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- Hannah Fry was born on 21 February 1984 in Harlow, Essex, England, UK. She is a writer, known for The Future with Hannah Fry (2023), Unvaccinated (2022) and The Sky at Night (1957). She is married to Phil . They have two children.
- Helen Czerski is known for The Quest for Wonder (2016), Science Club (2012) and Ocean Autopsy: The Secret Story of Our Seas (2020).
- Born in France to a French father and Trinidanian mother, she moved to Ireland at the age of 10. She studied Biochemistry at college and graduated with honours. She also launched a singing career and sang in a pop band. She was asked to present at the IRMA awards for Irish TV station RTÉ and has been a presenter for many other shows since then, working in Ireland and the U.K.
- Alice Roberts was born in 1973 in Bristol, England, UK. She is an actress and writer, known for Curse of the Ancients with Alice Roberts (2022), Detectorists (2014) and Ottoman Empire by Train. She has been married to David Stevens since 2000. They have one child.
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Lucy Worsley was born on 18 December 1973 in Reading, Berkshire, England, UK. She is a writer and producer, known for Tales from the Royal Bedchamber (2013), Our Food (2012) and Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen (2022). She has been married to Mark Hines since 2011.- Producer
- Actor
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Richard Hammond was born in 1969 in the British town of Solihull, which is near to Birmingham although it tries to pretend that it isn't. He started his career in local radio before getting a break on a cable TV car show where he was able to hone his presenting skills, safe in the knowledge that no one was watching. In 2002 he was given his big break on BBC Top Gear and has never looked back, except when pulling out into traffic. He lives almost in Wales and is known as the Hamster, though only by people he has never met.- Actress
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Kate Humble was born on 12 December 1968 in Wimbledon, London, England, UK. She is an actress and assistant director, known for The Runner (1992), Coast to Coast (1995) and Parallel 9 (1992). She has been married to Ludo Graham since 1992.- Writer
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- Producer
Bettany Hughes was born in 1968 in Oxford, England, UK. She is a writer and producer, known for Ultimate Treasure Countdown (2020), Curiosity (2011) and Warrior Women with Lupita Nyong'o (2019). She is married to Adrian Evans. They have two children.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Brian Cox was born on 3 March 1968 in Oldham, Lancashire, England, UK. He is an actor and writer, known for Sunshine (2007), The Last Star and Absolutely Anything (2015). He has been married to Gia Milinovich since 2003. They have one child.- Actor
- Camera and Electrical Department
Neil Oliver was born on 21 February 1967 in Renfrewshire, Scotland, UK. He is an actor, known for Coast Australia (2013), Brookside (1982) and Today's Builder (2009). He has been married to Trudi Alexandria Wallace since 10 October 2009. They have three children.- Sean Carroll is known for Earth to Echo (2014), Alien Encounters (2012) and Einstein and Hawking: Unlocking the Universe (2019).
- Brainbox Marcus De Saytoy is the Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His passion lies in teaching difficult mathematical concepts and making them palatable for the general public. He has been very influential in popularising maths--showing how it affects every aspect of our lives from simple counting to any form of trade and even the homes in which we live. In recognition of his work he won the Michael Faraday Prize from the Royal Society of London for "excellence in communicating science to UK audiences". His academic work concerns mainly group theory and number theory. He is also the President of the Mathematical Association and previously an EPSRC Senior Media Fellow and a Royal Society University Research Fellow.
Marcus was born in August 1965 in London and grew up in Henley-on-Thames. His intellectual journey began at local comprehensives Gillott's School and King James's College (VI Form, now Henley College) and Wadham College, Oxford where he obtained first class honours in Mathematics. He went on to complete his DPhil in mathematics.
Marcus is the author of The Music of the Primes - a genuinely bestselling maths book. He also writes for The Guardian and Telegraph, presents films for BBC's Horizon and regularly pops up as a guest on Radio 4's In Our Time.
He delivered the 2006 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures under the collective title The Num8er My5teries. This was only the third time the subject of the lectures had been mathematics--on the first occasion in 1978, when the lecture was delivered by Erik Christopher Zeeman, du Sautoy had been a schoolboy in the audience. The venue for the 2006 Christmas Lectures was the Institution of Engineering and Technology's headquarters at Savoy Place, London.
