Trivia: The youngest of four children born to Evelyn "Brandy" Foster, Jodie Foster entered the world on November 19, 1962, under the name Alicia, but earned her "proper" name when her siblings insisted upon Jodie. A stage-mother supreme, Brandy Foster dragged her kids from one audition to another, securing work for son Buddy in the role of Ken Berry's son on the popular sitcom Mayberry RFD. It was on Mayberry that Foster, already a professional thanks to her stint as the Coppertone girl (the little kid whose swimsuit was being pulled down by a dog on the ads for the suntan lotion), made her TV debut in a succession of minor roles. Buddy would become disenchanted with acting, but Jodie stayed at it, taking a mature, businesslike approach to the disciplines of line memorization and following directions that belied her years. Janet Waldo, a voice actress who worked on the 1970s cartoon series The Addams Family, would recall in later years that Foster, cast due to her raspy voice in the male role of Puggsley Addams, took her job more seriously and with more dedication than many adult actors.After her film debut in Disney's Napoleon and Samantha (1972), Foster was much in demand, though she was usually cast in "oddball" child roles by virtue of her un-starlike facial features. She was cast in the Tatum O'Neal part in the 1974 TV series based on the film Paper Moon -- perhaps the last time she would ever be required to pattern her performance after someone else's. In 1975, Foster was cast in what remains one of her most memorable roles, as preteen prostitute Iris in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Both the director and the on-set supervisors made certain that she would not be psychologically damaged by the sleaziness of her character's surroundings and lifestyle; alas, the film apparently did irreparable damage to the psyche of at least one of its viewers. In 1981, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate President Reagan, and when captured, insisted he'd done it to impress Foster -- a re-creation of a similar incident in Taxi Driver. The resultant negative publicity made Foster (who'd been previously stalked by Hinckley) extremely sensitive to the excesses of the media; through absolutely no fault of her own, she'd become the quarry of every tabloid and "investigative journalist" in the world. Thereafter, she would stop an interview cold whenever the subject of Hinckley was mentioned, and even ceased answering fan mail or giving out autographs. This (justifiable) shunning of "the public" had little if any effect on Foster's professional life; after graduating magna cum laude from Yale University (later she would also receive an honorary Doctorate), the actress appeared in a handful of "small" films of little commercial value just to recharge her acting batteries, and then came back stronger than ever with her Oscar-winning performance in The Accused (1988), in which she played a rape victim seeking justice. Foster followed up this triumph with another Oscar for her work as FBI investigator Clarice Starling (a role turned down by several prominent actresses) in the 1991 chiller The Silence of the Lambs.Not completely satisfied professionally, Foster went into directing with a worthwhile drama about the tribulations of a child genius, Little Man Tate (1991) -- a logical extension, according to some movie insiders, of Foster's tendency to wield a great deal of authority on the set. Foster would also balance the artistic integrity of her award-winning work with the more commercial considerations of such films as Maverick (1994). She made her debut as producer in 1994 with the acclaimed Nell, in which she also gave an Oscar-nominated performance as a backwoods wild child brought into the modern world. Foster would continue to to produce and direct, with 1995's Home for the Holidays and 2011's The Beaver.Foster would continue to chose a challenging variety of roles, playing scientist Ellie Arroway in Robert Zemeckis' 1997 adaptation of the Carl Sagan in Contact, and a widowed schoolteacher in Anna and the King (1999), and a mother defending her daughter during a home invasion in David Fincher's Panic Room. The 2000's would see Foster appear in several more films, like Inside Man, The Brave One, and the Roman Polanski directed domestic comedy Carnage. In 2013, Foster was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, and later appeared in sci-fi thriller Elysium.

