Unforgettable Character Actors
A list of character actors. Some of them are big names. Some of them you might not remember their names, but they all left a lasting impression
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Colorful character actor of American Westerns. Named "Chill" as an ironic comment on his birth date being the hottest day of 1902. A musician from his youth, he performed from the age of 12 with tent shows, in vaudeville, and with stock companies. While performing in vaudeville in Kansas City, he married ballet dancer Betty Chappelle, with whom he had two children. He formed a musical group, Chill Wills and His Avalon Boys. During an appearance at the Trocadero in Hollywood, they were spotted by an RKO executive, subsequently appearing as a group in several low-budget Westerns. After a prominent appearance with The Avalon Boys as both himself and the bass-singing voice of Stan Laurel in Way Out West (1937), Wills disbanded the group and began a solo career as a usually jovial (but occasionally sinister) character actor, primarily in Westerns. His delightful portrayal of Beekeeper in The Alamo (1960) won him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but his blatant and embarrassing campaign for the Oscar cost him the award and subjected him to a great deal of humiliation -- and probably cost the film a number of awards as well. His wife died in 1971, and he remarried, to Novadeen Googe, in 1973. He continued to work in films and television, usually in roguishly lovable good-ol'-boy parts, up until his death in 1978.- Actor
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American character actor who achieved considerable fame in the last decade of his life. A native of Kokomo, Indiana, Strother Martin Jr. was the youngest of three children of Strother Douglas Martin, a machinist, and Ethel Dunlap Martin. His family moved soon after his birth to San Antonio, Texas, but quickly returned to Indiana. Strother Jr. grew up in Indianapolis and in Cloverdale, Indiana. He excelled at swimming and diving, and at 17 won the National Junior Springboard Diving Championship. He attended the University of Michigan as diving team member. He served in the U.S. Navy as a swimming instructor in World War II. Nicknamed "T-Bone" Martin for his diving style, his 3rd place finish in the adult National Springboard Diving Championships cost him a place on the 1948 Olympic team. He moved to California to become an actor, but worked in odd jobs and as a swimming instructor to Marion Davies and the children of Charles Chaplin. He found work as a swimming extra in several films and as a leprechaun on a local children's TV show, "Mabel's Fables." Bit parts came his way, leading to television work with Sam Peckinpah, which led to a lifelong relationship. He also found memorable roles for John Ford and by the 1960s was a familiar face in American movies. With Cool Hand Luke (1967) in 1967 came new acclaim and a place among the busiest character actors in Hollywood. He worked steadily and in substantial roles throughout the 1970s and seemed at the peak of his career when he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1980.- Actor
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Stuart Margolin, the Emmy Award-winning actor and director, was born in Davenport, Iowa. He won two Best Supporting Actor Emmies playing James Garner's former cell-mate "Angel" Martin in The Rockford Files (1974).
Margolin made his debut in The Gertrude Berg Show (1961) before becoming a series regular on Ensign O'Toole (1962) the following year. His acting career has now spanned more than 50 years.
Most of Margolin's work has been on television, where he also has worked as a director since he helmed an episode of Love, American Style (1969) in 1973. He has been directing episodic TV and made-for-TV movies for 37 years. He has been nominated twice for directing Emmies: in 1987 for a Prime Time Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Variety or Music Program for The Tracey Ullman Show (1987) and in 1999 and a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Children's Special for The Sweetest Gift (1998).- Actor
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Alan Arkin was an Academy Award-winning American actor who was also an acclaimed director, producer, author, singer and composer.
He was born Alan Wolf Arkin on March 26, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. His family were Jewish emigrants from Russia and Germany. In 1946, the Arkins moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, California. His father, David I. Arkin, was an artist and writer, who worked as a teacher, and lost his job for merely refusing to answer questions about his political affiliation during the 1950s Red Scare. His father challenged the politically biased dismissal and eventually prevailed, but unfortunately it was after his death. His mother, Beatrice (Wortis) Arkin, a teacher, shared his father's views. Young Arkin was fond of music and acting, he was taking various acting classes from the age of 10. He attended Franklin High School, in Los Angeles, then Los Angeles City College from 1951 - 1953, and Bennington College in Vermont from 1953 - 1954. He sang in a college folk-band, and was involved in a drama class. He dropped out of college to form the folk music group The Tarriers, in which Arkin was the lead singer and played guitar. He co-wrote the 1956 hit "The Banana Boat Song" - a Jamaican calypso folk song, which became better known as Harry Belafonte's popular version, and reached #4 on the Billboard chart. At that time Arkin was a struggling young actor who played bit parts on television and on stage, and made a living as a delivery boy, repairman, pot washer and baby sitter. From 1958 - 1968 he performed and recorded with the children's folk group, The Babysitters. He has also recorded an entire album for the Elektra label titled "Folksongs - Once Over Lightly."
In 1957 Arkin made his first big screen appearance as a lead singer with The Tarriers in Calypso Heat Wave (1957). Then he made his Off-Broadway debut as a singer in "Heloise" (1958). Next year he joined the Compass Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri. There he caught the eye of stage director Bob Sills and became the original member of the "Second City" troupe in Chicago. In 1961 Arkin made his Broadway debut in musical "From the Second City", for which he wrote lyrics and sketches, then starred as David Kolowitz in the Broadway comedy "Enter Laughing" (1963), for which he won a Tony Award. He starred in a Broadway musical "From the Second City production, then returned to Broadway as Harry Berlin in "Luv" (1964). Arkin made his directorial debut with an Off-Broadway hit called "Eh?" (1966), which introduced the young actor, named Dustin Hoffman. He won a Drama Desk Award for his direction of the Off-Broadway production of "Little Murders" (1969), and another Drama Desk Award for "The White House Murder Case" (1970). He also directed the original version of Neil Simon's hilarious smash, "The Sunshine Boys" (1972), which ran over 500 performances.
Arkin earned his first Academy Award nomination as Best Actor for his feature acting debut in a comedy The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966), by director Norman Jewison, co-starring as Lt. Rozanov, a Soviet submariner who is mistaken for a spy after his boat accidentally wrecks aground in New England. Arkin demonstrated his dramatic range as the psychopathic killer Roat in suspense film Wait Until Dark (1967), opposite Audrey Hepburn. He reinvented himself as the sensitive deaf-mute in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), for which he received his second Academy Award Nomination as Best Actor in the Leading role. He followed with what remained his best known role as Captain Yossarian in Catch-22 (1970), directed by Mike Nichols and based on the eponymous anti-war novel by Joseph Heller. In it Arkin arguably gave his strongest performance, however, his career suffered because the film initially did not live up to expectations. After a few years of directorial work on television, Arkin made a comeback with an impressive portrayal of doctor Sigmund Freud in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976). In the early 1980s he acted in three movies that were family affairs, written by his wife, Barbara Dana, and co-starring his son, Adam Arkin.
During the 1990s he turned out several notable performances, such as a bitter former baseball player in TNT's Cooperstown (1993), and as a hilarious psychiatrist opposite John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank (1997). He won raves for his portrayal of a divorced father who struggles to keep his kids enrolled in the Beverly Hills school system in Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). Arkin gave a brilliant performance opposite Robin Williams in Jakob the Liar (1999), a film about the Nazi occupation of Poland. He also returned to the New York stage co-starring with his son, Tony Arkin and Elaine May in "Power Plays", which he also co-authored. His most recent comeback as a heroin-snorting, sex-crazed, foul-mouthed grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine (2006), earned him his third Academy Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, and his first Academy Award.
Alan Arkin had been a modern Renaissance man. In addition to his achievements as an actor, director, and producer, he made his mark as a singer-songwriter with his popular-song compositions "Banana Boat Song", "Cuddle Bug," "That's Me," and "Best Time of the Year." Arkin also authored several books, including science-fiction and some children's stories, such as "The Clearing", "The Lemming Condition" and "Cassie Loves Beethoven" among his other publications. He was a father of three sons, Adam Arkin, Matthew Arkin, and Anthony Arkin, and a grandfather of Molly Arkin.
Alan Arkin was a strong supporter of an organic way of living and also a proponent for preservation of the environment and natural habitat. He avoided the show-biz-milieu and was known as an actor who does not really care about prestigious awards, but values having a good job and being acknowledged by his peers. In Arkin's own words he wanted to "Stay home for three months. Living as quietly as humanly possible." Arkin was given an Indian name, Grey Wolf, by his Native American friends in New Mexico.
Alan Arkin died in California on June 29, 2023 at the age of 89. He is survived by his three sons - Adam, Matthew, and Anthony Dana Arkin, and with Dana, Alan Arkin is survived by third wife, Suzanne Newlander Arkin, whom he married in 1999.- Actor
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Gruff, burly American character actor. Born in 1903 in Benkelman, Nebraska (confirmed by Social Security records; sources stating 1905 or Denver, Colorado are in error.) Bond grew up in Denver, the son of a lumberyard worker. He attended the University of Southern California, where he got work as an extra through a football teammate who would become both his best friend and one of cinema's biggest stars: John Wayne. Director John Ford promoted Bond from extra to supporting player in the film Salute (1929), and became another fast friend. An arrogant man of little tact, yet fun-loving in the extreme, Bond was either loved or hated by all who knew him. His face and personality fit perfectly into almost any type of film, and he appeared in hundreds of pictures in his more than 30-year career, in both bit parts and major supporting roles. In the films of Wayne and Ford, particularly, he was nearly always present. Among his most memorable roles are John L. Sullivan in Gentleman Jim (1942), Det. Tom Polhaus in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and the Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnson Clayton The Searchers (1956). An ardent but anti-intellectual patriot, he was perhaps the most vehement proponent, among the Hollywood community, of blacklisting in the witch hunts of the 1950s, and he served as a most unforgiving president of the ultra-right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. In the mid-'50s he gained his greatest fame as the star of TV's Wagon Train (1957). During its production, Bond traveled to Dallas, Texas, to attend a football game and died there in his hotel room of a massive heart attack.- Actor
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Colorful American character actor equally adept at vicious killers or grizzled sidekicks. As a child he worked in the cotton fields. He attended Santa Monica Junior College in California and subsequently became an accountant and, at one time, manager of the Bel Air Hotel. Elam got his first movie job by trading his accounting services for a role. In short time he became one of the most memorable supporting players in Hollywood, thanks not only to his near-demented screen persona but also to an out-of-kilter left eye, sightless from a childhood fight. He appeared with great aplomb in Westerns and gangster films alike, and in later years played to wonderful effect in comedic roles.- Actor
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Paul Giamatti is an American actor who has worked steadily and prominently for over thirty years, and is best known for leading roles in the films American Splendor (2003), Sideways (2004), and Barney's Version (2010) (for which he won a Golden Globe), and supporting roles in the films Cinderella Man (2005), The Illusionist (2006), and San Andreas (2015).
Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti was born June 6, 1967 in New Haven, Connecticut, and is the youngest of three children. His mother, the former Toni Marilyn Smith, was an actress before marrying. His father, Bart Giamatti (Angelo Bartlett Giamatti), was a professor of Renaissance Literature at Yale University, and went on to become the university's youngest president (in 1986, Bart was appointed president of baseball's National League. He became Commissioner of Baseball on April 1, 1989 and served for five months until his untimely death on September 1, 1989. He was commissioner at the time Pete Rose was banned from the game). Paul's father also wrote six books. Paul's older brother, Marcus Giamatti, is also an actor. His sister, Elena, designs jewelry. His ancestry is Italian (from his paternal grandfather), German, English, Dutch, Scottish, and Irish.
Paul graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall prep school, majored in English at Yale, and obtained his Master's Degree in Fine Arts, with his major in drama from the Yale University School of Drama. His acting roots are in theatre, from his college days at Yale, to regional productions (Seattle, San Diego and Williamstown, Massachusetts), to Broadway.- Actor
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Character actor, dramatic leading man, or hilarious comic foil? With an astonishing range of roles already under his belt, John C. Reilly has played an eclectic host of rich characters to great effect over the years, from seedy ne'er-do-wells, to lovable, good-natured schlepps.
The fifth of six children, John Christopher Reilly was born in Chicago, to a father of mostly Irish descent, and a Lithuanian-American mother, and was brought up on Chicago's tough Southwest territory. His father, also named John, ran an industrial linen supply company business. On the amateur stage from age eight, Reilly trained at the Goodman School of Drama and eventually became a member of Chicago's renowned Steppenwolf Theatre.
His film break came with a small role in the Vietnam War drama Casualties of War (1989), wherein Brian De Palma liked his work so much during the early stages that he recast him in a major role by the start of shooting as a soldier bent on rape. Reilly gained momentum throughout the 1990s and showed his dazzling stretch of talent in such films as Days of Thunder (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and The River Wild (1994). He became a major stock player in director Paul Thomas Anderson's films, while finding some of his best roles in Hard Eight (1996) as a compulsive gambler, Boogie Nights (1997) in which he played a narcissistic porn star, and in Magnolia (1999) as a compassionate policeman. He went on to earn further critical points for his role of the soldier sent to the front lines in Terrence Malick's war epic The Thin Red Line (1998).
On stage, Reilly has wowed audiences in "The Grapes of Wrath" on Broadway, "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Othello" at Steppenwolf, and earned an Outer Critics Circle Award and Tony nomination for "True West" alongside another impeccable character player Philip Seymour Hoffman. Reilly finally received the film recognition he deserved in 2002 with a slew of choice, high-profile parts in The Hours (2002), The Good Girl (2002), Gangs of New York (2002), and especially Chicago (2002) as the put-upon husband, Amos Hart, who is played for a patsy by murderous wife Roxie (Renée Zellweger). For this last part, he received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.
Since then his stock has risen considerably, and he has further widened his cinematic repertoire, appearing in everything from dramatic roles - We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), The Aviator (2004) and Carnage (2011) - to broader comic turns - Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Step Brothers (2008), Cyrus (2010) and Cedar Rapids (2011). Most recently, he has voiced the lead in Disney's animated smash Wreck-It Ralph (2012).
Reilly is married to producer Alison Dickey.- Actor
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Film and stage actor and theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman was born in the Rochester, New York, suburb of Fairport to Marilyn (Loucks), a lawyer and judge, and Gordon Stowell Hoffman, a Xerox employee, and was mostly of German, Irish, English and Dutch ancestry. After becoming involved in high school theatrics, he attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating with a B.F.A. degree in Drama in 1989.
He made his feature film debut in the indie production Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole (1991) as Phil Hoffman, and his first role in a major release came the next year in My New Gun (1992). While he had supporting roles in some other major productions like Scent of a Woman (1992) and Twister (1996), his breakthrough role came in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997).
He quickly became an icon of indie cinema, establishing a reputation as one of the screen's finest actors, in a variety of supporting and second leads in indie and major features, including Todd Solondz's Happiness (1998), Flawless (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999), Almost Famous (2000) and State and Main (2000). He also appeared in supporting roles in such mainstream, big-budget features as Red Dragon (2002), Cold Mountain (2003) and Mission: Impossible III (2006).
Hoffman was also quite active on the stage. On Broadway, he has earned two Tony nominations, as Best Actor (Play) in 2000 for a revival of Sam Shepard's "True West" and as Best Actor (Featured Role - Play) in 2003 for a revival of Eugene O'Neill (I)'s "Long Day's Journey into Night". His other acting credits in the New York theater include "The Seagull" (directed by Mike Nichols for The New York Shakespeare Festival), "Defying Gravity", "The Merchant of Venice" (directed by Peter Sellars), "Shopping and F*@%ing" and "The Author's Voice" (Drama Desk nomination).
He was the Co-Artistic Director of the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York, for which he directed "Our Lady of 121st Street" by Stephen Adly Guirgis. He also directed "In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings" and "Jesus Hopped the A Train" by Guirgis for LAByrinth, and "The Glory of Living" by Rebecca Gilman at the Manhattan Class Company.
Hoffman consolidated his reputation as one of the finest actors under the age of 40 with his turn in the title role of Capote (2005), for which he won the Los Angeles Film Critics Award as Best Actor. In 2006, he was awarded the Best Actor Oscar for the same role.
On February 2, 2014, Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in an apartment in Greenwich village, New York. Investigators found Hoffman with a syringe in his arm and two open envelopes of heroin next to him. Mr. Hoffman was long known to struggle with addiction. In 2006, he said in an interview with "60 Minutes" that he had given up drugs and alcohol many years earlier, when he was age 22. In 2013, he checked into a rehabilitation program for about 10 days after a reliance on prescription pills resulted in his briefly turning again to heroin.- Margo Martindale was born July 18, 1951 in Jacksonville, Texas, to Margaret (Pruitt) and William Everett Martindale, a lumber company owner and dog handler. She is the youngest of three children, and the only daughter. Margo attended Lon Marris College, and later transferred to University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and did a summer study at Harvard University. She made her film debut appearance in Days of Thunder (1990), she played the minor role of Donna. Notable roles include: Sister Colleen, Susan Sarandon's fellow nun in Dead Man Walking (1995). She played a brief but memorable role as the selfish mother to Hilary Swank's character in Million Dollar Baby (2004).
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William Hall Macy Jr. is an American actor. His film career has been built on appearances in small, independent films, though he has also appeared in mainstream films. Macy has won two Emmy Awards and four Screen Actors Guild Awards, while his performance in Fargo earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. From 2011 to 2021, he played Frank Gallagher, a main character in Shameless, the Showtime adaptation of the British television series. Macy has been married to Felicity Huffman since 1997.- Actor
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Born in Oklahoma, Ben Johnson was a ranch hand and rodeo performer when, in 1940, Howard Hughes hired him to take a load of horses to California. He decided to stick around (the pay was good), and for some years was a stunt man, horse wrangler, and double for such stars as John Wayne, Gary Cooper and James Stewart. His break came when John Ford noticed him and gave him a part in an upcoming film, and eventually a star part in Wagon Master (1950). He left Hollywood in 1953 to return to rodeo, where he won a world roping championship, but at the end of the year he had barely cleared expenses. The movies paid better, and were less risky, so he returned to the west coast and a career that saw him in over 300 movies.- Actor
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Harry Carey, Jr., had been reliable character actor for decades, mostly in Westerns, before he retired. He is the son of the actor Harry Carey and the actress Olive Carey. He was born on his parents' 1000-acre ranch near Saugus, in the northwestern part of Los Angeles County, which is now next door to Santa Clarita, a large town that certainly did not exist in 1947 or for decades longer. Thus, the young Harry Carey, Jr., grew up among cattle and horses at the ranch. Because of a large group of Navajo Indians who worked on his parents' ranch, he learned to speak the Navajo language at the same time that he was learning to speak English.
During World War II, Carey enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and he served in the Pacific Theater first as a Navy medical corpsman. However, he was transferred back to the United States (against his wishes) to serve under his father's good friend, the director John Ford, in making movies for the Navy (training films)and the O.S.S. (propaganda films).
After World War II ended, Carey tried to make a career in singing, but he was not successful at this. Hence, he moved into acting, and after a couple of small acting parts, he was given a chance to work in a motion picture with his father, the John Wayne film Red River (1948). (However, the father and the son did not have any scenes with one another). After the death of Harry Carey, Sr., in 1946, Mr. Ford gave the younger Carey a leading role in the movie that Ford dedicated to the memory of Harry Carey, Sr., in 1948, 3 Godfathers (1948).
As a full-fledged member of the noted John Ford Stock Company, Carey, Jr., appeared in many of Mr. Ford's epic Westerns during the following two decades. Carey also starred in a series-within-a-series on TV, The Adventures of Spin and Marty (1955), which was shown as a part of The Mickey Mouse Club (1955). Very boyish looks characterized Carey's early years, but he matured into a strong and familiar character actor over the following four decades, and he acted in scores of films and TV programs in his long career. Carey, Jr., is married to Marilyn Fix Carey, the daughter of the actor Paul Fix.- Actor
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Kevin (Elliott) Pollak was born in San Francisco, California, on October 30, 1957, to Robert and Elaine (Harlow) Pollak, of Jewish descent. A stand-up comedy performer at age 10, he attended Pioneer High School in nearby San Jose, before turning professional comedian at 20. He rose through the ranks to the top of the San Francisco comedy scene by age 25, then moved to Los Angeles to decided to focus on acting.
With his early 1980's comic reputation preceding him, Kevin earned a regular role in the short-lived National Lampoon comedy series Hot Flashes (1984) and also participated in the series Comedy Break (1985). A series of TV guest parts included "Amen," "Thirtysomething," "Who's the Boss," and a regular role as the head of a senior retirement facility in the comedy series Coming of Age (1988).
Landing a part in George Lucas' Willow (1988), directed by Ron Howard, the opportunity became the wind beneath his wings, and Kevin sailed from then on. Critically noticed for his featured role as Izzy in the acclaimed Polish-Jewish family drama Avalon (1990) written and directed by Barry Levinson, he moved ahead with support parts in L.A. Story (1991) and Another You (1991), but it was dry-humored lieutenant in Rob Reiner's powerful drama A Few Good Men (1992) that shot him up the film credit's list. In addition to starring in his own HBO stand-up comedy special, Kevin Pollak: Stop with the Kicking (1991), he co-starred in the short-lived comedy series Morton & Hayes (1991) which co-starred Kevin with Bob Amaral and featured "lost clips" of them as an old time comedy team.
A strong support player in the films Indian Summer (1993), Wayne's World 2 (1993), Grumpy Old Men (1993), Clean Slate (1994) and Miami Rhapsody (1995), Pollak often played the best pal of the lead to amusing effect, but took a major departure from his comic instincts to play pungent dramatics in two crime dramas: as Todd Hockney, one of the criminals/suspects in the ultimate whodunnit The Usual Suspects (1995); as real estate hustler Philip Green in Martin Scorsese's mafioso drama Casino (1995)
Pollak returned to lighter material uplifting John Candy's last movie comedy Canadian Bacon (1995), and appearing in the Lemmon/Matthau sequel Grumpier Old Men (1995), co-starring with Jamie Lee Curtis in the fun family film House Arrest (1996); the fictional pop band musical That Thing You Do! (1996); the zany farce The Sex Monster (1999); and the romantic comedies She's All That (1999) and Deal of a Lifetime (1999).
Pollak would return to the live stand-up stage in 2001, headlining a sold out 20 city tour. Comedy Central named him on their Top 100 Comedians Of All Time list. He went on to star in his own comedy special Kevin Pollak: The Littlest Suspect (2010). He has also hosted his own talk show, Kevin Pollak's Chat Show (2009) and, as an avid poker player, participated in both Celebrity Poker Showdown (2003) and Poker Night Live (2018).
