Favorite Famos People
List activity
26 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
6 people
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Vincent Phillip D'Onofrio was born on June 30, 1959 in Brooklyn, New York, to Phyllis, a restaurant manager and server, and Gene D'Onofrio, a theatre production assistant and interior designer. He is of Italian descent and has two older sisters. He studied at the Actors Studio and the American Stanislavski Theatre. Vincent D'Onofrio is known as an "actor's actor". The wide variety of roles he has played and the quality of his work have earned him a reputation as a versatile talent.
His first paid role was in Off-Broadway's "This Property Is Condemned". He continued appearing in plays and worked as a bouncer, a bodyguard and a delivery man. In 1984, he made his Broadway debut in "Open Admissions", followed by work in numerous other stage plays. In 2012, D'Onofrio returned to teach at the Lee Strasberg Theater & Film Institute. As a film actor, D'Onofrio's career break came when he played a mentally unbalanced recruit in Full Metal Jacket (1987), directed by the renowned Stanley Kubrick. For this role D'Onofrio gained nearly 70 pounds. He had a major role in Dying Young (1991), and appeared prominently in the box-office smash Men in Black (1997) as the bad guy (Edgar "The Bug").
Other films of note in which he has appeared are Mystic Pizza (1988), JFK (1991), The Player (1992), Ed Wood (1994), The Cell (2000), The Break-Up (2006) and Jurassic World (2015). In 1996, D'Onofrio garnered critical acclaim along with co-star Renée Zellweger for The Whole Wide World (1996), which he helped produce. He also made a guest appearance in The Subway (1997), where he played an accident victim who could not be rescued and was destined to die. For this performance he won an Emmy nomination. In 2000, he both produced and starred in Steal This Movie (2000), a biopic of radical leader Abbie Hoffman.
In 2001, D'Onofrio took the role which has likely given him his greatest public recognition: Det. Robert Goren, the lead character in the TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001). Goren is based on Sherlock Holmes but, instead of relying upon physical evidence like Holmes, D'Onofrio's character focuses on psychology to identify the perpetrators, whom he often draws into confessing or yielding condemning evidence. He played the part for 10 years.
In his career D'Onofrio's various film characters have included a priest, a bisexual former porn star, a hijacker, a serial killer, Orson Welles, a space alien, a 1960s radical leader, a pulp fiction writer, an ingenious police investigator and Stuart Smalley's dope-head brother. His on-screen love interests have included Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Renée Zellweger, Marisa Tomei, Tracey Ullman, Rebecca De Mornay and Lili Taylor. One of his latest roles is in Marvel's Daredevil (2015) as Daredevil's nemesis, Wilson Fisk. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and children.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Mariska (Ma-rish-ka) Magdolna Hargitay was born on January 23, 1964, in Santa Monica, California. Her parents are Mickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield. She is the youngest of their three children. In June 1967, Mariska and her brothers Zoltan and Mickey Jr. were in the back seat of a car when it was involved in the fatal accident which killed her mother. The children escaped with minor injuries. Her father remarried a stewardess named Ellen, and they raised the three children and gave them a normal childhood. They also financially supported the children, since Jayne Mansfield's debt-ridden estate left no money for them.
Mariska majored in theater at UCLA. Her first motion picture feature was the cult favorite, Ghoulies (1984), where she gave a memorable performance as Donna. Unlike her mother Jayne, who had changed her name, her hair color, and did nude pictorials to become a star, Mariska took a very different approach on her journey to become a star. She rejected advice to change her name and appearance. And she refused to copy her mother's sexy image by turning down nude scenes in her next film Jocks (1986). She told casting directors that she was her own person when she held onto her dark locks and athletic figure, when they were expecting another blond, buxom Jayne Mansfield. Mariska continued with her acting classes and waited on tables, while she landed forgettable roles in short-lived television shows. She appeared a few times on the nighttime soap Falcon Crest (1981). She also appeared in the hit film Leaving Las Vegas (1995), credited as 'Hooker at the bar', and in the flop film Lake Placid (1999) as Myra Okubo. Her recurring role on the top-rated show ER (1994) in 1998 gave her career enough of a jolt to land her the starring role of Det. Olivia Benson in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), the first spin off from the excellent franchise of Law & Order (1990). The hour-long show deals with sex crimes and the detectives who solve these cases. Mariska played Olivia as a tough, compassionate detective, who did action scenes and her own stunt work. She reaped the rewards from the hit TV show, after struggling and studying her craft for fifteen years. She became the highest paid actress on television, and she won Emmy and Golden Globe awards for her performance. The show also changed her personal life, since she met her husband actor Peter Hermann on the set and married him on August 28, 2004. That same year, she appeared in the television movie Plain Truth (2004), in which she played attorney Ellie Harrison. Mariska became an activist, when fans of her show who were abused, would write to her, and she founded a non-profit organization called "Joyful Heart Foundation" to help "survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse."
