James Harrison Coburn III (August 31, 1928 – November 18, 2002) was an American film and television actor. Coburn appeared in nearly 70 films and made over 100 television appearances during his 45-year career, and played a wide range of roles and won an Academy Award for his supporting role as Glen Whitehouse in Affliction.

A capable, rough-hewn leading man, his toothy grin and lanky body made him a perfect tough-guy in numerous leading and supporting roles in Westerns and action films, such as The Magnificent Seven, Hell Is for Heroes, The Great Escape, Major Dundee, Our Man Flint, Duck, You Sucker, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Cross of Iron.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s he would cultivate an image synonymous with "cool", and along with such contemporaries as Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson, became one of the prominent "tough-guy" actors of his day.

Coburn was born in Laurel, Nebraska, the son of Mylet S. (née Johnson) and James Harrison Coburn, Jr., who had a garage business that was wiped out by the Great Depression. Coburn was of Scotch-Irish and Swedish descent. He was raised in Compton, California, attended Compton Junior College and enlisted in the United States Army in 1950, serving as a truck driver and an occasional disc jockey on an Army radio station in Texas. Coburn also narrated Army training films in Mainz, Germany. He attended Los Angeles City College, where he studied acting alongside Jeff Corey and Stella Adler, then made his stage debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in Billy Budd. Coburn was selected for a Remington Products razor commercial in which he was able to shave off 11 days of beard growth in less than 60 seconds, while joking that he had more teeth to show on camera than the other 12 candidates for the part.

William H. Bonney (born William Henry McCarty, Jr.) est. November 23, 1859 – c. July 14, 1881, better known as Billy the Kid but also known as Henry Antrim, was a 19th-century American gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War and became a frontier outlaw in the West. According to legend, he killed 21 men, but he is generally accepted to have killed between four and nine.

McCarty (or Bonney, the name he used at the height of his notoriety) was 5 feet 8 inches (173 cm) to 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm) tall with blue eyes, a smooth complexion, and prominent front teeth. He was said to be friendly and personable at times, and many recalled that he was as "lithe as a cat". Contemporaries described him as a "neat" dresser who favored an "unadorned Mexican sombrero". These qualities, along with his cunning and celebrated skill with firearms, contributed to his paradoxical image, as both a notorious outlaw and beloved folk hero.

Relatively unknown during most of his lifetime, Billy was catapulted into legend in 1881 when New Mexico's governor, Lew Wallace, placed a price on his head. In addition, the Las Vegas Gazette (Las Vegas, New Mexico) and the New York Sun carried stories about his exploits. Many other newspapers followed suit. After his death, several biographies were written that portrayed the Kid in varying lights.

Kristoffer Kristian "Kris" Kristofferson (born June 22, 1936) is an American musician, actor, and writer. He is known for such hits as "Me and Bobby McGee", "For the Good Times", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night". Kristofferson is the sole writer of most of his songs, and he has collaborated with various other figures of the Nashville scene such as Shel Silverstein.

Kristoffer Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, to Mary Ann (née Ashbrook) and Lars Henry Kristofferson, a U.S. Army Air Corps officer (later a U.S. Air Force Major General). His paternal grandparents immigrated from Sweden, and Kristofferson's paternal grandfather was an officer in the Swedish Army. When Kristofferson was a child, his father pushed him toward a military career. Like most "military brats", Kristofferson moved around frequently as a youth, finally settling down in San Mateo, California, where he graduated from San Mateo High School. An aspiring writer, Kristofferson enrolled in Pomona College in 1954. He experienced his first dose of fame when he appeared in Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd" for his achievements in collegiate rugby union, football, and track and field. He and fellow classmates revived the Claremont Colleges Rugby Club in 1958, which has remained a Southern California rugby dynasty.^{[clarification needed]} Kristofferson became a member of Kappa Delta at Pomona College, graduating in 1958 with a BA, summa cum laude in Literature. In a 2004 interview with Pomona College Magazine Kristofferson mentioned philosophy professor Frederick Sontag as an important influence in his life.

Sergio Leone (Italian pronunciation: [ˈsɛːrdʒo leˈoːne]; January 3, 1929 – April 30, 1989) was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.

Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots. His movies include The Last Days of Pompeii, The Colossus of Rhodes, the Dollars Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), Once Upon a Time in the West, Duck, You Sucker! and Once Upon a Time in America.

Born in Rome, Leone was the son of the cinema pioneer Vincenzo Leone (known as director Roberto Roberti or Leone Roberto Roberti) and the silent film actress Edvige Valcarenghi (Bice Waleran). During his schooldays, Leone was a classmate of his later musical collaborator Ennio Morricone for a time. After watching his father work on film sets, Leone began his own career in the film industry at the age of 18 after dropping out of law studies at the university.

Charles Bronson (November 3, 1921 – August 30, 2003), born Charles Dennis Buchinsky was an American actor, of Polish and Lithuanian background, best known for such films as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Rider on the Rain, The Mechanic, and the popular Death Wish series. He was often cast in the role of a police officer or gunfighter, often in revenge-oriented plot lines. During his career, Bronson had a long-term partnership with directors Michael Winner and J. Lee Thompson.

Bronson was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky (or Buchinskas) in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny Mountain Coal region north of Johnstown. During the McCarthy hearings, he changed his last name to Bronson, fearing that Buchinsky sounded "too Russian".

He was one of 15 children born to a Lithuanian immigrant father of Lipka Tatar ancestry, and a Lithuanian-American mother. His father hailed from the town of Druskininkai (or Druskienniki). His mother, Mary Valinsky, whose parents were from the Lithuania was born in the anthracite coal mining town of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania.