Trivia: The son of a prominent archaeologist/museum director, American actor Ted Danson grew up near the Navajo reservation in Arizona. He played basketball while at Kent School Connecticut, and then moved on to Stanford University. It was in the process of getting acquainted with an aspiring actress at Stanford that Danson found himself attending his first audition-- and by years' end had transferred to the drama department at Carnegie Tech. Marking time in non-speaking roles, Danson left the stage for the more lucrative world of TV commercials, some of which have been well-circulated on videotape since Danson has become famous. Danson's first steady TV work was as a slimy villain on the NBC soap opera Somerset. Shortly afterward, the actor attained his first film role, as a murdered cop, in The Onion Field (1978). After seeing Danson in the movie Body Heat (1981) and in an episode of the TV series Taxi, producer Glen Charles cast the actor as Sam Malone, ex-sports star and full-time barkeeper and womanizer, on the long-running, well-loved sitcom Cheers He won Emmys for the 1989-90 and 1992-93 seasons. Frequently making attempts at film stardom during the 11-season run of Cheers, Danson finally struck gold in Three Men and a Baby (1987) and its sequel Three Men and a Little Lady (1990). Danson's most recent work includes the 1996 starring role in the TV miniseries Gulliver's Travels and a co-starring role, opposite his new wife Mary Steenburgen, in the television sit-com Ink (also 1996). In 1998 Danson began a six-year run on another successful sitcom portraying the lead character on Becker, playing a caustic grump who couldn't have been further from Sam Malone's effortless charm. He continued to work steadily on the big screen as well scoring appearances in Saving Private Ryan and Mumford. He made sporadic appearances on Larry David's award-winning Curb Your Enthusiasm, and earned strong reviews for his dramatic work on the first season of the TV show Damages. He followed that up with a co-starring role on the HBO series Bored to Death, which lasted three seasons. In 2012 he could be seen in the inspirational animal movie Big Miracle.

Trivia: Northwestern University drama student Shelley Long began picking up work in Chicago TV commercials in the mid-1970s. She went on to host the WMAQ-TV "magazine" program Sorting it Out, and honed her comic timing with the Second City troupe. While her actual film debut was in 1980's A Small Circle of Friends, Long prefers to list the 1981 spoof Caveman as her first film. After a handful of TV guest appearances (notably as one of Alan Alda's lady friends on MASH) and an attention-grabbing performance as a freewheeling hooker in Night Shift (1982), Long was cast as the pretentious, garrulous waitress Diane Chambers on the weekly sitcom Cheers. She won an Emmy for this role, but all was not roses on the Cheers set. According to most sources, Diane's overbearing personality spilled over into Long's off-camera behavior; when she left the series in 1987, many of the cast members, especially star Ted Danson, breathed a rather loud and public sigh of relief. Shelley Long's post-Cheers efforts to establish herself as a movie star have thus far fallen short of expectations; her most successful film assignment to date has been as retro housewife Carol Brady in 1995's The Brady Bunch: The Movie. She reprised the role of Carol in the 1996 sequel A Very Brady Sequel. She returned to the part of Diane Chambers with a guest appearance on Frasier in 1996, and she would play Carol Brady again in A Very Brady Sequel that same year. At the beginning of the next decade she had a memorable turn in Robert Altman's Dr. T & the Women, and she would appear again on Frasier in the part that made her famous. There was a third Brady Bunch movie in 2002. She appeared in light fare such as Honeymoon with Mom and A Holiday Engagement.

Trivia: Fans familiar with diminutive American actress Rhea Perlman only through her Emmy-winning characterization of wasp-tongued waitress Carla Tortelli on the TV sitcom Cheers are usually taken aback to discover that Perlman is as shy and soft-spoken as Carla was pushy and abrasive. A working actress since the 1960s, Perlman played Carla from 1983 until Cheers' swan song ten years later. Most of her "outside" projects during that period, notably the 1984 TV movie The Ratings Game and a 1986 episode of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories, were done in conjunction with her longtime companion, Danny DeVito, who also played her boyfriend on the late-'70s comedy series Taxi. Kindred spirits, Rhea Perlman and Danny DeVito eventually marched down the matrimonial aisle as a loudspeaker played a recording of Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer singing "I'm in the Mood for Love."

