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Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, comedienne, singer, and model. Monroe is of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent. She became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her winsome embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol and her tragic personal and professional struggles within the film industry. Her life and death are still the subjects of much controversy and speculation.
She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1, 1926. Her mother, Gladys Pearl (Monroe), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, to American parents from Indiana and Missouri, and was a film-cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. Marilyn's biological father has been established through DNA testing as Charles Stanley Gifford, who had been born in Newport, Rhode Island, to a family with deep roots in the state. Because Gladys was mentally and financially unable to care for young Marilyn, Gladys placed her in the care of a foster family, The Bolenders. Although the Bolender family wanted to adopt Marilyn, Gladys was eventually able to stabilize her lifestyle and took Marilyn back in her care when Marilyn was 7 years old. However, shortly after regaining custody of Marilyn, Gladys had a complete mental breakdown and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was committed to a state mental hospital. Gladys spent the rest of her life going in and out of hospitals and rarely had contact with young Marilyn. Once Marilyn became an adult and celebrated as a film star, she paid a woman by the name of Inez Melson to look in on the institutionalized Gladys and give detailed reports of her progress. Gladys outlived her daughter, dying in 1984.
Marilyn was then taken in by Gladys' best friend Grace Goddard, who, after a series of foster homes, placed Marilyn into the Los Angeles Orphan's Home in 1935. Marilyn was traumatized by her experience there despite the Orphan's Home being an adequate living facility. Grace Goddard eventually took Marilyn back to live with her in 1937 although this stay did not last long as Grace's husband began molesting Marilyn. Marilyn went to live with Grace's Aunt Ana after this incident, although due to Aunt Ana's advanced age she could not care properly for Marilyn. Marilyn once again for the third time had to return to live with the Goddards. The Goddards planned to relocated and according to law, could not take Marilyn with them. She only had two choices: return to the orphanage or get married. Marilyn was only 16 years old.
She decided to marry a neighborhood friend named James Dougherty; he went into the military, she modeled, they divorced in 1946. She owned 400 books (including Tolstoy, Whitman, Milton), listened to Beethoven records, studied acting at the Actors' lab in Hollywood, and took literature courses at UCLA downtown. 20th Century Fox gave her a contract but let it lapse a year later. In 1948, Columbia gave her a six-month contract, turned her over to coach Natasha Lytess and featured her in the B movie Ladies of the Chorus (1948) in which she sang three numbers : "Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy", "Anyone Can Tell I Love You" and "The Ladies of the Chorus" with Adele Jergens (dubbed by Virginia Rees) and others. Joseph L. Mankiewicz saw her in a small part in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and put her in All About Eve (1950) , resulting in 20th Century re-signing her to a seven-year contract. Niagara (1953) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) launched her as a sex symbol superstar.
When she went to a supper honoring her in the The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she arrived in a red chiffon gown borrowed from the studio (she had never owned a gown). That same year, she married and divorced baseball great Joe DiMaggio (their wedding night was spent in Paso Robles, California). After The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she wanted serious acting to replace the sexpot image and went to New York's Actors Studio. She worked with director Lee Strasberg and also underwent psychoanalysis to learn more about herself. Critics praised her transformation in Bus Stop (1956) and the press was stunned by her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller . True to form, she had no veil to match her beige wedding dress so she dyed one in coffee; he wore one of the two suits he owned. They went to England that fall where she made The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Laurence Olivier , fighting with him and falling further prey to alcohol and pills. Two miscarriages and gynecological surgery followed. So had an affair with Yves Montand . Work on her last picture The Misfits (1961) , written for her by departing husband Miller, was interrupted by exhaustion. She was dropped from the unfinished Something's Got to Give (1962) due to chronic lateness and drug dependency.
On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe's day began with threatening phone calls. Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn's physician, came over the following day and quoted later in a document "Felt it was possible that Marilyn had felt rejected by some of the people she had been close to." Apart from being upset that her publicist slept too long, she seemed fine. Pat Newcombe, who had stayed the previous night at Marilyn's house, left in the early evening as did Greenson who had a dinner date. Marilyn was upset he couldn't stay, and around 7:30pm she telephoned him to say that her second husband's son had called her. Peter Lawford also called Marilyn, inviting her to dinner, but she declined. Lawford later said her speech was slurred. As the evening went on there were other phone calls, including one from Jose Belanos, who said he thought she sounded fine. According to the funeral directors, Marilyn died sometime between 9:30pm and 11:30pm. Her maid unable to raise her but seeing a light under her locked door, called the police shortly after midnight. She also phoned Ralph Greenson who, on arrival, could not break down the bedroom door. He eventually broke in through French windows and found Marilyn dead in bed. The coroner stated she had died from acute barbiturate poisoning, and it was a 'probable suicide' though many conspiracies would follow in the years after her death.- Actress
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A more unconventional husky-voiced "scream queen" heroine of the 1980s was Jill Schoelen, daughter of well-known fashion designer Dorothy Schoelen. Born and raised in Burbank, she studied at the Acting for Life Theatre in Burbank and started off on TV as a teen in the Fame-influenced TV pilot called The Best of Times (1981), starring the up-and-coming Nicolas Cage and Crispin Glover. She gained in experience with a number of innocuous films geared mostly toward the young, including D.C. Cab (1983), Thunder Alley (1985) and Hot Moves (1984). The dark-eyed, black-haired pretty girl, with the trademark bangs, wouldn't find her horror niche until starring in Wes Craven's TV movie, Chiller (1985). From there, she scored big with the cult shocker, The Stepfather (1987), wherein she played the resourceful stepdaughter terrorized by the lecherous, meek-appearing Terry O'Quinn as the title monster.
The sleeper hit put Jill on the map with a seemingly solid future, continuing on with The Phantom of the Opera (1989), this time keeping company opposite "Freddy Krueger" inhabiter, Robert Englund, as her deranged pursuer. But a few bumps in the road, with such low-grade fodder as Curse II: The Bite (1989), Cutting Class (1989) and Popcorn (1991), put a permanent damper on her career, despite coming back with a bit of grit in the thriller TV movie, When a Stranger Calls Back (1993). Her object-of-a-stalker days behind her, after filming Not Again! (1996), she settled comfortably back and raised two children with her husband, musician/composer Anthony Marinelli.- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
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Jean-Pierre Léaud is not everybody's cup of tea for sure, but will remain an important name in film history. As an actor he can be adored or hated for exactly the same reasons: he is one of those rare players that directors let improvise his dialogue, which gets on certain viewers' nerves while it fascinates others. The same is true for his very personal staccato diction and elocution and his many mannerisms, the most obvious one being his way to run his hand through his long hair. But there is no denying Léaud is not just another actor, whether you love him or are allergic to him. The son of actress Jacqueline Pierreux and scriptwriter/assistant director Pierre Léaud, Jean-Pierre started acting very early. Indeed, he was only thirteen when he first appeared on a screen, playing a small role in a swashbuckling film directed by veteran Georges Lampin "la Tour, prends garde!" (1957). And he was still only fourteen when he answered an ad placed in a newspaper by François Truffaut, who was seeking a young actor able to play Antoine Doinel, a troubled adolescent, in his first feature film "The 400 blows". Jean-Pierre was tested among a hundred other candidates and proved so amazingly spontaneous and so gifted for improvisation that not only was he hired but he would go on to play the role in four subsequent Truffaut semi-autobiographies concluding with "Love on the run" (1978), a unique experience indeed. Thanks to Truffaut he was introduced to the other stars of the French New Wave, mainly Jean-Luc Godard for whom he would appear in eight films and one TV film, and gradually became their icon. Not too sure about his acting talents, he planned to become a director (which he actually did only once) and worked as an assistant to Truffaut and Godard. But his success both as Truffaut's alter ego and as the leftist movie makers' spokesman encouraged him to go on playing rather than directing. "Masculin Féminin" (1966) by Godard even earned him an Award for Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival. An ardent leftist militant himself, he worked with equally committed directors, including abroad. He was in Italian Pasolini's "Porcile" (1968), in Polish Skolimovski's "Dialog 20-40-60" (also '68) Brazilian Carlos Diegues' Os herdeiros (1970) and Glauber Rocha's Der Leone have sept cabeças (1971). Bertolucci also hired him for "Last tango in Paris" starring Marlon Brando (who so petrified Léaud that he could not play his scenes alongside him), but this one was filmed in Paris. This busy period ended after an excellent role in a classic art movie in the French style: Jean Eustache's "La maman et la putain". In the late seventies and throughout the eighties Léaud worked irregularly, mainly on television, occasionally giving a crazy performance in a mainstream film, as was the case in Josiane's Balasko crime comedy "Les keufs", for which he got a César nomination. But he made an exciting comeback in the nineties when several "new New Wave" directors hired Léaud to pay homage to their elders. Among them French movie makers such as Olivier Assayas, Danièle Dubroux , Serge Le Péron or Bertrand Bonello and foreigners like Finnish Aki Käurismäki and Taiwanese Tsai Ming-Liang. A second youth for eternally young, rebellious, ill-at-ease, annoyingly romantic,touchingly annoying Jean-Pierre Léaud, whose round face staring at the camera in the last shot of "The 400 blows" will never be forgotten.- Actress
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Romy Schneider was born on 23 September 1938 in Vienna, Austria into a family of actors. Making her film debut at the age of 15, her breakthrough came two years later in the very popular trilogy Sissi (1955). Her mother, supervising her daughter's career, immediately approved Romy's participation in Christine (1958), the remake of Max Ophüls's Playing at Love (1933), where Magda Schneider once starred herself. During the shooting, she fell in love with her co-star Alain Delon and eventually moved with him to Paris. At that time, she started her international career collaborating with famous directors such as Luchino Visconti and Orson Welles. After Delon had broken up with her in 1964, she married Harry Meyen shortly after. Although she gave birth to a boy, David-Christopher, their relationship was difficult, so they divorced in 1975. Being unsatisfied with her personal life, she turned to alcohol and drugs, but her cinematic career -especially in France- remained intact. She was the first actress, receiving the new created César Award as "Best Actress" for her role in That Most Important Thing: Love (1975). Three years later, she was awarded again for A Simple Story (1978). After a short marriage to her former secretary Daniel Biasini, being the father of her daughter Sarah Biasini, she suffered the hardest blow of her life when her son was impaled on a fence in 1981. She never managed to recover from this loss and died on 29 May 1982 in Paris. Although it was suggested she committed suicide caused by an overdose of sleeping pills, she was declared to have died from cardiac arrest.- Actor
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Joe Dallesandro's still hangin' . . . after battles with drug addiction and alcohol, brushes with the law, three broken marriages and numerous love affairs, plus the suicide of his only sibling Bob. One of the most beautifully photographed wild guys to come out of the Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey "Factory" era, the slight and slightly androgynous Dallesandro became an improbable pioneer of the male sexual revolution and the first film actor to be glorified as a nude sex symbol. The Morrissey/Warhol movies were known for their bizarre, amateur standing, yet Joe and his completely uninhibited, walk-on-the-wild-side demeanor managed to hold an entire underground audience captive. Joe's dangerous street mentality and raw erotic power became a definitive turn-on to both gay and straight audiences and his fame eventually filtered somewhat into the mainstream.
Born humbly as Joseph Angelo D'Alessandro III in Pensacola (located on Florida's panhandle) on New Year's Eve in 1948, his parents, Joe II and Thelma, were teenagers when Joe was born; his father was a Navy man stationed there and his mother had a wild streak of her own. Joe (then age 5) and younger brother Robert were placed into a New York adoption facility after Thelma was given a five-year prison sentence for auto theft and the father decided he was unable to care for them alone. Brought up in a series of foster homes, Joe became notorious for his delinquent behavior at school -- which was often ignited by his short stature and even shorter temper. Frequent runaways, he and his brother eventually returned to live with their grandparents but Joe quickly drifted towards a life of crime (thievery, burglary, etc.) via his association with street gangs.
At 15 "Little Joe" was caught stealing a car and sentenced to a juvenile rehab facility in New York's Catskill Mountains. During this time he started his famous "Little Joe" tattoo body markings. He escaped from the facility and lived a nomadic life in Mexico for a time before returning to the US (Los Angeles), where he gained unexpected acceptance in the California gay scene. The wanderlust teen found it profitable to exploit his sulky good looks and smoothly-muscled physique by posing nude for various photographers in the mid-'60s. Sometimes billed as "Joe Catano", Dallesandro hit many of the underground studios in both California and New York, working most notably for Robert Henry Mizer, who founded the Athletic Model Guild (AMG), and Bruce Bellas, aka Bruce of Los Angeles. A little magazine called Physique Pictorial, which was passed off as a bodybuilding publication, was, in truth, geared heavily toward its gay subscribers. Many were clients of Mizer, who photographed thousands of buff young men (some even out-of-work military servicemen) in various stages of undress from 1945-1993. Joe became Mizer's most famous model and can be seen featured in Thom Fitzgerald's docudrama Beefcake (1998), which chronicles the Mizer AMG era.
Back in New York during the summer of 1967, the 18-year-old, while visiting a friend in Greenwich Village, was invited to sit in and watch Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey shooting an impromptu marathon movie in Warhol's building apartment. Morrissey's camera quickly found its way toward the ambivalent, good-looking Joe and the rest is history. Joe wound up shooting a wrestling scene with another guy clad only in his underwear. A year later that 23-minute footage found its way into The Loves of Ondine (1968), an 86-minute mishmosh of Warhol's eccentric ideas. Joe's image in his jockey shorts was used for the primary ads in The Village Voice. The movie, which featured his extended improvised wrestling scene, was reviewed by Variety and Joe himself, surprisingly, received raves for his charismatic good looks and natural acting ability, and was touted as a possible legit performer.
Young Dallesandro instead became Morrissey's protégé. Although Joe displayed beefcake appeal in Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys (1968), which was investigated by the FBI for rumors of an on-screen rape, and San Diego Surf (1968), the only Warhol feature film never released, it was Morrissey's film trilogy that led to Joe's subsequent idol worship. The first, Flesh (1968), placed Joe front-and-center as a male hustler á la Midnight Cowboy (1969). Intended for female and gay audiences, Joe hit counterculture fame as the first actor to offer extensive full-frontal nudity and the movie also managed to filter successfully out to mainstream audiences.
Morrissey's second feature, Trash (1970), was anointed a "masterpiece" and "best film of the year" by none other than Rolling Stone magazine. In it Little Joe plays a heroin junkie living in New York squalor with girlfriend Holly Woodlawn (Warhol's well-known transvestite actress). The last of Morrissey's trilogy, Heat (1972) takes place in the vicinity of L.A.'s Sunset Boulevard with a long, pony-tailed Joe as a cold-hearted ex-child star who beds down everyone, including seamy "Midnight Cowboy" actress Sylvia Miles and her lesbian daughter, in order to resuscitate his long-dormant career. This attention led to Joe's making the cover of Rolling Stone in April 1971. He was also photographed by some of the top celebrity photographers of the time, including Francesco Scavullo, and Richard Avedon. Singer/songwriter Lou Reed utilized Little Joe's identity in his pop hit "Walk on the Wild Side". In Europe Morrisey's films were praised even more, while Dallesandro was placed on an erotic pedestal.
Acting pay was practically non-existent so Dallesandro, now a husband (to wife Leslie, who was the daughter of one of his dad's girlfriends) and father (their son Michael), received "Factory" pay by answering phones, checking in and checking out film prints, acting as a projectionist, handling security and even running the building's elevator. Morrissey's hot trilogy was followed by the European cult films Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974), both eclectic X-rated blood spillers and ultimate cult items.
Tired of being just a gear in the Factory machinery, Joe stayed on in Europe after filming the two 1974 gorefests and decided to see if his Warhol Superstar status could trigger foreign box-office career a la the recently transported Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. Joe made 18 feature films overseas throughout the rest of the 1970s. They were a mixture of styles: the sex-farce One Woman's Lover (1974); the gritty, grimy crime yarn The Climber (1975) ["The Climber"]; _Louis Malle's adult version of Alice in Wonderland, Black Moon (1975); The Margin (1976) ["The Streetwalker"] co-starring softcore erotica star Sylvia Kristel; the sexually taunting Madness (1980) as a car thief-turned hostage taker; Jacques Rivette's surrealistic Merry-Go-Round (1980); Tapage nocturne (1979) ["Nocturnal Uproar"] as a self-absorbed actor; and Queen Lear (1982), a Franco-Swiss co-production in which he plays a bisexual.
The best of Joe's European films, and his personal favorite, is the sexually-charged Je t'aime moi non plus (1976) ["I Love You, I Don't"], Serge Gainsbourg's film wherein he plays a gay garbage truck driver who has the hots for a very boyish café waitress Jane Birkin (Gainsbourg's wife at the time).
Returning to the States in 1980, Joe's work became more erratic than erotic, but some of his roles have earned a bit of attention. More noteworthy was his gangster Lucky Luciano in Francis Ford Coppola"s The Cotton Club (1984); another gangster in the Bruce Willis starrer Sunset (1988); his religious zealot in John Waters' mainstream Cry-Baby (1990); his psychotic paratrooper in Private War (1988); his trailer park scum who lusts after 'Drew Barrymore' in Guncrazy (1992); his sleazy photographer in _L.A. Without A Map (1998)_, and his brain-damaged hit man in Steven Soderbergh's The Limey (1999). On TV he made standard guest appearances on such popular shows as Miami Vice (1984), Wiseguy (1987) and Matlock (1986).
The Teddy Award, an honor recognizing those filmmakers and artists who have contributed to the further acceptance of LGBT lifestyles, culture, and artistic vision, was awarded to Joe in February of 2009. A biography, "Little Joe: Superstar" by Michael Ferguson was released earlier in 2001 and a filmed documentary, Little Joe (2009), has been released with Joe serving as writer and producer. The thrice-married and divorced actor has two sons, Michael and Joe, Jr. Glimpsed here and there these days, he later managed a hotel in the Hollywood area.- Actress
- Make-Up Department
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Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage, and gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge.
After graduation from Cushing Academy, she was refused admittance to Eva Le Gallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory. She enrolled in John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School and was the star pupil. She was in the off-Broadway play "The Earth Between" (1923), and her Broadway debut in 1929 was in "Broken Dishes". She also appeared in "Solid South". Late in 1930, she was hired by Universal, where she made her first film, called Bad Sister (1931). When she arrived in Hollywood, the studio representative who went to meet her train left without her because he could find no one who looked like a movie star. An official at Universal complained she had "as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville" and her performance in "Bad Sister" didn't impress.
In 1932, she signed a seven-year deal with Warner Brothers Pictures. Her first film with them was The Man Who Played God (1932). She became a star after this appearance, known as the actress that could play a variety of very strong and complex roles. More fairly successful movies followed, but it was the role of Mildred Rogers in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that would give Bette major acclaim from the film critics. She had a significant number of write-in votes for the Best Actress Oscar, but didn't win. Warner Bros. felt their seven-year deal with Bette was more than justified. They had a genuine star on their hands. With this success under her belt, she began pushing for stronger and more meaningful roles. In 1935, she received her first Oscar for her role in Dangerous (1935) as Joyce Heath.
In 1936, she was suspended without pay for turning down a role that she deemed unworthy of her talent. She went to England, where she had planned to make movies, but was stopped by Warner Bros. because she was still under contract to them. They did not want her to work anywhere. Although she sued to get out of her contract, she lost. Still, they began to take her more seriously after that.
Returning after losing her lawsuit, her roles improved dramatically. In 1938, Bette received a second Academy Award win for her work in Jezebel (1938) opposite the soon-to-be-legendary Henry Fonda. The only role she didn't get that she wanted was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Warners wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless he hired Errol Flynn to play Rhett Butler, which both Selznick and Davis thought was a terrible choice. It was rumored she had numerous affairs, among them George Brent and William Wyler, and she was married four times, three of which ended in divorce. She admitted her career always came first.
She made many successful films in the 1940s, but each picture was weaker than the last and by the time her Warner Brothers contract had ended in 1949, she had been reduced to appearing in such films as the unintentionally hilarious Beyond the Forest (1949). She made a huge comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ill Claudette Colbert in, and received an Oscar nomination for, All About Eve (1950). She worked in films through the 1950s, but her career eventually came to a standstill, and in 1961 she placed a now famous Job Wanted ad in the trade papers.
She received an Oscar nomination for her role as a demented former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). This brought about a new round of super-stardom for generations of fans who were not familiar with her work. Two years later, she starred in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Bette was married four times.
In 1977 she received the AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1979 she won a Best Actress Emmy for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979). In 1977-78 she moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles and filmed a pilot for the series Hotel (1983), which she called Brothel. She refused to do the TV series and suffered a stroke during this time.
Her last marriage, to actor Gary Merrill, lasted ten years, longer than any of the previous three. In 1985, her daughter Barbara Davis ("B.D.") Hyman published a scandalous book about Bette called "My Mother's Keeper." Bette worked in the later 1980s in films and TV, even though a stroke had impaired her appearance and mobility. She wrote a book, "This 'N That", during her recovery from the stroke. Her last book was "Bette Davis, The Lonely Life", issued in paperback in 1990. It included an update from 1962 to 1989. She wrote the last chapter in San Sebastian, Spain.
Sadly, Bette Davis died on October 6, 1989, of metastasized breast cancer, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Many of her fans refused to believe she was gone.- Actress
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Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1906, in San Antonio, Texas, to Anna Belle (Johnson) and Thomas E. LeSueur, a laundry laborer. By the time she was born, her parents had separated, and by the time she was a teenager, she'd had three stepfathers. It wasn't an easy life; Crawford worked a variety of menial jobs. She was a good dancer, though, and -- perhaps seeing dance as her ticket to a career in show business -- she entered several contests, one of which landed her a spot in a chorus line. Before long, she was dancing in big Midwestern and East Coast cities. After almost two years, she packed her bags and moved to Hollywood. Crawford was determined to succeed, and shortly after arriving she got her first bit part, as a showgirl in Pretty Ladies (1925).
Three films quickly followed; although the roles weren't much to speak of, she continued toiling. Throughout 1927 and early 1928, she was cast in small parts, but that ended with the role of Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), which elevated her to star status. Crawford had cleared the first big hurdle; now came the second, in the form of talkies. Many stars of the silents saw their careers evaporate, either because their voices weren't particularly pleasant or because their voices, pleasing enough, didn't match the public's expectations (for example, some fans felt that John Gilbert's tenor didn't quite match his very masculine persona). But Crawford wasn't felled by sound. Her first talkie, Untamed (1929), was a success. As the 1930s progressed, Crawford became one of the biggest stars at MGM. She was in top form in films such as Grand Hotel (1932), Sadie McKee (1934), No More Ladies (1935), and Love on the Run (1936); movie patrons were enthralled, and studio executives were satisfied.
