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Philip Kindred Dick was born in Chicago in December 1928, along with a twin sister, Jane. Jane died less than eight weeks later, allegedly from an allergy to mother's milk. Dick's parents split up during his childhood, and he moved with his mother to Berkeley, California, where he lived for most of the rest of his life. Dick became a published author in 1952. His first sale was the short story "Roog." His first novel, "Solar Lottery," appeared in 1955. Dick produced an astonishing amount of material during the 1950s and 1960s, writing and selling nearly a hundred short stories and some two dozen or so novels during this period, including "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," "Time Out Of Joint," "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," and the Hugo-award winning "The Man In The High Castle." A supremely chaotic personal life (Dick was married five times) along with drug experimentation, sidetracked Dick's career in the early 1970s. Dick would later maintain that reports of his drug use had been greatly exaggerated by sensationalistic colleagues. In any event, after a layoff of several years, Dick returned to action in 1974 with the Campbell award-winning novel "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said." Perhaps more importantly, though, this same year Dick would have a profound religious experience that would forever alter his life. Dick's final years were haunted by what he alleged to be a 1974 visitation from God, or at least a God-like being. Dick spent the rest of his life writing copious journals regarding the visitation and his interpretations of the event. At times, Dick seemed to regard it as a divine revelation and, at other times, he believed it to be a sign of extreme schizophrenic behaviour. His final novels all deal in some way with the entity he saw in 1974, especially "Valis," in which the title-character is an extraterrestrial God-like machine that chooses to make contact with a hopelessly schizophrenic, possibly drug-addled and decidedly mixed-up science fiction writer named Philip K. Dick. Despite his award-winning novels and almost universal acclaim from within the science-fiction community, Dick was never especially financially successful as a writer. He worked mainly for low-paying science-fiction publishers and never seemed to see any royalties from his novels after the advance had been paid, no matter how many copies they sold. In fact, one of the reasons for his extreme productivity was that he always seemed to need the advance money from his next story or novel in order to make ends meet. But towards the very end of his life, he achieved a measure of financial stability, partly due to the money he received from the producers of Blade Runner (1982) for the rights to his novel "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" upon which the film was based. Shortly before the film premiered, however, he died of a heart attack at the age of 53. Since his death, several other films have been adapted from his works (incuding Total Recall (1990)) and several unpublished novels have been published posthumously.- Charles Robert Darwin FRS FRGS FLS FZS (12 February 1809 - 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary biology.His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now widely accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honored by burial in Westminster Abbey.
- Actor
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- Producer
Richard Dawkins was born on 26 March 1941 in Nairobi, Kenya. He is an actor and writer, known for Doctor Who (2005), Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008) and Intersect (2020). He has been married to Lalla Ward since September 1992. He was previously married to Marian Dawkins and Eve Barham.- Music Artist
- Music Department
- Composer
Robert Allen Zimmerman was born 24 May 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota; his father Abe worked for the Standard Oil Co. Six years later the family moved to Hibbing, often the coldest place in the US, where he taught himself piano and guitar and formed several high school rock bands. In 1959 he entered the University of Minnesota and began performing as Bob Dylan at clubs in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The following year he went to New York, performed in Greenwich Village folk clubs, and spent much time in the hospital room of his hero Woody Guthrie. Late in 1961 Columbia signed him to a contract and the following year released his first album, containing two original songs. Next year "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" appeared, with all original songs including the 1960s anthem "Blowin' in the Wind." After several more important acoustic/folk albums, and tours with Joan Baez, he launched into a new electric/acoustic format with 1965's "Bringing It All Back Home" which, with The Byrds' cover of his "Mr Tambourine Man," launched folk-rock. The documentary Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back (1967) was filmed at this time; he broke off his relationship with Baez and by the end of the year had married Sara Dylan (born Sara Lowndes). Nearly killed in a motorcycle accident 29 July 1966, he withdrew for a time of introspection. After more hard rock performances, his next albums were mostly country. With his career wandering (and critics condemning the fact), Sam Peckinpah asked him to compose the score for, and appear in, his Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) - more memorable as a soundtrack than a film. In 1974 he and The Band went on tour, releasing his first #1 album, "Planet Waves". It was followed a year later by another first-place album, "Blood on the Tracks". After several Rolling Thunder tours, the unsuccessful film Renaldo and Clara (1978) and a divorce, he stunned the music world again by his release of the fundamentalist Christrian album "Slow Train Coming," a cut from which won him his first Grammy. Many tours and albums later, on the eve of a European tour May 1997, he was stricken with histoplasmosis (a possibly fatal infection of the heart sac); he recovered and appeared in Bologna that September at the request of the Pope. In December he received the Kennedy Center Award for artistic excellence.- Felicia Day was born on June 28, 1979 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA as Kathryn Felicia Day. She is an actress and producer, known for her work on TV and the web video world. She has appeared in mainstream television shows and films, including Supernatural (2005) and a two-season arc on the SyFy series Eureka (2006). However, Felicia may be best known for her work in the web video world. She co-starred in Joss Whedon's Internet musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008) and created and starred in the hit web series, The Guild (2007). Felicia is creative chief officer of her production company Knights of Good, which produced the web series Dragon Age: Redemption (2011) and the YouTube channel Geek & Sundry.
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Robert Downey Jr. has evolved into one of the most respected actors in Hollywood. With an amazing list of credits to his name, he has managed to stay new and fresh even after over four decades in the business.
Downey was born April 4, 1965 in Manhattan, New York, the son of writer, director and filmographer Robert Downey Sr. and actress Elsie Downey (née Elsie Ann Ford). Robert's father is of half Lithuanian Jewish, one quarter Hungarian Jewish, and one quarter Irish, descent, while Robert's mother was of English, Scottish, German, and Swiss-German ancestry. Robert and his sister, Allyson Downey, were immersed in film and the performing arts from a very young age, leading Downey Jr. to study at the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in upstate New York, before moving to California with his father following his parents' 1978 divorce. In 1982, he dropped out of Santa Monica High School to pursue acting full time. Downey Sr., himself a drug addict, exposed his son to drugs at a very early age, and Downey Jr. would go on to struggle with abuse for decades.
Downey Jr. made his debut as an actor at the age of five in the film Pound (1970), written and directed by his father, Robert Downey Sr.. He built his film repertoire throughout the 1980s and 1990s with roles in Tuff Turf (1985), Weird Science (1985), True Believer (1989), and Wonder Boys (2000) among many others. In 1992, Downey received an Academy Award nomination and won the BAFTA (British Academy Award) for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of Chaplin (1992).
In Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), he appeared as an aspiring film make-up artist whose best friend commits murder. In Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, Downey starred as a tabloid TV journalist who exploits a murderous couple's killing spree to boost his ratings. For the comedy Heart and Souls (1993), Downey starred as a young man with a special relationship with four ghosts. In 1995, Downey starred in Restoration (1995), with Hugh Grant, Meg Ryan and Ian McKellen, directed by Michael Hoffman. Also that year, he starred in Richard III (1995), in which he appears opposite his Restoration (1995) co-star McKellen.
In 1997, Downey was seen in Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man (1998), alongside Kenneth Branagh, Daryl Hannah and Embeth Davidtz; in One Night Stand (1997), directed by Mike Figgis and starring Wesley Snipes and Nastassja Kinski; and in Hugo Pool (1997), directed by his father, Robert Downey Sr. and starring Sean Penn and Patrick Dempsey. In September of 1999, Downey appeared in Black & White (1999), written and directed by James Toback, along with Ben Stiller, Elijah Wood, Gaby Hoffmann, Brooke Shields and Claudia Schiffer. In January of 1999, he starred with Annette Bening and Aidan Quinn in In Dreams (1999), directed by Neil Jordan.
In 2000, Downey co-starred with Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire in Wonder Boys (2000), directed by Curtis Hanson. In this dramatic comedy, Downey played the role of a bisexual literary agent. In 2001, Downey made his prime-time television debut when he joined the cast of the Fox-TV series Ally McBeal (1997) as attorney "Larry Paul". For this role, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, as well as the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male in a Comedy Series. In addition, Downey was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
The actor's drug-related problems escalated from 1996 to 2001, leading to arrests, rehab visits and incarcerations, and he was eventually fired from Ally McBeal (1997). Emerging clean and sober in 2003, Downey Jr. began to rebuild his career.
