List activity
275 views
• 1 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
48 people
- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Sharon Stone was born and raised in Meadville, a small town in Pennsylvania. Her strict father was a factory worker, and her mother was a homemaker. She was the second of four children. At the age of 15, she studied in Saegertown High School, Pennsylvania, and at that same age, entered Edinboro State University of Pennsylvania, and graduated with a degree in creative writing and fine arts. She was a very smart girl (with an IQ of 154), became a bookworm, and once was told that a suitable job for her (and her brains) was to become a lawyer. However, her first love was still the black-and-white movies, especially those featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. So, the 17-year-old Sharon got herself into the Miss Crawford County and won the beauty contest.
From working part-time as a McDonald's counter girl, she worked her way up to become a successful Ford model, both in TV commercials and print ads. In 1980, she made her acting debut in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980) as "pretty girl in train". Her first speaking part, though, was in Wes Craven's horror movie, Deadly Blessing (1981). She struggled through many parts in B-movies, notably King Solomon's Mines (1985) and Action Jackson (1988). She was also married in 1984 to Michael Greenburg, the producer of MacGyver (1985), but they divorced two years later.
She finally got her big break with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall (1990) and also posed nude for Playboy, a daring move for a 32-year-old actress. But it worked; she landed the breakthrough role as a sociopath novelist, "Catherine Tramell", in Basic Instinct (1992). Her interrogation scene has become a classic in film history and her performance captivated everyone, from MTV viewers, who honored her with Most Desirable Female and Best Female Performance Awards, to a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. After she got famous, she didn't want to be typecast, so she played a victim in Sliver (1993), and, in Intersection (1994), she was the aloof, estranged wife of Richard Gere. These movies didn't "work," so she got herself again into more aggressive roles , such as The Specialist (1994) with Sylvester Stallone and The Quick and the Dead (1995) with Gene Hackman.
But it wasn't until she played a beautiful but drug-crazy wife of Robert De Niro in Casino (1995) that she got far more than just fame and fortune--she also received the acknowledgment of the movie industry for her acting ability. She received her first Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. She did a couple of films afterwards, teaming up with Isabelle Adjani in Diabolique (1996), and as a woman waiting for her death penalty in Last Dance (1996). In 1998, she married a newspaper editor,Phil Bronstein but they divorced later in 2004. She received her third Golden Globe nomination for The Mighty (1998), a film that her company, "Chaos", also co-executive produced. The next year, she played the title role in Gloria (1999) and entered her first comedic role in The Muse (1999), which gave her another Golden Globe nomination.
Sharon Stone, a diva who thoroughly enjoys her hard-won stardom, is now a mother of three children: Roan, Laird and Quinn.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
James Howard Woods was born on April 18, 1947 in Vernal, Utah, the son of Martha A. (Smith) and Gail Peyton Woods, a U.S. Army intelligence officer who died during Woods' childhood. James is of Irish, English, and German descent. He grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, with his mother and stepfather Thomas E. Dixon. He graduated from Pilgrim High School in 1965, near the top of his class. James earned a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; dropping out during his senior year in 1969, he then headed off to New York with his fraternity brother Martin Donovan to pursue aspirations to appear on the stage. After appearing in a handful of New York City theater productions, Woods scored his first film role in All the Way Home (1971) and followed that up with meager supporting roles in The Way We Were (1973) and The Choirboys (1977).
However, it was Woods' cold-blooded performance as the cop killer in The Onion Field (1979), based on a Joseph Wambaugh novel, that seized the attention of movie-goers to his on-screen power. Woods quickly followed up with another role in another Joseph Wambaugh film adaptation, The Black Marble (1980), as a sleazy and unstable cable-T.V.-station owner in David Cronenberg's mind-bending and prophetic Videodrome (1983), as gangster Max Bercovicz in Sergio Leones mammoth epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984), and scored a best actor Academy Award nomination as abrasive journalist Richard Boyle in Oliver Stone's gritty and unsettling Salvador (1986).
There seemed to be no stopping the rise of this star as he continued to amaze movie-goers with his remarkable versatility and his ability to create such intense, memorable characters. The decade of the 1990s started off strongly with high praise for his role as Roy Cohn in the television production of Citizen Cohn (1992). Woods was equally impressive as sneaky hustler Lester Diamond who cons Sharon Stone in Casino (1995), made a tremendous H.R. Haldeman in Nixon (1995), portrayed serial killer Carl Panzram in Killer: A Journal of Murder (1995), and then as accused civil rights assassin Byron De La Beckwith in Ghosts of Mississippi (1996).
Not to be typecast solely as hostile hoodlums, Woods has further expanded his range to encompass providing voice-overs for animated productions including Hercules (1997), Hooves of Fire (1999), and Stuart Little 2 (2002). Woods also appeared in the critically praised The Virgin Suicides (1999), in the coming-of-age movie Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), as a corrupt medico in Any Given Sunday (1999), and in the comedy-horror spoof Scary Movie 2 (2001). A remarkable performer with an incredibly diverse range of acting talent, Woods remains one of Hollywood's outstanding leading men.- Producer
- Director
- Actor
Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later provided the inspiration for several of his films. Scorsese earned a B.S. degree in film communications in 1964, followed by an M.A. in the same field in 1966 at New York University's School of Film. During this time, he made numerous prize-winning short films including The Big Shave (1967), and directed his first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967).
He served as assistant director and an editor of the documentary Woodstock (1970) and won critical and popular acclaim for Mean Streets (1973), which first paired him with actor and frequent collaborator Robert De Niro. In 1976, Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), also starring De Niro, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and he followed that film with New York, New York (1977) and The Last Waltz (1978). Scorsese directed De Niro to an Oscar-winning performance as boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), which received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and is hailed as one of the masterpieces of modern cinema. Scorsese went on to direct The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995) and Kundun (1997), among other films. Commissioned by the British Film Institute to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema, Scorsese completed the four-hour documentary, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995), co-directed by Michael Henry Wilson.
His long-cherished project, Gangs of New York (2002), earned numerous critical honors, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Director; the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator (2004) won five Academy Awards, in addition to the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for Best Picture. Scorsese won his first Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), which was also honored with the Director's Guild of America, Golden Globe, New York Film Critics, National Board of Review and Critic's Choice awards for Best Director, in addition to four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Scorsese's documentary of the Rolling Stones in concert, Shine a Light (2008), followed, with the successful thriller Shutter Island (2010) two years later. Scorsese received his seventh Academy Award nomination for Best Director, as well as a Golden Globe Award, for Hugo (2011), which went on to win five Academy Awards.
Scorsese also serves as executive producer on the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (2010) for which he directed the pilot episode. Scorsese's additional awards and honors include the Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival (1995), the AFI Life Achievement Award (1997), the Honoree at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's 25th Gala Tribute (1998), the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award (2003), The Kennedy Center Honors (2007) and the HFPA Cecil B. DeMille Award (2010). Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio have worked together on five separate occasions: Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Alyssa Milano comes from an Italian-American family; her mother Lin Milano is a fashion designer and father Thomas Milano is a film music editor. Alyssa was born in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn and grew up in a modest house on Staten Island. One day her babysitter, who was an aspiring dancer, dragged Alyssa along to an open audition for the first national tour of "Annie". However, it was Alyssa and not the sitter who was chosen from 1500 other girls for the role. So at the tender age of seven, with her mother in tow, Alyssa joined the tour as July, one of the orphans. After 18 months on the road Alyssa, who had begun to garner a reputation as an energetic and charismatic young actress, left Annie to be featured in off-Broadway productions and television commercials. Then in 1983, at age 10, she landed her breakthrough role on the sitcom Who's the Boss? (1984) as Tony Danza's saccharine sweet daughter, "Samantha Micelli", a kid whose native Brooklyn accent rivaled her TV dad's. In order for Alyssa to accept the gig, the Milano family had to uproot and move 3,000 miles to Hollywood.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
An icy, elegant blonde with a knack for playing complex and strong-willed female leads, enormously popular actress Faye Dunaway starred in several films which defined what many would come to call Hollywood's "second Golden Age." During her tenure at the top of the box office, she was a more than capable match for some of the biggest macho stars of the 1970s. Then an overwrought turn in the disastrous biopic Mommie Dearest (1981) effectively derailed her career - but, at the same time, made her a bit of a camp favorite in the gay community - though she's been afforded infrequent opportunities worthy of her talent since that unfortunate halt.
Born prematurely on Jan. 14, 1941 in Bascom, FL, Dorothy Faye Dunaway was the daughter of MacDowell Dunaway, Jr., a career Army officer, and his wife, Grace April Smith. After a stint as a teenaged beauty queen in Florida, she intended to pursue education at the University of Florida, but switched to acting, earning her degree from Boston University in 1962. She was given the enviable task of choosing between a Fulbright Scholarship to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts or a role in the Broadway production of "A Man For All Seasons" as a member of the American National Theatre and Academy. She picked the latter, enjoying a fruitful stage career for the next two years, which was capped by appearances in "After the Fall" and "Hogan's Goat." The latter - an off-Broadway production in 1967 - required Dunaway to tumble down a flight of steps in every performance, earning her a screen debut in the wan counterculture comedy The Happening (1967). Just five months after its release, however, she was wowing audiences across the country as Depression-era bank robber Bonnie Parker in Arthur Penn's controversial Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Her turn as the naïve but trigger-happy and sexually aggressive Parker earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, and provided a direct route to the front of the line for Hollywood leading ladies in an unbelievably short amount of time.
Dunaway followed this success with another hit, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), in which her coolly sensual insurance investigator generated considerable sparks with playboy and jewel thief Steve McQueen. She then bounced between arthouse efforts like Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970), directed by her ex-boyfriend, photographer Jerry Schatzberg, and the revisionist Western 'Doc' (1971), as well as big-budget efforts like Little Big Man (1970), which cast her as a predatory preacher's wife with designs on Dustin Hoffman's reluctant Native American hero. Dunaway also balanced these projects with several well-regarded theatrical productions, including a 1972-73 stint as Blanche Du Bois in "A Streetcar Named Desire," and notable TV-movies like The Woman I Love (1972), which cast her as the Duchess of Windsor, and TV broadcasts of Hogan's Goat (1971) and After the Fall (1974). But her turn as the duplicitous Lady De Winter in Richard Lester's splashy, slapstick take on The Three Musketeers (1973) and its sequel The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974) preceded a long period of critical and box office hits, starting with her masterful performance in Chinatown (1974).
