Trivia: The son of a Brooklyn policeman who died when he was eight, African-American comedy superstar Eddie Murphy was raised in the comfortable middle-class community of Hempstead, NY, by his mother and stepfather. A natural-born class clown, he was voted the most popular student at Roosevelt Junior and Senior High. By the age of 15, he was doing standup gigs at 25 to 50 dollars a pop, and within a few years he was headlining on the comedy-club circuit.Murphy was 19 he was when hired as one of the backup performers on the NBC comedy weekly Saturday Night Live. His unique blend of youthful arrogance, sharkish good cheer, underlying rage, and street-smart versatility transformed the comedian into SNL's prime attraction, and soon the country was reverberating with imitations of such choice Murphy characterizations as sourball celebrity Gumby, inner-city kiddie host Mr. Robinson, prison poet Tyrone Green, and the Little Rascals' Buckwheat. Just when it seemed that he couldn't get any more popular, Murphy was hastily added to the cast of Walter Hill's 1982 comedy/melodrama feature film 48 Hours, and voila, an eight-million-dollars-per-picture movie star was born. The actor followed this cinematic triumph with John Landis' Trading Places, a Prince and the Pauper update released during the summer of 1983, the same year that the standup album Eddie Murphy, Comedian won a Grammy. In 1984, he finally had the chance to carry a picture himself: Beverly Hills Cop, one of the most successful pictures of the decade. Proving that at this juncture Murphy could do no wrong, his next starring vehicle, The Golden Child (1986), made a fortune at the box office, despite the fact that the picture itself was less than perfect. After Beverly Hills Cop 2 and his live standup video Eddie Murphy Raw (both 1987), Murphy's popularity and career seemed to be in decline, though his staunchest fans refused to desert him. His esteem rose in the eyes of many with his next project, Coming to America (1987), a reunion with John Landis that allowed him to play an abundance of characters -- some of which he essayed so well that he was utterly unrecognizable. Murphy bowed as a director, producer, and screenwriter with Harlem Nights (1989), a farce about 1930s black gangsters which had an incredible cast (including Murphy, Richard Pryor, Della Reese, Redd Foxx, Danny Aiello, Jasmine Guy, and Arsenio Hall), but was somewhat destroyed by Murphy's lazy, expletive-ridden script and clichéd plot that felt recycled from Damon Runyon stories. Churned out for Paramount, the picture did hefty box office (in the 60-million-dollar range) despite devastating reviews and reports of audience walkouts. Murphy's box-office triumphs continued into the '90s with a seemingly endless string of blockbusters, such as the Reginald Hudlin-directed political satire The Distinguished Gentleman (1992), that same year's "player" comedy Boomerang, and the Landis-directed Beverly Hills Cop III (1994). After an onscreen absence of two years following Cop, Murphy reemerged with a 1996 remake of Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor. As directed by Tom Shadyac and produced by the do-no-wrong Brian Grazer, the picture casts Murphy as Dr. Sherman Klump, an obese, klutzy scientist who transforms himself into Buddy Love, a self-obsessed narcissist and a hit with women. As an added surprise, Murphy doubles up his roles as Sherman and Buddy by playing each member of the Klump family (beneath piles and piles of latex). The Nutty Professor grossed dollar one and topped all of Murphy's prior efforts, earning well up into the hundreds of millions and pointing the actor in a more family-friendly direction. His next couple of features, Dr. Dolittle and the animated Mulan (both 1998), were children-oriented affairs, although in 1999 he returned to more mature material with the comedies Life (which he also produced) and Bowfinger; and The PJs, a fairly bawdy claymation sitcom about life in South Central L.A.Moving into the new millennium, Murphy resurrected Sherman Klump and his brood of misfits with the sequel Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000) before moving on to yet another sequel in 2001, the decidedly more family-oriented Dr. Dolittle 2. That same year, sharp-eared audiences were served up abundant laughs by Murphy's turn as a donkey in the animated fairy tale spoof Shrek. Nearly stealing the show from comic powerhouse co-star Mike Myers, children delighted at Murphy's portrayal of the put-upon sidekick of the kindhearted ogre and Murphy was subsequently signed for a sequel that would go into pre-production in early 2003. After bottoming out with the subsequent sci-fi comedy flop The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Murphy stepped into Bill Cosby's old shoes for the mediocre big-screen adaptation of I Spy. With the exception of a return to donkeydom in the 2004 mega-hit Shrek 2, Murphy stuck with hapless father roles during the first several years of the new millennium, Daddy Day Care being the most prominent example, with Disney's The Haunted Mansion following closely behind.In December 2006, however, he emerged with a substantial part in Dreamgirls, writer/director Bill Condon's star-studded adaptation of the hit 1981 Broadway musical about a Supremes-esque ensemble's ascent to the top. Murphy plays James Thunder Early, an R&B vocal sensation for whom the titular divas are hired to sing backup. Variety's David Rooney proclaimed, "Murphy...is a revelation. Mixing up James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Jackie Wilson, and some of his own wiseass personae, his Jimmy leaps off the screen both in his scorching numbers (his proto-rap is a killer) and dialogue scenes. It's his best screen work." A variety of critics groups and peers agreed with that assessment, landing Murphy a number of accolades including a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Around the same time, Murphy wrapped production on director Brian Roberts' Norbit. In that picture, the actor/comedian retreads his Nutty Professor work with a dual turn as Norbit, an insecure, backward geek, and Norbit's monstrous wife, an oppressive, domineering loudmouth. The story has the unhappy couple faced with the possible end of their marriage when Norbit meets his dream-girl (Thandie Newton). Never one to stray too far from familiar territoryMurphy next reteamed with the vocal cast of Shrek yet again for the next installment in the series, Shrek the Third.Over the coming years, Murphy would appear in a handful of comedies like Meet Dave, Imagine That, and Tower Heist. In 2011, he was announced as the host of 2012 Academy Awards, with Brett Ratner (his Tower Heist director) producing the show, but Murphy dropped out after Ratner resigned. In 2013, a fourth Beverly Hills Cop was announced, but the film was pulled from Paramount's schedule after pre-production issues.

