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Amanda Seyfried was born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Ann (Sander), an occupational therapist, and Jack Seyfried, a pharmacist. She is of German, and some English and Scottish, ancestry. She began modeling when she was eleven, and acted in high school productions as well as taking singing lessons.
More soap work followed as she completed her schooling and had already secured a place at Fordham University when she was offered a role in the Tina Fey-penned teen comedy Mean Girls (2004). She deferred her university education to complete the film. More television work followed, raising her profile across America, while her appearances in Mamma Mia! (2008) and Red Riding Hood (2011) helped establish her international fame.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Robin McLaurin Williams was born on Saturday, July 21st, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois, a great-great-grandson of Mississippi Governor and Senator, Anselm J. McLaurin. His mother, Laurie McLaurin (née Janin), was a former model from Mississippi, and his father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams, was a Ford Motor Company executive from Indiana. Williams had English, German, French, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish ancestry.
Robin briefly studied political science at Claremont Men's College and theater at College of Marin before enrolling at The Juilliard School to focus on theater. After leaving Juilliard, he performed in nightclubs where he was discovered for the role of "Mork, from Ork", in an episode of Happy Days (1974). The episode, My Favorite Orkan (1978), led to his famous spin-off weekly TV series, Mork & Mindy (1978). He made his feature starring debut playing the title role in Popeye (1980), directed by Robert Altman.
Williams' continuous comedies and wild comic talents involved a great deal of improvisation, following in the footsteps of his idol Jonathan Winters. Williams also proved to be an effective dramatic actor, receiving Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989), and The Fisher King (1991), before winning the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in Good Will Hunting (1997).
During the 1990s, Williams became a beloved hero to children the world over for his roles in a string of hit family-oriented films, including Hook (1991), FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992), Aladdin (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), Flubber (1997), and Bicentennial Man (1999). He continued entertaining children and families into the 21st century with his work in Robots (2005), Happy Feet (2006), Night at the Museum (2006), Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009), Happy Feet Two (2011), and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014). Other more adult-oriented films for which Williams received acclaim include The World According to Garp (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Awakenings (1990), The Birdcage (1996), Insomnia (2002), One Hour Photo (2002), World's Greatest Dad (2009), and Boulevard (2014).
On Monday, August 11th, 2014, Robin Williams was found dead at his home in Tiburon, California USA, the victim of an apparent suicide, according to the Marin County Sheriff's Office. A 911 call was received at 11:55 a.m. PDT, firefighters and paramedics arrived at his home at 12:00 p.m. PDT, and he was pronounced dead at 12:02 p.m. PDT.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Wes Bentley is an American actor who first became well-known via his role in the Oscar-winning film American Beauty (1999), in which he played the soulful, artistic next-door neighbor Ricky Fitts. He also portrayed game-maker Seneca Crane in The Hunger Games (2012), and co-stars in Lovelace (2013) as photographer Thomas.
Wesley Cook Bentley was born September 4, 1978, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to David and Cherie Bentley, two Methodist ministers. Wes joined older brothers Jamey and Philip, and was later joined by younger brother, Patrick. Wes attended Sylvan Hills High School in Sherwood, Arkansas, where he was in the drama club. Interest in acting came from Improv Comedy. He, his brother Patrick, his best friend Damien Bunting, and another close friend Josh Cowdery developed an Improv group called B(3) + C. They regularly dominated competitions in Arkansas. He then placed First in the state of Arkansas in solo acting in 1996, his senior year of high school, Second in Duet, and also regularly won for Poetry and Prose Readings.
Wes appeared on-stage quite a bit in Little Rock. At The Weekend Theater, Wes played the straight son of the gay couple in a production of "La Cage aux Folles". At Murry's Dinner Playhouse, Wes' plays included "Oliver". At his mother's urging, Wes attended Juilliard School in New York after high school graduation. He was there only a short time but appeared in stage work like "Henry IV, Part 1" and "The Weavers". Wes then worked at Blockbuster and was a waiter at TGI Friday's on Long Island. Wes has stated that his most prideful venture in life was starting a soccer team from scratch at his high school and subsequently putting together a full conference, one of Arkansas's first. Wes had no real experience in soccer before doing this.
Bentley made his onscreen debut in Jonathan Demme's Beloved (1998). Following his success in American Beauty, Bentley struggled with substance abuse, which cost him his first marriage to actress Jennifer Quanz. Although he continued to land parts in films, including that of the primary antagonist in Ghost Rider (2007) and another major role in The Game of Their Lives (2005), Bentley has publicly admitted that during most of the 2000s he only took on acting roles to earn enough money to buy drugs. Bentley did not enter a 12-step program until 2009. He has stated that he considers his sobriety to be an ongoing process.
Bentley is one of the main subjects featured in the documentary My Big Break (2009), which followed him and his former roommates Chad Lindberg, Brad Rowe, and Greg Fawcett as they struggle to find success within the film industry. In 2010, Bentley made his professional stage debut with Nina Arianda in David Ives' award-winning play "Venus In Fur."
Bentley has one child with his second wife, producer Jacqui Swedberg.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Having made over one hundred films in his legendary career, Willem Dafoe is internationally respected for bringing versatility, boldness, and daring to some of the most iconic films of our time. His artistic curiosity in exploring the human condition leads him to projects all over the world, large and small, Hollywood films as well as Independent cinema.
In 1979, he was given a role in Michael's Cimino's Heaven's Gate, from which he was fired. Since then, he has collaborated with directors who represent a virtual encyclopedia of modern cinema: James Wan, Robert Eggers, Sean Baker, Kenneth Branagh, Kathryn Bigelow, Sam Raimi, Alan Parker, Walter Hill, Mary Harron, Wim Wenders, Anton Corbijn, Zhang Yimou, Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Oliver Stone, William Friedkin, Werner Herzog, Lars Von Trier, Abel Ferrara, Spike Lee, David Cronenberg, Paul Schrader, Anthony Minghella, Theo Angelopoulos, Robert Rodriguez, Phillip Noyce, Hector Babenco, John Milius, Paul Weitz, The Spierig Brothers, Andrew Stanton, Josh Boone, Dee Rees and Julian Schnabel.
Dafoe has been recognized with four Academy Award nominations: Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Platoon, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Shadow Of The Vampire, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Florida Project, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, and most recently, Best Leading Actor for At Eternity's Gate, for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination. Among his other nominations and awards, he has received two Los Angeles Film Critics Awards, a New York Film Critics Circle Award, a National Board of Review Award, two Independent Spirit Awards, Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup, as well as a Berlinale Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement.
Willem was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Muriel Isabel (Sprissler), a nurse, and William Alfred Dafoe, a surgeon. He is of mostly German, Irish, Scottish, and English descent. He and his wife, director Giada Colagrande, have made three films together: Padre, A Woman, and Before It Had A Name.
His natural adventurousness is evident in roles as diverse as Marcus, the elite assassin who is mentor to Keanu Reeves in the neo-noir John Wick; in his voice work as Gil the Moorish Idol in Finding Nemo and Ryuk the Death God in Death Note; as Paul Smecker, the obsessed FBI agent in the cult classic The Boondock Saints; and as real life hero Leonhard Seppala, who led the 1925 Alaskan dog sled diphtheria serum run in Ericson Core's Togo. That adventurous spirit continues with upcoming films including Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, Abel Ferrara's Siberia, and Paul Schrader's The Card Counter.
Dafoe is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group, the New York based experimental theatre collective. He created and performed in all of the group's work from 1977 thru 2005, both in the U.S. and internationally. Since then, he worked with Richard Foreman in Idiot Savant at The Public Theatre (NYC), with Robert Wilson on two international productions: The Life & Death of Marina Abramovic and The Old Woman opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov and developed a new theatre piece, directed by Romeo Castellucci, based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil. He recently completed work on Marina Abramovic's opera 7 Deaths of Maria Callas.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Paul Stephen Rudd was born in Passaic, New Jersey. His parents, Michael and Gloria, both from Jewish families, were born in the London area, U.K. He has one sister, who is three years younger than he is. Paul traveled with his family during his early years, because of his father's airline job at TWA. His family eventually settled in Overland Park, Kansas, where his mother worked as a sales manager for TV station KSMO-TV. Paul attended Broadmoor Junior High and Shawnee Mission West High School, from which he graduated in 1987, and where he was Student Body President. He then enrolled at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, majoring in theater. He graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts-West in Los Angeles and participated in a three-month intensive workshop under the guidance of Michael Kahn at the British Drama Academy at Oxford University in Britain. Rudd helped to produce the Globe Theater's production of Howard Brenton's "Bloody Poetry," which starred Rudd as Percy Bysshe Shelley.- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom Growing Pains (1985) and low budget horror movies, such as Critters 3 (1991), to a major teenage heartthrob in the 1990s, as the hunky lead actor in movies such as Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic (1997), to then become a leading man in Hollywood blockbusters, made by internationally renowned directors such as Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Irmelin DiCaprio (née Indenbirken) and former comic book artist George DiCaprio. His father is of Italian and German descent, and his mother, who is German-born, is of German, Ukrainian and Russian ancestry. His middle name, "Wilhelm", was his maternal grandfather's first name. Leonardo's father had achieved minor status as an artist and distributor of cult comic book titles, and was even depicted in several issues of American Splendor, the cult semi-autobiographical comic book series by the late 'Harvey Pekar', a friend of George's. Leonardo's performance skills became obvious to his parents early on, and after signing him up with a talent agent who wanted Leonardo to perform under the stage name "Lenny Williams", DiCaprio began appearing on a number of television commercials and educational programs.
DiCaprio began attracting the attention of producers, who cast him in small roles in a number of television series, such as Roseanne (1988) and The New Lassie (1989), but it wasn't until 1991 that DiCaprio made his film debut in Critters 3 (1991), a low-budget horror movie. While Critters 3 (1991) did little to help showcase DiCaprio's acting abilities, it did help him develop his show-reel, and attract the attention of the people behind the hit sitcom Growing Pains (1985), in which Leonardo was cast in the "Cousin Oliver" role of a young homeless boy who moves in with the Seavers. While DiCaprio's stint on Growing Pains (1985) was very short, as the sitcom was axed the year after he joined, it helped bring DiCaprio into the public's attention and, after the sitcom ended, DiCaprio began auditioning for roles in which he would get the chance to prove his acting chops.
Leonardo took up a diverse range of roles in the early 1990s, including a mentally challenged youth in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), a young gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead (1995) and a drug addict in one of his most challenging roles to date, Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries (1995), a role which the late River Phoenix originally expressed interest in. While these diverse roles helped establish Leonardo's reputation as an actor, it wasn't until his role as Romeo Montague in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996) that Leonardo became a household name, a true movie star. The following year, DiCaprio starred in another movie about doomed lovers, Titanic (1997), which went on to beat all box office records held before then, as, at the time, Titanic (1997) became the highest grossing movie of all time, and cemented DiCaprio's reputation as a teen heartthrob. Following his work on Titanic (1997), DiCaprio kept a low profile for a number of years, with roles in The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and the low-budget The Beach (2000) being some of his few notable roles during this period.
In 2002, he burst back into screens throughout the world with leading roles in Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Gangs of New York (2002), his first of many collaborations with director Martin Scorsese. With a current salary of $20 million a movie, DiCaprio is now one of the biggest movie stars in the world. However, he has not limited his professional career to just acting in movies, as DiCaprio is a committed environmentalist, who is actively involved in many environmental causes, and his commitment to this issue led to his involvement in The 11th Hour, a documentary movie about the state of the natural environment. As someone who has gone from small roles in television commercials to one of the most respected actors in the world, DiCaprio has had one of the most diverse careers in cinema. DiCaprio continued to defy conventions about the types of roles he would accept, and with his career now seeing him leading all-star casts in action thrillers such as The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), DiCaprio continues to wow audiences by refusing to conform to any cliché about actors.
In 2012, he played a mustache twirling villain in Django Unchained (2012), and then tragic literary character Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (2013) and Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
DiCaprio is passionate about environmental and humanitarian causes, having donated $1,000,000 to earthquake relief efforts in 2010, the same year he contributed $1,000,000 to the Wildlife Conservation Society.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Clémence Poésy was born Clémence Guichard in Paris in 1982. She took her mother's maiden name, Poésy, as her stage name. She attended an alternative school for most of her education, but spent her last year at L'École alsacienne.
She trained at the "Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique", with her first roles being for French TV series between 1997 and 1999, Un homme en colère (1997) and Les monos (1999). Her first feature film was a German production, Olga's Summer (2002) and her second the French production, Bienvenue chez les Rozes (2003).
Her first English speaking feature was as Mary, Queen of Scots, in the Gunpowder, Treason & Plot (2004) TV movie, for which she won the 2005 FIPA for best actress.
Since then she has starred in many films, the most notable being In Bruges (2008), which is probably the start of her worldwide recognition, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011), the US TV series Gossip Girl (2007) and the English TV mini-series, Birdsong (2012). All of these have shown her to be very capable of roles in multiple languages, periods and roles.
She is known for her natural beauty, devoid of make-up and cosmetics, and she herself says that she does not like using them.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Noted these days for his dashing, sporting, jet-setting playboy image and perpetually bronzed skin tones in commercials, film spoofs and reality shows, George Hamilton was, at the onset, a serious contender for dramatic film stardom. Born George Stevens Hamilton in Memphis, TN, on August 12, 1939, the son of gregarious Southern belle beauty Anne Lucille (Stevens) Potter Hamilton Hunt Spaulding, and her husband (of four), George William "Spike" Hamilton, a touring bandleader. Moving extensively as a youth due to his father's work (Arkansas, Massachusetts, New York, California), young George got a taste of acting in plays while attending Palm Beach High School. With his exceedingly handsome looks and attractive personality, he took a bold chance and moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950s.
MGM (towards the end of the contract system) saw in George a budding talent with photogenic appeal. It wasted no time putting him in films following some guest appearances on TV. His first film, a lead in Crime & Punishment, USA (1959), was an offbeat, updated adaptation of the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel. While the film was not overwhelmingly successful, George's heartthrob appeal was obvious. He was awarded a Golden Globe for "Most Promising Newcomer" as well as being nominated for "Best Foreign Actor" by the British film Academy (BAFTA). This in turn led to an enviable series of film showcases, including the memorable Southern drama Home from the Hill (1960), which starred Robert Mitchum and Eleanor Parker and featured another handsome, up-and-coming George (George Peppard); Angel Baby (1961), in which he played an impressionable lad who meets up with evangelist Mercedes McCambridge; and Light in the Piazza (1962) (another BAFTA nomination), in which he portrays an Italian playboy who falls madly for American tourist Yvette Mimieux to the ever-growing concern of her mother Olivia de Havilland. Along with the good, however, came the bad and the inane, which included the dreary sudsers All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) and By Love Possessed (1961) and the youthful spring-break romps Where the Boys Are (1960), which had Connie Francis warbling the title tune while slick-as-car-seat-leather George pursued coed Dolores Hart, and Looking for Love (1964), which was more of the same.
Not yet undone by this mixed message of serious actor and glossy pin-up, George went on to show some real acting muscle in the offbeat casting of a number of biopics -- as Moss Hart in Act One (1963), an overly fictionalized and sanitized account of the late playwright (the real Moss should have looked so good!), as ill-fated country star Hank Williams in Your Cheatin' Heart (1964), and as the famed daredevil Evel Knievel (1971).
The rest of the '60s and '70s, however, rested on his fun-loving, idle-rich charm that bore a close resemblance to his off-camera image in the society pages. As the 1960s began to unfold, he started making headlines more as a handsome escort to the rich, the powerful and the beautiful than as an acclaimed actor -- none more so than his 1966 squiring of President Lyndon B. Johnson's daughter Lynda Bird Johnson. He was also once engaged to actress Susan Kohner, a former co-star. Below-average films such as Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! (1967), A Time for Killing (1967) and The Power (1968) effectively ended his initially strong ascent to film stardom.
From the 1970s on George tended to be tux-prone on standard film and TV comedy and drama, whether as a martini-swirling opportunist, villain or lover. A wonderful comeback for him came in the form of the disco-era Dracula spoof Love at First Bite (1979), which he executive-produced. Nominated for a Golden Globe as the campy neck-biter displaced and having to fend off the harsh realities of New York living, he continued on the parody road successfully with Zorro: The Gay Blade (1981) in the very best Mel Brooks tradition.
This renewed popularity led to a one-year stint on Dynasty (1981) during the 1985-1986 season and a string of fun, self-mocking commercials, particularly his Ritz Cracker and (Toasted!) Wheat Thins appearances that often spoofed his overly tanned appearance. In recent times he has broken through the "reality show" ranks by hosting The Family (2003), which starred numerous members of a traditional Italianate family vying for a $1,000,000 prize, and participating in the second season of ABC's Dancing with the Stars (2005), where his charm and usual impeccable tailoring scored higher than his limberness. On the tube he can still pull off a good time, whether playing flamboyant publisher William Randolph Hearst in Rough Riders (1997), playing the best-looking Santa Claus ever in Very Cool Christmas (2004), hosting beauty pageants or making breezy gag appearances. In 1989 he started a line of skin-care products and a chain of tanning salons.
Into the millennium, he has had featured roles in the "opera singer trio reunion" comedy Off Key (2001) also starring Joe Mantegna and Danny Aiello; the offbeat underground film Reflections of Evil (2002); the comedy romps The L.A. Riot Spectacular (2005) and Melvin Smarty (2012); the political drama The Congressman (2016); the family dramedy Silver Skies (2016); and the romantic comedy Swiped (2018). On TV, he enhanced several programs including "Nash Bridges," "Pushing Daisies," "Hot in Cleveland" and "Grace and Frankie." He also had a recurring role on the series American Housewife (2016). Beginning in the summer of 2016, Hamilton appeared in TV commercials as the "Extra Crispy" sun-tanned version of KFC's Colonel Harland Sanders. He later played the Colonel on an episode of "General Hospital."
George managed one brief marriage to actress/TV personality Alana Stewart from 1972 to 1975 (she later married and divorced rock singer Rod Stewart), the pair have a son, actor Ashley Hamilton, born in 1974. Another son, George Thomas Hamilton, born in 2000, came from his involvement with Kimberly Blackford.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Adam Douglas Driver was born in San Diego, California. His mother, Nancy (Needham) Wright, is a paralegal from Mishawaka, Indiana, and his father, Joe Douglas Driver, who has deep roots in the American South, is from Little Rock, Arkansas. His stepfather is a Baptist minister. His ancestry includes Dutch, English, German, Irish and Scottish. Driver was raised in Mishawaka after his parents' divorce, attending Mishawaka High School, where he appeared in plays. After 9/11, he enlisted in the Marines, serving for more than two years before being medically discharged after he suffered an injury, which prevented him from being deployed.
Driver attended the University of Indianapolis (for a year) and then transferred to study drama at Juilliard School in New York City, graduating in 2009. He began acting in plays, appearing on Broadway, before being cast in Lena Dunham's series Girls (2012), as her character's love interest, Adam Sackler. The role gained him attention, and he subsequently began a robust film career, appearing in small roles in J. Edgar (2011) and Lincoln (2012), supporting roles in Frances Ha (2012) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and then to major mesmerizing roles like in the comedy-drama This Is Where I Leave You (2014), Martin Scorsese's Silence (2016) and as Kylo Ren in the Star Wars movie saga beginning with Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015).
Widely regarded as the one of greatest actors of his generation by now both in the United States and internationally as his superb qualities have been expressed further in a sublime range of excellent performances full of unique profoundness, subtlety, charisma and insights such as the ones included in brilliant films like Paterson (2016), Logan Lucky (2017), The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) and The Report (2019). His interpretations in BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Marriage Story (2019) were also nominated in the Academy Awards for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role respectively.- Actor
- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Gerard James Butler was born in Paisley, Scotland, to Margaret and Edward Butler, a bookmaker. His family is of Irish origin. Gerard spent some of his very early childhood in Montreal, Quebec, but was mostly raised, along with his older brother and sister, in his hometown of Paisley. His parents divorced when he was a child, and he and his siblings were raised primarily by their mother, who later remarried. He had no contact with his father between the ages of two and 16 years old, after which time they became close. His father passed away when Gerard was in his early 20s. Butler went on to attend Glasgow University, where he studied to be a lawyer/solicitor. He was president of the school's law society thanks to his outgoing personality and great social skills.
His acting career began when he was approached in a London coffee shop by actor Steven Berkoff, who later appeared alongside Butler in Attila (2001), who gave him a role in a stage production of "Coriolanus" (later, Butler played Tullus Aufidius in a big screen Coriolanus (2011). After that, Butler decided to give up law for acting. He was cast as Ewan McGregor's character "Renton" in the stage adaptation of Trainspotting. His film debut was as Billy Connolly's younger brother in Mrs. Brown (1997). While filming the movie in Scotland, he was enjoying a picnic with his mother near the River Tay when they heard the shouts of a young boy, who had been swimming with a friend, who was in some trouble. Butler jumped in and saved the young boy from drowning. He received a Certificate of Bravery from the Royal Humane Society. He felt he only did what anyone in the situation would have done.
