The Men of 1983
Because my Actor / Celebrity Hot List list is so big and in need of updating, I'm going to start breaking it down by year and using that to add all the new guys I come across. So: since every list is by-year, that means I will be adding men (not necessarily in ranked form) based on specific movies and episodes of shows where they made their greatest impression on me.
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- 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.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
In 1976, if you had told fourteen-year-old Franciscan seminary student Thomas Cruise Mapother IV that one day in the not too distant future he would be Tom Cruise, one of the top 100 movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to join the priesthood. Nonetheless, this sensitive, deeply religious youngster who was born in 1962 in Syracuse, New York, was destined to become one of the highest paid and most sought after actors in screen history.
Tom is the only son (among four children) of nomadic parents, Mary Lee (Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. His parents were both from Louisville, Kentucky, and he has German, Irish, and English ancestry. Young Tom spent his boyhood always on the move, and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the U.S. and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey with his mother and her new husband. While in high school, Tom wanted to become a priest but pretty soon he developed an interest in acting and abandoned his plans of becoming a priest, dropped out of school, and at age 18 headed for New York and a possible acting career. The next 15 years of his life are the stuff of legends. He made his film debut with a small part in Endless Love (1981) and from the outset exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences.
With handsome movie star looks and a charismatic smile, within 5 years Tom Cruise was starring in some of the top-grossing films of the 1980s including Top Gun (1986); The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). By the 1990s he was one of the highest-paid actors in the world earning an average 15 million dollars a picture in such blockbuster hits as Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996), for which he received an Academy Award Nomination for best actor. Tom Cruise's biggest franchise, Mission Impossible, has also earned a total of 3 billion dollars worldwide. Tom Cruise has also shown lots of interest in producing, with his biggest producer credits being the Mission Impossible franchise.
In 1990 he renounced his devout Catholic beliefs and embraced The Church of Scientology claiming that Scientology teachings had cured him of the dyslexia that had plagued him all of his life. A kind and thoughtful man well known for his compassion and generosity, Tom Cruise is one of the best liked members of the movie community. He was married to actress Nicole Kidman until 2001. Thomas Cruise Mapother IV has indeed come a long way from the lonely wanderings of his youth to become one of the biggest movie stars ever.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Michael Bowen Jr. is an American actor. He is best known for portraying Nicolas Cage's romantic rival, Tommy, in the cult classic Valley Girl (1983), Danny Pickett on the ABC series Lost, and Jack Welker on the AMC series Breaking Bad. Bowen is the only son of Beat painter Michael Bowen Sr. and actress Sonia Sorel (née Henius; 1921-2004) who was Bowen's first wife. His maternal great-grandfather was biochemist Max Henius, a Danish immigrant to America who himself was of Polish-Jewish descent, and his maternal great-grandmother was the sister of historian Johan Ludvig Heiberg. He grew up in San Francisco knowing "interesting characters - revolutionary-type people," which inspired his portrayal of Uncle Jack. Through his mother's other marriage he is the half-brother of actors Robert and Keith Carradine of the Carradine family. He is the half-uncle of actresses Martha Plimpton and Ever Carradine.- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Like a number of British actors of the same generation (John Hurt and Alan Rickman, to name two), Roger Rees originally trained for the visual arts. He was born on May 5 1944 in Aberystwyth, Wales, and acted in church and Boy Scouts stage productions while growing up in South London, but studied painting and lithography at the Slade School of Art. He had to quit his studies, however, when his father died and he had to help support the family. His first paying jobs in show business were as a scenery painter. He was painting scenery, in fact, when he was asked to sub in for a part and made his acting debut. He put away his brushes for good after this.
He turned to acting on a full-time basis in the mid-1960s and appeared on both the London and Scottish stages. After his fourth audition, the Royal Shakespeare Company finally hired him as a walk-on, sword carrier and bit player in 1968. He then worked his way up through the RSC's ranks, finally achieving stardom in the early 1980s in the 8-1/2 hour stage adaptation of "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby", which had a cast of 40 actors, and for which he won both an Olivier Award and a Tony Award. Rees was also nominated for an Emmy Award for the television version of the play. By this time, he had several TV movies to his name, but he did not make his big-screen debut until Star 80 (1983).
Living in the United States since 1989, Roger made a name for himself in America when he joined the cast of the TV hit comedy Cheers (1982) as the priggish Britisher Robin Colcord and later the glib British ambassador Lord John Marbury on the series The West Wing (1999). More recently, he appeared as a frequent guest in several British and American television series and in a number of independent films.