Trivia: Born on December 31, 1937, as the only son of a baker, Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins was drawn to the theater while attending the YMCA at age 17, and later learned the basics of his craft at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1960, Hopkins made his stage bow in The Quare Fellow, and then spent four years in regional repertory before his first London success in Julius Caesar. Combining the best elements of the British theater's classic heritage and its burgeoning "angry young man" school, Hopkins worked well in both ancient and modern pieces. His film debut was not, as has often been cited, his appearance as Richard the Lionhearted in The Lion in Winter (1968), but in an odd, "pop-art" film, The White Bus (1967).Though already familiar to some sharp-eyed American viewers after his film performance as Lloyd George in Young Winston (1971), Hopkins burst full-flower onto the American scene in 1974 as an ex-Nazi doctor in QB VII, the first television miniseries. Also in 1974, Hopkins made his Broadway debut in Equus, eventually directing the 1977 Los Angeles production. The actor became typed in intense, neurotic roles for the next several years: in films he portrayed the obsessed father of a girl whose soul has been transferred into the body of another child in Audrey Rose (1976), an off-the-wall ventriloquist in Magic (1978), and the much-maligned Captain Bligh (opposite Mel Gibson's Fletcher Christian) in Bounty (1982). On TV, Hopkins played roles as varied (yet somehow intertwined) as Adolph Hitler, accused Lindbergh-baby kidnapper Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.In 1991, Hopkins won an Academy Award for his bloodcurdling portrayal of murderer Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. With the aplomb of a thorough professional, Anthony Hopkins was able to follow-up his chilling Lecter with characters of great kindness, courtesy, and humanity: the conscience-stricken butler of a British fascist in The Remains of the Day (1992) and compassionate author C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands (1993). In 1995, Hopkins earned mixed acclaim and an Oscar nomination for his impressionistic take (done without elaborate makeup) on President Richard M. Nixon in Oliver Stone's Nixon. After his performance as Pablo Picasso in James Ivory's Surviving Picasso (1996), Hopkins garnered another Oscar nomination -- this time for Best Supporting Actor -- the following year for his work in Steven Spielberg's slavery epic Amistad. Following this honor, Hopkins chose roles that cast him as a father figure, first in the ploddingly long Meet Joe Black and then in the have-mask-will-travel swashbuckler Mask of Zorro with Antonio Banderas and fellow countrywoman Catherine Zeta-Jones. In his next film, 1999's Instinct, Hopkins again played a father, albeit one of a decidedly different stripe. As anthropologist Ethan Powell, Hopkins takes his field work with gorillas a little too seriously, reverting back to his animal instincts, killing a couple of people, and alienating his daughter (Maura Tierney) in the process.Hopkins kept a low profile in 2000, providing narration for Ron Howard's live-action adaptation of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas and voicing the commands overheard by Tom Cruise's special agent in John Woo's Mission: Impossible 2. In 2001, Hopkins returned to the screen to reprise his role as the effete, erudite, eponymous cannibal in Ridley Scott's Hannibal, the long-anticipated sequel to Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991). The 160-million-dollar blockbuster did much for Hopkins' bank account but little for his standing with the critics, who by and large found Hannibal to be a stylish, gory exercise in illogical tedium. Worse yet, some wags suggested that the actor would have been better off had he followed his Silence co-star Jodie Foster's lead and opted out of the sequel altogether. Later that year, the moody, cloying Stephen King adaptation Hearts in Atlantis did little to repair his reputation with critics or audiences, who avoided the film like the plague.The long-delayed action comedy Bad Company followed in 2002, wherein audiences -- as well as megaproducer Jerry Bruckheimer -- learned that Chris Rock and Sir Anthony Hopkins do not a laugh-riot make. But the next installment in the cash-cow Hannibal Lecter franchise restored a bit of luster to the thespian's tarnished Hollywood career. Red Dragon, the second filmed version of Thomas Harris' first novel in the Lecter series, revisited the same territory previously adapted by director Michael Mann in 1986's Manhunter, with mixed but generally positive results. Surrounding Hopkins with a game cast, including Edward Norton, Ralph Finnes, Harvey Keitel and Emily Watson, the Brett Ratner film garnered some favorable comparisons to Demme's 1991 award-winner, as well as some decent -- if not Hannibal-caliber -- returns at the box office.Hopkins would face his biggest chameleon job since Nixon with 2003's highly anticipated adaptation of Philip Roth's Clinton-era tragedy The Human Stain, a prestige Miramax project directed by Robert Benton and co-starring Nicole Kidman, fresh off her Oscar win for The Hours. Hopkins plays Stain's flawed protagonist Coleman Silk, an aging, defamed African-American academic who has been "passing" as a Jew for most of his adult life. Unfortunately, most critics couldn't get past the hurtle of accepting the Anglo-Saxon paragon as a light-skinned black man. The film died a quick death at the box office and went unrecognized in year-end awards.2004's epic historical drama Alexander re-united Hopkins and Nixon helmer Oliver Stone in a three-hour trek through the life and times of Alexander the Great. The following year, Hopkins turned up in two projects, the first being John Madden's drama Proof. In this Miramax release, Hopkins plays Robert, a genius mathematician who - amid a long descent into madness - devises a formula of earth-shaking proportions. That same year's comedy-drama The World's Fastest Indian saw limited international release in December 2005; it starred Hopkins - ever the one to challenge himself by expanding his repertoire to include increasingly difficult roles - as New Zealand motorcycle racer Burt Munro, who set a land speed record on his chopper at the Utah Bonneville Flats. The quirky picture did limited business in the States but won the hearts of many viewers and critics.He then joined the ensemble cast of the same year's hotly-anticipated ensemble drama Bobby, helmed by Emilio Estevez, about the events at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles just prior to RFK's assassination. Hopkins plays John Casey, one of the hotel proprietors.Hopkins long held true passions in arenas other than acting - specifically, painting and musical composition. As for the former, Hopkins started moonlighting as a painter in the early 2000s, and when his tableaux first appeared publicly, at San Antonio's Luciane Gallery in early 2006, the canvases sold out within six days. Hopkins is also an accomplished symphonic composer and the author of several orchestral compositions, though unlike some of his contemporaries (such as Clint Eastwood) his works never supplemented movie soundtracks and weren't available on disc. The San Antonio Symphony performed a few of the pieces for its patrons in spring 2006.Hopkins would remain a prolific actor over the next several years, appearing in films like The Wolfman, Thor, and 360.Formerly wed to actress Petronella Barker and to Jennifer Lynton, Hopkins married his third wife, actress and producer Stella Arroyave, in March 2003.

