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Entertainment Trivia

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Liv Tyler was named after film actress Liv Ullmann because she was reportedly on the cover of TV Guide the week baby Liv was born. She's the daughter of Aerosmith lead singer Steve Tyler and Bibi Buell.

Strangely enough, comedian Jim Carrey, who portrayed late comedian Andy Kaufman in the film Man on the Moon, and Andy Kaufman were both born on January 17th.

Lloyd Vernet Bridges III is the birth name of actor Beau Bridges. He was given the nickname "Beau" by his family – reportedly after Ashley Wilkes's son in the classic 1939 film Gone With the Wind.

Lucy Lawless was the fifth child born in a family of seven children.

Lushly filmed in black and white, William Wyler's moving Mrs. Miniver (1942) captured the hearts of audiences around the world. It was nominated for twelve Oscars and won six, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress for its star Greer Garson, and Best Supporting Actress for ingenue Teresa Wright. Sir Winston Churchill declared that the World War II drama, set in England and following the lives of a middle-class British family, had done more for the war effort than a flotilla of destroyers.

When in a movie theater, if there is a balcony, never sit underneath – that's a low sound frequency trap. According to a Sony Cinema Products Corp. representative, there's a "sweet" spot, where the sound is better than anyplace else in the movie theater. To find it, you should look for the speakers and position yourself in between them – usually about three-quarters of the way back from the movie screen.

When Mrs. New Jersey heard her name announced as Mrs. America 1952, she passed out cold on-stage. It took panicked pageant officials several minutes to revive her.

When sex symbol Mae West was named “Woman of the Century” by UCLA in the 1960s, the actress was asked about the Black Panthers, who were then in the nation's headlines. She replied with her familiar, witty sexual innuendo, “Depends on what angle you're lookin' at ‘em from.”

Strangely, the king of rock ‘n' roll, Elvis Presley, was a mama's boy. He slept in the same bed with his mother, Gladys, until he reached puberty. Up until Elvis entered high school, she walked him back and forth to school every day and made him take along his own silverware so that he wouldn't catch germs from the other kids. Gladys forbade young Elvis from going swimming or doing anything that might put him in danger. The two of them also conversed in a strange baby talk that only they could understand.

When she was a girl, former Radio City dancer Valerie Harper lived all over the U.S. because her father was a traveling salesman. When she was 18, she left upstate New York to be a member of the "Li'l Abner" chorus in 1958. A few years later, Harper contracted hepatitis. Her doctor prescribed loads of candy, and she ballooned to 155 pounds. In 1970, TV producers found her dumpy shape perfect for the part of Mary Tyler Moore's outspoken, overweight friend, Rhoda Morgenstern. Harper earned three Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Emmys for the role on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (in 1971, she tied with Sally Struthers in All in the Family), and won a Best Actress in a Comedy Emmy in 1975 for her own spin-off, Rhoda. By this time, Harper had shed much of the weight.

Surprisingly, Yul Brynner was seriously considered by director Robert Wise for the role of Captain Von Trapp in the film The Sound of Music (1965).

When Shirley Temple appeared in her first film, The Red-Haired Alibi, she was three years old.

Susan Sarandon helped pay her college tuition by modeling for a brochure promoting Washington's Watergate Hotel.

Madcap comedienne Lucille Ball was kicked out of drama school in New York City when she was 15 because she was too quiet and shy.

Susan Sarandon said in a 1993 interview, "Someone asked me if it was true that, once women had children, they didn't like to take their clothes off anymore. I said I didn't know any women any age who liked to take off their clothes."

Madonna's mother died when she was five years old.

When talk show host Jay Leno was in fifth grade, his teacher wrote the following on his report card: "If Jay spent as much time studying as he does trying to be a comedian, he'd be a big star."

T. E. Lawrence's novel The Seven Pillars of Wisdom was retitled when it was made into a film: Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

Mae West never said "Come up and see me some time" in a movie. She actually said, "Why don't you come up some time and see me."

When veteran actor James Cromwell was considering the role of Farmer Arthur Hoggett for the movie Babe (1995), he browsed through a copy of the screenplay to count how many lines he would have. Seeing that there were relatively few lines, he agreed to the part, which he believed would be an effortless, quick job. That misconception was quickly quashed. Cromwell didn't realize that he would have more screen time, although much of it was non-speaking, in this film than any previous roles in his career.

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