His film career continued with small roles, first in the "James Bond" movie, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and then Russell Mulcahy's Tale of the Mummy (1998). In 2000, Butler was cast in two breakthrough roles, the first being "Attila the Hun" in the USA Network mini-series, Attila (2001). The film's producers wanted a known actor to play the part but kept coming back to Butler's screen tests and decided he was their man. He had to lose the thick Scottish accent, but managed well. Around the time "Attila" was being filmed, casting was in progress for Wes Craven's new take on the "Dracula" legacy. Also wanting a known name, Butler wasn't much of a consideration, but his unending tenacity drove him to hounding the producers. Eventually, he sent them a clip of his portrayal of "Attila". Evidently, they saw something because Dracula 2000 (2000) was cast in the form of Butler. Attila's producers, thinking that his big-screen role might help with their own film's ratings, finished shooting a little early so he could get to work on Dracula 2000 (2000). Following these two roles, Butler developed quite a fan base, and began appearing on websites and fancasts everywhere.
Since then, he has appeared in Reign of Fire (2002) as "Creedy" and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (2003) as "Terry Sheridan", alongside Angelina Jolie. The role that garnered him the most attention from both moviegoers and movie makers, alike, was that of "Andre Marek" in the big-screen adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel, Timeline (2003). Butler played an archaeologist who was sent back in time with a team of students to rescue a colleague. Last year, he appeared in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, The Phantom of the Opera (2004), playing the title character in the successful adaptation of the stage musical. It was a role that brought him much international attention. Other projects include Dear Frankie (2004), The Game of Their Lives (2005) and Beowulf & Grendel (2005).
In 2007, he starred as Spartan "King Leonidas" in the Warner Bros. production 300 (2006), based on the Frank Miller graphic novel, and Shattered (2007), co-starring Pierce Brosnan and Maria Bello, which aired on network TV under the title, "Shattered". He also starred in P.S. I Love You (2007), with Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank.
In 2007, he appeared in Nim's Island (2008) and RocknRolla (2008), and completed the new Mark Neveldine / Brian Taylor film, Gamer (2009). His next films included The Ugly Truth (2009), co-starring Katherine Heigl, which began filming in April 2008, The Bounty Hunter (2010), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Chasing Mavericks (2012) and Olympus Has Fallen (2013). In recent years, he has appeared in films such as Gods of Egypt (2016), Geostorm (2017), Den of Thieves (2018), The Vanishing (2018) and Hunter Killer (2018). Butler is related to writer-director Mark Flood.- Producer
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- Director
Timothy Walter Burton was born in Burbank, California, to Jean Rae (Erickson), who owned a cat-themed gift shop, and William Reed Burton, who worked for the Burbank Park and Recreation Department. He spent most of his childhood as a recluse, drawing cartoons, and watching old movies (he was especially fond of films with Vincent Price). When he was in the ninth grade, his artistic talent was recognized by a local garbage company, when he won a prize for an anti-litter poster he designed. The company placed this poster on all of their garbage trucks for a year. After graduating from high school, he attended California Institute of the Arts. Like so many others who graduated from that school, Burton's first job was as an animator for Disney.
His early film career was fueled by almost unbelievable good luck, but it's his talent and originality that have kept him at the top of the Hollywood tree. He worked on such films as The Fox and the Hound (1981) and The Black Cauldron (1985), but had some creative differences with his colleagues. Nevertheless, Disney recognized his talent, and gave him the green light to make Vincent (1982), an animated short about a boy who wanted to be just like Vincent Price. Narrated by Price himself, the short was a critical success and won several awards. Burton made a few other short films, including his first live-action film, Frankenweenie (1984). A half-hour long twist on the tale of Frankenstein, it was deemed inappropriate for children and wasn't released. But actor Paul Reubens (aka Pee-Wee Herman) saw Frankenweenie (1984), and believed that Burton would be the right man to direct him in his first full-length feature film, Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985). The film was a surprise success, and Burton instantly became popular. However, many of the scripts that were offered to him after this were essentially just spin-offs of the film, and Burton wanted to do something new.
For three years, he made no more films, until he was presented with the script for Beetlejuice (1988). The script was wild and wasn't really about anything, but was filled with such artistic and quirky opportunities, Burton couldn't say no. Beetlejuice (1988) was another big hit, and Burton's name in Hollywood was solidified. It was also his first film with actor Michael Keaton. Warner Bros. then entrusted him with Batman (1989), a film based on the immensely popular comic book series of the same name. Starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson, the film was the most financially successful film of the year and Burton's biggest box-office hit to date. Due to the fantastic success of his first three films, he was given the green light to make his next film, any kind of film he wanted. That film was Edward Scissorhands (1990), one of his most emotional, esteemed and artistic films to date. Edward Scissorhands (1990) was also Burton's first film with actor Johnny Depp. Burton's next film was Batman Returns (1992), and was darker and quirkier than the first one, and, while by no means a financial flop, many people felt somewhat disappointed by it. While working on Batman Returns (1992), he also produced the popular The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), directed by former fellow Disney Animator Henry Selick. Burton reunited with Johnny Depp on the film Ed Wood (1994), a film showered with critical acclaim, Martin Landau won an academy award for his performance in it, and it is very popular now, but flopped during its initial release. Burton's subsequent film, Mars Attacks! (1996), had much more vibrant colors than his other films. Despite being directed by Burton and featuring all-star actors including Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Pierce Brosnan and Michael J. Fox, it received mediocre reviews and wasn't immensely popular at the box office, either.
Burton returned to his darker and more artistic form with the film Sleepy Hollow (1999), starring Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci and Casper Van Dien. The film was praised for its art direction and was financially successful, redeeming Burton of the disappointment many had felt by Mars Attacks! (1996). His next film was Planet of the Apes (2001), a remake of the classic of the same name. The film was panned by many critics but was still financially successful. While on the set of Planet of the Apes (2001), Burton met Helena Bonham Carter, with whom he has two children. Burton directed the film Big Fish (2003) - a much more conventional film than most of his others, it received a good deal of critical praise, although it disappointed some of his long-time fans who preferred the quirkiness of his other, earlier films. Despite the fluctuations in his career, Burton proved himself to be one of the most popular directors of the late 20th century. He directed Johnny Depp once again in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), a film as quirky anything he's ever done.- Actor
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Since his screen debut as a young Amish farmer in Peter Weir's Witness (1985), Viggo Mortensen's career has been marked by a steady string of well-rounded performances.
Mortensen was born in New York City, to Grace Gamble (Atkinson) and Viggo Peter Mortensen, Sr. His father was Danish, his mother was American, and his maternal grandfather was Canadian. His parents met in Norway. They wed and moved to New York, where Viggo, Jr. was born, before moving to South America, where Viggo, Sr. managed chicken farms and ranches in Venezuela and Argentina. Two more sons were born, Charles and Walter, before the marriage grew increasingly unhappy. When Viggo was seven, his parents sent him to the St. Paul's boarding school, in the Córdoba Sierras, in Argentina. Then, at age eleven, his parents divorced. His mother moved herself and the children back to her home state of New York.
Viggo attended Watertown High School, and became a very good student and athlete. He graduated in 1976 and went on to St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. After graduation, he moved to Denmark - driven by the need for a defining purpose in life. He began writing poetry and short stories while working many odd jobs, from dock worker to flower seller. In 1982, he fell in love and followed his girlfriend back to New York City, hoping for a long romance and a writing career. He got neither. In New York, Viggo found work waiting tables and tending bar and began taking acting classes, studying with Warren Robertson. He appeared in several plays and movies, and eventually moved to Los Angeles, where his performance in "Bent" at the Coast Playhouse earned him a Drama-logue Critic's Award.
He made his film debut with a small part in Witness (1985). He appeared in Salvation! (1987) and married his co-star, Exene Cervenka. The two had a son, Henry Mortensen. But after nearly eleven years of marriage, the couple divorced.
In 1999, Viggo got a phone call about a movie he did not know anything about: "The Lord of the Rings." At first, he didn't want to do it, because it would mean time away from his son. But Henry, a big fan of the books, told his father he shouldn't turn down the role. Viggo accepted the part and immediately began work on the project, which was already underway. Eventually, the success of "The Lord of the Rings" made him a household name - a difficult consequence for the ever private and introspective Viggo.
Critics have continually recognized his work in over thirty movies, including such diverse projects as Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady (1996), Sean Penn's The Indian Runner (1991), Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way (1993), Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane (1997), Tony Scott's Crimson Tide (1995), Andrew Davis's A Perfect Murder (1998), Ray Loriga's My Brother's Gun (1997), Tony Goldwyn's A Walk on the Moon (1999), and Peter Farrelly's Green Book (2018).
Mortensen is also an accomplished poet, photographer and painter.- Producer
- Director
- Production Designer
Described by film producer Michael Deeley as "the very best eye in the business", director Ridley Scott was born on November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and the family followed him as his career posted him throughout the United Kingdom and Europe before they eventually returned to Teesside. Scott wanted to join the British Army (his elder brother Frank had already joined the Merchant Navy) but his father encouraged him to develop his artistic talents instead and so he went to West Hartlepool College of Art and then London's Royal College of Art where he helped found the film department.
In 1962, he joined the BBC as a trainee set designer working on several high profile series. He attended a trainee director's course while he was there and his first directing job was on an episode of the popular BBC police series Z Cars (1962), Error of Judgement (1965). More TV work followed until, frustrated by the poor financial rewards at the BBC, he went into advertising. With his younger brother, Tony Scott, he formed the advertising production company RSA (Ridley Scott Associates) in 1967 and spent the next 10 years making some of the best known and best loved TV adverts ever shown on British television, including a series of ads for Hovis bread set to the music of Dvorak's New World Symphony which are still talked about today ("'e were a great baker were our dad.")
He began working with producer David Puttnam in the 1970s developing ideas for feature films. Their first joint endeavor, The Duellists (1977) won the Jury Prize for Best First Work at Cannes in 1977 and was nominated for the Palm d'Or, more than successfully launching Scott's feature film career. The success of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) inspired Scott's interest in making science fiction and he accepted the offer to direct Dan O'Bannon's low budget science fiction horror movie Alien (1979), a critical and commercial success that firmly established his worldwide reputation as a movie director.
Blade Runner (1982) followed in 1982 to, at best, a lukewarm reception from public and critics but in the years that followed, its reputation grew - and Scott's with it - as one of the most important sci-fi movies ever made. Scott's next major project was back in the advertising world where he created another of the most talked-about advertising spots in broadcast history when his "1984"-inspired ad for the new Apple Macintosh computer was aired during the Super Bowl on January 22, 1984. Scott's movie career has seen a few flops (notably Legend (1985) and 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)), but with successes like Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000) and Black Hawk Down (2001) to offset them, his reputation remains solidly intact.
Ridley Scott was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire at the 2003 Queen's New Year Honours for his "substantial contribution to the British film industry". On July 3, 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship in 2018. BAFTA described him as "a visionary director, one of the great British film-makers whose work has made an indelible mark on the history of cinema. Forty years since his directorial debut, his films continue to cross the boundaries of style and genre, engaging audiences and inspiring the next generation of film talent."- Richard Kohnke is known for When the Game Stands Tall (2014), Woodlawn (2015) and My All-American (2015).
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Yorgos Lanthimos was born in Athens, Greece. He studied directing for Film and Television at the Stavrakos Film School in Athens. He has directed a number of dance videos in collaboration with Greek choreographers, in addition to TV commercials, music videos, short films and theater plays. Kinetta, his first feature film, played at Toronto and Berlin film festivals to critical acclaim. His second feature Dogtooth, won the "Un Certain Regard prize" at the 2009 Cannes film festival, followed by numerous awards at festivals worldwide. It was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award (Oscar) in 2011. Alps won the "Osella for best screenplay" at the 2011 Venice film festival and Best Film at the Sydney film festival in 2012. His first English language film The Lobster was presented in Competition at the 68th Cannes Film Festival. Moreover, "The Lobster" was nominated for the (Oscar about the) Best Original Screenplay by the Academy and won Best Screenplay and Best Costume Design at the European Film Awards of 2015. His fifth project "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" was also presented in Competition at the 70th Cannes Film Festival where it won the award for the best Screenplay. Lanthimos's last film "The Favorite" is a historical Drama about the British Queen Anne.- Actor
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Domhnall Gleeson is an Irish actor and writer. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter film franchise (2010-2011), About Time (2013), Ex Machina (2015) and The Revenant (2015).
He is the son of actor Brendan Gleeson, alongside whom he has appeared in several films and theatre projects.
Gleeson starred in Anna Karenina (2012), Frank (2014), Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017). He also portrayed the First Order's General Hux in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017).
In 2013 he starred in the Black Mirror episode Be Right Back.
His film debut was Boy Eats Girl (2005).- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Joseph Jason Namakaeha Momoa was born on August 1, 1979, in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the son of Coni (Lemke), a photographer, and Joseph Momoa, a painter. His father is of Native Hawaiian and Samoan descent; and his mother, who is from Iowa, is of German, Irish, and Native American ancestry. Jason was raised in Norwalk, Iowa, by his mother. After high school, he moved to Hawaii, where he landed a lead role, beating out of thousands of hopefuls in the TV series Baywatch (1989) (known as "Baywatch Hawaii" in its 10th season). When the show ended, he spent the next couple of years traveling around the world. In 2001, he moved to Los Angeles, where he continued to pursue an acting career. In 2004, after the short-lived TV series North Shore (2004), he was cast as the popular character "Ronon Dex" in the TV series Stargate: Atlantis (2004), which achieved a cult-like following. In 2010, he appeared in the Emmy-nominated HBO series Game of Thrones (2011), playing the Dothraki king, Khal Drogo. To illustrate to the producers that he was Khal Drogo, he performed the Haka, a traditional war dance of the Maori of New Zealand. The audition was with the same casting director who was casting the titular role in the reboot of Conan the Barbarian (2011). Four weeks after being cast as the popular Robert E. Howard character, Momoa began shooting in Bulgaria. His approach, like that of the filmmakers, was to pull from the eight decades of comics and stories as well as the Frank Frazetta images rather than the hugely popular 1982 movie. Jason has a production company, Pride of Gypsies, in which he is expanding his career from actor to filmmaker. He has directed a couple of short films and is working on his feature film debut Road to Paloma (2014), which is pulled from a series of stories that he's been developing over the years, which he calls the Brown Bag Diaries: Ridin' the Blinds in B Minor (2010). Jason lives with his wife, actress Lisa Bonet, with whom he has two children, Lola and Nakoa-Wolf.- Actor
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Ezra Matthew Miller was born in Wyckoff, New Jersey, to Marta (Koch), a modern dancer, and Robert S. Miller, who has worked at Workman Publishing and as former senior V.P. for Hyperion Books. Ezra has two older sisters and is of Ashkenazi Jewish (father) and German-Dutch (mother) ancestry. Ezra has described themselves as Jewish and "spiritual".
As a child, Miller sang with the Metropolitan Opera and attended Rockland Country Day School and The Hudson School. Miller's first feature film was the independent Afterschool (2008), with subsequent appearances on the television series Californication (2007), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), and Royal Pains (2009), and in the films City Island (2009), Every Day (2010), Beware the Gonzo (2010), and Another Happy Day (2011).
Miller drew critical praise playing Kevin Khatchadourian, the homicidal son of Tilda Swinton's character, in the dramatic thriller We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011). Miller subsequently played Patrick in the well-received teen drama The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), opposite Logan Lerman and Emma Watson.
Ezra's other roles include the period piece Madame Bovary (2014), Judd Apatow's comedy Trainwreck (2015), and the psychological thriller The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015). Miller has been cast as superhero The Flash in The Flash (2023), scheduled for release in 2022.- Actor
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- Music Department
Tiny Tim, the ukulele-playing singer of 1920s ditties who was a true icon of the 1960s, was born Herbert Khaury on April 12, 1932, in New York City. The son of a Lebanese father and Jewish mother, the young Khaury grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. A high school dropout, his interest in the popular music of the 1890s through the 1930s manifested itself early, and his dream was to become a singer. He learned to play guitar and ukulele and began performing professionally as "Larry Love" in the early 1950s, making his debut at a lesbian cabaret in Greenwich Village called Page 3, where he became a regular. Though his parents tried to discourage him, Khaury continued to publicly perform the early mass culture American music that he so loved and collected on 78 records, at small clubs, parties and talent shows under a variety of names.
Khaury had established himself as a cult performer in the Greenwich Village music scene by the early 1960s, singing under the name that he would become famous for, that of the crippled lad in Charles Dickens' novel "A Christmas Carol" (allegedly the stage name was suggested by a manager who used to work with midgets; Khaury himself stood an inch over six feet, but the name helped to reinforce his bizarre persona). After appearing in You Are What You Eat (1968), he made an appearance on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967), the smash hit series that was as much a part of the 1960s as Tim would come to be. He was an instant sensation and his career was made. His weird appearance and act (he evinced the polite manners of a bygone era, which stood out in stark contrast to the "Let it All Hang Out!" ethos of the time) touched a nerve and he became a cultural specimen that elucidated the zeitgeist of that era.
Tiny Tim appeared several more times on "Laugh-In" but became better known through his frequent guest spots on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), where audiences were bemused by his eccentric personality. He signed with Frank Sinatra's record label Reprise and issued his debut album, "God Bless Tiny Tim," in 1968, featuring what became his signature song, a falsetto cover of "Tip-Toe Through the Tulips." "Tulips" became a hit, reaching the Top 20, and "God Bless Tiny Tim" sold over 200,000 copies. He followed it up before the year was out with the ingeniously entitled "Tiny Tim's Second Album."
Tiny Tim's wave crested in 1969, in terms of cultural recognition and popularity. In August he released his third LP, an album of children's songs called "For All My Little Friends," while on December 17 of that year he married "Miss Vicki," his 17-year-old girlfriend (Vicki Budinger) on "The Tonight Show." The wedding drew the largest rating ever recorded for an evening talk show, enjoying an incredible 85% share of the audience watching TV at that time. The couple mostly lived apart (as Tim did with his two later wives), and while the union produced a daughter, inevitably named Tulip, he and Miss Vicki divorced after eight years of marriage.
Tiny Tim performed around the country in 1970, enjoying some highly lucrative gigs in Las Vegas, but his business associates fleeced him. A one-trick pony, his popularity began to wane in the early 1970s and the lucrative bookings and TV appearances became a thing of the past. A trouper, Tiny Tim kept performing, eventually traveling the country playing community centers, high school theaters and other less-than-prestigious venues as part of Roy Radin's Vaudeville Revue with the likes of The Five Harmonica Rascals. He continued to record throughout the 1970s and 1980s for small labels, but he never again achieved any real success.
After the Roy Radin Revue, Tim kept on performing. He even joined a circus for its 36-week schedule. In the late 1980s he moved to Des Moines, Iowa, and managed a small comeback of sorts in the mid-'90s, when he appeared on Howard Stern's radio show. However, his comeback suffered a setback after he had a heart attack performing at a ukulele festival in September of 1996. After getting out of the hospital, Tiny Tim the trouper resumed his concert schedule. The schedule proved too taxing, and on November 30 he suffered another heart attack while performing "Tip-Toe Through the Tulips" in Minneapolis, and died an hour later. He was 64 years old.- Director
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Theo Angelopoulos began to study law in Athens but broke up his studies to go to the Sorbonne in Paris in order to study literature. When he had finished his studies, he wanted to attend the School of Cinema at Paris but decided instead to go back to Greece. There he worked as a journalist and critic for the newspaper "Demokratiki Allaghi" until it was banned by the military after a coup d'état. Now unemployed, he decided to make his first movie, Anaparastasi (1970). Internationally successful was his trilogy about the history of Greece from 1930 to 1970 consisting of Days of '36 (1972), The Travelling Players (1975), and Oi kynigoi (1977). After the end of the dictatorship in Greece, Angelopoulos went to Italy, where he worked with RAI (and more money). His movies then became less political.- Actor
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Kevin Spacey Fowler, better known by his stage name Kevin Spacey, is an American actor of screen and stage, film director, producer, screenwriter and singer. He began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s before obtaining supporting roles in film and television. He gained critical acclaim in the early 1990s that culminated in his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the neo-noir crime thriller The Usual Suspects (1995), and an Academy Award for Best Actor for midlife crisis-themed drama American Beauty (1999).
His other starring roles have included the comedy-drama film Swimming with Sharks (1994), psychological thriller Seven (1995), the neo-noir crime film L.A. Confidential (1997), the drama Pay It Forward (2000), the science fiction-mystery film K-PAX (2001)
In Broadway theatre, Spacey won a Tony Award for his role in Lost in Yonkers. He was the artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London from 2004 until stepping down in mid-2015. Since 2013, Spacey has played Frank Underwood in the Netflix political drama series House of Cards. His work in House of Cards earned him Golden Globe Award and Emmy Award nominations for Best Actor.
As enigmatic as he is talented, Kevin Spacey for years kept the details of his private life closely guarded. As he explained in a 1998 interview with the London Evening Standard, "the less you know about me, the easier it is to convince you that I am that character on screen. It allows an audience to come into a movie theatre and believe I am that person". In October 2017, he ended many years of media speculation about his personal life by confirming that he had had sexual relations with both men and women but now identified as gay.