Trivia: Ex-marine and ex-newspaper reporter Scott Glenn was ideally suited to the action-oriented films that would become his lot in the 1980s and 1990s. After learning the rudiments of his craft at the Actors Studio and appearing off-Broadway, Glenn made his film bow in 1970's The Baby Maker. He was rescued from low-budget cycle flicks by director Robert Altman, who cast Glenn as Pfc. Glenn Kelly in Nashville (1975). As rangy and rugged off-camera as on, Glenn was one of the few film actors of recent years to flourish in western roles: among his more impressive credits within this genre are Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), Silverado (1985), My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (1993), and, stretching a point a bit, Urban Cowboy (1980). Glenn has been equally laudable in such suit-and-tie roles as Jodie Foster's FBI chief in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), in "military" assignments like astronaut Alan Shepard in The Right Stuff (1981) and the U.S. sub commander in Hunt for Red October (1990). As a tribute to Robert Altman, the director who elevated him to "A" pictures back in 1975, Scott Glenn accepted a drastic cut in salary to portray "Himself" in Altman's The Player (1992). Over the next several years, Glenn remained active on screen, appearing in films like Training Day, The Virgin Suicides, The Bourne Ultimatum, W., and The Paperboy.

Trivia: Striking terror deep in the hearts and subconsciousness of filmgoers worldwide with his chilling portrayal of aspiring transsexual serial killer James "Buffalo Bill" Gumb in director Jonathan Demme's acclaimed thriller The Silence of the Lambs, Steppenwolf Theater alumnus Ted Levine may not have received the star status some may have expected would follow the role, but he can consistently be counted on to turn in a lively performance, no matter how small his part may be.Born in Cleveland, OH, Levine received his M.F.A. in acting from the University of Chicago before making frequent appearances in such 1980s made-for-television efforts as Michael Mann's Crime Story (1986) and his feature debut in 1987's Ironweed. Taking small roles in such features as Betrayed (1988) and Next of Kin (1989) before his big break in Silence, Levine, curiously, stuck mostly to television following his portrayal of Buffalo Bill, not taking another featured role until his turn as a cop on the trail of a carnivorous industrial speed iron in The Mangler (1995). Appearing in Georgia and Michael Mann's acclaimed Heat the same year, Levine began to gain more prominent roles in the following years before taking to the seas with Patrick Stewart in Moby Dick (1998). Though he received critical acclaim for his role in the controversial television series Wonderland (2000), the show aired a meager two episodes (though four were produced) before being pulled due to outcry over its portrayal of the mental health system and its inhabitants. Bouncing back to the big screen, fans found that Levine could still be counted on to turn in absorbing performances in such features as Evolution and The Fast and the Furious (both 2001). Over the next several years, Levine would remain extremely active, appearing in films like The Manchuriuan Candidate, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Hills Have Eyes, and Shutter Island, as well as on TV series like Monk and Luck.

