Some actors, filmmakers and crewmembers that I like.
Directors, writers, DPs, etc., as well as crewmembers working on effects, design, etc., and actors that I like (in no particular order).
I'm only listing their work that I've seen (or I've seen the bit they worked on), and if I liked their part in it (i.e., if a director made a movie that completely sucks, it's not listed).
I'm only listing their work that I've seen (or I've seen the bit they worked on), and if I liked their part in it (i.e., if a director made a movie that completely sucks, it's not listed).
List activity
516 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
115 people
- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle, Martin Perveler. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school, there seemed to be little change in his attitude or his results. Hoping to find something to interest his son, Jack introduced Stanley to chess, with the desired result. Kubrick took to the game passionately, and quickly became a skilled player. Chess would become an important device for Kubrick in later years, often as a tool for dealing with recalcitrant actors, but also as an artistic motif in his films.
Jack Kubrick's decision to give his son a camera for his thirteenth birthday would be an even wiser move: Kubrick became an avid photographer, and would often make trips around New York taking photographs which he would develop in a friend's darkroom. After selling an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine, Kubrick began to associate with their staff photographers, and at the age of seventeen was offered a job as an apprentice photographer.
In the next few years, Kubrick had regular assignments for "Look", and would become a voracious movie-goer. Together with friend Alexander Singer, Kubrick planned a move into film, and in 1950 sank his savings into making the documentary Day of the Fight (1951). This was followed by several short commissioned documentaries (Flying Padre (1951), and (The Seafarers (1953), but by attracting investors and hustling chess games in Central Park, Kubrick was able to make Fear and Desire (1952) in California.
Filming this movie was not a happy experience; Kubrick's marriage to high school sweetheart Toba Metz did not survive the shooting. Despite mixed reviews for the film itself, Kubrick received good notices for his obvious directorial talents. Kubrick's next two films Killer's Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956) brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and in 1957 he directed Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas later called upon Kubrick to take over the production of Spartacus (1960), by some accounts hoping that Kubrick would be daunted by the scale of the project and would thus be accommodating. This was not the case, however: Kubrick took charge of the project, imposing his ideas and standards on the film. Many crew members were upset by his style: cinematographer Russell Metty complained to producers that Kubrick was taking over his job. Kubrick's response was to tell him to sit there and do nothing. Metty complied, and ironically was awarded the Academy Award for his cinematography.
Kubrick's next project was to direct Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), but negotiations broke down and Brando himself ended up directing the film himself. Disenchanted with Hollywood and after another failed marriage, Kubrick moved permanently to England, from where he would make all of his subsequent films. Despite having obtained a pilot's license, Kubrick was rumored to be afraid of flying.
Kubrick's first UK film was Lolita (1962), which was carefully constructed and guided so as to not offend the censorship boards which at the time had the power to severely damage the commercial success of a film. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) was a big risk for Kubrick; before this, "nuclear" was not considered a subject for comedy. Originally written as a drama, Kubrick decided that too many of the ideas he had written were just too funny to be taken seriously. The film's critical and commercial success allowed Kubrick the financial and artistic freedom to work on any project he desired. Around this time, Kubrick's focus diversified and he would always have several projects in various stages of development: "Blue Moon" (a story about Hollywood's first pornographic feature film), "Napoleon" (an epic historical biography, abandoned after studio losses on similar projects), "Wartime Lies" (based on the novel by Louis Begley), and "Rhapsody" (a psycho-sexual thriller).
The next film he completed was a collaboration with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is hailed by many as the best ever made; an instant cult favorite, it has set the standard and tone for many science fiction films that followed. Kubrick followed this with A Clockwork Orange (1971), which rivaled Lolita (1962) for the controversy it generated - this time not only for its portrayal of sex, but also of violence. Barry Lyndon (1975) would prove a turning point in both his professional and private lives. His unrelenting demands of commitment and perfection of cast and crew had by now become legendary. Actors would be required to perform dozens of takes with no breaks. Filming a story in Ireland involving military, Kubrick received reports that the IRA had declared him a possible target. Production was promptly moved out of the country, and Kubrick's desire for privacy and security resulted in him being considered a recluse ever since.
Having turned down directing a sequel to The Exorcist (1973), Kubrick made his own horror film: The Shining (1980). Again, rumors circulated of demands made upon actors and crew. Stephen King (whose novel the film was based upon) reportedly didn't like Kubrick's adaptation (indeed, he would later write his own screenplay which was filmed as The Shining (1997).)
Kubrick's subsequent work has been well spaced: it was seven years before Full Metal Jacket (1987) was released. By this time, Kubrick was married with children and had extensively remodeled his house. Seen by one critic as the dark side to the humanist story of Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987) continued Kubrick's legacy of solid critical acclaim, and profit at the box office.
In the 1990s, Kubrick began an on-again/off-again collaboration with Brian Aldiss on a new science fiction film called "Artificial Intelligence (AI)", but progress was very slow, and was backgrounded until special effects technology was up to the standard the Kubrick wanted.
Kubrick returned to his in-development projects, but encountered a number of problems: "Napoleon" was completely dead, and "Wartime Lies" (now called "The Aryan Papers") was abandoned when Steven Spielberg announced he would direct Schindler's List (1993), which covered much of the same material.
While pre-production work on "AI" crawled along, Kubrick combined "Rhapsody" and "Blue Movie" and officially announced his next project as Eyes Wide Shut (1999), starring the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. After two years of production under unprecedented security and privacy, the film was released to a typically polarized critical and public reception; Kubrick claimed it was his best film to date.
Special effects technology had matured rapidly in the meantime, and Kubrick immediately began active work on A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), but tragically suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep on March 7th, 1999.
After Kubrick's death, Spielberg revealed that the two of them were friends that frequently communicated discreetly about the art of filmmaking; both had a large degree of mutual respect for each other's work. "AI" was frequently discussed; Kubrick even suggested that Spielberg should direct it as it was more his type of project. Based on this relationship, Spielberg took over as the film's director and completed the last Kubrick project.
How much of Kubrick's vision remains in the finished project -- and what he would think of the film as eventually released -- will be the final great unanswerable mysteries in the life of this talented and private filmmaker.Directing, writing and producing:- Day of the Fight (1951 documentary short) [directing and producing only - also for cinematography, editing and sound editing]
- Flying Padre (1951 documentary short) [directing and writing only - also for cinematography]
- Fear and Desire (1953) [directing and producing only - also for cinematography and editing]
- The Seafarers (1953 documentary short) [directing only - also for cinematography and editing]
- Dr. Strangelove (1964)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [also for special effects design and direction]
- A Clockwork Orange (1971)
- The Shining (1980)
- Full Metal Jacket (1987)
- Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
- Actor
- Writer
One of Britain's most recognizable (and most larger-than-life) character actors, Tom Baker is best known for his record-setting seven-year stint as the Fourth Doctor in Doctor Who (1963). He was born in 1934 in Liverpool, to Mary Jane (Fleming) and John Stewart Baker. His father was of English and Scottish descent, while his mother's family was originally from Ireland. Tom, along with his younger sister, Lulu, and younger brother, John, was raised in a poor Catholic community by his mother, a house-cleaner and barmaid, who was a devout Catholic, and his father, a sailor, who was rarely at home.
At age fifteen, Baker left school to become a monk with the Brothers of Ploermel on the island of Jersey. Six years later, he abandoned the monastic life and performed his National Service in the Royal Army Medical Corps., where he became interested in acting. Baker then served on the Queen Mary for seven months as a sailor in the Merchant Navy before attending Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in Kent, England, on scholarship.
Baker acted in repertory theaters around Britain until the late 1960s when he joined up with the National Theatre, where he performed with such respected actors as Maggie Smith, Anthony Hopkins and Laurence Olivier, who helped him get his first prominent film role as Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971). His performance in this film earned him two Golden Globe Award nominations, one for best actor in a supporting role and another for best new star of the year. A couple of years earlier, Baker had made his theatrical film debut in The Winter's Tale (1967).
Despite appearances in a spate of films, including The Canterbury Tales (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) and The Mutations (1974), Baker found himself in a career lull and working as a labourer at a building site. However, the BBC's Head of Serials, William Slater, who had directed Baker in BBC Play of the Month (1965), recommended him to producer Barry Letts, who was looking for a replacement for Jon Pertwee as the Fourth Doctor in Doctor Who (1963). Baker's performance in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) convinced Letts that he was right for it. It brought Baker international fame and popularity. He played the role for seven years, longer than any actor before or since.
After leaving Doctor Who (1963) in 1981, Baker returned to theatre and made occasional television and film appearances, playing Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1982), Puddleglum in The Chronicles of Narnia story The Silver Chair (1990) and Hallvarth, Clan Leader of the Hunter Elves, in Dungeons & Dragons (2000).Acting:- Doctor Who (1963-1989 TV series)
- Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)
- Arthur of the Britons: Go Warily (1973 TV episode)
- The Passionate Pilgrim (1984 short film)
- Blackadder II: Potato (1986 TV episode)
- Fort Boyard (1998-2003 TV series)
- Dungeons & Dragons (2000)
- Little Britain (2003-2006 TV series)
- Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor (2013 TV episode)
- Star Wars: Rebels: Steps Into Shadow / The Holocrons of Fate / Visions and Voices / Zero Hour (2016/2016/2016/2017 TV episodes)
- Producer
- Writer
- Director
George A. Romero never set out to become a Hollywood figure; by all indications, though, he was very successful. The director of the groundbreaking "Living Dead" films was born February 4, 1940 ,in New York City to Ann (Dvorsky) and Jorge Romero. His father was born in Spain and raised in Cuba, and his mother was Lithuanian. He grew up in New York until attending the renowned Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.
After graduation he began shooting mostly short films and commercials. He and his friends formed Image Ten Productions in the late 1960s and they all chipped in roughly $10,000 apiece to produce what became one of the most celebrated American horror films of all time: Night of the Living Dead (1968). Shot in black-and-white on a budget of just over $100,000, Romero's vision, combined with a solid script written by him and his "Image" co-founder John A. Russo (along with what was then considered an excess of gore), enabled the film to earn back far more than what it cost; it became a cult classic by the early 1970s and was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress of the United States in 1999. Romero's next films were a little more low-key but less successful, including The Affair (1971), The Crazies (1973), Season of the Witch (1972) (where he met future wife Christine Forrest) and Martin (1977). Though not as acclaimed as "Night of the Living Dead" or some of his later work, these films had his signature social commentary while dealing with issues--usually horror-related--at the microscopic level. Like almost all of his films, they were shot in, or around, Romero's favorite city of Pittsburgh.
In 1978 he returned to the zombie genre with the one film of his that would top the success of "Night of the Living Dead"--Dawn of the Dead (1978). He managed to divorce the franchise from Image Ten, which screwed up the copyright on the original and allowed the film to enter into public domain, with the result that Romero and his original investors were not entitled to any profits from the film's video releases. Shot in the Monroeville (PA) Mall during late-night hours, the film told the tale of four people who escape a zombie outbreak and lock themselves up inside what they think is paradise before the solitude makes them victims of their own, and a biker gang's, greed. Made on a budget of just $1.5 million, the film earned over $40 million worldwide and was named one of the top cult films by Entertainment Weekly magazine in 2003. It also marked Romero's first work with brilliant make-up and effects artist Tom Savini. After 1978, Romero and Savini teamed up many times. The success of "Dawn of the Dead" led to bigger budgets and better casts for the filmmaker. First was Knightriders (1981), where he first worked with an up-and-coming Ed Harris. Then came perhaps his most Hollywood-like film, Creepshow (1982), which marked the first--but not the last--time Romero adapted a work by famed horror novelist Stephen King. With many major stars and big-studio distribution, it was a moderate success and spawned a sequel, which was also written by Romero.
The decline of Romero's career came in the late 1980s. His last widely-released film was the next "Dead" film, Day of the Dead (1985). Derided by critics, it did not take in much at the box office, either. His latest two efforts were The Dark Half (1993) (another Stephen King adaptation) and Bruiser (2000). Even the Romero-penned/Tom Savini-directed remake of Romero's first film, Night of the Living Dead (1990), was a box-office failure. Pigeon-holed solely as a horror director and with his latest films no longer achieving the success of his earlier "Dead" films, Romero has not worked much since, much to the chagrin of his following. In 2005, 19 years after "Day of the Dead", with major-studio distribution he returned to his most famous series and horror sub-genre it created with Land of the Dead (2005), a further exploration of the destruction of modern society by the undead, that received generally positive reviews. He directed two more "Dead" films, Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009).
George died on July 16, 2017, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was 77.Directing and writing:- Night of the Living Dead (1968) [also for cinematography and editing]
- Season of the Witch (1972) [also for cinematography and editing]
- The Crazies (1973) [also for editing]
- Martin (1977) [also for acting and editing]
- Day of the Dead (1985)
- Misfits' "Scream!" (1999 music video)
- Land of the Dead (2005)
- Diary of the Dead (2007) [NOTE: it kinda sucks, but it's still interesting and watchable]
Other work:- Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010 video game) [acting]
- The Crazies (2010) [producing]
- Music Department
- Writer
- Composer
John Howard Carpenter was born in Carthage, New York, to mother Milton Jean (Carter) and father Howard Ralph Carpenter. His family moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where his father, a professor, was head of the music department at Western Kentucky University. He attended Western Kentucky University and then USC film school in Los Angeles. He began making short films in 1962, and won an Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Subject in 1970, for The Resurrection of Broncho Billy (1970), which he made while at USC. Carpenter formed a band in the mid-1970s called The Coupe de Villes, which included future directors Tommy Lee Wallace and Nick Castle. Since the 1970s, he has had numerous roles in the film industry including writer, actor, composer, producer, and director. After directing Dark Star (1974), he has helmed both classic horror films like Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), and The Thing (1982), and noted sci-fi tales like Escape from New York (1981) and Starman (1984).Directing and score:- Captain Voyeur (1969 short film) [directing and writing only]
- Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) [also for writing and editing]
- Halloween (1978) [also for writing and producing]
- The Fog (1980) [also for writing]
- Escape From New York (1981) [also for writing]
- The Thing (1982) [score - additional only]
- Christine (1983)
- Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
- Prince of Darkness (1987) [also for writing]
- They Live (1988) [also for writing]
- Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) [directing only]
- In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
- The Ward (2010) [directing only]
- John Carpenter's "Distant Dream" (2016 music video)
- John Carpenter's "Escape From New York" (2016 music video)
- John Carpenter's "Christine" (2017 music video)
Other work:- Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) [producing and score]
- Halloween (2018) [producing and score]
- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Friedkin's mother was an operating room nurse. His father was a merchant seaman, semi-pro softball player and ultimately sold clothes in a men's discount chain. Ultimately, his father never earned more than $50/week in his whole life and died indigent. Eventually young Will became infatuated with Orson Welles after seeing Citizen Kane (1941). He went to work for WGN TV immediately after graduating from high school where he started making documentaries, one of which won the Golden Gate Award at the 1962 San Francisco film festival. In 1965, he moved to Hollywood and immediately started directing TV shows, including an episode of the The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962); Hitchcock infamously chastised him for not wearing a tie.Directing:- The French Connection (1971)
- The Exorcist (1973)
- Sorcerer (1977) [also for producing]
- Cruising (1980) [also for writing]
- Laura Branigan's "Self Control" (1984 music video)
- To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) [also for writing]
- Wang Chung's "To Live and Die in L.A." (1985 music video)
- Rules of Engagement (2000)
- The Hunted (2003)
- Bug (2006)
- Killer Joe (2011)
- Production Designer
- Art Director
- Art Department
Oscar-winning British art director and production designer, most famous for being the creative genius behind the look of the original Star Wars trilogy. Reynolds also worked on many other blockbusters like Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Superman (1978), Empire of the Sun (1987) and Bicentennial Man (1999). While brilliantly inventive in his chosen field, he remained consistently self-effacing in private life. Many a famous prop had a modest beginning. The golden idol used in the opening scene of 'Raiders', for example, began life as a 'fertility figure', originally purchased by Reynolds at a Mexican airport as a "tacky tourist souvenir". His creations for Star Wars have included Yoda's swamp planet of Dagobah, Han Solo's carbon freezing chamber, Jabba the Hutt's sail barge and the Ewok village (respectively, for Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)). The look of most subsequent entries in the Star Wars franchise continues to remain greatly influenced by the earlier conceptual work of Reynolds.
Reynolds began his career in advertising, among other things creating illuminated signs. During a trip to Shepperton Studios in the early 60s, he was able visit multiple sets, including one for the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope classic The Road to Hong Kong (1962). From that moment on, Reynolds was hooked on the film industry and determined to become a part of it. He began his career by serving a two year long apprenticeship in production design at the old Elstree studios in Borehamwood, near London, plying his trade on episodes of The Saint (1962). He was to later revisit this location to create such iconic sets as Jabba's Palace for Star Wars, or set pieces like the opening scene of the rolling boulder for Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Norman Reynolds died on April 6 2023 at the age of 89.Production design:- Phase IV (1974) [assistant art direction only]
- Star Wars: Episodes IV-VI (1977[art direction only]/1980/1983)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
- Return to Oz (1985)
- Empire of the Sun (1987)
- Alien³ (1992)
- Mission Impossible (1996)
- Bicentennial Man (1999)
Other work:- The Exorcist III (1990) [special effects unit directing]
- Director
- Cinematographer
- Editor
John Smith was born in 1952 in London, England, UK. He is a director and cinematographer, known for Dad's Stick (2012), Blight (1996) and Regression (1999).Directing, writing, producing and editing:- Associations (1975 short film)
- Leading Light (1975 short film)
- The Girl Chewing Gum (1976 short film)
- Shepherd's Delight (1984 short film)
- Om (1986 short film)
- The Black Tower (1987 short film)
- Gargantuan (1992 short film)
- Blight (1996 short film)
- The Man Phoning Mum (2011 short film)
- Dad's Stick (2012 short film)
- White Hole (2014 short film)
- Steve Hates Fish (2015 short film)
- Who Are We? (2016 short film)
- A State of Grace (2019 short film)
- Twice (2020 short film)
- Actor
- Make-Up Department
- Special Effects
Actor/SFX wizard/stuntman/director Tom Savini was born in Pittsburgh. Inspired by the film Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), a young Savini became fascinated with the magic and illusion of film. He spent his youth in his room creating characters by tirelessly practicing make-up. Later, as a combat photographer in Vietnam, Savini saw first-hand the gruesome carnage for which he later gained fame, simulating it on screen.
He has acquired a remarkable cult following among film fans, primarily due to his ground-breaking SFX in the "splatter movie" explosion of the early 1980s. Along with fellow special make-up legends Dick Smith and Rob Bottin, Savini was one of the key SFX people behind the startling make-up & EFX seen in the fantasy/horror genre films of the 1980s-'90s. Savini was heavily influenced by the remarkable silent-era actor Lon Chaney, and he sought to emulate the amazing theatrical make-up effects that were a hallmark of Chaney's career. In Savini's insightful book "Grande Illusions", he speaks of his early attempts at applying prosthetics to his face using "spearmint gum", having misinterpreted that he was meant to actually use "spirit gum"! His first work was in low-budget fare, providing SFX and make-up for independently made horror films such as Deranged (1974) and Martin (1977).
He really caught the attention of horror buffs with his grisly effects in the cult George A. Romero-directed zombie film Dawn of the Dead (1978), and then in the controversial slasher film Friday the 13th (1980), the movie generally identified as the kickstart for the aforementioned "splatter movie" genre. Savini also contributed the incredible EFX & make-up to other splatter thrillers such as Maniac (1980), The Burning (1981), Creepshow (1982) and Romero's third "Dead" film, Day of the Dead (1985) (for which he won a Saturn Award). In 1990, Savini directed his feature film debut Night of the Living Dead (1990), the remake of the original zombie-classic.
Not content with only being behind the lens, however, Savini has appeared in dozens of films, and can be seen demonstrating his capable acting skills as "Morgan, the Black Knight" in Knightriders (1981), as "Blades", one of the biker gang members in Dawn of the Dead (1978) and as "Sex Machine", another leather-clad biker--but this time with a groin-mounted gun--in the wild vampire film From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).Special makeup effects/sequences:- Martin (1977)
- Dawn of the Dead (1978)
- Friday the 13th & The Final Chapter (1980/1984)
- Maniac (1980)
- The Burning (1981)
- The Prowler (1981)
- Day of the Dead (1985)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)
- Cutting Moments (1997 short film)
NOTE: he's also a sort-of prolific actor, but not a particularly memorable one.- Sound Department
- Additional Crew
- Editor
Ben Burtt was born in New York, USA. Though he is a writer, an editor and a director, he is best known for his work as a sound designer. Ben has worked on many Pixar and Star Trek movies and all of the Star Wars movies. He is credited for creating Chewbacca's voice and sounds as well as the voice of Yoda and several others.Sound/voice design and effects:- Star Wars: Episodes I-VII & IX (1977/1980/1983/1999/2002/2005/2015/2019)
- Alien (1979) [additional sound design only]
- Indiana Jones 1-3 (1981/1984/1989)
- The Dark Crystal (1982)
- E.T. (1982)
- WALL-E (2008) [also for voicing WALL-E]
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019 video game) [designing and voicing BD-1 only]
Other work:- Star Wars: Episodes I-III (1999/2002/2005) [editing]
NOTE: he also named and popularised the 'Wilhelm scream' sound effect.- Visual Effects
- Producer
- Director
Phil Tippett is the founder and namesake of Tippett Studio. His varied career in visual effects has spanned more than 30 years and includes two Academy Awards; and six nominations, one BAFTA award and four nominations, two Emmys and the advent of modern digital effects in motion pictures.
As a child of seven, Phil was profoundly inspired by Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion classic, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Willis O'Brien's classic character King Kong. His subsequent devotion to the creation of the fantastic creatures in film has become his raison d'etre. As a kid, and then as a student always drawing, sculpting and making animations, he developed his skills in a broader context first with a Fine Arts degree from University of California at Irvine, then as an animator at the commercial house, Cascade Pictures in Los Angeles. As a young adult Phil sought out teachers and mentors establishing connections and friendships with Ray Harryhausen and Ray Bradbury.
A huge turning point came in 1975 when George Lucas hired Phil and Jon Berg to create a stop motion miniature chess scene for Star Wars: A New Hope. Phil also had a hand in many other aspects of the Star Wars films, including modeling and casting alien heads and limbs for the busy Cantina scene in the first film. By 1978 Phil lead the animation team at Industrial Light and Magic that would launch his career bringing life to the sinister Imperial Walkers and the alien hybrid Tauntaun for The Empire Strikes Back.
In 1982, building upon insights from 'Empire', the same ILM team developed a stop-motion process that they comically christened as 'Go Motion' that produced a startlingly realistic beast for Dragonslayer and won Phil an Academy Award; nomination. And in 1983, as head of the ILM creature shop, he began work on Return of the Jedi, designing Jabba The Hut and the Rancor Pit Monster as well as animating the two legged Walker and later winning the Oscar; for Best Visual Effects.
In 1984 Phil left ILM to create a 10-minute short film, Prehistoric Beast. The newly formed Tippett Studio, then operating out of Phil's garage, drew upon Phil's wealth of experience with stop motion and his expertise in anatomical modeling and rigging. He and Tippett Studio went on to create top-notch stop motion animations for various television and film projects including Dinosaur!, Willow, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and the Robocop trilogy.
In 1991, Steven Spielberg, learning of Phil's expertise in dinosaur movement and behavior, selected him to supervise the dinosaur animation for Jurassic Park. When Phil learned of the choice to go with the computer generated dinosaurs, instead of stop motion, his initial reaction was, "I think I'm extinct!" It was this project that was responsible for Tippett Studio's transition from stop-motion to computer generated animation and for which Phil was awarded his second Oscar®.
Phil's next major challenge came in 1995 when Paul Verhoeven, again with producer Jon Davison, asked Tippett Studio to create the swarms of deadly arachnids for the sci-fi extravaganza, Starship Troopers. Leading a team of 150 computer artists and technicians, earned Phil a sixth Academy Award; nomination in 1997. Starship Troopers firmly planted Tippett Studio (and Phil) into the digital age of filmmaking.
In the following years Phil has been a guide and mentor for the Tippett Studio VFX supervisors and crew as they create monsters, aliens and appealing creatures for the numerous films that wind their way through the Tippett pipeline.
Partnering with associate, writer Ed Neumeier (Starship Troopers and Robocop scribe), the two created the story for Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, which Phil went on to direct in 2004 for Screengems.
Recently, Phil oversaw the design and creation of the wolf pack in Summit Entertainment's New Moon and Eclipse, the second and third film installments based on the Twilight series of novels by Stephanie Meyer.
