Trivia: One of Hollywood's most prominent strong, silent types, Kevin Costner was for several years the celluloid personification of the baseball industry, given his indelible mark with baseball-themed hits like Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and For Love of the Game. His epic Western Dances with Wolves marked the first break from this trend and established Costner as a formidable directing talent to boot. Although several flops in the late '90s diminished his bankability, for many, Costner remained one of the industry's most enduring and endearing icons.A native of California, Costner was born January 18, 1955, in Lynnwood. While a marketing student at California State University in Fullerton, he became involved with community theater. Upon graduation in 1978, Costner took a marketing job that lasted all of 30 days before deciding to take a crack at acting. After an inauspicious 1974 film debut in the ultra-cheapie Sizzle Beach USA, Costner decided to take a more serious approach to acting. Venturing down the usual theater-workshop, multiple-audition route, the actor impressed casting directors who weren't really certain of how to use him. That may be one reason why Costner's big-studio debut in Night Shift (1982) consisted of little more than background decoration, and the same year's Frances featured the hapless young actor as an off-stage voice.Director Lawrence Kasdan liked Costner enough to cast him in the important role of the suicide victim who motivated the plot of The Big Chill (1983). Unfortunately, his flashback scenes were edited out of the movie, leaving all that was visible of the actor -- who had turned down Matthew Broderick's role in WarGames to take the part -- to be his dress suit, along with a fleeting glimpse of his hairline and hands as the undertaker prepared him for burial during the opening credits. Two years later, a guilt-ridden Kasdan chose Costner for a major part as a hell-raising gunfighter in the "retro" Western Silverado (1985), this time putting him in front of the camera for virtually the entire film. He also gained notice for the Diner-ish buddy road movie Fandango. The actor's big break came two years later as he burst onto the screen in two major films, No Way Out and The Untouchables; his growing popularity was further amplified with a brace of baseball films, released within months of one another. In Bull Durham (1988), the actor was taciturn minor-league ballplayer Crash Davis, and in the following year's Field of Dreams he was Ray Kinsella, a farmer who constructs a baseball diamond in his Iowa cornfield at the repeated urging of a voice that intones "if you build it, he will come."Riding high on the combined box-office success of these films, Costner was able to make his directing debut. With a small budget of 18 million dollars, he went off to the Black Hills of South Dakota to film the first Western epic that Hollywood had seen in years, a revisionist look at American Indian-white relationships titled Dances With Wolves (1990). The supposedly doomed project, in addition to being one of '90s biggest moneymakers, also took home a slew of Academy Awards, including statues for Best Picture and Best Director (usurping Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas).Costner's luck continued with the 1991 costume epic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; this, too, made money, though it seriously strained Costner's longtime friendship with the film's director, Kevin Reynolds. The same year, Costner had another hit -- and critical success -- on his hands with Oliver Stone's JFK. The next year's The Bodyguard, a film which teamed Costner with Whitney Houston, did so well at the box office that it seemed the actor could do no wrong. However, his next film, A Perfect World (1993), directed by Clint Eastwood and casting the actor against type as a half-psycho, half-benign prison escapee, was a major disappointment, even though Costner himself garnered some acclaim. Bad luck followed Perfect World in the form of another cast-against-type failure, the 1994 Western Wyatt Earp, which proved that Lawrence Kasdan could have his off days.Adding insult to injury, Costner's 1995 epic sci-fi adventure Waterworld received a whopping amount of negative publicity prior to opening due to its ballooning budget and bloated schedule; ultimately, its decent box office total in no way offset its cost. The following year, Costner was able to rebound somewhat with the romantic comedy Tin Cup, which was well-received by the critics and the public alike. Unfortunately, he opted to follow up this success with another large-scaled directorial effort, an epic filmization of author David Brin's The Postman. The 1997 film featured Costner as a Shakespeare-spouting drifter in a post-nuclear holocaust America whose efforts to reunite the country give him messianic qualities. Like Waterworld, The Postman received a critical drubbing and did poorly with audiences. Costner's reputation, now at an all-time low, received some resuscitation with the 1998 romantic drama Message in a Bottle, and later the same year he returned to the genre that loved him best with Sam Raimi's baseball drama For Love of the Game. A thoughtful reflection on the Cuban missile crisis provided the groundwork for the mid-level success Thirteen Days (2000), though Costner's next turn -- as a member of a group of