A Superman for Every Generation
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William Clark Gable was born on February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio, to Adeline (Hershelman) and William Henry Gable, an oil-well driller. He was of German, Irish, and Swiss-German descent. When he was seven months old, his mother died, and his father sent him to live with his maternal aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania, where he stayed until he was two. His father then returned to take him back to Cadiz. At 16, he quit high school, went to work in an Akron, Ohio, tire factory, and decided to become an actor after seeing the play "The Bird of Paradise". He toured in stock companies, worked oil fields and sold ties. On December 13, 1924, he married Josephine Dillon, his acting coach and 15 years his senior. Around that time, they moved to Hollywood, so that Clark could concentrate on his acting career. In April 1930, they divorced and a year later, he married Maria Langham (a.k.a. Maria Franklin Gable), also about 17 years older than him.
While Gable acted on stage, he became a lifelong friend of Lionel Barrymore. After several failed screen tests (for Barrymore and Darryl F. Zanuck), Gable was signed in 1930 by MGM's Irving Thalberg. He had a small part in The Painted Desert (1931) which starred William Boyd. Joan Crawford asked for him as co-star in Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) and the public loved him manhandling Norma Shearer in A Free Soul (1931) the same year. His unshaven lovemaking with bra-less Jean Harlow in Red Dust (1932) made him MGM's most important star.
His acting career then flourished. At one point, he refused an assignment, and the studio punished him by loaning him out to (at the time) low-rent Columbia Pictures, which put him in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), which won him an Academy Award for his performance. The next year saw a starring role in Call of the Wild (1935) with Loretta Young, with whom he had an affair (resulting in the birth of a daughter, Judy Lewis). He returned to far more substantial roles at MGM, such as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939).
After divorcing Maria Langham, in March 1939 Clark married Carole Lombard, but tragedy struck in January 1942 when the plane in which Carole and her mother were flying crashed into Table Rock Mountain, Nevada, killing them both. A grief-stricken Gable joined the US Army Air Force and was off the screen for three years, flying combat missions in Europe. When he returned the studio regarded his salary as excessive and did not renew his contract. He freelanced, but his films didn't do well at the box office. He married Sylvia Ashley, the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, in 1949. Unfortunately this marriage was short-lived and they divorced in 1952. In July 1955 he married a former sweetheart, Kathleen Williams Spreckles (a.k.a. Kay Williams) and became stepfather to her two children, Joan and Adolph ("Bunker") Spreckels III.
On November 16, 1959, Gable became a grandfather when Judy Lewis, his daughter with Loretta Young, gave birth to a daughter, Maria. In 1960, Gable's wife Kay discovered that she was expecting their first child. In early November 1960, he had just completed filming The Misfits (1961), when he suffered a heart attack, and died later that month, on November 16, 1960. Gable was buried shortly afterwards in the shrine that he had built for Carole Lombard and her mother when they died, at Forest Lawn Cemetery.
In March 1961, Kay Gable gave birth to a boy, whom she named John Clark Gable after his father.1930s- Actor
- Producer
- Stunts
Buster Crabbe graduated from the University of Southern California. In 1931, while working on That's My Boy (1932) for Columbia Pictures, he was tested by MGM for Tarzan and rejected. Paramount Pictures put him in King of the Jungle (1933) as Kaspa, the Lion Man (after a book of that title but clearly a copy of the Tarzan stories). Publicity for this film emphasized his having won the 1932 Olympic 400-meter freestyle swimming championship and suggested a rivalry with Johnny Weissmuller. Producer Sol Lesser wanted Crabbe for an independent Tarzan the Fearless (1933), though he first had to get James Pierce to waive rights to the part already promised to him by his father-in-law, Edgar Rice Burroughs. The film was released as both a feature and a serial; most houses showed only the first serial episode, which critics panned as a badly organized feature. Just prior to the film's release, Crabbe married his college sweetheart and gave himself one year to either make it as an actor or start law school at USC. Paramount put him in a number of Zane Grey westerns, then Universal Pictures gave him the lead in very successful sci-fi serials (Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers) from 1936 to 1940. In 1940, he began a string of Billy the Kid westerns for low-budget (very low-budget) studio PRC. After World War II, he devoted much of his time to his swimming pool corporation and operation of a boys' camp in New York. In 1950, he made the serials Pirates of the High Seas (1950) and King of the Congo (1952). In addition, he was very active on television in the 1950s. In 1953, he hosted a local show in New York City that featured his serials. He played the title role in the adventure series Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion (1955). During television's "Golden Age", he had several "meaty" lead roles on such weekly anthology series as "Kraft Theater" ("Million Dollar Rookie") and "Philco Television Playhouse" ("Cowboy for Chris") He later returned to western features to play Wyatt Earp in Badman's Country (1958) and gave a stellar performance. Buster Crabbe died at age 75 of a heart attack on April 23, 1983.1930s- Actor
- Music Department
Johnny Weissmuller was born as Peter Johann Weißmüller in Freidorf, today a district of the city of Timisoara in Romania, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Weissmuller would later claim to have been born in Windber, Pennsylvania, probably to ensure his eligibility to compete as part of the US Olympic team. Weissmüller was one of two boys born to Petrus Weissmuller, a miner, and his wife Elisabeth Kersch, who were both Banat Swabians, an ethnic German population in Southeast Europe. A sickly child, he took up swimming on the advice of a doctor. He grew to be a 6' 3", 190-pound champion athlete - undefeated winner of five Olympic gold medals, 67 world and 52 national titles, holder of every freestyle record from 100 yards to the half-mile. In his first picture, Glorifying the American Girl (1929), he appeared as an Adonis clad only in a fig leaf. After great success with a jungle movie, MGM head Louis B. Mayer, via Irving Thalberg, optioned two of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan stories. Cyril Hume, working on the adaptation of Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), noticed Weissmuller swimming in the pool at his hotel and suggested him for the part of Tarzan. Weissmuller was under contract to BVD to model underwear and swimsuits; MGM got him released by agreeing to pose many of its female stars in BVD swimsuits. The studio billed him as "the only man in Hollywood who's natural in the flesh and can act without clothes". The film was an immediate box-office and critical hit. Seeing that he was wildly popular with girls, the studio told him to divorce his wife and paid her $10,000 to agree to it. After 1942, however, MGM had used up its options; it dropped the Tarzan series and Weissmuller, too. He then moved to RKO and made six more Tarzans. After that he made 13 Jungle Jim (1948) programmers for Columbia. He retired from movies to run a private business in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.1930s- Actor
- Producer
- Production Manager
Although he appeared in approximately 100 movies or TV shows, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. never really intended to take up acting as a career. However, the environment he was born into and the circumstances naturally led him to be a thespian. Noblesse oblige.
He was born Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Jr. in New York City, New York, to Anna Beth (Sully), daughter of a very wealthy cotton mogul, and actor Douglas Fairbanks (born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman), then not yet established as the swashbuckling idol he would become. Fairbanks, Jr. had German Jewish (from his paternal grandfather), English, and Scottish ancestry.
He proved a gifted boy early in life. To the end of his life he remained a multi-talented, hyperactive man, not content to appear in the 100 films mentioned above. Handsome, distinguished and extremely bright, he excelled at sports (much like his father), notably during his stay at the Military Academy in 1919 (his role in Claude Autant-Lara's "L'athlète incomplete" illustrated these abilities). He also excelled academically, and attended the Lycéee Janson de Sailly in Paris, where he had followed his divorced mother. Very early in his life he developed a taste for the arts as well and became a painter and sculptor. Not content to limiting himself to just one field, he became involved in business, in fields as varied as mining, hotel management, owning a chain of bowling alleys and a firm that manufactured popcorn. During World War II he headed London's Douglas Voluntary Hospital (an establishment taking care of war refugees), was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's special envoy for the Special Mission to South America in 1940 before becoming a lieutenant in the Navy (he was promoted to the rank of captain in 1954) and taking part in the Allies' landing in Sicily and Elba in 1943. A fervent Anglophile, was knighted in 1949 and often entertained Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in his London mansion, "The Boltons".
His film career began at the age of 13 when he was signed by Paramount Pictures. He debuted in Stephen Steps Out (1923) but the film flopped and his career stagnated despite a critically acclaimed role in Stella Dallas (1925). Things really picked up when he married Lucille Le Sueur, a young starlet who was soon to become better known as Joan Crawford. The young couple became the toast of the town (one "Screen Snapshots" episode echoes this sudden glory) and good parts and success followed, such as the hapless partner of Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (1931) a favorably reviewed turn as the villain in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) or more debonair characters in slapstick comedies or adventure yarns. The 1930s were a fruitful period for Fairbanks, his most memorable role probably being that of the British soldier in Gunga Din (1939); although it was somewhat of a "swashbuckling" role, Fairbanks made a point of never imitating his father. After the World War II, his star waned and, despite a moving part in Ghost Story (1981), he did not appear in a major movie. Now a legend himself, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. left this world with the satisfaction of having lived up to the Fairbanks name at the end of a life nobody could call "wasted".1930s- Actor
- Stunts
- Producer
Born to Alice Cooper and Charles Cooper. Gary attended school at Dunstable school England, Helena Montana and Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa (then called Iowa College). His first stage experience was during high school and college. Afterwards, he worked as an extra for one year before getting a part in a two-reeler by the independent producer Hans Tiesler . Eileen Sedgwick was his first leading lady. He then appeared in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) for United Artists before moving to Paramount. While there he appeared in a small part in Wings (1927), It (1927), and other films.1930s- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant", Grant is said to have replied, "So would I."
Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (Kingdon) and Elias James Leach, who worked in a factory. His early years in Bristol would have been an ordinary lower-middle-class childhood, except for one extraordinary event. At age nine, he came home from school one day and was told his mother had gone off to a seaside resort. However, the real truth was that she had been placed in a mental institution, where she would remain for years, and he was never told about it (he would not see his mother again until he was in his late 20s).
He left school at age 14, lying about his age and forging his father's signature on a letter to join Bob Pender's troupe of knockabout comedians. He learned pantomime as well as acrobatics as he toured with the Pender troupe in the English provinces, picked up a Cockney accent in the music halls in London, and then in July 1920, was one of the eight Pender boys selected to go to the United States. Their show on Broadway, "Good Times", ran for 456 performances, giving Grant time to acclimatize. He would stay in America. Mae West wanted Grant for She Done Him Wrong (1933) because she saw his combination of virility, sexuality and the aura and bearing of a gentleman. Grant was young enough to begin the new career of fatherhood when he stopped making movies at age 62.
One biographer said Grant was alienated by the new realism in the film industry. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he had invented a man-of-the-world persona and a style - "high comedy with polished words". In To Catch a Thief (1955), he and Grace Kelly were allowed to improvise some of the dialogue. They knew what the director, Alfred Hitchcock, wanted to do with a scene, they rehearsed it, put in some clever double entendres that got past the censors, and then the scene was filmed. His biggest box-office success was another Hitchcock 1950s film, North by Northwest (1959) made with Eva Marie Saint since Kelly was by that time Princess of Monaco.
Although Grant retired from the screen, he remained active. He accepted a position on the board of directors at Faberge. By all accounts this position was not honorary, as some had assumed. Grant regularly attended meetings and traveled internationally to support them. The position also permitted use of a private plane, which Grant could use to fly to see his daughter wherever her mother Dyan Cannon, was working. He later joined the boards of Hollywood Park, the Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle - Hollywood, California), Western Airlines (acquired by Delta Airlines in 1987) and MGM.
