Trivia: The son of a Czech-American golf pro, Jon Voight was active in student theatricals in high school and at Catholic University. In 1960 he began studying privately with Neighborhood Playhouse mentor Sanford Meisner, and made his off-Broadway debut that same year in O Oysters, receiving a daunting review which opined that he could "neither walk nor talk." Fortunately, Voight persevered, and in 1961 took over the role of "singing Nazi" Rolf in the Broadway hit The Sound of Music (his Liesl was Laurie Peters, who became his first wife).Blessed with handsome, Nordic features, Voight kept busy as a supporting player on such TV series as Gunsmoke, Coronet Blue, and NYPD, and in 1966 spent a season with the California National Shakespeare Festival. The following year, he won a Theatre World Award for his stage performance in That Summer, That Fall. Thus, by the time he became an "overnight" star in the role of wide-eyed hustler Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy (1969), he had nearly a decade's worth of experience under his belt. The success of Midnight Cowboy, which earned Voight an Oscar nomination, prompted a fast-buck distributor to ship out a double feature of two never-released mid-'60s films: Fearless Frank, filmed in 1965, starred Voight as a reluctant superhero, while Madigan's Millions was a 1968 turkey featuring Voight's Cowboy co-star (and longtime friend) Dustin Hoffman.Entering the 1970s with dozens of producers clamoring for his services, Voight refused to accept roles that banked merely on his youth and good looks. Instead, he selected such challenging assignments as crack-brained Army officer Milo Minderbinder in Catch 22 (1970), a political activist known only as "A" in The Revolutionary (also 1970), reluctant rugged individualist Ed Gentry in Deliverance (1972), and real-life teacher/novelist Pat Conroy in Conrack (1974). In 1978, he won both the Oscar and the Cannes Film Festival award for his portrayal of paraplegic Vietnam veteran Luke Martin in Hal Ashby's Coming Home. The following year, he earned additional acclaim for his work in the remake of The Champ.Devoting increasing amounts of time to his various sociopolitical causes in the 1980s and 1990s, Voight found it more and more difficult to fit film roles into his busy schedule. A reunion project with Ashby, on the godawful gambling comedy Lookin' to Get Out (produced 1980, released 1982), failed dismally, with many reviewers complaining about Voight's terrible, overmodulated performance, and the paper-thin script, which the actor himself wrote. Voight weathered the storm, however, and enjoyed box-office success as star of the 1983 weeper Table for Five. He also picked up another Oscar nomination for Andrei Konchalovsky's existential thriller Runaway Train (1985), and acted in such socially-conscious TV movies as Chernobyl: The Final Warning (1991) and The Last of His Tribe (1992). He also produced Table for Five and scripted 1990's Eternity. Voight kept busy for the remainder of the decade, appearing in such films as Michael Mann's Heat (1995), Mission: Impossible (1996), and The General, a 1998 collaboration with Deliverance director John Boorman, for which Voight won acclaim in his role as an Irish police inspector. During the same period of time, a bearded Voight also essayed a wild one-episode cameo on Seinfeld - as himself - with a scene that required him to bite the hand of Cosmo Kramer from a parked vehicle. In 1999, Voight gained an introduction to a new generation of fans, thanks to his role as James Van Der Beek's megalomaniacal football coach in the hit Varsity Blues, later appearing in a handful of other films before teaming onscreen with daughter Angelina Jolie for Tomb Raider in 2001. After essaying President Roosevelt later that same year in Pearl Harbor, Voight went for laughs in Ben Stiller's male-model comedy Zoolander, though his most pronounced role of 2001 would come in his Oscar nominated performance as iconic newsman Howard Cosell in director Michael Mann's Mohammad Ali biopic, Ali.Taken collectively, all of Voight's aformentioned roles during the mid-late 1990s demonstrated a massive rebound, from the gifted lead of '70s American classics to a character actor adept at smaller and more idiosyncratic character roles in A-list Hollywood fare ( the very same transition, for instance, that Burt Reynolds was wrongly predicted to be making when he signed to do Breaking In back in 1989). To put it another way: though Voight rarely received first billing by this point, his volume of work per se soared high above that of his most active years during the '70s. The parts grew progressively more interesting as well; Voight was particularly memorable, for instance, in the Disney comedy-fantasy Holes, as Mr. Sir, the cruel, sadistic right-hand-man to camp counselor Sigourney Weaver, who forces packs of young boys to dig enormous desert pits beneath the blazing sun for a mysterious reason. Voight then signed for a series of parts under the aegis of longtime-fan Jerry Bruckheimer, including the first two National Treasure installments (as John Patrick Henry) and - on a higher-profiled note - the audience-rouser Glory Road (2005), about one of the first all-black basketball teams in the U.S.; in that picture, Voight plays Adolph Rupp, the infamous University of Kentucky coach (nicknamed 'Baron of the Bluegrass') with an all-white team vying against the competitors at the center of the story.In 2007, Voight tackled roles in two very different high-profile films: he played one of the key characters in Michael Bay's live-action extravaganza Transformers, and portrayed a Mormon bishop who perishes in a Brigham Young-instigated massacre, in the period drama September Dawn, directed by Christopher Cain (Young Guns. He appeared in 24: Redemption, and became a part of that show's regular cast for its seventh season. Voight is the father of Angelina Jolie, and has often been the subject of tabloid coverage because of their occasionally fraught public bickering.

