Trivia: Chevy Chase is often considered one of the most likeable comedic personalities of his generation, even though the immediate popularity he achieved following a single season on Saturday Night Live never translated into more than a couple hit movies, and none after the 1980s. The prematurely balding, intelligent, fast-talking Chase created a couple classic characters, notably Irwin M. Fletcher (aka Fletch) and Vacation's Clark Griswold, but his career is often thought of as plagued by misfires and missed opportunities, rather than touched by comic brilliance.Born on October 8, 1943, in New York City, Cornelius Crane Chase became known as "Chevy" when his grandmother nicknamed him after Chevy Chase, the wealthy Maryland community. The 6'4" future writer and actor was valedictorian of his high school class before attending Bard College, where he earned a B.A. in English. With a pre-celebrity resumé as varied as any (tennis pro, truck driver, bartender), Chase spent his twenties as a comedy writer for such outlets as the Smothers Brothers and National Lampoon, the latter of which eventually led to a lucrative franchise of Vacation movies. Chase's first stint as a performer was with the New York comedy video workshop Channel One, which evolved into the 1974 film Groove Tube. This afforded Chase the necessary exposure to be hired by Lorne Michaels for the first season of Saturday Night Live in 1975.Initially hired on as a writer, Chase soon began appearing in front of the camera as the anchor of the popular Weekend Update segment of the ensemble variety show. With the catchphrase opening "Good evening, I'm Chevy Chase and you're not," and aided by his bumbling impersonation of President Gerald Ford, the actor quickly assumed breakout status, earning Emmys for both his writing and acting. He left after a single season to pursue film opportunities, but did not really strike gold until Caddyshack (1980), in which he played a rich golf pro who oozed confidence and a dry sarcastic wit three steps ahead of anyone else. These would become Chase's trademarks.During the filming of his next project, Modern Problems (1981), Chase was nearly electrocuted when a gag involving landing lights attached to his body short-circuited. The experience sunk him into a deep depression. But he recovered his stride in 1983 with the release of National Lampoon's Vacation, the first of four in an eventual series of epic misadventures of the Griswold family (European Vacation [1985], Christmas Vacation [1989], Vegas Vacation [1997]). As daffy father Clark, Chase turned the film into a huge hit, harnessing a likable befuddlement that kept the series going even as the sequels were increasingly less well received and tiresomely slapstick.Chase's other big hit came in 1985, when he starred as the title character in Fletch, the film widely considered the actor's best and most complimentary of his sharp talent for wordplay. As an undercover newspaper reporter with a quick answer -- not to mention a goofy disguise -- for every situation, Chase created a classic comic hero with a genius for confusing his adversaries. He reprised the role in the lesser sequel Fletch Lives (1989).Chase achieved moderate success by pairing with other Saturday Night Live alums in the mixed-bag comedies Spies Like Us (1985) and Three Amigos! (1986); though these had dedicated fans, they didn't achieve the critical praise of Fletch or Vacation. Despite an all-star cast, Caddyshack II (1988) went nowhere, and by the beginning of the 1990s, Chase had slipped from his status as a reliable comedic performer. Such well-documented failures as Nothing But Trouble (1991) and Cops and Robbersons (1994) became his crosses to bear during a decade that also saw the colossal failure of his Fox comeback variety show, which was canceled two months after it premiered in 1993. Chase was also arrested for drunk driving in 1995, just one incident in a career sometimes checkered by drug and alcohol abuse. In later years, Chase has preferred family oriented films, starring in such features as Man of the House (1995) (opposite Jonathan Taylor Thomas) and the kiddie-on-holiday flick Snow Day (2000). This stance prompted Chase to turn down the comeback-worthy role that won Kevin Spacey an Oscar in American Beauty (1999); had he accepted, it might have resulted in a very different film. As Chase's work has shifted more to the supporting role variety, including Dirty Work (1998) and Orange County (2002), he has seemed more comfortable. A series of appearances in such innocuous comedies as Bad Meat, Goose on the Loose, and Doogal found Chase continuing to plateau, and in 2006 the former SNL heavyweight would take to the lab to help save the world in the children's superhero adventure Zoom. In 2009 Chase was cast as a casually racist and sexist member of the study group at the heart of NBC's sitcom Community, and that program gave him some of the best reviews he'd had in quite some time. He appeared in the 2010 comedy Hot Tub Time Machine, and in 2011's Stay Cool.

