Mast is the "fruit of forest trees like acorns and other nuts". It is also defined as "the fruit of trees such as beech, and other forms of Cupuliferae". Alternatively, it can also refer to "a heap of nuts".

More generally, mast is considered the edible vegetative or reproductive part produced by woody species of plants, i.e. trees and shrubs, that wildlife species and some domestic animals consume. It comes in two forms.

Tree species such as oak, hickory and beech produce a hard mast - acorns, hickory nuts, and beechnuts. It has been traditional to turn pigs into forests to fatten on this form of mast. Also branch tips of the latest year's growth are eaten by some wildlife, such as deer.

Other tree and shrub species produce a soft mast - leaf buds, catkins, true berries, drupes, and rose hips.

Mast may refer to:

Alan Walbridge Ladd (September 3, 1913 – January 29, 1964) was an American film actor.

Ladd was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was the only child of Ina Raleigh Ladd and Alan Ladd, Sr. He was of English ancestry. His father died when he was four, and his mother relocated to Oklahoma City where she married Jim Beavers, a housepainter. The family then moved again to North Hollywood, California where Ladd became a high-school swimming and diving champion and participated in high school dramatics at North Hollywood High School, graduating on February 1, 1934. He opened his own hamburger and malt shop, which he called Tiny's Patio. He worked briefly as a studio carpenter (as did his stepfather) and for a short time was part of the Universal Pictures studio school for actors. But Universal decided he was too blond and too short and dropped him. Intent on acting, he found work in radio.

Ladd began by appearing in dozens of films in small roles, including Citizen Kane in which he played one of the "faceless" reporters who are always shown in silhouette. He first gained some recognition with a featured role in the wartime thriller Joan of Paris, 1942. For his next role, his manager, Sue Carol, found a vehicle which made Ladd's career, Graham Greene's This Gun for Hire in which he played "Raven," a hitman with a conscience. "Once Ladd had acquired an unsmiling hardness, he was transformed from an extra to a phenomenon. Ladd's calm slender ferocity make it clear that he was the first American actor to show the killer as a cold angel." - David Thomson (A Biographical Dictionary of Film, 1975)

James Neville Mason (15 May 1909 - 27 July 1984) was an English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films. Mason remained a powerful figure in the industry throughout his career and was nominated for three Academy Awards as well as three Golden Globes (winning once).

Mason was born in Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to John and Mabel Mason; his father was a wealthy merchant. He was educated at Marlborough College, and earned a first in architecture at Peterhouse, Cambridge where he became involved in stock theatre companies in his spare time. Mason had no formal training as an actor and initially embarked upon it for fun. After Cambridge he joined the Old Vic theatre in London under the guidance of Tyrone Guthrie and Alexander Korda. In 1933 Korda gave Mason a small role in The Private Life of Don Juan but fired him three days into shooting.

From 1935 to 1948 he starred in many British quota quickies. A conscientious objector during World War II (causing his family to break with him for many years), he became immensely popular for his brooding anti-heroes in the Gainsborough series of melodramas of the 1940s, including The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945). He also starred with Deborah Kerr and Robert Newton in Hatter's Castle (1942). He then took the lead role in the critically acclaimed and immensely popular The Seventh Veil (1945) that set box office records in postwar Britain and raised him to international stardom. He followed it with a role as a mortally wounded Irish bank robber in Odd Man Out (1947) and his first Hollywood film, Caught (1949). Exhibitors voted him the most popular star in Britain in 1944 and 1945.

Patricia Paz Maria Medina (19 July 1919 – 28 April 2012) was an English actress. Her father was a Spaniard (Ramón Medina Nebot from the Canary Islands) and her mother was English. Medina began acting as a teenager in the late 1930s. She worked her way up to leading roles in the mid-1940s, whereupon she left for Hollywood.

In 1950's Fortunes of Captain Blood, she teamed up with British actor Louis Hayward. She and Hayward subsequently appeared together in 1951's The Lady and the Bandit and Lady in the Iron Mask and Captain Pirate, both from 1952.

Darkly beautiful, Medina was often typecast in period melodramas such as The Black Knight. Two of her more notable films were William Witney's Stranger at My Door and Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin, based on episodes of the radio series The Adventures of Harry Lime, itself derived from The Third Man film.

Although prolific during the early 1950s, her film career petered out by the end of the decade. She performed in four episodes of Walt Disney's Zorro in 1958 as Margarita Cortazar. In 1958, she also appeared as "The Lady" Diana Coulter in two episodes of Richard Boone's Have Gun, Will Travel. In 1968, she returned to the big screen in Robert Aldrich's adaptation of the lesbian-themed drama The Killing of Sister George.