Trivia: American actress Helen Slater was trained at New York's High School for the Performing Arts. In 1984 she was signed for the leading role in Supergirl, perhaps hoping that this modest special-effects fest would do for her what Superman did for another unknown, Christopher Reeve. Alas, Supergirl was a failure, not so much due to Slater's spunky but antiseptic performance as to an uninvolving script and lackluster direction. Since Supergirl, Slater has been seen to best advantage in supporting parts, notably the sweet-tempered kidnapper in Ruthless People (1986) and cattle-drive novice Bonnie Rayburn in City Slickers (1991). In the decades to follow, Slater would appear in numerous projects, but found particular success with roles on the TV series Gigantic and The Lying Game.

Trivia: As the co-star of the landmark Bonnie and Clyde, actress Faye Dunaway helped usher in a new golden era in American filmmaking, going on to appear in several of the greatest films of the 1970s. Born January 14, 1941, in Bascom, FL, Dunaway was the daughter of an army officer. She studied theater arts at the University of Boston and later joined the Lincoln Center Repertory Company under the direction of Elia Kazan and Robert Whitehead. Between 1962 and 1967, she appeared in a number of prominent stage productions, including A Man for All Seasons and Arthur Miller's After the Fall, playing a character based on Marilyn Monroe. Dunaway's breakthrough performance came in an off-Broadway production of Hogan's Goat, which resulted in a contract with director Otto Preminger. She made her film debut in his 1967 drama Hurry Sundown, but the two frequently clashed, and she refused to appear in his Skidoo; after a legal battle, Dunaway was allowed to buy out the remainder of her contract, and she then starred in The Happening (1967).Still, Dunaway was virtually unknown when she accepted the role of the notorious gangster Bonnie Parker opposite Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn's 1967 crime saga Bonnie and Clyde. The picture was an unqualified success, one of the most influential films of the era, and she had become a star seemingly overnight, earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her sexy performance. Dunaway's next major role cast her with Steve McQueen in 1968's The Thomas Crown Affair, another major hit. However, her next several projects -- Amanti, a romance with Marcello Mastroianni, and the Kazan-directed The Arrangement -- stumbled, and although 1970's Little Big Man was a hit, Puzzle of a Downfall Child (directed by her fiancé, Jerry Schatzberg) was a disaster. Quickly, Dunaway was reduced to projects like the little-seen 1971 thriller La Maison Sous Les Arbres and the Western Doc. When they too failed, she retreated from films, first appearing on-stage in Harold Pinter's Old Times and then starring in the made-for-television The Woman I Love.After portraying Blanche du Bois in a Los Angeles stage adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire, Dunaway returned to the cinema in Stanley Kramer's 1973 drama Oklahoma Crude. Subsequent to her appearance in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers, she made headlines for her marriage to rocker Peter Wolf and was then cast in Roman Polanski's 1974 noir Chinatown. The performance was her best since Bonnie and Clyde, scoring another Academy Award nomination, and the film itself remains a classic. The success of The Towering Inferno later that same year confirmed that Dunaway's star power had returned in full, and she next co-starred with Robert Redford in the well-received thriller Three Days of the Condor. In 1976, Dunaway starred as an ambitious television executive in Sidney Lumet's scathing black comedy Network, and on her third attempt she finally won an Oscar. A British feature, Voyage of the Damned, and a TV-movie, The Disappearance of Aimee, quickly followed, and in 1978 she starred in the much-maligned thriller The Eyes of Laura Mars.After 1979's The Champ, Dunaway starred with Frank Sinatra in The First Deadly Sin. An over-the-top turn as Joan Crawford in the tell-all biopic Mommie Dearest followed in 1981, as did another biography, the TV feature Evita Peron. Her career was again slumping, a fate which neither the Broadway production of The Curse of an Aching Heart nor another telefilm, 1982's The Country Girl, helped to remedy. After 1984's Supergirl, Dunaway spent much of the decade on the small screen, appearing in a pair of miniseries -- Ellis Island and Christopher Columbus -- and in 1986 appearing as the titular Beverly Hills Madam. The 1987 feature Barfly found a cult audience, but almost without exception, Dunaway's subsequent films went unnoticed; even the 1990 Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes was a failure. In 1993, she starred in a short-lived sitcom, It Had to Be You, and continued to appear in little-seen projects. Dunaway's most prominent roles of the mid-'90s included a supporting turn as the wife of psychiatrist Marlon Brando in 1995's Don Juan DeMarco and as a barmaid/hostage in the directorial debut of actor Kevin Spacey, Albino Alligator (1996). In 1999, Dunaway gave a nod to her screen past with a cameo appearance in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. That same year, she took on the more substantial role of Yolande d'Aragon in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.As the new century began she had parts in The Yards and Festival in Cannes. In 2002 she had a part in the big-screen adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' The Rules of Attraction. She had a brief part in Tim Burton's Big Fish.In 2005 she appeared for one season as the lead judge on the acting reality series The Starlet, where she repeated the painful catchphrase, "don't call us, we'll call you," every time a contestant was dismissed from the program.She continued to work steadily in a variety of projects including Flick, Midnight Bayou, and 2010's A Family Thanksgiving.