Quite busy into the millennium, Pollak's movie work has included primarily comedies, including his over-the-top crimesters in the farcical The Whole Nine Yards (2000) and its sequel The Whole Ten Yards (2004), as well as 3000 Miles to Graceland (2001), Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001), The Santa Clause 2 (2002), The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006), Cop Out (2010), 3 Geezers! (2013), Compadres (2016), Lez Bomb (2018) and Benjamin (2019). On the TV front, he has enjoyed recurring roles in the mystery series Shark (2006); the horror comedy Sleeper (2010) (in which he made his directorial debut); the family comedy Mom (2013); the comedy fantasy Angel from Hell (2016); and the award-winning period comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017).- Actor
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Born in Los Angeles but raised in Manhattan and educated at Middlebury College and Carnegie-Mellon University, James Cromwell is the son of film director John Cromwell and actress Kay Johnson. He studied acting at Carnegie-Mellon, and went into the theatre (like his parents) doing everything from Shakespeare to experimental plays. He started appearing on television in 1974, gaining some notice in a recurring role as Archie Bunker's friend Stretch Cunningham on All in the Family (1971), made his film debut in 1976, and goes back to the stage periodically. Some of his more noted film roles have been in Revenge of the Nerds (1984), Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and the surprise classic about a charming pig, Babe (1995). He garnered some of the best reviews of his career (many of which said he should have received an Oscar) for his role as a corrupt, conniving police captain in L.A. Confidential (1997).- Actor
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Considering the kind of scruffy, backwoods, uneducated, Deep-South hillbilly types he played, many people would be surprised to hear that Ken Curtis wasn't actually born in the south but in the small town of Las Animas, Colorado, the son of the town sheriff. They would probably be even more surprised to learn that he began his show business career as a singer in the big-band era, and was a vocalist in the legendary Tommy Dorsey orchestra. He entered films in the late 1940s at the tail-end of the singing-cowboy period in a series of low-budget Westerns for Columbia Pictures. When that genre died out, Curtis turned to straight dramatic and comedy parts and became a regular in the films of director John Ford (who was his father-in-law). Curtis branched out into film production in the 1950s with two extremely low-budget monster films, The Killer Shrews (1959) and The Giant Gila Monster (1959), but he is best known for his long-running role as Festus Hagen, the scruffy, cantankerous deputy in the long-running TV series Gunsmoke (1955).- Actor
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Stephen Root, one of today's most prolific character actors, is currently starring in HBO's hit series Barry, for which he received a Best Supporting Actor Emmy Nomination. Barry has been nominated for multiple Emmy's and Golden Globes, and has been renewed through season four. Stephen recently starred in Amazon's drama Uncle Frank (2020) and plays a role in the Michael Morris feature directorial debut To Leslie (2020).
Stephen starred opposite of Nicole Kidman in the Roger Ailes, Fox News sexual harassment scandal, Bombshell (2019). Stephen a pivotal role in the AFI Film Festival winner On the Basis Sex (2018), the Ruth Bader Ginsberg biopic and starred opposite Melissa McCarthy in the New Line hit comedy Life of the Party (2018). Stephen was also part of the talented ensemble in Netflix's The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), reuniting with directors Joel & Ethan Coen. Stephen was part of Jordan Peele's box office hit Get Out (2017). Aside from his feature films, Stephen can be seen in his recurring role on HBO's drama Perry Mason (2020), also renewed for a second season, and Amazon's hit drama series The Man in the High Castle (2015).
Root has earned rave reviews for bringing a variety of characters to life in such films as O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Selma (2014), No Country for Old Men (2007), Leatherheads (2008), J. Edgar (2011), Cedar Rapids (2011), and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004). He was catapulted into the realm of cult hero when he starred as the put-upon Milton Waddams in Mike Judge's Office Space (1999). His animated features include Rango (2011), Finding Nemo (2003), Finding Dory (2016), Ice Age (2002) & Ice Age: The Melt Down (2006), and The Country Bears (2002).
Root starred as the eccentric station owner, Jimmy James, for five seasons on NBC's NewsRadio (1995-99). Stephen has also recurred on FX's Justified (2010), Boardwalk Empire (2010), Turn: Washington's Spies (2014), Idiotsitter (2016), True Blood (2008), 24 (2001), West Wing (1999) and Pushing Daisies (2007). His many memorable guest appearances include Veep (2012), Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2017), Big Bang Theory (2018), Angie Tribeca (2016), Fringe (2008), Raising Hope (2010), Children's Hospital (2010), CSI (2000), and Louie (2010).
Root was the voice of Bill Dauterieve and Mr. Strickland on FOX's Emmy-winning hit animated series King of the Hill (1997) for an impressive 13 seasons. He has also lent his voice to several animated series including Kevin Smith's revival of Masters of the Universe (2021), Amphibia (2019), BoJack Horseman (2019), Adventure Time (2010), Gravity Falls (2012), American Dad (2005), The Cleveland Show (2009), DreamWorks' Dragons: Riders of Berk (2012), Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness (2011), The X's (2005), and SyFy's Tripping the Rift (2004).
Born in Sarasota, Root received his initial training in the BFA program at the University of Florida and remains a die-hard Gators fan. After three years of touring the U.S. and Canada with the National Shakespeare Company, Root settled in New York, honing his craft in many regional theaters and starring off-Broadway in Journey's End and The Au Pair Man. His Broadway debut came in So Long on Lonely Street, which was followed by the Tony award-winning production of All My Sons, with Richard Kiley. A starring role as Boolie in the Broadway national touring company of Driving Miss Daisy with Julie Harris, brought Root to Los Angeles where he currently resides.- Slim Pickens spent the early part of his career as a real cowboy and the latter part playing cowboys, and he is best remembered for a single "cowboy" image: that of bomber pilot Maj. "King" Kong waving his cowboy hat rodeo-style as he rides a nuclear bomb onto its target in the great black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Born in Kingsburg, near Fresno in California's Central Valley, he spent much of his boyhood in nearby Hanford, where he began rodeoing at the age of 12. Over the next two decades he toured the country on the rodeo circuit, becoming a highly-paid and well-respected rodeo clown, a job that entailed enormous danger. In 1950, at the age of 31, Slim married Margaret Elizabeth Harmon and that same year he was given a role in a western, Rocky Mountain (1950). He quickly found a niche in both comic and villainous roles in that genre. With his hoarse voice and pronounced western twang, he was not always easy to cast outside the genre, but when he was, as in "Dr. Strangelove", the results were often memorable. He died in 1983 after a long and courageous battle against a brain tumor. He was survived by his wife Margaret and children.
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- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
American actor Lee Marvin was born Lamont Waltman Marvin Jr. in New York City. After leaving school aged 18, Marvin enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in August 1942. He served with the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific Theater during World War II and after being wounded in action and spending a year being treated in naval hospitals, he received a medical discharge. Marvin's military decorations include the Purple Heart Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal and the Combat Action Ribbon. Returning to the United States it was while working as a plumbers apprentice, repairing a toilet at a local community theater, that he was asked to stand in for an actor who had fallen ill during rehearsals. He immediately caught the acting bug, moving to Greenwich Village to study at the American Theater Wing and began making appearances in stage productions and TV shows. His film debut came in 'You're in the Navy Now' (1951) but it was his portrayal of villains in 'The Big Heat' (1953) and 'The Wild One' (1953) that brought him to the attention of the public and critical acclaim. Now firmly established as a screen bad guy, he began shifting towards leading man roles and landed the lead role in the popular TV series 'M Squad' (1957-1960). Returning to feature films, Marvin had prominent roles in 'The Comancheros' (1961), 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' (1962), 'Donovan's Reef' (1963) and 'The Killers' (1964) but it was his dual comic role in the offbeat western 'Cat Ballou' (1965) that made him a star and won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was now a much sought-after actor and starred in a number of movies as a new kind of leading man including 'The Professionals' (1966), 'The Dirty Dozen' (1967), 'Point Blank' (1967), 'Hell in the Pacific' (1968), 'Monte Walsh' (1970), 'Prime Cut' (1972), 'Emperor of the North' (1973) and 'The Spikes Gang' (1974).Later film credits include 'Shout at the Devil' (1976), 'Avalanche Express' (1979), 'The Big Red One' (1980), 'Death Hunt' (1981) and 'Gorky Park' (1983). His final film role was alongside Chuck Norris in 'The Delta Force' (1986). Lee Marvin died of a heart attack in August 1987. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Marvin paved the way for leading men that didn't fit the traditional mould. An iconic American tough guy and one of the 20th Century's greatest Hollywood stars.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Steve Buscemi was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Dorothy (Wilson), a restaurant hostess, and John Buscemi, a sanitation worker. He is of Italian (father) and English, Dutch, and Irish (mother) descent. He became interested in acting during his last year of high school. After graduating, he moved to Manhattan to study acting with John Strasberg. He began writing and performing original theatre pieces with fellow actor/writer Mark Boone Junior. This led to his being cast in his first lead role in Parting Glances (1986). Since then, he has worked with many of the top filmmakers in Hollywood, including Quentin Tarantino, Jerry Bruckheimer, and The Coen Brothers. He is a highly respected actor.- Slim Pickens spent the early part of his career as a real cowboy and the latter part playing cowboys, and he is best remembered for a single "cowboy" image: that of bomber pilot Maj. "King" Kong waving his cowboy hat rodeo-style as he rides a nuclear bomb onto its target in the great black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Born in Kingsburg, near Fresno in California's Central Valley, he spent much of his boyhood in nearby Hanford, where he began rodeoing at the age of 12. Over the next two decades he toured the country on the rodeo circuit, becoming a highly-paid and well-respected rodeo clown, a job that entailed enormous danger. In 1950, at the age of 31, Slim married Margaret Elizabeth Harmon and that same year he was given a role in a western, Rocky Mountain (1950). He quickly found a niche in both comic and villainous roles in that genre. With his hoarse voice and pronounced western twang, he was not always easy to cast outside the genre, but when he was, as in "Dr. Strangelove", the results were often memorable. He died in 1983 after a long and courageous battle against a brain tumor. He was survived by his wife Margaret and children.
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- Producer
- Soundtrack
Two-time Oscar nominee Bruce Dern's tremendous career is made up of playing both modern day heroes and legendary villains. Through decades of lauded performances, Dern has acquired the reputation of being one of the most talented and prolific actors of his generation.
Dern currently appears opposite Kristen Wiig, Allison Janney and his daughter Laura in Apple+ TV's acclaimed comedy series "Palm Royale." He also received critical praise for the last season of the Amazon series "Goliath" opposite Oscar winners Billy Bob Thornton and JK Simmons.
Dern appeared as real-life rancher George Spahn in Quentin Tarantino's 10-time Academy Award nominated "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." The film also won the Golden Globes & Critics Choice Awards for Best Picture, among others. He also co-starred in the #1 independent film of 2019, "The Peanut Butter Falcon" and he earned rave reviews for Focus Features' "The Mustang." He has recently appeared in several recent independent film projects including "Reminisce," "The Accidental Texan," "Remember Me," "The Artist's Wife," "Emperor," "Badland," "Death in Texas," "Last Call," and "The Gateway."
In 2018, he starred in two high profile independent films - as Joe Kennedy in "Chappaquiddick" and opposite Matthew McConaughey in Sony's "White Boy Rick." In 2017, he appeared with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford in the Netflix film "Our Souls at Night."
On the television side in 2019 - he memorably guested on Showtime's comedy "Black Monday" and was seen in the Stephen King series "Mr. Mercedes" for the AT&T AUDIENCE Network.
In 2015, Dern reteamed with his "Django Unchained" director Quentin Tarantino in the ambitious & critically-acclaimed "The Hateful Eight." In 2013, Dern earned his second Academy Award nomination for his heralded role in Alexander Payne's "Nebraska." That role also garnered him a Best Actor Award from the Cannes Film Festival and the National Board of Review. He was also nominated for a BAFTA, Golden Globe, Independent Spirit Award, Broadcast Film Critics Association Award and Screen Actors Guild Award.
Dern was also nominated for an Emmy in 2011 for his portrayal of polygamist patriarch Frank Harlow in HBO's hit drama "Big Love." A celebrated stage actor, Dern was trained by famed director Elia Kazan at the legendary The Actor's Studio and made his film debut in Kazan's "Wild River" in 1960. In the 60's, Dern also found success as a distinguished television actor. He appeared regularly in contemporary Western TV series, as well as on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Mr. Hitchcock was such a fan of Dern's that he cast him in "Marnie" and "Family Plot" (Hitchcock's final film).
Also during the 60's, Dern went on to work with director Roger Corman and appeared in several of his classic and decade defining films including "Wild Angels." He also received critical success during that time for films such as "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" and "Drive, He Said." Dern goes down in history for his role as Long Hair in "The Cowboys," in which he became the only man ever to kill John Wayne on screen.
Dern went on to star in such classic films like "The King of Marvin Gardens" with Jack Nicholson and Ellen Burstyn as well as playing Tom Buchanan in "The Great Gatsby" (for which he received a Golden Globe nomination). It was his brilliant and powerful performance in Hal Ashby's "Coming Home" that earned him both an Academy Award and Golden Globe nomination.
Dern has starred in over 100 films in his career, including: "Monster," "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte," "Silent Running," "Smile," "Middle Age Crazy," "That Championship Season," "Tattoo," "The 'Burbs," "The Haunting," "All the Pretty Horses," "Masked and Anonymous," "Down in the Valley," "Astronaut Farmer," "The Cake Eaters," "Black Sunday," "After Dark, My Sweet," "Madison," "Diggstown," "Twixt" and "Last Man Standing."
Dern has received several Lifetime Achievement Awards from various film festivals. In 2010, Dern received the prestigious Hollywood Walk of Fame star along with his ex-wife Diane Ladd & daughter Laura Dern, the only family in history to receive their Stars in one ceremony.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Walton Goggins is an actor of considerable versatility and acclaim who has delivered provocative performances in a multitude of feature films and television series. He won a Critics' Choice Award for his performance in the HBO comedy series "Vice Principals" and landed an Emmy nomination for his role of 'Boyd Crowder' on FX's "Justified," among numerous accolades.
Goggins is the producer/star of the hit new CBS single-camera comedy "The Unicorn," which debuted as TV's #1 New Show and has been picked up for a full season. The series is about a tight-knit group of best friends and family who help 'Wade' (Goggins) embrace his "new normal" in the wake of the loss of his wife one year ago. As a sometimes ill-equipped but always devoted single parent to his two adolescent daughters, he is taking the major step of dating again. To Wade's amazement, he's a hot commodity with women, and his friends explain that he's the perfect single guy - a "unicorn": employed, attractive, and with a proven track record of commitment.
He has also re-teamed with his former "Vice Principals" co-star Danny McBride on HBO's comedy series "The Righteous Gemstones," which has been renewed for a second season. Written, directed and EP'ed by McBride, it tells the story of a world-famous televangelist family with a long tradition of deviance, greed and charitable work. Goggins plays 'Baby Billy,' a former child star who clogged and sang for Jesus. As an aging man, he's fallen on hard times and comes to the Gemstones for salvation.
On the feature front, Goggins plays the role of 'Christ' in THREE CHRISTS, which IFC Films will release in theaters, VOD and Digital on January 10, 2020. The story follows a doctor (Richard Gere) who is treating paranoid schizophrenic patients at the Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, each of whom believe they are Jesus Christ. The film made its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Goggins recently starred opposite Oscar winner Olivia Colman in the Appalachian thriller THEM THAT FOLLOW, which made its World Premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was released in August 2019. The film followed members of an isolated community of Pentecostal snake handlers led by 'Pastor Lemuel' (Goggins). In the can is the indie feature WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS.
In 2018, Goggins appeared in three major studio features: He starred opposite Alicia Vikander in Warner Bros./MGM's TOMB RAIDER reboot, in the role of villain 'Mathias Vogel.' The film opened as the #1 film globally. In its review, Variety proclaimed, "Goggins, a magnetic actor who projects the lean, hungry anger of vintage-period Jack Nicholson, never hits you over the head with evil; he lets Vogel's sleazy cruelty seep through his pores."
In Disney/Marvel's ANT-MAN AND THE WASP, the sequel to the superhero feature starring Paul Rudd, Goggins played 'Sonny Burch,' a character deep in the Marvel mythos. Additionally, he appeared in Twentieth Century Fox's MAZERUNNER: THE DEATH CURE, the third installment of the highly successful franchise that also opened at #1.
In recent years, Goggins has had pivotal roles in films by two of Hollywood's most important auteurs: Quentin Tarantino and Steven Spielberg. His integral role as 'Chris Mannix,' a southern renegade who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock in Tarantino's THE HATEFUL EIGHT, marked his second collaboration with the Academy Award-winning writer/director. He previously played slave fight trainer 'Billy Crash' in Tarantino's 2012 DJANGO UNCHAINED. That same year, Goggins also appeared in Steven Spielberg's LINCOLN, where he portrayed Congressman 'Wells A. Hutchins.'
For television, Goggins headlined and executive-produced season two of the contemporary espionage thriller "Deep State." He starred as 'Nathan Miller,' a former CIA operative who now works in the private sector as a fixer for the deep state and is at the heart of the new season. The series aired in the U.S. on EPIX, and Fox Networks Group Europe & Africa aired it globally in 50 markets in the summer of 2019.
Goggins won a Critics Choice Award for his role opposite Danny McBride in the HBO series "Vice Principals," which aired for two seasons. Created by McBride and Jody Hill, who also created "Eastbound & Down," "Vice Principals" is a dark comedy about a high school and the two people who almost run it, the vice principals (McBride and Goggins).
He starred in the first season of HISTORY's "Six," a military action drama from A+E Studios and The Weinstein Co that was the top new cable series of 2017 in total viewers. Inspired by current events, it followed an elite team of Navy SEALs whose mission to eliminate a Taliban leader in Afghanistan went awry when they uncovered a U.S. citizen working with the terrorists. Goggins played 'Rip Taggart,' the one-time leader of the SEAL team SIX squad.
For over a decade, Goggins has been one of the most magnetic and intense actors on television. He received an Emmy® nomination and four Critics Choice Award nominations for his mesmerizing portrayal of 'Boyd Crowder' on FX's Peabody Award-winning Drama series "Justified," which ran for six seasons. Goggins' 'Boyd' was the long-time friend, yet ultimate nemesis to U.S. Marshal 'Raylan Givens' (Timothy Olyphant). Elmore Leonard, EP and writer of the short story "Fire in the Hole" on which the show is based, says of 'Boyd,' "There has never been a more poetic bad guy on television in the way that he sees the world."
Goggins' critical turn as the complex transgender prostitute 'Venus Van Dam' on the FX drama series "Sons of Anarchy" earned him two Critics Choice Award nominations and helped shed a fresh light on the transgender community.
For seven years Walton garnered much acclaim for his complex and edgy portrayal of 'Detective Shane Vendrell' on FX's gritty, award-winning drama series "The Shield." He was nominated for a Television Critics Association (TCA) Award in the category of "Individual Achievement in Drama."
He has also taken his turn behind the camera. Goggins' collaborations with his partners at Ginny Mule Pictures include winning an Academy Award® for their 2001 short film, THE ACCOUNTANT, which he produced and starred in. The team produced, directed and starred in their first feature, CHRYSTAL, starring Billy Bob Thornton, which was accepted into the 2005 Sundance Film Festival's Dramatic Competition. For their third collaboration, Goggins produced and starred in the feature RANDY AND THE MOB, which won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2007 Nashville Film Festival.
Goggins and his Ginny Mule partners completed their fourth feature, THAT EVENING SUN, starring Hal Holbrook and Goggins. The film made its world premiere at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin, TX in 2009, where it won the Narrative Feature Audience Award and received the Special Jury Award for "Best Ensemble Cast." It went on to win awards at over 14 film festivals, culminating with the honor of the "Wyatt Award" from the Southeastern Film Critics Association (SEFCA) and two Independent Spirit Award nominations.
Goggins is co-owner of Mulholland Distilling, a portfolio of premium spirits reflecting the vibrant, rich culture of Los Angeles and one of the first spirits companies from the city of Los Angeles since prohibition. Its namesake William Mulholland was the visionary who expanded the boundaries and possibilities of L.A. by bringing water to the desert town. Now, Mulholland Distilling is bringing a different kind of water to the city, the water of life. American Whiskey. Vodka. Gin. "The Spirit of Los Angeles." With a mission to create artisanal spirits inspired by the diversity and verve of Los Angeles, the brand has worked with top distillers, blenders and mixologists across the nation to bring only the best to the City of Angels (www.mulhollanddistilling.com).
Goggins enjoys traveling the world and has spent time in Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Central America, Morocco and India. He is an avid photographer and has captured many of his journeys on film.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
An actor for all seasons and all kinds of roles (from dark, difficult characters to more loving ones) Paul Dano has an extensive body work that includes working with directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Steve McQueen, Dayton & Ferris, Ang Lee, Denis Villenueve and Paolo Sorrentino; acting with heavyweights such as Harrison Ford, Daniel Day-Lewis, Alan Arkin, Jake Gyllenhaal, Toni Collette, Michael Caine, Kevin Kline - just to mention a few names; and easily making a fine transition in between independent cinema, art-house films and mainstream Hollywood blockbusters.
Paul Franklin Dano was born on 19 June, 1984 in New York City, the son of Gladys (Pipp) and Paul Dano. He is of Rusyn, Slovenian/Czech, and Swedish descent. At an early age he was already appearing in community plays and by his early teens he got his first TV appearance on an episode of Smart Guy (1998). His first major role was as Howie Blitzer, a trouble teenager who gets involved with an older man, played by Brian Cox, in the controversial and acclaimed L.I.E. (2001). For the role, Dano was awarded an Independent Spirit Award in the Best Debut Performance category, along with some other awards from Indie cinema. From the on, he moved on to supporting roles in The Girl Next Door (2004), Taking Lives (2004), The King (2005), Fast Food Nation (2006) and The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005).
Dano's rise to stardom came in consecutive films that showcased his talents and made him an important name in the business: as Dwayne, a rebel teen who copes with his teen angst by refusing to speak to everyone in his family, only using of his cold expressions and a notepad in Little Miss Sunshine (2006), he was praised by critics and audiences, a role that earned him among other awards the Screen Actors Guild as Best Ensemble Cast. The following year, he appeared on a dual role as twin brothers Paul and Eli Sunday - the latter character, a devoted preacher, is more extensive and challenging than the mysterious Paul, in Paul Thomas Anderson critically acclaimed There Will Be Blood (2007). The role was given to Dano after a recommendation from Daniel Day-Lewis who had worked with the young actor in The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005) and found him a very talented and interesting role. Anderson followed Day-Lewis suggestion, and the result was another hit for Dano, who received several awards nominations, including the Bafta as Best Supporting Actor.