There are, however, certain biographical facts to be had - for starters, Kevin Spacey Fowler was the youngest of three children born to Kathleen Ann (Knutson) and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler, in South Orange, New Jersey. His ancestry includes Swedish (from his maternal grandfather) and English. His middle name, "Spacey," which he uses as his stage name, is from his paternal grandmother. His mother was a personal secretary, his father a technical writer whose irregular job prospects led the family all over the country. The family eventually settled in southern California, where young Kevin developed into quite a little hellion - after he set his sister's tree house on fire, he was shipped off to the Northridge Military Academy, only to be thrown out a few months later for pinging a classmate on the head with a tire. Spacey then found his way to Chatsworth High School in the San Fernando Valley, where he managed to channel his dramatic tendencies into a successful amateur acting career. In his senior year, he played "Captain von Trapp" opposite classmate Mare Winningham's "Maria" in "The Sound of Music" (the pair later graduated as co-valedictorians). Spacey claims that his interest in acting - and his nearly encyclopedic accumulation of film knowledge - began at an early age, when he would sneak downstairs to watch the late late show on TV. Later, in high school, he and his friends cut class to catch revival films at the NuArt Theater. The adolescent Spacey worked up celebrity impersonations (James Stewart and Johnny Carson were two of his favorites) to try out on the amateur comedy club circuit.
He briefly attended Los Angeles Valley College, then left (on the advice of another Chatsworth classmate, Val Kilmer) to join the drama program at Juilliard. After two years of training he was anxious to work, so he quit Juilliard sans diploma and signed up with the New York Shakespeare Festival. His first professional stage appearance was as a messenger in the 1981 production of "Henry VI".
Festival head Joseph Papp ushered the young actor out into the "real world" of theater, and the next year Spacey made his Broadway debut in Henrik Ibsen's "Ghosts". He quickly proved himself as an energetic and versatile performer (at one point, he rotated through all the parts in David Rabe's "Hurlyburly"). In 1986, he had the chance to work with his idol and future mentor, Jack Lemmon, on a production of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night". While his interest soon turned to film, Spacey would remain active in the theater community - in 1991, he won a Tony Award for his turn as "Uncle Louie" in Neil Simon's Broadway hit "Lost in Yonkers" and, in 1999, he returned to the boards for a revival of O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh".
Spacey's film career began modestly, with a small part as a subway thief in Heartburn (1986). Deemed more of a "character actor" than a "leading man", he stayed on the periphery in his next few films, but attracted attention for his turn as beady-eyed villain "Mel Profitt" on the TV series Wiseguy (1987). Profitt was the first in a long line of dark, manipulative characters that would eventually make Kevin Spacey a household name: he went on to play a sinister office manager in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), a sadistic Hollywood exec in Swimming with Sharks (1994), and, most famously, creepy, smooth-talking eyewitness Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects (1995).
The "Suspects" role earned Spacey an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and catapulted him into the limelight. That same year, he turned in another complex, eerie performance in David Fincher's thriller Se7en (1995) (Spacey refused billing on the film, fearing that it might compromise the ending if audiences were waiting for him to appear). By now, the scripts were pouring in. After appearing in Al Pacino's Looking for Richard (1996), Spacey made his own directorial debut with Albino Alligator (1996), a low-key but well received hostage drama. He then jumped back into acting, winning critical accolades for his turns as flashy detective Jack Vincennes in L.A. Confidential (1997) and genteel, closeted murder suspect Jim Williams in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). In October 1999, just four days after the dark suburban comedy American Beauty (1999) opened in US theaters, Spacey received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Little did organizers know that his role in Beauty would turn out to be his biggest success yet - as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged corporate cog on the brink of psychological meltdown, he tapped into a funny, savage character that captured audiences' imaginations and earned him a Best Actor Oscar.
No longer relegated to offbeat supporting parts, Spacey seems poised to redefine himself as a Hollywood headliner. He says he's finished exploring the dark side - but, given his attraction to complex characters, that mischievous twinkle will never be too far from his eyes.
In February 2003 Spacey made a major move back to the theatre. He was appointed Artistic Director of the new company set up to save the famous Old Vic theatre, The Old Vic Theatre Company. Although he did not undertake to stop appearing in movies altogether, he undertook to remain in this leading post for ten years, and to act in as well as to direct plays during that time. His first production, of which he was the director, was the September 2004 British premiere of the play Cloaca by Maria Goos (made into a film, Cloaca (2003)). Spacey made his UK Shakespearean debut in the title role in Richard II in 2005. In 2006 he got movie director Robert Altman to direct for the stage the little-known Arthur Miller play Resurrection Blues, but that was a dismal failure. However Spacey remained optimistic, and insisted that a few mistakes are part of the learning process. He starred thereafter with great success in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten along with Colm Meaney and Eve Best, and in 2007 that show transferred to Broadway. In February 2008 Spacey put on a revival of the David Mamet 1988 play Speed-the-Plow in which he took one of the three roles, the others being taken by Jeff Goldblum and Laura Michelle Kelly.
In 2013, Spacey took on the lead role in an original Netflix series, House of Cards (2013). Based upon a British show of the same name, House of Cards is an American political drama. The show's first season received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination to include Outstanding lead actor in a drama series. In 2017, he played a memorable role as a villain in the action thriller Baby Driver (2017).- Actor
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Matthew Perry was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, to Suzanne Marie (Langford), a Canadian journalist, and John Bennett Perry, an American actor. His ancestry includes English, Irish, German, Swiss-German, and French-Canadian.
Perry was raised in Ottawa, Ontario, where he became a top-ranked junior tennis player in Canada. However, after moving to Los Angeles at the age of 15 to live with his father, he became more interested in acting. In addition to performing in several high school stage productions, he remained an avid tennis player. Perry ranked 17th nationally in the junior singles category and third in the doubles category. Upon graduating from high school, Perry intended to enroll at the University of Southern California. However, when he was offered a leading role on the television series, Boys Will Be Boys (1987), he seized the opportunity to begin his acting career.
Perry appeared in the hit comedy film The Whole Nine Yards (2000), as the neighbor of a hit man, played by Bruce Willis. His other feature film credits included Fools Rush In (1997), A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988), She's Out of Control (1989) and Parallel Lives (1994). He also co-starred with Chris Farley in the buddy comedy Almost Heroes (1998) and in the romantic comedy, Three to Tango (1999), opposite Neve Campbell. Perry resided in Los Angeles. He enjoyed playing ice hockey and softball in his spare time.- Producer
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American film director and screenwriter best known for the films The Vicious Kind (2009), Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012) and The Age of Adaline (2015).
Krieger was born and raised in Los Angeles. He became "hooked" on filmmaking at the age of 13 when his neighbor, film producer Steve Perry, brought him to the set of the 1996 film Executive Decision. Krieger later interned for Perry during high school, and in college he worked for Neil LaBute and his producing partner Gail Mutrux. He graduated from the University of Southern California's School of Cinema and Television in 2005.
Krieger founded a production company, Autumn Entertainment, in 2004, under which his first project was December Ends, a feature film shot on a US$75,000 budget. The film premiered at the 2006 Method Fest, two years after it was shot, where it won the festival's Best Picture award.
In 2009, Krieger wrote and directed The Vicious Kind, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and earned him numerous accolades including the Emerging Filmmaker Award at the Denver Film Festival and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Screenplay. He was later asked by producer Jennifer Todd to direct Celeste and Jesse Forever, based on a script written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, which would also premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. After the success of Celeste and Jesse Forever, he received offers to direct similar scripts, but turned them down in lieu of writing his own material for future projects.
He has also directed many commercials with clients such as Joseph Abboud and AG Jeans, and music videos for Universal Music Group and the Island Def Jam Music Group.
He directed The Age of Adaline, starring Blake Lively and Michiel Huisman. Production started in March 2014, and the film was released in April 2015.
In September 19, 2012, Lionsgate acquired the rights to the script Vanish Man written by Denison Hatch. Later in February 2015, Krieger was set to rewrite and direct the film, which 21 Laps Entertainment would produce.
On February 29, 2016, it was announced that Krieger would direct The Divergent Series: Ascendant, the final film in The Divergent Series.[10] On July 20, 2016, it was announced that the project was put on hold due to Lionsgate's decision to release the final film as a TV movie, mainly because of the third film in the series, Allegiant, under performing. In December 2018, it was announced that the television movie has been canceled due to the lack of interest of the cast and network executives.
On May 27, 2021, it was announced that Krieger would direct the first two episodes of the show Green Lantern for HBO Max.- Actor
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Curly haired and with a fast-talking voice, Jesse Eisenberg is a movie actor, known for his Academy Award nominated role as Mark Zuckerberg in the 2010 film The Social Network. He has also starred in the films The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland, The Education of Charlie Banks, 30 Minutes or Less, Now You See Me and Zombieland. Additionally, he played Lex Luthor in the 2016 film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Jesse Adam Eisenberg was born on October 5, 1983 in Queens, New York, and was raised in East Brunswick Township, New Jersey. His mother, Amy (Fishman), is a professional dressed-up clown who performed at children's birthday parties for a living in their hometown of East Brunswick for 20 years. His father, Barry Eisenberg, ran a hospital before moving on to become a college professor. Jesse has two sisters, Kerri and Hallie Eisenberg, who was a popular child star. His family is Jewish (his ancestors came to the U.S. from Poland, Russia, and Ukraine).
He attended East Brunswick High School, but he didn't really enjoy school. From age 10, he performed in children's theater. Jesse had his first professional role in an off-Broadway play, "The Gathering". Before fame, he made his first television appearance role that came in 1999 when he was 16 with a show on Fox's Get Real (1999), but the show was canceled in 2000. In his senior year of high school, he had landed his first film leading role in the 2002 film Roger Dodger (2002). He won an award for "Most Promising New Actor" at the San Diego film festival.
Jesse attended the New School University, New York, where he was a liberal arts major, with a focus on Democracy and Cultural Pluralism. He also studied at The New School in New York City's Greenwich Village. He applied and was accepted to New York University but declined enrollment to complete a film role. He has been playing the drums since he was age 8.
His breakthrough role came in Zombieland (2009). In 2010, he was nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globes and Academy Awards for his role of Facebook's creator, Mark Zuckerberg, in the film, The Social Network (2010). He also voiced Blu, a rare blue macaw, in the film Rio (2011), and its sequel Rio 2 (2014). He starred alongside Aziz Ansari in the 2011 comedy 30 Minutes Or Less, and played himself in the 2013 comedy film He's Way More Famous Than You (2013).- Producer
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One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, producer or writer since launching the summer blockbuster with Jaws (1975), and he has done more to define popular film-making since the mid-1970s than anyone else.
Steven Allan Spielberg was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Leah Frances (Posner), a concert pianist and restaurateur, and Arnold Spielberg, an electrical engineer who worked in computer development. His parents were both born to Russian Jewish immigrant families. Steven spent his younger years in Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona, and later Saratoga, California. He went to California State University Long Beach, but dropped out to pursue his entertainment career. Among his early directing efforts were Battle Squad (1961), which combined World War II footage with footage of an airplane on the ground that he makes you believe is moving. He also directed Escape to Nowhere (1961), which featured children as World War Two soldiers, including his sister Anne Spielberg, and The Last Gun (1959), a western. All of these were short films. The next couple of years, Spielberg directed a couple of movies that would portend his future career in movies. In 1964, he directed Firelight (1964), a movie about aliens invading a small town. In 1967, he directed Slipstream (1967), which was unfinished. However, in 1968, he directed Amblin' (1968), which featured the desert prominently, and not the first of his movies in which the desert would feature. Amblin' also became the name of his production company, which turned out such classics as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg had a unique and classic early directing project, Duel (1971), with Dennis Weaver. In the early 1970s, Spielberg was working on TV, directing among others such series as Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969), Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969) and Murder by the Book (1971). All of his work in television and short films, as well as his directing projects, were just a hint of the wellspring of talent that would dazzle audiences all over the world.
Spielberg's first major directorial effort was The Sugarland Express (1974), with Goldie Hawn, a film that marked him as a rising star. It was his next effort, however, that made him an international superstar among directors: Jaws (1975). This classic shark attack tale started the tradition of the summer blockbuster or, at least, he was credited with starting the tradition. His next film was the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a unique and original UFO story that remains a classic. In 1978, Spielberg produced his first film, the forgettable I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and followed that effort with Used Cars (1980), a critically acclaimed, but mostly forgotten, Kurt Russell/Jack Warden comedy about devious used-car dealers. Spielberg hit gold yet one more time with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with Harrison Ford taking the part of Indiana Jones. Spielberg produced and directed two films in 1982. The first was Poltergeist (1982), but the highest-grossing movie of all time up to that point was the alien story E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg also helped pioneer the practice of product placement. The concept, while not uncommon, was still relatively low-key when Spielberg raised the practice to almost an art form with his famous (or infamous) placement of Reese's Pieces in "E.T." Spielberg was also one of the pioneers of the big-grossing special-effects movies, like "E.T." and "Close Encounters", where a very strong emphasis on special effects was placed for the first time on such a huge scale. In 1984, Spielberg followed up "Raiders" with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), which was a commercial success but did not receive the critical acclaim of its predecessor. As a producer, Spielberg took on many projects in the 1980s, such as The Goonies (1985), and was the brains behind the little monsters in Gremlins (1984). He also produced the cartoon An American Tail (1986), a quaint little animated classic. His biggest effort as producer in 1985, however, was the blockbuster Back to the Future (1985), which made Michael J. Fox an instant superstar. As director, Spielberg took on the book The Color Purple (1985), with Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, with great success. In the latter half of the 1980s, he also directed Empire of the Sun (1987), a mixed success for the occasionally erratic Spielberg. Success would not escape him for long, though.
The late 1980s found Spielberg's projects at the center of pop-culture yet again. In 1988, he produced the landmark animation/live-action film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). The next year proved to be another big one for Spielberg, as he produced and directed Always (1989) as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Back to the Future Part II (1989). All three of the films were box-office and critical successes. Also, in 1989, he produced the little known comedy-drama Dad (1989), with Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson, which got mostly mixed results. Spielberg has also had an affinity for animation and has been a strong voice in animation in the 1990s. Aside from producing the landmark "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", he produced the animated series Tiny Toon Adventures (1990), Animaniacs (1993), Pinky and the Brain (1995), Freakazoid! (1995), Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain (1998), Family Dog (1993) and Toonsylvania (1998). Spielberg also produced other cartoons such as The Land Before Time (1988), We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), Casper (1995) (the live action version) as well as the live-action version of The Flintstones (1994), where he was credited as "Steven Spielrock". Spielberg also produced many Roger Rabbit short cartoons, and many Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs and Tiny Toons specials. Spielberg was very active in the early 1990s, as he directed Hook (1991) and produced such films as the cute fantasy Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991). He also produced the unusual comedy thriller Arachnophobia (1990), Back to the Future Part III (1990) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). While these movies were big successes in their own right, they did not quite bring in the kind of box office or critical acclaim as previous efforts. In 1993, Spielberg directed Jurassic Park (1993), which for a short time held the record as the highest grossing movie of all time, but did not have the universal appeal of his previous efforts. Big box-office spectacles were not his only concern, though. He produced and directed Schindler's List (1993), a stirring film about the Holocaust. He won best director at the Oscars, and also got Best Picture. In the mid-90s, he helped found the production company DreamWorks, which was responsible for many box-office successes.
As a producer, he was very active in the late 90s, responsible for such films as The Mask of Zorro (1998), Men in Black (1997) and Deep Impact (1998). However, it was on the directing front that Spielberg was in top form. He directed and produced the epic Amistad (1997), a spectacular film that was shorted at the Oscars and in release due to the fact that its release date was moved around so much in late 1997. The next year, however, produced what many believe was one of the best films of his career: Saving Private Ryan (1998), a film about World War Two that is spectacular in almost every respect. It was stiffed at the Oscars, losing best picture to Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Spielberg produced a series of films, including Evolution (2001), The Haunting (1999) and Shrek (2001). he also produced two sequels to Jurassic Park (1993), which were financially but not particularly critical successes. In 2001, he produced a mini-series about World War Two that definitely *was* a financial and critical success: Band of Brothers (2001), a tale of an infantry company from its parachuting into France during the invasion to the Battle of the Bulge. Also in that year, Spielberg was back in the director's chair for A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a movie with a message and a huge budget. It did reasonably at the box office and garnered varied reviews from critics.
Spielberg has been extremely active in films there are many other things he has done as well. He produced the short-lived TV series SeaQuest 2032 (1993), an anthology series entitled Amazing Stories (1985), created the video-game series "Medal of Honor" set during World War Two, and was a starting producer of ER (1994). Spielberg, if you haven't noticed, has a great interest in World War Two. He and Tom Hanks collaborated on Shooting War: World War II Combat Cameramen (2000), a documentary about World War II combat photographers, and he produced a documentary about the Holocaust called Eyes of the Holocaust (2000). With all of this to Spielberg's credit, it's no wonder that he's looked at as one of the greatest ever figures in entertainment.- Actor
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Dan Stevens was born at Croydon in Surrey on 10th October 1982. His parents are teachers. He was educated at Tonbridge School and trained in acting at the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. He studied English Literature at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Whilst he was a Cambridge undergraduate, he acted in several student drama productions. He played the title role in the Marlowe Dramatic Society's production of William Shakespeare's play, "Macbeth". This was staged at the Cambridge Arts Theatre from Tuesday 26th February to Saturday 2nd March 2002. The cast also featured Rebecca Hall in the roles of Lady Macbeth and Hecate. During one of his university summer holidays in August 2003 he went to Slovakia where he filmed his scenes for the Hallmark production of Frankenstein (2004). Dan played the part of Henry Clerval and the mini-series was first broadcast on American television on 5th October 2004. Shortly after graduating from Cambridge Dan was nominated for an Ian Charleson award for his performance as Orlando in "As You Like It" at the Rose Theatre at Kingston in Surrey. "As You Like It" was directed by Peter Hall and ran from 30th November to 18th December 2004. This production for the Peter Hall Company subsequently went on a tour of America in the early months of 2005, playing at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, the Curran Theater in San Francisco and the Harvey Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. It featured Rebecca Hall in the role of Rosalind.
Dan was reunited with the director Peter Hall when he played Claudio in a new production of the Shakespeare play, "Much Ado About Nothing", for the Peter Hall Company at the Theatre Royal in Bath from 29th June to 6th August 2005. In February 2006 Dan played the parts of Marban and Maitland in a revival of Howard Brenton's controversial play, "The Romans in Britain", directed by Samuel West at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. Then in May 2006 he played Nick Guest, the protagonist in The Line of Beauty (2006). This three part television mini-series was adapted by Andrew Davies from the 2004 Booker prize winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst. The Line of Beauty (2006) is about Nick Guest's relationship with his university friend Toby Fedden. The story takes place in the 1980s. It is set against the backdrop of Margaret Thatcher's free market economic policies and the spread of the acquired immunity deficiency syndrome, (AIDS). These two social developments directly affect the characters in the story because Toby's father Gerald is a Conservative member of parliament and Nick is homosexual.
Whilst The Line of Beauty (2006) was being broadcast on BBC television, Dan was appearing as Simon Bliss in the Noël Coward play, "Hay Fever". This play was staged at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London from 11th April to 5th August 2006 and the cast also included Judi Dench in the role of Judith Bliss. At the end of the year Dan played Lord Holmwood in a television dramatization of Dracula (2006), which was broadcast on 28th December 2006. In 2007 Dan played the part of Michael Faber in Miss Marple: Nemesis (2007), an Agatha Christie adaptation with Geraldine McEwan in the role of Miss Jane Marple. He also featured in the cast of Maxwell (2007), a television drama about the famous newspaper magnate. Maxwell (2007) was first broadcast on British television on 4th May 2007. David Suchet played Robert Maxwell, and Dan took the part of Basil Brookes, one of the press baron's financial directors.
Dan played the part of Edward Ferrars in a television dramatization of Jane Austen's novel, Sense & Sensibility (2008). This was broadcast in three episodes on BBC1 between Tuesday 1st and Sunday 13th January 2008. The novel was adapted for television by Andrew Davies, whom Dan had previously worked with on The Line of Beauty (2006). Davies felt that the part of Edward Ferrars was underdeveloped in the book, and so he deliberately added scenes not included in the novel to help draw out the character. So, for instance, we saw Edward out horse riding on the Norland estate and chopping logs at Barton Cottage. In the DVD audio commentary Dan joked that this was the best example of log chopping ever seen on British television! After Sense & Sensibility (2008), Dan featured in the cast of "The Tennis Court", a BBC Radio 4 Saturday play broadcast on 19th January 2008. He also played Nicky Lancaster in a revival of the Noël Coward play, "The Vortex", at the Apollo Theatre in London from Wednesday 20th February to Saturday 7th June 2008. This was another collaboration with the stage director, Peter Hall. Dan played the eponymous hero of "Dickens Confidential", a six part radio drama series set in the 1830s which imagines what might have happened if Charles Dickens had continued his career as a journalist. This was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between Monday 9th June and Monday 14th July 2008. He played the part of Peregrine in 'Orley Farm', the BBC Radio 4 Classic Serial. This was a three part adaptation of the novel by Anthony Trollope broadcast between Sunday 28th December 2008 and Sunday 11th January 2009. A month later he played Duval in the BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour drama, 'The Lady of the Camellias'. This was broadcast between Monday 2nd and Friday 6th February 2009.- Actor
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Born in London, England, Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is the second child of Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate of the U.K., and his second wife, actress Jill Balcon. His maternal grandfather was Sir Michael Balcon, an important figure in the history of British cinema and head of the famous Ealing Studios. His older sister, Tamasin Day-Lewis, is a documentarian. His father was of Northern Irish and English descent, and his mother was Jewish (from a family from Latvia and Poland). Daniel was educated at Sevenoaks School in Kent, which he despised, and the more progressive Bedales in Petersfield, which he adored. He studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic School. Daniel made his film debut in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), but then acted on stage with the Bristol Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare Companies and did not appear on screen again until 1982, when he landed his first adult role, a bit part in Gandhi (1982). He also appeared on British television that year in Frost in May (1982) and How Many Miles to Babylon? (1982). Notable theatrical performances include Another Country (1982-83), Dracula (1984) and The Futurists (1986).
