Trivia: The youngest member of what may arguably be the funniest family in show business, Marlon Wayans may also be working his way up to becoming funniest member of the funniest family in show business. Regarding the formidable task of living up to the humorous standards set by his siblings, Marlon takes a healthy and positive attitude, considering his family an important exemplary support system rather than an ominous shadow casting impossible expectations.Born in 1972 in New York City, Marlon graduated from the School of Performing Arts in New York before moving on to study film and arts at Howard University. Following the lead of eldest clan member and brother Keenen Ivory Wayans, Marlon was inspired to pursue a career in show business. After taking a small role in brother Keenen's blaxploitation spoof I'm Gonna Git You Sucka! (1988), Marlon joined the cast of Keenen's groundbreaking and trend-setting hip-hop variety show, In Living Color. A natural knack for comedy found Marlon quickly gaining momentum among the cast and refining the skills that would eventually lead him to bigger roles in both film and television. With his role in brother Damon's con-artist comedy Mo' Money, Marlon continued to display his talents for comedy with more substantial roles. Teaming with brother Shawn for television's The Wayans Bros. (1995), Marlon began to expand his responsibilities. Taking on numerous roles -- from writer to director and, of course, star -- Marlon learned the virtues of multi-tasking that would lead him to become a key creative force behind such spoofs as Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996) and Scary Movie (2000). Wayans gained the majority of positive press earned by the otherwise run-of-the-mill comedy Senseless, and a few even compared him to the likes of Jerry Lewis, thanks to his talent for rubber-limbed humor. Yet Marlon began to seek out more serious roles. "I would do straight dramatic stuff. I'm trained as a dramatic actor," he said. "A lot of people just think I'm funny and crazy all the time, but I went to a performing arts high school, so I'm trained in the dramatic arts. I just happen to be funny." Though Marlon got deadly serious for his role as Jared Leto's drug-addicted friend on a collision course with disaster in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, he continued to display his exceptional gift for comedy by hosting the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards with brother Shawn, and developing the follow-up to his runaway hit Scary Movie.The early 2000s were less benevolent to Wayans. Critics singled out and excoriated him for his foolhardy appearance as Snails in the 2000 bomb Dungeons & Dragons: The Movie. Cited as one of the most wretched films of its year - or any year, by almost everybody, Dungeons barely made half of its thirty-five million dollar budget. USA Today wrote, "Marlon Wayans' performance as a cowardly thief would have seemed in bad taste a half-century ago." As Gawain McSam in the lackluster Coen brothers remake The Ladykillers, Wayans similarly did little more than reinforce an ignorant, filthy-mouthed, jive-talking ghetto stereotype; moviegoers responded slightly more favorably than critics.Perhaps sensing the need to return to his roots for a fresh success, Marlon spent 2004 and 2006 in two family vehicles: the raunchy comedies White Chicks and Little Man, respectively In the former, he and brother Shawn play African American federal agents who go undercover as blonde Caucasian sorority girls to bust a kidnapping scheme. This film climbed the charts to become a top weekend and summer grosser. Little Man, directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans and released in July 2006, uses trick photography and sight gags to turn Marlon into the dwarfish thief Calvin Simms, who attempts to retrieve a fenced jewel by posing as an infant and hiding out in the home of aspiring parents. Once there, he relentlessly torments his would-be adoptive father (Shawn Wayans).

Trivia: As a key member of what many comedy lovers consider to be one of the funniest families on Hollywood, producer/writer/actor Shawn Wayans has been instrumental in bringing such hit parodies as Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, Scary Movie, and its sequel Scary Movie 2 to the big screen. Though Wayans has occasionally branched out to appear in such non-Wayans productions as the 1999 action thriller New Blood, it's mainly family that serves as this funnyman's bread and butter, with a lead role in the WB sitcom The Wayans Bros. leading to increasingly prominent roles in such family productions as White Chicks and Little Man. Raised in the Chelsea area of Manhattan with his nine siblings, Wayans credits his family's boundless sense of humor in helping him to get by when money was tight and the future looked grim. Supporting roles in such early efforts as elder brother Keenen Ivory's I'm Gonna Git You Sucka and the hit sketch comedy series In Living Color (for which he also DJ'ed) encouraged Wayans to try his hand at writing, and in the following years he would team with sibling Marlon to great success. Specializing in the kind of low-brow comedy that appealed mainly to the high-school and college set, the two Wayans soon found that an ideal way to gauge the success was in how much their efforts offended their mother. When their disapproving mom walked out on Scary Movie 2, the pair knew they had a surefire hit on their hands. After appearing as the titular "females" in the 2004 comedy White Chicks, it was time to shrink his best collaborator down to size for the big-head-on-a-little-body comedy Little Man in 2006.