Trivia: The legendary Irish-born thespian Peter O'Toole proves that when an actor is faced with a bitter personal crisis and struggles with addiction, spirit and determination can often lead to a forceful "third act" in that performer's career that rivals anything to have preceded it. Blessed with an immensity of dramatic power, the fair-haired, blue-eyed, flamboyant, and virile O'Toole chalked up one of the most formidable acting resumes of the 20th century during the 1950s and '60s, before experiencing an ugly bout of self-destruction in the mid-'70s that led to serious health problems, several disappointing and embarrassing roles, and the destruction of his marriage, and threatened (in the process) to bury his career. By 1980, however, O'Toole overcame his problems and resurfaced, triumphantly, as a box-office star.O'Toole began life in Connemara, Ireland, in either 1932 or 1933 (most sources list his birthdate as August 2, 1932, though the year is occasionally disputed). His family moved to Leeds, England in the early '30s, where O'Toole's father earned his keep as a racetrack bookie. Around 1946, 14-year-old O'Toole dropped out of secondary school and signed on with The Yorkshire Evening Post as copy boy, messenger, and eventually, a cub reporter. Within three years, he dropped the newspaper gig and joined the Leeds Civic Theatre as a novice player; this paved the way for ongoing parts at the much-revered Old Vic (after O'Toole's military service in the Royal Navy as a signalman and decoder), beginning around 1955. A half-decade of stage roles quickly yielded to screen parts in the early '60s. O'Toole actually debuted (with a bit role) in 1959, in The Savage Innocents, but international fame did not arrive for a few years, with several enviable back-to-back characterizations in the 1960s: that of the gallant, inscrutable T.E. Lawrence in Sir David Lean's 1962 feature Lawrence of Arabia (for which he received his first Best Actor Oscar nomination); Henry II in Peter Glenville's 1964 Becket (starring longtime friend Richard Burton), for which he received his second Best Actor Oscar nomination; the title character in Lord Jim (1965), and philandering fashion editor Michael James in the popular Clive Donner-Woody Allen sex farce What's New Pussycat? (1965). O'Toole's success continued, unabated, with yet another appearance as Henry II alongside Katharine Hepburn in Anthony Harvey's The Lion in Winter (1968), which netted him a third Best Actor Oscar nod. Unfortunately, O'Toole lost yet again, this time (in a completely unexpected turn of events) to Cliff Robertson in Charly, though a fourth nomination was only a year away, for the actor's work in 1969's Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The early 1970s were equally electric for O'Toole, with the highlight undoubtedly being his characterization of a delusional mental patient who thinks he's alternately Jesus Christ and Jack the Ripper in The Ruling Class (1972), Peter Medak's outrageous farce on the "deific" pretensions of British royalty. That gleaned O'Toole a fifth Oscar nomination; Jay Cocks, of Time Magazine called his performance one "of such intensity that it will haunt memory. He is funny, disturbing, and finally, devastating." Unfortunately, this represented the last high point of his career for many years, and the remainder of the '70s were marred by a series of disappointing and best-forgotten turns -- such as Don Quixote in Arthur Hiller's laughable musical Man of La Mancha (1972), covert CIA agent Larry Martin in Otto Preminger's spy thriller Rosebud (1975), and a Romanian émigré and refugee in Arturo Ripstein's soaper Foxtrot (1976). Meanwhile, O'Toole's off-camera life hit the nadir to end all nadirs. Though long known as a carouser (with friends and fellow Brits Burton, Richard Harris, Peter Finch, and others), O'Toole now plunged into no-holds-barred alcoholism, pushing himself to the very edge of sanity and death. The drinking necessitated major stomach surgery, and permanently ended his 20-year-marriage to Welsh actress Sian Phillips (best known as Livia in I, Claudius). Career-wise, O'Toole scraped the bottom of the gutter (and then some) when he made the foolish decision (around 1976 or 1977) to appear alongside Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren in the Bob Guccione/Tinto Brass Penthouse mega-production Caligula (released 1980) -- a period film wall-to-wall with hardcore sex and visceral, graphic violence that led celebrity critic Roger Ebert to echo another viewer's lament: "This movie is the worst piece of s*** I have ever seen." It did not help matters when O'Toole returned to The Old Vic not long after, and was roundly booed off the stage for his uncharacteristically wretched portrayal of Macbeth. The Macbeth calamity, however, masked a slow return to triumph, for O'Toole had since resolved to clean himself up; he moved in with Kate and Pat O'Toole, his two actress daughters from his marriage to Phillips, both of whom were teenagers in the late 1970s, and both of whom cared for him. And in 1979, he signed on to play one of the most esteemed roles of his career -- that of the sadistic, tyrannical director Eli Cross in Richard Rush's wicked black comedy The Stunt Man (1980) -- a role for which O'Toole received a sixth Oscar nomination. O'Toole again lost the bid, this time to Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. Not one to be daunted, however, the actor continued down the path to full professional and personal recovery by beginning an ongoing relationship with California model Karen Brown, and fathering a child by her in 1983. O'Toole then signed on for many fine roles throughout the 1980s and '90s: that of Alan Swann, a hard-drinking, hard-loving, has-been movie star, in Richard Benjamin's delightfully wacky 1982 film My Favorite Year (which drew the thesp yet another nomination for Best Actor -- his seventh); and as Professor Harry Wolper, a scientist obsessively trying to re-clone his deceased wife, in Ivan Passer's quirky, underrated romantic fantasy Creator (1985). Despite occasional lapses in taste and quality, such as 1984's Supergirl and 1986's Club Paradise, O'Toole was clearly back on top of his game, and he proved it with an admirable turn as Reginald Johnston in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 Best Picture winner, The Last Emperor. That same year, O'Toole signed on to co-star in High Spirits (1988), fellow Irishman Neil Jordan's whimsical, spiritual ghost story with Shakespearean overtones. At the time, this looked like a solid decision, but neither Jordan nor O'Toole nor their co-stars, Steve Guttenberg, Liam Neeson, and Daryl Hannah, could have anticipated the massive studio interference that (in the words of Pauline Kael) "whacked away at the film, removing between 15 and 25 percent of the footage" and turned it into one of that year's biggest flops. Ditto with Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1990 comedy fantasy The Rainbow Thief, where studio interference again all but destroyed the work.O'Toole remained active throughout the 1990s, largely with fine supporting roles, such as Willingham in King Ralph (1991), Welsh nobleman Lord Sam in Rebecca's Daughters (1992), Bishop Cauchon in the made-for-television Joan of Arc (1999), and Von Hindenburg in the telemovie Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003). In late 2006, O'Toole hit another career peak with a fine turn as a wily old thesp who enjoys a last-act fling with a twentysomething admirer, in the Roger Michell-directed, Hanif Kureishi-scripted character-driven comedy Venus. The effort reeled in an eighth Best Actor Oscar nomination for the actor. In 2007 he voiced the part of the critic in Pixar's Ratatouille, and in 2008 he joined the cast of The Tudors playing Pope Paul III. He played a priest in 2012's For Greater Glory and filmed a role for Katherine of Alexandria (2014) before he died at age 81 in 2013.