His first major supporting role in a feature film was in The Bounty (1984), quickly followed by My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and A Room with a View (1985). The latter two films opened in New York on the same day, offering audiences and critics evidence of his remarkable range and establishing him as a major talent. The New York Film Critics named him Best Supporting Actor for those performances. In 1986, he appeared on stage in Richard Eyre's "The Futurists" and on television in Eyre's production of The Insurance Man (1986). He also had a small role in a British/French film, Nanou (1986). In 1987, he assumed leading-man status in Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), followed by a comedic role in the unsuccessful Stars and Bars (1988). His brilliant performance as Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot (1989) won him numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor.
He returned to the stage to work again with Eyre, as Hamlet at the National Theater, but was forced to leave the production close to the end of its run because of exhaustion, and has not appeared on stage since. He took a hiatus from film as well until 1992, when he starred in The Last of the Mohicans (1992), a film that met with mixed reviews but was a great success at the box office. He worked with American director Martin Scorsese in The Age of Innocence (1993), based on Edith Wharton's novel. Subsequently, he teamed again with Jim Sheridan to star in In the Name of the Father (1993), a critically acclaimed performance that earned him another Academy Award nomination. His next project was in the role of John Proctor in father-in-law Arthur Miller's play The Crucible (1996), directed by Nicholas Hytner. He worked with Scorsese again to star in Gangs of New York (2002), another critically acclaimed performance that earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Day-Lewis's wife, Rebecca Miller, offered him the lead role in her film The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), in which he played a dying man with regrets over how his wife had evolved and over how he had brought up his teenage daughter. During filming, he arranged to live separate from his wife to achieve the "isolation" needed to focus on his own character's reality. The film received mixed reviews. In 2007, he starred in director Paul Thomas Anderson's loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!", titled There Will Be Blood (2007). Day-Lewis received the Academy Award for Best Actor, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, and a variety of film critics' circle awards for the role. In 2009, Day-Lewis starred in Rob Marshall's musical adaptation Nine (2009) as film director Guido Contini. He was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and the Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.- Actor
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Brenton Thwaites is an Australian actor. He played Luke Gallagher on the Fox8 teen drama series SLiDE (2011) and Stu Henderson on the Australian soap opera hit Home and Away (1988). His films include Blue Lagoon: The Awakening (2012), Oculus (2013), Maleficent (2014), and The Giver (2014). He starred in Gods of Egypt (2016) and will headline Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017), with Johnny Depp.
Brenton was born in Cairns, Queensland, to Fiona Middleton and Peter Thwaites.- Actor
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George Timothy Clooney was born on May 6, 1961, in Lexington, Kentucky, to Nina Bruce (née Warren), a former beauty pageant queen, and Nick Clooney, a former anchorman and television host (who was also the brother of singer Rosemary Clooney). He has Irish, English, and German ancestry. Clooney spent most of his youth in Ohio and Kentucky, and graduated from Augusta High School. He was very active in sports such as basketball and baseball, and tried out for the Cincinnati Reds, but was not offered a contract.
After his cousin, Miguel Ferrer, got him a small role in a feature film, Clooney began to pursue acting. His first major role was on the sitcom E/R (1984) as Ace. More roles soon followed, including George Burnett, the handsome handyman on The Facts of Life (1979); Booker Brooks, a supervisor on Roseanne (1988); and Detective James Falconer on Sisters (1991). Clooney had his breakthrough when he was cast as Dr. Doug Ross on the award-winning drama series ER (1994), opposite Anthony Edwards, Noah Wyle and Julianna Margulies.
While filming "ER" (1994), Clooney starred in a number of high profile film roles, such as Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), and One Fine Day (1996), opposite Michelle Pfeiffer. In 1997, Clooney took on the role of Batman in Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin (1997). The film was a moderate success in the box office, but was slammed by critics, notably for the nipple-laden Batsuit. Clooney went on to star in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight (1998), Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998), and David O. Russell's Three Kings (1999).
In 1999, Clooney left "ER" (1994) (though he would return for the season finale) and appeared in a number of films, including O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Perfect Storm (2000) and Ocean's Eleven (2001). Collaborating once again with Steven Soderbergh, Ocean's Eleven (2001) received critical acclaim, earned more than $450 million at the box office, and spawned two sequels: Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007).
In 2002, Clooney made his directorial debut with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), an adaptation of TV producer Chuck Barris' autobiography. This was the first film under the banner of Section Eight Productions, a production company he founded with Steven Soderbergh. The company also produced many acclaimed films, including Far from Heaven (2002), Syriana (2005), A Scanner Darkly (2006) and Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005). Clooney won his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Syriana (2005), and was nominated for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005).
In 2006, Section Eight Productions was shut down so that Soderbergh could concentrate on directing, and Clooney founded a new production company, Smokehouse Productions, with his friend and longtime business partner, Grant Heslov.
Clooney went on to produce and star in Michael Clayton (2007) (which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor), directed and starred in Leatherheads (2008), and took leading roles in Burn After Reading (2008), The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), and Jason Reitman's Up in the Air (2009). Clooney received critical acclaim for his performance in Up in the Air (2009) and was nominated for several awards, including a Golden Globe Award and Academy Award. He didn't win that year, but took home both Best Actor awards (as well as countless nominations) for his role as a father who finds out his wife was unfaithful as she lays in a coma in Alexander Payne's The Descendants (2011). Through his career, Clooney has been heralded for his political activism and humanitarian work. He has served as one of the United Nations Messengers of Peace since 2008, has been an advocate for the Darfur conflict, and organized the Hope for Haiti telethon, to raise money for the victims of the 2010 earthquake. In March 2012, Clooney was arrested for civil disobedience while protesting at the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C.
Clooney was married to actress Talia Balsam, from 1989 until 1993. After their divorce, he swore he would never marry again. Michelle Pfeiffer and Nicole Kidman bet him $10,000 that he would have children by the age of 40, and sent him a check shortly after his birthday. Clooney returned the funds and bet double or nothing he wouldn't have children by the age of 50. Although he has remained a consummate bachelor, Clooney has had many highly publicized relationships, including with former WWE wrestler Stacy Keibler. In 2014, he married lawyer and activist Amal Clooney, with whom he has two children, twins.- Actress
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Rebecca Hall was born in London, England, the daughter of Peter Hall, a stage director and founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Maria Ewing, an opera singer. Her father was English. Her mother, who is American, is of Dutch and African-American origin. Her parents separated when she was still young, and they divorced in 1990. She has a half-brother, Edward Hall, who is a theatre director, and four other half-siblings, including theatre designer Lucy Hall, veteran TV drama producer Christopher Hall, and Jennifer Caron Hall, a writer and painter.- Writer
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Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear, storytelling, acclaimed Academy Award winner writer/director/producer Sir Christopher Nolan CBE was born in London, England. Over the course of more than 25 years of filmmaking, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the biggest blockbusters ever made and became one of the most celebrated filmmakers of modern cinema.
At 7 years old, Nolan began making short films with his father's Super-8 camera. While studying English Literature at University College London, he shot 16-millimeter films at U.C.L.'s film society, where he learned the guerrilla techniques he would later use to make his first feature, Following (1998), on a budget of around $6,000. The noir thriller was recognized at a number of international film festivals prior to its theatrical release and gained Nolan enough credibility that he was able to gather substantial financing for his next film.
Nolan's second film was Memento (2000), which he directed from his own screenplay based on a short story by his brother Jonathan Nolan. Starring Guy Pearce, the film brought Nolan numerous honors, including Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay. Nolan went on to direct the critically acclaimed psychological thriller, Insomnia (2002), starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank.
The turning point in Nolan's career occurred when he was awarded the chance to revive the Batman franchise in 2005. In Batman Begins (2005), Nolan brought a level of gravitas back to the iconic hero, and his gritty, modern interpretation was greeted with praise from fans and critics alike. Before moving on to a Batman sequel, Nolan directed, co-wrote, and produced the mystery thriller The Prestige (2006), starring Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as magicians whose obsessive rivalry leads to tragedy and murder.
In 2008, Nolan directed, co-wrote, and produced The Dark Knight (2008). Co-written with by his brother Jonathan, the film went on to gross more than a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. Nolan was nominated for a Directors Guild of America (D.G.A.) Award, Writers Guild of America (W.G.A.) Award and Producers Guild of America (P.G.A.) Award, and the film also received eight Academy Award nominations. The film is widely considered one of the best comic book adaptations of all times, with Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker receiving an extremely high acclaim. Ledger posthumously became the first Academy Award winning performance in a Nolan film.
In 2010, Nolan captivated audiences with the Sci-Fi thriller Inception (2010), starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, which he directed and produced from his own original screenplay that he worked on for almost a decade. The thought-provoking drama was a worldwide blockbuster, earning more than $800,000,000 and becoming one of the most discussed and debated films of the year, and of all times. Among its many honors, Inception received four Academy Awards and eight nominations, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay. Nolan was recognized by his peers with a W.G.A. Award accolade, as well as D.G.A. and P.G.A. Awards nominations for his work on the film.
As one of the best-reviewed and highest-grossing movies of 2012, The Dark Knight Rises (2012) concluded Nolan's Batman trilogy. Due to his success rebooting the Batman character, Warner Bros. enlisted Nolan to produce their revamped Superman movie Man of Steel (2013), which opened in the summer of 2013. In 2014, Nolan directed, wrote, and produced the Science-Fiction epic Interstellar (2014), starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. released the film on November 5, 2014, to positive reviews and strong box-office results, grossing over $670 million dollars worldwide.
In July 2017, Nolan released his acclaimed War epic Dunkirk (2017), that earned him his first Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards, as well as winning an additional 3 Oscars. In 2020 he released his mind-bending Sci-Fi espionage thriller Tenet (2020) starring John David Washington in the lead role. Released during the COVID-19 pandemic, the movie grossed relatively less than Nolan's previous blockbusters, though it did do good numbers compared to other movies in that period of time. Hailed as Nolan's most complex film yet, the film was one of Nolan's less-acclaimed films at the time, yet slowly built a fan-base following in later years.
In July 2023, Nolan released his highly acclaimed biographic drama Oppenheimer (2023) starring Nolan's frequent collaborator Cillian Murphy- in the lead role for the first time in a Nolan film. The movie was a cultural phenomenon that on top of grossing almost 1 billion dollars at the Worldwide Box office, also swept the 2023/2024 award-season and gave Nolan his first Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, D.G.A. and P.G.A. Awards, as well as a handful of regional critics-circles awards and a W.G.A. nomination. Cillian's performance as quantum physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was highly acclaimed as well, and became the first lead performance in a Nolan film to win the Academy Award.
During 2023, Nolan also received a fellowship from the British Film Institute (BFI). In March 2024, it was announced that Nolan is to be knighted by King Charles III and from now on will go by the title 'Sir Christopher Nolan'.
Nolan resides in Los Angeles, California with his wife, Academy Award winner producer Dame Emma Thomas, and their children. Sir Nolan and Dame Thomas also have their own production company, Syncopy.- Jonathan B. Wright is an American stage and screen actor best known for originating the role of Hänschen Rilow in the Broadway musical Spring Awakening (2006). Film and TV credits include Gossip Girl (2021), Youth In Revolt (2009), and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2007).
Wright was born in Ypsilanti, MI, the son of Pamela, a school teacher, and Tom Wright, a firefighter. He began acting at the age of 14 at the Creative and Performing Arts Program (CAPA) located at Winston Churchill H.S. in Livonia, MI, then headed by Gail Susan Mack, a student of Uta Hagen. At the age of 16, Jonathan came to New York City and attended the summer acting workshop at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. Upon graduation from High School in 2005, he returned to New York to become the youngest member of The Actors Center's nine-month conservatory program, where he studied with teachers from Juilliard, Yale, and NYU.
Jonathan auditioned in 2005 for a role in the off-Broadway musical production of Spring Awakening at the Atlantic Theater Company. Jonathan was cast in the role of Hänschen, the choir boy who seduces his fellow male classmate, for which he received rave reviews, being cited by some as a scene-stealer. He continued with Spring Awakening as it moved to Broadway and went on to win eight Tony awards.
In 2015, Wright was cast in the Center Theatre Group's production of Martin Sherman's BENT, directed by Moises Kaufman in Los Angeles. - Actor
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Luke Bracey was born in Sydney, Australia and made his acting debut in Aussie soap opera, Home and Away (1988) in 2009, portraying bad-boy "Trey Palmer" into 2010, while also appearing in multiple episodes of Aussie series Dance Academy (2010)). He next co-starred in what was both his first feature film and first American role, in Monte Carlo (2011), opposite Leighton Meester. In 2012 he starred in horror film Amnesia (2012). In 2013, he appeared in G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) as "Cobra Commander" and he was cast in the male lead role of the ABC drama, Westside (2013), alongside Odette Annable and Jennifer Beals.- Writer
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- Actor
Nicholas Sparks was born on December 31, 1965 in Omaha, Nebraska. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1988 and is one of the more critically-acclaimed authors of the past 5 years. He is the author of 5 best-selling books, including "The Notebook" and "The Rescue". Eleven of his books, Message in a Bottle (1999), A Walk to Remember (2002), The Notebook (2004), Nights in Rodanthe (2008), The Last Song [2010] , Dear John [2010] , The Lucky One [2012], Safe Haven [2013] , The Best of Me [2014] , The Longest Ride (2015) and The Choice (2016)
have been adapted into blockbuster movies. Sparks lives in North Carolina with his wife, 3 sons, and twin daughters.- Actor
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Jason Flemyng was born on 25 September 1966 in Putney, London, England, UK. He is an actor and producer, known for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Deep Rising (1998). He has been married to Elly Fairman since 6 June 2008.- Actor
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- Stunts
Jason Statham was born in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, to Eileen (Yates), a dancer, and Barry Statham, a street merchant and lounge singer. He was a Diver on the British National Diving Team and finished twelfth in the World Championships in 1992. He has also been a fashion model, black market salesman and finally of course, actor. He received the audition for his debut role as Bacon in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) through French Connection, for whom he was modeling. They became a major investor in the film and introduced Jason to Guy Ritchie, who invited him to audition for a part in the film by challenging him to impersonate an illegal street vendor and convince him to purchase fake jewelry. Jason must have been doing something right because after the success of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) he teamed up again with Guy Ritchie for Snatch (2000), with co-stars including Brad Pitt, Dennis Farina and Benicio Del Toro. After Snatch (2000) came Turn It Up (2000) with US music star Ja Rule, followed by a supporting actor role in the sci-fi film Ghosts of Mars (2001), Jet Li's The One (2001) and another screen partnership with Vinnie Jones in Mean Machine (2001) under Guy Ritchie's and Matthew Vaughn's SKA Films. Finally in 2002 he was cast as the lead role of Frank Martin in The Transporter (2002). Jason was also in the summer 2003 blockbuster remake of The Italian Job (1969), The Italian Job (2003), playing Handsome Rob.
Throughout the 2000s, Statham became a star of juicy action B-films, most significantly Crank (2006) and Crank: High Voltage (2009), and also War (2007), opposite Jet Li, and The Bank Job (2008) and Death Race (2008), among others. In the 2010s, his reputation for cheeky and tough leading performances led to his casting as Lee Christmas in The Expendables (2010) and its sequels, the comedy Spy (2015), and as (apparently) reformed villain Deckard Shaw in Fast & Furious 6 (2013), Furious 7 (2015), The Fate of the Furious (2017), and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019). Apart from these blockbusters, he continued headlining B-films such as Homefront (2013).
In 2017, he had his first child, a son with his partner, model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.- Actor
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Kyle Schmid was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is best known for History's "SIX", BBC America's "COPPER" and a number of feature films including David Cronenberg's "A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE".
He has been acting for a majority of his life. An early career in television lead way to Disney films and a number of Lifetime films for which he garnered a nomination for a Young Artist Award. Well known for playing Henry Fitzroy in the Lifetime series "BLOODTIES", he went onto take on the role of Henry Durham, in the Syfy Channel series "BEING HUMAN" and the role of Robert Morehouse in the BBC America series "COPPER". Kyle focused on film for a number of years following building leading characters until he landed the role of Alex Caulder in History's well respected, "SIX".
Most recently Kyle can be seen portraying Charlie Dick, in the Lifetime film recently nominated for 5 Critic's Choice Awards, "PATSY AND LORETTA". He also recently wrapped the new Netflix series, "I-LAND" in which he plays Moses and will be seen in "10 MINUTES GONE" along side Micheal Chicklis and Bruce Willis.- 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.- Actress
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Rebel Wilson was born in Sydney, Australia, to a family of dog handlers and showers. She trained at the Australian Theatre for Young People and at Second City in the US. After a successful stage and television career in Australia, this writer/actress/producer now focuses on feature film projects in the United States and is perhaps most known for her breakthrough roles in the films Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect. In 2019, Rebel will be seen in four feature films: Isn't It Romantic and The Hustle (both of which she also produced), Jojo Rabbit directed by Taika Waititi and Tom Hooper's Cats and ABC television series Les Norton.- Actor
- Producer
- Music Department
Proclaimed by many critics as one of the best young actors of his generation, Benjamin John Whishaw was born in Clifton, Bedfordshire, to Linda (Hope), who works in cosmetics, and Jose Whishaw, who works in information technology. He has a twin brother, James. He is of French, German, Russian (father) and English (mother) descent.
Ben attended Samuel Whitbread Community College where his interest in theatre grew and he became a member of the Bancroft Players Youth Theatre at Hitchin's Queen Mother Theatre. During his time there he rose to prominence in many productions, most notably If This Is a Man, based on the book of the same name by Primo Levi, a survivor of Nazi World War II prisoner of war camp. The play was taken to the Edinburgh Festival in 1995 where it garnered five-star reviews and great critical acclaim with Ben Whishaw getting rave reviews for his portrayal of Levi.
Ben then enrolled in, RADA from where he graduated in 2004 and soon landed the role of Hamlet in Trevor Nunn's 2004 production making him one of the youngest actors to portray Hamlet on-stage. Hamlet opened to rave reviews with many critics hailing Ben as the next Laurence Olivier and applauding his portrayal of Hamlet with leading critics haling the birth of a star. Whishaw's film and TV credits include Layer Cake (2004) and Christopher Morris 2005 sitcom Nathan Barley (2005), in which he played a character called Pingu. He was named "Most Promising Newcomer" at the 2001 British Independent Film Awards (for My Brother Tom (2001)) and, in 2005, nominated as best actor in four award ceremonies for his Hamlet. He also played Keith Richards in the Stephen Woolley biopic Stoned (2005). Whishaw played in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a perfume maker whose craft turns deadly getting raves once again for his stunning portrayal. Whishaw appeared in 2007's I'm Not There (2007) as one of the Bob Dylan reincarnations and in 2008 in Criminal Justice (2008) a TV series. He appears in the forthcoming films The Tempest (2010) and Bright Star (2009).- Actor
- Producer
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Zachary Quinto was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Margaret J. (McArdle), an Irish-American office worker, and Joseph John Quinto, an Italian-American barber. Zachary graduated from Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, with the class of 1995, where he won Pittsburgh's Gene Kelly Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the Major General in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance". He then went on to attend Carnegie Mellon University, where he continued to hone his talents by performing in plays and musicals. He first appeared on numerous television series since 2000 and, in 2003, landed the role of computer expert "Adam Kaufman" on the Fox series, 24 (2001), during its third season. In 2006, Quinto portrayed serial killer "Sylar" on the science fiction series, Heroes (2006), until its cancellation in 2010, after four seasons. He was cast in his first main film role as "Spock", in the hugely successful franchise reboot, Star Trek (2009).- Actor
- Writer
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David Burtka was born on 29 May 1975 in Dearborn, Michigan, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011), Neil's Puppet Dreams (2012) and CSI: NY (2004). He has been married to Neil Patrick Harris since 6 September 2014. They have two children.- Actor
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Guy Edward Pearce was born October 5, 1967 in Cambridgeshire, England, UK to Margaret Anne and Stuart Graham Pearce. His father was born in Auckland, New Zealand, to English and Scottish parents, while Guy's mother is English. Pearce and his family initially traveled to Australia for two years, after his father was offered the position of Chief test pilot for the Australian Government. Guy was just 3-years-old. After deciding to stay in Australia and settling in the Victorian city of Geelong, Guy's father was killed 5 years later in an aircraft test flight, leaving Guy's mother, a schoolteacher, to care for him and his older sister, Tracy.
Having little interest in subjects at school like math or science, Guy favored art, drama and music. He joined local theatre groups at a young age and appeared in such productions as "The King and I," "Fiddler on the Roof," and "The Wizard of Oz." In 1985, just two days after his final high school exam, Guy started a four-year stint as "Mike Young" on the popular Aussie soap Neighbours (1985). At age 20, Guy appeared in his first film, Heaven Tonight (1989), then, after a string of appearances in film, television and on the stage, he won the role of an outrageous drag queen in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994).