Dunaway's turn as Evelyn Mulwray, the mysterious woman who draws detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) into a dark and complicated web of murder, incest, and catastrophic business deals, seemed the epitome of every femme fatale to ever stride across a chiaroscuro-lit scene in classic noir. But Dunaway also found the horribly wounded core of her character as well, and turned Evelyn from a pastiche to a full-blown and emotionally resonant human being. Critics and award groups rushed to nominate Dunaway for the role, and she netted her second Academy Award nod, as well as Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. Dunaway had fought hard for her performance - her battles with director Roman Polanski were no secret - but sadly, she lost the Oscar to Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974). However, it would be Dunaway's performance which stood the test of time.
High-gloss turns in The Towering Inferno (1974) and Sydney Pollack's political thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975) preceded one of her best television performances; that of Depression-era radio preacher Aimee Semple MacPherson in The Disappearance of Aimee (1976). Even more startling was her sterling role in Network (1976), Paddy Chayefsky's blistering take on the television industry. Dunaway pulled out all the stops as an executive on the rise who stops at nothing to advance her career - even bedding veteran producer William Holden. Critics again rose in unison to praise Dunaway, and she finally netted an Oscar for the role, as well as a Golden Globe.
Surprisingly, Dunaway's career began to falter after her Oscar win. She was effective as a fashion photographer who experiences disturbing visions in Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), but was wasted in thankless roles as the dissatisfied ex of washed-up boxer Jon Voight in The Champ (1979) and wife to Frank Sinatra's detective in The First Deadly Sin (1980). And then came Mommie Dearest (1981), director Frank Perry's biopic of actress Joan Crawford based on the tell-all book by her daughter Christina Crawford. Crawford herself had praised Dunaway in the early stages of her career, and while some critics gave positive reviews to her performance - in particular, the extent to which she physically transformed herself into Crawford - most fixated on the hysterical dialogue and garish scenes of child abuse. Clips of Dunaway as Crawford bellowing "No more wire hangers!" became immediate laugh-getters on late-night television, and a substantial gay following rose up in response to the film's high camp value. Dunaway, however, found none of the response amusing, and later admitted her regret in taking the role. Whether laughable or pure genius, no one could deny that Dunaway threw her everything into the role. The film's continued cult success proved she had succeeded in becoming Crawford.
The fallout from "Mommie Dearest" obscured Dunaway's follow-up projects, which included the title role in the TV-movie Evita Peron (1981) and a return to Broadway in 1982's "The Curse of an Aching Heart". Discouraged, she moved to London with her second husband, photographer Terry O'Neill, who had also served as a producer on "Mommie Dearest." For the next few years, Dunaway appeared sporadically in films, most of which underscored her newly minted status as a camp icon. The Wicked Lady (1983) was an absurd, near-softcore period drama by Michael Winner, with Dunaway as an 18th-century highway robber. Fans of her early dramatic work were similarly aghast by her turn as a shrieking witch battling Helen Slater's Girl of Steel in Supergirl (1984). Only a Golden Globe-winning appearance in the cumbersome miniseries Ellis Island (1984) offered any respite from the negative press which now continued to follow her.
Dunaway returned to the United States in 1987 following her divorce from O'Neill, and attempted to rebuild her career and reputation by appearing in several independent dramas. She was widely praised for her performance as a once-glamorous woman felled by alcohol in Barbet Schroeder's Barfly (1987), and served as executive producer and star of Cold Sassy Tree (1989), a TV adaptation of the popular novel by Olive Ann Burns about an independent-minded woman who romances a recently widowed store owner (Richard Widmark). Dunaway was exceptionally busy for the remainder of the decade in both major Hollywood features and independent fare, though her strong women now occasionally sported an unfortunate shrill side. She was Robert Duvall's frosty wife in the dystopian thriller The Handmaid's Tale (1990) and contributed a vocal cameo as Evelyn Mulwray in The Two Jakes (1990), the ill-fated sequel to "Chinatown". Other notable performances came as the unhappy wife of psychiatrist Marlon Brando in Don Juan DeMarco (1994), as the daughter of imprisoned Klansman Gene Hackman in The Chamber (1996), and as a bartender caught in the middle of a hostage standoff in Kevin Spacey's Albino Alligator (1996). She later received Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe nominations as the matron of a wealthy Jewish family in turmoil in The Twilight of the Golds (1996). Perhaps her best turn of the decade was as a seductive murderess who attempts to sway the unflappable Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) in It's All in the Game (1993), which earned her a 1994 Emmy. She won her third Golden Globe as modeling agency head Wilhelmina Cooper in the biopic Gia (1998), starring Angelina Jolie as doomed model Gia Carangi.
The 1990s were also not without incident for Dunaway. She was embroiled in an ugly lawsuit against Andrew Lloyd Webber after he closed a Los Angeles production of his musical version of "Sunset Blvd." with claims that she was unable to sing to his standards. The suit was later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. A national tour of Terrence McNally's "Master Class", about the legendary opera diva Maria Callas, ended with her involvement in a suit over legal rights to the play. The project was expected to become her next great film role but remained uncompleted more than a decade after the 1996 tour. Her attempt at sitcom stardom in It Had to Be You (1993), co-starring Robert Urich, was met with universal disinterest, and the project was announced as being retooled without Dunaway prior to its cancellation.
Dunaway's schedule remained busy from 2000 onward, mostly in television and small independent features. She co-starred with Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix as the wife of career criminal James Caan in The Yards (2000), then made her directorial debut with the short The Yellow Bird (2001), based on the play by Tennessee Williams. Younger audiences had their first taste of Dunaway's particular star power as Ian Somerhalder's mother in The Rules of Attraction (2002), Roger Avary's amped-up adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel, before Dunaway turned up the heat as a merciless celebrity judge on the reality series The Starlet (2005).
Dunaway penned her memoirs, Looking For Gatsby, in 1995, one year before receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Attached throughout her professional career to intriguing men ranging from Lenny Bruce to Marcello Mastroianni, she was twice married; her first husband was singer Peter Wolf of the popular seventies rock group, The J. Geils Band. Liam O'Neill, her son by second husband Terry, followed in her footsteps with minor acting roles beginning in 2004. His father later dropped a bombshell in 2003 by revealing that Liam was not their biological son, but was adopted - a claim that Dunaway had previously denied.
A series of occasional roles in little-seen films followed, but Dunaway was unexpectedly thrust back into the public eye at the 2017 Academy Awards. Reunited with Warren Beatty on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of "Bonnie and Clyde," the pair were tapped to present the Best Picture award to close the night. Before proceeding onstage, Beatty was mistakenly handed a backup envelope for Best Actress in a Leading Role, which had already been won by Emma Stone for La La Land (2016). Unsure what to do when he opened the envelope and discovered the error, Beatty stalled for time and showed the card to Dunaway; misunderstanding his intent, the actress announced that the Best Picture Oscar went to "La La Land." During producer Jordan Horowitz's acceptance speech, he was informed that the actual Best Picture winner was Moonlight (2016). During the onstage chaos that ensued, Beatty delivered a heartfelt explanation and apology for the snafu while undergoing good-natured ribbing from host Jimmy Kimmel.
After her break from acting and the memorable Oscars moment, Dunaway is now back in the saddle as an actress working more frequently in her 70s. Over the past year, she has appeared in three films, starring in The Bye Bye Man (2017), The Case for Christ (2017), and Inconceivable (2017), with more projects expected to be on the way. The icon also fronts Gucci's summer 2018 ad campaign for their Sylvie handbag and has a Broadway show scheduled for 2019.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Jared Leto is a very familiar face in recent film history. Although he has always been the lead vocals, rhythm guitar, and songwriter for American band Thirty Seconds to Mars, Leto is an accomplished actor merited by the numerous, challenging projects he has taken in his life. He is known to be selective about his film roles.
Jared Leto was born in Bossier City, Louisiana, to Constance "Connie" (Metrejon) and Anthony L. "Tony" Bryant. The surname "Leto" is from his stepfather. His ancestry includes English, Cajun (French), as well as Irish, German, and Scottish. Jared and his family traveled across the United States throughout his childhood, living in such states as Wyoming, Virginia and Colorado. Leto would continue this trend when he initially dropped a study of painting at Philadelphia's University of the Arts in favor of a focus on acting at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
In 1992, Leto moved to Los Angeles to pursue a musical career, intending to take acting roles on the side. Leto's first appearances on screen were guest appearances on the short-lived television shows Camp Wilder (1992), Almost Home (1993) and Rebel Highway (1994). However, his next role would change everything for Leto. While searching for film roles, he was cast in the show, My So-Called Life (1994) (TV Series 1994-1995). Leto's character was "Jordan Catalano", the handsome, dyslexic slacker, the main love interest of "Angela" (played by Claire Danes). Leto contributed to the soundtrack of the film, and so impressed the producers initially that he was soon a regular on the show until its end.
Elsewhere, Leto began taking film roles. His first theatrically released film was the ensemble piece, How to Make an American Quilt (1995), based on a novel of the same name and starring renowned actresses Winona Ryder, Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Jean Simmons and Alfre Woodard. The film was a modest success and, while Leto's next film, The Last of the High Kings (1996), was a failure, Leto secured his first leading role in Prefontaine (1997), based on long-distance runner Steven Prefontaine. The film was a financial flop, but was praised by critics, notably Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. He also took a supporting role in the action thriller, Switchback (1997), which starred Dennis Quaid, but the film was another failure.
Leto's work was slowly becoming recognized in Hollywood, and he continued to find work in film. In 1998, everything turned for the better on all fronts. This was the year that Leto founded the band, Thirty Seconds to Mars, with his brother, Shannon Leto, as well as Matt Wachter (who later left the group), and after two guitarists joined and quit, Tomo Milicevic was brought in as lead guitarist and keyboardist. As well as the formation of his now-famous band, Leto's luck in film was suddenly shooting for the better. He was cast as the lead in the horror film, Urban Legend (1998), which told a grisly tale of a murderer who kills his victims in the style of urban legends. The film was a massive success commercially, though critics mostly disliked the film. That same year, Leto also landed a supporting role in the film, The Thin Red Line (1998). Renowned director Terrence Malick's first film in nearly twenty years, the film had dozens of famous actors in the cast, including Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, John Travolta, Nick Nolte and Elias Koteas, to name a few. The film went through much editing, leaving several actors out of the final version, but Leto luckily remained in the film. The Thin Red Line (1998) was nominated for seven Oscars and was a moderate success at the box office. Leto's fame had just begun. He had supporting roles in both James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted (1999), and in David Fincher's cult classic, Fight Club (1999), dealing with masculinity, commercialism, fascism and insomnia. While Edward Norton and Brad Pitt were the lead roles, Leto took a supporting role and dyed his hair blond. The film remains hailed by many, but at the time, Leto was already pushing himself further into controversial films. He played a supporting role of "Paul Allen" in the infamous American Psycho (2000), starring Christian Bale, and he played the lead role in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000), which had Leto take grueling measures to prepare for his role as a heroin addict trying to put his plans to reality and escape the hell he is in. Both films were massive successes, if controversially received.