By the early 1940s, MGM was no longer giving her plum roles; newcomers had arrived in Hollywood, and the public wanted to see them. Crawford left MGM for rival Warner Bros., and in 1945 she landed the role of a lifetime. Mildred Pierce (1945) gave her an opportunity to show her range as an actress, and her performance as a woman driven to give her daughter everything garnered Crawford her first, and only, Oscar for Best Actress. The following year she appeared with John Garfield in the well-received Humoresque (1946). In 1947, she appeared as Louise Graham in Possessed (1947); again she was nominated for a Best Actress from the Academy, but she lost to Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter (1947). Crawford continued to choose her roles carefully, and in 1952 she was nominated for a third time, for her depiction of Myra Hudson in Sudden Fear (1952). This time the coveted Oscar went to Shirley Booth, for Come Back, Little Sheba (1952). Crawford's career slowed after that; she appeared in minor roles until 1962, when she and Bette Davis co-starred in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Their longstanding rivalry may have helped fuel their phenomenally vitriolic and well-received performances. (Earlier in their careers, Davis said of Crawford, "She's slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie", and Crawford said of Davis, "I don't hate [her] even though the press wants me to. I resent her. I don't see how she built a career out of a set of mannerisms instead of real acting ability. Take away the pop eyes, the cigarette, and those funny clipped words, and what have you got? She's phony, but I guess the public really likes that.")
Crawford's final appearance on the silver screen was in the flop Trog (1970). Turning to vodka more and more, she was hardly seen afterward. On May 10, 1977, Joan died of a heart attack in New York City. She was 71 years old. She had disinherited her adopted daughter Christina and son Christopher; the former wrote a tell-all book called "Mommie Dearest", The Sixth Sense published in 1978. The book cast Crawford in a negative light and was cause for much debate, particularly among her friends and acquaintances, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Crawford's first husband. (In 1981, Faye Dunaway starred in Mommie Dearest (1981) which did well at the box office.) Crawford is interred in the same mausoleum as fellow MGM star Judy Garland, in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.- Actress
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With her expressive blue eyes, soft, Southern-tinged voice and an acting range that can carry her from hysterically funny to terrifying in seconds, Patricia Arquette is one of the most underrated and talented actresses of her generation. Though she has been working for years, she's always stayed just under the radar of true stardom, despite a 1995 marriage to Nicolas Cage.
Patricia was born in Chicago, though the family soon moved to a commune near Arlington, Virginia. Her parents, Lewis Arquette, an actor, and Brenda Denaut (née Nowak), an acting teacher and therapist, had 4 other children: Rosanna Arquette, Richmond Arquette, Alexis Arquette, and David Arquette, all actors. Her paternal grandfather, Cliff Arquette, was also an entertainer. Patricia's mother was from an Ashkenazi Jewish family (from Poland and Russia), while Patricia's father had French-Canadian, Swiss-German, and English ancestry.
At 15, Patricia ran away from home to live with her sister Rosanna and, after initial insecurity, got her start in Pretty Smart (1987). A year later, she gained attention for her starring role in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), considered by many to be the best film of the Nightmare series. In 1989, Patricia's son, Enzo (father is Paul Rossi), was born. Soon after, her career took off, and she has since appeared in such critically acclaimed movies as True Romance (1993), Beyond Rangoon (1995), Ethan Frome (1992), Lost Highway (1997) and Flirting with Disaster (1996). She won a CableACE award in 1991 for her portrayal of a deaf epileptic in Wildflower (1991). In 1997, after her mother died of breast cancer, Patricia took the lead in the fight against the disease. She has run in the annual Race for the Cure and in 1999 was the Lee National Denim Day spokesperson.- Actress
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From the age of five, Linda Blair had to get used to the spotlight, first as a child model and then as an actress, when out of 600 applicants she was picked for the role of Regan, the possessed child, in The Exorcist (1973). Linda quickly rose to international fame, won the Golden Globe, and seemed to be set to take the Academy Award for that role, but when it leaked how some parts of the role were not performed by her (the demonic voice was dubbed by Mercedes McCambridge, and eight seconds of a stunt dummy were used) that dream broke, and with that disappointment probably came the first blow to what looked like the beginning of an A-list career.
Over the next few years she had no trouble securing lead roles in a number of pictures, including the highly successful television films Born Innocent (1974) (the #1 TV movie of that year) and Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (1975), as well as the Exorcist sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). However, when she was peer pressured into buying cocaine at the age of 18, it led to an arrest and subsequent sentencing to three years probation. The much-publicized drug bust caused Linda to be blacklisted in Hollywood, and her career was soon reduced to B-movies and occasional TV guest appearances only.
Although her career never returned to its former glory, Linda proved to be a good sport about embracing the change, and out of the '80s emerged lead roles in two cult classics: the women-in-prison film Chained Heat (1983) and the femme fatale vigilante action film Savage Streets (1984). She continued acting in numerous films throughout the '80s and '90s, including the Exorcist spoof Repossessed (1990). In 1997, she also took to the Broadway stage and starred as "Rizzo" in the revival of "Grease." She received widespread mainstream attention again in the 2000's with the theatrical re-release of the Exorcist, followed by a hosting job on the hit Fox Family TV series Scariest Places on Earth (2000), which ran for six years and followed Linda as she visited notorious "haunted" locations around the world.
Linda was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Elinore, a real estate agent, and James, an executive headhunter. She has a brother, Jimmy, and a sister, Debbie. Linda has been a Hollywood icon for over 40 years, but it is her first love of animals that has ultimately taken center stage in her life. She now runs the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation, a non-profit 501C3 tax deductible organization dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating abused, neglected, and abandoned animals from the harsh streets of the Los Angeles area, as well as from the overcrowded and overwhelmed city and county animal shelters. She works and lives on the 2-acre rescue sanctuary full-time in California, which was featured on The Today Show in a segment titled "From Devil to Angel." Of course, she also makes frequent appearances at horror fan conventions to celebrate the legacy of The Exorcist (1973) .- Actress
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American stage, screen and television actress, and comedian Carol Kane (b. Carolyn Laurie Kane, June 18, 1952, in Cleveland, Ohio), was born to Elaine Joy (née Fetterman), a jazz singer and pianist, and Michael Myron Kane, an architect. Her family is Jewish (from Russia, Poland, and Austria). Due to her parents' divorce, Carol spent most of her childhood in boarding schools until 1965. She also attended Professional Children's School in Upper West Side New York, and made her professional theater debut in a 1966 production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) starring Tammy Grimes. Kane, just 14 years old.
At 20 years old, Kane landed the lead role in William Fruets World War II film, Wedding in White (1972). Kane starred as Jeannie Dougall, a teenager whom after is raped is left with a moral dilemma when she discovers that the incident has left her pregnant. The actress received a surprise Academy Award nomination for her performance in the 1974 independent film, Hester Street (1975); Times of Israel describes Kane's character, Gitl, as "a straight-from-the-shtetl immigrant who, with her young son, joins her husband (Steven Keats) who is already halfway assimilated in New York's Lower East Side; the push and the pull between tradition and change drive the story to its bittersweet conclusion."
The following decade, from 1980-1983, she appeared on the television series Taxi (1978). Kane portrayed Simka Dahblitz-Gravas, wife of Latka Gravas (Andy Kaufman). She received two Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe nomination for her work in the series. Over the years, Kane racked up tons of credits from Taxi and The Princess Bride (1987), to Scrooged (1988), and more recently, the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015); the actress is making audiences laugh by playing Lillian Kaushtupper, in a recent interview, Kane described Lillian as "a hardworking landlady in Harlem who is very attached to the life in New York as she's known it."- Producer
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Since melting audiences' hearts at the age of just six in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Drew Barrymore has emerged as one of the most beloved and singularly gifted actresses of her generation. Born in Culver City, California to John Drew Barrymore and Jaid Barrymore, the clutches of fame were near inescapable for young Drew, her father being a member of the esteemed showbiz dynasty fronted by stage star Maurice Barrymore, his thespian wife Georgiana and their three children: Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, and John Barrymore.
Tailgating a turbulent adolescence that saw her grapple with insobriety, substance abuse, and cutthroat media vitriol, a diligent Barrymore threw herself into her career throughout the early-mid nineties, first with a succession of 'bad girl' parts in cultish B-pictures like Poison Ivy (1992), Guncrazy (1992) and - fittingly - Bad Girls (1994); then warmly received turns in prestige vehicles such as Boys on the Side (1995), Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You (1996), and Wes Craven's game-changing Scream (1996). Equal portions of goofball - The Wedding Singer (1998), Never Been Kissed (1999), Charlie's Angels (2000) - and gravitas - Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), Donnie Darko (2001), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) - came next, with a Golden Globe-grabbing pièce de résistance - her divine incarnation of Edith Bouvier Beale in Grey Gardens (2009) - confirming that her skill set was every bit as forceful and far-reaching as imagined.
Having already set in motion a bunch of lucrative projects via production house Flower Films (co-est. with Nancy Juvonen in '95), Barrymore fastened an additional string to her bow when she spearheaded the sports dramedy Whip It (2009), her glowingly appraised directorial debut. Fresh off a healthy run of movie parts at the launch of the 2010s, her star turn as zombified suburban realtor Sheila Hammond - a tour de force at once dizzy and detailed - on Netflix's Santa Clarita Diet (2017) saw her step with trademark resolve into newer territory still: the flourishing world of small screen entertainment, a metamorphosis she continues to espouse with her role as compère of spirited daytime staple The Drew Barrymore Show (2020).- Actress
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Erin Brown (born October 16, 1979 in Illinois, USA) is an actress, model, and film director. Her "trademark" appearance is her pronounced "naturalness" or lack of affectation, both in acting style and appearance.
She began her career making films for the underground filmmakers Factory 2000, then moved on to making films for ei Independent Cinema. She has since starred in many features for Shock-O-Rama Cinema and has directed her own films. As of 2005, she is still working in film and engaged in filmmaking studies in college.- Actress
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Goldie Jeanne Hawn was born November 21, 1945 in Washington, D.C. to Laura Hawn, who owned a dance school, and Rut Hawn, a band musician. She has one sister, entertainment publicist Patti Hawn; a brother, Edward, died in infancy before her birth. She was raised in the Jewish religion. Her mother was Jewish and the daughter of Hungarian immigrants. Her father was Presbyterian. At the age of three, Goldie began taking ballet and tap dance lessons, and at the age of ten she danced in the chorus of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo production of "The Nutcracker". At the age of 19 she ran and instructed a ballet school, having dropped out of college where she was majoring in drama. Before going into the film business she worked as a professional dancer.
Hawn made her feature film debut in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968), with a small role as a giggling dancer. Her first big role came in 1969, where she played opposite Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman in Cactus Flower (1969), a role which earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. After the Oscar win her career took off and she followed with roles in successful comedies such as There's a Girl in My Soup (1970) and Shampoo (1975), and more dramatic roles in The Girl from Petrovka (1974) and The Sugarland Express (1974). In 1978, she starred alongside Chevy Chase in the box office hit, Foul Play (1978). In 1980 she starred in another box office hit, Private Benjamin (1980), where she also served as producer. During the 1980s she starred in hit movies such as Best Friends (1982), Protocol (1984) and Wildcats (1986). In 1987, she appeared with her boyfriend Kurt Russell in Overboard (1987), which became both a critical and box office disappointment. Her career slowed down after that until 1990 when she starred alongside Mel Gibson in Bird on a Wire (1990). In 1992 she starred in the successful film, Death Becomes Her (1992), with Meryl Streep and Bruce Willis, which was followed by another successful film HouseSitter (1992), which co-starred Steve Martin. In 1996 she played the role of an aging alcoholic actress in the comedy, The First Wives Club (1996), with Diane Keaton and Bette Midler; it became a critical and financial success. She also starred in the Woody Allen film Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and The Out-of-Towners (1999), which reunited her with Martin. In 2001 and 2002 she starred in Town & Country (2001) with Warren Beatty, and The Banger Sisters (2002) with Susan Sarandon.
Goldie has been married twice. First to dancer/director Gus Trikonis from 1969 to 1973. In 1976 she married musician Bill Hudson and became a mother for the first time that year, when she gave birth to their son Oliver Hudson. In 1979, she had her second child with Hudson, daughter Kate Hudson. The marriage ended in divorce in 1980. Since 1983, she has been having a relationship with actor Kurt Russell. Their son Wyatt Russell was born in 1986. Goldie is also a de-facto stepmother to Kurt's son Boston Russell. She has eight grandchildren.- Director
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Keith Gordon was born on 3 February 1961 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a director and actor, known for A Midnight Clear (1992), Waking the Dead (2000) and Mother Night (1996). He has been married to Rachel Griffin since 1998.- Actor
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Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall was born in Herne Hill, London, to Winifriede Lucinda (Corcoran), an Irish-born aspiring actress, and Thomas Andrew McDowall, a merchant seaman of Scottish descent. Young Roddy was enrolled in elocution courses at age five. By age 10, he had appeared in his first film, Murder in the Family (1938), playing Peter Osborne, the younger brother of sisters played by Jessica Tandy and Glynis Johns.
His mother brought Roddy and his sister to the U.S. at the beginning of World War II, and he soon got the part of "Huw", the youngest child in a family of Welsh coal miners, in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941), acting alongside Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara and Donald Crisp in the film that won that year's best film Oscar. He went on to many other child roles, in films like My Friend Flicka (1943) and Lassie Come Home (1943) until, at age eighteen, he moved to New York, where he played a long series of successful stage roles, both on Broadway and in such venues as Connecticut's Stratford Festival, where he did Shakespeare. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1949.
In addition to making many more movies (over 150), McDowall acted in television, developed an extensive collection of movies and Hollywood memorabilia, and published five acclaimed books of his own photography. He died at his Los Angeles home, aged 70, of cancer. He never married and had no children.- Actress
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Jennifer Jason Leigh was born Jennifer Lee Morrow in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of writer Barbara Turner and actor Vic Morrow. Her father was of Russian Jewish descent and her mother was of Austrian Jewish ancestry. She is the sister of Carrie Ann Morrow and half-sister of actress Mina Badie.
Jennifer's parents divorced when she was two. Jennifer worked in her first film at the age of nine, in a nonspeaking role for the film Death of a Stranger (1973). At 14 she attended summer acting workshops given by Lee Strasberg and later landed a role in the Disney TV movie The Young Runaways (1978). She received her Screen Actors Guild membership for an episode of the TV series Baretta (1975) when she was 16. Jennifer performed in several TV movies and dropped out of Pacific Palisades High School six weeks short of graduation for her major role in the film Eyes of a Stranger (1981). Her first major success came as the female lead in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).
Jennifer was married to writer/director Noah Baumbach from 2005 to 2013, and the two have a son.- Actress
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Heather Joan Graham was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Joan (Bransfield), a schoolteacher and children's book author, and James Graham, an FBI agent. She and her sister, actress Aimee Graham, were raised by their strictly Catholic parents. They relocated often, as a result of their father's occupation, and Heather became increasingly shy. Surprisingly, she had a passion for acting from an early age and despite being labeled a 'theater geek' by her peers, she was voted Most Talented by her high school senior class. Unfortunately, her love of acting created a tension between Heather and her family although her mother obligingly drove her to auditions in Hollywood throughout her adolescence.
After high school Heather moved to Los Angeles and received small roles in a variety of films including Drugstore Cowboy (1989). When her career did not take off as quickly as was hoped, Heather enrolled in the University of California at Los Angeles to get her degree in drama. It was at UCLA that she was noticed by actor James Woods and received a subsequent part in a film Woods starred in, Diggstown (1992). Heather dropped out of UCLA after two years to pursue her acting career on a full time basis. Aside from gaining a modeling contract with Emanuel Ungaro Liberte, Heather has risen to star in such films as Swingers (1996), a role she received after being taken out swing dancing by Jon Favreau, to blockbusters like Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), and Boogie Nights (1997).- Actress
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From Monkey Trouble (1994) to American Beauty (1999)-- that's Hollywood "Hocus Pocus"!
Thora Birch was born on Thursday (as in Thor's Day) March 11, 1982 in Los Angeles. Her father, Jack Birch, and mom, Carol Connors, named her after the Norse God Thor ("Thora" being the feminine), the God of Thunder; she has a younger brother named Bolt Birch. Thora appeared in one of the "classic" California raisin commercials in 1986 (at age 4), and later did other commercials. At age 6, Thora appeared in Purple People Eater (1988) and won a Youth in Film Award for her performance. Then, she appeared in the television series Parenthood (1990), which co-starred a not-yet-discovered Leonardo DiCaprio. Thora's breakout movie was Paradise (1991) with Elijah Wood and Melanie Griffith; Thora bested 4,000 young hopefuls to land the role and she, again, got great reviews. Thora appeared in Hocus Pocus (1993) with major stars; however, she got real recognition by having a starring role in Monkey Trouble (1994), in which her affection for her pet (and sometimes scene-stealing) monkey basically carried the entire movie (she and the monkey did their own stunts). All grown up, this petite beauty (5' 4") with green eyes had a major role in American Beauty (1999) which won 5 Oscar awards. Thora delivered a strong, effective performance as the alienated daughter of parents whose mid-life crises drive them to affairs and destruction; her acting was convincing and inspired and, once again, received good reviews. A down-to-earth young woman in real life, she loves Italian food and diet root beer.- Actress
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Kevin Smith called her an American Pop Icon and John Waters called her the ultimate bad girl. While her early notoriety brought her international fame, her determination, grit, and talent have garnered her respect in many areas of the entertainment industry. She has appeared in dozens of films and television shows such as Roger Corman's cult classic Not of This Earth, John Water's Crybaby, Marvel's Blade, Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno, to the award-winning Excision; from Melrose Place, Roseanne, Will & Grace to series regular roles on NBC's Profiler and Syfy's First Wave. Her memoir Traci Lords Underneath It All (HarperCollins) was a NY Times Bestseller, and her pioneering techno album 1000 Fires topped the Billboard Dance Chart and was featured on both the Mortal Combat and Virtuosity soundtracks earning double platinum status. Lords is an award-winning voice over artist and has a vintage inspired line of clothing. In 2020, she made her stage debut as Gloria in the revival of Tom Eyen's cult classic Women Behind Bar which is now streaming on Broadway World.
Lords is an Ohio native born to Patricia and Louis Kuzma. Young Nora Louise Kuzma spent her early days in rural Steubenville, Ohio shuttled between her divorced parent's houses. It was then that her mother began a relationship with a man named Roger Hayes and relocated to Southern California. Teenage Nora missed her father terribly and began to treat Roger as a father figure. Her mother eventually realized that Roger was not the man she had thought he was and ended the relationship but left Nora in Roger's care, claiming she was overwhelmed and couldn't provide for the teenager. In Traci's memoir Underneath It All, she states that Roger groomed her for nude modeling and sex trafficked her at that time. Porn agent Jim South has confirmed in various interviews that it was Roger Hayes who brought the 15-year-old to his office in Van Nuys, California in 1984. Armed with a fake ID, no one questioned the stunning woman-child who signed on as a figure model which eventually led to adult films. With her rebellious attitude and stunning looks, she shot to stardom quickly in the X-rated world.
In May 1986, the Traci Lords story broke. The media had a field day with the tale of the troubled bad girl who tricked the porn world. The FBI questioned Lords and announced that because she was a minor, she was not responsible and that all films that featured her must be destroyed. Lords was never arrested or charged with any crimes but was punished in other ways. She was forced to pay estimated taxes on her purported income. And has faced years of criticism and ridicule because of her history in adult movies but eventually carved an impressive body of work in mainstream Hollywood where she continues to thrive today. Lords' lives in Southern California with her husband and their son.- Actress
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Jennifer Love Hewitt was born in Waco, Texas, to Patricia Mae (Shipp), a speech-language pathologist, and Herbert Daniel Hewitt, a medical technician. She has English, Italian, French, Scottish, and German ancestry. She got her first name from her older brother Todd Daniel Hewitt (b. November 8, 1970), who picked the name after a little blonde girl on whom he'd had a crush. Her mother selected Jennifer's middle name, Love (which she goes by offstage), from her best college friend. Her parents separated when she was six months old and her mother raised her in Killeen, Texas.
Hewitt made her official performing debut at age 3 when she sang at a livestock show. At age 5, she was taking tap, jazz, and ballet lessons, which led to her joining the Texas Show Team, who toured the Soviet Union and Europe. When she was 10 her family moved to Los Angeles with encouragement from talent scouts, while Todd stayed behind to finish high school in Texas Jennifer quickly found commercial work and a role on Disney's Kids Incorporated (1984) in 1989. She went through a series of television flops before finally hitting it big on Party of Five (1994) in 1995.- Actor
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Sensual, ambiguous, ultra sensitive French performer Jean-Hugues Anglade always had a reputation of intense and passionate actor. Any role, any language, Anglade seems to be able to do anything. From appearing integrally naked alongside Beatrice Dalle in "37.2 degrees in the morning", to playing an homosexual role in "The wounded man", from portraying the king of France in "Queen Margot", to playing a Canadian cop alongside Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke in "Taking lives", from playing Anne Parillaud's lover in "Nikita", to showing the 40-years-old-men crisis. Now Anglade is an established actor, a respected artist and man, who overcame the drama of his childhood.- Actress
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The sultry, versatile, petite (5' 4") beauty Sherilyn Fenn was born Sheryl Ann Fenn in Detroit, Michigan, into a family of musicians. The youngest of three children, her mother, Arlene Quatro, played keyboard in rock bands, her aunt is rock-star Suzi Quatro, and her grandfather, Art Quatro, was a jazz musician. Her father, Leo Fenn, was the manager of such bands as The Pleasure Seekers (the all-girl band formed by the Quatro sisters), Alice Cooper, and The Billion Dollar Babies. Sherilyn's ancestry includes Irish, Italian, Hungarian, German, and Bohemian Czech.
Sherilyn traveled a lot with her divorced mother and two older brothers before the family settled in Los Angeles when she was seventeen. Fenn, who says herself she's demure didn't want to start with a new school again and soon enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute.
Fenn began her career with a number of B-movies including The Wild Life (1984) (alongside Chris Penn), skater film Thrashin' (1986) (opposite Josh Brolin) and teen-fantasy movie The Wraith (1986) (opposite Charlie Sheen). She had a memorable part in the cult teen-comedy Just One of the Guys (1985) in which she tries to seduce a teenage girl disguised as a boy, played by Joyce Hyser. Fenn landed her first starring role, as an engaged heiress to an old Southern family experiencing her sexual awakening in Zalman King's erotic drama film Two Moon Junction (1988), after which she said she wanted to hide for a year. Fenn won her most outstanding role and made an indelible impression on the public when she was cast by David Lynch and Mark Frost as the tantalizing Audrey Horne, the high-school femme fatale from the critically acclaimed TV series Twin Peaks (1990). The series ran from 1990 to 1991, and the character of Audrey was one of the most popular with fans, in particular for her unrequited love for FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (played by Kyle MacLachlan) and her style from the '50s (with her saddle shoes, plaid skirts and tight sweaters). Sherilyn made a memorable impression as the cherry stem-twisting siren. This was her breakout role; even now she says of her Twin Peaks (1990) experience: "It still makes me feel kind of proud and special to be part of something like that". In the show's second season, when the idea of pairing Audrey and Cooper was abandoned, Audrey was paired with other characters like Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) and John Justice Wheeler (Billy Zane). Sherilyn hit cult status when Lynch filmed her dancing on Angelo Badalamenti's music and with another memorable scene in which her character knotted a cherry stem with her tongue.