Phil's roots in stop motion, modeling and practical effects and his ability to use this foundation in conjunction with developing technologies has made him one of a handful of artists whose careers have spanned the transition of visual effects from largely practical to digital. In this way he is a great teacher and mentor to the crew passing on the tradition of mentorship given to him in the early part of his career.Stop-motion (or go-motion) and visual effects:- Star Wars & The Empire Strikes Back (1977/1980)
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
- RoboCop 1 & 2 (1987/1990) [also for producing]
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- Starship Troopers (1997) [also for producing]
- Evolution (2001)
- Mastodon's "Asleep in the Deep" (2015 music video)
- Jurassic World & Fallen Kingdom (2015/2018)
Other work:- Return of the Jedi (1983) [makeup and creature design]
- Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004) [directing and producing]
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Multiple award-winning cinematographer Dean Cundey, ASC, CSC who was nominated for an Oscar for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and took home the BAFTA for the same film, has a career spanning decades with awards and nominations including a Primetime Emmy (2023 "The Mandalorian") a Daytime Emmy (2001 "The Face: Jesus in Art"), a Chicago Film Critics Association award ("Apollo 13"), to American Society of Cinematographers awards ("Apollo 13," "Hook"). His prolific career also includes a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASC and a President's Award from the SOC, and he's still not done shooting. Born in Alhambra, California, Cundey spent his childhood building miniature sets and reading "American Cinematographer." Following graduation from UCLA film school, where he was taught by James Wong Howe, ASC, Cundey's first job on set was as a makeup artist on Roger Corman's "Gas!" or "It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It." Cundey's first assignment as a director of photography was on the revenge film "The No Mercy Man." He continued with other horror and exploitation movies, then began a collaboration with director John Carpenter on five films for which he received accolades: "Halloween," "The Fog," "Escape from New York," "The Thing" and "Big Trouble in Little China." Cundey transitioned into a collaboration with Robert Zemeckis on impressive features such as "Romancing the Stone," all three "Back to the Future" films, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Death Becomes Her." Not content to settle for that, he also dabbled in directing with his debut on "Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves" and was also the second-unit director on "Deep Rising" and "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties." .Cinematography:- Halloween I-III (1978/1981/1982)
- The Fog (1980)
- Escape From New York (1981)
- The Thing (1982)
- Psycho II (1983)
- Back to the Future (1985)
- Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
- Road House (1989)
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- Apollo 13 (1995)
- The Killers' "Human" (2008 music video)
- The Girl in the Photographs (2015)
- The Book of Boba Fett: The Tribes of Tatooine / The Gathering Storm (2022 TV episodes)
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Mark Irwin was born on 7 August 1950 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is a cinematographer, known for Old School (2003), RoboCop 2 (1990) and There's Something About Mary (1998).Cinematography:- The Brood (1979)
- Night School (1981)
- Scanners (1981)
- The Dead Zone (1983)
- Videodrome (1983)
- The Fly (1986)
- The Blob (1988)
- Class of 1999 (1990)
- RoboCop 2 (1990)
- The Mask (1994) [additional cinematography only]
- New Nightmare (1994)
- Scream (1996)
- Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
- Scary Movie 3 (2003)
- Actor
- Location Management
- Soundtrack
David Bradley was born on 17 April 1942 in York, Yorkshire, England, UK. He is an actor, known for The World's End (2013), Hot Fuzz (2007) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011). He has been married to Rosanna Bradley since 1978. They have three children.Acting:- Coronation Street: 24 December 1980 (1980 TV episode)
- Harry Potter 1-7 (2001/2002/2004/2005/2007/2009/2011)
- Exorcist: The Beginning (2004)
- Hot Fuzz (2007)
- The Sarah Jane Adventures: Death of the Doctor (2010 TV episodes)
- Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
- Game of Thrones (2011-2019 TV series)
- Doctor Who: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship / Twice Upon a Time / The Power of the Doctor (2012/2017/2022 TV episodes)
- An Adventure in Space and Time (2013 TV film)
- Broadchurch (2013-2017 TV series)
- The World's End (2013)
- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Lawrence Kasdan is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. He directed Body Heat, Grand Canyon, The Big Chill, Silverado and Dreamcatcher. He wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Bodyguard, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens and Solo: A Star Wars Story. He is married to Meg Goldman since 1971 and has two sons.Writing:- Star Wars: Episodes V-VII (1980/1983/2015[also for producing])
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
- Dreamcatcher (2003) [also for directing and producing] [NOTE: one of the most baffling films I've ever seen]
- Solo (2018) [also for producing]
NOTE: a writer who seems to understand the epic and dramatic potential of "Star Wars" more than most.- Make-Up Department
- Additional Crew
- Special Effects
Rob Bottin was born on 1 April 1959 in El Monte, California, USA. He is known for RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990) and Se7en (1995).Special makeup effects:- The Fog (1980)
- The Thing (1982) [NOTE: it's worth mentioning that working on this film nearly killed him]
- RoboCop (1987) [also for designing the RoboCop costume]
- Total Recall (1990) [also for visual effects design]
- Se7en (1995)
- Mission Impossible (1996)
- Mimic (1997) [creature design only]
- Deep Rising (1998) [also for creature design]
- Fight Club (1999)
- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, at the Maine General Hospital in Portland. His parents were Nellie Ruth (Pillsbury), who worked as a caregiver at a mental institute, and Donald Edwin King, a merchant seaman. His father was born under the surname "Pollock," but used the last name "King," under which Stephen was born. He has an older brother, David. The Kings were a typical family until one night, when Donald said he was stepping out for cigarettes and was never heard from again. Ruth took over raising the family with help from relatives. They traveled throughout many states over several years, finally moving back to Durham, Maine, in 1958.
Stephen began his actual writing career in January of 1959, when David and Stephen decided to publish their own local newspaper named "Dave's Rag". David bought a mimeograph machine, and they put together a paper they sold for five cents an issue. Stephen attended Lisbon High School, in Lisbon, in 1962. Collaborating with his best friend Chris Chesley in 1963, they published a collection of 18 short stories called "People, Places, and Things--Volume I". King's stories included "Hotel at the End of the Road", "I've Got to Get Away!", "The Dimension Warp", "The Thing at the Bottom of the Well", "The Stranger", "I'm Falling", "The Cursed Expedition", and "The Other Side of the Fog." A year later, King's amateur press, Triad and Gaslight Books, published a two-part book titled "The Star Invaders".
King made his first actual published appearance in 1965 in the magazine Comics Review with his story "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber." The story ran about 6,000 words in length. In 1966 he graduated from high school and took a scholarship to attend the University of Maine. Looking back on his high school days, King recalled that "my high school career was totally undistinguished. I was not at the top of my class, nor at the bottom." Later that summer King began working on a novel called "Getting It On", about some kids who take over a classroom and try unsuccessfully to ward off the National Guard. During his first year at college, King completed his first full-length novel, "The Long Walk." He submitted the novel to Bennett Cerf/Random House only to have it rejected. King took the rejection badly and filed the book away.
He made his first small sale--$35--with the story "The Glass Floor". In June 1970 King graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor of Science degree in English and a certificate to teach high school. King's next idea came from the poem by Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." He found bright colored green paper in the library and began work on "The Dark Tower" saga, but his chronic shortage of money meant that he was unable to further pursue the novel, and it, too, was filed away. King took a job at a filling station pumping gas for the princely sum of $1.25 an hour. Soon he began to earn money for his writings by submitting his short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier.
On January 2, 1971, he married Tabitha King (born Tabitha Jane Spruce). In the fall of 1971 King took a teaching job at Hampden Academy, earning $6,400 a year. The Kings then moved to Hermon, a town west of Bangor. Stephen then began work on a short story about a teenage girl named Carietta White. After completing a few pages, he decided it was not a worthy story and crumpled the pages up and tossed them into the trash. Fortunately, Tabitha took the pages out and read them. She encouraged her husband to continue the story, which he did. In January 1973 he submitted "Carrie" to Doubleday. In March Doubleday bought the book. On May 12 the publisher sold the paperback rights for the novel to New American Library for $400,000. His contract called for his getting half of that sum, and he quit his teaching job to pursue writing full time. The rest, as they say, is history.
Since then King has had numerous short stories and novels published and movies made from his work. He has been called the "Master of Horror". His books have been translated into 33 different languages, published in over 35 different countries. There are over 300 million copies of his novels in publication. He continues to live in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, and writes out of his home.
In June 1999 King was severely injured in an accident, he was walking alongside a highway and was hit by a van, that left him in critical condition with injuries to his lung, broken ribs, a broken leg and a severely fractured hip. After three weeks of operations, he was released from the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston.Writing source materials [NOTE: I haven't read any of his works, but these films make them sound pretty interesting, despite the varying quality of the films themselves]:- The Shining (1980)
- The Boogeyman (1982 short film)
- Christine (1983)
- Children of the Corn (1984)
- Pet Sematary (1989) [also for screenwriting and acting]
- Misery (1990)
- The Green Mile (1999)
- Paranoid (2000 short film)
- Dreamcatcher (2003)
- 1408 (2007)
- The Mist (2007)
- Carrie (2013)
- Cell (2016) [also for screenwriting]
- 1922 (2017)
- The Dark Tower (2017)
- Gerald's Game (2017)
- It (2017/2019) [also for acting]
- Doctor Sleep (2019) [also for producing]
- In the Tall Grass (2019)
- Pet Sematary (2019)
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Kurt Vogel Russell was born on March 17, 1951 in Springfield, Massachusetts and raised in Thousand Oaks, California to Louise Julia Russell (née Crone), a dancer & Bing Russell, an actor. He is of English, German, Scottish and Irish descent. His first roles were as a child on television series, including a lead role on the Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1963). Russell landed a role in the Elvis Presley movie, It Happened at the World's Fair (1963), when he was eleven years old. Walt Disney himself signed Russell to a 10-year contract, and, according to Robert Osborne, he became the studio's top star of the 1970s. Having voiced adult Copper in the animated Disney film The Fox and the Hound (1981), Russell is one of the few famous child stars in Hollywood who has been able to continue his acting career past his teen years.
Kurt spent the early 1970s playing minor league baseball. In 1979, he gave a classic performance as Elvis Presley in John Carpenter's ABC TV movie Elvis (1979), and married the actress who portrayed Priscilla Presley in the film, Season Hubley. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for the role. He followed with roles in a string of well-received films, including Used Cars (1980) and Silkwood (1983), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture. During the 1980s, he starred in several films by director Carpenter; they created some of his best-known roles, including the infamous anti-hero Snake Plissken in the futuristic action film Escape from New York (1981) (and later in its sequel Escape from L.A. (1996)), Antarctic helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady in the horror film The Thing (1982), and Jack Burton in the fantasy film Big Trouble in Little China (1986), all of which have since become cult classics.
In 1983, he became reacquainted with Goldie Hawn (who appeared with him in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968)) when they worked together on Swing Shift (1984). The two have lived together ever since. They made another film together, Garry Marshall's comedy Overboard (1987). His other 1980s titles include The Best of Times (1986), Tequila Sunrise (1988), Winter People (1989) and Tango & Cash (1989).
In 1991, he headlined the firefighter drama Backdraft (1991), he starred as Wyatt Earp in the Western film Tombstone (1993), and had a starring role as Colonel Jack O'Neil in the science fiction film Stargate (1994). In the mid-2000s, his portrayal of U.S. Olympic hockey coach Herb Brooks in Miracle (2004) won the praise of critics. In 2006, he appeared in the disaster-thriller Poseidon (2006), and in 2007, in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (2007) segment from the film Grindhouse (2007). Russell appeared in The Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014), a documentary about his father and the Portland Mavericks, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014. Russell starred in the Western films Bone Tomahawk (2015) and The Hateful Eight (2015), and had a leading role in the dramatization Deepwater Horizon (2016). He also co-starred in the action sequels Furious 7 (2015) and The Fate of the Furious (2017).
Russell and Goldie Hawn live on a 72-acre retreat, Home Run Ranch, outside of Aspen. He has two sons, Boston Russell (from his marriage to Hubley) and Wyatt Russell (with Hawn). He also raised Hawn's children, actors Oliver Hudson and Kate Hudson, who consider him their father. Russell is also an avid gun enthusiast, a hunter and a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. He is also an FAA-licensed private pilot holding single/multi-engine and instrument ratings, and is an Honorary Board Member of the humanitarian aviation organization Wings of Hope.Acting:- Escape From New York (1981)
- The Thing (1982)
- Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
- Tombstone (1993)
- Breakdown (1997)
- Poseidon (2006)
- Death Proof (2007)
- Bone Tomahawk (2015)
- The Hateful Eight (2015)
- The Fate of the Furious (2017)
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 (2017)
- The Christmas Chronicles (2018)
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Highly inventive U.S. film director/producer/writer/actor Sam Raimi first came to the attention of film fans with the savage, yet darkly humorous, low-budget horror film, The Evil Dead (1981). From his childhood, Raimi was a fan of the cinema and, before he was ten-years-old, he was out making movies with an 8mm camera. He was a devoted fan of The Three Stooges, so much of Raimi's film work in his teens, with good friends Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert, was slapstick comedy based around what they had observed from "Stooges" movies.
Among the three of them, they wrote, directed, produced and edited a short horror movie titled Within the Woods (1978), which was then shown to prospective investors to raise the money necessary to film The Evil Dead (1981). It met with lukewarm interest in the U.S. with local distributors, so Raimi took the film to Europe, where it was much more warmly received. After it started gaining positive reviews and, more importantly, ticket sales upon its release in Europe, U.S. distributors showed renewed interest, and "Evil Dead" was eventually released stateside to strong box office returns. His next directorial effort was Crimewave (1985), a quirky, cartoon-like effort that failed to catch fire with audiences. However, he bounced back with Evil Dead II (1987), a racier and more humorous remake/sequel to the original "Dead" that did even better at the box office. Raimi was then given his biggest budget to date to shoot Darkman (1990), a comic book-style fantasy about a scarred avenger. The film did moderate business, but Raimi's strong visual style was evident throughout the film via inventive and startling camera work that caught the attention of numerous critics.
The third chapter in the Evil Dead story beckoned, and Raimi once again directed buddy Campbell as the gritty hero "Ash", in the Gothic horror Army of Darkness (1992). Raimi surprised fans when he took a turn away from the fantasy genre and directed Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone in the sexy western, The Quick and the Dead (1995); four years later, he took the directorial reins on A Simple Plan (1998), a crime thriller about stolen money, starring Bill Paxton and Bridget Fonda. In early 1999, he directed the baseball film, For Love of the Game (1999), and, in 2000, returned to the fantasy genre with a top-flight cast in The Gift (2000). In 2002, Raimi was given a real opportunity to demonstrate his dynamic visual style with the big-budget film adaptation of the Stan Lee comic book superhero, Spider-Man (2002), and fans were not disappointed. The movie was strong in both script and effects, and was a runaway success at the box office. Of course, Raimi returned for the sequel, Spider-Man 2 (2004), which surpassed the original in box-office takings.Directing and writing:- Evil Dead I & II (1981[also for producing and special effects]/1987)
- Darkman (1990)
- Army of Darkness (1992) [also for editing]
- Spider-Man 1-3 (2002[directing only]/2004[directing only]/2007)
- Drag Me to Hell (2009) [also for producing]
- Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) [directing only]
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) [directing only]
Producing:- The Grudge (2004)
- Boogeyman (2005)
- 30 Days of Night (2007)
- The Possession (2012)
- Evil Dead (2013)
- Don't Breathe 1 & 2 (2016/2021)
- Crawl (2019)
- 65 (2023)
- Evil Dead Rise (2023)
Other work:- Miller's Crossing (1990) [acting]
- Make-Up Department
- Special Effects
- Additional Crew
Stan Winston was born on 7 April 1946 in Richmond, Virginia, USA. He is known for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Jurassic Park (1993) and Aliens (1986). He was married to Karen Winston. He died on 15 June 2008 in Malibu, California, USA.Special makeup and puppet effects:- Friday the 13th: Parts II & III (1981/1982)
- The Thing (1982)
- Terminator 1-4 (1984[also for second unit directing]/1991/2003/2009)
- Aliens (1986) [also for second unit directing]
- Invaders From Mars (1986) [also for creature design]
- The Vindicator (1986) [also for designing the Vindicator costume]
- Predator 1 & 2 (1987/1990)
- Batman Returns (1992)
- Jurassic Park I-III (1993/1997/2001)
- Congo (1995)
- The Time Machine (2002)
- Darkness Falls (2003) [creature design only]
- Wrong Turn (2003) [producing only]
- Iron Man (2008)
- Avatar (2009)
- Shutter Island (2010)
- Costume Designer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Actor
Michael Kaplan was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He is known for Armageddon (1998), Blade Runner (1982) and Star Trek (2009).Costume design:- Blade Runner (1982)
- Se7en (1995)
- Armageddon (1998)
- Fight Club (1999)
- Panic Room (2002)
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
- I Am Legend (2007)
- Star Trek & Into Darkness (2009/2013)
- Burlesque (2010)
- The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010)
- Star Wars: Episodes VII-IX (2015/2017/2019)
- 65 (2023)
- Special Effects
- Make-Up Department
- Director
Bob Keen was born in 1960 in England, UK. He is known for Hellraiser (1987), Candyman (1992) and Nightbreed (1990). He is married to Sheila ?.Special makeup and creature effects:- The Dark Crystal (1982)
- The NeverEnding Story (1984)
- Lifeforce (1985)
- Highlander (1986)
- Hellraiser I-III (1987/1988/1992)
- Nightbreed (1990)
- Candyman (1992)
- Event Horizon (1997)
- Dungeons & Dragons (2000)
- Dog Soldiers (2002)
- Make-Up Department
- Special Effects
- Additional Crew
Known best for the films "127 Hours," "Zombieland Double Tap," "Hocus Pocus," and"Bad Grandpa," as well as his work with Daft Punk, Tony Gardner began his film career working on "Michael Jackson's Thriller" under the auspices of Rick Baker.
His very first independent FX job was an animatronic Half-Corpse for Dan O'Bannon's "The Return of the Living Dead," followed by Chuck Russell's feature film remake of "The Blob." Tony quickly established a reputation for delivering innovative effects work, and was quickly considered one of the most creative and reliable artists in Hollywood and abroad.In 1992, Tony created the disfigured title character for director Sam Raimi's classic film,"Darkman." From there, Tony's career took off. Films as varied as "Hocus Pocus," "Army of Darkness," "Hairspray," and the "Jackass" series followed.
Always once to believe that the on-screen presentation of the effects is equally as important as the design and creation, he has always been directly involved in the filming process on each film or television project, at times storyboarding scenes as well as directing second unit or the effects sequences for the films he's involved with. His collaboration with Daft Punk has led to writing, directing, and co-producing music videos, several of which have been lauded at worldwide festivals.
And his attention to detail and realism has led to investigations launched by the FBI, the LAPD, the Arizona State Police, and Missing Person's Division - all testaments to the quality of his work, albeit in a VERY roundabout way. His realistic attention to detail on Danny Boyle's film "127 Hours" led to screenings being halted and audience members passing out.
His company Alterian, Inc. is located in Los Angeles, California.Special makeup and creature effects:- Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (1983 music video)
- The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
- Aliens (1986)
- Evil Dead II (1987)
- The Blob (1988)
- Darkman (1990) [also for creature acting]
- Nightbreed (1990)
- Army of Darkness (1992)
- Freaked (1993)
- Hocus Pocus (1993)
- Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995)
- Tank Girl (1995) [special costume design only]
- The Craft (1996)
- Batman & Robin (1997) [also for special costume design]
- Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
- Scary Movie 2 (2001)
- Spider-Man (2002) [special costume development only]
- Seed of Chucky (2004) [also for additional directing]
- Zombieland (2009)
- Curse of Chucky (2013) [animatronic effects only]
- Clown (2014)
- The Bad Batch (2016) [also for producing]
- Happy Death Day (2017) [special costume design only]
- Hell Fest (2018) [special costume design only]
- Wounds (2019)
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
With an almost unpronounceable surname and a thick Austrian accent, who would have ever believed that a brash, quick talking bodybuilder from a small European village would become one of Hollywood's biggest stars, marry into the prestigious Kennedy family, amass a fortune via shrewd investments and one day be the Governor of California!?
The amazing story of megastar Arnold Schwarzenegger is a true "rags to riches" tale of a penniless immigrant making it in the land of opportunity, the United States of America. Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger was born July 30, 1947, in the town of Thal, Styria, Austria, to Aurelia Schwarzenegger (born Jadrny) and Gustav Schwarzenegger, the local police chief. From a young age, he took a keen interest in physical fitness and bodybuilding, going on to compete in several minor contests in Europe. However, it was when he emigrated to the United States in 1968 at the tender age of 21 that his star began to rise.
Up until the early 1970s, bodybuilding had been viewed as a rather oddball sport, or even a mis-understood "freak show" by the general public, however two entrepreneurial Canadian brothers Ben Weider and Joe Weider set about broadening the appeal of "pumping iron" and getting the sport respect, and what better poster boy could they have to lead the charge, then the incredible "Austrian Oak", Arnold Schwarzenegger. Over roughly the next decade, beginning in 1970, Schwarzenegger dominated the sport of competitive bodybuilding winning five Mr. Universe titles and seven Mr. Olympia titles and, with it, he made himself a major sports icon, he generated a new international audience for bodybuilding, gym memberships worldwide swelled by the tens of thousands and the Weider sports business empire flourished beyond belief and reached out to all corners of the globe. However, Schwarzenegger's horizons were bigger than just the landscape of bodybuilding and he debuted on screen as "Arnold Strong" in the low budget Hercules in New York (1970), then director Bob Rafelson cast Arnold in Stay Hungry (1976) alongside Jeff Bridges and Sally Field, for which Arnold won a Golden Globe Award for "Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture". The mesmerizing Pumping Iron (1977) covering the 1975 Mr Olympia contest in South Africa has since gone on to become one of the key sports documentaries of the 20th century, plus Arnold landed other acting roles in the comedy The Villain (1979) opposite Kirk Douglas, and he portrayed Mickey Hargitay in the well- received TV movie The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980).
What Arnold really needed was a super hero / warrior style role in a lavish production that utilized his chiseled physique, and gave him room to show off his growing acting talents and quirky humor. Conan the Barbarian (1982) was just that role. Inspired by the Robert E. Howard short stories of the "Hyborean Age" and directed by gung ho director John Milius, and with a largely unknown cast, save Max von Sydow and James Earl Jones, "Conan" was a smash hit worldwide and an inferior, although still enjoyable sequel titled Conan the Destroyer (1984) quickly followed. If "Conan" was the kick start to Arnold's movie career, then his next role was to put the pedal to the floor and accelerate his star status into overdrive. Director James Cameron had until that time only previously directed one earlier feature film titled Piranha II: The Spawning (1982), which stank of rotten fish from start to finish. However, Cameron had penned a fast paced, science fiction themed film script that called for an actor to play an unstoppable, ruthless predator - The Terminator (1984). Made on a relatively modest budget, the high voltage action / science fiction thriller The Terminator (1984) was incredibly successful worldwide, and began one of the most profitable film franchises in history. The dead pan phrase "I'll be back" quickly became part of popular culture across the globe. Schwarzenegger was in vogue with action movie fans, and the next few years were to see Arnold reap box office gold in roles portraying tough, no-nonsense individuals who used their fists, guns and witty one-liners to get the job done. The testosterone laden Commando (1985), Raw Deal (1986), Predator (1987), The Running Man (1987) and Red Heat (1988) were all box office hits and Arnold could seemingly could no wrong when it came to picking winning scripts. The tongue-in-cheek comedy Twins (1988) with co-star Danny DeVito was a smash and won Arnold new fans who saw a more comedic side to the muscle- bound actor once described by Australian author / TV host Clive James as "a condom stuffed with walnuts". The spectacular Total Recall (1990) and "feel good" Kindergarten Cop (1990) were both solid box office performers for Arnold, plus he was about to return to familiar territory with director James Cameron in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). The second time around for the futuristic robot, the production budget had grown from the initial film's $6.5 million to an alleged $100 million for the sequel, and it clearly showed as the stunning sequel bristled with amazing special effects, bone-crunching chases & stunt sequences, plus state of the art computer-generated imagery. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) was arguably the zenith of Arnold's film career to date and he was voted "International Star of the Decade" by the National Association of Theatre Owners.
Remarkably, his next film Last Action Hero (1993) brought Arnold back to Earth with a hard thud as the self-satirizing, but confusing plot line of a young boy entering into a mythical Hollywood action film confused movie fans even more and they stayed away in droves making the film an initial financial disaster. Arnold turned back to good friend, director James Cameron and the chemistry was definitely still there as the "James Bond" style spy thriller True Lies (1994) co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Arnold was the surprise hit of 1994! Following the broad audience appeal of True Lies (1994), Schwarzenegger decided to lean towards more family-themed entertainment with Junior (1994) and Jingle All the Way (1996), but he still found time to satisfy his hard-core fan base with Eraser (1996), as the chilling "Mr. Freeze" in Batman & Robin (1997) and battling dark forces in the supernatural action of End of Days (1999). The science fiction / conspiracy tale The 6th Day (2000) played to only mediocre fan interest, and Collateral Damage (2002) had its theatrical release held over for nearly a year after the tragic events of Sept 11th 2001, but it still only received a lukewarm reception.
It was time again to resurrect Arnold's most successful franchise and, in 2003, Schwarzenegger pulled on the biker leathers for the third time for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). Unfortunately, directorial duties passed from James Cameron to Jonathan Mostow and the deletion of the character of "Sarah Connor" aka Linda Hamilton and a change in the actor playing "John Connor" - Nick Stahl took over from Edward Furlong - making the third entry in the "Terminator" series the weakest to date.
Schwarzenegger married TV journalist Maria Shriver in April, 1986 and the couple have four children.
In October of 2003 Schwarzenegger, running as a Republican, was elected Governor of California in a special recall election of then governor Gray Davis. The "Governator," as Schwarzenegger came to be called, held the office until 2011. Upon leaving the Governor's mansion it was revealed that he had fathered a child with the family's live-in maid and Shriver filed for divorce.
Schwarzenegger contributed cameo roles to The Rundown (2003), Around the World in 80 Days (2004) and The Kid & I (2005). Recently, he starred in The Expendables 2 (2012), The Last Stand (2013), Escape Plan (2013), The Expendables 3 (2014), and Terminator Genisys (2015).Acting:- Terminator 1-3, 5 & 6 (1984/1991/2003/2015/2019)
- Commando (1985)
- Predator (1987)
- Total Recall (1990)
- Last Action Hero (1993) [also for producing]
- Batman & Robin (1997)
- The Rundown (2003)
- The Expendables 1 & 2 (2010/2012)
- Special Effects
- Make-Up Department
- Actor
Tom Woodruff Jr. was born in 1959 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, USA. He is an actor, known for Starship Troopers (1997), Death Becomes Her (1992) and Alien: Resurrection (1997). He is married to Tami Spitler Woodruff. They have three children.Makeup and creature design/effects:- The Terminator (1984)
- Alien 2-4 (1986/1992/1997)
- Invaders From Mars (1986)
- The Vindicator (1986)
- Predator (1987)
- Tremors (1990)
- Demolition Man (1993)
- Jumanji (1995)
- Mortal Kombat (1995)
- Starship Troopers (1997)
- Hollow Man (2000)
- Evolution (2001)
- Panic Room (2002)
- Spider-Man (2002)
- Alien vs. Predator & Requiem (2004/2007)
- Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
- Skyline (2010)
- The Thing (2011)
- X-Men: First Class (2011)
- Ender's Game (2013)
- Annabelle: Creation (2017)
- It (2017/2019)
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
- The Nun (2018)
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) [creature design only]
- Make-Up Department
- Producer
- Special Effects
Gifted SFX and make-up wizard, who learned his trade under the watchful eye of SFX splatter guru Tom Savini. Nicotero and buddies, Howard Berger and Robert Kurtzman started KNB Efx Group in 1988 and the group has provided eye-popping & jaw dropping special effects for major Hollywood releases including The Green Mile (1999), Vanilla Sky (2001), Sin City (2005) and Land of the Dead (2005).Special makeup and creature effects:- Day of the Dead (1985)
- From Beyond (1986)
- Evil Dead II (1987)
- Predator (1987)
- Misery (1990)
- Army of Darkness (1992)
- In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
- New Nightmare (1994)
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
- Scream 1 & 2 (1996/1997)
- Spawn (1997)
- Wishmaster (1997) [also for second unit directing]
- The Green Mile (1999)
- House on Haunted Hill (1999)
- Evolution (2001)
- Spy Kids 1-3 (2001/2002/2003)
- Cabin Fever (2002)
- The Time Machine (2002)
- Kill Bill (2003/2004)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
- Cursed (2005)
- Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist (2005)
- Hostel (2005)
- Land of the Dead (2005) [also for second unit directing]
- Sin City (2005)
- The Hills Have Eyes I & II (2006/2007)
- Poseidon (2006)
- Death Proof (2007)
- Diary of the Dead (2007)
- The Mist (2007) [also for second unit directing]
- Planet Terror (2007)
- Transformers (2007)
- Mirrors (2008)
- Drag Me to Hell (2009)
- The Final Destination (2009)
- Inglourious Basterds (2009)
- The Unborn (2009)
- Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)
- The Last Exorcism (2010)
- Predators (2010)
- The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010)
- The Walking Dead (2010- TV series) [also for directing and producing]
- The Ward (2010)
- The Grey (2011)
- Priest (2011)
- Torchwood: Miracle Day (2011 TV series)
- Django Unchained (2012)
- The Man With the Iron Fists (2012)
- Seven Psychopaths (2012)
- Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
- Texas Chainsaw (2013)
- Annabelle (2014)
- The Hateful Eight (2015)
- Patriots Day (2016)
- Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Having made over one hundred films in his legendary career, Willem Dafoe is internationally respected for bringing versatility, boldness, and daring to some of the most iconic films of our time. His artistic curiosity in exploring the human condition leads him to projects all over the world, large and small, Hollywood films as well as Independent cinema.
In 1979, he was given a role in Michael's Cimino's Heaven's Gate, from which he was fired. Since then, he has collaborated with directors who represent a virtual encyclopedia of modern cinema: James Wan, Robert Eggers, Sean Baker, Kenneth Branagh, Kathryn Bigelow, Sam Raimi, Alan Parker, Walter Hill, Mary Harron, Wim Wenders, Anton Corbijn, Zhang Yimou, Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Oliver Stone, William Friedkin, Werner Herzog, Lars Von Trier, Abel Ferrara, Spike Lee, David Cronenberg, Paul Schrader, Anthony Minghella, Theo Angelopoulos, Robert Rodriguez, Phillip Noyce, Hector Babenco, John Milius, Paul Weitz, The Spierig Brothers, Andrew Stanton, Josh Boone, Dee Rees and Julian Schnabel.
Dafoe has been recognized with four Academy Award nominations: Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Platoon, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Shadow Of The Vampire, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Florida Project, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, and most recently, Best Leading Actor for At Eternity's Gate, for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination. Among his other nominations and awards, he has received two Los Angeles Film Critics Awards, a New York Film Critics Circle Award, a National Board of Review Award, two Independent Spirit Awards, Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup, as well as a Berlinale Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement.
Willem was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Muriel Isabel (Sprissler), a nurse, and William Alfred Dafoe, a surgeon. He is of mostly German, Irish, Scottish, and English descent. He and his wife, director Giada Colagrande, have made three films together: Padre, A Woman, and Before It Had A Name.
His natural adventurousness is evident in roles as diverse as Marcus, the elite assassin who is mentor to Keanu Reeves in the neo-noir John Wick; in his voice work as Gil the Moorish Idol in Finding Nemo and Ryuk the Death God in Death Note; as Paul Smecker, the obsessed FBI agent in the cult classic The Boondock Saints; and as real life hero Leonhard Seppala, who led the 1925 Alaskan dog sled diphtheria serum run in Ericson Core's Togo. That adventurous spirit continues with upcoming films including Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, Abel Ferrara's Siberia, and Paul Schrader's The Card Counter.
Dafoe is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group, the New York based experimental theatre collective. He created and performed in all of the group's work from 1977 thru 2005, both in the U.S. and internationally. Since then, he worked with Richard Foreman in Idiot Savant at The Public Theatre (NYC), with Robert Wilson on two international productions: The Life & Death of Marina Abramovic and The Old Woman opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov and developed a new theatre piece, directed by Romeo Castellucci, based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil. He recently completed work on Marina Abramovic's opera 7 Deaths of Maria Callas.Acting:- To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
- The Simpsons: The Secret War of Lisa Simpson (1997 TV episode)
- American Psycho (2000)
- Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
- Spider-Man 1-3 (2002/2004/2007)
- Finding Nemo & Finding Dory (2003/2016)
- Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007)
- Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)
- Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
- The Fault in Our Stars (2014)
- The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
- John Wick (2014)
- The Great Wall (2016)
- Death Note (2017)
- Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
- Aquaman (2018)
- The Lighthouse (2019)
- Togo (2019)
- Justice League (2021)
- Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
- The Northman (2022)
- Make-Up Department
- Special Effects
- Writer
For more than three decades Robert Kurtzman has been an icon in the world of special make-up, creature effects, and genre filmmaking. His award-winning, photo-realistic effects work can be seen in hundreds of movies including Hollywood's biggest blockbusters, franchises and television series-most recently the Netflix hit series The Haunting of Hill House, Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, Russo Brothers/Apple TV's feature Cherry starring Tom Holland, Jerry Bruckheimer/Paramount's Secret Headquarters starring Owen Wilson, Jesse Williams and Michael Pena, Apple TV's The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey starring Samuel L. Jackson and the new Netflix series First Kill.Special makeup and creature effects:- From Beyond (1986)
- Invaders From Mars (1986)
- Evil Dead II (1987)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
- Predator (1987)
- Misery (1990)
- Tremors (1990)
- Army of Darkness (1992)
- In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
- New Nightmare (1994)
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) [also for producing]
- Scream (1996)
- Spawn (1997)
- Wishmaster (1997) [also for directing]
- The Green Mile (1999)
- House on Haunted Hill (1999)
- Evolution (2001)
- Spy Kids 1 & 2 (2001/2002)
- Cabin Fever (2002)
- Hostel (2005) [visual effects only]
- Hisss (2010)
- Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
- Texas Chainsaw (2013)
- It Follows (2014)
- The Funhouse Massacre (2015)
- Gerald's Game (2017)
- The Super (2017)
- The Haunting of Hill House (2018 TV miniseries)
- Doctor Sleep (2019)
- Production Designer
- Additional Crew
- Art Department
Dennis Gassner was born on 22 October 1948 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He is a production designer, known for Blade Runner 2049 (2017), 1917 (2019) and Road to Perdition (2002).Production design:- The Hitcher (1986)
- Miller's Crossing (1990)
- Waterworld (1995)
- The Truman Show (1998)
- O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
- The Ladykillers (2004)
- James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace / Skyfall / Spectre (2008/2012/2015)
- Into the Woods (2014)
- Blade Runner: 2049 (2017)
- 1917 (2019)
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Cinematographer
- Director
John Seale was born on 5 October 1942 in Warwick, Queensland, Australia. He is a cinematographer and director, known for Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), The English Patient (1996) and Witness (1985). He has been married to Louise Seale since 23 September 1967. They have two children.Cinematography:- The Hitcher (1986)
- Rain Man (1988)
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)
- Dreamcatcher (2003)
- Poseidon (2006)
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
- Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
John Gavin Malkovich was born in Christopher, Illinois, to Joe Anne (Choisser), who owned a local newspaper, and Daniel Leon Malkovich, a state conservation director. His paternal grandparents were Croatian. In 1976, Malkovich joined Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, newly founded by his friend Gary Sinise. After that, it would take seven years before Malkovich would show up in New York and win an Obie in Sam Shepard's play "True West". In 1984, Malkovich would appear with Dustin Hoffman in the Broadway revival of "Death of a Salesman", which would earn him an Emmy when it was made into a made-for-TV movie the next year. His big-screen debut would be as the blind lodger in Places in the Heart (1984), which earned him an Academy Award Nomination for best supporting actor. Other films would follow, including The Killing Fields (1984) and The Glass Menagerie (1987), but he would be well remembered as Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Playing against Michelle Pfeiffer and Glenn Close in a costume picture helped raise his standing in the industry. He would be cast as the psychotic political assassin in Clint Eastwood's In the Line of Fire (1993), for which he would be nominated for both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe. In 1994, Malkovich would portray the sinister Kurtz in the made-for-TV movie Heart of Darkness (1993), taking the story to Africa as it was originally written. Malkovich has periodically returned to Chicago to both act and direct.Acting:- Empire of the Sun (1987)
- Of Mice and Men (1992)
- Con Air (1997)
- Being John Malkovich (1999)
- Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
- Johnny English (2003)
- Burn After Reading (2008)
- Changeling (2008)
- Jonah Hex (2010)
- RED 1 & 2 (2010/2013)
- Bird Box (2018)
- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Quirky, inventive and handsome American actor Michael Keaton first achieved major fame with his door-busting performance as fast-talking ideas man Bill Blazejowski, alongside a nerdish morgue attendant (Henry Winkler), in Night Shift (1982). He played further comedic roles in Mr. Mom (1983), Johnny Dangerously (1984), and Beetlejuice (1988), earned further acclaim for his dramatic portrayal of Bruce Wayne / Batman in Tim Burton's Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), and since then, has moved easily between film genres, ranging from drama and romantic comedy to thriller and action.
Keaton was born Michael John Douglas on September 5, 1951 in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, to Leona Elizabeth (Loftus), a homemaker, and George A. Douglas, a civil engineer and surveyor. He is of Irish, as well as English, Scottish, and German, descent. Michael studied speech for two years at Kent State, before dropping out and moving to Pittsburgh. An unsuccessful attempt at stand-up comedy led Keaton to working as a TV cameraman in a cable station, and he came to realize he wanted to work in front of the cameras. Keaton first appeared on TV in several episodes of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (1968).
He left Pittsburgh and moved to Los Angeles to begin auditioning for TV. He began cropping up in popular TV shows including Maude (1972) and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979). Around this time, Keaton decided to use an alternative surname to remove confusion with better-known actor Michael Douglas. He looked into the "K"'s for surnames and thought it was inoffensive to chose 'Keaton'. His next break was scoring a co-starring role alongside Jim Belushi in the short-lived comedy series Working Stiffs (1979), which showcased his comedic talent and led to his co-starring role in Night Shift (1982). Keaton next scored the lead in the comedy hits Mr. Mom (1983), Johnny Dangerously (1984) , Gung Ho (1986), the Tim Burton horror-comedy Beetlejuice (1988), and The Dream Team (1989).
Keaton's career was given another major boost when he was again cast by Tim Burton, this time as the title comic book superhero, millionaire playboy/crime-fighter Bruce Wayne, in Batman (1989). Burton cast him because he thought that Keaton was the only actor who could portray someone who has the kind of darkly obsessive personality that the character demands. To say there were howls of protest by fans of the caped crusader comic strip is an understatement! Warner Bros. was deluged with thousands of letters of complaint commenting that comedian Keaton was the wrong choice for the Caped Crusader, given his prior work and the fact that he lacked the suave, handsome features and tall, muscular physicality often attributed to the character in the comic books. However, their fears were proven wrong when Keaton turned in a sensational performance, and he held his own on screen with opponent Jack Nicholson, playing the lunatic villain, "The Joker". Keaton's dramatic work earned widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike, and Batman (1989) became one of the most successful films of the year.
Keaton remained active during the 1990s, appearing in a wide range of films. Keen to diversify his work, Keaton starred as a psychotic tenant in Pacific Heights (1990), as a hard-working cop in One Good Cop (1991), and then donned the black cape and cowl once more for Batman Returns (1992). He remained in demand during the 1990s, appearing in a wide range of films, including the star-studded Shakespearian Much Ado About Nothing (1993), the drama My Life (1993), another Ron Howard comedy The Paper (1994), with sexy Andie MacDowell in Multiplicity (1996), twice in the same role, dogged Elmore Leonard character Agent Ray Nicolette, in Jackie Brown (1997) and Out of Sight (1998). He also played a killer in the mediocre thriller Desperate Measures (1998).
In the 2000s, Keaton appeared in several productions with mixed success, including Live from Baghdad (2002), First Daughter (2004), and Herbie Fully Loaded (2005). He also provided voices for characters in the animated films Cars (2006), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Minions (2015).
He returned to major film roles in the 2010s, co-starring in The Other Guys (2010), RoboCop (2014) and Need for Speed (2014). Also that year, Keaton starred alongside Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, and Naomi Watts in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), a film by 21 Grams (2003) and Biutiful (2010) director Alejandro G. Iñárritu. In the film, Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a screen actor, famous for playing the iconic titular superhero, who puts on a Broadway play based on a Raymond Carver short story, to regain his former glory. Keaton's critically praised lead performance earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, the Critics' Choice Award for Best Actor and Best Actor in a Comedy, and nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award, British Academy Film Award, and Academy Award for Best Actor.
In 2015, he played a journalist in Spotlight (2015), which, like Birdman, won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2016, he starred as Ray Kroc, the developer of McDonald's, in the drama The Founder (2016).
He is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Mellon University.Acting:- Beetlejuice (1988)
- Batman & Batman Returns (1989/1992)
- Jackie Brown (1997)
- Jack Frost (1998)
- Out of Sight (1998)
- The Simpsons: Pokey Mom (2001 TV episode)
- White Noise (2005)
- Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012 video game)
- Birdman (2014)
- RoboCop (2014)
- Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
- Dumbo (2019)
- The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
- Gaunt character actor Brad Dourif was born Bradford Claude Dourif on March 18, 1950 in Huntington, West Virginia. He is the son of Joan Mavis Felton (Bradford) and Jean Henri Dourif, a French-born art collector who owned and operated a dye factory. His father died when Dourif was three years old, after which his mother married Bill Campbell, a champion golfer, who helped raise Brad, his brother, and his four sisters. From 1963 to 1965, Dourif attended Aiken Preparatory School in Aiken, South Carolina, where he pursued his interests in art and acting. Although he briefly considered becoming a professional artist, he finally settled on acting as a profession, inspired by his mother's participation as an actress in community theater.
Beginning in school productions, he progressed to community theater, joining up with the Huntington Community Players, while attending Marshall University of Huntington. At age 19, he quit his hometown college and headed to New York City, where he worked with the Circle Repertory Company. During the early 1970s, Dourif appeared in a number of plays, off-Broadway and at Woodstock, New York, including Milos Forman who cast him in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). Although this film is frequently cited as his film debut, in fact, Dourif made his first big-screen appearance with a bit part in W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975). Nevertheless, his portrayal of the vulnerable Billy Bibbit in Forman's film was undoubtedly his big break, earning him a Golden Globe Award for Best Acting Debut, a British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actor, and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Skeptical of his instant stardom, Dourif returned to New York, where he continued in theater and taught acting and directing classes at Columbia University until 1988 when he moved to Hollywood. Despite his attempts to avoid typecasting, his intensity destined him to play eccentric or deranged characters, starting in Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), John Huston's Wise Blood (1979) (arguably his best performance to date), and Milos Forman's Ragtime (1981). Dourif then teamed up with director David Lynch for Dune (1984) and Blue Velvet (1986). His high-strung style also served him well in a number of horror films, notably as the voice of the evil doll Chucky in Child's Play (1988) and its sequels.
Dourif broke from the horror genre with roles in Fatal Beauty (1987), Mississippi Burning (1988), Hidden Agenda (1990) and London Kills Me (1991). Recent film work includes the role of Grima Wormtongue in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Since his television debut in the PBS film The Mound Builders (1976), Dourif has made sporadic appearances on a number of television series, such as The X-Files (1993), Babylon 5 (1993), Star Trek: Voyager (1995), Millennium (1996) and Ponderosa (2001). He also appeared in the music video "Stranger in Town" (1984) by the rock band TOTO.Acting:- Chucky 1-7 (1988/1990/1991/1998/2004/2013/2017)
- The Exorcist III (1990)
- Alien: Resurrection (1997)
- Nightwatch (1997)
- Urban Legend (1998)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers / The Return of the King (2002/2003)
- Priest (2011)
- Calvin Harris' "Drinking From the Bottle" (2012 music video)
- Wildling (2018)
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Nicolas Cage was born Nicolas Kim Coppola in Long Beach, California, the son of comparative literature professor August Coppola (whose brother is director Francis Ford Coppola) and dancer/choreographer Joy Vogelsang. He is of Italian (father) and Polish and German (mother) descent. Cage changed his name early in his career to make his own reputation, succeeding brilliantly with a host of classic, quirky roles by the late 1980s.
Initially studying theatre at Beverly Hills High School (though he dropped out at seventeen), he secured a bit part in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) -- most of which was cut, dashing his hopes and leading to a job selling popcorn at the Fairfax Theater, thinking that would be the only route to a movie career. But a job reading lines with actors auditioning for uncle Francis' Rumble Fish (1983) landed him a role in that film, followed by the punk-rocker in Valley Girl (1983), which was released first and truly launched his career.
His one-time passion for method acting reached a personal limit when he smashed a street-vendor's remote-control car to achieve the sense of rage needed for his gangster character in The Cotton Club (1984).
In his early 20s, he dated Jenny Wright for two years and later linked to Uma Thurman. After a relationship of several years with Christina Fulton, a model, they split amicably and share custody of a son, Weston Cage (b. 1990). He also has a son with his ex-wife, Alice Kim Cage.Scenery-chomping (and sometimes acting):- Vampire's Kiss (1988)
- Con Air (1997)
- Face/Off (1997)
- The Wicker Man (2006)
- World Trade Center (2006)
- Ghost Rider (2007)
- Grindhouse: Werewolf Women of the SS (2007 anthology segment)
- Next (2007) [also for producing]
- Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
- Knowing (2009)
- Kick-Ass (2010)
- The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010) [also for producing]
- Drive Angry (2011)
- Season of the Witch (2011)
- The Frozen Ground (2013)
- Mom and Dad (2017)
- Mandy (2018)
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
- Color Out of Space (2019) [NOTE: he's just terrible in it, but always entertaining]
Other work:- Shadow of the Vampire (2000) [producing]
- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
German-born composer Hans Zimmer is recognized as one of Hollywood's most innovative musical talents. He featured in the music video for The Buggles' single "Video Killed the Radio Star", which became a worldwide hit and helped usher in a new era of global entertainment as the first music video to be aired on MTV (August 1, 1981).
Hans Florian Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, then in West Germany, the son of Brigitte (Weil) and Hans Joachim Zimmer. He entered the world of film music in London during a long collaboration with famed composer and mentor Stanley Myers, which included the film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). He soon began work on several successful solo projects, including the critically acclaimed A World Apart, and during these years Zimmer pioneered the use of combining old and new musical technologies. Today, this work has earned him the reputation of being the father of integrating the electronic musical world with traditional orchestral arrangements.
A turning point in Zimmer's career came in 1988 when he was asked to score Rain Man for director Barry Levinson. The film went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture of the Year and earned Zimmer his first Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Score. The next year, Zimmer composed the score for another Best Picture Oscar recipient, Driving Miss Daisy (1989), starring Jessica Tandy, and Morgan Freeman.
Having already scored two Best Picture winners, in the early 1990s, Zimmer cemented his position as a preeminent talent with the award-winning score for The Lion King (1994). The soundtrack has sold over 15 million copies to date and earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, an American Music Award, a Tony, and two Grammy Awards. In total, Zimmer's work has been nominated for 7 Golden Globes, 7 Grammys and seven Oscars for Rain Man (1988), Gladiator (2000), The Lion King (1994), As Good as It Gets (1997), The The Preacher's Wife (1996), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Prince of Egypt (1998), and The Last Samurai (2003).
With his career in full swing, Zimmer was anxious to replicate the mentoring experience he had benefited from under Stanley Myers' guidance. With state-of-the-art technology and a supportive creative environment, Zimmer was able to offer film-scoring opportunities to young composers at his Santa Monica-based musical "think tank." This approach helped launch the careers of such notable composers as Mark Mancina, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, Nick Glennie-Smith, and Klaus Badelt.
In 2000, Zimmer scored the music for Gladiator (2000), for which he received an Oscar nomination, in addition to Golden Globe and Broadcast Film Critics Awards for his epic score. It sold more than three million copies worldwide and spawned a second album Gladiator: More Music From The Motion Picture, released on the Universal Classics/Decca label. Zimmer's other scores that year included Mission: Impossible II (2000), The Road to El Dorado (2000), and An Everlasting Piece (2000), directed by Barry Levinson.
Some of his other impressive scores include Pearl Harbor (2001), The Ring (2002), four films directed by Ridley Scott; Matchstick Men (2003), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), and Thelma & Louise (1991), Penny Marshall's Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), and A League of Their Own (1992), Tony Scott's True Romance (1993), Tears of the Sun (2003), Ron Howard's Backdraft (1991), Days of Thunder (1990), Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997), and the animated Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) for which he also co-wrote four of the songs with Bryan Adams, including the Golden Globe nominated Here I Am.
At the 27th annual Flanders International Film Festival, Zimmer performed live for the first time in concert with a 100-piece orchestra and a 100-voice choir. Choosing selections from his impressive body of work, Zimmer performed newly orchestrated concert versions of Gladiator, Mission: Impossible II (2000), Rain Man (1988), The Lion King (1994), and The Thin Red Line (1998). The concert was recorded by Decca and released as a concert album entitled "The Wings Of A Film: The Music Of Hans Zimmer."
In 2003, Zimmer completed his 100th film score for the film The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, for which he received both a Golden Globe and a Broadcast Film Critics nomination. Zimmer then scored Nancy Meyers' comedy Something's Gotta Give (2003), the animated Dreamworks film, Shark Tale (2004) (featuring voices of Will Smith, Renée Zellweger, Robert De Niro, Jack Black, and Martin Scorsese), and Jim Brooks' Spanglish (2004) starring Adam Sandler and Téa Leoni (for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination). His 2005 projects include Paramount's The Weather Man (2005) starring Nicolas Cage, Dreamworks' Madagascar (2005), and the Warner Bros. summer release, Batman Begins (2005).
Zimmer's additional honors and awards include the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in Film Composition from the National Board of Review, and the Frederick Loewe Award in 2003 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. He has also received ASCAP's Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement. Hans and his wife live in Los Angeles and he is the father of four children.Score:- Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
- True Romance (1993)
- The Lion King (1994)
- Gladiator (2000)
- Black Hawk Down (2001)
- Hannibal (2001)
- The Ring One & Two (2002/2005[themes only])
- Johnny English (2003) [main theme only]
- Batman Begins, The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises (2005/2008/2012)
- Madagascar (2005)
- Robert Langdon: The Da Vinci Code / Angels & Demons / Inferno (2006/2009/2016)
- Bee Movie (2007) [music producer only]
- The Simpsons Movie (2007)
- Iron Man (2008) [music producer only]
- 2012 (2009) [music producer only]
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009 video game) [main theme and music producer only]
- Sherlock Holmes (2009)
- Inception (2010)
- Man of Steel (2013)
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
- Interstellar (2014)
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
- The Crown (2016- TV series) [main theme and music producer only]
- Planet Earth II (2016 TV docu-miniseries)
- Blade Runner: 2049 (2017)
- Dunkirk (2017)
- Dark Phoenix (2019)
- The Lion King (2019)
- Wonder Woman: 1984 (2020)
- Dune (2021/2024)
- No Time to Die (2021)
- The Unforgivable (2021)
- Prehistoric Planet (2022 TV docu-miniseries)
- The Creator (2023)
NOTE: he also wrote the composition "Aurora" (2012).- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Liam Neeson was born on June 7, 1952 in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, to Katherine (Brown), a cook, and Bernard Neeson, a school caretaker. He was raised in a Catholic household. During his early years, Liam worked as a forklift operator for Guinness, a truck driver, an assistant architect and an amateur boxer. He had originally sought a career as a teacher by attending St. Mary's Teaching College, Newcastle. However, in 1976, Neeson joined the Belfast Lyric Players' Theater and made his professional acting debut in the play "The Risen People". After two years, Neeson moved to Dublin's Abbey Theater where he performed the classics. It was here that he was spotted by director John Boorman and was cast in the film Excalibur (1981) as Sir Gawain, his first high-profile film role.
Through the 1980s Neeson appeared in a handful of films and British TV series - including The Bounty (1984), A Woman of Substance (1984), The Mission (1986), and Duet for One (1986) - but it was not until he moved to Hollywood to pursue larger roles that he began to get noticed. His turn as a mute homeless man in Suspect (1987) garnered good reviews, as did supporting roles in The Good Mother (1988) and High Spirits (1988) - though he also starred in the best-to-be-forgotten Satisfaction (1988), which also featured a then-unknown Julia Roberts - but leading man status eluded him until the cult favorite Darkman (1990), directed by Sam Raimi. From there, Neeson starred in Under Suspicion (1991) and Ethan Frome (1992), was hailed for his performance in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives (1992), and ultimately was picked by Steven Spielberg to play Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List (1993). The starring role in the Oscar-winning Holocaust film brought Neeson Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor.
Also in 1993, he made his Broadway debut with a Tony-nominated performance in "Anna Christie", in which he co-starred with his future wife Natasha Richardson. The next year, the two also starred opposite Jodie Foster in the movie Nell (1994), and were married in July of that year. Leading roles as the 18th century Scottish Highlander Rob Roy (1995) and the Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins (1996) followed, and soon Neeson was solidified as one of Hollywood's top leading men. He starred in the highly-anticipated Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) as Qui-Gon Jinn, received a Golden Globe nomination for Kinsey (2004), played the mysterious Ducard in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), and provided the voice for Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).
Neeson found a second surprise career as an action leading man with the release of Taken (2008) in early 2009, an unexpected box office hit about a retired CIA agent attempting to rescue his daughter from being sold into prostitution. However, less than two months after the release of the film, tragedy struck when his wife Natasha Richardson suffered a fatal head injury while skiing and passed away days afterward. Neeson returned to high-profile roles in 2010 with two back-to-back big-budget films, Clash of the Titans (2010) and The A-Team (2010), and returned to the action genre with Unknown (2011), The Grey (2011), Battleship (2012) and Taken 2 (2012), as well as the sequel Wrath of the Titans (2012).
Neeson was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1999 Queen's New Year's Honours List for his services to drama. He has two sons from his marriage to Richardson: Micheal Richard Antonio Neeson (born June 22, 1995) and Daniel Jack Neeson (born August 27, 1996).Acting:- Darkman (1990)
- Revolver (1991 short film)
- Schindler's List (1993)
- Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
- Love Actually (2003)
- Batman Begins (2005)
- Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
- Taken 1-3 (2008/2012/2014)
- Clash of the Titans (2010)
- The Grey (2011)
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Overlords / Ghosts of Mortis / Voices (2011/2011/2014 TV episodes)
- Unknown (2011)
- Battleship (2012)
- The Lego Movie (2014)
- Non-Stop (2014)
- Ted 2 (2015)
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
- The Commuter (2018)
- Cold Pursuit (2019)
- The Ice Road (2021)
- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
Bill Pope was born on 19 June 1952 in Bowling Green, Kentucky, USA. He is a cinematographer and director, known for The Matrix (1999), The Jungle Book (2016) and Bound (1996). He is married to Sharon Oreck. They have one child.Cinematography:- Darkman (1990)
- Army of Darkness (1992)
- Fire in the Sky (1993)
- Clueless (1995)
- The Matrix (1999)
- Bedazzled (2000)
- Spider-Man 2 & 3 (2004/2007)
- Team America: World Police (2004)
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
- The World's End (2013)
- The Jungle Book (2016)
- Baby Driver (2017)
- Beck's "Colors" (2018 music video)
- Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
- Charlie's Angels (2019)
- The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
- Visual Effects
- Director
- Producer
Robert Stromberg is known for Avatar (2009), Maleficent (2014) and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003).Visual effects and digital matte painting:- Empire of the Dark (1990) [also for cinematography]
- Tremors (1990)
- From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
- Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
- Evan Almighty (2007)
- The Golden Compass (2007)
- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
- 2012 (2009)
- Shutter Island (2010)
- Game of Thrones (2011-2019 TV series)
- Life of Pi (2012)
Production design:- Avatar (2009)
- Alice in Wonderland (2010)
- Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
- The BFG (2016)
Other work:- The Hunger Games (2012) [concept art]
- Maleficent (2014) [directing]
- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel married actress Frances McDormand in 1984 and had an adopted son.(Instead of listing the same films twice, Joel counts for both himself and Ethan Coen)
Directing, writing, producing and editing:- Miller's Crossing (1990) [directing, writing and producing only]
- Fargo (1996)
- The Big Lebowski (1998)
- O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
- Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
- The Ladykillers (2004)
- No Country for Old Men (2007)
- Burn After Reading (2008)
- True Grit (2010)
- Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
- Hail, Caesar! (2016)
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Other work:- The Evil Dead (1981) [assistant editing - Joel only]
- Darkman (1990) [developing]
- Bad Santa (2003) [producing]
- Editor
- Sound Department
- Editorial Department
Lee Smith was born in 1960 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He is an editor, known for Inception (2010), Dunkirk (2017) and The Dark Knight (2008). He is married to Kimberly.Editing:- RoboCop 2 (1990)
- The Truman Show (1998) [also for sound design]
- Batman Begins, The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises (2005/2008/2012)
- The Prestige (2006)
- Inception (2010)
- X-Men: First Class (2011)
- Ender's Game (2013)
- Interstellar (2014)
- Spectre (2015)
- Dunkirk (2017)
- 1917 (2019)
- Dark Phoenix (2019)
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Darius Khondji was born on 21 October 1955 in Tehran, Iran. He is a cinematographer and actor, known for Amour (2012), Se7en (1995) and Delicatessen (1991). He is married to Marianne Khondji. They have three children.Cinematography:- Delicatessen (1991)
- Se7en (1995)
- Alien: Resurrection (1997)
- Panic Room (2002)
- Funny Games (2007)
- Lady Gaga's "Marry the Night" (2011 music video)
- Amour (2012)
- Magic in the Moonlight (2014)
- Uncut Gems (2019)
- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
Andrzej Sekula was born in Wroclaw, Dolnoslaskie, Poland. He is a cinematographer and director, known for Pulp Fiction (1994), American Psycho (2000) and Reservoir Dogs (1992).Cinematography:- Revolver (1991 short film)
- Reservoir Dogs (1992)
- Three of Hearts (1993)
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- Hackers (1995)
- American Psycho (2000)
- Cube²: Hypercube (2002) [also for directing]
- Vacancy (2007)
- Trust (2010)
- I Am Wrath (2016)
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Charles Dance is an English actor, screenwriter, and film director. Dance typically plays assertive bureaucrats or villains. Some of his most high-profile roles are Tywin Lannister in HBO's Game of Thrones (2011), Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Sardo Numspa in The Golden Child (1986), Dr. Jonathan Clemens in Alien 3 (1992), Benedict in Last Action Hero (1993), the Master Vampire in Dracula Untold (2014), Lord Havelock Vetinari in Terry Pratchett's Going Postal (2010), Alastair Denniston in The Imitation Game (2014) and William Randolph Hearst in Mank (2020).
He played the role of Tywin Lannister in HBO's Game of Thrones (2011), based on the Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R. R. Martin.
In 1989, he played Bond creator Ian Fleming in Anglia Television's drama biography.Acting:- Alien³ (1992)
- Last Action Hero (1993)
- Ali G Indahouse (2002)
- Swimming Pool (2003)
- Game of Thrones (2011-2019 TV series)
- Dracula Untold (2014)
- The Crown (2016- TV series)
- Underworld: Blood Wars (2016)
- Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (2018)
- Johnny English Strikes Again (2018)
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
- Producer
- Director
- Writer
David Fincher was born in 1962 in Denver, Colorado, and was raised in Marin County, California. When he was 18 years old he went to work for John Korty at Korty Films in Mill Valley. He subsequently worked at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) from 1981-1983. Fincher left ILM to direct TV commercials and music videos after signing with N. Lee Lacy in Hollywood. He went on to found Propaganda in 1987 with fellow directors Dominic Sena, Greg Gold and Nigel Dick. Fincher has directed TV commercials for clients that include Nike, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Heineken, Pepsi, Levi's, Converse, AT&T and Chanel. He has directed music videos for Madonna, Sting, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, George Michael, Iggy Pop, The Wallflowers, Billy Idol, Steve Winwood, The Motels and, most recently, A Perfect Circle.
As a film director, he has achieved huge success with Se7en (1995), Fight Club (1999) and, Panic Room (2002).Directing:- Alien³ (1992)
- Se7en (1995)
- Fight Club (1999)
- Panic Room (2002)
- Zodiac (2007)
- The Social Network (2010)
- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
- Justin Timberlake's "Suit & Tie" (2013 music video)
- The Killer (2023)
Other work:- The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) [producing]
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Don Burgess was born on 28 May 1956 in Santa Monica, California, USA. He is a cinematographer and actor, known for Forrest Gump (1994), Cast Away (2000) and Contact (1997). He has been married to Bonnie Ann Burgess since 4 December 1982. They have three children.Cinematography:- Batman Returns (1992) [second unit cinematography only]
- Forrest Gump (1994)
- Contact (1997)
- What Lies Beneath (2000)
- Spider-Man (2002)
- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
- My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)
- The Muppets (2011)
- Priest (2011)
- Source Code (2011)
- The Conjuring 2 (2016)
- Monster Trucks (2016)
- Aquaman (2018)
- The Christmas Chronicles (2018)
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Gary Oldman is a talented English movie star and character actor, renowned for his expressive acting style. One of the most celebrated thespians of his generation, with a diverse career encompassing theatre, film and television, he is known for his roles as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (1986), Drexl in True Romance (1993), George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (2017), among many others. For much of his career, he was best-known for playing over-the-top antagonists, such as terrorist Egor Korshunov in the 1997 blockbuster Air Force One (1997), though he has reached a new audience with heroic roles in the Harry Potter and Dark Knight franchises. He is also a filmmaker, musician, and author.
Gary Leonard Oldman was born on March 21, 1958 in New Cross, London, England, to Kathleen (Cheriton), a homemaker, and Leonard Bertram Oldman, a welder. He won a scholarship to Britain's Rose Bruford Drama College, in Sidcup, Kent, where he received a B.A. in theatre arts in 1979. He subsequently studied with the Greenwich Young People's Theatre and went on to appear in a number of plays throughout the early '80s, including "The Pope's Wedding," for which he received Time Out's Fringe Award for Best Newcomer of 1985-1986 and the British Theatre Association's Drama Magazine Award as Best Actor for 1985. Before fame, he was employed as a worker in assembly lines and as a porter in an operating theater. He also had jobs selling shoes and beheading pigs while supporting his early acting career.
His film debut was Remembrance (1982), though his most-memorable early role came when he played Sex Pistol Sid Vicious in the biopic Sid and Nancy (1986) picking up the Evening Standard Film Award as Best Newcomer. He then received a Best Actor nomination from BAFTA for his portrayal of '60s playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987).
In the 1990s, Oldman brought to life a series of iconic real-world and fictional villains including Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK (1991), the title character in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Drexl Spivey in True Romance (1993), Stansfield in Léon: The Professional (1994), Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg in The Fifth Element (1997) and Ivan Korshunov in Air Force One (1997). That decade also saw Oldman portraying Ludwig van Beethoven in biopic Immortal Beloved (1994).
Oldman played the coveted role of Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), giving him a key part in one of the highest-grossing franchises ever. He reprised that role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). Oldman also took on the iconic role of Detective James Gordon in writer-director Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), a role he played again in The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Prominent film critic Mark Kermode, in reviewing The Dark Knight, wrote, "the best performance in the film, by a mile, is Gary Oldman's ... it would be lovely to see him get a[n Academy Award] nomination because actually, he's the guy who gets kind of overlooked in all of this."
Oldman co-starred with Jim Carrey in the 2009 version of A Christmas Carol in which Oldman played three roles. He had a starring role in David Goyer's supernatural thriller The Unborn, released in 2009. In 2010, Oldman co-starred with Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli. He also played a lead role in Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood. Oldman voiced the role of villain Lord Shen and was nominated for an Annie Award for his performance in Kung Fu Panda 2.
In 2011, Oldman portrayed master spy George Smiley in the adaptation of John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and the role scored Oldman his first Academy Award nomination. In 2014, he played one of the lead humans in the science fiction action film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) alongside Jason Clarke and Keri Russell. Also in 2014, Oldman starred alongside Joel Kinnaman, Abbie Cornish, Michael Keaton, and Samuel L. Jackson in the remake of RoboCop (2014), as Norton, the scientist who creates RoboCop.
Aside from acting, Oldman tried his hand at writing and directing for Nil by Mouth (1997). The movie opened the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, and won Kathy Burke a Best Actress prize at the festival.
Oldman has three children, Alfie, with first wife, actress Lesley Manville, and Gulliver and Charlie with his third wife, Donya Fiorentino. In 2017, he married writer and art curator Gisele Schmidt.
In 2018 he won an Oscar for best actor for his work on Darkest Hour (2017).Acting:- Dracula (1992)
- True Romance (1993)
- The Fifth Element (1997)
- Hannibal (2001)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
- Batman Begins, The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises (2005/2008/2012)
- Call of Duty: World at War / Black Ops (2008/2010 video games)
- A Christmas Carol (2009)
- Red Riding Hood (2011)
- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
- RoboCop (2014)
- The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
- Tau (2018)
- The Woman in the Window (2021)
- Oppenheimer (2023)
- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Julianne Moore was born Julie Anne Smith in Fort Bragg, North Carolina on December 3, 1960, the daughter of Anne (Love), a social worker, and Peter Moore Smith, a paratrooper, colonel, and later military judge. Her mother moved to the U.S. in 1951, from Greenock, Scotland. Her father, from Burlington, New Jersey, has German, Irish, Welsh, German-Jewish, and English ancestry.
Moore spent the early years of her life in over two dozen locations around the world with her parents, during her father's military career. She finally found her place at Boston University, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree in acting from the School of the Performing Arts. After graduation (in 1983), She took the stage name "Julianne Moore" because there was another actress named "Julie Anne Smith". Julianne moved to New York and worked extensively in theater, including appearances off-Broadway in two Caryl Churchill plays, Serious Money and Ice Cream With Hot Fudge and as Ophelia in Hamlet at The Guthrie Theatre. But despite her formal training, Julianne fell into the attractive actress' trap of the mid-1980's: TV soaps and miniseries. She appeared briefly in the daytime serial The Edge of Night (1956) and from 1985 to 1988 she played two half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina on the soap As the World Turns (1956). This performance later led to an Outstanding Ingénue Daytime Emmy Award in 1988. Her subsequent appearances were in mostly forgettable TV-movies, such as Money, Power, Murder. (1989), The Last to Go (1991) and Cast a Deadly Spell (1991).
She made her entrance into the big screen with 1990's Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), where she played the victim of a mummy. Two years later, Julianne appeared in feature films with supporting parts in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and the comedy The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag (1992). She kept winning better and more powerful roles as time went on, including a small but memorable role as a doctor who spots Kimble Harrison Ford and attempts to thwart his escape in The Fugitive (1993). (A role that made such an impression on Steven Spielberg that he cast her in the Jurassic Park (1993) sequel without an audition in 1997). In one of Moore's most distinguished performances, she recapitulated her "beguiling Yelena" from Andre Gregory's workshop version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya in Louis Malle's critically acclaimed Vanya on 42nd Street (1994). Director Todd Haynes gave Julianne her first opportunity to take on a lead role in Safe (1995). Her portrayal of Carol White, an affluent L.A. housewife who develops an inexplicable allergic reaction to her environment, won critical praise as well as an Independent Spirit Award nomination.
Later that year she found her way into romantic comedy, co-starring as Hugh Grant's pregnant girlfriend in Nine Months (1995). Following films included Assassins (1995), where she played an electronics security expert targeted for death (next to Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas) and Surviving Picasso (1996), where she played Dora Maar, one of the numerous lovers of Picasso (portrayed by her hero, Anthony Hopkins). A year later, after co-starring in Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), opposite Jeff Goldblum, a young and unknown director, Paul Thomas Anderson asked Julianne to appear in his movie, Boogie Nights (1997). Despite her misgivings, she finally was won over by the script and her decision to play the role of Amber Waves, a loving porn star who acts as a mother figure to a ragtag crew, proved to be a wise one, since she received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. Julianne started 1998 by playing an erotic artist in The Big Lebowski (1998), continued with a small role in the social comedy Chicago Cab (1997) and ended with a subtle performance in Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho (1960). 1999 had Moore as busy as an actress can be.
As the century closed, Julianne starred in a number of high-profile projects, beginning with Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune (1999) , in which she was cast as the mentally challenged but adorable sister of a decidedly unhinged Glenn Close. A portrayal of the scheming Mrs. Cheveley followed in Oliver Parker's An Ideal Husband (1999) with a number of critics asserting that Moore was the best part of the movie. She then enjoyed another collaboration with director Anderson in Magnolia (1999) and continued with an outstanding performance in The End of the Affair (1999), for which she garnered another Oscar nomination. She ended 1999 with another great performance, that of a grieving mother in A Map of the World (1999), opposite Sigourney Weaver.Acting:- The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)
- Safe (1995)
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
- The Big Lebowski (1998)
- Psycho (1998)
- Evolution (2001)
- Hannibal (2001)
- The Forgotten (2004)
- Children of Men (2006)
- Next (2007)
- Carrie (2013)
- The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (2014/2015)
- Non-Stop (2014)
- Sia's "Free Me" (2017 music video)
- The Woman in the Window (2021)
- Editor
- Producer
- Sound Department
Sally Menke was born on 17 December 1953 in Mineola, New York, USA. She was an editor and producer, known for Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) and Inglourious Basterds (2009). She was married to Dean Parisot. She died on 27 September 2010 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Editing:- Reservoir Dogs (1992)
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- Jackie Brown (1997)
- Nightwatch (1997)
- Kill Bill (2003/2004)
- Death Proof (2007)
- Inglourious Basterds (2009)
- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, and his mother, Connie (McHugh), is a nurse from Tennessee. Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, when he was four years old.
In January of 1992, first-time writer-director Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) appeared at the Sundance Film Festival. The film garnered critical acclaim and the director became a legend immediately. Two years later, he followed up Dogs success with Pulp Fiction (1994) which premiered at the Cannes film festival, winning the coveted Palme D'Or Award. At the 1995 Academy Awards, it was nominated for the best picture, best director and best original screenplay. Tarantino and writing partner Roger Avary came away with the award only for best original screenplay. In 1995, Tarantino directed one fourth of the anthology Four Rooms (1995) with friends and fellow auteurs Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Allison Anders. The film opened December 25 in the United States to very weak reviews. Tarantino's next film was From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), a vampire/crime story which he wrote and co-starred with George Clooney. The film did fairly well theatrically.
Since then, Tarantino has helmed several critically and financially successful films, including Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012) and The Hateful Eight (2015).Directing and writing:- Reservoir Dogs (1992)
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- Jackie Brown (1997)
- Kill Bill (2003/2004)
- Death Proof (2007) [also for producing and cinematography]
- Inglourious Basterds (2009)
- Django Unchained (2012)
- The Hateful Eight (2015)
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) [also for producing]
Acting:- Reservoir Dogs (1992)
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- Somebody to Love (1994)
- Desperado (1995)
- From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
- Little Nicky (2000)
- The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005)
- Death Proof (2007)
- Planet Terror (2007)
- Sukiyaki Western Django (2007)
- Django Unchained (2012)
Other work:- From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) [writing and producing]
- Hero (2002) [presenting]
- Hostel (2005) [presenting]
- Planet Terror (2007) [producing]
- The Man With the Iron Fists (2012) [presenting]
- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Samuel L. Jackson is an American producer and highly prolific actor, having appeared in over 100 films, including Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Unbreakable (2000), Shaft (2000), Formula 51 (2001), Black Snake Moan (2006), Snakes on a Plane (2006), and the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999-2005), as well as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Samuel Leroy Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., to Elizabeth (Montgomery) and Roy Henry Jackson. He was raised by his mother, a factory worker, and his grandparents. At Morehouse College, Jackson was active in the black student movement. In the seventies, he joined the Negro Ensemble Company (together with Morgan Freeman). In the eighties, he became well-known after three movies made by Spike Lee: Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo' Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991). He achieved prominence and critical acclaim in the early 1990s with films such as Patriot Games (1992), Amos & Andrew (1993), True Romance (1993), Jurassic Park (1993), and his collaborations with director Quentin Tarantino, including Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), and later Django Unchained (2012). Going from supporting player to leading man, his performance in Pulp Fiction (1994) gave him an Oscar nomination for his character Jules Winnfield, and he received a Silver Berlin Bear for his part as Ordell Robbi in Jackie Brown (1997). Jackson usually played bad guys and drug addicts before becoming an action hero, co-starring with Bruce Willis in Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) and Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996).
With Jackson's permission, his likeness was used for the Ultimate version of the Marvel Comics character, Nick Fury. He later did a cameo as the character in a post-credits scene from Iron Man (2008), and went on to sign a nine-film commitment to reprise this role in future films, including major roles in Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and minor roles in Thor (2011) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). He has also portrayed the character in the second and final episodes of the first season of the TV show, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013). He has provided his voice to several animated films, television series and video games, including the roles of Lucius Best / Frozone in Pixar's film The Incredibles (2004), Mace Windu in Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008), Afro Samurai in the anime television series Afro Samurai (2007), and Frank Tenpenny in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004).Acting:- Jurassic Park (1993)
- True Romance (1993)
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)
- Jackie Brown (1997)
- Out of Sight (1998)
- Deep Blue Sea (1999)
- Star Wars: Episodes I-III & The Clone Wars (1999/2002/2005/2008)
- Rules of Engagement (2000)
- Incredibles 1 & 2 (2004/2018)
- Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
- The Boondocks (2005-2014 TV series)
- Snakes on a Plane (2006)
- 1408 (2007)
- Iron Man 1 & 2 (2008/2010)
- Inglourious Basterds (2009)
- Avengers & Age of Ultron (2012/2015)
- Django Unchained (2012)
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
- Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
- RoboCop (2014)
- Barely Lethal (2015)
- The Hateful Eight (2015)
- Cell (2016)
- The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
- Kong: Skull Island (2017)
- Captain Marvel (2019)
- Glass (2019)
- Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
- Death to 2020 (2020)
- Secret Invasion (2023 TV miniseries)
- Writer
- Additional Crew
- Director
David Koepp is an American film director and screenwriter. He is known for writing Jurassic Park directed by Steven Spielberg, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Spider-Man directed by Sam Raimi and Panic Room directed by David Fincher. He also directed You Should Have Left starring Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried.Writing:- Jurassic Park & The Lost World (1993/1997[also for second unit directing])
- Mission Impossible (1996)
- Panic Room (2002) [also for producing]
- Spider-Man (2002)
- War of the Worlds (2005)
- Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005)
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
- Angels & Demons & Inferno (2009/2016)
- Jurassic World (2015) [script consultant only]
- The Mummy (2017)
- Producer
- Actor
- Executive
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt was born on December 18, 1963 in Shawnee, Oklahoma and raised in Springfield, Missouri to Jane Etta Pitt (née Hillhouse), a school counselor & William Alvin "Bill" Pitt, a truck company manager. At Kickapoo High School, Pitt was involved in sports, debating, student government and school musicals. Pitt attended the University of Missouri, where he majored in journalism with a focus on advertising. He occasionally acted in fraternity shows. He left college two credits short of graduating to move to California. Before he became successful at acting, Pitt supported himself by driving strippers in limos, moving refrigerators and dressing as a giant chicken while working for El Pollo Loco.
Pitt's earliest credited roles were in television, starting on the daytime soap opera Another World (1964) before appearing in the recurring role of Randy on the legendary prime time soap opera Dallas (1978). Following a string of guest appearances on various television series through the 1980s, Pitt gained widespread attention with a small part in Thelma & Louise (1991), in which he played a sexy criminal who romanced and conned Geena Davis. This led to starring roles in badly received films such as Johnny Suede (1991) & Cool World (1992).
But Pitt's career hit an upswing with his casting in A River Runs Through It (1992), which cemented his status as an multi-layered actor as opposed to just a pretty face. Pitt's subsequent projects were as quirky and varied in tone as his performances, ranging from his unforgettably comic cameo as stoner roommate Floyd in True Romance (1993) to romantic roles in such visually lavish films as Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) and Legends of the Fall (1994), to an emotionally tortured detective in the horror-thriller Se7en (1995). His portrayal of frenetic oddball Jeffrey Goines in 12 Monkeys (1995) won him a Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role.
Pitt's portrayal of Achilles in the big-budget period drama Troy (2004) helped establish his appeal as an action star and was closely followed by a co-starring role in the stylish spy-versus-spy flick Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). It was on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith that Pitt, who married Jennifer Aniston in a highly publicized ceremony in 2000, met Angelina Jolie. Pitt left Aniston for Jolie in 2005, a break-up that continues to fuel tabloid stories years after its occurrence.
He continues to wildly vary his film choices, appearing in everything from high-concept popcorn flicks such as Megamind (2010) to adventurous critic-bait like Inglourious Basterds (2009) and The Tree of Life (2011). He has received two Best Actor Oscar nominations, for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Moneyball (2011). In 2014, he starred in the war film Fury (2014), opposite Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Jon Bernthal, and Michael Peña.