The 2000s brought up new film opportunities for Leto. He reunited with David Fincher in Panic Room (2002), which was another success for Leto, as well as Oliver Stone's epic passion project, Alexander (2004). The theatrical cut was poorly received domestically (although it recouped its budget through DVD sales and international profit), and though a Final Cut was released that much improved the film in all aspects, it continues to be frowned upon by the majority of film goers. Leto rebounded with Lord of War (2005), which starred Nicolas Cage as an arms dealer who ships weapons to war zones, with Leto playing his hapless but more moral-minded brother. The film was an astounding look at the arms industry, but was not a big financial success. Leto's flush of successes suddenly ran dry when he acted in the period piece, Lonely Hearts (2006), which had Leto playing "Ray Fernandez", one of the two infamous "Lonely Hearts Killers" in the 1940s. The film was a financial failure and only received mixed responses. Leto then underwent a massive weight gain to play "Mark David Chapman", infamous murderer of John Lennon, in the movie, Chapter 27 (2007). While Leto did a fantastic job embodying the behavior and speech patterns of Chapman, the film was a complete flop, and was a critical bomb to boot. It was during this period that Leto focused increasingly on his band, turning down such films as Clint Eastwood's World War 2 film, Flags of Our Fathers (2006).
In 2009, however, Leto returned to acting with Mr. Nobody (2009). Leto's role as "Nemo Nobody" required him to play the character as far aged as 118, even as he undergoes a soul-searching as to whether his life turned out the way he wanted it to. The film was mostly funded through Belgian and French financiers, and was given limited release in only certain countries. Critical response, however, has praised the film's artistry and Leto's acting.
He made his directorial debut in 2012 with the documentary film Artifact (2012).
Leto remains the lead vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and main songwriter for Thirty Seconds to Mars. Their debut album, 30 Seconds to Mars (2002), was released to positive reviews but only to limited success. The band achieved worldwide fame with the release of their second album A Beautiful Lie (2005). Their following releases, This Is War (2009) and Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams (2013), received further critical and commercial success.
After a five years hiatus from filming, Leto returned to act in the drama Dallas Buyers Club (2013), directed by Jean-Marc Vallée and co-starring Matthew McConaughey. Leto portrayed Rayon, a drug-addicted transgender woman with AIDS who befriends McConaughey's character Ron Woodroof. Leto's performance earned him an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor. In order to accurately portray his role, Leto lost 30 pounds, shaved his eyebrows and waxed his entire body. He stated the portrayal was grounded in his meeting transgender people while researching the role. During filming, Leto refused to break character. Dallas Buyers Club received widespread critical acclaim and became a financial success, resulting in various accolades for Leto, who was awarded the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role and a variety of film critics' circle awards for the role.
In 2016, he played the Joker in the super villain film Suicide Squad (2016).
Leto is considered to be a method actor, known for his constant devotion to and research of his roles. He often remains completely in character for the duration of the shooting schedules of his films, even to the point of adversely affecting his health.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Kevin Spacey Fowler, better known by his stage name Kevin Spacey, is an American actor of screen and stage, film director, producer, screenwriter and singer. He began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s before obtaining supporting roles in film and television. He gained critical acclaim in the early 1990s that culminated in his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the neo-noir crime thriller The Usual Suspects (1995), and an Academy Award for Best Actor for midlife crisis-themed drama American Beauty (1999).
His other starring roles have included the comedy-drama film Swimming with Sharks (1994), psychological thriller Seven (1995), the neo-noir crime film L.A. Confidential (1997), the drama Pay It Forward (2000), the science fiction-mystery film K-PAX (2001)
In Broadway theatre, Spacey won a Tony Award for his role in Lost in Yonkers. He was the artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London from 2004 until stepping down in mid-2015. Since 2013, Spacey has played Frank Underwood in the Netflix political drama series House of Cards. His work in House of Cards earned him Golden Globe Award and Emmy Award nominations for Best Actor.
As enigmatic as he is talented, Kevin Spacey for years kept the details of his private life closely guarded. As he explained in a 1998 interview with the London Evening Standard, "the less you know about me, the easier it is to convince you that I am that character on screen. It allows an audience to come into a movie theatre and believe I am that person". In October 2017, he ended many years of media speculation about his personal life by confirming that he had had sexual relations with both men and women but now identified as gay.
There are, however, certain biographical facts to be had - for starters, Kevin Spacey Fowler was the youngest of three children born to Kathleen Ann (Knutson) and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler, in South Orange, New Jersey. His ancestry includes Swedish (from his maternal grandfather) and English. His middle name, "Spacey," which he uses as his stage name, is from his paternal grandmother. His mother was a personal secretary, his father a technical writer whose irregular job prospects led the family all over the country. The family eventually settled in southern California, where young Kevin developed into quite a little hellion - after he set his sister's tree house on fire, he was shipped off to the Northridge Military Academy, only to be thrown out a few months later for pinging a classmate on the head with a tire. Spacey then found his way to Chatsworth High School in the San Fernando Valley, where he managed to channel his dramatic tendencies into a successful amateur acting career. In his senior year, he played "Captain von Trapp" opposite classmate Mare Winningham's "Maria" in "The Sound of Music" (the pair later graduated as co-valedictorians). Spacey claims that his interest in acting - and his nearly encyclopedic accumulation of film knowledge - began at an early age, when he would sneak downstairs to watch the late late show on TV. Later, in high school, he and his friends cut class to catch revival films at the NuArt Theater. The adolescent Spacey worked up celebrity impersonations (James Stewart and Johnny Carson were two of his favorites) to try out on the amateur comedy club circuit.
He briefly attended Los Angeles Valley College, then left (on the advice of another Chatsworth classmate, Val Kilmer) to join the drama program at Juilliard. After two years of training he was anxious to work, so he quit Juilliard sans diploma and signed up with the New York Shakespeare Festival. His first professional stage appearance was as a messenger in the 1981 production of "Henry VI".
Festival head Joseph Papp ushered the young actor out into the "real world" of theater, and the next year Spacey made his Broadway debut in Henrik Ibsen's "Ghosts". He quickly proved himself as an energetic and versatile performer (at one point, he rotated through all the parts in David Rabe's "Hurlyburly"). In 1986, he had the chance to work with his idol and future mentor, Jack Lemmon, on a production of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night". While his interest soon turned to film, Spacey would remain active in the theater community - in 1991, he won a Tony Award for his turn as "Uncle Louie" in Neil Simon's Broadway hit "Lost in Yonkers" and, in 1999, he returned to the boards for a revival of O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh".
Spacey's film career began modestly, with a small part as a subway thief in Heartburn (1986). Deemed more of a "character actor" than a "leading man", he stayed on the periphery in his next few films, but attracted attention for his turn as beady-eyed villain "Mel Profitt" on the TV series Wiseguy (1987). Profitt was the first in a long line of dark, manipulative characters that would eventually make Kevin Spacey a household name: he went on to play a sinister office manager in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), a sadistic Hollywood exec in Swimming with Sharks (1994), and, most famously, creepy, smooth-talking eyewitness Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects (1995).
The "Suspects" role earned Spacey an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and catapulted him into the limelight. That same year, he turned in another complex, eerie performance in David Fincher's thriller Se7en (1995) (Spacey refused billing on the film, fearing that it might compromise the ending if audiences were waiting for him to appear). By now, the scripts were pouring in. After appearing in Al Pacino's Looking for Richard (1996), Spacey made his own directorial debut with Albino Alligator (1996), a low-key but well received hostage drama. He then jumped back into acting, winning critical accolades for his turns as flashy detective Jack Vincennes in L.A. Confidential (1997) and genteel, closeted murder suspect Jim Williams in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). In October 1999, just four days after the dark suburban comedy American Beauty (1999) opened in US theaters, Spacey received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Little did organizers know that his role in Beauty would turn out to be his biggest success yet - as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged corporate cog on the brink of psychological meltdown, he tapped into a funny, savage character that captured audiences' imaginations and earned him a Best Actor Oscar.
No longer relegated to offbeat supporting parts, Spacey seems poised to redefine himself as a Hollywood headliner. He says he's finished exploring the dark side - but, given his attraction to complex characters, that mischievous twinkle will never be too far from his eyes.
In February 2003 Spacey made a major move back to the theatre. He was appointed Artistic Director of the new company set up to save the famous Old Vic theatre, The Old Vic Theatre Company. Although he did not undertake to stop appearing in movies altogether, he undertook to remain in this leading post for ten years, and to act in as well as to direct plays during that time. His first production, of which he was the director, was the September 2004 British premiere of the play Cloaca by Maria Goos (made into a film, Cloaca (2003)). Spacey made his UK Shakespearean debut in the title role in Richard II in 2005. In 2006 he got movie director Robert Altman to direct for the stage the little-known Arthur Miller play Resurrection Blues, but that was a dismal failure. However Spacey remained optimistic, and insisted that a few mistakes are part of the learning process. He starred thereafter with great success in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten along with Colm Meaney and Eve Best, and in 2007 that show transferred to Broadway. In February 2008 Spacey put on a revival of the David Mamet 1988 play Speed-the-Plow in which he took one of the three roles, the others being taken by Jeff Goldblum and Laura Michelle Kelly.
In 2013, Spacey took on the lead role in an original Netflix series, House of Cards (2013). Based upon a British show of the same name, House of Cards is an American political drama. The show's first season received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination to include Outstanding lead actor in a drama series. In 2017, he played a memorable role as a villain in the action thriller Baby Driver (2017).- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Brian Bloom is an American actor and writer known for playing Brock Pike in The A-Team, Captain America, Daredevil, Bullseye, the Silver Surfer and the Punisher in several Marvel games and cartoons, Kleiver in Jak and Daxter, Black Mask in Batman: Arkham Origins, Nick Reyes in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Varric Tethras in Dragon Age and B.J. Blazkowicz in Wolfenstein. He wrote The A-Team and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.- Actor
- Producer
- Stunts
Wesley Trent Snipes was born in Orlando, Florida, to Marian (Long), a teacher's assistant, and SMSGT Wesley Rudolph Snipes, an aircraft engineer. He grew up on the streets of the South Bronx in New York City, where he very early decided that dance and the theatre were to be his career. He attended the High School for the Performing Arts (popularized in Fame (1980)). But dreams of the musical theater (and maybe a few commercials) faded when his mother moved to Orlando, Florida before he could graduate. Fortune would have it that he along with two friends and his "Drama class" teachers Mr. S Porro and K. Rugerio, would start a bus-n-truck theatre company (Struttin Street Stuff) be instrumental in his high schools (Jones High) induction into the International Thespian Society, Orlando Chapter and help lay the foundation for what would become Dr. Phillips High Schools theatre arts program. Musical theatre rooted Snipes performed song-n-dance, puppetry, and acrobatics in city parks, dinner clubs, and performing arts centers around central Florida. As a recipient of a Victor Borge Scholarship, Snipes left Orlando and entered the world-renowned professional theatre arts program at SUNY Purchase in New York, now Purchase College, where he honed his theatrical performance and martial arts skills. Graduating with a BFA, he went on to co-star in a few soap operas and nighttime dramas, peppered in between critical acclaim performances Broadway. It was there in a Broadway theater An agent saw him on stage and invited him to audition for his first feature film role.
