Trivia: An alumnus of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Wisconsin-born actress Gena Rowlands entered the Broadway talent pool in 1952. From 1955 through 1957, the blonde, frosty-eyed actress co-starred with Edward G. Robinson in the original Broadway production of Middle of the Night. She also did plenty of Manhattan-based television during this period, including a recurring role on the forgotten syndicated series Top Secret U.S.A. Rowlands made her first film, The High Cost of Loving, in 1958, the same year that she married legendary actor/director John Cassavetes. The excellent response to her performance as the deaf-mute wife of a detective on the 1961 TV series 87th Precinct sparked a grass-roots campaign to have Rowlands appear on the series on a weekly basis, but her film commitments were such that she couldn't be confined to any one part for very long. Always a capable leading lady, Rowlands blossomed into full stardom in the films directed by her husband. She first collaborated with him on A Child Is Waiting (1963) and then starred as a prostitute in his 1968 film Faces. Rowlands went on to earn Oscar nominations for her work in two of her husband's other films, A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980).After Cassavetes' death in 1989, Rowlands took a two-year sabbatical from films, returning to play Holly Hunter's mother -- and Richard Dreyfuss' mother-in-law -- in Once Around (1991). That same year, she appeared as a casting agent in Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth. After starring in such films as 1995's The Neon Bible and Something to Talk About (the latter of which featured her as the "steel magnolia" wife of Robert Duvall and mother of Julia Roberts), Rowlands stepped in front the camera for her son Nick Cassavetes' 1996 directorial debut, Unhook the Stars. The actress turned in a strong performance as a matriarch experiencing various life upheavals, and the following year again collaborated with her son in his romantic comedy She's So Lovely. Rowlands continued to stay busy with work for other directors, appearing in no less than three films in 1998. Particularly notable appearances included her role as Sean Connery's estranged wife in Playing by Heart and her portrayal of the grandmother of a disabled boy in The Mighty. In addition to her film work, Rowlands has earned considerable acclaim for her television roles. In 1985, she earned an Emmy nomination for her role in the powerful AIDS drama An Early Frost, and has won Emmys for her performances in The Betty Ford Story (1987) and Face of a Stranger (1991).At the beginning of the 21st century Rowlands continued to work steadily racking up credits in a variety of projects including Wild Iris, Hysterical Blindness, and Taking Lives. IN 2004 she acted again for her son in the cult hit The Notebook, and she followed that up with a role in the supernatural thriller The Skeleton Key. In 2007 she provided one of the voices in the well-reviewed Persepolis, and after a five-year hiatus from screens she returned in yet another project directed by her son, the quirky psychological drama Yellow.