Trivia: Known almost as much for his off-screen pastimes as his on-screen characterizations, Woody Harrelson is an actor for whom truth is undeniably stranger than fiction. Son of a convicted murderer, veteran of multiple arrests, outspoken environmentalist, and tireless hemp proponent, Harrelson is colorful even by Hollywood standards. However, he is also a strong, versatile actor, something that tends to be obscured by the attention paid to his real-life antics. Born in Midland, TX, on July 23, 1961, Harrelson grew up in Lebanon, OH. He began his acting career there, appearing in high-school plays. He also went professional around this time, making his small-screen debut in Harper Valley P.T.A. (1978) alongside Barbara Eden. While studying acting in earnest, Harrelson attended Indiana's Hanover College; following his graduation, he had his first speaking part (one line only) in the 1986 Goldie Hawn vehicle Wildcats. On the stage, Harrelson understudied in the Neil Simon Broadway comedy Biloxi Blues (he was briefly married to Simon's daughter Nancy) and at one point wrote a play titled Furthest From the Sun. His big break came in 1985, when he was cast as the sweet-natured, ingenuous bartender Woody Boyd on the TV sitcom Cheers. To many, he is best remembered for this role, for which he won a 1988 Emmy and played until the series' 1993 conclusion. During his time on Cheers, Harrelson also played more serious roles in made-for-TV movies such as Bay Coven (1987), and branched out to the big screen with roles in such films as Casualties of War (1989) and Doc Hollywood (1991). Harrelson's big break as a movie star came with Ron Shelton's 1992 sleeper White Men Can't Jump, a buddy picture in which he played a charming (if profane) L.A. hustler. His next film was a more serious drama, Indecent Proposal (1993), wherein he was miscast as a husband whose wife sleeps with a millionaire in exchange for a fortune. In 1994, Harrelson appeared as an irresponsible rodeo rider in the moronic buddy comedy The Cowboy Way, which proved to be an all-out clinker. That film's failings, however, were more than overshadowed by his other film that year, Oliver Stone's inflammatory Natural Born Killers. Playing one of the film's titular psychopaths, Harrelson earned both raves and a sizable helping of controversy for his complex performance. Following work in a couple of low-rated films, Harrelson again proved his mettle, offering another multi-layered performance as real life pornography magnate Larry Flynt in the controversial People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996). The performance earned Harrelson an Oscar nomination. The next year, he earned further praise for his portrayal of a psychotic military prisoner in Wag the Dog. He then appeared as part of an all-star lineup in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998), and in 1999 gave a hilarious performance as Matthew McConaughey's meathead brother in EdTV. That same year, he lent his voice to one of his more passionate causes, acting as the narrator for Grass, a documentary about marijuana. In 2000, Harrelson starred in White Men collaborator Ron Shelton's boxing drama Play It to the Bone as an aspiring boxer who travels to Las Vegas to find fame and fortune, but ends up competing against his best friend (Antonio Banderas). The actor temporarily retired from the big screen in 2001 and harkened back to his television roots, with seven appearances as Nathan, the short-term downstairs boyfriend to Debra Messing's Grace, in producer David Kohan's long-running hit Will and Grace (1998-2006). After his return to television, Harrelson seemed content to land supporting roles for several years. He reemerged in cineplexes with twin 2003 releases. In that year's little-seen Scorched, an absurdist farce co-starring John Cleese and Alicia Silverstone, Harrelson plays an environmentalist and animal activist who seeks retribution on Cleese's con-man for the death of one of his pet ducks. Unsurprisingly, most American critics didn't even bother reviewing the film, and it saw extremely limited release. Harrelson contributed a cameo to the same year's Jack Nicholson/Adam Sandler vehicle Anger Mangement, and a supporting role to 2004's critically-panned Spike Lee opus She Hate Me. The tepid response to these films mirrored those directed at After the Sunset (2004), Brett Ratner's homage to Alfred Hitchcock. Harrelson stars in the diamond heist picture as federal agent Stan Lloyd, opposite Pierce Brosnan's master thief Max Burdett. Audiences had three chances to catch Harrelson through the end of 2005; these included Mark Mylod's barely-released, Fargo-esque crime comedy The Big White , with Robin Williams and Holly Hunter; Niki Caro's October 2005 sexual harrassment docudrama North Country, starring Charlize Theron; and the gifted Jane Anderson's period drama Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio. In the latter, Harrelson plays, Leo 'Kelly' Ryan, the drunken, increasingly violent husband of lead Julianne Moore, who manages to hold her family together with a steady stream of sweepstakes wins in the mid-fifties, as alcoholism and the financial burden of ten children threaten to either tear the family apart or send it skidding into abject poverty. Harrelson then joined the cast of maestro auteur Robert Altman's ensemble comedy-drama A Prairie Home Companion (2006), a valentine to Garrison Keillor's decades-old radio program with a strong ensemble cast that includes Meryl Streep, Lindsay Lohan and Kevin Kline. He also works wonders as a key contributor to the same year's Richard Linklater sci-fi thriller Through a Scanner Darkly, an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1977 novel that, like one of the director's previous efforts, 2001's Waking Life, uses rotoscoping to animate over live-action footage. It opened in July 2006 to uniformly strong reviews. As Ernie Luckman, one of the junkie hangers-on at Robert Arctor's (Keanu Reeves) home, Harrelson contributes an effective level of despondency to his character, amid a first-rate cast. After Harrelson shot Prairie and Scanner, the trades announced that he had signed up to star in Paul Schrader's first UK-produced feature, Walker, to co-star Kristin Scott-Thomas, Lauren Bacall, Ned Beatty, Lily Tomlin and Willem Dafoe. Harrelson portrays the lead, a Washington, D.C.-based female escort; Schrader informed the trades that he envisions the character as something similar to what American Gigolo's Julian Kaye would become in middle-age. Shooting began in March 2006. He also signed on, in June of the same year, to join the cast of the Coen Bros.' 2007 release No Country for Old Men, which would capture the Academy Award for Best Picture. Harrelson showed off his versatility in 2008 by starring in the Will Ferrell basketball comedy Semi-Pro as well as the thriller Transsiberian. He continued to prove himself capable of just about any part the next year with his entertaining turn in the horror comedy Zombieland, and his powerful work as a damaged soldier in Oren Moverman's directorial debut The Messenger. For his work in that movie, Harrelson captured his second Academy Award nomination, as well as nods from the Golden Globes, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild - in addition to winning the Best Supporting Actor award from the National Board of Review. In 2012, the actor appeared as the flawed but loyal mentor to two young adults forced to compete to the death in the film adaptation of author Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games.