He marked his debut into music with his debut album, titled "The Futurist", on the Sony Classics Label on November 23rd, 2004. The album's eight original songs, that Downey wrote, and his two musical numbers debuting as cover songs revealed his sultry singing voice and his musical talents. Downey displayed his versatility in two different films in October 2003: the musical/drama The Singing Detective (2003), a remake of the BBC hit of the same name, and the thriller Gothika (2003) starring Halle Berry and Penélope Cruz. Downey starred in powerful yet humbling roles inspired by real-life accounts of some of history's most precious kept secrets, including Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly (2006) in 2006 co-starring Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson, and Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006) co-starring Nicole Kidman, a film inspired by the life of Diane Arbus, the revered photographer whose images captured attention in the early 1960s. These roles exhibited Downey's momentum from the previous year of 2005, in which he starred in the Academy Award®-nominated feature film Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005), directed by George Clooney and in Shane Black's action comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) co-starring Val Kilmer. In 2007, he co-starred in David Fincher's suspenseful Zodiac (2007), alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo, about the notorious serial killer who haunted San Francisco during the 1970s.
In May 2008, Downey achieved critical acclaim and worldwide box office success for his starring role in Iron Man (2008), Jon Favreau's big-screen rendering of the Marvel comic book superhero. The film co-starred Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges and Terrence Howard. In August of 2008, Downey starred with Ben Stiller and Jack Black in the comedy Tropic Thunder (2008), and went on to receive an Academy Award®-nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his, Kirk Lazarus.
In December 2009, Downey starred in the action-adventure Sherlock Holmes (2009). The film, directed by Guy Ritchie, co-starred Jude Law and Rachel McAdams and earned Downey a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical in January of 2010. In early Summer 2010, Downey re-teamed with director Jon Favreau and reprised his role as "Tony Stark/Iron Man" in the hugely successful sequel to the original film, Iron Man 2 (2010), starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson and Mickey Rourke.
Downey next starred in Due Date (2010), a comedy directed by Todd Phillips, in which he plays the role of an expectant father on a road trip racing to get back in time for the birth of his first child. Due Date (2010), starring The Hangover (2009)'s Zach Galifianakis, was released in November 2010.
Downey was honored by Time Magazine's "Time 100" in 2008, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. His laurels include two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe wins, numerous other award nominations and wins, and tremendous popular and commercial success, particularly in his roles as Sherlock Holmes and Tony Stark (the latter of which he has so far played in Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). For three consecutive years, from 2012 to 2015, Downey has topped the Forbes list of Hollywood's highest-paid actors, making an estimated $80 million in earnings between June 2014 and June 2015.
In 2005, Downey Jr. married Susan Downey, with whom he has two children. Downey also has another son, Indio Falconer Downey, born 1993, from his first marriage to Deborah Falconer, from whom he was officially divorced in 2004.
Robert has jump-started the Team Downey Production Company with wife Susan Downey.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Danny DeVito has amassed a formidable and versatile body of work as an actor, producer and director that spans the stage, television and film.
Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. was born on November 17, 1944, in Neptune, New Jersey, to Italian-American parents. His mother, Julia (Moccello), was a homemaker. His father, Daniel, Sr., was a small business owner whose ventures included a dry cleaning shop, a dairy outlet, a diner, and a pool hall.
While growing up in Asbury Park, his parents sent him to private schools. He attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel grammar school and Oratory Prep School. Following graduation in 1962, he took a job as a cosmetician at his sister's beauty salon. A year later, he enrolled at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts so he could learn more about cosmetology. While at the academy, he fell in love with acting and decided to further pursue an acting career. During this time, he met another aspiring actor Michael Douglas at the National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Connecticut. The two would later go on to collaborate on numerous projects. Soon after he also met an actress named Rhea Perlman. The two fell in love and moved in together. They were married in 1982 and had three children together.
In 1968, Danny landed his first part in a movie when he appeared as a thug in the obscure Dreams of Glass (1970). Despite this minor triumph, Danny became discouraged with the film industry and decided to focus on stage productions. He made his Off-Broadway debut in 1969 in "The Man With the Flower in His Mouth." He followed this up with stage roles in "The Shrinking Bride," and "Lady Liberty." In 1975, he was approached by director Milos Forman and Michael Douglas about appearing in the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which would star Jack Nicholson in the leading role. With box office success almost guaranteed and a chance for national exposure, Danny agreed to the role. The movie became a huge hit, both critically and financially, and still ranks today as one the greatest movies of all time. Unfortunately, the movie did very little to help Danny's career. In the years following, he was relegated to small movie roles and guest appearances on television shows. His big break came in 1978 when he auditioned for a role on an ABC sitcom pilot called Taxi (1978), which centered around taxi cab drivers at a New York City garage. Danny auditioned for the role of dispatcher Louie DePalma. At the audition, the producers told Danny that he needed to show more attitude in order to get the part. He then slammed down the script and yelled, "Who wrote this sh**?" The producers, realizing he was perfect for the part, brought him on board. The show was a huge success, running from 1978 to 1983.
Louie DePalma, played flawlessly by Danny, became one of the most memorable (and reviled) characters in television history. While he was universally hated by TV viewers, he was well-praised by critics, winning an Emmy award and being nominated three other times. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Danny maintained his status as a great character actor with memorable roles in movies like Romancing the Stone (1984), Ruthless People (1986), Throw Momma from the Train (1987) and Twins (1988). He also had a great deal of success behind the camera, directing movies like The War of the Roses (1989) and Hoffa (1992). In 1992, Danny was introduced to a new generation of moviegoers when he was given the role of The Penguin/Oswald Cobblepot in Tim Burton's highly successful Batman Returns (1992). This earned him a nomination for Best Villain at the MTV Movie Awards. That same year, along with his wife Rhea Perlman, Danny co-founded Jersey Films, which has produced many popular films and TV shows, including Pulp Fiction (1994), Get Shorty (1995), Man on the Moon (1999) and Erin Brockovich (2000). DeVito has many directing credits to his name as well, including Throw Momma from the Train (1987), The War of the Roses (1989), Hoffa (1992), Death to Smoochy (2002) and the upcoming St. Sebastian.
In 2006, he returned to series television in the FX comedy series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005). With a prominent role in a hit series, Devito's comic talents were now on display for a new generation of television viewers. In 2012, he provided the title voice role in Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (2012).
These days, he continues to work with many of today's top talents as an actor, director and producer.- 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.- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Matthew Paige Damon was born on October 8, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Kent Damon, a stockbroker, realtor and tax preparer, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. Matt has an older brother, Kyle, a sculptor. His father was of English and Scottish descent, and his mother is of Finnish and Swedish ancestry. The family lived in Newton until his parents divorced in 1973, when Damon and his brother moved with his mother to Cambridge. He grew up in a stable community, and was raised near actor Ben Affleck.
Damon attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and he performed in a number of theater productions during his time there. He attended Harvard University as an English major. While in Harvard, he kept on skipping classes to pursue acting projects, which included the TNT original film, Rising Son (1990), and prep-school drama, School Ties (1992). It was until his film, Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), was expected to be a big success that he decided to drop out of university completely. Arriving in Hollywood, Matt managed to get his first break with a part in the romantic comedy, Mystic Pizza (1988). However, the film did not do too well and his film career failed to take off. Not letting failure discourage him from acting, he went for another audition, and managed to get a starring role in School Ties (1992). Up next for Matt was a role as a soldier who had problems with drug-addiction in the movie, Courage Under Fire (1996). Matt had, in fact, lost forty pounds for his role which resulted in health problems.
