Trivia: Cockney of birth and Cockney in nature, actor Alfie Bass made his first stage appearance in 1939, in the Unity Theatre production Plant in the Sun. Bass began acting before the camera in wartime British documentaries. While his stage career embraced Shakespeare and Shaw, Bass usually showed up in films as slang-spewing, pragmatic working class types. His movie credits include The Boys in Brown (1950) The Hasty Heart (1950), The Night My Number Came Up (1952), Help (1965), Alfie (1966), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) and Moonraker (1979). Alfie Bass was starred in the award-winning 1955 short subject The Bespoke Overcoat, and in 1967's The Fearless Vampire Killers he raised many a chuckle as the Jewish vampire who is impervious to the traditional crucifix.

Trivia: Left school at the age of 15 and started working for the Manchester Evening News newspaper. Changed his name to Warren in the 1960s because his girlfriend at the time had a crush on actor Warren Beatty. Developed his love for the performing arts while in his teens. A frequent visitor to the cinema for Saturday mornings and matineé screenings, he was actively encouraged by his parents to follow his chosen vocation. Began working in amateur dramatics and performed at Huddersfield Repertory Theatre before becoming a full-time actor. Played Huckleberry Finn in a 1965 Liverpool Playhouse production of Tom Sawyer. Played two separate characters in Coronation Street. The last scene he ever filmed was his character Charles Poldark's death in Poldark, two weeks before his own death in November 2014. Was a keen golfer and supporter of Manchester City. An actor of great presence and considerable versatility who lent his weight to a succession of diverse leading and supporting roles in comedy and drama.

Trivia: Sharp-featured, sharp-tongued British actress Kathleen Harrison was everyone's favorite Cockney, even though she was born in Lancashire. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Kathleen made her stage bow in 1926 (nine years earlier, she had appeared fleetingly in a silent picture). Her first talkie was 1931's Hobson's Choice; within only a few years, she was one of the best-loved actresses on the British screen. Her wide range encompassed suspense films (The Ghoul [1933], The Ghost Train [1941]), G. B. Shaw (Major Barbara [1941], Caesar and Cleopatra [1946]) and Dickens (A Christmas Carol [1951], The Pickwick Papers [1952]). In 1947, Harrison was costarred with Jack Warner in Holiday Camp; the actors played the heads of the Huggett family, a British equivalent to MGM's Hardy brood. This led to a popular series of Huggett films, and other well-received teamings of Warner and Harrison. Active in films until 1979, Kathleen Harrison worked almost exclusively in England; her one American production, Night Must Fall (1937), was based on a British stage success.

Trivia: British character actor Ronald Lacey had a distinguished career in British cinema and television. Lacey's unique face -- some called his looks diabolical -- was his ticket to a number of roles as the wicked, comedic, or the weird. His appearances in American film were few but memorable, since a medical condition kept him from traveling much overseas. Health problems plagued his entire life, and he died of liver failure in 1991, but not before achieving film immortality in his role as the nefarious Nazi Toht, in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark.Born in London, Lacey served in the military, and then studied drama at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. He landed his first part in the British film The Boys in 1962. Hollywood called, and he was cast in the 1964 film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage. Thereafter, Lacey was called upon to play a variety of challenging roles, such as the village idiot in Roman Polanski's 1967 film The Fearless Vampire Killers, and a demented soldier in How I Won the War (1967). He also appeared in many BBC productions, including the starring role in the story of Dylan Thomas in 1978.His unusual persona brought him roles in fantasy productions, on both television and the big screen. Notable among these was his characterization of the crazed President of the United States in the 1984 cult film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, and as the Bishop of Bath in British television's satire Blackadder II. He also excelled at two turns as transvestites in Trenchcoat (1982) and Invitation to the Wedding (1985).While Lacey will always be remembered for his inimitable performance in Raiders of the Lost Ark, his legacy is being carried on by daughters Rebecca Lacey and Ingrid Lacey, who have both followed their father into the acting profession.

Trivia: British lead actor, onscreen from the '60s.