Trivia: Possessing an air of smug authority that isn't without a slight sense of self-conscious humor, actor Anthony Heald's supporting roles in such films as The Silence of the Lambs and Deep Rising have found him mastering the art of the overconfident character who audiences instinctively sense (often rightly so) will receive his comeuppance before the end credits roll. Born Philip Anthony Mair Heald in New Rochelle, NY, the aspiring actor with a keen eye for detail sought higher education at Michigan State University following graduation from New York's Massapequa High School. It was during his tenure at Michigan State that Heald became involved with a street theater troupe, honing his skills while simultaneously developing a unique style that he would continue to develop in the decade that followed. Making the leap to the big screen with a supporting role in the 1983 drama Silkwood, Heald also impressed small-screen viewers with occasional roles in Miami Vice, Tales From the Dark Side, and later, Cheers. Of course, it was feature films that provided the most exposure for Heald, though, his role as Dr. Frederick Chilton in The Silence of the Lambs offering the ideal celluloid personification of the actor's nervous confidence. Supporting roles in such high-profile releases as Searching for Bobby Fischer, The Pelican Brief, The Client, and 8MM kept Heald in the public eye throughout the 1990s, and with his role as buttoned-down Assistant Principal Scott Guber in the popular 2000 series Boston Public, Heald seemed to hit his stride on the small screen. On the high-school comedy drama, Heald embued his straight-laced, officious, authoritarian character with a surprising degree of sympathy, making Mr. Gruber somewhat more endearing than would be expected. In 2002, Heald reprised his role as Dr. Frederick Chilton in Red Dragon, the second sequel -- actually a prequel -- to The Silence of the Lambs. Though Boston Public would close its doors in 2004, Heald continued to act in addition to providing vocal work on a number of talking books. In 2006 Heald helmed the clichéd part of the unctuous Dean of the rival college in the comedy Accepted, as well as appearing in the third installment of the popular X-Men franchise.

Trivia: Actress Diane Baker's well-scrubbed, all-American beauty has frequently been employed as a cool veneer for film characters of smoldering passions. The daughter of actress Dorothy Harrington, Diane was studying at USC when she was tapped for her first film role as Millie Perkins' sister in 20th Century-Fox's The Diary of Anne Frank (1959); the studio then cast Diane as Pat Boone's "girl back home," who didn't get to go along on Boone's Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). She remained at Fox until 1962, essaying the title role in the studio's re-remake of Tess of the Storm Country (1961). Her most famous screen assignment was at Columbia, where she portrayed axe murderess Joan Crawford's supposedly well-balanced daughter in Straitjacket (1963). Diane became a documentary director in the 1970s with Ashanya, and a producer with Never Never Land (1982). The best of Diane Baker's latter-day roles was the media-savvy politico mother of the kidnap victim in Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Trivia: Blonde-dreadlocked actress and filmmaker Kasi Lemmons was born in Missouri but raised in Massachusetts after her parents divorced. She performed in Boston Children's Theatre as a kid before studying at N.Y.U. and U.C.L.A. Starting at the tender age of 18, she acted professionally throughout the '80s in television and films, including a small role in Spike Lee's School Daze. With an interest in making documentaries, she went to film school at the New School for Social Research in N.Y.C. and made her first film, Fall From Grace, a short documentary about homelessness. Though she continued to develop her writing, she kept acting in order to pay the bills with supporting roles in The Silence of the Lambs, Candyman, Hard Target, and Fear of a Black Hat. Frustrated with her acting career and the lack of good roles for black women in Hollywood, she went to work on her screenplay for Eve's Bayou, a Southern Gothic drama about a girl growing up in Louisiana. In 1997, she appeared in Gridlock'd, the debut feature film by her husband, actor/director Vondie Curtis-Hall. That same year she became pregnant with her first child and made the short film Dr. Hugo -- based on a segment of her script and starring her husband in the lead role -- in order to convince the studios that she could direct Eve's Bayou herself. By the time shooting began, her son Henry Hunter Hall was just three months old. With Samuel L. Jackson as co-producer, Eve's Bayou was a critical success, winning Lemmons an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. In 2001, she teamed with Samuel L. Jackson again for the psychological thriller The Caveman's Valentine, adapted from a novel by George Dawes Green.