Grant expressed no interest in making a career comeback. He was in good health until almost the end of his life, when he suffered a mild stroke in October 1984. In his last years, he undertook tours of the United States in a one-man-show, "A Conversation with Cary Grant", in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. On November 29, 1986, Cary Grant died at age 82 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Davenport, Iowa.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Grant the second male star of Golden Age of Hollywood cinema (after Humphrey Bogart). Grant was known for comedic and dramatic roles; his best-known films include Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963).1930s/40s- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
American leading man Victor John Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Clara P. (Ackley) and Marcellus George Mature, a cutler and knife sharpener. His father, born Marcello Gelindo Maturi in Pinzolo, Trentino, was Italian, and his mother was of Swiss-German and German descent. Mature worked as a teenager with his father as a salesman for butcher supplies. Hoping to become an actor, he studied at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He auditioned for Gone with the Wind (1939) for the role ultimately played by his fellow Playhouse student, George Reeves. After achieving some acclaim in his first few films, he served in the Coast Guard in World War II. Mature became one of Hollywood's busiest and most popular actors after the war, though rarely was he given the critical respect he often deserved. His roles in John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) and in Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death (1947) were among his finest work, though he moved more and more frequently into more exotic roles in films like Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Egyptian (1954). Never an energetic actor nor one of great artistic pretensions, he nevertheless continued as a Hollywood stalwart both in programme and in more prominent films like The Robe (1953). More interested in golf than acting, his appearances diminished through the 1960s, but he made a stunning comeback of sorts in a hilarious romp as a very Victor Mature-like actor in Neil Simon's After the Fox (1966). Golf eventually took over his activities and, after a cameo as Samson's father in a TV remake of his own "Samson and Delilah" (Samson and Delilah (1984)), he retired for good. Rumors occasionally surfaced of another comeback, most notably in a never-realized remake of Red River (1948) with Sylvester Stallone, but none came to fruition. He died of cancer at his Rancho Santa Fe, California, home in 1999.1940s/50s- Actor
- Stunts
- Soundtrack
Popular American star of silent and early sound westerns and serials. Raised in Michigan, he went through a number of strenuous jobs (sailor, boxer, lumberjack, coal miner, etc.) before landing in Los Angeles and getting work as a movie extra and stuntman. His good looks and athletic physique (he was a champion weightlifter) led to an offer to play the lead in a series of silent westerns, which he filmed under the stage name Bill Burns. In 1925, FBO signed him and changed his name to Tom Tyler. He became one of the studio's most popular action stars and initially made a smooth transition into talking pictures, for which he worked hard to lose his natural Lithuanian accent. As the '30s progressed, however, he began to face stiff competition in the arena of B-westerns and started taking supporting roles in larger-budget pictures, such as Stagecoach (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939). In 1941, he took on perhaps his most famous role as the eponymous hero of Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941). This serial and several others brought him new fame, but within three years of playing Captain Marvel, Tyler's career was almost ended when his health failed. Rheumatoid arthritis crippled him and he was reduced to occasional minor supporting roles, often for John Ford, for whom he had worked in a number of films prior to his illness. During the last part of his career 1948-54, though reportedly in poor health, he appeared in supporting roles in over 35 films and TV series, including TV episodes of "The Lone Ranger", "The Cisco Kid", "The Range Rider", "Gene Autry", "Cowboy G-Men", and "Dick Tracy". He also co-starred with Tom Keene in an unsold TV pilot, "Crossroad Avengers" (1953), written and directed by Ed Wood. He eventually returned to live with his sister in the Detroit area and died there of heart failure at the age of 50 in 1954.1940s- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Rory Calhoun was born Francis Timothy McCown in Los Angeles, the son of Elizabeth Cuthbert and Floyd McCown. Rory starred in over 80 films and 1,000 television episodes. Before becoming an actor he worked as a boxer, a lumberjack, a truck driver and a cowpuncher. Tall and handsome, he benefited from a screen test at 20th Century-Fox, arranged for him by Sue Carol, a Hollywood agent and the wife of actor Alan Ladd, who is said to have spotted Calhoun while he was riding a horse in a Los Angeles park. He debuted on screen in Something for the Boys (1944), with Carmen Miranda, billed as "Frank McCown". David O. Selznick changed his name to Rory Calhoun, and after playing small parts for a while, he graduated to starring in western films, including River of No Return (1954) with Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum. Calhoun's better-known pictures include How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Lauren Bacall, Monroe and Betty Grable, and With a Song in My Heart (1952) with Susan Hayward.
From 1959 to 1960 he starred in the CBS television series The Texan (1958). More than two decades later he returned to CBS for five years as Judge Judson Tyler on the daytime serial Capitol (1982). His final appearance, 70 years old but handsome as ever, was as Ernest Tucker in Pure Country (1992). Calhoun has two stars on Hollywood's Walk of Fame: one for motion pictures, and one for television.1940s- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Burt Lancaster, one of five children, was born in Manhattan, to Elizabeth (Roberts) and James Henry Lancaster, a postal worker. All his grandparents were immigrants from the north of Ireland. He was a tough street kid who took an early interest in gymnastics. He joined the circus as an acrobat and worked there until he was injured. In the Army during WWII he was introduced to the USO and to acting. His first film was The Killers (1946), and that made him a star. He was a self-taught actor who learned the business as he went along. He set up his own production company in 1948 with Harold Hecht and James Hill to direct his career. He played many different roles in pictures as varied as The Crimson Pirate (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), Elmer Gantry (1960) and Atlantic City (1980).
His production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, produced such films as Paddy Chayefsky's Marty (1955) (Oscar winner 1955) and The Catered Affair (1956). In the 1980s he appeared as a supporting player in a number of movies, such as Local Hero (1983) and Field of Dreams (1989). However, it will be the sound of his voice, the way that he laughed, and the larger-than-life characters he played that will always be remembered.1940s- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois, to Katherine (Wood), a telephone operator, and Roy Harold Scherer, an auto mechanic. He was of German, Swiss-German, English, and Irish descent. His parents divorced when he was eight years old. He failed to obtain parts in school plays because he couldn't remember lines. After high school he was a postal employee and during WW II served as a Navy airplane mechanic. After the war he was a truck driver. His size and good looks got him into movies. His name was changed to Rock Hudson, his teeth were capped, he took lessons in acting, singing, fencing and riding. One line in his first picture, Fighter Squadron (1948), needed 38 takes. In 1956 he received an Oscar nomination for Giant (1956) and two years later Look magazine named him Star of the Year. He starred in a number of bedroom comedies, many with Doris Day, and had his own popular TV series McMillan & Wife (1971). He had a recurring role in TV's Dynasty (1981) (1984-5). He was the first major public figure to announce he had AIDS, and his worldwide search for a cure drew international attention. After his death his long-time lover Marc Christian successfully sued his estate, again calling attention to the homosexuality Rock had hidden from most throughout his career.1950s/60s- Actor
- Director
- Writer
With features chiseled in stone, and renowned for playing a long list of historical figures, particularly in Biblical epics, the tall, well-built and ruggedly handsome Charlton Heston was one of Hollywood's top leading men of his prime and remained active in front of movie cameras for over sixty years. As a Hollywood star, he appeared in 100 films over the course of 60 years. He played Moses in the epic film, The Ten Commandments (1956) , for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. He also starred in Touch of Evil (1958) with Orson Welles; Ben-Hur, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor (1959); El Cid (1961); and Planet of the Apes (1968). He also starred in the films The Greatest Show on Earth (1952); Secret of the Incas (1954); The Big Country (1958); and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). A supporter of Democratic politicians and civil rights in the 1960s, Heston later became a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan. Heston's most famous role in politics came as the five-term president of the National Rifle Association, from 1998 to 2003.
Heston was born John Charles Carter on October 4, 1923, in No Man's Land, Illinois, to Lila (Charlton) and Russell Whitford Carter, who operated a sawmill. He had English and Scottish ancestry, with recent Canadianforebears.
Heston made his feature film debut as the lead character in a 16mm production of Peer Gynt (1941), based on the Henrik Ibsen play. In 1944, Heston enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces. He served for two years as a radio operator and aerial gunner aboard a B-25 Mitchell stationed in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands with the 77th Bombardment Squadron of the Eleventh Air Force. He reached the rank of Staff Sergeant. Heston married Northwestern University student Lydia Marie Clarke, who was six months his senior. That same year he joined the military.
Heston played 'Marc Antony' in Julius Caesar (1950), and firmly stamped himself as genuine leading man material with his performance as circus manager 'Brad Braden' in the Cecil B. DeMille spectacular The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), also starring James Stewart and Cornel Wilde. The now very popular actor remained perpetually busy during the 1950s, both on TV and on the silver screen with audience pleasing performances in the steamy thriller The Naked Jungle (1954), as a treasure hunter in Secret of the Incas (1954) and another barn storming performance for Cecil B. DeMille as "Moses" in the blockbuster The Ten Commandments (1956).
Heston delivered further dynamic performances in the oily film noir thriller Touch of Evil (1958), and then alongside Gregory Peck in the western The Big Country (1958) before scoring the role for which he is arguably best known, that of the wronged Jewish prince who seeks his freedom and revenge in the William Wyler directed Ben-Hur (1959). This mammoth Biblical epic running in excess of three and a half hours became the standard by which other large scale productions would be judged, and its superb cast also including Stephen Boyd as the villainous "Massala", English actor Jack Hawkins as the Roman officer "Quintus Arrius", and Australian actor Frank Thring as "Pontius Pilate", all contributed wonderful performances. Never one to rest on his laurels, steely Heston remained the preferred choice of directors to lead the cast in major historical productions and during the 1960s he starred as Spanish legend "Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar" in El Cid (1961), as a US soldier battling hostile Chinese boxers during 55 Days at Peking (1963),played the ill-fated "John the Baptist" in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), the masterful painter "Michelangelo" battling Pope Julius II in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), and an English general in Khartoum (1966). In 1968, Heston filmed the unusual western Will Penny (1967) about an aging and lonely cowboy befriending a lost woman and her son, which Heston has often referred to as his favorite piece of work on screen. Interestingly, Heston was on the verge of acquiring an entirely new league of fans due to his appearance in four very topical science fiction films (all based on popular novels) painting bleak futures for mankind.
In 1968, Heston starred as time-traveling astronaut "George Taylor", in the terrific Planet of the Apes (1968) with its now legendary conclusion as Heston realizes the true horror of his destination. He returned to reprise the role, albeit primarily as a cameo, alongside fellow astronaut James Franciscus in the slightly inferior sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). Next up, Heston again found himself facing the apocalypse in The Omega Man (1971) as the survivor of a germ plague that has wiped out humanity leaving only bands of psychotic lunatics roaming the cities who seek to kill the uninfected Heston. And fourthly, taking its inspiration from the Harry Harrison novel "Make Room!, Make Room!", Heston starred alongside screen legend Edward G. Robinson and Chuck Connors in Soylent Green (1973). During the remainder of the 1970s, Heston appeared in two very popular "disaster movies" contributing lead roles in the far-fetched Airport 1975 (1974), plus in the star-laden Earthquake (1974), filmed in "Sensoround" (low-bass speakers were installed in selected theaters to simulate the earthquake rumblings on screen to movie audiences). He played an evil Cardinal in the lively The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974), a mythical US naval officer in the recreation of Midway (1976), also filmed in "Sensoround", an LA cop trying to stop a sniper in Two-Minute Warning (1976) and another US naval officer in the submarine thriller Gray Lady Down (1978). Heston appeared in numerous episodes of the high-rating TV series Dynasty (1981) and The Colbys (1985), before moving onto a mixed bag of projects including TV adaptations of Treasure Island (1990) and A Man for All Seasons (1988), hosting two episodes of the comedy show, Saturday Night Live (1975), starring as the "Good Actor" bringing love struck Mike Myers to tears in Wayne's World 2 (1993), and as the eye patch-wearing boss of intelligence agent Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies (1994). He also narrated numerous TV specials and lent his vocal talents to the animated movie Hercules (1997), the family comedy Cats & Dogs (2001) and an animated version of Ben Hur (2003). Heston made an uncredited appearance in the inferior remake of Planet of the Apes (2001), and his last film appearance to date was in the Holocaust-themed drama of My Father (2003).
Heston narrated for highly classified military and Department of Energy instructional films, particularly relating to nuclear weapons, and "for six years Heston [held] the nation's highest security clearance" or Q clearance. The Q clearance is similar to a DoD or Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) clearance of Top Secret.
Heston was married to Lydia Marie Clark Heston since March 1944, and they have two children. His highly entertaining autobiography was released in 1995, titled appropriately enough "Into The Arena". Although often criticized for his strong conservative beliefs and involvement with the NRA, Heston was a strong advocate for civil right many years before it became fashionable, and was a recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, plus the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2002, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and did appear in a film or TV production after 2003. He died in April 2008, a memorable figure in the history of US cinema.1950s/60s- Alexander Crichlow Barker Jr. was a direct descendant of the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, and of Sir William Henry Crichlow, historical Governor-General of Barbados. Barker attended the Fessenden School and Phillips-Exeter Academy, where he excelled in football and track. He went to Princeton, but left to become an actor. A year later he was spotted while working in summer stock theatre, and received a contract offer from 20th Century Fox. World War II intervened; he enlisted as an infantry private, and rose to the rank of major.