Trivia: For better or worse, leading actor Kelsey Grammer's name will probably forever be associated with the pompous, garrulous, and self-absorbed but lovable psychiatrist Frasier Crane, a character Grammer has played on television since he first appeared on the NBC sitcom Cheers, in 1984, as a love interest for Shelley Long. Though Frasier was not intended to become a series regular, Grammer's performance of the blowhard neurotic charmed audiences and he remained with Cheers through its 1993 demise. At the beginning of the 1993-1994 television season, Grammer's character was resurrected in his own show and moved from Boston to Seattle, where he became a radio psychologist and faced a whole slew of folks just waiting to poke metaphorical pins in his hot air balloon. Thanks to excellent performances and top-notch writing, Frasier became as big a hit as its predecessor. Grammer won three Emmy awards and was nominated for seven more (twice for Cheers, once for his guest appearance on a 1992 episode of Wings, four times for Frasier) for playing the character. Born on St. Thomas, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Grammer knew extreme tragedy in youth. Following the shooting death of his father when he was a boy, he was raised in New Jersey and then Florida, by his mother and grandfather. His grandfather died before Grammer became a teen. When he was 20, his sister was abducted and violently murdered. Five years later, he lost two half brothers in a diving accident. As a young man, Grammer found comfort in Shakespeare; with his acting debut in a high school production of The Little Foxes came an interest in pursuing drama as a career. He enrolled in Juilliard, but dropped out after two years to work at San Diego's Old Globe Theater, where he gained three years' invaluable experience performing in Shakespearean and classical dramas; afterward, Grammer performed in productions across the country. He eventually made it to Broadway, where he appeared in various productions, including Othello. Prior to playing Frasier, Grammer appeared occasionally on television and had regular roles in three soap operas, including One Life to Live. He continues to occasionally guest star on other series. Fans of the animated satire The Simpsons will recognize his periodic voice characterization as the venomous Sideshow Bob. Miniseries and telemovies in which he has appeared include London Suite and Beyond Suspicion. Grammer made his feature film debut with a small role in Top of the Hill (1989) and had his first starring role in the much-panned comedy Down Periscope (1996). In addition to his Emmy kudos, Grammer has received an American Comedy Award, two Golden Globes, and a People's Choice Award. In 1995, he published his autobiography So Far.Grammer would spend the following years taking on TV roles on shows like Back to You and Boss, but would find even more success as a producer, helping bring shows like The Game, Girlfriends, Hank, Medium, and World Cup Comedy to fruition. In 2014, he returned to acting in a big way, making a cameo appearance in X-Men: Days of Future Past, reprising his role as Beast, playing the bad guy in Transformers: Age of Extinction, and returning to television in the FX series Partners.