Pitt and Jolie have 6 children, 3 adopted & 3 biological.Acting:- True Romance (1993)
- Se7en (1995)
- Fight Club (1999)
- Snatch (2000)
- Ocean's Eleven (2001)
- Troy (2004)
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
- Burn After Reading (2008)
- Inglourious Basterds (2009)
- The Tree of Life (2011) [also for producing]
- World War Z (2013) [also for producing]
- The Jim Jefferies Show (2017- TV series)
- Ad Astra (2019) [also for producing]
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Tristan Oliver BSC is a British cinematographer best known for his work with Wes Anderson and Nick Park in the field of stop frame animated feature films. His work has also covered live action and mixed media commercials, shorts and feature films. His early collaborations with fellow cinematographer and long term friend and mentor Dave Alex Riddett resulted in Academy Awards for the Nick Park helmed shorts, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave and the feature film, Curse of the Wererabbit.Cinematography:- Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers / A Close Shave / The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (1993 short film/1995 TV short/2005)
- Chicken Run (2000)
- Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
- ParaNorman (2012)
- The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) [stop motion cinematography only]
- Loving Vincent (2017)
- Isle of Dogs (2018)
- Missing Link (2019) [consultant only]
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Robert Richardson has won three Academy Awards and earned seven Academy Award nominations for his cinematography. His work on director Oliver Stone's JFK earned him his first Oscar. His second and third came with The Aviator and Hugo directed by Martin Scorsese. These two films also garnered him BAFTA nominations for Best Cinematographer.
Prior to regularly collaborating with well-known directors like Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino, Richardson served an apprenticeship shooting second unit on Repo Man while filming television documentaries for PBS and the BBC. His work in television led Stone to hire Richardson to shoot both Salvador and Platoon. From there, he worked almost exclusively with Stone, filming Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July and The Doors, while occasionally branching out to shoot films like John Sayles' Eight Men Out and City of Hope.
Richardson also shot Stone's Natural Born Killers, Nixon and U-Turn. He then began collaborating with Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Scorsese chose him as DP on 1999's Bringing Out the Dead, while Tarantino snapped him up for Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and Kill Bill, Vol. 2.
Richardson continued to make his mark as Tarantino's DP on 2012's Django Unchained and 2015's The Hateful Eight, as well as on Ben Affleck's 2016 film Live By Night. He shot Director Andy Serkis's 2017 Breathe starring Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy; 2018's Adrift for Director Balthasar Kormakur starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin for STX, and 2018's A Private War for Director Matthew Heineman starring Rosamund Pike. Richardson then shot Tarantino's 2020 hit Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, and 2021's Venom 2 for Sony/Director Andy Serkis.
Recent credits include 2022's Emancipation again with Fuqua for Apple Studios, 2023's Air directed by Ben Affleck for Amazon Studios, and The Equalizer 3 for Director Antoine Fuqua and for Columbia Pictures.Cinematography:- Natural Born Killers (1994)
- Kill Bill (2003/2004)
- The Aviator (2004)
- Inglourious Basterds (2009)
- Shutter Island (2010)
- Hugo (2011)
- Django Unchained (2012)
- World War Z (2013)
- Big Hero 6 (2014) [consultant only]
- The Hateful Eight (2015)
- Adrift (2018)
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Stan Lee was an American comic-book writer, editor, and publisher, who was executive vice president and publisher of Marvel Comics.
Stan was born in New York City, to Celia (Solomon) and Jack Lieber, a dress cutter. His parents were Romanian Jewish immigrants. Lee co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, Thor, the X-Men, and many other fictional characters, introducing a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. In addition, he challenged the comics' industry's censorship organization, the Comics Code Authority, indirectly leading to it updating its policies. Lee subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.
He had cameo appearances in many Marvel film and television projects, with many yet to come, posthumously. A few of these appearances are self-aware and sometimes reference Lee's involvement in the creation of certain characters.
On 16 July 2017, Lee was named a Disney Legend, a hall of fame program that recognizes individuals who have made an extraordinary and integral contribution to The Walt Disney Company.
Stan was married to Joan Lee for almost 70 years, until her death. The couple had two children. Joan died on July 6, 2017. Stan died on November 12, 2018, in LA.(Since production companies can't be listed, Marvel's most famous member will have to do)
Writer and editor of Marvel Comics, who published the source materials for, and usually produced [NOTE: I haven't read any of the comics, but these films make them sound pretty interesting, despite the varying quality of the films themselves - some of these films suck]:- Spider-Man (1994-1998 TV series)
- Blade I-III (1998/2002/2004)
- X-Men 1-7 (2000/2003/2006/2011/2014/2016/2019)
- Spider-Man 1-3 (2002/2004/2007)
- Daredevil (2003)
- Elektra (2005)
- Fantastic Four & Rise of the Silver Surfer (2005/2007)
- Ghost Rider (2007)
- Iron Man 1-3 (2008/2010/2013)
- X-Men Origins, The Wolverine & Logan (2009/2013/2017)
- Planet Hulk (2010)
- Captain America 1-3 (2011/2014/2016)
- Thor 1-4 (2011/2013/2017/2022)
- The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2 (2012/2014)
- Avengers 1-4 (2012/2015/2018/2019)
- Big Hero 6 (2014)
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Vols. 1 & 2 (2014/2017)
- Ant-Man (2015)
- Daredevil (2015-2018 TV series)
- Fantastic Four (2015)
- Jessica Jones (2015-2019 TV series)
- Deadpool 1 & 2 (2016/2018)
- Doctor Strange 1 & 2 (2016/2022)
- Luke Cage (2016-2018 TV series)
- Spider-Man: Homecoming / Far From Home / No Way Home (2017/2019/2021)
- Black Panther (2018)
- Spider-Man (2018 video game)
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
- Venom (2018)
- Captain Marvel (2019)
- Black Widow (2021)
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021 TV miniseries)
- Loki (2021- TV series)
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
- WandaVision (2021 TV miniseries)
- Moon Knight (2022 TV miniseries)
- Secret Invasion (2023 TV miniseries)
NOTE: also worth mentioning are Stan Lee's glorious cameos in most of these films, which make me smile every time :)- Additional Crew
- Visual Effects
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Kyle Cooper has produced and directed hundreds of main title and visual effects sequences across a wide spectrum of film and broadcast mediums. Cooper received his MFA from Yale School of Art, where he studied independently with renowned American modernist Paul Rand. In his third year at Yale, Cooper was awarded the Mohawk Paper Traveling Fellowship to complete thesis research at the Sergei Eisenstein Kabinet in the then Soviet Union. Cooper was creative director at R/Greenberg Associates from 1988 to 1996. He founded and named Imaginary Forces in 1996 and went on to found Prologue Films, in 2003. Details magazine credits Cooper with "almost single-handedly revitalizing the main title sequence as an art form". Los Angeles magazine calls him the "Da Vinci of main titles." He is "one of the top 50 biggest and best thinkers from the last 20 years of advertising and consumer culture," according to Creativity magazine. "Not since Saul Bass' legendary preludes...have credits attracted such attention," proclaims Wired magazine. Cooper is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and holds the title of honorary Royal Designer for Industry from the Royal Society of Arts in London. He has seven Emmy nominations and two wins and was the recipient of the lifetime achievement medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, recognizing him for designing title sequences for film and television with a bold and unexpected style, conjuring emotional responses through his captivating use of narrative.Titles design:- Se7en (1995)
- Nightwatch (1997)
- Spawn (1997)
- Jack Frost (1998)
- The Mask of Zorro (1998)
- The Mummy & The Mummy Returns (1999/2001)
- Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3 (2001/2004 video games)
- One Hour Photo (2002)
- Spider-Man 1-3 (2002/2004/2007)
- Dreamcatcher (2003)
- Identity (2003)
- House of Wax (2005)
- Iron Man 1-3 (2008/2010/2013)
- Valkyrie (2008)
- Orphan (2009)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
- American Horror Story (2011- TV series)
- Final Destination 5 (2011)
- X-Men: First Class (2011)
- Oblivion (2013)
- World War Z (2013)
- Godzilla & King of the Monsters (2014/2019)
- Lost River (2014)
- The Monuments Men (2014)
- The Purge: Anarchy (2014)
- Scream Queens (2015-2016 TV series)
- The Great Wall (2016)
- Rogue One (2016)
- Star Trek: Beyond (2016)
- Kong: Skull Island (2017)
- mother! (2017)
- The Commuter (2018)
- 6 Underground (2019)
- Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
Other work:- Noah (2014) [Genesis sequence design]
NOTE: he also created the Marvel Studios 'flipbook' logo that debuted in "Spider-Man" (2002) and has been built upon ever since.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
With an authoritative voice and calm demeanor, this ever popular American actor has grown into one of the most respected figures in modern US cinema. Morgan was born on June 1, 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee, to Mayme Edna (Revere), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, a barber. The young Freeman attended Los Angeles City College before serving several years in the US Air Force as a mechanic between 1955 and 1959. His first dramatic arts exposure was on the stage including appearing in an all-African American production of the exuberant musical Hello, Dolly!.
Throughout the 1970s, he continued his work on stage, winning Drama Desk and Clarence Derwent Awards and receiving a Tony Award nomination for his performance in The Mighty Gents in 1978. In 1980, he won two Obie Awards, for his portrayal of Shakespearean anti-hero Coriolanus at the New York Shakespeare Festival and for his work in Mother Courage and Her Children. Freeman won another Obie in 1984 for his performance as The Messenger in the acclaimed Brooklyn Academy of Music production of Lee Breuer's The Gospel at Colonus and, in 1985, won the Drama-Logue Award for the same role. In 1987, Freeman created the role of Hoke Coleburn in Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Driving Miss Daisy, which brought him his fourth Obie Award. In 1990, Freeman starred as Petruchio in the New York Shakespeare Festival's The Taming of the Shrew, opposite Tracey Ullman. Returning to the Broadway stage in 2008, Freeman starred with Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher in Clifford Odets' drama The Country Girl, directed by Mike Nichols.
Freeman first appeared on TV screens as several characters including "Easy Reader", "Mel Mounds" and "Count Dracula" on the Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) show The Electric Company (1971). He then moved into feature film with another children's adventure, Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow! (1971). Next, there was a small role in the thriller Blade (1973); then he played Casca in Julius Caesar (1979) and the title role in Coriolanus (1979). Regular work was coming in for the talented Freeman and he appeared in the prison dramas Attica (1980) and Brubaker (1980), Eyewitness (1981), and portrayed the final 24 hours of slain Malcolm X in Death of a Prophet (1981). For most of the 1980s, Freeman continued to contribute decent enough performances in films that fluctuated in their quality. However, he really stood out, scoring an Oscar nomination as a merciless hoodlum in Street Smart (1987) and, then, he dazzled audiences and pulled a second Oscar nomination in the film version of Driving Miss Daisy (1989) opposite Jessica Tandy. The same year, Freeman teamed up with youthful Matthew Broderick and fiery Denzel Washington in the epic Civil War drama Glory (1989) about freed slaves being recruited to form the first all-African American fighting brigade.
His star continued to rise, and the 1990s kicked off strongly with roles in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and The Power of One (1992). Freeman's next role was as gunman Ned Logan, wooed out of retirement by friend William Munny to avenge several prostitutes in the wild west town of Big Whiskey in Clint Eastwood's de-mythologized western Unforgiven (1992). The film was a sh and scored an acting Oscar for Gene Hackman, a directing Oscar for Eastwood, and the Oscar for best picture. In 1993, Freeman made his directorial debut on Bopha! (1993) and soon after formed his production company, Revelations Entertainment.
More strong scripts came in, and Freeman was back behind bars depicting a knowledgeable inmate (and obtaining his third Oscar nomination), befriending falsely accused banker Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). He was then back out hunting a religious serial killer in Se7en (1995), starred alongside Keanu Reeves in Chain Reaction (1996), and was pursuing another serial murderer in Kiss the Girls (1997).
Further praise followed for his role in the slave tale of Amistad (1997), he was a worried US President facing Armageddon from above in Deep Impact (1998), appeared in Neil LaBute's black comedy Nurse Betty (2000), and reprised his role as Alex Cross in Along Came a Spider (2001). Now highly popular, he was much in demand with cinema audiences, and he co-starred in the terrorist drama The Sum of All Fears (2002), was a military officer in the Stephen King-inspired Dreamcatcher (2003), gave divine guidance as God to Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty (2003), and played a minor role in the comedy The Big Bounce (2004).
2005 was a huge year for Freeman. First, he he teamed up with good friend Clint Eastwood to appear in the drama, Million Dollar Baby (2004). Freeman's on-screen performance is simply world-class as ex-prize fighter Eddie "Scrap Iron" Dupris, who works in a run-down boxing gym alongside grizzled trainer Frankie Dunn, as the two work together to hone the skills of never-say-die female boxer Hilary Swank. Freeman received his fourth Oscar nomination and, finally, impressed the Academy's judges enough to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance. He also narrated Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005) and appeared in Batman Begins (2005) as Lucius Fox, a valuable ally of Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman for director Christopher Nolan. Freeman would reprise his role in the two sequels of the record-breaking, genre-redefining trilogy.
Roles in tentpoles and indies followed; highlights include his role as a crime boss in Lucky Number Slevin (2006), a second go-round as God in Evan Almighty (2007) with Steve Carell taking over for Jim Carrey, and a supporting role in Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone (2007). He co-starred with Jack Nicholson in the breakout hit The Bucket List (2007) in 2007, and followed that up with another box-office success, Wanted (2008), then segued into the second Batman film, The Dark Knight (2008).
In 2009, he reunited with Eastwood to star in the director's true-life drama Invictus (2009), on which Freeman also served as an executive producer. For his portrayal of Nelson Mandela in the film, Freeman garnered Oscar, Golden Globe and Critics' Choice Award nominations, and won the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor.
Recently, Freeman appeared in RED (2010), a surprise box-office hit; he narrated the Conan the Barbarian (2011) remake, starred in Rob Reiner's The Magic of Belle Isle (2012); and capped the Batman trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Freeman has several films upcoming, including the thriller Now You See Me (2013), under the direction of Louis Leterrier, and the science fiction actioner Oblivion (2013), in which he stars with Tom Cruise.Acting:- Se7en (1995)
- Deep Impact (1998)
- Bruce Almighty & Evan Almighty (2003/2007)
- Dreamcatcher (2003)
- Batman Begins, The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises (2005/2008/2012)
- Wanted (2008)
- RED (2010)
- Now You See Me 1 & 2 (2013/2016)
- Oblivion (2013)
- Olympus Has Fallen & London Has Fallen (2013/2016)
- The Lego Movie (2014)
- Lucy (2014)
- The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Roger Deakins is an English cinematographer best known for his work on the films of the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes, and Denis Villeneuve.
He is a member of both the American and British Society of Cinematographers.
Deakins' first feature film in America as cinematographer was Mountains of the Moon (1990). He began his collaboration with the Coen brothers in 1991 on the film Barton Fink. He received his first major award from the American Society of Cinematographers for his outstanding achievement in cinematography for the internationally praised major motion picture The Shawshank Redemption (1994).
He is also known for his work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), No Country for Old Men (2007), True Grit (2010), Skyfall (2012), Sicario (2015), and Blade Runner 2049 (2017).
Deakins also worked as one of the visual consultants for Pixar's animated feature WALL-E.
In 2018 he won an Oscar for best cinematographer for his work in Blade Runner 2049.Cinematography:- Fargo (1996)
- The Big Lebowski (1998)
- O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
- Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
- The Ladykillers (2004)
- The Village (2004)
- No Country for Old Men (2007)
- WALL-E (2008) [consultant only]
- True Grit (2010)
- In Time (2011)
- Skyfall (2012)
- Prisoners (2013)
- Sicario (2015)
- Hail, Caesar! (2016)
- Blade Runner: 2049 (2017)
- 1917 (2019)
- The Goldfinch (2019)
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
George Timothy Clooney was born on May 6, 1961, in Lexington, Kentucky, to Nina Bruce (née Warren), a former beauty pageant queen, and Nick Clooney, a former anchorman and television host (who was also the brother of singer Rosemary Clooney). He has Irish, English, and German ancestry. Clooney spent most of his youth in Ohio and Kentucky, and graduated from Augusta High School. He was very active in sports such as basketball and baseball, and tried out for the Cincinnati Reds, but was not offered a contract.
After his cousin, Miguel Ferrer, got him a small role in a feature film, Clooney began to pursue acting. His first major role was on the sitcom E/R (1984) as Ace. More roles soon followed, including George Burnett, the handsome handyman on The Facts of Life (1979); Booker Brooks, a supervisor on Roseanne (1988); and Detective James Falconer on Sisters (1991). Clooney had his breakthrough when he was cast as Dr. Doug Ross on the award-winning drama series ER (1994), opposite Anthony Edwards, Noah Wyle and Julianna Margulies.
While filming "ER" (1994), Clooney starred in a number of high profile film roles, such as Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), and One Fine Day (1996), opposite Michelle Pfeiffer. In 1997, Clooney took on the role of Batman in Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin (1997). The film was a moderate success in the box office, but was slammed by critics, notably for the nipple-laden Batsuit. Clooney went on to star in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight (1998), Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998), and David O. Russell's Three Kings (1999).
In 1999, Clooney left "ER" (1994) (though he would return for the season finale) and appeared in a number of films, including O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Perfect Storm (2000) and Ocean's Eleven (2001). Collaborating once again with Steven Soderbergh, Ocean's Eleven (2001) received critical acclaim, earned more than $450 million at the box office, and spawned two sequels: Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007).
In 2002, Clooney made his directorial debut with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), an adaptation of TV producer Chuck Barris' autobiography. This was the first film under the banner of Section Eight Productions, a production company he founded with Steven Soderbergh. The company also produced many acclaimed films, including Far from Heaven (2002), Syriana (2005), A Scanner Darkly (2006) and Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005). Clooney won his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Syriana (2005), and was nominated for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005).
In 2006, Section Eight Productions was shut down so that Soderbergh could concentrate on directing, and Clooney founded a new production company, Smokehouse Productions, with his friend and longtime business partner, Grant Heslov.
Clooney went on to produce and star in Michael Clayton (2007) (which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor), directed and starred in Leatherheads (2008), and took leading roles in Burn After Reading (2008), The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), and Jason Reitman's Up in the Air (2009). Clooney received critical acclaim for his performance in Up in the Air (2009) and was nominated for several awards, including a Golden Globe Award and Academy Award. He didn't win that year, but took home both Best Actor awards (as well as countless nominations) for his role as a father who finds out his wife was unfaithful as she lays in a coma in Alexander Payne's The Descendants (2011). Through his career, Clooney has been heralded for his political activism and humanitarian work. He has served as one of the United Nations Messengers of Peace since 2008, has been an advocate for the Darfur conflict, and organized the Hope for Haiti telethon, to raise money for the victims of the 2010 earthquake. In March 2012, Clooney was arrested for civil disobedience while protesting at the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C.
Clooney was married to actress Talia Balsam, from 1989 until 1993. After their divorce, he swore he would never marry again. Michelle Pfeiffer and Nicole Kidman bet him $10,000 that he would have children by the age of 40, and sent him a check shortly after his birthday. Clooney returned the funds and bet double or nothing he wouldn't have children by the age of 50. Although he has remained a consummate bachelor, Clooney has had many highly publicized relationships, including with former WWE wrestler Stacy Keibler. In 2014, he married lawyer and activist Amal Clooney, with whom he has two children, twins.Acting:- From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
- Batman & Robin (1997)
- Out of Sight (1998)
- O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
- Ocean's Eleven (2001)
- Spy Kids 1 & 3 (2001/2003)
- Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
- Burn After Reading (2008)
- Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
- The Descendants (2011)
- Gravity (2013)
- The Monuments Men (2014) [also for directing, writing and producing]
- Hail, Caesar! (2016)
- The Midnight Sky (2020) [also for directing and producing]
- Art Department
- Production Designer
- Additional Crew
Property master:- From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) [special weaponry design only]
- Jackie Brown (1997)
- Nightwatch (1997)
- Spy Kids 1-3 (2001/2002/2003)
- Kill Bill (2003/2004)
- Sin City (2005)
Production design:- Sin City (2005) [art direction only]
- Death Proof (2007)
- Planet Terror (2007)
- Predators (2010)
- Machete Kills (2013)
- Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Writer, director, and producer Nicolas Winding Refn was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1970, to Anders Refn, a film director and editor, and Vibeke Winding (née Tuxen), a cinematographer. Just before he turned 11, in 1981, he moved to New York with his parents, where he lived out his teen years. New York quickly became his city and soon began to shape Nicolas' future.
At seventeen, Nicolas moved back to his native Copenhagen to complete his high-school Education. After graduation, he swiftly flew back to New York, where he attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. However, this education was cut short when Nicolas threw a desk at a classroom wall and was expelled from the Academy. Consequently, he applied to the Danish Film School and was readily accepted. This education too was to be short-lived, though, as one month prior to the start of the semester, Nicolas dropped out.
A short film Nicolas had written, directed, and starred in was aired on an obscure cable TV channel and lead to the offer of a life-time. Nicolas was spotted and offered 3.2 million kroners to turn the short into a feature. At only twenty-four, Nicolas had written and directed the extremely violent and uncompromising Pusher (1996), which became a cult phenomenon and won Nicolas instant international critical acclaim. The success of his debut spurred him to push the boundaries of his creative filmmaking further, which resulted in the close-to-the-edge and intricately gritty Bleeder (1999). Highly stylized and focused on introverted reactions to outward situations, this film was a marking point for the shaping of Nicolas's future career. The movie was selected for the 1999 Venice International Film Festival as well as winning the prestigious FIPRESCI Prize in Sarajevo.
Nicolas's fourth feature, the much-anticipated Fear X (2003) was also his first foray into English-language movies. Starring the award-winning actor John Turturro, "Fear X" made its world premiere at the Sundance Film festival. However, Fear X divided critics and it flopped, which made Nicolas Winding Refn broke and in debt.
Having to provide for his family and paying his debt, he returned to Denmark to revisit "Pusher." Refn was reluctant to revisit his past success but decided that he could both make commercially viable and artistically pleasing films. In just two years he managed to write, direct and produce the two sequels. Pusher II (2004) and Pusher III (2005) sealed the box and success of the internationally renowned "Pusher" trilogy. In 2005, the Toronto Film Festival held a "Pusher" retrospective showing all three features cementing its worldwide phenomenon.
In 2006 Nicolas embarked on a second English-language (and first digital) feature called Valhalla Rising (2009), which was inspired by a story his mother read to him at the age of five about a father and son who embark on a trip to the moon. Not recalling the ending of this story has been a long time fascination of Nicolas's with the unknown. During the pre-production on "Valhalla Rising," his long time collaborator and friend, Rupert Preston, urged him into accepting an offer to write and direct Bronson (2008), an ultra-violent, surreal, and escapist film following the real-life landmarks and self-entrapment of Charles Bronson, Britain's most notorious criminal. Before its cinematic release, "Bronson" was making waves inside and outside the film industry. The 2009 Sundance Film Festival selected the blistering film for its World Cinema Dramatic Competition and it soon became the talk of the festival. With such a prestigious premiere, "Bronson" went on to be selected for other major international film festivals and reap strong box-office rewards. But, even with such a buzz surrounding the film, no one could predict how the British press would bite at "Bronson's" bit. The content was close to the knuckle, the subject matter controversial, but Nicolas's take on this was even more inspired leading him to be labeled by the British media as the next great European auteur.
With such critical acclaim, Nicolas's reputation as a producer, writer and director was solidly reaffirmed. Nicolas and his wife Liv Corfixen were the subjects of an acclaimed documentary, Gambler (2006), which premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2005. In addition, Nicolas already received two lifetime-achievement awards (one from the Taipei International Film festival in 2006 and the second from the Valencia International Film Festival in 2007), and it was the winner of the Emerging Master Award from the Philadelphia International Film Festival 2005.Directing and writing:- Pusher (1996)
- Bronson (2008)
- Valhalla Rising (2009)
- Drive (2011) [directing only]
- Only God Forgives (2013)
- The Neon Demon (2016)
- Hennessy's "Odyssey" (2016 promotional film) [directing only]
Other work:- Pusher (2012) [producing]
- Costume Designer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Make-Up Department
Award winning costume designer Kym Barrett, grew up in a nomadic environment on Christmas Island off the coast of Australia, before moving to Sydney where she would eventually study design at NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art).
Her creations on Romeo & Juliet (1996) garnered great attention. This lead to a collaboration with sibling directors Lana & Andy Wachowski, starting with The Matrix (1999). Barrett's original and now iconic designs catapulted her to fame, with the sleek and sexy costumes from The Matrix Trilogy (2003) being imitated and absorbed into global fashion trends of the day.
Not one to be pigeon holed, Barrett has mastered a vast array of theater, TV and film genres including: action, adventure, animation, circus, comedy, crime, fantasy, horror, mystery, opera, period (1800s - 1980s), romance, science fiction, thriller etc. She recently debuted at the Met in NYC having designed costumes for The Tempest. She was responsible for the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi as well as Cirque du Soliel's 26th production - Totem.
Other film work includes - Three Kings, Gothika, Monster in Law, Rumor Has It, Green Hornet, The Amazing Spiderman and The Nice Guys (2016).
Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas, and Jupiter Ascending, highlights Barrett's enduring association with the Wachowski siblings.Costume design:- Romeo + Juliet (1996) [also for customised weaponry design]
- The Matrix (1999)
- Gothika (2003)
- Monster-in-Law (2005)
- The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
- The Nice Guys (2016)
- The Shallows (2016)
- Aquaman (2018)
- Charlie's Angels (2019)
- Us (2019)
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom Growing Pains (1985) and low budget horror movies, such as Critters 3 (1991), to a major teenage heartthrob in the 1990s, as the hunky lead actor in movies such as Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997), to then become a leading man in Hollywood blockbusters, made by internationally renowned directors such as Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Irmelin DiCaprio (née Indenbirken) and former comic book artist George DiCaprio. His father is of Italian and German descent, and his mother, who is German-born, is of German, Ukrainian and Russian ancestry. His middle name, "Wilhelm", was his maternal grandfather's first name. Leonardo's father had achieved minor status as an artist and distributor of cult comic book titles, and was even depicted in several issues of American Splendor, the cult semi-autobiographical comic book series by the late 'Harvey Pekar', a friend of George's. Leonardo's performance skills became obvious to his parents early on, and after signing him up with a talent agent who wanted Leonardo to perform under the stage name "Lenny Williams", DiCaprio began appearing on a number of television commercials and educational programs.
DiCaprio began attracting the attention of producers, who cast him in small roles in a number of television series, such as Roseanne (1988) and The New Lassie (1989), but it wasn't until 1991 that DiCaprio made his film debut in Critters 3 (1991), a low-budget horror movie. While Critters 3 (1991) did little to help showcase DiCaprio's acting abilities, it did help him develop his show-reel, and attract the attention of the people behind the hit sitcom Growing Pains (1985), in which Leonardo was cast in the "Cousin Oliver" role of a young homeless boy who moves in with the Seavers. While DiCaprio's stint on Growing Pains (1985) was very short, as the sitcom was axed the year after he joined, it helped bring DiCaprio into the public's attention and, after the sitcom ended, DiCaprio began auditioning for roles in which he would get the chance to prove his acting chops.
Leonardo took up a diverse range of roles in the early 1990s, including a mentally challenged youth in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), a young gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead (1995) and a drug addict in one of his most challenging roles to date, Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries (1995), a role which the late River Phoenix originally expressed interest in. While these diverse roles helped establish Leonardo's reputation as an actor, it wasn't until his role as Romeo Montague in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) that Leonardo became a household name, a true movie star. The following year, DiCaprio starred in another movie about doomed lovers, Titanic (1997), which went on to beat all box office records held before then, as, at the time, Titanic (1997) became the highest grossing movie of all time, and cemented DiCaprio's reputation as a teen heartthrob. Following his work on Titanic (1997), DiCaprio kept a low profile for a number of years, with roles in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and the low-budget The Beach (2000) being some of his few notable roles during this period.
In 2002, he burst back into screens throughout the world with leading roles in Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Gangs of New York (2002), his first of many collaborations with director Martin Scorsese. With a current salary of $20 million a movie, DiCaprio is now one of the biggest movie stars in the world. However, he has not limited his professional career to just acting in movies, as DiCaprio is a committed environmentalist, who is actively involved in many environmental causes, and his commitment to this issue led to his involvement in The 11th Hour, a documentary movie about the state of the natural environment. As someone who has gone from small roles in television commercials to one of the most respected actors in the world, DiCaprio has had one of the most diverse careers in cinema. DiCaprio continued to defy conventions about the types of roles he would accept, and with his career now seeing him leading all-star casts in action thrillers such as The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), DiCaprio continues to wow audiences by refusing to conform to any cliché about actors.
In 2012, he played a mustache twirling villain in Django Unchained (2012), and then tragic literary character Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (2013) and Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
DiCaprio is passionate about environmental and humanitarian causes, having donated $1,000,000 to earthquake relief efforts in 2010, the same year he contributed $1,000,000 to the Wildlife Conservation Society.Acting:- Romeo + Juliet (1996)
- Titanic (1997)
- Inception (2010)
- Shutter Island (2010)
- Django Unchained (2012)
- The Revenant (2015)
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Other work:- Orphan (2009) [producing]
- Red Riding Hood (2011) [producing]
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Ewan Gordon McGregor was born on March 31, 1971 in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland, to Carol Diane (Lawson) and James Charles McGregor, both teachers. His uncle is actor Denis Lawson. He was raised in Crieff. At age 16, he left Morrison Academy to join the Perth Repertory Theatre. His parents encouraged him to leave school and pursue his acting goals rather than be unhappy. McGregor studied drama for a year at Kirkcaldly in Fife, then enrolled at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama for a three-year course. He studied alongside Daniel Craig and Alistair McGowan, among others, and left right before graduating after snagging the role of Private Mick Hopper in Dennis Potter's six-part Channel 4 series Lipstick on Your Collar (1993). His first notable role was that of Alex Law in Shallow Grave (1994), directed by Danny Boyle, written by John Hodge and produced by Andrew Macdonald. This was followed by The Pillow Book (1995) and Trainspotting (1996), the latter of which brought him to the public's attention.
He is now one of the most critically acclaimed actors of his generation, and portrays Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first three Star Wars episodes. McGregor is married to French production designer Eve Mavrakis, whom he met while working on the television series Kavanagh QC (1995). They married in France in the summer of 1995, and have four daughters. McGregor formed a production company, with friends Jonny Lee Miller, Sean Pertwee, Jude Law, Sadie Frost, Damon Bryant, Bradley Adams and Geoff Deehan, called "Natural Nylon", and hoped it would make innovative films that do not conform to Hollywood standards. McGregor and Bryant left the company in 2002. He was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Queen's New Years Honours List for his services to drama and charity.
Ewan made his directorial debut with American Pastoral (2016), an adaptation of Philip Roth's book, in which Ewan also starred.
In 2018 McGregor won an Golden Globe for his work in the TV Series Fargo.Acting:- Trainspotting (1996)
- Nightwatch (1997)
- Desserts (1999 short film)
- Star Wars: Episodes I-III (1999/2002/2005)
- Black Hawk Down (2001)
- Moulin Rouge! (2001)
- Stormbreaker (2006)
- Angels & Demons (2009)
- Haywire (2011)
- The Impossible (2012)
- Beauty and the Beast (2017)
- Doctor Sleep (2019)
- Birds of Prey (2020)
- Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022 TV miniseries) [also for producing]
- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear, storytelling, acclaimed Academy Award winner writer/director/producer Sir Christopher Nolan CBE was born in London, England. Over the course of more than 25 years of filmmaking, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the biggest blockbusters ever made and became one of the most celebrated filmmakers of modern cinema.
At 7 years old, Nolan began making short films with his father's Super-8 camera. While studying English Literature at University College London, he shot 16-millimeter films at U.C.L.'s film society, where he learned the guerrilla techniques he would later use to make his first feature, Following (1998), on a budget of around $6,000. The noir thriller was recognized at a number of international film festivals prior to its theatrical release and gained Nolan enough credibility that he was able to gather substantial financing for his next film.
Nolan's second film was Memento (2000), which he directed from his own screenplay based on a short story by his brother Jonathan Nolan. Starring Guy Pearce, the film brought Nolan numerous honors, including Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay. Nolan went on to direct the critically acclaimed psychological thriller, Insomnia (2002), starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank.
The turning point in Nolan's career occurred when he was awarded the chance to revive the Batman franchise in 2005. In Batman Begins (2005), Nolan brought a level of gravitas back to the iconic hero, and his gritty, modern interpretation was greeted with praise from fans and critics alike. Before moving on to a Batman sequel, Nolan directed, co-wrote, and produced the mystery thriller The Prestige (2006), starring Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as magicians whose obsessive rivalry leads to tragedy and murder.
In 2008, Nolan directed, co-wrote, and produced The Dark Knight (2008). Co-written with by his brother Jonathan, the film went on to gross more than a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. Nolan was nominated for a Directors Guild of America (D.G.A.) Award, Writers Guild of America (W.G.A.) Award and Producers Guild of America (P.G.A.) Award, and the film also received eight Academy Award nominations. The film is widely considered one of the best comic book adaptations of all times, with Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker receiving an extremely high acclaim. Ledger posthumously became the first Academy Award winning performance in a Nolan film.
In 2010, Nolan captivated audiences with the Sci-Fi thriller Inception (2010), starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, which he directed and produced from his own original screenplay that he worked on for almost a decade. The thought-provoking drama was a worldwide blockbuster, earning more than $800,000,000 and becoming one of the most discussed and debated films of the year, and of all times. Among its many honors, Inception received four Academy Awards and eight nominations, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay. Nolan was recognized by his peers with a W.G.A. Award accolade, as well as D.G.A. and P.G.A. Awards nominations for his work on the film.
As one of the best-reviewed and highest-grossing movies of 2012, The Dark Knight Rises (2012) concluded Nolan's Batman trilogy. Due to his success rebooting the Batman character, Warner Bros. enlisted Nolan to produce their revamped Superman movie Man of Steel (2013), which opened in the summer of 2013. In 2014, Nolan directed, wrote, and produced the Science-Fiction epic Interstellar (2014), starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. released the film on November 5, 2014, to positive reviews and strong box-office results, grossing over $670 million dollars worldwide.
In July 2017, Nolan released his acclaimed War epic Dunkirk (2017), that earned him his first Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards, as well as winning an additional 3 Oscars. In 2020 he released his mind-bending Sci-Fi espionage thriller Tenet (2020) starring John David Washington in the lead role. Released during the COVID-19 pandemic, the movie grossed relatively less than Nolan's previous blockbusters, though it did do good numbers compared to other movies in that period of time. Hailed as Nolan's most complex film yet, the film was one of Nolan's less-acclaimed films at the time, yet slowly built a fan-base following in later years.
In July 2023, Nolan released his highly acclaimed biographic drama Oppenheimer (2023) starring Nolan's frequent collaborator Cillian Murphy- in the lead role for the first time in a Nolan film. The movie was a cultural phenomenon that on top of grossing almost 1 billion dollars at the Worldwide Box office, also swept the 2023/2024 award-season and gave Nolan his first Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, D.G.A. and P.G.A. Awards, as well as a handful of regional critics-circles awards and a W.G.A. nomination. Cillian's performance as quantum physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was highly acclaimed as well, and became the first lead performance in a Nolan film to win the Academy Award.
During 2023, Nolan also received a fellowship from the British Film Institute (BFI). In March 2024, it was announced that Nolan is to be knighted by King Charles III and from now on will go by the title 'Sir Christopher Nolan'.
Nolan resides in Los Angeles, California with his wife, Academy Award winner producer Dame Emma Thomas, and their children. Sir Nolan and Dame Thomas also have their own production company, Syncopy.Directing, writing and producing:- Doodlebug (1997 short film) [directing and writing only - also for cinematography, editing and set design]
- Memento (2000) [directing and writing only]
- Batman Begins, The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises (2005[directing and writing only]/2008/2012)
- The Prestige (2006)
- Inception (2010)
- Interstellar (2014)
- Dunkirk (2017)
- Tenet (2020)
- Oppenheimer (2023)
Other work:- Justice League (2021) [producing]
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Dan Laustsen is a Danish cinematographer. He is best known for Crimson Peak (2015), John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) and The Shape of Water (2017) for which he received an Academy Award nomination.
He studied at the National Film School of Denmark from 1976 to 1979, to pursue a career of cinematography. Laustsen has been involved in the production of feature films, documentaries, and advertisements, and is a member of the Danish Society of Cinematographers.Cinematography:- Nightwatch (1997)
- Darkness Falls (2003)
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
- Silent Hill (2006)
- The Possession (2012)
- Crimson Peak (2015)
- John Wick: Chapters 2-4 (2017/2019/2023)
- The Shape of Water (2017)
- Stunts
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Actor
Well-respected and sought after Action Director Darrin Prescott, known for his stylized and visceral action in films such as Ford v Ferrari, Baby Driver, Black Panther, the John Wick series, Drive, and his Screen Actors Guild award-winning car chase work in The Bourne Ultimatum, got his start in the film business in 1994.
A stunt double for actors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger (Batman & Robin), Hugo Weaving (The Matrix Reloaded & Revolutions), Darrin made a name for himself as a talented and hard-working stuntman and stunt coordinator. With an impressive resume of more than 100 films, including The Bourne Supremacy, Spiderman 2, The Hangover, Independence Day, Darrin has seamlessly transitioned to creating and directing the action on some of Hollywood's most exciting films.
A 2001 X-Games competitor, Darrin has spent his life training in martial arts, snowboarding, surfing, driving, motorcycles and more.
Married to his wife Suzanne since 1996, they have 2 children together, Tanner Prescott and actress Kalia Prescott.Stunt coordinator/action unit directing:- Blade (1998) [stunt performer only]
- The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
- Spider-Man 2 & 3 (2004[assistant stunt coordinator only]/2007[stunt performer only])
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) [stunt performer only]
- Crank (2006)
- Drive (2011)
- John Wick: Chapters 1-3 (2014/2017/2019)
- Captain America: Civil War (2016)
- Baby Driver (2017)
- Black Panther (2018)
- Deadpool 2 (2018)
- Black Widow (2021)
- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Angelina Jolie is an Academy Award-winning actress who rose to fame after her role in Girl, Interrupted (1999), playing the title role in the "Lara Croft" blockbuster movies, as well as Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), Salt (2010) and Maleficent (2014). Off-screen, Jolie has become prominently involved in international charity projects, especially those involving refugees. She often appears on many "most beautiful women" lists, and she has a personal life that is avidly covered by the tabloid press.
Jolie was born Angelina Jolie Voight in Los Angeles, California. In her earliest years, Angelina began absorbing the acting craft from her actor parents, Jon Voight, an Oscar-winner, and Marcheline Bertrand, who had studied with Lee Strasberg. Her good looks may derive from her ancestry, which is German and Slovak on her father's side, and French-Canadian, Dutch, Polish, and remote Huron, on her mother's side. At age eleven, Angelina began studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she was seen in several stage productions. She undertook some film studies at New York University and later joined the renowned Met Theatre Group in Los Angeles. At age 16, she took up a career in modeling and appeared in some music videos.
In the mid-1990s, Jolie appeared in various small films where she got good notices, including Hackers (1995) and Foxfire (1996). Her critical acclaim increased when she played strong roles in the made-for-TV movies True Women (1997), and in George Wallace (1997) which won her a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination. Jolie's acclaim increased even further when she played the lead role in the HBO production Gia (1998). This was the true life story of supermodel Gia Carangi, a sensitive wild child who was both brazen and needy and who had a difficult time handling professional success and the deaths of people who were close to her. Carangi became involved with drugs and because of her needle-using habits she became, at the tender age of 26, one of the first celebrities to die of AIDS. Jolie's performance in Gia (1998) again garnered a Golden Globe Award and another Emmy nomination, and she additionally earned a SAG Award.
Angelina got a major break in 1999 when she won a leading role in the successful feature The Bone Collector (1999), starring alongside Denzel Washington. In that same year, Jolie gave a tour de force performance in Girl, Interrupted (1999) playing opposite Winona Ryder. The movie was a true story of women who spent time in a psychiatric hospital. Jolie's role was reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), the role which won Nicholson his first Oscar. Unlike "Cuckoo", "Girl" was a small film that received mixed reviews and barely made money at the box office. But when it came time to give out awards, Jolie won the triple crown -- "Girl" propelled her to win the Golden Globe Award, the SAG Award and the Academy Award for best leading actress in a supporting role.
With her newfound prominence, Jolie began to get in-depth attention from the press. Numerous aspects of her controversial personal life became news. At her wedding to her Hackers (1995) co-star Jonny Lee Miller, she had displayed her husband's name on the back of her shirt painted in her own blood. Jolie and Miller divorced, and in 2000, she married her Pushing Tin (1999) co-star Billy Bob Thornton. Jolie had become the fifth wife of a man twenty years her senior. During her marriage to Thornton, the spouses each wore a vial of the other's blood around their necks. That marriage came apart in 2002 and ended in divorce. In addition, Jolie was estranged from her famous father, Jon Voight.
In 2000, Jolie was asked to star in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). At first, she expressed disinterest, but then decided that the required training for the athletic role was intriguing. The eponymous character was drawn from a popular video game. Lara Croft was a female cross between Indiana Jones and James Bond. When the movie was released, critics were unimpressed with the final product, but critical acclaim wasn't the point of the movie. The public paid $275 million for theater tickets to see a buffed up Jolie portray the adventuresome Lara Croft. Jolie's father Jon Voight appeared in the movie, and during filming there was a brief rapprochement between father and daughter.
One of the Lara Croft movie's filming locations was Cambodia. While there, Jolie witnessed the natural beauty, culture and poverty of that country. She considered this an eye opening experience, and so began the humanitarian chapter of her life. Jolie began visiting refugee camps around the world and came to be formally appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Some of her experiences were written and published in her popular book "Notes from My Travels" whose profits go to UNHCR.
Jolie has stated that she now plans to spend most of her time in humanitarian efforts, to be financed by her actress salary. She devotes one third of her income to savings, one third to living expenses and one third to charity. In 2002, Angelina adopted a Cambodian refugee boy named Maddox, and in 2005, adopted an Ethiopian refugee girl named Zahara. Jolie's dramatic feature film Beyond Borders (2003) parallels some of her real life humanitarian experiences although, despite the inclusion of a romance between two westerners, many of the movie's images were too depressingly realistic -- the movie was not popular among critics or at the box office.
In 2004, Jolie began filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) with co-star Brad Pitt. The movie became a major box office success. There were rumors that Pitt and Jolie had an affair while filming Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Jolie insisted that because her mother had been hurt by adultery, she herself could never participate in an affair with a married man, therefore there had been no affair with Pitt at that time. Nonetheless, Pitt separated from his wife Jennifer Aniston in January 2005 and, in the months that followed, he was frequently seen in public with Jolie, apparently as a couple. Pitt's divorce was finalized later in 2005.
Jolie and Pitt announced in early 2006 that they would have a child together, and Jolie gave birth to daughter Shiloh that May. They also adopted a three-year-old Vietnamese boy named Pax. The couple, who married in 2014 and divorced in 2019, continue to pursue movie and humanitarian projects, and now have a total of six children. She was appointed Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George at the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to United Kingdom foreign policy and the campaign to end warzone sexual violence.Acting:- The Bone Collector (1999)
- Lara Croft Tomb Raider & The Cradle of Life (2001/2003)
- Taking Lives (2004)
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
- Changeling (2008)
- Kung Fu Panda (2008)
- Wanted (2008)
- Salt (2010)
- Maleficent & Mistress of Evil (2014/2019) [also for producing]
- Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)
- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Toni Collette is an Academy Award-nominated Australian actress, best known for her roles in The Sixth Sense (1999) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006).
Collette was born Toni Collett (she later added an "e") on November 1, 1972, in Blacktown, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. She is the first of three children of Judith (Cook), a customer service representative, and Bob Collett, a truck driver. From age six, she was brought up in suburban Sydney. At the age of eleven, she showed her phenomenal acting skills when she faked appendicitis out of boredom and longing for attention; her act was so convincing that doctors had to remove her appendix, even though the test showed nothing was wrong with it. At 16, she left school and enrolled in the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA). At that time, she was a struggling actress, supporting herself by delivering pizzas. After 18 months of studies, she left NIDA for her feature film debut as "Wendy Robinson", opposite Russell Crowe and Anthony Hopkins, in The Efficiency Expert (1991), and earned herself a nomination for Best Supporting Actress from the Australian Film Institute. Collette made her stage debut with the Sydney Theatre Company, as "Sonya" in Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya", a performance that won her a critic's circle award as Best Newcomer. She also appeared in stage productions at the Belvoir Street Theatre, under directorship of Geoffrey Rush. In 1994, she won the Australian Best Actress in a Lead Role for her work in Muriel's Wedding (1994), for which she had to gain 40 pounds in seven weeks. In 1995, Toni Collette came to Hollywood with a supporting role in The Pallbearer (1996), then had a string of supporting roles. Her first lead as "Diana Spencer", an Australian woman who shares the name and birthday of Princess Diana, in the comedy, Diana & Me (1997), was obscured by the real Diana's death, which practically occurred at the same time when the movie was released. Her breakthrough came with the role as "Lynn Sear" in The Sixth Sense (1999), for which she quite rightly won an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Her latest memorable role as "Sheryl", a beaten-down but loving mother, in Little Miss Sunshine (2006), is also a fine ensemble work with Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Paul Dano, and Alan Arkin. Since 2003, Toni Collette has been married to musician Dave Galafassi, with whom she recorded her singing and songwriting debut album, titled "Beautiful Awkward Pictures", in 2006. She co-owns an independent production company in Australia, and also continues her music career as a singer. Toni resides with her husband in Sydney, Australia, and owns a second home in Ireland.Acting:- The Sixth Sense (1999)
- About a Boy (2002)
- Krampus (2015)
- Miss You Already (2015)
- Imperium (2016)
- Hereditary (2018) [also for producing]
- Knives Out (2019)
- Pieces of Her (2022 TV miniseries) [also for producing]
- Editor
- Editorial Department
- Sound Department
Editing:- Spaced (1999-2001 TV series)
- Seed of Chucky (2004)
- Shaun of the Dead (2004)
- Hot Fuzz (2007)
- Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
- Submarine (2010)
- Paul (2011)
- Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
- Les Misérables (2012)
- Macbeth (2015)
- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
English actor, writer, and comedian Simon Pegg was born Simon John Beckingham in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, to Gillian Rosemary (Smith), a civil servant, and John Henry Beckingham, a jazz musician. His parents divorced when he was seven. He later took his stepfather's surname "Pegg." He was educated at Brockworth Comprehensive Secondary School in Gloucestershire and went on to Stratford-upon-Avon College to study English literature and performance studies. He then attended the University of Bristol, and earned a bachelor's degree in drama. In the early 2000s, Pegg moved to London and began forging a successful career in stand-up comedy. Television opportunities followed including roles in Six Pairs of Pants (1995), Asylum (1996), and We Know Where You Live (1997). In 1999, Pegg and Jessica Hynes teamed up to write and star in cult sitcom Spaced (1999), directed by Edgar Wright. The series also featured Pegg's best friend Nick Frost. Pegg's breakthrough in film came with the zom-rom-com Shaun of the Dead (2004), which he also co-wrote with director Edgar Wright. Again, the film featured Nick Frost. The trio also scored a hit with police comedy Hot Fuzz (2007). Further film successes followed for Pegg, notably in the iconic role of Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in Star Trek (2009) and alongside Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III (2006) and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011).Acting:- Spaced (1999-2001 TV series)
- Shaun of the Dead (2004)
- Doctor Who: The Long Game (2005 TV episode)
- Hot Fuzz (2007)
- Run Fatboy Run (2007)
- Paul (2011)
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Bounty (2012 TV episode)
- The World's End (2013)
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
- Star Trek: Beyond (2016)
Writing:- Spaced (1999-2001 TV series)
- Shaun of the Dead (2004)
- Hot Fuzz (2007)
- Run Fatboy Run (2007)
- Paul (2011)
- The World's End (2013) [also for producing]
- Star Trek: Beyond (2016)
- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Edgar Howard Wright (born 18 April 1974) is an English director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. He is best known for his comedic Three Flavours Cornetto film trilogy consisting of Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and The World's End (2013), made with recurrent collaborators Simon Pegg, Nira Park and Nick Frost. He also collaborated with them as the director of the television series Spaced.Directing and writing:- Spaced (1999-2001 TV series) [directing and editing only]
- The Bluetones' "Keep the Home Fires Burning" (2000 music video)
- Mint Royale's "Blue Song" (2002 music video)
- Shaun of the Dead (2004)
- Grindhouse: Don't (2007 anthology segment)
- Hot Fuzz (2007)
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) [also for producing]
- The World's End (2013) [also for producing]
- Pharrell Williams' "Gust of Wind" (2014 music video)
- Baby Driver (2017) [also for producing]
- Beck's "Colors" (2018 music video)
Other work:- Attack the Block (2011) [producing]
- Ant-Man (2015) [writing and producing]
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Cinematography:- A Wonderful Love (1999 short film)
- Irreversible (2002)
- Placebo's "Protège-Moi" (2003 music video)
- Calvaire (2004)
- The Card Player (2004)
- Innocence (2004)
- Enter the Void (2009)
- Passage (2009 short film)
- The Runaways (2010)
- Get the Gringo (2012)
- Spring Breakers (2012)
- John Legend's "Who Do We Think We Are" (2013 music video)
- Lost River (2014)
- Rihanna's "Bitch Better Have My Money" (2015 music video)
- Every Thing Will Be Fine (2015)
- Love (2015)
- The Carters' "Apeshit" (2018 music video)
- Climax (2018)
- SebastiAn's "Thirst" (2019 music video)
- Actor
- Writer
Shia LaBeouf's natural talent and raw energy have secured his place as one of Hollywood's leading men.
Most recently, LaBeouf starred alongside Vanessa Kirby and Ellen Burstyn in Kornel Mundruczo's Oscar® nominated Pieces of a Woman. In the critically acclaimed film, a grieving couple (Kirby/LaBeouf) embarks on an emotional journey after the loss of their baby. Previously, Shia was also seen in the crime drama, The Tax Collector, which was written and directed by David Ayer. He most recently wrapped production on Abel Ferrarra's Padre Pio which follows the life of the now saint during his time as a monk in Puglia, Italy.
LaBeouf received rave reviews for his performance in Honey Boy, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The film also marks Shia's first feature length film as a screenwriter. LaBeouf portrays a law breaking, alcohol-abusing father who tries to mend his tumultuous relationship with his son (Lucas Hedges & Noah Jupe) over the course of a decade. The film received a Special Jury Award for Vision and Craft at the festival. In 2019, Shia starred in The Peanut Butter Falcon, the highest grossing indie film of the year with $20,500,000 domestic box office receipts. The film, also starring Dakota Johnson, Bruce Dern and Zachary Gottsagen, won the Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival.