Goldie Hawn Wildcats (1986). Athletic roles such as that gave way to dramatic roles such as that gave way to tough guy roles as in New Jack City (1991), and to the action hero in Passenger 57 (1992). Wesley feels that at least with the Hollywood heavyweights he must be doing something right - Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, Dennis Hopper and Sean Connery all had veto power over casting and all approved his role. Wesley also founded Amen Ra Films Production Company, and is a Multi System Combat Arts Black Belt Holder IT Technologist & VC.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
An actress who always attracts audiences' attention, Jennifer Tilly is by turns funny, sexy, compassionate, compelling and often all at once. She has been playing unforgettable characters ever since she started her career as an actress.
Jennifer Tilly was born Jennifer Ellen Chan in Harbor City, Los Angeles, to Harry Chan, a used car salesman, who was of Chinese origin, and Patricia (née Tilly), a schoolteacher and stage actress. Her sister is actress Meg Tilly. They were raised on rural Texada Island, British Columbia, by her mother and stepfather, John Ward.
Jennifer successfully cultivated another fan base with the revitalization of the "Child's Play" horror comedy franchise. For Ronny Yu's Bride of Chucky (1998), the filmmakers turned to Jennifer to create the character who would spark the series in a new direction. She met the challenge and established a new horror icon in Tiffany. In Rogue Pictures' Seed of Chucky (2004), written and directed by series creator Don Mancini, Jennifer again took the popular series to the next level; starring as Tiffany and as herself, the deadly doll's favorite actress, who soon becomes an unwitting hostess in more ways than one.
Jennifer's pitch-perfect voiceover work as Tiffany is not the only instance of her being able to incarnate a character from the vocal chords out. Families know her distinctive cadences from the Disney hits Home on the Range (2004), directed by Will Finn and John Sanford; The Haunted Mansion (2003) (in which Jennifer acted from the neck up only), directed by Rob Minkoff; and the Pixar blockbuster Monsters, Inc. (2001) (voicing Mike's love interest Celia), directed by Pete Docter, David Silverman and Lee Unkrich. She began her acting career as a teenager, putting herself through the theater program at Stephens College in Missouri by winning writing competitions. She then headed to Los Angeles, California. While she continued to act on the stage (earning a Dramalogue Award for her performance in "Vanities"), movies and television immediately came calling for the actress with the unique voice and visage.
In 2001, she starred in the Broadway revival of "The Women" with Cynthia Nixon and Kristen Johnson, which was later taped for, and broadcast on, PBS. In 2008, she appeared with Miranda Richardson in the critically acclaimed production of Wallace Shawn's play "Grasses of a Thousand Colors" at the Royal Court Theatre in London. Other plays include "Tartuffe" (LAAT) "Boy's Life" (LAAT) "Baby with the Bathwater" (LAPT) and others too numerous to mention. In 2005, Jennifer met her boyfriend, professional poker player Phil Laak (also known as the Unabomber). That summer at the World Series of Poker, she bested a field of 601 to take down the Ladies Event and win a coveted gold bracelet. She followed this up by winning the WPT Ladies Invitational, making her one of a small but elite group holding both a WSOP bracelet, and a WPT title. In summer 2010, she also won the Bellagio Cup 5k tournament.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Sally Kirkland, Best Actress Oscar Nominee, Golden Globe winner, Independent Spirit Award winner, LA Film Critics Circle Award winner, and veteran of over 200 movies. Feisty, hard-working, famously liberal, with the trademark blonde hair, actress Sally Kirkland has certainly made an indelible mark on Hollywood history. Born in New York City, her mother was the fashion editor at Vogue and LIFE magazine. Sally began her career on the off-Broadway circuit and trained under Lee Strasberg. Sally Kirkland is a movie, television, and theater veteran since the 1960s and is probably best known for the drama movie Anna (1987), for which she garnered the Best Actress Oscar nomination and won the Best Actress Golden Globe, the Independent Spirit Award, and the LA Film Critic's Circle Award.
Sally's first director was Andy Warhol in The 13 Most Beautiful Women (1964). Her 220 movies also include Coming Apart (1969), The Sting (1973), The Way We Were (1973), Cold Feet (1989), Best of the Best (1989), Revenge (1990), JFK (1991), Edtv (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Coffee Date (2006) and Archaeology of a Woman (2012). In the past couple of years, she has starred in Buddy Solitaire (2016), Gnaw (2017), and The Most Hated Woman in America (2017) co-starring with Melissa Leo and Peter Fonda. And coming out soon, she has starred in Sarah Q (2018), Cuck (2019), Invincible (2020) and Hope for the Holidays (2020). She was nominated for Best Actress in a television movie by the Hollywood Foreign Press for The Haunted (1991). Her television credits include: guest starring on Criminal Minds (2005), and recurring roles on Head Case (2007) and The Simple Life (2003). She guest starred on Resurrection Blvd. (2000) and in the television movie Another Woman's Husband (2000).
Sally had a recurring role on Felicity (1998) and starred in the NBC movie Brave New World (1998). She also starred in the television episode Song of Songs (1994), and was a series regular on the television series Valley of the Dolls (1994). She also co-starred in the television movie The Woman Who Loved Elvis (1993). She had a recurring role as Barbara Healy in the original Roseanne (1988) series. She starred in the television movie Heat Wave (1990), and recurred as Tracy on Days of Our Lives (1965). Sally is also an exhibited painter, poet, renowned acting coach and ordained minister.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Jacqueline Bisset has been an international film star since the late '60s. She received her first roles mainly because of her stunning beauty, but over time she has become a fine actress respected by fans and critics alike. Bisset has worked with directors John Huston, François Truffaut, George Cukor and Roman Polanski. Her co-stars have included Anthony Quinn, Paul Newman, Nick Nolte, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Kenneth Branagh and Marcello Mastroianni.
Her somewhat French-sounding name has led many to assume that she is from France, but she was brought up in England and had to study to learn French. Her mother was French and was an attorney before being married. As a child Jacqueline studied ballet. During her teenage years her father left the family when her mother was diagnosed with disseminating sclerosis; Jacqueline worked as a model to support her ailing mother and eventually her parents divorced, an experience she has said she considered character-strengthening. She took an early interest in film, and her modeling career helped pay for acting lessons.
In 1967 Bisset gained her first critical attention in Two for the Road (1967), and that same year appeared in the popular James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967), playing Miss Goodthighs. In 1968 her career got a boost when Mia Farrow unexpectedly dropped out of the shooting of The Detective (1968); Farrow's marriage to co-star Frank Sinatra was on the rocks, and her role was eventually given to Bisset, who received special billing in the film's credits. In the following year she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Most Promising Newcomer for The Sweet Ride (1968) and gained even more attention playing opposite Steve McQueen in the popular action film Bullitt (1968). In 1970 she was featured in the star-studded disaster film Airport (1970) and had the main role in The Grasshopper (1970). Then she co-starred with Alan Alda in the well-reviewed but commercially underperforming horror movie, The Mephisto Waltz (1971). In 1973 she became recognized in Europe as a serious actress when she played the lead in Truffaut's Day for Night (1973). However, it would be several years before her talents would be taken seriously in the US. Though she scored another domestic hit with Murder on the Orient Express (1974), her part in it, as had often been the case, was decorative. She did appear to good effect in Believe in Me (1971), Le Magnifique (1973), The Sunday Woman (1975) and St. Ives (1976).
Jacqueline's stunning looks and figure made quite a splash in The Deep (1977). Her underwater swimming scenes in that movie inspired the worldwide wet T-shirt craze, and Newsweek magazine declared her "the most beautiful film actress of all time." The film's producer, Peter Guber, said "That T-shirt made me a rich man." However, she hated the wet T-shirt scenes because she felt exploited. At the time of filming she was not told that the filmmakers would shoot the scenes in such a provocative way, and she felt tricked. On the plus side, the huge success of the picture made Bisset officially bankable. She was next seen in high-profile roles in The Greek Tycoon (1978), a thinly disguised fictionalization of the marriage of Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis, and Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in a Comedy.
In the early '80s, Bisset starred in the box office disasters When Time Ran Out... (1980) and Inchon (1981), but her well-received turn opposite Candice Bergen in Rich and Famous (1981) between those two films helped gain her recognition as a serious actress from American audiences. She rebounded neatly with Class (1983) and Under the Volcano (1984), getting a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actress for the latter. She also earned praise for her work in the excellent made-for-cable WWII drama Forbidden (1984), then appeared on network TV in adaptations of Anna Karenina (1985) with Christopher Reeve and Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story (1987) with Armand Assante. In 1989 she co-starred in the raunchy yet witty comedy Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989) and the erotic thriller Wild Orchid (1989), neither of which fared too well, but her output remained consistent. As she transitioned seamlessly out of her ingenue years, smaller-scale productions such as CrimeBroker (1993) and Leave of Absence (1994) would provide Bisset with plum roles, even if they went largely unseen.
In 1996 she was nominated for a César Award, the French equivalent of the Oscar, for her performance in Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie (1995). She held roles in period pieces like Dangerous Beauty (1998), as well as the Biblical epics Jesus (1999) and In the Beginning (2000). Other notable credits included the miniseries Joan of Arc (1999) alongside Leelee Sobieski, which gained her an Emmy nomination, and The Sleepy Time Gal (2001), which premiered at Sundance but unfortunately was not picked up for theatrical distribution. In 2005 Jacqueline was back on the big screen, playing Keira Knightley's mother in the Domino Harvey biopic Domino (2005) for Tony Scott. In 2006 she appeared in the fourth season of Nip/Tuck (2003) as the ruthless extortionist "James." Bisset then turned in strong performances in Boaz Yakin's disturbing independent drama Death in Love (2008) and the telepic An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving (2008), garnering accolades for both. In 2013 she appeared in BBC's program Dancing on the Edge (2013), for which she finally won her first Golden Globe. She followed that up with the movies Welcome to New York (2014) with Gérard Depardieu and Miss You Already (2015) with Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette.