After that, he went on with his career with Taking Woodstock (2009), Cowboys & Aliens (2011), Ruby Sparks (2012) - in which he appears alongside his girlfriend Zoe Kazan, Looper (2012), as the tortured suspect in Prisoners (2013); the Oscar winning 12 Years a Slave (2013); as a young Method actor in Youth (2015); the freak comedy Swiss Army Man (2016); Okja (2017); and the miniseries War & Peace (2016) and Escape at Dannemora (2018), the latter being a role completely the opposite he ever played in previous years, as an inmate who escapes jail, a very physical work for him. In between those films and projects, he gained notoriety by playing the young Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy (2014), the Beach Boys leader who suffers a nervous breakdown while trying to compose an epic album. That role gave Paul Dano plenty of buzz during awards season, some deserved recognition and his first Golden Globe nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category.
His career seems to always be going further each year goes by, always promising. He made his directorial debut in Wildlife (2018), which was co-written with Zoe Kazan. They're living together for a decade and have one daughter.
In the 2020's, he provided the voice from a character in the thriller The Guilty (2021) and played the Riddler in the box-office hit The Batman (2022), in one of his most challenging roles. During 2022/2023 awards season he received a lot of praise and attention for his role in the acclaimed The Fabelmans (2022) where he plays a version of Steven Spielberg's father.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
American character actor, mainly in Westerns in comic or rustic roles. Born Norton Earl Worden in Rolfe, Iowa, during his parents' visit to a relative's home there, he was raised on a cattle ranch near Glendive, Montana. Educated at Stanford and the University of Nevada as an engineer, he trained as an Army pilot, but washed out of flight school. Worden toured the country in rodeos as a saddle bronc rider and broke his neck in a horse fall in his 20s, but didn't know it until his 40s. Chosen along with Tex Ritter from a rodeo at Madison Square Garden in New York to appear in the Broadway play "Green Grow the Lilacs", the play from which the musical "Oklahoma" was later derived, he afterward drove a cab in New York, then worked on dude ranches as a wrangler and as a guide on the Bright Angel trail of the Grand Canyon. Recommended by Billie Burke to several movie producers, Worden became friends with John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and later John Ford, all of whom provided him with much work. He was married to Louise Eaton, who predeceased him. Following his wife's death, he shared his house with Jim Beaver for several years, thus generously helping the young actor gain a foothold in Hollywood. He died in his sleep at 91, survived by his adopted daughter Dawn Henry.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Rambunctious British leading man (contrary to popular belief, he was of Scottish ancestry, not Irish) and later character actor primarily in American films, Victor McLaglen was a vital presence in a number of great motion pictures, especially those of director John Ford. McLaglen (pronounced Muh-clog-len, not Mack-loff-len) was the son of the Right Reverend Andrew McLaglen, a Protestant clergyman who was at one time Bishop of Claremont in South Africa. The young McLaglen, eldest of eight brothers, attempted to serve in the Boer War by joining the Life Guards, though his father secured his release. The adventuresome young man traveled to Canada where he did farm labor and then directed his pugnacious nature into professional prizefighting. He toured in circuses, vaudeville shows, and Wild West shows, often as a fighter challenging all comers. His tours took him to the US, Australia (where he joined in the gold rush) and South Africa. In 1909 he was the first fighter to box newly-crowned heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, whom he fought in a six-round exhibition match in Vancouver (as an exhibition fight, it had no decision). When the First World War broke out, McLaglen joined the Irish Fusiliers and soldiered in the Middle East, eventually serving as Provost Marshal (head of Military Police) for the city of Baghdad. After the war he attempted to resume a boxing career, but was given a substantial acting role in The Call of the Road (1920) and was well received. He became a popular leading man in British silent films, and within a few years was offered the lead in an American film, The Beloved Brute (1924). He quickly became a most popular star of dramas as well as action films, playing tough or suave with equal ease. With the coming of sound, his ability to be persuasively debonair diminished by reason of his native speech patterns, but his popularity increased, particularly when cast by Ford as the tragic Gypo Nolan in The Informer (1935), for which McLaglen won the Best Actor Oscar. He continued to play heroes, villains and simple-minded thugs into the 1940s, when Ford gave his career a new impetus with a number of lovably roguish Irish parts in such films as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and The Quiet Man (1952). The latter film won McLaglen another Oscar nomination, the first time a Best Actor winner had been nominated subsequently in the Supporting category. McLaglen formed a semi-militaristic riding and polo club, the Light Horse Brigade, and a similarly arrayed precision motorcycle team, the Victor McLaglen Motorcycle Corps, both of which led to conclusions that he had fascist sympathies and was forming his own private army. McLaglen denied espousing the far right-wing sentiments that were often attributed to him. He continued to act in films into his 70s and died, from congestive heart failure, not long after appearing in a film directed by his son, Andrew V. McLaglen.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Robert Michael "Rob" Schneider (born October 31, 1963) is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and director. A stand-up comic and veteran of the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live (1975), Schneider has gone on to a successful career in feature films, including starring roles in the comedy films Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), The Hot Chick (2002), and Grown Ups (2010).- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
George Harris Kennedy, Jr. was born on February 18, 1925 in New York City, to Helen (Kieselbach), a ballet dancer, and George Harris Kennedy, an orchestra leader and musician. Following high school graduation, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Army in 1943 with the hope to become a fighter pilot in the Army Air Corps. Instead, he wound up in the infantry, served under General George S. Patton and distinguished himself with valor. He won two Bronze Stars and four rows of combat and service ribbons.
A World War II veteran, Kennedy at one stage in his career cornered the market at playing tough, no-nonsense characters who were either quite crooked or possessed hearts of gold. Kennedy notched up an impressive 200+ appearances in both television and films, and was well respected within the Hollywood community. He started out on television Westerns in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), Rawhide (1959), Maverick (1957), Colt .45 (1957), among others) before scoring minor roles in films including Lonely Are the Brave (1962), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and The Flight of the Phoenix (1965).
The late 1960s was a very busy period for Kennedy, and he was strongly in favor with casting agents, appearing in Hurry Sundown (1967), The Dirty Dozen (1967) and scoring an Oscar win as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Cool Hand Luke (1967). The disaster film boom of the 1970s was also kind to Kennedy and his talents were in demand for Airport (1970) and the three subsequent sequels, as a grizzled police officer in Earthquake (1974), plus the buddy/road film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) as vicious bank robber Red Leary.
The 1980s saw Kennedy appear in a mishmash of roles, playing various characters; however, Kennedy and Leslie Nielsen surprised everyone with their comedic talents in the hugely successful The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), and the two screen veterans exaggerate themselves again, in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994). From 1988-1991, he also played Ewing family nemesis Carter McKay on the CBS prime-time soap opera Dallas (1978).
Kennedy also played President Warren G. Harding in the miniseries Backstairs at the White House (1979) and had a long standing role on the CBS daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless (1973). He remained busy in Hollywood and lent his distinctive voice to the animated Cats Don't Dance (1997) and the children's action film Small Soldiers (1998). A Hollywood stalwart for nearly 50 years, he is one of the most enjoyable actors to watch on screen. His last role was in the film The Gambler (2014), as Mark Wahlberg's character's grandfather.
George Kennedy died of natural causes in Middleton, Idaho on February 28, 2016, only ten days after his 91st birthday.- Actor
- Stunts
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
American stuntman who also played minor roles in scores of movies. Son of Allie W. and Jannie Hamm Roberson. Raised on cattle ranches in Shannon, Texas, and Roswell, New Mexico, he left school at 13 to become a cowhand and oilfield roughneck. He married and took his wife and daughter to California, where he joined the Culver City Police Department and guarded the gate at MGM studios. Following army service in World War II, he returned to the police force. During duty at Warner Bros. studios during a labor strike, he met stuntman Fred Kennedy, who alerted him to a stunt job at Republic Pictures. Roberson got the job, due both to his expert horsemanship and his resemblance to John Carroll, whom Roberson doubled in his first picture, Wyoming (1947). His close physical resemblance to John Wayne led to nearly 30 years as Wayne's stunt double. He often played small roles and stunted in other roles in the same film, which frequently resulted in his "shooting" himself once the picture was cut together. He graduated to larger supporting roles in westerns for Wayne and John Ford, and to a parallel career as a second-unit director. At the time of his death, he was one of the most respected stunt men in Hollywood.- Actor
- Soundtrack
In many ways the most successful and familiar character actor of American sound films and the only actor to date to win three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan attended college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying engineering. While in school he became interested in acting and performed in school plays. He worked some in vaudeville and also in various jobs such as clerking in a bank and as a lumberjack. He toured in small musical comedy companies before entering the military in 1917. After his war service he went to Guatemala and raised pineapples, then migrated to Los Angeles, where he speculated in real estate. A few jobs as a film extra came his way beginning in 1923, then some work as a stuntman. He eventually achieved speaking roles, going from bit parts to substantial supporting parts in scores of features and short subjects between 1927 and 1938. In 1936 his role in Come and Get It (1936) won him the very first Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. He would win it twice more in the decade, and be nominated for a fourth. His range was enormous. He could play sophisticated businessmen, con artists, local yokels, cowhands and military officers with apparent equal ease. An accident in 1932 cost him most of his teeth, and he most often was seen in eccentric rural parts, often playing characters much older than his actual age. His career never really declined, and in the 1950s he became an even more endearing and familiar figure in several television series, most famously The Real McCoys (1957). He died in 1974 of emphysema, a beloved figure in movies and TV, the target of countless comic impressionists, and one of the best and most prolific actors of his time.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Award-winning actor Mark Ruffalo was born on November 22, 1967, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, of humble means to father Frank Lawrence Ruffalo, a construction painter and Marie Rose (Hebert), a stylist and hairdresser; his father's ancestry is Italian and his mother is of half French-Canadian and half Italian descent. Mark moved with his family to Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he lived out most of his teenage years. Following high school, Mark moved with his family to San Diego and soon migrated north, eventually settling in Los Angeles.
Mark first took classes at the Stella Adler Conservatory and subsequently co-founded the Orpheus Theatre Company, an Equity-Waiver establishment, where he worked in nearly every capacity. From acting, writing, directing and producing to running the lights and building sets while building his resume.
Moving into film and TV, Mark's inauspicious movie debut was the drifter role of Christian in the horror opus Mirror Mirror 2: Raven Dance (1994) and returned to the film series in the role of Joey with Mirror Mirror 3: The Voyeur (1995). He continued on through the 1990's rather indistinctly with more secondary roles in the horror film The Dentist (1996) starring madman Corbin Bernsen; an amusing perf in the obscure dramedy The Last Big Thing (1996); a third billed role in the Jerry Stiller/Anne Meara bickering senior comedy A Fish in the Bathtub (1998); and the war drama Ceremony... The Ritual of Love (1976) directed by Ang Lee.
Bartending for nearly nearly a decade to make ends meet and discouraged enough to give it up, a chance meeting and resulting collaboration with playwright/screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan approaching the millennium changed everything. Ruffalo won NY success in Lonergan's 1996 off-Broadway play "This Is Our Youth," a story about troubled young adults. This led to his male lead in Lonergan's Oscar-winning film drama You Can Count on Me (2000), playing the ne'er-do-well brother of Laura Linney. The performance drew rave reviews and invited comparisons to an early Marlon Brando.
Ruffalo never looked back. Notable roles in The Last Castle (2001), XX/XY (2002), and Windtalkers (2002) followed, although in 2002 Ruffalo was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, a type of brain tumor. Though the tumor was benign, the resulting surgery led to a period of partial facial paralysis, from which he fully recovered. In 2003, Ruffalo scored leading roles alongside two popular female stars, playing a police detective opposite Meg Ryan in In the Cut (2003) and the love interest of Gwyneth Paltrow in the comedy View from the Top (2003).
Though both films were high-profile box office disappointments, Ruffalo went on to four notable (if highly disparate) films in 2004 -- We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), 13 Going on 30 (2004), and Collateral (2004) -- which solidified his ability to be both a popular leading man and an acclaimed ensemble player in either comedy or drama.
After 2004, Ruffalo was consistently at work, with leads in popular Hollywood films and independent productions that continued to solidify him as one of film's most consistently strong actors: Just Like Heaven (2005), All the King's Men (2006), Zodiac (2007), Reservation Road (2007), and The Brothers Bloom (2008). He also made his Broadway debut as Moe Axelrod in the play "Awake and Sing!"
In 2010 Ruffalo achieved something of a breakthrough, by directing the indie film Sympathy for Delicious (2010), which won him the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and co-starring as the sperm-donor father to lesbian couple Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right (2010). His role in the idiosyncratic domestic comedy/drama earned him Academy Award, Independent Spirit Award, Screen Actors Guild, and BAFTA nominations for Best Supporting Actor. He went on to earn two more Best Supporting Actor nominations as an Olympic-winning wrestling champion in Foxcatcher (2014) and as a journalist working to uncover the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal in Spotlight (2015). In 2017, the actor returned to Broadway in Arthur Miller's "The Price."
High-profile roles in Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010) and Longeran's long-delayed film Margaret (2011) followed before Ruffalo's appearance as Dr. Bruce Banner, aka The Hulk, in Joss Whedon's movie blockbuster The Avengers (2012). Garnering highly positive reviews for a role in which actors Eric Bana and Edward Norton could not find success in previous films made Ruffalo a box office action star in addition to a critically-acclaimed actor. He returned to the Banner/Hulk role frequently in such Marvel movies as Iron Man 3 (2013), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Captain Marvel (2019) and Avengers: Endgame (2019),
Reunited with former co-star Gwyneth Paltrow in the sex-addiction comedy-drama Thanks for Sharing (2012), he went on to earn a Golden Globe nomination for playing a bipolar Dad in Infinitely Polar Bear (2014). Ruffalo also took on the lead in Ryan Murphy's adaptation of Larry Kramer's AIDS-drama play The Normal Heart (2014) and earned a SAG Award and Emmy Nomination. He later took home the Emmy playing twin brothers, one a paranoid schizophrenic, in I Know This Much Is True (2020).
Ruffalo has been married to actress Sunrise Coigney since 2000; the couple has three children, two sons and a daughter.- Actor
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Harry Morgan was a prolific character actor who starred in over 100 films and was a stage performer. Known to a younger generation of fans as "Col. Sherman T. Potter" on M*A*S*H (1972). Also known for his commanding personality throughout his career, he tackled movies and television in a way no other actor would do it.
Born Harry Bratsberg in Detroit, Michigan to Anna Olsen, a homemaker who immigrated from Sweden, and Henry Bratsberg, a mechanic who immigrated from Norway. After graduating from Muskegon High School in Muskegon, Michigan, he took on a salesman job before becoming a successful actor.
Several of his most memorable film roles were: The Omaha Trail (1942), in the next quarter-century, he would also appear in The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), Wing and a Prayer (1944), State Fair (1945), Dragonwyck (1946), All My Sons (1948), Red Light (1949), Outside the Wall (1950), Dark City (1950) where he met future Dragnet 1967 (1967) co-star Jack Webb, who would be best friends until Webb's death, late in 1982, along with Appointment with Danger (1950). His films credits also include: High Noon (1952), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), Strategic Air Command (1955), among many others. He also co-starred with James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969) and Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971).
On television, he is fondly remembered as Spring Byington's jokingly henpecked neighbor, "Pete Porter" on December Bride (1954), where he became the show's scene-stealer. It was also based on a popular radio show that transferred into television. The show was an immediate success to viewers, which led him into starring his own short-lived spin-off series, Pete and Gladys (1960), which co-starred Cara Williams, who met Morgan in the movie, The Saxon Charm (1948).
Morgan began his eight-year association with old friend, Jack Webb, and Universal, starting with Dragnet 1967 (1967), which he played Off. Bill Gannon. For the second time, like December Bride (1954) before this, it was an immediate hit, where it tackled a lot of topics. Dragnet was canceled in 1970, after a 4-season run, due to Morgan's best friend and co-star (Jack Webb) leaving the show to continue producing other shows, such as Adam-12 (1968) and Emergency! (1972). Morgan would later work with Webb in both short-lived series, The D.A. (1971), opposite Robert Conrad and Hec Ramsey (1972), opposite Richard Boone. After those roles, Morgan ended his contract with both Universal and Mark VII, to sign with 20th Century Fox.
Morgan's biggest role was that of a tough-talking, commanding, fun-loving, serious Army Officer, "Col. Sherman T. Potter" on M*A*S*H (1972), when he replaced McLean Stevenson, who left the show to unsuccessfully star in his own sitcom. For the third time, the show was still a hit with fans, and at 60, he was nominated for Emmies nine times and won his first and only Emmy in 1980, for Outstanding Supporting Actor. By 1983, M*A*S*H's series was getting very expensive, as well as with the cast, hence, CBS reduced it to 16 episodes. Despite M*A*S*H's finale in 1983, Morgan went on to star in a short-lived spin-off series AfterMASH (1983), co-starring Jamie Farr and William Christopher, from the original M*A*S*H (1972) series, without series' star Alan Alda.
He also co-starred in 2 more short-lived series, as he was over 70, beginning with Blacke's Magic (1986) with Hal Linden and his final role with You Can't Take It with You (1987). That same year, he reprised his role, for a second time as "Off. Bill Gannon" in the film, Dragnet (1987), which starred Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks. Then, he guest-starred in several shows such as: The Twilight Zone (1985), Renegade (1992), The Jeff Foxworthy Show (1995), for the third time, he also reprised his "Off. Bill Gannon" role, supplying his voice on The Simpsons (1989). Towards the end of his acting career, as he reached 80, he had a recurring role as the older college professor on 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996), opposite John Lithgow. Afterwards, he retired from show business and lived with his family. Harry Morgan died on December 7, 2011 at 96. On confirming his death, his son Charles said that he had been recently treated for pneumonia. Morgan was also one of the oldest living Hollywood male actors.- Actor
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David Russell Strathairn was born on January 26, 1949 in San Francisco, California. He is the son of Mary Frances (Frazier), a nurse, and Thomas Scott Strathairn, Jr., a physician. He has two siblings, Tom and Anne. His ancestry includes English, Scottish, Irish, Portuguese, Hawaiian, and one sixteenth Chinese (the latter three from his paternal grandmother).
Strathairn attended Williams College, where he demonstrated great interest in the theatre, and first befriended John Sayles, with whom he would later frequently collaborate. Strathairn graduated college and traveled to Florida to visit with his grandfather, but the grandfather died while Strathairn was en route. Strathairn, finding himself freshly arrived and without friends in Florida, decided instead to join the Ringling Brothers Clown College and subsequently worked as a clown for six months in a traveling circus.
Relocating to New York State, he spent several years hitch-hiking across America to work in local theaters during the summers. During one of these summers Strathairn reunited with Sayles, and this eventually resulted in his role in the highly regarded Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980), Sayles' directorial debut. Thereafter Strathairn developed an extensive resume of supporting roles, which became increasingly substantial as his stature in the industry grew; notable films include Lovesick (1983), Silkwood (1983), L.A. Confidential (1997), and A Map of the World (1999). Sayles frequently casts Strathairn, whose performances can be seen in Sayles' The Brother from Another Planet (1984), Matewan (1987), Eight Men Out (1988), City of Hope (1991), and Passion Fish (1992). Perhaps most notable of his collaborations with Sayles is his superb performance co-starring with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in Limbo (1999).
After a string of successful supporting roles in the early 2000s, Strathairn found himself thrust into the role of leading man with his performance as Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) Taking on the role of the iconic newsman in the black-and-white drama, Strathairn garnered numerous award mentions including an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Following the success of that film, Strathairn traveled easily between low-budget independent films - The Notorious Bettie Page (2005), The Sensation of Sight (2006), My Blueberry Nights (2007), and Howl (2010) among them - and big-budget Hollywood productions, including We Are Marshall (2006), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), both The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and The Bourne Legacy (2012), and Steven Spielberg's biopic Lincoln (2012), in which he plays Secretary of State William Seward.
Strathairn has also worked extensively in television, and first became familiar to television viewers as the title character's boss in the series The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd (1987). In addition to narration work for many PBS shows, Strathairn has appeared in the TV series Big Apple (2001), The Sopranos (1999), Monk (2002), and headed the cast of the science-fiction series Alphas (2011). His work in television films has brought him an Emmy Award for Temple Grandin (2010) and an Emmy nominations for Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012).
Strathairn married nurse Logan Goodman in 1980, and the couple have two children.- Actor
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American actor and producer Harvey Keitel was born on May 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Miriam (Klein) and Harry Keitel. An Oscar and Golden Globe Award nominee, he has appeared in films such as Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), Ridley Scott's The Duellists (1977) and Thelma & Louise (1991), Peter Yates' Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), Jane Campion's The Piano (1993), Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (1992), Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), James Mangold's Cop Land (1997), Paolo Sorrentino's Youth (2015). He is regarded as one of the greatest method actors ever. Along with actors Al Pacino and Ellen Burstyn, he is the current co-president of the Actors Studio.
Keitel studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg and at the HB Studio, eventually landing roles in some Off-Broadway productions. During this time, Keitel auditioned for filmmaker Martin Scorsese and gained a starring role as "J.R.", in Scorsese's first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967). Since then, Scorsese and Keitel have worked together on several projects. Keitel had the starring role in Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), which also proved to be Robert De Niro's breakthrough film. Keitel re-teamed with Scorsese for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which he had a villainous supporting role, and appeared with Robert De Niro again in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), playing the role of Jodie Foster's pimp.- Actor
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Gary Oldman is a talented English movie star and character actor, renowned for his expressive acting style. One of the most celebrated thespians of his generation, with a diverse career encompassing theatre, film and television, he is known for his roles as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (1986), Drexl in True Romance (1993), George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (2017), among many others. For much of his career, he was best-known for playing over-the-top antagonists, such as terrorist Egor Korshunov in the 1997 blockbuster Air Force One (1997), though he has reached a new audience with heroic roles in the Harry Potter and Dark Knight franchises. He is also a filmmaker, musician, and author.
Gary Leonard Oldman was born on March 21, 1958 in New Cross, London, England, to Kathleen (Cheriton), a homemaker, and Leonard Bertram Oldman, a welder. He won a scholarship to Britain's Rose Bruford Drama College, in Sidcup, Kent, where he received a B.A. in theatre arts in 1979. He subsequently studied with the Greenwich Young People's Theatre and went on to appear in a number of plays throughout the early '80s, including "The Pope's Wedding," for which he received Time Out's Fringe Award for Best Newcomer of 1985-1986 and the British Theatre Association's Drama Magazine Award as Best Actor for 1985. Before fame, he was employed as a worker in assembly lines and as a porter in an operating theater. He also had jobs selling shoes and beheading pigs while supporting his early acting career.
His film debut was Remembrance (1982), though his most-memorable early role came when he played Sex Pistol Sid Vicious in the biopic Sid and Nancy (1986) picking up the Evening Standard Film Award as Best Newcomer. He then received a Best Actor nomination from BAFTA for his portrayal of '60s playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987).