Elvis impersonating casino bandits in 3000 Miles to Graceland -- drew harsh criticism, relegating it to a quick death at the box office. Though Costner's next effort was a more sentimental supernatural drama lamenting lost love, Dragonfly (2002) was dismissed by many as a cheap clone of The Sixth Sense and met an almost equally hasty fate.Costner fared better in 2003, and returned to directing, with Open Range, a Western co-starring himself and the iconic Robert Duvall -- while it was no Dances With Wolves in terms of mainstream popularity, it certainly received more positive feedback than The Postman or Waterworld. In 2004, Costner starred alongside Joan Allen in director Mike Binder's drama The Upside of Anger. That picture cast Allen as an unexpectedly single, upper-middle class woman who unexpectedly strikes up a romance with the boozy ex-baseball star who lives next door (Costner). Even if divided on the picture as a whole, critics unanimously praised the lead performances by Costner and Allen.After the thoroughly dispiriting (and critically drubbed) quasi-sequel to The Graduate, Rumor Has It..., Costner teamed up with Fugitive director Andrew Davis for the moderately successful 2006 Coast Guard thriller The Guardian, co-starring Ashton Kutcher and Hollywood ingenue Melissa Sagemiller.Costner then undertook another change-of-pace with one of his first psychological thrillers: 2007's Mr. Brooks, directed by Bruce A. Evans. Playing a psychotic criminal spurred on to macabre acts by his homicidal alter ego (William Hurt), Costner emerged from the critical- and box-office failure fairly unscathed. He came back swinging the following year with a starring role in the comedy Swing Vote, playing a small town slacker whose single vote is about to determine the outcome of a presidential election. Costner's usual everyman charm carried the movie, but soon he was back to his more somber side, starring in the recession-era drama The Company Men in 2010 alongside Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones. As the 2010's rolled on, Costner's name appeared often in conjunction with the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained prior to filming, but scheduling conflicts would eventually prevent the actor from participating in the project. He instead signed on for the latest Superman reboot, playing Clark Kent's adoptive dad on Planet Earth in Man of Steel.

Trivia: Rarely can it be said that an actor is so recognized and of such prominence that a game can be played by connecting him to just about any other celebrity simply through referencing his resumé. Any film buff has most likely participated in a round of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, and it's likely that if their opponent was an avid cinephile they came out on the losing end of the match. This should come as no surprise, considering Bacon's extensive and diverse body of work. Born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1958, Bacon received his education at The Circle in the Square (where he became the youngest student to appear in a production) and Manning Street Actor's Theater after leaving home at the age of 18. Two years later, Bacon made his feature debut as the smarmy Chip Diller in director John Landis' beloved frat-house epic Animal House. Following in the next few years with minor roles in such seemingly forgettable films as Hero at Large and Friday the 13th (both 1980), Bacon would re-create his off-Broadway role of a drug-addicted male prostitute in Forty Deuce the same year that he made a memorable appearance as the troubled Timothy Fenwick in Barry Levinson's Diner (1982). Though he had appeared in a few major films and displayed an intriguing range of abilities, it was 1984's Footloose that brought Bacon his breakthrough role. As the big-city boy crusading against the puritanical constraints against dancing imposed by a well-meaning but overbearing fundamentalist minister, Bacon became a teen icon -- an image that, though it propelled him to stardom, would prove difficult to shed. Following Footloose's success with a series of curious failures such as Quicksilver (1986) and White Water Summer (1987), it was on the set of Lemon Sky (also 1987) that Bacon would meet future wife Kyra Sedgwick; the couple exchanged wedding vows the following year. Though he would appear in a few other failed-but-interesting, audience-pleasing thrillers such as Tremors (1989) and Flatliners (1990) in the following years, it was with his role in conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) that Bacon found his career revived and began to shed his heartthrob image. Narrowly escaping the Brat Pack trappings of his '80s contemporaries, subsequent roles after JFK may not have all scored direct hits at the box office for Bacon, but audiences were now well aware of his talents and thirsted for more. Bacon would again prove his substantial range in the true story of a brutalized prison inmate opposite Gary Oldman in 1995's Murder in the First. His performance as the disillusioned and broken prisoner, accentuated by his famished and frail skeletal figure, was followed by an equally challenging reality-based role as a member of the troubled Apollo 13 (1995) lunar mission team in director Ron Howard's widely praised film. Proving that he could play sleaze as successfully as slice-of-life, Bacon took a turn for the worse as the