Trivia: Onscreen, versatile, multi-talented Beverly D'Angelo is best remembered for playing Ellen Griswold in the National Lampoon "vacation" series of films but she has appeared in over 50 films and also performs on television and the stage. The daughter of successful musicians, D'Angelo was educated in Europe and studied fine arts but left school at age 17 to become an artist at Hanna-Barbera Studios. For a time she was a folk singer and performed in Canadian coffee houses. She later sang rock & roll with the group Elephant. She tried acting in regional theater and during the early '70s appeared frequently on Broadway, making her debut playing Ophelia in the rock musical Rockabye Hamlet. D'Angelo made her film debut playing a bit in the Sentinel (1976). Her most highly regarded film role was that of singer Patsy Cline playing opposite Sissy Spacek's Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). D'Angelo's excellent portrayal won considerable critical acclaim. She imprinted herself into popular culture playing Ellen Griswold in the National Lampoon films Vacation, European Vacation, Christmas Vacation, and Vegas Vacation, and would continue be a consistant presence on screen for years to come, most notably in films like American History X and on the series Entourage.

Trivia: Juvenile actress Dana Hill burst into the public's consciousness with her poignant portrayal of a molestation victim in the made-for-TV movie Fallen Angel (1981). Hill was able to play adolescents and teenagers well into her 20s, essaying meaty supporting roles in such films as Shoot the Moon (1981), Cross Creek (1983) and National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985). On TV, she was seen as Gabby, daughter of Mimi Kennedy, in The Two of Us (1981), and as Ginger in Sugar and Spice. Her on-screen work radically curtailed by chronic illness--she would succumb to diabetes at the age of 32--Dana Hill flourished as a voiceover artist, lending her distinctively throaty vocal timbre to such TV cartoon series as Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, Widget the Worldwatcher, The Goof Troop, Droopy, Master Detective, Bonkers, and Duckman.

Trivia: American actor John Astin was the son of Dr. Allen V. Astin, director of the National Bureau of Standards. Evidently inheriting his intellectual bent from his father, Astin was a voracious reader and mathematician, at one point in his high school career mastering an entire semester's worth of study in one evening (that's his story, anyway). A part in the senior play at Johns Hopkins University (where he was majoring in math) cemented his desire to act, and in 1952 Astin did graduate work in dramatics at the University of Minnesota, where he appeared in 40 plays in and around the campus, played the violin, and gambled incessantly (and badly). With $100 in his pocket, Astin headed to New York, where he did janitorial work in theatres until securing a role in the off-Broadway Threepenny Opera for a princely $15 per week. Better money came Astin's way when he started doing voice-over work for animated commercials; in 1961 he extended his acting skills to films in a small but memorable part as a smarmy social worker in the Oscar-winning West Side Story. In 1962, Astin was teamed with Marty Ingels on the blue-collar sitcom I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, which despite a loyal following failed to garner ratings. The show did, however, establish Astin as a reliable laugh-getter, leading to a more successful run as Gomez Addams, the macabre but passionate paterfamilias on The Addams Family. This series ran from 1964 to 1966, after which Astin spent a great deal of time touring the country in theatrical productions - often living out of a van, a lifestyle he seemed to thrive upon. Joining Astin during his barnstorming days was his second wife, actress Patty Duke, who called herself Patty Duke Astin for the duration (Astin and Duke raised a son, Sean Astin, who grew up to become a popular film actor in his own right). The marriage ultimately dissolved due in part to Astin's bohemian point of view, though while the union lasted both Astin and Duke were tireless workaholics who were rarely without acting gigs. His many credits during this time period include 1974's Skyway to Death, and playing the dad in the original version of Freaky Friday. He directed and appeared in the TV movie Operation Petticoat. In the 1980's he landed recurring roles on both Murder, She Wrote and the sitcom Night Court. His marriage to Patti Duke ended in 1985, but Astin maintained a busy schedule appearing as a game-show host in National Lampoon's European Vacation, Teen Wolf Two, and Return of the Killer Tomatoes! As the 90s got under way he made two more Killer Tomatoes movies, appeared on the TV shows Mad About You and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., and earned favorable reviews for his appearance in The Frighteners.

