Trivia: The son of actor Lloyd Bridges, Jeff Bridges made his screen bow as a petulant infant in the arms of his real-life mother, Dorothy, in the 1950 Jane Greer melodrama The Company She Keeps; his troublesome older brother in that film was played by his real older brother Beau. The younger Bridges made a more formal debut before the cameras at age eight, in an episode of his dad's TV series Sea Hunt. After serving in the Coast Guard reserve, the budding actor studied acting at the Herbert Berghof school. While older brother Beau was developing into a character player, Bridges, thanks in equal parts to his ability and ruggedly handsome looks, became a bona fide leading man. He had his first major success with a leading role in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Two years later, he won yet another Oscar nomination, this time for Best Supporting Actor in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). Bridges worked steadily throughout the rest of the 1970s, starring in a number of films, including Hearts of the West (1975) and Stay Hungry (1976). The 1980s brought further triumph, despite starting out inauspiciously with a part in the notoriously ill-fated Heaven's Gate (1981). In 1984, Bridges won yet another Oscar nomination for his leading role in Starman and continued to find acclaim for his work, in such movies as The Morning After (1986) and The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). The latter featured Bridges and brother Beau as struggling musicians, as well as Michelle Pfeiffer in a performance marked by both the actress' own talent and her ability to roll around on a piano wearing a figure-hugging red velvet dress. Bridges began the 1990s with Texasville, the desultory sequel to The Last Picture Show. Things began to improve with acclaimed performances in Fearless (1993) and American Heart (1995) (the latter marked his producing debut), and the actor found commercial, if not critical, success with the bomb thriller Blown Away in 1994. More success followed, with a lead role in the Barbra Streisand vehicle The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), and as a hapless and perpetually stoned bowling aficionado in the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski (1998). In 1999, Bridges returned to the thriller genre with Arlington Road, playing the concerned neighbor of urban terrorist Tim Robbins, and then switched gears with Albert Brooks' comedy drama The Muse. In addition to his acting achievements, Bridges has also written some 200 songs, a talent which he memorably incorporated in The Fabulous Baker Boys.Bridges delivered a typically strong performance in 1999's Simpatico, which featured the actor as a horse-breeder embroiled in a complicated scam orchestrated by a once good friend, while The Contender (2000) found him playing a happy-go-lucky U.S. President suddenly forced to decide if his Vice Presidential candidate's rumored sexual escapades will affect his ultimate decision. Though K-PAX (2001) fared badly in theaters, Jeff's performance as Kevin Spacey's character's psychiatrist was solid, as was his role of a soft-spoken kidnapping victim in director Dominique Forma's Scenes of the Crime. 2003 was a polarizing year in terms of critical success -- despite an A-list cast including Bridges himself, Penelope Cruz, and Jessica Lange, Masked and Anonymous went unseen by most, and disliked by the rest. Luckily, Seabiscuit catapulted Bridges back into Hollywood's spotlight, as did Tod Wiliams' Door in the Floor, based on John Irving's novel A Widow for One Year.In 2008, Bridges landed the plum role of the bad guy in the box-office blockbuster Iron Man, but it was his turn as fading country music star Bad Blake in Crazy Heart that earned him the accolades that had eluded the respected actor throughout his career. For his work in that film Bridges captured the SAG award, the Golden Globe, and his fifth Oscar nomination -- marking his second nod in the lead category 25 years after his first for Starman.The next year Bridges would be up for the Best Actor award again, this time for the way he tackled one of John Wayne's iconic role's, Rooster Cogburn, in the Coen brother's hit remake of True Grit. That same year, he would return as Kevin Flynn in the sequel Tron: Legacy.

Trivia: The daughter of a military officer, Valerie Perrine spent her childhood hopscotching from one country to another. Her early plans to become a psychologist were abandoned when she parlayed her svelte figure and sparkling personality into a brief career as a Las Vegas showgirl. Perrine then settled into a lucrative, active career upon being cast as habitually naked movie queen Montana Wildhack in Slaughterhouse Five (1971). While her talk show persona was that of a typically airheaded starlet, Perrine was in fact a serious, dedicated actress; she won an Oscar nomination for her performance as Honey Bruce in 1974's Lenny, and was no less impressive as Carlotta Monti in 1976's W.C. Fields and Me. Despite her acting accomplishments, Perrine was most often cast on the basis of her top-heavy physical attributes; it is said that she was cast as the leading lady in Can't Stop the Music (1980) in order to attract those "straight" filmgoers that might have otherwise avoided a film starring the Village People. More recently, Valerie Perrine has excelled in eccentric character roles on such TV series as Northern Exposure and ER.