In the 1990s, Oldman brought to life a series of iconic real-world and fictional villains including Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK (1991), the title character in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Drexl Spivey in True Romance (1993), Stansfield in Léon: The Professional (1994), Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg in The Fifth Element (1997) and Ivan Korshunov in Air Force One (1997). That decade also saw Oldman portraying Ludwig van Beethoven in biopic Immortal Beloved (1994).
Oldman played the coveted role of Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), giving him a key part in one of the highest-grossing franchises ever. He reprised that role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). Oldman also took on the iconic role of Detective James Gordon in writer-director Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), a role he played again in The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Prominent film critic Mark Kermode, in reviewing The Dark Knight, wrote, "the best performance in the film, by a mile, is Gary Oldman's ... it would be lovely to see him get a[n Academy Award] nomination because actually, he's the guy who gets kind of overlooked in all of this."
Oldman co-starred with Jim Carrey in the 2009 version of A Christmas Carol in which Oldman played three roles. He had a starring role in David Goyer's supernatural thriller The Unborn, released in 2009. In 2010, Oldman co-starred with Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli. He also played a lead role in Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood. Oldman voiced the role of villain Lord Shen and was nominated for an Annie Award for his performance in Kung Fu Panda 2.
In 2011, Oldman portrayed master spy George Smiley in the adaptation of John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and the role scored Oldman his first Academy Award nomination. In 2014, he played one of the lead humans in the science fiction action film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) alongside Jason Clarke and Keri Russell. Also in 2014, Oldman starred alongside Joel Kinnaman, Abbie Cornish, Michael Keaton, and Samuel L. Jackson in the remake of RoboCop (2014), as Norton, the scientist who creates RoboCop.
Aside from acting, Oldman tried his hand at writing and directing for Nil by Mouth (1997). The movie opened the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, and won Kathy Burke a Best Actress prize at the festival.
Oldman has three children, Alfie, with first wife, actress Lesley Manville, and Gulliver and Charlie with his third wife, Donya Fiorentino. In 2017, he married writer and art curator Gisele Schmidt.
In 2018 he won an Oscar for best actor for his work on Darkest Hour (2017).- Actor
- Additional Crew
Gary Michael Cole is an American television, film and voice actor. Cole began his professional acting career on stage at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1985. On television, he has had starring roles in the TV series Midnight Caller, American Gothic, The West Wing, Crusade, The Good Wife, The Good Fight, Veep, Chicago Fire, and Mixed. In film, he has appeared in The Brady Bunch Movie, One Hour Photo, Office Space, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Breach, and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. He is also known for voicing the title character on the Adult Swim series Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Principal Shepherd on Family Guy, and James Timothy Possible on Kim Possible. As of season 19, Cole joined NCIS, taking over from Mark Harmon, who left the show, as FBI Special Agent, and new head of Gibbs' team, Alden Parker.- Actor
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Brian Cox is an Emmy Award-winning Scottish actor. He was born on June 1, 1946 in Dundee, Scotland, to Mary Ann Guillerline Cox, maiden surname McCann, a spinner, and Charles McArdle Campbell Cox, a shopkeeper and butcher. His father was of Irish ancestry and his mother was of Irish and Scottish descent.
Cox first came to attention in the early 1970s with performances in numerous television films. His first big break was as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter (1986). The film was not overly successful at the box office, although Cox's career prospects and popularity continued to develop. Through the 1990s, he appeared in nearly 20 films and television series, as well as making numerous television guest appearances. More recently, Cox has had roles in some major films, including The Corruptor (1999), The Ring (2002) and X2 (2003). He was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2003 Queen's New Year's Honours List for his services to drama.- Actor
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- Executive
Barry Robert Pepper was born on April 4, 1970, in Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada. He has two older brothers named Alex and Doug Pepper. The Peppers didn't stick around Campbell River for too long. They had been building a ship in their backyard for years. When Barry was five years old, the ship was done and the family set sail. The ship, named "The Moonlighter," was a 50-foot craft that would be their home for the next five years. They navigated through the South Pacific islands, using only a sextant and the stars as guides. While visiting such exotic locales as Fiji and Tahiti, Barry was educated through correspondence courses and sometimes enrolled in public schools. He grew up around Polynesian children and credits them for his love of dance, music and other expressive arts. Barry had plenty of time to practice his newfound loves, too. Without television as entertainment on the ship, the family relied on games and sketch acting for fun. When the five-year cruise was over, the Peppers returned to their native Canada, where they set up shop on a small island off the West Coast near Vancouver. They built a farm on the outskirts of a small artists' town, which was populated mainly by hippies, poets, musicians and other craftsmen. While in high school, Barry was enthusiastic about art and excelled in sports. In addition to playing volleyball, he was an excellent rugby player. He graduated in 1988 from George P. Vanier High School in Courtenay and then enrolled in college and majored in marketing and graphic design, but after getting involved with the Vancouver Actors Studio, he changed his course. Once again, he was using "the stars" to navigate. Barry landed his first role on Madison (1993) (a sort of Canadian 90210) and other prominent television series before moving on to more prestigious roles in the US. Television movies followed, most notably the mini-series Titanic (1996), which costarred George C. Scott. Still, Barry's career really wasn't taking off. He was a hard-working actor, but not a star. That all changed in 1998. After a string of big screen duds, Pepper obtained his breakthrough role as a Bible-quoting sniper in Steven Spielberg's WW II drama Saving Private Ryan (1998). With the success of the film came sudden stardom for its cast--complete with photo spreads, interviews and even some Oscar buzz. Barry followed the film with a small but noteworthy role in the blockbuster, Enemy of the State (1998) opposite Will Smith and Gene Hackman. Next he co-starred in an Oscar-worthy film starring Tom Hanks: Stephen King's The Green Mile (1999). Barry received much critical acclaim in 2001 for his portrayal of Roger Maris in the made-for-cable drama about the 1961 home run race between Maris and Mickey Mantle called 61* (2001).- Actor
- Producer
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Sam Rockwell was born on November 5, 1968, in San Mateo, California, the only child of two actors, Pete Rockwell and Penny Hess. The family moved to New York when he was two years old, living first in the Bronx and later in Manhattan. When Sam was five years old, his parents separated, at which point he and his father moved to San Francisco, where he subsequently grew up, while summers and other times were spent with his mother in New York.
He made his acting debut when he was ten years old, alongside his mother, and later attended J Eugene McAteer High School in a program called SOTA. While still in high school, he got his first big break when he appeared in the independent film Clownhouse (1989). The plot revolved around three escaped mental patients who dressed up as clowns and terrorized three brothers home alone--Sam played the eldest of the brothers. His next big break was supposed to have come when he was slated to star in a short-lived NBC TV-series called Dream Street (1989), but he was soon fired.
After graduating from high school, Sam returned to New York for good and for two years he had private training at the William Esper Acting Studio. During this period he appeared in a variety of roles, such as the ABC Afterschool Specials (1972): Over the Limit (1990) (TV) and HBO's Lifestories: Families in Crisis (1992): Dead Drunk: The Kevin Tunell Story (Season 1 Episode 7: 15 March 1993); the head thug in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990); and a guest-star turn in an Emmy Award-winning episode of Law & Order (1990), while working a string of regular day jobs and performing in plays.
In 1994, a Miller Ice beer commercial finally enabled him to quit his other jobs to concentrate on his acting career, which culminated in him having five movies out by 1996: Basquiat (1996); The Search for One-eye Jimmy (1994); Glory Daze (1995); Mercy (1995); and Box of Moonlight (1996). It was the latter film that would prove to be his real break-out in the industry. In Tom DiCillo's film, he found himself playing an eccentric named the Kid, a man-child living in a half-built mobile home in the middle of nowhere with a penchant for dressing like Davy Crockett, who manages to bring some much-needed chaos into the life of an electrical engineer played by John Turturro. The movie was not a box-office success, but it managed to generate a great deal of critical acclaim for itself and Sam.
In 1997, he found himself the star of another critically lauded film, Lawn Dogs (1997). Once again, he portrayed a societal outcast as Trent, a working-class man living in a trailer, earning a living mowing lawns inside a wealthy, gated Kentucky community. Trent soon finds himself befriended by 10-year-old Devon (Mischa Barton), and the movie deals with the difficulties in their friendship and the outside world. He also gave strong performances in the quirky independent comedy Safe Men (1998), in which he plays one half of a pretty awful singing duo (the other half being played by Steve Zahn) that gets mistaken for two safecrackers by Jewish gangsters; and the offbeat hitman trainee in Jerry and Tom (1998) against Joe Mantegna.
After a few smaller appearances in films such as Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998) and the modern version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999), in which he played Francis Flute, he had larger roles in two of the bigger hit movies to emerge: The Green Mile (1999) and Galaxy Quest (1999), wowing audiences and critics alike with his chameleon-like performances as a crazed killer in the former and a goofy actor in the latter.
More recently, he appeared in another string of mainstream films, most notably as Eric Knox in Charlie's Angels (2000) and as Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), while continuing to perform in smaller independent movies. After more than ten years in the business, Sam has earned his success. In 2018, he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor as a troubled police deputy in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017).- Actor
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Will Patton was born in Charleston, South Carolina. His father, Bill Patton, is a playwright, acting/directing instructor, and Lutheran minister. Patton attended the North Carolina School of the Arts. He has won two OBIE awards for Best Actor -- for the off-Broadway plays "Fool for Love" (by Sam Shepard) and the Public Theatre production of "What Did He See?" (by Richard Foreman).- Actor
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Highly talented, lightly built American actor who always looks unsettled and jumpy has become a favourite of cult/arthouse film aficionados with his compelling performances in a broad range of cinematic vehicles.
Turturro was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Italian-American parents, Katherine (Incerella), a jazz singer, and Nicholas Turturro, a construction worker and carpenter, who was born in Giovinazzo. His brother, also named Nicholas Turturro, is an actor, and actress Aida Turturro is his cousin.
Turturro has become a regular in the thought provoking films of Spike Lee and the off the wall comedies of Joel Coen & Ethan Coen. His wonderful performances include as the highly agitated "Pino" in Do the Right Thing (1989), as an intellectual playwright in Barton Fink (1991), a pedophile tenpin bowler in The Big Lebowski (1998), a confused boyfriend in Jungle Fever (1991) and as the voice of Harvey the dog in Summer of Sam (1999).
Turturro has continued to appeal to audiences despite his unconventional looks and the often annoying onscreen mannerisms of his characters which he used to great effect in films such as his blue collar tale of warring brothers in the construction business, Mac (1992), as the irate, dumped game show contestant, Herbie Stempel, in Robert Redford's dynamic Quiz Show (1994). One of modern American cinema's gems of acting, Turturro remains in strong demand for his high calibre thespian talents.- Actor
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Antonino Giovanni Ribisi is an American actor who was born in Los Angeles, California. His parents both have careers in the entertainment industry. His mother, Gay Ribisi (née Landrum), is a talent manager for actors and writers, and his father, Albert Anthony Ribisi, is a musician. He has a twin sister, actress Marissa Ribisi, and another sister, Gina. Giovanni is of Italian (from his paternal grandfather), English and German ancestry.
His mother helped to launch his acting career, which began with an appearance on two episodes of the television series Highway to Heaven (1984). This followed with numerous roles on television. In 1996, he gained the role of Phoebe Buffay's half-brother on the high profile sitcom Friends (1994), which boosted his career. He became involved in films, which included roles in Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do! (1996) and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998). He appeared in James Cameron's Avatar (2009), Contraband (2012), Gangster Squad (2013), Ted (2012) and Ted 2 (2015).- Actor
- Producer
Oliver Platt was born in Windsor, Ontario, to American parents, Sheila Maynard, a social worker, and Nicholas Platt, a career diplomat. His parents were both from upper-class families, and his maternal great-grandmother, Cynthia Roche, was the sister of Princess Diana's maternal grandfather, Maurice Roche.
Platt spent his childhood in Washington, D.C., Asia, and the Middle East. Oliver graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Drama in 1983 from Tufts University. He then trained at Shakespeare & Co. with Kristin Linklater.- Actor
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Joe Pantoliano is an American actor of the screen and stage, Joe has over 150 credits to his name. On the big screen, he is known for his roles in such films as "The Goonies," "La Bamba," "The Fugitive," "The Matrix," "Memento," and the "Bad Boys" trilogy. Pantoliano has also appeared on numerous television series over the years, including "Hill Street Blues," "NYPD Blue," "The Sopranos," and "Sense8." Some of his best career roles include Ralph Cifaretto on The Sopranos, Bob Keane in La Bamba, Cypher in The Matrix, Teddy in Memento, Francis Fratelli in The Goonies, Guido "the Killer Pimp" in Risky Business and Jennifer Tilly's violent mobster boyfriend Caesar in Bound. He also played Deputy U.S. Marshal Cosmo Renfro in both The Fugitive and U.S. Marshals. He won an Emmy in 2003 for Best Supporting Actor for his work on The Sopranos. He is often referred to as "Joey Pants", because of the difficulty some people have pronouncing his Italian surname Pantoliano.
Early Life Joe Pantoliano was born in Hoboken, New Jersey to Italian-American parents Dominic and Mary. His father was a factory foreman and hearse driver, while his mother was a seamstress and bookie. As a youth, Pantoliano moved with his family to the New Jersey borough of Cliffside Park, where he went to Cliffside Park High School. Later, he studied at the performing arts organization HB Studio in New York City.- Actor
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Popular British character actor Tom Wilkinson was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, and came from a long line of urban farmers. He was the son of Marjorie (Percival) and Thomas Wilkinson. Economic hardships forced his family to move to Canada for a few years when Wilkinson was a child; then, after he had returned to England, he attended and graduated from the University of Kent at Canterbury with a degree in English and American Literature.
Wilkinson first became active in film and television in the mid-1970s, but did not become familiar to an international audience until 1997. That was when he starred as one of six unemployed workers who strip for cash in Best Picture nominee The Full Monty (1997), and went on to win a BAFTA for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. That same year, he was featured in Oscar and Lucinda (1997) and Wilde (1997). Wilkinson was also shown to memorable effect as a theatre financier with acting aspirations in Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Over the next few years, Wilkinson would become more popular, especially with American audiences, with such roles as General Cornwallis alongside Mel Gibson in the blockbuster The Patriot (2000) and as the grief-stricken father, Matt Fowler, in the critically acclaimed Best Picture nominee In the Bedroom (2001). For his role in that movie, he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Since then, Wilkinson has made memorable appearances in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Batman Begins (2005), The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Valkyrie (2008), Duplicity (2009), The Ghost Writer (2010), The Debt (2010) and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), among others. Wilkinson also received his second Academy Award nomination for his acclaimed role in Michael Clayton (2007).
Wilkinson won an Emmy Award for his work as Benjamin Franklin in HBO's John Adams (2008) mini-series. The same year, he received an Emmy nomination for his role in HBO movie Recount (2008), and has also received Emmy nominations for Normal (2003) and The Kennedys (2011).
Wilkinson had two children, Alice and Molly, with his wife Diana Hardcastle.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Academy Award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham was born on October 24, 1939 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in El Paso, Texas. His father, Fred Abraham, was a Syrian (Antiochian Orthodox Christian) immigrant. His mother, Josephine (Stello) Abraham, was the daughter of Italian immigrants. Born with the first name "Murray", he added an "F." to distinguish his stage name.
Primarily a stage actor, Abraham made his screen debut as an usher in George C. Scott's comedy They Might Be Giants (1971). By the mid-1970s, Murray had steady employment as an actor, doing commercials and voice-over work. He can be seen as one of the undercover police officers along with Al Pacino in Sidney Lumet's Serpico (1973), and in television roles including the villain in one third-season episode of Kojak (1973). His film work of those years also included the roles of a cabdriver in The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), a mechanic in The Sunshine Boys (1975), and a police officer in All the President's Men (1976).
Beyond these small roles, Abraham continued to do commercials and voice-over work for income. But in 1978, he decided to give them up. Frustrated with the lack of substantial roles, Abraham said, "No one was taking my acting seriously. I figured if I didn't do it, then I'd have no right to the dreams I've always had". His wife, Kate Hannan, went to work as an assistant and Abraham became a "house husband". He described, "I cooked and cleaned and took care of the kids. It was very rough on my macho idea of life. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me". Abraham appeared as drug dealer Omar Suárez alongside Pacino again in the gangster film Scarface (1983). He also gained visibility voicing a talking bunch of grapes in a series of television commercials for Fruit of the Loom underwear.
In 1985, he was honored with as Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for the acclaimed role of envious composer Antonio Salieri in Amadeus (1984), an award for which Tom Hulce, playing Mozart in that movie, had also been nominated. He was also honored with a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama, among other awards, and his role in the film, is still considered to be his most iconic as the film's director Milos Forman inspired the work of the role with Abraham's wide range of qualities as a great stage and film actor.
After Amadeus, he next appeared in The Name of the Rose (1986), in which he played Bernardo Gui, nemesis to Sir Sean Connery as William of Baskerville. In the DVD audio commentary, his director on the film, Jean-Jacques Annaud, described Abraham as an "egomaniac" on the set, who considered himself more important than Sean Connery, since Connery did not have an Oscar. That said, the film was a critical success. Abraham had tired of appearing as villains and wanted to return to his background in comedy, as he also explained to People Weekly magazine in an interview he gave at the time of its release.- Actress
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In America, the early performing arts accomplishments of young Maureen FitzSimons (who we know as Maureen O'Hara) would definitely have put her in the child prodigy category. However, for a child of Irish heritage surrounded by gifted parents and family, these were very natural traits. Maureen made her entrance into this caring haven on August 17, 1920, in Ranelagh (a suburb of Dublin), Ireland. Her mother, Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons, was an accomplished contralto. Her father, Charles FitzSimons, managed a business in Dublin and also owned part of the renowned Irish soccer team "The Shamrock Rovers." Maureen was the second of six FitzSimons children - Peggy, Florrie, Charles B. Fitzsimons, Margot Fitzsimons and James O'Hara completed this beautiful family.
Maureen loved playing rough athletic games as a child and excelled in sports. She combined this interest with an equally natural gift for performing. This was demonstrated by her winning pretty much every Feis award for drama and theatrical performing her country offered. By age 14 she was accepted to the prestigious Abbey Theater and pursued her dream of classical theater and operatic singing. This course was to be altered, however, when Charles Laughton, after seeing a screen test of Maureen, became mesmerized by her hauntingly beautiful eyes. Before casting her to star in Jamaica Inn (1939), Laughton and his partner, Erich Pommer, changed her name from Maureen FitzSimons to "Maureen O'Hara" - a bit shorter last name for the marquee.
Under contract to Laughton, Maureen's next picture was to be filmed in America (The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)) at RKO Pictures. The epic film was an extraordinary success and Maureen's contract was eventually bought from Laughton by RKO. At 19, Maureen had already starred in two major motion pictures with Laughton. Unlike most stars of her era, she started at the top, and remained there - with her skills and talents only getting better and better with the passing years.
Maureen has an enviable string of all-time classics to her credit that include the aforementioned "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," How Green Was My Valley (1941), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Sitting Pretty (1948), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Parent Trap (1961). Add to this the distinction of being voted one of the five most beautiful women in the world and you have a film star who was as gorgeous as she was talented.
Although at times early in her career Hollywood didn't seem to notice, there was much more to Maureen O'Hara than her dynamic beauty. She not only had a wonderful lyric soprano voice, but she could use her inherent athletic ability to perform physical feats that most actresses couldn't begin to attempt, from fencing to fisticuffs. She was a natural athlete.
In her career Maureen starred with some of Hollywood's most dashing leading men, including Tyrone Power, John Payne, Rex Harrison, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Brian Keith, Sir Alec Guinness and, of course, her famed pairings with "The Duke" himself, John Wayne. She starred in five films with Wayne, the most beloved being The Quiet Man (1952).
In addition to famed director John Ford, Maureen was also fortunate to have worked for some other great directors in the business: Alfred Hitchcock, William Dieterle, Henry Hathaway, Henry King, Jean Renoir, John M. Stahl, William A. Wellman, Frank Borzage, Walter Lang, George Seaton, George Sherman, Carol Reed, Delmer Daves, David Swift, Andrew V. McLaglen and Chris Columbus.
In 1968 Maureen found much deserved personal happiness when she married Charles Blair. Gen. Blair was a famous aviator whom she had known as a friend of her family for many years. A new career began for Maureen, that of a full-time wife. Her marriage to Blair, however, was again far from typical. Blair was the real-life version of what John Wayne had been on the screen. He had been a Brigadier General in the Air Force, a Senior Pilot with Pan American, and held many incredible record-breaking aeronautic achievements. Maureen happily retired from films in 1973 after making the TV movie The Red Pony (1973) (which on the prestigious Peabody Award for Excellence) with Henry Fonda. With Blair, Maureen managed Antilles Airboats, a commuter sea plane service in the Caribbean. She not only made trips around the world with her pilot husband, but owned and published a magazine, "The Virgin Islander," writing a monthly column called "Maureen O'Hara Says."
Tragically, Charles Blair died in a plane crash in 1978. Though completely devastated, Maureen pulled herself together and, with memories of ten of the happiest years of her life, continued on. She was elected President and CEO of Antilles Airboats, which brought her the distinction of being the first woman president of a scheduled airline in the United States.
Fortunately, she was coaxed out of retirement several times - once in 1991 to star with John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991) and again, in 1995, in a made-for-TV movie, The Christmas Box (1995) on CBS. In the spring of 1998, Maureen accepted the second of what would be three projects for Polson Productions and CBS: Cab to Canada (1998) - and, in October, 2000, The Last Dance (2000).
On St. Patrick's Day in 2004, she published her New York Times bestselling memoir, 'Tis Herself, co-authored with her longtime biographer and manager Johnny Nicoletti.
On November 4, 2014 Maureen was honored by a long overdue Oscar for "Lifetime Achievement" at the annual Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Governors Awards.
Maureen O'Hara was absolutely stunning, with that trademark red hair, dazzling smile and those huge, expressive eyes. She has fans from all over the world of all ages who are utterly devoted to her legacy of films and her persona as a strong, courageous and intelligent woman.- Actor
- Soundtrack
J.K. Simmons is an American actor.
He was born Jonathan Kimble Simmons in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, to Patricia (Kimble), an administrator, and Donald William Simmons, a music teacher. He attended the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; University of Montana, Missoula, MT (BA in Music).
He had originally planned to be a singer and studied at the University of Montana to become a composer.
He starred as Captain Hook and Mr. Darling opposite gymnastics champ Cathy Rigby in the Broadway and touring revivals of Peter Pan.