Shortly after shooting Twin Peaks' pilot episode, David Lynch gave her a small but impressive part in Wild at Heart (1990), as a girl injured in a car wreck, obsessed by the contents of her purse, opposite Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern. According to Fenn, the turning point in her career was when she met veteran acting coach Roy London in 1990. She credits him with instilling confidence and newfound enthusiasm.
After two nominations (Emmy and Golden Globe) and covers for Rolling Stone and Playboy magazines, Fenn was propelled to stardom and became a major sex symbol. She was chosen as one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World", was named one of the "10 Most Beautiful Women in the World" by Us magazine, and one of the "100 Sexiest Women in the World" by FHM magazine. Fenn's classic looks - with her lily-white skin, vertiginous boomerang eyebrows, beauty mark next to her left eye and topaz eyes - were highlighted by renowned photographers like George Hurrell Sr., Steven Meisel, and Bettina Rheims, and led her to be compared to the ones like Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner. Fenn has had an eclectic career with a significant body of work following Twin Peaks (1990). She chose to focus on widening her range of roles and was determined to avoid typecasting. She turned down the Audrey Horne spin-off series that was offered to her, and unlike most of the cast, chose not to return for the 1992 prequel movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), as she was then shooting Of Mice and Men (1992). She proved her mettle as an actress with varied roles in neo-noir black comedy Desire and Hell at Sunset Motel (1991) (as a sultry femme fatale, opposite Whip Hubley and David Hewlett), huis-clos Diary of a Hitman (1991) (the directorial debut of her acting coach Roy London, in which she plays a fragile mother who confronts hitman Forest Whitaker), John Mackenzie's fictionalized biopic Ruby (1992), (as stripper Sheryl Ann DuJean, a Marilyn Monroe look-alike fictional character, who is a composite of several real-life women from Jack Ruby and president John Kennedy's entourage; opposite 'Danny Aiello' and Arliss Howard), romantic comedy Three of Hearts (1993) (as Kelly Lynch and William Baldwin's love interest), Carl Reiner's 1940s detective parody Fatal Instinct (1993) (as Armand Assante's lovesick secretary and Sean Young and Kate Nelligan's rival) and Showtime's biblical Slave of Dreams (1995), directed by Robert M. Young (as Potiphar's seductive wife Zulaikha, opposite Adrian Pasdar and Edward James Olmos, and produced by Dino De Laurentiis).
A highlight of Fenn's film career is Gary Sinise's film adaptation of Of Mice and Men (1992), in which she brought nuance to the role of a seductive and lonely country wife, desperately in need to talk to somebody, opposite Sinise and John Malkovich. In 1993, Fenn teamed up with David Lynch's daughter Jennifer Lynch and starred in her directorial debut Boxing Helena (1993) as a haughty seductress forced to live in a box after her limbs were amputated by love-obsessed surgeon Julian Sands in an effort to possess her (a role Kim Basinger backed out of). Both Lynch and Fenn were proud of their work in it but the film - which was overshadowed by the lawsuits against Kim Basinger after she dropped out - ultimately was a critical and commercial failure. Another outstanding performance was in NBC's miniseries Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story (1995). During the shooting, Fenn fought to keep integrity in the script. Her priority was to respectfully and accurately portray Taylor, and she supported the original screenwriter's effort to concentrate on Taylor the person, not the legend. The same year she starred in an episode of Tales from the Crypt (1989) directed by Robert Zemeckis, alongside Isabella Rossellini and John Lithgow, as the lover of Humphrey Bogart, who appeared in the episode via CGI special effects. She went on to star in independent films that have been well received on the festival circuit like Jon Harmon Feldman's Lovelife (1997) (as a low self-esteemed waitress, along with Bruce Davison, Jon Tenney, Carla Gugino and Saffron Burrows), romantic comedy Just Write (1997) (as the dream actress of Hollywood tour bus driver Jeremy Piven, who mistakes him for a famous screenwriter) and Adrian Pasdar's neo-noir directorial debut Cement (2000), a contemporary re-telling of "Othello", in which she played a tempting but imprudent femme fatale, alongside Chris Penn, Jeffrey Wright and Henry Czerny.
Tired of Hollywood, Fenn contemplated starting a European career when she starred opposite Ray Winstone in the British psychological drama and huis-clos Darkness Falls (1999) (as a wealthy, neglected wife, sequestered with her husband by a man determined to understand the events that led to his wife ending up in a coma). She eventually decided to return to the United-States and gained newfound enthusiasm with the lead role in Showtime's dark comedy Rude Awakening (1998) as Billie Frank, an alcoholic ex-soap actress who struggles with her self-destructive habits. Based upon creator/executive producer Claudia Lonow's experience, the series ran from 1998 to 2001 and co-starred Lynn Redgrave, Jonathan Penner and Mario Van Peebles. Following Rude Awakening (1998), Fenn's film and television credits have included Showtime's family comedy Off Season (2001), directed by Bruce Davison (along with Hume Cronyn, Rory Culkin, Adam Arkin and Davison; as a singer who takes care of her orphaned nephew), Matthew Ryan Hoge's The United States of Leland (2003) (as a woman who represents happiness and joie de vivre to Ryan Gosling), Showtime's Cavedweller (2004) (2004, along with Kyra Sedgwick and directed by Lisa Cholodenko), Geretta Geretta's Whitepaddy (2006) (opposite Lisa Bonet and Hill Harper, as a woman who struggles with her dysfunctional family after she reluctantly returned home and tries to fit in with her new neighborhood that has become predominantly black), Emily Skopov's Novel Romance (2006) (as a pregnancy shop owner, opposite Traci Lords and Paul Johansson), psychological thriller Presumed Dead (2006) (as a female detective working on a missing person case, who has to outwit crime novelist Duncan Regehr in order to get to the truth), and The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning (2007) (as a flirtatious version of Lulu Hogg).
Fenn has appeared along with Rob Estes and Milo Ventimiglia in a 2003 episode of Amy Sherman-Palladino's Gilmore Girls (2000), which was the pilot for a California-set spin-off, eventually dropped by the network. Sherman-Palladino brought her back in the series with a different part as Scott Patterson's ex-girlfriend and protective mother to his daughter (2006-2007). Fenn had previously had recurring parts on Dawson's Creek (1998), (2002, as Joshua Jackson's seductive boss) and Boston Public (2000) (2003-2004, as a porn star turned tutor). Other notable guest appearances have included 21 Jump Street (1987) (opposite her then-fiancé Johnny Depp), Friends (1994) (1997, as Matthew Perry's wooden-legged girlfriend), The Outer Limits (1995) (2001, as a duplicated scientist), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) (2002, as a manipulative actress), and The 4400 (2004) (2005, as Jean DeLynn Baker, a 4400 who has the ability to grow deadly toxin-emitting spores on her hands).
Fenn's interest in directing and children led her to step behind the camera to direct in 2006 a documentary film about the child enrichment program CosmiKids and Judy Julin, the program's founder. She subsequently joined its executive team as executive director of the film and television division.
On set, Sherilyn is noted for having a quirky sense of humor and a joie de vivre. Off-screen, Sherilyn is proud of the friendship she has maintained with her ex-hubby Toulouse Holliday, a musician and film technician. Sherilyn lives with her son, Myles, and two cats: Ophelia and Redmond. Sherilyn practices meditative kundalini yoga, and every room in her house has feng shui elements-- crystals in one corner, water in another. Sherilyn enjoys biking, swimming and cooking, and of course being a mom: "After I had my son, I found life much funnier and brighter".- Actress
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French actress and model Eva Gaëlle Green was born on July 6, 1980, in Paris, France. Her father, Walter Green, is a dentist who appeared in the 1966 film Au hasard Balthazar (1966). Her mother, Marlène Jobert, is an actress turned children's book writer. Eva's mother was born in Algeria, of French, Spanish, and Sephardic Jewish heritage (during that time, Algeria was part of France), and Eva's father is of Swedish, French, and Breton descent. She has a fraternal twin sister, Joy. Eva left French school at 17. She switched to the American School in France for one year. She left the American School and studied acting at Saint Paul Drama School in Paris for three years, then had a 10-week polishing course at the Weber Douglas Academy of dramatic Art in London. She returned to Paris as an accomplished young actress, and played on stage in several theater productions: "La Jalousie en Trois Fax" and "Turcaret". There, she caught the eye of director Bernardo Bertolucci. Green followed a recommendation to work on her English. She studied for two months with an English coach before doing The Dreamers (2003) with Bernardo Bertolucci. During their work, Bertolucci described Green as being "so beautiful it's indecent".
Green won critical acclaim for her role in The Dreamers (2003). After "The Dreamers", Green played the love interest of cult French gentleman-thief, Arsène Lupin (2004), opposite Romain Duris. In 2005, she co-starred, opposite Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson, in Kingdom of Heaven (2005), produced and directed by Ridley Scott. The film brought her a wider international exposure. She turned down the femme fatale role in The Black Dahlia (2006), that went to Hilary Swank, because she didn't want to end up typecast after her role in "The Dreamers". Instead, Eva accepted the prestigious role of "Vesper Lynd", one of three Bond girls, opposite Daniel Craig, in Casino Royale (2006) and became the fifth French actress to play a James Bond girl, after Claudine Auger in Thunderball (1965), Corinne Cléry in Moonraker (1979), Carole Bouquet in For Your Eyes Only (1981) and Sophie Marceau in The World Is Not Enough (1999). She achieved international recognition for the film, one of the highest-grossing Bond movies ever.
Since then, Green has starred in the films Dark Shadows (2012), 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014), and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016). She also starred as Vanessa Ives in Showtime's horror drama Penny Dreadful (2014). Her performance in the series earned her a nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series - Drama at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards.
Since her school years, Green has been a cosmopolitan multilingual and multicultural person. Yet, since her father always lived in France with them and her mother, she and her twin sister can't speak Swedish. She developed a wide scope of interests beyond her acting profession and became an aspiring art connoisseur and an avid museum visitor. Her other activities, outside of acting, include playing and composing music, cooking at home, walking her terrier, and collecting art. She shares time between her two residencies, one is in Paris, France, and one in London, England.- Actress
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Jane Birkin was born on 14 December 1946 in London, England, UK. She was an actress and director, known for Evil Under the Sun (1982), Blow-Up (1966) and Death on the Nile (1978). She was married to John Barry. She died on 16 July 2023 in Paris, France.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Phoebe Belle Cates was born on July 16, 1963 in New York City, New York, and raised there. She is the daughter of Lily and Joseph Cates, who was a Broadway producer and television pioneer. Her uncle was director/producer Gilbert Cates. Phoebe is of Russian Jewish, and one quarter Chinese, descent. She studied at Miss Hewitt's school and at the Professional Children's School in New York City. She took classes at Juilliard when she was ten-years-old for three and a half years until a knee injury forced her to stop. Phoebe had been a busy New York model starting at the age of fourteen. She's since been featured on the covers of four Seventeens, two Elle covers, a British Vogue, and Andy Warhol's Interview, as well as in numerous layouts in other magazines. She actively pursued her modeling career, until she met her film agent at a party at New York's Studio 54. She trains with Robert Ravan, founder of The Actors' Circle in New York. Previously she studied with Alice Spivack of the H.B. Studios. Cates made her motion picture debut as Sarah in Paradise (1982) in the same year she starred as Jennifer Jason Leigh's "experienced" confidante in Amy Heckerling's acclaimed Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). Cates then landed the role of "Christine Ramsey" in Private School (1983), then co-starred in the innovative Gremlins (1984) for Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, directed by Joe Dante. Cates has remained active in theatre, as well. After making her New York debut in Joseph Papp's Off-Broadway production of "The Nest of the Wood Grouse" in 1984, she followed with David Henry Hwang's "Rich Relations" at The Second Stage and a one-act festival at the Manhattan Punchline. On the West Coast, Cates played "Nina" in the La Jolla Playhouse production of Anton Chekhov's "The Sea Gull" and has since appeared in "Much Ado About Nothing" at New York's Public Theatre, and as "Juliet" in Chicago's Goodman Theatre production of "Romeo and Juliet".
Since 1989, Cates has been married to actor Kevin Kline, with whom she has two children.- Actress
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The late Adrienne Shelly was born in Queens, New York, to Elaine Langbaum and Sheldon Levine. After graduating Jericho High School in Jericho, New York, she enrolled at Boston University and majored in film production. She dropped out after her junior year and moved to Manhattan, where she made a name for herself in independent films with her work in The Unbelievable Truth (1989) and Trust (1990). She eventually moved behind the camera, writing and directing I'll Take You There (1999) and Waitress (2007) (her final film).
On November 1, 2006, Adrienne Shelly was murdered. She was survived by her husband Andy Ostroy and their daughter Sophie.- Actress
- Producer
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"Want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing." If you have not heard of Brooke Shields before, this tagline from her Calvin Klein Jeans ad had to grab your attention. Not that she has not had a previously noteworthy resume. She was born on May 31, 1965 in New York City, to Teri (Schmon) and Frank Shields. At age 12, she starred as a child prostitute in Pretty Baby (1978). Could this movie even be made today? It was considered risky and controversial in 1978. It was followed by another blockbuster, the romance adventure drama The Blue Lagoon (1980). Brooke has proved herself to be so much more than her early films. Her broad range of work as an adult would be quite an achievement for anyone, especially given how difficult transitioning from child actor to adult often is.
She has never stopped working, whether it be a Bob Hope Christmas special, her own sitcom Suddenly Susan (1996) or as an author. She also managed to work on a degree from Princeton University. She has received a number of awards during her career, most notably The People's Choice award for 1981 through 1984 in the category of Favorite Young Performer. In 1997, she was honored again with The People's Choice award for Favorite Female Performer in a New Television Series in 1997 for her work in Suddenly Susan (1996). In her personal life, she was married in 1997 to tennis player Andre Agassi and was devastated when they divorced two years later. She married for the second time in 2001 to Chris Henchy. She has been open about using fertility treatments to become pregnant with their daughter, Rowan, born in 2003.
When suffering debilitating depression after the birth of her daughter, she made the decision to put her feelings down on paper. Her book, "Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression," takes a hard, honest look at what she and many other women experience after childbirth. She still lives in New York City, and is still sought after for work in movies, television, and on stage. Pretty nice list of achievements for the once Calvin Klein jeans girl.- Actress
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Shannen Doherty was born in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, on April 12, 1971, to Rosa Doherty (Wright) and Tom Doherty. Her father worked in a bank, while her mother owned a beauty parlor. She has an older brother, Sean B. Doherty. Her ancestry includes Irish, English, Scottish, and French. In 1978, at the tender age of seven, she and her family moved to Los Angeles, where her father started a West Coast branch of the family transportation business. She knew she wanted to pursue an acting career when she made her acting debut at age ten, with a role on the series Father Murphy (1981).
Shannen was a confident student, involving herself in school performances and working hard in school, making sure she always had exceptional grades. Despite her confidence she isolated herself from large crowds and preferred to few close friends. She made a name for herself as a child actress at just 11-years-old, starring in Little House on the Prairie (1974) as Jenny Wilder. It was Michael Landon who noticed her performance in an episode of Father Murphy (1981) that he decided to cast her. She then went on to appear in Our House (1986) with Deidre Hall and Wilford Brimley. She also starred alongside Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985) and then in Heathers (1988), a teen comedy also starring Winona Ryder.
Her real success came in 1990, at the age of 19, when she was cast in Aaron Spelling's long-running hit series, Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) as Brenda Walsh, the twin sister of Brandon Walsh, played by Jason Priestley. She attracted media attention from the press and eventually made her a household name. The success of the popular teen drama appealed to young teenage girls who could relate to her character. After four years she left the show in 1994. Afterward, she continued her work in movies, starring in the thriller Almost Dead (1994) and the comedy Mallrats (1995).
During the fall of 1998, she reunited with long-time producer Aaron Spelling, when she was cast as Prue Halliwell on Charmed (1998), a show about three ordinary women who happen to be witches. She starred alongside Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs. After three years she left the show to find work in movies. Before her departure from the show she directed three of the last episodes in which she starred. She continued her work in movies by starring in Another Day (2001), The Rendering (2002), Hell on Heels: The Battle of Mary Kay (2002), and View of Terror (2003). In 2003, she hosted season one of Scare Tactics (2003) as well as season two with only 8 episodes and then left to pursue other endeavors.
In the fall of 2004, Shannen made her return to television on Fox's drama series North Shore (2004), where she played Alexandra Hudson, the long-lost sister of Nicole Booth, played by Brooke Burns. The show was canceled after one season. Then in 2005 she landed the role of Denise Johnson on the UPN series Love, Inc. (2005); however, after the pilot episode she was dropped from the sitcom. From there she has ventured into new projects and in 2006 she starred in her own reality series, Breaking Up with Shannen Doherty (2006).- Actress
- Producer
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Anne Celeste Heche was an American actress, director, and screenwriter. She came to recognition portraying Vicky Hudson and Marley Love in the soap opera Another World (1964), which won her a Daytime Emmy Award and two Soap Opera Digest Awards. She came to mainstream prominence in the late 1990s with roles in the crime drama film Donnie Brasco (1997), the disaster film Volcano (1997), the slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), the action comedy film Six Days Seven Nights (1998), and the drama-thriller film Return to Paradise (1998).- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Julianne Moore was born Julie Anne Smith in Fort Bragg, North Carolina on December 3, 1960, the daughter of Anne (Love), a social worker, and Peter Moore Smith, a paratrooper, colonel, and later military judge. Her mother moved to the U.S. in 1951, from Greenock, Scotland. Her father, from Burlington, New Jersey, has German, Irish, Welsh, German-Jewish, and English ancestry.
Moore spent the early years of her life in over two dozen locations around the world with her parents, during her father's military career. She finally found her place at Boston University, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree in acting from the School of the Performing Arts. After graduation (in 1983), She took the stage name "Julianne Moore" because there was another actress named "Julie Anne Smith". Julianne moved to New York and worked extensively in theater, including appearances off-Broadway in two Caryl Churchill plays, Serious Money and Ice Cream With Hot Fudge and as Ophelia in Hamlet at The Guthrie Theatre. But despite her formal training, Julianne fell into the attractive actress' trap of the mid-1980's: TV soaps and miniseries. She appeared briefly in the daytime serial The Edge of Night (1956) and from 1985 to 1988 she played two half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina on the soap As the World Turns (1956). This performance later led to an Outstanding Ingénue Daytime Emmy Award in 1988. Her subsequent appearances were in mostly forgettable TV-movies, such as Money, Power, Murder. (1989), The Last to Go (1991) and Cast a Deadly Spell (1991).
She made her entrance into the big screen with 1990's Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), where she played the victim of a mummy. Two years later, Julianne appeared in feature films with supporting parts in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and the comedy The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag (1992). She kept winning better and more powerful roles as time went on, including a small but memorable role as a doctor who spots Kimble Harrison Ford and attempts to thwart his escape in The Fugitive (1993). (A role that made such an impression on Steven Spielberg that he cast her in the Jurassic Park (1993) sequel without an audition in 1997). In one of Moore's most distinguished performances, she recapitulated her "beguiling Yelena" from Andre Gregory's workshop version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya in Louis Malle's critically acclaimed Vanya on 42nd Street (1994). Director Todd Haynes gave Julianne her first opportunity to take on a lead role in Safe (1995). Her portrayal of Carol White, an affluent L.A. housewife who develops an inexplicable allergic reaction to her environment, won critical praise as well as an Independent Spirit Award nomination.
Later that year she found her way into romantic comedy, co-starring as Hugh Grant's pregnant girlfriend in Nine Months (1995). Following films included Assassins (1995), where she played an electronics security expert targeted for death (next to Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas) and Surviving Picasso (1996), where she played Dora Maar, one of the numerous lovers of Picasso (portrayed by her hero, Anthony Hopkins). A year later, after co-starring in Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), opposite Jeff Goldblum, a young and unknown director, Paul Thomas Anderson asked Julianne to appear in his movie, Boogie Nights (1997). Despite her misgivings, she finally was won over by the script and her decision to play the role of Amber Waves, a loving porn star who acts as a mother figure to a ragtag crew, proved to be a wise one, since she received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. Julianne started 1998 by playing an erotic artist in The Big Lebowski (1998), continued with a small role in the social comedy Chicago Cab (1997) and ended with a subtle performance in Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho (1960). 1999 had Moore as busy as an actress can be.
As the century closed, Julianne starred in a number of high-profile projects, beginning with Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune (1999) , in which she was cast as the mentally challenged but adorable sister of a decidedly unhinged Glenn Close. A portrayal of the scheming Mrs. Cheveley followed in Oliver Parker's An Ideal Husband (1999) with a number of critics asserting that Moore was the best part of the movie. She then enjoyed another collaboration with director Anderson in Magnolia (1999) and continued with an outstanding performance in The End of the Affair (1999), for which she garnered another Oscar nomination. She ended 1999 with another great performance, that of a grieving mother in A Map of the World (1999), opposite Sigourney Weaver.- Actor
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Dennis Christopher was born on 2 December 1950 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He is an actor, known for Django Unchained (2012), Breaking Away (1979) and Fade to Black (1980).- Actress
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Diane Keaton was born Diane Hall in Los Angeles, California, to Dorothy Deanne (Keaton), an amateur photographer, and John Newton Ignatius "Jack" Hall, a civil engineer and real estate broker. She studied Drama at Santa Ana College, before dropping out in favor of the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. After appearing in summer stock for several months, she got her first major stage role in the Broadway rock musical "Hair". As understudy to the lead, she gained attention by not removing any of her clothing. In 1968, Woody Allen cast her in his Broadway play "Play It Again, Sam," which had a successful run. It was during this time that she became involved with Allen and appeared in a number of his films. The first one was Play It Again, Sam (1972), the screen adaptation of the stage play. That same year Francis Ford Coppola cast her as Kay in the Oscar-winning The Godfather (1972), and she was on her way to stardom. She reprized that role in the film's first sequel, The Godfather Part II (1974). She then appeared with Allen again in Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975).
