Trivia: Known in turn as Henry Fonda's son, Jane Fonda's brother, counter-culture icon Captain America, and Bridget Fonda's father, Peter Fonda finally got his due as an actor for his superb performance as a Florida beekeeper in Ulee's Gold (1997). Snaring an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for his work, Fonda was finally able to step out of his celebrated family's shadow, earning recognition for something besides his title as the black sheep of the Fonda clan.Born in New York City on February 23, 1940, Fonda, by his own accounts, grew up trying to live up to his famous father's expectations. An exceptionally bright young man, he entered the University of Omaha as a sophomore at the age of seventeen, without even finishing high school. In Omaha, he broke into acting, appearing in the Omaha Playhouse's production of Harvey. He then went to New York to pursue his acting career, first working with the Cecilwood Theatre and then debuting on Broadway at the age of twenty-one in a production of Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole. His early career took shape under the specter of his famous father, with the young actor incurring comparisons to the elder Fonda with everything he did. His onstage success led to a Hollywood screen test for the part of John F. Kennedy in PT 109. The role in the 1963 film ultimately went to Cliff Robertson, but Fonda made his film debut that same year in the Sandra Dee vehicle Tammy and the Doctor.Fonda continued to be consigned to romantic leads until he appeared in Roger Corman's The Wild Angels in 1966. A motorcycle enthusiast whom Corman cast after the film's original star, George Maharis, demanded a stunt double, Fonda seemed a natural for the role of a motorcycle gang leader. The film, which cast actual Hell's Angels and co-starred Bruce Dern, was a violent, drug-addled affair that catalyzed Fonda's reputation as his father's delinquent spawn and direct antithesis. This reputation was furthered by his starring role in Corman's The Trip, a 1967 film about the healing powers of LSD. Co-starring Dern and featuring a screenplay written by Jack Nicholson, The Trip, with its emphasis on sex, drugs, and societal estrangement, provided a preview of the film that would give Fonda both fame and notoriety.In 1969, Fonda starred in Easy Rider, a film that he also produced. Directed by Dennis Hopper, it starred Fonda, Hopper, and Nicholson as freewheeling, pot-smoking adventurers who find their counter-culture lifestyle threatened by the encroaching confines of the Establishment. One of the cultural landmarks of the late 1960s, tt was also an unexpected commercial success, grossing over $19 million at the box office, earning Fonda an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, and contributing to Hollywood's new interest in young audiences and socially relevant movies.Following the film's success, Fonda, now both a cult hero and a millionaire, went on to collaborate with Hopper again on 1971's The Last Movie. The film didn't enjoy the acclaim of their previous collaboration, and Fonda's subsequent efforts of that decade also failed to live up to the stature of Easy Rider. One possible exception was the 1974 sleeper Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, a film in which Fonda appeared to finance his directorial projects, one of which was Wanda Nevada, a 1979 film that featured his father. Increasingly, Fonda became better-known for his activities off-screen than on: his status as an anti-Establishment figurehead was enhanced when John Lennon wrote the song "She Said She Said" about him. Reportedly, it was inspired by a bad acid trip the musician had taken, during which Fonda repeatedly told him, "I know what it's like to be dead, man."Fonda's screen career continued its downward spiral during the 1980s, and towards the end of that decade it was once again overshadowed by that of a family member, in this case his daughter, Bridget. Fonda, who had exiled himself from L.A. in 1969 to live in Montana, seemed more aware of this than anyone: in an interview, he was quoted as saying, "I was Captain America and where....can you go with that? You can only ride so many motorcycles and smoke so many joints." But in the mid-1990s, Fonda's career began to get some much-needed resuscitation. After making a cameo appearance in Bodies, Rest & Motion, a 1993 film starring his daughter, he had a starring role in Michael Almereyda's Nadja (1994) and essentially parodied himself in John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. (1996). Fonda's true comeback was Ulee's Gold, Victor Nunez's 1997 exploration of loss and family ties. He won raves for his portrayal of the title character, and the Best Actor Oscar nomination he received for the film served as the industry's formal recognition of his re-emergence as a Hollywood player. The actor, always one to play by his own rules, next rejected mainstream Hollywood fare to star in Steven Soderbergh's The Limey in 1999, playing a shifty record producer, and earning uniformly excellent reviews. He also starred in The Passion of Ayn Rand as the author's long-suffering husband; the film premiered at that year's Sundance Film Festival. He branched out into kids films with a leading role in Thomas and the Magic Railroad in 2000, and appeared in The Laramie Project one year later. He continued to work steadily, often taking smaller parts in bigger movies like Supernova, Ghost Rider, and Wild Hogs. He was a fearsome, grizzled, and authentic Western presence in James Mangold's remake of 3:10 to Yuma in 2007. In 2011 he paid tribute to the man who helped launch his career by sitting down for interviews in Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.