Other credits include drama, Borg vs. McEnroe (critics heralded LaBeouf's performance as "perfection," "flawless" and "explosive"); the critically acclaimed independent film American Honey , directed by Andrea Arnold, (his performance earned him a British Independent Film Award nomination for "Best Actor," a London Critics' Circle Film Award nomination for "Supporting Actor of the Year," and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for "Best Supporting Male"); the post-apocalyptic thriller, Man Down alongside Gary Oldman and Kate Mara; the war drama Fury, directed by David Ayer, opposite Brad Pitt; Lars von Trier's drama, Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1; Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac: Vol. 2; and the suspense drama Charlie Countryman, opposite Evan Rachel Wood, Mads Mikkelsen and Melissa Leo.
LaBeouf starred in Transformers: Dark of the Moon (grossing over $1 billion worldwide), which marked his third and final turn as the enterprising and heroic Sam Witwicky. From the original Transformers released in 2007 (which earned over $700 million around the world in theatrical release and became the highest grossing DVD of the year) to the second installment in 2009, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, (which garnered global receipts upwards of $836 million,) Sam continued to find himself in the middle of a life and death struggle between warring robot legions on earth. Additional film credits include Robert Redford's The Company You Keep, Lawless alongside Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman and Guy Pearce, Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps opposite Michael Douglas, the fourth installment of Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones" series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, alongside Harrison Ford, D.J. Caruso's Eagle Eye, the Anthony Minghella-scripted segment of New York, I Love You, a romantic anthology also starring Julie Christie and John Hurt, the popular thriller Disturbia, the Oscar® nominated animated film Surf's Up alongside Jeff Bridges, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, which won "Best Ensemble Cast" at the Sundance Film Festival, Emilio Estevez's acclaimed drama Bobby, Disney's The Greatest Game Ever Played which follows the true story of a 19-year-old amateur athlete's journey to winning the U.S. Open, I, Robot, Constantine, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, HBO's "Project Greenlight" featuring The Battle of Shaker Heights produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and in 2003 he made his feature film debut in the comedy Holes, based on the best-selling book by Louis Sacher.
On television, LaBeouf garnered much praise from critics everywhere for his portrayal of "Louis Stevens" on the Disney Channel's original series "Even Stevens." In 2003, he earned a Daytime Emmy award for "Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series" for his work on the highly-rated family show.Acting:- Even Stevens (2000-2003 TV series)
- Holes (2003)
- Disturbia (2007)
- Surf's Up (2007)
- Transformers (2007)
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
- Sigur Rós' "Fjögur Píanó" (2012 music video)
- Sia's "Elastic Heart" (2015 music video)
Other work:- Born Villain (2011 short film) [directing, writing and producing] [NOTE: it kinda sucks, but still]
- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Clinton Darryl Mansell is an English singer, musician and film composer known for his collaborations with Darren Aronofsky. He composed Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, Black Swan, The Wrestler, Noah, Ghost in the Shell, Peacemaker, Doom Patrol, Loving Vincent, Mass Effect 3, Titans, World Traveler, Smokin' Aces, Doom, The Hole, and Definitely, Maybe.Score:- Requiem for a Dream (2000)
- The Hole (2001)
- 11:14 (2003)
- Doom (2005)
- The Fountain (2006)
- Black Swan (2010)
- Noah (2014)
- High-Rise (2015)
- Loving Vincent (2017)
- Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (2018)
- In the Earth (2021)
- Editor
- Editorial Department
- Producer
Jon Harris was born on 11 July 1967 in Sheffield, England, UK. He is an editor and producer, known for Pistol (2022), The Dig (2021) and 127 Hours (2010).Editing:- Snatch (2000)
- Occasional, Strong (2002 short film)
- Layer Cake (2004)
- The Descent: Parts 1 & 2 (2005/2009[also for directing])
- Stardust (2007)
- Eden Lake (2008)
- 127 Hours (2010)
- Kick-Ass (2010)
- The Woman in Black (2012)
- Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Dwayne Douglas Johnson, also known as The Rock, was born on May 2, 1972 in Hayward, California. He is the son of Ata Johnson (born Feagaimaleata Fitisemanu) and professional wrestler Rocky Johnson (born Wayde Douglas Bowles). His father, from Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada, is black (of Black Nova Scotian descent), and his mother is of Samoan background (her own father was Peter Fanene Maivia, also a professional wrestler). While growing up, Dwayne traveled around a lot with his parents and watched his father perform in the ring. During his high school years, Dwayne began playing football and he soon received a full scholarship from the University of Miami, where he had tremendous success as a football player. In 1995, Dwayne suffered a back injury which cost him a place in the NFL. He then signed a three-year deal with the Canadian League but left after a year to pursue a career in wrestling.
He made his wrestling debut in the USWA under the name Flex Kavanah where he won the tag team championship with Brett Sawyer. In 1996, Dwayne joined the WWE and became Rocky Maivia where he joined a group known as "The Nation of Domination" and turned heel. Rocky eventually took over leadership of the "Nation" and began taking the persona of The Rock. After the "Nation" split, The Rock joined another elite group of wrestlers known as the "Corporation" and began a memorable feud with Steve Austin. Soon the Rock was kicked out of the "Corporation". He turned face and became known as "The Peoples Champion". In 2000, the Rock took time off from WWE to film his appearance in The Mummy Returns (2001). He returned in 2001 during the WCW/ECW invasion where he joined a team of WWE wrestlers at The Scorpion King (2002), a prequel to The Mummy Returns (2001).
Dwayne has a daughter, Simone Alexandra Johnson, born in 2001, with his ex-wife Dany Garcia, and daughters, Jasmine, born in 2015, and Tiana Gia, born in 2018, with his wife, singer and songwriter Lauren Hashian.Acting:- Star Trek: Voyager: Tsunkatse (2000 TV episode)
- The Mummy Returns (2001)
- The Scorpion King (2002)
- The Rundown (2003)
- Doom (2005)
- San Andreas (2015)
- Moana (2016)
- The Fate of the Furious (2017)
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) [also for producing]
- Rampage (2018) [also for producing]
- Skyscraper (2018) [also for producing]
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
With his breakthrough performance as Eames in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi thriller Inception (2010), English actor Tom Hardy has been brought to the attention of mainstream audiences worldwide. However, the versatile actor has been steadily working on both stage and screen since his television debut in the miniseries Band of Brothers (2001). After being cast in the World War II drama, Hardy left his studies at the prestigious Drama Centre in London and was subsequently cast as Twombly in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down (2001) and as the villain Shinzon in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002).
Edward Thomas Hardy was born on September 15, 1977 in Hammersmith, London; his mother, Elizabeth Anne (Barrett), is an artist and painter, and his father, Chips Hardy, is a writer. He is of English and Irish descent. Hardy was brought up in East Sheen, London, and first studied at Reed's School. His education continued at Tower House School, then at Richmond Drama School, and subsequently at the Drama Centre London, along with fellow Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender. After winning a modeling competition at age 21, he had a brief contract with the agency Models One.
Tom spent his teens and early twenties battling delinquency, alcoholism and drug addiction; after completing his work on Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), he sought treatment and has also admitted that his battles with addiction ended his five-year marriage to Sarah Ward. Returning to work in 2003, Hardy was awarded the Evening Standard Most Promising Newcomer Award for his theatre performances in the productions of "In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings" and "Blood". In 2003, Tom also co-starred in the play "The Modernists" with Paul Popplewell, Jesse Spencer and Orlando Wells.
During the next five years, Hardy worked consistently in film, television and theatre, playing roles as varied as Robert Dudley in the BBC's The Virgin Queen (2005), Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist (2007) and starring in "The Man of Mode" at the National Theatre. On the silver screen, he appeared in the crime thriller Layer Cake (2004) with Daniel Craig, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006), and the romp Scenes of a Sexual Nature (2006).
In 2006, Hardy created "Shotgun", an underground theatre company along with director Robert Delamere, and directed a play, penned by his father for the company, called "Blue on Blue". In 2007, Hardy received a best actor BAFTA nomination for his touching performance as Stuart Shorter in the BBC adaptation of Alexander Masters' bestselling biography Stuart: A Life Backwards (2007). Hailed for his transformative character acting, Hardy was lauded for his emotionally and physically convincing portrayal in the ill-fated and warmhearted tale of Shorter, a homeless and occasionally violent man suffering from addiction and muscular dystrophy.
The following year, he appeared as gay hoodlum Handsome Bob in the Guy Ritchie film RocknRolla (2008), but this would be his next transformation that would prove his extensive range and stun critics. In the film Bronson (2008), Hardy played the notorious Charles Bronson (given name, Michael Peterson), the "most violent prisoner in Britain". Bald, pumped-up, and outfitted with Bronson's signature strongman mustache, Hardy is unrecognizable and gives a harrowing performance that is physically fearless and psychologically unsettling. Director Nicolas Winding Refn breaks the fourth wall with Hardy retelling his tales directly to viewers as well as performing them outright before an audience of his own imagining. The performance mixes terrifying brutality, vaudevillian showmanship, wry humor, and an alarming amount of commitment, and won Hardy a British Independent Film Award for Best Actor. The performance got Hollywood's attention, and in 2009, Hardy was named one of Variety's "10 Actors to Watch". That year, he continued to garner praise for his starring role in The Take (2009), a four-part adaptation of Martina Cole's bestselling crime novel, as well as for his performance as Heathcliff in a version of Wuthering Heights (2009).
Recent work includes the aforementioned breakthrough appearance in Inception (2010) alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard and Elliot Page. The movie was released in July 2010 and became one of top 25 highest grossing films of all time, collecting eight Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) and winning four.
Other films include Warrior (2011), opposite Joel Edgerton, the story of two estranged brothers facing the fight of a lifetime from director Gavin O'Connor, and This Means War (2012), directed by McG and co-starring Reese Witherspoon and Chris Pine. Tom also starred in the heralded Cold War thriller, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) with Colin Firth and Gary Oldman. Hardy rejoined Christopher Nolan for The Dark Knight Rises (2012); he played the villain role of Bane opposite Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman. Hardy's menacing physique and his character's scrambled, hard-to-distinguish voice became a major discussion point as the film was released.
Outside of performing, Hardy is the patron for the charity "Flack", which is an organization to aid the recovery of the homeless in Cambridge. And in 2010, Hardy was named an Ambassador for The Prince's Trust, which helps disadvantaged youth. On the recent stage, he starred in the Brett C. Leonard play "The Long Red Road" in early 2010. Written for Hardy and directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, the play was staged at Chicago's Goodman Theater.
In 2015, Hardy starred as the iconic Mad Max in George Miller's reboot of his franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). He also collected a British Independent Film Award for his portrayal of both the Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, in Legend (2015), and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as John Fitzgerald in The Revenant (2015). Hardy also starred on the BBC series Peaky Blinders (2013), alongside Cillian Murphy, and on the television series Taboo (2017), both created by Steven Knight.
He has an outlaw biker story among other projects in development. In 2010, Hardy became engaged to fellow English actress Charlotte Riley, whom he starred with in The Take (2009) and Wuthering Heights (2009), and is raising a young son, Louis Thomas Hardy, with ex-girlfriend Rachael Speed. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to drama.Acting:- Black Hawk Down (2001)
- Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
- Layer Cake (2004)
- Bronson (2008)
- Wuthering Heights (2009 TV miniseries)
- Inception (2010)
- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
- Legend (2015)
- Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
- The Revenant (2015)
- Dunkirk (2017)
- Venom (2018) [also for producing]
- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
One of the British theatre's most famous faces, Daniel Craig, who waited tables as a struggling teenage actor with the National Youth Theatre, has gone on to star as James Bond in Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021).
He was born Daniel Wroughton Craig on March 2, 1968, at 41 Liverpool Road, Chester, Cheshire, England. His father, Timothy John Wroughton Craig, was a merchant seaman turned steel erector, and then became landlord of the "Ring O'Bells" pub in Frodsham, Cheshire. His mother, Carol Olivia (Williams), was an art teacher. Craig has English, as well as Irish, Scottish and Welsh, ancestry. His parents split up in 1972, and young Daniel was raised with his older sister, Lea, in Liverpool, then in Hoylake, Wirral, in the home of his mother. His interest in acting was encouraged by visits to the Liverpool Everyman Theatre arranged by his mother. From the age of six, Craig started acting in school plays, making his debut in the Frodsham Primary School production of "Oliver!", and his mother was the driving force behind his artistic aspirations. The first Bond movie he ever saw at the cinema was Roger Moore's Live and Let Die (1973); young Daniel Craig saw it with his father, so it took a special place in his heart. He was also a good athlete and was a rugby player at Hoylake Rugby Club.
At age 14, Craig played roles in "Oliver", "Romeo and Juliet" and "Cinderella" at Hilbre High School in West Kirby, Wirral. He left Hilbre High School at age 16 to audition at the National Youth Theatre's (NYT) troupe on their tour in Manchester in 1984. He was accepted and moved down to London. There, his mother and father watched his stage debut as Agamemnon in Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida". As a struggling actor with the NYT, he was toiling in restaurant kitchens and as a waiter. Craig performed with NYT on tours to Valencia, Spain, and to Moscow, Russia, under the leadership of director Edward Wilson. He failed at repeated auditions at the Guildhall, but eventually his persistence paid off, and in 1988, he entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama at the Barbican. There, he studied alongside Ewan McGregor and Alistair McGowan, then later Damian Lewis and Joseph Fiennes, among others. He graduated in 1991, after a three-year course under the tutelage of Colin McCormack, the actor from the Royal Shakespeare Company. From 1992-1994, he was married to Scottish actress Fiona Loudon, their daughter, named Ella Craig (born 1992).
Craig made his film debut in The Power of One (1992). His film career continued on television, notably the BBC2 serial Our Friends in the North (1996). He shot to international fame after playing supporting roles in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Road to Perdition (2002). He was nominated for his performances in the leading role in Layer Cake (2004), and received other awards and nominations. Craig was named as the sixth actor to portray James Bond, in October 2005, weeks after he finished his work in Munich (2005), where he co-starred with Eric Bana under the directorship of Steven Spielberg. Craig's reserved demeanor and his avoidance of the showbiz-party-red-carpet milieu makes him a cool 007. He is the first blond actor to play Bond, and also the first to be born after the start of the film series, and also the first to be born after the death of author Ian Fleming in 1964. Four of the past Bond actors: Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan have indicated that Craig is a good choice as Bond.
He was appointed Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) by Queen Elizabeth II at the 2022 Queen's New Years Honours for his services to Film and Theatre.Acting:- Lara Croft Tomb Raider (2001)
- Occasional, Strong (2002 short film)
- Layer Cake (2004)
- James Bond 007: Casino Royale / Quantum of Solace / Skyfall / Spectre / No Time to Die (2006/2008/2012/2015[also for producing]/2021[also for producing])
- The Golden Compass (2007)
- Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
- Happy and Glorious (2012 TV short)
- Knives Out (2019)
- Stunts
- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
BRAD ALLAN: Born with an inherent fascination of all things Chinese, Brad Allan started studying martial arts, boxing, gymnastics and Chinese circus arts from the age of 10 years. At age 15 years, Brad met two of China's greatest wushu athletes Liang Chang Xing and Tang Lai Wei of the renowned Beijing Wushu Team (the same team as Jet Li). Under their expert guidance Brad quickly rose to become one of Australia's top wushu athletes. At the age of 22 years Brad returned to Australia after several years studying language and martial arts in Asia. It was in his home town of Melbourne that he met his mentor and master, Jackie Chan. A chance encounter gave Brad an opportunity to demonstrate his skills to Jackie and his team; a dream come true that would change his life forever. As the first non-Asian member, Brad spent the next 12 years traveling and performing around the world as part of the illustrious Jackie Chan Stunt Team. It was during this time and under Jackie's direct guidance that Brad progressed from stunt performer, to action choreographer, to stunt coordinator and finally action director. Brad Allan traveled one of the more unique paths to Hollywood and brought a unique visual style that combined the best of the east and west. Action transcends language and cultural boundaries; It can excite us, move us and make us laugh. Brad Allan had a global vision for action film making. He worked with an international team of skilled professionals from all over the world united by their passion for action and film making. His goal was to entertain, excite and motivate the human race.Stunt coordinator/action designer:- Rush Hour 2 & 3 (2001[stunt performer only]/2007)
- Kick-Ass (2010)
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) [also for second unit directing]
- Pacific Rim (2013)
- The World's End (2013) [also for second unit directing]
- Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) [also for second unit directing]
- Wonder Woman (2017) [stunt performer only]
- Solo (2018) [also for second unit directing]
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Jonathan Sela was born on 29 April 1978 in Paris, France. He is a cinematographer and director, known for Deadpool 2 (2018), Bullet Train (2022) and Max Payne (2008). He is married to Megan Schoenbachler. They have two children.Cinematography:- Green Day's "Waiting" (2001 music video)
- Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man" (2006 music video)
- The Omen (2006)
- Kanye West's "Love Lockdown" (2008 music video)
- Green Day's "21 Guns" (2009 music video)
- Katy Perry's "E.T." (2011 music video)
- Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" (2013 music video)
- John Wick (2014)
- Atomic Blonde (2017)
- Deadpool 2 (2018)
- Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Walton Goggins is an actor of considerable versatility and acclaim who has delivered provocative performances in a multitude of feature films and television series. He won a Critics' Choice Award for his performance in the HBO comedy series "Vice Principals" and landed an Emmy nomination for his role of 'Boyd Crowder' on FX's "Justified," among numerous accolades.
Goggins is the producer/star of the hit new CBS single-camera comedy "The Unicorn," which debuted as TV's #1 New Show and has been picked up for a full season. The series is about a tight-knit group of best friends and family who help 'Wade' (Goggins) embrace his "new normal" in the wake of the loss of his wife one year ago. As a sometimes ill-equipped but always devoted single parent to his two adolescent daughters, he is taking the major step of dating again. To Wade's amazement, he's a hot commodity with women, and his friends explain that he's the perfect single guy - a "unicorn": employed, attractive, and with a proven track record of commitment.
He has also re-teamed with his former "Vice Principals" co-star Danny McBride on HBO's comedy series "The Righteous Gemstones," which has been renewed for a second season. Written, directed and EP'ed by McBride, it tells the story of a world-famous televangelist family with a long tradition of deviance, greed and charitable work. Goggins plays 'Baby Billy,' a former child star who clogged and sang for Jesus. As an aging man, he's fallen on hard times and comes to the Gemstones for salvation.
On the feature front, Goggins plays the role of 'Christ' in THREE CHRISTS, which IFC Films will release in theaters, VOD and Digital on January 10, 2020. The story follows a doctor (Richard Gere) who is treating paranoid schizophrenic patients at the Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, each of whom believe they are Jesus Christ. The film made its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Goggins recently starred opposite Oscar winner Olivia Colman in the Appalachian thriller THEM THAT FOLLOW, which made its World Premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was released in August 2019. The film followed members of an isolated community of Pentecostal snake handlers led by 'Pastor Lemuel' (Goggins). In the can is the indie feature WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS.
In 2018, Goggins appeared in three major studio features: He starred opposite Alicia Vikander in Warner Bros./MGM's TOMB RAIDER reboot, in the role of villain 'Mathias Vogel.' The film opened as the #1 film globally. In its review, Variety proclaimed, "Goggins, a magnetic actor who projects the lean, hungry anger of vintage-period Jack Nicholson, never hits you over the head with evil; he lets Vogel's sleazy cruelty seep through his pores."
In Disney/Marvel's ANT-MAN AND THE WASP, the sequel to the superhero feature starring Paul Rudd, Goggins played 'Sonny Burch,' a character deep in the Marvel mythos. Additionally, he appeared in Twentieth Century Fox's MAZERUNNER: THE DEATH CURE, the third installment of the highly successful franchise that also opened at #1.
In recent years, Goggins has had pivotal roles in films by two of Hollywood's most important auteurs: Quentin Tarantino and Steven Spielberg. His integral role as 'Chris Mannix,' a southern renegade who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock in Tarantino's THE HATEFUL EIGHT, marked his second collaboration with the Academy Award-winning writer/director. He previously played slave fight trainer 'Billy Crash' in Tarantino's 2012 DJANGO UNCHAINED. That same year, Goggins also appeared in Steven Spielberg's LINCOLN, where he portrayed Congressman 'Wells A. Hutchins.'
For television, Goggins headlined and executive-produced season two of the contemporary espionage thriller "Deep State." He starred as 'Nathan Miller,' a former CIA operative who now works in the private sector as a fixer for the deep state and is at the heart of the new season. The series aired in the U.S. on EPIX, and Fox Networks Group Europe & Africa aired it globally in 50 markets in the summer of 2019.
Goggins won a Critics Choice Award for his role opposite Danny McBride in the HBO series "Vice Principals," which aired for two seasons. Created by McBride and Jody Hill, who also created "Eastbound & Down," "Vice Principals" is a dark comedy about a high school and the two people who almost run it, the vice principals (McBride and Goggins).
He starred in the first season of HISTORY's "Six," a military action drama from A+E Studios and The Weinstein Co that was the top new cable series of 2017 in total viewers. Inspired by current events, it followed an elite team of Navy SEALs whose mission to eliminate a Taliban leader in Afghanistan went awry when they uncovered a U.S. citizen working with the terrorists. Goggins played 'Rip Taggart,' the one-time leader of the SEAL team SIX squad.
For over a decade, Goggins has been one of the most magnetic and intense actors on television. He received an Emmy® nomination and four Critics Choice Award nominations for his mesmerizing portrayal of 'Boyd Crowder' on FX's Peabody Award-winning Drama series "Justified," which ran for six seasons. Goggins' 'Boyd' was the long-time friend, yet ultimate nemesis to U.S. Marshal 'Raylan Givens' (Timothy Olyphant). Elmore Leonard, EP and writer of the short story "Fire in the Hole" on which the show is based, says of 'Boyd,' "There has never been a more poetic bad guy on television in the way that he sees the world."
Goggins' critical turn as the complex transgender prostitute 'Venus Van Dam' on the FX drama series "Sons of Anarchy" earned him two Critics Choice Award nominations and helped shed a fresh light on the transgender community.
For seven years Walton garnered much acclaim for his complex and edgy portrayal of 'Detective Shane Vendrell' on FX's gritty, award-winning drama series "The Shield." He was nominated for a Television Critics Association (TCA) Award in the category of "Individual Achievement in Drama."
He has also taken his turn behind the camera. Goggins' collaborations with his partners at Ginny Mule Pictures include winning an Academy Award® for their 2001 short film, THE ACCOUNTANT, which he produced and starred in. The team produced, directed and starred in their first feature, CHRYSTAL, starring Billy Bob Thornton, which was accepted into the 2005 Sundance Film Festival's Dramatic Competition. For their third collaboration, Goggins produced and starred in the feature RANDY AND THE MOB, which won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2007 Nashville Film Festival.
Goggins and his Ginny Mule partners completed their fourth feature, THAT EVENING SUN, starring Hal Holbrook and Goggins. The film made its world premiere at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin, TX in 2009, where it won the Narrative Feature Audience Award and received the Special Jury Award for "Best Ensemble Cast." It went on to win awards at over 14 film festivals, culminating with the honor of the "Wyatt Award" from the Southeastern Film Critics Association (SEFCA) and two Independent Spirit Award nominations.
Goggins is co-owner of Mulholland Distilling, a portfolio of premium spirits reflecting the vibrant, rich culture of Los Angeles and one of the first spirits companies from the city of Los Angeles since prohibition. Its namesake William Mulholland was the visionary who expanded the boundaries and possibilities of L.A. by bringing water to the desert town. Now, Mulholland Distilling is bringing a different kind of water to the city, the water of life. American Whiskey. Vodka. Gin. "The Spirit of Los Angeles." With a mission to create artisanal spirits inspired by the diversity and verve of Los Angeles, the brand has worked with top distillers, blenders and mixologists across the nation to bring only the best to the City of Angels (www.mulhollanddistilling.com).
Goggins enjoys traveling the world and has spent time in Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Central America, Morocco and India. He is an avid photographer and has captured many of his journeys on film.Acting:- The Bourne Identity (2002)
- Predators (2010)
- Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
- Django Unchained (2012)
- Machete Kills (2013)
- American Ultra (2015)
- The Hateful Eight (2015)
- Marilyn Manson's "Slave Only Dreams to Be King" (2015 song)
- Tomb Raider (2018)
- Cinematographer
Maxime Alexandre was born in Renaix, Belgium, 1971. At five years old, he moved to Rome, Italy, with his mother, sisters, and brother. His stepfather, Inigo Lezzi (during that period A.D. for Marco Bellocchio, Gianni Amelio, and Nanni Moretti), let Maxime discover the Italian cinema sets one by one. Maxime soon worked as a young actor in several movies, including "Une Page d'Amour" directed by Elie Chouraqui, with Anouk Aimée and Bruno Cremer and Nanni Moretti's "Bianca" in 1984. A few years later, Maxime discovered his Photography passion on a set of a short-movie directed by his stepfather. In the late 1980s, Maxime moved with his family to Paris, where he began his career in the camera department working in commercials, learning from great Cinematographers like Darius Kondji, J.Y. Escoffier, P. Lhomme, Vilko Filak, and Italian cinematographers including Tonino Delli Colli and Franco Di Giacomo. His earliest work as a Director of Photography was shooting the second unit of a commercial for Michel Gondry. In 2001, Maxime met Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur, working in the second unit for Aja's father, Alexandre Arkadi, on the movie "Break of Dawn" written by Aja and Levasseur. The three collaborated on Aja's directorial debut, "High Tension," two years later. The movie was internationally recognized as the beginning of the French New Wave of horror in the 2000s and was picked up for distribution by Lions Gate Films.