The following year, he garnered accolades for Good Will Hunting (1997), a screenplay he had originally written for an English class at Harvard University. Good Will Hunting (1997) was nominated for 9 Academy Awards, one of which, Matt won for Best Original Screenplay along with Ben Affleck. In the year 1998, Matt played the title role in Steven Spielberg's film, Saving Private Ryan (1998), which was one of the most acclaimed films in that year. Matt had the opportunity of working with Tom Hanks and Vin Diesel while filming that movie. That same year, he starred as an earnest law student and reformed poker player in Rounders (1998), starring opposite Edward Norton and John Malkovich. The next year, Matt rejoined his childhood friend, Ben Affleck and fellow comedian, Chris Rock, in the comedy Dogma (1999).
Towards the end of 1999, Matt played "Tom Ripley", a working-class young man who tastes the good life and will do anything to live it. Both Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow also starred in the movie. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) earned mixed reviews from critics, but even so, Matt earned praise for his performance. Matt lent his voice to the animated movie, Titan A.E. (2000) in the year 2000, which also earned mixed reviews from the public. He also starred in two other movies, All the Pretty Horses (2000) and the golf comedy-drama, The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), starring alongside Will Smith. In the year 2003, he signed on to star in The Informant! (2009) by Steven Soderbergh and the Farrelly Brothers' Stuck on You (2003). He also starred in Gerry (2002), a film he co-wrote with his friends, Gus Van Sant and Casey Affleck. One of Matt's most recognizable work to date is his role in the "Bourne" movie franchise. He plays an amnesiac assassin, "Jason Bourne", in The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). Another praised role is that as "Linus Caldwell" in the "Ocean's" movie franchise. He had the opportunity to star opposite George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Don Cheadle in Ocean's Eleven (2001). The successful crime comedy-drama eventually had two other sequels, Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). Among other highly acclaimed movies that Matt has been a part of are Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm (2005), George Clooney's Syriana (2005), Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006) and Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd (2006).
In his personal life, Matt is now happily married to Argentine-born Luciana Barroso, whom he met in Miami, where she was working as a bartender. They married in a private civil ceremony on December 9, 2005, at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau. The couple have four daughters Alexia, Luciana's daughter from a previous relationship, as well as Isabella, Gia and Stella. Matt is a big fan of the Boston Red Sox and he tries to attend their games whenever possible. He has also formed great friendships with his Ocean's co-stars, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, whom he works on charity projects with. He and actor Ben Affleck have remained lifelong friends and collaborators.- Actor
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Initially not a science fiction fan, theatre actor Anthony Daniels was persuaded by his agent to meet George Lucas for the casting of C-3PO in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). He went on to perform the character, both his voice and body in the suit, for all the episodic Star Wars films produced. Additionally, he performed the voice of the character for the radio serial based on the original trilogy and the animated series Star Wars: Droids (1985), Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003), Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008), related series Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) and Star Wars: Rebels (2014).
For Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), he wore a blue Spandex suit, as the android is incomplete in the film and ultimately produced in CGI. In addition to playing the golden droid, he appeared in a live action cameo in the nightclub scene of Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) and opera scene in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005). As C-3PO, he played a small role in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) and The Lego Movie (2014).- Director
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Joe Dante is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art. After a stint as a film reviewer, he began his filmmaking apprenticeship in 1974 as trailer editor for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. He made his directorial debut in 1976 with Hollywood Boulevard (1976) (co-directed with Allan Arkush), a thinly disguised spoof of New World exploitation pictures, shot in ten days for $60,000.
In 1977 Dante made his solo debut as a film director with Piranha (1978), which went on to become one of the company's biggest hits and was distributed throughout the rest of the world by United Artists. During his tenure at New World, Dante edited Ron Howard's directorial debut Grand Theft Auto (1977) and co-wrote the original story for Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979).
For Avco-Embassy Dante next directed the highly praised werewolf thriller The Howling (1981), followed by the It's a Good Life segment of the episodic Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).
Having worked with Steven Spielberg on Twilight Zone, Dante was chosen to helm one of the first Amblin Productions for Warner Bros. Gremlins (1984) became a runaway hit and grossed more than $200 million worldwide.
Dante followed up with Explorers (1985) for Paramount, a sci-fi fantasy about three kids who build their own spaceship, and then Innerspace (1987) for Guber/Peters, Amblin and Warner Bros., an action comedy in which miniaturized test pilot Dennis Quaid is injected into the body of supermarket clerk Martin Short.
Tom Hanks starred in Dante's next film for Imagine/Universal, The 'Burbs (1989), which was followed by Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) for Warner Bros. in 1990. Matinee (1993) featuring John Goodman as a huckster showman premiering his new horror film during the Cuban Missile Crisis, was a production of Dante and partner Michael Finnell's Renfield Productions for Universal in 1993.
Dreamworks/Universal's Small Soldiers was released in 1998, followed in 2003 by Warner Bros. Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) featuring one of Dante's favorite actors, Bugs Bunny.
Dante's Homecoming (2005), debuted in December 2005 to rave reviews from critics and audiences alike and was named to numerous "Top 10" critics lists. The Sitges and Brussels International Film Festivals both honored Homecoming with Special Jury Recognition Awards, and the New Yorker called it the best political film of 2005. More recent work includes The Screwfly Solution (2006), and Boo (2007). His new 3D thriller, The Hole (2009), for Bold Films recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it garnered the first-ever award for Best 3D Feature.
Dante also produces the critically-acclaimed webisode/mobile phone series, Trailers from Hell.
Along the way Dante contributed several comedy segments to the multi-part Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) spoof produced by John Landis, and directed various episodes of the tv series Amazing Stories (1985), The Twilight Zone (1985), Police Squad! (1982), Night Visions (2001) and Picture Windows (1994). He also directed the network pilots for The Osiris Chronicles (1998) and the NBC series Eerie, Indiana (1991), on which he was creative consultant throughout its run.
Dante received Cable Ace nominations for his direction of Showtime's Runaway Daughters (1994) and HBO's The Second Civil War (1997).- Producer
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- Actor
Lawrence Gene David is an American comedian, writer, actor, director, and television producer. He and Jerry Seinfeld created the television sitcom Seinfeld, on which David was head writer and executive producer for the first seven seasons. He gained further recognition for the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, which he created and stars in as a semi-fictionalized version of himself. He has written or co-written the stories of every episode since its pilot episode in 1999.
David's work on Seinfeld won him two Primetime Emmy Awards in 1993, for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Comedy Series. Formerly a comedian, he went into television comedy, writing and starring in ABC's Fridays, and writing briefly for Saturday Night Live. He has been nominated for 27 Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He was voted by fellow comedians and comedy insiders as the 23rd greatest comedy star ever in a 2004 British poll to select "The Comedian's Comedian", and received the Laurel Award for TV Writing Achievement by the Writers Guild of America in 2010.
Since 2015, he has made recurring guest appearances on Saturday Night Live, where he impersonates 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.- Actor
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English actor Warwick Davis was born in Epsom, Surrey, England, the son of Susan J. (Pain) and Ashley Davis, an insurance broker. Davis was born with the condition spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenital (SED), which caused his dwarfism. He was educated at City of London Freemen's School. When he was 11 years old, his grandmother heard a radio appeal for people under four feet tall to appear in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983). A huge Star Wars fan, Davis auditioned successfully and was cast as an extra, playing an Ewok. Kenny Baker was cast as lead Ewok Wicket, but fell ill so George Lucas chose Davis to replace him. The film was a smash hit, and Davis went on to reprise his role as Wicket in further TV projects - The Ewok Adventure (1984) and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985).
Davis next big role came with a part specifically written for him, as the titular hero in Willow (1988). Other successes followed with roles in such projects as Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1989) and two distinctly different film series - the 'Harry Potter' and 'Leprechaun' film series. In 2006, he appeared in a cameo role in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's hit sitcom Extras (2005), which led to the pair writing a series specifically for Davis, the comic mockumentary Life's Too Short (2011).
Davis, along with his father-in-law Peter Burroughs, is also the director of an acting agency for very short and tall actors called Willow Management. He is married to Samantha Davis and they have a son and a daughter.- Producer
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Emmy-winning talk show host Ellen Lee DeGeneres was born in Metairie, Louisiana, a New Orleans suburb. She is the daughter of Betty DeGeneres (née Elizabeth Jane Pfeffer), a speech therapist, and Elliott Everett DeGeneres, Jr., an insurance agent. Her brother is musician and producer Vance DeGeneres. Her parents divorced when she was 16 years old. Her mother remarried, and her new husband, salesman Roy Gruessendorf, moved the family to Atlanta, Texas.