Trivia: Jowly, curmudgeonly Australian actor Leo McKern was seen in over 200 stage productions during his five-decade career. After several comic-villain film assignments, McKern briefly became an icon of the Swingin' '60s with his portrayal of the blustering cult leader in the Beatles' Help (1965). He has since been seen as Cromwell in A Man For All Seasons (1966), as Professor Moriarty in Gene Wilder's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1986), and as a pigheaded ex-communist civil engineer in Travelling North (1986), a role which won him several industry awards. In the late 1970s, Leo McKern scored an enormous hit as the title character in the British TV series Rumpole of the Bailey, which ran off and on from 1977 through 1992. Rumpole has been both bogy and blessing to McKern, as he revealed to Vanity Fair magazine in 1995: "I consider that my best performance ever was as Peer Gynt. But if I get an obit in the London Times, they will say, '...of course, known to millions as Rumpole.'"

Trivia: Born February 15th, 1951, the raven-haired daughter of a prosperous British gynecologist, Jane Seymour debuted onstage at 13 as a member of the London Festival Ballet, after training at the Arts Educational School. Five years later, she switched to acting, making her screen bow as part of a huge ensemble in Oh, What A Lovely War! (1968). She entered the fan-mag files with her portrayal of the enigmatic Solitaire in the 1973 James Bond epic Live and Let Die, following this with a ingenue turn in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1974). While her subesquent film appearances were well-received (as was her engagement in the 1980 Broadway production of Amadeus), Seymour's larger fame rested on her prolific TV work, notably on such miniseries as "East of Eden" and "War and Remembrance." In 1988, she won an Emmy for her portrayal of Maria Callas in the TV miniseries "Onassis." Four years later, she landed one of her most successful roles to date, that of the title heroine of the TV series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. In subsequent years, Seymour sustained her career with longform soapers - such as the 1998 A Marriage of Convenience and the 2002 Heart of a Stranger - before making a most welcome return to theatrical features in 2005. That year, she scored a neat comic turn as the wife of U.S. Treasury Secretary Christopher Walken (and the mother of some outrageously dysfunctional children) in the summer comedy smash Wedding Crashers. Two years later, ABC tapped Seymour to trip the light fantastic as one of the celebrity dancers on its blockbuster series Dancing with the Stars. On that program, Seymour danced opposite series vet Tony Ovolani.

Trivia: British stage actor Patrick Troughton made the transition to films in 1948's Escape. His movie credits included the Laurence Olivier Shakespearean productions Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955), Disney's Treasure Island (1950), Hammer Films' Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and the Ray Harryhausen special effects banquets Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. From 1966 through 1968, Troughton played the eccentric time traveler Doctor Who in the BBC TV series of the same name, succeeding the first Who William Hartnell. Patrick Troughton's association with this series assured him a standing ovation whenever he appeared at science fiction conventions in the 1970s and 1980s; it was while appearing at a Who convention in Georgia that the 67-year-old Troughton died of a heart attack.

Trivia: British actor Jack Wild enjoyed a unique career in film and television, but -- like many child stars who peak at an early age -- found it resolutely difficult to extend his success beyond his initial decade and traveled a hard road thereafter. A native of Roynton, England (near Oldham), Wild debuted on television at age 13 and landed a series of roles on British television, including Danny the Dragon (a recurring part as Gavin), One of the Unknown, and Z Cars. His breakthrough arrived at the hands of famed director Carol Reed (The Third Man), who tapped the diminutive performer (with a highly unique, elfin look) to portray The Artful Dodger opposite Mark Lester and Ron Moody in the blockbuster musical Oliver!, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1968. Unsurprisingly, the popularity of that role turned into a triumph for Wild, and in fact prompted another, equally successful turn in the trippy children's series H.R. Pufnstuf as Jimmy, a flutist who lives on a psychedelic island. Sadly, Wild spent the following decades struggling to find steady work, and his roles grew less frequent and substantial. His problems were exacerbated by constant cigarette smoking and heavy drinking. Though the actor managed to completely sober up by the early '90s and landed a supporting turn as Morin in the Kevin Reynolds-directed Kevin Costner vehicle Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), the smoking continued unabated, and contributed to Wild's contraction of oral cancer in 2000. As a result of complications from this, he had his voice box and tongue completely removed, and thus spent the end of his life mute. Following extensive chemotherapy, surgery, and radiotherapy, Wild died from the cancer at age 53 in 2006.