Trivia: Following his training at the North Carolina School of the Arts, actor Judge Reinhold worked in regional repertory, dinner theaters, and "outdoor" dramas. He gained prominence in TV roles as gawky teenagers, notably the lead in the syndicated Capital Cities Special A Step Too Slow. In films from 1979, Reinhold's first major role was high schooler Brad in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He hit his stride in 1984, playing the nice-guy detective sent to trail Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop (1984). Though he has proven a convincing villain when the need has arisen, Judge Reinhold has thrived in parts calling for decency and dependency. Reinhold's career slowed down a bit during the '90s and in the early part of the decade he seemed destined to be relegated to B-movies and television films such as Four Eyes and Six Guns (1993), but in 1994, he appeared in two major features, Beverly Hills Cop III and The Santa Clause.

Trivia: An actor of seemingly boundless range, New York-born Hector Elizondo began his career as a dancer. His initial training was at the Ballet Arts school of Carnegie Hall, from which he moved on to the Actors Studio. After several years' stage work, Elizondo made an inauspicious movie debut as "The Inspector" in the low-budget sex film The Vixens (1969). He was shown to better advantage in his next film, Hal Ashby's The Landlord (1970), which he followed up with strong character parts in such Manhattan-based productions as The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) and Thieves (1977). With Young Doctors in Love (1982), Elizondo began his long association with director Garry Marshall, who has since cast the actor in all of his films, in roles both sizable (Matt Dillon's dad in The Flamingo Kid [1984], the cafe owner in Frankie and Johnny [1991]), and microscopic (Overboard [1987]). Elizondo's screen roles have run the gamut from scrungy garbage scow captains to elegant concierges (Pretty Woman). In addition, he has been a regular on several mediocre television series: Popi, Freebie and the Bean, Casablanca (in the old Claude Rains role of Inspector Renault), a.k.a. Pablo, Foley Square, and Down and Out in Beverly Hills, In 1994, Elizondo took on a co-starring role as a demanding chief of surgery on the popular TV medical drama Chicago Hope. Other non-Marshall highlights in his filmography include Tortilla Soup, Overboard, Necessary Roughness, and Music Within.

Trivia: John Saxon never intentionally set out to be a Brando clone, but his resemblance to Marlon Brando was something he was born with, so what was there to do? A student of Stella Adler at the Actor's Studio, Saxon's first film was Running Wild (1955). Thanks to "hunk" assignments in films like The Restless Years (1957), The Reluctant Debutante (1958), and Summer Youth (1958), Saxon was briefly the object of many a teenage crush. He shed himself of his heartthrob image in the early '60s with a string of unsympathetic roles, making a leading man comeback of sorts as Bruce Lee's co-star in the immensely popular Enter the Dragon (1973). Fans could watch Saxon's expertise as an actor increase (and his hairline recede) during his three-year (1969-1972) stint as Dr. Ted Stuart on the NBC television series The Bold Ones. He later appeared as a semiregular on the prime-time TV soaper Dallas. In 1988, John Saxon made his directorial debut with the low-budget feature Death House.

Trivia: Though American actress Theresa Randle has only been in films since 1990, she has already worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. She made her debut with a small role in Maid to Order (1987) and appeared sporadically in films such as Easy Wheels (1989), but first gained national notice when director Spike Lee cast her as an aspiring actress who works for a phone sex service in Girl 6 (1996). Prior to that, Randle had played small roles in two other Lee films, Jungle Fever (1991) and Malcolm X (1992). Other notable directors with whom she has worked include Robert Townsend and John Landis. In 1996, she starred opposite basketball superstar Michael Jordan and the stars of the old Warner Bros.' cartoons in the b-ball fantasy Space Jam. In 1997, Randle played a major role in the film adaptation of Todd McFarlane's popular comic Spawn (1997).

Trivia: Educated at Arcadia University and prepped for an acting career at AADA, Canadian-born Stephen McHattie billed himself as Stephen Smith during his earliest New York years. McHattie made his Broadway debut in 1968's The American Dream; two years later, he was seen in his first television production, The People Next Door. Though he has shown up in quite a few theatrical features (Belizaire the Cajun, Beverly Hills Cop), McHattie has most often been seen on TV, usually in such oddball roles as the grown-up protagonist in Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976). He was a regular on the weekly series Highcliffe Manor (1979, as Reverend Glenville), Beauty and the Beast (1989, as the unspeakable Gabriel) and the "repertory company" Canadian anthology Scene of the Crime (1991); he also played two significant guest roles on the Fox Network's X Files. Stephen McHattie was married to actress Meg Foster.

