Trivia: British actor Patrick Macnee barely had time to earn his Eton school tie when he began training for his career on a scholarship to the Webber Douglas School of Dramatic Art. While serving with the Royal Navy during World War II, Macnee made his first film appearance with a small role in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). He continued essaying such featured roles as Young Marley in the 1951 Christmas Carol before coming to Broadway with the Old Vic troupe in 1954. He decided to stay in Hollywood a while, appearing in several TV shows and such films as Les Girls (1957). He would later describe most of his roles during this period as "villainy in a tri-corner hat." In 1960, Macnee traded his period duds for a bowler and three-piece suit when he began his long run as sophisticated secret agent John Steed on the British TV series The Avengers (incidentally, the murder that Macnee was "avenging" in the early episodes was that of a woman played by his then-wife Kate Woodville). He remained the one permanent fixture on The Avengers until its demise in 1968, appearing opposite three different jumpsuit-clad leading ladies: Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg and Linda Thorson. Macnee also showed up as a supervisor of sort in the 1977 "retro" series The New Avengers, leaving the karate and gunplay to Joanna Lumley and Gareth Hunt. In America, Patrick Macnee appeared regularly on the TV series Gavilan (1982), Empire (1984), and Lightning Force (1991). Macnee continued working through the 2000s, including a voice appearance in the 1998 Avengers movie. Patrick Macnee passed away in 2015, at age 93.

Trivia: Look up "statuesque" in the dictionary and you just might find a picture of British actress Diana Rigg. Born in a Yorkshire industrial town, Rigg was two years old when her father, a railroad constructionist, moved the family to India. Six years later, she was back in Yorkshire, suffering through the discipline and rigors of private school until one of her teachers introduced her to the world of the theatre. After graduation, Rigg was accepted by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; she went on to the Royal Shakespeare Company, where her deeply distinctive voice, auburn red hair, and towering height (5'8") assured her such dynamic roles as Viola in Twelfth Night and Cordelia in King Lear. Though never lacking in prestige, the Royal Shakespeare paid starvation wages, compelling Rigg to moonlight in the more lucrative world of movies and TV. In 1965, she was selected to replace Honor Blackman on the popular tongue-in-cheek TV-adventure series "The Avengers," and for the next two years captivated little boys of all ages with her energetic portrayal of coolheaded, leather-clad karate expert Mrs. Emma Peel. Film stardom followed in short order with plum roles in The Assassination Bureau (1968) and the James Bond flick On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Though she was always welcome in films and television (she headlined a brief American sitcom, "Diana," in 1973), Rigg preferred to think of herself as a "theatre animal," and continued to star in the classics on stage, still frequently accepting a miniscule salary in order to satisfy her muse. In the last decade, Rigg published the hilarious book No Turn Unstoned, in which she gathered together the worst reviews ever received by the world's best actors (including her own bad notices); in the early 1990s, she replaced Vincent Price as the host of PBS' "Mystery" anthology.

Trivia: When leggy, 5'9" brunette actress Linda Thorson replaced Diana Rigg on the long-running British TV adventure series The Avengers, one critic summed up Thorson as "a cute trick, but not in Diana's league." Hold on there! Though Thorson was only 20, she was no mere bubble-headed starlet. The daughter of a Canadian math and physics teacher, she was a trained dancer and an alumnus of London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. She had previously won speaking and singing honors while in school, and was well on her way to a prestigious stage career when she was selected from a field of 200 actresses to play Tara King, the new partner of crimefighter John Steed(Patrick MacNee) on The Avengers. Some fans of the series have a low regard of Thorson's contributions, citing her misguided efforts to inject more sexual tension between Tara and Steed, and her tendency to react more fearfully to dangerous situations than the unflappable Rigg. In point of fact, Thorson was only following orders; the producers of The Avengers were responsible for the questionable "improvements" in their flagging property. After the series' cancellation in 1969, Thorson launched her stage career in earnest, racking up respectable credits on the British stage and in such films as Valentino (1977) and The Great Tycoon (1979). She won a Theatre World Award for her 1982 Broadway debut in Steaming, and proved a superb farceur in the Alan Ayckbourn stage comedy Noises Off. The mature, poised, wryly self-confident Linda Thorson who co-starred on the 1986 TV comedy series Marblehead Manor was a far cry from the slightly awkward, plucked-eyebrowed nymphet who co-starred in the waning days of The Avengers.