Trivia: American actress and long-time Woody Allen muse, Mia Farrow was the third of seven children born to film star Maureen O'Sullivan and director John Farrow. Born February 9, 1945, she enjoyed the usual pampered Hollywood kid lifestyle until she fell victim to polio at the age of nine; her struggle to recover from this illness was the first of many instances in which the seemingly frail Farrow exhibited a will of iron. Educated in an English convent school, Farrow returned to California with plans to take up acting. With precious little prior experience that included a bit part in her father's 1959 film John Paul Jones, she debuted on Broadway in a 1963 revival of The Importance of Being Earnest. The following year, she was cast as Alison McKenzie in the nighttime TV soap opera Peyton Place, which made her an idol of the American teen set. That people over the age of 18 were also interested in Farrow was proven in the summer of 1965, when she became the third wife of singer Frank Sinatra, 30 years her senior. The marriage provided fodder for both the tabloids and leering nightclub comics for a time, and while the union didn't last long, it put Farrow into the international filmgoing consciousness. (She and Sinatra remained close, long-time friends after their divorce). Farrow's first important movie appearance was in Rosemary's Baby (1968) as the unwitting mother of Satan's offspring. She was often cast in damsel-in-distress parts -- capitalizing on Rosemary's Baby -- and in "trendy" pop-culture roles for several years thereafter. During this period, she married pianist André Previn and starting a family. Her skills as an actress increased, even if her films didn't bring in large crowds; Farrow's performance as Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (1974) remains one of the few high points of the largely disappointing film. By the early '80s, a newly divorced Farrow had taken up with comedian/director Woody Allen, for whom she did some of her best work in such films as Zelig (1983); Broadway Danny Rose (1984), in which she was barely recognizable in a brilliant turn as a bosomy blonde bimbo; The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985); Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Radio Days (1987); Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989); and Husbands and Wives (1992). Farrow and Allen were soul mates in private as well as cinematic life; she had a child by him named Satchel, who was Allen's first son. In 1992, ironically the same year that she starred as Allen's discontented spouse in Husbands and Wives, Farrow once more commanded newspaper headlines when she discovered that Allen had been having more than a parental relationship with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn (whom he later married). Farrow and Allen then engaged in a long, well-publicized court battle for custody of their adopted and biological children; in the aftermath, Farrow wrote a tell-all memoir entitled What Falls Away. She also continued to appear on the screen in such films as Widows' Peak (1994), Miami Rhapsody (1995), and Coming Soon (1999).Farrow stayed out of the limelight at the beginning of the next decade, but brought back memories of one of her best films, Rosemary's Baby, when she appeared as the nanny guiding the evil Satan child Damien in John Moore's adaptation of The Omen. The actress appeared in The Ex (2006), a romantic comedy, and in the first installment of filmmaker Luc Besson's fantasy adventured trilogy Arthur and the Invisibles. Farrow starred alongside Jack Black, Mos Def, and Danny Glover in the lighthearted comedy Be Kind Rewind (2008), which followed a bumbling movie lover who accidentally erased a vast collection of VHS films. In 2011, Farrow joined the cast of filmmaker Todd Solondz' Dark Horse, in which she co-starred with Selma Blair and Jordan Gelber.