Trivia: The daughter of a Dublin attorney, Geraldine Fitzgerald was still in her teens when she made her theatrical bow with the Gate Theatre. In films from 1934, she played a series of petulant ingénues in a string of forgettable quota quickies; in later years, she sarcastically summed up her early screen roles by repeating her most frequent snatch of dialogue, "But daddy, it's my birthday!" With her first husband, she moved to New York in 1938, where she was hired by her old Gate Theatre colleague Orson Welles to star in the Mercury Theater production Heartbreak House. This led to several choice Hollywood assignments in such films as Dark Victory (1939) and Wuthering Heights (1939). Forever battling with studio executives over her often inconsequential screen assignments (exceptions included such roles as Edith Galt in the 1945 biopic Wilson), Fitzgerald briefly gave up films in 1948 to return to the stage. Carefully picking and choosing her subsequent movie roles, she established herself as a reliable character actress in quality films like Ten North Frederick (1958) and The Pawnbroker (1965). She briefly pursued a folksinging career before returning to Broadway in the ultra-demanding role of Mary Tyrone in the 1971 revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night. Active into the late '80s, Fitzgerald has added a welcome dash of Hibernian feistiness to such projects as Arthur (1981) and Easy Money (1983). Geraldine Fitzgerald is the mother of prominent British film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg.

Trivia: Portly American character actor Ned Beatty originally planned to enter the clergy, but after appearing in a single high-school play, he changed his mind and decided to become a thespian instead. By his early twenties, Beatty was playing Broadway and it was his work in the play The Great White Hope that attracted the interest of film director John Boorman, who cast him as one of the four main stars in his gripping backwoods thriller Deliverance (1972). Forever immortalized in the notorious "squeal like a pig" rape scene, Beatty subsequently went on to become one of the screen's more prolific supporting actors, frequently appearing in up to four films per year. His more notable film work includes Nashville (1975), All the President's Men (1976), Network (for which he earned an Oscar nomination), The Big Easy (1987), Hear My Song (1991), A Prelude to a Kiss (1992), Radioland Murders (1994), and He Got Game (1998). In 1999, he could be seen as a small-town sheriff in the Robert Altman ensemble film Cookie's Fortune.At the start of the 21st century the always-employed character actor continued to work steadily in projects as diverse as Roughing It, Where the Red Fern Grows, Shooter, and Charlie Wilson's War. He joined the Pixar family when he voiced Lotso, the bad guy in Toy Story 3, and he provided the voice of Mayor in 2011's Oscar winning animated feature Rango.

Trivia: Although American leading man Gary Busey has made distinguished appearances in many films, he has yet to attain the consistent popularity that would make him a major star. Born in Texas, Busey first few years were spent on an Oklahoma ranch where he learned to be a bull rider. He attended three different colleges before finally graduating in 1963, the year he became a professional drummer with the rock group The Rubber Band. Later, he billed himself as Teddy Jack Eddy and played percussion for Leon Russell, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson. In 1970, Busey made his acting debut in an episode of the TV western High Chaparel. This led to his feature film debut as a biker in Angels Hard as They Come the following year. After that Busey went on to play supporting roles (typically cast as renegades, daredevils, or good ol' boys with dubious morals) until 1978 when he made a major splash playing the lanky lead in The Buddy Holly Story, for which he did all the guitar and vocal work. His impersonation of Holly was remarkable and won him considerable acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Busey then went on to play leads in many films of varying quality during the early to mid-1980s. In the late '80s he returned to supporting roles and co-leads. In 1988, Busey almost died in a motorcycle accident and his near death resulted in enactment of tougher helmet laws in California.

Trivia: Originally billing himself as Art London, Art Lund started out as a baritone singer with bandleader Benny Goodman. He became an actor in the 1950s and appeared in several Broadway productions. Lund made his feature-film debut as a character actor in The Molly McGuires (1970).

Trivia: An English major in college, Ed Lauter worked as a stand-up comic before entering films in 1971. The tall, menacing Lauter has generally been typecast as humorless, easily corruptible authority figures. He was at his meanest as the vindictive Captain Knaur in Robert Aldrich's The Longest Yard. His TV credits include such roles as Sheriff Cain in BJ and the Bear (1979-80) and General Louis Crewes in Stephen King's The Golden Years (1991). In 1976, Ed Lauter was afforded a rare leading role--and a sympathetic one to boot--in the made-for-TV murder mystery Last Hours Before Morning (1976). Lauter appeared in the 2005 remake of The Longest Yard and had a small role in the Oscar-winning film The Artist (2011). He also had a recurring role on the TV series Shameless. Lauter passed away in 2013 of mesothelioma at age 74, with several films in post-production, awaiting release.

