Joan Ann Hackett (March 1, 1934 – October 8, 1983) was an American actress who appeared on stage, in films, and on television.

She was born in New York City of Irish and Italian extraction. Her immigrant parents raised her Roman Catholic and sent her to Catholic schools.

Hackett debuted with the role of Gail Prentiss in the TV series Young Doctor Malone in 1959. In 1961 she won a Theatre World Award, an Obie Award, and a Drama Desk Award for her portrayal of Chris in Michael Shurtleff's play Call Me By My Rightful Name. She had a recurring role on the CBS legal drama The Defenders (1961–1965) as the fiancee of Kenneth Preston (played by Robert Reed), partner in the father-and-son law firm led by patriarch Lawrence Preston (E.G. Marshall). She appeared regularly in scenes with both lead actors. She had a leading role in The Twilight Zone episode "A Piano in the House". In the 1963-1964 season, she guest starred on the ABC drama about college life, Channing starring Jason Evers and Henry Jones. She had one of the starring roles in the 1966 Sidney Lumet film The Group, along with Candice Bergen, Larry Hagman, Richard Mulligan, Joanna Pettet and others.

George Richard Chamberlain (born March 31, 1934) is an American stage and screen actor and singer, who became a teen idol in the title role of the television show Dr. Kildare (1961–1966).

Since then, he has appeared in several mini-series such as Shōgun (1980) and The Thorn Birds (1983), many successful films, and performed classical stage roles and worked in the musical theatre.

Chamberlain was born in 1934 in Beverly Hills, California, the son of Elsa Winnifred (née Matthews) and Charles Axiom Chamberlain, who was a salesman. Chamberlain's father was well known within Alcoholics Anonymous, having traveled for years speaking at A.A. conventions. In 1952, Richard Chamberlain graduated from Beverly Hills High School and later attended Pomona College (class of 1956).

Chamberlain co-founded a Los Angeles-based theatre group, Company of Angels, and began appearing in TV series in the 1950s. In 1961 he gained widespread fame as the young intern, Dr. Kildare, in the MGM television series of the same name. His singing ability also led to some hit singles in the early 1960s. One of them was the "Theme from Dr. Kildare" entitled "Three Stars Will Shine Tonight", which hit number 10 according to the Billboard Hot 100 Charts. Dr. Kildare ended in 1966, after which Chamberlain began performing on the theatre circuit. In 1966, he was cast opposite Mary Tyler Moore in the ill-fated Broadway musical Breakfast at Tiffany's, co-starring Priscilla Lopez, which, after an out-of-town tryout period, closed after only four previews. Decades later he returned to Broadway in revivals of My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music.^{[citation needed]}

Biagio Anthony Gazzarra (August 28, 1930 – February 3, 2012), known as Ben Gazzara, was an American film, stage, and Emmy Award winning television actor and director.

Gazzara was born in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants Angelina (née Cusumano) and Antonio Gazzarra, who was a laborer and carpenter. Gazzara grew up in New York's Kips Bay neighborhood; he lived on East 29th Street and participated in the drama program at Madison Square Boys and Girls Club located across the street. He attended New York City's Stuyvesant High School; but finally graduated from Saint Simon Stock in the Bronx. Years later, he said that the discovery of his love for acting saved him from a life of crime during his teen years. He went to City College of New York to study electrical engineering. After two years, he relented. He took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator and afterward joined the Actors Studio.

In 1954, Gazzara (having tweaked his original surname from "Gazzarra") made several appearances on NBC's legal drama Justice, based on case studies from the Legal Aid Society of New York. Gazzara starred in various Broadway productions around this time, including creating the role of Brick in Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1955) opposite Barbara BelGeddes, directed by Elia Kazan, although he lost out to Paul Newman when the film version was cast. He joined other Actors Studio members in the 1957 film The Strange One. Then came a high-profile performance as a soldier on trial for avenging his wife's rape in Otto Preminger's courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959).

Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) was an American actor. Perkins was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his second film, Friendly Persuasion. He is best known for playing Norman Bates in the Psycho films. His other films include The Trial, Fear Strikes Out, Tall Story, Pretty Poison, and The Black Hole.

Perkins was born in New York City, the son of Janet Esselstyn (née Rane) and stage and film actor Osgood Perkins. Anthony was five when his father died. He is a descendant of a Mayflower passenger, John Howland. He attended The Brooks School, The Browne & Nichols School, Columbia University and Rollins College, having moved to Boston in 1942.

Perkins made his film debut in The Actress (1953). He received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor and an Academy Award nomination for his second film, Friendly Persuasion (1956). The tall (6'2") Perkins also portrayed the troubled former Boston Red Sox baseball player Jimmy Piersall in the 1957 true story Fear Strikes Out.

Julia Ann "Julie" Harris (born December 2, 1925) is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. She also received the 2002 Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.

Harris's screen debut was in 1952, repeating her Broadway success as the monumentally lonely teenage girl Frankie in Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. That film also preserves the original Broadway cast performances of Ethel Waters and Brandon DeWilde. That same year, she won her first Best Actress Tony for originating the role of insouciant Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera, the stage version of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin (later musicalized as Cabaret on Broadway in 1966 and, in the 1972 film, with Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles.) Harris repeated her stage role in the 1955 film version of I Am a Camera. She also appeared in such films as East of Eden (1955), with James Dean (with whom she became close friends), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), with Paul Newman in the private-detective film Harper in 1966, and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).