In 1977, she broke away from her comedy image to appear in the chilling Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), which won her a Golden Globe nomination. It was the same year that she appeared in what many regard as her best performance, in the title role of Annie Hall (1977), which Allen wrote specifically for her (her real last name is Hall, and her nickname is Annie), and what an impact she made. She won the Oscar and the British Award for Best Actress, and Allen won the Directors Award from the DGA. She started a fashion trend with her unisex clothes and was the poster girl for a lot of young males. Her mannerisms and awkward speech became almost a national craze. The question being asked, though, was, "Is she just a lightweight playing herself, or is there more depth to her personality?" For whatever reason, she appeared in but one film a year for the next two years and those films were by Allen. When they broke up she was next involved with Warren Beatty and appeared in his film Reds (1981), as the bohemian female journalist Louise Bryant. For her performance, she received nominations for the Academy Award and the Golden Globe. For the rest of the 1980s she appeared infrequently in films but won nominations in three of them. Attempting to break the typecasting she had fallen into, she took on the role of a confused, somewhat naive woman who becomes involved with Middle Eastern terrorists in The Little Drummer Girl (1984). To offset her lack of movie work, Diane began directing. She directed the documentary Heaven (1987), as well as some music videos. For television she directed an episode of the popular, but strange, Twin Peaks (1990).
In the 1990s, she began to get more mature roles, though she reprized the role of Kay Corleone in the third "Godfather" epic, The Godfather Part III (1990). She appeared as the wife of Steve Martin in the hit Father of the Bride (1991) and again in Father of the Bride Part II (1995). In 1993 she once again teamed with Woody Allen in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), which was well received. In 1995 she received high marks for Unstrung Heroes (1995), her first major feature as a director.- Actor
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Born in Rhinebeck, New York, he got into acting when he was 5 years old, after his sister had appeared in 30-odd commercials. Since then he has acted opposite some of the best actors in Hollywood as a bright, expressive actor with complexity, sensitivity, and emotion. He attended film school at USC and got a degree in cinema and television production. He plans on continuing his acting career while also following his aspirations of becoming a director.- Actor
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David Kross was born on July 4, 1990 in Bargteheide, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany next to Hamburg. He attended Eckhorst High School in Bargteheide till 2007. In this period, he first appears in the German movie Verzauberte Emma oder Hilfe, ich bin ein Junge... ! (2002). He also receives his first leading role in the movie Tough Enough (2006) directed by Detlev Buck.
In 2007 Stephen Daldry cast Kross in the adaption of his best selling novel "The Reader (2008)" provided that Kross had to learn English until the start of shooting. Later, Kross was honored with the Chopard trophy at the 62nd Cannes Festival playing on of the leading roles, opposite Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes.
He subsequently stars in War Horse (2011) and Into the White (2012).- Actor
- Producer
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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.- Actress
- Additional Crew
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Theresa Russell, named one of the "100 sexiest stars in film history" (Empire Magazine), was born in San Diego, California. She was discovered by a photographer at the age of 12, and made her film debut in Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon (1976), opposite Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Robert Mitchum, at the age of 19. Her resume of nearly fifty films has centered on ground-breaking roles in acclaimed independent films, such as Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980), directed by Nicolas Roeg (whom she would later marry); Eureka (1983); Insignificance (1985); Aria (1987) and Ken Russell's Whore (1991). Her legendary star turn in the thriller, Black Widow (1987), co-starring Debra Winger, stands as one of the most iconic female crime dramas in cinema history. She has had roles in major film and television projects, including the feature films, Straight Time (1978), opposite Dustin Hoffman and Kathy Bates; The Razor's Edge (1984), opposite Bill Murray; Physical Evidence (1989) with Burt Reynolds; Kafka (1991), directed by Steven Soderbergh, playing opposite Jeremy Irons; Impulse (1990), directed by Sondra Locke; The Believer (2001), opposite Ryan Gosling; Luckytown (2000), with Kirsten Dunst and James Caan; Being Human (1994), opposite Robin Williams; Wild Things (1998), with Denise Richards, Matt Dillon and Kevin Bacon; Jolene (2008), opposite Jessica Chastain; the block-buster Spider-Man 3 (2007), and the mini-series Blind Ambition (1979), with Martin Sheen; Empire Falls (2005), with Ed Harris, Paul Newman and Helen Hunt; and Lifetime's Liz & Dick (2012), opposite Lindsay Lohan, portraying Elizabeth Taylor's mother.
Along with her then-partner, legendary jazz musician, Michael Melvoin, she has performed in jazz clubs throughout the United States. She is the mother of two sons (Statten Roeg and Maximillian Roeg).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Suellyn Lyon was born in Davenport, Iowa, the youngest of five siblings born to Sue Lyon (née Karr) and James Lyon. Sue Karr Lyon was 42 years old when she was widowed, when Suellyn was just 10 months old. Her mother worked in a hospital to provide for her children, and money was tight. The family then moved to Los Angeles in hopes that Suellyn could help out financially as a model.
She duly got jobs modeling for JC Penney, and doing a commercial, which featured her bleached blonde hair. She landed small parts on Dennis the Menace (1959) and The Loretta Young Show (1953). Director Stanley Kubrick saw Sue on the show and suggested to his partner that they should see her for the role of Lolita (1962). She was signed by the Glenn Shaw agency, and Pat Holmes, an agent, brought her down to Kubrick for audition, and won the part of Lolita.
In 1964, Sue married Hampton Fancher III but the marriage, like the four that would follow, would end in divorce. She was appearing at the time in such movies as 7 Women (1965), The Flim-Flam Man (1967) and Tony Rome (1967). Her second husband was Roland Harrison, an African-American photographer and football coach. The controversy over their marriage made them decide to move to Europe. She continued in movies like Evel Knievel (1971), Game of Murder (1973), and Murder in a Blue World (1973), but wound up divorcing Harrison, in part due to the fallout over the controversy and other problems.
Sue met Gary "Cotton" Adamson at the Colorado State Penitentiary, where he was serving time for murder and robbery. She worked as a cocktail waitress and lived in a hotel in Denver nearby. She married him in 1973 and began working for prison reform and conjugal rights. Unfortunately this was another short-lived marriage as she divorced him after he committed yet another robbery. More films followed including Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (1976), The Astral Factor (1978), Towing (1978), Crash! (1976), Don't Push, I'll Charge When I'm Ready (1971) and her final film, Alligator (1980).
Sue married Edward Weathers in 1983, but the marriage ended a year later. She married a radio engineer, Richard Rudman, but that marriage, like the four before it, ended in divorce.
Sue Lyon died in 2019, aged 73. She was survived by her only child, a daughter, Nona Harrison (from her marriage to Roland Harrison).- Actress
- Producer
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Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was considered one of the last, if not the last, major star to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system. She was known internationally for her beauty, especially for her violet eyes, with which she captured audiences early in her youth and kept the world hooked with ever after.
Taylor was born on February 27, 1932 in London, England. Although she was born an English subject, her parents, Sara Taylor (née Sara Viola Warmbrodt) and Francis Taylor, were Americans, art dealers from St. Louis, Missouri. Her father had moved to London to set up a gallery prior to Elizabeth's birth. Her mother had been an actress on the stage, but gave up that vocation when she married. Elizabeth lived in London until the age of seven, when the family left for the US when the clouds of war began brewing in Europe in 1939. They sailed without her father, who stayed behind to wrap up the loose ends of the art business.
The family relocated to Los Angeles, where Mrs. Taylor's own family had moved. Mr. Taylor followed not long afterward. A family friend noticed the strikingly beautiful little Elizabeth and suggested that she be taken for a screen test. Her test impressed executives at Universal Pictures enough to sign her to a contract. Her first foray onto the screen was in There's One Born Every Minute (1942), released when she was ten. Universal dropped her contract after that one film, but Elizabeth was soon picked up by MGM.
The first production she made with that studio was Lassie Come Home (1943), and on the strength of that one film, MGM signed her for a full year. She had minuscule parts in her next two films, The White Cliffs of Dover (1944) and Jane Eyre (1943) (the former made while she was on loan to 20th Century-Fox). Then came the picture that made Elizabeth a star: MGM's National Velvet (1944). She played Velvet Brown opposite Mickey Rooney. The film was a smash hit, grossing over $4 million. Elizabeth now had a long-term contract with MGM and was its top child star. She made no films in 1945, but returned in 1946 in Courage of Lassie (1946), another success. In 1947, when she was 15, she starred in Life with Father (1947) with such heavyweights as William Powell, Irene Dunne and Zasu Pitts, which was one of the biggest box office hits of the year. She also co-starred in the ensemble film Little Women (1949), which was also a box office huge success.
Throughout the 1950s, Elizabeth appeared in film after film with mostly good results, starting with her role in the George Stevens film A Place in the Sun (1951), co-starring her good friend Montgomery Clift. The following year, she co-starred in Ivanhoe (1952), one of the biggest box office hits of the year. Her busiest year was 1954. She had a supporting role in the box office flop Beau Brummell (1954), but later that year starred in the hits The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) and Elephant Walk (1954). She was 22 now, and even at that young age was considered one of the world's great beauties. In 1955 she appeared in the hit Giant (1956) with James Dean.
Sadly, Dean never saw the release of the film, as he died in a car accident in 1955. The next year saw Elizabeth co-star with Montgomery Clift in Raintree County (1957), an overblown epic made, partially, in Kentucky. Critics called it dry as dust. In addition, Clift was seriously injured during the film, with Taylor helping save his life. Despite the film's shortcomings and off-camera tragedy, Elizabeth was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Southern belle Susanna Drake. However, on Oscar night the honor went to Joanne Woodward for The Three Faces of Eve (1957).
In 1958 Elizabeth starred as Maggie Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). The film received rave reviews from the critics and Elizabeth was nominated again for an Academy Award for best actress, but this time she lost to Susan Hayward in I Want to Live! (1958). She was still a hot commodity in the film world, though. In 1959 she appeared in another mega-hit and received yet another Oscar nomination for Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Once again, however, she lost out, this time to Simone Signoret for Room at the Top (1958). Her Oscar drought ended in 1960 when she brought home the coveted statue for her performance in BUtterfield 8 (1960) as Gloria Wandrous, a call girl who is involved with a married man. Some critics blasted the movie but they couldn't ignore her performance. There were no more films for Elizabeth for three years. She left MGM after her contract ran out, but would do projects for the studio later down the road. In 1963 she starred in Cleopatra (1963), which was one of the most expensive productions up to that time--as was her salary, a whopping $1,000,000. The film took years to complete, due in part to a serious illness during which she nearly died.
This was the film where she met her future and fifth husband, Richard Burton (the previous four were Conrad Hilton, Michael Wilding, Mike Todd--who died in a plane crash--and Eddie Fisher). Her next films, The V.I.P.s (1963) and The Sandpiper (1965), were lackluster at best. Elizabeth was to return to fine form, however, with the role of Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Her performance as the loudmouthed, shrewish, unkempt, yet still alluring Martha was easily her finest to date. For this she would win her second Oscar and one that was more than well-deserved. The following year, she and Burton co-starred in The Taming of The Shrew (1967), again giving winning performances. However, her films afterward were box office failures, including Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), The Comedians (1967), Boom! (1968) (again co-starring with Burton), Secret Ceremony (1968), The Only Game in Town (1970), X, Y & Zee (1972), Hammersmith Is Out (1972) (with Burton again), Ash Wednesday (1973), Night Watch (1973), The Driver's Seat (1974), The Blue Bird (1976) (considered by many to be her worst), A Little Night Music (1977), and Winter Kills (1979) (a controversial film which was never given a full release and in which she only had a small role). She later appeared in some movies, both theatrical and made-for-television, and a number of television programs. In February 1997, Elizabeth entered the hospital for the removal of a brain tumor. The operation was successful. As for her private life, she divorced Burton in 1974, only to remarry him in 1975 and divorce him, permanently, in 1976. She had two more husbands, U.S. Senator John Warner and construction worker Larry Fortensky, whom she met in rehab.
In 1959, Taylor converted to Judaism, and continued to identify herself as Jewish throughout her life, being active in Jewish causes. Upon the death of her friend, actor Rock Hudson, in 1985, she began her crusade on behalf of AIDS sufferers. In the 1990s, she also developed a successful series of scents. In her later years, her acting career was relegated to the occasional TV-movie or TV guest appearance.
Elizabeth Taylor died on March 23, 2011 in Los Angeles, from congestive heart failure. Her final resting place is Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, California.- Actress
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Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith is an actress quite familiar to genre film fans. With leads in "B" pictures and meaty smaller parts in more major ones, her career showed great promise in the 1970s. Alas, it was not meant to be . . . the lure of hard drugs was to bring tragedy to the lovely and talented "Rainbeaux" (a nickname given her for being a mainstay at L.A.'s Rainbow Club, a popular spot for musicians). She was once a member of the legendary girl band The Runaways, but heroin plagued her life for many years and caused her to contract hepatitis, which ultimately killed her. She is the mother of a son, allegedly sired by a member of the rock band The Animals.- Gorgeous and voluptuous blonde actress Linda Hayden made a strong and lasting impression with her steamy portrayals of lusty nymphets and tempting seductresses in a handful of pictures made in the 60s and 70s. Linda was born on January 19, 1953 in Stanmore, Middlesex, England. She studied her craft at the esteemed Aida Foster Stage School, where she took drama, dancing and singing classes. Hayden made a bold film debut as brassy 15-year-old teenage tart Luci Thompson in the racy melodrama Baby Love (1969). Linda achieved her greatest enduring cult cinema popularity with her appearances in several horror features; she was excellent as virginal innocent Alice Hargood in the typically fine Hammer outing Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) and gave an outstanding performance as alluring devil cult leader Angel Blake in the chilling The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971). Hayden was likewise memorable as libidinous sexpot secretary Linda Hindstatt in the sleazy thriller Trauma (1976) and had a brief cameo in The Boys from Brazil (1978). She acted in four amusingly lowbrow comedies with her onetime boyfriend Robin Askwith: Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974), Queen Kong (1976), Let's Get Laid (1978) and Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977).
Linda has made guest appearances in such TV shows as Now Look Here (1971), Marked Personal (1973), Traffic Warden's Daughter: Part 1 (2007), Pig in the Middle (1975), Robin's Nest (1977), Sole Agent (1980), Black Out (1980), Shillingbury Tales (1980), Cuffy (1983), Passing Chance (1983), Black Carrion (1984) and Performance Anxiety (1997).
In addition to her movie and television credits, Hayden has also acted on stage: she co-starred with Askwith in the bawdy farce "Who Goes Bare" and has performed extensively in productions for the Theatre of Comedy Company.
Linda Hayden is married to theatre producer Paul Elliott and is the mother of two children. - Actress
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Christina Applegate was born in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, to record producer/executive Robert Applegate and singer-actress Nancy Priddy. Her parents split-up shortly after her birth. She has two half-siblings from her father's re-marriage - Alisa (b. October 10, 1977) and Kyle (b. July 15, 1981). Alisa and Christina are best friends and even lived together while Alisa was going to college. Christina's mother took her along on all of her auditions and acting jobs. She made her acting debut at age five months, when her mother got her in a commercial for Playtex nursers. Her mother never remarried, but kept company with Stephen Stills. Christina still cherishes a guitar Stephen gave her when she was young. She played in a number of TV series before landing her breakout role in Married... with Children (1987). Christina still studies jazz dance.- Actress
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Julie Delpy was born in Paris, France, in 1969 to Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet, both actors.
She was first featured in Jean-Luc Godard's Detective (1985) at the age of fourteen. She has starred in many American and European productions since then, including Disney's The Three Musketeers (1993), Killing Zoe (1993), Three Colors: White (1994), and the "Before" series, alongside Ethan Hawke: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013).
She graduated from NYU's film school, and wrote and directed the short film Blah Blah Blah (1995), which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. She is a resident of Los Angeles.- Actress
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Elizabeth Montgomery was born into show business. Her parents were screen actor Robert Montgomery and Broadway actress Elizabeth Allen. Elizabeth graduated from the Spence School in New York City and attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. After three years' intensive training, she made her TV debut in her father's 1950s playhouse series Robert Montgomery Presents (1950) and appeared in more than 200 live programs over the next decade. She once remarked, "I guess you could say I'm a TV baby." Notable early film roles included The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955) and Johnny Cool (1963). However, she is best remembered for her leading role as the witch Samantha in the top-rated ABC sitcom Bewitched (1964). Her family - mother Endora (Agnes Moorehead), look-alike cousin Serena (Montgomery, wearing a dark wig) and advertising executive husband Darrin (first Dick York then Dick Sargent) - tried to suppress her supernatural skills but often turned to her tricks to solve problems. The signal of impending witchcraft was a twitch of Samantha's nose. After her first and only TV series ended she turned to made-for-TV movies, many of which won critical praise: A Case of Rape (1974), The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975), Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story (1993). She narrated the movie The Panama Deception (1992) which won an Academy Award in 1993. Reference works showed her as 62 when she died though the family said she was 57. The family did not disclose the type of cancer which caused her death.- Actor
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Tom Schilling was born on 10 February 1982 in Berlin, Germany. He is an actor and producer, known for A Coffee in Berlin (2012), Before the Fall (2004) and Who Am I (2014).- Actress
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Juno Violet Temple was born in London, England, into a showbiz family, the daughter of producer Amanda Temple and film director Julien Temple. She was named 'Juno' after her parents took a visit to the Grand Canyon during pregnancy and found they were standing on a butte of Cape Final known as Juno Temple. She has English and Scottish ancestry.
Her family moved to America, where she spent the first four years of her life. The family then moved back to England and settled in Somerset. At age four, she decided she wanted to be an actress after her father showed her Beauty and the Beast (1946) by Jean Cocteau.
She attended Enmore Primary School in Somerset. It was during this time that her father cast her in his film Vigo (1998). However, her father ended up cutting her out of the film. Two years later, at age 11, her father cast her in another of his films, Pandaemonium (2000).
She became a weekly boarder at King's College boarding school in Taunton. She then moved on to Bedales boarding school in Hampshire to take her A-Levels, one of which was Drama. She left with a B and two C's.
At age 15, she told her parents that she was serious about becoming an actress Her mother saw a call for an open audition for Notes on a Scandal (2006), and Juno was successful in winning the role of Cate Blanchett's daughter. This was her big break and led to a role in another high-profile film, Atonement (2007). She dyed her hair red to play Lola.
In 2009, Juno moved to Los Angeles, partly for her acting career.- Actress
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Ione Skye Lee is a British-born American actress. She made her film debut in the thriller River's Edge (1986) before gaining mainstream exposure for her starring role in Cameron Crowe's Say Anything... (1989). She continued to appear in films throughout the 1990s, with notable roles in Gas Food Lodging (1992), Wayne's World (1992) and One Night Stand (1997).- Strikingly beautiful and a multi-talented performer, Jennifer Collene Rubin is an American actress, model, screenwriter, and producer, with a career spanning nearly four decades. She was voted Ford International Model of the Year in 1984. She gained fame for her pictures in Harper Bazaar, Vogue, Glamour, and Interview magazine. Which lead her to acting in Super Bowl commercials for Chevrolet, Coke, Budweiser, and many more. Jennifer was also David Lynch's original Calvin Klein model for his "Obsession" campaign. In 1987, she decided to devote herself to acting and accepted the role of "Taryn White" in the Wes Craven sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), directed by Chuck Russell.
Jennifer followed "Elm Street 3" with Bad Dreams (1988), Permanent Record (1988) with Keanu Reeves, and the Oliver Stone-directed The Doors (1991) starring Val Kilmer, a biopic based on the career of Jim Morrison and The Doors. By the mid-1990s, she was co-starring in films, such as The Crush (1993) with Cary Elwes and Screamers (1995) alongside Peter Weller, the latter based on the science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick.
Adaptable to various genres, working in front and behind the camera, it is apparent that Jennifer is an enduring talent, much more than just a pretty face, and one of the top script writers to watch. She has produced - and starred in - the film, Road Kill (1999), and further appeared in popular TV series, including The Twilight Zone (1985), Tales from the Crypt (1989) and The Outer Limits (1995).
Jennifer appeared in Chris Isaak's music video for "Somebody's Crying" (1995), with Chris Penn. Bruce Hornsby's music video for "Harbor Lights"
In 2010, Jennifer followed her true passion and started writing the screenplays Hot Hemp Pancakes, Oopsy-Daisy, and The Bookie-Lady - all high quality scripts in pre-production for 2019. It is apparent that Jennifer is an enduring talent - much more than just a pretty face - and is one of the most mercurial talents working in Hollywood. - Actress
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Actress and singer Ann-Margret is one of the most famous sex symbols and actresses of the 1960s and beyond. She continued her career through the following decades and into the 21st century.
Ann-Margret was born Ann-Margret Olsson in Valsjöbyn, Jämtland County, Sweden, to Anna Regina (Aronsson) and Carl Gustav Olsson, who worked for an electrical company. She came to America at age 6. She studied at Northwestern University and left for Las Vegas to pursue a career as a singer. Ann-Margret was discovered by George Burns and soon afterward got both a record deal at RCA and a film contract at 20th Century Fox. In 1961, her single "I Just Don't Understand" charted in the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 Charts. Her acting debut followed the same year as Bette Davis' daughter in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles (1961). She appeared in the musical State Fair (1962) a year later before her breakthrough in 1963. With Bye Bye Birdie (1963) and Viva Las Vegas (1964) opposite Elvis Presley, she became a Top 10 Box Office star, teen idol and even Golden Globe nominated actress. She was marketed as Hollywood's hottest young star and in the years to come got awarded the infamous nickname "sex kitten." Her following pictures were sometimes ripped apart by critics (Bus Riley's Back in Town (1965) and The Swinger (1966)), sometimes praised (The Cincinnati Kid (1965)). She couldn't escape being typecast because of her great looks. By the late 1960s, her career stalled, and she turned to Italy for new projects. She returned and, by 1970, she was back in the public image with Hollywood films (R.P.M. (1970) opposite Anthony Quinn), Las Vegas sing-and-dance shows and her own television specials. She finally overcame her image with her Oscar-nominated turn in Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge (1971) and succeeded in changing her image from sex kitten to respected actress. A near-fatal accident at a Lake Tahoe show in 1972 only momentarily stopped her career. She was again Oscar-nominated in 1975 for Tommy (1975), the rock opera film of the British rock band The Who. Her career continued with successful films throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s. She starred next to Anthony Hopkins in Magic (1978) and appeared in pictures co-starring Walter Matthau, Gene Hackman, Glenda Jackson and Roy Scheider. She even appeared in a television remake of Tennessee Williams's masterpiece play "A Streetcar Named Desire" in 1983. Another late career highlight for her was Grumpy Old Men (1993) as the object of desire for Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. She continues to act in movies today.- Cassidy was discovered at age 14 by a talent agent in Florida and started modeling and acting in commercials. She got a one year scholarship at the Huntington Film Institute in Orlando, which led to a part in the Nickelodeon series Clarissa Explains It All (1991). She then (1993) moved to Los Angeles together with her mother Amy to start an acting career. Her first on-screen appearance was in the TV show Angel Falls (1993); next she was cast in the short-lived Spelling show Models Inc. (1994).