Trivia: There's no mystery concerning the hometown of George Wendt. The heavyset, curly haired actor never misses a talk show opportunity to cheer on his beloved Chicago "Cubbies" or "Da Bears." After theater work in Chicago and New York and a handful of TV appearances on sitcoms like M*A*S*H and Alice, Wendt inaugurated his signature role of burly, unemployed barfly Norm Peterson on TV's long-running Cheers (1983-1993); so far as it can be determined, he still hasn't paid his bar tab, which according to TV Guide totalled up to 64,218 dollars at the end of 11 seasons. He starred in the short-lived The George Wendt Show, and continued to work steadily on both the small and big screen in a variety of projects including Spice World, Outside Providence, Teddy Bears' Picnic, and Edmond. He also reprised his iconic role of Norm on an episode of the successful Cheers spinoff Frasier.

Trivia: Born in Connecticut, John Ratzenberger spent most of his early adulthood in England and Europe. After a brief stint as assistant to a London tree surgeon, Ratzenberger helped organize the English improvisational troupe "Sal's Meat Market" in 1971. He made his first screen appearances in such British-based productions as The Ritz (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Superman (1978), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Gandhi (1982). In 1982, Ratzenberger read for the part of post-office employee Norm on the upcoming American TV sitcom Cheers. Sensing that he hadn't won the role (which was true), Ratzenberger asked if the cast of Cheers included the character of "a bar know-it-all." Suddenly he launched into an impromptu ten-minute monologue, posing as an endlessly chattering repository of useless information. Then and there, the character of Cliff Clavin was born--a character Ratzenberger played for the next ten years. A man of many talents, Ratzenberger directed several Cheers episodes, and also co-wrote two British television plays Friends in Space (1978) and Scalped (1979). Tirelessly active in the pro-ecology movement, John Ratzenberger was owner and operator of Eco-Pak, a conservation-conscious packaging firm. Since the demise of Cheers, the actor has resurrected Cliff Clavin in the form of an advertising pitchman and has appeared in many commercials. He has also found success doing voice overs for advertising and voicework in films such as Toy Story (1995) and Dog's Best Friend (1997). Ratzenberger continued to make occasional guest appearances on television series such as Caroline in the City.He maintained a relationship with Pixar after Toy Story and went on to lend his distinctive voice to each of their films through Cars 2 in 2011. He returned to TV to appear in the fourth season of the reality competition series Dancing With the Stars.