Throughout his distinguished career Marcus has received a number of accolades. He has been named by The Independent on Sunday as one of the UK's leading scientists and, in 2001, he won the Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society, which is awarded every two years to reward the best mathematical research by a mathematician under forty.
Du Sautoy is also on the advisory board of Mangahigh.com--an online maths game website and has appeared on Channel 4 News and on BBC Radio 4's Today programme promoting the service and is a regular contributor to the same network's In Our Time. He also appears on the TV series School of Hard Sums with Dara Ó Briain.
He is also a supporter of Common Hope, an organisation that helps people in Guatemala.
Marcus is an unrivaled speaker on mathematics and is represented in London, England by Useful Talent. - Additional Crew
- Actor
Dr Iain Stewart is a Scottish geologist who graduated from Stathclyde University in Scotland, in 1986 with a degree in geology and geography. He followed this with a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy which is a higher research degree) on Mediterranean earthquakes at the University of Bristol in England, submitted in 1990.
After some time as a teacher at Brunel University, he moved to the Centre for Geosciences at Glasgow University in 2002 and began pitching an idea about a television series on Geology. The following year, he began working with the BBC on the Rough Science programme, and on two Horizon specials - Helike: The Real Atlantis and Earthquake Storms.
Since 2004, he has been a Lecturer at the University of Plymouth and continues to broadcast on geology.- Ray Mears was born in 1964. He has been married to Ruth since 2009. He was previously married to Rachel.
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Ruth Goodman is known for Inside the Factory (2015), Jack the Ripper: The Hidden Victims (2022) and E Numbers: An Edible Adventure (2010). She is married to Mark Goodman. They have two children.- David Pogue is an American technology writer and TV science presenter. He is the founder of Yahoo Tech, having been groomed for the position by 13 years as the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times. He's also a monthly columnist for Scientific American and host of science shows on PBS's Nova (1974). He's been a correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley (1979) since 2002.
With over 3 million books in print, David is one of the world's bestselling how-to authors. He wrote or co-wrote seven books in the "for Dummies" series (including Macs, Magic, Opera, and Classical Music); in 1999, he launched his own series of complete, funny computer books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes 120 titles.
David graduated summa cum laude from Yale in 1985, with distinction in Music, and he spent ten years conducting and arranging Broadway musicals in New York. He's won two Emmy awards, two Webby awards, a Loeb award for journalism, and an honorary doctorate in music. He's been profiled on "48 Hours" and 60 Minutes (1968). He lives in Connecticut with his wife and three children. - Writer
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- Editorial Department
Brian Greene was born on 9 February 1963 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a writer and actor, known for Deja Vu (2006), Frequency (2000) and The Last Mimzy (2007).- Writer
- Producer
- Music Department
James May was born in 1963 but his development was tragically arrested at the age of 12. A confessed 'complete waster' until the age of 42, May then took the decision to apply his talent for the pointless in the direction of television. His oeuvre includes a record for the world's longest train set, building a real house from Lego, propelling children's action figures to beyond the speed of sound, a revival of the cult of duelling, the creation of a mechanical email system, and a wholesale rethink of the pet funeral business. He regards the fish-finger sandwich as the greatest single leap in human progress until the invention of the internet.
He lives in Hammersmith, but his neighbours wish he didn't.- Professor Jameel Sadik "Jim" Al-Khalili OBE is a British theoretical physicist, Author, respected BBC presenter and frequent commentator about science in British media. He holds the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey, and previously held the position as President of the British Humanist Association (promoting Humanism) between January 2013 and January 2016.****
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Geoffrey Baer is known for Great Performances (1971), Love in 4 Acts (1994) and The Magic Door (1962).- Writer
- Actor
Andrew Marr was born on 31 July 1959 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He is a writer and actor, known for Doctor Who (2005), Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain (2007) and BBC News at Ten O'Clock (2000). He has been married to Jackie Ashley since 1987. They have three children.- Editorial Department
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Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator.