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Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon was born in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, France, to Édith (Arnold) and Fabien Delon. His father was of French and Corsican Italian descent, and his mother was of French and German ancestry. His parents divorced early on, and Delon had a stormy childhood, being frequently expelled from school.
In 1953/1954 he served with the French Marines in Indochina. In the mid-'50s he worked at various odd jobs including waiter, salesman and porter in Les Halles market. He decided to try an acting career and in 1957 made his film debut in Yves Allégret's Quand la femme s'en mêle (1957). He declined an offer of a contract from producer David O. Selznick, and in 1960 he received international recognition for his role in Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers (1960). In 1961 he appeared on the stage in "'Tis a Pity She's a Whore", directed by Visconti, in Paris. In 1964 he formed his own production company, Delbeau Productions, and he produced a short film directed by Guy Gilles. In 1968 he found himself involved in murder, drug and sex scandal that indirectly implicated major politicians and show-business personalities, but he was eventually cleared of all charges. In the late 1960s he formed another company. Adel Film, and the next year he began producing features. In 1981 he directed his first film, To Kill a Cop (1981).
Delon was a sensation early in his career; he came to embody the young, energetic, often morally corrupted man. With his breathtaking good looks he was also destined to play tender lovers and romantic heroes, and he was a French embodiment of the type created in America by James Dean. His first outstanding success came with the role of the parasite Tom Ripley in 'Rene Clement''s sun-drenched thriller Purple Noon (1960). Delon presented a psychological portrait of a murderous young cynic who attempts to take on the identity of his victim. A totally different role was offered to him by Visconti in Rocco and His Brothers (1960). In this film Delon plays the devoted Rocco, who accepts the greatest sacrifices to save his shiftless brother Simon.
After several other films in Italy, Delon returned to the criminal genre with Jean Gabin in Any Number Can Win (1963). This work, a classic example of the genre, was distinguished not only by a soundly worked-out screenplay, but also by the careful production and the excellent performances of both Delon and Gabin. It was only in the late 1960s that the sleek and lethal Delon came to epitomize the calm, psychopathic hoodlum, staring into the camera like a cat assessing a mouse. His tough, ruthless side was first used to real effect by Jean-Pierre Melville in The Samurai (1967). In 1970 he had a huge success in the bloodstained Borsalino (1970)--which he also produced--playing a small-time gangster in the 1930s who, with Jean-Paul Belmondo, becomes king of the Marseilles underworld. Delon later won critical acclaim for his roles, against type, in Joseph Losey's Mr. Klein (1976) in which he played (brilliantly) the icily sinister title role, and the art-movie Swann in Love (1984). He has an older son Anthony Delon (who has also acted in a number of movies) from his first marriage to Nathalie Delon, and has a young son and daughter, Alain-Fabien and Anouchka with Rosalie.- Actress
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Jane Seymour was born as Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg in 1951 in Middlesex, England, to a nurse mother and gynaecologist/obstetrician father. She is of Polish Jewish (father) and Dutch (mother) descent. She adopted the acting name of "Jane Seymour" when she entered show business as it was easier for people to remember (and the name of one of King Henry VIII's wives). She attracted the attention of the James Bond film producers when they saw her on British television. She was cast as the main Bond girl, "Solitaire", in Live and Let Die (1973). The role gained her international recognition but she was in danger of losing it all like the previous Bond girls, so she came to the U.S.
A casting director advised her to lose her English accent and acquire an American accent to land roles on American television. She did and started getting roles, earning five Emmy nominations, resulting in one win for Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (1988) for playing Maria Callas. She won Golden Globe awards for both East of Eden (1981) and the American television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993), where she played the title role for 5 years. She occasionally appeared in feature films, memorably in Somewhere in Time (1980) and in Wedding Crashers (2005).
Married and divorced four times, she gave birth to four children and is a stepmother to two. They have children of their own, making her a grandmother. As of 2018, she has been acting in television movies and making guest-appearances.- Actress
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One of the leading sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s, film actress Jayne Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, the only child of Vera J. (nee Palmer; later Peers) and Herbert W. Palmer. Her parents were well-to-do, with her father a successful attorney in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, where she spent a portion of her childhood. Her parents were both born with the same surname, and her ancestry was seven eighths English and Cornish and one eighth German. She was reportedly a talented pianist and played the violin when she was young.
Tragedy struck when Jayne was three, when her father suddenly died of a heart attack. Three years later, her mother remarried and she and her mother moved to Dallas, Texas, buying a small home where she had violin concerts in the driveway of their home. Her IQ was reportedly 163, and she attended the University of Dallas and participated in little-theater productions. In 1949, at the age of 16, she married a man five years her senior named Paul Mansfield. In November 1950, when Jayne was seventeen, their daughter, Jayne Marie Mansfield was born. The union ended in divorce but she kept the surname Mansfield as a good surname for an actress.
After some productions there and elsewhere, Jayne decided to go to Hollywood. Her first film was a bit role as a cigarette girl in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955). Although the roles in the beginning were not much, she was successful in gaining those roles because of her ample physical attributes which placed her in two other films that year, Hell on Frisco Bay (1955) and Illegal (1955). Her breakout role came the next year with a featured part in The Burglar (1957). By the time she portrayed Rita Marlowe in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) and Playgirl After Dark (1960), Jayne was now known as the poor man's Marilyn Monroe. She did not get the plum roles that Marilyn got in her productions. Instead, her films were more of a showcase for her body more than anything else. She did have a real talent for acting, but the movie executives insisted she stay in her dumb blonde stereotype roles. By the 1960s, her career had options that grew lower. She made somewhat embarrassing guest appearances like on the popular game show What's My Line? (1950), she appeared on the show four times in 1956, 1957, 1964, and 1966 and many other 1950s and 1960s game shows. By 1962, she was dropped from 20th Century Fox and the rest of her career had smaller options like being in B movies and low budget movies or performing at food stores or small nightclubs.
While traveling from a nightclub in Biloxi, Mississippi and 30 miles from New Orleans to where she was to be on television the following day, she was killed instantly on Highway 90 in Slidell, Louisiana in a car crash in the early hours of June 29, 1967, when the car in which she was riding slammed into the back of a semi-tractor trailer truck that had stopped due to a truck in front of the tractor trailer that was spraying for bugs. Her car went under the truck at nearly 80 miles per hour. Her boyfriend Samuel Brody and their driver Ronnie Harrison, were also killed. The damage to the car was so bad that the engine was twisted sideways. She was not, however, decapitated, as had long been misreported. She was 34 years old.
Mansfield's funeral was on July 3, 1967 and hundreds of people lined the main street of Pen Argyl for Mansfield's funeral, a small private ceremony at Fairview Cemetery in Plainfield (outside Pen Argyl), Pennsylvania (where her father was also buried), attended by her family. The only ex-husband to attend was Mickey Hargitay. Her final film, Single Room Furnished (1966), was released the following year. In 2000, Mansfield's 97 year old mother, Mrs. Vera Peers, was interred alongside Mansfield.
After Mansfield's death, Mansfield's mother, as well as her ex-husband Mickey Hargitay, William Pigue (legal guardian for her daughter, Jayne Marie), Charles Goldring (Mansfield's business manager), and Bernard B. Cohen and Jerome Webber (both administrators of the estate) all filed unsuccessful suits to gain control of her estate, which was initially estimated at $600,000 ($3,712,000 in 2018 dollars), including the Pink Palace (estimated at $100,000 ($619,000 in 2018 dollars)), a sports car sold for $7,000 ($43,000 in 2018 dollars), her jewelry, and Sam Brody's $185,000 estate left to her in his last will ($1,145,000 in 2018 dollars).
In 1971, Beverly Brody sued the Mansfield estate for $325,000 ($2,011,000 in 2018 dollars) worth of presents and jewelry given to Mansfield by Sam Brody; the suit was settled out of court.
In 1977, Mansfield's four eldest children (Jayne Marie, Mickey, Zoltan, and Mariska) went to court to discover that some $500,000 in debt which Mansfield had incurred ($3,093,000 in 2018 dollars) and litigation had left the estate insolvent.- Actress
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Lee Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, to Gertrude Margaret (Waldo), an actress, and Francis Edwin Remick, a department store owner. She had Irish and English ancestry. Remick was educated at Barnard College, studied dance and worked on stage and TV, before making her film debut as a sexy Southern majorette in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957). Her next role was also southern: Eula Varner in The Long, Hot Summer (1958). She emerged as a real star in the role of an apparent rape victim in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). And she won an Academy Award nomination for her role as the alcoholic wife of Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses (1962). After more work in TV and movies, she moved to England in 1970, making more movies there. In 1988 she formed a production company with partners James Garner and Peter K. Duchow.- Actress
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Susan George was born on 26 July 1950 in Surbiton, Surrey, England, UK. She is an actress and producer, known for Straw Dogs (1971), Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) and Mandingo (1975). She was previously married to Simon MacCorkindale.- Actress
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Alyssa Milano comes from an Italian-American family; her mother Lin Milano is a fashion designer and father Thomas Milano is a film music editor. Alyssa was born in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn and grew up in a modest house on Staten Island. One day her babysitter, who was an aspiring dancer, dragged Alyssa along to an open audition for the first national tour of "Annie". However, it was Alyssa and not the sitter who was chosen from 1500 other girls for the role. So at the tender age of seven, with her mother in tow, Alyssa joined the tour as July, one of the orphans. After 18 months on the road Alyssa, who had begun to garner a reputation as an energetic and charismatic young actress, left Annie to be featured in off-Broadway productions and television commercials. Then in 1983, at age 10, she landed her breakthrough role on the sitcom Who's the Boss? (1984) as Tony Danza's saccharine sweet daughter, "Samantha Micelli", a kid whose native Brooklyn accent rivaled her TV dad's. In order for Alyssa to accept the gig, the Milano family had to uproot and move 3,000 miles to Hollywood.- Actress
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Precocious, outspoken child-teen starlet of the 1990s, Christina Ricci was born on February 12, 1980 in Santa Monica, California, the youngest of four children of Sarah (Murdoch), a realtor, and Ralph Ricci, a lawyer and therapist. She is of Italian (from her paternal grandfather), Irish, and Scots-Irish descent. She made her screen debut at the age of 9 in Mermaids (1990), in which she worked with Winona Ryder and Cher. Her breakthrough adult role was in The Ice Storm (1997), in which she plays a nymphet who skillfully seduces two brothers. She worked with Johnny Depp and Casper Van Dien in the Tim Burton film Sleepy Hollow (1999).- Actress
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Diane Lane was born on January 22, 1965, in New York. She is the daughter of acting coach Burton Eugene "Burt" Lane and nightclub singer/centerfold Colleen Farrington. Her parents' families were both from the state of Georgia. Diane was acting from a very young age and made her stage debut at the age of six. Her work in such acclaimed theater productions as "The Cherry Orchard" and "Medea" led to her being called to Hollywood. She was 13 when she was cast by director George Roy Hill in his wonderful 1979 film A Little Romance (1979), opposite Sir Laurence Olivier. The film only did so-so commercially, but Olivier praised his young co-star, calling her the new Grace Kelly. After her well-received debut, Diane found herself on magazine covers all over the world, including "Time", which declared her the "new young acting sensation". However, things quietened down a bit when she found herself in such critical and financial flops as Touched by Love (1980), Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1980), Movie Madness (1982), Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982) and, most unmemorably, Six Pack (1982), all of which failed to set her career on fire.
She also made several TV movies during this period, but it was in 1983 that she finally began to fulfill the promise of stardom that had earlier been predicted for her. Acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola took note of Diane's appeal and cast her in two "youth"-oriented films based on S.E. Hinton novels. Indeed, Rumble Fish (1983) and The Outsiders (1983) have become cult classics and resulted in her getting a loyal fan base. The industry was now taking notice of Diane Lane, and she soon secured lead roles in three big-budget studio epics. She turned down the first, Splash (1983) (which was a surprise hit for Daryl Hannah). Unfortunately, the other two were critical and box-office bombs: Walter Hill's glossy rock 'n' roll fable Streets of Fire (1984) was not the huge summer success that many had thought it would be, and the massively troubled Coppola epic The Cotton Club (1984) co-starring Richard Gere was also a high-profile flop. The back-to-back failure of both of these films could have ended her career there and then -- but thankfully it didn't. Possibly "burned out" by the lambasting these films received and unhappy with the direction her career was taking, she "retired" from the film business at age 19, saying that she had forgotten what she had started acting for. She stayed away from the screen for the next three years. Ironically, the two films that were the main causes of her "retirement" have since grown in popularity, and "Streets of Fire" especially seems to have found the kind of audience it couldn't get when it was first released.
The process of rebuilding her career was a slow and gradual one. First came the obscure and very sexy straight-to-video thriller Lady Beware (1987), followed by the critically acclaimed but little seen The Big Town (1987) with Matt Dillon and Tommy Lee Jones. In the former, Diane plays a very mysterious and sexy stripper and her memorable strip sequence is a highlight of the film. Despite her sexy new on-screen image, it wasn't until 1989's smash hit TV mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989) that Diane made another big impression on a sizable audience. Her performance in the hugely popular and critically acclaimed western epic as a vulnerable "whore with a heart" won her an Emmy nomination and much praise. Film producers were interested in her again. Another well-received TV production, Descending Angel (1990), was followed by smaller roles in major films like Richard Attenborough's Chaplin (1992) and Mike Binder's Indian Summer (1993), and larger parts in small independent films like My New Gun (1992), Vital Signs (1990) and Knight Moves (1992). Indeed, the latter two films co-starred her then-husband, Christopher Lambert, with whom she had a daughter named Eleanor.
Diane was now re-established in Hollywood and started to appear in higher-profile co-starring roles in some big-budget, major movies like Walter Hill's Wild Bill (1995), the Sylvester Stallone actioner Judge Dredd (1995), the Robin Williams's comedy Jack (1996) and Murder at 1600 (1997) co-starring Wesley Snipes. However, all of these still did not quite make Diane a "big-name star" and, by 1997, she found herself, possibly by choice, back in smaller, personal projects.
Her next role as a frustrated 1960s housewife in the independent hit A Walk on the Moon (1999) deservedly won her rave notices and, at last, gave her career the big lift it needed. The cute but tear-jerking comedy My Dog Skip (2000) also proved to be a small-scale success. However, it was the £330-million worldwide grossing blockbuster hit The Perfect Storm (2000) that finally made Diane Lane the household name that she always should have been.
After the worldwide success of "The Perfect Storm", she was more in demand than ever. She played Leelee Sobieski's sinister junkie guardian in the slick thriller The Glass House (2001), and co-starred with Keanu Reeves in the #1 smash hit Hardball (2001). However, her greatest career moment was still to come with her lead role in the enormous critical and commercial hit Unfaithful (2002), in which she superbly portrayed Richard Gere's adulterous wife. Her performance won the respect of critics and audiences alike, as well as many awards and nominations including Best Actress Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.
Her follow-up films including Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), Must Love Dogs (2005), Hollywoodland (2006), Secretariat (2010), and the blockbuster, Man of Steel (2013), were all received and her performances were highly praised. She won further Best Actress Golden Globe nominations for her roles in Under the Tuscan Sun (2003) and Cinema Verite (2011).
She is very well regarded within the industry, adored by film fans, and has a credibility and quality that is all too rare today. Her immense talent at playing human and real characters, her "drop dead gorgeous" beauty and down-to-earth grittiness guarantees that she will stay on top, and she guarantee has already shown the kind of resilience that will keep her working for a long, long time.- Actress
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Rosanna Arquette has acted extensively in film and television, and has come to be acknowledged as an actress of rare depth and scope.
Arquette was born in New York City, New York. Her parents, Lewis Arquette, an actor, and Brenda Denaut (née Nowak), an acting teacher and therapist, had 4 other children: Richmond Arquette, Patricia Arquette, Alexis Arquette, and David Arquette, all actors. Her paternal grandfather, Cliff Arquette, also was an entertainer. Rosanna's mother was from an Ashkenazi Jewish family (from Poland and Russia), while Rosanna's father had French-Canadian, Swiss-German, and English ancestry.
Growing up in a family of actors, she began working at a young age. Her first big break came as a teenager with a role in the Movie of the Week The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978), which starred Bette Davis. Several television roles followed, including an ABC Afterschool Specials (1972) and a part on the series James at 16 (1977) before her talents led to her film debut in Gorp (1980). Since then she has acted in a steady stream of films, including John Sayles' Baby It's You (1983), Fathers & Sons (1992) with Jeff Goldblum, Silverado (1985) (which also featured Goldblum), The Linguini Incident (1991), Martin Scorsese's segment of New York Stories (1989) with Nick Nolte, and many others. She feels particularly proud of her offbeat roles in such independent films as After Hours (1985), Nobody's Fool (1986), and Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), for which she won the British Academy Award. Ms. Arquette was nominated for an Emmy for her work in the controversial The Executioner's Song (1982). She continues her work on television as well as the big screen.- Actress
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Montgomery was born Poppy Petal Emma Elizabeth Deveraux Donahue in Sydney, Australia, to Nicola (Montgomery), a market researcher and executive, and Phil Donahue, a restaurateur. She was raised in Sydney. Since the age of 12, Poppy had a near obsession with cultural icon Marilyn Monroe.
Her parents had named each of their five daughters after a flower and, after a time, the name "Poppy Petal" attracted so much derision from fellow students that she left school at the age of 14. At 16, she left home to travel abroad and, at 18, she traveled to America.
In Los Angeles, penniless and with a copy of "How to Make it in Hollywood", Poppy adopted her mother's maiden name as a stage name and made daily contact with Julia Roberts's agent who told her he did not handle unknowns but arranged for her to be signed with another agent.
After various minor roles, Montgomery got several breaks in 1996. She had guest appearances on TV series NYPD Blue (1993) and Party of Five (1994), she got a regular part in the TV series Relativity (1996), and she won a starring role in the TV movie The Cold Equations (1996). Her career has been on an upward climb ever since.
In 2001, Montgomery won the dream role of her lifetime. CBS was looking to create a TV mini-series based on author Joyce Carol Oates' novelization of the life of Marilyn Monroe (the series was titled Blonde (2001)). Poppy's greatest wish was fulfilled when she got cast as her childhood idol. When she told her family that she'd won the role, Poppy's mother blithely commented "Well, you've been rehearsing for it your whole life". Her portrayal won critical acclaim.
In 2002, Montgomery joined the original cast of the soon-to-be-successful TV series Without a Trace (2002). She has a lead role portraying FBI agent Samantha Spade. Montgomery shared the cast's 2004 SAG Award nomination for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series.- Actress
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Sally Margaret Field was born November 6, 1946 in Pasadena, California, to actress Margaret Field (née Morlan) and salesman Richard Dryden Field. Her parents divorced in 1950 and her mother then married stuntman Jock Mahoney, and they had a daughter, Princess O'Mahoney. She also has a brother, Richard Field. Sally attended Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California.
Her acting career began in 1965, when she landed the role of Frances Elizabeth 'Gidget' Lawrence in Gidget (1965); it was canceled after only one season because of bad ratings. She went on to star in The Flying Nun (1967), which ran for three seasons. She also appeared in her first film in 1967, The Way West (1967) opposite Kirk Douglas. In the next few years she appeared in numerous TV movies and TV shows such as Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (1971), Marriage: Year One (1971), The Girl with Something Extra (1973), and Sybil (1976). In 1977 she starred alongside then-boyfriend Burt Reynolds in the box office hit Smokey and the Bandit (1977), which led to a less successful sequel in 1980. In 1979 she starred in the popular film Norma Rae (1979) and she received her first Oscar for that role.
In the years that followed she starred in films such as Absence of Malice (1981), Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), Places in the Heart (1984) (she received her second Oscar for her role), Murphy's Romance (1985), Punchline (1988) and Steel Magnolias (1989). In 1993 she starred alongside Robin Williams and Pierce Brosnan in the popular comedy Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). A year after, she played the role of Tom Hanks character's mother (even though she's only ten years older than he is in real life) in Forrest Gump (1994). The film was a huge commercial success and won six Academy awards.
Since then she has appeared in TV movies and miniseries such as A Woman of Independent Means (1995), Merry Christmas, George Bailey (1997), From the Earth to the Moon (1998) and David Copperfield (2000). In 2000 she appeared in the film Where the Heart Is (2000) with Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd, and in 2003 she starred alongside Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003). She also appeared in 12 episodes of ER (1994) from 2000 to 2006. From 2006 to 2011, she played the role of matriarch Nora Walker in the hit television show Brothers & Sisters (2006), which earned her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Getting back into film, she earned her third Oscar nomination for Lincoln (2012) and played Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its blockbuster sequel.
Sally has been married twice, first to Steven Craig from 1968 to 1973. They had two sons together, Peter Craig and Eli Craig. Her second marriage was to film producer Alan Greisman from 1984 to 1994. They had one son together, Samuel Greisman. Between marriages, from 1976 to 1980, she was in a relationship with Burt Reynolds.- Actress
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Daughter of a law professor at Northwestern University, she moved with her family to Los Angeles when he transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles (U.C.L.A.). She began acting in school plays at North Hollywood High, graduated from The Oakwood School and then continued her stage training at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and the drama division of The Juilliard School in New York. Following a pleasant screen debut in Robert Redford's Oscar-winning Ordinary People (1980), McGovern gave a great performance as Evelyn Nesbit in Ragtime (1981) for which she earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress. She has continued performing on stage between screen assignments rather than concentrate on being a film star, where her notable work in prolific plays, among others, also includes an acclaimed production of Alexi Kaye Campbell's "Sunset at the Villa Thalia" premiered in London at the National Theatre of Great Britain in May 2016, directed by Simon Godwin together with Ben Miles, Sam Crane, Pippa Nixon, Christos Callow, Glykeria Dimou and Eve Polycarpou in the brilliant cast..- Actress
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One of the world's most underrated Academy Award-winning actresses, Jennifer Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley on 2 March 1919 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Flora Mae (Suber) and Phillip Ross Isley, who ran a travelling stage show. As a young aspiring actress, she met and fell for young, handsome, aspiring actor Robert Walker. They soon married, and moved to Chicago in order to fulfill their dreams of becoming film stars. Though their plans (initially) fell through, Phyllis began working as a model; sporting mainly hats, gloves and jewelry, and also occasionally found some work on local radio stations, where she provided the voice for various characters in radio programmes, along with her husband.
In a last-ditch attempt to pursue her dream, Phyllis traveled to Selznick studios for a reading which would ultimately change her life. It was that day where she met David O. Selznick, and after that, her career began to take shape. Initially, Phyllis thought the audition went terribly and stormed out of the studios in tears, only to be chased by Selznick, who assured her she had been fine. Although she didn't get that particular part (which was for the iconic character, Scarlett O'Hara, which would ultimately go to Vivien Leigh, in one of the most famous castings in Hollywood's history), Phyllis was given a contract with Selznick studios. In short order, Phyllis was 'renamed' to the alliterative Jennifer Jones, and was cast over thousands of other hopefuls in the role of Bernadette Soubirous in The Song of Bernadette (1943).
