Before tackling the most challenging role in his film career, Jon Voight spent 11 weeks at the Rancho Los Amigos Hospital near Los Angeles interviewing 500 paraplegics to learn how they conducted sexual relations. Cast as Jane Fonda's veteran paraplegic lover in the 1978 Coming Home, Voight earned many awards, including an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, and a Los Angeles Film Critics award. He also won the National Board of Review award, tying with Laurence Olivier for his perfomance in The Boys from Brazil. The lovemaking scenes between Voight and Fonda became the most analyzed film sex scenes in modern film history.

Actor Robert Mitchum served time on a Georgia chain gang as a teenager. He had been arrested for vagrancy.

Actor Steve McQueen encouraged his karate teacher to pursue a career in acting. The teacher? Chuck Norris. McQueen is quoted as telling Norris, "If you can't do anything else, there's always acting."

Actor Yaphet Kotto, co-star Lt. Al "Gee" Giardello on TV's acclaimed Homicide: Life on the Street, has an unusual background. He was raised a Jew and attended Roman Catholic schools. He is also of royalty: his father is a Cameroonian crown prince. In a scenario of life imitating art, Kotto's oldest son, Fred, works in San José, California as a police officer.

Actors Robert Redford, Steve McQueen, and Paul Newman all turned down a contract offer of $ 4 million for the starring role in Superman. Christopher Reeve was paid $250,000 for the part.

Actors who have played the title role in "The Saint" in the movies or on television include Hugh Sinclair, George Sanders, Louis Hayward, Roger Moore, and Val Kilmer.

Actress Anne Bancroft was first signed to play Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest, but after many creative problems developed, she was replaced by Faye Dunaway. Reportedly, Dunaway created her own share of problems, wanting to portray the legendary Crawford in a more sympathetic light.

Actress Carrie Fisher has had a rocky road in romance. She married singer/composer Paul Simon in 1983 after a 5-year romantic partnership. Their marriage lasted less than a year. Then Fisher had a long-term, although shaky, relationship with actor Albert Brooks and a romance with her agent, Bryan Lourd, which produced their daughter, Billie, born in 1992. Reportedly, Fisher was devastated when Lourd left her for a man.

Actress Demi Moore's birth name was Demetria Guynes. At age 18, she married rock musician Freddy Moore, and decided to be called Demi Moore professionally. She divorced Moore four years later. In 1987, she married actor Bruce Willis, but kept her original professional name.

Actress Gale Sondergaard was the first actor to win an Oscar for a debut film performance. It was in 1936 for the film Anthony Adverse.

Before they became celebrities, film actor Hugh Grant, director Spike Lee, PBS-TV show cooking guru Julia Child, and 1930s singing film star Nelson Eddy worked as advertising copywriters.

Before they became successful in show business, Charles Bronson and Jack Palance both labored as coal miners. Ava Gardner's father also worked as a coal miner.

Before they made their marks in entertainment, a number of actors worked in the field of journalism: Candice Bergen was formally a photojournalist; Sir Michael Redgrave and Patrick Stewart were journalists; Peter O'Toole, Nelson Eddy, and Cornel Wilde were newspaper reporters; Angela Bassett was a photo researcher at U.S. News & World Report, and Ali MacGraw was an editorial assistant at Harper's Bazaar.

Believe it or not, 175 people are needed to assemble the approximate 500 tons of equipment for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus – the "Biggest Show on Earth."

Ben Affleck appeared as an extra – a basketball player – in the 1992 surprise hit film Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Benny Goodman was declared the "King of Swing." He was so extraordinarily capable on the clarinet that he became the definitive clarinet musician in the world. During Goodman's "reign," a clarinet player had to play the instrument in Goodman's style, or it was considered that he was not playing clarinet correctly. This created tremendous pressure for good clarinet players; they would have preferred to develop their own style instead of being a copy of Goodman.

Bert Lahr's unforgettable performance in The Wizard of Oz in 1939 apparently hurt his career in films. He told friend George Burns that typecasting meant "that they call me every time a role comes up for a cowardly lion. Otherwise, they don't call me."

Best known for her role as Commander Beverly Crusher, M.D. on television’s Star Trek: The Next Generation, comely actress Gates McFadden dropped her birth-given name Cheryl and adopted her middle name as her professional listing in screen credits.

Best Picture Oscar winner Dances with Wolves, a three-hour Western, had a full-third of its dialogue spoken in Lakota Sioux. Subtitles were used, unusual for a major Academy Award-winning film.

Bette Davis appeared in more than 100 films between 1931 and 1989. She made her first film called Way Back Home in 1931. She was 5' 3 1/2" tall. Lucille Ball was her classmate at John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School. In the 1950s, she suffered osteomyelitis of the jaw and had to have part of her jaw removed.

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