5. Christopher Plummer
Although you would think that Science-Fiction and musicals might be as disparate genres as you can get, they in fact have more in common than you realise. Take Robert Wise for example, who in between directing duties on The Day The Earth Stood Still and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, helmed the equally classic West Side Story and The Sound Of Music. And it is this particular favourite that starred Christopher Plummer as the widowed father of seven, based on the real life decorated Austrian naval Captain Georg Von Trapp. Bringing up his children the only way he knows how, according to naval protocol, he soon enlists the help of Maria, played by Mary Poppins herself, Julie Andrews. Soon the family home is filled, quite literally, with the sound of music, Georg's strict parenting relaxes, and of course he and Maria fall in love. It all sounds too good to be true for a real life story, were it not for the fact that the Third Reich annexes their homeland, and von Trapp is ordered to report for duty in the German Navy. In real life he and his family were technically Italian citizens and so fled via train in broad daylight, something the film negated to make way for a much more dramatic climax of hiding in a cemetary. Either way Georg, Maria, and the Children had a happy ending, and Plummer would later assume the role of General in the Klingon Defence Force.