Trivia: A remarkably prolific and versatile talent, Gene Hackman was a successful character actor whose uncommon abilities and smart career choices ultimately made him a most unlikely leading man. In the tradition of Spencer Tracy, he excelled as an Everyman, consistently delivering intelligent, natural performances which established him among the most respected and well-liked stars of his era. Born January 30th, 1930 in San Bernardino, CA, Hackman joined the Marines at the age of 16 and later served in Korea. After studying journalism at the University of Illinois, he pursued a career in television production but later decided to try his hand at acting, attending a Pasadena drama school with fellow student Dustin Hoffman; ironically, they were both voted "least likely to succeed." After briefly appearing in the 1961 film Mad Dog Coll, Hackman made his debut off-Broadway in 1963's Children at Their Games, earning a Clarence Derwent Award for his supporting performance. Poor Richard followed, before he starred in 1964's production of Any Wednesday. Returning to films in 1964, Hackman earned strong notices for his work in Warren Beatty's Lilith and 1966's Hawaii, but the 1967 World War II tale First to Flight proved disastrous for all involved. At Beatty's request, Hackman co-starred in Bonnie and Clyde, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and establishing himself as a leading character player. After making a pair of films with Jim Brown, (1968's The Split and 1969's Riot), Hackman supported Robert Redford in The Downhill Racer, Burt Lancaster in The Gypsy Moths, and Gregory Peck in Marooned. For 1970's I Never Sang for My Father, he garnered another Academy Award nomination. The following year Hackman became a star; as New York narcotics agent Popeye Doyle, a character rejected by at least seven other actors, he headlined William Friedkin's thriller The French Connection, winning a Best Actor Oscar and spurring the film to Best Picture honors. Upon successfully making the leap from supporting player to lead, he next appeared in the disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure, one of the biggest money-makers of 1972. After co-starring with Al Pacino in 1973's Scarecrow, Hackman delivered his strongest performance to date as a haunted surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 classic The Conversation and went on to tap his under-utilized comedic skills in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. Arthur Penn's grim 1975 thriller Night Moves and the Western Bite the Bullet followed before the actor agreed to The French Connection 2. While remaining the subject of great critical acclaim, Hackman's box-office prowess was beginning to slip: 1975's Lucky Lady, 1977's The Domino, and March or Die were all costly flops, and although 1978's Superman -- in which he appeared as the villainous Lex Luthor -- was a smash, his career continued to suffer greatly. Apart from the inevitable Superman 2, Hackman was absent from the screen for several years, and with the exception of a fleeting appearance in Beatty's 1981 epic Reds, most of his early-'80s work -- specifically, the features All Night Long and Eureka -- passed through theaters virtually unnoticed.Finally, a thankless role as an ill-fated war correspondent in Roger Spottiswoode's acclaimed 1983 drama Under Fire brought Hackman's career back to life. The follow-up, the action film Uncommon Valor, was also a hit, and while 1984's Misunderstood stalled, the next year's Twice in a Lifetime was a critical success. By the middle of the decade, Hackman was again as prolific as ever, headlining a pair of 1986 pictures -- the little-seen Power and the sleeper hit Hoosiers -- before returning to the Man of Steel franchise for 1987's Superman 4: The Quest for Peace. No Way Out, in which he co-starred with Kevin Costner, was also a hit. In 1988, Hackman starred in no less than five major releases: Woody Allen's Another Woman, the war drama Bat 21, the comedy Full Moon in Blue Water, the sports tale Split Decisions, and Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning. The last of these, a Civil Rights drama set in 1964, cast him as an FBI agent investigating the disappearance of a group of political activists. Though the film itself was the subject of considerable controversy, Hackman won another Oscar nomination. During the 1990s, Hackman settled comfortably into a rhythm alternating between lead roles (1990's Narrow Margin, 1991's Class Action) and high-profile supporting performances (1990's Postcards From the Edge, 1993's The Firm). In 1992, he joined director and star Clint Eastwood in the cast of the revisionist Western Unforgiven, appearing as a small-town sheriff corrupted by his own desires for justice. The role won Hackman a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. The performance helped land him in another pair of idiosyncratic Western tales, Wyatt Earp and The Quick and the Dead. In 1995, he also co-starred in two of the year's biggest hits, the submarine adventure Crimson Tide and the Hollywood satire Get Shorty. Three more big-budget productions, The Birdcage, The Chamber, and Extreme Measures, followed in 1996, and a year later Hackman portrayed the President of the United States in Eastwood's Absolute Power. In 1998, Hackman lent his talents to three very different films, the conspiracy thriller Enemy of the State, the animated Antz, and Twilight, a noirish mystery co-starring Paul Newman and Susan Sarandon. Moving into the new millennium with his stature as a solid performer and well-respected veteran well in place, Hackman turned up in The Replacements in 2000, and Heist the following year. 2001 also found Hackman in top form with his role as the dysfunctional patriarch in director Wes Anderson's follow-up to Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums. Hackman's lively performance brought the actor his third Golden Globe, this time for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.

