Trivia: Actor, producer, and director Tim Reid has committed himself to projects that show American blacks in a more positive light than are generally seen in Hollywood through his United Image Entertainment company. As an actor Reid is best remembered for playing cool disc jockey Venus Flytrap on WKRP and for his short-lived sitcom Frank's Place (1987-1988). Fans of the crime-drama Simon and Simon (1981-1988) will remember him for playing Lt. Downtown Brown. Reid first appeared on television in Frankie Avalon: Easy Does It (1976). He then worked on The Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Hour (1977) and The Richard Pryor Show (1977). He made his feature film debut in Dead Bang (1989) and since then his feature film appearances have been sporadic. As a director, Reid debuted with the acclaimed Once Upon a Time...When We Were Colored (1997). As a writer, Reid has penned scripts for a series of animated videos chronicling Frank Baum's Oz tales. He also produced the feature films Out-of-Sync (1995) and Spirit Lost (1996). On television, Reid starred in the sitcom Sister-Sister (1994). In 1999 he directed the moody thriller Asunder. Though he appeared on screens only intermittently as the 21st century got under way, he did appear in You Wish! And The Reading Room, as well as the gritty 2007 drama Trade.

Trivia: Family moved to New York City's Harlem when she was 9. At 14, she landed the role of the King in an all-girls production of The King and I. Taught American History at Brooklyn Technical High School for two years. In 1987, became the first African-American to win an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Filmed a pilot for her own series, Jackee, following her success on 227; the pilot was never picked up, but aired as an episode of 227. In a 2013 episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories, she claims that when she was a child, the spirit of her late uncle saved her from an attack by a home invader.

Trivia: Identical twin Tamera Mowry starred as Tamera Campbell, opposite her sibling Tia, on the popular sitcom Sister, Sister -- both in its original ABC Friday-night run and later during its four-year stint on the WB network. This stardom arrived at the tail end of several one-shot prime-time series appearances and commercial appearances that began during the actress' preteen years. During the Sister, Sister period and for years afterward, the Mowrys broke the mold of standard twin and triplet actors by appearing together in films and television programs, in lieu of forking off into different paths. They co-headlined the family-oriented comedy Seventeen Again (2000), the teen movie The Hot Chick (2002), and the 2005 Disney Channel telemovie Twitches (a kind of rehash of the Sister, Sister premise with an occult twist, which spawned a sequel in 2007), but also essayed individual roles from time to time. Circa 2000, Tamera struck out on her own, starring in the Billy Graham-produced Christian telemovie Something to Sing About, alongside Graham, Darius McCrary, Kirk Franklin, and Irma P. Hall. She also joined the cast of the popular Lifetime medical drama Strong Medicine during that show's fifth and sixth seasons, as Kayla Thornton, a young physician from a rural area who arrives as a first-year resident at Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Women's Health Clinic following the traumatizing death of her brother, with the intention of pursuing a medical career. In later years, Mowry branched out more into reality TV, including a show with her sister Tia (cleverly titled Tia & Tamera), but still occasionally returned to acting.

Trivia: Gen Y-ers will doubtless remember Tia Mowry as Tia Landry, one of the long-estranged, suddenly reunited titular siblings on ABC's Friday night "TGIF" sitcom Sister, Sister -- a role Tia played opposite her identical twin, Tamera, from 1994-1995, and carried over into an extended run on the then-fledgling WB network from 1995-1999. Though this hardly constituted the actress' premier role (she had already essayed a sequence of guest appearances on various U.S. series during her early teenage years), it did generate substantial audience attention and paved the way for additional onscreen work. Whereas many other multiple-birth actresses and actors (for instance, the Olsen Twins and the Sprouse Twins) first tackled projects that called for twin roles, then forked off into divergent paths, the Mowrys cut back and forth between joint casting and separate casting. They co-headlined the family-oriented comedy Seventeen Again (2000), the teen movie The Hot Chick (2002), and the 2005 Disney Channel telemovie Twitches (a kind of rehash of the Sister, Sister premise, with an occult twist), but essayed individual roles from time to time. Tia provided one of the main voices for the 2005 animated musical Bratz: Rock Angelz (and the accompanying Bratz TV series); she also signed for the lead in the sitcom The Game (2006), as Melanie Barnett, a med student who transfers from John Hopkins to a small San Diego college to be near her professional football player boyfriend. A spin-off of the CW hit Girlfriends, The Game was still going strong in 2012.

Trivia: Born in the Midwest and educated in the military, actor Fred Willard has proven his talent for improvisational comedy on the stage, television, and the big screen. His characters are frequently grinning idiots or exaggerated stereotypes, but Willard's skillful timing has always added a unique spin. An alumni of Second City in Chicago, he's worked with many of the biggest-named comedians of his time. His early TV credits include a regular stint on The Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour, a supporting part on the sitcom Sirota's Court, and the role of Jerry Hubbard, sidekick of TV talk-show host Barth Gimble (Martin Mull) in the satirical Fernwood 2Night. He went on to appear in subsequent incarnations of Fernwood and continued to work with Mull and his gang for the next few decades. In the early '80s, he hosted the actuality series Real People and co-hosted the talk show Thicke of the Night. Some of his small, yet memorable, performances in feature comedies included President Fogerty in National Lampoon Goes to the Movies; the garage owner in Moving Violations who's mistaken for a doctor; the air force officer in This Is Spinal Tap; and Mayor Deebs in Roxanne. Doing a lot of guest work on television, he was also involved in Martin Mull's The History of White People in America series and was the only human actor amid a cast of puppets on the strange show D.C. Follies. In the '90s, he worked frequently in the various projects of fellow satirists Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and the like. He was travel agent Ron Albertson in Waiting for Guffman, TV announcer Buck Laughlin in Best in Show, and manager Mike LaFontaine in A Mighty Wind. He also appeared in Eugene Levy's Sodbusters, Permanent Midnight with Ben Stiller, and showed up in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. On television, he picked up a regular spots on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, Roseanne (as Martin Mull's lover), and Mad About You, along with voice-over work on numerous cartoons. He also received an Emmy nomination for his role as Hank McDougal on Everybody Loves Raymond. Since 2000, he has shown up in quite a few mainstream commercial films, including The Wedding Planner, How High, and American Wedding; but he also played Howard Cosell in the TV movie When Billie Beat Bobby. Projects for 2004 include Anchor Man: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.IHe also joined up with his Mighty Wind and Waiting for Guffman castmates again in 2006 with For Your Consideration, a satire of Hollywood self importance injected with Willard's trademark clever silliness. The next year he appeared in the spoof Epic Movie, as well as the romantic comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman. He was in the Pixar sci-fi film WALL-E, and had a role in the 2009 comedy Youth In Revolt. In 2012 he starred in Rob Reiner's The Magic of Belle Isle opposite Morgan Freeman.