For her moving portrayal of the sickly teenager who sees a vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes and devotes her life to her by becoming a nun, Jones won the Academy Award for best actress in a leading role on 2 March 1944 (coincidentally her 25th birthday) beating out stiff competition such as Ingrid Bergman (who later became a close friend of hers), Greer Garson, Joan Fontaine and Jean Arthur.
Now, considered a 'true' star, Jones' career was marked out and moulded for her by Selznick, who would become the love of her life. They began an affair and eventually she left her husband and two sons for the producer, which ultimately led Walker to an untimely death, attributed to alcohol and drug abuse instigated due to their separation. As for her career, Jones took on the supporting role of Jane Hilton, a headstrong teenage girl who grows up fast when her fiance is killed in action during WWII, in Since You Went Away (1944). For her performance Jones received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination, but lost out to Ethel Barrymore for None But the Lonely Heart (1944). Jennifer continued to deliver strong performances, receiving further best actress Oscar nominations for Love Letters (1945) (she lost to Joan Crawford for Mildred Pierce (1945)) and Duel in the Sun (1946), (she lost to Olivia de Havilland for To Each His Own (1946)) which saw her cast against type as the seductive biracial beauty Pearl Chavez.
Jones continued to produce memorable performances throughout the 1940s , including Portrait of Jennie (1948). In the 1950s she received her fifth and final Oscar nomination for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), losing out to Anna Magnani for The Rose Tattoo (1955).
Despite her success within the film industry, Jones was a very private person and managed to stay out of the spotlight that dominated so many other performers' lives. But a lack of publicity led to a lack of roles, a trend that amplified when Selznick died in 1965. She appeared in fewer and fewer films, and after a moderately successful supporting performance in The Towering Inferno (1974) Jones decided to make that role her swan song, bowing out of the film industry. She did, however, try to revive her film career in later years by campaigning for the role of Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment (1983), but Shirley MacLaine was cast instead and as a result, won the Oscar for best actress.
Jennifer Jones died 17 December, 2009, in Malibu, California. In the 21st century, Jones may not be as well known as other actresses of her time such as Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn, Greer Garson, Bette Davis etc. But for those who know of her and her extraordinary talent, she is alluring to watch and her acting abilities extended far greater than most of her contemporaries.- Actor
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When hunky, twenty-year-old heart-throb Heath Ledger first came to the attention of the public in 1999, it was all too easy to tag him as a "pretty boy" and an actor of little depth. He spent several years trying desperately to sway this image, but this was a double-edged sword. His work comprised nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Monster's Ball (2001), Ned Kelly (2003), The Brothers Grimm (2005), Lords of Dogtown (2005), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Casanova (2005), Candy (2006), I'm Not There (2007), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). He also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
Heath Ledger was born on the fourth of April 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, to Sally (Ramshaw), a teacher of French, and Kim Ledger, a mining engineer who also raced cars. His ancestry was Scottish, English, Irish, and Sephardi Jewish. As the story goes, in junior high school it was compulsory to take one of two electives, either cooking or drama. As Heath could not see himself in a cooking class he tried his hand at drama. Heath was talented, however the rest of the class did not acknowledge his talent. When he was seventeen he and a friend decided to pack up, leave school, take a car and rough it to Sydney. Heath believed Sydney to be the place where dreams were made or, at least, where actors could possibly get their big break. Upon arriving in Sydney with a purported sixty-nine cents to his name, Heath tried everything to get a break.
His first real acting job came in a low-budget movie called Blackrock (1997), a largely unimpressive cliché; an adolescent angst film about one boy's struggle when he learns his best mate raped a girl. He only had a very small role in the film. After that small role Heath auditioned for a role in a T.V. show called Sweat (1996) about a group of young Olympic hopefuls. He was offered one of two roles, one as a swimmer, another as a gay cyclist. Heath accepted the latter because he felt to really stand out as an actor one had to accept unique roles that stood out from the bunch. It got him small notice, but unfortunately the show was quickly axed, forcing him to look for other roles. He was in Home and Away (1988) for a very short period, in which he played a surfer who falls in love with one of the girls of Summer Bay. Then came his very brief role in Paws (1997), a film which existed solely to cash in on guitar prodigy Nathan Cavaleri's brief moment of fame, where he was the hottest thing in Australia. Heath played a student in the film, involved in a stage production of a Shakespeare play, in which he played "Oberon". A very brief role, this offered him a small paycheck but did nothing to advance his career. Then came Two Hands (1999). He went to the U.S. trying to audition for film roles, showcasing his brief role in Roar (1997) opposite then unknown Vera Farmiga.
Then Australian director Gregor Jordan auditioned him for the lead in Two Hands (1999), which he got. An in your face Aussie crime thriller, Two Hands (1999) was outstanding and helped him secure a role in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). After that, it seemed Heath was being typecast as a young hunk, which he did not like, so he accepted a role in a very serious war drama The Patriot (2000).
What followed was a stark inconsistency of roles, Ledger accepting virtually every single character role, anything to avoid being typecast. Some met with praise, like his short role in Monster's Ball (2001), but his version of Ned Kelly (2003) was an absolute flop, which led distributors hesitant to even release it outside Australia. Heath finally had deserved success with his role in Brokeback Mountain (2005). For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in in the film, Ledger won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and Best International Actor from the Australian Film Institute, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Ledger was found dead on January 22, 2008 in his apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, with a bottle of prescription sleeping pills near-by. It was concluded weeks later that he died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs that included pain-killers, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication. His death occurred during editing of The Dark Knight (2008) and in the midst of filming his last role as Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009).
Posthumously, he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There (2007), which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona.
A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his performance as the Joker in 'The Dark Knight (2008). His untimely death cast a somber shadow over the subsequent promotion of the $185 million Batman production. Ledger received more than thirty posthumous accolades for his critically acclaimed performance as the Joker, the psychopathic clown prince of crime, in the film, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards (for which he is the second actor to win an acting award posthumously after Peter Finch who won an Oscar for Network (Best Actor 1977)), the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.- Actress
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Kristin Lee Davis was born on February 23, 1965 in Boulder, Colorado. An only child, her parents divorced when she was a baby. She was adopted by her stepfather, psychology professor Keith Davis, after he married her mother, Dorothy, a university data analyst, in 1968. Early in her childhood, Kristin and her parents moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where her stepfather was transferred to a university. She lived in South Carolina until she graduated high school in 1983. She then moved to New Jersey, where she attended Rutgers University. After graduation, she moved to New York and waited tables before opening a yoga studio with a friend. In 1995, she got her big break when she landed the role of Brooke Armstrong Campbell on Melrose Place (1992). She left the show after one year when producers found that audience members hated her bitchy character. In 1998, Kristin was cast as Charlotte York in Sex and the City (1998), of which she remained an integral cast member until the series ended in 2004. Kristin Davis resides in Los Angeles.- Elizabeth Kaitan was born on July 19, 1960 in Hungary. She was brought to New York City by her mother at the age of eight.
Kaitan moved to Manhattan at age 18 in order to fulfill her lifelong ambition of being an actress in motion pictures. She studied her craft at the New York Academy of Theatrical Arts and was a member of the repertory company the American Theatre of Arts for several years (Kaitan acted in works by William Shakespeare as well as contemporary dramas). In addition, Kaitan kept herself afloat by doing modeling work for the Bonnie Kay Agency in New York City.
She made her film debut in the raucous comedy Waitress! (1982) and got her SAG card by doing a one-line bit part as a German girl in Woody Allen's Zelig (1983). Elizabeth moved to Los Angeles, California in 1984. She alternated between lead and supporting roles in a bunch of entertainingly trashy low-budget exploitation features in the horror, action, comedy and science fiction genres. Kaitan appeared as Candy in the "Vice Academy" film series. Her other memorable parts include Jennifer Statson in Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987), Daria in Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987), one of the titular airheads in Assault of the Killer Bimbos (1988), Julie Johnson in Necromancer (1988), Robin in Friday the 13th: The New Blood (1988), and Gretchen Hope in Roller Blade Warriors: Taken by Force (1989). Kaitan was particularly impressive in a dual starring role as both frustrated unhappy housewife Beth and more uninhibited fantasy lover Liza in the steamy Night Club (1989). Moreover, she occasionally popped up in minor parts in such mainstream films as The Lonely Guy (1984), Twins (1988), and Spy Hard (1996). Alas, she voluntarily quit acting in the late 1990s and married a Los Angeles sheriff's deputy. Kaitan now works as a secretary for controversial conservative political activist David Horowitz. - Actress
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Pamela Sue Martin attended public schools in Westport, Connecticut and graduated from Staples High School in February 1971. Before she graduated, Pamela was working in a hamburger stand for $1.45 per hour when a friend told her that she was earning $60 per hour modeling in New York. Liking the wages and being of an ambitious nature, Pamela Sue decided to emulate her friend and soon was earning a good living as a teenage model for print ads and television commercials. Although she was completely innocent of dramatic training, experience or even ambitions, when Pamela Sue heard that Columbia Pictures was auditioning girls for a film called To Find a Man (1972), she decided to try. It took the producers three months to make up their minds, but in the end Pamela Sue had the female starring role. Pamela returned to Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut to finish high school. On the basis of her performance in To Find a Man (1972), producer Irwin Allen cast her to co-star with five Academy Award winners in The Poseidon Adventure (1972). Then came a starring role in the ABC Movie of the Week The Girls of Huntington House (1973) and a co-starring role with Jan-Michael Vincent in Buster and Billie (1974). She is particularly proud of her portrayal in the production, The Hemingway Play (1976). She has played the character Celia Grey in the television movie, Strong Medicine (1986) and has hosted "Saturday Night Live." Pamela enjoys athletic pursuits, especially scuba diving, tennis and skiing.- Actress
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Tracey Gold has virtually grown up on television. She made an auspicious television debut in the award-winning mini-series Roots. She also enjoyed seven years on the immensely popular ABC comedy series Growing Pains after which she returned to drama in more than 20 movies for television.
Born in New York City and raised in Southern California, Tracey is the oldest daughter of a thriving show business family. Her father, Harry Gold, owns a successful talent agency in Hollywood. Her mother, Bonnie, is a former New York advertising executive, who had her own radio show in Montana. Following Tracey's lead, three of her younger sisters have also pursued acting: Missy starred in the long-running ABC series Benson, Brandy starred in ABC's Baby Makes Five, and Jessie starred alongside Tracey in Shattered Trust.
Tracey's career as an actress started at the age of five when she began working in commercials. Her first television starring role was as Missy Ann (Sandy Duncan's character as a girl) in the ABC mini-series Roots. Since then, Tracey has accumulated an impressive number of television movie credits. She has starred in Captains and Kings; Night Cries; Little Moe; Jennifer: A Woman's Story; The Secret of the Harvest Moon (with Bette Davis), The Child Stealer (opposite Beau Bridges), Walt Disney's Escape From Witch Mountain; A Few Days at Weasel Creek; Marilyn: The Untold Story; Labor of Love (with Anne Jillian); Thursday's Child (opposite Rob Lowe); Who Will Love My Children (alongside Ann-Margaret; Another Woman's Child; Lots of Luck and A Reason to Live. She also portrayed the title character in the ABC television movie For the Love of Nancy. Other movie of the week credits include Sleep Baby Sleep, The Lady Killer with Judith Light, Midwest Obsession with Courtney Thorne-Smith and Stolen Innocence and the air rescue thriller Wild Fire 7. In 2000, she starred in Growing Pains The Movie, ABC's highest-rated television movie of the year. She also appeared recently on USA's series The Dead Zone. Recently she starred in the TV movies My Dad'a a Soccer Mom, Arachnoquake, Your Love Never Fails and Sight Unseen amongst many others.
Tracey has also starred in many television specials, such as the CBS Emmy Award-winning Kelly vs. Kelly, (directed by Tom Skerrit), I Think I'm Having a Baby; If Wishes Were Horses; The Hand Me Down Kid and Senior Prom.
Not limiting herself only to television, Tracey has also ventured into feature films and theatre. She co-starred in several features such as Shoot the Moon (opposite Albert Finney and Diane Keaton), Best of Times (with Robin Williams and Kurt Russell) and Wanted and Tailspin.
In 2012 Tracey hosted and Produced the reality series Starving Secrets for LifeTime. Other hosting credits include The Secret Life Of A Soccer Mom for TLC, Trapped in TV Guide and multiple episodes of Entertainment Tonight.
On the stage she starred in Neil Simon's I Ought To Be in Pictures at the Tiffany Attic Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, before performing alongside Bonnie Franklin and Jackee Harry in The Vagina Monologues at the famous Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills.
She also authored Room To Grow, her autobiography.
In 1992, Tracey's former television mother, Joanna Kearns, introduced her to Roby Marshall. The couple married two years later and are now the parents of sons Sage, Bailey, Aiden, Dillon. The family resides in Los Angeles.- Erika Maya Eleniak was born on September 29, 1969 in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, California. She is the eldest daughter in a family of four girls and one boy. Erika began her acting career at the age of 10, starring in numerous productions for television, film, commercials and theater. Her first film role was in the science fiction blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), by Steven Spielberg. Her film credit given was "Pretty Girl". Erika was spotted by a talent scout working for Steven Spielberg in a performer's audition showcase. Erika's mother was very determined for Erika to have a normal childhood and finish school, so Erika worked a couple of jobs a year throughout childhood and adolescence, until after graduating from high school.
It was directly after this, that Erika joined the original cast of the television series Baywatch (1989) and stayed there for the first two years. Erika decided to leave the series after it changed direction. She wanted to venture out into other avenues and so began a successful film career. Erika starred in such films as Under Siege (1992), The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), Chasers (1994), A Pyromaniac's Love Story (1995), Bordello of Blood (1996), among many others. Erika has also done many independent films and cable movies. Her credits include writing, hosting and producing, as well.
Erika's television work also includes a guest-starring role on CSI: Miami (2002) and a guest-starring role, rumored to be reoccurring, on Desperate Housewives (2004). - Actor
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Max Riemelt was born on 7 January 1984 in Berlin, Germany. He is an actor, known for Before the Fall (2004), Free Fall (2013) and Berlin Syndrome (2017).- Actress
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Jenny Agutter was born on December 20, 1952, in Taunton, Somerset, England, UK. The daughter of an army officer, she spent her childhood traveling and living in different countries. Her film career began at the age of 12 in East of Sudan (1964), which was quickly followed by Ballerina: Part 1 (1966) and Ballerina: Part 2 (1966), and A Man Could Get Killed (1966). Other films and television appearances in her early career include Gates to Paradise (1968), Long After Summer (1967), Star! (1968), I Start Counting (1970), The Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens (1970), and The Wild Duck (1971).
In 1970, she appeared in what was her real big break as a child star: The Railway Children (1970), as "Bobbie". The next year, Hollywood called and she spent several years there, appearing in such works as The Cherry Orchard (1971), Walkabout (1971), and The Snow Goose (1971) with Richard Harris, for which she received an Emmy Award. She also appeared in the critically acclaimed A War of Children (1972) and Shelley (1972).
In 1976, Jenny really came to the attention of US film audiences with her starring role in the science-fiction classic Logan's Run (1976) with Michael York. Though not a critical favorite, it was a huge box-office success and spawned a television series. She also starred alongside Richard Chamberlain in a well-received made-for-TV version of the famous Dumas tale The Man in the Iron Mask (1977) and turned in a solid performance in the WW II thriller The Eagle Has Landed (1976) with Michael Caine and Donald Sutherland. The next year, she starred in Peter Shaffer's weighty Equus (1977) as "Jill Mason", alongside Richard Burton. Among her other TV and film work during the 1970s were Dominique (1979), School Play (1979), and The Riddle of the Sands (1979).
In 1981, she played "Desdemona" opposite William Marshall in The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice (1981). Other Shakespeare performances include "King Lear", Love's Labour's Lost (1985) as "Rosaline" for the BBC and Romeo & Juliet (1993) as "Lady Capulet". During this time, she was in numerous films and television series, including Sweet William (1980), Beulah Land (1980), The Survivor (1981), Amy (1981), and one of the films for which she is most fondly remembered, An American Werewolf in London (1981). She also appeared in This Office Life (1984), Secret Places (1984), Silas Marner (1985), Dark Tower (1987), Miss Right (1982), and King of the Wind (1990).
In the 1990s, she concentrated mainly on television, with roles in TECX (1990); Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (1990); Red Dwarf (1988); The All New Alexei Sayle Show (1994); The Buccaneers (1995); And the Beat Goes On (1996); September (1996) with Edward Fox, Michael York, Virginia McKenna, and Jacqueline Bisset; A Respectable Trade (1998) with Warren Clarke, Anna Massey, and Richard Briers. Her theatrical films during this period included Darkman (1990) with Liam Neeson; and Blue Juice (1995) with Sean Pertwee, Ewan McGregor, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. She also appeared as "Mrs. Bruce" in two feature-length episodes of the popular ITV series Bramwell (1995) in which she starred with Jemma Redgrave. She has also made several guest appearances in TV shows such as The Red Dwarf (1998); Boon (1986); The Equalizer (1985) with Edward Woodward; The Twilight Zone (1985); Magnum, P.I. (1980) and The Six Million Dollar Man (1974).
Jenny married to Johan Tham in August 1990. They have one son Jonathan, born in December 1990 and live in Cornwall, England, UK. Her particular love is charity work for The Diabetic Association and NCH Action for Children - a charity which provides home and other help for homeless children - with which she has been involved for many years.- Actress
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Most recently, Keri can be seen starring in "The Diplomat" for Netflix in which Keri plays the titular role of an American Diplomat in London. She also stars in an episode of the limited anthology series "Extrapolations" created by Scott Burns. She also recently starred in "Cocaine Bear" for Universal Pictures from director Elizabeth Banks. Last year, she starred in the supernatural horror thriller "Antlers" for director Scott Cooper and producer Guillermo del Toro, and in "Star Wars: Episode IX" which reunited her with friend and director J.J. Abrams.
For six seasons Keri starred in the critically acclaimed FX series "The Americans" for which she received a Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama, three Emmy Award nominations, two Golden Globe Award nominations, six Critics' Choice Award nominations - one win - and a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.
Russell's film credits include "We Were Soldiers," "Mad About Mambo," "The Upside of Anger," "Mission Impossible III," "August Rush," "The Girl In The Park," "Bedtime Stories," Extraordinary Measures," "Goats," "Austenland," "Dark Skies," "Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes," "Free State Of Jones," and the romantic comedy "Waitress" for which she received rave reviews.
Keri first garnered attention when she starred in the title role of the hit television series "Felicity" from J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves. Just four months after the show's acclaimed premiere on the WB, she was honored with a Golden Globe® Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Drama Series.
Keri's other television credits include the miniseries "Into the West," executive produced by Steven Spielberg, the Hallmark Hall of Fame Presentation "The Magic of Ordinary Days," and "Running Wilde" with Will Arnett.
Keri starred alongside Adam Driver in the Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson's "Burn This." The limited engagement play, directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer, opened in March 2019 and ran through July 2019.
Russell returned to New York theatre after making her off- Broadway stage debut in production of Neil LaBute's "Fat Pig," in 2005.- Actress
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Rose McGowan is an American actress and director, known for her contribution to independent film. Since the age of nineteen, she has appeared in acclaimed films by Gregg Araki, Wes Craven, Brian De Palma, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. In 2014, her directorial debut Dawn (2014) was nominated for the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Rose Arianna McGowan was born on September 5, 1973 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy, to American parents Terri and Daniel Patrick McGowan. She is the second eldest of six siblings, and has Irish, French, and English ancestry. As a young child, she was raised within the Italian chapter of the Children of God. During the early 1980s, her family severed ties with the community and migrated to Eugene, Oregon, USA. Following the divorce of her parents, Rose relocated to Gig Harbor, Washington, to live with her grandmother. At age 14, McGowan was accused of drug use by a family friend and committed to rehabilitation. She has consistently maintained the decision was unjustified. Upon release, she spent a year without a home and was emancipated from her parents by the age of 15. McGowan's career as an actor began with The Doom Generation (1995). Originally intended for Jordan Ladd, the character of Amy Blue was, coincidentally, awarded to McGowan by an associate of director Gregg Araki. For her performance, she was nominated at the 1995 Independent Spirit Awards for Best Debut Performance. Subsequently cast in Wes Craven's Scream (1996), she experienced further success when the project defied expectations to become one of the highest grossing films of the year. The innovative career of McGowan was overshadowed throughout much of the 1990s by her high-profile relationship with musician Brian Warner (aka Marilyn Manson). Strong performances in Going All the Way (1997), Lewis & Clark & George (1997), Southie (1998) and Jawbreaker (1999) were largely unseen by the general public. When the relationship ended between Rose and Manson in 2001, she remarked: "There is great love, but our lifestyle difference is, unfortunately, even greater". Rose continued to work solidly, appearing in a string of soft-sounding studio and independent films. Performances from this period included: a political activist in Showtime's The Killing Yard (2001), a grifter in Roads to Riches (2002) and a factory worker in "Stealing Bess" (aka Vacuums (2003)). She was re-introduced to the mainstream as Paige Matthews in Aaron Spelling's Charmed (1998), a popular television series for which she devoted five consecutive years. When "Charmed" finished its run in 2006, McGowan emerged in top form. Critics praised her efforts in Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror (2007), and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (2007). In several interviews, McGowan has expressed a general apathy and disdain for Hollywood. Despite this, her work ethic remains strong. Following her recent marriage to LA-based artist Davey Detail, the actress has resolved to purse further projects as a director.90's- Actress
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Alicia Silverstone was born on October 4, 1976 in San Francisco, California, the youngest of three children. She is the daughter of Didi (Radford), a former flight attendant, and Monty Silverstone, a real estate investor. Her English-born father is from a Jewish family, while her Scottish-born mother converted to Judaism. Alicia's career began at the tender age of six, when her father took some photos of his young daughter, which eventually led to her getting several television commercials. After a guest spot on The Wonder Years (1988) as a literal "dream girl", she moved on to movies. She landed a role in The Crush (1993), a sort of Fatal Attraction (1987) for teenagers in which she portrayed a disturbed young girl obsessed with an older man. The nasty little role did not impress the critical establishment but it wowed its target audience: teenagers. In fact, the role won her the 1994 MTV Movie Award for "Best Villain" and "Breakthrough Performance". It is interesting to note that during the filming of the movie, Alicia became an emancipated minor in order to get around child labor laws which would have interfered with her working hours. She was a dedicated actress from early on.