Most recently, he has amazed film critics and audiences, alike, with his magnificent performances in L.A. Confidential (1997), Memento (2000), The Proposition (2005), Factory Girl (2006), The Hurt Locker (2008), The King's Speech (2010) and the HBO mini-series, Mildred Pierce (2011). Next to acting, Guy has had a life-long passion for music and songwriting.
Guy likes to keep his private life very private. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, which is also where he married his childhood sweetheart, Kate Mestitz in March 1997.- Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 on Oxford, Oxfordshire, England. He was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge.
His scientific works include a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He was a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Hawking was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. In 2002, Hawking was ranked number 25 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009 and achieved commercial success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; his book "A Brief History of Time" appeared on the British Sunday Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.
At the release party for the home video version of A Brief History of Time (1991), Leonard Nimoy, who had played Spock on Star Trek (1966), learned that Hawking was interested in appearing on the series. Nimoy made the necessary contact, and Hawking played a holographic simulation of himself in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) in 1993. The same year, his synthesizer voice was recorded for the song "Keep Talking" by the rock band Pink Floyd, and in 1999 for an appearance on The Simpsons (1989). Hawking also guest-starred on Futurama (1999) and The Big Bang Theory (2007).
Hawking allowed the use of his copyrighted voice in the biographical drama The Theory of Everything (2014), in which he was portrayed by Eddie Redmayne in an Academy Award-winning role. Hawking died at age 76 in his home in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, early in the morning of 14 March 2018. - Elden Henson (formerly billed as Elden Ratliff and Elden Ryan Ratliff) got his start in the business at age two, as a baby model. By the time he was six, he was appearing in numerous commercials; by age ten, he was on his way to becoming a successful child actor. By the time he started high school, John Burroughs High School in Burbank, California, he got his big break, starring in the three The Mighty Ducks (1992) movies as enforcer Fulton Reed. From there, he went on to get rave reviews as Max Kane, the seemingly slow-witted giant in Miramax's The Mighty (1998). Elden has since starred in Idle Hands (1999), She's All That (1999), and Showtime's Gift of Love: The Daniel Huffman Story (1999).
- Actress
- Producer
After her debut film Mississippi Masala (1991) became an art house hit, Sarita Choudhury was determined not to "go Hollywood," focusing her acting energies on independent film instead.
Raised in Jamaica, Mexico, and Italy, the half-Indian, half-English Choudhury studied economics at Queens University in Ontario before switching to acting. She casually auditioned for Mississippi Masala (1991) and wound up cast as the lead opposite Denzel Washington in the singular interracial romance between a Southern African American man and a transplanted Indian woman. Despite the film's surprise success, Choudhury stuck to her non-Hollywood roots, putting her exotic looks and talent to versatile use as a Pakistani country-western singer in Wild West (1992), a Chilean maid who is raped in Bille August's adaptation of The House of the Spirits (1993), and a lesbian mother in Fresh Kill (1994).
Choudhury worked with Mississippi Masala (1991) director Mira Nair again in The Perez Family (1995) and played the cuckolded queen Tara in Nair's frankly-sensual feminist parable Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996).
By the late 1990s, Choudhury added a touch of Hollywood to her repertoire with supporting roles in the glossy Alfred Hitchcock remake, A Perfect Murder (1998) and the John Cassavetes retread Gloria (1999).- Actor
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Anthony Hopkins was born on December 31, 1937, in Margam, Wales, to Muriel Anne (Yeats) and Richard Arthur Hopkins, a baker. His parents were both of half Welsh and half English descent. Influenced by Richard Burton, he decided to study at College of Music and Drama and graduated in 1957. In 1965, he moved to London and joined the National Theatre, invited by Laurence Olivier, who could see the talent in Hopkins. In 1967, he made his first film for television, A Flea in Her Ear (1967).
From this moment on, he enjoyed a successful career in cinema and television. In 1968, he worked on The Lion in Winter (1968) with Timothy Dalton. Many successes came later, and Hopkins' remarkable acting style reached the four corners of the world. In 1977, he appeared in two major films: A Bridge Too Far (1977) with James Caan, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Elliott Gould and Laurence Olivier, and Maximilian Schell. In 1980, he worked on The Elephant Man (1980). Two good television literature adaptations followed: Othello (1981) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982). In 1987 he was awarded with the Commander of the order of the British Empire. This year was also important in his cinematic life, with 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), acclaimed by specialists. In 1993, he was knighted.
In the 1990s, Hopkins acted in movies like Desperate Hours (1990) and Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) (nominee for the Oscar), Legends of the Fall (1994), Nixon (1995) (nominee for the Oscar), Surviving Picasso (1996), Amistad (1997) (nominee for the Oscar), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Meet Joe Black (1998) and Instinct (1999). His most remarkable film, however, was The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. He also got a B.A.F.T.A. for this role.- Actor
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Nikolai Nikolaeff was born on 26 December 1981 in Melbourne, Australia. He is an actor, known for Daredevil (2015), Stranger Things (2016) and Six (2017).- Producer
- Actress
- Executive
Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon was born on March 22, 1976 in New Orleans, Louisiana to Betty Witherspoon, a registered nurse & John Draper Witherspoon, a military surgeon. Reese spent the first 4 years of her life in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany, where her father served as a lieutenant colonel in the US Army reserves. Shortly after, the family moved back to the USA & settled in Nashville, Tennessee.
Reese was introduced to the entertainment industry at a very early age. At age 7, she began modeling. This led to appearances on several local television commercials. At age 11, she placed first in a Ten-State Talent Fair.
In 1990, she landed her first major acting role in Robert Mulligan's The Man in the Moon (1991). Her role as a 14-year old tomboy earned her rave reviews. Roles in bigger films such as Jack the Bear (1993) and A Far Off Place (1993) followed shortly after.
Following high school graduation in 1994 from Harpeth Hall, a Nashville all girls school, Reese decided to put her acting career on hold and attend Stanford University where she would major in English literature. However, her collegiate plans were shortly dashed when she accepted roles to star in two major motion pictures: Fear (1996), alongside Mark Wahlberg, and Freeway (1996) with Kiefer Sutherland. Although neither film was a huge box-office success, they did help to establish Reese as a rising starlet in Hollywood and open the door for bigger and better film roles. Those bigger roles came in movies such as Pleasantville (1998), Election (1999) and Cruel Intentions (1999).
Her breakthrough role came as Elle Woods in the 2001 comedy, Legally Blonde (2001). The movie was huge box-office smash and established Reese as one of the top female draws in Hollywood. The next year, she scored a follow-up hit with Sweet Home Alabama (2002), which went on to gross over $100 million dollars at the box office. In 2006, she took home the best actress Oscar for her role as June Carter Cash in the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line (2005). On the late 2000s and early 2010s, Reese continued to star in more romantic comedies, such as Four Christmases (2008) and How Do You Know (2010). In December 2010, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In the year 2014, she produced both Gone Girl (2014) and Wild (2014), for which she got nominated for best actress Oscar again for her role as Cheryl Strayed.- Actor
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Aidan Quinn was born on 8 March 1959 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Benny & Joon (1993), Practical Magic (1998) and Flipped (2010). He has been married to Elizabeth Bracco since 1 September 1987. They have two children.- Actor
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McAvoy was born on 21 April 1979 in Glasgow, Scotland, to James, a bus driver, and Elizabeth (née Johnstone), a nurse. He was raised on a housing estate in Drumchapel, Glasgow by his maternal grandparents (James, a butcher, and Mary), after his parents divorced when James was 11. He went to St Thomas Aquinas Secondary in Jordanhill, Glasgow, where he did well enough and started 'a little school band with a couple of mates'.
McAvoy toyed with the idea of the Catholic priesthood as a child but, when he was 16, a visit to the school by actor David Hayman sparked an interest in acting. Hayman offered him a part in his film The Near Room (1995) but despite enjoying the experience McAvoy didn't seriously consider acting as a career, although he did continue to act as a member of PACE Youth Theatre. He applied instead to the Royal Navy and had already been accepted when he was also offered a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD).
He took the place at the RSAMD (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and, when he graduated in 2000, he moved to London. He had already made a couple of TV appearances by this time and continued to get a steady stream of TV and movie work until he came to attention of the British public in 2004 playing car thief Steve McBride in the successful UK TV series Shameless (2004) and then to the rest of the world in 2005 as Mr Tumnus, the faun, in Disney's adaptation of C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005). In The Last King of Scotland (2006) McAvoy portrayed a Scottish doctor who becomes the personal physician to dictator Idi Amin, played by Forest Whitaker. McAvoy's career breakthrough came in Atonement (2007), Joe Wright's 2007 adaption of Ian McEwan's novel.
Since then, McAvoy has taken on theatre roles, starring in Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' (directed by Jamie Lloyd), which launched the first Trafalgar Transformed season in London's West End and earned him an Olivier award nomination for Best Actor. In January 2015, McAvoy returned to the Trafalgar Studios stage to play Jack Gurney, the delusional 14th Earl of Gurney who believes he is Jesus, in the first revival of Peter Barnes's satire 'The Ruling Class', a role for which he was subsequently awarded the London Evening Standard Theatre Award's Best Actor.
On screen, McAvoy has appeared as corrupt cop Bruce Robertson in Filth (2013), a part for which he received a Scottish BAFTA for Best Actor, a British Independent Film Award for Best Actor, a London Critics Circle Film Award for British Actor of the Year and an Empire Award for Best Actor. More recently, he reprised his role as Professor Charles Xavier in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019). He began his depiction of Kevin Wendell Crumb, also known as The Horde, a man with an extreme case of dissociative identity disorder in M. Night Shyamalan's thriller Split (2016) and continued it in the sequel, Glass (2019). Also in 2019, he played Bill Denbrough in It Chapter Two (2019), the horror sequel to It (2017).
McAvoy and Jamie Lloyd look set to continue their collaboration in December 2019, with a production of 'Cyrano de Bergerac' at the Playhouse Theatre in the West End, London. The project has been on the cards as long ago as 2017, when McAvoy posted a picture of him reading the script and wearing a false nose.- Actor
- Producer
Shawn Robert Ashmore was born one minute after his twin brother Aaron Ashmore in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, on October 7, 1979. He is the son of Linda, a homemaker, and Rick Ashmore, a manufacturing engineer. By the age of seven, when their mother became a part of the Multiple Births Association in Alberta, Canada, the Ashmore twins were already in front of cameras impressing their elders. But it was Shawn that at the age of 14, stole the hearts of many with his wonderful performance in Guitarman (1994) in which he played the main character and was nominated for a Gemini Award. Since then, his career has skyrocketed. He has done many made-for-television movies and series, and has guest starred on various television shows, but it was his brief appearance in X-Men (2000) that landed him a role in X2 (2003) and got him on the road to stardom. As an added bonus, he even got his own personal action figure modeled after him.
After only three months after X2 (2003) he easily earned the very minor role of his brother's double in My Brother's Keeper (2004) with a release date in spring of 2004. Apart from acting, Shawn enjoys spending time with his brother, listening to music, playing guitar and snowboarding. His special skill is that he's fluent in French. His mother Linda, who is a twin herself, is a homemaker, while his father Rick is a manufacturing manager. Shawn has one pet, Jessica, a golden retriever, that he got from his grandmother when he was nine.- Actor
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Joseph Cross made his motion picture debut in M. Night Shyamalan's Wide Awake (1998). Cross was also seen in Strangers with Candy (2005), co-starring Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, and Greg Hollimon. The prequel to the Comedy Central series of the same name, the film was directed by Paul Dinello and debuted at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews.
Cross can be seen in the Clint Eastwood-directed Flags of Our Fathers (2006), which was released in August 2006 and Running with Scissors (2006), where he is reunited with Brian Cox.
Cross's other feature film credits include the 1998 thriller Desperate Measures (1998), where he appeared with Brian Cox for the first time, directed by Barbet Schroeder and co-starring Michael Keaton. Cross and Keaton collaborated again in the film Jack Frost (1998), which also starred Kelly Preston. He previously appeared with Diane Keaton in the television film Northern Lights (1997), directed by Linda Yellen. Among his other television credits, Cross appeared in episodes of the popular series Law & Order (1990), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), and Third Watch (1999).
In 2003, Cross made his stage debut at the Williamstown Playhouse in John Guare's play "Landscape of the Body," directed by Michael Greif and co-starring Lili Taylor and Michael Gaston.- Actor
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Matthew Lillard was born in Lansing, Michigan, to Paula and Jeffrey Lillard. He lived with his family in Tustin, California, from first grade to high school graduation. The summer after high school, he was hired as an extra for Ghoulies Go to College (1990). Matthew was the MC of the Nickelodeon program SK8 TV (1990) in 1989. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasedena, California. Along with a friend, Matthew started the Mean Street Ensemble theater company that functioned until 1991, when Matthew moved to New York to attend the theater school Circle in the Square.
Manager Bill Treusch got Matthew auditions for Serial Mom (1994). Matthew was cast as Chip and began another theater company called the Summoners.- Actor
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Jack Nicholson, an American actor, producer, director and screenwriter, is a three-time Academy Award winner and twelve-time nominee. Nicholson is also notable for being one of two actors - the other being Michael Caine - who have received an Oscar nomination in every decade from the '60s through the '00s.
Nicholson was born on April 22, 1937, in Neptune, New Jersey. He was raised believing that his grandmother was his mother, and that his mother, June Frances Nicholson, a showgirl, was his older sister. He discovered the truth in 1975 from a Time magazine journalist who was researching a profile on him. His real father is believed to have been either Donald Furcillo, an Italian American showman, or Eddie King (Edgar Kirschfeld), born in Latvia and also in show business. Jack's mother's ancestry was Irish, and smaller amounts of English, German, Scottish, and Welsh.
Nicholson made his film debut in a B-movie titled The Cry Baby Killer (1958). His rise in Hollywood was far from meteoric, and for years, he sustained his career with guest spots in television series and a number of Roger Corman films, including The Little Shop of Horrors (1960).
Nicholson's first turn in the director's chair was for Drive, He Said (1971). Before that, he wrote the screenplay for The Trip (1967), and co-wrote Head (1968), a vehicle for The Monkees. His big break came with Easy Rider (1969) and his portrayal of liquor-soaked attorney George Hanson, which earned Nicholson his first Oscar nomination. Nicholson's film career took off in the 1970s with a definitive performance in Five Easy Pieces (1970). Nicholson's other notable work during this period includes leading roles in Roman Polanski's noir masterpiece Chinatown (1974) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which he won his first Best Actor Oscar.
The 1980s kicked off with another career-defining role for Nicholson as Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's novel The Shining (1980). A string of well-received films followed, including Terms of Endearment (1983), which earned Nicholson his second Oscar; Prizzi's Honor (1985), and The Witches of Eastwick (1987). He portrayed another renowned villain, The Joker, in Tim Burton's Batman (1989). In the 1990s, he starred in such varied films as A Few Good Men (1992), for which he received another Oscar nomination, and a dual role in Mars Attacks! (1996).
Although a glimpse at the darker side of Nicholson's acting range reappeared in The Departed (2006), the actor's most recent roles highlight the physical and emotional complications one faces late in life. The most notable of these is the unapologetically misanthropic Melvin Udall in As Good as It Gets (1997), for which he won his third Oscar. Shades of this persona are apparent in About Schmidt (2002), Something's Gotta Give (2003), and The Bucket List (2007). In addition to his Academy Awards and Oscar nominations, Nicholson has seven Golden Globe Awards, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. He also became one of the youngest actors to receive the American Film Institute's Life Achievement award in 1994.
Nicholson has six children by five different women: Jennifer Nicholson (b. 1963) from his only marriage to Sandra Knight, which ended in 1966; Caleb Goddard (b. 1970) with Five Easy Pieces (1970) co-star Susan Anspach, who was automatically adopted by Anspach's then-husband Mark Goddard; Honey Hollman (b. 1982) with Danish supermodel Winnie Hollman; Lorraine Nicholson (b. 1990) and Ray Nicholson (b. 1992) with minor actress Rebecca Broussard; and Tessa Gourin (b. 1994) with real estate agent Jennine Marie Gourin. Nicholson's longest relationship was the 17 nonmonogamous years he spent with Anjelica Huston; this ended when Broussard announced she was pregnant with his child.- Actor
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Michael is an East Tennessee native and a graduate of The North Carolina School of the Arts Drama School. He has appeared in numerous stage productions in New York City and in productions across the country in some of the nations most prestigious regional theaters. He is also a proud member of John Houseman's Tony-honored, Acting Company. Michael made his feature film debut in writer and director Jeff Nichol's debut feature film Shotgun Stories in 2007.- Actor
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- Soundtrack
Vincent Peter Jones was born on January 5, 1965 in Watford, England. He first came to public notice as a professional footballer, playing in the English Football League. Noted as one of football's hard men, he leaped to fame when a photographer, at a match, snapped him "marking" Newcastle United's Paul Gascoigne, by grabbing his testicles. He has played for Wimbledon, Leeds United, Sheffield United, Chelsea, and Queens Park Rangers. Internationally, he played for Wales, qualifying for that nationality through his grandparents. He made his first acting appearance in the British comedy/thriller, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), at age 33, although he had previous presented a video on football's hard men (for which he was censured by the Football Association).
He starred in the blockbuster, X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), as "Cain Marko", also known as "The Juggernaut". Prior to that, he played the scowling soccer coach illustrating both his likability and comedic side in Dreamworks' She's the Man (2006), with Amanda Bynes. Other projects include a lead role in Johnny Was (2006), starring Roger Daltrey, Eriq La Salle and Lennox Lewis, and he also appears in the independent feature, The Riddle (2007), starring Vanessa Redgrave and Derek Jacobi.
Over the years, he has received a number of prestigious awards, which showcase his accomplishments as a talented actor. In 1997, he won Satellite TV's "Personality of the Year", from Satellite TV Europe Magazine. In 1998, GQ Magazine named Jones "Man of the Year". He was awarded Best Actor for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) at the Odeon Audience Awards and also won the award for Outstanding New Talent from the Sir James Carreras Award Variety Club of GB. Jones won Best Debut in 1999 for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) at Empire Magazine's "The Awards 1999" and was titled the Male Cigar Personality of the Year at the Millennium Cigar Awards. In 2001, he was named Best British Actor for Empire Magazine's "The Awards 2001". In 2002, Jones received the award for Best Supporting Actor for Night at the Golden Eagle (2001) at the New York Film Festival and, in 2005, he was honored with Best Newcomer for Slipstream (2005) at London's Sci-Fi Film Festival.- Actor
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Bela Lugosi was born Béla Ferenc Dezsö Blaskó on October 20, 1882, Lugos, Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania), to Paula de Vojnich and István Blaskó, a banker. He was the youngest of four children. During WWI, he volunteered and was commissioned as an infantry lieutenant, and was wounded three times.
A distinguished stage actor in his native Hungary, Austria-Hungary, he began his stage career in 1901 and started appearing in films during World War I, fleeing to Germany in 1919 as a result of his left-wing political activity (he organized an actors' union). In 1920 he emigrated to the US and made a living as a character actor, shooting to fame when he played Count Dracula in the legendary 1927 Broadway stage adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. It ran for three years, and was subsequently, and memorably, filmed by Tod Browning in 1931, establishing Lugosi as one of the screen's greatest personifications of pure evil. Also in 1931, he became a U.S. citizen. Sadly, his reputation rapidly declined, mainly because he had been blacklisted by the main studios and had no choice but to accept any part (and script) handed to him, and ended up playing parodies of his greatest role, in low-grade poverty row films. Due to shady blacklisting among the top Hollywood studio executives, he refused to sell out or to compromise his integrity, and therefore ended his career working for the legendary Worst Director of All Time, Edward D. Wood Jr..
Lugosi was married to Ilona Szmik (1917 - 1920), Ilona von Montagh (? - ?), and Lillian Arch (1933 - 1951). He is the father of Bela Lugosi Jr. (1938). Lugosi helped organize the Screen Actors Guild in the mid-'30s, joining as member number 28.
Bela Lugosi died of a heart attack August 16, 1956. He was buried in a Dracula costume, including a cape, but not the ones used in the 1931 film, contrary to popular--but unfounded--rumors.- Actress
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Taissa Farmiga is an American actress, and the younger sister of Academy Award nominee Vera Farmiga, who is 21 years her senior. She was born in Readington Township, New Jersey, USA, to Ukrainian-born parents Michael and Lubomyra (Spas) Farmiga.
Unlike her older sister, Taissa initially had no interest in becoming an actor. However, she was persuaded to make her acting debut in Vera's directorial debut film Higher Ground (2011). Also playing the lead, Vera wanted to cast someone who was physically similar to play the younger version of her character. Taissa was 15 years old and, apart from a second grade school play, had no previous acting experience. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and Taissa's performance received critical acclaim. It was after Sundance that Taissa officially decided to pursue acting. At age 16, she landed a leading role as Violet Harmon in the Fox horror series American Horror Story (2011).