Although later signed by Fox and then Warner Bros, he was too tall for supporting parts and too unknown for leads. Tarzan's Magic Fountain (1949) (RKO) provided his first starring role. After five Tarzan films, he went into other adventure films. After 16 non-Tarzan films, mostly westerns, he went to Europe in 1957 (he spoke French, Spanish, Italian, and German). He went on to make more than 50 more films worldwide: Brazil, Germany, Spain, Yugoslavia, Italy, Lebanon, France, as well as the USA. He became very popular in Germany owing to his roles as "Old Shatterhand", "Kara Ben Nemsi", and "Dr. Karl Sternau", in films based on books written by Karl May, a popular German writer of adventure literature. Barker won Germany's Bambi Award as Best Foreign Actor of 1966.1950s - Actor
- Soundtrack
Clint Walker was born Norman Eugene Walker in Hartford, southwestern Illinois, to Gladys Huldah (Schwanda), a Czech immigrant, and Paul Arnold Walker, who was from Arkansas. Walker almost single-handedly started the western craze on TV in the 1950s as Cheyenne Bodie in Cheyenne (1955). Growing up in the Depression era meant taking work wherever you could get it, and Walker found himself working at such jobs as Mississippi River boatman, carnival roustabout and golf caddy. He quit high school at 16 and at age 17 joined the Merchant Marine. After the war he worked his way cross country, including working in the oil fields in Brownwood, Texas, and wound up in California, where he worked as an undercover agent for a private detective agency on the Long Beach waterfront. After a while he took a job as a security officer at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. It was there that he met quite a few Hollywood people who told him that his size, physique and good looks would serve him well in Hollywood and that he should go to Los Angeles and give it a try. He met actor Henry Wilcoxon, who introduced him to director Cecil B. DeMille, and Walker found himself playing the part of a Captain of the Guard in The Ten Commandments (1956). Someone from Warner Bros. saw the film, found out that Walker was under contract to producer Hal B. Wallis, bought up Walker's contract and gave him the lead in "Cheyenne". The series was a huge hit and spawned countless other western series, from Warners and other studios. However, Walker was dissatisfied with the way Warners was handling his career -- they would let other contract players make films, for example, but he wasn't allowed to -- and that triggered a dispute which ended up with him taking a walk from the show. He and Warners eventually settled their disagreements. When the show ended Walker began to get supporting parts in features, his biggest and most successful one being The Dirty Dozen (1967). He starred in the well-received The Night of the Grizzly (1966) and the not-so-well received None But the Brave (1965), a WWII film that was Frank Sinatra's one and only stab at directing. He also played the lead in Baker's Hawk (1976), and turned in a good performance as a villain in the TV movie Scream of the Wolf (1974). Lately he and several of his colleagues from "The Dirty Dozen" provided the voices for the animated film Small Soldiers (1998).1950s/60s- Actor
- Writer
Handsome bodybuilder Steve Reeves certainly had an enviable Herculean physique, and made plenty good use of it in Europe during the late 1950s and early 1960s portraying some of filmdom's most famous bronzed gods. Reeves was originally a Montana boy born on a cattle ranch in 1926. His destiny was revealed early in the game when, at the age of six months, he won his first fitness title as "Healthiest Baby of Valley County." His father Lester died in a farming accident when Steve was just a boy, and his family moved to Oakland (California). He first developed an interest in bodybuilding while in high school.
Steve joined the Army in his late teens where his job was loading boxcars and trucks. He also worked out loyally at the gym during his free time and the combination helped develop his body quite rapidly. Following Army service (he served for a time in the Pacific), he decided to pursue bodybuilding professionally. In 1946, at the age of 20, he won "Mr. Pacific Coast" in Oregon, which led to his titles of "Mr. Western America" (1947), Mr. America" (1947), "Mr. World" (1948) and, ultimately, "Mr. Universe" (1950).
With all the body-worshiping publicity he garnered, he decided to travel to New York to study and pursue acting. He subsequently returned to California...and Hollywood. There were not huge opportunities for a muscleman in Tinseltown other than providing pectoral background. Steve was, however, considered for the lead role in Cecil B. DeMille's biblical costumer Samson and Delilah (1949), but refused when told by the legendary director he would have to lose some of his musculature (about 15 lbs.). The part instead went to Victor Mature. Steve did manage to snag the role of a detective in infamous director Edward D. Wood Jr.'s Jail Bait (1954). Small parts on TV also came his way, but they too were mostly posing bits or walk-ons. To the Hollywood power players, Steve was just a body. Whether he could act or not was not a concern or selling point. Fans just wanted to see him take his shirt off.
Down on his luck, Steve's fortunes change when Italian film director Pietro Francisci saw him play Jane Powell's boyfriend in the feature film Athena (1954) and persuaded him to go overseas to star in Hercules (1958) (US title: "Hercules"). Though critics dismissed the film as "muddled mythology" while denigrating its cheapjack production values (including a poorly-dubbed sound track), the public went crazy over the sword-and-sandal epic and, in particular, Steve's marvelous beefcake heroics. He became an "overnight" star. Sequels followed, none any better or worse, with him going through the paces as a number absurdly-muscled biblical and mythological figures. An able horseman, he also performed many of his own stunts. Moreover, he paved the way for other pumped-up acting hopefuls (Ed Fury, Mark Forest, Reg Park) to seek their fame and fortune in Italy as a feature-length Samson, Ursus or Colossus. Nobody, however, came close to topping Steve in popularity.
A shoulder injury forced Steve's retirement, spending the remainder of his life promoting steroid-free bodybuilding while living on a ranch and breeding horses. The more recent bodybuilders of fame such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno, both Hercules impersonators of yore, have given Steve significant credit for their respective acting successes. Married twice, Steve died in Southern California of lymphoma on May 1, 2000, at age 74.1950s/60s- Physical Education major Gordon Weschkul left the University of Oregon after one term. He became an infantry drill instructor (rifle, pistol and bayonet; judo and hand-to-hand combat; close order drill), then a military policeman. After his honorable discharge in 1947, he was a fireman, cowboy, and farm machinery salesman. In 1953, a Las Vegas lifeguard, he was spotted by a pair of Hollywood agents who introduced him and his 19-inch biceps to Sol Lesser, who had already conducted 200 tests in search of a new Tarzan. The producer gave him a seven-year contract and a new last name. His three MGM Tarzans were run-of-the mill, but his two for Sy Weintraub, through Paramount, marked a rebirth of the Tarzan character. The movies were well received. Weintraub was looking for a leaner, more thoughtful Tarzan so Scott moved on to a number of Italian strong-man spectaculars and spaghetti westerns, becoming a sensation in Europe.1950s
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- Special Effects
- Producer
Peter Lupus was born on 17 June 1932 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Mission: Impossible (1966), Challenge of the Gladiator (1965) and Goliath at the Conquest of Damascus (1965). He has been married to Sharon M. Hildebrand since 27 November 1960. They have one child.1960s- Actor
- Additional Crew
Michael Dennis Henry was born August 15th, 1936. He was an athletic professional football player at the time he entered the movies. He played for the Pittsburgh Steelers (1958-61) and the Los Angeles Rams (1962-64). During part of that time (1961-64) he was under contract with Warner Brothers and played a variety of bit parts (TV's Surfside 6 (1960), Hawaiian Eye (1959), Cheyenne (1955) & the movie, Spencer's Mountain (1963)). He earned the role of Tarzan when series producer, Sy Weintraub began looking for a "younger Burt Lancaster" type, anticipating not only more Tarzan movies but a TV series as well. Weintraub was a Rams fan and had seen a TV documentary about them called Men from the Boys, produced by and featuring Mike Henry. Mike only made three Tarzan movies. He suffered animal bites, food poisoning, infections, and impossible work schedules in Mexico and especially Brazil. He wound up suing Weintraub for "maltreatment, abuse, and working conditions detrimental to my health and welfare." Just before his second Tarzan release in 1967 he was signed as Sgt. Kowalski in John Wayne's The Green Berets (1968). He made more movies, including the part of "Junior", as a naive son of Jackie Gleason, with the role of Buford T. Justice! in the Smokey and the Bandit (1977) movie set there were three.1960s/70s- The future Italian epic star was registered as Roy Park in 1928, but little Reg was soon re-named after his father Reginald Park Snr., a well-known gymnasium proprietor in Leeds and owner of the Reg Park Barbell Company. Reg Jnr. played reserve team football for Leeds United before turning to body-building in 1946. He finished Mr Universe runner-up to future film rival Steve Reeves in 1950, then won the title outright in 1951, 1958 and 1965. After marrying South African-born Mareon Isaacs in Johannesburg in 1952, the Parks moved permanently to South Africa where Reg ran a chain of fitness studios. In December 1960 he was invited to Rome to star in two back-to-back Hercules movies, Hercules and the Captive Women (1961) followed immediately by Hercules in the Haunted World (1961). Since these were directed by intellectually acclaimed veterans Vittorio Cottafavi and Mario Bava, Reg Park himself became something of a cult personality in the Italian epic genre. His friend and protege Arnold Schwarzenegger considered Park to be the best of the "peplum" heroes.
Three more sword-and-sandals followed, including Maciste in King Solomon's Mines (1964) which, handily for Park, was filmed on location in South Africa.1960s - Tall, massively built, imposing-looking blond Gordon Mitchell (early on dubbed the "The Bronze Giant") was one of those perfectly developed bodybuilders who jumped on the Steve Reeves bandwagon and hightailed it to Italy to seek movie stardom as a Herculean strongman. Born Charles Allen Pendleton in Denver, Colorado on July 29, 1923, and raised in Inglewood, California, Mitchell served in WWII and, at one point, became a prisoner of war at the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, Gordon went to USC in Los Angeles under the G.I. bill and became a high school teacher and guidance counselor.
A fitness nut with an incredible physique, he soon became part of the Venice, California "Muscle Beach" crowd and it took over. He literally flexed his way into the entertainment business as part of Mae West's musclebound revue. He toured everywhere with Ms. West from Las Vegas to the Latin Quarter with other "abs"normal actor wannabes Mickey Hargitay, Brad Harris and Reg Lewis. In between, Gordon obscurely posed as beefcake in such films as The Ten Commandments (1956), Li'l Abner (1959) and Spartacus (1960), which, of course, did little to advance his acting career.
In 1961, after Reeves' Hercules (1958) proved a box-office smash, the non-Italian-speaking Mitchell, among others, headed off to Europe to compete on the peplum film pedestal. With his fierce and progressively hardened features, Gordon wound up playing both hero and villain, appearing regularly in the popular, if poorly dubbed, sandal-and-spear epics. In the usual over-the-top style. Gordon started off as the title strongman in Atlas Against the Cyclops (1961); and went on to play the Roman warrior General Metellus in The Centurion (1961); massively muscled hero Obro in The Giant of Metropolis (1961); Pluto, the God of War in Vulcan, Son of Jupiter (1962); the villainous pirate Hamar in Caesar Against the Pirates (1962); the title hero Fury of Achilles (1962); the barbarous villain Brenno in Brennus, Enemy of Rome (1963); a slave and co-hero in Gli schiavi più forti del mondo (1964); evil tyrant Omar in Simbad contro i sette saraceni (1964); villainous assassin Sven in Erik, the Viking (1965); and the villainous Hunding in The Stone Forest (1965).
Gordon developed a strong core of fans during this brief reign. When the film fad wore off by 1965, Mitchell, unlike many of his pectoral partners who chose to drop out of sight, moved on and muscled his way into more than 100 additional films. Many of his later 60's and 70's offerings were further down the credits list in the "spaghetti western" or "giallo mystery" categories -- staying true to the country that made him a star -- Three Graves for a Winchester (1966), Uccidi o muori (1966) a.k.a. "Kill or Be Killed", È mezzanotte... butta giù il cadavere (1966), Born to Kill (1967), Crazy Westerners (1967), Death on the Run (1967), John the Bastard (1967), Cheers to Cyanide (1968), Beyond the Law (1968), Trusting Is Good... Shooting Is Better (1968), Cry of Death (1968), I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death (1969), Django and Sartana Are Coming... It's the End (1970), Inginocchiati straniero... I cadaveri non fanno ombra! (1970), Finders Killers (1971), Coffin Full of Dollars (1971), Down with Your Hands... You Scum! (1971), Let's Go and Kill Sartana (1971), Day of Judgment (1971), Lobo the Bastard (1971), His Name Was Sam Walbash, But They Call Him Amen (1971), Un uomo chiamato Dakota (1972), Stay Away from Trinity... When He Comes to Eldorado (1972), His Colt, Himself, His Revenge (1972), Seven Devils on Horseback (1975) and La polizia ordina: sparate a vista (1976).
As the years went on, Gordon would branch out more internationally. Some of these films included The Arizona Kid (1970) (Philippines); Angel's Leap (1971) (France); Seven Times Seven (1969) (Hong Kong); Tiger from River Kwai (1975) (Germany); A Very Special Woman (1979) (France); Kopfschuß (1981) (Germany); Inchon (1981) (US); the international mini-series Marco Polo (1982); White Fire (1984) (France); Commando Invasion (1986) (Germany) and Evil Spawn (1987) (Taiwan).