Trivia: A Staten Island native, Rick Schroder was billed as Ricky Schroder in the fledgling stage of his acting career, which began when he was just a baby (working on commercials) and has persevered ever since. By the time he made his film debut at nine-years-old as the emotionally tortured son of a washed-up boxer (Jon Voight) in The Champ (1979), Schroder had more than 60 television appearances to his name, many of which had been filmed before he had even learned to speak. Schroder played another traumatized boy in The Earthling (1980) and fared well in several subsequent made-for-TV features, but his breakout role wouldn't come until the 1982 premiere of Silver Spoons. The NBC sitcom starred Schroder as young Ricky Stratten, the wealthy son of a toy-store mogul, and employed the winning '80s formula of single parent + wealth + cute kid + wacky best friend = hit.After the 1986 cancellation of Silver Spoons, the child actor officially became Rick Schroder and starred in several unremarkable small-screen features until landing the coming-of-age role of Newt Dobbs in the award-winning 1989 miniseries Lonesome Dove. This would become a trend for Schroder; despite his attempts to make a transition into the film world (his most notable successes being a supporting role in Crimson Tide [1995] and a performance opposite a very young Brad Pitt in Across the Tracks [1991]), the actor would find a much warmer reception in the television community. From bad seeds (1990's The Stranger Within and 1991's My Son, Johnny) to survivalists (1992's Miles From Nowhere and 1993's Return to Lonesome Dove), Schroder's roles were continually met with praise, and he seemed to have escaped the curse suffered by so many child actors.As an adult, Schroder was fatefully cast as Detective Danny Sorenson in ABC's long-running cop drama NYPD Blue. Though he was decried by NYPD Blue loyalists as little more than a former child sitcom star, it wasn't long before his aptitude at the dramatic role convinced both critics and audiences of his acting capability. When Schroder left the series in 2001, it was a great disappointment to the fan following he had developed during his time on the series. However, fans of Schroder weren't left entirely in the lurch; in 2002, Schroder joined the cast of Poolhall Junkies along with Rod Steiger and Chazz Palminteri, and also starred in the German-helmed Consequence in 2003.

Trivia: Fair-haired actress Victoria Pratt was set on quite a different career path before becoming interested in acting. She attended York University in Toronto, where she earned a degree in kinesiology, and she went on to work in the University's Human Performance Lab, testing athletes from teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs and the San Jose Sharks. She was even offered a scholarship for the physiotherapy master's program at the University of Toronto, but so she turned it down. She co-authored a book on fitness with one of her university professors, and worked as a professional fitness model, which is how she met Robert Kennedy, the publisher of MuscleMag. He suggested that Pratt enroll in acting classes, and soon after taking his advice, the model-turned-actress scored a role on the sci-fi series Cleopatra 2525 as Rose, otherwise known as "Sarge." She stuck with science fiction, later scoring roles on the series Mutant X and Day Break, and the female lead, opposite Rick Schroder, in the TV adaptation Journey to the Center of the Earth in 2008.