Trivia: Born in England, Alan Young was raised in Canada, where his precocious talents won him work on network radio while he was still a teenager. Already quite popular in his adopted country, Young was given an ABC network radio program in the States in 1944, which confined his wide-ranging talent for music and mimicry in a standard sitcom format. Still youthful looking enough to pass for a high school kid, Young's screen debut was in the teen romance Margie (1946), which led to several years of collegiate roles (he was a college senior in Mr. Belvedere Goes to College, even though he was 30 at the time). In 1950, the actor headlined a comedy-variety TV series, CBS' The Alan Young Show, which spotlighted his pantomime skills; unfortunately, the series degenerated into yet another situation comedy when it returned to CBS in 1953 after an 11-month hiatus. In the mid-'50s, Young was offered the lead in a comedy series about a talking horse, but turned it down cold; after several years of relative inactivity, Young was more responsive to the offer, and in 1961 began a five-year run on Mister Ed as the horse's bemused master, Wilbur Post. Upon Ed's cancellation in 1965, Young turned his back on show business to devote himself to the Christian Science movement. By 1980, the actor and the Movement had come to a parting of the ways, and he was free to accept performing work again. Very little happened until Young was hired to provide the voice of Scrooge McDuck in the 1983 Disney cartoon short Mickey's Christmas Carol. He did so well with this assignment that he became the permanent voice of Scrooge in the TV cartoon series Duck Tales, which ran from 1987 through 1990 and yielded 100 episodes. In 1988, Alan Young could be seen as well as heard in Coming of Age, a CBS sitcom set in an Arizona retirement community -- the closest Young ever come to true and full retirement. He continued to voice Scrooge McDuck in various Disney shows and video games until the end of his life. Young died in 2016, at age 96.

Trivia: Gangly, sweet-faced actor Bronson Pinchot was born in New York and raised in California, then returned to the East Coast to study at the Yale School of Drama. The common misconception is that Pinchot sprang fully grown as a comedian with his performance as an effete, bizarrely accented art gallery assistant in Beverly Hills Cop (1984). Actually he'd been in films since 1982, including Risky Business, but his Cop appearance was his breakthrough role, and was instrumental in his receiving the starring assignment of Balki Bartokomous ("Doan be reedeeculus!"), ingenuous immigrant from the mythical country of Mypos, in the popular TV sitcom Perfect Strangers (1986). Pinchot and his co-star, Mark-Linn Baker, worked together as though they'd been a team for years. In fact, they did have something in common: Both had appeared in Woody Allen films, and both had had their scenes cut before release. Since the cancellation of Perfect Strangers, Bronson Pinchot has appeared in important feature-film roles, generally amusing in nature; he was far less funny as the megalomaniac villain of the 1995 Stephen King TV miniseries The Langoliers. He appeared in Courage Under Fire, Slappy and the Stinkers, and Boardheads. In the 21st century he could be seen in Second Best, Icemaker, Cluster, and Pure Country 2: The Gift. He also found stead work in animated film lending his vocal talent to projects like Babes in Toyland, Quest for Camelot, and Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure.

Trivia: Character actor Jon Tenney has appeared on stage and in feature films, but he may be best known for his television work, notably for playing Patrol Sergeant Francis X. Donovan on Steven Bochco's short-lived police drama Brooklyn South. His film work includes Twilight of the Golds (1997), Fools Rush In (1997), and With Friends Like These... (1998). Tenney's interest in acting stems from early childhood and it developed further while he attended Vassar College, where he majored in drama and philosophy. Afterwards, he was accepted to Juilliard, where he was a standout student. He made his professional debut starring in a touring production of The Real Thing, directed by Mike Nichols. This led to his working steadily on and off Broadway, as well as in regional theater. His television credits include Equal Justice and Crime and Punishment. His made-for-television movie credits include Alone in the Neon Jungle (1987). Since 1994, Tenney has been married to popular television actress Teri Hatcher. He appeared in Kenneth Lonnergan's first film, You Can Count on Me, and Albert Brooks cast him in Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. In 2005 he was cast in the hit cable series The Closer as Agent Fritz Howard, and he would stay with that show for the next few years. He continued to work on the big screen in projects such as The Stepfather, Rabbit Hole, and Green Lantern.

Trivia: Inasmuch as Joey Travolta enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame after his brother John ascended to stardom, many jaundiced observers assumed that Joey was the typical "kid brother" coasting on his sibling's celebrity. In fact, Joey was two years older than John. Also, both Joey and his older sister Ellen Travolta had been professional actors in the New York area for several years before kid brother John hit it big with Saturday Night Fever. Largely lacking his brother's charisma, Joey has nonetheless made a comfortable living as a character actor over the past two decades, appearing in projects ranging from the made-for-TV Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story (1982) to the destined-for-oblivion Beach Babes from Beyond (1988). Joey Travolta has also landed a leading role or two, notably as conscience-stricken ex-CIA agent Frank DaVinci in 1993's DaVinci's War.

Trivia: Character actor and comedian Fred Asparagus played supporting roles in 16 films and guest starred on numerous television series ranging from Cheers to Roseanne to Hunter. Asparagus frequently performed standup comedy.

Trivia: Heavyset, memorably colorful character actor Louis Lombardi attained recognition for his ability to tackle both aggressive and jovial roles with equal deftness. A Bronx native, Lombardi specialized in a down-to-earth, unaffected acting style he later termed "naturalistic." The thespian debuted on film at age 25 (around 1993) in the drama Amongst Friends. Though it received limited theatrical exposure, its run on the festival circuit and appearance at Sundance caught the eye of Oliver Stone, who felt impressed by Lombardi and cast him as Deputy Sparky in the ultraviolent media evisceration Natural Born Killers. 1994 represented Lombardi's breakthrough year -- one that witnessed him not merely working with Stone, but with such heavyweights as John Landis (in Beverly Hills Cop 3) and Tim Burton (in Ed Wood). By affording the actor the exposure he needed, that triple play left the door wide open for Lombardi to tackle new and successive projects on the big screen and television, including the features 3000 Miles to Graceland (2001), Animal (2001), and Wonderland (2003), and such series as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Ugly Betty, and 24.