Born and raised in New York City, Tyson became interested in astronomy at the age of nine after a visit to the Hayden Planetarium. After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, where he was editor-in-chief of the Physical Science Journal, he completed a bachelor's degree in physics at Harvard University in 1980. After receiving a master's degree in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin in 1983, he earned his master's (1989) and doctorate (1991) in astrophysics at Columbia University. For the next three years, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. In 1994 he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist and the Princeton faculty as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. In 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210-million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000.
From 1995 to 2005, Tyson wrote monthly essays in the "Universe" column for Natural History magazine, some of which were published in his book Death by Black Hole (2007). During the same period, he wrote a monthly column in Star Date magazine, answering questions about the universe under the pen name "Merlin". Material from the column appeared in his books Merlin's Tour of the Universe (1998) and Just Visiting This Planet (1998). Tyson served on a 2001 government commission on the future of the U.S. aerospace industry, and on the 2004 Moon, Mars and Beyond commission. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in the same year.
In 2014, he hosted the television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a successor to Carl Sagan's 1980 series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.
As a science communicator, Tyson regularly appears on television, radio, and various other media outlets.- Composer
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Howard Goodall was educated at New College School, Stowe School and Lord Williams's School. A boy chorister, he studied music at Christ Church, Oxford, where he achieved a First. He became known to the public for composing the theme tunes to popular BBC comedy series such as Blackadder (1982), Red Dwarf (1988) and The Vicar of Dibley (1994). He has also presented educational programmes on music, such as 20th Century Greats (2004) and Sgt Pepper's Musical Revolution with Howard Goodall (2017). He is particularly noted as an expert on the music of The Beatles.- Producer
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Michael Mosley was born on 22 March 1957 in Calcutta, West Bengal, India. He is a producer and writer, known for The Human Face (2001), Leonardo (2003) and Pompeii: The Last Day (2003). He has been married to Clare Bailey since 1987. They have four children.- Actor
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Bill Nye was born on 27 November 1955 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993), Flubber (1997) and Stargate: Atlantis (2004). He has been married to Liza Mundy since 22 June 2022. He was previously married to Blair Tindall.- Producer
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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored or co-authored twenty-four books and created twenty-one documentary films, including Wonders of the African World, African American Lives, Faces of America, Black in Latin America, Black America since MLK: And Still I Rise, Africa's Great Civilizations, and Finding Your Roots, his groundbreaking genealogy series now in its sixth season on PBS. His six-part PBS documentary series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (2013), which he wrote, executive produced, and hosted, earned the Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program-Long Form, as well as the Peabody Award, Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, and N.A.A.C.P. Image Award. Professor Gates's latest project is the history series, Reconstruction: America after the Civil War (PBS, 2019), and the related books, Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow, with Tonya Bolden (Scholastic, 2019), and Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow (Penguin Random House, 2019).
Having written for such leading publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Time, Professor Gates serves as chairman of TheRoot.com, a daily online magazine he co-founded in 2008, and chair of the Creative Board of Fusion TV. He oversees the Oxford African American Studies Center, the first comprehensive scholarly online resource in the field, and has received grant funding to develop a Finding Your Roots curriculum to teach students science through genetics and genealogy. In 2012, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader, a collection of his writings edited by Abby Wolf, was published.
The recipient of fifty-five honorary degrees and numerous prizes, Professor Gates was a member of the first class awarded "genius grants" by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, and in 1998, he became the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. He was named to Time's 25 Most Influential Americans list in 1997, to Ebony's Power 150 list in 2009, and to Ebony's Power 100 list in 2010 and 2012. He earned his B.A. in English Language and Literature, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1973, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge in 1979. In 2018, he was one of 15 alumni of African descent honored in the exhibition, Black Cantabs: History Makers, at the Cambridge University Library. Professor Gates has directed the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research-now the Hutchins Center-since arriving at Harvard in 1991, and during his first fifteen years on campus, he chaired the Department of Afro-American Studies as it expanded into the Department of African and African American Studies with a full-fledged doctoral program. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and serves on a wide array of boards, including the New York Public Library, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Aspen Institute, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Library of America, and the Brookings Institution. In 2017, the Organization of American States named Gates a Goodwill Ambassador for the Rights of People of African Descent in the Americas. His portrait, by Yuqi Wang, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.- Writer
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Michael Wood was born on 23 July 1948 in Manchester, England, UK. He is a writer and director, known for River Journeys (1984), A Church to Yourself (1979) and The Great British Story: A People's History (2012). He has been married to Rebecca Dobbs since 1988. They have two children.- Additional Crew
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Expert in science fiction, futurist, bestselling author, acclaimed on-air personality, and popularizer of theoretical physics.