Trivia: American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker Paul Bartel is perhaps best known as the director and star of the quirky sleeper Eating Raoul (1982). Born in New York City, Bartel was a film aficionado since childhood and entered the industry at age 13 working as an assistant animator for UPA. He later studied film at UCLA and while there, made several short animated films and documentaries; for his work as a student actor and playwright, Bartel won several awards. Later he studied at Rome's prestigious Centro Sperimental di Cinematografica on a Fulbright Scholarship; there his graduation film, Progetti, was shown at the Venice Film Festival. Soon after coming back to the U.S., Bartel began working as an assistant director for military films; he then went on to make films for the U.S. government. As a feature filmmaker, Bartel is consistently drawn to the darkly funny, more perverse aspects of life. His provocative directorial debut was Private Parts (1972) which centered on a runaway teenage girl who encounters several residents involved with bizarre sexual practices in her aunt's ramshackle San Francisco hotel. Though it was a box office flop, the film earned Bartel decent notice from critics. He next involved himself with B-movie king Roger Corman and worked for him as both an actor and a second unit photographer. In 1974, he again tried directing with Big Bad Mama. He directed one more film before coming up with the screenplay for Eating Raoul. Directed by and starring Bartel, it is the ghastly but hilarious tale of an average couple who comes up with an unusual scam for making money involving sex for sale and a very large frying pan. Bartel was unable to find a distributor for the film until he entered it in the Los Angeles Film Festival where it generated such acclaim that 20th Century-Fox obtained the distribution rights. The film has since become a cult favorite. After the success of Raoul, Bartel continued directing a variety of films through the 1980s. Notable efforts from this time period include his wild satire of westerns Lust in the Dust (1985) and Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989). In the early '90s, he directed Shelf Life and then began focusing on his acting career and appearing in such films as The Jerky Boys (1994) and Basquiat (1996). He died of a heart attack, following surgery for liver cancer, on May 13, 2000.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: British actress Gwen Nelson started her long career with the Old Vic company in the mid-'20s after training for the opera. She went on to play character roles on stage, television, and in feature films. She was often cast as a good-natured, genteel woman.

Trivia: Stocky Scottish comic actor Robbie Coltrane was trained as an artist in Glasgow. During the 1970s, he rose to prominence as an improvisational nightclub comedian, usually working in ensemble groups (one of his partners was actress Emma Thompson). During the '80s, he was in a number of British features and made-for-TV movies. A regular at London's Comic Strip comedy club, he had a habit of appearing as himself in comedy specials like Secret Policeman's Third Ball. He also showed up in small comedic cameos in National Lampoon's European Vacation and Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. Though he was popular in the U.K. on TV shows like Alfresco, Tutti Fruitti, Black Adder, and The Young Ones, he wasn't widely known in the U.S. until his antic performance in Nuns on the Run with Eric Idle. He then starred as the title character in the satiric comedy The Pope Must Die (released in the U.S. as The Pope Must Diet). In 1993, he starred in the British TV detective series Cracker as Fitz, a nervous forensic psychologist who helps crack cases. He won a BAFTA TV award for the role, and he won a Cable ACE award when it was rebroadcast in the U.S. on A&E. When the show ended, he briefly joined up with the James Bond film series as Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky in GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough. In the late '90s, he starred in a few independent films (Montana, Frogs for Snakes) and played Sgt. Peter Goldy in the Hughes brothers' thriller From Hell. However, he's been most successful in the area of family entertainment. He was delightful as the con man in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with Elijah Wood; he was Tweedledum to George Wendt's Tweedledee in Alice in Wonderland; and he found a fine place for himself as Hagrid the Giant in the Harry Potter film series. In 2002, he earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the British Academy for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. In 2003, he returned to British TV to play lawyer Jack Lennox in The Planman. Coltrane continued to work as Hagrid throughout the Harry Potter film series (2001-2011), and lent his voice to films including The Tales of Despereaux (2008) and Brave (2012).