Trivia: Prolific and versatile, actor Michael Bowen joined the casts of some of the most critically respected and lucrative pictures of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, nearly always enlisted as an unremarkable everyman. Bowen launched his career with bit parts in such pictures as Valley Girl (1983), Iron Eagle (1985), and Less Than Zero (1987), then graduated to supporting roles by the late '90s. He was particularly memorable as cop Mark Dargus, the partner of ATF agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction follow-up, Jackie Brown (1997), then turned in a haunting portrayal of Rick, the dysfunctional father of game show contestant Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) in Paul Thomas Anderson's mosaic of contemporary L.A. life, Magnolia (1999). In the following decade, Bowen re-teamed with Tarantino for the neo-martial arts opus Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) and delivered an intense performance as a cruel and vile counselor at a rehab center in first-time director Monty Lapica's psychodrama, Self-Medicated (2005). He also took on a recurring role on the hit TV drama Lost as Danny Pickett, a hotheaded, tough member of the Others, during the second and third seasons of the series (2006-2007).

Trivia: Along with his friend and occasional collaborator Steven Spielberg, George Lucas was the key figure behind the American film industry's evolution (or, according to most critics, de-evolution) from cinema to spectacle during the late '70s. The mastermind behind two of the most lucrative franchises in history -- Star Wars and the Indiana Jones features, respectively -- Lucas redefined the concept of the Hollywood motion picture, shifting the focus of film away from acting and personal storytelling to special effects, production design, and rapid-fire action. Remaining at all times on the cutting edge of merchandising and technology, he forever altered the ways in which movies are perceived by audiences and studios alike. Born May 14, 1944, in Modesto, CA, George Walton Lucas Jr.'s first love was not filmmaking, but auto racing. Only a serious wreck forced him out of the sport, and he eventually enrolled in the University of Southern California's famed film school program. There his experimental short subject THX 1138 won a number of awards and helped earn him an internship at Warner Bros. studios, where he worked as a production assistant on fellow U.S.C. alum Francis Ford Coppola's 1969 effort The Rain People. After working on the Al and David Maysles brothers' 1970 Rolling Stones documentary Gimme Shelter, Lucas (with Coppola's financial assistance) mounted a feature-length remake of THX 1138. The end result, starring Robert Duvall, won rave reviews, and swiftly established itself as a major cult favorite. The success of THX 1138 brought Lucas to the attention of Universal Studios, which agreed to finance 1973's nostalgic American Graffiti, a superb reminiscence on early-'60s America which launched the motion-picture careers of talents including Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, and Harrison Ford. Even more important was the film's soundtrack, a collection of vintage rock & roll hits which became an immediate best-seller and established the formula for movie soundtracks for decades to come. Shot on a miniscule budget, American Graffiti grossed over 145 million dollars, and earned a number of Academy Award nominations including nods for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Suddenly, Lucas was a major Hollywood player, and he was given much greater latitude and support in developing his next project. That next project proved to be 1977's Star Wars, one of the most important and successful films in Hollywood history. A space opera inspired by the writings of Joseph Campbell (as well as, in no small part, Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress), it incorporated elements of mythology and religion to create a self-contained universe populated by larger-than-life characters in extraordinary situations, all achieved with the latest in cutting-edge technology. Made for just under ten million dollars, Star Wars grossed over 400 million dollars globally on just its initial run alone, creating a cottage industry of toys, comic books, and other collectibles and establishing science fiction as Hollywood's dominant genre. The overwhelming success of Star Wars did more than simply alter the kinds of films the studios looked to produce, however; it also forever changed the way films were made. The most notable aspect of the picture's storytelling was its breakneck pacing, edited by Lucas himself in tandem with his wife. Seemingly no film had ever moved so quickly, and its overwhelming success proved not only that a generation weaned on the rapid pace of television could easily absorb such an onslaught of image and sound, but that this was the kind of narrative they wanted to see on a regular basis. Studios scrambled to develop their own sci-fi projects, while Lucas himself turned to studying the pioneering special effects work of innovators like Willis O'Brien and Linwood Dunn, ultimately establishing his own F/X company, Industrial Light and Magic, to assist other filmmakers and technicians in creating the most accomplished visuals possible. The work of the Industrial Light and Magic team quickly became the industry standard, constantly remaining two or three steps ahead of their competition by applying the latest technological advances to manufacture seamless visual effects. Eventually, they became among the very first to work with computer graphics. Lucas also established Skywalker Sound, a state-of-the-art post-production audio facility which later developed THX, a means of creating new levels of sophistication in motion-picture soundtracks. Given the flurry of activity that followed in the wake of Star Wars, Lucas opted not to direct his screenplay for the film's inevitable sequel, 1980's The Empire Strikes Back, instead handing the reins over to Irvin Kershner. Widely considered the best of the Star Wars films, it was another massive hit, with a cliffhanger ending which left audiences dangling in suspense waiting for the third part of the trilogy. However, Lucas' next project, which he worked on with director Steven Spielberg, was the screenplay for 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, an adventure inspired by the old-time movie serials. Starring Harrison Ford as the renowned archaeologist Indiana Jones, Raiders was another blockbuster, later inspiring two sequels, 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, as well as a short-lived television series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Now working almost exclusively in the capacity of executive producer, Lucas wrapped up the Star Wars trilogy in 1983 with Return of the Jedi. His next major project was also his first unmitigated disaster: 1986's Howard the Duck. Based on a cult hit from Marvel Comics, the film was both a critical and commercial bomb, while 1988's sword-and-sorcery epic Willow failed to fare much better. In 1997, he reissued the Star Wars trilogy in theaters with additional footage and newly revised special effects, all to massive box-office success. Finally, that summer he also began pre-production on the first of the hotly anticipated new Star Wars features. The first of the new trilogy, Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace, opened in May of 1999. Despite an almost unprecedented degree of marketing, rumor, and advance ticket sales, the film failed to live up to the colossal expectations that industry and media observers placed upon it. In addition to receiving unenthusiastic reviews and weak word-of-mouth, it also didn't surpass Titanic's box-office record, as many had expected it would. However, The Phantom Menace still proved to be a very profitable affair, grossing well over 400 million dollars, and legions of Lucas fans came out of theaters already impatient for the trilogy's next installment. Though Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones was greeted with largely negative reviews by critics, longtime fans of the series nevertheless costumed-up and assembled en masse in front of multiplexes nationwide in anticipation for the next chapter in Anakin Skywalker's continuing fall to the dark side. Generally considered an improvement over the previous installment by fans, the film also made film history in being the first feature to be digitally shot and projected in theaters, prompting many to mark the days of celluloid entertainment in the traditional sense. Though it had strong adversarial competition in the form of everyone's favorite web-slinging superhero Spider-Man, Attack of the Clones still managed to make a splash at the box-office. The next installment, in the saga, 2005's Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith - fared even better critically and commercially, and brought the saga full circle, ending where 1977's Episode IV: A New Hope begain.In the years that followed, Lucas turned up as participant in a number of documentaries, such as The Pixar Story and Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel. He then joined forces with longtime friend and collaborator Steven Spielberg for 2008's sequel Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, executive produced the same year's television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and then in 2012 executive produced the period drama Red Tails, on the experiences of the Tuskegee Airmen - directed by first-timer Anthony Hemingway. He also served as the executive producer for the 2012 film Red Tails.