Trivia: The actress whose convincing portrayal of one of Buffalo Bill's potential victims in The Silence of the Lambs had audiences squirming in their seats, Brooke Smith has subsequently built an enduring career with memorable roles in such efforts as Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and the searing reality television satire Series 7: The Contenders (2001). Born the daughter of renowned publicist Lois Smith and raised in New York City, Brooke was immersed in show business from the moment she left the womb. A graduate of Tappan Zee High School, Smith is also a professional journalist whose published interviews with such stars as Ed Harris and Steve Buscemi have earned her kudos in the world of entertainment journalism. Smith made her film debut in the 1988 drama The Moderns, and it was only three short years later that her breakthrough role in The Silence of the Lambs would launch a successful career working with some of the most respected names in the business. Directed by everyone from Louis Malle (Vanya on 42nd Street) to Sydney Pollack (Random Hearts), Smith can usually be spotted in minor, albeit sometimes pivotal supporting roles that always serve to elevate any project in which she appears. In 2001 Smith took the lead, to memorable effect, in 2001's Series 7: The Contenders. A film that took the concept of reality television to the next level, Series 7 found Smith cast as an expectant mother who becomes a participant in a deadly television series in which participants are expected to kill or be killed. Smith's performance as the ice-cold participant who seems to derive pleasure from tormenting her opponents gave the film a disturbing edge that left audiences chilled to the core. Subsequently appearing in the Coen brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) and Joel Schumacher's big-budget action opus Bad Company, it seemed that Smith might finally be on her way to becoming a recognizable figure in the world of film.

Trivia: Towering American character actor Charles Napier has the distinction of being one of the few actors to transcend a career start in "nudies" and sustain a successful mainstream career. Napier, clothed and otherwise, was first seen in such Russ Meyer gropey-feeley epics as Cherry, Harry and Raquel (1969) and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). Graduating from this exuberant tawdriness, Napier became a dependable film and TV villain, playing nasty characters in films like Handle With Care (1977) and Rambo (1984). Napier would continue to become an ever more familiar face throughout the 80's and 90's, with roles in movies like The Blues Brothers (1980), Married to the Mob (1990), Ernest Goes to Jail (1991) and the-Oscar winning Silence of the Lambs (1991), Philadelphia (1994), The Cable Guy (1996), and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) - just to name a few. He would also remain active in the realm of TV, appearing on shows like Walker, Texas Ranger and Roswell. The new millennium would find Napier playing roles on shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, as well as lending his voice to animated shows like The Simpsons, Squidbillies, and Archer. Napier passed away in October of 2011 at the age of 75.

Trivia: The memorable but fleeting appearance of American actor Tracey Walter as "Bob the Goon" in Batman was typical of Walter's career. In the grand tradition of such Hollywood character actors as Percy Helton, Dick Wessel and Louis Jean Heydt, Walter is in the "who is that?" category--familiar yet anonymous--and has developed a cult following amongst cinema buffs. The stage-trained Walters can be seen in such films as Repo Man (1984) City Slickers (1991), Pacific Heights (1992), and Philadelphia (1993). As far back as the 1984 critic's-darling sitcom Best of the West, Walter played Frog, the knuckle-dragging henchman of villain Leonard Frey.