Trivia: Popularly known as "Mr. Ubiquitous" thanks to his versatility as a stage and screen actor, Ian Holm is one of Britain's most acclaimed -- to say nothing of steadily employed -- performers. Although the foundations of his career were built on the stage, he has become an increasingly popular onscreen presence in his later years. Holm earned particular plaudits for his work in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997), in which he played an emotionally broken lawyer who comes to a small town that has been devastated by a recent school bus crash.Born on September 12, 1931, Holm came into the world in a Goodmayes, Ilford, mental asylum, where his father resided as a psychiatrist and superintendent. When he wasn't tending to the insane, Holm's father took him to the theatre, where he was first inspired, at the age of seven, by a production of Les Miserables starring Charles Laughton. The inspiration carried him through his adolescence -- which, by his account, was not a happy one -- and in 1950, Holm enrolled at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Coincidentally, while a student at RADA, he ended up acting with none other than Laughton himself.Following a year of national service, Holm joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, making his stage debut as a sword carrier in Othello. In 1956, after two years with the RSC, he debuted on the London stage in a West End production of Love Affair; that same year, he toured Europe with Laurence Olivier's production of Titus Andronicus. Holm subsequently returned to the RSC, where he stayed for the next ten years, winning a number of awards. Among the honors he received were two Evening Standard Actor of the Year Awards for his work in Henry V and The Homecoming; in 1967, he won a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway production The Homecoming.The diminutive actor (standing 5'6") made his film debut as Puck in Peter Hall's 1968 adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a production that Holm himself characterized as "a total disaster." Less disastrous was that same year's The Bofors Gun, a military drama that earned Holm a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA. He went on to appear in a steady stream of British films and television series throughout the '70s, doing memorable work in films ranging from Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) to Alien (1978), the latter of which saw him achieving a measure of celluloid immortality as Ash, the treacherous android. Holm's TV work during the decade included a 1973 production of The Homecoming and a 1978 production of Les Miserables, made a full 40 years after he first saw it staged with Charles Laughton.Holm began the '80s surrounded by a halo of acclaim garnered for his supporting role as Harold Abrahams' coach in Chariots of Fire (1981). Nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, he won both a BAFTA and Cannes Festival Award in the same category for his performance. Not content to rest on his laurels, he played Napoleon in Terry Gilliam's surreal Time Bandits that same year; he and Gilliam again collaborated on the 1985 future dystopia masterpiece Brazil. Also in 1985, Holm turned in one of his greatest -- and most overlooked -- performances of the decade as Desmond Cussen, Ruth Ellis' steadfast, unrequited admirer in Dance with a Stranger. He also continued to bring his interpretations of the Bard to the screen, providing Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989) with a very sympathetic Fluellen and Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990) with a resolutely meddlesome Polonius.The following decade brought with it further acclaim for Holm on both the stage and screen. On the stage -- from which he had been absent since 1976, when he suffered a bout of stage fright -- he won a number of honors, including the 1998 Olivier Award for Best Actor for his eponymous performance in King Lear; he also earned Evening Standard and Critics Circle Awards for his work in the play, as well as an Emmy nomination for its television adaptation. On the screen, Holm was shown to great effect in The Madness of King George (1994), which cast him as the king's unorthodox physician, Atom Egoyan's aforementioned The Sweet Hereafter (1997), and Joe Gould's Secret (1999), in which he starred in the title role of a Greenwich Village eccentric with a surprising secret. In 2000, Holm took on a role of an entirely different sort when he starred as Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's long awaited adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Holm, who was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1989, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998 for his "services to drama."After the final installment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was released in 2003, Holm took a role in completely different kind of film. 2004's Garden State was a far cry from the epic, big-budget fantasy he'd just starred in and rather, was a quiet, independent film written, directed, produced by and starring the young Zach Braff. Holm's portrayal of the flawed but well-meaning father a confused adult son was a great success, and he went on to play equally complex and enjoyable supporting roles in a variety of films over the next year, from the Strangers with Candy movie to Lord of War. In 2006, Holm signed on to lend his voice to the casts of two animated films: the innovative sci-fi noir, Renaissance, and the family feature Ratatouille--slated for release in 2006 and 2007 respectively. He also joined the cast of the controversial drama O Jerusalem, a movie about a friendship between a Jewish and Arab man during the creation of the state of Israel. After five years away from the big screen, he returned to play Bilbo Baggins yet again in Peter Jackson's adaptations of The Hobbit.