Farmiga has since starred in films from a range of genres, including Sofia Coppola's crime film The Bling Ring (2013), Jorge Dorado's psychological thriller Anna (2013), Todd Strauss-Schulson's horror comedy The Final Girls (2015), Hannah Fidell's romantic drama 6 Years (2015), Ti West's western In a Valley of Violence (2016), and Warren Beatty's comedy-drama Rules Don't Apply (2016).- Actor
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Mandy Patinkin was born Mandel Bruce Patinkin in Chicago, Illinois, to Doris "Doralee" (Sinton), a homemaker and cookbook writer, and Lester Patinkin, who operated two scrap metal plants. He is of Russian Jewish and Latvian Jewish descent. Growing up, he began singing in synagogue choirs at the age of 13-14 and still continues to use his fantastic voice in musicals and in recordings. Attending Juilliard, he became good friends with actor Kelsey Grammer and upon hearing that Cheers (1982) was auditioning for the role of Dr. Frasier Crane he immediately put Grammer's name forward for the role. Rumours persist about Patinkin's sudden departure from Criminal Minds (2005). He simply failed to show up one day for a table read. He has contacted the entire cast to explain what is referred to as "personal reasons" for leaving. It seems that although Patinkin was prepared for the show to include violence the actual level of violence portrayed was unacceptable to the actor. He left to do more light hearted work. Patinkin supports many charities including: PAX, Doctors Without Borders, Americans for Peace Now, The September 11th Fund, Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America and Gilda's Club.- Writer
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The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca.
After moving to Paris, Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs in Paris, including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein. With financial assistance from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film, the 17-minute Un chien andalou (1929), in 1929, and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its shocking imagery (much of which - like the sliced eyeball at the beginning - still packs a punch even today). It made a deep impression on the Surrealist Group, who welcomed Buñuel into their ranks.
The following year, sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first feature, the scabrous witty and violent L'Age d'Or (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career. That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War he emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros.
Moving to Mexico in the late 1940s, he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in The Young and the Damned (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.
But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries (though many of them are well worth seeking out). But in 1961, General Franco, anxious to be seen to be supporting Spanish culture invited Buñuel back to his native country - and Bunuel promptly bit the hand that fed him by making Viridiana (1961), which was banned in Spain on the grounds of blasphemy, though it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
This inaugurated Buñuel's last great period when, in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière he made seven extraordinary late masterpieces, starting with Diary of a Chambermaid (1964). Although far glossier and more expensive, and often featuring major stars such as Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve, the films showed that even in old age Buñuel had lost none of his youthful vigour.
After saying that every one of his films from Belle de Jour (1967) onwards would be his last, he finally kept his promise with That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), after which he wrote a memorable (if factually dubious) autobiography, in which he said he'd be happy to burn all the prints of all his films- a classic Surrealist gesture if ever there was one.
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His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was orphaned at 15 after his father's death in 1930 and became the ward of Dr. Maurice Bernstein of Chicago. In 1931, he graduated from the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois. He turned down college offers for a sketching tour of Ireland. He tried unsuccessfully to enter the London and Broadway stages, traveling some more in Morocco and Spain, where he fought in the bullring.
Recommendations by Thornton Wilder and Alexander Woollcott got him into Katharine Cornell's road company, with which he made his New York debut as Tybalt in 1934. The same year, he married, directed his first short, and appeared on radio for the first time. He began working with John Houseman and formed the Mercury Theatre with him in 1937. In 1938, they produced "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", famous for its broadcast version of "The War of the Worlds" (intended as a Halloween prank). His first film to be seen by the public was Citizen Kane (1941), a commercial failure losing RKO $150,000, but regarded by many as the best film ever made. Many of his subsequent films were commercial failures and he exiled himself to Europe in 1948.
In 1956, he directed Touch of Evil (1958); it failed in the United States but won a prize at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. In 1975, in spite of all his box-office failures, he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1984, the Directors Guild of America awarded him its highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award. His reputation as a filmmaker steadily climbed thereafter.- Writer
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Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born July 14, 1918, the son of a priest. The film and T.V. series, The Best Intentions (1992) is biographical and shows the early marriage of his parents. The film Sunday's Children (1992) depicts a bicycle journey with his father. In the miniseries Private Confessions (1996) is the trilogy closed. Here, as in 'Den Goda Viljan' Pernilla August play his mother. Note that all three movies are not always full true biographical stories. He began his career early with a puppet theatre which he, his sister and their friends played with. But he was the manager. Strictly professional he begun writing in 1941. He had written a play called 'Kaspers död' (A.K.A. 'Kaspers Death') which was produced the same year. It became his entrance into the movie business as Stina Bergman (not a close relative), from the company S.F. (Swedish Filmindustry), had seen the play and thought that there must be some dramatic talent in young Ingmar. His first job was to save other more famous writers' poor scripts. Under one of that script-saving works he remembered that he had written a novel about his last year as a student. He took the novel, did the save-poor-script job first, then wrote a screenplay on his own novel. When he went back to S.F., he delivered two scripts rather than one. The script was Torment (1944) and was the fist Bergman screenplay that was put into film (by Alf Sjöberg). It was also in that movie Bergman did his first professional film-director job. Because Alf Sjöberg was busy, Bergman got the order to shoot the last sequence of the film. Ingmar Bergman is the father of Daniel Bergman, director, and Mats Bergman, actor at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theater. Ingmar Bergman was also C.E.O. of the same theatre between 1963-1966, where he hired almost every professional actor in Sweden. In 1976 he had a famous tax problem. Bergman had trusted other people to advise him on his finances, but it turned out to be very bad advice. Bergman had to leave the country immediately, and so he went to Germany. A few years later he returned to Sweden and made his last theatrical film Fanny and Alexander (1982). In later life he retired from movie directing, but still wrote scripts for film and T.V. and directed plays at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre for many years. He died peacefully in his sleep on July 30, 2007.- Actor
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Marcel Marceau was the legendary mime, who survived the Nazi occupation, and saved many children in WWII. He was regarded for his peerless style pantomime, moving audiences without uttering a single word, and was known to the World as a "master of silence."
He was born Marcel Mangel on March 22, 1923, in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, and was brought up in Strasbourg and Lille. There he was introduced to music and theatre by his father, Charles Mangel, a kosher butcher, who also sang baritone and was a supporter of arts and music. His mother, Anne Mangel (née Werzberg), was a native Alsatian, and the family was bilingual. At the age of 5, his mother took Marcel to a Charlie Chaplin's movie, and he was entranced and decided to become a mime. Young Marcel was also fond of art and literature, he studied English in addition to his French and German, and became trilingual.
At the beginning of the Second World War, he had to hide his Jewish origin and changed his name to Marceau, when his Jewish family was forced to flee their home. His father was deported to Auschwitz, where he was killed in 1944. Both Marceau and his brother, Alain, were in the French underground, helping children to escape to safety in neutral Switzerland. Then Marceau served as interpreter for the Free French Forces under General Charles de Gaulle, acting as liaison officer with the allied armies.
Marcel Marceau gave his first big public performance to 3000 troops after liberation of Paris in August of 1944. After the war, in 1946, he enrolled as a student in Charles Dullin's School of Dramatic Art at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre in Paris. There his teacher was Etienne Decroux, whose other apprentice Jean-Louis Barrault hired Marcel Marceau, and cast him in the role as Arlequin. His biggest inspirations were Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Marx Brothers. In 1947, blending the 19th century harlequin with the gestures of Chaplin and Keaton, Marceau created his most famous mime character, Bip, a white-faced clown with a tall, battered hat and a red flower. In 1949 he created his own company and toured around the world.
Marcel Marceau shone in a range of characters, from an innocent child, to a peevish waiter, to a lion tamer, to an old woman, and became acknowledged as one of the world's finest mimes. In just a couple of minutes, he could show a metamorphosis of an entire human life from birth to death. Through his alter ego, Bip, he played out the human comedy without uttering a word. His classic silent works such as The Cage, Walking Against the Wind, The Mask Maker, In The Park, and satires on artists, sculptors, matadors, has been described as works of genius. For many years Marceau's 'Compagnie de Mime Marcel Marceau', also known as 'Compagnie de Mimodrame', was the only company of pantomime in the world. Marceau played several silent film roles and only one with a speaking part, as himself, speaking the single word "Non" in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie (1976).
In 1959, Marcel Marceau established his own school in Paris, and later the Marceau Foundation to promote the art of pantomime in the United States. His later performances in 2000-2001 received great acclaim. He was made "Officer de la Legion d'Honneur" (1978) and "Grand Officer de la Legion d'Honneur" (1998), and was awarded the National Order of Merit (1998). He won the Emmy Award for his work on television, and was elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, the Academie des beaux-arts France and the Institut de France, and was declared "National treasure" in Japan. In 2002 he was UN Goodwill Ambassador at the international conference on aging in Madrid.
His "art of silence" filled a remarkable acting career that lasted over 60 years. He was an actor, director, teacher, interpreter, and public figure, and made extensive tours in countries on five continents. Outside of his mime profession, Marcel Marceau was a multilingual speaker and a great communicator, who surprised many with his flowing speeches in several languages. In his later years he was living on a farm at Cahors, near Toulouse, France. He continued his routine practice daily to keep himself in good form, never losing the agility that made him famous. He also continued coaching his numerous students.
Marcel Marceau passed away at his home in France, on September 23, 2007, like an Autumn leaf after the Autumn Equinox, and after Yom Kippur in Jewish calendar, having the Day of Atonement as his final curtain. His burial ceremony was accompanied by the Mozart's piano concerto No21, and the music of J.C. Bach. Marcel Marceau was laid to rest in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, France.
He brought poetry to silence.- Actor
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Richard Dawson was born Colin Lionel Emm on November 20, 1932 in Gosport, Hampshire, England. When he was 14, he joined the Merchant Navy and served for three years. During that time, he made money boxing. He had to lie about his age and remain tough so the older guys would not hassle him. In the late 1950s, Richard met a British actress named Diana Dors. On April 12, 1959, while in New York for an appearance on The Steve Allen Plymouth Show (1956), they were married. Richard and Diana's first child, a son named Mark Dawson, was born in 1960, and a second son, Gary Dawson, was born in 1962. Richard and Diana separated in 1964 and eventually divorced in 1967. When Richard moved to the United States, he began acting on the well-known series, Hogan's Heroes (1965), in 1965. Richard played the lovable British Corporal Peter Newkirk. The show ended in 1971. Not long after that, in 1973, he became a panelist on Match Game (1973) and remained there until 1978.
While still on "Match Game", he hosted his own show called Family Feud (1976). , which he is most remembered for by his trademark of kissing all the female contestants. Those kisses made the show a warm and friendly program, along with his quick wit, subtle jokes, and ability to make people feel at ease with being on camera. In 1987, Richard co-starred withArnold Schwarzenegger in the science fiction action movie The Running Man (1987). Richard portrayed an egotistical game show host, Damon Killian, whom many say was a mirror image of himself at one time or another, during his real-life career.
When Richard was 61, he hosted the third incarnation of "Family Feud" in 1994, but had only a short run. On April 6, 1981, the Johnson family appeared on "Family Feud" and Richard was introduced to 27-year-old Gretchen Johnson. They had a daughter, Shannon Dawson (Shannon Nicole Dawson), in 1990, and were married in 1991. They were still married and reside in Beverly Hills, California. Richard narrated TV's Funniest Game Show Moments (1984) on Fox in early 2000. On Thanksgiving Day, November 23rd, 2000, he hosted a "Family Feud" marathon, which was filmed in 1995. Some people hear the name Richard Dawson and may not recognize the name. But say his name, followed by his famous quote "Survey says...!" or mention "Newkirk on Hogan's Heroes (1965)", and they're sure to know who you mean. Richard Dawson died at age 79 of complications from esophageal cancer on June 2, 2012.- Director
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Director. Writer. Producer. Actor. Poet. He studied history, literature and theatre for some time, but didn't finish it and founded instead his own film production company in 1963. Later in his life, Herzog also staged several operas in Bayreuth, Germany, and at the Milan Scala in Italy. Herzog has won numerous national and international awards for his poetic feature and documentary films.- Actor
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Alan Cumming was born on January 27, 1965, in Aberfeldy, Scotland, to Mary (Darling), an insurance company secretary, and Alex Cumming. His family lived nearby in Dunkeld, where his father was a forester for Atholl Estate. The family (including his brother, Tom) moved to Fassfern near Fort William, before moving to the east coast of Scotland in 1969, where Alan's father took up the position of Head Forester of Panmure Estate; it was there that Alan grew up. He went to Monikie Primary School and Carnoustie High School, where he began appearing in plays, and soon after that began working with with the Carnoustie Theatre Club and Carnoustie Musical Society.
In 1981, he left high school with 8 'O' Grades and 4 Highers, but because he was too young to enter any university or drama school he worked for just over a year as a sub-editor at D.C. Thomson Publishers in Dundee. There he worked on the launch of a new magazine, "Tops", and was also the "Young Alan" who answered readers' letters. In September 1982 he began a three-year course at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. He graduated in 1985 with a B.A. (Dramatic Studies) and awards for verse speaking and direction. He also had formed a cabaret double act with fellow student Forbes Masson called Victor and Barry, which went on to become hugely successful with tours (including two Perrier Pick of the Fringe seasons in London and a month-long engagement at the Sydney Opera House as part of an Australian tour), records ("Hear Victor and Barry and Faint", "Are We Too Loud?") and many TV appearances throughout the UK. Before graduating Alan made his professional theater and film debuts in "Macbeth" at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow and in Gillies MacKinnon's "Passing Glory". After graduating, Alan worked extensively in Scottish theater and television, including a stint on the soap opera Take the High Road (1980) before moving to London when "Conquest of the South Pole", a play by German playwright Manfred Karge, transferred from the Traverse Theatre in, Edinburgh to the the Royal Court in London, earning him his first Olivier award nomination for Most Promising Newcomer of 1988. Alan performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and then the Royal National Theatre, where he starred in "Accidental Death of an Anarchist", which he also adapted with director Tim Supple. The production was nominated for Best revival at the 1991 Olivier awards and Alan won for Comedy Performance of the Year.
His film career began with Ian Sellar's Prague (1992), in which he starred with Sandrine Bonnaire and Bruno Ganz. The film premiered at the 1992 Cannes film festival and went on to win him Best Actor award at the Atlantic Film Festival and a Scottish BAFTA Best Actor nomination. In the same year he made two films for the BBC - The Last Romantics (1992) and Bernard and the Genie (1991), the latter winning him the Top Television Newcomer award at 1992 British Comedy Awards. In the 1992 Olivier awards he was also nominated for Comedy Performance of the Year for "La Bete". In 1993 he played Hamlet for the English Touring Theare to great critical acclaim ("An actor knocking on the door of greatness" - Daily Mail; ranked first and second--with his performance in "Cabaret"--in the Daily Telegraph's performances of the year) and then immediately went on to play the Emcee in Sam Mendes' revival of "Cabaret" at the same venue (London's Donmar Warehouse). He received a 1994 Olivier award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical for "Cabaret", and for Hamlet he received the 1994 TMA Best Actor award and a Shakespeare Globe award nomination.
In 1994, he made his first Hollywood film, Circle of Friends (1995), and his performance as the oleaginous Sean Walsh along with those in two films released in quick succession (Emma (1996) and GoldenEye (1995)) brought him to the attention of American producers, and he appeared in several Hollywood films, such as Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) and Buddy (1997). He returned to the UK in 1997 to work with Stanley Kubrick and the Spice Girls before returning stateside in 1998 to reprise his role in "Cabaret" on Broadway. The show and his portrayal were a sensation, and he received the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics' Circle, Theatre World, FANY, New York Press and New York Public Advocate's awards for his performance. Since then he has alternated between theater and films, and also between smaller independent films and more mainstream fare. His theater work includes 2001's "Design for Living" on Broadway and the hugely successful off-Broadway "Elle" by Jean Genet, which he adapted and played the lead in 2002. His films include Julie Taymor's Titus (1999), Urbania (2000), the "Spy Kids" trilogy, Josie and the Pussycats (2001), X2 (2003), Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Son of the Mask (2005) and the Showtime movie musical Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical (2005).
He wrote, directed, produced and acted in The Anniversary Party (2001) with Jennifer Jason Leigh, which premiered at the Cannes Film festival in 2002 and went on to win a National Board of Review award and two Independent Spirit award nominations. More recently he has produced the documentary Show People (2004) and the films Sweet Land (2005) and Full Grown Men (2006) (and appears in both) and acted in Gray Matters (2006) opposite Heather Graham and Bam Bam and Celeste (2005), opposite Margaret Cho. In 2006, he returned to Broadway as Macheath in "The Threepenny Opera". He has also found the time to write a novel, "Tommy's Tale", in 2002.- Actor
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John Gavin Malkovich was born in Christopher, Illinois, to Joe Anne (Choisser), who owned a local newspaper, and Daniel Leon Malkovich, a state conservation director. His paternal grandparents were Croatian. In 1976, Malkovich joined Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, newly founded by his friend Gary Sinise. After that, it would take seven years before Malkovich would show up in New York and win an Obie in Sam Shepard's play "True West". In 1984, Malkovich would appear with Dustin Hoffman in the Broadway revival of "Death of a Salesman", which would earn him an Emmy when it was made into a made-for-TV movie the next year. His big-screen debut would be as the blind lodger in Places in the Heart (1984), which earned him an Academy Award Nomination for best supporting actor. Other films would follow, including The Killing Fields (1984) and The Glass Menagerie (1987), but he would be well remembered as Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Playing against Michelle Pfeiffer and Glenn Close in a costume picture helped raise his standing in the industry. He would be cast as the psychotic political assassin in Clint Eastwood's In the Line of Fire (1993), for which he would be nominated for both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe. In 1994, Malkovich would portray the sinister Kurtz in the made-for-TV movie Heart of Darkness (1993), taking the story to Africa as it was originally written. Malkovich has periodically returned to Chicago to both act and direct.- Actor
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Bob Morley was born on 20 December 1984 in Kyneton, Victoria, Australia. He is an actor and director, known for The 100 (2014), Love Me (2021) and Home and Away (1988). He has been married to Eliza Taylor since 5 May 2019. They have one child.- Writer
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Robert Lee Frost, arguably the greatest American poet of the 20th century, was born in San Francisco, California, on March 26, 1874. His father, William Prescott Frost Jr., was from a Lawrence, Massachusetts, family of Republicans, and his mother, Isabelle Moodie Frost, was an immigrant from Scotland. His father was a journalist who dabbled in politics, was rebellious and named his son after the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. William Frost was also an alcoholic and tubercular.
William met his wife while teaching school in Pennsylvania. Their marriage was not a happy one due to a dissimilarity of temperament. He succumbed to tuberculosis in 1885, and Isabelle honored her husband's wish he be buried in his native Massachusetts. With Robert and her daughter Jeanie, they relocated to Lawrence, near his father's parents.
Isabelle became a schoolteacher in Salem, New Hampshire, just over the state line, close to Lawrence. Robert and Jeanie became two of her pupils. Robert attended Lawrence High School, where his first poems were published in the school's bulletin. Upon graduation in 1892, he shared valedictorian honors with Elinor White, to whom he became engaged later that year.
Frost entered Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, in September 1892, but left after one semester. This caused a conflict with Elinor, who wanted him to finish college and refused to marry him until he did so. In his late teens and early 20s he worked at various occupations, including mill hand, newspaper reporter and teacher in his mother's school.
His first published poem, "My Butterfly: An Elegy", appeared in the New York magazine "The Independent" in 1894, and he eventually self-published a book of poems. He and Elinor were married on December 19, 1895. Their first child, a son they named Elliott, was born on September 29, 1896. Robert was accepted at Harvard as a special student, but had to drop out due to tuberculosis and the birth of the couple's second child in 1899. He never finished his college education.
As the new century dawned, the Frost family was afflicted with the first of the tragedies that would dog them all of their lives. Elliott contracted cholera and died in July of 1900, at age four, a development that rocked the Frost marriage (Frost later addressed the event in his poem "Home Burial"). Frost's mother died that year from cancer, and his grandfather, William Prescott Frost Sr., passed away in 1901. His grandfather left him an annual annuity of $500 and the use of his Derry, New Hampshire, farm for ten years, after which ownership would pass to Robert.
The Frosts had four more children; their last, a daughter born in 1907, died after three days. Although Frost longed to be a poet since he was a youth, recognition of his talent would prove elusive. To support himself he had to work the farm and supplemented his income by teaching school, often in partnership with his wife. He tried to make a go as a poultry farmer, but he was not successful. Economic necessity forced him to spend the 1910-11 school year teaching at the State Normal School in far-off Plymouth, New Hampshire.
Frost practiced education by poetry with his children, since to him the two were one and the same. Poetry thus became part of the everyday life of the Frost family. His daughters Lesley, Irma, Marjorie and son Carol were home-schooled by their parents. Along with the basic instruction, they were encouraged to develop their powers of observation and cultivate their imaginations. Reading and writing were intended to be both pleasurable and a vehicle of discovery.
Frost shared his stories and poems with his children and they, in turn, were encouraged to write and share their stories and poems with their parents. The Frost children published their own little magazine, "The Bouquet", with their English friends while their family was living in England. The family had moved there in August 1912 because no American publisher was interested in his poems and he was feeling isolated. After coming into possession of the Derry farm in 1911, he sold it to raise the funds to finance the move. The relocation proved fortunate, as he quickly made friends and, for the first time in his life, was a member in good standing of a group of serious poets.