The film also caught the attention of Aerosmith, who hired her to appear in a string of their music videos. The first of them, "Cryin'", was voted the #1 video of all time on MTV. Silverstone was definitely a hit with the MTV crowd, but larger commercial success still eluded her. That all changed when she landed the role of Cher in Amy Heckerling's Clueless (1995). Cher was the antithesis of Alicia's role in The Crush; this time around, she was a rich, naive yet endearing girl from Beverly Hills in search of love in the 1990s. The film was a huge box-office hit and wowed both audiences and critics alike and demonstrated Alicia's strength and bankability. She was hailed as the woman of the hour, and branded the spokeswoman for an emerging young generation. She signed a deal with Columbia TriStar worth $10 million and got the coveted role of Batgirl in the Batman franchise. Also, as part of the package, she received a three-year first-look deal for her own production company, First Kiss Productions. The first film released by First Kiss was Excess Baggage (1997).90's- Actress
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Courteney Cox was born on June 15th, 1964 in Birmingham, Alabama, into an affluent Southern family. She is the daughter of Courteney (Bass) and Richard Lewis Cox (1930-2001), a businessman. She was the baby of the family with two older sisters (Virginia and Dottie) and an older brother, Richard, Jr. She was raised in an exclusive society town, Mountain Brook, Alabama. Courteney was the archetypal daddy's girl, and therefore was understandably devastated when, in 1974, her parents divorced, and her father moved to Florida.
She became a rebellious teen, and did not make things easy for her mother, and new stepfather, New York businessman Hunter Copeland. Now, she is great friends with both. She attended Mountain Brook High School, where she was a cheerleader, tennis player and swimmer. In her final year, she received her first taste of modeling. She appeared in an advert for the store, Parisians. Upon graduation, she left Alabama to study architecture and interior design at Mount Vernon College. After one year she dropped out to a pursue a modeling career in New York, after being signed by the prestigious Ford Modelling Agency. She appeared on the covers of teen magazines such as Tiger Beat and Little Miss, plus numerous romance novels. She then moved on to commercials for Maybeline, Noxema, New York Telephone Company and Tampax.
While modeling, she attended acting classes, as her real dream and ambition was to be an actress. In 1984, she landed herself a small part in one episode of As the World Turns (1956) as a young débutante named Bunny. Her first big break, however, was being cast by Brian De Palma in the Bruce Springsteen video "Dancing in The Dark". In 1985, she moved to LA to star alongside Dean Paul Martin in Misfits of Science (1985). It was a flop, but a few years later, she was chosen out of thousands of hopefuls to play Michael J. Fox's girlfriend, psychology major Lauren Miller in Family Ties (1982).
In 1989, Family Ties (1982) ended, and Cox went through a lean spell in her career, featuring in unmemorable movies such as Mr. Destiny (1990) with Michael Caine. Fortunes changed dramatically for Cox, when in 1994, she starred alongside Jim Carrey in the unexpected hit Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), and a year later she was cast as Monica Geller on the hugely successful sitcom Friends (1994). It was this part that turned her into an international superstar and led to an American Comedy Award nomination. In 1996 Cox starred in Wes Craven's horror/comedy Scream (1996) . This movie grossed over $100 million at the box office, and won Cox rave reviews for her standout performance as the wickedly bitchy and smug TV reporter Gale Weathers. She went on to play this character again in each of the three sequels. Not only did her involvement in this movie lead to critical acclaim, but it also led to her meeting actor husband David Arquette. He played her on-screen love interest Dewey, and life imitated art as the two fell in love for real. Their wedding took place in San Francisco, at the historic Grace Cathedral atop Nob Hill, on June 12th, 1999. Joined by 200 guests, including Cox's film star friends Liam Neeson and Kevin Spacey, the happy couple finally became Mr. and Mrs. Arquette.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Hardly the dumb blonde of Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997), Lisa was born in Encino, California on July 30, 1963. Her mother, Nedra S. (Stern), worked as a travel agent, and her father, Lee N. Kudrow, is a physician. Her parents are both from Jewish families (from Belarus, Russia, and Hungary). Lisa was raised in Tarzana and played varsity-level tennis in high school and college, and is a pool shark who has mastered some of the more difficult trick shots (so beware). She graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychobiology. At first, she wanted to pursue a career in research, so she returned to Los Angeles to begin working with her father. However, Lisa got inspired to perform by one of her brother's friends, comedian Jon Lovitz, and so the tall (5' 8") blonde-haired, green-eyed beauty entered show biz. Lisa auditioned for the improv theater group, The Groundlings, based in Los Angeles. Cynthia Szigeti, a well-known improv teacher, took Lisa under her wing. In that class, Lisa became a friend of Conan O'Brien. Graduating with honors in 1989, Lisa became a full-fledged member of The Groundlings. Breaking into TV, she got a recurring role as Ursula, the ditsy waitress on Mad About You (1992). This led to her starring role on Friends (1994). In the debut season (1994-95) of Friends (1994), Lisa earned an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series; in 1998, she won that award for her role as Phoebe, the ditsy but lovable folk singer. Lisa has also been nominated for Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and American Comedy Awards for her performances.
Lisa made the transition to the big screen with a lot of success. In 1997, she starred opposite Oscar winner Mira Sorvino in the above-mentioned Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997). Lisa garnered more praise for her film work when she got the New York Film Critics Award for her starring role in The Opposite of Sex (1998).
Lisa married Michel Stern, an advertising executive, on May 27, 1995. On May 7, 1998, they were blessed with a son, Julian Murray; they live in Los Angeles.- Actor
- Producer
- Composer
Henry Jackson Thomas Jr. is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor and had a lead role in the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), for which he won a Young Artist Award and received Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award, and Saturn Award nominations. Thomas also had roles in films like Cloak & Dagger (1984), Fire in the Sky (1993), Legends of the Fall (1994), Suicide Kings (1997), All the Pretty Horses (2000), Gangs of New York (2002), 11:14 (2003), and Dear John (2010). Thomas was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Series, Miniseries or Television Film for his role in the television film Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1997).- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
As a seasoned actor, writer, producer, and stand-up comedian, Paul Reiser continues to add to his list of accomplishments. In addition to co-creating and starring on the critically acclaimed NBC series, Mad About You (1992), which garnered him Emmy, Golden Globe, American Comedy Award and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Actor in a Comedy Series, his successes also include his book, "Couplehood", which sold over two million copies and reached the number one spot on "The New York Times" best-seller list, and "Babyhood", his follow-up book, which features his trademark humorous take on the adventures of being a first-time father, which also made "The New York Times" best-seller list. He also wrote follow-up bestseller Familyhood.
Born and raised in New York City, Reiser was drawn to Greenwich Village clubs, which featured, among others, George Carlin, Robert Klein and David Steinberg. He subsequently attended college at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he majored in music (piano and composition) and participated in drama classes. During his university years, he was active in student theater productions at the Hinman Little Theater, an on-campus community theater organization located in Hinman College, his dorm community. Reiser later began performing as a comedian at the Improv and Comic Strip during university summer breaks.
Remembered for notable performances in films, such as Diner (1982), Aliens (1986), Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), The Marrying Man (1991), Bye Bye Love (1995) and One Night at McCool's (2001). More recently, he starred in two original movies for Showtime - Strange Relations (2001) opposite Julie Walters, Chazz Palminteri's Women vs. Men (2002), opposite Joe Mantegna and Christine Lahti. His first original screenplay also became his next film The Thing About My Folks (2005), also starring Peter Falk, Olympia Dukakis and Elizabeth Perkins.
Reiser's development company, "Nuance Productions", has produced several projects for NBC television including, My 11:30 (2004), starring Jeff Goldblum and Donna Murphy - which Reiser co-wrote with Steven Sater. Also in the works - for the Showtime cable network - is a mock-documentary about "The Smothers Brothers" and their battles with television network censorship in the late 1960s. Since then, he has maintained a lower profile, working more as an executive producer and writer than as an actor.
In 2003, Reiser made his stage debut in Woody Allen's directorial play debut Writer's Block. He also paired with Steven Soderbergh to star in the Amazon Original Series Red Oaks.
Reiser tours the country performing to sold-out venues and was recently voted one of Comedy Central's "Top 100 Comedians of All Time."- Actress
- Producer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Dominique Swain was raised in Malibu, California, USA. The second of three daughters of mother Cindy and father David an electrical engineer, her sisters makeup artist Alexis and actress Chelse. She debuted her film career in the controversial remake of Vladimir Nabokov's novel and Stanley Kubrick's film Lolita by director Adrian Lyne. It was a powerful first performance by the young actress, Lyne had seen her performance on a videotape audition she put together with a friend while she was between agents, selecting her from a pool of more than 2500 actresses vying for the role. Lyne was charmed by her and her reading directly from the novel as opposed to the script. . Despite a phenomenal performance opposite Jeremy Irons as Humbert and Melanie Griffith as Lolita's mother, the film faced a great deal of controversy due to its subject matter as networks pulled away from backing wide theatrical release. After some delays, it was eventually premiered to US audiences on the Showtime network followed by a limited theatrical release.
Since then she has gone on to act and star in close to 100 other films, including Face/Off, Girl and Alpha Dog. Recently she has joined Cameo where her fans can directly reach out to her for personal videos or direct message chats.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Brad Renfro was born on July 25, 1982 in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Angela Denise McCrory and Mark Renfro, a factory worker. He was discovered at age 10 by director Joel Schumacher and was cast in the motion picture The Client (1994), which starred Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones. Although this would be his zenith, he went on to appear in other films, including The Cure (1995), Tom and Huck (1995), Sleepers (1996), and Apt Pupil (1998). Renfro won The Hollywood Reporter's Young Star Award in 1995 and was nominated as one of People magazine's "Top 30 Under 30," though addiction problems in his teens and early 20s led to several police arrests and hampered his career. He died of a drug overdose in January 2008, aged 25.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Frank Whaley is a critically acclaimed actor/writer/director. He is best known for the films Pulp Fiction (1994) and Swimming with Sharks (1994), and has worked with Oliver Stone multiple times. His feature directorial debut, Joe the King (1999), earned him the Waldo Salt Screenwriting prize at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. He was born in Syracuse, New York, and resides in New York City. He is also an accomplished stage actor, working frequently with the New Group theater. Frank is married to the writer Heather Whaley. They have two children.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
It was after the 1968 Democratic convention and there was a casting call for a film with several roles for the kind of young people who had disrupted the convention. Two recent graduates of Catholic University in Washington DC, went to the audition in New York for Joe (1970). Chris Sarandon, who had studied to be an actor, was passed over. His wife Susan got a major role.
That role was as Susan Compton, the daughter of ad executive Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick). In the movie Dad Bill kills Susan's drug dealer boyfriend and next befriends Joe (Peter Boyle)-- a bigot who works on an assembly line and who collects guns.
Five years later, Sarandon made the film where fans of cult classics have come to know her as Janet, who gets entangled with transvestite Dr. Frank n Furter in The The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). More than 15 years after beginning her career Sarandon at last actively campaigned for a great role, Annie in Bull Durham (1988), flying at her own expense from Rome to Los Angeles. "It was such a wonderful script ... and did away with a lot of myths and challenged the American definition of success", she said. "When I got there, I spent some time with Kevin Costner, kissed some ass at the studio and got back on a plane". Her romance with the Bull Durham (1988)) supporting actor, Tim Robbins, had produced two sons by 1992 and put Sarandon in the position of leaving her domestic paradise only to accept roles that really challenged her. The result was four Academy Award nominations in the 1990s and best actress for Dead Man Walking (1995). Her first Academy Award nomination was for Louis Malle's Atlantic City (1980).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Samantha Eggar was born on 5 March 1939 in Hampstead, London, England, UK. She is an actress, known for The Collector (1965), Hercules (1997) and The Brood (1979). She was previously married to Tom Stern.- Susan Strasberg was born in New York City on May 22, 1938. From the time of her birth, she was destined to be an actress, as her father was Lee Strasberg, acting coach at the famed Actors Studio in New York. In 1953, Susan made her acting debut in the episode Catch a Falling Star (1953) of the Goodyear Playhouse (1951) when she was just 15 years old. However, her true stage debut was on Broadway in the title role of "Diary of Anne Frank" in 1955. From that time on, Susan would devote part time to the stage and part time to the screen. Her first movie role was a fourth-billed part in Picnic (1955). That spot wasn't bad, considering she was still relatively new to the screen and her co-stars were William Holden, Kim Novak, Rosalind Russell, Cliff Robertson and Arthur O'Connell.
After making The Cobweb (1955) later that same year, she went back to perform on the stage. It just wasn't on-screen that she co-starred with big names; in 1957 she shared the stage with Helen Hayes and Richard Burton in "Time Remembered". In 1958, Susan returned to the big screen again in Stage Struck (1958). Although her billing wasn't anywhere near what it was with "Picnic", the picture got good reviews. For the remainder of her acting career, Susan alternated among the stage, screen and television. Wherever there was an acting role, she was there to appear in it. She spent some time in Europe, particularly Italy, making films for the rabid fans there. During the course of her tenure, she appeared in three documentaries about her old friend Marilyn Monroe. The first two were Marilyn Monroe: Beyond the Legend (1986) and Remembering Marilyn (1988). The third was Marilyn Monroe: Life After Death (1994). On January 21, 1999, Susan lost her struggle with breast cancer in New York City. She was a youthful 60 years old. - Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Sigourney Weaver has created a host of memorable characters, both dramatic and comic, ranging from Ripley in Alien to Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist to Gwen/Tawny in Galaxy Quest and most recently, 14-year-old Kiri in Avatar: The Way of Water. With a career spanning over 50 years, Weaver has captivated audiences and won acclaim as one of the most gifted and versatile actresses on stage and screen.
Born and educated in New York City, Weaver graduated from Stanford University and went on to receive a master's degree from the Yale School of Drama. Her first professional job was in Sir John Gielgud's production of The Constant Wife working with Ingrid Bergman.
After a walk-on in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, Weaver made her motion picture debut in Ridley Scott's 1979 blockbuster Alien. She later reprised the role of Warrant Officer Ripley in James Cameron's 1986 Aliens; her performance earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. In 1992, she again brought Ripley back to life in David Fincher's Alien 3, which she co-produced, and in 1997 she starred in and co-produced Alien: Resurrection for director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. In 1985, Weaver starred in Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters alongside Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd playing Dana Barrett and her possessed counterpart Zuul.
In 1988 Weaver portrayed primatologist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist and Katharine Parker in the Mike Nichols comedy Working Girl. Both performances earned her Academy Award Nominations, and she was awarded two Golden Globes for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture. Other films include Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously (1983) with Linda Hunt and Mel Gibson, Eyewitness (1981) with William Hurt, Half Moon Street (1986) with Michael Caine, Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) with Gerard Depardieu, Roman Polanski's gripping film adaptation of Death and the Maiden (1994), the thriller Copycat (1995) and Paul Rudnick's comedy Jeffery (1995). Weaver also starred in Showtime's live-action film Snow White (1997) based on the original Grimm's fairy tale, which earned her an Emmy nomination and a Screen Actors Guild nomination.
In 1997 Weaver joined the ensemble of Ang Lee's critically acclaimed film The Ice Storm alongside Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci. Her performance garnered her a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe nomination and a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She later gave a galvanizing performance in A Map of the World (1999), Scott Elliott's powerful drama based on the novel by Jane Hamilton, which earned her universal critical praise and a Golden Globe nomination for best actress. Also in 1999, Weaver appeared in the science fiction comedy Galaxy Quest directed by Dean Parisot alongside Tim Allen and Alan Rickman. She delighted audiences with her flair for comedy, and the film proved to be a hit of the 1999 holiday season. She followed this with the popular comedies Company Man (2000) written and directed by Douglas McGrath and David Mirkin's Heartbreakers (2001) opposite Gene Hackman, Jennifer Love-Hewitt and the late Ray Liotta.
In 2002 Weaver starred in the film version of The Guys, with Anthony LaPaglia, directed by Jim Simpson, and in 2003 she portrayed the cold-blooded, red-headed warden in the hit comedy Holes directed by Andy Davis. The next year, Weaver appeared in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village and received rave reviews for her performance in Imaginery Heroes written and directed by Dan Harris.
In 2006 she appeared in three films - as Babe Paley in Douglas McGrath's Infamous, in Jake Kasdan's The TV Set, and in Snow Cake opposite Alan Rickman. In the following years, Weaver lent her voice to Pixar's 2008 box office smash WALL-E as well as The Tale of Despereaux (2008) with Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Watson. She also starred in the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedy Baby Mama (2008) and Andy Fickman's comedy You Again (2010) with Jamie Lee Curtis. In December 2009 Weaver starred as Dr. Grace Augustine in Jim Cameron's groundbreaking film Avatar, which went on to be the highest grossing film of all time. The film won a Golden Globe for Best Picture and an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.
Other credits include Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Miguel Arteta's Cedar Rapids (2011), Paul (2011), Amy Heckerling's Vamps (2012), and Neil Blomkamp's Chappie (2015). In December 2016 she starred in Focus Features' A Monster Calls alongside Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones and newcomer, Lewis MacDougall, followed by Lionsgate's The Assignment (2017) with Michelle Rodriguez directed by Walter Hill.
After coming to New York in the fall of 1975, Weaver performed Off-Off Broadway in Christopher Durang's The Nature and Purpose of the Universe (1974), Titanic (1976) and Das Lusitania Songspiel (1980). She and Durang co-wrote Das Lusitania which earned them both Drama Desk nominations. She has appeared in numerous Off-Broadway productions in New York, working with writers such as John Guare, Albert Innaurato, Richard Nelson and Len Jenkin. In regional repertory she has performed works by Pinter, Williams, Feydeau and Shakespeare. Weaver also appeared in the PBS mini-series "The Best of Families" (1977) and John Cheever's The Sorrows of Gin (1979), adapted by Wendy Wasserstein for PBS.
Weaver received a Tony Award nomination for her starring role in Hurlyburly (1984) on Broadway, directed by Mike Nichols. She played Portia in the Classic Stage Company of New York's production of The Merchant of Venice (1986). In 1996 Weaver returned to Broadway in the Lincoln Center production of Sex and Longing, written by Christopher Durang. In the Fall of 2012, she starred in the Lincoln Center production of Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike which moved to Broadway in 2013. That year Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike took home the Tony award for Best Play.
Weaver originated the female lead in Anne Nelson's The Guys (2001) at The Flea where it was commissioned and directed by Jim Simpson. The Guys tells the story of a fire captain played by Bill Murray dealing with the aftermath of 9/11. In 2002 she starred in Neil LaBute's play The Mercy Seat opposite Liev Schreiber - which John Lahr of The New Yorker described as offering "performances of a depth and concentration that haven't been seen in New York for many seasons." Weaver also originated roles in two A.R. Gurney world premieres, Mrs. Farnsworth (2004) at the Flea Theater (New York Times 10 Best Plays for 2004), and Crazy Mary (2007) at Playwrights Horizons.
In television Weaver received Emmy, Screen Actors' Guild and Golden Globe nominations for her role as Mary Griffith in Lifetime's "Prayers for Bobby," which was also Emmy nominated for Outstanding Made for Television Movie. In 2012 she was seen in USA Network's miniseries "Political Animals," for which she received SAG, Golden Globe, and Emmy nominations. Weaver also appeared in the Marvel series "The Defenders," released globally on Netflix in August 2017.
Ms. Weaver was honored to receive the GLAAD Media Award for her work in "Prayers for Bobby" as well as the Trevor Life Award in 2011. She has been the Honorary Chair of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund for the last 33 years. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, and she also served on the Board of Human Rights First for 25 years. Weaver was proud to receive the National Audubon Society's Rachel Carson Award in 2009 for her environmental work. She was also a co-founder of the original Flea Theater on White Street which championed young artists and new work.
Weaver appeared in season 4 of the French television series "Call My Agent!" which was released globally on Netflix in 2021 and won the International Emmy for Comedy Series. Additionally, she starred in Philippe Falardeau's My Salinger Year which opened the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival. In April 2021 Weaver narrated James Cameron's "Secrets of the Whales," which debuted on Disney+ and garnered an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Narrator. The series also won the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.
Weaver's recent film work includes Phyllis Nagy's drama Call Jane alongside Elizabeth Banks, Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky's The Goos House alongside Kevin Kline. James Cameron's Avatar: The Way of Water premiered at the end of 2022 with Weaver playing Kiri, Grace Augustine's Na'vi daughter. A2 received "Best Picture" nominations for the Oscars, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice awards and has grossed almost 2.5 billion dollars. Upcoming projects include Amazon Studios' drama series, "The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart," which she also executive produced, and Paul Schrader's Master Gardener, opposite Joel Edgerton, which premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.- British actress Pamela Franklin has worked with many notable actors and directors throughout her career. A somewhat underrated actress, she had a wide range of emotions that she brought to her many versatile characters. Franklin was born in Yokohama, Japan, and her father was an importer/exporter. She initially studied dance at the Elmhurst School of Ballet in England (now the Elmhurst School for Dance). She made her film debut at age 11 as "Flora" in The Innocents (1961) alongside Deborah Kerr and a year later appeared as "Tina" in The Lion (1962) with William Holden and Trevor Howard. She has worked with many directors including Ronald Neame, Jack Clayton, and John Huston. Franklin is most remembered for her performance as the rebellious "Sandy" in the The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) which starred Maggie Smith and also as the hapless kidnap victim in The Night of the Following Day (1969) in which she appeared with Marlon Brando and Rita Moreno.
Franklin later carved out a niche as a "scream queen" in a handful of 1970s horror features. She portrayed the psychic medium in The Legend of Hell House (1973) which also featured Roddy McDowall. For many years, Franklin made several guest appearances on hit TV shows. In the early 1970s, she married actor Harvey Jason whom she met on the set of Necromancy (1972) and had two children. Franklin retired from acting in the early 1980s. - Actress
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Born two months premature at four pounds, Kate Noelle Holmes made her first appearance on December 18, 1978, in Toledo, Ohio. She is the daughter of Kathleen Ann (Craft), a philanthropist, and Martin Joseph Holmes, Sr., a lawyer. She is of German, Irish, and English ancestry. Her parents have said that her strong-willed personality is probably due to her early birth. Being the youngest in the Holmes clan, completing the family of three other sisters and one brother, Katie was always the baby.
As a teenager, she began attending modeling school. When she was sixteen, her teacher invited her to go to a modeling competition with other girls from her class. She competed in the International Modeling and Talent Association by singing, dancing, and reciting a monologue from To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). By the end of that time in New York, Katie won many awards. But she said she didn't want to model because it wasn't challenging enough. So when she was seventeen, Katie went to Los Angeles to audition for movies. Luckily, on her second audition, she was cast in the movie, The Ice Storm (1997), directed by Ang Lee. Katie's character was Libbets Casey, a rich New Yorker, who is pursued by two of the main characters. It was a small part, but it marked the beginning of her professional acting career.