Trivia: Canadian-born actor Hume Cronyn was the son of a well-known Ontario politician. At his father's insistence, young Cronyn studied law at McGill University, but had by then already decided he wanted to be an actor; he made his stage bow with the Montreal Repertory Company at 19, while still a student. After taking classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and working with regional companies in Washington, DC and Virginia, Cronyn made it to Broadway in 1934. His first important role was as the imbibing, jingle-writing hero of Three Men on a Horse, directed and co-written by George Abbott. He remained with Abbott to work in Room Service and Boy Meets Girl - not only establishing himself as a versatile stage actor but also gleaning a lifelong appreciation of strict artistic discipline from the authoritarian Mr. Abbott. Cronyn went from one taskmaster to another when he made his film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. The 32-year-old Cronyn quietly stole several scenes in the film as a fiftyish mystery-novel fanatic. Cronyn would remain beholden to Hitchcock for the rest of his career: He acted in Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) and worked several times thereafter on the director's TV series; he adapted the stage play Rope and the novel Under Capricorn for Hitchcock's filmizations; and he sprang to the late director's defense when a dubious biography of Hitchcock was published in the mid-1980s. Though well-versed in Shakespeare and Moliere on stage, Cronyn was often limited to unpleasant, weasely and sometimes sadistic characters in films; one of his nastiest portrayals was as the Hitleresque prison guard Munsey in Brute Force (1947). A somewhat less hissable Cronyn appeared in The Green Years (1946), wherein he portrayed the father of his real-life wife Jessica Tandy, who was in fact two years older than he. Cronyn had married Tandy in 1942, a union that was to last until the actress' death in 1994. They worked together often on stage (The Fourposter, The Gin Game) and in films (Batteries Not Included), and delighted in giving joint interviews where they'd confound and misdirect the interviewer. Their daughter, Tandy Cronyn, matured into a fine actress in her own right. Seemingly indefatigable despite health problems and the loss of one eye, Cronyn remained gloriously active in films, television and stage into the 1990s, encapsulating many of his experiences in his breezy autobiography A Terrible Liar.