Trivia: A top-flight character actor and sometime leading man, Gregory Walcott managed to bridge the tail-end of the studio system, the heyday of series television, and the boom years of the post-studio 1970s, and carve a notable career in the process. He was born Bernard Mattox in 1928 (some sources say 1932) in Wendell, NC, a small town about 10 miles east of the state capitol of Raleigh. After serving in the Army following the end of the Second World War, he decided to try for an acting career and hitchhiked his way to California. He managed to get work in amateur and semi-professional theatrical productions and was lucky enough to be spotted in a small role in one of these by an agent. That resulted in his big-screen debut, in an uncredited role in the 20th Century-Fox drama Red Skies of Montana (1952). With his 6'-plus height, impressive build, and deep voice, Walcott would seem to have a major career in front of him, but the movie business of the 1950s was in a state of constant retrenchment, battling the intrusion of television and the eroding of its audience. For the next three years, he had little but bit parts in films, some of them major productions. His performance as the drill instructor in the opening section of Raoul Walsh's Battle Cry (1955) was good enough to get him a contract with Warner Bros. He subsequently played supporting roles in Mister Roberts (1955) and in independent productions such as Badman's Country (1958), and also started showing up on television with some regularity. And with each new role, he seemed to gather momentum in his career.As luck would have it, however, Walcott's most prominent role of the 1950s ended up being the one he received the lowest fee for doing, and that he also thought the least of, and also one that, for decades, he was loathe to discuss, on or off the record: as Jeff Trent, the hero of Plan 9 From Outer Space. Walcott's work on the magnum opus of writer/producer/director Edward D. Wood, Jr. amounted to less than a week's work, and he was so busy in those days that one can easily imagine him forgetting about it as soon as his end of the shoot was over. And the movie was scarcely even seen on its initial release in the summer of 1959 and went to television in the early '60s in a package that usually had it relegated to "shock theater" showcases and the late-night graveyard (no pun intended). But the ultra-low-budget production, renowned for its eerily, interlocking values of ineptitude and entertainment, has become one of the most widely viewed (and deeply analyzed) low-budget movies of any era in the decades since.As this oddity in his career was starting to gather its fans (some would say fester), Walcott had long since moved on to co-starring in the series 87th Precinct and guest-starring roles in series television. Across the 1960s, he remained busy and had a chance to do especially good work on the series Bonanza, which gave him major guest-starring roles in seven episodes between 1960 and 1972. In one of these, "Song in the Dark" (1962), Walcott even had a chance to show off his singing voice, a talent of his that was otherwise scarcely recognized in a three-decade career. By the late '60s, he had also moved into production work, producing and starring in Bill Wallace of China (1967), the story of a Christian missionary. During the 1970s, Walcott finally started to get movie roles that were matched in prominence to his talent, most especially in the films of Clint Eastwood. He remained busy as a prominent character actor and supporting player -- part of that category of performers that includes the likes of Richard Herd and James Cromwell -- into the 1980s. He had retired by the start of the 1990s, but was called before the cameras once more for an appearance in Tim Burton's movie Ed Wood. Walcott died in 2015, at age 87.

Trivia: Lane Smith attended the Actors Studio during its halcyon days of the late 1950s-early 1960s. Though he didn't go on to stardom like such Studio grads as Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, Smith found steady work on the New York stage. In over 100 films and television projects from 1974's Man on a String, Smith has regularly invested three-dimensionality into such cardboard characters as prosecutor Jim Trotter III in My Cousin Vinny (1992) and Coach Reilly in The Mighty Ducks (1993). His latter-day stage work has included a healthy run in the original production of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. Smith's TV roles included smiler-with-a-knife space alien Nathan Bates in V (1984) and Dr. Robert Moffitt in Kay O'Brien (1986). In 1989, Lane received a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of Richard M. Nixon in the ABC miniseries The Final Days. Fans of ABC's Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman will recognize Smith for playing the gruff Daily Planet editor Perry White. Lane Smith was married to writer Sydne MacCall.

Trivia: Ernie Orsatti performed stunts and played supporting roles in films of the '70s, '80s, and '90s.