Maxime, Alexandre, and Gregory collaborated again on the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Mirrors." During the making of Hills Have Eyes, Maxime met Wes Craved, with whom he worked on "Paris, Je T'aime," an anthology film that grouped works from Alexander Payne, The Coen Brothers, Vincenzo Natali, and others, and the film was selected to screen at Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, the second time for Maxime after "Marock," a movie directed by Laila Marrakchi in 2005.
In 2006, Maxime was recognized by Variety as one of its Ten Cinematographers to Watch.
Several other films have followed, including P2, directed by Franck Khalfoun; The Crazies, by Breck Eisner; The Voices, directed by Marjane Satrapi; The Crawl, by Alexandre Aja; Shazam, by David F. Sandberg and soon-to-be-release Never let go by Alexandre Aja and Paris Paradis by Marjane Satrapi.Cinematography:- High Tension (2003)
- The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
- Mirrors (2008)
- The Crazies (2010)
- Maniac (2012)
- The Other Side of the Door (2016)
- Annabelle: Creation (2017)
- The Nun (2018)
- Countdown (2019)
- Crawl (2019)
- Shazam! (2019)
- The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020 TV miniseries)
- Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Ryan Rodney Reynolds was born on October 23, 1976 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the youngest of four children. His father, James Chester Reynolds, was a food wholesaler, and his mother, Tamara Lee "Tammy" (Stewart), worked as a retail-store saleswoman. He has Irish and Scottish ancestry. Between 1991-93, Ryan appeared in Fifteen (1990), a Nickelodeon series taped in Florida with many other Canadian actors. After the series ended, he returned to Vancouver where he played in a series of forgettable television movies. He did small roles in Glenn Close's Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (1995) and CBS's update of In Cold Blood (1996). However, his run of luck had led him to decide to quit acting.
One night, he ran into fellow Vancouver actor and native Chris William Martin. Martin found Ryan rather despondent and told him to pack everything: they were going to head to Los Angeles, California. The two stayed in a cheap Los Angeles motel. On the first night of their stay, Reynolds' jeep was rolled downhill and stripped. For the next four months, Ryan drove it without doors. In 1997, he landed the role of Berg in Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place (1998). Initially, the show was reviled by critics and seemed desperate for any type of ratings success. However, it was renewed for a second season but with a provision for a makeover by former Roseanne (1988) writer Kevin Abbott. The show became a minor success and has led to additional film roles for Ryan, most notably in the last-ever MGM film, a remake of The Amityville Horror (2005). Ryan was engaged to Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, another Nickelodeon veteran, between 2004-2006.
He has been married to Blake Lively since September 9, 2012. They have three daughters. He was previously married to Scarlett Johansson.Acting:- Scrubs: My Dream Job (2003 TV episode)
- Blade: Trinity (2004)
- Adventureland (2009)
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
- Buried (2010)
- Ted (2012)
- R.I.P.D. (2013)
- Deadpool 1 & 2 (2016[also for producing]/2018[also for writing and producing])
- The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
- 6 Underground (2019)
- Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019)
- Director
- Actor
- Writer
David Firth was born on 23 January 1983 in Doncaster, England, UK. He is a director and actor, known for Salad Fingers (2004), Burnt Face Man (2004) and Jerry Jackson (2005).Directing, writing, voice acting and animating:- Burnt Face Man (2004-2010 internet series)
- Salad Fingers (2004- internet series)
- Spoilsbury Toast Boy (2004-2005 internet series)
- Video Dating Tape (2004 internet short)
- Black and White Cartoons (2005 internet series)
- Jerry Jackson (2005- internet series)
- Sock (2005-2012 internet series)
- Valentine's Day Special (2005 internet short)
- Men From Upstairs (2006 internet short)
- Crooked Rot (2008 internet short)
- Dog of Man (2008 internet short)
- Flying Lotus' "Fire is Coming" (2019 music video) [directing only]
- Actor
- Director
- Producer
McAvoy was born on 21 April 1979 in Glasgow, Scotland, to James, a bus driver, and Elizabeth (née Johnstone), a nurse. He was raised on a housing estate in Drumchapel, Glasgow by his maternal grandparents (James, a butcher, and Mary), after his parents divorced when James was 11. He went to St Thomas Aquinas Secondary in Jordanhill, Glasgow, where he did well enough and started 'a little school band with a couple of mates'.
McAvoy toyed with the idea of the Catholic priesthood as a child but, when he was 16, a visit to the school by actor David Hayman sparked an interest in acting. Hayman offered him a part in his film The Near Room (1995) but despite enjoying the experience McAvoy didn't seriously consider acting as a career, although he did continue to act as a member of PACE Youth Theatre. He applied instead to the Royal Navy and had already been accepted when he was also offered a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD).
He took the place at the RSAMD (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and, when he graduated in 2000, he moved to London. He had already made a couple of TV appearances by this time and continued to get a steady stream of TV and movie work until he came to attention of the British public in 2004 playing car thief Steve McBride in the successful UK TV series Shameless (2004) and then to the rest of the world in 2005 as Mr Tumnus, the faun, in Disney's adaptation of C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005). In The Last King of Scotland (2006) McAvoy portrayed a Scottish doctor who becomes the personal physician to dictator Idi Amin, played by Forest Whitaker. McAvoy's career breakthrough came in Atonement (2007), Joe Wright's 2007 adaption of Ian McEwan's novel.
Since then, McAvoy has taken on theatre roles, starring in Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' (directed by Jamie Lloyd), which launched the first Trafalgar Transformed season in London's West End and earned him an Olivier award nomination for Best Actor. In January 2015, McAvoy returned to the Trafalgar Studios stage to play Jack Gurney, the delusional 14th Earl of Gurney who believes he is Jesus, in the first revival of Peter Barnes's satire 'The Ruling Class', a role for which he was subsequently awarded the London Evening Standard Theatre Award's Best Actor.
On screen, McAvoy has appeared as corrupt cop Bruce Robertson in Filth (2013), a part for which he received a Scottish BAFTA for Best Actor, a British Independent Film Award for Best Actor, a London Critics Circle Film Award for British Actor of the Year and an Empire Award for Best Actor. More recently, he reprised his role as Professor Charles Xavier in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and Dark Phoenix (2019). He began his depiction of Kevin Wendell Crumb, also known as The Horde, a man with an extreme case of dissociative identity disorder in M. Night Shyamalan's thriller Split (2016) and continued it in the sequel, Glass (2019). Also in 2019, he played Bill Denbrough in It Chapter Two (2019), the horror sequel to It (2017).
McAvoy and Jamie Lloyd look set to continue their collaboration in December 2019, with a production of 'Cyrano de Bergerac' at the Playhouse Theatre in the West End, London. The project has been on the cards as long ago as 2017, when McAvoy posted a picture of him reading the script and wearing a false nose.Acting:- Inside I'm Dancing (2004)
- Shameless (2004-2013 TV series)
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
- Wanted (2008)
- Gnomeo & Juliet (2011)
- X-Men: First Class / Days of Future Past / Apocalypse / Dark Phoenix (2011/2014/2016/2019)
- Victor Frankenstein (2015)
- Split & Glass (2016/2019)
- Atomic Blonde (2017)
- It: Chapter Two (2019)
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Burn Gorman was born on 1 September 1974 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA. He is an actor, known for Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022), The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018). He has been married to Sarah Beard since July 2004. They have three children.Acting:- Layer Cake (2004)
- Torchwood (2006-2011 TV series)
- EastEnders: 9 March 2007 (2007 TV episode)
- Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011 video game)
- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
- Game of Thrones: Walk of Punishment / And Now His Watch is Ended / Oathkeeper / First of His Name (2013/2013/2014/2014 TV episodes)
- Pacific Rim (2013)
- And Then There Were None (2015 TV miniseries)
- Imperium (2016)
- In a Valley of Violence (2016)
- Cheat (2019 TV miniseries)
- Watcher (2022)
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Neil Maskell was born in 1976. From the age of eleven he attended the Anna Scher acting school in Islington in his native London and later studied at the Miskin Theatre at the North West Kent College,subsequently returning there as a director. He began acting as a teenager,making his television debut in 'The Bill' and has appeared in several populist dramas such as 'Casualty' and 'Soldier Soldier'. On stage he has worked with the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and made his film debut in 1997 in 'Nil By Mouth'. In 2011 he was nominated as Best Actor by the British Independent Film Awards for his role in the British movie 'Kill List'.Acting:- Shameless: Episode 2.0 (2004 TV episode)
- Doghouse (2009)
- Kill List (2011)
- The ABCs of Death: U is for Unearthed (2012 anthology segment)
- Pusher (2012)
- Devlin's "Watchtower" (2012 music video)
- Humans (2015-2018 TV series)
- King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
- Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (2018)
- Little Monster (2018 short film)
- Production Designer
- Art Department
- Additional Crew
Marcus Rowland is known for Last Night in Soho (2021), Attack the Block (2011) and All the Old Knives (2022).Production design:- Shaun of the Dead (2004)
- Hot Fuzz (2007)
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
- Attack the Block (2011)
- The World's End (2013)
- Ant-Man (2015)
- Baby Driver (2017)
- The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)
- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Domhnall Gleeson is an Irish actor and writer. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter film franchise (2010-2011), About Time (2013), Ex Machina (2015) and The Revenant (2015).
He is the son of actor Brendan Gleeson, alongside whom he has appeared in several films and theatre projects.
Gleeson starred in Anna Karenina (2012), Frank (2014), Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017). He also portrayed the First Order's General Hux in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017).
In 2013 he starred in the Black Mirror episode Be Right Back.
His film debut was Boy Eats Girl (2005).Acting:- Six Shooter (2004 short film)
- True Grit (2010)
- Dredd (2012)
- Black Mirror: Be Right Back (2013 TV episode)
- Ex Machina (2014)
- Frank (2014)
- The Revenant (2015)
- Star Wars: Episodes VII-IX (2015/2017/2019)
- mother! (2017)
- Art Director
- Production Designer
- Visual Effects
Nelson Lowry is known for Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) and ParaNorman (2012).Production design:- Corpse Bride (2005) [art direction only]
- Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
- ParaNorman (2012)
- Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)
- Missing Link (2019)
Other work:- Sunshine (2007) [digital matte painting]
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Curly haired and with a fast-talking voice, Jesse Eisenberg is a movie actor, known for his Academy Award nominated role as Mark Zuckerberg in the 2010 film The Social Network. He has also starred in the films The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland, The Education of Charlie Banks, 30 Minutes or Less, Now You See Me and Zombieland. Additionally, he played Lex Luthor in the 2016 film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Jesse Adam Eisenberg was born on October 5, 1983 in Queens, New York, and was raised in East Brunswick Township, New Jersey. His mother, Amy (Fishman), is a professional dressed-up clown who performed at children's birthday parties for a living in their hometown of East Brunswick for 20 years. His father, Barry Eisenberg, ran a hospital before moving on to become a college professor. Jesse has two sisters, Kerri and Hallie Eisenberg, who was a popular child star. His family is Jewish (his ancestors came to the U.S. from Poland, Russia, and Ukraine).
He attended East Brunswick High School, but he didn't really enjoy school. From age 10, he performed in children's theater. Jesse had his first professional role in an off-Broadway play, "The Gathering". Before fame, he made his first television appearance role that came in 1999 when he was 16 with a show on Fox's Get Real (1999), but the show was canceled in 2000. In his senior year of high school, he had landed his first film leading role in the 2002 film Roger Dodger (2002). He won an award for "Most Promising New Actor" at the San Diego film festival.
Jesse attended the New School University, New York, where he was a liberal arts major, with a focus on Democracy and Cultural Pluralism. He also studied at The New School in New York City's Greenwich Village. He applied and was accepted to New York University but declined enrollment to complete a film role. He has been playing the drums since he was age 8.
His breakthrough role came in Zombieland (2009). In 2010, he was nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globes and Academy Awards for his role of Facebook's creator, Mark Zuckerberg, in the film, The Social Network (2010). He also voiced Blu, a rare blue macaw, in the film Rio (2011), and its sequel Rio 2 (2014). He starred alongside Aziz Ansari in the 2011 comedy 30 Minutes Or Less, and played himself in the 2013 comedy film He's Way More Famous Than You (2013).Acting:- Cursed (2005)
- Adventureland (2009)
- Zombieland (2009)
- The Social Network (2010)
- Now You See Me 1 & 2 (2013/2016)
- American Ultra (2015)
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Stephan Pehrsson was born on 10 November 1975 in Hillerød, Denmark. He is a cinematographer and assistant director, known for Black Mirror (2011), Johnny English Strikes Again (2018) and Tolkien (2019).Cinematography:- Doctor Who (2005- TV series)
- M.I. High (2007-2014 TV series)
- Runaway (2009 TV miniseries)
- Hammer of the Gods (2013)
- Humans: Episodes 2.5 & 2.6 (2016 TV episodes)
- Black Mirror: USS Callister (2017 TV episode)
- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Matt Smith is an English actor who shot to fame in the UK aged 26 when he was cast by producer Steven Moffat as the Eleventh Doctor in the BBC's iconic science-fiction adventure series Doctor Who (2005).
Matthew Robert Smith was born and raised in Northampton, the son of Lynne (Fidler) and David Smith. He was educated at Northampton School For Boys. He studied Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He got into acting through the National Youth Theatre and performed with the Royal Court and the National Theatre.
Smith made his television debut in The Ruby in the Smoke (2006) and won several further roles on television but was largely unknown when he was announced as the surprise choice for the role of the Eleventh Doctor in Doctor Who. He was younger than any other actor to have taken the role (Peter Davison was previously the youngest, aged 29 when he was cast in 1981). Smith starred in 49 episodes of Doctor Who (three short of his predecessor, David Tennant). He left in the momentous 50th anniversary year of the Doctor Who legend in 2013, which included starring in the 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor (2013), which found him acting with Tennant, guest star John Hurt and the oldest living and longest-serving actor to play the Doctor, Tom Baker.
Since leaving Doctor Who, Smith has launched himself into a film career.Acting:- Doctor Who (2005- TV series)
- The Ruby in the Smoke (2006 TV film)
- In Bruges (2008) [deleted scenes only]
- The Sarah Jane Adventures: Death of the Doctor (2010 TV episodes)
- Womb (2010)
- Christopher and His Kind (2011 TV film)
- Lost River (2014)
- Terminator: Genisys (2015)
- The Crown (2016- TV series)
- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
- Charlie Says (2018)
- Official Secrets (2019)
- His House (2020)
- House of the Dragon (2022- TV series)
- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Cinematography:- Doctor Who (2005- TV series)
- The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007-2011 TV series)
- Torchwood: Children of Earth (2009 TV miniseries)
- Actress
- Producer
- Director
The iconoclastic gifts of the highly striking and ferociously talented actress Tilda Swinton have been appreciated by art house crowds and international audiences alike. After her stunning Oscar-winning turn as a high-powered corporate attorney in the George Clooney starring and critically-lauded legal thriller Michael Clayton (2007), however, her androgynous looks and often bizarre appeal have been embraced by more mainstream crowds as well.
She was born Katherine Mathilda Swinton into a patrician Scottish military family on November 5, 1960, in London, England. Her mother, Judith Balfour, Lady Swinton (née Killen), was Australian, and her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton, an army officer, was English-born. Her ancestry is Scottish, Northern Irish, and English, including a long tapestry of prominent Scottish ancestors. Educated at an English and a Scottish boarding school, Tilda subsequently studied Social and Political Science at Cambridge University and graduated in 1983 with a degree in English Literature.
During her tenure as a student, she performed countless stage productions and proceeded to work for a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company where she appeared in such productions as "Measure for Measure." The rebel insider her, however, was strong and she left the company after a year as her approach and interests began to shift dramatically. With a pungent taste for the unique and seldom tried, Tilda found some gender-bending stage roles come her way. She portrayed Mozart in Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri", and as a working class woman impersonating her dead husband during World War II, in Manfred Karge's "Man to Man," a role she later committed to film (Man to Man (1992)).
In 1985, the tall, slender performer with alabaster skin and carrot-topped hair began a professional association with gay experimental director Derek Jarman. She continued to live and work with the groundbreaking writer/director/cinematographer for the next nine years, involving herself in seven of his often notorious films. This quirky, highly fascinating alliance would produce such stark and radical turns as the Berlin International Film Festival winners Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), The Garden (1990) and Edward II (1991) (playing Isabella, in which she won "Best Actress" at the Venice Film Festival) and Wittgenstein (1993), as well as the films Soursweet (1988) (a movie with no spoken dialogue) and the Stockholm Film Festival Award winner Blue (1993).
Jarman succumbed to complications from AIDS in 1994. His untimely demise left a devastating void in Tilda's life for quite some time. Her most notable performance of her Jarman period, however, came from a non-Jarman film. For the vivid title role in Orlando (1992), her nobleman character lives for 400 years while changing sex from man to woman. The film, which Swinton spent years helping writer/director Sally Potter develop and finance, continues to this day to have a worldwide devoted fan following.
Over the years, Tilda has preferred art to celebrity, opening herself to experimental projects with new and untried directors and mediums, delving into the worlds of installation art and cutting-edge fashion. Consistently off-centered roles in Female Perversions (1996), Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), Teknolust (2002), Young Adam (2003), Broken Flowers (2005) and Béla Tarr's The Man from London (2007) have added to her mystique. Back in 1995, she delved into a performance art piece in the Serpentine Gallery, London, where she was put on display to the public for a week, asleep (or apparently so), in a glass case.
Following the birth of her twins in 1997, Tilda would leave lean for a time towards Hollywood mainstream filming. The thriller The Deep End (2001), earned her a number of critic's awards and her first Golden Globe nomination. Other visible U.S. pictures included The Beach (2000) with Leonardo DiCaprio, fantasy epic Constantine (2005) with Keanu Reeves, her Oscar-decorated performance in Michael Clayton (2007) and, of course, her iconic White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).
Into the millennium, Tilda continued to amaze starring in the crime drama Julia (2008) and in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). She learned Italian and Russian for Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love (2009), starred in the psychological thriller We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Bong Joon Ho's Snowpiercer (2013), and earned fine notice in Terry Gilliam's The Zero Theorem (2013). She also starred in the dark romantic fantasy drama Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) directed by Jim Jarmusch, had a small role in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), starred in Judd Apatow's comedy Trainwreck (2015), and played a rock star in Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash (2015).
Showing no signs of slowing up, Tilda continues to make creative, visual impressions in such films as the Coen Brothers' Hail, Caesar! (2016) where she reunited with Clooney and had a dual role playing twin journalists, and as the wise Asian teacher of Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) in the Marvel Comics action film Doctor Strange (2016), while repeating the part of The Ancient One in Avengers: Endgame (2019). She gave another eccentric, unhinged performance in the action adventure message movie Okja (2017), played Betsy Trotwood in a contemporary telling of The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) and teamed up again with writer/director Jim Jarmusch in the thoroughly offbeat fantasy horror comedy The Dead Don't Die (2019).Acting:- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
- Burn After Reading (2008)
- Snowpiercer (2013)
- David Bowie's "The Stars" (2013 music video)
- The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
- Doctor Strange (2016)
- Hail, Caesar! (2016)
- Suspiria (2018)
- Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- Uncut Gems (2019)
- The Killer (2023)
- Actor
- Producer
- Executive
Michael Fassbender is an Irish actor who was born in Heidelberg, Germany, to a German father, Josef, and an Irish mother, Adele (originally from Larne, County Antrim, in Northern Ireland). Michael was raised in the town of Killarney, Co. Kerry, in south-west Ireland, where his family moved to when he was two years old. His parents ran a restaurant (his father is a chef).
Fassbender is based in London, England, and became known in the U.S. after his role in the Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009). In 2011, Fassbender debuted as the Marvel antihero Magneto in the prequel X-Men: First Class (2011); he would go on to share the role with Ian McKellen in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). Also in 2011, Fassbender's performance as a sex addict in Shame (2011) received critical acclaim. He won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for Golden Globe and BAFTA Awards. In 2013, his role as slave owner Edwin Epps in slavery epic 12 Years a Slave (2013) was similarly praised, earning him his first Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor. 12 Years a Slave marked Fassbender's third collaboration with Steve McQueen, who also directed Hunger and Shame. In 2013, Fassbender appeared in another Ridley Scott film, The Counselor (2013). In 2015, he portrayed Steve Jobs (2015) in the Danny Boyle-directed biopic of the same name, and played Macbeth (2015) in Justin Kurzel's adaptation of William Shakespeare's play. For the former, he has received Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe and SAG nominations for Best Actor. As well as acting, Fassbender produced the 2015 western Slow West (2015), which he also starred in.Acting:- 300 (2006)
- Eden Lake (2008)
- Fish Tank (2009)
- Inglourious Basterds (2009)
- Centurion (2010)
- Jonah Hex (2010)
- Haywire (2011)
- X-Men: First Class / Days of Future Past / Apocalypse / Dark Phoenix (2011/2014/2016/2019)
- Prometheus & Alien: Covenant (2012/2017)
- Frank (2014)
- Macbeth (2015)
- Steve Jobs (2015)
- Assassin's Creed (2016) [also for producing]
- Trespass Against Us (2016)
- The Snowman (2017)
- The Killer (2023)
- Production Designer
- Art Director
- Art Department
Naaman Marshall is known for Mortal Kombat (2021), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and The Dark Knight (2008).Art direction (when noted, production design instead):- Apocalypto (2006)
- The Prestige (2006) [assistant art direction only]
- The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises (2008/2012)
- After Earth (2013)
- The Lone Ranger (2013)
- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
- Nightcrawler (2014)
- The Visit (2015) [production design]
- Don't Breathe (2016) [production design]
- John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
- Underwater (2020) [production design]
- Mortal Kombat (2021) [production design]
- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Emily Olivia Leah Blunt is a British actress known for her roles in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), The Young Victoria (2009), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and The Girl on the Train (2016), among many others.
Blunt was born on February 23, 1983, in Roehampton, South West London, England, the second of four children in the family of Joanna Mackie, a former actress and teacher, and Oliver Simon Peter Blunt, a barrister. Her grandfather was Major General Peter Blunt, and her uncle is MP Crispin Blunt. Emily received a rigorous education at Ibstock Place School, a co-ed private school at Roehampton. However, young Emily Blunt had a stammer, since she was a kid of 8. Her mother took her to relaxation classes, which did not do anything. She reached a turning point at 12, when a teacher cleverly asked her to play a character with a different voice and said, "I really believe in you". Blunt ended up using a northern accent, and it did the trick, her stammer disappeared.
From 1999 - 2001, Blunt went to Hurtwood House, the top co-ed boarding school where she would excel at sport, cello and singing. She also had two years of drama studies at Hurtwood's theatre course. In August 2000, she was chosen to perform at the Edinburgh Festival. She was signed up by an agent, Kenneth Mcreddie, who led her to the West End and the BBC, scoring her roles in several period dramas on stage as well as on TV productions, such as Foyle's War (2002), Henry VIII (2003) and Empire (2005). In 2001, she appeared as "Gwen Cavendish" opposite Dame Judi Dench in Sir Peter Hall's production of "The Royal Family" at Haymarket Theatre. For that role, she won the Evening Standard Award for Best Newcomer. In 2002, she played "Juliet" in "Romeo and Juliet" at the prestigious Chichester Festival.
Blunt's career ascended to international fame after she starred as "Isolda" opposite Alex Kingston in Warrior Queen (2003). A year later, she won critical acclaim for her breakout performance as "Tamsin", a well-educated, cynical and deceptive 16-year-old beauty in My Summer of Love (2004), a story of two lonely girls from the opposite ends of the social heap. Emily Blunt and her co-star, Natalie Press, shared an Evening Standard British Film award for Most Promising Newcomer. In 2005, she spent a few months in Australia filming Irresistible (2006) with Susan Sarandon and Sam Neill. Blunt gave an impressive performance as "Mara", a cunning young destroyer who acts crazy and surreptitiously provokes paranoia in others. She also continued her work on British television, starring as "Natasha" in Stephen Poliakoff's Gideon's Daughter (2005), opposite Bill Nighy, a role that won her a 2007 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role.
She continued the line of playing manipulative characters as "Emily", a caustic put-upon assistant to Meryl Streep's lead in The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Blunt's performance with a neurotic twist added a dimension of sarcasm to the comedy, and gained her much attention as well as new jobs: in two dramas opposite Tom Hanks, then in the title role in the period drama, The Young Victoria (2009). Her most recent works include appearances as antiques dealer "Gwen Conliffe" in The Wolfman (2010) and as the ballerina in The Adjustment Bureau (2011).
Emily is a highly versatile actress and a multifaceted person. Her talents include singing and playing cello; she is also skilled at horseback riding.
On August 28, 2009, Blunt and Krasinski announced their engagement. The couple married on July 10, 2010, at the estate of their friend, George Clooney, on Lake Como in Italy. Blunt and Krasinski live in the Los Angeles area, California, and have two children.Acting:- The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
- Looper (2012)
- Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
- Sicario (2015)
- Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
- A Quiet Place: Parts I & II (2018/2020)
- Oppenheimer (2023)
- Editor
- Editorial Department
- Director
Paul Machliss was born on 2 April 1972 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He is an editor and director, known for The Flash (2023), Last Night in Soho (2021) and Baby Driver (2017).Editing:- Tell It to the Fishes (2006 short film)
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
- The World's End (2013)
- Baby Driver (2017)
- The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)
- Editor
- Editorial Department
Jonathan Amos is known for Baby Driver (2017), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) and Attack the Block (2011).Editing:- Hot Fuzz (2007) [additional editing only]
- Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
- Attack the Block (2011)
- In Fear (2013)
- Grimsby (2016)
- Baby Driver (2017)
- The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)