sadistic reform-school guard responsible for the rape of a trio of young boys in Sleepers (1996) and as a cop investigating accusations of rape in director John McNaughton's raunchy sex-thriller Wild Things. Bacon's entertaining turn as a receptive father tangled in a mind-bending murder mystery in Stir of Echoes (1999) gained positive reviews, though the intelligent and subtle shocker withered in the shadow of another similarly themed thriller, The Sixth Sense. Though he wasn't visible for the majority of the film, Bacon fell into psychotic territory as the malicious genius consumed by his discovery of the key to invisibility in Paul Verhoeven's sadistic Hollow Man (2000). After an uncredited supporting role in the independent comedy Novocaine, Bacon once again went for the throat in Trapped; and though audiences were generally entertained by the film, it ultimately fell victim to a quick death at the box office due to poor timing (numerous stories of child abductions had been making headlines at the time Trapped was released). Of course with an actor such as Bacon, it was only a matter of time before he once again tackled a substantial dramatic role, and with the release of Mystic River in 2003 audiences found him doing just that. Adapted from the novel of the same name by author Dennis Lehane and directed by Clint Eastwood, Mystic River provided audiences with a brutal, slow-burning study in the effects of violence and the nature of revenge, withBacon's turn as a sympathetic detective playing pitch perfect opposite a mournful performance by Sean Penn. That same year, Bacon showed up in an uncredited role in the Jane Campion thriller In the Cut before taking the lead in the emotional drama The Woodsman.Bacon would continue to work on a variety of projects over the coming years, appearing in everything from the tense period thriller Where the Truth Lies to the ensemble rom-com Crazy, Stupid, Love, to the superhero flick X-Men: First Class. Soon however, the actor found himself hungry for a more substantial project, and he found it with the Billy Bob Thornton directed drama Jane Mansfield's Car in 2012, which found him acting alongside heavyweights like Robert Duvall and John Hurt. In 2013, Bacon turned to television, headlining Fox's drama The Following.In addition to his film work, Bacon has frequently toured with brother Michael, playing upbeat country-folk rock under the alliterate moniker the Bacon Brothers.

Trivia: In order to land the part of Bo Duke in the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard, John Schneider adopted a Cracker dialect and shambling good-ole-boy manner, claiming that he hailed from the tiny -- and fictional -- community of Snailville, Georgia. In fact, Schneider was born in Upstate New York, and was raised in Atlanta by his mom. During his teen years, Schneider picked up spending money by working as an entertainer at parties and public events, playing the guitar, telling jokes and performing a magic trick or two. He briefly attended the Georgia School of High Performance, hoping to become a race-car driver. His prowess behind the wheel enabled him to land his Dukes of Hazzard job, which he held down from 1979 to 1985, save for a brief 1982 walkout due to contract dispute. Schneider's Hazzard success allowed him to have both a recording career as a country music artist, and an ongoing presence on the small screen. In addition to numerous made-for-TV movies, he had a recurring role on the popular program Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Schneider gained a whole new legion of fans as the Earth father of Superman when he began playing Jonathan Kent on the teen-oriented superhero series Smallville in 2001. He returned to the big screen with a starring role in 2006's Collier & Co., which he also directed. He would also appear in movies like Super Shark and on the TV series Hero Factory. In 2013, he took a starring role in The Haves and Have Nots, a sopa opera created by Tyler Perry.

Trivia: Gave birth to her first daughter, Wynonna, the week of her high-school graduation. Worked as a nurse before starting her career in entertainment. After divorcing her first husband, she moved her family from Los Angeles to Kentucky because "the kids were starting to think Hollywood was normal." In 1983, took daughter Wynonna to a live audition for the RCA Nashville record executives, who signed them to a record deal within an hour. Along with daughter Wynonna, became the first female country act to found their own booking agency. Took a hiatus from performing professionally in 1991 after being diagnosed with hepatitis C and founded the Naomi Judd Research Fund. In 2000, she told Larry King that she was cured. In April 2011, said of daughter Ashley Judd's memoir, All That Is Bitter & Sweet, that she would one day get around to reading it since she wanted to "honor her [daughter's] reality." Has authored more than 10 books on such topics as cooking, aging and her struggles with hepatitis C.

Trivia: Began playing guitar in the fifth grade. Plays baseball; is the pitcher on his high-school team. Impersonated Elvis Presley when he was younger. Won the Clayton (NC) Idol competition in 2009. Winner of season 10 of American Idol; runner-up was Lauren Alaina. Won his first CMT Music Award, for Breakthrough Video of the Year for "The Trouble With Girls," the night before his high school graduation.