He played Benny South-street in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls and can be heard on the cast recording.
He did a commercial voice-over work, including the voice of the yellow M&M in the candy's TV ads.
He appeared as police psychiatrist Emil Skoda on Law & Order (1990), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) and Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001).
As of 2011, has made five films with director Sam Raimi: For Love of the Game (1999); The Gift (2000); Spider-Man (2002); Spider-Man 2 (2004); and Spider-Man 3 (2007).
He won many awards from 2005 to 2007 in Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2014 won Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. 2015 won a Golden Globe for his Best Performance as an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture, BAFTA Film Awards Best Supporting Actor, Independent Spirit Awards Best Supporting Male.- Actor
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Christopher Walton Cooper was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to Mary Ann (Walton), a homemaker, and Charles Sherwood Cooper, a cattleman and internist who served as a doctor in the US Air Force. His parents were from Texas, where Cooper was raised.
Educated at the University of Missouri school of drama, Cooper appeared on Broadway in "Of the Fields Lately (1980)", and off-Broadway in "The Ballad of Soapy Smith (1983)" and "A Different Moon (1983)". He debuted in films in the John Sayles movie Matewan (1987). Although his performance was well received, the picture was not successful. Other films he has appeared in include Guilty by Suspicion (1991), Money Train (1995) and A Time to Kill (1996). On television, Cooper has been featured in the mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989) and Return to Lonesome Dove (1993), as July Johnson. He has also appeared in a number of television movies. In 1996, he starred in his third John Sayles movie, Lone Star (1996), where he plays Sam Deeds, the sheriff whose lawman father becomes a posthumous suspect in a murder investigation.
Cooper married actress/producer/scriptwriter Marianne Leone on July 8, 1983. They have one child, a son Jesse, who died on January 3, 2005 at the age of 17, of natural causes related to cerebral palsy. Jesse Cooper inspired his mother to author the script for the film "Conquistadora." It relates the true story of Mary Somoza, the mother of twins with cerebral palsy, who fought the educational system to provide the best education possible for her children.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Having made over one hundred films in his legendary career, Willem Dafoe is internationally respected for bringing versatility, boldness, and daring to some of the most iconic films of our time. His artistic curiosity in exploring the human condition leads him to projects all over the world, large and small, Hollywood films as well as Independent cinema.
In 1979, he was given a role in Michael's Cimino's Heaven's Gate, from which he was fired. Since then, he has collaborated with directors who represent a virtual encyclopedia of modern cinema: James Wan, Robert Eggers, Sean Baker, Kenneth Branagh, Kathryn Bigelow, Sam Raimi, Alan Parker, Walter Hill, Mary Harron, Wim Wenders, Anton Corbijn, Zhang Yimou, Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Oliver Stone, William Friedkin, Werner Herzog, Lars Von Trier, Abel Ferrara, Spike Lee, David Cronenberg, Paul Schrader, Anthony Minghella, Theo Angelopoulos, Robert Rodriguez, Phillip Noyce, Hector Babenco, John Milius, Paul Weitz, The Spierig Brothers, Andrew Stanton, Josh Boone, Dee Rees and Julian Schnabel.
Dafoe has been recognized with four Academy Award nominations: Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Platoon, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Shadow Of The Vampire, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Florida Project, for which he also received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, and most recently, Best Leading Actor for At Eternity's Gate, for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination. Among his other nominations and awards, he has received two Los Angeles Film Critics Awards, a New York Film Critics Circle Award, a National Board of Review Award, two Independent Spirit Awards, Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup, as well as a Berlinale Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement.
Willem was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Muriel Isabel (Sprissler), a nurse, and William Alfred Dafoe, a surgeon. He is of mostly German, Irish, Scottish, and English descent. He and his wife, director Giada Colagrande, have made three films together: Padre, A Woman, and Before It Had A Name.
His natural adventurousness is evident in roles as diverse as Marcus, the elite assassin who is mentor to Keanu Reeves in the neo-noir John Wick; in his voice work as Gil the Moorish Idol in Finding Nemo and Ryuk the Death God in Death Note; as Paul Smecker, the obsessed FBI agent in the cult classic The Boondock Saints; and as real life hero Leonhard Seppala, who led the 1925 Alaskan dog sled diphtheria serum run in Ericson Core's Togo. That adventurous spirit continues with upcoming films including Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, Abel Ferrara's Siberia, and Paul Schrader's The Card Counter.
Dafoe is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group, the New York based experimental theatre collective. He created and performed in all of the group's work from 1977 thru 2005, both in the U.S. and internationally. Since then, he worked with Richard Foreman in Idiot Savant at The Public Theatre (NYC), with Robert Wilson on two international productions: The Life & Death of Marina Abramovic and The Old Woman opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov and developed a new theatre piece, directed by Romeo Castellucci, based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil. He recently completed work on Marina Abramovic's opera 7 Deaths of Maria Callas.- Actor
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Dennis Haysbert was born on 2 June 1954 in San Mateo, California, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Far from Heaven (2002), 24 (2001) and Heat (1995). He was previously married to Lynn Griffith and Elena Simms.- Actor
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Lanky, charismatic and versatile actor with an amazing grin that put everyone at ease, James Coburn studied acting at UCLA, and then moved to New York to study under noted acting coach Stella Adler. After being noticed in several stage productions, Coburn appeared in a handful of minor westerns before being cast as the knife-throwing, quick-shooting Britt in the John Sturges mega-hit The Magnificent Seven (1960). Sturges remembered Coburn's talents when he cast his next major film project, The Great Escape (1963), where Coburn played the Australian POW Sedgwick. Regular work now came thick and fast for Coburn, including appearing in Major Dundee (1965), the first of several films he appeared in directed by Hollywood enfant terrible Sam Peckinpah.
Coburn was then cast, and gave an especially fine performance as Lt. Commander Paul Cummings in Arthur Hiller's The Americanization of Emily, where he demonstrated a flair for writer Paddy Chayefsky's subtle, ironic comedy that would define his performances for the rest of his career.
The next two years were a key period for Coburn, with his performances in the wonderful 007 spy spoof Our Man Flint (1966) and the eerie Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966). Coburn followed up in 1967 with a Flint sequel, In Like Flint (1967), and the much underrated political satire The President's Analyst (1967). The remainder of the 1960s was rather uneventful for Coburn. However, he became associated with martial arts legend Bruce Lee and the two trained together, traveled extensively and even visited India scouting locations for a proposed film project, but Lee's untimely death (Coburn, along with Steve McQueen, was a pallbearer at Lee's funeral) put an end to that.
The 1970s saw Coburn appearing again in several strong roles, starting off in Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), alongside Charles Bronson in the Depression-era Hard Times (1975) and as a disenchanted German soldier on the Russian front in Peckinpah's superb Cross of Iron (1977). Towards the end of the decade, however, Coburn was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which severely hampered his health and work output for many years. After conventional treatments failed, Coburn turned to a holistic therapist, and through a restructured diet program, made a definite improvement. By the 1990s he was once again appearing regularly in both film and TV productions.
No one was probably more surprised than Coburn himself when he was both nominated for, and then won, the Best Supporting Actor Award in 1997 for playing Nick Nolte's abusive and alcoholic father in Affliction (1997). At 70 years of age, Coburn's career received another shot in the arm, and he appeared in another 14 films, including Snow Dogs (2002) and The Man from Elysian Fields (2001), before his death from a heart attack in November of 2002. Coburn's passions in life included martial arts, card-playing and enjoying Cuban cigars (which may have contributed to his fatal heart attack).- Actor
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Michael Corbett Shannon was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, the son of Geraldine Hine, a lawyer, and Donald Sutherlin Shannon, an accounting professor at DePaul University. His grandfather was entomologist Raymond Corbett Shannon.
Shannon began his professional stage career in Chicago. His first acting role was in "Winterset" at the Illinois Theatre Center. Over the next several years, he continued working on the stage with such companies as Steppenwolf, The Next Lab and the Red Orchid Theatre. He subsequently relocated to London for a year, and performed on stage in London's West End in such productions as "Woyzeck", "Killer Joe" and "Bug".
While in Chicago, Shannon also kept busy in front of movie and television cameras, most notably in the big screen project Chicago Cab (1997), based on the long-running stage play "Hellcab". Kangaroo Jack (2003) marked the third Jerry Bruckheimer production in which Shannon has appeared. He also appeared in Bad Boys II (2003), directed by Michael Bay and starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, and in Grand Theft Parsons (2003), with Johnny Knoxville and Christina Applegate.
In addition, Shannon appeared in Pearl Harbor (2001), also directed by Bay. His other film credits also include Curtis Hanson's 8 Mile (2002); Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky (2001) with Tom Cruise; Carl Franklin's High Crimes (2002) with Morgan Freeman; John Waters' Cecil B. Demented (2000), and Joel Schumacher's war drama Tigerland (2000).- Actor
- Producer
- Music Department
Legendary actor Christopher Plummer, perhaps Canada's greatest thespian, delivered outstanding performances as Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979), the chilling villain in The Silent Partner (1978), the iconoclastic Mike Wallace in The Insider (1999), the empathetic psychiatrist in A Beautiful Mind (2001), the kindly and clever mystery writer in Knives Out (2019), and as Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009). It was this last role that finally brought him recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, when he was nominated as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, one of three Academy Award nominations he received in the 2010s, along with All the Money in the World (2017) (as J. Paul Getty) and Beginners (2010); he won for the latter role. He will also likely always be remembered as Captain Von Trapp in the atomic bomb-strength blockbuster The Sound of Music (1965), a film he publicly despised until softening his stance in his autobiography "In Spite of Me" (2008).
Christopher Plummer was born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer on December 13, 1929 in Toronto, Ontario. He was the only child of Isabella Mary (Abbott), a secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University, and John Orme Plummer, who sold securities and stocks. Christopher was a great-grandson of John Abbott, who was Canada's third Prime Minister (from 1891 to 1892), and a great-great-great-grandson of Presbyterian clergyman John Bethune. He had Scottish, English, Anglo-Irish, and Cornish ancestry. Plummer was raised in Senneville, Quebec, near Montreal, at his maternal grandparents' home.
Aside from the youngest member of the Barrymore siblings (which counted Oscar-winners Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore in their number), Plummer was the premier Shakespearean actor to come out of North America in the 20th century. He was particularly memorable as Hamlet, Iago and Lear, though his Macbeth opposite Glenda Jackson was -- and this was no surprise to him due to the famous curse attached to the "Scottish Play" -- a failure.
Like another great stage actor, Richard Burton, early in his career Plummer failed to connect with the screen in a way that would make him a star. Dynamic on stage, he didn't succeed as a younger leading man in films. Perhaps if he had been born earlier, and acted in the studio system of Hollywood's golden age, he could have been carefully groomed for stardom. As it was, he shared the English stage actors' disdain -- and he was equally at home in London as he was on the boards of Broadway or on-stage in his native Canada -- for the movies, which did not help him in that medium, as he has confessed. As he aged, Plummer excelled at character roles. He was always a good villain, this man who garnered kudos playing Lucifer on Broadway in Archibald Macleish's Pulitzer Prize-winning "J.B.".
Plummer won two Emmy Awards out of seven nominations stretching 46 years from 1959 and 2011, and one Genie Award in six nominations from 1980 to 2009. For his stage work, Plummer has racked up two Tony Awards on six nominations, the first in 1974 as Best Actor (Musical) for the title role in "Cyrano" and the second in 1997, as Best Actor (Play), in "Barrymore". Surprisingly, he did not win (though he was nominated) for his masterful 2004 performance of "King Lear", which he originated at the Stratford Festival in Ontario and brought down to Broadway for a sold-out run. His other Tony nominations show the wide range of his talent, from a 1959 nod for the Elia Kazan-directed production of Macleish's "J.B." to recognition in 1994 for Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land", with a 1982 Best Actor (Play) nomination for his "Iago" in William Shakespeare's "Othello".
Until the 2009 Academy Awards were announced, it could be said about Plummer that he was the finest actor of the post-World War II period to fail to get an Academy Award. In that, he was following in the footsteps of the late great John Barrymore, whom Plummer so memorably portrayed on Broadway in a one-man show that brought him his second Tony Award. In 2010, Plummer finally got an Oscar nod for his portrayal of another legend, Lev Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009). Two years later, the first paragraph of his obituary was written when the 82-year-old Plummer became the oldest person in Academy history to win an Oscar. He won for playing a senior citizen who comes out as gay after the death of his wife in the movie Beginners (2010). As he clutched his statuette, the debonaire thespian addressed it thus: "You're only two years older than me darling, where have you been all of my life?"
Plummer then told the audience that at birth, "I was already rehearsing my Academy acceptance speech, but it was so long ago mercifully for you I've forgotten it." The Academy Award was a long time in coming and richly deserved.
Plummer gave many other fine portrayals on film, particularly as he grew older and settled down into a comfortable marriage with his third wife Elaine. He continued to be an in-demand character actor in prestigious motion pictures. If he were English rather than Canadian, he would have been knighted. (In 1968, he was appointed Companion of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor and one which required the approval of the sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II.) If he lived in the company town of Los Angeles rather than in Connecticut, he likely would have several more Oscar nominations before winning his first for "The Last Station".
As it is, as attested to in his witty and well-written autobiography, Plummer was amply rewarded in life. In 1970, Plummer - then a self-confessed 43-year-old "bottle baby" - married his third wife Elaine Taylor, a dancer, who helped wean him off his dependency on alcohol. They lived happily with their dogs on a 30-acre estate in Weston, Connecticut. He thanked her from the stage during the 2012 Oscar telecast, quipping that she "deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for coming to my rescue every day of my life." Although he spent the majority of his time in the United States, he remained a Canadian citizen. He died in his Weston, Connecticut home on February 5, 2021 at age 91.
His daughter, with actress Tammy Grimes, is actress Amanda Plummer.- Actor
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- Stunts
Scott Glenn was born January 26, 1939, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Hope Elizabeth and Theodore Glenn, a salesman. As he grew up in Appalachia, his health was poor; he was bedridden for a year and doctors predicted he would limp for the rest of his life. During long periods of illness, Glenn was reading a lot and "dreaming of becoming Lord Byron". He challenged his illness by intense training programs and eventually got rid of his limp.
After graduating high school, Glenn entered William and Mary College where he majored in English. He spent three years in the Marines and then tried to combine his passion for storytelling with his passion for adventures by working for five months as a criminal reporter at the Kenosha Evening News. Glenn planned to become an author but found out he had "problems with dialogues", so he decided to overcome it by studying acting. In 1966, he headed to New York where he joined George Morrison acting class. He helped in directing student plays to pay for his studies and appeared onstage in La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club productions. Soon after arriving in New York, Glenn became a fan of martial arts. In 1968, he joined The Actors Studio and began working in professional theater and TV. In 1970, James Bridges offered him his first movie work in The Baby Maker (1970).
Glenn left for L.A., where he spent seven of the "most miserable years of [his] life". He couldn't find interesting film roles and, doing brief TV stints, he felt "like a person who had to paint the Sistine Chapel with a house-painter's brush". On a brighter side, he worked episodically with Jonathan Demme (Angels Hard as They Come (1971), Fighting Mad (1976)), Robert Altman (Nashville (1975)) and Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now (1979)). In 1978, Glenn got tired of Hollywood and moved his family to Ketchum, Idaho, where he worked as a barman, huntsman and mountain ranger for two years (occasionally acting in Seattle stage productions). James Bridges once more changed the course of Glenn's life in 1980 when he offered him the role of John Travolta's rival in Urban Cowboy (1980) and made him a star. Glenn's acting abilities and physical presence helped him to excel both in action (Silverado (1985), The Challenge (1982)) and drama (The Right Stuff (1983), Countdown to Looking Glass (1984), The River (1984)) as he alternately played good guys and bad guys.
In the beginning of the '90s, his career was at its peak - he appeared in such indisputable masterpieces as The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and The Hunt for Red October (1990). Established as one of Hollywood's most solid and respected character actors he has appeared in a wide variety of films, such as the black Freudian farce Reckless (1995), the tragicomedy Edie & Pen (1996) and Ken Loach's socio-political declaration Carla's Song (1996), alternating mainstream (Courage Under Fire (1996), Absolute Power (1997)) with independent projects (Lesser Prophets (1997) and Larga distancia (1997)), written by his daughter Dakota Glenn), and TV (Naked City: A Killer Christmas (1998)). Continuing into the 21st century, Glenn has also appeared in Training Day (2001), W. (2008) (as Donald Rumsfeld), Secretariat (2010), Sucker Punch (2011), The Paperboy (2012), and two of the Bourne films: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and The Bourne Legacy (2012).- Actor
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Actor, producer and humanitarian Danny Glover has been a commanding presence on screen, stage and television for more than 35 years.
Glover was born in San Francisco, California, to Carrie (Hunley) and James Glover, postal workers who were also active in civil rights. Glover trained at the Black Actors' Workshop of the American Conservatory Theater. It was his Broadway debut in Fugard's Master Harold...and the Boys, which brought him to national recognition and led director Robert Benton to cast Glover in his first leading role in 1984's Oscar®-nominated Best Picture Places in the Heart.
The following year, Glover starred in two more Best Picture nominees: Peter Weir's Witness and Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple. In 1987, Glover partnered with Mel Gibson in the first Lethal Weapon film and went on to star in three hugely successful Lethal Weapon sequels. Glover has also invested his talents in more personal projects, including the award-winning To Sleep With Anger, which he executive produced and for which he won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor; Bopha!; Manderlay; Missing in America; and the film version of Athol Fugard's play Boesman and Lena. On the small screen, Glover won an Image Award and a Cable ACE Award and earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the title role of the HBO movie Mandela. He has also received Emmy nominations for his work in the acclaimed miniseries Lonesome Dove and the telefilm Freedom Song. As a director, he earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for Showtime's Just a Dream.
Glover's film credits range from the blockbuster Lethal Weapon franchise to smaller independent features, some of which Glover also produced. He co-starred in the critically acclaimed feature Dreamgirls directed by Bill Condon and in Po' Boy's Game for director Clement Virgo. He appeared in the hit feature Shooter for director Antoine Fuqua, Honeydripper for director John Sayles, and Be Kind, Rewind for director Michel Gondry.
Glover has also gained respect for his wide-reaching community activism and philanthropic efforts, with a particular emphasis on advocacy for economic justice, and access to health care and education programs in the United States and Africa. For these efforts, Glover received a 2006 DGA Honor. Internationally, Glover has served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Program from 1998-2004, focusing on issues of poverty, disease, and economic development in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and serves as UNICEF Ambassador.
In 2005, Glover co-founded Louverture Films dedicated to the development and production of films of historical relevance, social purpose, commercial value and artistic integrity. The New York based company has a slate of progressive features and documentaries including Trouble the Water, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, Africa Unite, award winning feature Bamako, and most recent projects Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and The Disappearance of McKinley Nolan.- Actor
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Michael Rooker was born on April 6, 1955 in Jasper, Alabama. When he was thirteen, his parents divorced and he went with his mother to live in Chicago. He caught the acting bug while attending college, and began appearing in local stage productions. On first breaking into film, his intensity and "don't-mess-with-me" good looks were highlighted to chilling effect as he title character in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), filmed in 1986 but, due to its controversial nature, not released until 1990. Since that widely noticed and highly praised performance, much of his career has been spent playing brutes, villains and psychopaths. However, his occasional turns as a "good guy" are always well-acted and a welcome change for a talented actor too often typecast.
2017 marks an exciting time for Rooker, as he starred in two films premiering just two months of each other. On March 17, audiences saw Rooker in Blumhouse Tilt's indie horror thriller The Belko Experiment (2016). The film is the terrifying yet humorous look at a group of employees that become guinea pigs in a company-wide experiment that leads them to either kill their fellow employees or be killed themselves. Returning to his indie roots, Rooker starred as maintenance worker, Bud Melks, one of the employees trapped in the office building, who may or may not be able to kill his fellow staff member. On May 5, Rooker reprised his role as Yondu in the highly anticipated sequel, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017). The film follows the same group of galactic underdogs saving the universe to a stellar soundtrack. Rooker's breakout performance earned him critical acclaim, as audiences were introduced to a more dramatic Yondu. The film went on to earn over $145 million domestically its opening weekend and has surpassed its predecessor by grossing over $850 million worldwide.
Rooker made his film debut, playing the title role in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), a film based on the confessions of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. It was here that audiences were first introduced to Rooker's impeccable ability to channel a character's idiosyncrasies and subtleties. He has also starred in some of the most iconic films, such as Mississippi Burning (1988), Sea of Love (1989), JFK (1991), Tombstone (1993) and Jumper (2008) to name a few. In August 2014, Rooker starred in one of the most memorable franchises in the Marvel Universe, Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), as Yondu, the blue-skinned renegade space pirate and surrogate father to Peter Quill. The film went on to gross over $700 million at the worldwide box office and spent five weekends atop the box office, more than any other film in the Marvel Universe.
On the television front, Rooker is best known for his series regular role as Merle Dixon on AMC's hit series The Walking Dead (2010). Audiences loved to hate the ill-tempered redneck hunter and were sad to see him killed off the series in season three. Rooker has completed a variety of stints on some of the most prominent series on television: Criminal Minds (2005), CSI: Miami (2002), Las Vegas (2003), Law & Order (1990) and Archer (2009), among others. Additionally, Rooker's talents go beyond both film and television. He adds his voice to various video games, including The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, and Lollipop Chainsaw.- Actor
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A talented character actor known for his military roles, Ronald Lee Ermey was in the United States Marine Corps for 11 years. He rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant, and later was bestowed the honorary rank of Gunnery Sergeant by the Marine Corps, after he served 14 months in Vietnam and later did two tours in Okinawa, Japan. After injuries forced him to retire from the Corps, he moved to the Phillipines, enrolling in the University of Manila, where he studied Criminology and Drama. He appeared in several Filipino films before being cast as a helicopter pilot in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979). Due to his Vietnam experiences, Coppola also utilized him as a technical adviser. He got a featured role in Sidney J. Furie's The Boys in Company C (1978), playing a drill instructor. Ermey worked with Furie again in Purple Hearts (1984).
However, his most famous (or infamous) role came as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe. He did win the best supporting actor award from The Boston Society of Film Critics. Since then, he has appeared in numerous character roles in such films as Leaving Las Vegas (1995), Se7en (1995) and Dead Man Walking (1995). However, Ermey prefers comedy to drama, and has a comedic role in Saving Silverman (2001).- Actor
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British actor Mark Strong, who played Jim Prideaux in the 2011 remake of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), is often cast as cold, calculating villains. But before he became a famous actor, he intended to pursue a career in law.