Trivia: British actress Maureen Lipman played leading roles in a number of films during the '70s. She is particularly known for her versatility and her television work.

Trivia: The "matinee idol" of the motley Monty Python crew, Eric Idle attended Cambridge University, where he served as president of the Footlights Revue. Idle's fellow college troupers included future Pythonites John Cleese and Graham Chapman. After getting his start on such TV series as Do Not Adjust Your Set and The Frost Report, Idle served as performer and co-writer for the zany weekly series Monty Python's Flying Circus. He remained a loyal Python throughout the group's many film, TV-special and book projects. On his own, Idle has co-starred in such films as The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989), Nuns on the Run (1990), Mom and Dad Save the World (1992), and Casper (1995). One of his best screen showings was his sidesplitting bit as an accident-prone cyclist in National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985). Among Idle's contributions to American television was his star turn as snobbish ghost Grant Pritchard in the 1989 comedy/fantasy series Nearly Departed. He starred in the 1990 farce Nuns on the Run, and three years later wrote and starred in the comedy Splitting Heirs. He continued to appear in various projects, often lending his voice to animated works like Quest for Camelot, The Secret of NIMH II, and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. He directed a second Rutles movie in 2003, and that same year appeared in the documentary about the tribute concert performed after George Harrison's death. He narrated Ella Enchanted in 2004, but the next year he would have one of the biggest successes of his career when he masterminded Spamalot, a smash-hit Broadway musical that reworked Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He appeared in the documentary The Aristocrats, and voiced Merlin in Shrek the Third. In 2011 he was one of the many pepole who discussed his relationship with George Harrison in Martin Scorsese's documentary about the former Beatle.

Trivia: Supporting player, onscreen from the late '80s.

Trivia: In the '80s, filmmaker Amy Heckerling was one of only a handful of American female directors (alongside Penny Marshall, Martha Coolidge, and Penelope Spheeris) known for consistently producing A-budget box office draws. Born in the Bronx, NYC, on May 7, 1954, Heckerling graduated, sequentially, from Manhattan's High School of Art and Design, NYU's prestigious Tisch School of Film, and the AFI - where she received her Master's in filmmaking.Heckerling served her apprenticeship with five years' worth of short subjects, and graduated to a feature-length effort with the sleeper hit Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). Adapted from the book of the same title by Rolling Stone journalist Cameron Crowe, the picture recounts Crowe's experiences impersonating a student at a southern California high school. The innuendo-laden film divided critics, but permanently carved a niche for "teen" films in American cinema (and probably paved the way for John Hughes); it also became a box-office smash and established several young stars, including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Nicolas Cage and Eric Stolz, and most of all Sean Penn, who dazzled everyone with his evocation of stoner surfer Jeff Spicoli. The picture briefly typed Heckerling as a "youth market" director. Heckerling subsequently directed Johnny Dangerously (1984), an uneven gangster spoof starring Michael Keaton, Joe Piscopo and Marilu Henner, and helmed the vulgar and ugly National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985), from a script by John Hughes and Robert Klane. Critics quite rightly lambasted both. Perhaps as a result, it would be four years before Heckerling's fourth feature outing, and she spent that time going back to the roots of her first big success, with an attempt to adopt Fast Times at Ridgemont High for the small screen. The effort failed; CBS's 1986 series Fast Times lasted approximately one month, debuting to dismal ratings.Heckerling's fourth big-screen venture, Look Who's Talking, starred John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, and Bruce Willis (voicing a cute baby) as the three leads; it shot up to become one of the most towering box-office draws of 1989 when it hit theaters late that year, surpassing even Back to the Future, Part II. Heckerling's decision to stick with the franchise for a follow-up proved less intuitive; 1990's Look Who's Talking Now featured Roseanne Barr voicing a second Alley/Travolta childThe director returned to form with her 1995 feature Clueless, a modernization of Jane Austen's novel Emma, about a spoiled and airheaded Beverly Hills teen. The picture made a star of Alicia Silverstone and charmed just about everyone; it also became a box office blockbuster.Heckerling continued to work as a producer throughout the late nineties, and returned as a director with less success for 2000's Loser, an oddball romance starring Mena Suvari and Jason Biggs. The romantic comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman followed, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Paul Rudd as lovers with an eleven-year age difference. In 2012 she reteamed with Clueless star Alicia Silverstone for Vamps, a horror comedy about female vampires who love the night life.