Trivia: Actress Madge Sinclair was born and raised in Jamaica. A bright and ambitious student, Sinclair excelled in speech and drama, winning several awards. She put her theatrical aspirations on hold when she married a Jamaican policeman, working for several years as a schoolteacher. In 1968, she moved to New York with her two sons in tow, hoping to launch an acting career. While opportunities were still rather limited for black performers in the late 1960s, she managed to find good, solid stage work with producer Joseph Papp, the Public Theatre and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She made her film debut as Mrs. Scott in Conrack (1974), then went on to earn an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Bell in the 1977 TV miniseries Roots. After a brief fling at series TV with the 1978 Jack Albertson sitcom Grandpa Goes to Washington, Sinclair enjoyed a six-season (1980-86) run as Nurse Ernestine Shoop on Trapper John MD. Her later weekly TV stints included Ohara (1987) and Me and the Boys (1994). Busy though she was on television, Sinclair always managed to find time for theatrical and film work (in the 1986 Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America, for example, she was seen as Eddie's royal mamma). Madge Sinclair died of leukemia at the age of 57, not long after completing work on the TV special A Century of Women.

Trivia: Before he inaugurated his professional career, African-American actor Paul Winfield received a well-rounded education: He trained at the University of Portland, Los Angeles City College, Stanford, U.C.L.A., the University of Hawaii, and the University of Santa Barbara. After stage work, Winfield received his first major Hollywood break as Paul Cameron on the TV sitcom Julia (1968-1971). In films from 1969, he received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of a fiercely proud sharecropper in Sounder (1972). Back on the small screen, he earned Emmy nominations for his interpretation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1978 miniseries King and his work as Dr. Huguley in 1979's Roots: The Next Generation. An indispensable purveyor of authoritative roles, he has played several judges, winning a 1994 Emmy for his performance in this capacity on TV's Picket Fences. Paul Winfield has also been seen on a regular basis in three television series, playing Julian C. Barlow in the 1989-1990 episodes of 227, Isaac Tuhle in Wiseguy (1987-1991), and a no-nonsense Magic Mirror (voice only) in the 1987 Cinderella spoof The Charmings. In 2004, not long after playing a small role in a remake of Sounder, Winfield suffered a heart attack and passed away at the age of 62.

Trivia: Black supporting actor Antonio Fargas first appeared onscreen in the '70s.

Trivia: American actress Ruth Attaway is best known for her work in theater. She debuted on Broadway in 1936 and went on to work on various stages, on and off Broadway, for over 40 years. Attaway was the first director in the New York Players Guild. She also has experience working in radio and on television. When not acting, she worked for the American Red Cross and for the state of New York.

Trivia: Supporting actress Gracia Lee frequently guest starred on numerous television series, including Newhart, thirtysomething, and Cagney and Lacey. She also appeared in a handful of films, beginning with Conrack (1974).

Trivia: American film director Martin Ritt started out as a Broadway actor. Ritt's stage role as "Gleason" in Winged Victory brought him to Hollywood for the film version, for which the studio publicity billed him, along with the rest of the male cast, by the rank he held in the Army (Private First Class Martin Ritt). A victim of the Hollywood blacklist, Ritt's career came to a standstill in the early 1950s. He reemerged, not as an actor, but as a director for the 1956 film Edge of the City. A favorite of actor Paul Newman, Ritt directed Newman in The Long Hot Summer (1958), Paris Blues (1961), Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962), Hud (1963), The Outrage (1964) and Hombre (1967). Other Ritt-directed films of note were Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), Cross Creek (1984), Murphy's Romance (1985), and, his last film, Stanley and Iris (1990). If there doesn't seem to be a central throughline in these films it was because Ritt steadfastly refused to be typecast as a director. One project that brought him immense satisfaction was The Front (1976), a comedy-drama of the blacklist years in which Ritt worked with fellow blacklistees Martin Balsam, Zero Mostel, Joshua Shelley, Herschel Bernardi, Lloyd Gough, and screenwriter Walter Bernstein. In 1985, Ritt made a surprising but delightful return to acting in the role of an excitable baseball manager in the otherwise disposable The Slugger's Wife (1985).