Strong was born Marco Giuseppe Salussolia in London, England, to an Austrian mother and an Italian father. His father left the family not long after he was born, and his mother worked as an au pair to raise the boy on her own. Strong's mother had his name legally changed, by deed poll, when he was young in order to help him better assimilate with his peers. He became Mark Strong.
Strong attended Wymondham College in Norfolk, and studied at the university level in Munich with the intent of becoming a lawyer. After a year, he returned to London to study English and Drama at Royal Holloway. He went on to further master his craft of at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Although Americans are most familiar with Strong's roles as Sinestro in Green Lantern (2011), mob boss Frank D'Amico in Kick-Ass (2010), and Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes (2009), British audiences know him from his long history as a television actor. He also starred in as numerous British stage productions, including plays at the Royal National Theatre and the RSC.
His most prominent television parts include Prime Suspect 3 (1993) and Prime Suspect: The Last Witness (2003) as Inspector Larry Hall, and starring roles in the BBC Two dramas Our Friends in the North (1996) and The Long Firm (2004), the latter of which netted Strong a BAFTA nomination. He also played Mr. Knightley in the 1996 adaptation of Jane Austen's classic tale Emma (1996).
Strong resides in London with his wife Liza Marshall, with whom he has two sons, the younger of which is the godson of his longtime friend Daniel Craig.- Actor
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Michael Peña was born and raised in Chicago, to Nicolasa, a social worker, and Eleuterio Peña, who worked at a button factory. His parents were originally from Mexico. After graduating from high school, he went to an open casting call for the Peter Bogdanovich feature To Sir, with Love II (1996), and to his surprise, beat out hundreds of other young men for a role. After relocating to Los Angeles Peña quickly booked a succession of roles in features including Star Maps, My Fellow Americans (1996) (opposite Jack Lemmon and James Garner), La Cucaracha (1998) (winner of the Best Picture in the Austin Film Festival), Bellyfruit (1999), and the Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer feature Gone in 60 Seconds (2000). Michael resides in Los Angeles, where he plays bass guitar with his band, plays golf, and boxes for relaxation.- Actor
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Rotund comic character actor of American films. Born Andrew Vabre Devine in Flagstaff, Arizona, he was raised in nearby Kingman, Arizona, the son of an Irish-American hotel operator Thomas Devine and his wife Amy. Devine was an able athlete as a student and actually played semi-pro football under a phony name (Jeremiah Schwartz, often erroneously presumed to be his real name). Devine used the false name in order to remain eligible for college football. A successful football player at St. Mary & St. Benedict College, Arizona State Teacher's College, and Santa Clara University, Devine went to Hollywood with dreams of becoming an actor. After a number of small roles in silent films, he was given a good part in the talkie The Spirit of Notre Dame (1931) in part due to his fine record as a football player. His sound-film career seemed at risk due to his severely raspy voice, the result of a childhood injury. His voice, however, soon became his trademark, and he spent the next forty-five years becoming an increasingly popular and beloved comic figure in a wide variety of films. In the 1950s, his fame grew enormously with his co-starring role as Jingles P. Jones opposite Guy Madison's Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1951), on television and radio simultaneously. In 1955, before the Hickok series ended, Devine took over the hosting job on a children's show retitled Andy's Gang (1955), in which he gained new fans among the very young. He continued active in films until his death in 1977. He was survived by his wife and two sons.- Actor
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One of the great movie villains, Clarence Leroy Van Cleef, Jr. was born in Somerville, New Jersey, to Marion Lavinia (Van Fleet) and Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef, Sr. His parents were of Dutch ancestry. Van Cleef started out as an accountant. He served in the U.S. Navy aboard minesweepers and sub chasers during World War II. After the war he worked as an office administrator, becoming involved in amateur theatrics in his spare time. An audition for a professional role led to a touring company job in "Mr. Roberts". His performance was seen by Stanley Kramer, who cast him as henchman Jack Colby in High Noon (1952), a role that brought him great recognition despite the fact that he had no dialogue. For the next decade, he played a string of memorably villainous characters, primarily in westerns but also in crime dramas such as The Big Combo (1955). His hawk nose and steely, slit eyes seemed destined to keep him always in the realm of heavies, but in the mid 1960s Sergio Leone cast him as the tough but decent Col. Mortimer opposite Clint Eastwood in For a Few Dollars More (1965). A new career as a western hero (or at least anti-hero) opened up, and Van Cleef became an international star, though in films of decreasing quality. In the 1980s, he moved easily into action and martial-arts movies and starred in The Master (1984), a TV series featuring almost non-stop martial arts action. He died of a heart attack in December 1989 and was buried at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills.- 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.- Actor
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Tall, thin, wiry Sam Elliott is the classic picture of the American cowboy. Elliott began his acting career on the stage and his film debut was in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Although his future wife, Katharine Ross co-starred in the film, the two did not meet until they filmed The Legacy (1978) together. Over the years there would be few opportunities to act in feature westerns, but it would be television that gave him that opportunity, in The Sacketts (1979), The Shadow Riders (1982) and The Yellow Rose (1983), among others. He would also work in non-westerns, usually as a tough guy, as in Lifeguard (1976) and Road House (1989). In 1985 he played Cher's love interest Gar in the drama Mask (1985), and he was in some cop movies such as Fatal Beauty (1987) and Shakedown (1988). In the 1990s, Elliott was back on the western trail, playing everyone from Brig. Gen. John Buford in the film Gettysburg (1993) to Wild Bill Hickok in the made-for-TV movie Buffalo Girls (1995). In 1991 he wrote the screenplay and co-starred with his wife in the made-for-TV western Conagher (1991), and two years later he played Wyatt Earp's brother Virgil in Tombstone (1993), with Kurt Russell as Wyatt. In 1995 the starred as John Pierce the tense thriller The Final Cut (1995), as a former head of a Bomb Squad who must to stop a dangerous bomber. In 1998 he was the narrator of the hilarious comedy The Big Lebowski (1998), playing him as The Stranger, and returned to the Western in the drama The Hi-Lo Country (1998), closing the 20th century with another western, the TV movie You Know My Name (1999).
Sam Elliott started the 21st century with the Stephen Frears' TV movie Fail Safe (2000) playing Congressman Raskob, and The Contender (2000) as Kermit Newman, at the side of Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman, and in We Were Soldiers (2002) as Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, together Mel Gibson. In 2003 he played Gen. Thunderbolt Ross in the Ang Lee's pre-MCU Hulk (2003), repeating in another Marvel superhero movie as Caretaker in Ghost Rider (2007). After participating in the fantasy movie The Golden Compass (2007) and made a stellar cameo in Up in the Air (2009), Elliott played Clay Wheeler in the box office flop comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009), starring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker, and in 2012 he was a supporting character as Mac Macleod in Robert Redford's The Company You Keep (2012). After the playing Coach Moore in the sport drama Draft Day (2014) In 2015 Elliott was hyperactive, appearing in seven different productions including cinema and TV: Digging for Fire (2015), I'll See You in My Dreams (2015), Sam Elliott, the sixth season of Justified (2010) as Avery Markham, and The Good Dinosaur (2015) voicing Butch. Two years later was absolute star in the drama The Hero (2017) as Lee Hayden, and in the sci-fi movie The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018) as Calvin Barr, to shine again as supporting character playing Bradley Cooper's brother Bobby in the multi-nominated Cooper's directorial debut A Star Is Born (2018), sharing scenes with Lady Gaga, coming back again to the western in the TV series 1883 (2021) as Shea Brennan.- Actor
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Nathan Lane is an American actor and singer from New Jersey who is known for playing Timon from The Lion King, Spot Helperman/Scott Leadready II from Teacher's Pet, Max Bialystock from The Producers, Snowball from Stuart Little, Hamegg from Astro Boy and Ernie Smuntz from Mouse Hunt. He is married to his husband Devlin Elliott since 2015.- Actor
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Barry's full given name is Leonard Barrie Corbin, and he was born on October 16, 1940 in Lamesa, Texas, to Kilmer Blain Corbin, an attorney & TX State Senator, and Alma Corbin, an elementary school teacher. Barry and his wife Jo share a ranch in Fort Worth, Texas. He says when he isn't working, he rides horses there every chance he gets.- Actor
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John Gavin Malkovich was born in Christopher, Illinois, to Joe Anne (Choisser), who owned a local newspaper, and Daniel Leon Malkovich, a state conservation director. His paternal grandparents were Croatian. In 1976, Malkovich joined Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, newly founded by his friend Gary Sinise. After that, it would take seven years before Malkovich would show up in New York and win an Obie in Sam Shepard's play "True West". In 1984, Malkovich would appear with Dustin Hoffman in the Broadway revival of "Death of a Salesman", which would earn him an Emmy when it was made into a made-for-TV movie the next year. His big-screen debut would be as the blind lodger in Places in the Heart (1984), which earned him an Academy Award Nomination for best supporting actor. Other films would follow, including The Killing Fields (1984) and The Glass Menagerie (1987), but he would be well remembered as Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Playing against Michelle Pfeiffer and Glenn Close in a costume picture helped raise his standing in the industry. He would be cast as the psychotic political assassin in Clint Eastwood's In the Line of Fire (1993), for which he would be nominated for both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe. In 1994, Malkovich would portray the sinister Kurtz in the made-for-TV movie Heart of Darkness (1993), taking the story to Africa as it was originally written. Malkovich has periodically returned to Chicago to both act and direct.- Actor
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British actor Jeremy Irons was born in Cowes, Isle of Wight, a small island off the south coast of England. He is the son of Barbara Anne Brereton (Sharpe) and Paul Dugan Irons, an accountant. Young Jeremy didn't prove very fond of figures. He visited mainland England only once a year. He wound up being grounded when his family settled down in Hertfordshire. At the age of 13 he enrolled in Sherborne School, Dorset, where he could practice his favorite sport, horse-riding. Before becoming an actor, he had considered a veterinarian surgeon's career.
He trained at the Bristol Old Vic School for two years, then joined Bristol Old Vic repertory company where he gained experience working in everything from Shakespeare to contemporary dramas. He moved to London in 1971 and had a number of jobs before landing the role of "John the Baptist" in the hit musical "Godspell". He went on to have a successful early career in the West End theatre and on TV, and debuted on-screen in Nijinsky (1980). In the early 80s, he gained international attention with his starring role in the Granada Television serial adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel Brideshead Revisited (1981), after which he was much in demand as a romantic leading man. He went on to a steady film career. In 1984, he debuted on Broadway opposite: Glenn Close in Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing" and, in the mid-80s, he appeared in three lead roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Once described as 'the thinking woman's pin up', he has made his name in thought provoking films such as David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (1988), for which he won the New York Critics Best Actor Award. He gained a Golden Globe Award in addition to an Oscar for Best Actor in 1990 for his role as Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune (1990) alongside Glenn Close. Among his many achievements, his role as Professor Higgins in Loewe-Lerner's famous musical "My Fair Lady" mustn't be forgotten. It was in London, back in 1987.
He is married to actress Sinéad Cusack, with whom he appeared in Waterland (1992) and in the Royal Shakespeare Company plays. He appeared with his son Samuel Irons and his father-in-law Cyril Cusack in the film Danny the Champion of the World (1989). His son Max Irons is also an actor.- Actor
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Jeffrey Leon Bridges was born on December 4, 1949 in Los Angeles, California, the son of well-known film and TV star Lloyd Bridges and his long-time wife Dorothy Dean Bridges (née Simpson). He grew up amid the happening Hollywood scene with big brother Beau Bridges. Both boys popped up, without billing, alongside their mother in the film The Company She Keeps (1951), and appeared on occasion with their famous dad on his popular underwater TV series Sea Hunt (1958) while growing up. At age 14, Jeff toured with his father in a stage production of "Anniversary Waltz". The "troublesome teen" years proved just that for Jeff and his parents were compelled at one point to intervene when problems with drugs and marijuana got out of hand.
He recovered and began shaping his nascent young adult career appearing on TV as a younger version of his father in the acclaimed TV- movie Silent Night, Lonely Night (1969), and in the strange Burgess Meredith film The Yin and the Yang of Mr. Go (1970). Following fine notices for his portrayal of a white student caught up in the racially-themed Halls of Anger (1970), his career-maker arrived just a year later when he earned a coming-of-age role in the critically-acclaimed ensemble film The Last Picture Show (1971). The Peter Bogdanovich- directed film made stars out off its young leads (Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd) and Oscar winners out of its older cast (Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman). The part of Duane Jackson, for which Jeff received his first Oscar-nomination (for "best supporting actor"), set the tone for the types of roles Jeff would acquaint himself with his fans -- rambling, reckless, rascally and usually unpredictable).
Owning a casual carefree handsomeness and armed with a perpetual grin and sly charm, he started immediately on an intriguing 70s sojourn into offbeat filming. Chief among them were his boxer on his way up opposite a declining Stacy Keach in Fat City (1972); his Civil War-era conman in the western Bad Company (1972); his redneck stock car racer in The Last American Hero (1973); his young student anarchist opposite a stellar veteran cast in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1973); his bank-robbing (also Oscar-nominated) sidekick to Clint Eastwood in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974); his aimless cattle rustler in Rancho Deluxe (1975); his low-level western writer who wants to be a real-life cowboy in Hearts of the West (1975); and the brother of an assassinated President who pursues leads to the crime in Winter Kills (1979). All are simply marvelous characters that should have propelled him to the very top rungs of stardom...but strangely didn't.
Perhaps it was his trademark ease and naturalistic approach that made him somewhat under appreciated at that time when Hollywood was run by a Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino-like intensity. Neverthless, Jeff continued to be a scene-stealing favorite into the next decade, notably as the video game programmer in the 1982 science-fiction cult classic Tron (1982), and the struggling musician brother vying with brother Beau Bridges over the attentions of sexy singer Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). Jeff became a third-time Oscar nominee with his highly intriguing (and strangely sexy) portrayal of a blank-faced alien in Starman (1984), and earned even higher regard as the ever-optimistic inventor Preston Tucker in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988).
Since then Jeff has continued to pour on the Bridges magic on film. Few enjoy such an enduring popularity while maintaining equal respect with the critics. The Fisher King (1991), American Heart (1992), Fearless (1993), The Big Lebowski (1998) (now a cult phenomenon) and The Contender (2000) (which gave him a fourth Oscar nomination) are prime examples. More recently he seized the moment as a bald-pated villain as Robert Downey Jr.'s nemesis in Iron Man (2008) and then, at age 60, he capped his rewarding career by winning the elusive Oscar, plus the Golden Globe and Screen Actor Guild awards (among many others), for his down-and-out country singer Bad Blake in Crazy Heart (2009). Bridges next starred in Tron: Legacy (2010), reprising one of his more famous roles, and received another Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his role in the Western remake True Grit (2010). In 2014, he co-produced and starred in an adaptation of the Lois Lowry science fiction drama The Giver (2014).
Jeff has been married since 1977 to non-professional Susan Geston (they met on the set of Rancho Deluxe (1975)). The couple have three daughters, Isabelle (born 1981), Jessica (born 1983), and Hayley (born 1985). He hobbies as a photographer on and off his film sets, and has been known to play around as a cartoonist and pop musician. His ancestry is English, and smaller amounts of Scots-Irish (Northern Irish), Irish, Swiss-German, and German.- Actor
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Multi-talented and unconventional actor/director regarded by many as one of the true "enfant terribles" of Hollywood who led an amazing cinematic career for more than five decades, Dennis Hopper was born on May 17, 1936, in Dodge City, Kansas. The young Hopper expressed interest in acting from a young age and first appeared in a slew of 1950s television shows, including Medic (1954), Cheyenne (1955) and Sugarfoot (1957). His first film role was in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), quickly followed by Giant (1956) and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Hopper actually became good friends with James Dean and was shattered when Dean was killed in a car crash in September 1955.
Hopper portrayed a young Napoléon Bonaparte (!) in the star-spangled The Story of Mankind (1957) and regularly appeared on screen throughout the 1960s, often in rather undemanding parts, usually as a villain in westerns such as True Grit (1969) and Hang 'Em High (1968). However, in early 1969, Hopper, fellow actor Peter Fonda and writer Terry Southern, wrote a counterculture road movie script and managed to scrape together $400,000 in financial backing. Hopper directed the low-budget film, titled Easy Rider (1969), starring Fonda, Hopper and a young Jack Nicholson. The film was a phenomenal box-office success, appealing to the anti-establishment youth culture of the times. It changed the Hollywood landscape almost overnight and major studios all jumped onto the anti-establishment bandwagon, pumping out low-budget films about rebellious hippies, bikers, draft dodgers and pot smokers. However, Hopper's next directorial effort, The Last Movie (1971), was a critical and financial failure, and he has admitted that during the 1970s he was seriously abusing various substances, both legal and illegal, which led to a downturn in the quality of his work. He appeared in a sparse collection of European-produced films over the next eight years, before cropping up in a memorable performance as a pot-smoking photographer alongside Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen in Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now (1979). He also received acclaim for his work in both acting and direction for Out of the Blue (1980).
With these two notable efforts, the beginning of the 1980s saw a renaissance of interest by Hollywood in the talents of Dennis Hopper and exorcising the demons of drugs and alcohol via a rehabilitation program meant a return to invigorating and provoking performances. He was superb in Rumble Fish (1983), co-starred in the tepid spy thriller The Osterman Weekend (1983), played a groovy school teacher in My Science Project (1985), was a despicable and deranged drug dealer in River's Edge (1986) and, most memorably, electrified audiences as foul-mouthed Frank Booth in the eerie and erotic David Lynch film Blue Velvet (1986). Interestingly, the offbeat Hopper was selected in the early 1980s to provide the voice of "The StoryTeller" in the animated series of "Rabbit Ears" children's films based upon the works of Hans Christian Andersen!
Hopper returned to film direction in the late 1980s and was at the helm of the controversial gang film Colors (1988), which was well received by both critics and audiences. He was back in front of the cameras for roles in Super Mario Bros. (1993), got on the wrong side of gangster Christopher Walken in True Romance (1993), led police officer Keanu Reeves and bus passenger Sandra Bullock on a deadly ride in Speed (1994) and challenged gill-man Kevin Costner for world supremacy in Waterworld (1995). The enigmatic Hopper continued to remain busy through the 1990s and into the new century with performances in All the Way (2003), The Keeper (2004) and Land of the Dead (2005).
As well as his acting/directing talents, Hopper was a skilled photographer and painter, having had his works displayed in galleries in both the United States and overseas. He was additionally a dedicated and knowledgeable collector of modern art and had one of the most extensive collections in the United States. Dennis died of prostate cancer on May 29, 2010, less than two weeks after his 74th birthday.- Actress
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Melissa McCarthy was born in Plainfield, Illinois, to Sandra and Michael McCarthy, and was raised on her family's corn and soybean farm. She began her performing career as a stand-up comedian in New York where she appeared at the famous clubs, Stand Up New York and The Improv. She worked on her acting skills at The Actors Studio and appeared in many stage productions in the city before moving to Los Angeles in the late-1990s. She made a number of TV and movie appearances before making her big breakthrough as Sookie in Gilmore Girls (2000). A steady stream of comedy performances followed, leading to her starring role in the sitcom Mike & Molly (2010).
In the 2010s, McCarthy became known for her starring roles in the films Bridesmaids (2011), The Heat (2013), St. Vincent (2014), Spy (2015), Ghostbusters (2016), and Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018).- Actor
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Bill Murray is an American actor, comedian, and writer. The fifth of nine children, he was born William James Murray in Wilmette, Illinois, to Lucille (Collins), a mailroom clerk, and Edward Joseph Murray II, who sold lumber. He is of Irish descent. Among his siblings are actors Brian Doyle-Murray, Joel Murray, and John Murray. He and most of his siblings worked as caddies, which paid his tuition to Loyola Academy, a Jesuit school. He played sports and did some acting while in that school, but in his words, mostly "screwed off." He enrolled at Regis College in Denver to study pre-med but dropped out after being arrested for marijuana possession. He then joined the National Lampoon Radio Hour with fellow members Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and John Belushi. However, while those three became the original members of Saturday Night Live (1975), he joined Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell (1975), which premiered that same year. After that show failed, he later got the opportunity to join Saturday Night Live (1975), for which he earned his first Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy-Variety or Music Series. He later went on to star in comedy films, including Meatballs (1979), Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981), Tootsie (1982), Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II (1989), Scrooged (1988), What About Bob? (1991), and Groundhog Day (1993). He also co-directed Quick Change (1990). Murray garnered additional critical acclaim later in his career, starring in Lost in Translation (2003), which earned him a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award for Best Actor, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He also received Golden Globe nominations for his roles in Ghostbusters, Rushmore (1998), Hyde Park on Hudson (2012), St. Vincent (2014), and the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge (2014), for which he later won his second Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Movie.- Actor
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A marvelous character actor with intense eyes, a sly grin and somewhat grizzled appearance, Golden Globe-winner Fred Ward had nearly 90 appearances under his belt in many tremendous films and television programs. He first became interested in acting after serving three years in the US Air Force and studied at New York's Herbert Berghof Studio. Ward then went to Europe, where he dubbed many Italian movies, and first appeared on-screen in two films by Roberto Rossellini. He then returned to the United States, and got his first decent role alongside Clint Eastwood in the nail-biting prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979). Ward's looks often saw him cast as law enforcement or military characters, and he put in noteworthy performances in Southern Comfort (1981), Uncommon Valor (1983), as astronaut Gus Grissom in The Right Stuff (1983) and scored the lead in the interesting spy/martial arts movie Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985), which unfortunately was not as successful as had been the mega-selling series of Remo Williams books.
However, during "Remo", Ward demonstrated a great knack for comedic timing and satirical performance, and this ability was used to great effect in several films, including playing Kevin Bacon's fellow giant-worm-fighting handyman in the light-hearted sci-fi hit Tremors (1990), as "Walter Stuckel" in Robert Altman's The Player (1992), as TV anchorman "Chip Daley" in Tim Robbins' razor-sharp political satire Bob Roberts (1992) and as a vicious, but incompetent, gangster menacing Leslie Nielsen in Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994).
