Marvin J. Chomsky (born May 23, 1929) is an American television and film director. He has also worked as a producer. He is a cousin of academic Noam Chomsky.^{[citation needed]}

Born in New York City, Chomsky graduated from Syracuse University in 1950. His early jobs in the motion picture and television industries included work as an art director, set decorator, and producer. His feature film directing credits include Evel Knievel and Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff.

Chomsky is a prolific television director, and his career spanned from 1964-1995. During the late 1960s, Chomsky directed eleven episodes of the television series The Wild Wild West. He also directed episodes of Star Trek and Gunsmoke.

Besides directing individual episodes for television series, Chomsky directed made-for-TV movies. Later in his career, Chomsky worked almost exclusively on made-for-TV movies and miniseries. During the 1970s, Chomsky served as one of the directors for the miniseries Roots: The Saga of an American Family. In 1982 he directed Vanessa Redgrave in the TV movie, My Body, My Child and in 1989 the miniseries Brotherhood of the Rose with Robert Mitchum, Peter Strauss and David Morse.

Evel Knievel (/ˈiːvəl kɨˈniːvəl/; October 17, 1938 – November 30, 2007), born Robert Craig Knievel, was an American daredevil and entertainer. In his career he attempted over 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps between 1965 and 1980, and in 1974, a failed jump across Snake River Canyon in the Skycycle X-2, a steam-powered rocket. The 433 broken bones he suffered during his career earned an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the survivor of "most bones broken in a lifetime." Knievel died of pulmonary disease in Clearwater, Florida, aged 69. According to The Times writing his obituary, Knievel was one of the greatest American icons of the 1970s. Knievel was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999.

Knievel was born in Butte, Montana in 1938 and raised by his grandparents. After watching a Joie Chitwood auto daredevil show as a child, he took to jumping using a pedal bike, later moving on to motorcycles. As a troubled youth, he earned his stagename after occupying a jail cell next to a man named Knofel, leading the jailer to refer to the pair as Awful Knofel and Evil Knievel (Knievel later changed the spelling of the first name to Evel). In addition to stunt riding at local shows, his early life including a spell in the United States Army at the behest of a magistrate, as well as jobs as a hunting guide, an insurance salesman, while also becoming an ice-hockey team owner. Knievel notably staged an exhibition match against the Czechoslovakian hockey team ahead of the 1960 Winter Olympics. After moving into sports full time, he had moderate success on the motocross circuit.

Jan Niklas is a German actor. He is best known for playing in TV films such as Peter The Great, Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna and Anne Frank: The Whole Story. He also played in the Hungarian film Colonel Redl which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Jan Niklas was born October 15, 1947 in Pottenstein, near Nuremberg, Germany. After attending boarding school in England, he took acting classes in London, following this he completed three years of acting classess at the Max Reinhardt Academy in Berlin.

Niklas made his first television appearance on an episode of the German TV series Sonderdezernat K1 as Juniorchef. After playing in a couple of TV movies and miniseries Niklas slowly gained popularity, his breakthrough came in 1985, when he was cast to have a supporting role in István Szabó's war film Oberst Redl. But things went really well when in 1986 he was cast to portray a young Peter the Great in the miniseries Peter the Great, a lot of newspapers and magazines stated that it was Niklas' performance that made the miniseries so believable, the Miami Herald stated:

Maximilian Schell (born 8 December 1930) is an Austrian-born Swiss actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961. He is also a writer, director and producer of several films.

Schell was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Margarethe (née Noe von Nordberg), an actress who ran an acting school, and Hermann Ferdinand Schell, a Swiss poet, novelist, playwright, and owner of a pharmacy. His parents were Roman Catholics. Schell's late elder sister, Maria Schell, was also an actress; as are their two other siblings, Carl and Immy (Immaculata) Schell. The Schell family moved to Zurich, Switzerland in 1938, where young Maximilian went on to serve in the Swiss Army, achieving the rank of corporal. He began acting at the Basel Theater.

Schell made his Hollywood debut in 1958 in the World War II film The Young Lions. In 1959, he appeared as Hans Rolfe, the defense attorney, in a live Playhouse 90 television production of Judgment at Nuremberg. In 1961, he reprised the role on film, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. 1974's The Pedestrian, which Schell wrote, produced, directed, and starred in, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.