Trivia: A former engineering student, Roger Corman entered the picture business as a messenger and ended up a producer/director after a stint as a story analyst and a brief detour to Oxford University. After returning to Hollywood, he saw an opportunity to make money and gain experience by making low-budget films to feed the drive-in and neighborhood theater circuits, which had been abandoned in large part by the major studios. Working from budgets of as little as 50,000 dollars, he quickly learned the art of creating bargain-basement entertainment and making money at it, producing and directing pictures for American International Pictures and Allied Artists. Five Guns West, Apache Woman, The Day the World Ended, It Conquered the World, Not of This Earth, The Undead, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Doll, Machine Gun Kelly, The Wasp Woman, and Sorority Girl were only a few of the titles, and they were indicative of their subjects. These films were short (some as little as 62 minutes) and threadbare in production values. (Reportedly, distributor Samuel Z. Arkoff used to look at the film footage at the end of each day of shooting and call Corman, telling him, "Roger, for chrissake, hire a couple more extras and put a little more furniture on the set!") But his films were also extremely entertaining, and endeared Corman to at least two generations of young filmgoers.During the early '60s, Corman became more ambitious, and made the serious school desegregation drama The Intruder. Adapted for the screen by his brother Gene Corman from Charles Beaumont's novel, it was the only one of his movies to lose money -- because few theaters would book it -- although it was one of the finest B-movies ever made. Corman also began working in color, most notably on a series of adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe stories starring Vincent Price that won the respect of younger critics and aspiring filmmakers alike. Corman also employed many young film students and writers during this period, including Francis Ford Coppola, Curtis Harrington, and author Robert Towne. His output decreased as his budgets went up, and Corman moved away from directing and into producing. In the 1970s, '80s and '90s, Corman was still producing exploitation films (such as Humanoids From the Deep), but his New World Pictures also distributed several important foreign movies, including Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers and the groundbreaking Jamaican crime drama The Harder They Come.

Trivia: In another era, Chris Isaak's steely good looks and affable, unaffected screen presence would have made him an overnight leading man. Whether by choice or fate, however, Isaak seems to be content with his status as a part-time character actor and full-time rockabilly-influenced crooner. Born in Stockton, CA, in 1956, Isaak dabbled in surfing and competitive boxing as a teenager -- leaving him with his trademark bent nose -- before enrolling in an exchange student program in Japan. Upon his return to the U.S., Isaak completed college and endured a series of odd jobs as he led the life of the Northern California beach bum.In the mid-'80s, Isaak and his friends secured a record deal and began recording their unique brand of Southwestern retro-pop under the moniker Silvertone. It was director Jonathan Demme -- already a fan of Isaak's music -- who gave him bit parts in 1988's Married to the Mob and Demme's 1991 breakthrough, The Silence of the Lambs. Though Isaak's acting career was slowly gaining momentum, his Roy Orbison-influenced ballads still weren't catching on with the general public. When David Lynch featured the jilted-lover anthem "Wicked Game" in his road movie Wild at Heart, however, radio requests for the song quickly grew, and Isaak found himself with a Top Ten hit by the end of 1990 -- well over a year since the track was originally released. Thanks to Herb Ritts' sultry video for the song, Isaak had become a reluctant sex symbol as well. Lynch would be the first to capitalize on Isaak's heightened public profile, casting him as Special Agent Chester Desmond in 1992's baffling, elliptical Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.Despite the film's lackluster box-office performance, director Bernardo Bertolucci took notice and gave Isaak a lead role in his fantasy-biopic Little Buddha. Though convincing as the stoic family man whose son is mysteriously believed to be the latest reincarnation of Buddha, the neophyte actor couldn't withstand the wellspring of negative critical response to the film, causing some wags to slight his work in it. Perhaps as a response, Isaak has usually maintained a low profile in features since Buddha, choosing instead to take distinctive supporting roles in period films such as That Thing You Do! and Grace of My Heart, both in 1996.Though his feature-film aspirations hadn't panned out, Isaak did find some success acting on the small-screen in 2001, when he was given his own television show on Showtime. The Chris Isaak Show attracted a cult following with its witty semi-fictional portrayal of musician Chris Isaak. In 2004, Isaak took to the big-screen again, starring in the NC-17-rated John Waters sex comedy A Dirty Shame amidst an eclectic cast that included British comedian Tracey Ullman, Jackass co-creator Johnny Knoxville, indie-film actress Selma Blair, and such Waters regulars as Patricia Hearst and Mink Stole.

Trivia: An actor of stage and screen, Ron Vawter was best known for essaying the parts of Roy Cohn and Jack Smith, a pair of prominent but wildly different homosexuals, both of whom died of AIDS in the 1980s. Having gained experience in performing in small troupes, Vawter took on the play about them in 1980 and was soon touring North America and a few major European cities. In London, he received much acclaim and several awards for his work in the play. He starred in the screen version of Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, but it was not released until after his death. Vawter's other film credits include Philadelphia (1993), Silence of the Lambs (1991), and sex, lies, and videotape (1989).