Returning to the States around 1990, Gordon continued to work sporadically Bikini Drive-in (1995) and An Enraged New World (2002)) until his last film -- the crime action flick Malevolence (2004). The actor, briefly married in the early 1950's, died of a heart attack on September 20, 2003, in Marina del Rey, California. He was 80 years old.1960s - Actor
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- Director
The mighty, musclebound actor Richard Harrison was one of a slew of handsome American pectoral hunks whose 1950's career in Hollywood amounted to little more than brawny bits but, after, being lured to Italy, became a popular sword-and-sandal star of the early 1960's. Unlike many others, Harrison managed to sustain his action star status, making over 100 European/Asian films due thanks to his impulsive trek abroad.
Born on May 26, 1936 in Salt Lake City, Richard relocated to sunny Southern California in his late teens where his blond, tanned, chiseled good looks (he was sometimes mistaken for handsome actor Guy Madison) landed him modeling work both on runways and in beefcake magazines such as "Body Beautiful," "Adonis" and "Physique Pictorial."
It didn't take long for Richard to be noticed by Hollywood casting agents. At first cast in he-man bit roles wearing a uniform (or less), he can be obscurely seen in Jeanne Eagels (1957), his film debut starring Kim Novak, Kronos (1957) with Jeff Morrow, Too Much, Too Soon (1958) starring Dorothy Malone, South Pacific (1958), in which he can be glimpsed as a co-pilot, and Battle Flame (1959) with Scott Brady and a young Robert Blake. While filming another minor role in Master of the World (1961), he met producer James H. Nicholson's daughter, Loretta (actress Loretta Nicholson) and married her within six months. The couple produced three children.
Frustrated at not being able to secure meatier roles in Hollywood, Richard jumped at the chance when offered the lead role in the peplum spectacle The Invincible Gladiator (1961) which filmed in Europe. He wound up settling in Italy for the next two decades. His first role, of course, immediately typed him as another Steve Reeves mythological hero type and it was followed by other warriors such as Darius in Gladiators 7 (1962), Perseus in Perseo l'invincibile (1963), Glaucus in Messalina vs. the Son of Hercules (1964), Crassus in The Two Gladiators (1964), Rufo in The Revolt of the Pretorians (1964) and Claudius in Giants of Rome (1964).
Once the Herculean craze waned in the mid 1960s, Richard sought other starring parts in both Italian "spaghetti" westerns (One Hundred Thousand Dollars for Ringo (1965), 28 minuti per 3 milioni di dollari (1967), Vengeance (1968), God Was in the West, Too, at One Time (1968), Day After Tomorrow (1968)) and crime/spy intrigue (Secret Agent Fireball (1965), Killers Are Challenged (1966), Master Stroke (1967), Fantabulous Inc. (1968)). He then maintained a sturdy steadiness into the 1970's with title roles in Sheriff of Rock Springs (1971), Jesse & Lester - Two Brothers in a Place Called Trinity (1972) and Hand of the Godfather (1972).
As work thinned out, Richard managed to dig up work outside Italy -- with low-budget features in Hong Kong (Marco Polo (1975), Ba guo lian jun (1976)), Turkey (Anasinin Gözü (1974), Yankesici (1975), Sahit (1978)), Germany (Natascha - Todesgrüße aus Moskau (1977) (Natascha: The Deadly Drop)), and Yugoslavia (Alpha Beta (1974)). In the 1980's, Richard found a profitable market in Hong Kong with his series of "Ninja Master" films (as Ninja Master Gordon) in such representative actioneers as Ninja Terminator (1986), Ninja Dragon (1986), Ninja Operation: Licensed to Terminate (1987), Ninja: Silent Assassin (1987), The Ninja Showdown (1988), Ninja Powerforce (1988).
Occasionally delving into writing, producing and directing as he did with Terror Force Commando (1986), Richard's status as a European action star continued with lead roles as renegade cops in both Terminal Force (1989) and Highway to Hell (1990). As he aged, he then began turning more and more to featured parts for other stars such as Dan Haggerty in The Channeler (1991) and Erik Estrada in Angel Eyes (1993). He retired by the millennium.
After his divorce from Loretta, Richard married actress Maria Francesca in 1978. They had one more child. Two of Richard's sons went into film acting -- Robert Harrison and Sebastian Harrison.1960s- Actor
- Director
The 15th screen Tarzan (if you don't count Gordon Griffith) was to have played a Tarzan impersonator in a projected Mike Henry television show, which never materialized. He had been tested fourteen months earlier when Henry got the part. Prior to Tarzan, Ron had numerous parts in movies and television, including the copilot in South Pacific (1958) and had co-starred in TV's brief series "Malibu Run" (The Aquanauts (1960)). He played the title role in the TV series Tarzan (1966), and in two movies made from that series in 1970. He refused to use a stunt double in his vine-swinging or animal fights and was often injured. It has been noted that Ron's physical appearance and dialogue were much more like those of Edgar Rice Burroughs' character than could be said for any other Tarzan. In addition to occasional parts in TV series and movies, several made in Germany, Ron hosted the "Miss America" pageant on television 1979-81, replacing Bert Parks.1960s/70s- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Thomas William Selleck is an American actor and film producer, best known for his starring role as Hawaii-based private investigator "Thomas Magnum" on the 1980s television series, Magnum, P.I. (1980).
Selleck was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Martha (Jagger), a homemaker, and Robert Dean Selleck, a real estate investor and executive. He is of mostly English descent, including recent immigrant ancestors. Selleck has appeared extensively on television in roles such as "Dr. Richard Burke" on Friends (1994) and "A.J. Cooper" on Las Vegas (2003). In addition to his series work, Selleck has appeared in more than fifty made-for-TV and general release movies, including Mr. Baseball (1992), Quigley Down Under (1990), Lassiter (1984) and, his most successful movie release, Three Men and a Baby (1987), which was the highest grossing movie in 1987.
Selleck also plays "Jesse Stone" in a series of made-for-TV movies, based on the Robert B. Parker novels. In 2010, he appears as "Commissioner Frank Reagan" in the drama series, Blue Bloods (2010) on CBS.1970s- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Tall, thin, wiry Sam Elliott is the classic picture of the American cowboy. Elliott began his acting career on the stage and his film debut was in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Although his future wife, Katharine Ross co-starred in the film, the two did not meet until they filmed The Legacy (1978) together. Over the years there would be few opportunities to act in feature westerns, but it would be television that gave him that opportunity, in The Sacketts (1979), The Shadow Riders (1982) and The Yellow Rose (1983), among others. He would also work in non-westerns, usually as a tough guy, as in Lifeguard (1976) and Road House (1989). In 1985 he played Cher's love interest Gar in the drama Mask (1985), and he was in some cop movies such as Fatal Beauty (1987) and Shakedown (1988). In the 1990s, Elliott was back on the western trail, playing everyone from Brig. Gen. John Buford in the film Gettysburg (1993) to Wild Bill Hickok in the made-for-TV movie Buffalo Girls (1995). In 1991 he wrote the screenplay and co-starred with his wife in the made-for-TV western Conagher (1991), and two years later he played Wyatt Earp's brother Virgil in Tombstone (1993), with Kurt Russell as Wyatt. In 1995 the starred as John Pierce the tense thriller The Final Cut (1995), as a former head of a Bomb Squad who must to stop a dangerous bomber. In 1998 he was the narrator of the hilarious comedy The Big Lebowski (1998), playing him as The Stranger, and returned to the Western in the drama The Hi-Lo Country (1998), closing the 20th century with another western, the TV movie You Know My Name (1999).
Sam Elliott started the 21st century with the Stephen Frears' TV movie Fail Safe (2000) playing Congressman Raskob, and The Contender (2000) as Kermit Newman, at the side of Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman, and in We Were Soldiers (2002) as Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, together Mel Gibson. In 2003 he played Gen. Thunderbolt Ross in the Ang Lee's pre-MCU Hulk (2003), repeating in another Marvel superhero movie as Caretaker in Ghost Rider (2007). After participating in the fantasy movie The Golden Compass (2007) and made a stellar cameo in Up in the Air (2009), Elliott played Clay Wheeler in the box office flop comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009), starring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker, and in 2012 he was a supporting character as Mac Macleod in Robert Redford's The Company You Keep (2012). After the playing Coach Moore in the sport drama Draft Day (2014) In 2015 Elliott was hyperactive, appearing in seven different productions including cinema and TV: Digging for Fire (2015), I'll See You in My Dreams (2015), Sam Elliott, the sixth season of Justified (2010) as Avery Markham, and The Good Dinosaur (2015) voicing Butch. Two years later was absolute star in the drama The Hero (2017) as Lee Hayden, and in the sci-fi movie The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018) as Calvin Barr, to shine again as supporting character playing Bradley Cooper's brother Bobby in the multi-nominated Cooper's directorial debut A Star Is Born (2018), sharing scenes with Lady Gaga, coming back again to the western in the TV series 1883 (2021) as Shea Brennan.1970s- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Perry King was born on 30 April 1948 in Alliance, Ohio, USA. He is an actor and director, known for The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Mandingo (1975) and Class of 1984 (1982).1970s- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Craig Eric Sheffer is an American film and television actor. He is known for his leading roles as Norman Maclean in the film A River Runs Through It, Aaron Boone in the film Nightbreed, Joe Kane in the film The Program, and Keith Scott on the television series One Tree Hill. Sheffer was born in York, Pennsylvania. His father worked as a prison guard. Before becoming an actor, Sheffer sold newspapers in New York City and "slept under the marble staircase" in Grand Central Terminal for weeks while living off Unification Church spaghetti dinners."1980s- Actor
- Producer
- Music Department
Dennis William Quaid was born on April 9, 1954 in Houston, Texas to Juanita Bonniedale "Nita" Quaid (née Jordan), a real estate agent & William Rudy Quaid, an electrician. He grew up in the Houston suburban city of Bellaire. He was raised a Baptist, and studied drama, Mandarin Chinese, and dance while a student at Bellaire High School. He continued study at the University of Houston, but dropped out before completing his degree. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue a film career where his brother, Randy Quaid, had already began to build a successful career. However, Dennis initially had trouble finding film roles, but began to gain notice when he appeared in Breaking Away (1979) and earned strong reviews for his role in The Right Stuff (1983). Aside from acting, Quaid is also a musician, and plays with his band, "The Sharks". He holds a flying license and is a five handicap golfer.1980s- Actor
- Producer
William McChord Hurt was born in Washington, D.C., to Claire Isabel (McGill) and Alfred McChord Hurt, who worked at the State Department. He was trained at Tufts University and The Juilliard School and has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including the most recent nomination for his supporting role in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005). Hurt received Best Supporting Actor accolades for the role from the Los Angeles Film Critics circle and the New York Film Critics Circle.
Hurt spent the early years of his career on the stage between drama school, summer stock, regional repertory and off-Broadway, appearing in more than fifty productions including "Henry V", "5th of July", "Hamlet", "Uncle Vanya", "Richard II", "Hurlyburly" (for which he was nominated for a Tony Award), "My Life" (winning an Obie Award for Best Actor), "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" and "Good". For radio, Hurt read Paul Theroux's "The Grand Railway Bazaar", for the BBC Radio Four and "The Shipping News" by Annie Proulx. He has recorded "The Polar Express", "The Boy Who Drew Cats", "The Sun Also Rises" and narrated the documentaries, "Searching for America: The Odyssey of John Dos Passos", "Einstein-How I See the World" and the English narration of Elie Wiesel's "To Speak the Unspeakable", a documentary directed and produced by Pierre Marmiesse. In 1988, Hurt was awarded the first Spencer Tracy Award from UCLA.1980s- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Stylish Rupert James Hector Everett was born on May 29, 1959, in Burnham Deepdale, Norfolk, to Sara (Maclean) and Anthony Michael Everett, a Major in the British Army, who later worked in business. Of royal stock, he is of primarily English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry with a dash of German and Dutch thrown in for good measure.
Everett grew up in privileged circumstances, but the wry, sometimes arrogant intellectual was a rebel from the very beginning. At the age of seven, he was placed into the care of Benedictine monks at Ampleforth College where he trained classically on the piano. He was expelled from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London for clashing with his teachers and instead apprenticed himself at the avant-garde Glasgow Citizen's Theatre in Scotland, performing in such productions as "Don Juan" and "Heartbreak House." He moved from stage to British TV in 1982 with sophisticated appearances on such series as "Strangers" "Play for Today" and "The Agatha Christie Hour" and the more visibly seen mini-series Princess Daisy (1983) and The Far Pavilions (1984).