Ward's abilities as both a supporting player and truly versatile character actor ensured that he would be in steady demand, and he continued to turn up in a wide variety of roles utilizing his skills. Keep an eye out for Fred Ward in the action-filled The Chaos Factor (2000), as David Spade's dad in Joe Dirt (2001), in the tongue-in-cheek Corky Romano (2001) and in the Reese Witherspoon romantic tale Sweet Home Alabama (2002). His last three films were more action-oriented, Armored (2009), [link=tt1622547, and 2 Guns (2013), and he subsequently mostly retired from acting until his death in 2022.- Actor
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Steve Zahn was born in Marshall, Minnesota, to Zelda, who worked at a YMCA, and Carleton Edward Zahn, a Lutheran pastor at Peace Lutheran Church, Robbinsdale, Minnesota. His career kicked off in his native Minnesota when he crashed the audition of a local stage production of "Biloxi Blues" and won the lead role. He next trained at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA; then moved to New York City, where he won a role touring for 13 months in national company of Tommy Tune-directed version of "Bye Bye Birdie". Back in New York, he played opposite Ethan Hawke in "Sophistry" at Playwright's Horizon, where Ben Stiller noticed him and cast him and Hawke in Reality Bites (1994).- Actor
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From small-town Oklahoma native to internationally acclaimed actor and musician, Wes Studi credits his passion and multi-faceted background for his powerful character portrayals that forever changed a Hollywood stereotype. Within a few years of his arrival in Hollywood, Studi caught the attention of the public in Dances with Wolves (1990). In 1992, his powerful performance as "Magua" in The Last of the Mohicans (1992) established him as one of the most compelling actors in the business.
Studi has since appeared in more than 80 film and television productions, including Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Being Flynn (2012), Avatar (2009), Comanche Moon (2008), Streets of Laredo (1995), Mystery Men (1999), Kings (TV Series), The New World (2005), Hell on Wheels (2011), Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007) and Seraphim Falls (2006). He also brought Tony Hillerman's "Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn" to life in a series of PBS specials produced by Robert Redford: Skinwalkers (2002), Coyote Waits (2003), and A Thief of Time (2003).
Studi was born in Nofire Hollow, Oklahoma, the son of Maggie (Nofire), a housekeeper, and Andy Studie, a ranch hand. Studi exclusively spoke his native Cherokee language until beginning school at the age of five. A professional horse trainer, Studi began acting at The American Indian Theatre Company in Tulsa in the mid-80s.
Studi and his wife, Maura Dhu Studi, live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They have a son, Kholan. Studi has a daughter, Leah, and a son, Daniel, from a previous marriage.- Actor
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Louis Gossett Jr. was one of the most respected and beloved actors on stage, screen and television and was also an accomplished writer, producer and director. Off-screen, he was a social activist, educator, and author dedicated to enriching the lives of others. He was the first African-American to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his unforgettable performance as drill Sergeant Emil Foley in "An Officer and a Gentleman".
Among his other awards were an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor for his portrayal of Fiddler in the groundbreaking ABC series "Roots", a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for "The Josephine Baker Story" and a Golden Globe for "An Officer and a Gentleman". He was nominated for seven Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes, one Academy Award, five Images Awards, two Daytime Emmy Awards and in 1992 received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He received numerous other honors throughout his illustrious career.
His film debut was in the 1961 classic movie "A Raisin in the Sun" with Sidney Poitier. Other film credits include "The Deep," "Blue Chips," "Daddy's Little Girls," Tyler Perry's "Why Did I Get Married Too?," "Firewalker," "Jaws-3D," "Enemy Mine" and "Iron Eagle" 1-4, among many others. Television credits include "Extant," "Madam Secretary," "Boardwalk Empire," "Family Guy", and "ER", among dozens of others.
Gossett authored the bestselling autobiography "An Actor and a Gentleman", recounting the challenges and triumphs of his 50+ year career. Gossett was recognized as much for his humanitarian efforts as for his accomplishments as an actor. In 2006, he founded The Eracism Foundation which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to eradicating racism. The foundation provides young adults with tools to live a racially diverse and culturally inclusive life. Programs focus on fostering cultural diversity, historical enrichment, education and anti-violence initiatives.
Gossett was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and made his stage debut when he was 17 years old in "Take a Giant Step", which was selected as one of the 10 best Broadway shows of 1953 by the New York Times. He had two sons and resided in Malibu until his death in Santa Monica, California, in 2024, aged 87.- Actor
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Hugh was born in Oxford, England on June 11, 1959, to Patricia (Laidlaw) and William George Ranald Mundell "Ran" Laurie, a doctor, both of Scottish descent. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge. Son of an Olympic gold medalist in the sport, he rowed for the England youth team (1977) and for Cambridge (1980). He met Emma Thompson at Cambridge in 1978 when both joined "Footlights" and was introduced to Stephen Fry by Emma in 1980. Hugh is married and lives in Los Angeles. His wife and three children, who previously lived in London, are moving to Los Angeles to live with him. Besides acting and comedy, he has written the best-selling thriller The Gun Seller. A second novel, titled The Paper Soldier, is forthcoming.- Actor
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Garret studied journalism at the University of Washington and received an MFA from New York University's Graduate Acting Program. He performed on and off Broadway and in theaters around the country before he also began pursuing film and television roles. A self described workaholic, he enjoys a reputation as a highly respected and sought after performer known for his focused and immersive style.
Garret Lee Dillahunt was born in Castro Valley, California to working class parents. He has two brothers.- Actor
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Richard Jenkins was born on 4 May 1947 in DeKalb, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for The Shape of Water (2017), The Visitor (2007) and Step Brothers (2008). He has been married to Sharon R. Friedrick since 23 August 1969. They have two children.- Actor
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John Carroll Lynch was born August 1, 1963 in Boulder, Colorado, and was raised in Denver. It was there John found a passion for acting and became a Denver Broncos fan. He graduated in the mid-80s with a B.F.A. in theatre from the The Catholic University of America / Hartke Theatre Acting program. From then, he continued to work in theatre around the country, but concentrated mostly on his work at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, acting in many plays from Shakespeare to Shaw to Chekhov. In the early nineties, John was able to find time away from the theatre to work in film, as productions came through Minnesota. In 1996, he received critical acclaim for his role as Marge Gunderson's simple husband Norm Gunderson in Fargo (1996). He went on to make two more films that year, both of which were conveniently set in Minnesota, the acclaimed Beautiful Girls (1996) and Feeling Minnesota (1996). Since then, John's film career has been on an amazing climb. Much like other well respected actors from the theatre, such as John Malkovich and Gary Sinise, he chooses to play very interesting and diverse roles.- Actor
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A small-town guy with a big heart, William Fichtner has been captivating the hearts of Western New Yorkers for decades. Bill was born in 1956 on Long Island, New York, to Patricia A. (Steitz) and William E. Fichtner. He is of German, Irish, and English descent.
Fichtner was raised in Cheektowaga, and graduated from Maryvale High School in 1974. His first roles were in soap operas such as As the World Turns (1956) and sitcoms like Grace Under Fire (1993). He has also been in films such as Armageddon (1998), Empire Falls (2005), as The Marriage Counselor, uncredited, in Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), and in The Dark Knight (2008). A fan of the Buffalo Sabres, Bill always stays true to his roots. He is married to actress Kymberly Kalil.- Actor
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Michael Clarke Duncan was born on December 10, 1957 in Chicago, Illinois. Raised on Chicago's South Side by his single mother, Jean, a house cleaner, Duncan grew up resisting drugs and alcohol, instead concentrating on school. He wanted to play football in high school, but his mother wouldn't let him, afraid that he would get hurt. He then turned to acting and dreamed of becoming a famous actor.
After graduating from high school and attending community college, he worked digging ditches at People's Gas Company in Chicago. When he quit his job and headed to Hollywood, he landed small roles while working as a bodyguard. Duncan's role in the movie Armageddon (1998) led to his breakthrough performance in The Green Mile (1999), when his Armageddon co-star Bruce Willis called director Frank Darabont, suggesting Duncan for the part of convict John Coffey. He landed the role and won critical acclaim as well as many other Awards and Nominations, including an Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
After suffering a heart attack on July 13, 2012, he was taken to a Los Angeles hospital, in which his girlfriend Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth tried to save his life with CPR. Unfortunately, on September 3, 2012, Michael Clarke Duncan died at age 54 from respiratory failure.- Actress
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Viola Davis is a critically revered actress of film, television, and theater and has won rave reviews for her multitude of substantial and intriguingly diverse roles. Audiences across the United States and internationally have admired her for her work- including her celebrated, Oscar-nominated performances in The Help (2011), Doubt (2008), and her Oscar winning performance in Fences (2016). In 2015, Davis won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series for her work in ABC's How To Get Away With Murder, making her the first black woman in history to take home the award. In addition to acting, Viola currently produces alongside her husband and producing partner, Julius Tennon, through their JuVee Productions banner. Together they have produced award-garnering productions across theater, television, and film.- Actress
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Spencer is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, which she claims is the proverbial buckle of the Bible belt. She's the sixth of seven siblings and holds a BS in Liberal Arts from Auburn University. A "closet" lover of acting, this practical Alabamian knew that she'd someday work in the film industry, but never dreamed it would be in front of the camera. In 1995, acclaimed director Joel Schumacher changed all that by giving her a small part opposite Sandra Bullock in the hit film A Time to Kill, and Spencer was on her way. In 1996, she teamed up with Bullock again in Bullock's directorial debut of Making Sandwiches, a short film that premiered at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.
Spencer made her stage debut in Los Angeles and originated the role of "LaSonia" (pronounced lasagna) in famed writer/director Del Shore's, The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife, starring opposite veteran actors Beth Grant, Dale Dickey and David Steen (2003). The play garnered Spencer and her fellow cast mates critical acclaim and a bevy of awards. Since then, Spencer has continued to see success as an actor in both film and television, working alongside Hollywood's elite. In February 2009, she was lauded by Los Angeles Times publication: The Envelope, for her brief but memorable performance in the Will Smith drama Seven Pounds.- Actor
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Hector Elizondo was born in New York City, New York, where he was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He is the son of Carmen Medina Reyes and Martín Echevarría Elizondo. Hector is of Basque and Puerto Rican descent, and "Elizondo" means "at the foot of the church" in Basque. His lifestyle in his days before acting was as diverse as the roles he plays today. He was a conga player with a Latin band, a classical guitarist and singer, a weightlifting coach, a ballet dancer and a manager of a bodybuilding gym. In his teens, he played basketball and baseball, and was scouted by the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates farm teams. After a knee injury ended his dance career, he switched to drama. Since then, he has frequently appeared on Broadway, most notably with George C. Scott in Arthur Penn's production of "Sly Fox" for which he received a Drama Desk nomination and for his role as "God" in "Steambath", which won him an Obie Award. Other theatre credits include; "The Prisoner of Second Avenue"; "The Great White Hope"; "Dance of Death" with Robert Shaw and "The Rose Tattoo" opposite Cicely Tyson. Countless starring roles in television include: Foley Square (1985); Medal of Honor Rag (1982); Casablanca (1983) (in which he recreated the Claude Rains role of police chief "Capt. Renault"); Freebie and the Bean (1974); Popi (1975) and as Sophia Loren's husband in the CBS special Courage (1986). Guest appearances include: Kojak (1973); Kojak: Ariana (1989); A Case of Immunity (1975); Baretta (1975); All in the Family (1971); The Rockford Files (1974) and Bret Maverick (1981). In addition, he also directed a.k.a. Pablo (1984), the first show to utilize seven cameras instead of the usual four. On the big screen, he has been seen in, among others, American Gigolo (1980); The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974); Cuba (1979); Valdez Is Coming (1971) and in four films directed by Garry Marshall: Young Doctors in Love (1982); The Flamingo Kid (1984); Nothing in Common (1986) and Overboard (1987). Elizondo starred with Dan Aykroyd and Michelle Pfeiffer in PBS' Tales from the Hollywood Hills: Natica Jackson (1987) (based on a collection of John O'Hara stories) and made his debut as a stage director with a production of "Villa!" starring Julio Medina. In addition, he performed in the 50th anniversary production of "War of the Worlds" co-starring Jason Robards and the TV-movie Addicted to His Love (1988) with Barry Bostwick.- Actor
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Peter Stormare was born in Arbrå, Gävleborgs län, Sweden, to Gunhild (Holm) and Karl Ingvar Storm. He began his acting career at the Royal National Theatre of Sweden, performing for eleven years. In 1990 he became the Associate Artistic Director at the Tokyo Globe Theatre and directed productions of many Shakespeare plays, including "Hamlet". In 1993 he moved to New York, where he appeared in English productions. He continues to work in both the United States and his his homeland of Sweden. He resides in Los Angeles, California, USA, with his wife.- Actor
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Wonderfully talented, heavyset character actor (from New York, but regularly playing Southerners) M. Emmet Walsh has made a solid career of playing corrupt cops, deadly crooks, and zany comedic roles since the early 1970s.
Michael Emmet Walsh was born in Ogdensburg, to Agnes Katharine (Sullivan) and Harry Maurice Walsh, a customs agent. He is of Irish descent. Walsh first appeared in a few fairly forgettable roles both on TV and onscreen before cropping up in several well remembered films, including a courtroom police officer in What's Up, Doc? (1972), as the weird Dickie Dunn in Slap Shot (1977), and as a loony sniper hunting Steve Martin in The Jerk (1979). On-screen demand heated up for him in the early 1980s with attention-grabbing work in key hits, including Brubaker (1980), Reds (1981), and as Harrison Ford's police chief in the futuristic thriller Blade Runner (1982). Walsh then turned in a stellar performance as the sleazy, double-crossing private detective in the Joel Coen and Ethan Coen film noir Blood Simple (1984), and showed up again for the Coens as a loud-mouthed sheet-metal worker bugging Nicolas Cage in the hilarious Raising Arizona (1987). As Walsh moved into his fifties and beyond, Hollywood continued to offer him plenty of work, and he has appeared in over 50 movies since passing the half-century mark. His consistent ability to turn out highly entertaining portrayals led film critic Roger Ebert to coin the "Stanton-Walsh Rule," which states that any film starring Walsh or Harry Dean Stanton has to have some merit. And the "M" stands for Michael!- Actor
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William Thomas Sadler was born on April 13, 1950 in Buffalo, New York, to Jane and William Sadler. He began his acting career in New York theaters, appearing in more than 75 productions over the course of 12 years. His roles included that of Sgt. Merwin J. Toomey in Neil Simon's Tony Award winning play "Biloxi Blues". He is best remembered for his roles in Die Hard 2 (1990), Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995). He is also a television star, appearing in such sitcoms as Roseanne (1988) and Murphy Brown (1988) and such movies-of-the weeks as Charlie and the Great Balloon Chase (1981). Sadler also starred as Sheriff Jim Valenti on the WB science fiction television series Roswell (1999).- Actor
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A tall, wavy-haired US actor with a deep, resonant voice, Clancy Brown has proven himself a versatile performer with first-class contributions to theatre, feature films, television series and even animation.
Clarence J. Brown III was born in 1959 in Urbana, Ohio, to Joyce Helen (Eldridge), a concert pianist, conductor, and composer, and Clarence J. "Bud" Brown, Jr., who helped manage the Brown Publishing Company, the family-owned newspaper started by Clancy's grandfather, Clarence J. Brown. Clancy's father and grandfather were also Republican congressmen from the same Ohio district, and Clancy spent much of his youth in close proximity to Washington, D.C. He plied his dramatic talents in the Chicago theatre scene before moving onto feature film with a sinister debut performance bullying Sean Penn inside a youth reformatory in Bad Boys (1983). He portrayed Viktor the Monster in the unusual spin on the classic Frankenstein story in The Bride (1985), before scoring one of his best roles to date as the evil Kurgan hunting fellow immortals Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery across four centuries of time in Highlander (1986).
Brown played a corrupt American soldier in the Walter Hill-directed hyper-violent action film Extreme Prejudice (1987), another deranged killer in Shoot to Kill (1988) and a brutal prison guard, who eventually somewhat "befriends" wrongfully convicted banker Tim Robbins, in the moving The Shawshank Redemption (1994). His superb vocal talents were in demand, and he contributed voices to animated series, including Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm (1995), Street Sharks (1994), Gargoyles (1994) and Superman: The Animated Series (1996). Brown then landed two more plum roles, one as a "tough-as-nails" drill sergeant in the science fiction thriller Starship Troopers (1997), and the other alongside Robin Williams in the Disney comedy Flubber (1997).
The video gaming industry took notice of Clancy's vocal abilities, too, and he has contributed voices to several top selling video games, including Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex (2001), Lands of Lore III (1999), Star Wars: Bounty Hunter (2002) and Crash Nitro Kart (2003). His voice is also the character of cranky crustacean Mr. Eugene H. Krabs in the highly successful SpongeBob SquarePants (1999) animated series and films, and he contributed voices to The Batman (2004), Jackie Chan Adventures (2000) and Justice League (2001) animated series. A popular and friendly personality, Clancy Brown continues to remain busy both through his vocal and acting talents in Hollywood.- Actor
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David Morse, a 6' 4" tall blue-eyed blond who performed on stage for 10 years before breaking into film, has become established as a respected supporting, character actor and second lead.
He was born the first of four children of Charles, a sales manager, and Jacquelyn Morse, a schoolteacher, on October 11, 1953, in Beverly, Massachusetts. He grew up with three younger sisters. After graduating from high school, Morse studied acting at the William Esper Studio. In 1971, he began his professional acting career appearing in over 30 productions with the Boston Repertory Company from 1971 to 1977. In the late 1970s, Morse continued his stage career with the Circle Repertory Company in New York before moving into television and film. In the late 1990s, he returned to the Off-Broadway stage starring in Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize winning drama, "How I Learned to Drive" (1997), for which he won the Drama Desk Award and the Obie.
Morse made his big screen debut in 1980 co-starring as "Jerry Maxwell", a cheerful bartender turned basketball player, opposite John Savage and Diana Scarwid in Inside Moves (1980), written by Barry Levinson and directed by Richard Donner. Although Inside Moves (1980) was nominated for an Oscar, Morse had to wait a few years until his career took off. His big break came in 1982 when he was cast as Dr. Jack "Boomer" Morrison, a young doctor who struggles as a single parent after the death of his wife, in St. Elsewhere (1982), a medical drama that ran for six seasons. He co-starred as opposite Jodie Foster and young Jena Malone in the Oscar nominated Sci-Fi drama Contact (1997). In 1999, he appeared in Stephen King's The Green Mile (1999), with Tom Hanks. A year later, he played a supporting role as a kidnapped husband of Meg Ryan in Proof of Life (2000). In 2002, Morse became the first English-speaking actor nominated for the Golden Horse Award, the Chinese equivalent of the Oscars, for his superb performance as FBI expert "Kevin Richter" in Double Vision (2002). From 2002 to 2004, Morse had a regular gig starring as "Mike Olshansky", an ex-Philadelphia policeman turned cab driver, in the TV series Hack (2002) which ran three seasons and was filmed in Philadelphia, close to his home. In 2006-2007, he has a recurring role on season 3 of an Emmy award-winning medical drama House (2004).
David Morse has been married to fellow actress Susan Wheeler Duff since 1982. They have three children, one daughter and twin sons. In 1994, after the the Northridge earthquake destroyed his home in Sherman Oaks, Morse moved from LA to Philadelphia with his family, and resides in his wife's hometown.- Actor
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English film actor, director and author Andy Serkis is known for his performance capture roles comprising motion capture acting, animation and voice work for such computer-generated characters as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001-2003) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), the eponymous King Kong in the 2005 film, Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), Captain Haddock / Sir Francis Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin (2011) and Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015). Serkis earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of serial killer Ian Brady in the British television film Longford (2006), and was nominated for a BAFTA Award for his portrayal of new wave and punk rock musician Ian Dury in the biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010). In 2015, he had a small role in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Serkis has his own motion capture workshop, The Imaginarium Studios in London, which he will use for his directorial debut, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018).
Andrew Clement G. Serkis was born April 20, 1964, in Ruislip Manor, West London, England. He has three sisters and a brother. His father, Clement Serkis, an ethnic Armenian whose original family surname was Serkissian, was a medical doctor working abroad, in Iraq; the Serkis family spent time around the Middle East, and for the first ten years of his life, Andy traveled between Baghdad and London. His mother, Lylie (Weech), who is British-born, was busy working as a special education teacher of handicapped children, so Andy and his four siblings were raised with au pairs in the house. Young Serkis wanted to be an artist; he was fond of painting and drawing, and visualized himself working behind the scenes. He attended St. Benedict's School, a Roman Catholic School for boys at the Benedictine Abbey in London. Serkis studied visual arts at Lancaster University in the north-west of England. There, he became involved in mechanical aspects of the theatre and did stage design and set building for theatrical productions. Then, Serkis was asked to play a role in a student production, and made his stage debut in Barrie Keeffe's play, "Gotcha"; thereafter, he switched from stage design to acting, which was a real calling that transformed his life.
Instead of going to an acting college, Serkis, in 1985, began his professional acting career at the Duke's Playhouse in Lancaster, where he was given an Equity card and performed in fourteen plays, one after another, as an apprentice of Jonathan Petherbridge. After that, he worked in touring theatre companies, doing it for no money, fueled by a sense of enthusiasm, moving to a new town every week. He has thus appeared in a host of popular plays and on almost every renowned British stage. In 1989, he appeared in a stage production of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth", so beginning his long association with the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, where he would return many times, to appear in "She Stoops to Conquer", "Your Home in the West" and the "True Nature of Love", among other plays. In the 1990s, Serkis began to make his mark on the London stage, appearing at the Royal Court Theatre as "The Fool" in "King Lear", making his interpretation of "The Fool" as the woman that "Lear", a widower, could relate to - a man, in drag, as a Victorian musician. He also appeared as "Potts" in the hit play, "Mojo", playing in front of full houses and earning huge critical success. In 1987, Serkis made his debut on television, and he acted in several major British TV miniseries throughout the 1990s.
In 1999, Andy Serkis landed the prize role of "Gollum" in Peter Jackson's epic film trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's saga, "The Lord of the Rings". He spent four years in the part and received awards and nominations for his performance as "Gollum", a computer-generated character in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), which won 11 Oscars. "Gollum" was the collaborative team's effort around Serkis's work in performance capture - an art form based on CGI-assisted acting. Serkis's work was an interactive performance in a skin-tight CGI suit with markers allowing cameras to track and register 3D position for each marker. Serkis' every nuance was picked up by several cameras positioned at precisely calculated angles to allow for the software to see enough information to process the image. The images of Serkis' performances were translated into the digital format by animators at Weta Digital studio in New Zealand. There, his image was key-frame animated and then edited into the movie, Serkis did have one scene in "The Return of the King" showing how he originally had the ring, killing another hobbit to posses it after they found it during a fishing trip. He drew from his three cats clearing fur balls out of their throats to develop the constricted voice he produced for "Gollum" and "Sméagol", and it was also enhanced by sound editing in post-production.
