Trivia: Born Carlos Ray Norris, Chuck Norris served in Korea in the Army. While there, he studied karate and later became the World Middleweight Karate Champion. He was encouraged by one of his karate students, actor Steve McQueen, to go into acting. He debuted onscreen in the enormously popular Bruce Lee vehicle Enter the Dragon (1973); since the death of Lee he has been the screen's premier martial arts star. He has appeared primarily in militaristic movies in which he single-handedly kills many enemies. His breakthrough film was Missing in Action (1984), in which he played an ex-POW in search of American prisoners still held in Vietnam.

Trivia: Formerly a schoolteacher, Texas-born Noble Willingham has been essaying crusty character roles since 1969. Willingham's resumé includes a brace of location-filmed Peter Bogdanovich films, The Last Picture Show (1971) and Paper Moon (1973), and the role of Clay Stone in both of Billy Crystal's City Slickers comedies. Among his TV-movie credits is the part of President James Knox Polk in 1985's Dream West. A regular on several TV series (The Ann Jillian Show, Texas Wheelers, Cutter to Houston, AfterMASH, When the Whistle Blows), Willingham is best known to 1990s viewers as Mr. Binford (of Binford Tools) in Home Improvement and C. D. Parker in Walker, Texas Ranger. Noble Willingham's most recent film assignments include Ace Ventura, Pet Detective (1994) Up Close and Personal (1996) and Space Jam (1996). In 2000, Willingham left Walker, Texas Ranger to run for Congress in Texas. After losing the election to his Democratic opponent, Max Sandlin, Willingham returned to acting with a supporting role in the Val Kilmer thriller Blind Horizon. Sadly, the part would be the actor's last. In early 2004, at the age of 72, Willingham passed away at home from natural causes.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the late '80s.

Trivia: Trained at Juilliard, actor Michael Beach worked in regional theater and off-Broadway productions before moving to Los Angeles to work on television and film. His stage credits include Much Ado About Nothing and Ascension Day. Though he appeared on television a lot in the late '80s, his film breakthrough came in Carl Franklin's 1991 crime thriller One False Move. He played the ex-con Pluto opposite Billy Bob Thornton, who also co-wrote the script. Thornton later wrote the role of Virgil for Beach in the 1996 drama A Family Thing, starring James Earl Jones. In 1993, he was a part of the ensemble cast in Robert Altman's award-winning feature Short Cuts. After playing opposite Laurence Fishburne in the crime thriller Bad Company (1995), Beach went on to play several unfaithful husbands. He cheated on Angela Bassett in Waiting to Exhale (1995), Vanessa Williams in Soul Food (1997), and Gloria Reuben on ER. Fellow ER cast member Eriq La Salle cast Beach in his sports drama Rebound: The Legend of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (1996) for HBO. Back on television, Beach earned an Image Award for his role of Monte 'Doc' Parker on the NBC dramatic series Third Watch. In 2002, he re-teamed with actor/director La Salle for the lead role of Dr. Ty Adams in the thriller Crazy as Hell.

Trivia: Blonde-dreadlocked actress and filmmaker Kasi Lemmons was born in Missouri but raised in Massachusetts after her parents divorced. She performed in Boston Children's Theatre as a kid before studying at N.Y.U. and U.C.L.A. Starting at the tender age of 18, she acted professionally throughout the '80s in television and films, including a small role in Spike Lee's School Daze. With an interest in making documentaries, she went to film school at the New School for Social Research in N.Y.C. and made her first film, Fall From Grace, a short documentary about homelessness. Though she continued to develop her writing, she kept acting in order to pay the bills with supporting roles in The Silence of the Lambs, Candyman, Hard Target, and Fear of a Black Hat. Frustrated with her acting career and the lack of good roles for black women in Hollywood, she went to work on her screenplay for Eve's Bayou, a Southern Gothic drama about a girl growing up in Louisiana. In 1997, she appeared in Gridlock'd, the debut feature film by her husband, actor/director Vondie Curtis-Hall. That same year she became pregnant with her first child and made the short film Dr. Hugo -- based on a segment of her script and starring her husband in the lead role -- in order to convince the studios that she could direct Eve's Bayou herself. By the time shooting began, her son Henry Hunter Hall was just three months old. With Samuel L. Jackson as co-producer, Eve's Bayou was a critical success, winning Lemmons an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. In 2001, she teamed with Samuel L. Jackson again for the psychological thriller The Caveman's Valentine, adapted from a novel by George Dawes Green.