Trivia: Born on October 12, 1992, Kentuckian Josh Hutcherson began his career as a child actor at the age of ten and ascended meteorically to the top of his game, transitioning effortlessly within a few short years from television series episodes to telemovies to big-screen voice-over work to live-action parts in Hollywood feature films. Hutcherson's career began when producers of the hit NBC series ER cast him in the "First Snowfall" episode of that program; it aired in late 2002. Hutcherson transitioned to telemovies the following year, as the grandson of Peter Falk, who accompanies the elderly man on a colorful road trip in David Mickey Evans' picaresque yarn Wilder Days (2003).Hutcherson debuted on the big screen in 2004, with two back-to-back voice assignments on animated features. He played Markl in the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle (alongside screen vets Lauren Bacall, Christian Bale, Billy Crystal, and others) and a Hero Boy -- one of many -- in Robert Zemeckis' CG-animated holiday picture The Polar Express. That same year, Hutcherson topped these efforts with additional small-screen voice-over work in the episode of the televised animated series Justice League Unlimited entitled "For the Man Who Has Everything."Hutcherson tackled a three major roles in 2005, beginning that spring with a supporting role as Bucky, the son of dictatorial boys' soccer coach Robert Duvall (and the half-brother of Will Ferrell) in Jesse Dylan's family-oriented sports comedy Kicking & Screaming. Later that same year, Hutcherson tackled his first lead with premier billing in Mark Levin's Wonder Years-style coming-of-age dramedy Little Manhattan; in that film, the actor played Gabe, an 11-year-old boy from the New York upper crust who must contend with a newfound crush on a girl in his class (Charlie Ray), against the backdrop of his parents' tentative split. (That film also marked Hutcherson's first onscreen appearance alongside his younger brother, Connor.) Concurrent with the release of Little Manhattan, Hutcherson received second billing after Jonah Bobo, as Walter, the eldest of two siblings, in Jon Favreau's underrated family-friendly sci-fi thriller Zathura (adapted, like The Polar Express, from a Chris Van Allsburg tale).Hutcherson's activity decrescendoed the following year, when he limited himself to one role, albeit one with great visibility -- that of young Carl Munro, the son of family patriarch Robin Williams, in Barry Sonnenfeld's nutty road comedy RV In 2007, however, Hutcherson resumed his hectic workload with multiple A-list motion pictures. The first, Bridge to Terabithia, was adapted from Katherine Paterson's popular children's novel; it stars Hutcherson as Jess Aarons, a youngster who befriends classmate Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb) and constructs a vivid fantasy world with her that ends in tragedy. Animator Gabor Csupo, of Rugrats fame, directs. In spring of the same year, Hutcherson headlined another picture, Firehouse Dog, directed by Todd Holland. In that film, Hutcherson played an adolescent who teams up with the titular canine to resurrect a dilapidated firehouse. And in the summer 2008 release Journey 3-D (produced under the working title Journey to the Center of the Earth, and a contemporized adaptation of the Verne novel), the young actor portrays the nephew of a geologist played by Brendan Fraser, with whom he discovers a passageway to a "lost" universe at the Earth's core. Hutcherson would continue to nurture a career in young adult cinema, appearing in the tween-favorite Circue du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant in 2009, and Detention in 2010, before signing on for the highly anticipated big-screen adaptation of the successful fantasy-adventure young adult book franchise The Hunger Games in 2012, which became one of the biggest box office successes of that year. That same year he had another hit with the special effects-heavy adventure film Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.

Trivia: A muscular, darkly handsome actor who defies easy categorization, Brendan Fraser has an enviable versatility that has allowed him to be equally convincing in comedies, dramas, and adventure films alike. The son of a Canadian tourism executive, Fraser was born in Indianapolis on December 3, 1968. Thanks to his father's job, Fraser and his family led a fairly peripatetic existence, living in locales as varied as Ottawa, London, Rome, and Seattle. During his time in London, Fraser became interested in theater and eventually enrolled in Seattle's Cornish Institute for training.After an early appearance in Dogfight (1991), Fraser got his break in 1992's Encino Man as a Stone-Age man unfrozen in modern-day California. He went on to gain audience prominence in diverse roles such as a Jewish football player in an all-WASP environment in School Ties (1992), a grunged-out musician in Airheads (1994), a Harvard student who loses his thesis in With Honors (1994), and a quirky baseball phenom in The Scout (1994). Fraser has been quoted in one magazine article as saying that he seeks out roles combining "silliness and sexiness"; his work during the second half of the '90s certainly reflected this. Particular highlights were George of the Jungle (1997), a satire of jungle adventure films; Gods and Monsters (1998), the acclaimed rendering of the last days of director James Whale, for which Fraser earned particular praise in his role as Whale's strapping gardener; the romantic comedy Blast From the Past (1999); and a big-budget remake of The Mummy (1999) that effectively showcased Fraser as a hero well-suited to old-school adventure. So successful were the extravagantly computer generated exploits of the revived Mummy soon became a franchise, birthing sequels like The Mummy Returns (2001) and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008). Fraser would spend subsuquent years appearing in a number of varied projects, including comedies like Bedazzled and Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, dramas like The Quiet American and Crash, and adventure movies, like Journey to the Center of the Earth and Inkheart.

Trivia: Comedian Seth Myers began honing his comedy skills doing improv at Northwestern University. He would further his craft at Chicago's ImprovOlympic, and eventually joined the cast and writing staff of Saturday Night Live in 2001. Myers excelled at SNL, moving up the ladder to writing supervisor in 2005 and to co-head writer in 2006, sharing duties with Tina Fey. Myers would also become known for his hosting duties on Weekend Update, which he took over when Fey left the show. By 2013, Myers was given his own late night talk show, Late Night, in the timeslot vacated by Jimmy Fallon when Fallon took over hosting duties on The Tonight Show.