Dr. Kaku has starred in science programming for television including series for Discovery, Science Channel, BBC, ABC, and History Channel. Beyond his numerous New York Times bestselling books, he has also been a featured columnist for top science publications such as Popular Mechanics, Discover, Cosmos, WIRED, New Scientist, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, Variety, Vanity Fair, and many others.
Kaku is a news contributor to several news organizations including CBS, CBSN, FOX News, CNN, and CNBC, also appearing on ABC, FOX Business, and RT. Dr. Kaku has made guest appearances on all major talk shows including The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Late Show, The Tonight Show, and Conan. He was profiled in the award-winning documentary film, "Me & Isaac Newton" by Michael Apted.
Kaku has also appeared in commercial media for Toyota, Samsung, TurboTax, Coca-Cola, and others.- Actress
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Joanna Lumley was born on 1 May, 1946 in Kashmir, India, to British parents, Thya Beatrice Rose (Weir) and James Rutherford Lumley. Her father was a major in the Gurkha Rifles, and she spent most of her early childhood in the Far East where her father was posted.
An aspiring actress, she first came to fame as a model in London's swinging 1960s, where she was photographed by the greats, including her friend, the late Patrick Lichfield. She was designer Jean Muir's muse and house model for several years before carving a career as a freelance model where she became one of the top ten most-booked models of the 1960s.
Lumley's breakthrough role was as Purdey in The New Avengers (1976), a role for which over 800 girls auditioned. Purdey propelled Lumley to instant fame and created one of the "must-have" hairstyles of the 1970s -- the Purdey bob. Lumley became a pin-up figure for a generation of British males who grew up watching her as the high-kicking action girl.
Other roles followed, most notably as Sapphire in Sapphire & Steel (1979) opposite David McCallum -- a sci-fi precursor to The X-Files (1993) and an under-rated gem of a series which has gained a cult following in recent years, despite the fact it has only ever been shown ONCE on terrestrial TV. During the 1980s, Lumley returned to the theater, making notable appearances as "Hedda Gabler" and as "Elvira" in "Blithe Spirit" -- a role that seems tailor-made for her. Lumley also made appearances in several films, including Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), and a screen-stealing role in Shirley Valentine (1989).
It was her reinvention as a comic actress in Absolutely Fabulous (1992) that shot Lumley to wider international acclaim. Her role as Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous (1992) is regarded as one of the greatest female comic performances ever, earning Lumley a stream of awards, including several BAFTAs. Since Absolutely Fabulous (1992), Lumley has cemented her role as one of the UK's most-loved & respected actresses. She is rarely off UK TV screens and has also built a successful film career as a character/voice-over actress.
She recently teamed up with the writer/director Hugo Blick for the series of acclaimed monologues Up in Town (2002) which were critically regarded as the performance of a lifetime, and the recent Sensitive Skin (2005).
In 2007, she returned to the stage for the first time in over a decade in a production of Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard", directed by Sir Jonathan Miller.- Writer
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Simon Schama was born on 13 February 1945 in London, England, UK. He is a writer and actor, known for A History of Britain (2000), Simon Schama's Power of Art (2006) and The Romantic Revolution. He is married to Virginia E. Papaioannou. They have one child.- Writer
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David Starkey was born on 3 January 1945 in Kendal, England, UK. He is a writer and producer, known for Good Ideas of the 20th Century (1993), Late Great Britons - Reappraised (1988) and Monarchy by David Starkey (2004).- Podcaster
- Producer
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Melvyn Bragg was born on 6 October 1939 in Wigton, Cumbria, England, UK. He is a podcaster and producer, known for Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), The South Bank Show (1978) and Monitor (1958).- Actor
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With an authoritative voice and calm demeanor, this ever popular American actor has grown into one of the most respected figures in modern US cinema. Morgan was born on June 1, 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee, to Mayme Edna (Revere), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, a barber. The young Freeman attended Los Angeles City College before serving several years in the US Air Force as a mechanic between 1955 and 1959. His first dramatic arts exposure was on the stage including appearing in an all-African American production of the exuberant musical Hello, Dolly!.