After graduating from Atlanta High School in 1976, Ellen attended the University of New Orleans as a communications major, but she dropped out after one semester. She held a wide variety of jobs until she turned to stand-up comedy, making her bones at small clubs and coffeehouses before working her way up to emcee Clyde's Comedy Club by 1981. Her comedy was described as a distaff version of Bob Newhart. Beginning in the early 1980s, she toured nationally and was named the funniest person in America after winning a competition sponsored by the cable network Showtime. This led to better gigs, including her first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) in 1986.
Though DeGeneres's early forays into series television were not successful (she appeared as a supporting player in two short-lived TV situation comedies in the period 1989-92, Open House (1989) and Laurie Hill (1992)), she scored a hit headlining her own 1994 sitcom on ABC "These Friends of Mine" (renamed Ellen (1994) after its first season). She made TV history in April 1997, when her character, and DeGeneres personally, revealed that she was a lesbian. However, the show was canceled the following season due to declining ratings, after which DeGeneres returned to the stand-up circuit. In 2001, DeGeneres launched a new series, The Ellen Show (2001), on CBS, but it suffered from poor ratings and was canceled.
Redemption as a television artist came in 2003, when DeGeneres's daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show (2003), proved to be both a critical hit and a commercial success. Along with good ratings, the show has won unprecedented kudos from the industry, winning 15 Emmy Awards in its first three seasons on the air and becoming the first talk show in TV history to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show in its first three seasons.
DeGeneres has also made a name for herself as a host of awards shows. She hosted the Grammy Awards in 1996 and 1997, as well as the Primetime Emmy Awards in 2001 and 2005. In February 2007, she had the ultimate TV awards show gig, hosting the Oscars, which she hosted again in 2014.- Actor
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John DiMaggio is an American actor, voice actor, comedian, and producer from Plainfield, New Jersey. He is best known for voicing Bender on Futurama, Jake the Dog on Adventure Time, King Zøg on Disenchantment, The Joker from Batman: Under the Red Hood and Jerry Jumbeaux Jr from Zootopia. He can also be seen in Better Call Saul, Mythic Quest, The Newsroom, Modern Family, The League, Historical Roasts on Netflix and The Little Fockers. John had his own comedy show on MTV named after his comedy duo called Red Johnny and the Round Guy, and did stand up at home and abroad in the 1990s, with the likes of Dave Chapelle, Jeff Ross, Dave Attell, Greer Barnes and Dane Cook. He has been married to actress Kate Miller since 2014. He resides in both New York and Los Angeles.- Actor
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Peter Dinklage is an American actor. Since his breakout role in The Station Agent (2003), he has appeared in numerous films and theatre plays. Since 2011, Dinklage has portrayed Tyrion Lannister in the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011) . For this he won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Series, Miniseries or Television Film in 2011.
Peter Hayden Dinklage was born in Morristown, New Jersey, to Diane (Hayden), an elementary school teacher, and John Carl Dinklage, an insurance salesman. He is of German, Irish, and English descent. In 1991, he received a degree in drama from Bennington College and began his career. His exquisite theatre work that expresses brilliantly the unique range of his acting qualities, includes remarkable performances full of profoundness, charisma, intelligence, sensation and insights in plays such as "The Killing Act", "Imperfect Love", Ivan Turgenev's "A Month in the Country" as well as the title roles in William Shakespeare's "Richard III" and in Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya".
Peter Dinklage received acclaim for his first film, Living in Oblivion (1995), where he played an actor frustrated with the limited and caricatured roles offered to actors who have dwarfism. In 2003, he starred in The Station Agent (2003), written and directed by Tom McCarthy. The movie received critical praise as well as Peter Dinklage's work including nominations such as for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role at the "Screen Actors Guild" and Best Male Lead at the "Film Independent Spirit Awards". One of his next roles has been the one of Miles Finch, an acclaimed children's book author, in Elf (2003). Find Me Guilty (2006), the original English Death at a Funeral (2007), its American remake Death at a Funeral (2010), Penelope (2006), The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) are also included in his brilliant work concerning feature films.
His fine work in television also includes shows such as Entourage (2004), Life as We Know It (2004), Threshold (2005) and Nip/Tuck (2003). In 2011, the primary role of Tyrion Lannister, a man of sharp wit and bright spirit, in Game of Thrones (2011), was incarnated with unique greatness in Dinklage's unparalleled performance. The series is an adaptation of author George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and his work has received widespread praise, also highlighted by his receiving of the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series at The 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards (2011), The 67th Primetime Emmy Awards (2015), The 70th Primetime Emmy Awards (2018) and The 71st Primetime Emmy Awards (2019) as well as of the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television at [error].
Dinklage, among others, has also voiced Captain Gutt in Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) and The Mighty Eagle in The Angry Birds Movie (2016), starred in the comedy horror film Knights of Badassdom (2013) while his tour-de-force interpretations as a multifarious "chameleon" of substantial mastery and artistic generosity also include film and TV gems such as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), Three Christs (2017) and I Think We're Alone Now (2018).- Producer
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Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney, a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of his childhood. At age 16, during World War I, he faked his age to join the American Red Cross. He soon returned home, where he won a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. There, he met a fellow animator, Ub Iwerks. The two soon set up their own company. In the early 1920s, they made a series of animated shorts for the Newman theater chain, entitled "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams". Their company soon went bankrupt, however.
The two then went to Hollywood in 1923. They started work on a new series, about a live-action little girl who journeys to a world of animated characters. Entitled the "Alice Comedies", they were distributed by M.J. Winkler (Margaret). Walt was backed up financially only by Winkler and his older brother Roy O. Disney, who remained his business partner for the rest of his life. Hundreds of "Alice Comedies" were produced between 1923 and 1927, before they lost popularity.
Walt then started work on a series around a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This series was successful, but in 1928, Walt discovered that M.J. Winkler and her husband, Charles Mintz, had stolen the rights to the character away from him. They had also stolen all his animators, except for Ub Iwerks. While taking the train home, Walt started doodling on a piece of paper. The result of these doodles was a mouse named Mickey. With only Walt and Ub to animate, and Walt's wife Lillian Disney (Lilly) and Roy's wife Edna Disney to ink in the animation cells, three Mickey Mouse cartoons were quickly produced. The first two didn't sell, so Walt added synchronized sound to the last one, Steamboat Willie (1928), and it was immediately picked up. With Walt as the voice of Mickey, it premiered to great success. Many more cartoons followed. Walt was now in the big time, but he didn't stop creating new ideas.
In 1929, he created the 'Silly Symphonies', a cartoon series that didn't have a continuous character. They were another success. One of them, Flowers and Trees (1932), was the first cartoon to be produced in color and the first cartoon to win an Oscar; another, Three Little Pigs (1933), was so popular it was often billed above the feature films it accompanied. The Silly Symphonies stopped coming out in 1939, but Mickey and friends, (including Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and plenty more), were still going strong and still very popular.
In 1934, Walt started work on another new idea: a cartoon that ran the length of a feature film. Everyone in Hollywood was calling it "Disney's Folly", but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was anything but, winning critical raves, the adoration of the public, and one big and seven little special Oscars for Walt. Now Walt listed animated features among his ever-growing list of accomplishments. While continuing to produce cartoon shorts, he also started producing more of the animated features. Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942) were all successes; not even a flop like Fantasia (1940) and a studio animators' strike in 1941 could stop Disney now.
In the mid 1940s, he began producing "packaged features", essentially a group of shorts put together to run feature length, but by 1950 he was back with animated features that stuck to one story, with Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953). In 1950, he also started producing live-action films, with Treasure Island (1950). These began taking on greater importance throughout the 50s and 60s, but Walt continued to produce animated features, including Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).
