Uta Thyra Hagen (12 June 1919 – 14 January 2004) was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee (who called her "a profoundly truthful actress"). Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, and this curtailed film opportunities, focusing her to perform in New York theaters. She won the Tony Award three times. She later became a highly influential acting teacher at New York's Herbert Berghof Studio and authored best-selling acting texts, Respect for Acting, with Haskel Frankel, and A Challenge for the Actor. She was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981.

Born in Göttingen, Germany, the daughter of Thyra A. (née Leisner) and Oskar Frank Leonard Hagen, Hagen and her family emigrated to the United States in 1924, when her father received a position at Cornell University. She was raised in Madison, Wisconsin. She appeared in productions of the University of Wisconsin High School and in summer stock productions of the Wisconsin Players. She studied acting briefly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1936. After spending one semester at the University of Wisconsin, where her father was the head of the department of art history, she left for New York City in 1937. Her first professional role was as Ophelia opposite Eva Le Gallienne in the title role of Hamlet in Dennis, Massachusetts in 1937.

Adeline Virginia Woolf (/ˈwʊlf/; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London in 1882 to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson).

Virginia's father, Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), was a notable historian, author, critic and mountaineer. He was the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, a work that would influence Woolf's later experimental biographies.

Virginia's mother Julia Stephen (1846–1895) was a renowned beauty, born in India to Dr. John and Maria Pattle Jackson. She was also the niece of Julia Margaret Cameron née Pattle, the famous photographer. Julia moved to England with her mother, where she served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones.

David Hyde Pierce (born April 3, 1959) is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for playing the psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the NBC sitcom Frasier, for which he won four Emmy Awards during the series' run.

Pierce, the youngest of four siblings, was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, the son of Laura Marie (née Hughes) and George Hyde Pierce, an insurance agent and aspiring actor. He has three older siblings: Barbara, Nancy, and Thomas, and adapted his name as an adult.

As a child, Pierce became very interested in the piano and frequently played organ at the local Bethesda Episcopal Church in Saratoga Springs. He began acting while in high school, earning recognition as best Dramatic Arts student. In 1977, Pierce received the Yaddo Medal for character and scholarship and worked in theater while a counselor at Camp Kabeyun in New Hampshire. However, his love of music was still strong, so he decided to study classical piano at Yale University. However, Pierce soon grew bored with music history lessons and found that he wasn’t dedicated enough to practice the required number of hours to become a successful concert pianist. Instead, he graduated in 1981 with a double major in English and Theatre Arts.

Robert Mulligan (August 23, 1925 – December 20, 2008) was an American film and television director best known as the director of humanistic American dramas, including To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), Summer of '42 (1971), The Other (1972), Same Time, Next Year (1978) and The Man in the Moon (1991). He was also known in the 1960s for his extensive collaborations with producer Alan J. Pakula.

Mulligan studied at Fordham University before serving with the United States Marine Corps during World War II. At war's end, he obtained work in the editorial department of The New York Times, but left to pursue a career in television.

Employed by the CBS network, Mulligan began his television career at the bottom of the ladder as a messenger boy. He worked his way up, learned the business and by 1948 was directing important dramatic television shows. In 1959 he won an Emmy Award for directing The Moon and Sixpence, a made-for-television production that marked the American small-screen debut of Laurence Olivier.