Trivia: Versatile American actress Kirstie Alley has found success in feature films, but is still best known for her portrayal of neurotic Rebecca Howe during the latter years of the television series Cheers. Noted for her unusual beauty, thick, chestnut-colored hair, and whiskey voice, Alley studied drama in her native Kansas and then became an interior decorator. For a while, she went through a wild and crazy phase in which she abused cocaine and hung out with bikers, but when the lifestyle got old, Alley moved to California, underwent drug rehabilitation, and became a devout Scientologist. She made her feature-film debut playing Savic, a Vulcan student of Mr. Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and then played a major role in the television miniseries North and South, but she did not become a real star until she was selected to replace Shelly Long in Cheers in the late '80s. Though the role of Rebecca marked Alley as a comedienne, she is also a talented dramatic actress as she demonstrated in the 1988 outdoor thriller Shoot to Kill. In 1989, Alley had her first box-office hit with Look Who's Talking; that coupled with Cheers made her one of the most popular actresses in Hollywood and the winner of Emmys, a People's Choice award, and a Golden Globe for Look Who's Talking. With the demise of Cheers, Alley's career became more sporadic and the quality of her films uneven. In the fall of 1997, Alley starred in the NBC prime time sitcom Veronica's Closet.Alley would appear in a handful of TV movies over the next few years, like Family Sins, While I Was Gone, Write and Wrong, and The Minister of Divine. Alley would also find her name in the news for less than glamorous reasons, as she gained a noticeable amount of weight in the early 2000's. Happy to capitalize on the press, Alley soon starred in a comedy series in 2005 called Fat Actress, in which she played a fictionalized version of herself, a la Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Alley then moved from pseudo-reality to actual reality, starring in a candid reality show about herself called Kirstie Alley's Big Life in 2010. Along the same lines, Alley competed on the reality show Dancing with the Stars the following year.

Trivia: A versatile actress who has displayed a talent for both comedy and drama, Bebe Neuwirth is also a gifted dancer and vocalist who has won acclaim for her work on the musical stage, though she's still best known to television viewers as Lilith Sternin, Frazier Crane's tightly wound girlfriend (and later wife) on the popular comedy Cheers. Born Beatrice Neuwirth on New Year's Eve, 1958, she was raised in Princeton, NJ, where her father, Lee Neuwirth, was a mathematician and her mother, Sydney Anne Neuwirth, was an artist. Bebe began taking dance lessons at the age of five, and, while a student at Princeton High School, she began appearing in local ballet productions and community theater productions. After high school, Neuwirth studied dance at New York's prestigious Juilliard School, and in 1980 she made her professional debut as Shelia, a once-famous dancer looking to make a comeback, in a touring production of the long-running musical A Chorus Line. In 1982, Neuwirth hit Broadway in two different shows, Dancin', directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, and Little Me. In 1986, Neuwirth won the starring role in another Fosse musical, a revival of Sweet Charity, which later earned her a Tony award and cemented her reputation on Broadway. That year also marked Neuwirth's television debut (not counting a brief appearance as a member of the Whitney Dance Theater on the daytime drama The Edge of Night in 1981) with her first appearance as Lilith Sternin on Cheers; Lilith soon became a regular fixture on Cheers and Neuwirth won two Emmy awards for her work until Lilith was written out of the show (at Neuwirth's request) in 1992, to allow Neuwirth to pursue film and stage work. Lilith, however, occasionally made return visits to Cheers, and later on Kelsey Grammer's spin-off series, Frasier. Neuwirth made her feature-film debut in 1989 with a small role as a guidance counselor in Say Anything..., and while a steady stream of supporting roles followed in such films as Bugsy, Green Card, and Jumanji, she had a hard time finding screen roles which suited her edgy charm. She continued to have better luck on-stage, and in 1997 her performance in the Broadway revival of Chicago won her the Tony and Drama Desk awards. After scoring meatier roles in the films Summer of Sam and Liberty Heights, Neuwirth returned to episodic television in the well-reviewed but short-lived drama series Deadline, in which she worked alongside Oliver Platt, Lili Taylor, and Tom Conti. In 2002, Neuwirth finally scored a film role that truly suited her talents as Diane, a sexy fourtysomething woman who seduces her best friend's teenage son in the independent comedy Tadpole. She had a small part in the romantic comedy How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and in 2005 she landed a recurring role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2009 she played one of the teachers at a high school for the performing arts in the remake of Fame.

Trivia: American actor Nicholas Colasanto worked in feature films and extensively in television as both an actor and a director, but he is best remembered for playing Coach Pantusso, the sweetly addle-pated bartender and former baseball coach, on the long-running NBC sitcom Cheers. Colasanto passed away just before the show's third year.