However, Roger Rees remained primarily a man of the theatre with secondary careers as a playwright and stage director. Married to theatre collaborator Rick Elice since 2011, Roger was subsequently diagnosed with cancer. Performing on Broadway in the musical "The Visit" starring Chita Rivera, he was forced to quit the show in late May of 2015. The 71-year-old actor died on July 10, 2015.- A tall, lean, sometimes bearded actor with a career lasting more than forty years, David Clennon is also a very vocal political agitator. In 1967, during the most savage years of U.S. aggression against Vietnam, Clennon turned in his Selective Service System identification card (a federal felony) and joined the draft resistance movement. His anti-war, anti-draft activities are included in the book "Confronting the War Machine," by Michael Foley. Appearing in Sam Shepard's "The Unseen Hand" in 1970, he began to establish himself in off-Broadway theater. He also performed in several regional theatres, and on Broadway, in Chekov's "The Cherry Orchard" (1977). He began his film career as a background actor in "The Way We Were" (1973). His first speaking role was in "The Paper Chase" (also 1973).
As his career developed, he always tried to follow his moral and political convictions. He has turned down roles in films (e.g., "Just Cause," which promoted the death penalty) and television (e.g., Fox's "24," which promoted torture). In 2018, Clennon engaged in a campaign to alert Emmy voters to the half-truths, distortions and omissions in Ken Burns' PBS series "The Vietnam War," which is nominated for four Emmys. (It received none.) He has been arrested for civil disobedience, and he has clashed with the Hollywood establishment.
In spite of the prevalence of type-casting, David has managed to demonstrate considerable versatility. To every role that he plays, he tries to bring a sense of reality and a spark of humanity. He tends to be cast as educated, white-collar characters, but he occasionally breaks that mold with working class characters like Palmer in John Carpenter's "The Thing (1982)." He got his first film role in 1973 in "The Paper Chase" and followed up with Bound for Glory (1976), "Coming Home" (1978), and "Being There" (1979). In his movies, he has worked with Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Meryl Streep, and Susan Sarandon. He moved into TV in the drama "The Migrants" and, with several roles, in the classic comedy "Barney Miller. He is most famous for his role as Miles Dentrell on the acclaimed drama thirtysomething (1987).
David was a regular on the CBS series "The Agency" (2001) playing the computer and forgery expert Joshua Nankin. When he publicly criticized the show for its pro-CIA slant, and its propaganda supporting George Bush's invasion of Iraq, he was attacked by Sean Hannity (with actor James Woods piling on) and political consultant Dick Morris.
Clennon appeared in three films by the late Hal Ashby and four by Costa-Gavras. He lists among his favorite films (or roles) "Being There," "Coming Home," "Go Tell the Spartans," "Missing," "Sweet Dreams," "Dos Crimenes" (Mexico), "Silver City," (Mort Seymour) "Syriana" and, of course, "The Thing" (Palmer).
In 2019, Clennon refused to audition for the upcoming Netflix series "Hit and Run" because it is co-produced by an Israeli company and he chose not to work under the authority of what he calls "a racist, apartheid state." - Director
- Writer
- Music Artist
"Robby Romero is an articulate artist and advocate for the causes and concerns behind a cultural resistance that is older than this country." - Danny Schechter, Media Channel
Robby's latest music release, BORN ON THE REZ, produced by multi-grammy award winner Don Was, features Ojibwa Warrior Dennis Banks and Country Outlaw Kris Kristofferson.
Robby rose to prominence with the global broadcast of his first music picture IS IT TOO LATE. This endeavor earned Robby the title of United Nations Ambassador of Youth for the Environment and a Certificate of Appreciation Award from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) signed by Executive Director, Mostafa K. Tolba.
Over the past three decades Robby has used the international languages of music and film to help shift the paradigm and bridge the gap between Indigenous Peoples, human rights and the environment through his non-profit organization, Native Children's Survival, an Indigenous Peoples Organization in Special Consultive Status with the United Nations Economic & Social Council (ECOSOC).
Robby's directorial film debut Makoce Wakan: Sacred Earth first aired on VH1 in 1993. "Feedback has been more than positive: Congratulations on a very successful show that has generated more viewer calls than any other show to date." - MTV Networks
Robby's music pictures broadcast on MTV and VH1 introduced Native Rock music to the music television generation. "Since VH1 began airing Inside Music segments featuring Robby Romero the Viewer Services Hotline has been bombarded by calls." - MTV Networks
His Indigenous stereotype-breaking public services announcements as part of MTV's Free Your Mind campaign won the Industry's prestigious CableAce Award. His politicized rockumentary films broadcast nationally and internationally, catapulted him into an arena of his own making.
Robby has shared the stage with multi-platinum musical artists, including Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana, and Cat Stevens, and with such dignitaries as His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Former Presidents Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Shimon Peres, to name a few. Over the years, Robby has received multiple awards and cultural honors in acknowledgment of his work.
The Encyclopedia of North American Indians Past to Present states, "Red Thunder has commanded the largest audience of any contemporary Indian music group."
The Los Angeles Times Magazine speaks of Robby's work as, "changing the world and the world of music."
News From Indian Country says, "Red Thunder, formed by Romero in 1989, continues to be one of the most popular musical groups known in "Indian Country" and around the world."
Robby is the founder of Eagle Thunder Enterprises (ETE), an artist-owned and operated independent Indigenous company consisting of four divisions: 1) Music, 2) Film, 3) Publishing, and 4) Production. ETE has reached millions of people from all walks of life through global releases, television broadcasts, concerts, tours and events.