Trivia: American actress and long-time Woody Allen muse, Mia Farrow was the third of seven children born to film star Maureen O'Sullivan and director John Farrow. Born February 9, 1945, she enjoyed the usual pampered Hollywood kid lifestyle until she fell victim to polio at the age of nine; her struggle to recover from this illness was the first of many instances in which the seemingly frail Farrow exhibited a will of iron. Educated in an English convent school, Farrow returned to California with plans to take up acting. With precious little prior experience that included a bit part in her father's 1959 film John Paul Jones, she debuted on Broadway in a 1963 revival of The Importance of Being Earnest. The following year, she was cast as Alison McKenzie in the nighttime TV soap opera Peyton Place, which made her an idol of the American teen set. That people over the age of 18 were also interested in Farrow was proven in the summer of 1965, when she became the third wife of singer Frank Sinatra, 30 years her senior. The marriage provided fodder for both the tabloids and leering nightclub comics for a time, and while the union didn't last long, it put Farrow into the international filmgoing consciousness. (She and Sinatra remained close, long-time friends after their divorce). Farrow's first important movie appearance was in Rosemary's Baby (1968) as the unwitting mother of Satan's offspring. She was often cast in damsel-in-distress parts -- capitalizing on Rosemary's Baby -- and in "trendy" pop-culture roles for several years thereafter. During this period, she married pianist André Previn and starting a family. Her skills as an actress increased, even if her films didn't bring in large crowds; Farrow's performance as Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (1974) remains one of the few high points of the largely disappointing film. By the early '80s, a newly divorced Farrow had taken up with comedian/director Woody Allen, for whom she did some of her best work in such films as Zelig (1983); Broadway Danny Rose (1984), in which she was barely recognizable in a brilliant turn as a bosomy blonde bimbo; The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985); Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Radio Days (1987); Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989); and Husbands and Wives (1992). Farrow and Allen were soul mates in private as well as cinematic life; she had a child by him named Satchel, who was Allen's first son. In 1992, ironically the same year that she starred as Allen's discontented spouse in Husbands and Wives, Farrow once more commanded newspaper headlines when she discovered that Allen had been having more than a parental relationship with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn (whom he later married). Farrow and Allen then engaged in a long, well-publicized court battle for custody of their adopted and biological children; in the aftermath, Farrow wrote a tell-all memoir entitled What Falls Away. She also continued to appear on the screen in such films as Widows' Peak (1994), Miami Rhapsody (1995), and Coming Soon (1999).Farrow stayed out of the limelight at the beginning of the next decade, but brought back memories of one of her best films, Rosemary's Baby, when she appeared as the nanny guiding the evil Satan child Damien in John Moore's adaptation of The Omen. The actress appeared in The Ex (2006), a romantic comedy, and in the first installment of filmmaker Luc Besson's fantasy adventured trilogy Arthur and the Invisibles. Farrow starred alongside Jack Black, Mos Def, and Danny Glover in the lighthearted comedy Be Kind Rewind (2008), which followed a bumbling movie lover who accidentally erased a vast collection of VHS films. In 2011, Farrow joined the cast of filmmaker Todd Solondz' Dark Horse, in which she co-starred with Selma Blair and Jordan Gelber.