Trivia: Grew up in Tennessee on a dairy farm. Was an excellent student in high school while taking drama classes and doing plays. Travelled to New York for the first time due to a modeling job. Worked as a foot model. Was a trophy girl at a race track. Studied acting in New York before moving to Los Angeles. Studied acting at Larry Moss Studio and holds a B.F.A. in Theater Arts. Skilled in swimming, horseback riding, rock climbing and softball.

Trivia: After studying at the Rhode Island School of Design and N.Y.U., filmmaker Martha Coolidge worked in Canadian television while making short films and documentaries. In 1975, she wrote, directed, and produced her first feature film, Not a Pretty Picture, focusing on the issue of high school date rape. It wasn't until 1983 that she would find her niche in comedies with the teen classic Valley Girl, starring a young Nicolas Cage. She stayed with teen movies for her next three projects: National Lampoon's Joy of Sex, Real Genius, and Plain Clothes. For the rest of the '80s, Coolidge directed several TV shows (including a few episodes of The Twilight Zone) and made-for-TV movies before making a comeback in 1991 with the coming-of-age drama Rambling Rose, winning her Best Director at the Independent Spirit Awards. In 1992, she made the TNT movie Crazy in Love, featuring an all-star cast with Holly Hunter, Gena Rowlands, and Frances McDormand. She stayed with comedy dramas for her next two efforts: Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers and Angie, starring Geena Davis. The rest of the '90s she made several little-seen features, including the Jack Lemmon/ Walter Matthau comedy Out to Sea. Her television work was more successful, with an Emmy nomination for her biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and a Director's Guild award for a segment of the anthology If These Walls Could Talk 2 (the other segments were directed by Jane Anderson and Anne Heche). A longtime associate of the DGA, Coolidge became the group's first woman president in 2002. The next year, she made the romantic drama Aurora Island, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Kim Basinger. In 2004 Coolidge release The Prince & Me, a romance starring Julia Stiles as a young woman who falls in love with a royal. Two years later Coolidge directed the Duff sisters, Hilary and Haylie as spoiled sisters who lose their fortune, in Material Girls.

Trivia: Dubbed "the Queen of B-movies," Julie Strain has established herself as the reigning monarch of a rarefied kingdom whose subjects include chainsaw-wielding lesbian hookers, virgin-sacrificing sorceresses, 6'7" dominatrixes, Satanic cops, and horny vampires. Standing a proud 6'1" and packing more silicon than the Dupont plant, Strain has starred in over 80 films, most of which have gone straight to video and into the hearts and hormones of remote control-toting men everywhere.Hailing from Concord, California, where she was born February 18, 1962, Strain had a lower-income, middle-American upbringing. Her life changed drastically when, at the age of 11, she was kicked in the head by a horse and suffered total amnesia as a result. After spending many years reconstructing her identity from scratch and enduring an unsatisfying marriage, Strain decided to head for Hollywood at the ripe old age of 28. Although she initially encountered extreme poverty, perseverance and a willingness to do just about anything allowed the aspiring actress to prevail, and five years later she had starred in a dizzying number of films and videos with names like Witchcraft 4: Virgin Heart and Bimbo Movie Bash, had been named Penthouse magazine's 1993 "Pet of the Year," and had seen her likeness reproduced on everything from calendars to coffee mugs. Although Strain has stuck largely to the B-movie realm, she has made the occasional foray into mainstream film, appearing in such features as Kuffs (1992), Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994), and Beverly Hills Cop III (1994), the last of which billed her simply as "Annihilator Girl."