In 1955 he opened a theme park in southern California: Disneyland. It was a place where children and their parents could take rides, just explore, and meet the familiar animated characters, all in a clean, safe environment. It was another great success. Walt also became one of the first producers of films to venture into television, with his series The Magical World of Disney (1954) which he began in 1954 to promote his theme park. He also produced The Mickey Mouse Club (1955) and Zorro (1957). To top it all off, Walt came out with the lavish musical fantasy Mary Poppins (1964), which mixed live-action with animation. It is considered by many to be his magnum opus. Even after that, Walt continued to forge onward, with plans to build a new theme park and an experimental prototype city in Florida.
He did not live to see the culmination of those plans, however; in 1966, he developed lung cancer brought on by his lifelong chain-smoking. He died of a heart attack following cancer surgery on December 15, 1966 at age 65. But not even his death, it seemed, could stop him. Roy carried on plans to build the Florida theme park, and it premiered in 1971 under the name Walt Disney World. His company continues to flourish, still producing animated and live-action films and overseeing the still-growing empire started by one man: Walt Disney, who will never be forgotten.- Writer
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Steve Ditko was an American comics writer and artist of Rusyn descent. He is better known for co-creating the superheroes Spider-Man/Peter Parker and Doctor Strange/Stephen Strange for Marvel Comics. He created many other characters for various publishing companies. Among his better known creations are Blue Beetle/Ted Kord, Captain Atom/Allen Adam, the Creeper/Jack Ryder, Hawk and Dove/Hank Hall and Don Hall, Mr. A/Rex Graine, the Question/Charles Victor Szasz, Shade the Changing Man/Rac Shade, Ditko was an adherent of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand (1905-1982). Her work had a significant influence on his own work, which often reflected Objectivism's belief in moral absolutism.
In 1927, Ditko was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a city located 56 miles (90 kilometers) to the east of Pittsburgh. His parents were master carpenter Stephen Ditko and his homemaker wife Anna. Both parents were first-generation American Rusyn immigrants from Czechoslovakia. Steve was the second of four children born to the Ditko family, and he was raised as a typical member of a working class family.
Stephen Ditko, Steve's father, loved newspaper comic strips. He introduced his son to the work of comic strip artists of the 1930s and 1940s. The Ditko family's favorite comic strip was the adventure series "Prince Valiant" by Hal Foster (1892-1982). As Steve grew up, so did his interest in both comic strips and comic books. His favorite characters during his adolescence were Batman/Bruce Wayne and the Spirit/Denny Colt.
Ditko received his secondary education at the Greater Johnstown High School, and graduated in 1945. In October 1945, Ditko enlisted in the United States Army. He spend his military service in Allied-occupied Germany. While there, Ditko drew comic strips for a military newspaper. It was his first comics-related work, though he lacked formal training at the time.
Following his discharge, Ditko had the option to receive a college education, thanks to the G.I. Bill. The G. I. Bill was a law that provided a range of benefits to returning veterans, including the payments of tuition and living expenses needed for them to attend high school, college, or vocational school. In 1950, Ditko chose to enroll at the art school "Cartoonists and Illustrators School" (later known as the School of Visual Arts) , located in New York City.
While studying at art school, Ditko found a mentor in veteran comic book artist Jerry Robinson (1922-2011). Robinson had been one of the main artists of the "Batman" series, and was credited as the co-creator of Robin/Dick Grayson and the Joker. Robinson found Ditko to be a dedicated student, and a very hard worker. He encouraged Ditko to write his own stories and to create his own characters,
By 1953, Ditko had graduated and began work as a professional comic book artist. His first work was illustrating the science fiction story "Stretching Things" for Stanmor Publications. Stanmor sold this story to the comic book publisher Farrell Publications, which first published it in 1954.
Ditko's second professional story, but first published work, was the romance story "Paper Romance" . It was published by Gillmor Magazines in October, 1953.
Ditko was soon after hired by the studio operated by veteran comic book writers and artists Jack Kirby (1917-1994) and Joe Simon (1913-2011). While working for them, Ditko received additional training by his co-worker Mort Meskin (1916-1995). According to an interview, Ditko admired Meskin's ability to create detailed drawing compositions without cluttering the image.
Some of Ditko's earliest known work was published by Prize Comics, an imprint of Crestwood Publications which was co-headed by Kirby and Simon. In 1954, Ditko was first hired by the publisher Charlton Comics, a low-budget company located in Derby, Connecticut. His first story for them was a vampire story, titled "Cinderella". He continued working for Charlton on-and-off until 1986, when the company shut down.
In 1954, Ditko contracted tuberculosis and had to take a hiatus from his comic book work. He recuperated at his family's house in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. By 1955, Ditko had recovered and he moved back to New York City. In 1956, Ditko was hired by Atlas Comics, Marvel Comics' predecessor. He mostly illustrated surreal stories, written by Atlas' writer-editor Stan Lee (1922-2018).
Ditko's work for Atlas Comics was published in its anthology titles, including "Amazing Adventures", "Journey into Mystery", "Strange Tales", "Strange Worlds", "Tales of Suspense" and "Tales to Astonish". Ditko's stories were sufficiently were sufficiently popular for him to be assigned as the main artist of "Amazing Adventures" in December, 1961. The anthology was renamed to "Amazing Adult Fantasy", to reflect its publication of stories that were more sophisticated that Atlas/Marvel's typical output.
Ditko's stories for Atlas and Marvel Comics were composed according to the company's "Marvel Method" of writer-artist collaboration. The writer provided a brief outline of the plot, while the artist fleshed out the story and illustrated it. This gave Ditko significant creative influence on any story, though he did not receive a credit as a co-writer or co-plotter.
In the early 1960s, Stan Lee wanted to create a new teenage hero, called Spider-Man. He first gained permission to create such a story by his publisher Martin Goodman (1908-1992). He then had to design the new character, and then gave the assignment to his main artist at the time: Jack Kirby. Kirby created a 6-page-long draft for the character's first story, but Lee rejected his designs. He then gave the assignment of designing Spider-Man to Ditko, who was the company's second most prominent artist at the time. Ditko's version of the character was accepted by Lee.
Ditko created Spider-Man's original costume. He incorporated a face mask which hid the character's facial features, a costume with no shoes that would allow the character to cling on walls, and a hidden wrist-shooter. Ditko also created the character's "web gimmick" and his spider signal. The idea of webs coming out of the character's hands was credited to Ditko's roommate at the time, the fetish artist Eric Stanton (1926-1999).
Spider-Man's origin story was published in "Amazing Fantasy" #15 (August 1962), the final issue of the anthology series. It became a top-seller, so Marvel Comics decided to give Spidey (as the character was nicknamed) his own series: "The Amazing Spider-Man" vol. 1 (March, 1963-November, 1998). Ditko was the new magazine's main artist for its first 38 issues (March, 1963-July, 1966).