In 1984, Everett filmed a leading gay role in the acclaimed collegiate-themed picture Another Country (1984), which he had performed earlier on stage in 1981. Earning a BAFTA nomination and shooting to international attention, Rupert became one of England's hottest crossover stars. Top patrician roles in quality films came his way such as Dance with a Stranger (1985) opposite Miranda Richardson and Duet for One (1986) starring Julie Andrews and Alan Bates. The rebel went international instead of Hollywood, however, with top-billing in the Aussie feature The Right Hand Man (1987) with Hugo Weaving; the Italian-made Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1987) and the French drama Tolérance (1989) opposite Ugo Tognazzi.
Again, however, the wickedly sharp and suave actor doused his own star fire by clashing with the press and even his own fans in the late 1980's. In 1989, Everett openly and proudly declared his homosexuality which put an initial damper on his status as a romantic leading man. Appearing sporadically in such featured roles as the Prince of Wales in the majestic drama The Madness of King George (1994) and Lord Rutledge in the family comedy Dunston Checks In (1996), Rupert's popularity was re-energized after playing Julia Roberts' gay confidante to droll effect in the box-office comedy hit My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), earning him both BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. He continued to impress thereafter, notably in such classical-styled pieces as Shakespeare in Love (1998) (as Christopher Marlowe), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999) (as Oberon), and the Oscar Wilde plays An Ideal Husband (1999) (as Lord Goring, Golden Globe nominee) and The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) (as Algy). On the lighter, fun side, his predilection for mischief was demonstrated as the cartoonish villain Dr. Claw, the nemesis of Matthew Broderick's title character, in Inspector Gadget (1999).
Into the millennium, Rupert continued to be a vibrant presence on stage with a tour of "Private Lives" (in Italian) in 2008, a 2009 Broadway revival of "Blithe Spirit" (his New York debut) and as Henry Higgins in Shaw's "Pygmalion" in Munich the following year. He went on to play Oscar Wilde in "The Judas Kiss" in 2013 and was about to play George on Broadway in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" when the play closed before it officially opened due to the COVID pandemic in 2020. On TV, he played the effortlessly suave Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking (2004), the Marquis de Feron in the British series The Musketeers (2014) and Carroll Quinn in a second British series Adult Material (2020).
On film, Everett enhanced the royal dramas To Kill a King (2003) and Stage Beauty (2004) as King Charles I and King Charles II, respectively. Known for his aloof handsomeness and often smug, piss-elegant characters, he engagingly portrayed a jet-setter in the contemporary film People (2004); provided the voice of the unprincely Prince Charming in the animated features Shrek 2 (2004) and Shrek the Third (2007); played a British defector opposite Sharon Stone in the romantic thriller A Different Loyalty (2004); a millionaire playboy involved in a hit-and-run in Separate Lies (2005); an eccentric tycoon in Hysteria (2011); King George VI (father of Queen Elizabeth) opposite Emily Watson's Queen Mum in the romantic dramedy A Royal Night Out (2015); a monsignor in If I Had a Heart (2013); and tortured gay playwright Oscar Wilde during his last days in The Happy Prince (2018), which he wrote and directed.
A novelist on the sly with Hello, Darling, Are You Working? (1989), Rupert has also published two volumes of memoirs: Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins (2006) and Vanished Years (2012), produced documentaries .1980s/90s- Actor
- Producer
Jason Patric was born on 17 June 1966 in Queens, New York, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for The Lost Boys (1987), The Losers (2010) and Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997).1980s- Actor
- Producer
Actor Sam J. Jones was born in Chicago, Illinois but grew up in Sacramento, California. He was educated at Mira Loma High School in Sacramento and went on to serve as a United States Marine. Jones made his screen debut in Blake Edwards' comedy film 10 (1979). In 1980, he was cast in the iconic role of Flash Gordon in the cult classic of the same name, Flash Gordon (1980). A solid acting career in mostly television roles followed. Jones came back to moviegoers attention, making a cameo as a version of himself in the comedy film Ted (2012).1980s- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Two-time Golden Globe nominee and SAG Award nominated actor Chris Noth stars on Season 3 FX's critically acclaimed drama Tyrant (2014) and has two independent films coming out this year.
On Tyrant (2014), Noth enters the show in its third season premiering in July, starring as Gen. William Cogswell, an exiled powerhouse whose return to Abbudin and subsequent rise to power is complicated by his romantic history and hidden idiosyncrasies. In film, he stars in the hit Sundance feature film White Girl (2016), with Morgan Saylor, and the independent film Chronically Metropolitan (2016) with Mary-Louise Parker.
Christopher David Noth was born in Madison, Wisconsin, to Jeanne Parr, a CBS news reporter, and Charles James Noth, an attorney. He is of German, Irish, and English descent. Setting the bar for strong, charismatic leading men on television, Chris has a knack for tackling characters that remain as relevant today as when he first played them. He rose to prominence as Detective Mike Logan on the original Law & Order (1990), where he spent five seasons before going on to set hearts aflutter as the iconic Mr. Big on HBO's groundbreaking series Sex and the City (1998). Noth garnered his first Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Comedy playing the unattainable bachelor who gradually evolves into the love of Carrie Bradshaw's life. Meanwhile, Mr. Big became a central point for the Carrie character and the series as a whole, with their tumultuous storyline launching two blockbuster movies Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010) in which he also starred. Next came a critically lauded turn as the flawed and powerful Peter Florrick opposite Julianna Margulies on the CBS hit drama The Good Wife (2009). Noth's complex performance earned him a second Golden Globe nod - this one for Best Actor in a Drama, as well as two SAG nominations for Best Ensemble. The show is coming to a close after seven seasons.
Noth has regularly appeared on stage since graduation from the Yale School of Drama and considers theater his first love. He most recently starred as Faustus in Classic Stage Company's Off-Broadway production of Dr. Faustus. Notable Broadway credits include That Championship Season with Kiefer Sutherland and Jason Patric and Gore Vidal's The Best Man with Elizabeth Ashley and Charles Durning, for which Chris received a Theatre World Award. Off Broadway Noth starred in the Atlantic Theater's Production of Farragut North with John Gallagher, Jr and then again in Los Angeles at the Geffen Theater with Chris Pine. He also starred in, What Didn't Happen at the Playwrights Horizons, and Arms and the Man at the Roundabout Theater. He starred in American Buffalo at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, and played Hamlet at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford. He has also performed in plays at Yale Rep, The Manhattan Theater Club, Circle Rep, Taper 2 series at Mark Taper Forum, and La Mama.
Other television credits include the TNT original film Bad Apple (2004), which he not only starred in but Executive Produced, as well as TNT's epic miniseries Caesar (2002), TNT telefilm Exiled (1998) and the BBC Series Titanic: Blood and Steel (2012). Additional film credits include: Lovelace (2013) with Amanda Seyfried and Peter Sarsgaard, Elsa & Fred (2014), with Christopher Plummer and Marcia Gay Harden, 3, 2, 1... Frankie Go Boom (2012), My One and Only (2009), Mr. 3000 (2004), Searching for Paradise (2002), Double Whammy (2001), Cast Away (2000), A Texas Funeral (1999), Getting to Know You (1999), The Broken Giant (1997), The Confession (2011), Cold Around the Heart (1997) and Naked in New York (1993).
Noth has been the face of Biotherm Homme in Canada, he was GQ's 2015 International Man of the Year, is a supporter of the Rainforest Action Network and is co-owner of The Cutting Room, a well known music venue in New York City that opened in late 1999, with his friend Steve Walter.
Noth resides in New York and Los Angeles.1980s/90s- Actor
- Director
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Michael Kevin Paré was born on October 9, 1958 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Joan (Moroney) and Francis Paré, who owned print shops. His father died of leukemia when Paré was five, leaving his mother to raise their large family of children. Paré was working as a chef in New York City when an agent, Yvette Bikoff, convinced him to try acting. Paré's first starring role was as high school student Tony Villcana on the television series The Greatest American Hero (1981). His well-known film roles were as 1960s rock icon Eddie Wilson in Eddie and the Cruisers (1983) and its sequel Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! (1989), as well as Streets of Fire (1984) and The Philadelphia Experiment (1984). Other films include Moon 44 (1990), Village of the Damned (1995), Bad Moon (1996), Hope Floats (1998) and The Virgin Suicides (1999). On television, Paré starred with Michael Beck on the CBS police drama Houston Knights (1987), as well as the short-lived sci-fi series Starhunter (2000).1980s- Actor
- Producer
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In 1979 with his Detroit friends, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, Bruce Campbell raised $350,000 for a low-budget film, The Evil Dead (1981), in which he starred and co-executive produced. Completed piecemeal over four years, the film first gained notoriety in England where it became the best-selling video of 1983, beating out The Shining (1980). After its appearance at Cannes, where Stephen King dubbed it "the most ferociously original horror film of the year", New Line Cinema stepped forward to release "Evil Dead" in the U.S.
After co-producing Crimewave (1985), a cross-genre comedy written by Sam Raimi, Ethan and Joel Coen, Campbell moved to Los Angeles and quickly gained a foothold producing or starring in genre films such as the Maniac Cop (1988) series, Lunatics: A Love Story (1991), Moontrap (1988), and Mindwarp (1991), a post-apocalyptic "Jeremiah Johnson", during which he met his wife-to-be, filmmaker, Ida Gearon.
Campbell then rejoined his Detroit colleagues to star and co-produce the second and third films in the Evil Dead trilogy (Evil Dead II (1987) & Army of Darkness (1992)), completing 12 years of work on the cult favorite.
This rough-and-tumble background was a plus as Campbell made his foray into television, first starring in the highly touted Fox series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993), then as a recurring guest-star on the hit show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993).
With these under his belt, Campbell easily made the transition to director, helming numerous episodes and recurring as the King of Thieves in the #1 syndicated Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995), and its follow-up phenomenon, Xena: Warrior Princess (1995).
Bruce has since expanded his range on television, appearing in anything from Disney's update of The Love Bug (1997), to decidedly dramatic turns on the acclaimed series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) and The X-Files (1993). At the invitation of ABC, Campbell ventured into the world of sitcoms with a recurring role on ABC's Emmy-nominated Ellen (1994), participating in one of the three touted "out" episodes.
But Campbell didn't abandon his film roots. During that time, he had featured roles in the blockbuster Congo (1995), John Carpenter's Escape from L.A. (1996), and the award-winning independent crime drama, Running Time (1997). He followed these up with roles in Paramount's romantic comedy, Serving Sara (2002), Jim Carrey's The Majestic (2001), and all three of Sam Raimi's blockbuster Spider-Man movies.
After a return to episodic television in the swashbuckling series, Jack of All Trades (2000), Campbell took the title role in MGM's cult sleeper Bubba Ho-Tep (2002). His directorial debut, Man with the Screaming Brain (2005) premiered on the Sci Fi Channel, and Dark Horse Comics published the comic adaptation.
Campbell then directed and starred as himself in My Name Is Bruce (2007), a spoof of his B-movie career, then re-teamed with Disney for their fun-filled hit, Sky High (2005).
Campbell has since made the leap into other forms of entertainment, and is enjoying his role as an author with back-to-back New York Times bestsellers: a memoir entitled "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor", and his first novel, "Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way".
In the multi-media industry, Bruce has enjoyed voicing characters for Disney's animated TV series The Legend of Tarzan (2001) and the Warner Brothers feature The Ant Bully (2006). He also portrayed the character of "Mayor Shelbourne" in the animated hit film, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009). Recently, Campbell voiced the role of "Rod Torque Redline" in Cars 2 (2011), the sequel to the smash Disney animated feature and for the immensely popular game, "Call of Duty".
In 2013, Bruce co-produced the hit remake of Evil Dead (2013), joined his filmmaking pal Sam Raimi on Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), and completed an impressive seven-year run on the spy show, Burn Notice (2007) (2007-2013), USA's #1 show on cable.
More than two decades after the release of Army of Darkness (1992), Bruce returned to his most iconic role for Ash vs Evil Dead (2015), a highly-anticipated series premiering on the Starz network on Halloween 2015.1980s/90s- Actor
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Producer
In 2019 Billy Campbell won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Actor for his role in the CTV/HULU television series "Cardinal" for the second year in a row, as well as being nominated for a 2018 International Emmy Award for Best Actor in a series. He is also known for his work as a co-lead in the critically acclaimed AMC series "The Killing", the Lifetime MOW "Lizzie Borden Took an Ax," DirecTV's Neil LaBute drama, "Full Circle," as well as the title role in Nat Geo Channel's "Killing Lincoln", which garnered record-breaking ratings. Other feature film credits include Disney's "The Rocketeer," "Ghost Town" opposite Ricky Gervias, "Bram Stoker's Dracula" directed by Francis Ford Coppola and the male lead in "Enough" opposite Jennifer Lopez.