Living on a farm in Buckinghamshire with his family, Frost became a prolific writer as he went about finding his own, distinct poetic voice. Through an acquaintance, he met fellow American exile 'Ezra Pound', the great avant-garde poet who would prove to be a supporter of his.
Just two months after his arrival in England, the small London publisher David Nutt accepted his submission of a collection of poems primarily consisting of the work he had done over the previous nine years. "A Boy's Will" was published in 1913, and received good reviews from the English press despite being a young man's work. Frost then relocated to Gloucestershire, England, to be closer to the group of poets known as The Georgians. The second collection, his seminal "North of Boston", was published in 1914. The volume contained his classic poems "Mending Wall", "The Death of the Hired Man" and "After Apple-Picking", which have been frequently anthologized. Frost, as a poet, had not only arrived, but he had matured as an artist.
After the publication of "North of Boston", Frost moved his family back to the US due to England's involvement in World War One. By the time of his return, publisher Henry Holt had published "North of Boston" to great success. Frost was a shrewd promoter of himself as a poet, and he became celebrated by the literary establishments of Boston and New York. Holt, who would be his publisher throughout his life, brought out his third volume, "Mountain Interval", in 1916. The book, containing poems he had written in England and in his nine-year exile as a farmer-teacher, solidified his reputation. The collection included "The Road Not Taken", "An Old Man's Winter Night", "The Oven Bird" and "Birches".
Once again settling in the New England he would forever be associated with, Frost bought a farm at Franconia, New Hampshire. In 1917 he took a position at Amherst College as professor of literature and poet-in-residence. By the 1920s he was acknowledged as one of America's most important poets. Frost won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924 for his fourth book of verse, "New Hampshire". He published new and collected volumes of poetry at fairly regular intervals, assumed teaching appointments at Dartmouth, Harvard and the University of Michigan, and maintained a busy schedule of lectures and poetry readings. His honors, which included a record four Pulitzer Prizes, were matched by his popularity. He was the only poet ever chosen as a selection of The Book of the Month Club, and his books of poetry were sold in mass-market editions.
Frost has been frequently but erroneously mentioned as a Nobel laureate, but he never won the prize. As he became a leading literary lion in America, he became more influential, and was a favorite of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Frost successfully lobbied Ike to have Ezra Pound, incarcerated in a madhouse since being arrested for his treasonous radio broadcasts from fascist Italy during World War II, released and returned to private life.
One of the most famous moments in American history came at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, a fellow New Englander, on January 20, 1961, when Frost read a poem. He was the first poet ever to read at an American inauguration, and the event testified to both his greatness as a serious poet and his popular appeal. He represented the United States on official foreign missions during both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. The U.S. Congress voted Frost a Congressional Gold Medal in 1962, presented to him by President Kennedy at a public ceremony. Kennedy sent Frost as a cultural emissary to the USSR at the height of the Cold War in 1962, not long before his death.
Towards the end of his life he had achieved a popular acclaim unique for an American poet, though his critical reputation had declined due to a diminution of his powers. "A Witness Tree", his last truly significant book of verse, was published in 1942. His final three collections of poetry were not as praised as his older poetry had been, though certain pieces were acknowledged as among his best.
When Frost died in a Boston hospital on January 29, 1963, two months shy of his 89th birthday, he was the most widely respected man of American letters. Since his death his reputation has not diminished, the mark of a great artist. In 1996 three poets who won the Nobel Prize for literature, Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott jointly published an homage to the influence of Frost, whom they feel is one of literature's greatest poets.- Actor
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Dominic Monaghan is best known for his role in the movie adaptations of "Lord of the Rings". Before that, he became known in England for his role in the British television drama Hetty Wainthropp Investigates (1996).
Monaghan was born in Berlin, West Germany, to British parents Maureen, a nurse, and Austin Monaghan, a science teacher. His family moved back to England when he was eleven. He was studying English Literature, Drama and Geography at Sixth Form College when he was offered the co-starring role in the series, which ran for four seasons. His other television credits include This Is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper (2000) and a leading role in Monsignor Renard (2000), a series starring John Thaw.
On the stage Monaghan has performed in the world premiere UK production of The Resurrectionists, Whale and Annie and Fanny from Bolton to Rome. Since watching Star Wars when he was six years old, Dominic has been consumed by films. His other obsessions include writing, music, fashion, playing/watching soccer and surfing. Utilizing his writing skills, he and LOTR co-star Billy Boyd are collaborating on a script.
Born and raised in Berlin, Monaghan and his family moved to England when he was twelve. In addition to speaking fluent German, he has a knack at impersonations and accents. He frequently returns to his hometown of Manchester, England.- Tom Wisdom was born on 18 February 1973 in Swindon, Wiltshire, England, UK. He is an actor, known for 300 (2006), The Boat That Rocked (2009) and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008).
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Brittany Anne Snow (born March 9, 1986) is an American actress and singer. She began her career as Susan "Daisy" Lemay on the CBS series Guiding Light (1952) for which she won a Young Artist Award for Best Young Actress and was nominated for two other Young Artist Awards and a Soap Opera Digest Award. She then played the protagonist Meg Pryor on the NBC series American Dreams (2002) for which she was nominated for a Young Artist Award and three Teen Choice Awards.
Snow's notable film roles include Kate Spencer in John Tucker Must Die (2006), Amber Von Tussle in Hairspray (2007), Donna Keppel in Prom Night (2008), Emma Gainsborough in The Vicious Kind (2009), and Chloe Beale in Pitch Perfect (2012).- Director
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Michael Spierig was born in Germany. He is known for Predestination (2014), Daybreakers (2009) and Winchester (2018).- Actor
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American actor and producer Matthew David McConaughey was born in Uvalde, Texas. His mother, Mary Kathleen (McCabe), is a substitute school teacher originally from New Jersey. His father, James Donald McConaughey, was a Mississippi-born gas station owner who ran an oil pipe supply business. He is of Irish, Scottish, German, English, and Swedish descent. Matthew grew up in Longview, Texas, where he graduated from the local High School (1988). Showing little interest in his father's oil business, which his two brothers later joined, Matthew was longing for a change of scenery, and spent a year in Australia, washing dishes and shoveling chicken manure. Back to the States, he attended the University of Texas in Austin, originally wishing to be a lawyer. But, when he discovered an inspirational Og Mandino book "The Greatest Salesman in the World" before one of his final exams, he suddenly knew he had to change his major from law to film.
He began his acting career in 1991, appearing in student films and commercials in Texas and directed short films as Chicano Chariots (1992). Once, in his hotel bar in Austin, he met the casting director and producer Don Phillips, who introduced him to director Richard Linklater for his next project. At first, Linklater thought Matthew was too handsome to play the role of a guy chasing high school girls in his coming-of-age drama Dazed and Confused (1993), but cast him after Matthew grew out his hair and mustache. His character was initially in three scenes but the role grew to more than 300 lines as Linklater encouraged him to do some improvisations. In 1995, he starred in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994), playing a mad bloodthirsty sadistic killer, opposite Renée Zellweger.
Shortly thereafter, moving to L.A., Matthew became a sensation with his performances in two high-profile 1996 films Lone Star (1996), where he portrayed killing suspected sheriff and in the film adaptation of John Grisham's novel A Time to Kill (1996), where he played an idealistic young lawyer opposite Sandra Bullock and Kevin Spacey. The actor was soon being hailed as one of the industry's hottest young leading man inspiring comparisons to actor Paul Newman. His following performances were Robert Zemeckis' Contact (1997) with Jodie Foster (the film was finished just before the death of the great astronomer and popularizer of space science Carl Sagan) and Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997), a fact-based 1839 story about the rebellious African slaves. In 1998, he teamed again with Richard Linklater as one of the bank-robbing brothers in The Newton Boys (1998), set in Matthew's birthplace, Uvalde, Texas. During this time, he also wrote, directed and starred in the 20-minute short The Rebel (1998).
In 1999, he starred in the comedy Edtv (1999), about the rise of reality television, and in 2000, he headlined Jonathan Mostow's U-571 (2000), portraying officer Lt. Tyler, in a WW II story of the daring mission of American submariners trying to capture the Enigma cipher machine.
In the 2000s, he became known for starring in romantic comedies, such as The Wedding Planner (2001), opposite Jennifer Lopez, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), in which he co-starred with Kate Hudson. He played Denton Van Zan, an American warrior and dragons hunter in the futuristic thriller Reign of Fire (2002), where he co-starred with Christian Bale. In 2006, he starred in the romantic comedy Failure to Launch (2006), and later as head coach Jack Lengyel in We Are Marshall (2006), along with Matthew Fox. In 2008, he played treasure hunter Benjamin "Finn" Finnegan in Fool's Gold (2008), again with Kate Hudson. After playing Connor Mead in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009), co-starring with Jennifer Garner, McConaughey took a two year hiatus to open different opportunities in his career. Since 2010, he has moved away from romantic comedies.
That change came in 2011, in his first movie after that pause, when he portrayed criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller in The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), that operates mostly from the back seat of his Lincoln car. After this performance that was considered one of his best until then, Matthew played other iconic characters as district attorney Danny Buck Davidson in Bernie (2011), the wild private detective "Killer" Joe Cooper in Killer Joe (2011), Mud in Mud (2012), reporter Ward Jensen in The Paperboy (2012), male stripper club owner Dallas in Magic Mike (2012), starring Channing Tatum. McConaughey's career certainly reached it's prime, when he played HIV carrier Ron Woodroof in the biographical drama Dallas Buyers Club (2013), shot in less than a month. For his portrayal of Ron, Matthew won the Best Actor in the 86th Academy Awards, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, among other awards and nominations. The same year, he also appeared in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). In 2014, he starred in HBO's True Detective (2014), as detective Rustin Cohle, whose job is to investigate with his partner Martin Hart, played by Woody Harrelson, a gruesome murder that happened in his little town in Louisiana. The series was highly acclaimed by critics winning 4 of the 7 categories it was nominated at the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards; he also won a Critics' Choice Award for the role.
Also in 2014, Matthew starred in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi film Interstellar (2014), playing Cooper, a former NASA pilot.- Actor Dominic Anthony Sherwood was born in Kent, South East England. After studying Drama and Theater Studies at schools in Maidstone, he left to work abroad starting in Kenya and moving for 6 months before returning to London. There he began work in several plays before being signed to an agency and getting work on TV and Film.
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Christopher "Chris" O'Dowd (born 9 October, 1979) is an Irish actor and comedian best known for his role as Roy Trenneman in the Channel 4 comedy The IT Crowd (2006). O'Dowd created and is starring in the Sky 1 television series Moone Boy (2012). He had a recurring role on the drama series Girls (2012) and starred in the television series Family Tree (2013). O'Dowd is also known for his films, most notably Bridesmaids (2011), This Is 40 (2012), The Sapphires (2012), Thor: The Dark World (2013), Calvary (2014), and St. Vincent (2014). He made his Broadway debut in the play adaptation of Of Mice and Men in 2014, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award.- Actor
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English actor, writer and director Chiwetel Ejiofor is renowned for his portrayal of Solomon Northup in 12 Years a Slave (2013), for which he received Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations, along with the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. He is also known for playing Okwe in Dirty Pretty Things (2002), the Operative in Serenity (2005), Lola in Kinky Boots (2005), Luke in Children of Men (2006), Dr. Adrian Helmsley in 2012 (2009) and Dr. Vincent Kapoor in The Martian (2015).
Chiwetelu Umeadi Ejiofor was born on July 10, 1977 in Forest Gate, London, England, to Nigerian parents, Obiajulu (Okaford), a pharmacist, and Arinze Ejiofor, a doctor. Chiwetel attended Dulwich College in South-East London. By the age of 13, he was appearing in numerous school and National Youth Theatre productions and subsequently attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA).
Ejiofor caught the attention of Steven Spielberg who cast him in the critically acclaimed Amistad (1997) alongside Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins. He has since been seen on the big screen in numerous features including Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things (2002) (for which he won Best Actor at the British Independent Film Awards, the Evening Standard Film Awards, and the San Diego Film Critics Society Awards), Love Actually (2003), Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda (2004), Kinky Boots (2005), Inside Man (2006), Children of Men (2006), American Gangster (2007) and Talk to Me (2007), for which his performance won him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Ejiofor has balanced his film and television commitments with a number of prestigious stage productions. In 2008, his portrayal of the title role in Michael Grandage's "Othello" at the Donmar Warehouse alongside Ewan McGregor was unanimously commended and won him best actor at the 2008 Laurence Olivier Awards and Evening Standard Theatre Awards. He also received nominations in the South Bank Show Awards and the What's On Stage Theatregoers' Choice Awards in 2009. His other stage roles include Roger Michell's "Blue/Orange" in 2000 which received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Play, and the same year Tim Supple's "Romeo and Juliet" in which Ejiofor portrayed the title role.
Following his television debut in the series episode Deadly Voyage (1996), Ejiofor has complimented his film and theatre work on the small screen in productions including Murder in Mind (2001), created by the award-winning writer Anthony Horowitz, Trust (2003), Twelfth Night, or What You Will (2003), and Canterbury Tales (2003). His television appearance in the hard hitting emotional drama Tsunami: The Aftermath (2006) alongside Toni Collette, Sophie Okonedo and Tim Roth earned him a nomination for a Golden Globe Award as well as an NAACP Image award.
Ejiofor also appeared in such notable films as Endgame (2009), Channel 4's moving drama set in South Africa for which his performance earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Miniseries; Roland Emmerich's action feature 2012 (2009), opposite John Cusack, Danny Glover and Thandiwe Newton; and Salt (2010), opposite Angelina Jolie and Liev Schreiber. In 2013, he starred in Half of a Yellow Sun (2013) and 12 Years a Slave (2013), receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for the latter film.- Writer
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Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future director Jennifer Lynch shortly after he turned 21. That experience, plus attending art school in a particularly violent and run-down area of Philadelphia, inspired Eraserhead (1977), a film that he began in the early 1970s (after a couple of shorts) and which he would work on obsessively for five years. The final film was initially judged to be almost unreleasable weird, but thanks to the efforts of distributor Ben Barenholtz, it secured a cult following and enabled Lynch to make his first mainstream film (in an unlikely alliance with Mel Brooks), though The Elephant Man (1980) was shot through with his unique sensibility. Its enormous critical and commercial success led to Dune (1984), a hugely expensive commercial disaster, but Lynch redeemed himself with the now classic Blue Velvet (1986), his most personal and original work since his debut. He subsequently won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival with the dark, violent road movie Wild at Heart (1990), and achieved a huge cult following with his surreal TV series Twin Peaks (1990), which he adapted for the big screen, though his comedy series On the Air (1992) was less successful. He also draws comic strips and has devised multimedia stage events with regular composer Angelo Badalamenti. He had a much-publicized affair with Isabella Rossellini in the late 1980s.- Actor
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Born February 24, 1947, in East Los Angeles, at The First Japanese Hospital to Pedro Olmos and Eleanor Huizar. Raised on Cheesebrough's Lane, he attended Greenwood Elementary and Montebello Junior High. He then graduated from Montebello High School in 1964. After which he received an Associative Arts Degree in Sociology and Criminal Justice at East Los Angeles College in 1966. Olmos since then has gone on to receive many accolades from the City of Montebello, including the Alumni of The Year from Montebello High School in 2014, and Man of the Year Award from The Mexican American Opportunity Foundation in 2015.
He has achieved extraordinary success as an actor, producer and humanitarian. The Tony, Emmy and Academy Award® Nominated actor, is probably best known to young audiences for his work on the SYFY television series "Battlestar Galatica" as Admiral William Adama. Although the series kept the actor busy during its run from 2003 through 2009, it didn't stop him from directing the HBO movie "Walkout" in 2007, for which he earned a DGA Nomination in the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television category.
Olmos' career in entertainment spans over 30 years. In that time he created a signature style and aesthetic that he applies to every artist endeavor, often grounding his characters in reality and gravitas. His dedication to his craft has brought him attention across the industry, and with audiences worldwide.- Actor
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Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch was born and raised in London, England. His parents, Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton (born Timothy Carlton Congdon Cumberbatch), are both actors. He is a grandson of submarine commander Henry Carlton Cumberbatch, and a great-grandson of diplomat Henry Arnold Cumberbatch CMG. Cumberbatch attended Brambletye School and Harrow School. Whilst at Harrow, he had an arts scholarship and painted large oil canvases. It's also where he began acting. After he finished school, he took a year off to volunteer as an English teacher in a Tibetan monastery in Darjeeling, India. On his return, he studied drama at Manchester University. He continued his training as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art graduating with an M.A. in Classical Acting. By the time he had completed his studies, he already had an agent.
Cumberbatch has worked in theatre, television, film and radio. His breakthrough on the big screen came in 2004 when he portrayed Stephen Hawking in the television movie Hawking (2004). In 2010, he became a household name as Sherlock Holmes on the British television series Sherlock (2010). In 2011, he appeared in two Oscar-nominated films - War Horse (2011) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). He followed this with acclaimed roles in the science fiction film Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), the Oscar-winning drama 12 Years a Slave (2013), The Fifth Estate (2013) and August: Osage County (2013). In 2014, he portrayed Alan Turing in The Imitation Game (2014) which earned him a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award, British Academy of Film and Television Arts and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Cumberbatch was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2015 Birthday Honours for his services to the performing arts and to charity.
Cumberbatch's engagement to theatre and opera director Sophie Hunter, whom he has known for 17 years, was announced in the "Forthcoming Marriages" section of The Times newspaper on November 5, 2014. On February 14, 2015, the couple married at the 12th century Church of St. Peter and St. Paul on the Isle of Wight followed by a reception at Mottistone Manor. They have three sons, Christopher Carlton (born 2015), Hal Auden (born 2017), and Finn (born 2019).- Actor
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McCaul has had four films in four years premiere at Cannes; two in Official Selection - 'American Honey' and 'Port Authority'. The latter is writer-director Danielle Lessovitiz's feature debut, produced by Martin Scorsese's Sikelia Productions and 'Call Me By Your Name' outfit RT Features.
McCaul's first film was A24 / Film4's 'American Honey' from Andrea Arnold. Thereafter, he played a supporting role in Fox Searchlight's 'Patti Cake$' which premiered as part of Directors' Fortnight in Cannes. More recently, McCaul played the lead role in 'We The Coyotes', which premiered in Cannes, as part of ACID, in 2018.
Other notable credits include 'Sollers Point', in which McCaul played the lead role. It was the New York Times' "Critic's Pick" and premiered in competition at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
McCaul's a proud Baltimorean. The son of a health care professional and a high school football coach, he grew up with dreams of becoming a professional athlete - a running back, specifically - but after an injury on the field as a teenager he shifted his focus on to acting.- Actor
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Jamie Alexander Blackley is a British actor. He is known for his role as Adam Wilde in the film If I Stay. Blackley was born in Douglas, Isle of Man, and was raised in London, England, with his father Martin, mother Marina, and older sister Holly-Anna. His first major appearance was as Hanschen in the London stage production of Spring Awakening. Blackley had a small role as Iain in the fairy tale/action-adventure movie Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), but some of his most prominent film roles include Mark in the thriller Uwantme2killhim? (2013), Sigurdur Thordarson in the thriller The Fifth Estate (2013), and Adam Wilde in the romantic drama If I Stay (2014). He played Freddie Hamilton in The Halcyon.- Actress
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Zoe Saldana was born on June 19, 1978 in Passaic, New Jersey, to Asalia Nazario and Aridio Saldaña. Her father was Dominican and her mother is Puerto Rican. She was raised in Queens, New York. When she was 10 years old, she and her family moved to the Dominican Republic, where they would live for the next seven years. While living there, Zoe discovered a keen interest in performance dance and began her training at the prestigious ECOS Espacio de Danza Dance Academy where she learned ballet as well as other dance forms. Not only did her training provide an excellent outlet for the enthusiastic and energetic youngster, it would also prove to be a fortunate precursor for the start of her professional acting career. At age 17, Zoe and her family moved back to the United States where her love for dance followed and an interest in theater performance became stronger.
She began performing with the Faces theater troupe which put on plays geared to provide positive messages for teens with themes dealing with issues such as substance abuse and sex. These performances not only gave her valuable experience but also a source of great pride knowing that she was making a difference in the lives of young people like herself. While performing with the Faces troupe and also the New York Youth Theater, Zoe was recruited for a talent agency and her dance training years before coupled with her acting experience greatly helped her land her first big screen role as Eva Rodriguez, the talented and headstrong ballet dancer in the film Center Stage (2000). Since her professional career began several years ago, Zoe's talent and determination have allowed her to be involved in blockbuster films and act with major actors, actresses and industry insiders at a pace that very few young professionals have experienced.
Zoe has not only held her own in major motion picture productions but gained the respect and praise from industry insiders such as Jerry Bruckheimer and Steven Spielberg and actors/actresses such as Tom Hanks, Bernie Mac, Keira Knightley, Ashton Kutcher, Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom. According to many of her co-stars, producers and directors, the sky is no limit for this young star who has incredible range, intense concentration, and a steely determination to be involved with projects that challenge her professionally with wide-ranging subject matters and characters. Just to ask practically anyone who she has worked for or with about her, glowing comments abound and earned friendships and respect are readily revealed. A star has been born, and growing every day.- Actor
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J.K. Simmons is an American actor.