Trivia: Yale Drama School alumnus George Schaefer built his reputation as producer/director of several Hallmark Hall of Fame TV productions of the 1950s and 1960s. One of these, Macbeth (starring Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson), was expanded and released as a theatrical feature in 1963. Schaefer's subsequent non-TV films were as forgettable as his TV work was memorable; arguably the best of his Hollywood efforts was An Enemy of the People, a 1978 labor of love co-conceived by Schaefer and star Steve McQueen. Schaefer returned to television after 1978, garnering several industry awards to add to his already impressive trophy collection. Among George Schaefer's Emmy-winning TV productions were Little Moon of Alban (1959), the aforementioned MacBeth (1960), The Magnificent Yankee (1965), Elizabeth the Queen (1967), and A War of Children (1972). Schaefer died September 10, 1997, after a lengthy illness at the age of 76.

Trivia: Born and raised in New Jersey, Joe Dante was a garrulous, semi-obsessed "movie nut." As a teenager, Dante wrote articles and criticism for "#Castle of Frankenstein," a popular "fanzine" for horror-film aficionados. While attending the Philadelphia College of Art, Dante and his friend Jon Davidson put together The Movie Orgy (1968), a 7-hour compilation of kitschy film clips that was screened on the college-campus circuit under the sponsorship of Schlitz beer. Dante went on to write for The Film Bulletin, then joined Roger Corman's New World Pictures, starting out editing trailers. When Dante made noises about becoming a director, Corman challenged him to whip up a picture for $50,000; the result was Hollywood Boulevard, an elongated (and frequently sidesplitting) inside joke about low-budget moviemaking. With Piranha (1978) and The Howling (1980), Dante began attracting critical attention as a director to keep an eye on. For producer Steven Spielberg, Dante directed his most profitable film, Gremlins (1984), a funny and frightening compendium of filmic "quotes" from past movie classics, full of cameo appearances by such pop-culture icons as Chuck Jones, Dick Miller, and Robby the Robot. For television, Dante has directed episodes of Police Squad, Amazing Stories, Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt. While Dante is best known for his stylish "scare" pictures, one of the director's finest and most personal projects was Matinee (1993), a nostalgic (and very movie-savvy) glance back at what it was like to grow up as a film buff in the early 1960s.

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: Were it not for the Russian put-down of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, director Peter Medak might well have been one of the leading lights of the New Hungarian Cinema of the 1970s. As it happened, Medak was forced to flee to Britain, where after a lengthy apprenticeship he was allowed to direct TV movies and to work as second-unit director on such films as Kaleidescope (1966) and Funeral in Berlin (1967). After making his theatrical-film directorial bow in 1968, Medak garnered praise for his handling of the very black comedy A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1972). He followed this with The Ruling Class (1972) a rude, irreverent, achingly funny combination of theatrical and cinematic knowhow which skewered every traditional value held near and dear by the British aristocracy (the hero imagines he's Jesus Christ, then switches to Jack the Ripper). In between bread-and-butter assignments like Zorro the Gay Blade (1982), Medak has continued pushing the envelope of taste and style with such films as The Krays, a 1990 crime story concerning London's notorious identical-twin gang bosses (whom Medak knew personally), and Romeo Is Bleeding (1994), a horrifying and sometimes darkly hilarious study of modern-day gang activity.

Trivia: After wartime service with the Royal Canadian Air Force, Edmontonian Arthur Hiller began his show business career in Canadian radio and television. In the mid-1950s, Hiller left the CBC for American television, directing such live anthologies as Playhouse 90 and such filmed weeklies as Alcoa/Goodyear Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Naked City. He directed his first theatrical film in 1957, moving on to such 1960s big-budgeters as The Americanization of Emily (1964), where he proved himself a superb technician with only a trace of personal style. In 1970, Hiller was fortunate enough to be in the director's chair for that year's biggest hit, Love Story, which earned him an Oscar nomination. Extremely successful for the next four decades, Arthur Hiller continued to turn out such slick, efficient products as Silver Streak (1974), The In-Laws (1976), The Lonely Guy (1984) and The Babe (1992), works that were always as good as (but seldom better than) their scripts. One of Hiller's most admirable professional accomplishments was establishing a strong rapport with notoriously argumentative actor George C. Scott, whom Hiller directed in The Hospital (1971) and Plaza Suite (1971), and about whom Hiller wrote an article for the 1977 compendium Closeups: The Movie Star Book. In 1993, Hiller was appointed president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a post he held until 1997. One of his last films, An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997), was ironic in that Hiller requested his name be taken off the film after seeing the final cut; Alan Smithee was the official pseudonym of the Directors Guild in cases like that, and, therefore, the film credited to Alan Smithee. Hiller won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 2002, and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006. He died in 2016, at age 92.