Besides Spidey himself, Ditko co-created most of his early supporting cast and early foes. His creations included (in order) Aunt May/May Reilly Parker, Uncle Ben/Ben Parker, the Burglar, Crusher Hogan/Joseph Hogan, Flash Thompson/Eugene Thompson, Elizabeth Allan, Maxie Shiffman, Raymond Warren, Bluebird/Sally Avril, and Seymour O'Reilly (all introduced in Amazing Fantasy #15),J. Jonah Jameson (issue #1), Man-Wolf/John Jameson (issue #1), Chameleon/Dmitri Smerdyakov (issue #1),Vulture/Adrian Toomes (issue #2), Tinkerer/Phineas Mason (issue #2), Doctor Octopus/Otto Octavius (issue #3), Betty Brant (issue #4), Sandman/Flint Marko (issue #4), Principal Davis/Andrew Davis (issue #4), Lizard/Dr. Curtis Connors (issue #6), the Living Brain (issue #8), Charlie Murphy/Charles Murphy (issue #8), Electro/Maxwell "Max" Dillon (issue #9), Dr. Nicholas Bromwell (issue #9), Montana/Jackson Brice (issue #10), Fancy Dan/Daniel Brito (issue #10), the Ox/Raymond Bloch (#issue #10), the Big Man/Frederick Foswell (issue #10), Crime-Master/Bennett Brant (issue #11), Mysterio/Quentin Beck (issue #13), Green Goblin/Norman Osborn (issue #14), Kraven the Hunter/Sergei Kravinoff (issue #15), Anna Watson (issue #15), the Great Gambonnos/Ernest Gambonno and Luigi Gambonno (issue #16), Wilson Allan (issue #17), Hobgoblin/Ned Leeds (issue #18), the Scorpion/Mac Gargan (issue #20), Princess Python/Zelda DuBois (issue #22), Lucky Lobo/Francisco Lobo (issue #23), Mary Jane Watson (issue #25), Professor Spencer Smythe (issue #25), Spider-Slayer (issue #25), Crime-Master/Nicholas "Nick"/ "Lucky" Lewis (issue #26), Barney Bushkin (issue #27), the Molten Man/Mark Raxton (issue #28), Doris Raxton Allan (issue #28), Prowler/Cat Burglar/ the Cat (issue #30), Green Goblin/Harry Osborn (issue #31), Gwen Stacy (issue #31), the Jackal/Professor Miles Warren (issue #31), Dean Corliss (issue #31), the Looter/Meteor Man/Norton Fester (issue #36), Sally Green (issue #36), Robot Master/Gaunt/Professor Mendel Stromm (issue #37), Max Young (issue #37), and Guy Named Joe/Joe Smith (issue #38).
Ditko eventually demanded credit for his plot contributions, and Stan Lee complied. Fros issue #25 onward, Ditko started receiving plot credits. One of the most celebrated issues plotted by Ditko was issue #33, titled "If This Be My Destiny...!", In it Spider-Man is pinned down by heavy machinery, and is plagued by visions of having failed to rescue his uncle and being then unable to rescue his aunt. He eventually escapes through sheer force of will. The story has been repeatedly cited as one of Marvel Comics' best stories.
While continuing his work on Spider-Man, Ditko co-created Dr. Strange. The character was introduced in "Strange Tales" #110 (July 1963), and continued to appear regularly in the magazine. Ditko's Doctor Strange artwork was acclaimed "for its surrealistic mystical landscapes and increasingly psychedelic visuals". It became a favorite series for college students of the 1960s. Dr. Strange was a magic user whose adventures took place in "bizarre worlds and twisting dimensions".
In the Dr. Strange series, Ditko introduced some of the earlier cosmic characters used by Marvel. A multi-part story in "Strange Tales" #130-146 (March 1965 - July 1966) introduced Eternity, a living personification of the universe,
Besides Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, Ditko contributed stories for other Marvel characters of the era. He drew stories of the Hulk/Bruce Banner and Iron Man/Tony Stark. Ditko is credited for designing the Leader/Samuel Sterns in 1964, who has since served as the Hulk's primary adversary.
In 1966, Ditko decided to quit working for Marvel Comics, though he never explained the reasons for his decision. His relationship with Stan Lee had deteriorated sometime earlier, and they were no longer on speaking terms. Art and editorial changes in their stories were handled through intermediaries. According to John Romita Sr. (1930-), Ditko's replacement in the Spider-Man series, Ditko and Lee had disagreed on how to handle their characters.
After leaving Marvel Comics, Ditko returned to Charlton Comics. The pay rates at Charlton were considerably lower than Marvel's, but its creators enjoyed more creative freedom over their stories. Between 1965 and 1968, Ditko was the main creative force behind the stories of Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, and the Question.
From 1966 to 1967, Ditko also worked for Warren Publishing. The publisher specialized in comic magazines, and Ditko contributed 16 stories for the anthology series "Creepy" and "Eerie".
In 1967, Ditko created the creator-owned character Mister A. The character was inspired by Objectivism philosophy, and often delivered lethal justice to criminals. The first Mister A story was published in "witzend", an an underground comic which handled creator-owned stories by comic book professionals. Its original publisher was veteran comic book artist Wally Wood (1927-1981). Ditko regularly worked on Mister A stories for various publishers between 1967 and 1978. He eventually published the penultimate Mister A story in 2000, and the ultimate story in the series in 2009.
In 1968, Ditko was hired by DC Comics. His first major creation for the company was the Creeper, with the character introduced in "Showcase" #73 (April 1968). The sibling duo Hawk and Dove were then introduced in Showcase #75 (June 1968). The Creeper graduated to his own comic book series called "Beware the Creeper: (June 1968 - April 1969), and Ditko handled all 6 of its issues.
In 1969, Ditko resigned from DC Comics. He contributed a story to the first issue of Wally Wood's series "Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon" (1969), but otherwise worked near-exclusively for Charlton Comics in the early from 1969 to the mid-1970s. In 1974, Ditko became the main artist for the stories featuring Liberty Belle/Caroline Dean.
In 1975, Ditko was hired by the short-lived publisher Atlas/Seaboard Comics (1974-1975). The company was owned by Martin Goodman, Marvel Comics' former owner. Ditko co-created a character called Destructor, which was given his own series. Ditko handled the art for all 4 of its issues (February-August, 1975). He also worked on 2 issues for the series Tiger-Man, and a single issue for Morlock 2001. Atlas/Seabord shut down in 1975.
In 1975, Ditko returned to DC Comics. His first major work there was creating the antihero Stalker/Elpis, who briefly received his own sword-and-sorcery themed series. Ditko handled all 4 of its issues. He also created the character Shade, the Changing Man, and handled all issues of his short-lived series (1977-1978).
Besides working on his own characters for DC Comics, Ditko contributed stories for its other characters. He worked on stories for Etrigan the Demon, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and Man-Bat/Robert Kirkland "Kirk" Langstrom. Several of his stories were published in anthology titles. In 1980, Ditko became the main artist for the stories featuring Starman/Prince Gavyn, a new extraterrestrial superhero. His stories only covered the first year of Starman's series.
In 1979, Ditko was hired by Marvel Comics again. He took over the series "Machine Man", featuring Jack Kirby's character Machine Man/Aaron Stack. The character was a sentient robot. Ditko also wrote stories for Captain Universe and the Micronauts, space-faring heroes. In 1980, Ditko co-created a new hero: Dragon Lord/Tako Shamara. The character failed to caught on with readers.
From 1984 to 1986, Ditko drew a series featuring the character of Rom the Space Knight/Rom of Galador, another extraterrestrial superhero. The long-running series ended in 1986. In 1988, Ditko co-created a new teenage superhero for Marvel, called Speedball/Robbie Baldwin. Speedball graduated to his own series, which lasted for 10 issues. Ditko was the series main artist, and contributed most of its plots. Following the series' cancellation, Speedball became a featured character in the team book "New Warriors".
While Ditko mostly worked for Marvel Comics during the 1980s, he also contributed for Pacific Comics, Eclipse Comics, First Comics, and Archie Comics. He contributed stories for Archie's resident superheroes, including the Fly/Thomas "Tommy" Troy, Flygirl/Kim Brand, and Jaguar/Ralph Hardy.
In 1982, Ditko was on contract with Western Publishing to serve as the main artist for a new science-fiction series called "Astral Frontiers". The series ended in development hell, and Western stopped publishing comics in 1984.
In the early 1990s, Ditko was hired by Valiant Comics to contribute stories for its stable of characters. Ditko worked on stories for "Magnus, Robot Fighter", Solar/Phil Seleski, and X-O Manowar/Aric of Dacia.
Ditko contributed an Iron Man and Dr. Doom crossover story in the anthology Marvel Super-Heroes vol. 2, #8 (January, 1992). This story introduced new super-heroine Squirrel Girl/Doreen Allene Green. The character eventually gained a cult following, joined the Great Lakes Avengers (an Avengers' spin-off team), and graduated to her own series. She was among the last original characters Ditko created for Marvel Comics, and the last one to become popular.
In 1995, Ditko served as the main artist for a comic-book miniseries featuring Phantom 2040/Kit Walker, the 24th incarnation of the Phantom. The series was an adaptation of a then-popular French-American animated series. It was among Ditko's large mainstream works. His other commercial works of the 1990s included one-shot publications for Dark Horse Comics, Defiant Comics, and Fantagraphics Books.