Trivia: Brooklynite Brenda Vaccaro was raised in Texas, where she began acting in amateur theatricals. She returned to New York to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse, securing stage and TV roles from 1961 onward. Vaccaro's first important film appearance was as Jon Voigt's "intellectual" vis-à-vis in the latter portions of Midnight Cowboy (1969). In 1971 she co-starred in Summertree with her longtime lover Michael Douglas; the eventual breakup of this relationship was made doubly traumatic by the disproportionate amount of press coverage it received. Shortly after earning an Oscar nomination for 1975's Once Is Not Enough, Brenda Vaccaro briefly became a weekly TV star, playing a 19th century frontier schoolteacher in Sara; she later appeared in another short-lived series, 1979's Dear Detective.

Trivia: Cambridge-educated Peter Cook was, along with Dudley Moore, David Frost and Jonathan Miller, one of the founders of the irreverent British comedy troupe "Beyond the Fringe." When the group came to Broadway (an event celebrated on a near-nightly basis on such TV programs as The Jack Paar Program and The Ed Sullivan Show), Cook shared a Tony award with his fellow Fringers. Together with longtime collaborator Dudley Moore, Cook split off into a two-man act. The towering Cook and diminutive Moore co-starred in such cheeky British comedies as The Wrong Box (1968) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1968), usually writing all their own material. The best of their filmic collaborations was Bedazzled, a breezily sacrilegious update of the "Faust" legend. While they remained friends, Cook and Moore eventually decided that they'd fare better as "singles." Cook continued to write for and appear in such films as Supergirl (1984), The Princess Bride (1986) and Great Balls of Fire (1989), and also co-starred with Mimi Kennedy on the 1981 American TV sitcom The Two of Us. Peter Cook died of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage at the age of 57.