After the excitement of her first movie, Katie began sending in audition tapes for pilot shows. During that time, she was also starring in her all-girls Catholic high school musical, Damn Yankees, as Lola. After Kevin Williamson received her audition tape for his new show, Dawson's Creek (1998), the producers wanted her to come to Hollywood right away and read live for them. But because they wanted her to come on the opening night for Damn Yankees, Katie had to tell them she couldn't make it. Fortunately, the show's producers wanted her so much for that role, they rescheduled her callback and the result was she got the part as Joey Potter. During her first year with Dawson's Creek (1998), Katie was able to do two movies, Disturbing Behavior (1998) and Go (1999), and, for the former, she won Best Breakthrough Female Performance at the 1999 MTV Movie Awards.
The following year, she starred next to Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys (2000), playing Hannah Green, a published author and a boarder at her teacher's (Douglas) house, who has a crush on him, and tries to seduce him. Her first leading role came in 2002, with Abandon (2002). She played a college student named Katie Burke, who is haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her boyfriend who vanished two years prior. With Dawson's Creek (1998) coming to a close after six years in May of 2003, it was a bittersweet moment for all the cast. Accustomed to being in North Carolina filming ten months out of a year, the cast members now had the opportunity to make more movies.
Katie demonstrated this in October, when she had two new movies, Pieces of April (2003) and The Singing Detective (2003), coming out in that month alone. Pieces of April (2003) is a charming Thanksgiving movie about April (Holmes), the black sheep of her family, who wants to give her family the perfect dinner before her mother passes on. The Singing Detective (2003) is a dark musical where the main character (Robert Downey Jr.) was a writer in a hospital for skin conditions who writes a dark world of seduction and murder in his mind. Katie Holmes played the kind Nurse Mills who tends to his every need. She also gets to lip sync and dance in this movie. In 2004, she starred in the romantic movie First Daughter (2004), in which she played the President's (Michael Keaton) daughter, Samantha, who wants to go to college without any Secret Service tagging along. In 2005, Holmes co-starred in Batman Begins (2005), where she played Rachel Dawes, a childhood sweetheart and love interest to Batman/Bruce Wayne.
Katie has a daughter with her ex-husband, Tom Cruise.- Actress
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Diana Dors was born Diana Mary Fluck on October 23, 1931 in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. She and her mother both nearly died from the traumatic birth. Because of the trauma, her mother lavished on Diana anything and everything she wanted--clothes, toys and dance lessons were the order of the day. Diana's love of films began when her mother took her to the local movies theaters. The actresses on the screen caught Diana's attention and she said, herself, that from the age of three she wanted to be an actress. She was educated in the finest private schools, much to the chagrin of her father (apparently he thought private education was a waste of money). Physically, Diana grew up fast. At age 12, she looked and acted much older than what she was. Much of this was due to the actresses she studied on the silver screen and Diana trying to emulate them. She wanted nothing more than to go to the United States and Hollywood to have a chance to make her place in film history. After placing well in a local beauty contest, Diana was offered a role in a thespian group (she was 13).
The following year, Diana enrolled at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) to hone her acting skills. She was the youngest in her class. Her first fling at the camera was in The Shop at Sly Corner (1947). She did not care that it was a small, uncredited role; she was on film and at age 16, that's all that mattered. That was quickly followed by Dancing with Crime (1947), which consisted of nothing more than a walk-on role. Up until this time, Diana had pretended to be 17 years old (if producers had known her true age, they probably would not have let her test for the role). However, since she looked and acted older, this was no problem. Diana's future dawned bright in 1948, and she appeared in no less than six films. Some were uncredited, but some had some meat to the roles. The best of the lot was the role of Charlotte in the classic Oliver Twist (1948). Throughout the 1950s, she appeared in more films and became more popular in Britain. Diana was a pleasant version of Marilyn Monroe, who had taken the United States by storm. Britain now had its own version.
Diana continued to play sexy sirens and kept seats in British theaters filled. She really came into her own as an actress. She was more than a woman who exuded her sexy side, she was a very fine actress as her films showed. As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, she began to play more mature roles with an effectiveness that was hard to match. Films such as Craze (1974), Swedish Wildcats (1972), The Amorous Milkman (1975) and Three for All (1975) helped fill out her resume. After filming Steaming (1985), Diana was diagnosed with cancer, which was too much for her to overcome. The British were saddened when word came of her death at age 52 on May 4, 1984 in Windsor, Berkshire, England.- Actress
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Music Department
A California native, Kelli Garner made her film debut at age sixteen in director Mike Mills' short film Architecture of Reassurance. Her performance captured the attention of director Larry Clark who cast her in her first feature film, as the drug-addicted teen, Heather Swallers, in the controversial docudrama Bully, establishing Kelli as an edgy young talent. After honing in on her unique chameleon like skills in more independent film, the fiery young actor earned a part as the 1940's Hollywood ingénue, Faith Domergue, in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. Soon after, she reunited with Mike Mills for his 2005 Sundance hit Thumbsucker, and further proved her ability to shine in comedy, with her first leading roles, starring opposite Tommy Lee Jones in Man of the House as well as the quirky and off beat comedy Lars and the Real Girl, opposite Ryan Gosling.
On the television side, Garner most recently starred as Kate Ryan on NBC's The Enemy Within opposite Jennifer Carpenter and Morris Chestnut and gave a knockout performance per Variety as Norma Jean /Marilyn Monroe in LIfetime's event drama, The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, also starring Susan Sarandon. Garner co-starred in ABC's 1960's airline drama, Pan Am, opposite Christina Ricci , cementing her throwback, vintage appeal, along the way.
In both film and television Kelli has continued to disappear into role after role, leaving us with raw, honest and heartbreaking performances.
Some other notable roles include, Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock and Alex Aja's Horn's with Daniel Radcliffe
Her Theatre credits include:
The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, opposite Diane Wiest Classic Stage Company
1+1 by Eric Bogosian, New York Stage and Film
Dog See's God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead by Bert V Royal Century Center for Performing Arts- Yasmine Bleeth was born on 14 June 1968 in New York City, New York, USA. She is an actress, known for BASEketball (1998), Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding (2003) and Nash Bridges (1996). She has been married to Paul Cerrito since 25 August 2002.
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Zuniga was born in San Francisco, California to Agnes A. Zuniga (née Janawicz) and Joaquin Alberto Zuniga Mazariegos. Her mother is a Unitarian minister, of Polish and Finnish descent, and her father, originally from Guatemala, was an emeritus professor of philosophy at California State University, East Bay. Zuniga has two sisters: Jennifer Zuniga and Rosario Zúñiga.
In her early teens, Zuniga expressed interest in acting, and attended the Young Conservatory program of the American Conservatory Theater of San Francisco. After her parents divorced, Zuniga moved with her mother and sister from Berkeley, California to Reading, Vermont, where she spent the remainder of her teenage years. Zuniga graduated from Woodstock Union High School in Woodstock, Vermont, in 1980, after which she returned to California and enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles to study theater arts. After leaving college, Zuniga was close friends and roommates with fellow actress Meg Ryan.
Zuniga made her film debut in a supporting part in the slasher film The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982), while a student at the University of California, Los Angeles. She was then cast in the 1984 horror film The Initiation (1984), opposite Vera Miles and Clu Gulager. This was followed by a lead role, opposite John Cusack, in Rob Reiner's film, The Sure Thing (1985).
In 1986, she starred as Princess Vespa in Mel Brooks' memorable cult comedy Spaceballs (1987), followed by a supporting part in the science fiction horror sequel, The Fly II (1989). From 1992 to 1996, Zuniga portrayed Jo Reynolds on the wildly popular soap opera Melrose Place (1992), which garnered Zuniga wider mainstream exposure. Her role on the series would be followed by numerous appearances on television series, including a lead role as Shelly Pierce on American Dreams (2004) from 2004 to 2005, and a recurring on the popular CW series, One Tree Hill (2003), as Victoria Davis, a role which she played from 2008 until 2012.- Actor
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Matthew Rhys Evans is a Welsh actor. He is known for playing Kevin Walker in Brothers & Sisters (2006-2011) and Philip Jennings in The Americans (2013-2018), for which he received two Golden Globe Award nominations and a Primetime Emmy Award. In film, he appeared as Dylan Thomas in the film The Edge of Love (2008) and as Daniel Ellsberg in the film The Post (2017) and starred in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019). In 2020, he starred in the lead role on the HBO period series Perry Mason, for which he received his third Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor - Television Series Drama.- Actor
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Such is the mythology that has sprung up around Bruce Robinson's first film, the openly autobiographical Withnail & I (1987), that it's often hard to separate fact from fiction. But the facts appear to be these: trained as an actor at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, he got off to a good early start when he was given a reasonably prominent part as Benvolio in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968). But despite this and other parts for the likes of Ken Russell (The Music Lovers (1971)) and François Truffaut (the male lead in The Story of Adele H (1975)), he found that acting mostly involved fruitless waiting for the phone to ring interspersed with the occasional TV commercial, while desperately trying to make ends meet. So he began writing screenplays in the mid-1970s, and was lucky enough to secure the patronage of producer David Puttnam who finally produced Robinson's script about Cambodia, The Killing Fields (1984) for which he was nominated for an Oscar. But cult success was to come a couple of years later when he wrote and directed Withnail & I (1987), a film about the squalid lives of two unemployed actors that was elevated to iconic status by students all over the world and which shot newcomer Richard E. Grant to stardom. Robinson's subsequent films, the advertising satire How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989) and the serial-killer thriller Jennifer 8 (1992), while less memorable than his debut, both show that Robinson has more than enough intelligence and brio to make his future career worth following.- Actor
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The son of the renowned French sculptor Paul Belmondo, he studied at Conservatoire National Superieur d'Art Dramatique (CNSAD); after the minor stage performances he made his screen debut in À pied, à cheval et en voiture (1957) but the episodes with his participation were cut before release. However, the breakthrough role in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) made him one of the key figures in the French New Wave. Since mid-60s he completely switched to commercial mainstream pictures and became a big comedy and action star in France. Following the example of Alain Delon he founded his own production company Cerito named after his grandmother's maiden name. In 1989 he was awarded Cesar for his performance in Itinerary of a Spoiled Child (1988) . Recently he returned to stage performing in the Théâtre Marigny, Paris, notably as Edmund Kean or Cyrano de Bergerac. He still appears in the movies but not so often as before preferring mostly dramatic roles. The president of France distinguished him with order of Legion of Honour. Belmondo had three children with his first spouse Elodie Constant: Patricia Belmondo ( who died in a fire in 1993), Florence Belmondo and Paul Belmondo. In 2003, he had another daughter, Stella Belmondo, with his second spouse Natty Belmondo. None of his children became actors though you could have seen his son Paul in an episodic role (the same as his father, at an earlier age) in Itinerary of a Spoiled Child (1988).- Actor
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Sam Shepard was born Samuel Shepard Rogers in Fort Sheridan, IL, to Jane Elaine (Schook), a teacher, and Samuel Shepard Rogers, a teacher and farmer who was also in the army. As the eldest son of a US Army officer (and WWII bomber pilot), Shepard spent his early childhood moving from base to base around the US until finally settling in Duarte, CA. While at high school he began acting and writing and worked as a ranch hand in Chino. He graduated high school in 1961 and then spent a year studying agriculture at Mount San Antonio Junior College, intending to become a vet.
In 1962, though, a touring theater company, the Bishop's Company Repertory Players, visited the town and he joined up and left home to tour with them. He spent nearly two years with the company and eventually settled in New York where he began writing plays, first performing with an obscure off-off-Broadway group but eventually gaining recognition for his writing and winning prestigious OBIE awards (Off-Broadway) three years running. He flirted with the world of rock, playing drums for the Holy Modal Rounders, then moved to London in 1971, where he continued writing.
Back in the US by 1974, he became playwright in residence at San Francisco's Magic Theater and continued to work as an increasingly well respected playwright throughout the 1970s and into the '80s. Throughout this time he had been dabbling with Hollywood, having most notably in the early days worked as one of the writers on Zabriskie Point (1970), but it was his role as Chuck Yeager in 1983's The Right Stuff (1983) (co-starring Fred Ward and Dennis Quaid) that brought him to the attention of the wider, non-theater audience. Since then he has continued to write, act and direct, both on screen and in the theater.
He died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis--commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease--in Kentucky on July 27, 2017.- Actress
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Diane Franklin is an iconic 80s American film actress, known for her dark curly hair, and dialects. Beginning her acting career at the age of ten, Diane started with modeling, theater, commercials, and soap opera work. She then won the lead role of the dream girl, Karen, in cult classic THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN (1982) and soon after played the daughter, Patricia Montelli in AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION. Her break-out film role was the spirited French-exchange student, Monique Junot, from the off-beat comedy BETTER OFF DEAD. And her most notable commercial success was playing the medieval Princess-babe, Joanna, from 1980s iconic comedy, BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE. Diane sang the NATIONAL ANTHEM at Dodger Stadium in 2004, and wrote two autobiographies about her career: Diane Franklin: The Excellent Adventures of the Last American, French Exchange Babe of the 80s (Amazon/Kindle), and Diane Franklin: The Excellent CURLS of the Last American, French Exchange Babe of the 80s (Amazon/Barnes&Noble) Her other acting credits include episodic television, such as Charles in Charge, Murder She Wrote, Matlock and Dallas : The Early Years. She also re-curred in televisions series, and movies made for television, such as SummerGirl and Deadly Lessons. Over the years Diane has also performed in her daughter/filmmaker, OLIVIA DELAURENTIS' award winning comedies: HUMANIZED (L.A. Film Festival,) MY BETTER HALF (Soho Film Festival,) and more recently a comedy web-series on YouTube titled SUGARBABIES (Barely Legal Comedy). Diane returns to acting, on the big screen, in 2018 with the following films: WALLY GOT WASTED, WAKING NIGHTMARE, THE FINAL INTERVIEW and THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS: THE HAUNTING ON LONG ISLAND.- Actress
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Jennifer Eve Garth was born on April 3rd, 1972 in Urbana, Illinois, USA to John and Carolyn Garth, who both had 3 children each from different marriages, before they had Jennie. She grew up on a 25-acre horse ranch outside Urbana, Illinois with her 6 older siblings: Johnny, Chuck, Lisa, Cammie, Wendy and Lynn. When Jennie was 13, she and her family moved to Phoenix, Arizona. She took dancing lessons and did a little modeling while living in Arizona, and she dreamed of going to college and later start her own dance studio. At age 15, Jennie was discovered and encouraged to pursue an acting career by a talent scout, who had seen her win a talent competition. Therefore, she dropped out of high school during her junior year, and she and her mom moved to Los Angeles, California so she could become an actress. She later obtained her diploma in California. There, she started taking acting classes and went to auditions almost every day. After living in LA for about four months, she landed the role of 'Ericka McCray' on the NBC series A Brand New Life (1989). Within a year, she was cast as 'Kelly Taylor' on the long-running hit teen drama-series Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) on FOX television. Ever since, she has starred in several movies made for TV, a number of which she has produced and directed herself. On January 20th, 2001, she married actor Peter Facinelli, the father of her first daughter, Luca Bella (born June 29th, 1997), on her ranch in Santa Barbara, California. On December 6th, 2002, Jennie and Peter welcomed their second daughter, Lola Ray and their third daughter Fiona Facinelli on September 30th, 2006. Jennie most recently starred in the WB network sitcom What I Like About You (2002) as 'Valerie Tyler' until its cancellation in 2006.- Actress
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Carol White was born on 1 April 1943 in Hammersmith, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Poor Cow (1967), The Wednesday Play (1964) and Some Call It Loving (1973). She was married to Mike King, Stuart Lerner and Mike Arnold. She died on 16 September 1991 in Miami, Florida, USA.- Carroll Baker was born on May 28, 1931 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a traveling salesman, William W. Baker. She attended community college for a year and then worked as a dancer and magician's assistant. After a brief marriage, she had a small part in Easy to Love (1953), did TV commercials, and had a bit part on Broadway. She studied at the Actors Studio and was married to director Jack Garfein (one daughter, Blanche Baker). Warner Brothers, sensing a future Marilyn Monroe, cast her in Giant (1956), Baby Doll (1956) (Oscar nomination for her thumb-sucking role), The Carpetbaggers (1964) and Harlow (1965) (title role). Moving to Italy, she made films there and in England, Germany, Mexico and Spain . After returning to American films, she married Donald Burton in 1982 and resided in Hampstead, London in the 1980s. They remained together until Burton's death from emphysema in their home in Cathedral City, California in 2007.
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Liliane Rudabet Gloria Elsveta Sobieski was born June 10, 1983 in New York City, New York. She is the daughter of Elizabeth Sobieski (née Salomon), a writer, and Jean Sobieski, a painter who has also acted. She has a younger brother, Robert. Her father, born in France, is of Polish and Swiss descent, while her mother is of three quarters Ashkenazi Jewish and one quarter Dutch, ancestry.
Sobieski caught the attention of a casting agent who noticed her while he was scouting the cafeteria of a New York City private school. Leelee's first major audition was for a role in Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994). She ended up losing the role to Kirsten Dunst, but that didn't stop her. At age 11 she co-starred in the TV movie Reunion (1994) with Marlo Thomas and a year later starred in A Horse for Danny (1995). In 1998 Leelee starring opposite Elijah Wood in Deep Impact (1998). The film, which was one of the summer's biggest hits, garnered Leelee great reviews and brought her to the attention of many casting directors. Next up was Joan of Arc (1999), which she shot in the Czech Republic and for which she received an Emmy nomination. While working on Joan of Arc (1999), she was also shooting a film with Tom Cruise, Eyes Wide Shut (1999). The film, shot under strict secrecy by the notoriously reclusive Stanley Kubrick, had Leelee cast as a teenage nymphet who tempts Cruise's character. While shooting the film she developed a friendship with Stanley Kubrick and was heartbroken when he died soon after its completion.
Leelee went on to star with other big names: Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed (1999); Diane Lane in The Glass House (2001) and Josh Hartnett & Chris Klein in Here on Earth (2000).
Leelee married fashion designer Adam Kimmel in 2010. The couple has two children.- Actress
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Juliette Lewis has been recognized as one of Hollywood's most talented and versatile actors of her generation since she first stunned audiences and critics alike with her Oscar-nominated performance as "Danielle Bowden" in Cape Fear (1991). To date, she has worked with some of the most revered directors in the industry, including Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Lasse Hallström, Oliver Stone, and Garry Marshall. Whether lending dramatic authenticity or a natural comedic flair to her roles, Lewis graces the screen with remarkable range and an original and captivating style.
Lewis was born in Los Angeles, Californa, to Glenis (Duggan) Batley, a graphic designer, and Geoffrey Lewis, an actor. By the age of six, she knew she wanted to be a performer. At twelve, Lewis landed her first leading role in the Showtime miniseries Home Fires (1987). After appearing in several TV sitcoms including The Wonder Years (1988), she made her move to film, starring with Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) and with Jennifer Jason Leigh in the drama Crooked Hearts (1991). At 16, Lewis starred opposite Brad Pitt in the critically acclaimed television movie Too Young to Die? (1990), catching the attention of Martin Scorsese, who cast her in his thriller Cape Fear (1991). Her powerful scenes with Robert De Niro captured the quiet complexities of adolescence and earned her an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe nomination for "Best Supporting Actress". Her auditorium scene with De Niro went down in movie history as one of cinema's classic scenes.
Lewis next worked with Woody Allen in Husbands and Wives (1992), playing a self-assured college coed with a penchant for older men and, particularly, her married professor. She quickly followed suit with a succession of starring roles in a variety of blockbusters and critically acclaimed projects including Kalifornia (1993), Romeo Is Bleeding (1993), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), and Natural Born Killers (1994), Oliver Stone's controversial media satire about two mass murderers who become legendary folk heroes. Lewis's other credits include the Nora Ephron comedy Mixed Nuts (1994), with Steve Martin and Adam Sandler; the sci-fi action film Strange Days (1995) with Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett; Quentin Tarantino's vampire tale From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) with George Clooney; The Evening Star (1996) with Shirley MacLaine; the Garry Marshall-directed The Other Sister (1999), and Todd Phillips' Old School (2003), co-starring opposite Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Will Ferrell as well as Starsky & Hutch (2004). In addition to her film career, Lewis has continued to add roles to her growing list of television credits with a performance in Showtime's My Louisiana Sky (2001), for which she secured an EMMY nomination, and a starring role in the Mira Nair-directed HBO's film Hysterical Blindness (2002), alongside Uma Thurman and Gena Rowlands.
After a six-year hiatus from film to pursue her burgeoning music career exclusively, Lewis announced her return to acting with a handful of upcoming movies. Juliette starred alongside Elliot Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig and Jimmy Fallon in the comedy Whip It (2009). The film was released by Fox Searchlight on October 2nd, 2009. Directed by Drew Barrymore, the film tells the story of an ex-beauty pageant contestant that leaves her crowns behind after joining a roller derby team. Lewis plays "Iron Maven", the star of a top derby team. Next, she joined the cast of the acclaimed European animated thriller Metropia (2009), as the voice of "Nina". She also appeared in the romantic comedy The Switch (2010), opposite Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, and Patrick Wilson. The film tells the story of a single mother (Aniston) who decides to have a child using a sperm donor. Juliette plays "Debbie Epstein", the best friend of Aniston's character. Lewis also appears in Sympathy for Delicious (2010), Mark Ruffalo's directorial debut. The film follows a paralyzed DJ, struggling to survive on the streets of LA who turns to faith healing and mysteriously develops the ability to cure the sick. Juliette plays "Ariel", costarring alongside Orlando Bloom, Mark Ruffalo, and Laura Linney. The film took home the US Dramatic Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Most recently, Juliette Lewis appears in the indie-drama Conviction (2010), which stars Hilary Swank, Melissa Leo, Minnie Driver, and Sam Rockwell. She plays "Roseanna Perry" in the true story of an unemployed single mother (Swank) who saw her brother begin serving a life sentence in 1983 for murder and robbery. The role has won Lewis praise from audiences and critics, alike, for her performance, with USA Today saying, "Juliette Lewis has an indelible role" and the San Francisco Chronicle saying "Her character work should be studied in schools. Just remarkable". In addition to Conviction (2010), Lewis also makes a cameo in Todd Phillips's comedy, Due Date (2010), starring Robert Downey Jr., Michelle Monaghan, and Zach Galifianakis.
Beginning in 2004, Juliette took a hiatus from acting to embark on a musical journey. After six years, two full length albums and countless high profile tours and festival gigs with her band, 'Juliette & the Licks', Juliette set out on a solo career. Releasing "Terra Incognita" last fall, the album has taken her all across the world from Europe to Japan to Turkey, Australia, North America and Canada. For more information on Juliette Lewis' music, please visit her MySpace page. Juliette Lewis resides in Los Angeles.