Serkis spent almost two years in New Zealand and away from his family, and much of 2002 and 2003 in post-production studios for large periods of time, due to complexity of the creative process of bringing the character of "Gollum" to the screen. Serkis had to shoot two versions for every scene; one version was with him on camera, acting with (chiefly) Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, which served both to show Wood and Astin the moves so that they could precisely interact with the movements of "Gollum", and to provide the CGI artists the subtleties of Gollum's physical movements and facial expressions for their manual finishing of the animated images. In the other version, he'd go the voice off-camera, as Wood and Astin repeated their movements as though "Gollum" were there with them; that take would be the basis for inserting the CGI Gollum used in the released movie. In post-production, Serkis was doing motion-capture wearing a skintight motion capture suit with CGI gear while acting as a virtual puppeteer redoing every single scene in the studio. Additional CGI rotomation was done by animators using the human eye instead of the computer to capture the subtleties of Serkis' performance. Serkis also used this art form in his performance as "Kong" in King Kong (2005), which won him a Toronto Film Critics Association Award (2005) for his unprecedented work helping to realize the main character in "King Kong", and a Visual Effects Society Award (2006) for Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Motion Picture.
Apart from his line of CGI-driven characters, Serkis continued with traditional acting in several leading and supporting roles, such as his appearances as "Richard Kneeland" opposite Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30 (2004), and "Alley" opposite David Bowie in The Prestige (2006), among other film performances. On television, he starred as 'Vincent Van Gogh' in the sixth episode of Simon Schama's Power of Art (2006), the BBC2 series about artists. Serkis is billed as "Capricorn" in the upcoming adventure film, Inkheart (2008). At the same time, he continued the development of performance capture while expanding his career into computer games. He starred as "King Bothan" in the martial arts drama, Heavenly Sword (2007), a Playstation 3 title, for which he provided a basis for his in-game face and also acts as a dramatic director on the project.
Andy Serkis married actress and singer Lorraine Ashbourne, and the couple have three children: daughter Ruby Serkis (born in 1998), and two sons Sonny Serkis (born in 2000) and Louis Ashbourne Serkis (born on 19 June 2004), who is now also a movie star. Away from acting, Andy Serkis is an accomplished amateur painter. Since his school years at Lancaster, being so close to the Lake District, Serkis developed his other passion in life: mountaineering. He is a pescetarian. Serkis has been active in charitable causes, such as The Hope Foundation, which provides essential life-saving medical aid for children suffering from Leukemia and children from countries devastated by war. In October 2006, he was a presenter at the first annual British Academy Video Games Awards at the Roundhouse, London. Andy Serkis lives with his family in North London, England.- Actor
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Keith David is a classically trained actor, winning 3 Emmys out of 6 nominations as well as being nominated for a Tony award. He starred in the recently concluded TV series "Greenleaf" for Oprah Winfrey's OWN network. Upcoming films include "Horizon Line" with Allison Williams ("Get Out") and "Black As Night," for Amazon.
In "Greenleaf" Keith portrayed 'Bishop James Greenleaf', the charismatic and God-fearing leader of the Calvary Fellowship and the patriarch of the family. The series followed the unscrupulous world of the Greenleaf family, their scandalous secrets and lies, and their sprawling Memphis megachurch. The series was praised for its push and pull dynamic, its hypocrisy, and its compelling characters. Keith's stellar performance was best stated by The Hollywood Reporter, "... Keith David ...is perfectly cast as Bishop Greenleaf. Whether he's playing to the congregation at the altar or getting conspiratorial in a smaller venue, this is an unusually great and meaty role for David."
On the big screen, Keith co-starred with Chadwick Boseman in "21 Bridges". Prior credits include "Night School" with Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish and "Tales from the Hood 2". Additional titles include the Academy award-winning films "Crash" and "Platoon." He is widely recognized for appearing in the highly-acclaimed films Disney's "The Princess and the Frog", "Requiem for a Dream", "Men at Work", "They Live", "There's Something About Mary", and "The Thing."
Other recent TV credits include an upcoming appearance on "Creepshow," "NCIS: New Orleans", "Blackish," MacGyver", and "Fresh Off the Boat". Earlier credits include "Community", "Enlisted", "ER", and "Mister Roger's Neighborhood". On Broadway, Keith starred in August Wilson's "Seven Guitars" and "Jelly's Last Jam" for which he garnered a Tony Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical.
Keith's work as a voice actor has made him a household name. His rich and powerful voice has been featured in national commercials, award shows, documentaries, video games, and animation. His work in narration has earned him three Emmys for Ken Burns' "Jackie Robinson", "The War", and "Unforgivable Blackness - The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson". Some of his other voice acting credits include countless fan favorites such as "Adventure Time", "Bojack Horseman," "Rick & Morty", "Spawn", and "Gargoyles". Keith has lent his voice to many video game titles. Recently he portrayed the character "Spawn" in the reboot of the "Mortal Kombat" video game. Other appearances include the "Halo" series (games 2, 3, and 5), the "Saint's Row" series (games 1, 2, and 4), as well as the "Mass Effect" series (games 1,2, and 3).
Born and raised in New York by his parents Lester and Dolores, Keith became interested in the arts at a very young age. After appearing in his school's production of "The Wizard of Oz", he knew this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He enrolled in New York's High School of the Performing Arts and continued his studies at The Juilliard School. After graduation, he was immediately hired by Joseph Papp as an understudy for the role of Tullus Aufidius in William Shakespeare's "Coriolanus." His work with Mr. Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival launched his incredible career.
In addition to his versatile acting and voiceover work, Keith is also a remarkable singer. He's has been touring in 2 shows, "Too Marvelous for Words", in which he portrays the legendary singer Nat King Cole, and a show about the incredible Blues singer Joe Williams, "Here's to Life."
Twitter: @ImKeithDavid Instagram: @SilverThroat Facebook: @ImKeithDavid- Actor
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Veteran actor and director Robert Selden Duvall was born on January 5, 1931, in San Diego, CA, to Mildred Virginia (Hart), an amateur actress, and William Howard Duvall, a career military officer who later became an admiral. Duvall majored in drama at Principia College (Elsah, IL), then served a two-year hitch in the army after graduating in 1953. He began attending The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre In New York City on the G.I. Bill in 1955, studying under Sanford Meisner along with Dustin Hoffman, with whom Duvall shared an apartment. Both were close to another struggling young actor named Gene Hackman. Meisner cast Duvall in the play "The Midnight Caller" by Horton Foote, a link that would prove critical to his career, as it was Foote who recommended Duvall to play the mentally disabled "Boo Radley" in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). This was his first "major" role since his 1956 motion picture debut as an MP in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), starring Paul Newman.
Duvall began making a name for himself as a stage actor in New York, winning an Obie Award in 1965 playing incest-minded longshoreman "Eddie Carbone" in the off-Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge", a production for which his old roommate Hoffman was assistant director. He found steady work in episodic TV and appeared as a modestly billed character actor in films, such as Arthur Penn's The Chase (1966) with Marlon Brando and in Robert Altman's Countdown (1967) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969), in both of which he co-starred with James Caan.
He was also memorable as the heavy who is shot by John Wayne at the climax of True Grit (1969) and was the first "Maj. Frank Burns", creating the character in Altman's Korean War comedy M*A*S*H (1970). He also appeared as the eponymous lead in George Lucas' directorial debut, THX 1138 (1971). It was Francis Ford Coppola, casting The Godfather (1972), who reunited Duvall with Brando and Caan and provided him with his career breakthrough as mob lawyer "Tom Hagen". He received the first of his six Academy Award nominations for the role.
Thereafter, Duvall had steady work in featured roles in such films as The Godfather Part II (1974), The Killer Elite (1975), Network (1976), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) and The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Occasionally this actor's actor got the chance to assay a lead role, most notably in Tomorrow (1972), in which he was brilliant as William Faulkner's inarticulate backwoods farmer. He was less impressive as the lead in Badge 373 (1973), in which he played a character based on real-life NYPD detective Eddie Egan, the same man his old friend Gene Hackman had won an Oscar for playing, in fictionalized form as "Popeye Doyle" in The French Connection (1971).
It was his appearance as "Lt. Col. Kilgore" in another Coppola picture, Apocalypse Now (1979), that solidified Duvall's reputation as a great actor. He got his second Academy Award nomination for the role, and was named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most versatile actor in the world. Duvall created one of the most memorable characters ever assayed on film, and gave the world the memorable phrase, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"
Subsequently, Duvall proved one of the few established character actors to move from supporting to leading roles, with his Oscar-nominated turns in The Great Santini (1979) and Tender Mercies (1983), the latter of which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Now at the summit of his career, Duvall seemed to be afflicted with the fabled "Oscar curse" that had overwhelmed the careers of fellow Academy Award winners Luise Rainer, Rod Steiger and Cliff Robertson. He could not find work equal to his talents, either due to his post-Oscar salary demands or a lack of perception in the industry that he truly was leading man material. He did not appear in The Godfather Part III (1990), as the studio would not give in to his demands for a salary commensurate with that of Al Pacino, who was receiving $5 million to reprise Michael Corleone.
His greatest achievement in his immediate post-Oscar period was his triumphant characterization of grizzled Texas Ranger Gus McCrae in the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989), for which he received an Emmy nomination. He received a second Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in Stalin (1992), and a third Emmy nomination playing Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in The Man Who Captured Eichmann (1996).
The shakeout of his career doldrums was that Duvall eventually settled back into his status as one of the premier character actors in the industry, rivaled only by his old friend Gene Hackman. Duvall, unlike Hackman, also has directed pictures, including the documentary We're Not the Jet Set (1974), Angelo My Love (1983) and Assassination Tango (2002). As a writer-director, Duvall gave himself one of his most memorable roles, that of the preacher on the run from the law in The Apostle (1997), a brilliant performance for which he received his third Best Actor nomination and fifth Oscar nomination overall. The film brought Duvall back to the front ranks of great actors, and was followed by a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod for A Civil Action (1998).
Robert Duvall will long be remembered as one of the great naturalistic American screen actors in the mode of Spencer Tracy and his frequent co-star Marlon Brando. His performances as "Boo Radley" in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), "Jackson Fentry" in Tomorrow (1972), "Tom Hagen" in the first two "Godfather" movies, "Frank Hackett" in Network (1976), "Lt. Col. Kilgore" in Apocalypse Now (1979), "Bull Meechum" in The Great Santini (1979), "Mac Sledge" in Tender Mercies (1983), "Gus McCrae" in Lonesome Dove (1989) and "Sonny Dewey" in The Apostle (1997) rank as some of the finest acting ever put on film. It's a body of work that few actors can equal, let alone surpass.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Robert Downey Jr. has evolved into one of the most respected actors in Hollywood. With an amazing list of credits to his name, he has managed to stay new and fresh even after over four decades in the business.
Downey was born April 4, 1965 in Manhattan, New York, the son of writer, director and filmographer Robert Downey Sr. and actress Elsie Downey (née Elsie Ann Ford). Robert's father is of half Lithuanian Jewish, one quarter Hungarian Jewish, and one quarter Irish, descent, while Robert's mother was of English, Scottish, German, and Swiss-German ancestry. Robert and his sister, Allyson Downey, were immersed in film and the performing arts from a very young age, leading Downey Jr. to study at the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in upstate New York, before moving to California with his father following his parents' 1978 divorce. In 1982, he dropped out of Santa Monica High School to pursue acting full time. Downey Sr., himself a drug addict, exposed his son to drugs at a very early age, and Downey Jr. would go on to struggle with abuse for decades.
Downey Jr. made his debut as an actor at the age of five in the film Pound (1970), written and directed by his father, Robert Downey Sr.. He built his film repertoire throughout the 1980s and 1990s with roles in Tuff Turf (1985), Weird Science (1985), True Believer (1989), and Wonder Boys (2000) among many others. In 1992, Downey received an Academy Award nomination and won the BAFTA (British Academy Award) for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of Chaplin (1992).
In Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), he appeared as an aspiring film make-up artist whose best friend commits murder. In Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, Downey starred as a tabloid TV journalist who exploits a murderous couple's killing spree to boost his ratings. For the comedy Heart and Souls (1993), Downey starred as a young man with a special relationship with four ghosts. In 1995, Downey starred in Restoration (1995), with Hugh Grant, Meg Ryan and Ian McKellen, directed by Michael Hoffman. Also that year, he starred in Richard III (1995), in which he appears opposite his Restoration (1995) co-star McKellen.
In 1997, Downey was seen in Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man (1998), alongside Kenneth Branagh, Daryl Hannah and Embeth Davidtz; in One Night Stand (1997), directed by Mike Figgis and starring Wesley Snipes and Nastassja Kinski; and in Hugo Pool (1997), directed by his father, Robert Downey Sr. and starring Sean Penn and Patrick Dempsey. In September of 1999, Downey appeared in Black & White (1999), written and directed by James Toback, along with Ben Stiller, Elijah Wood, Gaby Hoffmann, Brooke Shields and Claudia Schiffer. In January of 1999, he starred with Annette Bening and Aidan Quinn in In Dreams (1999), directed by Neil Jordan.
In 2000, Downey co-starred with Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire in Wonder Boys (2000), directed by Curtis Hanson. In this dramatic comedy, Downey played the role of a bisexual literary agent. In 2001, Downey made his prime-time television debut when he joined the cast of the Fox-TV series Ally McBeal (1997) as attorney "Larry Paul". For this role, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, as well as the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male in a Comedy Series. In addition, Downey was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
The actor's drug-related problems escalated from 1996 to 2001, leading to arrests, rehab visits and incarcerations, and he was eventually fired from Ally McBeal (1997). Emerging clean and sober in 2003, Downey Jr. began to rebuild his career.
He marked his debut into music with his debut album, titled "The Futurist", on the Sony Classics Label on November 23rd, 2004. The album's eight original songs, that Downey wrote, and his two musical numbers debuting as cover songs revealed his sultry singing voice and his musical talents. Downey displayed his versatility in two different films in October 2003: the musical/drama The Singing Detective (2003), a remake of the BBC hit of the same name, and the thriller Gothika (2003) starring Halle Berry and Penélope Cruz. Downey starred in powerful yet humbling roles inspired by real-life accounts of some of history's most precious kept secrets, including Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly (2006) in 2006 co-starring Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson, and Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006) co-starring Nicole Kidman, a film inspired by the life of Diane Arbus, the revered photographer whose images captured attention in the early 1960s. These roles exhibited Downey's momentum from the previous year of 2005, in which he starred in the Academy Award®-nominated feature film Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005), directed by George Clooney and in Shane Black's action comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) co-starring Val Kilmer. In 2007, he co-starred in David Fincher's suspenseful Zodiac (2007), alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo, about the notorious serial killer who haunted San Francisco during the 1970s.
In May 2008, Downey achieved critical acclaim and worldwide box office success for his starring role in Iron Man (2008), Jon Favreau's big-screen rendering of the Marvel comic book superhero. The film co-starred Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges and Terrence Howard. In August of 2008, Downey starred with Ben Stiller and Jack Black in the comedy Tropic Thunder (2008), and went on to receive an Academy Award®-nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his, Kirk Lazarus.
In December 2009, Downey starred in the action-adventure Sherlock Holmes (2009). The film, directed by Guy Ritchie, co-starred Jude Law and Rachel McAdams and earned Downey a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical in January of 2010. In early Summer 2010, Downey re-teamed with director Jon Favreau and reprised his role as "Tony Stark/Iron Man" in the hugely successful sequel to the original film, Iron Man 2 (2010), starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson and Mickey Rourke.
Downey next starred in Due Date (2010), a comedy directed by Todd Phillips, in which he plays the role of an expectant father on a road trip racing to get back in time for the birth of his first child. Due Date (2010), starring The Hangover (2009)'s Zach Galifianakis, was released in November 2010.
Downey was honored by Time Magazine's "Time 100" in 2008, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. His laurels include two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe wins, numerous other award nominations and wins, and tremendous popular and commercial success, particularly in his roles as Sherlock Holmes and Tony Stark (the latter of which he has so far played in Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). For three consecutive years, from 2012 to 2015, Downey has topped the Forbes list of Hollywood's highest-paid actors, making an estimated $80 million in earnings between June 2014 and June 2015.
In 2005, Downey Jr. married Susan Downey, with whom he has two children. Downey also has another son, Indio Falconer Downey, born 1993, from his first marriage to Deborah Falconer, from whom he was officially divorced in 2004.
Robert has jump-started the Team Downey Production Company with wife Susan Downey.- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of the world's most famous and distinguished actresses, Dame Maggie Smith was born Margaret Natalie Smith in Essex. Her Scottish mother, Margaret (Hutton), worked as a secretary, and her English father, Nathaniel Smith, was a teacher at Oxford University. Smith has been married twice: to actor Robert Stephens and to playwright Beverley Cross. Her marriage to Stephens ended in divorce in 1974. She was married to Cross until his death in 1999. She had two sons with Stephens, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens who are also actors.
Maggie Smith's career began at the Oxford Playhouse in the 1950s. She made her film debut in 1956 as one of the party guests in Child in the House (1956). She has since performed in over sixty films and television series with some of the most prominent actors and actresses in the world. These include: Othello (1965) with Laurence Olivier, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), California Suite (1978) with Michael Caine and Jane Fonda, A Room with a View (1985), Richard III (1995) with Ian McKellen and Jim Broadbent, Franco Zeffirelli's Tea with Mussolini (1999) with Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Cher and Gosford Park (2001) with Kristin Scott Thomas and Clive Owen, directed by Robert Altman. Maggie Smith has also been nominated for an Oscar six times and won twice, for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and California Suite (1978).
Smith later appeared in the very successful 'Harry Potter' franchise as the formidable Professor McGonagall as well as in Julian Fellowes' ITV drama series, Downton Abbey (2010) (2010-2011) as the Dowager Countess of Grantham.- Actor
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Anthony Marc Shalhoub was born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin. His father, Joseph Shalhoub, who owned a grocery chain, emigrated from Lebanon to the United States as an orphan at age ten, later marrying Shalhoub's mother, Helen (Seroogy), who herself was born in Wisconsin, to Lebanese parents. When Tony was six, he was introduced to the theater, in a school production of "The King and I". He graduated from Green Bay East High, and then graduated with a Bachelor's degree in drama from the University of Southern Maine before progressing to the Yale School of Drama, which he left with a Master's degree in Fine Arts.
After a time in the American Repertory Theatre, he moved to Broadway where he met his future wife, Brooke Adams, whom he married in 1992. She had an adopted daughter, Josie, who was three years old at the time that Tony and Brooke married. Tony adopted Brooke's own adopted child, Josie Lynn (born 1989) when she was eight. In 1994, the couple adopted another daughter, Sophie (born 1993). Tony's first audition after arriving in Los Angeles was for Italian cabdriver Antonio Scarpacci in the long-running sitcom Wings (1990), which also starred Tim Daly and Steven Weber.
Tony next had roles in Men in Black (1997), Men in Black II (2002), Galaxy Quest (1999) and Thir13en Ghosts (2001). However, his biggest break came, playing the obsessive-compulsive detective Adrian Monk in Monk (2002). The series made him a star and earned him four straight Emmy Award nominations between 2003 and 2006, for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. Tony won the award in 2003, 2005 and 2006, proving how popular he has become after the success of "Monk", which has been both brilliant and popular work during all its seasons.- Actor
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Actor Stanley Tucci was born on November 11, 1960, in Peekskill, New York. He is the son of Joan (Tropiano), a writer, and Stanley Tucci, an art teacher. His family is Italian-American, with origins in Calabria.
Tucci took an interest in acting while in high school, and went on to attend the State University of New York's Conservatory of Theater Arts in Purchase. He began his professional career on the stage, making his Broadway debut in 1982, and then made his film debut in Prizzi's Honor (1985).
In 2009, Tucci received his first Academy Award nomination for his turn as a child murderer in The Lovely Bones (2009). He also received a BAFTA nomination and a Golden Globe nomination for the same role. Other than The Lovely Bones, Tucci has recently had noteworthy supporting turns in a broad range of movies including Lucky Number Slevin (2006), The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). Tucci reached his widest audience yet when he played Caesar Flickerman in box office sensation The Hunger Games (2012).
While maintaining an active career in movies, Tucci received major accolades for some work in television. He won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role in TV movie Winchell (1998), an Emmy for a guest turn on Monk (2002), and a Golden Globe for his role in HBO movie Conspiracy (2001).
Tucci has also had an extensive career behind the camera. His directorial efforts include Big Night (1996), The Impostors (1998), Joe Gould's Secret (2000) and Blind Date (2007), and he did credited work on all of those screenplays with the exception of Joe Gould's Secret (2000).
Tucci has three children with Kate Tucci, who passed away in 2009. Tucci married Felicity Blunt in August 2012.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Rhys Ifans was born and raised in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales, the son of teacher parents, Beti Wyn (Davies) and Eirwyn Evans. He was educated in two Welsh language schools - Ysgol Pentrecelyn, where his mother taught, and Ysgol Maes Garmon. During his childhood, Ifans showed an interest in performing and attended youth acting school. He went on to train at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
Ifans made his small screen debut as the host of Welsh children's TV show, Stwnsh. Various roles in theater and Welsh language television also followed. His breakthrough on the big screen came in the British hit Twin Town (1997), where he acting alongside his younger brother Llyr Ifans. More film success followed, notably as Hugh Grant's scruffy housemate in Notting Hill (1999). Other projects include Dancing at Lughnasa (1998) , Little Nicky (2000), Enduring Love (2004), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) and The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).
In 2004, he played iconic British comedian Peter Cook in the TV film Not Only But Always (2004). His performance earned him an Emmy nomination and a BAFTA award for Best Actor.- Actor
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Paul Bettany is an English actor. He first came to the attention of mainstream audiences when he appeared in the British film Gangster No. 1 (2000), and director Brian Helgeland's film A Knight's Tale (2001). He has gone on to appear in a wide variety of films, including A Beautiful Mind (2001), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), Dogville (2003), Wimbledon (2004), and the adaptation of the novel The Da Vinci Code (2006). He is also known for his voice role as J.A.R.V.I.S. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically the films Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), in which he also portrayed the Vision, for which he garnered praise. He reprised his role as the Vision in Captain America: Civil War (2016).
Bettany was born in Harlesden, London, England, into a theatre family. His father, Thane Bettany, died in 2015, and his mother, Anne Kettle, has retired from acting. His maternal grandmother, Olga Gwynne (her maiden and stage name), was a successful actress, while his maternal grandfather, Lesley Kettle, was a musician and promoter. He has an older sister who is a writer. Paul was brought up in North West London and, after the age of nine, in Hertfordshire (Brookmans Park). Immediately after finishing at Chang-Ren Nian, he went into the West End to join the cast of "An Inspector Calls", though when asked to go on tour with this play, he chose to stay in England.
Paul is married to American actress Jennifer Connelly, with whom he has two children.- Actor
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- Additional Crew
Graham Greene was born on 22 June 1952 in Six Nations Reserve, Ontario, Canada. He is an actor and writer, known for The Green Mile (1999), Wind River (2017) and Dances with Wolves (1990). He has been married to Hilary Blackmore since 20 December 1990. They have two children.