Billy Campbell is best known for starring in the beloved ABC drama "Once and Again," for which he earned a Golden Globe Awards nomination in the Best Actor - Drama Series category, as well as a People's Choice Award in the Favorite Male Performer in a New Television Series category.
Among his stage credits, Campbell starred in "A Winter's Tale" at The Old Globe, San Diego in 2014, as well as "Fortinbras," for which he received a 1996 Ovation Award for best actor in LA theatre, along with "Comedy of Errors" and "Much Ado about Nothing" at the Old Globe, San Diego.1990s- Actor
- Producer
- Art Department
Brendan James Fraser was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Canadian parents Carol Mary (Genereux), a sales counselor, and Peter Fraser, a journalist and travel executive. He is of Irish, Scottish, German, Czech, and French-Canadian ancestry. As his parents frequently moved, Brendan can claim affinity with Ottawa, Indianapolis, Detroit, Seattle, London and Rome. His early exposure to theatre, particularly in London, led him to Seattle's Cornish Institute. After graduation he found a minor role as Sailor #1 in River Phoenix's Dogfight (1991), then somewhat more substantial roles in Encino Man (1992) and School Ties (1992). He expresses a preference for playing "fish out of water" men. Five more years of supporting work led finally to the title role in George of the Jungle (1997), a role which fully utilized his charm and beefy good looks, as well as offering him a chance to show off his comic talents. He describes this role as the one which dramatically altered his career. Critical raves for his role in Gods and Monsters (1998) pointed to yet another dimension to his dramatic persona.1990s/2000s- Actor
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William George Zane, better known as Billy Zane, was born on February 24, 1966 in Chicago, Illinois, to Thalia (Colovos) and William Zane, both of Greek ancestry. His parents were amateur actors and managed a medical technical school. Billy has an older sister, actress and singer Lisa Zane. Billy was bitten by the acting bug early on. In his early teens, he attended Harand Camp of the Theater Arts in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. In 1982, he attended the American School in Switzerland. His high school days were spent at Francis Parker High School in Chicago, Illinois. Daryl Hannah and Jennifer Beals also attended Parker, prior to Billy's attendance.
Soon after graduating from high school, Billy decided to venture out to California to attempt acting for the first time. Within three weeks, he won his very first big screen role in Back to the Future (1985), playing the role of Match, one of Biff Tannen's thugs. He would later reprise that role for the sequel Back to the Future Part II (1989). Then after a small role in the science fiction horror film Critters (1986), he landed starring roles in several television films. Billy played villain Hughie Warriner in the Australian thriller film Dead Calm (1989), where he met his future wife, Lisa Collins.
He also co-starred in Memphis Belle (1990), a film version of a 1944 documentary about a World War II bomber. In 1991, he appeared as John Justice Wheeler on several episodes of David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks (1990). Billy starred as the eponymous superhero in The Phantom (1996) and as Caledon Hockley in the billion dollar grossing Titanic (1997). Then, he starred in the television movie Cleopatra (1999) where he met his soon-to-be fiance, actress Leonor Varela from whom he subsequently separated. In 2005, he had a recurring role as the poetry loving ex-demon Drake on the television series Charmed (1998).1990s- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Jerry O'Connell was born in New York City, to Linda (Witkowski), an art teacher, and Michael O'Connell, a British-born advertising agency art director. He spent his early years in Manhattan, with his parents and younger brother, Charlie O'Connell, who is also an actor. He is of one half Irish, one quarter Italian, and one quarter Polish, descent. Jerry began his acting career at a very young age. He did commercial work and TV work before getting the role of "Vern Tessio" in the popular film Stand by Me (1986) opposite River Phoenix and Corey Feldman. After that, he worked on several TV-Movies and TV-series and had a starring role in My Secret Identity (1988). From 1991 to 1994, Jerry attended New York University where he majored in film, but he didn't graduate.
In 1993, he starred in the film Calendar Girl (1993) opposite Jason Priestley. In 1995, he starred in the TV-movie western The Ranger, the Cook and a Hole in the Sky (1995) and, in 1996, he landed the role of "Frank Cushman" in the successful film Jerry Maguire (1996) opposite Tom Cruise. Over the next few years, he starred in Scream 2 (1997), had a small uncredited role in Can't Hardly Wait (1998), as well as appearing in several TV-movies and having starring roles in the TV-series Sliders (1995) and the film Body Shots (1999) opposite Sean Patrick Flanery and Tara Reid.
In 2000, he appeared in the Brian De Palma film Mission to Mars (2000) with Gary Sinise, among others. He has also appeared in movies such as Tomcats (2001), Buying the Cow (2002), Kangaroo Jack (2003), Yours, Mine & Ours (2005), Man About Town (2006) and Room 6 (2006). In 2007, he married actress/model Rebecca Romijn, and they have twin girls.1990s/2000s- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Chris Klein was born in Hinsdale, Illinois, on March 14, 1979, to Terese (Bergen), a kindergarten teacher, and Fred Klein, an engineer. He is of German, Irish, and English descent. After spending the first thirteen years of his life there, he moved with his family to Nebraska. It was while he was in high school that Klein was discovered by director Alexander Payne, who was busy casting his upcoming film, Election. Klein won the role of Paul Metzler in Payne's film, which opened to enthusiastic reviews. As Paul, Klein played the dim but sweet football player persuaded by Matthew Broderick's Jim McAllister to run against the unopposed Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) in the school's student council election. The film was released in April 1999 to positive reviews. Soon after, Klein found a steady amount of work in the film industry while briefly attending TCU, where he studied theater and was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. He was next seen in American Pie, which opened on July 9, 1999, and was a box office success. Klein reprised his American Pie role in American Pie 2 and American Reunion. In 2002, Klein had a role in the Mel Gibson Vietnam War film, We Were Soldiers. Klein has also appeared in several teen movies, including Just Friends (2005), American Dreamz (2006). In 2014, Klein was cast as an American pilot in the Damien Lay film The Uberkanone. He co-starred in the 2014 comedy indie film Authors Anonymous with Kaley Cuoco.1990s/2000s- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Colin Andrew Firth was born into an academic family in Grayshott, Hampshire, England. His mother, Shirley Jean (Rolles), was a comparative religion lecturer at the Open University, and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, lectured on history at Winchester University College (formerly King Alfred's College) in Winchester, and worked on education for the Nigerian government. His grandparents were missionaries. His siblings Katie Firth and Jonathan Firth are also actors.
Firth's first acting experience came in infant's school when he played "Jack Frost" in a Christmas pantomime. Three of his four grandparents were Methodist missionaries and he spent his early childhood in Nigeria, returning to England at age five where he entered a comprehensive school in Winchester. He spent two years at the Drama Centre, then in Chalk Farm, where he was "discovered" whist playing "Hamlet" during his final term. His first professional role was as "Bennet" in the West End production of "Another Country". From this performance, he was chosen to play the character of "Judd" in the movie of the play. He went on to play a variety of character parts in both film and television. For his portrayal of "Robert Lawrence" in the 1989 TV production Tumbledown (1988), he received the Royal Television Society Best Actor award and also a BAFTA nomination. He also received a BAFTA nomination for "Mr. Darcy" in the 1995 TV version of Pride and Prejudice (1995). In 2011, he won the Oscar for Best Actor for his commanding leading role, playing British King George VI in The King's Speech (2010).1990s- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Paul Johansson was born on 26 January 1964 in Spokane, Washington, USA. He is an actor and director, known for One Tree Hill (2003), The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009) and Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011). He was previously married to Gabriela Oltean.1990s/2000s- Actor
- Producer
James Patrick Caviezel was born on September 26, 1968 in Mount Vernon, Washington. He was one of five children born to Margaret (Lavery), a former stage actress, and James Caviezel, a chiropractor. The Caviezels are a closely knit Catholic family. He is of Irish (mother) and Swiss-Romansh and Slovak (father) descent; the surname, "Caviezel", is Romansh. As a boy, Jim was described as being "very intense." His two main interests growing up were sports and religion. He was athletically gifted on the basketball court and dreamed of someday playing in the N.B.A. He was also instilled with Christianity at a very young age, attending Church regularly with his family. In 1984, he went to Mount Vernon High School but transferred to O'Dea High School after two years. The following spring, he transferred again to Burien Kennedy High School in Burien, Washington where he was a star on the basketball team and graduated in 1987. While at O'Dea and Kennedy, he stayed with family friends. Following high school Jim enrolled at Bellevue Community College where he again played on the basketball team. A foot injury in his sophomore season put an end to Jim's basketball career and his dreams of playing in the N.B.A. Shortly after this, he turned his focus toward acting. In 1990, he auditioned for a part in the independent film My Own Private Idaho (1991). He won a very small role as a foreign airline clerk after he told casting agents that he was a recent Italian immigrant. The following year, Jim moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a waiter between auditions. He landed small roles in Diggstown (1992) and Wyatt Earp (1994) and guest starring roles on The Wonder Years (1988) and Murder, She Wrote (1984). He continued to go relatively unnoticed in small roles and even thought about quitting acting until 1998 when he received critical recognition for his role as idealist Private Witt in The Thin Red Line (1998). The following year, he gained further recognition with roles in Ride with the Devil (1999) and Frequency (2000). In 2001, his role as Jennifer Lopez's love interest in Angel Eyes (2001) helped to establish him as a versatile actor and leading man. It wasn't until 2002 that Jim made his strong religious beliefs known. While filming High Crimes (2002), he refused to do any love scenes with on-screen wife Ashley Judd because it conflicted with his strong Catholic faith. It was also around this time when he was chosen by Mel Gibson to star as Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ (2004). The movie made headlines and broke box-office records around the world, becoming one of the highest grossing films of all time. Although the movie dealt with controversial matters, Caviezel's performance was acclaimed by both critics and viewers. Jim's next big role would be on the small screen. In 2011, he landed the lead role in the CBS crime drama Person of Interest (2011). The show instantly clicked with audiences, becoming one of the highest rated shows on television. From an outcast actor to a respected film star to a television star, James Caviezel is continuing to give his best to play challenging roles. Off screen, Jim lives with his wife, Kerri, a school teacher whom he met on a blind date in 1993 and married in 1996, and their adopted children.1990s/2000s- Actor
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- Producer
Eric Bana was born Eric Banadinovic on August 9, 1968, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He is the younger of two brothers. His father, named Ivan Banadinovic, came from Zagreb, Croatia, and worked as a manager for Caterpillar Inc. His mother, named Eleanor Banadinovic, came from a German family and was a hairdresser.
Young Bana grew up in suburban Melbourne. He was popular among his schoolmates for his talent of making comic impressions of his teachers. At that time, he was fond of Mel Gibson in Mad Max (1979) and also decided to become an actor. He moved to Sydney and worked odd jobs to support himself. In 1991, he began a career as a stand-up comedian, while working as a barman at Melbourne's Castle Hotel. In 1993, Bana made his television debut on Steve Vizard's Tonight Live with Steve Vizard (1990) talk show, then joined the Full Frontal (1993) TV-series. He gained popularity for making impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruse and "Columbo". In 1996, he started his own show titled Eric (1997), then launched a comedy series titled The Eric Bana Show Live (1997). The show was canceled for the lack of substantial audience. However, in 1997, Bana received the Logie Award for "Most Popular Comedian" for his work on The Eric Bana Show Live (1997).
He made his film debut in The Castle (1997), in a supporting comic role. That same year, he was cast to portray Mark "Chopper" Read, the notorious Australian underworld figure. For the role, Bana gained 30 pounds, by eating junk food; he also spent a few days with Read in prison, in order to perfect his mimicry. Bana completely transformed himself into a bald, plump, disturbed criminal. He would arrive on the film set at four in the morning, spending several hours in makeup, being tattooed exactly like Read. Chopper (2000) became an international success and won three Australian Film Institute Awards. Bana won the Best Actor at the 2000 Stockholm Film Festival and also the AFI 2000 Best Actor Award. Then he co-starred in Black Hawk Down (2001), then starred in Hulk (2003). In 2002, he was cast as the Trojan Prince Hector in the historical epic Troy (2004), after being recommended by Brad Pitt, who admired Bana for his work in Chopper (2000). In 2005, Bana co-starred with Daniel Craig and Geoffrey Rush in the political drama Munich (2005) directed by Steven Spielberg.