Trivia: In the late '30s she worked in Chicago's WPA Theater. She moved to New York City in the early '40s, where she was a member of the Rose McClendon Players. She debuted on Broadway in 1941, portraying the sister of Bigger Thomas (Canada Lee) in Orson Welles's production of Native Son (1941). She established herself as a serious stage actress. She was one of the founders of the American Negro Theater. Over the years she landed a small handful of film roles, debuting onscreen in The Phenix City Story (1955). In the '70s she became recognizable to a large audience through her appearances on a number of sitcoms; she was a regular on Baby, I'm Back and 227, and she had guest appearances on many other shows.

Trivia: Sherman Hemsley is best remembered for playing George Jefferson, the lovably pompous, diminutive loud-mouth who made a fortune from his dry cleaning business and moved from Queens to a posh Manhattan high rise in The Jeffersons, a popular sitcom that ran for ten years on the CBS network. Before becoming an actor in the late '60s, Hemsley worked for the U.S. Post Office. He started out on the New York stage where his first break came from playing Gitlow in the Broadway musical Purlie (1970). Television producer Norman Lear was impressed by Hemsley's performance and so created George Jefferson for him. Originally designed as an African-American alter ego/foil to his blustery, bigoted Archie Bunker character on the smash hit All in the Family, Hemsley's George became so popular that he and his family were given their own series in 1975. Following the series' demise, Hemsley played an egotistical, loud-mouthed deacon/lawyer at the First Community Church of Philadelphia who tried to keep the new minister, Reverend Gregory, from taking over what he viewed as his personal domain, on Amen. The series broke ground by being the first hit sitcom centered on religion and ran from 1986 to 1991. In between his series work, Hemsley occasionally played supporting roles in feature films after making his debut playing Rev. Mike in the comedy Love at First Bite (1979). Most of his subsequent films were low-budget affairs such as Stewardess School and Club Fed; he also continued to appear frequently on television as a guest star and starred in such failed series as Townsend Television (1993) and Goode Behavior (1996-1997), but never quite recaptured the success he had during the '70s and '80s. His final small-screen appearance came in 2006 when he was a cast member on the sixth season of the reality TV show The Surreal Life. Hemsley died at age 74 in late July, 2012.

Trivia: Born and raised in the Midwest, actress Paula Jai Parker moved to Washington, D.C., to study at Howard University. After getting her B.A., she went on to become a regular on The Apollo Comedy Hour and Townsend Television on FOX. After proving she could do comedy, she made a dramatic turn on the HBO anthology series Cosmic Slop. She won a Cable ACE Award for her title role in the segment "Tang," based on the short novel by Chester Himes. Parker made her feature film debut as Ice Cube's girlfriend Joi in F. Gary Gray's hit comedy Friday. After meeting director Rusty Cundieff while doing Tales From the Hood, she was cast as gold-digging Adina in his urban comedy Sprung with Tisha Campbell. She also worked with many of the Wayans brothers on the WB show The Wayans Bros. and the feature film Don't Be a Menace in South Central. Her next few films included the romantic comedy Woo, starring Jada Pinkett Smith, and the period drama Why Do Fools Fall in Love, starring Halle Berry. In 1999, she joined the cast of the David E. Kelley's Snoops, a detective drama on ABC starring Gina Gershon. After the show ended, she provided the voice of Trudy Proud on the animated series The Proud Family and starred in the ensemble comedy 30 Years to Life with Tracy Morgan. Parker later appeared in Joel Schumacher's action thriller Phone Booth and Cheryl Dunye's domestic comedy My Baby's Daddy.

Trivia: Black supporting actress, onscreen from the late '70s.

Trivia: Father was U.S. Ambassador to South Africa under President Clinton. Began acting as a child and appeared in Storyville at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., at age 11. Named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts at 18. First break came when he was cast in the title role of the short-lived CBS sitcom Teech in 1991.

Trivia: Black supporting actress Ja'net DuBois first appeared onscreen in 1970.