Trivia: American actress Blythe Danner brings a kind of classy elegance to her work that betrays her real-life background: the daughter of a Philadelphia bank executive, she enjoyed an expensive prep school education and undergraduate study at Bard College. Her earliest theatrical work was with the Theater Company of Boston and the Trinity Square Playhouse of Boston; by the time she was 25, Danner had won the Theatre World Award for her performance in the Lincoln Center Rep's production of The Miser. In 1970, she earned a Tony for her performance in Butterflies are Free; based on the true story of a blind attorney, Danner played the central character's free-spirit love interest. Given the tenor of '70s newspaper publicity, Danner was featured in several magazine and newspaper photo spreads because she spent much of Butterflies' first act clad in nothing but her underwear. Subsequently, the actress was frequently cast opposite fellow up-and-comer Ken Howard, notably in the short-lived 1973 TV sitcom Adam's Rib. She worked so well with Howard that many fans assumed that the two were married; in fact, Danner's longtime husband is Broadway and TV producer Bruce Paltrow.A "critic's darling" thanks to her husky voice and pleasantly mannered acting style, Danner has worked with distinction in TV and on stage, though her film roles have tended to be few and far between. She was memorable as Robert Duvall's long-suffering wife in The Great Santini (1980) and as Nick Nolte's wife in The Prince of Tides (1991), while in 1986's Brighton Beach Memoirs, the decidedly WASPish Danner surprised fans by portraying a middle-aged Jewish woman. Danner's film appearances became more frequent during the latter half of the '90s: she did starring work in such films as To Wong Foo: Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), The Myth of Fingerprints (1997), The X-Files (1998), and The Love Letter (1999). A memorable turn opposite Robert DeNiro in the 2000 comedy found the established dramatic actress reaching the apex of a particularly impressive comedy run, and a year after reprising her role in the 2004 sequel Meet the Fockers, Danner would make showbiz history by earning a record three Emmy nominations for her roles in Huff, Will and Grace, and Back when We Were Grownups. When the smoke cleared and all of the winners had been announced, Danner did ineed come out on top when she took home the "Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series" award for Huff, with nominations for both Huff and Will and Grace at the following year's ceremony offering telling testament as to just how strong her work truly was. In 2006 Danner could be seen performing opposite Zack Braff in the romantic comedy drama remake The Last Kiss. She continued to work steadily, often in comedies such as Paul, Little Fockers, and What's Your Number, and she starred in the 2012 drama The Lucky One.Frequently seen in TV guest roles (she managed to make her Mrs. Albert Speer in 1982's Inside the Third Reich sympathetic, no mean feat), Danner could be seen on television on a regular basis in the brief 1989 series Tattingers, produced by her husband. In 1992, she did stellar work in the made-for-TV movie Cruel Doubt, in which she played the matriarch of a broken family. Her daughter Gwyneth Paltrow was also featured in the movie.

Trivia: Texas-born actress Betty Buckley decided upon a theatrical career when, at a very early age, she was taken by her mother to a Fort Worth production of The Pajama Game. A trained singer and dancer, Ms. Buckley made her professional bow on the musical stage, reaching Broadway at age 22 as Mrs. Thomas Jefferson in the original production of 1776. Additional Broadway credits include two seasons' worth of Pippin (73-75), three years in Cats (82-85) (for which she won a Tony Award), and a healthy run in 1985's The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Betty's first film was Carrie (76), in which she played the tough girl's gym coach whose punishment of Carrie's tormentors set the plot in motion. One year after Carrie, she replaced the late Diana Hyland on the popular TV "dramedy" Eight is Enough, playing the stepmother of a eight-kid brood (at the time, she was two years younger than the oldest kid!) Always on the lookout for an opportunity to sing, Betty took a fraction of her salary to play a Tammy Wynette-style country western star in 1983's Tender Mercies. In 1995, amidst a flurry of press attention, Betty Buckley successfully took over for Glenn Close as "Norma Desmond" in the Broadway production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Sunset Boulevard (Betty had already scored a hit in the London production).

Trivia: A lead and former juvenile actress, with a strong, intelligent, almost abrasive screen presence, she is the daughter of actors Keith Carradine and Shelley Plimpton, who never married and, in fact, broke up before she was born. At age eight she began working in a film-acting workshop; she made a series of Calvin Klein commercials at age 11. She debuted onscreen at the age of 13 in River Rat (1984), playing adolecents and teenagers in a string of films. By the early '90s she had broken out of the juvenile mode and started to establish herself as a mature actress. She had a close relationship with the late actor River Phoenix, with whom she appeared in The Mosquito Coast (1986) and Running on Empty (1988).