Throughout the 1970s, he continued his work on stage, winning Drama Desk and Clarence Derwent Awards and receiving a Tony Award nomination for his performance in The Mighty Gents in 1978. In 1980, he won two Obie Awards, for his portrayal of Shakespearean anti-hero Coriolanus at the New York Shakespeare Festival and for his work in Mother Courage and Her Children. Freeman won another Obie in 1984 for his performance as The Messenger in the acclaimed Brooklyn Academy of Music production of Lee Breuer's The Gospel at Colonus and, in 1985, won the Drama-Logue Award for the same role. In 1987, Freeman created the role of Hoke Coleburn in Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Driving Miss Daisy, which brought him his fourth Obie Award. In 1990, Freeman starred as Petruchio in the New York Shakespeare Festival's The Taming of the Shrew, opposite Tracey Ullman. Returning to the Broadway stage in 2008, Freeman starred with Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher in Clifford Odets' drama The Country Girl, directed by Mike Nichols.
Freeman first appeared on TV screens as several characters including "Easy Reader", "Mel Mounds" and "Count Dracula" on the Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) show The Electric Company (1971). He then moved into feature film with another children's adventure, Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow! (1971). Next, there was a small role in the thriller Blade (1973); then he played Casca in Julius Caesar (1979) and the title role in Coriolanus (1979). Regular work was coming in for the talented Freeman and he appeared in the prison dramas Attica (1980) and Brubaker (1980), Eyewitness (1981), and portrayed the final 24 hours of slain Malcolm X in Death of a Prophet (1981). For most of the 1980s, Freeman continued to contribute decent enough performances in films that fluctuated in their quality. However, he really stood out, scoring an Oscar nomination as a merciless hoodlum in Street Smart (1987) and, then, he dazzled audiences and pulled a second Oscar nomination in the film version of Driving Miss Daisy (1989) opposite Jessica Tandy. The same year, Freeman teamed up with youthful Matthew Broderick and fiery Denzel Washington in the epic Civil War drama Glory (1989) about freed slaves being recruited to form the first all-African American fighting brigade.
His star continued to rise, and the 1990s kicked off strongly with roles in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and The Power of One (1992). Freeman's next role was as gunman Ned Logan, wooed out of retirement by friend William Munny to avenge several prostitutes in the wild west town of Big Whiskey in Clint Eastwood's de-mythologized western Unforgiven (1992). The film was a sh and scored an acting Oscar for Gene Hackman, a directing Oscar for Eastwood, and the Oscar for best picture. In 1993, Freeman made his directorial debut on Bopha! (1993) and soon after formed his production company, Revelations Entertainment.
More strong scripts came in, and Freeman was back behind bars depicting a knowledgeable inmate (and obtaining his third Oscar nomination), befriending falsely accused banker Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). He was then back out hunting a religious serial killer in Se7en (1995), starred alongside Keanu Reeves in Chain Reaction (1996), and was pursuing another serial murderer in Kiss the Girls (1997).
Further praise followed for his role in the slave tale of Amistad (1997), he was a worried US President facing Armageddon from above in Deep Impact (1998), appeared in Neil LaBute's black comedy Nurse Betty (2000), and reprised his role as Alex Cross in Along Came a Spider (2001). Now highly popular, he was much in demand with cinema audiences, and he co-starred in the terrorist drama The Sum of All Fears (2002), was a military officer in the Stephen King-inspired Dreamcatcher (2003), gave divine guidance as God to Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty (2003), and played a minor role in the comedy The Big Bounce (2004).