2016 saw the long-awaited release of Linda Yellen's comedy The Last Film Festival (2016), where Jacqueline was a riot as a washed-up Italian diva alongside Dennis Hopper in his final role. Since then she's kept busy on the indie circuit, appearing in Backstabbing for Beginners (2018) with Ben Kingsley, Here and Now (2018) with Sarah Jessica Parker, and Asher (2018) with Ron Perlman and Famke Janssen, as well as the Amazon original movie Birds of Paradise (2021) and a title role in Loren & Rose (2022).
Bisset has never married, but has been involved in long-term romantic relationships with Canadian actor Michael Sarrazin, Moroccan entrepreneur Victor Drai, Russian ballet dancer Alexander Godunov, Swiss actor Vincent Perez and Turkish martial arts instructor Emin Boztepe. She continues to make numerous films, and frequently participates in film festivals and award ceremonies around the world.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Matthew Perry was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, to Suzanne Marie (Langford), a Canadian journalist, and John Bennett Perry, an American actor. His ancestry includes English, Irish, German, Swiss-German, and French-Canadian.
Perry was raised in Ottawa, Ontario, where he became a top-ranked junior tennis player in Canada. However, after moving to Los Angeles at the age of 15 to live with his father, he became more interested in acting. In addition to performing in several high school stage productions, he remained an avid tennis player. Perry ranked 17th nationally in the junior singles category and third in the doubles category. Upon graduating from high school, Perry intended to enroll at the University of Southern California. However, when he was offered a leading role on the television series, Boys Will Be Boys (1987), he seized the opportunity to begin his acting career.
Perry appeared in the hit comedy film The Whole Nine Yards (2000), as the neighbor of a hit man, played by Bruce Willis. His other feature film credits included Fools Rush In (1997), A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988), She's Out of Control (1989) and Parallel Lives (1994). He also co-starred with Chris Farley in the buddy comedy Almost Heroes (1998) and in the romantic comedy, Three to Tango (1999), opposite Neve Campbell. Perry resided in Los Angeles. He enjoyed playing ice hockey and softball in his spare time.- Actress
- Producer
- Executive
Principal is the elder daughter of Ree (née Veal) and Victor Rocco Principal. Her paternal grandparents were Italian, while her mother's family was from Gordon, Georgia, and South Carolina. Her father, a United States Air Force sergeant, was often transferred to different duty stations, so the family constantly moved, and Victoria grew up in London, Florida, Puerto Rico, Massachusetts, and Georgia, among other places. She and her sister attended 17 different schools. Victoria's acting career began when she made a commercial at age five, and she began modeling in high school. She enrolled at Miami-Dade Community College, and wanted to study chiropractic medicine. However, being seriously injured in a car crash at age 18 made her refocus her energy on her love of acting. She moved to New York City, where she worked as a model and actress. She then studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and moved to Los Angeles, California in 1971.
Her first film was as a Mexican mistress in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), starring Paul Newman. Four years later, she became so disappointed with her career that she quit acting and spent the next three years working as an agent. In 1978, she planned on going to law school and later become a studio executive, but Aaron Spelling offered her a year's tuition to accept a role in the pilot of Fantasy Island (1977). She agreed, and soon after that, she landed the role of Pamela Barnes Ewing on CBS' long-running soap opera Dallas (1978). She left the series after nine years, and began her own production company, Victoria Principal Productions. She continues to work as an actress and producer, and has also created a line of skin care products and written three books about beauty and skin-care.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Julie Brown is an American actress, comedian, screen/television writer, singer-songwriter, and director. After moving away from her hometown of Van Nuys (aka "The Valley"), Julie began her career as a comedian in the clubs of San Francisco. After returning to Los Angeles, she immediately started working as an actress and writer.
After guest-starring in sitcoms, like "Laverne & Shirley," "The Jeffersons," "Newhart," and "Quantum Leap," Julie added singing to her act, producing her own EP with the hit songs "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gone" and "Earth Girls Are Easy"- which through a stroke of show business luck became a movie she co-wrote and starred in (along with Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, and Jim Carrey). She also starred in and wrote the comedy show "Just Say Julie" for MTV and created a satire Madonna mockumentary for Showtime called "Medusa: Dare to be Truthful," which won her the Writers Guild award for Best Comedy Special. During this same time, Julie also co-created the FOX sketch comedy series, "The Edge," starring herself and Jennifer Aniston.
Julie was then cast as Ms. Stoeger in the movie "Clueless" and went on to write, direct, and star on the series version of "Clueless," which ran for three seasons. Julie also starred in and created "Strip Mall" for Comedy Central for two seasons. In addition, Julie co-wrote the Disney Channel original movie mega-hit "Camp Rock," which launched the careers of Demi Lovato and The Jonas Brothers. Julie was later a writer on the Kevin Hart series "The Big House." Julie also wrote multiple episodes of "Melissa and Joey," where she recurred as a guest star. Julie also had a recurring role on ABC's "The Middle" and was a guest judge on "RuPaul's Drag Race."
Julie has voiced many fan-favorite animated characters for TV and film, including "Animaniacs," "Batman," "Pinky and the Brain," and "A Goofy Movie."
Currently, Julie is working on a sequel to "Medusa," as well as "Earth Girls are Easy: The Musical," and her first Young Adult novel.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Antonio Sabato Jr. was born on 29 February 1972 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He is an actor and producer, known for The Big Hit (1998), The Three Stooges (2012) and Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas (2009). He was previously married to Cheryl Moana Marie Nunes and Tully Jensen.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
David Hasselhoff has become one of the most recognizable faces on television and throughout the world. Aside from starring in Knight Rider (1982) and Baywatch (1989), he is also an accomplished singer and popular recording artist.
David Michael Hasselhoff was born on July 17, 1952 in Baltimore, Maryland, to Dolores Therese (Mullinex) and Joe Hasselhoff (Joseph Vincent Hasselhoff), a business executive. He is of German (from his paternal grandfather), English, and Irish descent. The acting bug first hit when David was seven and so he took acting, singing and dancing lessons. He was very shy off stage in front of girls because he was tall and thin, but when he was on stage he was in his element. Due to his father's work, his family (he has four sisters) moved around frequently. He initially thought his career was going to go in the direction of musicals and Broadway.
American audiences first came to know Hasselhoff when he portrayed the popular "Dr. Snapper Foster" for six seasons on CBS's soap opera, The Young and the Restless (1973). Lured by NBC's Brandon Tartikoff to move from daytime to prime time, Hasselhoff went on to star as "Michael Knight" in NBC's hit series Knight Rider (1982). The role garnered him a "People's Choice Award" for most popular actor and the show became a huge success overseas. The success of Knight Rider (1982) resulted in Hasselhoff's first major international following. When the show ended, Hasselhoff launched a successful recording career in Europe. In 1989, "Looking for Freedom" remained in the number one spot on the German charts for eight consecutive weeks. He has continued to perform regularly in concert and has released nine albums to date.
Hasselhoff returned to episodic television as Mitch Buchannon on Baywatch (1989) when the show debuted on NBC in 1989. Though it enjoyed good ratings, the network canceled the series after only one season. Undeterred, Hasselhoff and his partners acquired the rights to the show and, based on Hasselhoff's popularity overseas, they were able to secure financing and revive "Baywatch" in 1991. Now a piece of American pop culture and an international television phenomenon, Baywatch (1989) was at its peak seen in 140 countries by over one billion viewers each week. During his lengthy career, Hasselhoff has flexed his acting muscles in numerous other projects. He starred in the epic miniseries Shaka Zulu (1986), shot on-location in Morocco.
Hasselhoff is an outdoor sports enthusiast whose interests include scuba diving, hiking, white water rafting, tennis, and jogging. In addition, he has parachuted with the US Army Parachute Demonstration Team, The Golden Knights, and flown with the US Navy's Blue Angels. He is an avid sports fan, and has attended the World Cup Soccer Finals, the NBA Finals, the Olympics, the Indy 500, and the Kentucky Derby. Hasselhoff has traveled throughout Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean. He spends many hours visiting children's hospitals throughout the world. His charity, "Race For Life", works with the terminally ill and handicapped children in America.
He was married to the beautiful actress Pamela Bach-Hasselhoff, with whom he has two daughters, Taylor-Ann and Hayley Amber.- Actress
- Producer
Internationally recognized actress, Pamela Bach-Hasselhoff is the recipient of Germany's Otto Award (in recognition of her status as one of Germany's favorite actresses). Pamela is among just a handful of actresses who have done two television series, concurrently. This multi-talented actress learned how to balance her successful career as well as her personal life. She starred in the motion picture, Castle Rock (2000), with Ernest Borgnine and Alana Austin, Wolf Larson and Frank Gorshin for "TAG Entertainment" (Show Time), under the direction of Craig Clyde. Pamela starred in the comedy, "The Sicilian Bachelor", as "Millian Black" at the American Renegade Theatre in the NoHo Arts District of Los Angeles.
Pamela is best-known for her roles on Baywatch (1989) and Sirens (1993). Pamela managed to create two significant different characters and make them believable on these two series for several seasons (10 years on "Baywatch"). As "Kaye Morgan", she portrayed a cafe owner on "Baywatch" who stays in the mix of things and always lends a helping hand when she feels the necessity. On "Sirens", she portrayed "Ellen Baskin", the top ranking police psychologist, candid and to the point. Up until the final season ago, she was a frequent flyer between the beaches of Los Angeles, to the city of Montreal.
She starred in the motion picture, More Than Puppy Love (2002) (Show Time), that was shot entirely on location in Kansas City, with Diane Ladd, and in a motion picture, Route 66 (1998), in which she starred as the Stepmother, with an all-star cast that includes Diane Ladd, Alana Austin, Richard Moll, Mat McCoy and Bruce Weitz, under the direction of Steve Austin and written and produced by Shauna Leigh Austin.
Pamela made her motion picture debut when legendary director Francis Ford Coppola went to Oklahoma to shoot the hit film, Rumble Fish (1983), co-starring Matt Dillon, Vincent Spano and Mickey Rourke. He auditioned the locals for the other roles and she was hired. Encouraged by professionals about her abilities, she decided to relocate to Los Angeles. To make an income and to continue her education while pursuing her career, Pamela worked as a page on several popular hit series. After a year in California, she moved to New York to pursue her first love, the theatre. Immediately she signed with the Ford Petite Modeling Agency and, shortly thereafter, became one of the top petite models in the Big Apple, and soon adorned the covers of magazines. She co-starred off-Broadway in "Crimes of the Heart" and continued to study and act in various plays for the next two years. Comedy became one of Pamela's foundations, she worked with Joe Piscopo for over two years which included: stage, concert and night club appearances, television specials and guest appearances on the major talk show. She was polishing her craft as Piscopo's side-kick. Then, she landed a special with George Burns, on her own. With Burns, Pamela learned several tricks of the trade and fine-tuned her timing.