Trivia: Ray Harryhausen carved out an all-but-unique niche for himself in movies, from the 1950s through the 1980s. In an era in which actors commanded the lion's share of public attention, with directors taking most of what was left, Harryhausen acquired a worldwide fandom as the creator and designer of some of the most beloved fantasy films of all time. He was usually identified as a special-effects designer and, more specifically, a master of stop-motion animation, but Harryhausen's role went much deeper than that. He was the originator of most of the movies with which he is associated, and his special effects determined the shape, content, and nuances of his movies down to the script level, much more so than the directors of the movies, who often had little more to do than move actors around and run the crew. Harryhausen began devising his own models and puppets, eventually putting his skills to use working in an army-training film unit during World War II. After the war, he went to work for producer George Pal on a series of stop-motion animated short films called Puppetoons, and eventually went to work for Willis O'Brien. At the time, O'Brien was working on a joint production with Merian C. Cooper (the co-producer of King Kong), making a fantasy film about a giant ape entitled Mighty Joe Young (1949). As it worked out, O'Brien was so heavily involved on the production side that 80 percent of the animation in the movie was Harryhausen's work.At the start of the 1950s, Harryhausen devised a relatively low-cost method of stop-motion work that permitted the creation of special effects on a smaller budget than had theretofore been the case. The first movie to make use of his new technique was The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Inspired by the short story The Foghorn (written by Harryhausen's longtime friend Ray Bradbury), the movie told the story of a dinosaur awakened from suspended animation by an Arctic nuclear test; the dinosaur escapes official notice at first, wrecking isolated ships and a lighthouse as it follows its ancient spawning instinct down the Atlantic coast until it comes ashore in New York City. That last third of the film remains one of the most spectacular ever seen in movies, Harryhausen's model work and Willis Cooper's miniature sets resulting in stunningly realistic, spellbinding depictions of the gigantic beast and the destruction of the city.The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was soon remade as Gojira, which was later recut for the U.S. and retitled Godzilla, King of the Monsters; and later as The Giant Behemoth; with a man in a rubber suit, as Gorgo. He followed this up with It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).Harryhausen eventually wearied of doing monster-on-the-loose stories, so he turned back to an idea that he'd first conceived after The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms of doing an Arabian Nights fantasy along the lines of the 1940 Alexander Korda-produced Thief of Bagdad. The difference would be that his would show all of the wonders of the ancient-world fantasy onscreen using stop-motion photography. The result was The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). The opening of Harryhausen's great cycle of fantasy films, the movie was a huge box-office hit and a critical favorite.The next 23 years were something of a golden age for Harryhausen and Schneer, as they generated seven extraordinary fantasy and sci-fi fantasy films: The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1959), Mysterious Island (1961), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The First Men in the Moon (1964), The Valley of Gwangi (1969), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), and Clash of the Titans (1981). He also took a break from his own productions with Schneer to work on Hammer Films' One Million Years B.C. (1966), starring Raquel Welch and John Richardson. The latter featured the best dinosaur animation seen onscreen since King Kong, and The Valley of Gwangi gave Harryhausen a chance to pay tribute to his mentor, adapted as it was from a proposal of O'Brien's. The jewel among his own productions with Schneer, however, was Jason and the Argonauts, which brought the Greek gods, goddesses, demigods, and other mythical creations to life as they had never before been seen onscreen. Harryhausen's movies of the 1970s were no less dazzling, and it is to his credit that he continued making his fantasy movies. By 1981, Harryhausen and Schneer had reached the top of their game in terms of casting -- Burgess Meredith, Dame Maggie Smith, and Sir Laurence Olivier were all in Clash of the Titans. But Columbia had gone through several management shifts over the years and declined to produce that movie, which ended up in the hands of MGM. It was also the first movie in which Harryhausen had to rely on the work of assistants to help him. He was unable to get further films produced, however, as the generational change in the movie industry, combined with his good taste, his advancing age (as well as his corresponding desire not to be divided from his family for months at a time), and his unwillingness to utilize CGI technology, left Harryhausen seeming out of step with the business.From the 1980s onward, Harryhausen maintained (and his fans seem to all agree) that his stop-motion technique, though time-consuming, permitted the introduction of a personality into his creations. Those creatures, from Mighty Joe Young to Clash of the Titans, display the illusion of full life, including feeling and, within the limits of what their nature is supposed to be, an inner life. Indeed, one of the highest tributes to Harryhausen's art is the sense of real life behind his Rhedosaurus from The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, his Ymir (and the elephant) from 20 Million Miles to Earth, the Cyclops (and most of the rest) from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and all of the creatures from Jason and the Argonauts and The Valley of Gwangi -- they feel so real that it hurts when they hurt . Despite Harryhausen's absence from movies for 11 years, he received an Academy Award in 1992 for his career-length work as a creator and designer of stop-motion animation. A frequent guest at festivals of his films, he has also seen his models and miniatures exhibited in museums. In May of 2004, he published Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life, a deluxe oversize hardcover book (co-written with Tony Dalton), featuring a forward by Ray Bradbury. Harryhausen died in 2013 of natural causes at the age of 92.

Trivia: Songwriter Robert B. Sherman and his brother, Richard, were popular songwriters best known for working with the Walt Disney studios during the 1960s. They left the studio in the early '70s and as freelance artists collaborated on numerous screenplays and songwriting gigs. They are particularly known for working on children's films. Both brothers received their educations at Bard College.

Trivia: A handsome, silver-crowned news anchor whose soothing baritone voice and warm familiarity helped him to endure as one of L.A.'s most beloved and trustworthy newscasters, Jerry Dunphy's remarkable 40 years as a broadcaster brought him both instant local recognition and numerous film roles in which he usually played a character fairly close to home. Born in Milwaukee in 1921, Dunphy served as a captain in the Army Air Corps during WWII before returning to his home state to finish college and begin his career as a broadcaster in Peoria, IL. Subsequently working for CBS Radio and ABC, Dunphy later moved to Los Angeles, which positioned him well for numerous roles as a broadcaster in film and television. Appearing in such television series as Batman and Roseanne and such features as Oh, God! (1977) and Independence Day (1996), Dunphy's persona was the definition of the distinguished and sincere newscaster. After suffering heart attacks in both 1978 and 1991, Dunphy died in May of 2002 after stricken by a third heart attack in front of his L.A. condo. He was 80.