Trivia: Before entering the entertainment industry, actor, producer, scriptwriter, playwright and stage director John Houseman, born Jacques Haussmann, first worked for his father's grain business after graduating from college, then began writing magazine pieces and translating plays from German and French. Living in New York, he was writing, directing, and producing plays by his early 30s; soon he had a stellar reputation on Broadway. In 1937, he and Orson Welles founded the Mercury Theater, at which he produced and directed radio specials and stage presentations; at the same time he was a teacher at Vassar. He produced Welles's never-completed first film, Too Much Johnson (1938). Houseman then went on to play a crucial role in the packaging of Welles's first completed film, the masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941): he developed the original story with Herman Mankiewicz, motivated Mankiewicz to complete the script, and worked as a script editor and general advisor for the film. Shortly afterwards, he and Welles had a falling out and Houseman became a vice president of David O. Selznick Productions, a post he quit in late 1941 (after Pearl Harbor) to become chief of the overseas radio division of the OWI. After returning to Hollywood he produced many fine films and commuted to New York to produce and direct Broadway plays and TV specials; in all, the films he produced were nominated for 20 Oscars and won seven. Later he became the artistic director of the touring repertory group the Acting Company, with which he toured successfully in the early '70s. He debuted onscreen at the age of 62 in Seven Days in May (1964), and then in the '70s and '80s played character roles in a number of films. As an actor he was best known as Kingsfield, the stern Harvard law professor, in the film The Paper Chase (1973), his second screen appearance, for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar; he reprised the role in the TV series of the same name. He authored two autobiographies, Run-Through (1972) and Front and Center (1979).

Trivia: Sandy Dennis was a distinctive actress with a flighty demeanor who enjoyed popularity during the '60s and early '70s. The Nebraska-born Dennis began her career in local stock companies, then studied at New York's Actors' Studio, where she embraced method acting. She debuted onscreen in Splendor in the Grass (1961) with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty. On Broadway, she won two Tony Awards in successive years, for A Thousand Clowns (1963) and Any Wednesday (1964). For her second screen performance, as George Segal's academic wife in the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Dennis won the "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar. She went on to get leads and co-starring roles in a number of films, but remained primarily a stage actress; after 1971 her film work was sporadic. She died of cancer in 1992.

Trivia: In contrast to the insufferably intellectual characters he has played so often and so well, David Ogden Stiers wasn't much of a student while growing up in Eugene, Oregon. Like many another "underachiever," Stiers excelled at the things he was truly interested in, such as music (he played piano and french horn) and acting. After flunking out of the University of Oregon, Stiers stepped up his amateur-theatrical activities, and at age 20 was hired by the California Shakespeare Festival at Santa Clara, where he spent the next seven years performing the Classics. After briefly working with the famous San Francisco improv group The Committee, Stiers attended Juilliard, in hopes of improving his vocal delivery. Evidently his training paid off: in 1974, Stiers co-starred with Zero Mostel in the Broadway production Ulysses in Nighttown, then went on to appear opposite Doug Henning in the long-running musical The Magic Show. Despite his success, Stiers detested New York, and at the first opportunity he "ran screaming" back to the West Coast. He was cast in the short-lived sitcom Doc in 1975, and the following year played an important role in the 90-minute pilot for Charlie's Angels, though he passed when offered a regular assignment in the Angels series proper. Stiers' performance as a stuttering TV executive in a 1976 Mary Tyler Moore Show episode led to his being cast as the overbearing Major Charles Emerson Winchester on the ever-popular M*A*S*H; at first signed to a two-year contract, Stiers remained with the series until its final episode in February of 1983. Before, during and after his tenure on M*A*S*H, Stiers kept busy in made-for-TV films, lending his patented authoritativeness to such real-life characters as Dr. Charles Mayo (in 1977's A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story), critic and social arbiter Cleveland Amory (1984's Anatomy of an Illness) and President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1987's J. Edgar Hoover). He was also seen as pontificating DA Michael Reston in several of the Perry Mason TV-movies of the late 1980s. Disney animation devotees will remember Stiers for his voiceover work as Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast (1988) and Lord Ratcliffe in Pocahontas (1995). Stiers continued his work in film, voiceover work and television, appearing in projects like Woody Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), voicing Jumba in Lilo & Stitch (2002) and playing the recurring role of Oberoth on Stargate Atlantis in 2007. Parlaying his lifelong love of classical music into a second career, David Ogden Stiers has served as guest conductor for over 70 major U.S. symphony orchestras.