2005 was a huge year for Freeman. First, he he teamed up with good friend Clint Eastwood to appear in the drama, Million Dollar Baby (2004). Freeman's on-screen performance is simply world-class as ex-prize fighter Eddie "Scrap Iron" Dupris, who works in a run-down boxing gym alongside grizzled trainer Frankie Dunn, as the two work together to hone the skills of never-say-die female boxer Hilary Swank. Freeman received his fourth Oscar nomination and, finally, impressed the Academy's judges enough to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance. He also narrated Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005) and appeared in Batman Begins (2005) as Lucius Fox, a valuable ally of Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman for director Christopher Nolan. Freeman would reprise his role in the two sequels of the record-breaking, genre-redefining trilogy.
Roles in tentpoles and indies followed; highlights include his role as a crime boss in Lucky Number Slevin (2006), a second go-round as God in Evan Almighty (2007) with Steve Carell taking over for Jim Carrey, and a supporting role in Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone (2007). He co-starred with Jack Nicholson in the breakout hit The Bucket List (2007) in 2007, and followed that up with another box-office success, Wanted (2008), then segued into the second Batman film, The Dark Knight (2008).
In 2009, he reunited with Eastwood to star in the director's true-life drama Invictus (2009), on which Freeman also served as an executive producer. For his portrayal of Nelson Mandela in the film, Freeman garnered Oscar, Golden Globe and Critics' Choice Award nominations, and won the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor.
Recently, Freeman appeared in RED (2010), a surprise box-office hit; he narrated the Conan the Barbarian (2011) remake, starred in Rob Reiner's The Magic of Belle Isle (2012); and capped the Batman trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Freeman has several films upcoming, including the thriller Now You See Me (2013), under the direction of Louis Leterrier, and the science fiction actioner Oblivion (2013), in which he stars with Tom Cruise.- Writer
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David McCullough was born on 7 July 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Seabiscuit (2003), Nova (1974) and The Civil War (1990). He was married to Rosalee Barnes. He died on 7 August 2022 in Hingham, Massachusetts, USA.- Writer
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Born 8 May 1926, the younger brother of actor Lord Richard Attenborough. He never expressed a wish to act and, instead, studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, graduating in 1947, the year he began his two years National Service in the Royal Navy. In 1952, he joined BBC Television at Alexandra Palace and, in 1954, began his famous "Zoo Quest" series. When not "Zoo Questing", he presented political broadcasts, archaeological quizzes, short stories, gardening and religious programmes.
1964 saw the start of BBC2, Britain's third TV channel, with Michael Peacock as its Controller. A year later, Peacock was promoted to BBC1 and Attenborough became Controller of BBC2. As such, he was responsible for the introduction of colour television into Britain, and also for bringing Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969) to the world.
In 1969, he was appointed Director of Programmes with editorial responsibility for both the BBC's television networks. Eight years behind a desk was too much for him, and he resigned in 1973 to return to programme making. First came "Eastwards with Attenborough", a natural history series set in South East Asia, then The Tribal Eye (1975) , examining tribal art. In 1979, he wrote and presented all 13 parts of Life on Earth (1979) (then the most ambitious series ever produced by the BBC Natural History Unit). This became a trilogy, with The Living Planet (1984) and The Trials of Life (1990).
His services to television were recognised in 1985, and he was knighted to become Sir David Attenborough. The two shorter series, "The First Eden" and "Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives" were fitted around 1993's spectacular Life in the Freezer (1993), a celebration of Antarctica and 1995's epic The Private Life of Plants (1995), which he wrote and presented. Filming the beautiful birds of paradise for Attenborough in Paradise (1996) in 1996 fulfilled a lifelong ambition, putting him near his favourite bird. Entering his seventies, he narrated the award-winning Wildlife Specials (1995), marking 40 years of the BBC Natural History Unit. But, he was not slowing down, as he completed the epic 10-part series for the BBC, The Life of Birds (1998) along with writing and presenting the three-part series State of the Planet (2000) as well as The Life of Mammals (2002). Once broadcast, he began planning his next projects.
He has received honorary degrees from many universities across the world, and is patron or supporter of many charitable organisations, including acting as Patron of the World Land Trust, which buys rain forest and other lands to preserve them and the animals that live there.****