In 1998, Ditko wrote a few stories featuring Iron Man, Namor, the Sub-Mariner, and the Power Rangers. Then he mostly retired from mainstream comics. His final mainstream work was a 5-page-long story featuring the New Gods. It was intended for publication c. 2000, but was not published by DC Comics until 2008.
During the last decades of his life, Ditko mostly worked on creator-owned stories. Most of them were published by his long-time associate Robin Snyder, a former editor of Charlton Comics. Most of these works did not receive a wide circulation. In 2008, Ditko published the essay book "The Avenging Mind", and a collection of editorial cartoons under the title "Ditko, Etc...,".
In 2010, Ditko helped in the publication of reprint collections featuring his work from the 1970s. At about the same time, DC and Marvel published a number of previously unpublished stories by Ditko. Ditko had sold the stories to the two publishers in earlier decades, but they were kept in their respective inventories.
In the 2010s, Ditko continued to work in his apartment within Manhattan's Midtown West neighborhood. He lived alone, having never married and having no known children. In June 2018, Ditko was found dead within his apartment. The cause of death was a myocardial infarction (heart attack),itself caused by arteriosclerotic and hypertensive cardiovascular disease. Ditko was 90 years old at the time of death.
In 2019, Ditko's last essay was published posthumously. His last printed words concerned his thoughts about his friends and foes: "Here's to those who wish me well, and those that don't can go to hell."- Actor
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Cory Doctorow was born on 17 July 1971 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is an actor and writer, known for Little Brother, Silicon Valley (2014) and Hello from the Magic Tavern (2015).- Director
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Richard Donner was born on 24 April 1930 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He was a director and producer, known for Superman (1978), Ladyhawke (1985) and Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (1980). He was married to Lauren Shuler Donner. He died on 5 July 2021 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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Best known as Scotty in Star Trek he was educated at High School in Sarnia, Ontario, where he acted in school productions.
When WWII began he joined the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery eventually obtaining the rank of Captain. He was wounded on D-Day, suffering severe damage to his right middle finger which was removed ahead of first knuckle, then became a flying observer for the rest of the war. His daring aerial maneuvers flying in an observation plane got him known as the craziest pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Once the war ended, he found himself on many other adventures although none of them would come anywhere close to what he experienced before.
He would become a popular voice actor who participated in thousands of CBC programs spread across both radio and television.
Later on, during the mid-1960's, he would develop into the Star Trek great we now know as Montgomery Scott, "Scotty".
In 1946 he won a 2 year scholarship to the Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York City and from there went to teach for three years.
In 1953 he returned to Canada and lived in Toronto for 8 years acting on radio, television and some films before moving to Hollywood where he also appeared in a number of popular television series such as the Canadian version of The Howdy Doody Show, Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, R.C.M.P., Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, Hazel, The Gallant Men, Bonanza, The Richard Boone Show, The Outer Limits, Ben Casey, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Fugitive, Laredo, Bewitched, The Virginian, The Man from Uncle, The F.B.I., Peyton Place, Daniel Boone, Marcus Welby M.D., Fantasy Island, Magnum P.I., Danger Bay and The Bold and The Beautiful, while in between he made a return to the stage for various plays.
James Doohan departed the scene at the age of 85 on 20 July 2005.
Many current-day engineers credit Scotty with being their childhood inspiration and in honour of his memory a portion of Doohan's ashes were sprinkled in space by the rocket SpaceLoft XL.- Actor
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Michael Dorn is an American actor from Texas. He is best known for playing Worf in the "Star Trek" franchise, the first Klingon character to be part of a television series' main cast. Dorn played the character regularly from 1987 to 2002, appearing in four films and 272 television episodes. Dorn has had more episode appearances than any other actor in the franchise's main cast.
In 1952, Dorn was born in Luling, Texas. Luling was a small city, established as a railroad town in 1874. It used to be visited by cattle drivers on the Chisholm Trail. In the 1950 census, the city had a population of about 4,300 people. Dorn's parents were Fentress Dorn, Jr. and his wife Allie Lee Nauls. Relatively little is known about his family background.
The Dorn family eventually moved to California. Dorn was primarily raised in Pasadena, a city located 11 miles (17.7 kilometers) northeast of Downtown Los Angeles. He eventually attended Pasadena City College, a community college located in Pasadena. He studied radio and television production, though he had not planned on becoming an actor.
Following his graduation, Dorn initially pursued a career as a rock musician. He served as a member of several California-based music bands, though fame eluded him. In 1976, Dorn made his film debut in the sports film "Rocky". He had an uncredited role as the bodyguard of boxer Apollo Creed (played by Carl Weathers).
Dorn had his next film role in the science fiction-horror film "Demon Seed" (1977), which depicted the forced impregnation of a woman by a sentient computer. He had a small television role in the short-lived soap opera "W.E.B. " (1978), which depicted the behind-the-scenes activities of the personnel of a television network.
Dorn came to the attention of a television producer, who learned that the novice actor had no formal training. The producer helped introduce Dorn to a talent agent, who arranged for some acting lessons for Dorn. Dorn was trained for six months by the acting coach Charles Erich Conrad (1925 - 2009).
Dorn received his first regular television role when cast as officer Jebediah Turner in the crime drama series "CHiPs". The series depicted the activities of the California Highway Patrol (CHP). He was a series regular from 1979 to 1982. For most of the 1980s, Dorn played bit parts and one-shot characters in various television series.
In 1985, Dorn had a small part in the neo-noir thriller "Jagged Edge". The film depicts an affair between defense lawyer Teddy Barnes (played by Glenn Close) and a client who is accused of murdering his wife. Barnes is increasingly convinced that her lover is manipulating her. The film was a modest box office hit, and received decent reviews.
Dorn received his big break as an actor when cast as Worf in the science fiction television series "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987-1994). It was the third television series in the "Star Trek" franchise and featured an entirely new cast of characters. Klingons had traditionally been portrayed as a warrior race with an antagonistic relationship with the United Federation of Planets. Worf was depicted as an orphaned Klingon who was raised by human adoptive parents. He had chosen to follow a career in the Federation's Starfeet, and his upbringing resulted in him having unique cultural traits. Worf turned out to be one of the series' most popular characters.
In 1991, Dorn appeared in the film "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" which depicted the cast of the original Star Trek series. Dorn played the role of a namesake ancestor of Worf, who was employed as a defense lawyer. He next played Worf himself in the film "Star Trek Generations" (1994), which featured the cast of the third series. The film was successful and was followed by three sequels. Dorn played Worf in three subsequent films: "Star Trek: First Contact" (1996), "Star Trek: Insurrection" (1998), and "Star Trek: Nemesis" (2002).
In 1995, Dorn (as Worf) was added to the main cast of the television series "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (1993-1999), the fourth "Star Trek" television series. The addition to the cast was part of an effort to boost the series' ratings. The series introduced a romantic relationship between Worf and chief science officer Jadzia Dax (played by Terry Farrell). The two characters were married in the series' 6th season, though the marriage ended with Jadzia's death in the season finale. The series was canceled in 1999, ending Dorn's regular appearances in "Star Trek" television series.
During the 1990s, Dorn started regularly working as a voice actor in animated television series. Among his notable voice roles in this period were the cyborg gargoyle Coldstone in the urban fantasy series "Gargoyles" (1994-1997), Gorgon the Inhuman in the superhero series "Fantastic Four" (1994-1996), and both the villainous god Kalibak and the superhero Steel/John Henry Irons in the superhero series "Superman: The Animated Series (1996-2000). He also received the eponymous role of I.M. Weasel in the comedy series "I Am Weasel" (1997-2000). The series focused on a rivalry between the successful and popular character Weaser and his envious frenemy I.R. Baboon (played by Charlie Adler), who constantly tries to upstage him.
In the 2000s, Dorm continued working regularly as a voice actor, though he often played one-shot characters. Among his prominent roles in superhero series of this period were the super-villain Kraven the Hunter/Sergei Kravinoff in "Spider-Man: The New Animated Series" (2003) and villainous ghost Fright Knight in "Danny Phantom" (2004-2007). and the super-villain Bane in "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" (2008-2011).