Trivia: Catholic University was the alma mater of American actor Philip Bosco -- or would have been if he hadn't been expelled. Bosco would not collect a college degree until age 27, after a long stint as an Army cryptographer. Most comfortable in classical stage roles, Bosco has found it expedient to don modern garb for most of his movie work. After a one-shot screen appearance in 1968's A Lovely Way to Die, Bosco didn't step before the movie cameras again until 1983, making up for the lost years with supporting appearances in such films as Trading Places (1983), The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), Three Men and a Baby (1987), Working Girl (1988) and Shadows and Fog (1992). Philip Bosco won a Tony Award for his performance in the popular door-slamming farce Lend Me a Tenor.

Trivia: Solemn, soulful-eyed character actor Harris Yulin made his 1963 off-Broadway debut in Next Time I'll Sing for You. Though Yulin remained a frequent visitor to the New York theatrical scene (he made his Broadway bow in a 1980 revival of Watch on the Rhine), he preferred to live and work in his home state of California. As one of the founders of the Los Angeles Classic Theater, he became a mentor and spiritual advisor for a number of film stars with theatrical aspirations. His own movie work includes the roles of Wild Bill Hickok in the 1971 revisionist Western Doc, Bernstein in the 1983 remake of Scarface, and King Edward in 1996's Looking for Richard, a contemporary spin on Shakespeare's Richard III. On television, Harris Yulin has been seen as Senator Joseph McCarthy in Robert F. Kennedy and His Times (1985) and as girl-chasing TV anchorman Neal Frazier in the weekly WIOU (1990).

Trivia: Veteran stage actress Frances Conroy studied drama at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Juilliard School in New York. During the '70s, she performed regularly with regional and touring theater companies, including an off-Broadway production of Othello with Richard Dreyfuss and Raul Julia. One of her first film appearances was as a generic Shakespearean actress in Woody Allen's 1979 classic Manhattan. In 1980, she made her Broadway debut in The Lady From Dubuque. Small roles followed in feature films like the sports drama Amazing Grace and Chuck and the family drama Rocket Gibraltar (as one of Burt Lancaster's daughters). She mainly focused on her stage career for the rest of the '80s, appearing with the Broadway cast of Our Town and receiving several Drama Desk nominations.In 1992, Conroy became friends with famed playwright Arthur Miller. This friendship led to much involvement in his productions, on both stage and screen. During this time, she also appeared on some television shows, miniseries, and made-for-TV movies, and met and married fellow actor Jan Munroe. She was nominated for a Tony Award in 1998 for her work on the Broadway hit Ride Down Mt. Morgan. Like many of her theatrically trained colleagues, she received unexpected attention for the award-winning HBO dramatic series Six Feet Under. For her role of family matriarch Ruth Fisher, she's been recognized by the Screen Actor's Guild, the Golden Globes, and the Emmys. Following small roles in the mainstream Maid in Manhattan and the independent Die Mommie Die, Conroy portrayed legendary actress Katharine Hepburn's mother, Kit, in Martin Scorsese's 2004 Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator.In 2005 she had a small part in the drama Broken Flowers, and appeared in the ill-fated remake of The Wicker Man in 2006. In 2008 she lent her vocal talents to the cast of The Tale of Despereaux and in 2010 she acted with Robert De Niro in the drama Stone. 2011 saw her return to the small screen with a part in American Horror Story.

Trivia: Skater-turned-supporting actor Michael Kirby made his film debut in Keep Your Powder Dry (1945). The first leg of his film career ended in 1945 and it would be nearly 30 years before he would again turn up in Hollywood to play small character roles through 1992.