Returning to Los Angeles, she accomplished becoming a working actress, guest-starring on several TV shows, specials, MOWs, including George Burns Comedy Week (1985), Cheers (1982), The Young and the Restless (1973), The Fall Guy (1981), Superboy (1988), The Joe Piscopo New Jersey Special (1986), True Confessions (1981), T.J. Hooker (1982), Knight Rider (1982), etc. She starred in several plays, including "Dora", "I Remember Mama" and "Lilion", to name a few. Pamela co-starred in the motion picture, The Appointment (1982) and The Men's Club (1986). Hailing from Tulsa, Oklahoma, she is the middle child of three sisters. Her mother and stepfather were ideal role models and unique parents; they raised 37 foster children throughout the years. Actually, Pamela's performing debut occurred at age nine, when she sang "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" and realized that she loved the stage. Pamela completed two years as an engineering major at Northeastern Oklahoma Junior College and she is an accredited lifeguard, an avid diver (certified scuba diver), skier as well as a top marksman.
Pamela is a working actress/producer... also being a mother of two daughters... as well as president of her own production company.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Kathleen Quinlan was born in Pasadena, California, the only child of Josephine (Zachry), a military-supply supervisor, and Robert Quinlan, a television sports director. She grew up in Mill Valley, Ca, and got her break in acting when George Lucas came to her high school to cast for his movie American Graffiti (1973). She followed up her one-line role four years later with Lifeguard (1976), and then several roles in the late 1970s and 1980s. Her breakthrough performance came in 1977, as Deborah in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977). She was nominated for an Academy Award in 1995 for Apollo 13 (1995). She starred in the TV series Family Law (1999), but her contract stipulated that she could not work later than 6 pm, so she could be home with her husband Bruce Abbott, son [error] (b. October 17, 1990), and stepson Dalton Abbott (b. October 4, 1989). She currently works in television and film.- Actor
- Director
While still in his teens, Bruce Abbott discovered the thrill and fulfillment of acting, and followed his dreams to Hollywood. Over the past 20 years, he's made a name for himself as a Dark Prince, excelling in roles that show the duality of human nature in such films as Re-Animator (1985) and Summer Heat (1987) and the TV series, Dark Justice (1991).- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Lisa Deanna Rinna was born on July 11, 1963 in Newport Beach, California and raised in Medford, Oregon to Lois Rinna & Frank Rinna, she has an older half-sister: Nancy Rinna. As an actress, she is best known for her roles as Billie Reed on the NBC daytime soap opera, Days of Our Lives (1965) and Taylor McBride on Fox's television drama, Melrose Place (1992). Since 2014, Rinna has been a cast member on Bravo's hit reality television series, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (2010). Other television credits include being a contestant on NBC's The Celebrity Apprentice and ABC's Dancing with the Stars, as well as guest-starring roles on Entourage, The Middle, Veronica Mars, Community & 8 Simple Rules. Rinna made her Broadway debut in Chicago as Roxie Hart on June 2007. She was the host of Soapnet's talk show, SoapTalk (2002) for which she earned four Emmy nominations for Outstanding Talk Show Host. Rinna has also written three books: Starlit, The Big, Fun, Sexy Sex Book and The New York Times best-seller Rinnavation. Her other ventures include a fashion line for QVC named The Lisa Rinna Collection and the cosmetics collection Rinna Beauty.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Patrick Wayne Swayze was born on August 18, 1952 in Houston, Texas, to Patsy Swayze (née Yvonne Helen Karnes), a choreographer, and Jesse Wayne Swayze, a chemical plant engineer draftsman. His mother owned a dance school in Houston, where Patrick was also a student. His father passed away in 1982. He graduated from Waltrip High School in Houston, and attended San Jacinto College in Pasadena, Texas. He married actress/dancer Lisa Niemi on June 12, 1975, whom he had known when she was 15 and a student at his mother's dance school. His New York City dance training included the Harkness Ballet School and Joffrey Ballet School. He first danced professionally as "Prince Charming" in "Disney on Parade". After a stint as "Danny Zuko" in the original Broadway production of "Grease", he made his film debut with a small role in Skatetown U.S.A. (1979). He made his television debut in 1981 on M*A*S*H (1972), as a soldier diagnosed with leukemia.
After many supporting roles in films and a lead role in the TV mini-series North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985), he landed his breakthrough role as dance instructor "Johnny Castle" in the hit film Dirty Dancing (1987), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. He received a second nomination for his portrayal of "Sam Wheat" in the blockbuster Ghost (1990). Ghost (1990) was the highest-grossing film of 1990, and at one point, the fourth highest-grossing film of all time. Unfortunately, he did not capitalize on its success. His subsequent films like City of Joy (1992), Tall Tale (1995), Black Dog (1998), and Waking Up in Reno (2002) did not fare well with critics or audiences. In December 2003, he returned to Broadway as a replacement for the lead role of "Billy Flynn" in the acclaimed revival of John Kander & Fred Ebb's musical, "Chicago". The production also went on tour in several cities of the United States, including Los Angeles. In January 2008, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He fought the illness for well over a year and was able to continue working, but died on September 14, 2009.- Actress
- Director
- Additional Crew
Lisa Niemi was born on 26 May 1956 in Houston, Texas, USA. She is an actress and director, known for One Last Dance (2003), She's Having a Baby (1988) and Super Force (1990). She has been married to Albert DePrisco since 25 May 2014. She was previously married to Patrick Swayze.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Her father is Tariq Anwar and her mother is Shireen Anwar. Anwar attended Laleham Church of England Primary and Middle School from 1975 to 1982. Trinian's sketch in the school concert of 1982 gave an early indication of her theatrical leanings. She studied at the London drama and dance school, "Italia Conti". She appeared in many British television productions before making her film debut in Manifesto (1988).
Her first American movie was If Looks Could Kill (1991), in which she played the daughter of a murdered British Agent (played by Roger Daltrey). In 1992, she made a guest appearance on Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) as "Tricia Kinney". She followed that with the films, Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken (1991) (inspired by "A Girl and Five Brave Horses"), Scent of a Woman (1992), Body Snatchers (1993), For Love or Money (1993) and The Three Musketeers (1993). In 1994, People magazine named her one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. One of her most memorable moments on screen came in 1992's Scent of a Woman (1992), when she danced a tango with Al Pacino, whose character was blind.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Actor/director/producer Eriq La Salle is best known to worldwide television audiences for his award-winning portrayal of the commanding Dr. Peter Benton on the critically acclaimed and history-making medical drama ER. Educated at Juilliard and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, his credits range from Broadway to film roles opposite Eddie Murphy in Coming to America and Robin Williams in One Hour Photo and Hugh Jackman in Logan. La Salle has maintained a prolific acting career while at the same time working steadily as a director, taking the helm for HBO, Showtime, NBC, Fox and CBS. He remains a valued member of the Dick Wolf Entertainment camp after 4 years as Executive Producer and director on Chicago PD in addition to directing episodes of Law & Order, and Law and Order Organized Crime. As a writer, La Salle is the author of several critically acclaimed thrillers published in 2022 and 2023-Laws of Depravity, Laws of Wrath, and Laws of Annihilation. He has also written an episode of The Twilight Zone which made WGA's list of 101 Best Written TV Series. He lives in Los Angeles, California- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Cuba Gooding Jr. was born on January 2, 1968, in The Bronx, New York. His mother, Shirley (Sullivan), was a backup singer for The Sweethearts. His father, Cuba Gooding, was the lead vocalist for the R&B group The Main Ingredient, which had a hit with the song "Everybody Plays The Fool". His paternal grandfather was from Barbados.
Cuba's father moved the family to Los Angeles in 1972, only to leave them a few years later. Despite this setback, Cuba was able to maintain a positive outlook and overachieved throughout school. He attended four different high schools and was elected class president in three of them. While at high school, Cuba met and fell in love with Sara Kapfer, whom he later lived with for seven years before tying the knot in March 1994.
Following high school, Cuba studied Japanese martial arts for three years before turning his focus toward acting. Early on, he landed guest starring roles on shows like Hill Street Blues (1981) and MacGyver (1985). His first major role was in the 1991 box office surprise Boyz n the Hood (1991). He followed this success with supporting roles in major films like A Few Good Men (1992), Lightning Jack (1994) and Outbreak (1995).
In 1996, Cuba was cast as an arrogant but loyal football player in the Tom Cruise-Cameron Crowe film Jerry Maguire (1996). The film became a huge box office smash and earned Cuba an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His "Show Me The Money" line in the movie became a nationwide catchphrase. The role elevated him to superstar status, as many of Hollywood's top producers began to "show him the money" to appear in their films.
Since Jerry Maguire (1996), Cuba has managed to keep busy with a wide range of roles alongside many of Hollywood's biggest stars. Most recently, he won critical support for his portrayal of a mentally handicapped man in the heartwarming film Radio (2003), another movie about football. In 2002, he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
He resides in Studio City, California.- Harry Glassman was born in 1943. He was previously married to Victoria Principal and Jane Louise Rubins.
- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Phil Hartman was born Philip Edward Hartmann on September 24, 1948, in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. His surname was originally "Hartmann", but he later dropped the second "n". He was one of eight children of Doris Marguerite (Wardell) and Rupert Loebig Hartmann, a salesman. He was of German, Irish, and English descent. The family moved to the United States when Phil was around ten, and he spent the majority of his childhood in Connecticut and Southern California. He later obtained his American citizenship in the early 1990s. He often would visit his homeland of Canada throughout his career, and the City of Brantford even erected a plaque on the Walk of Fame in the town in honor of Phil's career and memory. The Humber College Comedy: Writing & Performance program in Toronto, Ontario, also has an award in Phil's memory that is given out to their Post-Graduate comedy students.
Phil originally studied Graphic Design at California State University. He began to work part time as a graphic artist, designing album covers for such bands as Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (see Crosby Stills Nash & Young) and Poco. In 1975, alongside doing album work, Phil joined the California comedy troupe, The Groundlings. While in The Groundlings, Phil worked with Paul Reubens and Jon Lovitz, who became good friends of his until his death. Phil and Paul created the character Pee Wee Herman together, and Phil even had a role on Pee-wee's Playhouse (1986) as pirate Captin' Carl.