In 1995, he began dating Rebecca Gleeson, a publicist and daughter of Australian High Court Chief Justice Murray Gleeson. The following year, he was named "Bachelor of the Year" by Cleo magazine, and won a trip for two to the United States. He invited Gleeson, and proposed to her during that romantic trip. In 1997, the two were married; their son, Klaus, was born in 1999, their daughter, Sophia, was born in 2002. He currently resides in Melbourne with his wife and their two children. Bana is a passionate supporter of Australian football. He was appointed Member of the Order of Australia at the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to the performing arts and to charitable organisations.2000s- Actor
- Director
Born and raised in San Mateo, California, he graduated from Santa Clara University with a BA in Theatre Arts and was quickly headed to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of a career in Film and Television. He didn't have to wait long. A recurring role on Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) brought Michael the recognition he sought and he followed that with a starring role on the CBS Series Pensacola: Wings of Gold (1997) opposite James Brolin for two seasons. After that, he landed notable recurring roles on shows such as Arli$$ (1996), Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996), One Tree Hill (2003), Castle (2009), How I Met Your Mother (2005), Revenge (2011), and the animated series Young Justice (2010) as Adam Strange. Some of his most memorable guest appearances include The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis (2008), Smut (2008), Angels (2014), John May (2010), Dead Man's Curveball (2011), and Baby Made a Mess (2014). He can be seen recurring on Grandfathered (2015) on the FOX network. But he is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Samuel T. Anders on the critically acclaimed Sci-Fi series Battlestar Galactica (2004) and for Justin Patrick on the USA Network series Fairly Legal (2011). He can be seen in the thriller/horror films Hush (2016), The Bye Bye Man (2017), and Hunter Killer (2018). He is currently starring in Rutherford B. Haze (2017) as Tae Kwon Doug. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actress Sandra Hess and their two dogs and two cats.2000s- Actor
- Writer
- Music Department
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, and raised in Joliet, Illinois. He returned to the UK, for a 6 month Shakespeare semester with the United States International University of San Diego, but left to star in the musical production of "Anything Goes," with Elaine Paige. He went on to star in "Miss Saigon," "Matador," "Rope," and "Hair" at London's West End. Barrowman has homes in London and Cardiff, Wales.2000s- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Anson is an American actor, born in Mount Prospect, IL and grew up in White Bluff, Tennessee. His mother is Nancy Smith, a former professional golfer. His father Anson Adams Mount II was one of the original contributing editors to Playboy magazine. Anson has an older brother Anson Adams III and a sister Kristin from his father's first marriage. His great-great-great grandfather was a Confederate cavalry colonel in the Civil War. Anson attended the University of the South and Columbia University for MFA Acting Program from 1995-1998.2000s- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Joe Manganiello is an American actor, producer, director, and author. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Susan (Brachanow) and Charles John Manganiello, and has a younger brother, Nicholas who is also his producing partner. His ancestry includes Sicilian, Irish, Croatian, Armenian, German, and African heritage. Joe was raised in Mount Lebanon and attended Mount Lebanon high school. During high school, he was captain of the football, basketball and volleyball teams, and played at the varsity level in all three. It was during high school that he began writing and directing films with his friends and as a result, became interested in acting. He went on to study acting at The Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, after which he moved to Los Angeles where he very quickly landed his first job as 'Flash Thompson' in Spider-Man (2002).2000s- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Alexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård was born in Stockholm, Sweden and is the eldest son of famed actor Stellan Skarsgård. Among his siblings are actors Gustaf Skarsgård, Bill Skarsgård, and Valter Skarsgård. For most of his formative years, his father was an acclaimed actor in Europe but had not yet achieved the international fame that came after his star turn in Breaking the Waves (1996). Young Alexander was raised under modest circumstances in a working-class Swedish neighborhood as his parents wanted their children to have as normal an upbringing as possible. He began his acting career at the age of eight and continued working in films and on Swedish television until he turned sixteen and decided acting was not the career for him. Life under a microscope lost its charm and perhaps due to the influence of My Skarsgård, his physician mother, he stopped working as an actor, to continue his education.
Instead of continuing college, at the age of nineteen, he entered compulsory military service (military conscription). He used the time to contemplate his future. He studied at the Leeds Metropolitan University then moved to New York where he enrolled at Marymount Manhattan College to study theatre. After six months in New York, a romantic entanglement lured him back to Sweden but the relationship was short-lived. Despite having a broken heart, Alexander decided to stay in Sweden and, with a bit of life experience under his belt, began his acting career again. He appeared in a number of Swedish productions and became a star in his native country but was interested in broadening his horizons and working outside of Sweden. A visit to Los Angeles landed him both an agent and a part in the Ben Stiller movie, Zoolander (2001). After that Alexander returned to Sweden where he continued honing his acting in film and theatrical productions including "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Bloody Wedding". He also co-wrote and co-directed an award-winning short, Att döda ett barn (2003), (To Kill a Child), which was shown at both the Tribeca and Cannes Film Festivals.
His first big break was with the miniseries Generation Kill (2008). Alexander spent seven months broiling in the desert of Namibia but it was well worth it. His portrayal of Marine Sgt. Brad "Iceman" Colbert astonished critics and audiences, alike. Thanks to the writer's strike, after completing Generation Kill (2008), he was cast in the role of "Eric Northman", a 1,000-year-old Viking vampire on the hit series, True Blood (2008). The series was created by Alan Ball, the man behind Six Feet Under (2001). True Blood (2008) was adapted from the "Sookie Stackhouse' novels by Charlaine Harris' and rode to success on quality scripts, great acting and the public's obsession with the vampire genre. In addition to True Blood (2008), which begins its third season in 2010, Alexander has a number of film projects in the works including the remake of Straw Dogs (2011), Melancholia (2011), written and directed by Lars von Trier, action Sci-Fi film, Battleship (2012), and The East (2013), directed by Zal Batmanglij.2000s- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Jon Hamm is an American actor and producer from St. Louis, Missouri who is known for playing Don Draper in Mad Men. He also played Mister Sinister in a deleted scene of The New Mutants and Legion, Brogan from Shrek Forever After, and other films and shows including Sucker Punch, Million Dollar Arm, Black Mirror and Good Omens.2000s- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Patrick Joseph Wilson was born in Norfolk, Virginia and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, the son of Mary Kathryn (Burton), a voice teacher and professional singer, and John Franklin Wilson, a news anchor.
Wilson has a B.F.A. in Drama from Carnegie-Mellon University. His theater work has produced many nominations and awards. He was nominated for Best Actor in a Musical for The Full Monty, a Drama League Award for "Fascinating Rhythm", a Drama Drama League Award for "Bright Lights, Big City", an Encores nomination for "Tenderloin". He had national tours in "Carousel" (Drama Logue Award winner and L.A. Ovation nomination) and "Miss Saigon". Regionally, he has appeared in "Sweet Bird of Youth" (La Jolla), "Cider House Rules" (Mark Taper Forum), "Romeo and Juliet: The Musical" (Ordway), "Lucky in the Rain" (Goodspeed), "Harmony" (La Jolla), and "The Full Monty" (Globe).
Patrick Wilson is married to actress Dagmara Dominczyk; the couple has two children.2000s- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Stephen Boyd was born William Millar on July 4, 1931, at Glengormley, Northern Ireland, one of nine children of Martha Boyd and Canadian truck driver James Alexander Millar, who worked for Fleming's on Tomb Street in Belfast. He attended Glengormley & Ballyrobert primary school and then moved on to Ballyclare High School and studied bookkeeping at Hughes Commercial Academy. In Ireland he worked in an insurance office and travel agency during the day and rehearsed with a semi-professional acting company at night during the week and weekends. He would eventually manage to be on the list for professional acting companies to call him when they had a role. He joined the Ulster Theatre Group and was a leading man with that company for three years, playing all kinds of roles. He did quite a bit of radio work in between as well, but then decided it was distracting him from acting and completely surrendered to his passion. Eventually he went to London as an understudy in an Irish play, "The Passing Day."
In England he became very ill and was in and out of work, supplementing his acting assignments with odd jobs such as waiting in a cafeteria, doorman at the Odeon Theatre and even busking on the streets of London. Even as things turned for the worst, he would always write back to his mother that all was well and things were moving along so as not to alarm her in any way or make her worry. Sir Michael Redgrave discovered him one night at the Odeon Theatre and arranged an introduction to the Windsor Repertory Company. The Arts Council of Great Britain was looking for leading man and part-time director for the only major repertory company that was left in England, The Arts Council Midland Theatre Company, and he got the job. During his stay in England he went into television with the BBC, and for 18 months he was in every big play on TV. One of the major roles in his early career was the one in the play "Barnett's Folly," which he himself ranked as one of his favorites.
In 1956 he signed a seven-year contract with 20th Century-Fox. This led to his first film role, as an IRA member spying for the Nazis The Man Who Never Was (1956), a job he was offered by legendary producer Alexander Korda. William Wyler was so struck by Boyd's performance in that film that he asked Fox to loan him Boyd, resulting in his being cast in what is probably his most famous role, that of Messala in the classic Ben-Hur (1959) opposite Charlton Heston. He received a Golden Globe award for his work on that film but was surprisingly bypassed on Oscar night. Still under contract with Fox, Boyd waited around to play the role of Marc Anthony in Cleopatra (1963) opposite Elizabeth Taylor. However, Taylor became so seriously ill that the production was delayed for months, which caused Boyd and other actors to withdraw from the film and move on to other projects.
Boyd made several films under contract before going independent. One of the highlights was Fantastic Voyage (1966), a science-fiction film about a crew of scientists miniaturized and injected into the human body as if in inner space. He also received a nomination for his role of Insp. Jongman in Lisa (1962) (aka "The Inspector") co-starring with Dolores Hart.
Boyd's Hollywood career began to fade by the late 1960s as he started to spend more time in Europe, where he seemed to find better roles more suited to his interests. When he went independent it was obvious that he took on roles that spoke to him rather than just taking on assignments for the money, and several of the projects he undertook were, at the time, quite controversial, such as Slaves (1969) and Carter's Army (1970). Boyd chose his roles based solely on character development and the value of the story that was told to the public, and never based on monetary compensation or peer pressure.
Although at the height of his career he was considered one of Hollywood's leading men, he never forgot where he came from, and always reminded everyone that he was, first and foremost, an Irishman. When the money started coming in, one of the first things he did was to ensure that his family was taken care of. He was particularly close to his mother Martha and his brother Alex.
Boyd was married twice, the first time in 1958 to Italian-born MCA executive Mariella di Sarzana, but that only lasted (officially) during the filming of "Ben Hur." His second marriage was to Elizabeth Mills, secretary at the British Arts Council and a friend since 1955. Liz Mills followed Boyd to the US in the late 1950s and was his personal assistant and secretary for years before they married, about ten months before his death. He died on June 2, 1977, in Northridge, California, from a massive heart attack while playing golf - one of his favorite pastimes - at the Porter Valley Country Club. He is buried at Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth, California. It was a terrible loss, just as he seemed to be making a comeback with his recent roles in the series Hawaii Five-O (1968) and the English movie The Squeeze (1977).
It is a real tragedy to see that a man who was so passionate about his work, who wanted nothing but to tell a story with character, a man who was ahead of his time in many ways ended up being overlooked by many of his peers. One fact remains about Stephen Boyd, however--his fans are still passionate about his work to this day, almost 30 years after his death, and one has to wonder if he ever realized that perhaps in some way he achieved the goal he set out for himself: to entertain the public and draw attention to the true art of acting while maintaining glamour as he defined it by remaining himself a mystery.1960s- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Jeffrey Hunter was born Henry Herman McKinnies Jr. on November 25, 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana, an only child. His parents met at the University of Arkansas, and when he was almost four his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In his teens, he acted in productions of the North Shore Children's Theater and, from 1942 to 1944, performed in summer stock with the local Port Players, along with Eileen Heckart, Charlotte Rae and Morton DaCosta. Hunter was also a radio actor at WTMJ, getting his first professional paycheck in 1945 for the wartime series "Those Who Serve." After graduation from Whitefish Bay High School, where he was co-captain of the football team, he enlisted in the United States Navy and underwent training at Great Lakes Naval Station, Illinois, in 1945-1946, but on the eve of his shipping out for active duty in Japan he took ill and received a medical discharge from the service.
Hunter attended and graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor's degree in 1949, where he acquired more stage experience in Sheridan's "The Rivals" and Ruth Gordon's "Years Ago". He also did summer stock with Northwestern students at Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania in 1948, worked on two Northwestern Radio Playshop broadcasts, was president of Phi Delta Theta Fraternity, and was active in the campus film society with David Bradley, later acting in director David Bradley's production of Julius Caesar (1950) in 1949. He then attended graduate school at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he studied radio and drama. He was in the cast of a UCLA production of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" in May, 1950; on opening night, the good-looking Hunter drew the attention of talent scouts from Paramount and 20th Century-Fox Studios.