Trivia: Barbet Schroeder's Swiss geologist father was on assignment in Iran when he was born. After a globe-trotting childhood, Schroeder was educated at the Sorbonne; then, like half the under-30 population of France (or so it seemed), he became a movie critic. Brief jobs as a jazz concert producer and news photographer followed before Schroeder went to work as an assistant for one of his role models, French director Jean-Luc Godard. In 1964, the 22-year-old Schroeder set up his own film production company, Les Films du Losange. Among the many prominent pictures produced by Schroeder include director Eric Rohmer's "Moral Tales" La Collectioneuse (1966), My Night at Maud's (1969), and Claire's Knee (1970). Schroeder himself turned director with 1969's More, gaining critical attention with several unorthodox documentaries. With the American film Barfly (1987), Schroeder established himself as a prime purveyor of "slice of life" drama -- albeit entertaining enough to please the crowd. Oscar nominated for his take-no-sides direction of Reversal of Fortune (1990), the story of the controversial Claus von Bulow case, Schroeder then helmed the tense -- and successful -- "cat-and-mouse" thriller Single White Female (1992).

Trivia: Becoming, at the age of 24, the youngest individual and the first African American ever to be nominated for a Best Director Academy Award, John Singleton made movie history with Boyz 'N the Hood, his astonishing 1991 directorial debut. An intensely personal portrait of life and death in South Central L.A. that was inspired by the director's own experiences, the film earned Singleton comparisons to past wunderkind Orson Welles and heralded him as one of Hollywood's most important new directors.Born January 6, 1968, in the South Central L.A. neighborhood he would later immortalize on celluloid, Singleton was the son of a mortgage broker father and a company sales executive mother. Raised jointly by his divorced parents, he went on to attend the University of Southern California, where he majored in film writing. While a student at U.S.C., Singleton won a number of writing awards that led to a deal with the Creative Artists Agency during his sophomore year. At the age of 23, he wrote and directed Boyz 'N the Hood, a coming-of-age drama that centered on an intelligent 17-year-old's (Cuba Gooding Jr.) efforts to make it out of his neighborhood alive. Featuring a strong cast that included Gooding Jr., Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, and Laurence Fishburne, and deft direction that humanized the violence of South Central L.A. rather than sensationalized it, the film was a major critical and commercial triumph. One of the highest-grossing films in history to have been directed by an African American, Boyz 'n the Hood also made history with its twin Best Screenplay and Best Director Oscar nominations for its young writer/director. In addition to those nominations, Singleton was also honored with the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best First-Time Director.Singleton followed Boyz 'N the Hood with Poetic Justice in 1993. Starring Janet Jackson as its heroine, a South Central L.A. hairdresser coping with the shooting death of her boyfriend, the film boasted magnetic performances from its entire cast, which also included rapper Tupac Shakur as Jackson's love interest. Although it was profitable, Poetic Justice failed to find favor with most critics, some of whom noted that it lacked the power and urgency of Singleton's previous effort. The director's subsequent project, Higher Learning (1995), also fared rather poorly among critics. A drama about racial, gender, and political conflict on a college campus, it benefited from the performances of its ensemble cast, which included Omar Epps, Laurence Fishburne, Ice Cube, and Kristy Swanson, but was weighed down by the presence of one too many one-dimensional characters that existed to highlight the issues Singleton was attempting to explore. Ironically, it was Singleton's most critically appreciated effort since Boyz 'N the Hood that was virtually ignored by audiences. Rosewood, a powerful drama based on the real-life 1923 massacre and destruction of an African-American town in Florida by whites from a neighboring community, was widely considered Singleton's strongest film since his directorial debut. A dense and ultimately depressing multi-character epic fueled by the presence of such talented actors as Ving Rhames, John Voight, and Don Cheadle, the film did not attempt to make a happy ending out of its stark material, which may have accounted for its inability to win a large audience.In 2000, Singleton returned with his biggest project to date, a glossy, expensive remake of Shaft. Starring Samuel L. Jackson as its titular, Armani-clad hero, the nephew of original Shaft Richard Roundtree (who had a cameo in the new film), the film was an exercise in flamboyant, unapologetic political incorrectness, featuring easily distinguishable bad guys and good guys and meaty helpings of bad-ass attitude. Shaft earned decidedly mixed reviews but was a summer audience pleaser, putting its director back on the map. Finding his way back into familiar territory, Singleton's next film, Baby Boy (2001), was constructed as a loose follow up to Boyz 'N the Hood. Starring vocalist/model Tyrese Gibson and Omar Gooding, the film marked a notable return to the sensative issues that Singleton had touched upon in the past after the flashily entertaining but ultimately inconsequencial departure of Shaft. Singleton made a rare appearance in front of the camera for BAADASSSSS! before helming the hit sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious. He produced {Craig Brewer's Oscar winning Hustle & Flow, a film that ended up overshadowing his directorial effort form that same year, Four Brothers. He maintained his working relationship with Brewer by producing his Hustle & Flow follow-up Black Snake Moan. In 2010 he made a documentary about shamed Olympian Marion Jones, and the next year he helmed the Taylor Lautner action vehicle Abduction

Trivia: Supporting actress, onscreen from the late '60s.

Trivia: American composer Richard Sherman and his brother, Robert B. Sherman, wrote many popular songs for Walt Disney studios during the 1960s. In 1964, they shared an Oscar for the song "Chim Chim Cheree." In the 1970s, they left Disney and began freelancing; they also began working together on screenplays.

Trivia: African-American actor Bob Minor gained his cinematic entree as a stuntman. His earliest speaking roles came by way of the blaxploitation pictures of the '70s. Two of the more profitable examples of this genre were Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), both of which starred Pam Grier and featured Minor in supporting roles. The actor occasionally surfaced in mainstream films designed for a more generic audience, notably The Deep (1978) (as Wiley), White Dog (1982) and Glory (1989) but even after attaining this filmic level he couldn't quite escape such exploitation flicks as Swinging Cheerleaders (1976). Bob Minor worked with regularity on television, just missing consistent weekly work in such never-purchased pilots as Friendly Persuasion (1975), Dr. Scorpion (1978) and Samurai (1979).