In 1986, Phil joined the cast of Saturday Night Live (1975) and was on the show for a record of 8 seasons (which was later broken by Tim Meadows). Phil played a wide range of characters including: Frank Sinatra, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Ed McMahon, Barbara Bush, and many others. He was known to help out other writers who wanted to get their sketches read and onto the show. He held Saturday Night Live (1975) together during his 8-year reign, thus the nickname he garnered while on the show, "The Glue." Phil was also known for his voice work on commercials and cartoons. He was probably most well known for the voices of Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz on the animated comedy The Simpsons (1989). He also provided other minor voices for The Simpsons (1989). Phil left Saturday Night Live (1975) in 1994, and in 1995, was cast in the critically acclaimed NBC show NewsRadio (1995) as arrogant radio show host Bill McNeal.
After Phil's death, Phil's good friend Jon Lovitz attempted to fill the void as Max Lewis on NewsRadio (1995), but the struggling show's ratings dropped, and the show later fizzled out and ended in 1999. Phil had an interesting career in movies, mostly playing supporting characters. He was the lead in Houseguest (1995) and was also in Greedy (1994), Jingle All the Way (1996), Sgt. Bilko (1996), and his last live action film, Small Soldiers (1998). His last role was the English language dub of Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), as the quick-witted cat Jiji, which featured Small Soldiers co-star Kirsten Dunst in the lead voice role.
On May 28th, 1998, Phil was shot to death while sleeping in his Encino, California home by his wife, Brynn Hartman. Brynn left the house and later came back with a friend to show him Phil's body. When her friend went to call 911, Brynn locked herself in the bedroom with Phil's lifeless body and shot herself. It was later discovered by the coroner that Brynn had alcohol, cocaine, and the antidepressant, Zoloft, in her system. They left behind two children, Sean Edward (b. 1988) and Birgen (b. 1992). Phil and Brynn's bodies were cremated and spread upon Catalina Island, just off the coast of California, on June 4, 1998. Phil had specifically stated in his will that he wanted the ashes spread on Catalina Island because it was his favorite holiday getaway as he was an avid boater, surfer and general lover of the sea.
Phil was a very caring and sensitive person and was described as "very sweet and kind of quiet."- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Actor
Lawrence Bender is a movie producer working in the entertainment industry for 20 years. He helped produce Hollywood films like Reservoir Dogs (1992), Good Will Hunting (1997), Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django (2012). Lawrence won 6 Academy Awards with 29 nominations including 3 Best Picture films. An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary he produced that raised awareness of climate change and won him an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Lawrence Bender was born in The Bronx, New York City, as Lawrence Kirk Bender. His mother was a kindergarten teacher. Lawrence's father was a college history professor. In high school, he was inspired to follow his grandfather's career as a civil engineer. At the University of Maine in 1979, he graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering. After he graduated, he became a dancer for several years which ended after an injury. Lawrence is a political and environmental activist as the co-founder of the Detroit Project. In 2003 he worked with environmentalists in targeting gas-guzzling SUVs. As the Dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, he sits on the Advisory Board. Lawrence has used his influence to support philanthropic initiatives working with Yahoo, the Muppets, the EPA, and Wal-Mart. He is a Director for CleanSource Power, LLC and a board member of The Creative Coalition Inc.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
David Alan Grier was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Aretas Ruth (Dudley), a schoolteacher, and William Henry Grier, a psychiatrist and writer. He trained in Shakespeare at Yale University, where he received an MFA from the Yale School of Drama.
Grier began his professional career on Broadway as Jackie Robinson in "The First", for which he earned a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and won the Theatre World Award (1981). He then joined the Broadway cast of "Dreamgirls", before going on to star opposite Denzel Washington in "A Soldier's Play", for which both actors reprised their roles in the film adaptation titled A Soldier's Story (1984). He appeared in Robert Altman's Streamers (1983) as "Roger", a role for which he won the Golden Lion for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival (1983).
His television work is highlighted by a turn as a principal cast member on the Emmy Award-winning In Living Color (1990) (1990-1994), where he helped to create some of the show's most memorable characters, "DAG" (2000-2001) and "Life with Bonnie" (2002-2004), for which he earned Image and Golden Satellite nominations. David also created, wrote and executive-produced a show for Comedy Central called Chocolate News (2008). Grier also won America's votes as a smooth, debonair, and outrageously irreverent contestant on ABC's smash hit, Dancing with the Stars (2005), in 2009. But Grier didn't hang up his dance shoes just then - he later appeared in the Wayans Brothers' spoof movie, Dance Flick (2009), which hit theaters in May 2009.
In Grier's first book, "Barack Like Me: The Chocolate Covered Truth" (Touchstone / Simon & Schuster; October 6, 2009), the acclaimed comedian expounds on politics, culture and race while recounting his own life story in this edgy, timely, timeless, and hilarious memoir and look at all things Barack Obama.
Grier returned to his theatrical roots 2009/2010; he starred in David Mamet's acclaimed play, "Race", opposite James Spader and Kerry Washington, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway for which he received a Tony Award nomination.
He has been named one of Comedy Central's "100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time".- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
After this feisty, highly offbeat actress from Chattanooga, Tennessee, broke into TV in the 1980s, she immediately set herself apart from the norm with a prime role as new owner Bud Cort's female friend in the bizarre mini-movie Bates Motel (1987). This rather inauspicious beginning would also set Lori Petty off on a career as a kinetic fighter and a misfit, types for which she would be best known.
Lori was born on October 14, 1963, and spent her childhood traveling the US with her father, a Pentecostal minister. Her keen talents first lent themselves toward being a graphic artist in Omaha, Nebraska, but an impulsive desire to act quickly took precedence and soon she was off to New York, where she took acting classes and pounded the pavement for jobs.
Going nowhere fast, she eventually headed for Los Angeles and finally found an "in". Following a number of mediocre TV roles, she won a bit of attention on the short-lived series Booker (1989) as a lippy secretary, then hit pay dirt in secondary roles as an outrageous Cyndi Lauper wannabe in Cadillac Man (1990) and as Patrick Swayze's ex-girlfriend/waitress who hooks up with Keanu Reeves in Point Break (1991).
It looked like mainstream stardom might happen for the tomboy actress, especially after getting cast as Geena Davis' bratty baseball-playing sister in the highly successful A League of Their Own (1992). However, while Lori proved to be an intriguing, kooky sort, she also proved more difficult to cast. Such disparate roles as a kind-hearted animal trainer in Free Willy (1993) and the sole female recruit in Pauly Shore's inane comedy In the Army Now (1994) only proved the point.
She seemed bent towards playing scrappy, hard-edged figures alongside the big action guys but started off on the wrong foot when she was replaced by Sandra Bullock in Sylvester Stallone's Demolition Man (1993) due to "artistic differences". She did play a lone female cop in the thriller The Glass Shield (1994), then found her true calling as the bizarre cartoon heroine Tank Girl (1995), which was billed as "a post-apocalyptic comedy." Playing along the same hard lines, Lori portrayed an FBI agent who teams up with a Tokyo policewoman Yûki Amami in the crime thriller Countdown (1996); played a butch lesbian in the social comedy Relax... It's Just Sex (1998); and an aggressive, tough-talking stripper at odds with the Mafia in the potboiler The Arrangement (1999). She ended the decade on TV as Max, a motel clerk, in the crime drama fantasy series Brimstone (1998).
Into the millennium, the crop-haired, tough-as-nails actress continued to take it to the limit. Following roles in the action films Firetrap (2001) and Route 666 (2001), Lori co-starred alongside the similarly tough-styled Gina Gershon in Prey for Rock & Roll (2003) as members of a punk rock band. She later starred in the creature vs. human horror opus Cryptid (2006); had a small part (First Murderer) in a contemporary Hollywood updating of Shakespeare's Richard III (2007); a deputy in the cross-country sports movie Chasing 3000 (2010); a doctor in the horror thriller Dead Awake (2016); a starring role as a lady Marine in Fear, Love, and Agoraphobia (2018); and a campy role in the low-budget horror flick A Deadly Legend (2020).
On TV, Lori would be seen as a guest in such shows as "The Beast," "NYPD Blue," "CSI: NY," "Masters of Horror," "House," "Prison Break," "Hawaii Five-0," and, more notably, in the recurring and amusing role of loony, paranoiac Lolly in the women's prison series Orange Is the New Black (2013). On the other side of the camera, the still-single Lori wrote and directed the film The Poker House (2008) starring Jennifer Lawrence, a re-dramatization of Lori's teenage years in Iowa. The film earned awards at the Los Angeles Film Festival- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Costume Designer
- Producer
Giorgio Armani was born on 11 July 1934 in Piacenza, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. He is a costume designer and producer, known for Elysium (2013), The Dark Knight (2008) and American Gigolo (1980).- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Ross Kemp was born on July 21, 1964 in Barking, Essex, England. His mother, Jean, was a hairdresser and his father, John, was a policeman with the Metropolitan Police force. He has a brother named Darren who is a documentary producer for the BBC.
Ross attended Shenfield High School, where he is remembered as an excellent athlete. He wanted to be an actor from a young age and went on to study drama at the Webber Douglas Academy. He has rarely been out of work since leaving the academy in 1985, appearing on stage, in films, on television and in various adverts.
His first credited television appearance was in 1986, playing Graham Lodsworth in "Emmerdale Farm" (now "Emmerdale"). His most famous role to date was his award-winning portrayal of hardman Grant Mitchell in the popular BBC series "EastEnders".- Actress
- Make-Up Department
- Producer
Deborah Anne Mazar Corcos (born August 13, 1964) is an American actress and television personality, known for playing sharp-tongued women. She began her career with supporting roles in Goodfellas (1990), Little Man Tate (1991) and Singles (1992), followed by lead roles on the legal drama series Civil Wars and L.A. Law.
Beginning in 2014, she has had a starring role in the Cooking Channel series, Extra Virgin, along with her husband Gabriele Corcos. She is also known for her role as press agent Shauna Roberts on the HBO series Entourage and stars as Maggie Amato on TV Land's Younger.
Mazar was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York City, the daughter of Nancy and Harry Mazar. Her father was born in the Latvian SSR, Soviet Union, to a Jewish family, but raised Roman Catholic. She had no knowledge of her father's ancestry until her twenties. Mazar's parents annulled their marriage shortly after she was born, and she spent her early life in the country in upstate New York with her mother. As a teenager, she relocated to Long Island, where she lived with her godparents.
Mazar worked various odd jobs, including selling jewelry at Fiorucci with Linda Ramone and Joey Arias, later as a dental assistant, and at a nightclub.