Trivia: Ballard Berkeley went from a successful if somewhat undistinguished career as a theatrical leading man to a long and lucrative career in movies and television playing memorable character roles and closed it out with a part on television that made him famous on both sides of the Atlantic. Born in Margate, Kent, England, in 1904, he was the son of a theatrical manager with the family name Blascheck. He aspired to an acting career and made his London theatrical debut in 1928. Berkeley was the understudy to the lead in Counsel's Opinion (the play that became the movie The Divorce of Lady X). He also appeared with Fred Astaire and Adele Astaire in Stop Flirting and, over the next decade did a string of appearances opposite some of the top leading ladies of the day, including Dame Edith Evans and Fay Compton. His work as a theatrical leading man, however, was rather forgettable in the eyes of most critics, next to the actresses with whom he worked. But the movies beckoned after the advent of sound, and from 1930 -- with London Melody and The Chinese Bungalow -- Berkeley regularly appeared in features, often in leading or major supporting roles. His performances may have been fine, but the movies he did failed to have a major impact; the most widely seen of the early features was The Saint in London (1939), part of a series of films about the fictional Leslie Charteris-created sleuth. His career was interrupted at that point by the outbreak of the Second World War, rather ironically, considering the path of his subsequent career. Berkeley didn't serve in combat or even in the armed forces, but worked as a special constable, often in tandem with his fellow thespian Jack Hulbert. His presence was a big boost to the morale of their fellow officers, as he would organize entertainment in his off-duty hours.Berkeley sole wartime film appearance was a small but memorable part, as the HMS Torin's engineer-commander, in Noel Coward and David Lean's In Which We Serve (1942). And in 1947, after the war's end, he made his New York stage debut in the musical comedy Under the Counter. But theater receded in significance as part of his career during the postwar era, as Berkeley moved into character roles in film playing army officers (and, later -- and more notably -- retired army officers), police inspectors, and the occasional villain. During the 1950s, he also increasingly began to be seen on television as that medium took root in England, especially in crime programs like Dixon of Dock Green and action-adventure series such as The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, and The Invisible Man. He remained busy on both the big and small screens and became a popular and familiar presence in British entertainment. Finally, in the mid-'70s, as he reached his own seventies, he was cast in the perfect role, a part that took advantage of his comically officious, Colonel Blimp-ish persona, which he cultivated in his portrayal of many a military officer, and also of his advancing age: Major Gowen on Fawlty Towers. As one of the long-standing residents at the broken-down hotel owned by Basil Fawlty (John Cleese), the Major -- who sometimes seemed comically disoriented -- was the most memorable of the guests whose presence vexed Fawlty, and Berkeley brought a great deal of humanity to the role without ever losing the opportunity for a laugh. And the series' success in America made him a familiar name to television viewers across the Atlantic for the first time. He continued working for another nine years, right up to his death in 1988, even making it into National Lampoon's European Vacation. Most of his appearances were in productions aimed at British viewers, such as The Wildcats of St. Trinian's (1980), alongside such long-serving acting talents as Michael Hordern and Thorley Walters, in what was the last of the "St. Trinian's" films.

Trivia: Italian lead actor in international films, onscreen from the '80s.