Mariska gave birth to her son August in 2006. But that tremendous joy was soon followed by tremendous sadness when her beloved father Mickey died just two months later at the age of 80. Mariska and her husband Peter adopted two children, a girl named Amaya, and a boy named Andrew, within a span of few months in 2011.
Mariska speaks English, Hungarian, French, Spanish, and Italian, and her husband also speaks several languages, including his native language German. They divide their time between New York and Los Angeles.- Music Artist
- Actress
- Composer
Shania Twain was born as Eilleen Regina Edwards in 1965 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, one of three daughters of Clarence and Sharon (Morrison) Edwards (sister Jill is two years older and Carrie-Ann three years younger). When she was age six, her mother remarried Jerry Twain, a full-blooded Ojibwa native from Timmins, Ontario, who adopted her as his own. She started out singing in bars as a child after hours, and, at thirteen, appeared on The Tommy Hunter Show (1965). When she was 22, her parents were killed in an accident, and she became the legal guardian of her half-brothers (Mark, then 13, and Darryl, then 14) and sister, putting her musical career on hold to raise her family. In 1991 she changed her name to Shania (meaning "I'm on my way" in Ojibwa, it was the name of a co-worker), and signed a contract with Mercury Nashville that same year. Her first album went by without notice, but her second album (produced with Mutt Lange, who she wed in 1993) broke world records with its sales!- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Though not Hispanic, Autry's parents named him "Carlos" after a Louisiana politician admired by his father. The couple soon divorced, however, and Autry's mother took him to be with her family in central California. Carlos Autry now became Carlos Brown. Autry played sports in high school and earned a scholarship to the University of the Pacific where he played quarterback and then tight end on the football team. He attracted attention in the 1975 football draft and wound up playing for the Green Bay Packers. He started three games as quarterback but his efforts were disappointing and coach Bart Starr cut him from the team in 1977. Autry then moved into acting and played small parts in North Dallas Forty (1979) and Popeye (1980) under the name "Carlos Brown". While filming Southern Comfort (1981) in Louisiana in 1981, he again made contact with his father and afterwards decided to change his name back to Autry. He also dropped the "Carlos" and began to use his middle name -- Alan. His acting career peaked when he played a small-town Mississippi policeman in the In the Heat of the Night (1988) TV series which ran from 1988 to 1995. Later, Autry moved into politics and was elected mayor of Fresno, California, in 2000. In 2004, he was re-elected.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Tyne Daly was born on 21 February 1946 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for Judging Amy (1999), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Cagney & Lacey (1981). She was previously married to Georg Stanford Brown.- Actress
- Producer
Few actresses have the distinction of being recognized and revered worldwide for multiple iconic roles in groundbreaking television shows. Sharon Gless is one of them.
Generations of TV viewers know and love the remarkable characters brought to life by this standout multi Emmy and Golden Globe winning actress: Christine Cagney (Cagney & Lacey), Debbie Novotny (Queer As Folk) and Madeline Westen (Burn Notice), among many others. With over four decades of indelible television, film, and stage roles to her credit, Gless continues to enchant her longtime followers and captivate new fans with every appearance.
In 1972, the head of Talent at Universal Studios perceived a take-notice quality in Sharon Gless and signed her as a contract player, a coveted breakthrough opportunity for any young actress. Gless remained under contract for the next decade, until the studio ended all talent contracts in 1982, earmarking her as the last contract player in the history of Hollywood.
During her contract years with Universal, Gless appeared in top-rated television series including: The Rockford Files, The Bob Newhart Show, Kojack, Adam-12, and Faraday and Company. After reoccurring guest-star spots on Marcus Welby, M.D., Gless was offered the role of Kathleen Faverty, a medical professional and James Brolin's first love interest. Robert Young appreciated the young rising star's talent and she was cast in two television movies to play his daughter. When the Marcus Welby, M.D. storyline changed, Gless' career advanced when she was chosen to play Maggie Philbin, the only female main character on Switch, an action series starring Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert, for all three seasons from 1975 to 1978.