Trivia: Though she came to prominence in the 1980s, Kathleen Turner, with her blend of raw sexuality, beauty, intelligence, and drive, could give golden age-sirens like Lana Turner and Ava Gardner a run for their money. After years of working as a relative unknown in way-off-Broadway productions and in the television soap opera The Doctors, Turner burst onto the movie scene in a star-making blaze when she was cast as femme fatale Matty opposite William Hurt in Lawrence Kasdan's neo-noir thriller Body Heat (1981). She continued to wreak havoc on the opposite sex throughout the decade, appearing in a variety of popular movies that ranged from drama to lighthearted adventure to jet-black comedy. The daughter of a U.S. ambassador, Turner experienced a peripatetic upbringing in a fiercely competitive environment. Living in Canada, Cuba, Washington, D.C., Venezuela, and England, she learned to adjust to new situations at a very young age. She later claimed the experience molded her as an actress and taught her to constantly refashion herself to meet the needs of particular situations. Turner first became conscious of wanting to be an actress while living in England, where, during her weekly visits to the theater, she was thrilled by the work of Diana Rigg, Christopher Plummer, Angela Lansbury, and others. While attending high school, Turner enrolled in classes at London's Central School of Speech and Drama. She studied there until 1973, when her father's death forced her mother to move the family back to her hometown of Springfield, MO. It was there that Turner would take voice lessons at Southwest Missouri State University, where she later enrolled. Finding the campus devoid of the culture she craved, however, Turner transferred to the University of Maryland and in 1977 graduated with a degree in theater. Following graduation, she moved to New York and, in between waiting tables, found work in television commercials and obscure stage productions until deciding it was time to try Hollywood. Turner had just finished an unsuccessful audition when, fortuitously enough, she encountered the casting agent for Body Heat. Her subsequent portrayal of the murderous Matty proved to be her breakthrough and led to a series of widely varied starring roles. For her sophomore effort, she tried her hand at comedy with The Man With Two Brains (1983), in which she starred opposite Steve Martin. Again, as with her previous role, she played a woman who used her feminine wiles to manipulate a man. In the erotic Crimes of Passion (1984), she once more was cast as a woman using sex for manipulation, playing a fashion designer/hooker who gets involved with a street preacher. Understandably not wanting to get typecast by this point, Turner next played a dowdy author who finds herself caught up in an exciting South American adventure with dashing Michael Douglas and sleazy Danny De Vito in Romancing the Stone (1984). The film was a smash hit and Turner found herself a star. The following year, the trio reunited for the sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, and in 1989, they once again collaborated for The War of the Roses, Danny DeVito's grimly funny dissection of a messy divorce. Other high points of that period included Turner's performance as a beautiful but ruthless hit woman in Prizzi's Honor (1985) and her Oscar-nominated turn as a dissatisfied housewife who gets a second chance to alter her life in Francis Ford Coppola's moving Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). In 1988, Turner re-teamed with William Hurt for a supporting role in Kasdan's The Accidental Tourist (1988). That same year, she gave a devastatingly sexy performance as the voice of Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Unfortunately, despite these successes, Turner subsequently had a hard time finding quality roles, and her appearances during the early to mid-'90s were sporadic. One highlight of this period was her turn as the completely psychotic suburban housewife who goes on a killing spree in John Waters' funny but uneven Serial Mom (1994). In the latter half of the 1990s, Turner began to find more quality work in films like Moonlight and Valentino (1995) and The Real Blonde (1997). In 1999, she could be seen starring in the children's comedy Baby Geniuses, The Prince of Central Park, and Sofia Coppola's eagerly awaited adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, which cast Turner as the matriarch of a profoundly dysfunctional family.As the 21st century began, Turner made a handful of appearances as Chandler's drag-queen dad on Friends. On the big screen she lent her distinctive husky tones to the animated project Monster House. In 2008 she acted in the hit Marley & Me, and in 2012 had one of her best leading film roles in quite some time as the Catholic mother of a dysfunctional clan in The Perfect Family.