Trivia: London-born Simon Ward had pretty fair idea of what he wanted to do with his life from an early age. At 15, Ward became a member of what was later formalized as the National Youth Theatre. Trained at Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he made his professional stage debut with the Northhampton Repertory in 1963 and his London theatrical bow one year later in The 4th of June. His first film appearance was an uncredited role as one of the sociopathic students in Ken Russell's If.... (1968). In 1972, he played the title role in Young Winston (Churchill, that is), and the following year played the Duke of Buckingham in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers (1973). He was also seen as a fictional Nazi functionary (the "nice" one, with whom the audience is supposed to identify) in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973). Later film roles ran the gamut from author/veterinarian James Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small (1977) to Zor-El in Supergirl (1984). Simon Ward is the father of actress Sophie Ward.

Trivia: Best remembered for playing plucky cub reporter Jimmy Olson in all four of the Superman films that starred Christopher Reeve, Marc McClure made his film debut in the Disney film Freaky Friday and in the television movie James at 15 (both 1977). He went on to play supporting roles and occasional leads in both venues. In 1979, McClure starred in the short-lived TV series California Fever.

Trivia: Hart Bochner is a handsome, dark-haired supporting actor who has worked in several major theatrical and television movies. He is the son of Lloyd Bochner, a film and TV actor himself, and was born in Canada. As a teenager, he made his film debut in Franklin Schaffner's 1975 film Islands in the Stream. Before deciding to become an actor like his father, Bochner earned a graduate degree in English literature at a university in San Diego. Following college, he appeared in a supporting role in the 1979 sleeper Breaking Away. It was a promising start to his career and he next went on to appear in George Cukor's final film, Rich and Famous (1981). Though he appeared in many subsequent films, Bochner unfortunately has not become a well-known cinema actor though he did turn in a memorable performance as a sleazy yuppie businessman in 1988's Die Hard. With television, he has done a little better starring in adaptations such as East of Eden, The Sun Also Rises, and most notably the TV mini-series War and Remembrance.

Trivia: Though American born and raised, character actor David Healy spent most of his career in England performing on stage, screen and television. In the latter part of his theatrical career, Healy specialized in musical comedies. The portly performer once said that he preferred Great Britain to America because in the former he was "a big fish in a little pond. In the States, there are 20 guys who look exactly like you and are probably much more talented." Prior to making his professional debut as an Air Force entertainer stationed in England during WW II, Healy was a drama major at Southern Methodist University. Following the war, Healy remained in London, building a respectable theatrical career. In 1967, he made his debut performance with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Jules Feiffer's Little Murders. He continued on to perform in several more RSC productions. When not with them, Healy sometimes performed in a few London "fringe" productions. Healy began his film career in the 1965 British musical Be My Guest and went on to appear in a wide variety of roles in films ranging from the drama Isadora (1968), to romantic comedy A Touch of Class (1973), to horror Lust for a Vampire (1971), to fantasy Labyrinth (1986).

Trivia: It's likely that nothing American actor Matt Frewer ever did while training with Britain's Old Vic prepared him for the role that would boost him to stardom. In the early 1980s, Frewer began making appearances on a British music video show in the role of Max Headroom, an ostensibly computer-generated "talking head". Decked out in sunglasses and loud preppie clothes, Max Headroom would break into the middle of videos making nonsensical, obtrusive comments, his voice metallicized and distorted; Max' trademark was an electronic stutter, virtually indescribable on paper. In 1985 Max began conducting celebrity interviews, forever digressing from the conversation with self-involved harangues about his favorite subject, golf. So popular was Frewer as Headroom that Britain's Channel 4 devised a one-hour "documentary" titled Rebus: The Max Headroom Story, which alleged that Max had once been a flesh-and-blood TV newsman who was killed by an oppressive government to keep him from divulging secrets: his name, it was explained, was derived from the last words the "live" Max ever saw, a warning on a bridge reading "Maximum Headroom." This premise was modified a bit when Frewer starred on the 1986 American satirical talk show Max Headroom, which first appeared on the Cinemax cable service. Frewer continued the characterization into a local New York program, then played the dual role of Max and futuristic investigative reporter Edison Carter on ABC's brief Max Headroom comedy adventure series. In addition, Frewer essayed Max for a series of widely-imitated Coca Cola commercials. In 1989, Matt Frewer abandoned Max Headroom to seek out roles that didn't require computer enhancement; he subsequently starred in a few sitcoms, and in 1993 provided the voice of the title character in a new series of Pink Panther TV cartoons.