von Roon in both); he also played Cornwall in Sir Laurence Olivier's 1983 television adaptation of King Lear, and was featured in the internationally produced historical multiparters George Washington (1985) and Peter the Great (1986). Exuding class and professionalism from every pore, Kemp was afforded ample screen time as Sir John Delaney in the 1994 box-office hit Four Weddings and a Funeral. Evidently, Jeremy Kemp expends all his energy on his acting: when asked in 1981 to list his favorite off-stage hobbies, he wrote "Bad sports and pure idleness."

Trivia: University of Utah alumnus Anthony Geary was in soap operas almost from his matriculation into professional acting. His first TV role was on the long-forgotten ABC daytime drama Bright Promise in 1969; he also made his film bow that year, in the equally obscure Blood Sabbath. Not quite dashing enough for leading-man roles, Geary settled early on for character roles, ranging from fey (he was mistaken for a homosexual by Archie Bunker on a 1971 All in the Family episode) to ferocious. When cast as Luke Spencer on General Hospital in 1978, Geary was at first going through his standard villainous paces, sexually assaulting the married Laura Baldwyn (Genie Francis). Audience response to Luke, however, was astonishingly positive, and soon the antiheroic Mr. Spencer was a good guy (albeit with shady underworld connections), eventually making daytime TV ratings history when he married Laura in November of 1981. Geary ended up winning a 1982 Emmy for his fascinating performance as Luke. He left General Hospital in 1984 to pursue other career vistas; he headlined his own nightclub act, the "Smut Queens," and also starred in theatrical productions (in his pre-Luke years, Geary performed with the touring company of Jesus Christ Superstar). His plans for film stardom dwindled to silly supporting parts in sillier films, notably Disorderlies (1988) and UHF (1989). Geary returned to General Hospital in 1990 -- not as Luke, but as Luke's cousin Bill Eckert (complete with Italian-Teutonic accent). Anthony Geary at last resigned himself to reviving the Luke Spencer character, beginning with General Hospital's 1993-94 season.

Trivia: While growing up in Chicago, Tom Bosley dreamed of becoming the star left-fielder for the Cubs. As it turned out, the closest Bosley got to organized athletics was a sportscasting class at DePauw University. After additional training at the Radio Institute of Chicago and two years' practical experience in various dramatic radio programs and stock companies, he left for New York in 1950. Five years of odd jobs and summer-theater stints later, he landed his first off-Broadway role, playing Dupont-Dufort in Jean Anouilh's Thieves' Carnival. Steadier work followed at the Arena Theatre in Washington, D.C.; then in 1959, Bosley landed the starring role in the Broadway musical Fiorello!, picking up a Tony Award, an ANTA Award, and the New York Drama Critics Award in the bargain. In 1963, he made his film bow as Natalie Wood's "safe and secure" suitor Anthony Colombo in Love With the Proper Stranger. Occasionally cast as two-bit criminals or pathetic losers (he sold his eyes to blind millionairess Joan Crawford in the Spielberg-directed Night Gallery TV movie), Bosley was most often seen as a harried suburban father. After recurring roles on such TV series as That Was the Week That Was, The Debbie Reynolds Show, and The Sandy Duncan Show, Bosley was hired by Hanna-Barbera to provide the voice of flustered patriarch Howard Boyle on the animated sitcom Wait Til Your Father Gets Home (1972-1973). This served as a dry run of sorts for his most famous series-TV assignment: Howard Cunningham, aka "Mr. C," on the immensely popular Happy Days (1974-1983). The warm, familial ambience of the Happy Days set enabled Bosley to weather the tragic death of his first wife, former dancer Jean Elliot, in 1978. In addition to his Happy Days duties, Bosley was narrator of the syndicated documentary That's Hollywood (1977-1981). From 1989 to 1991, he starred on the weekly series The Father Dowling Mysteries, and thereafter was seen on an occasional basis as down-to-earth Cabot Cove sheriff Amos Tupper on Murder, She Wrote. Reportedly as kind, generous, and giving as his Happy Days character, Tom Bosley has over the last 20 years received numerous honors for his many civic and charitable activities.

Trivia: Canadian-born, Yale-trained Peter Donat made his mark on the theatrical world with his rich portrayals of such larger-than-life characters as Cyrano de Bergerac. Donat brought some of this grandiosity into his film work, which includes appearances in films as diverse as The Godfather II (1974), The China Syndrome (1979), War of the Roses (1987), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), and The Babe (1992). His TV-series roles include Arthur Raymond in Rich Man, Poor Man -- Book 2 (1977) and Elmo Tyson in Flamingo Road (1980). Peter Donat was making occasional appearances on the syndicated TV sci-fier Time Trax (1993), gesticulating his way through the role of Dr. Mordecai (Mo) Sahmbi, the ee-vil scientist who used the time-traveling TRAX machine for his own nefarious purposes.

Trivia: British lead and supporting actress, onscreen from the early '60s.

Trivia: Wiry, curly haired comic actor Adrian Zmed got his professional start in his native Chicago. One of Zmed's first important film roles was in Grease 2 (1982); he returned to the Grease fold 15 years later, touring the East Coast in a revival of the original musical. His TV series credits include the sitcoms Flatbush (1979) and Goodtime Girls (1980), and, most famously, the role of rookie cop Vince Romano in T.J. Hooker (1982-1985). A fan since childhood of Chicago's Bozo's Circus kiddie series, Adrian Zmed realized a lifelong dream when, in the late '80s, he was briefly engaged by the series to play Adrian the Clown.

Trivia: California native Cristine Rose cultivated an extremely successful onscreen career with a huge number of guest appearances on various TV shows like Moonlighting, St. Elsewhere, and Growing Pains. In 2006, Rose's already familiar face became even more of a fixture in American living rooms when she scored the recurring role of Angela Petrelli on the show Heroes. She was also in the 2011 romantic comedy Take Me Home.