While working at Danceteria, Mazar met Madonna. She hired Mazar to do her makeup for the music video for "Everybody". She also originated the hair and makeup for the play Speed-the-Plow.
Mazar began her career as a hip hop b-girl in New York City. Her first television appearance was on the pilot for a hip hop television dance show, Graffiti Rock in 1984. She appeared in five of Madonna's music videos - "Papa Don't Preach", "True Blue" (both 1986), "Justify My Love" (1990), "Deeper and Deeper" (1992) and "Music" (2000).
Mazar has played a number of minor supporting roles in a variety of films, including Sandy, a friend of Henry Hill's mistress in Goodfellas (1990); The Doors (1991); a small role in Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992); Bullets Over Broadway (1994); and as Spice (of Sugar and Spice, with Drew Barrymore as Sugar) in Batman Forever (1995). She gained her first real following from playing a character on Civil Wars in the early 1990s. When that series was can-celled her character was brought over as a recurring role between 1993 and 1994 season of the TV drama L.A. Law.
She played the villain Regina, a modern-day Cruella de Vil, in the family film Beethoven's 2nd (1993). She has appeared in independent films Inside Monkey Zetterland and Nowhere and her short-lived sitcom, Temporarily Yours. She appeared as the genie in the Space Monkeys' music video, "Sugarcane".
Mazar appeared on a Friends episode in its eighth season ("The One Where Rachel Has a Baby, Part One"). Mazar played "Doreen, the Evil Bitch," a crazed pregnant woman who shares a hospital room with Rachel. In the 1999 docudrama film The Insider she played character Lowell Bergman's assistant Debi. From 2000-02 she played Jackie on the television drama That's Life. She provided the voice of Maria Latore in the video games Grand Theft Auto III (2001) and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004).
From 2004 to 2011, she had a supporting role on Entourage as press agent Shauna Roberts. She also had a recurring role on the sitcom Living with Fran, playing Fran Drescher's character's cousin, Merrill. She did a two-episode stint on the television series Ugly Betty as fraudster Leah Stillman.
Mazar was a contestant on the ninth season of Dancing With the Stars. She was partnered with Maksim Chmerkovskiy and finished in twelfth place. She was eliminated in the third week (October 6, 2009). In 2012, Mazar played Jessica, a glamorous, leather-clad villainies in Home Alone: The Holiday Heist.
Mazar began appearing on a Cooking Channel cooking/reality show television series in January 2011. She, her husband Gabriele Corcos, and their two daughters star in the series, which depicts their lives, and showcases their own recipes. The show is scripted. The show has had four seasons as of June 2014. In 2015, Mazar and her husband started another series on the Cooking Channel entitled Extra Virgin Americana where they travel the U.S., road trip style, with their children and family friend searching for great food.
Beginning in 2015, Mazar has starred in Younger with Sutton Foster and Hilary Duff as Maggie. The series met critical acclaim and began filming its fifth season in February 2018.
Mazar appeared in the 2nd season of The $100,000 Pyramid reboot on ABC on August 6, 2017. In the main game, she helped her contestant get 7 clues in only 15 seconds causing host Michael Strahan to say, "I think that's the quickest round we've ever had, 15 seconds!"
In 2018 she played Ava Gardner in the Spanish period comedy-drama television series Arde Madrid, telling the story of the period which the American actress spent in Madrid during Francoist Spain.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Jerry Vale was born on 8 July 1930 in The Bronx, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000), Casino (1995) and Goodfellas (1990). He was married to Rita Grapel. He died on 18 May 2014 in Palm Springs, California, USA.- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Alan King was born on 26 December 1927 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and actor, known for Casino (1995), Cat's Eye (1985) and Rush Hour 2 (2001). He was married to Jeanette Sprung. He died on 9 May 2004 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Renee Raudman is known for Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (2004), Metal Gear Solid: Integral (1999) and Metal Gear Solid (1998).
- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Drew Carey was born on 23 May 1958 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He is a producer and actor, known for The Drew Carey Show (1995), Robots (2005) and Jack and Jill (2011).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Kelly Preston was born on October 13, 1962 in Honolulu, Hawaii. A talented and captivating performer, she first garnered international attention with her role as "Marnie Mason" in Ivan Reitman's Twins (1988), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. With her diverse character portrayals in films, such as director Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire (1996); Citizen Ruth (1996) for Alexander Payne; and For Love of the Game (1999), directed by Sam Raimi, she continued to capture audience attention.
In the early part of her career, Kelly worked with notable director John Frankenheimer in the Elmore Leonard film, 52 Pick-Up (1986), alongside Roy Scheider and Ann-Margret. Her career saw her cast her beside some of Hollywood's most notable names, including Kevin Spacey in Casino Jack (2010); Quentin Tarantino, George Clooney, and Harvey Keitel in Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn (1996); Kevin Bacon in Death Sentence (2007); Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick in Addicted to Love (1997); Debra Winger, Zooey Deschanel, and Hank Azaria in Eulogy (2004); Mike Myers in The Cat in the Hat (2003); and Rod Steiger and Julie Harris in the Academy Award-nominated short, Little Surprises (1996).
Kelly was actively involved in education, drug reform and many charitable organizations. She was acknowledged with numerous awards as a result of her work. She married John Travolta on September 12, 1991, and they had three children.
Kelly died on July 12, 2020, in Ocala, Florida, after a two-year battle with breast cancer. She was 57.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Louis Diamond Phillips is an American actor and film director. His breakthrough came when he starred as Ritchie Valens in the biographical drama film La Bamba (1987). For Stand and Deliver (1988), Phillips was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won an Independent Spirit Award. Phillips made his Broadway debut with the 1996 revival of The King and I, earning a Tony Award nomination for his portrayal of King Mongkut of Siam. Phillips' other notable films include Young Guns (1988), Young Guns II (1990), Courage Under Fire (1996), The Big Hit (1998), Brokedown Palace (1999), Che (2008), and The 33 (2015). In the television series Longmire, he played a main character named Henry Standing Bear. He played New York City Police Lieutenant Gil Arroyo on Prodigal Son on FOX from 2019 to 2021.- Actor
- Producer
Daniel Benzali is an internationally renowned actor who has astonished and delighted audiences worldwide for over 30 years with his powerful performances in a wide range of film, television and theatre roles. He received a Golden Globe Award nomination for his magnificent performance as superstar attorney Ted Hoffman in the groundbreaking, highly acclaimed television series, Murder One (1995). He received the honor of being invited to become a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Other major London Theatre work includes starring as Juan Domingo Perón in the global hit musical, Evita, and starring opposite Patti LuPone in the world premiere of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical, Sunset Boulevard. Benzali's singing can be heard on the world premiere cast recording of Sunset Boulevard and on his own album, Benzali.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Kim Victoria Cattrall was born on August 21, 1956 in Mossley Hill, Liverpool, England to Gladys Shane (Baugh), a secretary, and Dennis Cattrall, a construction engineer. At the age of three months, her family immigrated to Canada, where a large number of her films have been made. At age 11, she returned to her native country and studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA). She returned to Vancouver and, at age 16, graduated from high school and won a scholarship to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) in New York City. During her final year at the Academy, she won a role in Otto Preminger's action thriller Rosebud (1975). Following her film debut, Kim returned to the theatre, first in Vancouver and then in repertory in Toronto before winning a contract at Universal Pictures in Los Angeles, California.
Kim continued to work steadily through the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, including roles in 1980s cult classics such as Police Academy (1984), Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and Mannequin (1987), and as Mr. Spock's protegee Lieutenant Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). However, it was her portrayal of sexually liberated public relations executive Samantha Jones on the HBO sitcom Sex and the City (1998) and its two feature film follow-ups that brought her worldwide attention, and gained her five Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations including winning the 2002 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.- Writer
- Producer
Nicholas Pileggi was born and raised in New York, the son of a shoe store owner. He worked as a journalist for Associated Press in the 1950s where he specialized in crime reporting. Over the next 30 years he built up his contacts and reputation, covering stories for New York magazine and contributing to many others, as he became an expert on crime, most especially the organized crime world of the Mafia.
In 1986 he wrote "Wiseguy" which he subsequently developed into the Academy Award nominated screenplay for Goodfellas (1990) with Martin Scorsese. He followed that up with scripts for Casino (1995) (also with Scorsese) and City Hall (1996) as well as writing and producing several other crime-based movies and TV shows.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Nora Ephron was educated at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. She was an acclaimed essayist (Crazy Salad 1975), novelist (Heartburn 1983), and had written screenplays for several popular films, all featuring strong female characters, such as anti-nuclear activist Karen Silkwood (Silkwood (1983), co-written with Alice Arlen) and a mobster's feisty independent daughter Cookie Voltecki (Cookie (1989), also co-written with Arlen). Ephron's hard-headed sensibilities helped make Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally... (1989) a clear-eyed view of modern romance, and she earned an Oscar nomination for her original screenplay.
Ephron made her directorial debut with the comedy This Is My Life (1992), co-scripted by her sister Delia Ephron, which starred Julie Kavner as a single mother who struggles to establish herself as a stand-up comedienne. Ephron followed up by helming and co-writing Sleepless in Seattle (1993), a romantic comedy in which lovers Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are separated for most of the film. Less about love than about love in the movies, the film drew inspiration from the beloved shipboard romance An Affair to Remember (1957), starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.
Ephron was born in New York City, the daughter of stage and screen writing team Henry Ephron and Phoebe Ephron, who used her infancy as the subject of their play "Three's a Family" and based their comedy Take Her, She's Mine (1963) on letters their daughter wrote them from college. Their screenplays include There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), Carousel (1956) and Desk Set (1957). Formerly married to novelist Dan Greenburg and investigative journalist Carl Bernstein, Ephron was wed to crime journalist and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, at the time of her passing, who wrote such films as Goodfellas (1990). She was of Russian Jewish descent.- Actress
- Writer
- Executive
Lucy Webb was born on 31 October 1956 in Cookeville, Tennessee, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for Not Necessarily the News (1982), Corrina, Corrina (1994) and Outside Ozona (1998). She was previously married to Kevin Pollak.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
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).- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Arthel Neville was born on 20 October 1962 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for Fire in the Sky (1993), Days of Our Lives (1965) and Dallas (1978). She has been married to Taku Hirano since 2001. She was previously married to Derrick Lassic.- Music Artist
- Music Department
- Actor
Robbie Robertson was born on 5 July 1943 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was a music artist and actor, known for Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Ladder 49 (2004). He was married to Janet Zuccarini and Dominique Robertson. He died on 9 August 2023 in Los Angeles, California, USA.