Hunter made a screen test with Ed Begley in a scene from "All My Sons" at Paramount (where he met Barbara Rush, his future wife), but after an executive shake-up at that studio derailed his hiring, he was signed by 20th Century Fox (where he remained under contract until 1959) and within a month was sent on location in New York for Fourteen Hours (1951). Hunter was kept fairly busy in pictures, working his way from featured roles to starring roles to first-billing within two years in Sailor of the King (1953). His big break came with John Ford's classic, The Searchers (1956), where he played the young cowboy who accompanies John Wayne on his epic search for a child kidnapped by Comanches. Hunter got excellent reviews for his performance in this film and justifiably so, as he held his own well with the veteran Wayne.
Starring roles in two more John Ford movies followed, and in 1960, Hunter had one of his best roles in Hell to Eternity (1960), the true story of World War II hero Guy Gabaldon. That same year, Hunter landed the role for which he is probably best known (although it's far from his best work), when he played Jesus in producer Samuel Bronston's King of Kings (1961), which due to Hunter's still youthful looks at 33, was dubbed by irreverent Hollywood wags "I Was a Teenage Jesus." After the cancellation of his Western series Temple Houston (1963), and his decision not to continue in the lead role of the current series Star Trek (1966), his career took a downturn, and Hunter eventually wound up in Europe working on cheap Westerns, at the time a sure sign of a career in trouble.
While in Spain in November 1968 to film Cry Chicago (¡Viva América!), a story about the Chicago Mafia, Hunter was injured in an on-set explosion when a car window near him, which had been rigged to explode outward, accidentally exploded inward. Hunter sustained a serious concussion. According to Hunter's wife Emily, he "went into shock" on the flight back to the United States after filming and "couldn't speak. He could hardly move." After landing, Hunter was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, but doctors could not find any serious injuries except for a displaced vertebra and a concussion.
On the afternoon of May 26, 1969, Hunter suffered an intracranial hemorrhage while walking down a three-stair set of steps at his home in Van Nuys, California. He fell, knocked over a planter, and struck his head on the banister, fracturing his skull. He was found unconscious by Frank Bellow, an actor and a friend of Hunter's, who came for a visit, and taken to Valley Presbyterian Hospital, where he underwent brain surgery. He died at about 9:30 the following morning at the age of 42.1950s/60s- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Paul Gross is the elder of two brothers. He was an Army brat; his father, Bob Gross, was a Tank Commander in the Canadian Army. As a consequence Paul and his family moved around a lot: he has lived in Canada, the U.S, England and Germany. Paul was introduced to acting in his early teens, while the Gross family was in Washington. He performed in stage plays such as Canterbury Tales and Faustus. From the age of 14, he appeared in television commercials, which enabled him to pay for his degree in Drama at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
In 2011, Paul Gross appeared at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto playing Elyot opposite Kim Cattrall's Amanda in the celebrated comedy by Noel Coward, Private Lives.1990s/2000s- Actor
- Soundtrack
When someone told Brad Johnson he'd come a long way, his usual response was, "Well, I had a long way to come." Born on a small ranch in Tucson, Johnson, the son of a horse trainer/used car salesman, did everything from shoeing horses to repossessing cars to serving as a hunting and fishing guide. His humble beginnings nurtured his modesty and quiet strength and had critics comparing him to John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and James Stewart.
Brad's route to stardom was speedy, dramatic and somewhat circuitous. He joined the Pro Rodeo circuit in 1984 and was spotted wrestling steers in Wyoming by a casting director looking for cowboys to use as extras in a beer commercial. After this first break came a three-year run as the Marlboro Man, then numerous Calvin Klein print ads and more commercials. After a serious knee injury sidelined his rodeo career, Johnson headed for Hollywood.
Within five months of his arrival, Roger Corman cast him to star in Nam Angels (1989). Soon after, Steven Spielberg discovered Johnson and offered him the coveted role of Ted Baker, Holly Hunter's love interest in Always (1989). When asked about her co-star, Holly described Brad as "all twisted steel and sex appeal." The Spielberg film led Johnson to Paramount for John Milius's Flight of the Intruder (1991). An exclusive three-picture deal at Paramount followed.
With 60 hours of television, 11 pilots and over 25 films to his credit, there was no slowing down. Johnson's Los Angeles-based High Lonesome Productions and his producing partner Lou Pitt had several projects in different stages of production.
Brad lived with his wife Laurie and their eight children on a ranch in the mountains of Colorado.1980s/90s- Actor
- Producer
- Director
David James Elliott was born on 21 September 1960 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is an actor and producer, known for Trumbo (2015), JAG (1995) and Exploding Sun (2013). He has been married to Nanci Chambers since 8 October 1992. They have two children.1980s/90s- A familiar face to film and television audiences, Victor Webster is an established actor with an impressive list of credits. Most recently, he joined the cast of the Netflix/CBC comedy "Workin' Moms," playing Mike Bolinski for two seasons. He's also recently filmed a large recurring arc on the second season of the CW's military fantasy show "Motherland: Fort Salem." On the film side, Victor just starred alongside Bethany Joy Lenz in the romantic comedy "Five Star Christmas" which premiered on Hallmark last Thanksgiving during the networks "Countdown to Christmas" programming event.
Victor discovered his passion for acting when he made his television debut on the NBC daytime drama "Days of Our Lives." He then segued to the AMC network series "The Lot" and the number one syndicated series "Mutant X." His growing body of work brought him accolades and spots on various lists of Hollywood notables, including people magazine's "50 Most Eligible Bachelors." While it was a fun title, Webster chose to hone his craft and play characters that challenged his abilities.
Victor's commitment paid off with rolls opposite acclaimed talents in some of televisions most popular series, including "Sex and the City," "Castle," "Bones," "CSI," "Mom," "Charmed," "Criminal Minds," "Melrose Place," "Paradise Inc." and "Girlfriends Guide to Divorce," just to name a few. Webster costarred as Detective Carlos Fonegra in the acclaimed sci-fi series "Continuum," which ran for four seasons.
Webster is known to Hallmark channel fans for his roles in, "Homegrown Christmas," "Love Blossoms," "Summer Villa" and "A Harvest Wedding." Webster starred in hallmark movies and mysteries "Matchmaker Mysteries: A Killer Engagement," as well as "Matchmaker Mysteries: A Fatal Romance," and most recently "Matchmaker Mysteries: The Art of the kill," The first three installments of the new original franchise. Victor also starred in "Hearts of Winter," which premiered in January 2020 as part of Hallmark channels popular "Winterfest" programming event.
On the film side, Victor has built a career that spans genres, from romantic comedies to action thrillers. His credits include "Bringing Down the House ," "Must Love Dogs," "Surrogates," " Why did I Get Married Too?" as well as the leading role in the third and fourth installment of "The Scorpion King" franchise. Victor can also be seen starring in the action packed Chinese blockbuster "Wings Over Everest." An artist to his core, Webster pursues his passion for photography as well as martial arts, holding a black belt and an undefeated record in Tae Kwon Do and a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu for which he holds two bronze medals from the world championships. He is committed to his various charities, and life of giving through arts and travel. Although he calls California his home, he hails from Canada and will always be the Canadian cowboy.2000s - Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Harry Robinson Hamlin is an American actor of stage, television and films. He was born in 1951, in Pasadena, California, to Berniece (Robinson), a socialite, and Chauncey Jerome Hamlin, Jr., an aeronautical engineer. He graduated from Yale University in 1974 with degrees in Drama and Psychology and was later awarded a Master of Fine Arts in acting from The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. Though awarded an ITT-Fullbright scholarship in acting in 1977 he opted instead to make his feature film debut in Stanley Donen's comedy spoof "Movie Movie" opposite George C. Scott for which he received his first Golden Globe nomination. Best known for his roles a Perseus in "Clash of the Titans" with Lawrence Olivier and Michael Kusac in the Emmy winning TV series "LA Law", he is the son of Chauncey Jerome Hamlin Jr. who helped design the Saturn V rocket with Dr.Wernher Von Braun at Rocketdyne and North American Aviation. He is the grandson of Chauncey Jerome Hamlin who founded the Buffalo Museum of Science in Buffalo, New York. Chauncey Hamlin was also a president of the American Association of Museums and created the International Council of Museums.1980s- Though born in England in May of 1952, Antony Hamilton was adopted by an Australian military man and his wife and grew up in Adelaide, Australia. A classically trained dancer, he danced with the Australian ballet before his outstanding good looks led him into a modeling career. He modeled in Europe and, while studying acting, in the U.S. After being "introduced" (according to the film credits) in _Samson and Delilah (1984)_ he was offered the co-starring role in the TV series Cover Up (1984) as a replacement for the late Jon-Erik Hexum. As Hexum was an acting school classmate of Hamilton's, the actor hesitated to profit by Hexum's death, but eventually agreed to take the role. Around that same time, Cubby Broccoli tested him as the new James Bond when Pierce Brosnan was at first unable to get out of his "Remington Steele" contract to play the role. According to some reports, Broccoli decided against a blond Bond; in other reports, it was agreed by both Hamilton and Broccoli that Hamilton's known homosexuality would work against him in the role. Whatever the reason, Hamilton continued in television and films until his death from complications due to the AIDS virus in March of 1995.1980s
- Born in Niskayuna (Schenectady county), New York, Eric Thal attended Haverford Preparatory School in Haverford, Pennsylvania in 1983 were he was Student Council President. He then moved on to attend Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania where he majored in engineering. With the encouragement of his acting teacher Richard Bruer he left school after one year to pursue acting. At The Neighbourhood Playhouse Theatre he studied with Richard Pinter and studied classical theatre with Ada Brown Mather.
After working in commercials and as a magician in New York City, he auditioned for a small role in Sidney Lumet's film A Stranger Among Us (1992). Lumet was so impressed by the young actor, the director invited back to audition for the leading role. Although he had virtually no professional credits, Thal landed the role of an Hasidic scholar who becomes involved with an undercover police officer (Melanie Griffith).
While the film failed to impress critics or the public, Thal's carefully measured intensity and equanimity were praised. He subsequently played a police officer (and the anti-heroine's husband) in the farcical The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag (1992) and followed up with a small role in Six Degrees of Separation (1993), as a heterosexual driven to suicide after an intimate encounter with a con artist (Will Smith).
Thal later co-starred as Donald Sutherland's disaffected son in The Puppet Masters (1994) and as a man who must face romance after the excitement has worn off in Joe's So Mean to Josephine (1996). He segued to the small screen playing the hirsute strongman in the TNT Biblical epic Samson and Delilah (1996), opposite Elizabeth Hurley. The following year, Thal was cast as a musician engaged to Halle Berry in the ABC TV-movie The Wedding (1998).1990s - Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
The "boy next door, if that boy spent lots of time alone in the basement", is how Rich Cohen described Kyle MacLachlan in a 1994 article for "Rolling Stone" magazine. That distinctly askew wholesomeness made MacLachlan a natural to become famous as the alter ego of twisted director David Lynch.
MacLachlan was born and raised in Yakima, Washington, to Catherine Louise (Stone), a public relations director, and Kent Alan McLachlan, a lawyer and stockbroker. He has Scottish, English, Cornish, and German ancestry. MacLachlan graduated from the University of Washington in 1982. The darkly handsome actor made his feature film debut when he starred in the big-budget David Lynch adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune (1984), but only enjoyed real success after appearing in a second Lynch project, the moody and perverse classic, Blue Velvet (1986).
The following year saw MacLachlan appearing as an otherworldly FBI agent in the cult classic sci-fi film, The Hidden (1987). This turned out to be a sign of things to come, as MacLachlan soon took on another oddball G-man, "Special Agent Dale Cooper", on Lynch's cryptic ABC-TV series, Twin Peaks (1990), perhaps, along with Blue Velvet (1986), his most famous role. MacLachlan's remarkable work as Agent Cooper earned him a Golden Globe award and a pair of Emmy nominations, as well as steady work in television and films, including a part as Ray Manzarek in the Oliver Stone film, The Doors (1991), and villain "Cliff Vandercave" in the live action version of The Flintstones (1994).
His career took a hit after he appeared in the infamous flop, Showgirls (1995). However, MacLachlan returned to prominence in the early 2000s with a re-occurring role on HBO's Sex and the City (1998), as well as a starring role in the TV movie, The Spring (2000), and a turn as "Claudius" in director Michael Almereyda's version of Hamlet (2000). MacLachlan later took advantage of his resemblance to Cary Grant, when he played the classic actor's spirit in Touch of Pink (2004).
MacLachlan has remained a popular actor with independent filmmakers, and he has also been a familiar face on television, appearing on the ABC-TV shows, In Justice (2006) and Desperate Housewives (2004).1980s/90s