He was born Jonathan Kimble Simmons in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, to Patricia (Kimble), an administrator, and Donald William Simmons, a music teacher. He attended the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; University of Montana, Missoula, MT (BA in Music).
He had originally planned to be a singer and studied at the University of Montana to become a composer.
He starred as Captain Hook and Mr. Darling opposite gymnastics champ Cathy Rigby in the Broadway and touring revivals of Peter Pan.
He played Benny South-street in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls and can be heard on the cast recording.
He did a commercial voice-over work, including the voice of the yellow M&M in the candy's TV ads.
He appeared as police psychiatrist Emil Skoda on Law & Order (1990), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) and Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001).
As of 2011, has made five films with director Sam Raimi: For Love of the Game (1999); The Gift (2000); Spider-Man (2002); Spider-Man 2 (2004); and Spider-Man 3 (2007).
He won many awards from 2005 to 2007 in Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2014 won Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. 2015 won a Golden Globe for his Best Performance as an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture, BAFTA Film Awards Best Supporting Actor, Independent Spirit Awards Best Supporting Male.- Actor
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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).- Actor
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Djimon Hounsou was born in Cotonou, Benin, in west Africa to Albertine and Pierre Hounsou, a cook. He moved to Lyon, France, when he was 13. Hounsou has graced the catwalks of Paris and London as a popular male model. He has since left his modeling career and has worked on Gladiator (2000) by Ridley Scott and Amistad (1997) by Steven Spielberg.- Producer
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A graduate of Wesleyan University, Michael Bay spent his 20s working on advertisements and music videos. His first projects after film school were in the music video business. He created music videos for Tina Turner, Meat Loaf, Lionel Richie, Wilson Phillips, Donny Osmond and Divinyls. His work won him recognition and a number of MTV award nominations. He also filmed advertisements for Nike, Reebok, Coca-Cola, Budweiser and Miller Lite. He won the Grand Prix Clio for Commercial of the Year for his "Got Milk/Aaron Burr" commercial. At Cannes, he has won the Gold Lion for The Best Beer campaign for Miller Lite, as well as the Silver for "Got Milk". In 1995, Bay was honored by the Directors Guild of America as Commercial Director of the Year. That same year, he also directed his first feature film, Bad Boys (1995), starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, which grossed more than $160 million, worldwide. His follow-up film, The Rock (1996), starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage, was also hugely successful, making Bay the director du jour.- Actor
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Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning actor Woodrow Tracy Harrelson was born on July 23, 1961 in Midland, Texas, to Diane Lou (Oswald) and Charles Harrelson. He grew up in Lebanon, Ohio, where his mother was from. After receiving degrees in theater arts and English from Hanover College, he had a brief stint in New York theater. He was soon cast as Woody on TV series Cheers (1982), which wound up being one of the most-popular TV shows ever and also earned Harrelson an Emmy for his performance in 1989.
While he dabbled in film during his time on Cheers (1982), that area of his career didn't fully take off until towards the end of the show's run. In 1991, Doc Hollywood (1991) gave him his first widely-seen movie role, and he followed that up with White Men Can't Jump (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993) and Natural Born Killers (1994). More recently, Harrelson was seen in No Country for Old Men (2007), Zombieland (2009), 2012 (2009), and Friends with Benefits (2011), along with the acclaimed HBO movie Game Change (2012).
In 2011, Harrelson snagged the coveted role of fan-favorite drunk Haymitch Abernathy in the big-screen adaptation of The Hunger Games (2012), which ended up being one of the highest-grossing movies ever at the domestic box office. Harrelson is set to reprise that role for the sequels, which are scheduled for release in November 2013, 2014 and 2015. Harrelson has received two Academy Award nominations, first for his role as controversial Hustler founder Larry Flynt in The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and then for a role in The Messenger (2009). He also received Golden Globe nominations for both of these parts. In 2016, he had a stand-out role as a wise teacher in the teen drama The Edge of Seventeen (2016).
Harrelson was briefly married to Nancy Simon in the 80s, and later married his former assistant, Laura Louie, with whom he has three daughters.- Actor
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Simon Woods was born in 1980 in England, UK. He is an actor and writer, known for Pride & Prejudice (2005), Penelope (2006) and Rome (2005). He has been married to Christopher Bailey since 2012.- Caleb Landry Jones is an American actor and musician, known for his roles as Banshee in X-Men: First Class, Jeremy Armitage in Get Out, Red Welby in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Ty Carter in The Outpost, Jeff in Finch, and Martin Bryant in Nitram. His accolades include a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and a Aacta Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in Nitram.
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Marton was born in Invercargill, Aotearoa (New Zealand), to Margaret Christine (Rayner), a nurse, and Márton Csókás, a mechanical engineer. His father is Hungarian and his mother is Australian (of English, Irish, and Danish origin). He inherited some of his talents from his father, who was also a trained opera singer and at one time, a trapeze artist in the Hungarian Circus.
His academic training began at Canterbury University, Christchurch, New Zealand, where he commenced a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in Art History, and then transferred to, Te Kura Toi Whakaari o Aotearoa/ The New Zealand Drama School, graduating in December, 1989. His first acting role was in Te Whanau a Tuanui Jones by Apairana Taylor at the Taki Rua Theatre in Wellington New Zealand, (1990). He has since had an eclectic career of theatre, television and film.
He appeared in the 1994 movie Jack Brown Genius (1996) in which he played the role of Dennis. After starring for two years in the New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street (1992), he starred in the 1996 movie Broken English (1996) as Darko. After performing in a great number of theatrical plays, writing his own and co-founding his own theatre company, the Stronghold Theatre, Marton got the role of Tarlus in an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995). After that, he continued working with Renaissance Pictures, playing the roles of Khrafstar and Borias in the 1997-1998 seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess (1995). He continued appearing in many other shows in both NZ and Australia, such as Farscape (1999), BeastMaster (1999), Water Rats (1996), Cleopatra 2525 (2000), and more, returning for the role of Borias in three episodes of the 2000-2001 season of Xena: Warrior Princess (1995). He was also in many movies produced in NZ and Australia, such as Hurrah (1998), The Monkey's Mask (2000) and the mini-series The Farm (2001). He is a citizen of the European Union and Hungary, and is a permanent resident of the United States.
Most recently, Csokas starred opposite Denzel Washington in Sony's hit film The Equalizer. He played a brutal fixer for the Russian mafia and a formidable villain to Washington's reluctant hero.
Csokas appeared in Darren Aronofsky's Noah as well as Robert Rodriguez's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, a sequel to the 2005 hit film Sin City. Csokas also played the psychiatrist, "Dr. Kafka," in the hit movie sequel, The Amazing Spiderman 2, alongside Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone and Jamie Foxx.
Csokas most famously starred as "Lord Celeborn" in one of the highest-grossing film series of all time, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Some of his other film credits include 2010's The Debt opposite Jessica Chastain and Paul Greengrass' The Bourne Supremacy with Matt Damon. His depth of experience is illustrated in Asylum in which he starred opposite Natasha Richardson and Ian McKellen, as well as the Ridley Scott epic, Kingdom of Heaven, with Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson and Liam Neeson.
On the small screen, Csokas recently starred on the History Channel's miniseries Sons of Liberty as well as Discovery Channel's miniseries Klondike with Tim Roth and Sam Shepard.
On stage, Csokas continues to work internationally, most recently starring in a production of Lillian Hellman's "Little Foxes" at The New York Theatre Workshop by acclaimed director, Ivo van Hove. The play was noted by Time Magazine as one of the "Top 10 of Everything of 2010." The actor has numerous classical credits, including 'Orsino' in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" at the National Theatre of Great Britain, 'Anthony' in "Anthony and Cleopatra" at the Theatre of a New Audience, 'Brutus' in "Julius Caesar" and as 'Septimus' in Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" in his birthplace of New Zealand. On the Australian stage, Csokas has appeared as 'George' in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," directed by Benedict Andrews of the Schaubuhne Theatre in Berlin and in "Riflemind," directed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman at the Sydney Theatre Company.- Actress
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Debby Ryan was born in Huntsville, Alabama on May 13, 1993, but she and her family moved to Texas when she was a small child and lived there for five years before moving to Wiesbaden, Germany. In Germany Debby became fascinated with acting in local plays and musicals. By age 9, she knew she wanted to be an actress. After three years in Germany, the family moved to Keller, Texas, where they lived until they moved to Los Angeles so Debby could pursue a career in the entertainment industry.
Debby got her start in film with roles in Barney: Let's Go to the Firehouse (2007) and the MGM feature film The Longshots (2008) alongside Keke Palmer and Ice Cube. She also appeared in a handful of national television commercials. From there, her career took off when she secured one of the series-regular roles on Disney Channel's The Suite Life on Deck (2008), which debuted in 2008. In 2010, she starred in the smash hit Disney Channel film 16 Wishes (2010), one of the first of many Disney co-productions. She took an active role employing online and guerrilla-marketing techniques to the film that had a tiny marketing budget. The movie premiered to 5.6 million viewers and made it as second on the list of cable's top 25 most popular shows of that week, twice. Since then, 16 Wishes (2010) has been successful in over 30 countries worldwide and continues to draw in strong viewership numbers.
In addition to her work with The Disney Channel, Debby appeared on ABC's Private Practice (2007), showcasing some of her dramatic acting chops playing Hailey, a recovering cocaine addict. She also appeared as a murder suspect on A&E's hit series The Glades (2010), in 2012. Debby has appeared in over 8 live-action Disney Channel series and countless interstitials. Her current hit series Jessie (2011) was the first live-action series in Disney history to be picked up with only her cast, the Show Runner, and the script. Debby starred in the Disney Channel original movie, Radio Rebel (2012), which premiered on February 17, 2012 to over 6 million viewers. It was based on Danielle Joseph's novel "Shrinking Violet", and Debby appeared as Tara Adams, a shy high-school senior who leads an alternate life as an anonymous DJ [called Radio Rebel]. In addition to starring in the movie, Debby produced the music video and contributed to three tracks on the soundtrack, including "We Got The Beat", "A Wish Comes True Every Day", and "We Ended Right". Aside from Radio Rebel (2012) and Jessie (2011), Debby is also widely recognized for her role as popular season regular Bailey Pickett on the Disney Channel series The Suite Life on Deck (2008), a role she held from 2008-2011. She flexed her voiceover skills in Secret of the Wings (2012) and Ultimate Spider-Man (2012).
When she isn't working, Debby is passionate about volunteering and is a Disney Friends for Change Ambassador. Her recent work with Friends for Change took her to India, where in partnership with Free the Children, Debby helped to build a new school for a local village. The documentary on her work was nominated for a daytime Emmy in 2013. Debby is also heavily involved in music and loves to collaborate with her brother, Chase Ryan, and her friends. Her self-written single debuted in 2010 on Disney Channel as a music video about her character in 16 Wishes (2010). It was featured on the 16 Wishes (2010) soundtrack. In July 2011, she released the single, "We Ended Right", which debuted on iTunes and was also picked up to be featured on the "Radio Rebel" soundtrack. Debby wrote her first EP entitled "One". This indie rock, self funded/produced record premiered in the Top 5 on the rock charts and was featured on Billboard. Debby directed plays and skits while she was younger and after years of shadowing successful directors, she was allowed to take the reins as a director for her live action hit series Jessie (2011). She will direct 3 more episodes before the season ends in February. On the business side, Debby is an active producer on Jessie (2011). She was there from the inception of the story, attends production meetings, and makes meaningful and significant contributions to Jessie (2011).
She launched a production company called Shadowborn Productions, where she produced the official music video for "Radio Rebel" and another one for Atlantic's "Fueled by Ramen". In 2016, Debby played the part of "Holli" on the YouTube Red series, Sing It! (2016). She is costarring in the upcoming films Rip Tide (2017), playing the role of Cora; and the comedy Life of the Party (2018), alongside Gillian Jacobs, Melissa McCarthy, and Maya Rudolph. Debby was also cast in the lead role of Patty in a pilot ordered by the CW, Insatiable (2018).- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle, Martin Perveler. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school, there seemed to be little change in his attitude or his results. Hoping to find something to interest his son, Jack introduced Stanley to chess, with the desired result. Kubrick took to the game passionately, and quickly became a skilled player. Chess would become an important device for Kubrick in later years, often as a tool for dealing with recalcitrant actors, but also as an artistic motif in his films.
Jack Kubrick's decision to give his son a camera for his thirteenth birthday would be an even wiser move: Kubrick became an avid photographer, and would often make trips around New York taking photographs which he would develop in a friend's darkroom. After selling an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine, Kubrick began to associate with their staff photographers, and at the age of seventeen was offered a job as an apprentice photographer.
In the next few years, Kubrick had regular assignments for "Look", and would become a voracious movie-goer. Together with friend Alexander Singer, Kubrick planned a move into film, and in 1950 sank his savings into making the documentary Day of the Fight (1951). This was followed by several short commissioned documentaries (Flying Padre (1951), and (The Seafarers (1953), but by attracting investors and hustling chess games in Central Park, Kubrick was able to make Fear and Desire (1952) in California.
Filming this movie was not a happy experience; Kubrick's marriage to high school sweetheart Toba Metz did not survive the shooting. Despite mixed reviews for the film itself, Kubrick received good notices for his obvious directorial talents. Kubrick's next two films Killer's Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956) brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and in 1957 he directed Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas later called upon Kubrick to take over the production of Spartacus (1960), by some accounts hoping that Kubrick would be daunted by the scale of the project and would thus be accommodating. This was not the case, however: Kubrick took charge of the project, imposing his ideas and standards on the film. Many crew members were upset by his style: cinematographer Russell Metty complained to producers that Kubrick was taking over his job. Kubrick's response was to tell him to sit there and do nothing. Metty complied, and ironically was awarded the Academy Award for his cinematography.
Kubrick's next project was to direct Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), but negotiations broke down and Brando himself ended up directing the film himself. Disenchanted with Hollywood and after another failed marriage, Kubrick moved permanently to England, from where he would make all of his subsequent films. Despite having obtained a pilot's license, Kubrick was rumored to be afraid of flying.
Kubrick's first UK film was Lolita (1962), which was carefully constructed and guided so as to not offend the censorship boards which at the time had the power to severely damage the commercial success of a film. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) was a big risk for Kubrick; before this, "nuclear" was not considered a subject for comedy. Originally written as a drama, Kubrick decided that too many of the ideas he had written were just too funny to be taken seriously. The film's critical and commercial success allowed Kubrick the financial and artistic freedom to work on any project he desired. Around this time, Kubrick's focus diversified and he would always have several projects in various stages of development: "Blue Moon" (a story about Hollywood's first pornographic feature film), "Napoleon" (an epic historical biography, abandoned after studio losses on similar projects), "Wartime Lies" (based on the novel by Louis Begley), and "Rhapsody" (a psycho-sexual thriller).
The next film he completed was a collaboration with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is hailed by many as the best ever made; an instant cult favorite, it has set the standard and tone for many science fiction films that followed. Kubrick followed this with A Clockwork Orange (1971), which rivaled Lolita (1962) for the controversy it generated - this time not only for its portrayal of sex, but also of violence. Barry Lyndon (1975) would prove a turning point in both his professional and private lives. His unrelenting demands of commitment and perfection of cast and crew had by now become legendary. Actors would be required to perform dozens of takes with no breaks. Filming a story in Ireland involving military, Kubrick received reports that the IRA had declared him a possible target. Production was promptly moved out of the country, and Kubrick's desire for privacy and security resulted in him being considered a recluse ever since.
Having turned down directing a sequel to The Exorcist (1973), Kubrick made his own horror film: The Shining (1980). Again, rumors circulated of demands made upon actors and crew. Stephen King (whose novel the film was based upon) reportedly didn't like Kubrick's adaptation (indeed, he would later write his own screenplay which was filmed as The Shining (1997).)
Kubrick's subsequent work has been well spaced: it was seven years before Full Metal Jacket (1987) was released. By this time, Kubrick was married with children and had extensively remodeled his house. Seen by one critic as the dark side to the humanist story of Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987) continued Kubrick's legacy of solid critical acclaim, and profit at the box office.
In the 1990s, Kubrick began an on-again/off-again collaboration with Brian Aldiss on a new science fiction film called "Artificial Intelligence (AI)", but progress was very slow, and was backgrounded until special effects technology was up to the standard the Kubrick wanted.
Kubrick returned to his in-development projects, but encountered a number of problems: "Napoleon" was completely dead, and "Wartime Lies" (now called "The Aryan Papers") was abandoned when Steven Spielberg announced he would direct Schindler's List (1993), which covered much of the same material.
While pre-production work on "AI" crawled along, Kubrick combined "Rhapsody" and "Blue Movie" and officially announced his next project as Eyes Wide Shut (1999), starring the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. After two years of production under unprecedented security and privacy, the film was released to a typically polarized critical and public reception; Kubrick claimed it was his best film to date.
Special effects technology had matured rapidly in the meantime, and Kubrick immediately began active work on A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), but tragically suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep on March 7th, 1999.
After Kubrick's death, Spielberg revealed that the two of them were friends that frequently communicated discreetly about the art of filmmaking; both had a large degree of mutual respect for each other's work. "AI" was frequently discussed; Kubrick even suggested that Spielberg should direct it as it was more his type of project. Based on this relationship, Spielberg took over as the film's director and completed the last Kubrick project.
How much of Kubrick's vision remains in the finished project -- and what he would think of the film as eventually released -- will be the final great unanswerable mysteries in the life of this talented and private filmmaker.- Director
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- Writer
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct the film Number 13 (1922), though the production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock didn't give up then. He directed The Pleasure Garden (1925), a British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his first trademark film in 1927, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) . In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940). After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended the service, among them were Mel Brooks (director of High Anxiety (1977), a comedy tribute to Hitchcock and his films), Louis Jourdan, Karl Malden, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh and François Truffaut.- Actor
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Scott 'Carrot Top' Thompson was born on 25 February 1965 in Cocoa Beach, Florida, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Chairman of the Board (1997), Savannah and Dennis the Menace Strikes Again! (1998).- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Andrew Scott is an Irish actor who started his career at a very young age. He made his first appearance on television in an advertisement for a brand of porridge at the age of 6.
He was born into an Irish family where his father, Jim, worked in a recruitment agency and his mother, Nora, taught art. He has an older sister, Sarah, and a younger sister, Hannah.
He received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in an Affiliated Theater for the play A Girl in a Car with a Man at Jerwood Theater Upstairs and the Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor for the film Dead Bodies.
He is known for his portrayal of Paul McCartney in the 2010 BBC drama Lennon Naked and for his portrayal of villain Jim Moriarty in the modern adaptation Sherlock, also produced in 2010 by the BBC and for which he received the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2012.
In November 2013, he revealed his homosexuality during an interview for the British daily The Independent, while indicating that he did not play it in the interpretation of his roles: "Fortunately, nowadays, people don't perceive homosexuality as a defect. But it's also not a quality, like kindness. Or a talent, like knowing how to play the banjo. It's simply a fact. Of course, that's part of what I'm sending back, but I don't want to play with it. I'm not advertising it; I think it's important when you're an actor. But there's a difference between privacy and secrecy, and I'm not a secretive person. All I really want to do is continue doing my job, which is pretending to be a bunch of different people. It's as simple as that. »
In 2014, he took on the role of a priest in Ken Loach's film: Jimmy's Hall.
In 2015, he appeared in the new James Bond: 007 Spectre, as Max Denbigh aka "C", a member of the British government whose goal is to shut down the Double-0 spy branch.
In 2017, he returned to the role of Hamlet in the theater, under the direction of Robert Icke, for nearly 150 performances. The piece lasts almost 4 hours. His performance was unanimously praised by critics.
In 2019, he played "the priest" in the second season of the multi-award winning British series: Fleabag. A role which will notably earn him a nomination for the Golden Globes in 2020, as best supporting role in a TV series. Fans of the series will nickname "the hot priest", this Catholic priest with whom Fleabag will fall in love. He will reprise the role of the priest in 2020, in a "special" episode of the Irish series Normal people.
The same year, he reunited with Sam Mendes, with whom he had already collaborated several times in the past, in the film 1917.
Then he participated in an episode of the successful British series: Black Mirror for episode 2 of season 5 entitled Smithereens.
In 2020, Andrew Scott landed the lead role in the series Tom Ripley, adapted from the novels by Patricia Highsmith. The same year, the actor read the poem Everything is Going to be All Right by Irish poet Derek Mahon, in a video posted on Instagram by actress Emilia Clarke. This reading is dedicated to Irish men with cancer.
Andrew Scott will be part of the jury for the 2021 GQ Grooming Awards, a ceremony created by GQ magazine and which celebrates men's cosmetic products.
Andrew Scott is filming in November 2020 alongside Ruth Wilson in the television adaptation for HBO of the play Oslo by J.T. Rogers. With Steven Spielberg as executive producer.
In March 2021, Andrew Scott will begin filming Lena Dunham's new film: Catherine, Called Birdy, the adaptation of the book of the same name, alongside Billie Piper.- Actor
- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Patrick Fugit was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Jan Clark-Fugit, a dance teacher, and Bruce Fugit, an electrical engineer. He has two siblings. He began acting in a summer Theater program through the University of Utah at eleven. He continued on through high school and regional productions. He enjoys biking and skating. In 2002, he was featured in Seventeen magazine, along with Alison Lohman, his co-star from White Oleander (2002).