L.A. Law creator, Steven Bocho, had earlier developed a situation comedy, Turnabout, (1979), in which a married couple, through magic, switch bodies. Loving the cross-gender acting challenge, Gless played Penny, who has embodied her husband, Sam. Noting her naturally husky and sultry voice and precise comic timing, Gless was next cast to play Carole Lombard in a successful TV movie directed by John Erman, The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980). It was during a screening of The Scarlett O'Hara War that television producer Barney Rosensweig discovered Gless and entreated her to star in his upcoming TV project, Cagney and Lacey. By the start of production, Gless had already been cast in the popular series, House Calls, as Jane Jeffries, making her unavailable for Cagney & Lacey's 2-hour pilot movie and first episodes.
Gless stepped in to the role of New York Police Detective Christine Cagney in 1982 and Cagney and Lacey made television history as the first hour-long drama to feature two females in the leading roles, who brought public awareness to serious cultural issues for women: date rape, breast cancer, addiction, sexism in the workplace, career choices, abortion, and moral dilemma. Over 30 million American viewers watched the show every week and Gless garnered two Emmy awards for Best Lead Actress in a Drama and six total nominations, along with a Golden Globe award and six nominations during the show's highly-rated run. After the show ended, Gless won an additional Golden Globe for her starring role in the drama series, The Trials of Rosie O'Neill, and two more Emmy nominations.
In popular demand, Gless, also costarred in a feature film with Michael Douglas, The Star Chamber, as well as telefilms: Honor Thy Mother, Hobson's Choice, Hard Hat & Legs, Separated by Murder, and the heartbreaker, Letting Go, with John Ritter.
From 1994 to 1996, Gless reunited with TV partner Tyne Daly for a quartet of critically acclaimed Cagney & Lacey television movies.
In 2000, Gless took a daring chance with a role that opened to viewers the underground lives of gay and lesbians in America, playing the outrageous and bold, yet tender, character Debbie Novotny in Queer as Folk. Her portrayal of a devoted mother to a gay son and confidant to his gay friends in this unexpected Showtime smash series, touched countless hearts and changed the definition of family for millions of viewers. In five seasons, Gless accomplished with her brilliant interpretation of Debbie what had previously taken decades in acceptance of gay and lesbian family members.
Now known for her ability to portray characters with multi-layered, startling and complex emotions, U.S.A. network cast her in their radical series, Burn Notice, (2007- 2013) as a chain-smoking persuasive woman, Madeline Westen, who helps her son establish a new life, by using an unpredictable mixture of heart and heat. Gless earned her 10th Emmy nomination for work in this series. Her 11th Emmy nomination was for Guest Actress in a Drama series, portraying Colleen Rose, an ambitious Hollywood agent harboring chilling secrets on FX's Nip / Tuck in 2008.
Recently, Gless also appeared in two independent features, Once Fallen, with Ed Harris and Amy Madigan, and Hannah Free, in the title role of Hannah.
In 2016, Gless became an intriguing surprise character, much talked about on social media, in four episodes of The Exorcist on Fox TV, sharing the screen with Geena Davis.
Throughout her TV and film career, Gless has also acted on stage to rave reviews in various productions, debuting with Oscar-winner Kim Hunter in Watch on the Rhine at Stage West in Massachusetts. She then starred in London's famed West End as Annie Wilkes in the adaptation of Misery alongside Bill Paterson, for an extended run. Her comedy chops were applauded in Neil Simon's Chapter Two with Tom Conti, and she returned to the West End to star in Jane Prowse's A Round-Heeled Woman in 2011-12 to standing ovations. Gless has also led the cast of Claudia Allen's Cahoots at Victory Gardens in Chicago and appeared in Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues at Madison Square Garden.
Gless has a star on the renowned Hollywood Walk of Fame, an award for Excellence in the Arts from DePaul University in Chicago, and has recorded radio plays, including 'Night, Mother, which earned her the International Sony Award.
Always the happiest when acting in a series or on screen, Gless also finds great fulfillment in lending her indomitable voice to issues involving human rights and LGBTQ causes and was honored by Norman Lear's People for the American Way for her unwavering dedication to helping others. 2017 finds Gless joining stars like Chita Rivera, Kelli O'Hara, and Ben Vereen in "Concert for America: Stand up, Sing Out," on Broadway and in Chicago, benefiting Planned Parenthood, NAACP, and the Sierra Club, and others.