Trivia: A veteran character actor whose work has shown he's as comfortable with comedy as drama, Frankie Faison was born in Newport News, VA, in 1949. Faison developed the acting bug while in grade school after appearing in a school play, and after high school he was a theater student at both Illinois Wesleyan University and New York University. Faison began pursuing a career in the theater, and appeared in a number of acclaimed off-Broadway productions, including Athol Fugard's Playland, the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of Before It Hits Home, and an adaptation of King Lear at the NYSF Delacorte Theater. Faison made his film debut in 1981 with a small role in Ragtime, and Faison soon began supplementing his stage work with small parts in motion pictures and guest shots on television. An inkling of what was to come for Faison appeared in 1986, when he was cast in a small role as a cop in Manhunter, an adaptation of Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon, in which Brian Cox played the murderous Hannibal Lector. In 1987, Faison appeared on Broadway in August Wilson's drama Fences, opposite James Earl Jones; Faison's performance earned him a Tony award nomination. In 1988, Faison scored a showy comic role in the Eddie Murphy vehicle Coming to America, and a year later he was one of the "corner men" in Spike Lee's acclaimed and controversial Do the Right Thing. In 1990, Faison scored the male lead in a short-lived sitcom, True Colors, and in 1991 he appeared in another adaptation of a Thomas Harris novel when he was cast as Barney Matthews, the big but gentle male nurse in The Silence of the Lambs. Faison continued to win supporting roles in a variety of notable films, including City of Hope, Sommersby, Mother Night, I Love Trouble, Albino Alligator, Where the Money Is, and The Thomas Crown Affair, and he had a leading role in the well-regarded police drama Prey; sadly, the show fared poorly in the ratings and didn't survive its first season. Faison revived his role as Barney Matthews in 2001's box-office blockbuster Hannibal, making him the only actor to appear in all three films about the famous cannibal. ~ Mark Deming

Trivia: Character actor Don Brockett seldom had more than bit parts in movies and yet still managed to stay gainfully employed in the motion picture and television industry. His film credits include Flashdance (1983), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Hoffa (1991). Brockett made his final film appearance in Houseguest (1995). Fans of the long-running PBS children's series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood will know that he spent 30 years on the show appearing as Chef Brockett. In addition to his acting career, Brockett was well-known in Pittsburg for writing, producing and directing musicals and industrial productions for local conventions and trade shows.

Trivia: From the late '60s through the early '90s, Kenneth Utt produced or co-produced numerous feature films, notably Midnight Cowboy (1969), The French Connection (1971), All That Jazz (1979), Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Philadelphia (1993). Born and raised in Winston-Salem, NC, Utt began his entertainment industry career in New York television and radio shortly after the end of WWII. He also dabbled as a stage manager on Broadway. He started producing television programs in the 1950s and, in the early '60s, was the associate producer for the series The Defenders and Coronet Blue. Utt occasionally appeared in the films he produced. In Silence of the Lambs, he played Dr. Aiken.

Trivia: American director George A. Romero was making films from the age of 14 -- like most teen movie enthusiasts, with an 8 mm camera. Matriculating into the industrial-film business in Pittsburgh, Romero accrued enough capital to make his first feature-length film in 1968, a graphically gruesome zombie picture entitled Night of the Living Dead. Barely making back its cost on its initial release, the movie received some welcome, if adverse, publicity when Reader's Digest devoted an article to it. The magazine was appalled at the scenes of cannibalism and similar horrors, going so far as to insist that a movement be started to have the picture banned. Naturally, this made the movie more popular than ever, much more so than if Reader's Digest had simply ignored it. And the subsequent profits of Night of the Living Dead enabled Romero to finance several more low-budget scare pictures before he broke into the mainstream with Dawn of the Dead in 1978, a semi-comic sequel to his first film. Day of the Dead (1985), the third of the Dead Trilogy, was more elaborate than his earlier productions, but also more disappointing. Still, Romero could point with pride to such films as Creepshow (1980), Martin (1978), and his weekly TV terror anthology Tales From the Darkside (1984-1986), which belied its tiny budget with excellent writing, first-rate actors (Barnard Hughes, Fritz Weaver, Jerry Stiller, Eddie Bracken, et al.) and bone-chilling makeup effects. Although remaining in the realm of B-movies by choice, Romero has exerted considerable influence on an entire school of higher-budget horror directors, notably John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and especially Brian De Palma. Romero is married to actress and long-time collaborator Christine Forrest.