In a 2010 interview, Dorn mentioned that he had been diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer. While receiving treatment, he decided to switch to a vegan diet.
In 2011, Dorn was cast as the villainous god Lord Darkar in Nickelodeon's dub of the popular Italian animation series "Winx Club". Darkar was a major villain in the series 2nd season but was eventually killed. Whether his death was permanent is questionable because he had the form of a phoenix.
From 2011 to 2015, Dorn had the regular role of Dr. Carver Burke in the police procedural series "Castle (2009-2016). Burke is depicted as the psychiatrist treating female lead Kate Beckett (played by Stana Katic) for post-traumatic stress disorder. She eventually confides in him about other psychological problems which she is facing.
In 2011, Dorn had another prominent role in a superhero series when he voiced Ronan, the Accuser, in the final season of "The Super Hero Squad Show" (2009-2011). Ronan is a prominent Marvel character, typically serving as an officer of the Kree Empire, a militaristic space empire. His role as a hero or a villain depends on the Empire's plan in any given story-line.
From 2015 to 2016, Dorn played the alien Captain Mozar in the superhero series "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles " (2012-2017). Mozar is a humanoid Triceratops leading an alien invasion fleet to Earth. The character was a regular antagonist of the Turtles, portrayed as a brutal military commander.
From 2016 to 2017, Dorn voiced the super-villain Prometheus/Adrian Chase in the live-action series "Arrow" (2012-2020). The series portrayed the adventures of the superhero Green Arrow/Oliver Queen, and Prometheus holds Queen responsible for his father's death and seeks revenge.
In 2017, Dorn voiced Fortress Maximus, an Autobot Titan, in the animated web series "Transformers: Titans Return". The series featured characters from the "Generation 1" version of the "Transformers" franchise. Fortress Maximus was introduced in the 1980s. Dorn replaced the three previous voice actors of the character, Stephen Keener, Kunihiko Yasui, and Ikuya Sawaki.
From 2017 to 2018, Dorn voiced Atrocitus in the superhero series "Justice League Action" (2016-2018). Atrocitus is a prominent DC super-villain, typically depicted as the leader of the Red Lantern Corps. In the original comics, Atrocitus is a character mainly motivated by revenge. His wife and daughters were murdered before his eyes, and since then, Atrocitus has sought revenge against those responsible for the tragedy.
From 2017 to 2019, Dorn voiced the recurring character Bupu, the sable antelope, in the coming-of-age series "The Lion Guard" (2016-2019). The series was a spin-off of the film "The Lion King" (1994) and featured the adventures of Simba's son Kion. Bupu is depicted as the leader of a herd of antelopes and too proud and stubborn to follow orders from others.
By 2021, Dorn is 68-years-old and continues to add new roles to his resume.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Adam Douglas Driver was born in San Diego, California. His mother, Nancy (Needham) Wright, is a paralegal from Mishawaka, Indiana, and his father, Joe Douglas Driver, who has deep roots in the American South, is from Little Rock, Arkansas. His stepfather is a Baptist minister. His ancestry includes Dutch, English, German, Irish and Scottish. Driver was raised in Mishawaka after his parents' divorce, attending Mishawaka High School, where he appeared in plays. After 9/11, he enlisted in the Marines, serving for more than two years before being medically discharged after he suffered an injury, which prevented him from being deployed.
Driver attended the University of Indianapolis (for a year) and then transferred to study drama at Juilliard School in New York City, graduating in 2009. He began acting in plays, appearing on Broadway, before being cast in Lena Dunham's series Girls (2012), as her character's love interest, Adam Sackler. The role gained him attention, and he subsequently began a robust film career, appearing in small roles in J. Edgar (2011) and Lincoln (2012), supporting roles in Frances Ha (2012) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and then to major mesmerizing roles like in the comedy-drama This Is Where I Leave You (2014), Martin Scorsese's Silence (2016) and as Kylo Ren in the Star Wars movie saga beginning with Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015).
Widely regarded as the one of greatest actors of his generation by now both in the United States and internationally as his superb qualities have been expressed further in a sublime range of excellent performances full of unique profoundness, subtlety, charisma and insights such as the ones included in brilliant films like Paterson (2016), Logan Lucky (2017), The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) and The Report (2019). His interpretations in BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Marriage Story (2019) were also nominated in the Academy Awards for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role respectively.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
David William Duchovny was born on August 7, 1960, in New York City, New York, USA. His father, Amram Ducovny, was a writer and publicist who was from a family of Jewish immigrants (from Ukraine and Poland), and worked for the American Jewish Committee. His mother, Margaret (Miller), was a Scottish-born school teacher. David has a sister, Laurie, and an older brother, Daniel Ducovny, an award-winning director of commercials, as well as a director of photography.
David earned an undergraduate degree from Princeton University, and also attended Yale University, where he undertook a Master's Degree in English Literature. A keen poet and writer, David's work was well recognized by his peers and teachers while he was in attendance at Yale. He was even nominated for a college prize by the Academy of American Poets for his outstanding work within the literary field. While at Yale, he began commuting to New York to study acting and was soon appearing in off-Broadway plays. In 1987, he abandoned his doctoral studies at Yale to pursue acting full time.
Like any actor or celebrity, David began his career on the bottom, by acting in numerous commercials in the late-eighties. He crossed over into films with bit parts in low key films such as New Year's Day (1989) and Bad Influence (1990). Although these parts were small and somewhat insignificant, it was a start and David was able to get his foot in the door.
In 1991, David got offered the role of DEA Dennis Bryson on the acclaimed TV series, Twin Peaks (1990). He only appeared in three episodes, but at that early stage, it was his biggest claim to fame yet, as Twin Peaks (1990) was watched by millions of people worldwide. Needless to say, David's talents as an actor would finally be recognized and he would get the acknowledgment that he so richly deserved.
In the early 1990s, he got more bit parts in films, this time, however, the films weren't "low key", but hits, such as Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991) and the family favorite comedy, Beethoven (1992). David's role in Beethoven (1992) was small, but it was hard to forget the poor guy who was dragged across the lawn by the giant St. Bernard!
A year later, in 1993, David got the lead role in the independent film Kalifornia (1993). The film also starred another up-and-coming young actor, Brad Pitt. In Kalifornia (1993), David played a journalist who goes on a cross-country tour of famous murder sites with his girlfriend as research for a book he is writing about serial killers. He takes Pitt's character along to help pay the bills, unaware that Pitt's character is in fact a serial killer himself. Although it did not do much business at the box office, it is still a great film and has become somewhat of a cult favorite among fans.
That same year, David was offered the role of FBI Agent Fox "Spooky" Mulder on the long-running TV series The X-Files (1993). The show was a tremendous international success and propelled David (and his co-star Gillian Anderson) into super-stardom. His character of Mulder has become somewhat of a pop culture legend and is renowned the world over for his satirical wit and dry sense of humor. Fans loved the fact that he could keep a straight face and still crack and joke in the face of extreme danger. David improvised a lot of his own lines of dialogue while on the show and even penned and directed a few episodes. The series ended in 2002 and still has a strong, dedicated following. To date, David has reprised his role of Fox Mulder in two "X Files" feature films: The X Files (1998) and The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008).
During the initial run of The X-Files (1993), David kept busy and made several films, such as: Return to Me (2000), alongside actress Minnie Driver and the comedy favorite Evolution (2001), with Julianne Moore, Seann William Scott and Orlando Jones. He even had a hysterical cameo as a self-obsessed, simple-minded hand model in the comedy-smash Zoolander (2001).
In 2007, after a few years out of the limelight, David struck gold again after landing the plum role of Hank Moody in Californication (2007). The raunchy series follows the life of womanizing writer Hank Moody (Duchovny) as he tries to juggle his career and his relationship with his daughter and his ex-girlfriend. The show has become a hit for its off-the-wall humor and Duchovny's ability to always turn in a brilliant performance.
It may have taken a while, but David has worked his way to the top and notched up an impressive resume along the way. We can expect to see a lot more of him in the future.